Spanish Islam Research Articles

Aljamiado retellings of the Hebrew Bible

Stories from the Hebrew Bible were popular among the Iberian Peninsula’s Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Beginning in the fourteenth century, Muslims and Moriscos retold these stories in Aljamiado texts in Spanish or Aragonese written in Arabic characters. These fictionalised retellings drew on vernacular language and literary forms common to Christians and Muslims, and are a lens through which to study the cultural life of late Spanish Islam in its negotiation with the dominant Christian culture. The vernacular language and culture shared by Moriscos and Christians was a powerful medium for creating fictional Biblical storyworlds, mental models of the reality represented by the Biblical narratives. These retellings both exalt Islamic beliefs, traditions, rituals, and doctrines in the face of social marginalization and persecution, while at the same time validating their experience as speakers of Spanish and Aragonese and as participants in a vernacular culture shared between Moriscos and Christians.

Spanish Islam in Arabic Script

Abstract The present study discusses language as a tool of identity construction by Muslims from the Late Medieval and Early Modern Christian Iberian Peninsula who could practice Islam by law in exchange for paying taxes (Mudejars). Their writings, as well as those of the group who were later forced to convert to Christianity (Moriscos), are in various languages and scripts. The Arabic (Aljamiado) used to transcribe Romance is distinctive and abundant evidence of it is left from the later Morisco period. The earlier uses of language by the Mudejars are nonetheless essential to understand how Muslims negotiated their community boundaries within a Christian majority society. My analysis will concentrate on two Mudejar polemics against the Christians and the Jews, which were most likely composed in fourteenth-century Aragon. In these works, approaches to language and the interplay of Arabic—both as a target language and as a script—with Romance escape discrete definitions of religion and culture.1

The Mosque as an Educational Space: Muslim Women and Religious Authority in 21st-Century Spain

This article presents the results of a fieldwork project from January to April 2017 in Spanish mosques, an on-the-ground investigation using interviews with female Muslim teachers who constitute a sort of women’s movement within Islamic education in Islamic associations and schools across Spain. These women reflect on their zeal for teaching and the desire to receive an education in Islamic studies among Muslim women, students and teachers, who participate in these activities to transmit their knowledge of Islam in Spain. These female teachers form a heterodox group of interconnected educators who have acquired status within their communities, legitimized by their ability to impart Islamic religious knowledge, and who could prove to be potential alternative educational authorities in Spanish Islam. This educational activity by and for women in Spanish mosques, which has been studied by others at the European level could be seen as a revitalization of religious dynamics or as processes of re-Islamization. However, as the interviewees themselves observe, ‘we never stopped believing and practicing’, suggesting that this educational activity should be situated within the framework of the active search for Islamic knowledge in a non-Islamic European context.

Colin M. MacLachlan.Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture.

First, it is important to note what this book is not: it is not a deeply researched monograph or an up-to-date historiographical exploration of Mexican history and culture. Rather, its scope is different: it is macro, overarching, and “interpretive” (32). It embodies the author’s decades’ long reflections on the history and meetings of empires. According to Colin M. MacLachlan, “Hispano-Indo Mexico became an heir to a lengthy historical process including early Iberian tribalism, Rome, the Visigoths, Spanish Islam, Judaism and Western Civilization in general” (29–30). Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture traces specifically how these civilizations might have contributed to shape the history of Mexico. MacLachlan does not focus solely on the “hybridization that took place,” the “mestizo culture,” but also delineates “a continuum” that located “Indo-Mexico, Europe and Spain on the same road to modernity” (32). There are a number of preconceptions—Indo-Mexico, mestizo, continuum, and modernity—that needed more explanation at the start. Why introduce the term Indo-Mexico and never define it or justify its practice? The elaboration of “New Spain’s mestizo culture” also falls short (249). The proffered definition recognizes “mestizo” as “both a biological and cultural term,” given that “one could be a cultural mestizo by adopting elements of European culture” including “language” while “retaining religious fragments, words, customs and food from the indigenous side” (23). Yet such interpretation fails to engage with a cohort of research post A. Magnus Morner (R. Douglas Cope, Matthew Restall, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, and Joanne Rappaport) that has fruitfully complicated shifting constructions of socio-racial identity while also including African contributions to the postconquest Mexican mix.

Sin and Redemption: Woman’s Body, Necrophilia, and Spanish Islam

Sin and Redemption:Woman’s Body, Necrophilia, and Spanish Islam Miguel Ángel Vázquez It could have happened at some point during the late 15th century or the first part of the 16th century. It could have been anywhere in the region of Aragon. It was probably under the cover of night, illuminated only by the faint light of a candle. He could have belonged to the Mohamed Escribano family (López-Morillas, “Copistas” and “Trilingual”). The details are not very clear, but one thing is certain: the enterprise he was engaged in was at the same time pious and extremely dangerous. He was a Morisco (a Christian converso from Islam) and he was breaking the law by writing using the Arabic alphabet. But he felt it was worth the danger since the spiritual salvation of his community was at stake. He may have paused to wonder how did it all come to this? His ancestors had ruled the Peninsula (which they called Al-Andalus) for hundreds of years, and had advanced the arts and sciences. Where did they go wrong?1 The beginning of the end started soon after the fall of the Cordoban caliphate (1031) when the Christians started the series of wars called the Reconquista.2 This process culminated in 1492 with the Fall of Granada and, and in 1501, with the subsequent ultimatum given to the mudéjares of Castile and Leon: forced conversion to Christianity or expulsion.3 Those who decided to stay and convert came to be known as “Moriscos.” The conversions, however, were, for the most part, not sincere but just a way to remain on Spanish soil as the newly converted minority engaged in the practice of Islam in secrecy. As part of the clandestine activities of the Moriscos to preserve their culture, they engaged in the production of a corpus of manuscripts containing everything a person would need to know about Islam and the Morisco situation in 16th-century Spain. Since the possession of such a manuscript was grounds for an inquisitorial process, the Moriscos hid them in false floors, walls or columns, where they remained after their expulsion in 1609 and the reason why the manuscripts were able to survive until their discovery in the 19th century. To understand the impact the Moriscos had not only on the culture that surrounded them but also on our understanding of the complex culture of 16th century Spain, we must remember that the official discourse of the Christian authorities was one of homogeneity where purportedly all Spaniards spoke one language (Spanish), professed one religion (Catholicism), and were part of one culture. But the mere presence of the Moriscos in the Iberian Peninsula attempted against the actuality of that discourse.4 The Moriscos may [End Page 147] have had Christian names, but they also had Muslim names that they used in secrecy; their literature was in Spanish, but it was filled with Arabic words, phrases and calques; and they practiced Islam even though they claimed to be Christians. This notion of the “other Spain” that were the Moriscos can also be seen from a literary standpoint. Consider for instance the Moorish novels that were published during the Early Modern period of which the Abencerraje is one of its finest examples. In it, the first appearance of the Muslim protagonist, Abindarráez, seems to come right out of the Arabian nights: he is dressed with a luxurious red tunic embroidered with gold and silver threads, speaks with wonderful Spanish rhetoric, is the model of nobility—Christian nobility that is—and becomes the best friend of the Christian protagonist. But the literature that the Moriscos themselves wrote has little to do with this type of idealistic scenarios. A text like the Tafsira of the Mancebo de Arévalo (edited by María Teresa Narváez) presents the reader with a different kind of Morisco, not idealized, and very much aware of the precarious state of his community in Spain. Morisco poetry is also of note. Writers like Mohamad5 Rabadán (edited by Lasarte López) and Ibrahim Taybili, known in public as Juan Pérez (edited by Bernabé Pons), used traditional Spanish poetic forms to...

Eurocentrism in Reinhart Dozy’s Spanish Islam: A History of The Muslims in Spain

Eurocentrism is an ideology which influenced the works of Orientalists in the 19th century to elevate and raise the prestige of European culture and civilisation. Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883) was among the most famous and well-known Orientalist scholars who lived around the 19th century and he produced a majestic work on the history of Islam in al-Andalus entitled Spanish Islam: A History of the Muslims in Spain. In relation to that, the objective of this study is to analyse the influence of Eurocentrism in Spanish Islam authored by Dozy. This study wholly employed a qualitative approach via historical research method and content analysis by examining specifically the work of Spanish Islam. Results of this study argued that Spanish Islam produced by Dozy was influenced by Eurocentrism which spread in the 19th century. This is proven by the existence of Eurocentrism characteristics in the work of Dozy which ignored and degraded the values of the Muslims, characterised the Muslim community as despotic and evaluated and interpreted the history of Islam according to Western perspective and imagination. Hence, the presence of these features makes the piece Spanish Islam less authoritative as a source of reference for Islamic history and civilisation researchers. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n29p74

Recent Works on the Early Modern History of Spanish Muslims

RECENT WORKS ON THE EARLY MODERN HISTORY OF SPANISH MUSLIMS Between Christians and Moriscos:Juan de Ribera and Religious Reform in Valencia, 1568-1614. By Benjamin Ehlers. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 124th series (2006), volume 1.] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 241. $45.00. ISBN 0-8018-8322-9.) Muslims in Spain, 1500 1614. By Leonard Patrick Harvey. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. Pp. xiv, 448. $25.00 paperback. ISBN 0-226-31964-4.) From Muslim Christian Granada:Inventing a City's Past in Early Modern Spain. By A. Katie Harris. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 125th series (2007), volume 1.] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2007. Pp. xxiv, 255. $50.00. ISBN 978-0-8018-8523-5.) These three books tell us that Spain's Muslim remnants were conquered three times: first militarily, with the fall of Granada in 1492, then theologically when rebellions led policies of forced conversion (1500, Granada; 1526, rest of Spain), and finally macro-politically, after the 1568-1570 Alpujarras rebellion proved neither military control nor parish reform were defeating crypto-Islam. Harvey's broad chronological coverage of the Muslim side is complemented by the younger scholars' detailed analysis of Christian perspectives. Harris's analysis of the Sacromonte lead tablets forged between 1588 and 1595, for example, illustrates their role in Granada's self-Christianization, while Harvey understands them as strategies for Christian/crypto-Muslim survival, attempts raise the self-esteem of a downtrodden elite, and an effort to salvage something from the shipwreck of Spanish Islam (p. 267).Taken singly, each work makes a necessary Moriscological addition; together, they testify the sophistication of an important subfield in early modern Iberian history. Ehlers's is a complex study of Valencian archbishop Juan de Ribera's transformation from enthusiastic advocate of Christian lay spirituality confirmed enemy of the newly converted Moriscos. He concludes that antiIslamism did not cause the archbishop adopt expulsion; but rather, he was influenced by a combination of missionary frustration, episcopal cynicism, and a nationalist conviction that Spain could ill afford a fifth-column presence (Ribera conflated religious and political loyalty). The more Ribera achieved success in promoting a renewed Tridentine emphasis on the Eucharist amongst Old Christians, the more crypto-Muslim ridicule drew lines in the sand. Ribera's initial position also succumbed anti-Castilian Valencian rejection of Habsburg centralization (Harvey concurs, p. 258). Old and New Christians originally hoped that Ribera would rule with benign neglect rather than leadership (Ehlers, p. 39), but when the regional nobility blackmailed Moriscos by turning a blind eye their Islamism, they scuppered Ribera's initial plans tolerate slow conversion. Subnational regionalism also played a significant part according Harris in the mostly immigrant Granadan city council's promotion of the Torre Turpiana tablets and Sacromonte relics as authentic, in the face of persistent challenges from Madrid and Rome (p. 133). However, unlike the Valencian nobility, who acquired no legitimacy by supporting Moriscos, Harris's council acquired some of the historical continuity the city lacked as a Muslim capital, a feat accomplished for them by the tablets revealing that Granada's firstcentury Christian converts had been Arabs (p. 135). The differences between Granada and Valencia explain why Philip III did not reject the tablets (precisely in 1609, the year of expulsion) and why Granadans refused accept their condemnation as forgeries by Pope Innocent XI in 1682. Additionally, the Morisco problem in Ehlers 's Valencia was ruralized, whereas Harris's Granada tablets were deeply imbedded in the urban politics that contemporary Latin civic panegyrics fostered. …

The Theory and Practice of Just War in the Late-Medieval Crown of Aragon

In post-modern world that we inhabit, war, it seems, still lives in Middle Ages. Leaders of free world have proclaimed-almost preached-a crusade against international terrorism and, in response, radical Islamist leaders have thrown down gauntlet against Christian interlopers seeking to extend political control and godless culture over traditional heartlands of Prophet.1 What these implacable enemies hold in common is unshakable belief that their own cause is thoroughly just and that of their adversary systemically evil. Despite its unpleasant rebirth in modern times, idea of just war has a very long provenance, stretching back to such Renaissance scholars as Erasmus and Vives,2 to such medieval thinkers as Thomas Aquinas,3 and finally to virtual originator of just war theory, late antique polymath, St. Augustine.4 From High Middle Ages onward, this intrusion of philosophy and ethics into military matters gave rise to generally accepted standards by which war was waged and peace negotiated.5 With this growing regulation of violent aspects of warfare, formerly unconsidered questions, such as involvement of clerics in war, became meat of both canon and Roman law.6 Far from exploring abstract philosophical concepts of just war in medieval centuries, this paper will focus on everyday realities of a multi-national conflict which affected much of Iberian Peninsula in mid-fourteenth century and came to be known by later historians as War of Two Pedros (1356-1365).7 This struggle, which pitted Peninsula's largest realms, related but vastly different states of Castile8 and Crown of Aragon,9 provides a perfect lens to view practice and perception of late-medieval warfare as it affected rapidly evolving states of eastern Spain. I The great conflict that unsettled central and eastern Spain during middle decades of fourteenth century clearly reflected weaknesses and aspirations of war's two protagonists. While this long episode of war had clear economic and geopolitical antecedents,10 it soon became a struggle of wills between men whose backgrounds were uncannily similar. Descending from a line of strong-armed conquerors who had made their reputations by engaging in a sometimes intense and always profitable war on Spanish Islam, both Pere III the Ceremonious (1336-1387) and Pedro I the Cruel (1350-1369) were products of loveless marriages and sterile family lives.12 Though far better educated than Castilian ruler, Aragonese sovereign, like his principal adversary, yearned to equal record of martial glory won by his predecessors. The result of this emotional malnourishment coupled with a never-satiated desire for military success made Pere and Pedro into amateur family men, while transforming them into sovereigns who seldom shied away from war in defense of personal or national honor. Though royal courts of these two rivals subsisted under a tragic atmosphere, Pedro's vindictive cruelty, though occasionally mirrored in Pere's life, was markedly worse, bordering, as it did, on psychosis.13 Although Pere could unleash short bouts of brutality against those whom he judged to be traitors, he seldom used cruelty to assuage a drive for vengeance, but rather as a way of gaining political profit.14 Perhaps greatest difference between two men was their view of war itself in cosmological scheme of things. Pedro seldom mentions Almighty in regard to struggle he so remorselessly waged against exposed flanks of Crown of Aragon. Pere, on other hand, based his long and often unsuccessful defense on a theory of human conflict, which, though drawn from centers of belief and education of time, had been molded into a political and martial tradition by his relatives who had occupied Aragonese throne in previous century. II In many ways, Pere III's view of his proper relationship to war came to him as an intellectual inheritance of sorts from his great-greatgrandfather, Jaume I (1213-1276) and his grandfather, Pere II (1276-1285). …

Language and Identity in Late Spanish Islam

L'article examine l'attachement des morisques a leur langue, ce qui ouvre deux perspectives puisque les morisques parlent espagnol et arabe. Apres avoir rappele l'histoire des morisques (peuple musulman d'Espagne), l'A. examine dans quels contextes -anciens et modernes- ce peuple utilise l'une ou l'autre de ses deux langues

The Moriscos and theHajj

(1988). The Moriscos and the Hajj. British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. Bulletin: Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 11-24.

Textual Problems in Ibn Quzmān

THE Diwan of Ibn Quzman has many attractions for the student of Arabic poetry, Western Middle Arabic, medieval Hispanic subjects, Spanish Islam, Bacchic-cum-panegyric poetry, poetry in general, and other things besides. The approaches to this attractive corpus of poems are fraught with difficulties, however, though probably not as many nor as serious as is sometimes alleged. In a previous study, I have attempted to delineate some of these problems and to dissipate others 1. My main point was that the metrical basis of the Hispanic zagal is demonstrably ( Classical)>, that is, made up of quantitative rhythms closely related, and in many cases identical, to the traditional metres of the Arabs. The most immediate consequence of this concerns the text. The textual difficulties in IQ's Dtwan have been frequently emphasized, and it is true that the major sources of his poems were either copied (MSD) or composed (AH) in the Arab East by Easterners having at best a demonstrably shaky command of the Hispanic dialect of Middle Arabic in which IQ's zagals are written. Four-fifths of the D?wdn, furthermore, survives in a defective unique MS. The quantitative scansion of each poem, easily obtainable in some cases from the Classical Arabic muwassahMt of which some of IQ's zagals are explicit metrical imitations (mu'dra.da), and in the rest by applying the techniques of scansion derived from an attentive study of such mu'dradas, is at least as useful a tool for establishing the text of these songs as Greek metre is for poems in that language. Using these techniques, as decribed in considerable detail in Metre, I have now completed a critical edition of the Diwdn compiled from all the relevant manuscript and published sources 2. The result is a

: Spanish Islam: A History of the Moslems in Spain . Reinhart Dozy.

: Spanish Islam: A History of the Moslems in Spain . Reinhart Dozy.

Spanish Islam: A History of the Moslems in Spain

Spanish Islam: A History of the Moslems in Spain

Maslama al=Majriti and the Rutbatu'l=Hakim

The Rutbatu'l-Hakim or (c Sage's Step ) is one of the most important sources for the history of the development of chemistry in Arabic Spain. I have not hitherto been able to make a properly critical study of the text, although I hope to undertake this in the near future, but there are many problems and points of interest in connection with the Rutba which can profitably be considered independently, and with some of these I propose to deal. In view of the fact that it was from Spanish Islam that chemistry was transmitted to Europe, the necessity for a thorough study of those works on chemistry, by Andalusian Arabs, which have been preserved to us, will be apparent. Unfortunately such works are few in number, so that it will be needful to study those which we do possess very closely. The present article is to be regarded as preliminary only, but it is hoped that the information and discussion it contains will prove of use to those who pursue further researches on the subject.