Moorish Barracks

This guide to the Moorish Barracks in Macau starts with a name that misleads: the men it honors were not Moors at all, but Indian Muslim police recruited from Goa in eighteen seventy-four to serve Portugal's colonial government. It follows how the word Mouros drifted from medieval Iberian warriors to a colonial catch-all, and describes the trefoil Moorish Revival arches built for the two hundred men who once lived and were buried here. The guide leaves you looking at those yellow and white arches, considering what they were built to house.