UC Berkeley

In the Spanish city of Granada, beginning with its conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella in

1492, Christian aesthetics, briefly Gothic, and then classical were imposed on the landscape.

There, the revival of classical Roman culture took place against the backdrop of Islamic

civilization. The Renaissance was brought to the city by its conquerors along with Christianity

and Castilian law. When Granada fell, many Muslim leaders fled to North Africa. Other elite

families stayed, collaborated with the new rulers and began to promote this new classical culture.The Granada Venegas were one of the families that stayed, and participated in the Renaissance in Granada by sponsoring a group of writers and poets, and they served the crown in various military capacities. They were royal, having descended from a Sultan who had ruled Granada in 1431. Cidi Yahya Al Nayar, the heir to this family, converted to Christianity prior to the conquest. Thus he was one of the Morisco elites most respected by the conquerors. My dissertation follows Cidi Yahya Al Nayar’s descendants, the Granada Venegas family, in their more than one hundred year quest to join the high nobility of Spain. This quest ended at the court of Philip IV in Madrid when Don Pedro de Granada Venegas was made a Marqúes in 1643. The Granada Venegas were Moriscos, or Muslim converts to Christianity. Most accounts of Morisco history have focused their attention on many Morisco laborers and farmers who tried to keep their cultural and religious traditions alive and who ultimately were expelled from Spain in 1609. This dissertation describes a different sort of Morisco experience—the successful assimilation of elites—which adds complexity to our understanding of this persecuted minority. The Granada Venegas family, as Moriscos, worked hard and successfully to convince their neighbors in Granada, and ultimately the crown in Madrid, that they were loyal servants and devout Christians, worthy of a noble title.