Islam in Gibraltar: history and Muslim population data

History of Islam in Gibraltar

This overseas territory of the United Kingdom has an area of 7 sq km and its map is presented in Figure 4.3.4. It is named after the Muslim General Tariq bnu Zeyad, who crossed from Tangier in north Morocco, and started its campaign of conquering the Iberian Peninsula, by capturing this Mountain in 711. It was named Jabal Tariq, or Traiq’s mountain, while the opposite mountain in Morocco across the Strait was named Jabal Musa, after his superior Musa bnu Nusayr, who later joined him in their successful conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Mountain fell to the Christians between 1309 and 1331, but was recaptured by Muslims, until they lost it for good to the Christian Castilians in 1462 as the Nasrid Dynasty was losing territory. The Castilians then expelled all Muslims from this area. Thus, the Mountain was under Muslim rule for 729 years. It was seized by the British in 1702 and is under their control since then.

British censuses in the eighteenth century show the presence of no Muslims in the Peninsula. In fact, until the 1960s, the presence of Muslims was negligible, peaking at fifty or 0.3% in 1911. Post WWII censuses show the increase of Muslims from none in 1951, to six in 1961, to 1,989 or 8.1% in 1970. The significant increase is due to Spain’s closure of the border, which caused shortage in labor force. Thus, Spanish workforce was replaced by Moroccan ones, consequently the vast majority of Muslims in Gibraltar are of Moroccan descent. The Muslim population then increased to 2,124 or 8.0% in 1981, but decreased to 1,850 or 6.9% in 1991, to 1,102 or 4.0% in 2001 and 1,066 or 3.6% in 2012.

Thus, assuming that the percentage of Muslims will remain constant; then the Muslim population is expected to continue to decrease in number and remain around one thousand throughout this century.

Historical Muslim population dataset for Gibraltar

The figures below are from the CoMPS historical dataset. Population values are expressed in thousands; 2100 is a modelled projection, not a present-day count.

For the full time series and visualisation, use the interactive map above.