Portuguese Jews Were as Black as the Moors
Portuguese Jews Were as Black as the Moors
In a firsthand account from 1693, William Bromley reported that many Jews in Portugal were as swarthy (dark/black) as the Moors.
“William Bromley, who visited Lisbon in 1693, said that in spite of the persecution of Jews and New Christians, these people still formed a third of the population and many of them looked as swarthy as Moors.
*New Christians were Sephardic Jews who converted to Christianity
SOURCE >>> "The Methuens and Portugal, 1691-1708" by Alan David Francis, page 10 (1966) Cambridge University Press
https://archive.org/details/methuensportugal0000fran_a3z8/page/10/mode/1up?l=
A manuscript from the year 1440-1450 titled "King of the Moors submitting to the Antichrist". It depicts the King of the Moors submitting to the "antichrist".
SOURCE >>> "The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume II: From the Early Christian Era to the “Age of Discovery,”" by David Bindman & Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1979) Harvard University Press
Posted Feb 22, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC