Moors

We have already referred, in the entry Slaves, to the Moorish captives employed in clearing the land of Madeira. Since the general term ‘slaves’ covered Black people, mulattoes, Canary Islanders and Moors, it is difficult today to determine with precision the facts or circumstances that concern any one of those groups in particular. Nevertheless, we know that there was a large number of Moors in this archipelago in the early days of colonisation, and that important communities of this population formed, notably in Funchal, Ponta do Sol, Curral das Freiras and Machico. In the first of these places there was a mouraria (Moorish quarter), a district of Moors, and the public still today gives one of the streets of Funchal the name of Mouraria.

Lieutenant-Colonel Alberto Artur Sarmento published in no. 1983 of the former Heraldo da Madeira (‘Madeira Herald’) an interesting article on the Moors in Madeira, from which we transcribe the following passages:

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The Moor was a harder worker than the slave from Guinea and Mina, which is why landowners preferred to import him for their farming estates. This scandalous trade, arranged between the donataries here and the governors of the strongholds in Africa, who ordered raids, provoked the outcry of the chief of the Moors, who complained in a letter to Manuel I of what Azambuja was doing: seizing people indiscriminately, of every class, to send under contract to the captains of Madeira. This is what we find in the “Documentos arabicos copiados dos originaes da Torre do Tombo, 1790.” ‘The Moors formed large communities, gathering in groups or in a separate quarter, as the Mouraria, one of the oldest streets in Funchal, bears witness, and they were heavily traded in the towns, especially in Ponta do Sol and Santa Cruz (‘Holy Cross’). In Santa Cruz, until a few years ago, an altarpiece in the parish church could still be seen, depicting Moorish slaves wearing a small funnel-shaped turban with a drooping tip. From this derived the peasant’s carapuça (traditional Madeiran cap shaped like an inverted funnel) and the little cloth hanging from the head, old characteristic garments of the Madeiran countrywoman. ‘From the Moors comes the plaintive quality of the songs, though the stamping dance is a movement of the Black people. From the Moors come the rambling rhymes of the hill folk, the popular ones: lengi lengi the passing fog, the ant that catches its foot. Amid the mists, enchanted princesses, tales of palaces and hidden treasure, thieves and magic wands are influences and themes of the people, carried over in this current from a distant subject race. ‘From the Moors, too, comes couscous, that granulated paste of wheat flour, so prized by the poorer classes, who eat it only on solemn occasions, with a chunk of pork, at baptisms and weddings, never without the sprig of savory and coriander that crowns the dish and gives it its aroma. ‘“Vae-te p’ra Argel” (Go off to Algiers) is a popular curse that recalls the plundering and captivity in the lands of the Moors. A 15th-century episode is handled by an artist’s hand in one of the chapters of the historical novel “A Filha de Tristam das Damas”, with a vivid colouring of the golden days of the dandyish donatary of Machico. ‘That intelligent and adventurous race gave us a figure in history in the person of the Moor Barque, of Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), who overthrew the false doctrine of the prophet Fernão Bravo. As in the tale of “the king is naked”, from then on everyone began to see the fraud, and the authorities took charge of the impostor who had deceived a credulous people with his tricks.