Granada’s keys in Moorish hands

From John Drummond Hay, Morocco and the Moors: Western Barbary, Its Wild Tribes and Savage Animals (1861):

There are descendants of the Moorish families of Granada now residing in Tetuan and Fas [Fez], who still preserve the keys, and it is said also the title-deeds, of the houses of their Mauro-Spanish ancestors, in the hope that the Arabs will yet return as conquerors to Spain.

This is a frequent meme in C19th British and, I think, Spanish accounts of the region. It’s unclear to me whether there’s any truth in it, although John Drummond Hay was in a position to know, being British Consul General at Tangier.

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Comments

1. kalebeul » “Prussian Jews wanted to come back to Spain in 1854″ sez:
   26 October 2006 at 11:35 PM

   [...] The story of the Moroccans with keys to houses in Granada is well known. La Cruz, The Cross, a Catholic periodical carried what sounds like a variant of this in 1854, claiming that Prussian Jews were about to petition the Spanish court to abolish the 1492 expulsion decree. Léon Carbonero y Sol wrote: In truth it does not surprise us that at this time in which Spain appears a putrefying corpse, these stinking worms emerge into the public, this accursed race, which, no matter how hard it strives, will not be able to erase from its forehead the execrable anathema that reduced it to nomadism, without temple, ministers, fatherland, or home, always persecuted and always hated wherever it desires to leave its foul footprint. [...]

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