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Can someone help enlighten me. What did the moors call themselves, was it one cultural group of people, or several, that after history has passed share a similar ideology and culture and got group into “the moors” now?
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Hello, a response based on inductive thinking/educated speculation : moor is etymologically related to the term french word “marron” and spanish word “maron” for brown. it comes from greek “mauros” which means black or dark. it seems like europeans used this term to describe the people. And like middle easterners and the term “sudan” for the “the blacks” and Mauritania became named after the “mauros” people. The moors did not have an ideology, as being originally from the empires of Songhay, Ghana and Mali, they practiced african spiritualities that eventually mixed with islam, and continued to become more muslim by the early middle ages around 1300. They accompanied islamised Morrocans and Mauritanians into Spain around the 700s. Sufism is an important syncretic practice of the Moors, very present in Mali, Niger and Senegal. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia they also practice syncretised afro/islamic divination but I do not know what names and if they also practice under the name of Sufism. The “moorish” ideology from the US has very little to do with what was going from 0 BC to 1000 AD in western and northern africa.
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To put it simply the Moors are what the Greeks called Mauritanians and what Europeans called the Africans that conquered Spain and the African elite in Europe during the Middle Ages. Their name had nothing to do with their beliefs ad they didn’t even have their own separate/specific belief system. Now who/where from exactly were these Africans is less clear. A lot of archival documentation has to be collected and various competing sources must be compared. I am happy that this platform is a space for that.
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Thank you for sharing, this does help clarify things. It seems like a 1,00 years from now a scholar may cal the diaspora “Negroes” although that it not what we call ourselves at the moment. I think what I’m (other too) are looking for is how did “the moors” call themselves. Surely if they had the power to conquer and presumptuously came from an older identity and culture, they had names, cosmology , and a history they believed in. That is my interest on the topic, but as you say lets search and present. Jerejef naa lool meda woe ase thank you for the share.
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I see, the wikipedia pages related to the moors will lead you to their arabic names, and in the arabic names you can decipher the african locations, maybe the sources referenced there can help. Example: the Banu Ghaniya, sounds like sons of Ghana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banu_Ghaniya And of course have you tried Ivan van Sertima’s Golden Age of the Moors?
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