Muladi
Muladies ( sg: Muladi ) were an ethnic group, who lived in the Middle Ages on the Iberian Peninsula.
The Spanish name Muladi is derived from the Arabic word muwallad ( pl: مولدون / muwalladūn ). The basic meaning muwallad means a person with parents of different origins, especially the descendants of an Arab and a non-Arab parent, who grew up among Arabs and was educated in the Arab-Islamic culture. In Islamic history Muwalladūn referred in a broader sense non-Arab Muslims New, ie the descendants of converts.
In the Iberian Peninsula, including some noble families were already in the 8th and 9th centuries parts of the locals, until then the Christian population to Islam. In the 10th century, however, there was a massive increase in this population, so that Muladies at the end of this century constituted the majority of the population of Al -Andalus. It is assumed that this is, in contrast to the previous crossings to Islam, to a great extent not " conscious " conversions acted. The reason for this lies in Islamic law. If a child is born and this is expressly designated as "Christian " or "Jewish", such a child gains the status of "Muslim". Since after the massive emigration of Christian chaplains in the 9th century, especially in rural areas due to lack of priests officially hardly baptisms were performed, the new-born child could not be registered as a Christian and was therefore automatically Muslim.
By Arabization of Muladies and their mixing with Arabs and Berbers also partially blurred in the 11th and 12th centuries increasingly the differences between the different Muslim population groups, so that they gradually went up in a largely uniform group and called themselves Andalusiyūn.