[Music] This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. >> And welcome to Facts for Frauds. Now, let's talk about the moors. Is it a nationality? Is it a religion? Is it an ethnicity? Well, here's the facts from history. Europe was not always on top of the world and in fact for a period was actually on the back foot against invasions from the east such as with the Huns, Mongols and Avars and from the south such as with the Turks, Arabs and Iranians and at one point it seemed like much of Christian Europe could fall to the everexpanding Islamic conglomerate to the south with the Balkans being conquered by the Ottomans and Iberia and other areas of Europe conquered by the Moors. But who were the Moors anyways? This is a hotly contested issue and quite the sensitive topic considering the historic tensions and conflicts between Christians, Jews, and Muslims throughout the Mediterranean region such as in the Levant, the Balkans, Egypt, the Maghreb, and other regions of southern Europe. But there are actually many other players here involved rather than the three affforementioned religious groups. Although all of these religions do have their origins with the Semitic peoples of the Well, it actually all began during the Roman era when the up andcoming Empire conquered the Magra from the Carthaginians and native Berber or Amazic people, a region known to them in Latin as Moritania and hence the native inhabitants were referred to as the Mari or Moors, inhabiting what is now parts of Algeria and Morocco. Truth be told, the genetic makeup of the region hasn't changed too terribly much since antiquity. So we can assume that the ancient moors would have been pretty much identical to the Arab Berbers we see today in appearance and genetics largely being of Southwest Asian origin but with substantial ad mixture from both Europe and subsaran Africa and hence there is a considerable amount of diversity in the North African population being anything but a homogeneous people with some being quite fair such as the cabio while others are very dark such as the Tuare and others being somewhere in between. But on average, most indigenous North Africans are in the range of 10 to 30% subsaharan and 70 to 90% Western Eurasian. Keep in mind, although the Moors and other North Africans did speak Afroaciotic languages, meaning they were related to Arabic, Hebrew, Syriak, and other Semitic tongues, they were most certainly distinct and of their own branch, not even close to being mutually intelligible, with there being quite a bit of diversity between Amazic languages themselves. So even though the region of Moretania spent many centuries under Roman rule, they still maintained their own regional cultures and languages and were even later invaded and conquered by Germanic peoples such as the Goths and Vandals as well as the ironic Allens from Central Asia. But the Arab invasion of the Magb had the biggest impact on the region with the vast majority of the population converting to Islam with Arabic becoming the official lingua franca. Although different tribes did continue to speak Amazic languages, Islamic Arabs under the Umayad caliphate very quickly spread out throughout the Maghreb and even into southern Europe where they conquered nearly the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula by the 8th century AD. And this is where the term Moors comes from in European history. Since many of the Islamic forces originated in the region of Moritania, although it was definitely more of a coalition of people from all over the Islamic world at the time, including those from Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, and even some from subsaharan Africa. So Moore was not an ethnic or racial group, but rather a term used by Europeans to refer to those invading Europe from the region of Moritania. In European sources, the term Moore was eventually redefined to strictly refer to those of subsaharan African origin with all North Africans simply portrayed as blackkinned peoples, most likely in an attempt to distance them from Europeans and portray them as a more alien and foreign threat. As although there were Moors of subsaharan African descent in Iberia during the occupation, both free and enslaved, they were a very small minority just as in the rest of the Islamic world. Because of this historical depiction of Moors as black in the present day, many assume that all Moors were of subsaharan African descent, which is not even close to being true and has had quite an interesting social impact on the African diaspora. Islamic Iberia or Alandaloo was briefly ruled over by the larger Umayads before eventually splitting with the Amazids based in Morocco. Although interestingly, no, the name of Morocco is actually not tied to the name Moore, but the country of Moritania to the south is. Although Moritania was more on the periphery of the Almorid Empire, with modern-day Moritanians having much more subsaharan DNA on average than Moroccans. Moore is also an ethnic term used in some parts of the Sahara today in order to denote those of predominantly mixed Arab Berber origins in the region. Predominantly Moritania, Western Sahara, and Mali. And there are even some tribes such as the Arma in West Africa who actually can trace back their ancestry to the Moors of Iberia. However, Iberia was not the only region of Western Europe to be conquered by the Moors, as the Boleric Islands, Sicily, and parts of southern Italy had also been invaded by North African Muslims and incorporated, albeit briefly, into the Islamic world. Obviously, Spain, Portugal, and Italy are not ArabIlamic countries today, with Iberia having been gradually Christianized over nearly seven centuries by a coalition of Christian Latin peoples pushing south, with Sicily being conquered by the Normans. a French Viking population. And although there were still moderate numbers of Islamic citizens remaining in these countries, they met with a variety of fates. In Iberia, the last Islamic holdout, the Emirate of Granada, had a shaky peace with Castile before being annexed and Muslim Iberians were initially tolerated for a time, speaking a heavily Arabic influenced Latin dialect known as Mo Aarabic. Although with the incorporation of Granada, the language and religion of the remaining Moors was heavily suppressed and eventually stamped out altogether with the Moorish converts to Catholicism being known as Moriscos. In most of Sicily following the Norman invasion, Muslims were largely treated as equal citizens. However, upon incorporation with the rest of Italy, the remaining Sicilian Muslim population was expelled to a village in south central mainland Italy known as Lucura. And eventually even this settlement of Arabic-sp speakaking Muslims in Italy was destroyed and its inhabitants were slaughtered or sold into slavery. Although the Arabic language quickly dissipated in Sicily, replaced by Italian dialects from the south, the Arabic language did survive on the island of Malta in between Sicily and North African with the Maltese language being a heavily Latinized Tunisian Arabic dialect with over a third of its vocabulary coming from Italian. So even though the Moorish community of Spain had converted to Catholicism on paper, much like with the Jewish converts or conversos, the crown basically went with the once a Muslim always a Muslim approach and decided to expel the entirety of the morisco community of Spain with the bulk arriving in North Africa and a large number also fled to Spanish colonies in the new world. The Sephardic Jews, having been accused of heresy and collaboration with the Muslims, were also largely expelled from Iberia, mainly to North Africa and the New World, other areas of Europe, such as the Netherlands, or making their way to the Ottoman Empire, which is why there were previously large Sephardic communities in Greece and Turkey. Over many generations of living in colonial and postcolonial Latin America, the vast majority of the Sephardic and Moriscoco peoples of the region intermarried with other ethnic groups and completely lost their religion and cultural heritage, mainly due to the dangers that persisted in outing oneself as someone of Jewish or Muslim descent. For this reason, many Latin Americans from many different racial groups may have varying levels of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry. Essentially meaning that many Latinos carry the blood of the old Moors and Jews of Iberia. The genetic impact in Iberia and southern Europe from occupation by the Moors was actually rather minimal as I discussed in a much older video with recent ad mixture rates from the Middle East and North Africa in the Spanish and Portuguese ranging from 2 to 10% and in Sicily much of the same while in Malta it may be up to 14% of the gene pool although the bulk of their ancestry is still shared with the neighboring Sicilians. The historic conflation of the Moors with subsaharan Africans has led to a rather strange movement arising in the African diaspora with many self-identifying as Islamic Moors and with Moors history being pretty much exclusive to black Americans which is fine whatever but it seems disingenuous to steal and erase the entire history of the actual Moors of North Africa and just acting like they never existed. Additionally, large numbers of Hispanic Americans, mostly from mixed race communities, have been converting to Islam in large numbers with the Islamic Hispanic-American community now estimated to be over 100,000. And it's surmised that this may be due to contact with Arab and black Muslims in major cities and the revelations that due to the explosion of many morisco to Latin America, many of these Hispanic and Arab Americans may have more in common than they might think. Not to mention the overlap in appearance between some Middle Easterners and Latinos. So although the historic Arab impact and influence on the Western world, such as that in southern Europe and Latin America, is pretty wellnown and becoming more apparent to many, one topic that certainly doesn't get a lot of attention in the west, is the Arab conquest and explorations to the east with there being a history of massive invasions from the Islamic world into Southeast Asia and South Asia with the latter region known as Alhind. Although the Indian subcontinent was eventually conquered by the Turco Persian peoples known as the Muggals, the Arabs still had a massive influence on their society as they had for generations before Islam even existed. With there being especially large Islamic community in southern India and Sri Lanka who have major ties to the Arabian Peninsula, although the Arab impact on their DNA is only small to moderate. In India, the Mallayali speaking Mapila and Tamill speaking Lab have long claimed descent from Arab and other Middle Eastern traders mostly from the Hajramount region of Yemen as do the Sri Lankan Sonicar and upon discovery by the Portuguese they were known as the Indian Moors and Sri Lankan Moors respectively due to them having shared the same religion of the Iberian Moors who they were already very familiar with. Although I've yet to see any genetic studies to corroborate the claims of Arab descent in southern Indian Muslims such as the Mapila and Lebe, Sri Lankan Moors have been shown to have limited amounts of ad mixture from the Middle East, albeit quite unevenly dispersed in the population due to the diverse origins of the different Islamic groups on the island. The last group of Moors that existed in the present day and actually have little to nothing to do with the actual Iberian Moors would be the Morrow people in the Bang Samurro or Mindanao region of the southern Philippines. Also clearly named by the Spaniards after the Iberian Moors. The term Morrow or Bang Samurro in the Philippines is used to refer to all of the Islamic ethnic groups on the islands, many of whom may or may not have trace amounts of Arab ancestry from ancient traders or Islamic missionaries. and today make up around 5 to 10% of the country's population. It seems likely that had the Spaniards not conquered the Philippines at the time they had certainly the entirety of the Philippine Islands would have eventually been converted to Islam. This is in Indonesia and Malaysia. So it is rather interesting that the Iberians were constantly butting heads with Muslims just about everywhere and in the case of Latin America even were the direct cause of them migrating there. meaning that many people around the globe are descended from these old moors of Iberia, Sicily, and North Africa. >> Well, in general, it's obvious. The first thing that comes up to my head is no, like not even not even close. You know, it's it's the thing is there are there are black people here that lives with us. They could claim to be Moorish and that is more of more con more more convincing than these people because these people leave lived in USA. It's so far so far away to claim another culture like this if you know what I mean. >> Like and just to jump from here to to to from there like to from USA to Africa here and claim a whole culture that you have nothing to do with you have no evidence of you have no genetic relations to whatsoever, no linguistic even, nothing at all and then just want to claim it. It's it's nonsense to me. And then as I got deep and more deeper into it, I I just get shocked every time. I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Like I I wish I could have them around here, teach them all about the proper Moish culture, about what what is actually what what does it mean to be more? What does it really like? What does it feel and mean? And what is actually being more, if you know what I mean? Cuz none of none of none of what they claim. And I'm like just no that's totally wrong. It's it's absolutely wrong. Like everything they say, everything they they they claim to dress, everything they claim to like the names, as you said, is pretty new to me. BL, we don't use that at all. I it's so not familiar in in North Africa. We use totally different names. If we talk about the original Moorish names, that's totally different. It's called Buus, Burga, Atlas, Abuhood. Those are Moish names. those those are 100% morish names because we talk about the kingdom of Moritania like 100 BC before the 100 uh years before Christ and those are original not affected by any other culture those are pure murish uh names why didn't you look into it if you want to claim the culture that means that you are relying on some false uh sources which is definitely the the whole book and whatever they have in their hands They claim to be Quran and the prophet that they call Ali something, you know. >> Yeah. True Ali. No, it's it's none of that is is correct to me as a Moish person, an actual person who lived in the culture surrounded by the Moish people, lived and studied and and and grow up into the culture. It's it's totally strange for me. It it doesn't from far it seems like some couple people that gather up that want to make up stuff and then they looked around they picked up something randomly and claim it flag whatever let's give it 10,000 years old what are you talking 10,000 years old like that's even older than that's almost as old as the Ibraian the the the the um I would I would call it the father of ms if you know what I mean genetically that's the 14,000 years ago. Ibra is the oldest evidence of the indigenous people of North Africa that look exactly like us by the way. And you say that the flag is that old 10,000 years ago. Bro, what? That's that's total nonsense. It doesn't make any sense. >> And it's probably not a good idea to be doing this kind of stuff when you have warrants for not showing up in court. you'll be digital like me someday, you know. >> And thanks for hanging out with us on Fracture Frauds. Make sure you hit the thumbs up button, you're subscribed, and ring that bell. Also, leave a comment in the comments section telling me what you think. And a huge thank you to all of our Facts or Frauds channel members. And if you're still hanging out, thank you. I appreciate you all. Make sure you hit the thumbs up button, subscribe, and ring that bell. Also, leave a comment in the comment section. Tell me what you think. Till next time, I'll see you soon.