Abstract
The main aim of this article is to investigate the similarities between the Latin translation of the Qur’ān commissioned by the Italian cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (first version, 1518) and Quranic quotations included in a treatise entitled Lumbre de fe contra el Alcoran (Valencia, 1521) authored by a Catholic preacher, Fray Johan Martin de Figuerola, in order to corroborate the hypothesis that the texts share a common author. The person regarded as the link between them is a convert from Islam to Christianity known as Juan Gabriel from Teruel, formerly Ali Alayzar. The arguments in favour of this thesis are presented, first of all, within a historical description of the circumstances and coincidences of the people involved in the production of the two translation projects; secondly, textual evidence is put forward in which correspondences, similarities and differences are highlighted and discussed. We also consider the similarities to the quotations in Juan Andres’s Confusion o confutacion del Alcoran , drawing attention to a circle of other Christian polemicists around Martin Garcia who were all working in various ways with the Arabic Qur’ān.
Highlights
Este artículo se propone estudiar las similitudes entre la traducción latina del Corán encargada por el cardenal Egidio de Viterbo en 1518 y las citas coránicas incluidas en un tratado de polémica titulado Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán (Valencia, 1521) escrito por un predicador, Fray Martín de Figuerola
Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán: Martín de Figuerola, Martín García and Juan Gabriel In June 1521, in Valencia, Mossen Johan Martín de Figuerola finished writing a work which he had begun two years earlier, on 1st November 1519. He titled it Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán and dedicated it to His Majesty King Charles V, exhorting the king to consider the spiritual dangers represented by the presence of Muslims living in the Crown of Aragon and to decree their conversion to Catholicism.[2]
It is our argument that Martín de Figuerola worked with Juan Gabriel, or used the translation made by Juan Gabriel, to produce an original translation of the Qur’an
Summary
It is our argument that Martín de Figuerola worked with Juan Gabriel, or used the translation made by Juan Gabriel, to produce an original translation of the Qur’an. Employed a former Muslim ambassador, al-Hasan al-Wazzan, better known in Italy as Leo Africanus, to help him further his studies of Arabic This collaboration resulted, inter alia, in Leo revising and correcting the Quranic translation in 1525, at the cardinal’s residence in Viterbo.[36] One century later, the version corrected by Leo Africanus found its way to the Biblioteca de El Escorial in Spain, and, as we can read in the prologue to the Milan manuscript (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS D 100 inf., dated 1621, quoted here as M), it consisted of four columns: This book was copied from a manuscript in the Biblioteca Real de San Lorenzo with the Superiors’ permission. The similarities have been marked in bold and the differences underlined:
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