Black Moor's Heads -The Statue of Liberty is a BLACK Muslim Woman

"The Moors disappeared from power. Their faces did not. They remained on the shields of Europe."

Who were the Moors, were the Moors Black, and what happened to the Moors after 1492? This episode follows Moorish history, the Black Moors, Moors in Spain, Muslim Spain and al-Andalus from the Muslim conquest of Iberia through the Reconquista and Granada 1492. When Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella, nearly eight centuries of Muslim political rule in parts of Iberia came to an end. But the Moors did not simply disappear, and neither did their image from European history.

The Moor's head and Moor's head heraldry appear across medieval Europe. These Black heads in European heraldry can be found in Germany, Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, Italy, Switzerland, France and England. The trail includes the Black Saint Maurice, the Moor of Freising, the Coburg Moor head, the Sardinia Four Moors, the Corsica Moor head and Spain's Cross of Alcoraz. These images did not all have the same meaning. Some represented Saint Maurice, some were associated with Christian victories over Muslim rulers, and others became symbols of families, cities and territories.

The Black Saint Maurice is particularly important to the history of Black Africans in medieval Europe. Around 1240, Saint Maurice was portrayed at Magdeburg as a Black African Christian soldier. In Freising, a crowned Black or Moor's head was documented by 1316. Centuries later, the Freising Moor became part of the Joseph Ratzinger coat of arms when he became Archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1977. When Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, the Pope Benedict XVI coat of arms still displayed the historic Pope Benedict XVI Moor head, alongside the Bear of Saint Corbinian.

The year 1492 connects the Moors to another enormous historical sequence: Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish Inquisition, the Alhambra Decree, the expulsion of practicing Jews from Spain and Christopher Columbus. Granada fell on January 2, 1492. The Alhambra Decree was issued on March 31. Columbus sailed west on August 3. Instead of separating these events into different chapters of history, this episode puts them back onto the same timeline.

The Moorish and North African story then enters the history of America. In 1528, Estevanico, a Moroccan-born North African, arrived in Florida and later traveled across areas of the present-day American Southwest. The history of Islam in early America also includes the Thomas Jefferson Quran. Jefferson purc