[Music] welcome back to baxter frauds who were the moors and whatever happened not a surprise to many that before different european groups basically conquered the entire planet 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 ever-expanding islamic conglomerate to the cell 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 aforementioned religious groups although all of these religions do have their origins with the semitic peoples of them well it actually all began during the roman era when the up-and-coming empire conquered the magura from the carthaginians and native berber or amazigh people a region known to them in latin as mauritania and hence the native inhabitants were referred to as the maori 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 in genetics largely being of southwest asian origin but with substantial admixture from both europe and sub-saharan 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 cabal while others are very dark since the tuareg and others being somewhere in between but on average most indigenous north africans are in the range of 10 to 30 percent sub-saharan and 70 to 90 western eurasian keep in mind although the moors and other north africans did speak afro-asiatic languages meaning they were related to arabic hebrew syriac and other semitic tongues they were most certainly distinct and of their own branch not even close to being mutually intelligible where there being quite a bit of diversity between amazigh languages themselves so even though the region of mauritania spent many centuries under roman rule they still maintained their own regional cultures and languages and were even later invaded and conquered by germanic people such as the goths and vandals as well as the aaronic allens from central asia but the arab invasion of the magurap 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 amazing languages islamic arabs under the umayyad caliphate very quickly spread out throughout the maghrib and even into southern europe where they conquered nearly the entirety of the iberian peninsula by the 8th century a.d and this is where the term moors comes from in european history since many of the islamic forces originated in the region of mauritania 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 sub-saharan 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 mauritania in european sources the term more was eventually redefined to strictly refer to those of sub-saharan african origin with all north africans simply portrayed as black-skinned 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 mores of sub-saharan 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 assumed that all mores were of sub-saharan 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 al-andalus was briefly ruled over by the larger umayyads before eventually splitting with the amazigh al-muravids based in morocco although interestingly no the name of morocco is actually not tied to the name more but the country of mauritania to the south is although mauritania was more on the periphery of the almoravid empire with modern-day mauritanians having much more sub-saharan dna on average than moroccans more is also an ethnic term used in some parts of the sahara today in order to denote those of predominantly mixed arab origins in the region predominantly mauritania 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 balearic 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 arab islamic 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 influence latin dialect known as mos arabic although with the incorporation of granada the language and religion of the remaining wars 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 lucera and eventually even this settlement of arabic-speaking 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 marisco community of spain with a 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 post-colonial latin america the vast majority of the sephardic and marisco 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 admixture rates from the middle east in north africa in the spanish and portuguese ranging from two to ten percent and in sicily much of the same while in malta it may be up to fourteen percent of the gene pool although the bulk of their ancestry is still shared with the neighboring sicilians the historic conflation of the moors with sub-saharan africans has led to a rather strange movement arising in the african diaspora with many self-identifying as islamic moors and with moore's 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 one hundred thousand 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 moriscos to latin america many of these hispanic and arab americans may have more in common than they might think not to mention the overlap and 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 well known 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 al hind although the indian subcontinent was eventually conquered by the turko-persian peoples known as the mughals the arabs still had a massive influence on their society as they had for generations before islam even existed where 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 malayali speaking mapilla and tamo speaking la bay have long claimed dissent from arab and other middle eastern traders mostly from the hagermouth region of yemen as do the sri lankan sanikar 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 wars 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 that mapilla and labay sri lanka and moors have been shown to have limited amounts of admixture 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 wars would be the moro people in the bang samuro or mindanao region of the southern philippines also clearly named by the spaniards after the iberian moors the term moro or bangsamoro in the philippines is used to refer to all of these 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 five to ten percent 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 so to be clear these are moors and these are not [Music] you