my ancestors were muslim

Okay, okay, so the secret was: my mother's ancestors were muslim. She didn't want to tell me, until I was more mature, and then somehow it never did get told.  I've had to 'figure it out' for myself. In today's climate, I'm not sure how much I want to trumpet this information myself.  When I was a child, in my neighborhood, if I had said my ancestry was African, I would never have heard the end of it.  Now, the issue wouldn't be about being African, but Muslim.

The ancestors probably left Grenada in 1492, and possibly emigrated to North Africa (Morocco), from there to Ireland, and then the US.  The reason I think that someone in my family came from Morocco is that we had the Moroccan flag in our living room when I was small.  It was tucked away where visitors would not immediately see it, but it was there, and as a contemplative little only-child I used to spend a fair amount of time staring at it.  We also have some moorish daggers and a smallish scimitar (I have no idea how big a scimitar ought to be.)  I'd always assumed they were picked up by my Dad in his travels, but when I asked him about the bigger one, he said I'd have to ask my mother about that one. 

We used to have what I now realize was Berber jewelry, but I think all we have left of that is some bracelets my father had made for my mother before they were married.  It was probably his way of showing her he accepted and loved her ethnicity.  I remember I asked him once, about a bracelet of coins he had had embossed with their initials, dates, etc., and he said he'd had the bracelet made out of coins because that was a part of her heritage.  I didn't have a clue what he meant.  I think the category 'Berber' was pretty far away from any American's consciousness in the nineteen-fifties.  I certainly was 'not ready' to hear the truth - probably until now, when they are gone, and can no longer tell me.  My mother tried to share it with me before she died, but we miscommunicated and didn't get another chance.  So I'm trying to explore this territory and find out the information in my own way.

I'm not sure how this all fits together, but I do know there were both Moors and Berbers living in Morocco, and we had the Moroccan flag, and I scored very high on the autosomal dna test in many of the ethnicities represented in Morocco (Arab, Yemeni, Turk, Spanish, Portugese, Flemish, French, Italian, Berber, in particular), and also matched with populations in many spots where refugees from the Spanish Inquisition were welcomed, so I'm conjecturing.  I've deduced that my mother's father's mother's people were Moors from my great-grandmother's photographic portrait taken around 1900.  In it she wears her Spanish comb, which I played with as a child, and also a small piece of faux-silver jewelry (nickel perhaps, pewter? I don't know my metals, it looked silver, that's all I remember) which I also played with.  The ornament was a single key and a door.  I remember my mother asking me what I thought it might be, and I said maybe it was a book, because I had seen pictures of books with locks.  But now I realize it was a door.  When I looked up 'key' in the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, I found this: "The symbolism of the key unlocking the door of initiation finds expression, too, in the Koran which states that the Shahada (‘There is no God but God’) is the key to Paradise.  Esoteric interpretation makes each of the four words of the Shahada one of the four teeth of the key which, provided it is whole, will open ‘all the gates of the Word o fGod’ and therefore those of Paradise.”  pp. 564-565

If I hadn't scored so high on my autosomal dna test in Arabic, Portugese, Spanish, and Turkish, I would never have believed it.  But I do also recall my mother saying her grandmother was very 'different,' 'foreign' and 'strict.'  So I think she was probably what is called a Morisco or crypto-muslim (hidden muslim).  I believe she was professed as a Quaker, but clearly she still felt a great deal of attachment to her muslim heritage.  Otherwise why would she adorn herself like that for her portrait?  You might not believe it, but I can actually 'feel' and sense and identify elements of that tradition in my experience of my mother.  She spent a lot of time with her grandmother, who only lived one block away from her during her childhood.

In earlier posts, I speculated on the possibility of an early American, even pre-colonial origin of the relatively small amount of sub-saharan ancestry I matched with.  I was thinking of the Delaware Moors and the Melungeons, who trace their ancestry to early Turkish/Portugese/Arab sailors who stayed ashore and married native americans and early freed blacks in the 1500's and 1600's.  These people were ostrasized by later European colonials, but they had their own communities by then.  This may still exist in the way back of my old American line but I haven't been able to identify it yet from documentation.  Anyway, now I am assuming that the racial mixing represented in my dna report may have more likely occurred in Africa itself.  For example, the Berber tribes are a mix of European and sub-saharan african, as well as some Arab and Turkish.  I had a whole lot more North African ancestry-matching than sub-saharan.  I sure do wish I had more facts, but I have a feeling that ancestry.com is not going to be able to help me trace Moroccan ancestors.

Now about the Danish side of my ancestry, in response to Kurt's questions: apparently King Christian IV invited Spanish Jews and Conversos to come to Denmark during the Spanish Inquisition, so some of us may come by Spanish and 'Arab' (Semitic) ancestry that way.  I figure that to have scored so high on Arab ancestry (50%) means it may be on both sides of my family. 

Kurt asks who the Danes trace back to, beyond the Vikings.  My Danish father used to say that the Danes had emigrated from Greece and Turkey to Denmark.  His source was an old collection of folktales that he prized mightily.  Some modern scholars believe there is a lot more truth to the old tales than we usually think, so  maybe he was on to something.  Modern scientiests claim that the Vikings travelled by river as far as Baghdad and Constantinople (Istanbul), and so, many Danes ought to score fairly high on matches with Slavs, Turks and Iranians. 

I know I said I was going to write a book about all of this, but I think now that I'm just going to put it all up here on the web.  When I first discovered all of this, it seemed huge, and enough data to write an interesting book.  but after all, how many people are going to be interested in this?  I certainly am, but then, it is my ancestry.

Comments

[Carrie K]

Well, it is pretty interesting! It's an awful lot of conjecture too. Hard to do othewise, when you weren't told. I think people are a much bigger mishmash than they suspect anyway, certainly heritage has been hidden and faked for.... well, forever, somewhere.

But wow, that's pretty compelling evidence you're compiling.

[Dave]

Pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.

[Jean]

Thanks for sharing. The story of the clues you remember from your childhood is fascinating. So sad, so hard to understand, that it was hidden from you. Whatever must it be like to stop talking about where you come from? You know, there's been so much talk here in England about whether we went too far in recent decades towards 'multi-culturalism', whether it is healthy for people to be so identified with their inherited difference, rather than their shared new country. Your story tells me powerfully that we must tread very carefully, find the middle way; that the opposite, the melting pot, is just as sad and destructive in its way.

[shelly]

Read you post on genealogy, we have just launched family based social network, Kincafe- www.kincafe.com. We would like you to particpate in beta release of Kincafe and provide feedback to andy@kincafe.com.

Thank you
Shelly

[charles mosley]

my fathers people are moors as has been told generation by generation. As legend states we can to the us during the spanish inquisistion. Im thinking about getting a DNA test to prove or dis prove what I was told. I'm probably 98% sure the infor is correct. I guess I have to get the mitochondria DNA test that looks at the male contributions to you DNA

[kasturi]

Charles, I appreciate your writing a comment on this subject and would love to correspond with you further about your moorish ancestry. The DNA tests you might wish to consider include mitochondrial dna (which tells your mother's maternal line heritage), y-chromosome (tells your father's father's, etc, lineage) and autosomal dna which gives you some idea of the rest of your ancestry. good luck, and please keep in touch!

[Marge]

I just had an autosomal DNA test done myself, and discovered I have quite a lot of high probability matches for Berbers and Subsaharan Africans, so many, in fact, that the DNA gent said it's likely to be recent DNA as opposed to ancient. I had no family stories like yours whatsoever. I was raised being told I was Polish, Irish and German, with some eyebrows raised toward my Irish/German dark grandma, so I would guess it came through her, and quite strongly so, at least in terms of the test I took. Not even sure how to begin to properly figure out how my ancestors came to Chicago. You mentioned something about Ireland as a possible stopping point for your ancestors? Good luck with your searchings.

[kasturi]

hi marge,

which test did you take? i took dnatribes, and am about to take the dna fingerprint test for reasons relating more to my father's side of the family, which i'll post about later.

i'm pretty sure the autosomal dna test doesn't show 'ancient' ancestry, but rather more recent, like the last 500 years or so. people are so confused about the different tests and what they will show, so i've heard all kinds of things, but in fact the autosomal dna test shows more recent ethnicity and may show genetic material from ancestors not on the y-chromosome or mtdna lines. I was interested in my mother's father, and my father's mother, so the autosomal dna was the way to go for me. It has been so interesting, and so fulfilling to follow this trail. Good luck to you in your search!

[Linda]

you have beautiful ancestors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVgA5QJ-cZ8