ARAGON IN ITALY AND SPAIN, 1458-94certainly displaced a substantial population of artisans.^30
Southern Italy and eventually the Balkans became the target
for the Spanish Jewish refugees or Sephardim (the Hebrew
word for 'Spaniards'), and these communities persisted in
the Turkish empire, aware of their ancestry and intellectual
heritage, for many centuries.^31
Purged of Jews, Spain was not at once purged of Muslims;
the fall of Granada in January 1492 signalled the submission
but not the extinction of Islam, and the right of Muslims to
continue to worship according to their rites was guaranteed
in the surrender treaty that ended the Granadan crusade.
Aggressive attempts at conversion and rebellion within Gra-
nada led to the loss of the right to practise Islam in all the
Castilian lands by 1502; but what is astonishing is the lack
of application of similar legislation in Aragon and Valencia.
A fundamental study of the Valencian Muslims by Mark
Meyerson explains why. He distinguishes between the out-
look oflsabella (advised by Archbishop Cisneros of Toledo),
always more fanatical on the question of religious uniformity,
and the more pragmatic Ferdinand II, who saw the Muslims
as financial assets in the same way as his predecessors on the
Aragonese throne had done. For Isabella, the conversion of
a scattering of isolated Muslim communities in Castile was
a viable project. For Ferdinand, the conversion of perhaps a
quarter of his subjects in Aragon and Valencia was a differ-
ent proposition: there was the danger of mass resistance in
areas still heavily populated by Muslims, and the fear of loss
of revenue from a productive element in the population; this
was a time when the monarchy needed to foster economic
recovery in the Aragonese realms after a period of civil war
and uneven economic performance. The result was that Islam
was quite simply allowed to survive for another generation.^32
In 1525 political trouble, compounded by the renewed fear
- For an outline of the issues, see David Abulafia, Spain and 1492. Unity
and uniformity under Ferdinand and Isabella (Headstart History Papers,
Bangor, 1992), pp. 33-53. Recent attempts by Benzion Netanyahu
and Norman Roth to insist that the con versos were virtually all sincere
Christians are based on a seriously flawed reading of the evidence. - N. Ferorelli, Gli Elffei nell1talia meridionale dall'eta romana al secolo XVIII,
new edition by F. Patroni Griffi (Naples, 1990). - M. Meyerson, Muslims of Valencia in the age of Fernando and Isabel
(Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1991); Abulafia, Spain and 1492, pp. 21-33.