One of the little-studied subjects in the history of the early modern Mediterranean is the relationship between the forcibly Christianized Iberian Muslims--Moriscos--and the Ottomans. Although they were known as the "Ottoman Fifth Column" in the Iberian Peninsula and sought help from the Ottoman Sultans throughout the sixteenth century as the Spanish Monarchy imposed ever greater restrictions on expressions of their religious and cultural identity, the nature of the relationship between the Moriscos and their hoped-for saviors, especially in half century following the Second Revolt of Alpujarras in 1568-70 and after their final expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in 1609-14, has not been systematically researched. And yet, this encounter between the heirs of the glorious medieval Islamic culture of al-Andalus and the new scions of Islam claiming caliphal honors, between Western and Eastern Mediterranean Islams, opens up exciting vistas into the nature of the religio-political trends and imperial aspirations in contemporary Islamdom. This paper will explore the relationship between the Ottomans and the Moriscos in the context of the imperial and confessional polarization in the early modern Mediterranean and the wider Islamic world, between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs on one hand, and the Ottomans and the Safavids on the other. The connecting themes will be the issues of the Islamic millennium and the expectation of the Last Judgment as well as the debate over the nature of the "true religion" and right to imperial title. The paper will compare the developments within Morisco, Ottoman, and Safavid Islams in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and situate them within the broader contemporary religio-political debates. It will also look at the role of the Morisco refugees to Istanbul in the Ottoman domestic agenda in the context of the tensions between Islam and Christianity and Sunnism and Shiism.