Aben Humeya - Downfall and Murder

Downfall and Murder

A prominent Muslim from Ugíjar, Diego Alguacil, was said to have harbored resentment against Aben Humeya for having forcibly abducted a widowed cousin and making her his mistress, when with her social status he should have taken her as his wife. Alguacil eventually married her in Tétouan six years later. In order to avenge his cousin's honor, Alguacil began plotting Humeya's downfall.

Aben Humeya had also long distrusted his Turkish and African allies, whom he removed from his camp to the frontier in Almeria and placed under the command of his cousin, Aben Aboo.

Alguacil began to play on the tensions that Humeya had reportedly had with the Turkish contingent of his army for quite some time. He went to the Turks and claimed that "he had supplied Hashish to Aben Humeya in order that it be given to the Turkish captains so that they would be sedated and later, killed that night". The Turks refused the offer, explaining that the Turkish Caliphate had sent them "not to become kings but to assist the king of the Moors."

The Captains suggested that the best course was, after securing approval from Algiers, to put power in the hands of a local man of noble descent in whom one might have confidence, someone who would serve the interests of the Muslims.

On October 20, 1569, he was strangled to death in a coup engineered by the Turkish military experts and Aben Aboo was proclaimed as Chief of the Moriscos under the name Mulley Abdalla. Various Christian sources including the historian, Marmol state that with his dying breath Aben Humeya declared himself a Christian and said that what he had done was in the prosecution of a family feud. His successor, Aben Aboo, was also eventually killed by his own men.

The deaths of Aben Humeya and Aben Aboo coupled with the arrival of 20,000 soldiers under the command of John of Austria, Philip's illegitimate half-brother, to quash the rebellion, brought an end to over two years of vicious guerilla warfare in the Alpujarras. Almost the entire population of the Alpujarras was then deported to Castille and western Andalusia and some 270 villages and hamlets were repopulated with settlers brought in from Northern Spain. The remaining villages were abandoned. This led to the destruction of the silk industry over the course of several centuries.

King Philip II had ordered the dispersal of 80,000 Moriscos of Granada to other parts of the country. Philip expected that this would fragment the Morisco community and accelerate their assimilation into the Christian population. However, the Moriscos from Granada, having been dispersed throughout the Kingdom of Castile (notably to Andalusia and Extremadura), actually had some influence on the local Moriscos who had until then become more assimilated. This eventually culminated with the overall Expulsion of the Moriscos.