Mudejar

Mudéjar , name given to the Moors who remained in Spain after the Christian reconquest but were not converted to Christianity, and to the style of Spanish architecture and decoration, strongly influenced by Moorish taste and workmanship, that they developed. In erecting Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance buildings, elements of Islamic art were used, achieving sometimes striking results. The dominant geometrical character, distinctly Islamic, emerged conspicuously in the accessory crafts—tilework, brickwork, wood carving, plaster carving, and ornamental metals. Even after the Muslims themselves were no longer employed, many of their contributions remained as an integral part of Spanish building. A particularly fine Mudéjar example is the Casa de Pilatos, of the early 16th cent., at Seville.

Bibliography: See G. G. King, Mudéjar (1927).

Mudejar a subject Muslim during the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors (11th–15th centuries) who, until 1492, was allowed to retain Islamic laws and religion in return for loyalty to a Christian monarch. After 1492 such people were treated with less toleration, dubbed Moriscos, and forced to accept the Christian faith or leave the country.

The name is now used to designate a partly Gothic, partly Islamic style of architecture and art prevalent in Spain in the 12th to 15th centuries.

Mudejar is Spanish, and comes from Arabic mudajjan ‘allowed to stay’.