In this lucid and accessible volume, James Amelang presents an overview of the turbulent “parallel” histories of Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity in early modern Spain. A specialist in neither Jewish nor Islamic history, Amelang seeks, as “a sympathetic observer who looks [in] from the outside,” to bring together two separate historiographies that “live largely with their backs to each other” (x). In so doing, he contributes to a small but growing body of work that pioneers a fresh and profitable comparative approach to the study of religious minorities in postmedieval Europe. Highly readable and including a useful thematic bibliography, Parallel Histories will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate classes while also engaging the general reader with an interest in medieval, early modern, Spanish, Jewish, Muslim, or religious history.

The joint treatment of the histories of Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity in early modern Spain is, in several regards, long overdue. While these two histories profoundly differed, they nevertheless bear striking similarities. They not only unfolded against the same political, social, cultural, and economic landscape, but they both featured forced conversion, the construction of newly complex confessional identities, inquisitorial prosecution, and royally mandated expulsion. Moreover, these two histories shaped one another. To cite but one example, the 1501 charter expelling Muslims from the kingdoms of Castile and León modeled much of its rationale and phrasing on the 1492 charter that expelled the Jews from Spain, and directly referred to the lessons learned from Jews’ alleged corruption of conversos (converts from Judaism). Studying the histories of moriscos (converts from Islam) and conversos in tandem facilitates a deeper understanding of each, as well as a more holistic appreciation of majority-minority dynamics in early modern Spain.

Parallel Histories does not itself engage in extensive comparative analysis. Instead, it presents the histories of moriscos and conversos separately—in parts 1 and 2 of the book, respectively—and then considers a handful of salient similarities and differences between the two in an epilogue. Within each of the two main sections of the book, an early chapter provides an overview of political history, and subsequent chapters address the religious practices, social and professional characteristics, cultural creativity, and “Old Christian” perceptions of the converts in question. Throughout, attention is paid to regional variations.

In Part 1, “The Moriscos and the End of Muslim Spain,” Amelang traces morisco history from the fall of Nasrid Granada in 1492 through the mass conversions of 1502 to 1526, the expulsion of the moriscos between 1609 and 1613 (which represented the largest migration decreed by a state for religious reasons in early modern western Europe), and the aftermath of this expulsion, which resulted in the return to Islam of untold numbers of moriscos in North Africa. Amelang calls attention to the wide spectrum of Old Christian attitudes toward moriscos, which ranged from deep mistrust of “the eternal Muslim enemy” (29) to “maurophilia,” which found expression in the “Moorish novel” genre and, to a degree, in the greatest literary work of early modern Spain, Don Quixote. He explores the diversity of morisco spiritual stances and cultural practices, highlighting the fascinating case of the plomos of Granada, which illustrates one morisco approach to mixing Christianity and Islam. And he notes the richness of Morisco aljamiado literature—texts that transcribed contemporary Spanish using Arabic characters, forming a literature of resistance and loss that provides unparalleled insight into the experience of the most highly educated moriscos.

In Part 2, “From Jews to Christians,” Amelang traces converso history from the mass conversions of 1391 through the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 (whose greatest impact he characterizes as spiritual and cultural), and the emergence of the Sephardic diaspora. One important theme is the evolution of Old Christian attitudes toward conversos and Jews. Amelang pays special attention to the Statutes of Purity of Blood—legislation intended to prevent descendants of Muslims and Jews from acceding to numerous privileges. He argues that these laws were primarily applied to descendants of Jews but left less of a mark than once thought, as many conversos procured certificates of limpieza, or “purity.” A second major theme of this section of the book is the complexity of converso identities. Amelang surveys the social and professional characteristics of conversos as well as the ways in which many conversos inhabited a religious “no-man's-land between Judaism and Christianity” (122). He also mentions the fascinating journeys back to Judaism of conversos who left Spain and Portugal for Amsterdam. Finally, Amelang considers the impact of conversos' experiences on Spanish culture and modernity more broadly. While noting “how hard it is to generalize about a shared Converso identity or point of view” (132), he presents conversos' struggles as driving their unusual visibility in three arenas of cultural creativity: Catholic religious reform, philosophy and the sciences, and literature. He also reflects on the contributions of Uriel da Costa, Baruch Spinoza, and others to the forging of skeptical and rationalist worldviews.

At the start of the epilogue to Parallel Histories, Amelang suggests that the commonalities between the histories of the moriscos and the conversos pertain primarily to these groups' origins. He points out that both moriscos and conversos were the objects of collective Spanish Christian violence, came to constitute new social categories, and were automatically religiously suspect on account of the involuntary nature of their conversions. A far longer list of links, however, could be drawn up on the basis of the material presented in the preceding chapters. It seems noteworthy, for instance, that both the moriscos and the conversos emerged in multiple waves over time, complicating their internal group dynamics as well as Christian perceptions of them. Moreover, the ways in which moriscos and conversos negotiated their religious identities invite especially rich comparison. The practices, beliefs, and respective evolutions of crypto-Islam and crypto-Judaism had much in common, as did the ways in which some moriscos and conversos envisioned the ultimate historical triumph of their ancestral faith. The respective returns, outside of Iberia, of moriscos to Islam and conversos to Judaism could also fruitfully be compared. Amelang leaves this work to future scholars.

While paving the way for a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the ties between morisco and converso histories, Parallel Histories also underscores vital differences between the two. In the epilogue, Amelang stresses the radically different fates of moriscos and conversos. He observes that while Muslims and moriscos were both expelled from Spain, Jews suffered this fate but conversos did not. As a result, even though Old Christians had long considered Muslim “blood” less “contaminating” and “dishonorable” than that of Jews (108, 168), conversos ultimately assimilated into Spanish Christian society whereas moriscos did not. In seeking to account for this key divergence, Amelang points to additional contrasts between moriscos and conversos pertaining to Christian perceptions and the social and professional profiles of the two groups. He highlights age-old Christian fears about Muslim and morisco political and military disloyalty, which were fueled by suspicions of these groups' contacts with North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and France, as well as by bloody morisco revolts in Spain. These concerns had no parallels to the conversos, whom Old Christians regarded as posing challenges that were primarily spiritual. Amelang suggests also that the tendency of many moriscos to live in isolated rural communities facilitated the maintenance of morisco communal identity in ways that Old Christians came to find intolerable and that facilitated their targeting of moriscos. Conversos, by contrast, tended to live in close proximity to Old Christians and to belong to an upwardly mobile urban middle class; these factors helped conversos integrate into the Christian mainstream.

The methodological difficulties inherent in treating both converso and morisco history in a single volume render Amelang's achievement all the more singular. The historical trajectory of the conversos in Spain began earlier and ended later than that of the moriscos, and far more extant sources document the converso experience than the morisco one. Moreover, one group loomed larger in the realm of high politics and the other in cultural life. Amelang surmounts these challenges with grace, producing a rich but concise narrative that invites reflection and discussion. Although the internal structure of each section of the book could, in places, have been more streamlined (certain chapters could have been consolidated and it might have made sense to introduce the mechanics of the Spanish Inquisition in Part 1 instead of in Part 2), although greater attention to pre-fifteenth-century interfaith dynamics would have enriched the study, and although the inclusion of the work of John Tolan and Benjamin Kedar would have strengthened the bibliography, these points by no means detract from the overall value of Amelang's work. Parallel Histories stands as an important book that is sure to shape the next generation's approach to one of the most complex and controversial subjects in early modern history.