Social Science Research Council

"Migration and the City: Early-Seventeenth Century Urban History in Granada, Valencia, Rabat, and Tetouan"

The large-scale movement of populations has a profound effect upon the urban environment. For this project, I will examine the effects of a historical moment of forced migration upon the built landscapes of Granada and Valencia in Spain, and Rabat and Tetouan in Morocco. The moriscos, descendants of Muslims who had been forcibly converted to Christianity, were expelled from Spain between 1609 and 1614 by Phillip III; this resulted in the loss of population in Spanish cities and a population explosion in the North African Maghrib. The four cities that I propose to study are the two that lost and gained, respectively, the largest numbers. I will focus upon change in these cities in the decades following the morisco expulsion. The product of my study will be a comparative textual and visual analysis that shows change in urban form across time within and between the proposed case studies. To produce this, I will examine textual descriptions, historical documents, and structures in both Morocco and Spain. Pertinent structures are those with social significance, such as mosques, churches, schools, and defensive walls. Relevant documents include travelogues, meeting minutes, official correspondence, and historiography found in both national and local archives, as well as the documentation surrounding the construction and alteration of significant structures. The result of this study, my dissertation, will contribute to the discourses on comparative urbanism and migration in history generally and the histories of Spain and the Maghrib specifically. This dissertation will also contribute to the study of architecture within a social historical context.