Historical list of expulsion of muslims
Executive summary
A recurrent theme across centuries is the forced removal, exile or coerced assimilation of Muslim populations amid conquests, nation‑building and religious intolerance; prominent episodes include the medieval Reconquista and the early modern expulsions of the Moriscos from Iberia, the elimination or flight of Muslim communities during the Ottoman retreat from the Balkans, and state‑led expulsions such as waves from Bulgaria in the 19th–20th centuries [1] [2] [3]. The records in the available reporting emphasize patterns—military defeat, legal prohibitions, and demographic engineering—while also showing scholarly debate about numbers and motivations in key cases, notably Spain’s Moriscos [1] [4].
1. Iberian expulsions and forced conversions (15th–17th centuries)
The late medieval and early modern Iberian Peninsula offers the clearest documented series of expulsions and coerced religious changes: after Granada’s fall, Castile issued laws outlawing public Islamic practice (1501–1502) and would enforce mass baptisms and conversions, while the formal expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609–1614 removed large numbers of people of Muslim origin from Spain—estimates vary widely and historians dispute whether the total removed reached the hundreds of thousands or millions, making the scale contested even in recent scholarship [4] [1].
2. Portugal’s expulsions and erasure of Muslim presence
Portuguese policy mirrored Iberian patterns: edicts in the late 15th century pushed Muslims to convert, leave or face death, and many fled to North Africa while mosques and synagogues were repurposed or destroyed as part of a cultural erasure; modern Portuguese recognition and restitution has acknowledged expelled Jews but, according to reporting, similar courtesies have not been extended to descendants of expelled Muslims [5] [6].
3. Ottoman contraction and Balkan expulsions (19th–20th centuries)
The breakup of Ottoman rule produced repeated waves of Muslim displacement across the Balkans: wars and nation‑state formation in the 19th and early 20th centuries (including the Russo‑Turkish War and Balkan Wars) led to massacres, expulsions and migrations of Turks, Albanians, Bosnian Muslims and other Muslim groups, often accompanied by destruction of Islamic infrastructure and deliberate demographic policies to create ethnically homogeneous states [2] [3] [7].
4. State‑sponsored population transfers: Bulgaria and beyond
Longer chronologies of state engineering appear in the Balkans and Anatolia; for example, Bulgarian policies from the late 19th century through the communist era included episodic expulsions or pressure on Turks, Tatars, Pomaks and Muslim Roma to leave for Turkey, culminating in high‑profile episodes such as the 1989 exodus of Turks from Bulgaria [2]. Scholarly compilations emphasize that expulsions ranged from violent purges to coerced “voluntary” migrations encouraged by destination states [8].
5. Earlier and other historical expulsions: medieval killings, banishments and conversions
The historical record cited in the reporting stretches further back—Muslim communities in regions reconquered by European powers after Ottoman retreat were sometimes massacred, enslaved, forcibly converted or banished to remaining Muslim territories, with examples named in Croatia, Hungary and the reconquest of Buda in 1686 where civilian reprisals followed military victories [3]. The sources indicate that such actions were part of broader campaigns of religious and cultural cleansing in the wake of conquest [3] [7].
6. Limits of the available reporting and contested numbers
Quantifying expulsions and distinguishing forced expulsion from coerced emigration remain contested in the cited material: major episodes—like the Morisco expulsions—have widely varying population estimates and active historiographical debate about intent and efficacy [1]. The reporting assembled here is heavily weighted toward European and Ottoman‑era examples available in encyclopedic and academic summaries; other regional expulsions may exist but are not detailed in the provided sources, and therefore cannot be definitively listed or assessed from this dataset [9] [8].
7. Patterns, motives and historiographical perspectives
Across episodes covered by the sources, three recurring motives emerge—religious uniformity, ethnic nationalism and geopolitical security—leading to legal bans on Islamic practice, forced conversions, or population exchanges; historians note that contemporary publics and later scholarship often paid more attention to expulsions of Christians while understating Muslim victims, complicating comparative assessments [2] [3]. Alternative interpretations—such as framing some movements as voluntary migration under pressure or as consequences of wartime upheaval—are recorded in the scholarship and remain part of ongoing debate [8] [1].