ABSTRACT
In the Middle Ages, clashes with the faithful of the Crescent gave Christians opportunities to deport entire Muslim communities. The first to do this were the Byzantines during their campaign to reconquer a part of Syria in mid-tenth century. Considering the highly efficient manufacturing and commercial system of the Kingdom of Granada and the large amount of money generated in taxes by that region after the Christian conquest, Spanish rulers preferred to maintain the structure of Muslim society before conversion and avoided intervening in cultural and religious affairs of Moriscos. Throughout the pre-modern age in House of Islam, there were very few Christian insurrections against Muslim authorities, and therefore very rare were the cases in which it was considered necessary to deport or eliminate an entire community of Christian subjects. In the nineteenth century, the independence movements of the Ottoman Empire’s Balkan provinces, often aided by foreign powers, ultimately resulted in the loss of those territories by the Sublime Porte.
