The Iberian Qur’an: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times 9783110778847, 9783110778595

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
The Iberian Qur’an and the Qur’an in Iberia: A Survey
I Latin and the Development of Literal Translation
Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo and the Rise and Development of the Literal Translation of the Qur’an
The Qur’an and the ‘Laws of Muḥammad’ in Medieval Christian Eyes
A Mozarabic Qur’an? Some Reflexions on the Evidence
Projecting the Qur’an into the Past. A Reassessment of Juan de Segovia’s Disputes with Muslims in Medina del Campo (1431)
Germanus de Silesia’s Qur’an Translation in the MS K-III-1 of the El Escorial Library: Newly Discovered Revised Versions
II Muslims in Christian Spain: From Arabic to Aljamía
The Office of the Four Chief Judges of Mamluk Cairo and their views on Translating the Qur’an in the Early Sixteenth Century: Iberian Islam in a Global Context
New Models of Qur’an Abridgment among the Mudejars and Moriscos: Copies in Arabic Containing three Selections of Suras
Dialectal Variations in Aljamiado Translations of the Qur’an
Morisco Methods for Memorizing the Qur’an: Fragmentary Copies with the Suras in Reverse Order
The Inquisition and the Search for Qur’ans
III Antialcoranes. Polemicists, Converts, Scholars
Sounding the Qur’an: The Rhetoric of Transliteration in the Antialcoranes
Preaching, Polemic, and Qur’an. Joan Martí de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán
Quoting the Original: Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe and the Arabic Qur’an
Translations from Arabic of Iberian Origin in Egidio da Viterbo’s Qur’an
To Translate is to Interpret: Exegetic Annotations in the Qur’an of Bellús (Valencia c. 1518)
IV Modern Times
Rediscovering the Qur’an in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Allure and Aversion in the Shadow of A. B. Kazimirski’s French Edition
José Filiberto Portillo: Qur’an, Poetry and Exile in the Court of Isabel II
The Qur’an in the Spanish Philippines
Notes on Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The Iberian Qur’an

The European Qur’an

Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, Jan Loop, John Tolan and Roberto Tottoli

Volume 3

The Iberian Qur’an From the Middle Ages to Modern Times Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers

The research leading to these results has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, SyG grant agreement no. 810141, project EuQu: “The European Qu’ran. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150–1850.”

ISBN 978-3-11-077859-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-077884-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-077904-2 ISSN 2701-0554 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939314 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; Detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: [El Corán de Toledo] MS 235 M-0190, fol. 81v. Colección Borbón-Lorenzana, Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha (Toledo, Spain). Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements This book is the outcome of the conference The Iberian Qur’an / El Corán en Iberia convened by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers, which took place in Madrid on 5 and 6 May, 2021. Our research, as well as the conference and this book, are within the framework of the activities programmed by the research project “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850 (EuQu),” and both were financed by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 810141, and by the Plan Estatal of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (FFI2017– 86538-P): “Orientalismo y verdad: la influencia de la erudición oriental en el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico en la España Moderna.” This book has benefited from the discussion and debates that took place both at the conference and during the process of edition. It has also profited from previous work on the subject done by different members of the team in the monographic issues on “The Qur’an in Early Modern Iberia and Beyond,” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014); on “Orientalism, History and Thought in Modern Europe,” Al-Qanṭara 31, no. 2 (2010); “Interreligious Encounters in Polemics,” Medieval Encounters 26, no. 4– 5 (2019) and “Translating Sacred Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia” Medieval Encounters 26, no. 4– 5 (2020). We want to express our thanks to all the scholars who participated in the conference and contributed to the discussions, including those who presented their papers and are not present in the book, namely Xavier Casassas Canals and Álvaro González, and also the ones who did not participate in the conference but do contribute to the book: Luis Bernabé Pons, Charles Burnett, and Isaac Donoso. We want especially to thank the contributors to this volume for their patience in the process of edition and revision. We wish to express our thanks to Teresa Madrid Álvarez-Piñer for her careful editorial work, and to Nicholas Callaway and Consuelo López-Morillas for translating into English the contributions written in Spanish. And last, our sincere thanks to Pilar Torres (Cálamo y Cran) for compiling the Index. We have used the IJMES transliteration system for Arabic throughout, except for terms that are common in English usage such as Qur’an, hadith, fatwa, tafsir, qadi, imam, mufti, hajj and hijra. These terms are used without diacritics nor are they italicized.

Table of Contents Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers The Iberian Qur’an and the Qur’an in Iberia: A Survey

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I Latin and the Development of Literal Translation Charles Burnett Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo and the Rise and Development of the 27 Literal Translation of the Qur’an Teresa Witcombe The Qur’an and the ‘Laws of Muḥammad’ in Medieval Christian Eyes Anthony John Lappin A Mozarabic Qur’an? Some Reflexions on the Evidence

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Davide Scotto Projecting the Qur’an into the Past. A Reassessment of Juan de Segovia’s 107 Disputes with Muslims in Medina del Campo (1431) Ulisse Cecini Germanus de Silesia’s Qur’an Translation in the MS K-III-1 of the El Escorial 133 Library: Newly Discovered Revised Versions

II Muslims in Christian Spain: From Arabic to Aljamía Gerard A. Wiegers The Office of the Four Chief Judges of Mamluk Cairo and their views on Translating the Qur’an in the Early Sixteenth Century: Iberian Islam in a Global Context 151 Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias New Models of Qur’an Abridgment among the Mudejars and Moriscos: Copies in Arabic Containing three Selections of Suras 165

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Pablo Roza Candás Dialectal Variations in Aljamiado Translations of the Qur’an

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Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias, Pablo Roza Candás Morisco Methods for Memorizing the Qur’an: Fragmentary Copies with the Suras in Reverse Order 217 Mercedes García-Arenal The Inquisition and the Search for Qur’ans

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III Antialcoranes. Polemicists, Converts, Scholars Ryan Szpiech Sounding the Qur’an: The Rhetoric of Transliteration in the 285 Antialcoranes Luis F. Bernabé Pons Preaching, Polemic, and Qur’an. Joan Martí de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán 319 Roberto Tottoli Quoting the Original: Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe and the Arabic Qur’an

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Katarzyna K. Starczewska Translations from Arabic of Iberian Origin in Egidio da Viterbo’s 399 Qur’an Maxime Sellin To Translate is to Interpret: Exegetic Annotations in the Qur’an of Bellús (Valencia c. 1518) 421

IV Modern Times Juan Pablo Arias Torres Rediscovering the Qur’an in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Allure and Aversion in the Shadow of A. B. Kazimirski’s French Edition 443

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Isabel Boyano Guerra, Fernando Rodríguez Mediano José Filiberto Portillo: Qur’an, Poetry and Exile in the Court of Isabel 469 II Isaac Donoso The Qur’an in the Spanish Philippines Notes on Contributors Index 537 537 General Index Index of Manuscripts

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The Iberian Qur’an and the Qur’an in Iberia: A Survey

Due to the long presence of Muslims in Iberia, both as inhabitants of the Islamic territories (al-Andalus and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada) and as Muslim minorities in the Christian Kingdoms, the Iberian Peninsula provides fertile soil for the study of the cultural history of the Qur’an in Europe, the focus precisely of the EuQu project to which this book belongs. This book focuses on Christian Iberia. From the mid-twelfth to at least the end of the seventeenth century, the efforts undertaken by Muslim religious scholars and copyists on the one hand, and Christian scholars and converts to Christianity on the other, to copy, transmit, interpret and translate the Qur’an are of the utmost importance for understanding the significance of the Qur’an in Europe. But this book goes beyond the Early Modern period, exploring the significance and knowledge of the Qur’an in Iberia in Modern times and also in other Hispanic territories, demonstrating the long engagement with the Muslim Holy Scripture well after the times in which Muslim minorities inhabited the Peninsula. As a result of the long process known as “Reconquest”, the Northern Spanish kingdoms, slowly expanding their frontiers southwards throughout the Middle Ages, came to contain large minorities of Muslims, the so-called Mudejars (from Arabic mudajjan, i. e., he who has concluded a treaty after the surrender of his village or city), who were allowed, under certain conditions, to preserve and practice their faith. It was the first time in history that significant numbers of Muslims came to live under non-Muslim rule. There were other minorities, the Mozarabs or Arabized Christians, who lived in Muslim lands and remained as a distinct Arabized minority when they emigrated to Christian territory. Muslims (named Mudejars before the orders of conversion) and Moriscos (converted Muslims) interpreted and translated their sacred scripture for their own use as they were becoming increasingly at home in the Romance vernacular and losing the

Note: This book is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 810141), project EuQu: “The European Qu’ran. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” We are grateful to Consuelo López-Morillas who polished the language of this essay and in so doing helped us also to better its content. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-001

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knowledge of Arabic.¹ There were translations from Arabic to vernacular Castilian or Aragonese, written in the Latin alphabet or more frequently in what is called “Aljamiado”, i. e., Romance vernacular in Arabic script. The first written evidence of such translations appears in Aragon dated in 1415. A decade after the rendition of the capital city of Granada and conquest of the Nasrid Kingdom, the so-called Catholic Monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, decreed in 1502 the expulsion (to be avoided only by conversion) of the entire Muslim population of the territories belonging to the Crown of Castile. In the Crown of Aragon the Muslim population would be allowed to practice Islam until 1526, when they too were forced to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. The existence of numerous and firmly established Muslim communities in the Crown of Aragon (including Valencia) that were free to practice their faith from the eleventh to the early sixteenth centuries explains the fact that most of the translations and commentaries of the Qur’an were written and copied in the Aragonese territories, where Christian and Muslim communities had lived side by side for centuries and used a common language to communicate with one another. In Castile, the situation was different. Muslims were a much smaller part of the population, about 3 %, against 30 % in Aragon and Valencia. Christian Aragonese or Catalan scholars and clerics (from the famous examples of Ramon Martí and Ramon Llull up to Juan Andrés and Joan Martí de Figuerola) had easier access to Arabic or Islamic works than other European scholars interested in studying the Qur’an, and they had much greater opportunities to engage Muslim or formerly Muslim collaborators to help them study it than they would have had elsewhere in Europe. As far as is known, the earliest Romance Qur’an translation (now lost) was made from Latin into Catalan in 1382 at the behest of King Pere III el Ceremoniòs (Peter IV of Aragon, d. 1387).² In Castile the period of collaboration between Christian scholars and Muslims was shorter. But we do have the famous example of the translation of the Qur’an made by Juan de Segovia in 1456 with the cooperation of the faqih and mufti ʻĪsa ibn Jābir, a Mudejar, not a convert, who died in Tunis and was buried there. This translation has not been found. The only complete translation of a

 There was another important minority, the Arabized Jews of al-Andalus, many of whom also migrated in a later period to the Christian territories. We will not deal with them here, as they do not seem to have participated at this point in translating the Qur’an.  Mikel de Epalza Ferrer, Josep V. Forcadell Saport and Joan M. Perujo Melgar, eds., El Corán y sus traducciones. Propuestas (Alicante: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Alicante, 2008), 100 – 1.

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Morisco Qur’an that has reached us, known as “El Corán de Toledo” was copied in 1606; one of its colophons is shown on the cover of this book.³ Forced conversion of Muslims to Christianity was completed by the 1520s; those who wanted to remain Muslim had to practice their religion in clandestinity and, from the 1530s onwards, under persecution by the Inquisition. By the end of the sixteenth century, Arabic was still spoken and written in parts of Spain (mainly Granada, Extremadura, Valencia and areas of Aragon) by this population of Islamic origin. Inquisition files contain highly detailed information on the use of Arabic until the expulsion of 1609. And that was so in spite of the fact that Felipe II, by means of a decree in 1567 in the Kingdom of Granada, had forbidden the oral and written use of the Arabic language. This final prohibition of Arabic in 1567 was the main cause of the Morisco revolt of the former Kingdom of Granada known as the War of the Alpujarras, a fierce and devastating two-year war. In effect it required a new Christian conquest of the kingdom, and its aftermath was the expulsion of the Granadan Morisco population to the Northern territories of Castile (1570 – 71). This is the background of a long-term historical situation which makes Iberia a unique case study for the history of the translation of the Qur’an. On the one hand, no other area of Western Europe knew such an intense and enduring confrontation with Islam; and on the other, no other area had such a close and productive entanglement with Islam and with Muslims, to the point that arguments over Spain’s Islamic past have been a fundamental element in constructing its national identity. The religious confrontation produced polemics and disputations, but not only those, as this book will show. Rather, the term “polemics” covers a complex field of intellectual and religious activity in which the aims of knowing and confuting Islamic doctrine were intertwined and not only directed to Muslims, but also to Christians with the aim of separating clearly what was Christian and what was not.⁴ Translation of the Qur’an for Christians was a tool to convert Muslims; for Muslims it was a protection from being converted, from losing oneself in a Christian majority. In this book we have intended to consider all facets of the cultural and religious significance of the Qur’an on Iberian Christian soil: copies of the Qur’an,

 Toledo, Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha, MS 235 M-0190.  And from our previous work, Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers, eds., Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), and García-Arenal, Wiegers, and Ryan Szpiech, eds., Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

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translations, dissemination by way of teaching, interpretation and preaching, circulation, collections made by both Christians and Muslims. The contributors to the present volume reflect on a context where Arabic books and Arabic speakers who were familiar with the Qur’an and its exegesis coexisted with Christian populations, often sharing the same spaces, with Christian scholars and the centres of power and (religious) education. In Christian Iberia, the close proximity of Islamic tradition and sources, and the “availability” of informants (mostly, but not exclusively, converts), offered Christians interested in the Qur’an a privileged access to Islam. This is visible in a concept of Islam (even in anti-Islamic texts) that is much closer to the lived experience of Muslims than we find, for example, in early modern Northern European scholarship: a concept of Islam not limited to the Qur’an, but also more aware of the religious significance of tafsir (exegesis), and hadith (tradition) than in other parts of Europe, where that awareness was almost absent in this period. The collaboration and contacts between the two religions also produced reactions of separation and rejection on both sides; we will see these phenomena when dealing with the action of the Inquisition and the Indexes of Forbidden Books, or the fatwas issued to restrain Muslims from providing Qur’ans and tafsir to the Christians as well as helping them to understand their Holy Text. Both communities were engaged in drawing clear boundaries between them. But in this process the power relations between the different groups played a major role. Interesting in this regard are the continuous relations between Muslims in the Christian territories and their coreligionists in Muslim lands. Muslims from Christian territories performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and returned.⁵ They also consulted muftis in Granada and in Cairo, and managed to obtain books from Algiers and Morocco.⁶ We constantly see through all the phenomena and case studies analysed in this book that Iberia is a laboratory for the study of the construction, destruction, and blurring of religious, cultural and political boundaries. Finally, another important aspect of Iberia is its connection with Italy, which imports and then transforms this Islamic knowledge for Italians’ own humanist and philological endeavours that will nurture nascent Orientalism, as we will see with Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, among others. It is, we believe, one of the important aspects of this book that it considers Iberian Qur’ans as studied by both Christians and Muslims. The different features and uses of the Qur’an in Iberia, its circulation, and the lives and works  See Pablo Roza Candás, Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka. La peregrinación de Omar Patón (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 2018).  Carmen Barceló and Ana Labarta, Archivos moriscos. Textos árabes de la minoría islámica valenciana 1401 – 1608 (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2009).

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of those who wrote about it and the responses of their audiences, are the object of this book. The first part of the book is dedicated to Iberian translations of the Qur’an into Latin. In it we have followed suit to the first volume of this series, The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Interpretation, edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan. This important recent volume explains the relatively small space that Latin translations occupy in the present volume. Nevertheless, those Latin translations are of utmost importance and deserve to be briefly introduced here. In 1142 the head of the Cluniac order, Peter the Venerable, travelled to Northern Spain, where among other things he commissioned from the astronomer and mathematician Robert of Ketton a complete translation of the Qur’an. Therefore the first translation of the Qur’an into Latin was made somewhere in the Ebro valley in 1143, half a century after the conquest of Toledo (1085) and after Pope Urban II had launched the first Crusade (1095). A Muslim was involved in it as well, whom we know only by his ism, Muḥammad. A second translation was carried out in Toledo in 1210 at the time of the emergence of the Mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans) in Italy and Spain, where they established themselves as the Church missionary arm committed to the evangelisation of Jews and Muslims. It was also the time when the Castilian Kingdom was engaged in an effort to stop the Almohad expansion. This second translation was made by Mark of Toledo, canon of the Toledo cathedral and a member of the entourage of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, and probably patronised by him. Those two first translations arose, according to Davide Scotto, from personal and collective convictions in regard to the Crusades —or rather, at the intersection between translation and Crusade.⁷ Charles Burnett offers here a slightly different interpretation. His chapter, the first in the book, is dedicated to these two translations and focuses on the different norms of translation used by Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo —one paraphrastic, or ad sensum, and the other literal— in a debate that was also being carried out in connection with the translation of the Bible. Mark of Toledo’s translation provides a starting point for confronting the Arabic text directly. Burnett analyses how these norms of translation were applied and what effect the results had on their readers. In so doing he demonstrates the hermeneutical sophistication of both translation processes. As he pro Davide Scotto, “Translation in Wartime. Disseminating the Qur’an during the Crusades (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries),” in Transfer and Religion. Interactions between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, ed. Alexander A. Dubrau et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020).

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poses, those translations reflect local concerns: mainly, the intention to persuade families who had accepted Islam or their descendants to revert to Christianity. Therefore Burnett reads these translations in the context of a mission to the Mozarabs, the Christian minority that was living in al-Andalus but also emigrating to Toledo. In the second chapter Teresa Witcombe examines how the Christian Castilians consider the Qur’an precisely in the period between the translations by Ketton and Mark of Toledo, showing that the term Qur’an (Alchoran) appears in Castilian chronicles only in the aftermath of Mark’s translation. Before this point there are mentions of the “law” of the Muslims, as in the translation of Robert of Ketton who refers to lex sarracenorum, but the term Qur’an itself is not used. At the same time, the thirteenth-century chronicles from Castile contain considerably more detail about Islamic doctrine than their predecessors, and Witcombe links this fact clearly to Mark of Toledo’s translation of the Liber Alchorani and the Libellus of the Almohad mahdī Ibn Tūmart. It means that the translation of Mark of Toledo had a wider diffusion, a bigger readership than has been hitherto known. As for the very convincing proposal by Charles Burnett (and also by Teresa Witcombe) to consider the translations of both Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo in the context of the need to instruct Mozarabs and Christian converts to Islam, it fits with the third chapter, penned by Anthony J. Lappin and also concerned with Toledo. At that time an important minority of Arabic Christians, the Mozarabs, lived in that city as in many others in al-Andalus. The question addressed by Lappin is whether the Mozarabs had also translated the Qur’an into Latin for their own use. Using indirect evidence for the existence of a Mozarabic Latin compilation of Islamic legal material, including legal sections of the Qur’an, Lappin argues that this was the case. He also, most interestingly, establishes the contacts of the Toledan Mozarabs with Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, who was responsible for the creation of the Corpus of texts related to Islam known as the Corpus Cluniacense. Lappin concurs with Burnett and Witcombe in linking the first translations with the need to keep Mozarabs within the Christian realm. A new, complete translation of the Qur’an into Latin was completed in 1456 by Juan de Segovia in close cooperation with a faqih of Segovia, Yça de Gebir.⁸ This translation is lost except for a few fragments in other manuscripts. We know that it was a trilingual endeavour, with parallel texts in Arabic, Castilian and Latin. Only the prologue has survived and through it we know that Juan de Se-

 Yça de Gebir, ‘Īsā b. Jābir, Yça Gidelli. See Gerard A. Wiegers, Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (Fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors (Leiden: Brill, 1994).

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govia, a prominent theologian and participant in the council of Basel (1431– 39), prepared this trilingual Qur’an in the Benedictine convent of Aiton. Davide Scotto, who has done previous important work on Segovia,⁹ dedicates his contribution to this volume to Juan de Segovia’s reports on the disputes between himself and three Muslims that took place in Medina del Campo starting in October 1431. In his accounts, written at the Aiton monastery more than twenty years after the Castilian encounters, Segovia made a number of references to the Qur’an. Scotto uses these reports to reconstruct the political and cultural context in which the disputes took place and the arguments made in those interreligious conversations. Scotto concludes that these disputes convinced Segovia of the need to have a translation of the Qur’an for his strategy of converting the Muslims peacefully —per viam pacis et doctrinae, as Segovia says in his epistles. While in fact he read the Qur’an only much later, he projects his knowledge of the book back in time to those disputes in Medina del Campo. The last contribution in this part, authored by Ulisse Cecini, presents another fascinating chapter in the story of Latin translations in the Iberian Peninsula. He deals with the one written in the El Escorial monastery by the Franciscan friar Germanus de Silesia, which was concluded, after many versions and revisions, in 1664. It is not only a Latin translation of the Qur’an but also a presentation and discussion of Islamic exegesis, in Latin translation and at times also in Arabic transcription. Cecini’s essay sheds light on another aspect of the Iberian Qur’an, the connections between Rome/Italy and the Iberian Peninsula in the seventeenth century. He also discusses the work done on Arabic manuscripts at El Escorial, where Felipe II had established his Royal Library in the early 1570 (Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial). The second part of the book is dedicated to the Muslim production of Qur’ans in Christian Spain, mainly during the sixteenth century, both in Arabic and translated from Arabic into Romance vernaculars written in the Arabic alphabet (Aljamiado). It begins with a chapter by Gerard Wiegers on the responses that the office of four chief qadis of Mamluk Cairo, representing the four Sunni schools of law (madhāhib), issued at the request of Mudejars from Aragon a decade before the forced conversion of the Aragonese Muslims to Christianity. One of the questions the Mudejars addressed to the qadis was whether or not it was legitimate to translate the Qur’an into non-Arabic languages. The responses vary according to  Davide Scotto, “‘Neither through Habits, nor Solely through Will, but through Infused Faith’: Hernando de Talavera’s Understanding of Conversion,” in Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

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the different approaches of the four schools, but they are all in accord about the legitimacy of vernacular tafsirs, that is to say that translating in the sense of commentary is approved. The fatwas seem to aim at limiting the ritual and visible use of Romance vernaculars and literal translation, but they take a non-rejective view of the possibility of Islam living in a minority position with the limitations that such a position entails. This first chapter is important for understanding the features of the translations made by Mudejars and Moriscos considered in the subsequent chapters of this section. We may assume that translations already circulated among the Mudejars well before the said fatwas were given. The last chapter of the section, by Mercedes García-Arenal, draws on a wide range of Inquisition trials in which the culprit is accused of having a Qur’an, or of copying, reading, studying, memorizing, or carrying it. Scrutiny of Inquisition material shows how widely copies of the Qur’an circulated in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. The abundance of Qur’ans demonstrates that the Holy Book continued to be the backbone of Morisco Islam up to the years of the general Expulsion of the Moriscos (1609 – 14). This is important because the Qur’ans in both Arabic and Aljamiado that have reached us are only a small corpus —many perished in the fires of the Inquisition or were taken by Moriscos into exile. Many were hidden in false floors and walls, and discovered after the expulsion and up to the nineteenth century. We also have Arabic Qur’ans copied throughout the Morisco period up to the beginning of the seventeenth century; some of them are rich and well-decorated manuscripts that reveal the patronage of wealthy Muslim families and the existence of copyists, calligraphers and illustrators, access to good paper and ink, etc. A good example of this is a Muṣḥaf preserved in Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, copied in 1597 by Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Ballester in Aranda de Moncayo.¹⁰ Therefore the first and last chapters of this section frame the Mudejar and Morisco Qur’ans as caught between Muslim and Christian legislation, both of them seriously curtailing (or trying to destroy completely, in the case of the Inquisition) the efforts of Iberian Muslims to possess, circulate, and translate the Qur’an. These efforts by Muslims —but also by Christians, as we will see in the next part of the book—were aimed at establishing distance and clear boundaries between the two religious communities, to avoid any porosity, including knowledge of the other. We will return to this aspect later on. As this part shows, Spanish Muslim versions of the Qur’an differ greatly in the amount of exegesis that they contain. Mudejar and Morisco translations of the Qur’an often include longer or shorter passages of tafsir, or are presented

 RAH, MS Codera 288/1110619.

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chiefly in the form of tafsir: i. e., the translations are actually paraphrasing the Arabic and clearly do not intend to function as a literal, word-for-word rendering. Works of Muslim exegesis circulated among the Moriscos sometimes in compendiums of different authors of tafsir; others are transmitted in complete versions, such as the one by Ibn Abī Zamanīn, translated into Romance in Arabic script (Aljamiado). Most of the copies of Mudejar and Morisco Qur’ans that have reached us date from the sixteenth century, and constitute either a part or excerpt of the Qur’an or what is known in the scholarly literature since Eduardo Saavedra as “abridged Qur’ans”. More recently, Nuria de Castilla has called the standard selection of chapters and verses “the Morisco Qur’an”.¹¹ In fact, it is remarkable that there is only one complete Qur’an translated during the Mudejar-Morisco period that has reached us, the already mentioned BCLM MS 235 (known as the Toledo Qur’an), copied in 1606 in Castilian language and Latin script from a copy written in Aljamiado.¹² We have two copies made outside the Peninsula in Salonica (Thessaloniki), where there was an important community of Iberian exiles, Moriscos and Sephardic Jews. One of the Thessaloniki Qur’ans was translated by the Aragonese Ybrahim Izquierdo in 1568; it contains an interlinear translation in Arabic and Castilian, and is held at the Bibliothe`que nationale de France where it was donated by the French Orientalist Antoine Galland. The other was made by Muhamad Rabadan in 1612, also in Salonica, and is written in Aljamiado. Both are abridged or abbreviated Qur’ans, of which we have nearly thirty examples. These consisted of a selection, always the same, of the chapters and verses most recited in daily prayer, generally arranged by the length of the suras, the longest suras selected first. The chapter by Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias is dedicated to these manuscripts and their typologies. We have also another type of abridged Qur’an in Arabic, organized in reverse order, which seems to have been used for learning the book by heart. Adrián Rodríguez and Pablo Roza Candás devote a chapter to this newly discovered reverse-order Qur’an and to the role of memory and memorizing in the religious life of Mudejars and Moriscos. The copies they study have all been found in the Aragonese village of Calanda, where, as they demonstrate, a school of copyists existed. In his other chapter

 Eduardo Saavedra Moragas, “Discurso que el Excmo sr. Don Eduardo Saavedra leyó en Junta pública de la Real Academia Española el día 29 de diciembre de 1878 al tomar posesión de su plaza de académico de número,” Memorias de la Real Academia española 6 (1889); Nuria Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts from Late Muslim Spain: The Collection of Almonacid de La Sierra,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16, no. 2 (2014).  Edited and studied by Consuelo López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha (Gijón: Trea, 2011).

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Pablo Roza Candás offers an overview of dialectal and lexical variations in different Morisco translations of the Qur’an and links these variations to the sociocultural contexts in which they arose, mainly in Aragon. Considering the Qur’an of Salonica translated by Izquierdo (who was a member of a well-known Aragonese family), and analyzing its linguistic features that he also finds in Sephardic works from the same Greek locality, Roza suggests a fascinating world of relations and contacts between different Hispanic minorities in Iberia and, most importantly, in exile around the Mediterranean. According to the contributions in this section, the typical Spanish Qur’an made by and for Iberian Muslims is found in anonymous sixteenth-century manuscripts, but these translations appear to be copies of versions made earlier. What were the originals, and who made them? When was the Qur’an first translated in Spanish? Most of these questions remain unanswered. The chapters in this section demonstrate that Mudejars and then Moriscos read, copied and preserved more than one version of the Qur’an in Spanish. The genetic or genealogical relationships that may exist among surviving versions of the Spanish Qur’an are of the utmost interest and, though scrutinized here, remain in need of further study. As for who made them, the clear protagonists of this section of the book are the so-called alfaquíes (from Arabic al-faqīh), important figures in their communities, respected persons with religious knowledge: the “guardians of Islam”, who had preserved a tradition of Quranic learning and exegesis.¹³ The role of the alfaquíes in the Christian territories of Castile and Aragon cannot be overestimated, nor can the contacts among them and the networks they established. They played a central role, for example, in reading the Qur’an to their communities and explaining it in the vernacular. The aurality of the Qur’an is important and worth taking into account. Inquisition trials testify to the alfaquíes’ activity of reading and commenting on the Qur’an to their flocks (García-Arenal), and Christian polemicists knew very well the importance of hearing the Qur’an read aloud. This fact is attested in the chapters contained in the third part of this book, dedicated to the Romance translations made by Christians during this same period of the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, and in particular the genre known today as Antialcoranes (even though in reality only one of these treatises, that by the Erasmian scholar Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, bore the title Antialcorano). Despite firm evidence of Romance translations of the Qur’an among Christians in the late fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, the earliest surviving trans-

 Kathryn A. Miller, Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

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lations of the Qur’an into Romance are those circulating among Mudejar and Morisco populations. Bridging the gap between these two separate streams of Romance translations, the Christian and the Muslim, is the figure of Juan Andrés, the converted alfaquí who worked in the service of preaching against Islam as part of the Christian missionizing effort of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The third part of the book focuses on these sixteenth century translations. Between 1502, when Isabel of Castile banned the Islamic religion in her kingdom, and 1526, when her grandson King Carlos V imposed a similar decree in Aragon, various authors wrote polemical works and sermons aimed at the evangelisation of the forcibly converted Muslim populations. There was a messianic idea that this conversion, which would become universal under the aegis of Fernando and Carlos (both of whom bore the title “King of Jerusalem”), would be completed in about two generations.¹⁴ The authors and patrons of those polemical works, the object of our third section, believed that would be so. Those works were particularly aimed at refuting the Qur’an; or, in other words, at basing their refutation of Islam solely on the Qur’an. Their precedent can be considered the Spanish translation of the work by Riccoldo da Monte di Croce titled Refutación del Alcorán, printed in Seville in 1502 under the auspices of Archbishop Hernando de Talavera of Granada. The Latin edition of this same book had also been printed in Seville two years earlier financed by King Fernando of Aragon. We can see different strategies of conversion patronized by Castile and Aragon (as considered here by Scotto, Bernabé Pons, and Tottoli), still to be elucidated. It was not Talavera (though he was invested in using Arabic for missionary endeavours) who was directly involved in the promotion of works on the Qur’an, but another bishop also confessor to Queen Isabel, Martín García.¹⁵ Most of the authors of the Antialcoranes were connected to this Martín García —canon at the Zaragozan see, inquisitor in Aragon, later bishop of Barcelona— who had been asked by the Catholic Monarchs to come to Granada to begin missionizing and pastoral work there soon after the conquest of the city.

 Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, eds., Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam: Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2019); García-Arenal and Stefania Pastore, eds., Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo (Madrid: Abada, 2018).  Mònica Colominas Aparicio, “Profecía, conversión y polémica islamo-cristiana en la Iberia alto-moderna (siglo XV): Alfonso de Jaén y el círculo del obispo Don Martín García,” in Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Stefania Pastore (Madrid: Abada, 2018).

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García gathered a group of people who became engaged in campaigns for converting Muslims in Granada, Valencia and Aragon, and who were writing treatises between 1515 and 1555: Juan Andrés, Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, Lope de Obregón, Martí de Figuerola. In a limited span of time a considerable number of works came into being. The writings of Martín García, particularly his sermons, and those of his group of collaborators were constructed according to the same principles, using direct dialogues which question Muslims (“próximo mío de Moro”, something like “my dear fellow” or “my good neighbour”), and refer solely to Muslim sources. In reality, of course, the underlying discourse was a Christian polemical one, deeply but not exclusively immersed in the medieval tradition. This was the strategy of the aforementioned work by Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, which had a wide diffusion in its Castilian translation. But the authors of Antialcoranes plunged also into different medieval traditions, as Luis Bernabé Pons, scrutinizing the work of Joan Martí de Figuerola, shows, especially regarding the influence of Ramon Llull. Direct access to the Scriptures was for this group of scholars, much immersed in Erasmianism, an important principle. Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón’s work, in particular, was not only directed against Islam but also aimed to spread Erasmian ideas at a time when those ideas were already controversial. All the Antialcoranes contain numerous qur’anic quotations which are recorded in Arabic transcribed into the Latin alphabet (i. e., in inverse Aljamía), accompanied by a Spanish translation and the pertinent exegesis provided by the authors of tafsir. Ryan Szpiech explores the role of transliteration in Martín García’s work in comparison with later writers of the Antialcoranes genre — from Juan Andre´s and Martí de Figuerola to Bernardo Pe´rez de Chincho´n and Lope de Obrego´n. Because those works cultivate a dual focus on language and doctrine that combines attention to the Arabic language with discussion of the qur’anic content, Szpiech explores the question of what role the ability to read Arabic —either silently or aloud— played in the missionary campaign of García and his circle. He argues that written transliteration plays a valuable role in highlighting the place of oral presentation of the Qur’an in campaigns of preaching to Muslims and Moriscos from Granada to Valencia. Whereas earlier polemical writers sought authority in the presentation and translation of content from the Qur’an, authors of the Antialcoranes also used transliteration as a rhetorical tool to appeal to listeners through the sound of their Arabic sources. In so doing they were counting on the oral modality of Muslim engagement with the text. Ryan Szpiech demonstrates that Martín García was not consulting a written Qur’an to make his transliterations, but was instead relying on oral information from a Muslim or former Muslim who knew the material by heart. This interpretation reinforces what Roza Candás and Rodríguez Iglesias explored in

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the previous section of this book: the immense role of memorisation and orality in Morisco Islam. Also transversal to both these sections of the book is the question of transliteration: Romance in Arabic letters by the Muslims, Arabic in Latin letters by the Christians. Szpiech calls this second form of transliterating, or inverse Aljamiado, “Anti-aljamiado”. He uses this term to stress that transliteration is not a neutral or transparent action, and to propose that in his view, putting the Qur’an into Latin letters in this sixteenth-century Iberian context is inherently a polemical gesture. The question of transliteration is, no doubt, in need of being explored further. It is obvious that in this context changing alphabets is not neutral, but rather a tool of identity formation or of undermining identity formation. Szpiech’s suggestion that one community transliterates in order to express and defend identity, while the other employs transliteration to undermine that identity formation, deserves further exploration. The first work in the series of what have come to be known as Antialcoranes is Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (“Confusion or Confutation of the Muḥammadan Sect and of the Qur’an”), published in 1515 in Valencia and attributed to Juan Andrés, allegedly a faqih from Xàtiva who had converted to Christianity. Juan Andrés, in the preface to his Confusión, claims to have converted to Catholicism in 1487 and to have preached to his former coreligionists in both Valencia and Granada, where he was a canon of its cathedral. He further states in the preface that in about 1510 he translated the Qur’an and the the Sunna. This project was undertaken at the behest of Martín García. Juan Andrés was familiar with exegetical works, quoting freely from those of al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya and citing Ibn Abī Zamanīn, who was known to the Moriscos (see Tottoli and Sellin). Six years later, and before the Aragonese decree of conversion, Joan Martí de Figuerola, a priest who was also from a nearby region of Valencia and also worked under the auspices of Martín García, finished his Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán (“Fire/Light of Faith against the Qur’an”), which presents a similar exposition against the Qur’an. Both authors include hundreds of qur’anic passages in their works, quoting the Qur’an in Arabic in phonological transcription and in Spanish translation, and referring to tafsir authorities to explain each passage. Figuerola, whose work is extant in only one manuscript and has not yet been printed, also includes illustrations as well as the Arabic text of his citations written out in Arabic script. Martí de Figuerola does not use Juan Andrés’s translation, but prefers to rely on sources from the Islamic tradition provided to him by Juan Gabriel, a recently converted alfaquí from Teruel, who translated parts of the Qur’an for him and accompanied him on his campaigns. The abundant Arabic passages found in the Antialcorán literature deserve to be studied, not only in the context of the history of polemical writing against Muslims, but also as an

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important source informing the translation of the Qur’an in the Early Modern period. Contributors to this section include Roberto Tottoli, who offers the first detailed and complete study of the Arabic quotations in Figuerola. In this regard an important intermediate source is the Qur’an of the Italian Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, again a Latin translation. We need to refer in more detail to the qur’anic project of Egidio da Viterbo, since the contributions by Katarzyna K. Starczewska and Maxime Sellin are connected to it. As Starczewska’s contribution tells us, the original of his Latin translation is lost. What we have is a copy of the original (then at the Royal Library at El Escorial and probably lost in the fire of 1671) made in 1621 by the Scottish Orientalist David Colville, who for many years worked, as Germanus de Silesia did, in that library. In a three-page preface to his copy, Colville provides information about the context of the translation and about the people intellectually involved in its preparation. Colville mentions three individuals: Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo himself, Juan Gabriel of Teruel (Ioannes Gabriel Terrolensis) and al-Ḥassan alWazzān or Leo Africanus, famous for his work Della Descrittione dell’Africa. Leo Africanus had been captured at sea in 1518 and converted under the patronage of Egidio da Viterbo. The sequence of work on the text, as explained by Colville, was that Egidio da Viterbo first commissioned Juan Gabriel to translate the Qur’an, but that translation was later corrected by Leo Africanus. Colville, when copying the translation, maintains all the versions. Thus Colville’s manuscript contains a translation from Arabic into Latin, which had been commissioned by an Italian cardinal from a scholar of Spanish Muslim origin, who in turn lived in the Iberian Peninsula. The same text was then edited and reworked by another convert from Islam to Christianity, Leo Africanus, also of Muslim Iberian (Granadan) stock, who lived in Italy. Martí de Figuerola also describes in detail how he worked together with Juan Gabriel and, again, how they had recourse to Hadith and the Sira of Muḥammad. Figuerola was also involved in trying to convince the authorities in Aragon, as well as the Pope, to decree the conversion of the Muslims of Aragon. To this end he went to meet the new papal legate, the very same cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, when Egidio arrived in Barcelona in June 1518 together with Adrian of Utrecht. The role of Adrian (1459 – 1523) in Habsburg politics towards the Mudejars is still to be considered further. Adrian was a mentor of Carlos, who was about to inherit the Hispanic Monarchy and become the Emperor. Carlos brought Adrian of Utrecht with him from the Low Countries when he came to Spain at the time of the death of his grandfather Fernando. Carlos made Adrian cardinal of Tortosa, General Inquisitor of Aragon, and elected papal legate and sent him in 1516 to Cardenal Cisneros, who for a short time was the regent of the Kingdom.

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Adrian also accompanied Carlos to Zaragoza where he was recognized as king by the Aragonese Cortes in 1618 and where he apparently met Joan Martí de Figuerola. Shortly afterwards Adrian was elected Pope by the Roman Curia. When Adrian of Utrecht was elected pope as Adrian VI, he happened to be in Vitoria; he departed for Barcelona, from where he planned to set sail for Rome. He was accompanied by Cardinal Egidio. In passing through Aragon he remained in Zaragoza for two months and so, in 1522, Zaragoza briefly became a pontifical court. This interlude shows the context of the intertwined, complex and not always harmonious relations of the Crowns of Aragon and Castile with Rome as regarding the conversion of Mudejars and later the Expulsion of Moriscos.¹⁶ We have already referred to this fact when Fernando and Isabel adopted different strategies of conversion. The Catholic Monarchs were united in a single new polity, and also shared a vision of religious uniformity. But the limits of obedience to royal authority, and the relationship of that authority to the Papacy, were also in play. We want merely to sketch here a set of problems which are the context to the different trends and directions that the conversion and evangelization of the Moriscos happened to undergo through the first part of the sixteenth century. Cardinal Egidio was part of the papal retinue. While in Spain, Egidio commissioned a translation of the Qur’an and also other works, as Starczewska explains in her contribution. The last chapter of this section, by Maxime Sellin, is dedicated to a manuscript of the Qur’an which can be connected to the purchases of Egidio. It is the so-called Qur’an of Bellús, Bellús being a village near Valencia where it was copied in 1518, precisely the year in which Egidio was in Spain. The manuscript has interlinear translations and glosses in Latin, Castilian and Catalan, demonstrating that the Bellús Qur’an came into the hands of Christian scholars who wanted to use it as a tool for studying Islam’s sacred book. The Bellús Qur’an is another important testimony we have about the process of collective and individual study of the text of the Qur’an: it preserves traces of all the phases and figures involved in this process, from the initial work of the Muslim scribe who produced a careful professional copy, to the insertion of explanatory glosses in the margins and the marking up of parts of the text that were considered of interest and that would later be used in sermons and different kinds of works written with the goal of converting Muslims. This copy of the Qur’an, during its circulation outside of Spain, appears in Egidio da Viterbo’s intellectual circle. All evidence points to its ownership by the Orientalist Johann Albrecht von Wid-

 Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers, eds., The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

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manstetter (1557) of Heidelberg, who would have acquired it from the library of Egidio da Viterbo following the latter’s death.¹⁷ Therefore we can infer that this copy was used in the preparatory work for the translation commissioned by Cardinal Egidio. We can see through the example of Egidio how interest in Morisco knowledge arose in Italy: not only because of the collaboration of an Aragonese Mudejar in the ambitious intellectual endeavours of an Italian cardinal, but also because Martí de Figuerola’s work was brought to Italy (and copied there), together with a number of Aljamiado and Morisco Arabic manuscripts, by another papal legate, Cardinal Camillo Massimo.¹⁸ The stories of Egidio and many others before him (from Robert of Ketton to Juan de Segovia) prove that, in order to understand the Qur’an at a time when dictionaries and grammars were lacking, it was necessary to have the collaboration of a Muslim or a convert. And those were generally alfaquíes, the persons who had an education in qur’anic and religious sources. The collaboration of Muslim alfaquíes, converted or not, was fundamental to the enterprise of the Antialcoranes. We have seen that Juan Andrés was a convert, and Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, the author of the extensive and elaborate Antialcorano written around 1528, worked, as he himself says, on the Qur’an with alfaquíes in Valencia like the qadi of Valencia (whom he calls Moscayre or Mangay) and the alfaquí of Zumilla. Martí de Figuerola had collaborated with the converted alfaquí of Teruel. At the same time, as Ryan Szpiech shows in his contribution, the authors of the Antialcoranes, with their strategy of exhibiting the text and orality of the Qur’an to reinforce their authority, were probably targeting the alfaquíes they were addressing; it is through them that they sought to implement conversion. All evidence indicates that the authors of Antialcoranes considered alfaquíes as a group to be the best intermediaries through which to convert their communities, and the ones most susceptible to following and understanding their theological messages. This is not to say that we want to use the concept of “reception” in the sense that it may suggest some sort of homogenous intellectual entities in the engagement with Islam. In fact, the different types of Qur’an translations made in sixteenth-century Spain show how different registers of discourse could be employed for different audiences. For example, the authors of the Antialcoranes do not all use the same translation of the Qur’an, and they use qur’anic material in a different manner. They were probably consulting different works of tafsir. While Juan Gabriel’s translation is almost certainly based on a previous Romance version, it is Juan  See Robert Jones, Learning Arabic in Renaissance Europe (1505 – 1624) (Leiden: Brill, 2020).  Mercedes García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán (1519),” in Polemical Encounters; and García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, “Los libros de los moriscos y los eruditos orientales,” Al-Qanṭara 31, no. 2 (2010).

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Andrés’s Confusión that offers transliterations and translations of Arabic material to a vast group of polemical writers. All the Antialcoranes of the sixteenth century, including those that do not include Arabic text, recognize Juan Andrés as a foundational source. A comparison of Juan’s treatment of Arabic with that of subsequent Christian authors —in particular Martí de Figuerola and Lope de Obregón— shows that the Antialcoranes make use of Juan Andrés’s text in divergent ways. It is more productive, we suggest, to think in terms of clusters of people or networks within which individual texts circulated, and particular contexts in which these texts were then assigned meaning. Coming back to García-Arenal’s contribution at the end of the second part, we perceive that around the 1530s the whole perception in Catholic Spain of the evangelization of Muslims varied dramatically. In that decade there was a strong shift in the means of achieving conversion. After the demise of the Erasmian Grand Inquisitor Manrique in 1533 and the work of the council of Trent in the 1540s, a significant ideological change took place in Iberian Christendom that among other things, curtailed the direct access of believers to sacred texts, including the Bible, whose Romance translations had been shun from the times of the Catholic Monarchs. Now it was considered dangerous to be using and publishing so much information about Islam that the Moriscos could easily access it and learn from it about their own religion and Holy Book. It was even recommended that accusations of the culprits appearing in the Inquisition’s autos da fe not specify what the person punished had done, and what were his or her rituals and beliefs.¹⁹ The Arabic language was now totally identified with Islam.²⁰ It seemed that conversion was not possible through the means of persuasion considered by Hernando de Talavera, Martín García and their followers a few decades before. With the Inquisition’s harsher attitude towards converted Muslims came a pessimistic feeling regarding what was felt as a failure in their conversion.²¹ Involvement with the Qur’an, whether by Muslims or Christians, was considered dangerous, and the Antialcoranes contained so much qur’anic material that they could

 Mercedes García-Arenal, “Reading Against the Grain, Readings of Substitution: Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia,” Jewish History 35 (2021).  Mercedes García-Arenal, Is Arabic a Spanish Language? The Uses of Arabic in Early Modern Spain, The James K. Binder Lectureship in Literature 10 (La Jolla: University of California, San Diego, 2015); García-Arenal, “The Religious Identity of the Arabic Language and the Affair of the Lead Books of Granada,” Arabica 56 (2009).  Mercedes García-Arenal, “‘Mi padre moro, yo moro’: The Inheritance of Belief in Early Modern Iberia,” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. M. García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

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be (and in fact were) used by some Muslims who had little access to the Qur’an or difficulty in understanding it in Arabic. Therefore, the Antialcoranes were banned and listed in the Indexes of forbidden books from 1559 onwards. The Bible in Romance translation appears in this same Index of 1559 as well. The possession of Arabic Qur’ans became dangerous for Christian bibliophiles and collectors as well, as García-Arenal also shows. But this position, which came to predominate and had important consequences, was not homogeneous, but full of contradictions. One contradiction was that Felipe II, the king who had forbidden Arabic, was at the same time forming an impressive collection of Arabic manuscripts in his Royal Library, which even today is one of the most important repositories of Arabic works in Europe. Felipe II began by depositing the collections of Juan Páez de Castro and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza; the latter had brought from Italy an important collection of Arabic manuscripts that he had acquired through his friendship with the exiled Hafsid prince Muley Hassan.²² An ambiguous attitude towards Arabic books appears in many individual stories: the Flemish humanist Nicolaus Cleynaerts, in his letters directed to colleagues back in Louvain, relates that in the 1530s Francisco de Vitoria, a professor at Salamanca, had asked him to translate the Qur’an into Latin as the sole means of converting the Moriscos. But Cleynaerts, who went after Salamanca to Seville and Granada, even with the help of the Governor of this city, Luis de Mendoza, and of the bishop of Burgos (who was in Granada in 1537 for the burial of Empress Isabel of Portugal) was not able to obtain from the Inquisition Arabic books that the Holy Office had confiscated. The difficulty of accessing Qur’ans and Qur’an translations enhanced still more the usefulness of the Antialcoranes. We know that Moriscos bought them and used them as an aid to reading the Arabic Qur’an. In 1510 Hernando Colón, son of Christopher Columbus, who had collected an immense library, bought a rich and beautifully decorated Qur’an that he describes in his catalogue. The same catalogue entry includes Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s Refutación del Alcorán which Colón, who knew very little Arabic, probably used to guide himself through the qur’anic text. Even King Felipe II bought a copy of an Antialcorán in Valencia in 1541.²³ Felipe II’s enforcement of the prohibition of the Arabic language and texts throughout the Peninsula in 1567 effectively ended the growth of the Antialcorán

 Javier Castillo-Fernández, “Hurtado de Mendoza: humanista, arabista e historiador,” El Fingidor 21 (2004). Braulio Justel Calabozo, La Real Biblioteca de El Escorial y sus manuscritos árabes. Sinopsis histórico-descriptiva (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1987); Daniel Hershenzon, “Traveling Libraries: The Arabic Manuscripts of Muley Zidan and the Escorial Library,” Journal of Early Modern History 18, no. 6 (2014).  José Luis Gonzalo Sánchez-Molero, Felipe II. La educación de un ‘felicísimo príncipe’ (1527 – 1545) (Madrid: Polifemo, 2013), 671.

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genre and altered the strategies for evangelising Moriscos in the mid-sixteenth century. It also ended the study of the Qur’an in Iberia. Nonetheless, the material organised and employed in the Antialcoranes provided a basis for subsequent discussions of and attacks on Islam outside the Peninsula. Arguments similar to those of the authors of Antialcoranes can be found repeated in later writers such as Tirso González de Santalla, Manuel Sanz, and Ludovico Marracci in the seventeenth century, and Manuel de Santo Tomás de Aquino Traggia in the eighteenth. Juan Andrés was a pioneer in the writing of anti-Muslim polemic, and his book marks a number of important firsts in the European encounter with Islam. Juan Andrés’s work was extremely influential, in both Spain and Europe: it was printed in Spain in 1515, 1519, 1537, and 1560. The first translation into Italian appeared in Venice in 1537, and another five editions followed, also in Venice, up to 1597. There was one translation into French (1574) and two into German (printed in 1598 and 1685), three editions of the Latin translation, one into English, and one into Dutch (1651). The work was forbidden in Spain by the Index of 1559. As has been said, other Antialcoranes suffered the same fate. The fourth part of the book focuses on modern times. There is no doubt that the action of the Inquisition curtailed further attempts at knowing, possessing or translating the Qur’an. A couple of centuries later it had to be “rediscovered” in Spain, but the translations made then were translations from the French, as the contributions by Juan Pablo Arias, and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano and Isabel Boyano show. This second contribution unearths a hitherto unknown nineteenth-century manuscript translation in verse made by Filiberto Portillo in 1850 for Queen Isabel II. In this translation we perceive the traces of a new European phenomenon: toward the end of the eighteenth century Europeans began to view the Qur’an in a new light, as a masterpiece of world literature and a reflection of poetic genius. New translations sought to capture this genius. Already in the late eighteenth century there were attempts to convey the poetry of the Qur’an in new European translations, as part of a broader exploration of Islamic art and culture. An exploration that would continue until the Romantic period, whose relationship with Eastern cultures would give new meaning to the very concept of “Orientalism”, just when colonial expansion was producing a radical change in the world political and cultural order. Here again Spain forms a contrast with the rest of Europe. Spanish Romanticism interrogates the role of Spain’s Arabic past in its national identity, but at the same time, since Spain occupies a second rank among the European powers, Spanish culture depends strongly on that of other countries, France in particular. We have observed that some Qur’an translations studied here are essentially indirect versions made from French. Spain’s unique role in the nineteenth century, at once

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obsessed with its Arab past and strongly Gallicised (afrancesado), also explains the singular character of Spanish Africanism and the country’s small but intense colonial venture in North Africa—essential for understanding Spain’s history in the twentieth century. While the Moriscos were producing their Qur’an, at the other side of the globe the “Moros” of the Hispanic Philippines were producing their own translations, which depended in this case on Malay exegetical writing in Jawi, another form of Aljamiado.²⁴ At the end of the nineteenth century the situation was very different, and Jesuits in the Philippines wrote qur’anic suras, including Spanish translations in both Latin and Jawi script, into their texts dedicated to the instruction of Moros. This book contains much that is new and suggests that connections between Muslim and Christian translations of the Qur’an are of great interest. The enormous holdings of archival documents extant in Christian Spain allow us to know a great deal about Iberian Islam, in a way that stresses its unique character. Inquisition sources, though biased, shed light on these lived religious practices. Christian Iberia offers insight into an Islam that is in a sense devoid of the Islamic authority structures that support most of the Islamicate world. At the same time, the study of the Christian Qur’an allows us to delve further into the debates and different phases of conversion and mission, and how these debates are bound up with issues of governance and the nature of royal authority. Also on display are the tensions between the two Crowns (of Castile and Aragon), relations with Rome, and the relationship of the Catholic Monarchs to the Spanish Arabo-Islamic past. Another important contribution of this book is that it unveils a number of aspects that appear in need of further or deeper consideration, including the unearthing of new materials. We see new materials in several contributions to this volume, such as those of Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias and Pablo Roza Candás, Fernando Rodríguez Mediano and Isabel Boyano, and Isaac Donoso. The work carried out and now in progress by the EuQu team for its Data Base is constantly incorporating new findings. With what we already have, among the issues that appear most promising for further research are the relationship between translations and missionizing, notions of alteration of texts (taḥrīf) and exegesis (tafsir), and the relationship between translation and defining the religious contours of the community that produces it. Also ripe for exploration are the interactions between patrons and

 Sibgatullina and Wiegers, “Aljamiado” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE (forthcoming).

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(convert) translators across religious boundaries, including concepts of language, subjecthood and orthodoxy. Is there a relation or an overlap between the qur’anic translations made by Muslims for Muslim use, and the qur’anic translations made by Christians for their mission of conversion to Christianity? Does the fact that Muslims and converts from Islam collaborated with Christians in these translations produce similarities between the two, or do Christians draw on translations made by Muslims? As we have seen, Morisco translations incorporate exegesis and shun literal translation. But the selection of qur’anic material differs: the suras selected in the abridged Qur’ans and the suras chosen by the authors of Antialcoranes rarely coincide. Antialcoranes selected qur’anic material on matters shared with Christianity, such as Jesus or the Virgin Mary, or on contradictions between different suras, or narratives that Christians considered unbelievable. The abridged Qur’ans have a different function: they provide prayers, and specially funerary prayers, selected to counteract the fact that Moriscos are living in a Christian society, they live their religion in clandestinity and are obliged to comply with Christian ritual. These abridged Qur’ans are a stronghold of Muslim identity. What can be learned, then, from the fact that they are contemporary in time and made by almost the same kind of people? Given how few texts and translations are extant, and what limited circulation they had, special scholarly efforts should be made to reconstruct their circulation and shared production between Christians and Muslims. This pursuit would reveal exciting episodes and entanglements across time and space (such as the Figuerola-Juan Gabriel-Egidio da Viterbo nexus that we have considered), and would be much more instructive methodologically than mere surveys or even analyses of tropes in themselves. On a different note, some of these chapters inspire the need to enrich our discussion of censorship, authorship and dissimulation in Early Modern Europe, including challenging questions about co-authorship, reciprocity and power dynamics, since collaboration between members of opposing religious communities was often based on the subordination of one of the two subjects involved. Material and linguistic aspects of the texts will also be in need of further development: for example, the questions produced by the existence of multialphabetism and interlinearity, multilingualism and multiple authorship. The process of the shaping of a language by the alphabet of another is still in need of further scrutiny, and we have added in this volume the very interesting case of the Aljamiado Philippine Qur’ans. We also need to continue our exploration of the impact of the translation of holy texts on the construction and definition of new vernaculars. Other aspects to be considered are the collection and circulation of Arabic manuscripts among Christian scholars and bibliophiles, the potential prestige

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as well as the risks for their owners in a country in which Arabic is necessary— these pursuits were prestigious but also dangerous. Arabic books were simultaneously collected and prized, but also persecuted, censored and destroyed. Qur’an manuscripts held religious (including talismanic) value for Muslims, of course, but also for Christian collectors: for noblemen and kings, and as prestigious gifts in diplomatic missions. Another whole new volume of essays begs to be written on the noble and royal libraries of Spain, Italy, the Low Countries, Germany and England and their Arabic collections, most especially the Royal Library of El Escorial.

Bibliography Barceló, Carmen, and Ana Labarta. Archivos moriscos. Textos árabes de la minoría islámica valenciana 1401 – 1608. Valencia: Universitat de València, 2009. Castillo-Fernández, Javier. “Hurtado de Mendoza, humanista, arabista e historiador.” El Fingidor 21 (2004): 25 – 27. Colominas Aparicio, Mònica. “Profecía, conversión y polémica islamo-cristiana en la Iberia alto-moderna (siglo XV): Alfonso de Jaén y el círculo del obispo Don Martín García.” In Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo. Edited by Stefania Pastore and Mercedes García-Arenal, 51 – 77. Madrid: Abada, 2018. Epalza Ferrer, Mikel de, Josep V. Forcadell Saport and Joan M. Perujo Melgar, eds. El Corán y sus traducciones. Propuestas. Alicante: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Alicante, 2008. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “The Religious Identity of the Arabic Language and the Affair of the Lead Books of Granada.” Arabica 56 (2009): 495 – 528. García-Arenal, Mercedes. Is Arabic a Spanish Language? The Uses of Arabic in Early Modern Spain. The James K. Binder Lectureship in Literature, 10. La Jolla: University of California, San Diego, 2015. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “‘Mi padre moro, yo moro’: The Inheritance of Belief in Early Modern Iberia.” In After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 304 – 35. Leiden: Brill, 2016. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán.” In Polemical Encounters Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers, 155 – 78. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2019. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “Reading Against the Grain, Readings of Substitution: Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia.” Jewish History 35 (2021): 241 – 63. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. “Los libros de los moriscos y los eruditos orientales.” Al-Qanṭara 31, no. 2 (2010): 611 – 46. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Gerard A. Wiegers, eds. The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

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García-Arenal, Mercedes and Gerard A. Wiegers, eds. Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. García-Arenal, Mercedes, Gerard A. Wiegers and Ryan Szpiech, eds. Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. Leiden: Brill, 2019. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, eds. Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam: Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and Beyond. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Gonzalo Sánchez-Molero, José Luis. Felipe II. La educación de un ‘felicísimo príncipe’ (1527 – 1545). Madrid: Polifemo, 2013. Hershenzon, Daniel. “Traveling Libraries: The Arabic Manuscripts of Muley Zidan and the Escorial Library.” Journal of Early Modern History 18, no. 6 (2014): 535 – 58. “Interreligious Encounters in Polemics.” Monographic issue, Medieval Encounters 24, no. 1 – 3 (2018); https://brill.com/view/journals/me/24/1-3/me.24.issue-1-3.xml?language=en [accessed 22/04/2022] Jones, Robert. Learning Arabic in Renaissance Europe (1505 – 1624). Leiden: Brill, 2020. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha. Gijón: Trea, 2011. Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, Nuria. “Qur’anic Manuscripts from Late Muslim Spain: The Collection of Almonacid de La Sierra.” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16, no. 2 (2014): 89 – 138. Miller, Kathryn A. Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. “Orientalism, History and Thought in Modern Europe.” Monographic issue, Al-Qanṭara 31, no. 2 (2010); https://al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al-qantara/issue/view/20 [accessed 22/04/2022] Pastore, Stefania and Mercedes García-Arenal, eds. Visiones imperiales y profecía. Roma, España, Nuevo Mundo. Madrid: Abada, 2018. “The Qur’an in Early Modern Iberia and Beyond.” Monographic issue, Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014); https://al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al-qantara/issue/view/28 [accessed 22/04/2022] Roza Candás, Pablo. Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka: La peregrinación de Omar Patón. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 2018. Saavedra Moragas, Eduardo. “Discurso que el Excmo sr. Don Eduardo Saavedra leyó en Junta pública de la Real Academia Española el día 29 de diciembre de 1878 al tomar posesión de su plaza de académico de número.” Memorias de la Real Academia Española 6 (1889): 140 – 328. Scotto, Davide. “‘Neither through Habits, nor Solely through Will, but through Infused Faith’: Hernando de Talavera’s Understanding of Conversion.” In Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Coercion and Faith in Premodern Iberia and Beyond. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, 291 – 327. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Scotto, Davide. “Translation in Wartime. Disseminating the Qur’an during the Crusades (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries).” In Transfer and Religion. Interactions between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Edited by

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Alexander A. Dubrau, Davide Scotto, and Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverin,129 – 67. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020. “Translating Sacred Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia.” Monographic issue, Medieval Encounters 26, no. 4 – 5 (2020); https://brill.com/view/journals/me/26/4-5/me. 26.issue-4-5.xml?language=en [accessed 22/04/2022] Wiegers, Gerard A. Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (Fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors. Leiden: Brill, 1994.

I Latin and the Development of Literal Translation

Charles Burnett

Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo and the Rise and Development of the Literal Translation of the Qur’an In discussing the earliest translations of the Qur’an into Latin the contrast is often made between that of Robert of Ketton (1143) and that of Mark of Toledo (1213). Both were made on Iberian soil, and reflect local concerns, but both had an impact on the wider world. The former is said to be too free —a paraphrase rather than a translation— and not accurate; the latter is considered to be a literal translation. In this article I would like to explore the context of both translations, and in particular to see how different norms for translation were applied, and what effect the results had on later readers.¹ We can first take the translation of Robert of Ketton. He is clearly a fine Latin scholar. We have the evidence of the prefaces to his translations. We do not know where he was educated, but his education prepared him for high positions in the church, including being an archdeacon at the cathedral of Pamplona. This presumably meant that he was familiar with theological discourse, but by his own admission, his expertise lay in the mathematical sciences. When asked to translate the Qur’an, he told Peter the Venerable that “he laid aside [his] main study of astronomy and geometry,” and that his eventual aim was to write for Peter the Venerable a celestial gift which embraces within itself the whole of science. This would reveal according to number, proportion and measure, all the celestial circles and their quantities, orders and conditions and, finally, all the various movements of the stars and their effects and natures and everything else of this kind.²

 For a more detailed comparison between the styles of the two translators and their place in the history of translating into Latin, see Ulisse Cecini, Alcoranus latinus. Eine sprachliche und kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse der Koranübersetzungen von Robert von Ketton und Marcus von Toledo (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2012); for some specific characteristics see Julian Yolles, “Scientific Language in the Latin Qur’ans of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 22, no. 3 (2020).  Robert of Ketton’s dedication to Peter the Venerable accompanying his translation of the Qur’an (ed. Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 94): “… que me compulit interim astronomie geometrieque studium meum principale pretermittere… Tibique celesti… celeste munus voveo, quod integritatem in se scientie complectitur, que secundum numerum et proportionem et mensuram celestes circulos omnes et eorum quantitates ac ordines et habitudines, demum stellarum motus omnimodos et earumdem effectus atque naturas, et huiusmodi cetera… aperit.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-002

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Robert may have “willingly sweated over” other texts in the Arabic language,³ but that love certainly did not extend to translating Islamic texts. As he writes in the preface to Fabulae Sarracenorum, having taken up this ridiculous text, I shall deal with it quickly. For, it is more healthy and appropriate to touch lightly something frivolous and poisonous than to hold on to it, and it is better to pass through sirens with a speedy gait and wide steps than to linger slowly through them.

And he goes on to say that it was by a “special favour” towards Peter the Venerable, that he “uncovered by his own hand the Law of the Saracen, and brought it into the treasury of the Roman language.”⁴ So, what method of translation did Robert use? In the preface to his translation of al-Kindī’s astrological work, the Iudicia, he claims that “having untangled the surface meaning of the words… I have carefully adapted to Latin brevity the seed and effect of things” (in this case the effects of the planets and the predictions of certain future events),⁵ i. e. he is trying to get to the kernel of the text, and summarise this in Latin. He uses a different metaphor in his preface to the Qur’an itself: that of “just taking off the Arabic veil” (Arabico tantum semoto velamine), and therefore revealing the material in its own light (pro sui modo), “not having recourse to excerpts, not changing the sense of anything, except only for better understanding” (nil excerpens, nil sensibiliter nisi propter intelligentiam tantum alterans), but not making the translation any more beautiful than the original. He continues: it is important not to make any changes, because the Qur’an “although lethal, in many places provides for select and understanding readers, very great testimony and the strongest argument for the sacredness and excellence of our religion.”⁶  Robert of Ketton, Preface to al-Kindī’s Iudicia: “libencius insudarem”; Charles Burnett, “AlKindī on Judicial Astrology: ‘The Forty Chapters’,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3, no. 1 (1993), 106; ed. Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 87.  Robert of Ketton, Preface to Fabulae Sarracenorum: “… ludum illum… ingressus sum cito transiturus. Est enim salubrius commodiusque rem frivolam et venenosam tangere quam tenere potiusque Sirenes spaciosis cursibus ac festinis quam lentis et numerosis passibus preterire. Sui namque gratia speciali prius laborem aggressus, Legem predicti manu propria detexi et in lingue Romane thesaurum attuli”; ed. Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 89.  Robert of Ketton, Preface to al-Kindī, Iudicia: “enodato verborum vultu, rerum semen et effectum atque summam stellarium effectuum pronosticationisque quorumlibet eventuum Latine brevitati diligenter inclusi”; Burnett, “Al-Kindī on Judicial Astrology,” 106, and ed. Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 87.  Robert of Ketton, Preface to the Qur’an: “ob translationis nostre vilem et dissolubilem ac incompaginatam materiam pro sui modo prorsus Arabico tantum semoto velamine tue maiestati

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In the eyes of Peter the Venerable, who commissioned the translation of Islamic material, Robert and his colleague, Hermann of Carinthia, were examples of people who were skilled in Arabic and Latin and who, moreover, had access to Arabic libraries in which both religious and secular manuscripts could be found.⁷ One of these armaria may have been the library of the last of the Muslim kings of Zaragoza, in exile in Rueda de Jalo´n (armarium rotense), which was the source of mathematical texts definitely for Hugo Sanctelliensis, and probably for his colleagues Robert and Hermann, and this could have been where the manuscript of Robert’s Qur’an came from.⁸

What do Robert’s Translations Tell us about His Method of Translation? I would just like to give two example of Robert’s style of translating by looking at the Fātiḥa (the “opening” of the Qur’an), and the beginning of the second sura, and making a comparison with a literal translation of the Arabic (the verse numbers of the Arabic have been added): This is his translation of the Fātiḥa, the praise to God with which the Qur’an begins:

prebendam… nil excerpens, nil sensibiliter nisi propter intelligentiam tantum alterans attuli…. numquam hoc fuisse propositum, floribus venenum tegere, remque vilem et abiciendam deaurare… Lex tamen ista, licet letifera, multis in locis maximum testimonium argumentumque firmissimum sanctitatis et excellentie nostre Legis videntibus et electis prebet”; ed. Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 93 – 94.  Peter the Venerable, supposedly addressing a Muslim audience in his Contra Sarracenos: “Habet gens nostra plurimos in utraque lingua peritos, qui non tantum ea quae ad religionem… pertinent… sed etiam quantum ad liberalia vel physica studia spectat, armariorum vestrorum intima penetrarunt” (“Our people have many skilled in both languages, who [study] not only what pertains to religion, but also what considers both the liberal arts and the natural sciences; they have penetrated the innermost parts of your libraries”); Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia latina, vol. 189 (Paris: Garnier fratres, 1890), col. 688.  Charles Burnett, “Imagined and Real Libraries in the Case of Medieval Latin Translators from Greek and Arabic,” in Die Bibliothek – The Library – La Bibliothèque, ed. Andreas Speer and Lars Reuke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 735 – 36.

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Robert’s translation⁹

English translation of Robert’s English translation of the translation Qur’an¹⁰

() Misericordi pioque Deo, () universitatis creatori, iudicium () cuius postrema dies expectat, () voto supplici nos humiliemus, adorantes ipsum, suaeque manus suffragium, () semitaeque donum et dogma, () quos nos ad se benevolos, nequaquam hostes et erroneos adduxit, iugiter sentiamus.

() To the merciful and pious God, () Creator of the Universe, () whose judgement the Last Day awaits, () let us humble ourselves with a supplicant prayer, adoring Him; let us perpetually feel the help of His hand, () the gift and teaching of the Way, () we whom He has led to Him – being kind to him, in no way [being] enemies and strayers.

() In the name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. () All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds, () the All-beneficent, the Allmerciful, () Master of the Day of Retribution. () You do we worship, and to You do we turn for help. () Guide us on the straight path, () the path of those whom You have blessed – such as have not incurred Your wrath, nor are astray.

Robert makes a single sentence of the whole of the Fātiḥa. He puts a main verb at the end (7) and turns verbal phrases into nouns that depend on this one verb (in verses 5 and 6). Other finite clauses in the Arabic have become a subordinate clause (4) or a participle (5).¹¹ Above all, God, who is directly addressed with vocatives and imperatives in the Arabic, becomes the subject of verbs in the third person and is described by third person pronouns and adjectives. The opening verses of sura II: Robert’s translation

English translation of Robert’s English translation of the translation Qur’an

() In nomine Domini pii et misericordis. () Liber hic absque falsitatis vel erroris annexu, veridicus eis quibus inest amor divinus, deitatis-

() In the name of the pious and merciful. () This book – without the addition of falsity or error, [being] truth-telling for those in whom there is di-

() In the name of Allah, the All-beneficent, the All-merciful. Alif. Lām. Mīm. () This is the Book – there is no doubt in it – a guidance to the God-

 The text is taken from Theodore Bibliander’s editions of 1543 and 1550 as edited by Anthony John Lappin, Theodorus Bibliander and Robert of Ketton, Alchoran Latinus. Vol. III: Editiones Theodori Bibliandri (1543 & 1550), ed. Anthony J. Lappin (Rome: Aracne, 2011).  All Qur’an translations are based on those in ʿAlī Qulī Qarā’ī (trans.), The Quran: with a phrase-by-phrase English translation (London: ICAS Press, 2018).  D’Alverny has described this habit of Robert’s as an effort “pour mettre un lien logique entre des phrases simplement juxtapose´e dans l’original”; Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny, “Deux traductions latines du Coran au Moyen Âge,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 16 (1947), 86.

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Continued Robert’s translation

English translation of Robert’s English translation of the translation Qur’an

que timor et cultus, () necnon orationum ac eleemosynarum studium, () legum item tum tibi, tum caeteris praedecessoribus coelitus a Deo datarum observatio, spesque seculi futuri, sectam veracem patefecit.

vine love, and awe and worship of the deity; () moreover, zeal for prayers and almsgiving; () likewise observation of the laws given from heaven by God both to you and to all your predecessors, and hope of the future world – has revealed a true religion.

wary, () who believe in the Unseen, and maintain the prayer, and spend out of what We have provided them with, () and who believe in what has been sent down to you, and what was sent down before you, and are certain of the Hereafter.

Robert’s text is a single sentence with the subject at the beginning and the single finite verb at the end, and intervening nominal phrases introduced by -que, necnon, and item. The first phrase is an expansion on the Arabic “This is the book, there is no doubt in it.” Robert uses a doublet for “doubt”: “falsity or error”, and, for euphony adds annexu (“addition of”). “A guidance for those who fear God” is expanded into “in those in whom there is divine love, and awe and worship of the deity,” whilst the “belief in the Unseen (i. e. afterlife)” is omitted, probably because it is stated in different words later on (“spes seculi futuri”). Prayers and almsgiving are retained, but with the use of a distinctly Christian term “eleemosyne”, and the last three words have been added to complete the sentence (“sectam veracem patefecit”). One may compare this style with Robert’s translation of al-Kindī’s Iudicia. His rendering of the opening of chapter 20, on digging wells, can be placed alongside a contemporary but independent translation of the same chapter by Hugo Sanctelliensis:¹² Arabic

Hugo

Robert

() As for digging canals, that should be done when () the Moon is in the first quadrant of the Sun, made fortunate, and received in the cardines; () and the cardines are firm and direct; () and the Lord of the ascendant is eastern, in its

() In excedendis fluviorum alveis () Luna in primo Solis tetragono fortunata et recepta in cardine, () cardines etiam firmi et directi disponantur, () ascendentis quoque dominus orientalis in aliquo dignitatis sue loco, in cardine aut post

() In alveorum fluminum eductionumque suarum opere, () cardinem firmum atque directum () in primo Solis quadrante fortunata necnon et recepta Luna sociatur () orientisque dominus orientalis in suarum aliqua potenciarum in

 Burnett, “Al-Kindī on Judicial Astrology,” 111– 14, where the Arabic text is also provided.

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Continued Arabic

Hugo

Robert

dignities, cardinal or in a succedent; () and the ascendant is a watery sign, () made fortunate by a strong benefic; () and the cardine of the fourth is made fortunate too by a strong benefic.

cardinem (), ascendens etiam signum aquaticum () et a vigenti fortunio secundatum. () Quarti quidem loci cardo fortis, felicium beatitudine non privetur.

cardine vel receptus existat. () Oriens item signum aqueum () terreque cardo () a felicissimo fortunentur.

The various indications that have to be taken into account are simply listed in the Arabic, with a succession of ‘and’s. In Robert we find the same variation between -que, necnon and item as in sura 2. The order of the phrases is changed (2 and 3 and 6 and 7 are swapped), so that two finite clauses share a single verb in each case and the text is abbreviated. Robert turns verbal constructions into nouns (1 and 2), and verbs are moved to the ends of phrases (sociatur … existent … fortunentur).¹³ By comparison, Hugo Sanctelliensis’ version, although elaborated, follows the Arabic syntax. One can say, then, that Robert used the same translation method in translating astrological texts, as in translating the Qur’an. His aim was to present a text in good Latin which, at the same time, got to the heart of whatever he was translating. He eschewed a literal translation, whether he was translating a scientific or a theological work. Julian Yolles has detected signs of his real competence in astronomy and astrology in the way he translated certain verses of the Qur’an,¹⁴ but he made an effort, through the use of Arabic interpretations of the Qur’an (whether written or by word of mouth) to render the religious text intelligible, as has been demonstrated by Thomas Burman.¹⁵ In avoiding verbum de verbo translation Robert was following a tradition in Arabic-Latin translation which is manifest in the medical translations of Constantinus Africanus and his immediate successors, of the late eleventh and early twelfth century, and was continued by Hermann of Carinthia in the middle years of the twelfth century. This focused on the adaption of the text to the understanding and cultural environment of its readers. It is, perhaps, significant that Robert advised Hermann not to stick closely to the Arabic text when  In one case (vel receptus 4) Robert mistranslates the Arabic, writing “or received” rather than “or in a succedent [place].”  Yolles, “Scientific Language in the Latin Qur’ans.”  Thomas E. Burman, “Tafsīr and Translation: Traditional Arabic Qurʾān Exegesis and the Latin Qurʾāns of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo,” Speculum 73, no. 3 (1998), 703 – 32.

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Latin conventions required a different approach.¹⁶ Hugo Sanctelliensis also did not aim for a verbum de verbo literal translation (as we have seen), and, in one instance, apologies for departing from the dialogue form in his Arabic original, because, he says, it is not the custom in modern (Latin) works.¹⁷ Hermann of Carinthia’s translation of Abū Maʿshar’s Great Introduction is often referred to as a “paraphrase”, in contrast to Juan de Sevilla’s literal translation, which is a harbenger of the kind of Arabic-Latin translation which became progressively more common. By the second half of the twelfth century the role of the fidus interpres, in which accuracy, even at the expense of comprehensibility, became the rule for translations of scientific works. But when Robert was making his translation it was still acceptable (if not preferable) to translate according to sense and intelligibility, and to impose one’s own style on a work written in another language. While Robert’s translation conformed to the norms of his day, it was criticised severely by later scholars for not being a faithful rendering of the Arabic text. Juan de Segovia, in the mid-fifteenth century, wrote in the prologue to his version of the Qur’an, that “Robert was the most important author of a translation, but his proemium shows that he was a splendid rhetorician and poet. Having seen the contents of the Arabic text and his translation, it appears clearly that he converted what had been written down in Arabic in the Qur’an into his own kind of eloquence (eloquentiae modus), and Juan de Segovia enumerates examples of this: changes in the order of things, choosing the wrong Latin word, misinterpreting Arabic grammatical forms, and in general altering the mode of

 When Hermannus wants to depart from the Arabic of Abū Maʿshar’s Great Introduction to Astrology in consideration of the custom among the Latins (“cum et hunc morem Latinis cognoscerem”), Robert advised him that “although no well-advised interpreter of a foreign language should in any way depart from the advise of Boethius in translating things” (referring to the necessity of being a “fidus interpres’), nevertheless (in some situations) “a different path should be followed” (“… quamquam… nec ulli consulto aliene lingue interpreti in rerum translationibus a Boetii sententia quadam ullatenus divertendum sit, ita tamen alienum iter sequendum videtur”); Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924), 46. For the context, see Charles Burnett, “Translating from Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: Theory, Practice, and Criticism,” in Éditer, Traduire, Interpréter. Essais de Méthodologie Philosophique, ed. Steve G. Lofts and Philip W. Rosemann (Louvain: Peeters, 1997).  “Ne… a modernis prorsus videar dissentire, non per dialogum, ut apud Arabes habetur, verum more solito atque usitato hoc opus subiciam” (“Lest… I should seem to depart completely from the moderns, I shall submit this work to what is customary and practiced [among the Latins] rather than dialogue form, as is used among the Arabs”), Haskins, Studies, 73.

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discourse, so that “he presents himself like a master teaching pupils in the schools, or someone exhorting the crowd from a podium.”¹⁸ As late as the end of the seventeenth century Ludovico Marracci, in the preface to his own translation of the Qur’an, still felt obliged to criticize Robert’s translation: “The translation which I have said should be attributed to the effort of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, should be called rather a paraphrase than a translation, and frequently it departs from the true sense of the Arabic.”¹⁹ The translation of Robert provides the standard text to which other translators react. But there is an exception to this, namely the translation of Mark of Toledo. There is no evidence that he made use of Robert of Ketton’s translation. In any case history repeats itself in the kingdom of Castile in the early thirteenth century, just at the time when King Alfonso VIII was strengthening Castilian control and Spanish identity in the Iberian Peninsula (culminating in the decisive battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, in which the Almohads were defeated and driven out of Spain). The leading figure in the cultural, political and religious seachange occurring at this time was Rodrigo Jime´nez de Rada, archbishop of the metropolitan see of Toledo from 1209 to 1247 and Chancellor of the realm, whose writings already attested his crusading interest in winning over Spain for the Christian church. His main work is Historia de rebus Hispaniae which, as a comprehensive national history from the earliest period to 1243, includes the Historia Romanorum, Historia Gothica, and the Historia Arabum. He was particularly concerned to unify Spain under one religion and one kingdom. To do this he felt he had to eradicate all heresies and non-Christian religions. He wrote a substantial work against the Jews: the Dialogus libri vitae. ²⁰ Another

 Juan de Segovia, Prologue to his translation of the Qur’an: “Robertus translationis fuit precipuus auctor, prohemio vero eius demonstrante splendidum fuisse rhetorem atque poetam. Visa Arabici textus continentia suaque translatione, liquido apparet, descripta Arabice in Alchurano in suum convertisse eloquentie modum… omnibus pendentibus hiis ex transmutato loquendi modo, adeo quod in aliquibus habet se velud magister in scolis discipulos docens vel exortans populum in ambone”; José Martínez Gázquez, “El Prólogo de Juan de Segobia al Corán (Qur’an) trilingüe (1456),” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch: internationale Zeitschrift für Mediävistik 38, no. 1– 2 (2003), 405, reproduced in Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 15.  Ludovico Marracci, Prologue to his translation of the Qur’an, Alcorani textus universus, 2 vols. (Padua: Typographia Seminaria, 1698), 7: “Translatio illa quam Venerabilis Petri Abbatis Cluniacensis operae tribui superius dixi, paraphrasis potius quam interpretatio meretur appellari, et non raro a vero Alcorani sensu recedit.” For another criticism of Robert’s translation see below.  Fernando Bravo López, “Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his Historia: Distortions, Manipulations and New Perspectives’, in Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Chris-

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major figure was his archdeacon, Mauricio, who in 1213 became bishop of Burgos. It is at the bidding and persuasion of both these men that Mark of Toledo translated the Qur’an in 1210, and at the request of Mauricio alone that he translated the sayings of the religious founder of the Almohads, Ibn Tūmart, in 1213, as the Libellus Habentometi de Unione Dei.²¹ In his long prologue to the Qur’an translation, Mark sketches the origins of the Qur’an, the life of Muḥammad, and the foundational precepts of Islam, and the style of discourse of the Qur’an, before turning to the miserable situation of parts of Spain in which Islam had taken over from Christianity. In the face of this situation, Archbishop Rodrigo and Archdeacon Mauricio have determined to act: At this point the archbishop, who is commendable for his knowledge of the writings on divine science, … lamenting the unhappy outcome of his church,… dedicated his labour and his prime concern to ensuring that the book in which sacrilegious instructions and monstrous decrees were contained, having been translated, should come to the notice of those of the correct faith (orthodoxi), so that those whom he was not allowed to fight with corporeal arms at least he could confound by attacking their monstrous instructions. In this concern, the reverent archdeacon Mauritius was also not lazy, but fired by zeal for the Christian faith … and he laboured with the same desire and passion (as Rodrigo) to ensure that this book should be translated into the Latin language, so that some Saracens, confounded by the Christians, should be dragged from the detestable instructions of Muḥammad into the Catholic faith. Therefore, both my lord the archbishop of the see of Toledo and primate of Spain, and his archdeacon, were completely persuading me and with a healthy injunction compelled me not to refuse to undertake the labour of this translation.”²²

The purpose of this commission, therefore, was to provide the material, in the form of a translation of the Qur’an for a refutation of Islam, possibly by Mauricio himself, which would parallel the refutation of Judaism (the Dialogus libri vitae) made by Rodrigo Jime´nez. Mark had already been persuaded (if not commis-

tians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth-Century Iberia, ed. Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas España (Co´rdoba: CNERU-The Warburg Institute, 2021), 53 – 76.  This scenario is well described in Teresa Witcombe, “Mark of Toledo’s Liber Alchorani (‘The Book of the Qur’an’) and its reception in Medieval Toledo,” in Mark of Toledo, 21– 38.  Mark of Toledo, Prologue to Qur’an translation (ed. Cecini, Alcoranus Latinus, 115): “Hic nimirum antistes… infelicem ecclesie sue successum deplorans… prescrutabiliter operam dedit et sollicitudinem, ut liber in quo sacrilega continebantur instituta et enormia precepta translatus in noticiam veniret ortodoxorum, ut quos ei non licebat armis impugnare corporabilibus saltem enormibus institutis obviando confunderet. In hac quoque sollicitudine zelo succensus fidei Christiane non segnis extitit reverendus Mauricius archidiaconus… sed pari voto parique affectu laboravit ut liber iste in Latinum transferretur sermonem, quatinus ex institutis detestandis Mafometi a Christianis confusi Sarraceni ad fidem nonnulli traherentur catholicam.”

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sioned) to make translations in another field – i. e. in medicine – by fellow students of medicine, and had sought out, in Arabic libraries (armaria) in Toledo, a manuscript of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Introduction to Medicine (the Masā’il fi-l-ṭibb) and another manuscript that contained the Arabic versions of Galen’s De tactu pulsus, De utilitate pulsus, and De motibus membrorum liquidis. ²³ So, like Robert, Mark’s interests did not seem to be particularly in Islam, but rather in one of the practical arts, namely medicine: he had been a student of medicine and had thoroughly read the doctrine of Galen and other masters of the art and, just as Julian Yolles had noticed a particular competence in the science of the stars in Robert’s translation of the Qur’an, so he remarked on a predilection for medicine and medical metaphors in Mark’s translation, and especially in the prologue to his translation (His use of the word salubris, healthy, is particularly conspicuous: as in salubris admonitio and salubris persuasio).²⁴ But their methods of translation were very different. Mark, unlike Robert, gives us few clues on how he intended to translate. His statements are very matter-of-fact. In his translation of the De tactu pulsus he wrote that “My spirit moved me to bring the medical works to the notice of the Latins. So, having called upon the name of God, taking up my pen, I translated these books from Arabic into Latin.”²⁵ In the preface to his translation of Ibn Tūmart, Mark simply says “I translated this after the book of Muḥammad (i. e. the Qur’an).”²⁶ As for enjoying translating, he is certainly happier translating the sayings (dicta) of Ibn Tūmart than the words (verba) of Muḥammad, since “the arguments and persuasions which Ibn Tūmart introduced into his book of the Oneness are of greater weight among intelligent and wise men than the words of Muḥammad in the Qur’an, which are disturbed and very confused and pronounced without any foundation, while this Ibn Tūmart, relying on necessary assertions for proving that God is first and last, has founded his intention well,” adding in his favour that he

 Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny, “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tūmart,” Al-Andalus 16, no. 1 (1951); and D’Alverny and Georges Vajda, “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tūmart (Conclusión),” Al-Andalus 17, no. 1 (1952).  Yolles, “Scientific Language in the Latin Qur’ans.”  Mark of Toledo, Preface to Galen, De tactu pulsus: “pulsavitque animus ut hos in Latinorum deducerem notitiam. Invocato igitur Dei nomine, stilum accipiens, hos libros de Arabica in linguam transtuli Latinam”; D’Alverny and Vajda, “Marc de Tole`de,” 43 – 44; Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 105.  “Transtuli siquidem post librum Mofometi”; Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 108.

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was a philosopher and a student of al-Ghazālī (an Arabic philosopher well respected in the Latin West).²⁷ What we find in both Mark’s medical texts and his translation of the Qur’an and Ibn Tūmart is that he sticks quite close to the syntax of the Arabic text. We can see this immediately from his translation of the Fātiḥa: In nomine Dei, misericordis, miseratoris. (2) Gloria Deo, Creatori gencium, (3) Misericordi, Miseratori, (4) qui regnat in die legis. (5) Te quidem adoramus, per te iuvamur.²⁸ (6) Dirige nobis viam rectam, (7) quam eis erogasti, non eorum contra quos iratus es neque dampnatorum.²⁹

Here one can see that each Latin word corresponds to a single Arabic word except in (4) qui regnat in replaces a present participle in Arabic: mālik (“reigning”) which takes a direct object; in (5) the quidem reproduces the emphatic particle iyyā-, and the three words iyyā-ka nastaʿīnū (“We ask for help from you”) are rendered as three words in Latin, but they differ syntactically: “through you we are helped.” In (7) quam replaces the repeat of ṣirāṭ plus a relative pronoun in Arabic and eorum contra quos iratus es replaces a passive participle (“those being hated”). While choosing a single Latin word as equivalent to an Arabic word, his choice is sometimes questionable: e. g. the meaning of gentium (“races”), while preserving the plural form of al-ʿālamīn is not immediately obvious, and erogare (“give”) is hardly the equivalent of anʿamta (“you have blessed”). D’Alverny and Vajda, however, have observed that Mark quite frequently translates one word in Arabic by two words in Latin (doublets); and just as frequently two words in Arabic by one word in Latin. Also Mark is not consistent in always translating an Arabic word by the same Latin word (e. g. āya, the word used for the verse of a sura in the Qur’an is translated as auctoritas, miraculum, prodigium

 Mark of Toledo, Preface to Ibn Tūmart, ʿAqīda (Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, p. 108): “… maioris [ponderis] sunt apud discretos viros et prudentes argumenta et persuasiones quas Habentometus induxit in libello Unionis quam verba Mafameti in Alchorano, turbata valdeque confusa, et sine aliquo prolata fundamento, quoniam quidem hic Habentometus necessariis innixus assertionibus ad probandum unum Deum esse primum et novissimum, suam bene fundavit intentionem… utpote philosophus Algazelis didascalus.” For Ibn Tūmart and al-Ghazālī see Frank Griffel, “Ibn Tūmart’s Rational Proof for God’s Existence and Unity, of and His Connection to the Niẓāmiyya Madrasa in Baghdad,” in Los Almohades. Problemas y perspectivas, ed. Patrice Cressier (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2005).  The context clearly requires iuuamur (“we are helped”), which has evidentally become corrupted into the very similar looking uiuamus in the manuscripts.  Nàdia Petrus Pons, Alchoranus Latinus Quem Transtulit Marcus Canonicus Toletanus. Estudio y edición crítica (Madrid: CSIC, 2016), 13.

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and virtus).³⁰ And he shows a rather strange use of words (e. g. destinare rather than mittere, erogare rather than dare, and, in the Ibn Tūmart translations unio rather than unitas for the oneness of God). Sometimes this unusual usage appears to be influenced by the vernacular Romance and Arabic dialects of Spain. E. g. he translates an Arabic word for “companion in solitude” (anīs) as solacium (which should mean “solace” or “help”), but, in Spanish (solacio) acquired the meaning of “being alone”. In another case, he translates the Arabic ʿājiz (“weak”) as “piger” and “segnicies”, which reflects the popular meaning of the Arabic word in al-Andalus (“lazy”). Moreover, he varies his translation depending on the style and the purpose of the original Arabic text. E. g. in his translation of Murshida I, which is the most creed-like of the constituents of the Libellus Habentometi de Unione Dei, he employs rhymed prose as the principal structural element, and in Laus II, another part of the Libellus, he varies the litany of the Arabic subḥān man shahadat al-dalālāt wa-l-āyāt bi-annahu… (“Praise Him of whom indications and signs witness that He…”) by changing one or two words in each reiteration of the formula in Latin.³¹ It is clear, then, that Mark of Toledo does not translate mechanically but allows for some flexibility, both in vocabulary and syntax. We find the same method used in his medical works. Vivian Nutton sees in his translation of De motibus membrorum liquidis the same characteristics as D’Alverny and Vajda saw in his Qur’an translation, including the avoidance of the transliteration of Arabic words, avoidance of some distinctive elements of Arabic syntax (such as the combination of verb, adjective and a noun derived from the root of the verb, which occurs only once in De motibus membrorum liquidis: “inquisitone vehementi inquirere”),³² and the use of doublets.³³

 D’Alverny and Vajda, “Marc de Tole`de,” 134– 38.  These variations in Mark’s translation style are discussed in Charles Burnett, “Mark of Toledo’s Rendering of the Declaration of Faith of the Almohads,” in Mark of Toledo, 39 – 52. It remains to be investigated whether he varies his style in accordance with the variations of style he detects in the Arabic original of the Qur’an: “In modo loquendi discrepat ab aliis scripturis Veteris et Novi Testamenti. Interdum enim loquitur sicut qui delirat, interdum autem sicut inanimatus, aliquando increpando ydolatras, aliquando comminando eis mortem, nonumquam vero vitam eternam conversis promittendo, sed stilo turbato et dissoluto” (“In its mode of discourse it differs from the other writings of the Old and New Testament. For sometimes he (Muḥammad) speaks like a madman, at other times like a zombie, sometimes by railing against idolaters, sometimes by threatening them with death, but not rarely promising to the converted eternal life, but in a turbulent and loose style”); dedicatory preface to the Qur’an, ed. Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 115.  This construction is also retained in Mark’s translation of Qur’an, sura XLVIII: “nos quidem aperuimus tibi apertionem patentem”; see Cecini, Alcoranus latinus, 164.

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In contrast to Robert of Ketton, Mark of Toledo was writing in a period in which translation from Arabic had become a profession in which strict verbum de verbo translation was expected. The seventy-odd translations of Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187) in subjects ranging from medicine, through philosophy to mathematics, alchemy and geomancy, are a prime example of this literal technique, and Gerard can also be seen making more literal versions of works that had previously been translated.³⁴ In the thirteenth century, Michael Scot, followed by Herman the German (both starting their translation work in Toledo), were completing the work of Gerard of Cremona, especially in the field of Aristotle’s works and the commentaries on them by Averroes. It is interesting to note that Herman the German, in his translation of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics (Toledo, 1256), not only translates the Arabic literally but also uses the same rhymed prose as does Mark, in order to render some of the poems that Averroes adds as examples.³⁵ Mark of Toledo’s literalness could be seen as conforming to the norms of his time, just as Robert of Ketton followed certain contemporary norms of paraphrasing a foreign language when he was translating. But it has been suggested that Mark also had a specific reason for making a translation which was close to the Arabic. Teresa Witcombe has suggested that the purpose of Mark’s translation was to provide a crib for archdeacon Mauricio, which he could use for reading the original Arabic in composing a refutation of Islam, which would complement Archbishop Jime´nez’ refutation of Judaism. Mauricio, as a native of Toledo, certainly knew Arabic.³⁶ This contrasts to the situation with Robert of Ketton, since there was no likelihood that Peter the Venerable, in his refutation of Islam, would turn to an Arabic text. Unfortunately, no refutation by Mauricio survives, and we do not know whether the archdeacon embarked on this project. What we do know, however, is that Mark’s translation was used by later scholars alongside the Arabic Qur’an (which Robert’s text never was). This has been pointed out by Thomas Burman who regarded Mark’s Latin Qur’an as “facilitat(ing) philological

 See Galen, On Problematical Movements, ed. Vivian Nutton and Gerrit Bos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 88 – 89. Nutton mentions “his (Mark’s) general flexibility and his preference for clarity over a close adherence to the style and syntax of the Arabic.”  For a revision by Gerard of a text in the direction of bringing it closer to the Arabic, see Danielle Jacquart, “Note sur la traduction latine du Kitāb al-Manṣūrī de Rhazès,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 24 (1994).  See Burnett, “Mark of Toledo,” 39 – 52.  Witcombe, “Mark of Toledo,” 32.

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study”,³⁷ and five out of the seven extant manuscripts show evidence of this. Burman gives the example of Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 780 (of ca. 1400 A.D.), which happens to be the only manuscript to contain also the Libellus of Ibn Tūmart. A later scribe has added to this manuscript transcriptions of the original Arabic titles of the suras and includes transcriptions of some Arabic words adjacent to Mark’s Latin translations, as well as making notes that show that he knew Arabic commentaries (tafsir) on the Qur’an. In the case of Riccoldo da Monte di Croce (ca. 1243 – 1320), the Dominican Friar who spent many years among Muslims and wrote a book Contra legem Sarracenorum, we can see this in practice, because his copy of the Arabic Qur’an survives (Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale de France [BnF], MS ar. 384), and in the margins he includes equivalent passages from Mark’s translation, and then sometimes transfers these translations, at other times corrects them, and at yet other times replaces them with his own translations in his Contra legem Sarracenorum. ³⁸ Another example is Paris, BnF, MS lat. 14503, dating from the second half of the fourteenth century, which happens to be one of the earlier manuscripts of Mark’s translation, and unusual in that it is accompanied by the corpus of Islamic works commissioned by Peter the Venerable (including Robert of Ketton’s Qur’an) and other Islamic material. Unfortunately, the copy of Mark’s translation is incomplete,³⁹ but the notes that accompany this acephalous text are interesting in that they point to two other versions of the Latin Qur’an. The first one names the incomplete sura in which the beginning of the text falls, and gives its opening words according “the edition of Marracci.”⁴⁰ As we have seen, Marracci published his edition in 1698, but this quotation does not quite match that of the published edition, and may refer to an earlier version of the translation that Ludovico Marracci had been working on for at least 40 years.⁴¹ The second note locates the beginning of Mark’s text on the relevant folio of Robert of Ketton’s text that follows later in the manuscript, but the an-

 Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560 (Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 123.  Petrus Pons, Alchoranus Latinus, lv–lxxi.  It starts near the beginning of sura VI (ed. Petrus Pons, 85).  Paris, BnF, MS lat. 14503, fol. 154v: “sūra al-anʿām (sura of the cattle). Caput elenam, scilicet, 176 verborum sententiarum aut miraculorum. Caput sextum in editione Maracii. In nomine Dei, misericordis, pii….”  For the successive stages of Marracci’s translation, see Reinhold Glei and Roberto Tottoli, Ludovico Marracci at Work: The Evolution of his Latin Translation of the Qurʼān in the Light of his Newly Discovered Manuscripts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016).

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notator takes the opportunity to pour scorn on Robert’s translation: “Read in another translation up to fol. 280 where it is sura 14, which, however, is the sixth sura, then continue from here, whoever of you delights in trifles. The other translation (Robert’s) is far away from the mind of the worthless fellow (Muḥammad). This translation (Mark’s), although it is distant (from the mind), is nevertheless closer.”⁴² The final example shows a thorough-going use of Mark’s translation as a template for preparing a new translation. This is Paris, BnF, MS lat. 3394, originally written in the second half of the sixteenth century, but annotated by a hand of the second half of the seventeenth century (see Figure 1). Na`dia Petrus Pons has shown that an Arabic scholar (as yet unidentified) has compared Mark’s translation with the Arabic text of the Qur’an and, on the basis of this comparison (one might say “improvement”), has started to prepare a French translation of which the first four suras are copied, both as a rough draft and a neat version, at the end of the same manuscript.⁴³ These corrections are very dense and are an attempt to bring Mark’s translation even closer to the Arabic text. We can observe the following kinds of intervention: 1) Underlining in pencil, indicating that the Arabic text does not have the underlined passage. 2) Transposing the order of words in pencil into the Arabic order. 3) Underlining and replacing by an alternative translation. 4) Crossing out and replacing by the correct translation. 5) Adding a reference mark picked up in the margin. 6) Adding the gloss: Ad verbum (meaning “literally”), followed by a literal translation of a longer passage. 7) Underlining indicating a word added to complete the sense in Latin (this is later replaced by connecting words by hyphens). 8) Using hyphens to join words which are written as single words in the Arabic (e. g. in sura II, v. 19: “digitos-suos in auribus-suis” shows that there are only three words in Arabic: aṣābiʿahum fī ’ādhānihim where the possessive adjectives are attached to the nouns). 9) Numbers over words indicate the order of those words in Arabic. 10) Glosses pointing out an Arabismus, i. e. a construction that is peculiar to Arabic (e. g. in an annotation to sura II, v. 25, anna lahum jannāt, tajrī min  Paris, BnF, MS lat. 14503, fol. 154v: “Lege in alio usque ad 280. folium ubi est asorah 14, que tamen sexta est, tum huc te recipe quiscumque nugis delectaris. Alia traductio longe a mente abest nebulonis. Hec etsi distat longe, tamen propior est.” The discrepancy in the sura numbers arises because Robert of Ketton subdivided the first suras, so that sura VII became sura XVII.  Petrus Pons, Alchoranus Latinus, pp. lxxix–xci.

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taḥtihā al-anhāru, translated by Mark as “habebunt paradisos sub quibus flumina defluent”: Ad verbum: “Quoniam ipsis horti, currit sub eis flumina. Arabism puriss singularis plurali eleganter respondens” (explaining the anomaly that flumina (pl.) is the subject of a verb in the singular currit: “in the purest Arabic, a singular elegantly relates to the plural”). These annotations do not correspond to any other translation of the Qur’an that I have seen, and are most likely the spontaneous outcome of the comparison of Mark’s text with an Arabic Qur’an. The as-yet-unidentified Arabic scholar probably intended to translate much more; several more suras throughout the Qur’an have been subjected to the same degree of annotation and comparison to the Arabic text. But, obviously, the enterprise was not carried through to conclusion. We can now make a synopsis of Robert of Ketton’s paraphrastic translation, Mark’s closer translation and the anonymous annotator’s closer still interventions, taking the same Fātiḥa and Sura II as we quoted before.⁴⁴ The Fātiḥa: Mark’s text

anonymous annotator

Arabic

Robert’s text

() In nomine dei misericordis, miseratoris

‘misericordis, miseratoris’ transposed in pencil

‫ ﺑﺴﻢ ﷲ‬Misericordi pioque Deo, ‫ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻤﺎﻥ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻴﻢ‬

() Gloria deo, Creatori gentium

‘Creatori gentium’ underlined in pencil; ‘Domino creaturarum’ written above.

‫ ﺍﻟﺤﻤﺪ ﷲ‬universitatis Creatori, ‫ﺭﺏ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﻴﻦ‬

() misericordi, miseratori

‘misericordi, miseratori’ transposed in pencil

‫ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻤﺎﻥ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻴﻢ‬

() qui regnat in die legis.

Lined through and replaced by ‘regi diei Iudicii’

‫ ﻣﺎﻟﻚ ﻳﻮﻡ‬iudicium cuius postrema ‫ ﺍﻟﺪﻳﻦ‬dies expectat,

() Te quidem adoramus, per te iuvamur.

Gloss added: ‘Ad verbum: Nos te colimus, et nos tuam opem-imploramus’

‫ ﺍﻳﺎﻙ ﻧﻌﺒﺪ‬voto supplici nos humilie‫ ﻭﺍﻳﺎﻙ‬mus, adorantes ipsum, ‫ ﻧﺴﺘﻌﻴﻦ‬suaeque manus suffragium

() Dirige nobis viam rectam

‘Nobis’ lined through and replaced by ‘nos in’

‫ ﺍﻫﺪﻧﺎ‬semitaeque donum et dogma ‫ﺍﻟﺼﺮﺍﻁ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﻤﺴﺘﻘﻴﻢ‬

 The following examples are also given in Petrus Pons, Alchoranus Latinus, lxxxi and lxxxiii, without the Arabic and Robert’s translation, but with the rough and neat versions of the French translation.

Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo

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Continued Mark’s text

anonymous annotator

Arabic

Robert’s text

() quam eis erogasti

Lined through and replaced by ‘viam eorum quibus gratiosus es erga eos. ‘Eis’ has been lined through and replaced by ‘electis’ which has also been lined through

‫ ﺻﺮﺍﻁ‬quos nos ad se benevolos, ‫ﺍﻟﺬﻳﻦ‬ ‫ﺍﻧﻌﻤﺖ‬ ‫ﻋﻠﻴﻬﻢ‬

non eorum contra quos iratus es neque damnatorum.

sine ira contra eos, et non errantium

‫ ﻏﻴﺮ‬nequaquam hostes et erro‫ ﺍﻟﻤﻐﻀﻮﺏ‬neos adduxit, iugiter sentia‫ ﻋﻠﻴﻬﻢ‬mus ‫ﻭﻻ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﻀﺎﻟﻴﻦ‬

‘misericordis, miseratoris’ transposed in pencil ‘amen’ lined through and replaced by ‘Proh!’

‫ ﺑﺴﻢ ﷲ‬In nomine Domini pii et ‫ ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻤﺎﻥ‬misericordis. ‫ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻴﻢ‬

Sura II, vv. 1– 4: In nomine dei misericordis miseratoris amen

() In isto libro non ‘dubitandum’ lined through and est dubitandum. replaced by ‘erratum’ dirigit enim timentes:

‫ﺫﻟ ﻚ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﻜﺘﺎﺏ ﻻ‬ ‫ﺭﻳﺐ ﻓﻴﻪ‬ ‫ﺣﺪﯼ‬ ‫ﻟﻠﻤﺘﻘﻴﻦ‬

Liber hic absque falsitatis vel erroris annexu, veridicus eis quibus inest amor divinus, deitatisque timor et cultus,

() qui credunt in futuram vitam et qui orationi quippe insistent

‘quippe’ lined through. ‘orationi insistunt’ transposed

‫ ﺍﻟﺬﻳﻦ‬necnon orationum ac elee‫ ﻳﺆﻣﻨﻮﻥ‬mosynarum studium, ‫ﺑﺎﻟﻐﻴﺐ‬ ‫ﻭﻳﻘﻴﻤﻮﻥ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﺼﻠﻮﺓ‬

et de hiis que contulimus eis erogare

‘hiis’ corrected to ‘iis’; ‘e’ expunged in ‘que’; ‘-nos’ added after ‘contulimus’; ‘erogare’ corrected to ‘erogant’

‫ ﻭﻣﻤﺎ‬legum item tum tibi, tum ‫ ﺭﺯﻗﻨﺎﻫﻢ‬caeteris praedecessoribus ‫ ﻳﻨﻔﻘﻮﻥ‬coelitus a Deo datarum observatio,

() et qui credunt ‘insinuavimus’ added after ‘quod’; in id quod tibi fuit ‘fuit destinatum’ lined through. destinatum.

‫ﻭﺍﻟﺬﻳﻦ‬ ‫ﻳﺆﻣﻨﻮﻥ‬ ‫ﺑﻤﺎ ﺍﻧﺰﻝ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﻴﻚ‬

‫ ﻭﻣﺎ ﺍﻧﺰﻝ‬spesque seculi futuri, sectam et quod fuit ante te ‘fuit’, ‘collatum et aliam’ lined collatum et aliam through and ‘asserunt’ under‫ ﻣﻦ ﻗﺒﻠﻚ‬veracem patefecit. vitam asserunt lined; replaced by ‘contuli [iis qui] ‫ﻭﺑﺎﻻﺧﺮﺓ‬ ante te; et in altera ipsi-vitam‫ﻫﻢ‬ agunt’ ‫ﻳﻮﻗﻨﻮﻥ‬

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The annotations in Paris, BnF MS lat. 3394 provide an extreme example of a copy of Mark’s translation being used as the starting-point for making a yet more exact translation. However, the anonymous annotator does not mark the extreme limit of literalness. This accolade belonged rather to Ludovico Marracci later in the seventeenth century, with the publication of his Alcorani textus universus. Recently, thanks to the discovery of his manuscripts, it has been revealed that, throughout his long career, Marracci changed his translation technique, from one in which the Latin provided a clear interpretation of the Arabic, to that in which the Latin text was simply Arabismus latine impersonatus (“Arabic with a Latin mask”). Marracci criticizes previous translations of the Qur’an (including Robert’s, Juan de Segovia’s, and Andre´ du Ryer’s recently printed, 1671, translation into French), and does not think that Jerome’s well-known pronouncements about translations⁴⁵ can be applied to Arabic. Rather he has had to invent his own method. Among the statements in the preface to his Alcorani textus universus are: When the Latin interpretation was expressed to the level of each word and literally, as far as possible, in doing this I preferred to be judged as less elegant and less “Latin”, not to say a little barbarous, than to fall short even a tiny bit from being an exact translator of the faith.⁴⁶

And But in translating the Qur’an I have not sought elegance but what belongs to it (proprietas), so that it is not so much that meanings (sensa) correspond to meanings as words (verba) correspond to words, as far as possible. In a word: I have exhibited in my version Arabic wearing the mask of Latin.⁴⁷

 The reference would be to Jerome, Liber de optimo genere interpretandi (Epistula 57), ed. Gerhardus Johannes Marinus Bartelink (Leiden: Brill, 1980), where a translation ad sensum is recommended, except in the case of Holy Scripture.  Marracci, Alcorani textus universus, I: 12: “Latinam interpretationem… verbo tenus et ad litteram, quantum fieri potuit, expressam, qua in re minus elegans, minusque Latinus, ne dicam aliquantulum barbarus censeri malui, quam exacti Interpretis fidei vel tantillum deesse.”  Marracci, Alcorani textus universus, I: 16: “Postremo non deerunt qui stylum meum tamquam minus expolitum minusque elegantem sugillent, etsi non barbarum, saltem nimis rudem, et e trivio esse conquerantur. Quod spectat ad Alcorani translationem jam supra professus sum me in ea non elegantiam sed proprietatem quaesivisse, ut scilicet non tantum sensa sensis, sed verba verbis, quantum fieri posset, responderent. Uno verbo: Arabismum in mea versione latine personatum exhibui.”

Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo

45

In Marracci’s Qur’an translation the Arabic is placed next to the Latin. In fact, the Latin is not meant to be read without the Arabic but, as Reinhold Glei and Roberto Tottoli have written, “is laid over the original text like a transparent foil that allows one to see what is behind.”⁴⁸ The Iberian Peninsula provided a fruitful soil for two translations of the Qur’an which proved to be of the utmost importance for the understanding of Islam in Europe from the mid-twelfth century to at least the end of the seventeenth century. Only in a context where both Arabic books and Arab-speakers who were familiar with the Qur’an and its exegesis, could such translations have been made. Moreoever in Spain, above all, methods for translating Arabic into Latin were experimented with and developed. The method that became dominant was that of literal translation, which provided the norms for the translators working in Toledo in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Because of the facility that a literal translation provided for comparing the target text with the source text, literal translations became the starting point for revisions which approached ever more closely to the original text, until the source and the offspring virtually merged into one text. While Robert of Ketton’s translation continued to be read as much for the elegance of its language as for its religious content, Mark of Toledo’s translation provided the starting point for confronting the Arabic text directly, and fostered scholarship in the Arabic language and in Islam. Both texts were products of the social and political environment in which they were composed, but expanded from there onto the European scene of interreligious dialogue.

 Glei and Tottoli, Ludovico Marracci at Work, 136.

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Fig. 1: Mark of Toledo’s Translation of the Qur’an with the annotation of an unidentified French Arabist; Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale de France, MS lat. 3394, fol. 1r.

Bibliography Bibliander, Theodorus and Robert of Ketton. Alchoran Latinus. Vol. III: Editiones Theodori Bibliandri (1543 & 1550). Edited by Anthony J. Lappin. Rome: Aracne, 2011. Bravo Lopez, Fernando, “Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his Historia: Distortions, Manipulations and New Perspectives.” In Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth-Century Iberia. Arabica Veritas 4. Cordoba: CNERU–The Warburg Institute, 2021. Burman, Thomas E. “Tafsīr and Translation: Traditional Arabic Qurʾān Exegesis and the Latin Qurʾāns of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo.” Speculum 73, no. 3 (1998): 703 – 32. Burman, Thomas E. Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Burnett, Charles. “Al-Kindī on Judicial Astrology: ‘The Forty Chapters.” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3, no. 1 (1993): 77 – 117. Burnett, Charles. “Translating from Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: Theory, Practice, and Criticism.” In Éditer, Traduire, Interpréter. Essais de Méthodologie Philosophique. Edited by Steve G. Lofts and Philip W. Rosemann, 55 – 78. Philosophes Médiévaux 36. Louvain: Peeters, 1997. Burnett, Charles. “Imagined and Real Libraries in the Case of Medieval Latin Translators from Greek and Arabic.” In Die Bibliothek – The Library – La Bibliothèque. Edited by Andreas Speer and Lars Reuke, 735 – 45. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Burnett, Charles and Pedro Mantas España, eds. Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth-Century Iberia. Arabica Veritas 4. Co´rdoba: CNERU–The Warburg Institute, 2021. Cecini, Ulisse. Alcoranus Latinus. Eine Sprachliche Und Kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse der Koranübersetzungen von Robert von Ketton Und Marcus von Toledo. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2012.

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D’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse. “Deux traductions latines du Coran au Moyen Âge.” Archives d’histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 16 (1948): 69 – 131. D’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse. “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tūmart.” Al-Andalus 16, no. 1 (1951): 99 – 140. D’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse, and Georges Vajda. “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tūmart (Conclusión).” Al-Andalus 17, no. 1 (1952): 1 – 56. Galien, Claude. On Problematical Movements. Edited by Vivian Nutton and Gerrit Bos. Cambridge classical texts and commentaries 47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Glei, Reinhold, and Roberto Tottoli. Ludovico Marracci at Work: The Evolution of his Latin Translation of the Qurʼān in the Light of his Newly Discovered Manuscripts. With an Edition and a Comparative Linguistic Analysis of Sura 18. Corpus Islamo-Christianum, Series Arabica-Latina 1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016. Griffel, Frank. “Ibn Tūmart’s Rational Proof for God’s Existence and Unity of and His Connection to the Niẓāmiyya Madrasa in Baghdad.” In Los almohades: problemas y perspectivas. Edited by Patrice Cressier, vol. 2, 753 – 813. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2005. Haskins, Charles Homer. Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924. Jacquart, Danielle. “Note sur la traduction latine du Kitāb al-Manṣūrī de Rhazès.” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 24, no. 1994 (1994): 359 – 74. Jerome. Liber de optimo genere interpretandi (Epistula 57). Edited by Gerhardus Johannes Marinus Bartelink. Mnemosyne, bibliotheca classica Batava 61. Leiden: Brill, 1980. Marracci, Ludovico. Alcorani textus universus. 2 vols. Padua: Typographia Seminaria, 1698. Martínez Gázquez, José. “El Prólogo de Juan de Segobia al Corán (Qur’an) trilingüe (1456).” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch: internationale Zeitschrift für Mediävistik 38, no. 1 – 2 (2003): 389 – 410. Migne, Jacques-Paul. Patrologia Latina. Vol. 189. Paris: Garnier fratres, 1890. Petrus Pons, Nàdia. Alchoranus Latinus quem transtulit Marcus Canonicus Toletanus. Estudio y edición crítica. Madrid: CSIC, 2016. Qarā’ī, ʿAlī Qulī, trans. The Quran: With a Phrase-by-phrase English Translation. London: ICAS Press, 2018. Witcombe, Teresa. “Mark of Toledo’s Liber Alchorani (‘The Book of the Qur’an’) and its reception in Medieval Toledo.” In Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth-Century Iberia. Edited by Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas España. Arabica Veritas 4. Cordoba: CNERU–The Warburg Institute, 2021. Yolles, Julian. “Scientific Language in the Latin Qur’ans of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo.” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 22, no. 3 (2020): 121 – 48.

Teresa Witcombe

The Qur’an and the ‘Laws of Muḥammad’ in Medieval Christian Eyes In the summer of 1210, canon Mark of Toledo completed his Latin translation of the Qur’an, the Liber Alchorani, a work he had undertaken at the request of his two seniors in Toledo cathedral: Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, and archdeacon Maurice. The translation itself was preceded by a lengthy prologue consisting of a polemical biography of the Prophet Muḥammad, an account of the origins of Islamic expansion, and a description of suffering of Hispania in Mark’s own time.¹ Three years later, in 1213, Mark translated his second Islamic doctrinal text, the Libellus Habentumeti de Unione Dei, which comprised the teachings of the spiritual leader, or mahdī, of the Almohads, Ibn Tūmart. Mark’s translation style has received extensive scholarly attention.² His was an exactingly literal form of translation. In producing his Liber Alchorani, his efforts to provide as literal a translation as possible led to him eschewing Latin conventions in order to do so on some occasions. The resulting translation re-

 The modern scholarly edition of the Liber Alchorani, including Mark’s prologue, is Nàdia Petrus Pons, Liber Alchorani quem transtulit Marcus Toletanus: Estudio y edición crítica (Madrid: CSIC, 2016). Similarly, Mark’s prologue to the Liber Alchorani, and his entire translation of the Libellus Habentumeti de Unione Dei can be found in Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny and Georges Vajda, “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tūmart,” Al-Andalus 16 (1951).  For an overview, see Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Ulisse Cecini, Alcoranus latinus: eine sprachliche und kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse der Koranü bersetzungen von Robert von Ketton und Marcus von Toledo (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2012); J. Martinez Gázquez, “Trois traductions médiévales latines du Coran: Pierre le Vénérable-Robert de Ketton, Marc de Tolède et Jean de Segobia,” Revue des Études Latines 80 (2002); John Tolan, “Las traducciones y la ideología de la reconquista: Marcos de Toledo,” in Musulmanes y cristianos en Hispania durante las conquistas de los siglos XII y XIII, ed. Miquel Barceló Perelló, Pedro Bádenas and José Martínez Gázquez (Bellaterra: Servei de Publicacions UAB, 2005); Nàdia Petrus Pons, “Marcos de Toledo y la segunda traducción Latina del Corán,” in Barceló Perelló, Bádenas and Martínez Gázquez, Musulmanes y cristianos; and Reinhold Glei and Stefan Reichmuth, “Religion between Last Judgement, Law and Faith: Koranic Dīn and Its Rendering in Latin Translations of the Koran,” Religion 42, no. 2 (2012). Note: I am very grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding this research with a Study Abroad Studentship. I would also like to thank Mercedes García-Arenal at the CCHS-CSIC Madrid for her encouragement and support, Gerard A. Wiegers for his comments on this paper, and the European Qur’an project for inviting me to share this research with them. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-003

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spected not only the structural divisions and form of the Qur’an, but also the sentence order, and even the word order and syntax of the Arabic original.³ Particularly notable is Mark’s use of a transliterated form of the Arabic word Qur’an (Alchoran) as the work’s title. This stands in most obvious contrast to the first translation of the Qur’an by Robert of Ketton, a work that circulated under the title Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete. This had been commissioned by the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, in the 1140s, and is a text that Mark is widely considered not to have known.⁴ Mark’s reasons for maintaining the Arabic title of the Qur’an, rather than providing a translation, are not known. He was aware of the meaning of the Arabic word, commenting in his prologue that “Alchoran can be interpreted as ‘lesson’.”⁵ Whatever Mark’s reasons, the result, as Thomas Burman has commented, was that from 1210, the Qur’an translation was available in the Christian west “under something rather like its proper Arabic name.”⁶ Nonetheless, the Liber Alchorani does not appear to have enjoyed great popularity in Iberia. Very few manuscript copies survive, and perhaps surprisingly, there is no evidence that any anti-Islamic treatise was written in thirteenth-century Castile on the basis of this translation. Mark’s Libellus Habentumeti de Unione Dei had an even smaller circulation, only surviving in one manuscript copy from the early fifteenth century.⁷ However, this is not to say that the doctrinal

 Ulisse Cecini, “Faithful to the Infidels’ Word: Mark of Toledo’s Latin Translation of the Qur’an,” in Frühe Koranübersetzungen. Europäische und außereuropäische Fallstudien, ed. Reinhold Glei (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2012); U. Cecini, “The Main Features of Mark of Toledo’s Latin Qurʾān Translation,” Al-Masāq 25, no. 3 (2013); Thomas E. Burman, “Polemic, Philology, and Ambivalence: Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom,” Journal of Islamic Studies 15, no. 2 (2004); Burman, “Tafsīr and Translation: Traditional Arabic Qur‘ān Exegesis and the Latin Qur‘āns of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo,” Speculum 73 (1998); Teresa Witcombe, “Mark of Toledo’s Liber Alchorani (“The Book of the Qur’an”) and its reception in medieval Toledo,” in Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth Century Iberia, ed. Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas España (Cordoba: University of Cordoba Press, 2022); and Charles Burnett, “Robert of Ketton and Marcos de Toledo and the Rise and Development of the Literal Translation of the Qur’an,” in this volume.  José Martinez Gázquez, “Trois traductions médiévales latines du Coran: Pierre le VénérableRobert de Ketton, Marc de Tolède et Jean de Segobia,” Revue des Études Latines 80 (2002). Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny suggested that Mark disapproved of Robert of Ketton’s translation, and so did not mention it; see D’Alverny and Vajda, “Marc de Tolède,” 116.  “Alchoranum qui interpretatur ‘leccionarius’ et Alforcanum qui ‘distinctus’ in lingua sonat arabica, qui distinguitur inter Vetus et Novum Testamentum, velut quidam interpretantur inter blasphemiam gentilium et fidem quam ipse docuit”: see D’Alverny and Vajda, “Marc de Tolède,” 263.  Burman, Reading the Qur’an, 124.  On the manuscript traditions of these texts, see Burman, Reading the Qur’an, 124– 25.

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translations of Mark of Toledo went entirely unnoticed in thirteenth-century Castile. In the coming pages, I will assess what was known about the Qur’an and the doctrines of Islam in the chronicles written in Castile-Leon over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As we shall see, although chroniclers had long been aware of the “laws of Muḥammad,” as they were most commonly referred to, it was not until after Mark’s translation that the transliterated title Alchoran began to be used by those writing about the Muslim south. These translations also accompanied a wider trend towards a more detailed understanding of Muslim scripture, beliefs and practices —including those of the contemporary Andalusi enemy, the Almohads— in the narrative texts of thirteenth-century Castile. Interactions with the Muslim world to the south of the Peninsula appear frequently in the chronicles of twelfth-century Castile-Leon. The Historia Roderici [HR], an account of the life of Rodrigo Díaz —better known to posterity as El Cid— was written in the early decades of the twelfth century, and features a number of notable Muslim protagonists.⁸ These include the Cid’s Muslim allies, such as the Taifa king of Zaragoza, Yūsuf b. Aḥmad b. Sulaymān b. Hūd al-Mu’tamin, at whose court the Cid spent some time and where he was “received by the citizens with the greatest honour and respect.”⁹ They also include his enemies, most notably the Almoravids, referred to as Moabites, who the author describes as “howling and shouting” on the hills around Valencia.¹⁰ Yet despite this, the Historia Roderici provides no information at all concerning the religion of these various peoples. The Saracens and Moabites exist as entirely political figures within this narrative, mattering only to the chronicler in terms of their roles within the overlapping networks of alliances and enmities in which the Cid operated. No clue as to their beliefs or practices can be seen in the text. The only exception to this is news that the Cid constructed a church “in the Saracen building which they call a mosque [mezquita].”¹¹ Likewise, the reader gleans little concerning the doctrines of the Muslims of al-Andalus from reading the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris [CAI]. This is a panegyrical account of the reign of Alfonso VII of Leon, comprising of two sections in

 The critical edition of this text can be found in Emma Falque Rey, Juan Gil and Antonio Maya, eds., Chronica Hispana saeculi XII (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), 47– 98. For a modern translation and study of the Historia Roderici, see Simon Barton and Richard Fletcher, The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 90 – 147. For an overview of El Cid, see Richard Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid (Oxford: OUP, 1991).  HR ch. 17, in Barton and Fletcher, The World of El Cid, 108.  HR ch. 65, in Barton and Fletcher, The World of El Cid, 140.  HR ch. 73, in Barton and Fletcher, The World of El Cid, 146.

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prose, which cover the king’s life and deeds, and a final passage in verse known as the Poema de Almería, commemorating that city’s conquest from the Almoravids in 1147.¹² Scholarly opinion concerning the CAI’s provenance has coalesced around a date of composition in the late 1140s, and the likelihood that the author was well acquainted with the city of Toledo, and familiar with a number of terms of Arabic origin, but also had firmly Leonese sympathies and close connections with the court of Alfonso VII; Bishop Arnaldo of Astorga (d.1152/3) has been identified as a likely candidate.¹³ The CAI is important for our purposes because it has a great deal to say about the Islamic world south of al-Andalus and North Africa, in particular the military and political operations of the Almoravid Empire, and their defeat in 1147 by the Almohads. The title of the second book of the chronicle indicates the author’s priorities: namely, “the history of emperor Alfonso, of the conflicts and battles which he, the nobles of Toledo, and the commanders of Extremadura had with King Ali, with his son Tashufin, and with the other kings and princes of the Moabites and Hagarenes.” In the text we find highly detailed information about Almoravid military strategy, the names and careers of Almoravid leaders and also of local Muslim governors, and an awareness of the existence of political tensions between Muslim groups, distinguishing between Iberian Muslims (“Hagarenes”), Almoravids (“Moabites”), and Almohads (“Muzmutos”).¹⁴ Simon Barton has suggested that the author of the CAI most likely had direct sources of information from Andalusis fleeing to Toledo around the fall of the Almoravid Empire and the arrival of the Almohads in the late 1140s, and may indeed have witnessed some of these events himself, all of which he drew on to produce what was “without doubt one of the most vivid and well-informed depictions of the contemporary Muslim world to have survived from anywhere in the medieval Latin West.”¹⁵

 See Simon Barton, “Islam and the West: A View from Twelfth-Century León,” in Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher, ed. S. Barton and Peter Linehan (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 153 – 74. For a critical edition of the text, see Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, ed. Antonio Maya Sánchez, in Chronica Hispana saeculi XII, 109 – 248, and for a translation and study, see Barton and Fletcher, The World of El Cid, 148 – 263.  Barton, “Islam and the West,” 156. The author of the CAI knew words such as algaras, alcaceres, and celatas, which he described as being of “our language.”  Barton, “Islam and the West,” 163; also, on names, Hélène Sirantoine “What’s in a Word? Naming ‘Muslims’ in Medieval Christian Iberia,” in Making the Medieval Relevant: How Medieval Studies Contribute to Improving our Understanding of the Present, ed. Chris Jones, Conor Kostick and Klaus Oschema (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 225 – 38.  Barton, “Islam and the West,” 154 and 166.

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It is consequently something of a surprise that the author’s knowledge of Islam itself —the doctrines or laws of the Muslims— is far less precise. In part, this can be attributed to the demands of polemic. In the highly rhetorical final section of the CAI, the Poema de Almería, the author writes of the “barbarous people” in terms derived directly from the Old Testament. Their defeat by the armies of Alfonso VII was inevitable, since “they did not know the Lord and rightly perished. This people was rightly doomed: they worship Baal, but Baal does not set them free.”¹⁶ Association with the Old Testament deity Baal, who was denounced by the prophet Elijah in the book of Kings, served as a useful rhetorical image to counterbalance against the “divine sword” of Alfonso VII. However, even when the author of the CAI was writing in less eschatological terms, his understanding of Islam appears to be rather vague. He knew of the existence of “books of the law of Muḥammad,” very likely a reference to the Qur’an, since he describes Alfonso’s raiding parties destroying them when plundering the Upper Guadalquivir region in 1138: they “destroyed their synagogues [mosques], and consigned to the flames the books of the law of Muḥammad. They put to the sword all the doctors of that law that they encountered.”¹⁷ The author likewise describes the killing of “priests (sacerdotes) and doctors (doctores) of their law” and the burning of “the books of their law (libri legis suae) in the synagogues” on the occasion of Alfonso’s attack on Seville in 1133.¹⁸ Given how well-informed the author is about so many other aspects of the Islamic south, it is curious that he should not only rely on the Christianised terminology of “priests and doctors,” but also refer to Muslim mosques exclusively as “synagogues” [synagoge]. Matthias Tischler has speculated that more accurate terminology may have represented a linguistic stumbling block for the author, and yet, as mentioned above, there are Hispano-Arabic terms dotted throughout the CAI, and the author appears to have spent a considerable amount of time in Toledo, a city with both a large Arabic-speaking Christian community and a Mus-

 Non cognouere Dominum, merito periere. / Ista creatura merito fuerat peritura / Cum colunt Baalim, Baalim non liberat illos, Poema de Almería, vv. 24– 27; see also Barton, “Islam and the West,” 170, and Barton and Fletcher, The World of El Cid, 250.  Synagogas eorum destruxerunt et libros legis Mahometi combusserunt igne. Omnes viri doctores legis, quicunque inventi sunt, gladio trucidati sunt, CAI, II.36. For the translation, Barton and Fletcher, The World of El Cid, 220. Another reference to the Andalusi Muslims going to their “synagogues” can be found in CAI II.93.  Sed et omnes synagoge eorum, quas inveniebant, destructe sunt. Sacerdotes vero et legis sue doctores, quoscumque inveniebant, gladio trucidabant, sed et libri legis suae in synagogis igne combusti sunt; CAI, I.36.

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lim minority, rather complicating this conclusion.¹⁹ Moreover, as we saw in the Historia Roderici, a Latin-Romance term for mosque certainly did exist, in the term “mesquita”. Recounting the occupation of Cordoba by Alfonso VII in 1146, the CAI refers to the great mosque of the city as “the place where a synagogue to Satan had previously been built.”²⁰ Yet when the same events are referred to in a charter issued by Alfonso in August 1146, the notary uses the far more precise “mesquita maiori”.²¹ It is instructive to compare the vision of Islam in these two twelfth-century texts with a view from thirteenth-century Leon. The Chronicon Mundi [CM] was written by Bishop Lucas of Tuy in the late 1230s, after the reunification of the kingdoms of Leon and Castile. Composed at the request of King Fernando III’s mother, Berenguela, this “world chronicle” spans human history, from Genesis until the author’s present day, ending with the Christian conquest of Cordoba in 1236.²² Inevitably, Islamic al-Andalus features prominently in Lucas’s chronicle, forming the backdrop for a series of Christian victories. In line with the ambition encapsulated in the work’s title, Lucas also devotes several chapters to a short, polemical biography of Muḥammad, presenting him as a “pessimus seductor” who was trained in magic and who declared himself Messiah.²³ Several features of this are rather unusual, not least Lucas’s claims that Muḥammad came to Cordoba to teach but was driven out of the Peninsula by Isidore of Seville, and was advised by the devil to preach in Africa and Arabia instead, and that Muḥammad tried, among other things, to propagate the heretical early Christian sect of the Nicolaitans.²⁴ Muḥammad was poisoned by one of his followers,

 Matthias Tischler, “Lex Mahometi. The Authority of a Pattern of Religious Polemics,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 2, no. 1 (2015), 15.  CAI, II.106.  quondam partem Cordube depredavit cum mesquita maiori; see Fletcher and Barton, The World of El Cid, 247.  Emma Falque Rey, ed., Lucae Tudensis Chronicon Mundi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). On this source, see John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Colombia University Press, 2002), 180 – 82; Bernard F. Reilly, “Sources of the Fourth Book of Lucas of Tuy’s Chronicon Mundi,” Classical Folia 30 (1976); and Juan Estévez Sola, “Fuentes menores del Chronicon Mundi de Lucas de Tuy y un apéndice de Pedro Comestor,” Traditio 61 (2006).  CM III.5. For an analysis of Lucas’s life of Muḥammad, see Fernando González Muñoz, “La leyenda de Mahoma en Lucas de Tuy,” in Actas III Congreso Hispánico de Latín Medieval (León, 26 – 29 de septiembre de 2001), ed. Maurilio Pérez González (Leon: Universidad de León, 2002), vol. I, 347– 58.  Unde es tut in exordio sue subdole predicationis adiret Yspaniam et Cordube sue perditionis sectam doceret. / Machometus autem post fugam in Affricam et Arabiam innumerabiles plebes seduxit… CM III.5. González Muñoz points out that “el enfrentamiento entre Mahoma e Isidoro

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Lucas informs us, and when he had not risen again after eleven days, his body was eaten by dogs. His bones were then buried at “Medina Rassul”, which Lucas translates correctly as “City of the Messenger” (civitas nuncii). In his study of Lucas’s sources, Fernando González Muñoz concludes that this is “a portrait of Muḥammad in line with the offering of most contemporary chroniclers, although barely interested in dogmatic aspects and relatively slight on details of particular novelty,” drawing most often on an anonymous twelfth-century Life of St Isidore, the so-called Mozarabic Chronicle of 754, the life of Muḥammad taken from Eulogius of Cordoba’s ninth-century Liber Apologeticus and later incorporated into the Asturian Prophetic Chronicle, and finally the twelfth-century writings of Hugh of Fleury (or perhaps a text derived from him).²⁵ Interestingly, there is nothing to suggest that Lucas used Mark of Toledo’s translations or the prologue to his Liber Alchorani, despite the fact that these sources had existed within Castilian intellectual circles (though perhaps not those of Leon), since 1210. As noted by González Muñoz, despite this attention to the figure of Muḥammad, Lucas appears to have shown very little interest in the doctrines of Islam itself, or the “nefarious Muḥammadian rite” as Lucas terms it.²⁶ When discussing the creation of the Qur’an, Lucas recycles the long-standing polemical tradition according to which Muḥammad moulded his own “new laws” (novas leges) out of Jewish and Christian Testaments; he then proclaimed these edicts, and “the Saracens call these sacrilegious traditions the laws of God.”²⁷ This is as close as Lucas gets to mentioning the Qur’an, or indeed to any doctrinal elements of Islam. He refers to Muḥammad “teaching his sect of destruction” and “seducing innumerable peoples” —yet what these teachings might have involved remained unmentioned, aside from Lucas’s statement that Muḥammad had taught that Jesus was born of a virgin but that he was not divine.²⁸ Likewise, throughout the rest of the Chronicon Mundi, Islam plays a strictly political role in Lucas’s vision of history. Muslims abound, whether in his lengthy

constituye un capítulo de la hagiografía isidoriana más que de la polémica antimahometana”; González Muñoz, “La leyenda de Mahoma,” 353.  See González Muñoz, “La leyenda de Mahoma,” 347– 58, and Tolan, Saracens, 180 – 82.  Nefariis ritibus Machometi; CM III.7.  Quibus cepit novas leges fingere, eisque tradere, adibens ipsis nefandis legibus de utroque Testamento corrupta testimonia. Ideo divine pagine auctoritates pervertit, ut tam Christianis quam Iudeis cum Sarracenis aditum precluderet disputandi. Dedit etiam suis edictum ut quicumque alia quam ea que ab illo acceperant, predicare[n]t, animadversione gladii puniretur. Huius sacrilegas tradiciones Sarraceni Dei leges appellant, eumque suum legislatorem et nuncium Dei fatentur; CM III.5.  Dicebat enim Ihesum Christum Dominum de virgine esse natum operatione Spiritus Sancti, non tamen esse Deum; CM III.5.

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description of the conquests of the Cid (Rodrigo Díaz) in Valencia, or the arrival of the Almoravids and then the Almohads in the Peninsula, but their beliefs and practices remain entirely outside his narrative. A useful illustration —especially so because another account of the same events will be discussed further on— is Lucas’s description of the Christian conquest of Cordoba in 1236 by Fernando III, and the consecration to Christianity of the city’s great mosque. This is the event with which Lucas finishes his chronicle, and although it represents the pinnacle of Christian triumph over the Muslims of al-Andalus in his own lifetime, it is merely a brief passage in the Chronicon Mundi. Lucas describes how “King Fernando entered Cordoba with great glory and joy, and, having eliminated all the filth of Mohammed, on the sacred feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, the priests performed the divine mystery in that same city to the honour of the Lord Jesus Christ and his mother Mary Queen of Heaven, adorning that great oratory of the Saracens with the name of Mary, Mother of God.”²⁹ Lucas’s language is revealing. He does not, here or elsewhere in the Chronicon Mundi, use any specific term for “mosque”; whether he knew the word “mezquita” is impossible to say. Instead, by employing a broadly parallel Christian term, and referring to the Cordoban mosque as an oratory (oratorium), Lucas keeps the “filth of Muḥammad” shrouded in imprecision. The facts of Muslim belief or practice are irrelevant to his narrative. The Muslims of the Chronicon Mundi provide a blank canvas to Lucas, a “depraved heresy” against which Christianity can triumph, and to which the specifics of Islam are relatively unimportant, as summed up in Lucas’s closing exclamation: “Oh what blessed times are these, in which the Catholic faith is exalted, the perversity of heresy is crushed, and the cities and armies of the Saracens are destroyed by the swords of the faithful.”³⁰ However, a rather different picture of Islam emerges from the chronicles written in Castile in the 1230s and 1240s; that is, in the immediate circles of the translators of Toledo and, particularly, of Mark of Toledo and his doctrinal translations of 1210 and 1213. I am here referring to the histories of the Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, produced in the 1240s, just before the conquest of Seville, and the Chronica Latina Regum Castellae, a text that seems to have been finished in the late 1230s, not long after Cordoba fell to the Castilians. Whilst there is no doubt that the Muslims of al-Andalus and North Africa remain highly

 Ingressus est rex Fernandus Cordubam cum gloria et leticia magna et eliminata omni spurcitia Machometi pontifices sacri in festo apostolorum Petri et Pauli ad honorem Domine Ihesu Christi et genitricis eius Regine celorum Marie in eadem urbe divina misteria peregerunt, magnum illud Sarracenorum oratorium genitricis Dei Marie nomini decorantes… CM IV.94.  O quam beata tempora ista in quibus fides catholica sublimatur heretica pravitas trucidatur et Sarracenorum urbes et castra fidelium gladiis devastantur! CM IV.94.

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polemicised enemies in all of these texts, nonetheless, here we are afforded a far more detailed view of Islam itself and the texts and practices at its centre. Let us start with the archbishop of Toledo and prolific author, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (fl. 1190s–1247), who was also, of course, one of the patrons of the Liber Alchorani, a commission that must have been one of his very first acts on becoming archbishop in February 1209.³¹ As archbishop of Toledo from 1209 until 1248, Rodrigo presided over a culturally and religiously diverse city, with a sizeable population of Muslims and Jews. Islam was a major preoccupation for him throughout his life. He was deeply invested in promoting war with the Islamic south —it was, after all, to this end that he had commissioned the translation of the Qur’an, in the lead up to the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. Likewise, he preached crusade in the 1220s in support of Fernando III’s conquest of much of al-Andalus, and was likely present at many of the conflicts that he would later describe.³² It is, as such, no surprise that the Archbishop Rodrigo should display an understanding of Islam in his own collection of historical writings that was considerably more detailed than that of his predecessors. This comes to the fore in the two of his histories to feature the Islamic world: the De Rebus Hispanie [DRH], completed in c.1243, a history of the world from the start of time leading up to the triumph of the Castilians against Islam in Rodrigo’s lifetime, and the Historia Arabum [HA], the first Christian history of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula, starting with a polemical life of Muḥammad and ending with the arrival of the Almohads.³³ As Lucy Pick and Mattias Maser have shown, in both of these works, Rodrigo’s priority was to demonstrate the inevitable unification of Iberia under the Christian rule of the king of Castile,  Much has been written on Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his policies regarding Islam. Most importantly, see Lucy K. Pick, Conflict and Coexistence, Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Pick, “What did Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada know about Islam?” Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia 20 (2011); and Tolan, “Las traducciones y la ideología de la reconquista.”  See Pick, Conflict and Coexistence, and Teresa Witcombe, “Praying for Conquest in Thirteenth-Century Castile: The Oratio in tempore belli adversus Saracenos,” in A Plural Peninsula: Studies in Honour of Professor Simon Barton, ed. Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).  For the critical edition of the De Rebus Hispanie, see the Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de Rebus Hispanie sive Historica Gothica, ed. Juan Fernández Valverde (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), as well as the Spanish translation, Historia de los hechos de España ed. and trans. Juan Fernández Valverde (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989). For the Historia Arabum, see Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historiae Minores: Dialogus Libri Vite, eds Juan Fernández Valverde and Estévez Sola (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 87– 149, as well as the study by Matthias Maser, Die Historia Arabum des Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Arabische Traditionen und die Identität der Hispania im 13. Jh. Studie – Übersetzung – Kommentar (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2007).

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and to make sense of the presence of non-Christians under his own jurisdiction.³⁴ Whilst there is no consensus on whether Rodrigo spoke Arabic himself (though there were certainly many in his immediate entourage, like Mark of Toledo, that did), he nonetheless drew on a unique range of Arabic sources when he came to write his Historia Arabum. These include the chronicles of Ibn Hayyan, and the Sīrat rasūl Allāh of Ibn Isḥāq, with the latter providing the basis for Rodrigo’s polemical life of Muḥammad.³⁵ Notably, he does not appear to have taken inspiration from either the biography of Muḥammad by Lucas of Tuy, nor that written by Mark of Toledo, although he certainly knew both texts well. Instead, the Historia Arabum provides the reader with six chapters on the life and death of the Prophet, covering his childhood as an orphan, his education in natural sciences and Jewish and Christian law, his marriage to a rich widow, his successes against the Byzantine Empire, and his “mendacious visions,” that largely preserved the “original narrative structure and formal register” of his Arabic sources, accompanied by his own polemical commentary.³⁶ Significantly, Rodrigo is the first Castilian-Leonese chronicler to use the transliterated Arabic title “Alchoran” to refer to the Islamic scripture, as he does throughout his histories. In so doing, he was of course reflecting the title of Mark of Toledo’s Liber Alchorani, in clear contrast to the much vaguer references to the “book of Muḥammad” that we saw above. Rodrigo also seems to have been aware of something of the significance of the text within Muslim society. Thus, for example, in his description of the surrender of the Almoravid governor of Cordoba, Ibn Ghaniya, to Alfonso VII in 1144, Rodrigo records that the Muslim leader swore to vassalage by taking his oath “on the book of Muḥammad which is called Alchoran.”³⁷ Likewise, Muslim leaders symbolically brought “the book of the cursed sect of Muḥammad, called Alchoran” to battle against Christians.³⁸

 Maser Die Historia Arabum, and Pick, “What did Rodrigo Know about Islam?” 225.  For Rodrigo’s Arabic sources, see Maser, Die Historia Arabum; María Crego Gómez, “La fuente árabe de la historia del Emirato omeya de al-Andalus en la Historia Arabum de Jiménez de Rada,” e-Spania 2 (2006); Cándida Ferrero Hernández, “Cristianos y musulmanes en la Historia Arabum de Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 18 (2006); and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Muḥammad’s Portrait in Jimenez de Rada’s Historia Arabum and in Marcos de Toledo’s Prologus Alcorani. Two different examples of the Islamic-Christian controversy literature,” in Estudios de latín medieval hispánico. Actas del V Congreso, ed. José Martínez Gázquez, Óscar de la Cruz Palma and Cándida Ferrero Hernández (Florence: Millennio Medievale, 2011).  Starczewska, “Muḥammad’s Portrait,” 461.  …ille super librum Machometi, qui Alchoranus dicitur, sibi et regi Sancio filio suo fecit hominium et iurauit; DRH, VII.8.  librum etiam secte nepharie Machometi, qui dicitur Alchoranus; DRH, VIII.9.

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It is of course a further indication of this significance that Rodrigo should have commissioned the translation of the qur’anic text by Mark of Toledo in 1210. It is in the course of his polemical biography of Muḥammad, however, that we come across a more detailed knowledge of the Islamic scripture. Rodrigo reiterates the standard Christian polemical line that Muḥammad himself fabricated the qur’anic text, from his training “in natural sciences, and the Catholic law, and the written record of Jewish perfidy; whence he afterwards usurped something of the Catholic faith and something of the Old Law for the support of his sect.”³⁹ Subsequently, having suffered from seizures, he came up with the idea of presenting his law as divine revelation: “then he lied that the book that is called Alchoran was given to him by an angel.”⁴⁰ Rodrigo then adds: At length, however, as if restored in spirit, he [Muḥammad] put forth certain teachings, which, gathered together into one chapter, he called “zoharas”, and by such zoharas is his book subdivided, which is called Alchoran, in which he preached so many ignominious zoharas that one should blush to say them let alone follow them…⁴¹

Rodrigo’s “zoharas” are clearly an attempt to reproduce the Arabic term sura, the chapters of the Qur’an. Interestingly, this is not information that he would have received through familiarity with the Liber Alchorani, for, whilst Mark does adhere to the structure of the Qur’an and translates the title of each chapter –unlike his predecessor Robert of Ketton–, he does not appear to have used the transliterated term “sura” itself in his work. In the prologue to the translation, Mark comments that Muḥammad divided his book into “112 tracts or chapters” (a clear reference to the 114 suras of the Qur’an), as well as 60 “distinctions”, seemingly referring to the division of the qur’anic text into 60 parts, or aḥzāb, for the purposes of recital and memorisation.⁴² Within the body of the text itself,  Iste tradidit eum predicto geneatico instruendum, qui instruxit in naturalibus scienciis et lege catholica et Iudayce perfidie documentis; unde et ipse postmodum aliqua de fide catholica, aliqua de lege veteri in sue secte subsidium usurpauit; HA, ch. 2. See also Pick, “What did Rodrigo know about Islam?” 226.  Et ibi mentitur sibi datum ab angelo librum qui dicitur Alcoranus; HA, ch. 3.  Demum autem quasi restituto spiritu precepta aliqua proferebat que sub uno compacta capitulo zoharas appellabat et per tales zoharas distinguitur liber eius qui dicitur Alchoranus in quo tot ignominiosas zoharas predicavit quod puderet dicere, nedum sequi; HA, ch. 6.  …Alchoranum qui interpretatur “leccionarius” et Alforcanum qui “distinctus” in lingua sonat arabica, qui distinguitur inter Vetus et Novum Testamentum, velut quídam interpretantur inter blasphemiam gentilium et fidem quam ipse docuit. Composuit itaque hunc in secreto eumque in centum duodecim tractatus sive capitula dividens, ipsis sub sexuaginta distinccionibus artavit. Mark’s prologue to the Liber Alchorani; see D’Alverny and Vajda, “Marc de Tolède,” 263, footnote 5. D’Alverny points out that Mark likely didn’t include the first sura in his tally of 112, and that he

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Mark appears to have used ‘chapter’ (capitulum) as his regular translation of the Arabic term, as can be found in almost all of the earliest extant manuscripts of the Liber Alchorani, thus indicating that Rodrigo must have drawn this information from his wider knowledge of Arabic sources or indeed from direct contact with Muslims themselves.⁴³ Likewise, Rodrigo’s incidental knowledge of Islam far outstrips that of his predecessors. He was aware that Muslims fasted for 30 days for the month of Ramadan.⁴⁴ He also was careful to use the term “mezquita” (mosque) and “maior mezquita” (great mosque) throughout his histories, in clear contradistinction to both the CAI and the Chronicon Mundi. His account in the De Rebus Hispanie of Fernando III’s triumphant entry into Cordoba in 1236 illustrates the comparison nicely. Rodrigo writes that the assembled bishops of Castile-Leon “entered into the mosque of Cordoba, which surpassed all the other mosques of the Arabs in adornment and size. And as the venerable Juan (bishop of Osma)… erased the filth of Muḥammad and sprinkled the water of purification, he converted it into a church.”⁴⁵ Additionally, the king ordered a cross to be erected “at the top of the great tower, from where in the past they had invoked the name of the cursed one” —here of course Rodrigo is referring, albeit vaguely, to the minaret and the call to prayer, or adhan, during which the name of the prophet is recited.⁴⁶ We can also glean a surprisingly detailed view of the doctrines of the Almohads, the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus in Rodrigo’s own day, from the De Rebus Hispanie, and in particular the Almohad mahdī, or spiritual leader [literally “rightly guided one”], Ibn Tūmart (d.1130), who had led the Almohad revolution

may also have merged suras 113 and 114. The fact that Mark refers to the division of the Qur’an into ahzāb raises some interesting questions about the transmission of the text to Christian Toledo. It is not unlikely that the qur’anic sources Mark worked with reached him in shorter sections. Alternatively, his use of the term could indicate some awareness of the recitation of the Qur’an within Islamic worship, for which the text may be divided into 30 or 60 parts (ajzāʼ and aḥzāb).  Burman, Reading the Qur’an, 124.  Precepit etiam ut in mense Ramadam ieiunarent XXX diebus; HA, ch. 2.  Et tunc uenerabilis Iohannes Oxomensis episcopus, regalis aule cancellarius, cum Gundisaluo Conchensi, Dominico Beaciensi, Adam Placentinensi, Sancio Cauriensi episcopis mezquitam ingressus est Cordubensem, que cunctas mezquitas Arabum ornatu et magnitudine superabat. Et quia uenerabilis Iohannes, de quo diximus, Roderici Toletani primatis uices gerebat, qui tunc temporis apud sedem apostolicam morabatur, eliminata spurcicia Machometi et aqua lustrationis perfusa, in ecclesiam comutauit et in honore beate Virginis erexit altare et missam sollempniter celebrauit… DRH, VIII.17.  Set rex in turri maiori, ubi solebat nomen perfidi inuocari, precepit lignum crucis uiuifice exaltari; DRH, VIII.16. Also see Tolan, Saracens, 185.

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in Morocco in the 1120s, and whose teachings had been compiled in Cordoba in the 1180s, under the title the A’azz mā yuṭlab (The greatest thing that one seeks).⁴⁷ Rodrigo tells us that not only was he “very learned in the doctrine of Muḥammad” and able to “preach and teach the book of Muḥammad, which is called the Alchoran,” but also “very well versed in astronomy and natural sciences,” an impression of the desert preacher that mirrors precisely the more learned image of the Almohad mahdī being curated by the Cordoban court in the 1180s.⁴⁸ On this note, Rodrigo also appears to have understood something of Ibn Tūmart’s spiritual position as mahdī, or “Almohadi”, as he transliterates the term here.⁴⁹ He informs us that Ibn Tūmart preached against “the caliph of Baghdad… the pope of the Arabs, who is descended directly from Muḥammad,” and even more interestingly, that “the mahdī was honoured in all things as if he were a prophet of God.”⁵⁰ His followers “held him in such veneration that in moments of necessity, they prayed to him for help.”⁵¹ Rodrigo posits two reasons for the naming of Ibn Tūmart’s followers as the “Almohads”: the first, he suggests, may be their devotion to their “al-mahdī”, whilst “others consider that Almohad means ‘united’.”⁵² And it is in the Chronica Latina Regum Castellae that we find precisely the viewpoint of these “others”. The Chronica Latina is a text to which Rodrigo refers on more than one occasion and one that he certainly knew well. It was written over the course of the 1220s and 1230s, and provides a history of the kingdom of Castile from the mid-twelfth century until the author’s own day, terminating with the conquest of Cordoba in 1236. Much scholarly debate on the question of the work’s author has coalesced around the identity of Bishop Juan of Osma, the

 Allen J. Fromherz, The Almohads: The Rise of an Islamic Empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010).  In diebus autem huius Aldefonsi imperatoris surrexit apud Arabes uir quidam nomine Auentumerth, homo in astronomia et naturalibus ualde doctus…. erat in Machometi doctrina ualde peritus, et cepit librum Machometi, qui dicitur Alchoranus, exponere et docere; DRH, VII.10. On the image of Ibn Tūmart, see Maribel Fierro, “Le Mahdi Ibn Tūmart et al-Andalus: l’élaboration de la légitimité almohade,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 91– 94 (2000); and Madeleine Fletcher, “The Almohad Tawhid: Theology which Relies on Logic,” Numen 38 (1991), 116 – 18.  Auentumerth autem asciuit quendam, qui Almohadi uocabatur; DRH, VII.10.  Et caliphe de Baldac, qui est Papa Arabum et descendit generationis linea de semine Machometi, contraria predicare, similiter contra Almorauides, qui tunc culmen regni in Affrica optinebant, rebellia adhortari… Almahadi quasi Dei prophetam in omnibus honorabat; DRH, VII.10.  Et in tanta ueneratione habetur, ut in neccessitatibus suis ad eum recurrant subsidia petituri; DRH, VII.10.  Ab eius nomine complices huius secte Almohades nominantur. Alii tamen dicunt Almohades unitos interpretari; DRH, VII.10.

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chancellor of King Fernando III, and a man who would unquestionably have mixed in the same intellectual, theological, and cultural circles as Rodrigo.⁵³ With its focus on the political and military deeds of the Castilian court in recent times, the Chronica Latina does not touch on the identity of Muḥammad, nor does it mention the Qur’an, either explicitly or implicitly. Like Rodrigo, the chronicler does refer frequently to mosques as “mezquitas”.⁵⁴ However, where the chronicle is of particular note for our purposes is in its presentation of the doctrines of the Almohads and the figure of Ibn Tūmart. Chapter Six of the Chronica Latina is dedicated to “the coming of the Almohads.” Like Rodrigo, the author of the chronicle is alive to the presentation of Ibn Tūmart as a learned man: we read that he came from “the region of the noble and famous city of Baghdad, where he had studied for a long time.”⁵⁵ Further on in the chronicle, he is even referred to as a “philosopher from Baghdad.”⁵⁶ Similarly, the author of the Chronica Latina presents Ibn Tūmart as a schismatic and a bringer of liberty to the oppressed Andalusis: He preached especially against the arrogance and oppression of the Moabites [Almoravids], who cruelly repressed the people subject to them… Thus he drew to himself innumerable people who, anxious to cast off from their necks the yoke of a very harsh servitude, willingly followed him. As a wise and discrete man, even though an infidel, he won to himself the minds of men, promising them the inestimable gift of liberty…⁵⁷

The chronicler also knew that Ibn Tūmart was recognised as a “prophet” by his followers, again a nod to the ongoing discourse around the figure of the mahdī that was taking shape at the Cordoban court of the late twelfth century.  The edition used in this paper is as follows; Crónica latina de los reyes de Castilla, ed. Luis Charlo Brea (Cadiz: Universidad de Cadiz, 1984) [hereafter, Chronica Latina]. For the identification of the author, see Peter Linehan, “Don Juan de Soria, unas apostillas,” in Fernando III y su tiempo (1201 – 1252): VIII Congreso de Estudios Medievales (Ávila: Fundación Sánchez Albornoz, 2003); also Bernard F. Reilly, “The Chronica Latina Regum Castellae: Historical Composition at the Court of Fernando III of Castile, 1217– 1252,” Viator 41, no. 1 (2010). An English translation is available, see The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. Joseph O’Callaghan (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002).  See, for example, Chronica Latina, ch. 50, 53, and 73.  Quidam Sarracenus, Aven Tummert nomine, qui veniens de partibus civitatis nobilis et famose, scilicet Baldac, ubi longo tempore studuerat; Chronica Latina, ch. 6.  Ad predicationem Auen Tummert, philosophi de Baldach; Chronica Latina, ch. 45.  Predicauit igitur specialiter contra superbiam et opressionem Moabitarum, qui gentes sibi subditas crudeliter oprimebant… Asciuit autem sibi gentes innumeras, que libenter ipsum sequebantur uolentes excutere de ceruicibus suis iugum durissime seruitutis, concilians sibi, tanquam uir sapiens et discretus licet infidelis, animos hominum, promictens eis munus inestimabile libertatis; Chronica Latina, ch. 6.

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As well as preaching against the oppression of the Almoravids, the author also informs us of Ibn Tūmart’s tawḥīd, the doctrine of the absolute divine unity that was central to Almohad theology, and which, the chronicler states, lay behind the naming of the mahdī’s followers: Those who won the kingdom in this way were called Almohads, that is, Unitarians, because they devoted themselves to the cult of one God whom Ibn Tūmart preached, as is set forth clearly in a certain book [libellus] that he wrote.⁵⁸

And importantly, here we are provided with a clue as to how its author came by his information about Ibn Tūmart. The “libellus” referred to here is unquestionably a reference to the teachings of Ibn Tūmart on the Almohad tawḥīd —the “cult of one God”— translated by Mark of Toledo in 1213 under the title Libellus Habentumeti de Unione Dei. ⁵⁹ This Libellus constituted a collection of five doctrinal pieces, the ‘Aqīda or creed of the mahdī, two short “guides” to the creed (the murshidas) which provide summaries of the main text, and two brief prayers, taken from the longer A’azz mā yuṭlab complied at the Cordoban court in the 1180s.⁶⁰ Taken together, Mark informed the reader in his prologue to the translation, these texts comprised “the most efficacious reasoning that there is one God.”⁶¹ He also points out that the teachings of the Almohad mahdī compare favourably to the Qur’an, since “greater, amongst discerning and prudent men, are the arguments and convictions which Ibn Tūmart has put forward in the little

 Nominati sunt autem illi sic qui obtinuerunt regnum predictum Almohades, hoc est Vnientes, quia scilicet unum deum se colere fatebantur, quem predicauit Auen Tummert, sicut in libello quodam, quem ipse composuit, manifeste declarator; Chronica Latina, ch. 6.  Joseph O’Callaghan, who translated and studied the chronicle, did not recognise this identification, commenting that “whatever the book may have been, it does not appear to be extant”; O’Callaghan, The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, 14.  For details on this, see Fromherz, The Almohads, 169 – 86. In an important paper on Ibn Tūmart, Frank Griffel described these five texts as “key documents for the Almohad doctrine,” see Griffel, “Ibn Tūmart’s Rational Proof for God’s Existence and Unity, and His Connection to the Nizamiyya Madrasa in Baghdad,” in Los Almohades. Problemas y perspectivas, ed. Patrice Cressier et al. (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2005), vol. 2, 770. See also Charles Burnett, “Mark of Toledo’s Rendering of the Declaration of Faith of the Almohads,” in Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth Century Iberia, ed. C. Burnett and Pedro Mantas España (Cordoba: UCO Press, 2022).  Unum Deum esseque unam essentiam rationibus probat efficacissimis; D’Alverny and Vajda, “Marc de Tolède,” 269.

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book on unity than the words of Mohammad in the Qur’an.”⁶² Clearly, then, the author of the Chronica Latina was familiar with Mark’s translation of the Libellus Habentumeti de Unione Dei, and used it as a basis for his own understanding of the doctrines of the Almohads. The Archbishop Rodrigo appears to have done likewise in his comments on Ibn Tūmart in the De Rebus Hispanie, creating an image of the mahdī that was shaped by the Almohad’s own doctrinal texts. Such detailed engagement with Islamic doctrine was unprecedented in the narrative tradition of Castile-Leon, and marks a long step from the vagueness and disinterest in the religion of Islam found in the Chronicon Mundi and the twelfth-century Leonese-Castilian texts surveyed above. Of course, it must be reiterated that, in all cases, the aims of these chroniclers remained self-evidently polemical. The “filth of Muḥammad” (spurcitia Machometi) is equally the target of Rodrigo as it is of Lucas of Tuy. Nonetheless, the reliance of the Chronica Latina on the Libellus Habentumeti, and the emergence of the term “Alchoran” in the writings of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada all point to the doctrinal translations of Mark of Toledo having an immediate audience in the clerics and scholars that made up the intellectual circles of Toledo and the court of Fernando III in the first half of the thirteenth century. In the case of the Archbishop Rodrigo, his interest in the Islamic scriptures clearly went further than Mark’s translation work, as he drew on a range of Arabic sources for his Historia Arabum, gleaning information about the Qur’an that went beyond what Mark had supplied in his Liber Alchorani, and providing an increasingly detailed view of the Andalusi Muslims and their beliefs, even as the territory of Islamic al-Andalus shrank to Castilian conquest across these same decades.

Bibliography Barton, Simon. “Islam and the West: A View from Twelfth-Century León.” In Cross, Crescent and Conversion: Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher. Edited by S. Barton and Peter Linehan, 153 – 74. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Barton, Simon and Richard Fletcher. The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Burman, Thomas E. “Tafsīr and Translation: Traditional Arabic Qur’ān Exegesis and the Latin Qur‘āns of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo.” Speculum 73 (1998): 703 – 32 Burman, Thomas E. “Polemic, Philology, and ambivalence: Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom.” Journal of Islamic Studies 15, no. 2 (2004): 181 – 209.

 Maioris sunt apud discretos viros et prudentes argumenta et persuasiones quas Habentometus induxit in libello Unionis quam verba Mafameti in Alchorano; D’Alverny and Vajda, “Marc de Tolède,” 269.

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Burman, Thomas E. Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Burnett, Charles. “Mark of Toledo’s Rendering of the Declaration of Faith of the Almohads.” In Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth Century Iberia. Edited by C. Burnett and Pedro Mantas España, 39 – 51. Cordoba: UCO Press, 2022. Cecini, Ulisse. “Faithful to the Infidels’ Word: Mark of Toledo’s Latin Translation of the Qur’an.” In Frühe Koranübersetzungen. Europäische und außereuropäische Fallstudien. Edited by Reinhold Glei, 83 – 98. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2012. Cecini, Ulisse. Alcoranus latinus: eine sprachliche und kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse der Koranü bersetzungen von Robert von Ketton und Marcus von Toledo. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2012. Cecini, Ulisse. “The Main Features of Mark of Toledo’s Latin Qurʾān Translation.” Al-Masāq 25, no. 3 (2013): 331 – 44. Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris. Edited by Antonio Maya Sánchez. In Chronica Hispana saeculi XII, eds. Emma Falque Rey, Juan Gil and Antonio Maya, 109 – 248 Turnhout: Brepols, 1990. Crego Gómez, María. “La fuente árabe de la historia del Emirato omeya de al-Andalus en la Historia Arabum de Jiménez de Rada.” e-Spania 2 (2006). Crónica latina de los reyes de Castilla. Edited by Luis Charlo Brea. Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 1984. D’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse and Georges Vajda. “Marc de Tolède, traducteur d’Ibn Tūmart.” Al-Andalus 16 (1951): 260 – 307. Estévez Sola, Juan. “Fuentes menores del “Chronicon Mundi” de Lucas de Tuy y un apéndice de Pedro Comestor.” Traditio 61 (2006): 167 – 93. Ferrero Hernández, Cándida. “Cristianos y musulmanes en la Historia Arabum de Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada.” The Journal of Medieval Latin 18 (2006): 356 – 73. Fierro, Maribel. “Le Mahdi Ibn Tūmart et al-Andalus: l’élaboration de la légitimité almohade.” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 91 – 94 (2000): 107 – 24. Fletcher, Madeleine. “The Almohad Tawhid: Theology which Relies on Logic.” Numen 38 (1991): 110 – 27. Fletcher, Richard. The Quest for El Cid. Oxford: OUP, 1991. Fromherz, Alan. The Almohads: The rise of an Islamic Empire. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Glei, Reinhold and Stefan Reichmuth. “Religion between Last Judgement, Law and Faith: Koranic Dīn and Its Rendering in Latin Translations of the Koran.” Religion 42, no. 2 (2012): 247 – 71. González Muñoz, Fernando. “La leyenda de Mahoma en Lucas de Tuy.” In Actas III Congreso Hispánico de Latín Medieval (León, 26 – 29 de septiembre de 2001), vol. I. Edited by M. Pérez González, 347 – 58. León: Universidad de León, 2002. Griffel, Frank. “Ibn Tūmart’s Rational Proof for God’s Existence and Unity, and His Connection to the Nizamiyya Madrasa in Baghdad.” In Los Almohades: Problemas y perspectivas, 2 vols. Edited by Patrice Cressier et al, vol 2, 753 – 813. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2005. Historia Arabum, Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historiae Minores: Dialogus Libri Vite. Edited by Juan Fernández Valverde and Estévez Sola, 87 – 149 Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Historia de los hechos de España. Edited and translated by Juan Fernández Valverde. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989.

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Historia Roderici, Chronica Hispana saeculi XII. Edited by Emma Falque Rey, Juan Gil and Antonio Maya, 47 – 98. Turnhout: Brepols, 1990. Linehan, Peter. “Don Juan de Soria, unas apostillas.” In Fernando III y su tiempo (1201 – 1252): VIII Congreso de Estudios Medievales, 375 – 94. Ávila: Fundación Sánchez Albornoz, 2003. Lucae Tudensis Chronicon Mundi. Edited by Emma Falque Rey. Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. Martínez Gázquez, José. “Trois traductions médiévales latines du Coran: Pierre le Vénérable-Robert de Ketton, Marc de Tolède et Jean de Segobia.” Revue des Études Latines 80 (2002): 223 – 36. Maser, Matthias. Die Historia Arabum des Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Arabische Traditionen und die Identität der Hispania im 13. Jh. Studie – Übersetzung – Kommentar. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2007. Petrus Pons, Nàdia. “Marcos de Toledo y la segunda traducción latina del Corán.” In Musulmanes y cristianos en Hispania durante las conquistas de los siglos XII y XIII. Edited by Miquel Barceló Perelló, Pedro Bádenas and José Martínez Gázquez, 87 – 94. Bellaterra: Servei de Publicacions UAB, 2005. Petrus Pons, Nàdia. Liber Alchorani quem transtulit Marcus Toletanus. Estudio y edición crítica. Madrid: CSIC, 2016. Pick, Lucy K. Conflict and Coexistence. Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Pick, Lucy K. “What did Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada Know about Islam?” Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia 20 (2011): 221 – 35. Reilly, Bernard F. “Sources of the Fourth Book of Lucas of Tuy’s Chronicon Mundi.” Classical Folia 30 (1976): 127 – 37. Reilly, Bernard F. “The Chronica Latina Regum Castellae: Historical Composition at the Court of Fernando III of Castile, 1217 – 1252.” Viator 41, no. 1 (2010): 141 – 54. Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de Rebus Hispanie sive Historica Gothica. Edited by Juan Fernández Valverde. Turnhout: Brepols, 1987. Sirantoine, Hélène. “What’s in a Word? Naming ‘Muslims’ in Medieval Christian Iberia.” In Making the Medieval Relevant: How Medieval Studies Contribute to Improving our Understanding of the Present. Edited by Chris Jones, Conor Kostick and Klaus Oschema, 225 – 38. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “Muḥammad’s Portrait in Jimenez de Rada’s Historia Arabum and in Marcos de Toledo’s Prologus Alcorani. Two Different Examples of the Islamic-Christian Controversy Literature.” In Estudios de latín medieval hispánico. Actas del V Congreso. Edited by Jósé Martínez Gázquez, Óscar de la Cruz Palma and Cándida Ferrero Hernández, 455 – 81. Florence: Millennio Medievale, 2011. The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile. Translated by Joseph O’Callaghan. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002. Tischler, Matthias. “Lex Mahometi. The Authority of a Pattern of Religious Polemics.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 2, no. 1 (2015): 3 – 62. Tolan, John. Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. New York: Colombia University Press, 2002. Tolan, John. “Las traducciones y la ideología de la reconquista: Marcos de Toledo.” In Musulmanes y cristianos en Hispania durante las conquistas de los siglos XII y XIII.

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Edited by Miquel Barceló Perelló, Pedro Bádenas and José Martínez Gázquez, 79 – 85. Bellaterra: Servei de Publicacions UAB, 2005. Witcombe, Teresa. “Mark of Toledo’s Liber Alchorani (‘The Book of the Qur’an’) and Its Reception in Medieval Toledo.” In Mark of Toledo. Intellectual Context and Debates between Christians and Muslims in Early Thirteenth Century Iberia. Edited by Charles Burnett and Pedro Mantas España, 21 – 39. Cordoba: University of Cordoba Press, 2022. Witcombe, Teresa. “Praying for conquest in thirteenth-century Castile: The Oratio in tempore belli adversus Saracenos.” In A Plural Peninsula: Studies in Honour of Professor Simon Barton. Edited by A. Liuzzo Scorpo. Leiden, Brill [forthcoming].

Anthony John Lappin

A Mozarabic Qur’an? Some Reflexions on the Evidence The existence of a Latin translation in Toledo of the Qur’an in the first part of the twelfth century has been postulated by Jean-Baptiste Marquette, by Patrick Henriet and Christophe Baillet, and by Matthias Tischler.¹ The evidence is provided by the un-named author of the eulogy written, some time shortly after 1140, to exalt the relic of John the Baptist’s blood held at the Gascon Cathedral of Bazas. The relevant section is as follows (I add superscript underlined numeration to assist citation):²

 Jean-Bernard Marquette, “La visite d’Urbain II à Bazas et la consécration de la cathédrale à Saint Jean-Baptiste (mai 1096),” in La Cathédrale Saint-André, reflet de neuf siècles d’histoire et de vie, ed. Marc Agostino (Pessac: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2001), 23; Christophe Baillet and Patrick Henriet, “Gallia, 1130–fin XIIIe siècle. Provinces de Bordeaux, Auch et Narbonne,” in Hagiographies, vol. VI, ed. Monique Goullet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 719; Matthias M. Tischler, “Supposed and True Knowledge of the Qur’ān in Early Medieval Latin Literature, Eighth and Ninth Centuries,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5 (2018), 17.  Jean-Aurelien Lagardière, La Gaule catacombaire: L’Apôtre Saint Martial et les fondateurs apostoliques des églises des gaules; Baptista salvatoris, ou le sang de Saint Jean à Bazas peu d’années après l’Ascenscion de Nôtre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ (Toulouse: L. Sistac & J. Boubée; Paris: Victor Lecoffre, 1880), 274– 75. There is, regrettably, no medieval witness to the text; Lagardière (La Gaule, 217– 300) used the sixteenth-century printing on parchment of the the Bazas cathedral manuscript (Iohannes Dibarrolus, Opus quod baptista saluatoris nuncupatur in suum ordinem et debitam formam redactum suadentibus dominis canonicis et capitulo insignis ecclesie Basatensis, cum rubricis ac fideli emendatione tum marginali allegationem quotatione et aliorum nuper accessione perfectum [Bazas: Claude Garnier, 1530]); the particular printed copy had previously formed part of the library of the Archbishop of Reims, Charles-Maurice Le Tellier, but had passed to the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris by the early nineteenth century (C. M. Le Tellier, Bibliotheca telleriana, sive catalogus librorum bibliothecae ilustrissimi ac reverendissimi Caroli Mauritii Le Tellier, Archiepiscopi Ducis Remensis [Paris: Typographia Regia, 1693], 248b; Frederic Adolphus Ebert, A General Bibliographical Dictionary, from the German of Frederic Adolphus Ebert, Librarian to the King of Saxony, 4 vols. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1837], vol. I: 454b; Joseph van Praet, Catalogue de livres imprimés sur vélin… vol. III: Histoire [Paris: de Bure frères, 1824], 23, no. 34). A sole further acephelous example, on paper, is preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (D-80383). Some caution is necessary in approaching the text, since, as ocurred with most sixteenth-century editions, the editor, Jean D’Ibarrola, adNote: My thanks must be offered to Dr Asim Zubčević, Assistant Professor of Islamic Civilization at the University of Sarajevo, for crucial assistance with the development of this paper. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-004

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1

Quippe qui non modo a Christicolis verum 2 etiam a Gentilibus maxima excolitur veneratione, 3 adeo ut et ipsi acerrimi hostes christiani nominis 4 annuatim nativitatem eius 5 solemnibus frequentant gaudiis. 6 Quem morem apud eos ex hoc inolevisse 7 arbitror quod sacrilegus legislator eorum 8 Mahumetus auctor totius, qui nunc habetur, paganismi, 9 id eos agere sanxerit, 10 sicut etiam in decretis legum ejus 11 me Toleti legisse memini. 12 Unde et venerabiliter a Gentilis superstitionis cultoribus 13 etiam nunc quotannis celebratur. 14 Sed jam a diverticulo repetatur narratio.

1

Evidently, he [John the Baptist], not only by the worhippers of Christ 2 but also indeed by the pagans, is honoured through the greatest veneration, 3 even to the point that these most bitter enemies of the name of Christian 4 commemorate his birth every year 5 with festal expressions of joy. 6 Such a custom grew amongst them, 7 I believe, because their impious lawgiver, 8 Muḥammad, the father of all what is now called heathendom, 9 ordained them to carry this out, 10-11 as I recall reading also in the doctrines of his laws in Toledo. 12 And whence by the worshippers of pagan supersition 13 it is yearly celebrated with reverence. 14 But now let us return to our account.

The author had been appointed as canon to teach in the cathedral school four or five years earlier.³ His final flourish in this section (14), which makes direct reference to Juvenal’s “A diverticulo repetatur fabula” (“let us return to our tale”),⁴ should leave us in no doubt about his primary field of reference nor his intellectual formation. The citation is not exact, however: fabula (tale, story) —the word he does not repeat— is, according to Quintillian, the most fictitious of the three types of narratio,⁵ and so our schoolmaster uses that more general term —narratio— to stress the truth of his eye-witness account.

mits that he needed to retouch what he found in his manuscript source, which was, by then, in poor condition (Marquette, “La visite,” 25). Nevertheless, in the section cited, there seems nothing anachronistically jarring in either phrasing or content.  Frédéric Boutoulle, “Échos de la Reconquista en Gascogne bordelaise (1079-milieu du XIIe siècle),” Revue de Pau et de Béarn 34 (2007), 39. For the organization of cathedral schools at the time, see Philippe Delehaye, “L’organisation scolaire au XIIe siècle,” Traditio 5 (1947).  Satire XV.72; ed. G. A. Simcox, Decimi Junii Junevalis Satirae XIII: Thirteen Satires of Juvenal (2nd edn; Boston: John Allyn, 1873), 162.  Institutio oratoria II.4.2; Harold E. Butler, ed., The Institutio oratoria of Quintilian with an English Translation, 4 vol. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), vol. I: 224– 25, “narrationum tris accepimus species, fabulam, quae versatur in tragoediis atque carminibus non a veritate modo, sed etiam a forma veritatis remota; argumentum, quod falsum sed vero simile comoediae fingunt; historiam, in qua est gestae res expositio”— “There are three forms of narrative: first there is the fictitious narrative [fabula] that we get in tragedies and poems, which is not merely not true but has little resemblance to truth. Secondly, there is the realistic narrative [argumentum] as presented by comedies, which, though not true, has yet a certain verisimilitude. Thirdly there is the historical narrative [historia] which is an exposition of actual fact.”

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His first phrase (1–2) provides a balance between two antonyms (christicolis– gentilibus); the latter term is then expanded, via a synonym for Muslims redolent of crusading literature and expressing the violent confrontation of the two faiths (3): “hostes christiani nominis.”⁶ However, the crusading echo is combined with a borrowing from Cicero: “acerrimi hostes…” (pro lege Manilia 28), designed to stress the irreconcilable differences and antagonism between the foes.⁷ These bitter enemies, though, still celebrated the Forerunner’s feast every year, a repetition emphasised by annuatim being placed in parallel to solemnis: the latter also signified etymologically “once a year”, and suitably conjures a general, rather than a strictly Christian, devotional frame, whilst at the same time emphasising the sensory pleasures to be had at the feast.⁸ The Bazas canon’s explanation is nicely crafted, and gives the impression that he had more than just a passing familiarity with the Muslim festival; it would seem to have been something that he had witnessed over a number of years —it has been suggested that, given Gascony’s connexion with Aragon and Catalunya, the author may well have been Iberian.⁹ The feast to which

 Used, for example, by Urban II (Sermo II, PL 151, 568 – 571 at 570C), “Arma quae caede mutua illicite cruentastis, in hostes fidei et nominis christiani convertite” (Turn the arms which you bloody in unlawful killing of each other against the enemies of the Faith and of the name of Christian); Albericus Aquensis (fl. c. 1100), Historia expeditionis Hierosolymitanae III.32 (PL 166, 389 – 410, at 457 A), “In hac omnes hostes christiani nominis, turcos, sarracenos, arabes e montanis Romaniae et ex omni parte…” (At this, all the enemies of the Christian name, the Turks, the Saracens, the Arabs and the mountain-folk from Rumania and from everywhere else …). Cp. also Guibert de Nogent, Gesta dei per francos I.1 (PL 156, 679 – 833, at 685D) and Sigebert de Gembloux, Chronica, s.a. 1096 (PL 160, 57– 257, at 226 A). The phrase was perhaps returning into fashion as a second crusade became more likely; Peter the Venerable describes the Turks as the “novi hostes christiani nominis” in his letter to the Byzantine emperor, Ioannes II Komnenos (†1143): Epistola 29 (PL 189, 260 – 262, at 261 A). Nevertheless, the author of the Baptista Salvatoris does not mention Pope Urban II’s preaching of the first crusade, even though Urban plays a fundamental role in the dénouement of his account (Marquette, “La visite,” 26).  Augustus S. Wilkins, ed., M. Tulli Ciceronis De imperio Gnaei Pompei oratio ad quirites (pro lege Manilia), with an Introduction and Notes, Edited after Karl Halm (London: Macmillan & Co., 1879), 28: “bello maximo atque acerrimis hostibus” (“through all-out war and the most unreconcilable of enemies”).  “Solemnibus… gaudiis” may perhaps be a classicizing echo of Bernard de Clairvaux, In ascensione domini II.1 (PL 183, 299 – 323 at 301C): “Solemnitas ista, fratres charissimi, gloriosa est, et, ut ita dicam, gaudiosa” (“This solemnity, most dear brethren, is glorious, and if I may say thus, joyful”).  Marquette, “La visite,” 23. The attribution of the work to the bishop of Bazas from c. 1165, Garsias “de Benquet” (on whom Marcel Pacaut, Louis VII et les élections épiscopales dans le royaume de France [Paris: J. Vrin, 1957], 129 n. 2), which was previously made by Marquette (Le Site épiscopal de Bazas: état de la question [Bazas: Les Amis du Bazadais, 1992], 13 – 15), is

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our anonymous author refers is the widely-celebrated midsummer celebration which co-incided with the feast of the birth of John the Baptist, referred to as al-ʿĀnṣara by Andalusi Muslims,¹⁰ the celebration over the 23 – 24 June which has continued throughout Spain in multiple fashions,¹¹ and was popular and enjoyable enough to receive thundering denunciations from ninth-century Malikite jurists, and deep-rooted enough for these denunciations to be repeated into the twelfth century and beyond:¹² our Latin cleric, then, was approving festivities and popular practices which Muslim clerics, seemingly in general, condemned in the strongest possible terms.¹³ The feast has remained popular with the Muslims of the Maghreb, and is still celebrated on the 24 June according to the Julian calendar.¹⁴

not wholly unfounded; Garsias’s family had a long connexion to the chapter (a previous Garsias de Benquet had been sacristan towards the end of the eleventh century: Jean J. Monlezun, Histoire de la Gascogne depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours [Auch: J. A. Portes 1846], 142), and was rooted in Aquitaine, which would quite easily explain the knowledge of Spanish customs. Boutoulle, “Échos,” 39, emphasises that the author originated outside Gascony; he describes earlier Gascon links with Iberia in the same article (“Échos,” 32– 38).  Jordi Aguadé, “Anṣara,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, ed. Kate Fleet et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2015).  Manuel Medina Los misterios de la noche de San Juan (Barcelona: Plaza Janés, 2007).  Charles Melville and Ahmad Ubaydi, Christians and Moors in Medieval Spain, vol. III: Arabic Sources (711 – 1501) (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1992), 28; Fernando de la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas en al-Andalus: materiales para su estudio, I,” and “Fiestas cristianas en al-Andalus: materiales para su estudio, II,” in De la Granja, Estudios de Historia de al-Andalus (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1999), 262– 68; Shojaeddin Shafa, De la Persia a la España musulmana: la historia recuperada, trans. María Ángeles Gallego García (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 2000), 500.  However, for its presence in popular entertainment, see James T. Monroe and Mark F. Pettigrew, “The Decline of Courtly Patronage and the Appearance of New Genres in Arabic Literature: The Case of the Zajal, the Maqāma, and the Shadow Play,” Journal of Arabic Literature 34 (2003).  Aguadé “Anṣara”; further, see Alfred Bel, “La ‘Anṣra: feux et rites du solstice d’été en Berbérie,” in Mélanges offerts à Gaudefroy-Demombynes par ses amis et anciens élèves (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1935). The eighteenth-century French traveller, Louis de Chenier, described his own observation of the solstice celebrations in Morrocco: “The Moors have a custom of making bonfires at the feast of Saint John, and are less able even than the Christian to give any reason for this practice. I happened to be at Fez during this festival, which the Moors, according to the old stile, observe much in the same manner as do the Europeans. I asked a Moor, who was tolerably well informed, why they made bonfires: and he answered me, it was el Ansarà, which signifies in Arabic, pronouncing the last a short, the companion, or defender, and should denote Saint John, the precursor and companion of Christ. He had no farther reason to give for the fires thus publicly made. […] At Sallee, where the harvest is gathered before the feast of Saint John, which among the Moors corresponds with the fifth of July, I have seen young people collect reeds and straw into a heap, set them on float down the

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The feast involved the setting of bonfires to mark the shortest night of the year, but also various forms of entertainment and ritual practices. The Berber jurist Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī (d. 849) seems to have primarily associated the feast of al-ʿĀnṣara with the marking of the solstice, since he applies the hadiths that had been used to dissuade Muslims from taking part in the Zoroastrian festivals that solemnized the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, Naurūz and Mehregān.¹⁵ He was aware of the connexion of al-ʿĀnṣara to John the Baptist (referred to in the Qur’an as Yaḥyā ibn Zakaryyāʾ), since he warns that whoever infringes his fatwa “has shared in spilling the blood of Zakaryyāʾ,” who had died at the hands of a mob shortly after, and following on from, the death of Yaḥyā;¹⁶ nevertheless, he does not mention John by name.

river, light them in a blaze as they swam, and sport round” (The Present State of the Empire of Morocco… translated from the French, 2 vols. [London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, 1788], I, 292– 93). The river in question is the Bou Regreg, which divides Salé (on its right bank, to the NE) from Rabat. Some solstice-celebrations have coalesced around the shrines of local saints (David M. Hart, Tribe and Society in Rural Morocco [New York: Frank Cass, 2000], 170).  According to an agraphon attributed to the mid-seventh-century traditionist, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣī (see De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 243 and n. 189): “Whoever passes through the land of the non-Arabs and celebrates their Naurūz and Mehregān, and imitates them until he dies in that state, will be gathered with them on the Day of Resurrection.” Naurūz was observed in al-Andalus as a propitious time for weddings (De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 188 – 89; Henry Paul Joseph Renaud, “Sur la date de Nairûz en Espagne musulmane,” Bulletin des études arabes 3 [1943]); playing music at weddings was specifically allowed from the earliest Islamic times (Meir J. Kister, “‘Exert Yourselves, O Banu Arfida!’: Some Notes on Entertainment in the Islamic Tradition,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 23 (1999), 73 – 74). Nevertheless, “Meheregān” seems to have been used to define any feast, but particularly the midsummer festival (Reinhart Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, 2 vol. [2nd edn; Leiden: Brill; Paris Masonneuve Frères, 1927], II, 621a; Shafa, De la Persia, 500), which may explain the jurists repetition of the agrapha forbidding Muslims from taking part. For the constant recyling of this antiPersian material, De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 233 – 37; and for the historical symbiosis of the Persian festival with Islam, see Ali Kadhim Ali Almadani, “Eid Festival (Mihrajan) and its Effect on Arabic Literature until the End of the Abbasid Era,” International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change 11 (2020).  The Qur’an says nothing about the death of Zakaryyāʾ; various stories (such as the version in Miguel Asín Palacios, “Logia et agrapha Domini Jesu: apud moslemicos sriptores, asceticos praesertime, usitata, I,” Patrologia orientalis 13 [1917], 394– 95, no. 66) tell how Zakaryyāʾ, fleeing the Jews who wished to kill him, sought refuge in the trunk of a tree which had opened miraculously for him, but was betrayed by some of his clothes which had remained trapped in the closing bark; his pursuers sawed the tree, and thus the prophet, in half. See, for example, “The Prophet Zakariya in a Tree,” The Worcester Art Museum, obj. no. 1935.16, at https://worcester.emuseum.com/objects/31520/the-prophet-zakariya-in-a-tree?ctx=a53b152a-b707– 4a2 f-845d1635ded8fad7&idx=0. The story was probably pre-Islamic (cp. Jerome, Commentaria in Mattaeum IV.23.35; PL 26, 16 – 181 at 173C), and was also applied to Isaiah in Muslim folklore (Asín Palacios,

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The behaviour that most exercised the good cleric would seem to be women’s rituals connected to fertility: scattering the house with water, leaving fabrics out overnight to be impregnated with dew and subsequently decorating the house with them; bathing in natural water-sources, especially the sea, but not for the purpose of removing ritual impurity; and the making of cabbage leaves stuffed with vegetables. Safran considered that the ban on the latter delicacies was presumably due to their being “the traditional food of the occasion”;¹⁷ Melville and Ubaydi thought that it was because they were vegetarian;¹⁸ but, although this is only a suspicion, their haramitude was probably owed to their phallic shape and therefore association with a pagan fertility-festival. Yet, at the same time, there was also a simple unwillingness to allow that any Muslim should make a holiday of something that was not one of the two major Islamic feasts,¹⁹ particularly when men and women might congregate in the same places for the purposes of leisure:²⁰ cp. the Bazas author’s use of frequentant at (5), which implies much the same (although without the censoriousness). The feasts of Christ’s and John’s nativities were condemned by the Muslim jurists, either because they represented feasts of the Christian “enemies”,²¹ or, more usually, due to their being bid‘a, an innovation, and therefore unacceptably wrong for Muslims, “concepto esgrimido hasta la monotonía” (“a concept brandished with boring repetition”), as De la Granja wearily observed.²² The claim that it was an innovation was also a reason to condemn the consumption of un-Islamic festive foods, such as fried cheese buns and doughnuts.²³ Prohibitions came from, seemingly, all quarters, and the early twelfthcentury philosopher, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Walīd al-Ṭurṭūshī (d. 1127), was followed by the highly-influential qadi of Ceuta, Abū al-Faḍl ʿIyāḍ ibn Mūsā ibn ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣubī (d. 1149), in lamenting any Muslim participation in the feast.²⁴

“Logia… I,” 395). On the genre of Tales of the Prophets as a whole, see Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 26 – 29.  Janina Safran, Defining Boundaries in al-Andalus: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Islamic Iberia (Ithaca: Cornell, 2013), 143.  Melville and Ubaydi, Christians and Moors, 29.  And for the thirteenth-century fear that such otium would disrupt the work ethic: De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 225.  De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 251.  De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 238.  De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 247.  De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 251.  De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 256 – 58.

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Repeated agitation on the part of jurists need tell us only that the festivals were a recurring site of anxiety for the pious; but the seeming unanimity of Islamic lawmakers on the issue should be borne in mind whilst we consider the next, and most important, section of our text from Bazas (6–12). The grammaticus does not, as the qadis do, state that Muslims have learnt their veneration from Christians, but rather situates it directly within Islam itself. He had a point: veneration for the prophets is a key aspect of Islamic piety, and the cult of their relics and holy places was particularly strong at this time.²⁵ Further, the Congregational Mosque in Damascus (the former cathedral) was the site of the particular veneration of St John’s skull, which —legend had it— the Ummayyad caliph, alWalīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, had unearthed and placed in a pillar.²⁶ The site of this relic has been a long-standing destination for Muslim pilgrimage. Veneration was not limited to Damascus: a lock of John the Baptist’s hair was sent by the amīr of Aleppo in 1032 to the Byzantine emperor as a precious and eloquently diplomatic gift.²⁷ Popular piety elaborated the events of Yaḥyā’s life in numerous legends: for example, al-Thalabī in his Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyā (Tales of the Prophets) provides four different versions of how John met his end.²⁸

 Josef W. Meri, “Relics of Piety and Power in Medieval Islam,” Past and Present Supplement 5 (2010): 102.  Josef W. Meri, The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 200. In the later twelfth century, however, the head was still thought to be buried in the south aisle of the mosque: according to Ibn Jubayr, “Over it [the skull] is a wooden chest, that stands out from the column, and on which is a lamp that seems to be of hollow crystal, and like a large drinking vessel. It is not known whether it is the glass of Iraq or Tyre, or some other ware” (Ronald Broadhurst, transl., The Travels of Ibn Jubayr: A Medieval Journey from Cordoba to Jerusalem [London: Jonathan Cape, 1952; 2nd edn, London: I.B. Tauris, 2020], 304); the import here is that a lamp was kept burning above the martyr’s relics (as in Christian practice), and that highly expensive materials were used to show honour to them.  Nicolas Drocourt, “Arabic-Speaking Ambassadors in the Byzantine Empire (from the Ninth to the Eleventh Centuries),” in Ambassadors, Artists and Theologians: Byzantine Relations with the Near East from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries, ed. Zachary Chitwood and Johannes Pahlitzsch (Heidelberg: Propylaeum, 2019), 63.  John C. L. Gibson, “John the Baptist in Muslim Writings,” Muslim World 45 (1955), 343 – 45. For the influence of Syriac Christianity on John’s representation amongst Muslims, see James Kelhoffer, The Diet of John the Baptist: ‘Locusts and Wild Honey’ in Synoptic and Patristic Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 177. Further tales of Yaḥyā are to be found in Asín Palacios (“Logia… I,” 356– 57 [no. 12], 363 [no. 24], 366 – 67 [nos. 30 – 31]; 379 – 80 (no. 52], 398 – 400 [no. 69], 406 – 7 [no. 78], 420 [no. 95]; “Logia et agrapha Domini Jesu, II,” Patrologia orientalis 19 (1924): 541– 42 [no. 114], 544– 55 [no. 121], 559 – 61 [nos. 143, 143bis], 564– 65 [no. 149], 573 [no. 171], 578 [no. 182], 584– 85 [no. 196, which links his death to the destruction of Jerusalem], 586 [no. 199], 587– 88 [no. 202]). Unfortunately, none of these have any bearing on his midsummer feast.

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In contrast to the oral tradition, the Qur’an does not busy itself with recounting Yaḥyā’s death, any more than that of his father, Zakaryyāʾ. It does, however, recount the miraculous details of John’s conception as part of its mash-up of the infancy narratives in the Gospel of Luke and the Protoevangelium of James.²⁹ Thus John is promised to Zachariah at 3:39: Then the angels called him, while he was standing in prayer in al-Mihrāb [a praying place or a private room], (saying): “Allāh gives you glad tidings of Yaḥyā (John), confirming (believing in) the Word from Allāh [i. e. the creation of ʿĪsā (Jesus), the Word from Allāh (“Be!” – and he was!)], noble, keeping away from sexual relations with women, a Prophet, from among the righteous.”³⁰

A shorter promise is given at 19:7, “(Allāh said) ‘O Zakarīyyāʾ (Zachariah)! Verily, We give you the glad tidings of a son, His name will be Yaḥyā (John). We have

 Very much low-hanging fruit in terms of qur’anic source criticism, the passage has been dealt with by John S. Trimingham, Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times (New York: Longman, 1979); S. Shoemaker, “Christmas in the Qur’ān: The Qur’ānic account of Jesus’ Nativity and Palestinian Local Tradition,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 28 (2003): 11– 39; Cornelia B. Horn “Intersections: The Reception History of the Protoevangelium of James in Sources from the Christian East and in the Qur’ān,” Apocrypha 17 (2006); and Horn “Mary between Bible and Qur’ān: Soundings into the Transmission and Reception History of the Protoevangelium of James on the Basis of Selected Literary Sources in Coptic and CoptoArabic and of Art-Historical Evidence Pertaining to Egypt,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 5 (2007); Suleiman A. Mourad, “Mary in the Qur’ān: A Reexamination of her Presentation,” in The Qur’ān in its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel S. Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2008); Horn, “Syriac and Arabic Perspectives on Structural and Motif Parallels regarding Jesus’ Childhood in Christian Apocrypha and Early Islamic Literature: The ‘Book of Mary’, the Arabic Apocryphal Gospel of John, and the Qur’an,” Apocrypha 19 (2008); Reynolds, The Qur’ān and its Biblical Subtext (New York: Routledge, 2010), 130 – 46; Darren M. Slade, “Arabia haeresium ferax (Arabia Bearer of Heresies): Schismatic Christianity’s Potential Influence on Muḥammad and the Qur’ān,” American Theological Inquiry 7 (2011); Jonathan M. Reck, “The Annunciation to Mary: A Christian Echo in the Qur’ān,” Vigiliae christianae 68 (2014). The foregoing list is obviously not complete.  I adopt the al-Hilālī‒Muhsin Khān translation (Muḥammad Taqi al-Din al-Hilali and Muḥammad Muhsin Khān, The Noble Qur’ān in the English Language: A Summarized Version of at-Tabari, al-Qurtubi, and Ibn Kathir with Comments from Sahih al-Bukhari [Medinah: King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’ān, 1996], 73), mainly because it is leans heavily upon the medieval commentators (see Khaleel Mohammad, “Assessing English Translations of the Qur’ān,” Middle East Quarterly 12, no. 2 [2005]). The details of this verse are recalled at Q. 21:90 without any significant addition; and John is, further, named together with his father, with Jesus, and with Elijah, as one of the righteous at Q. 6:85.

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given that name to none before (him).’”³¹ Five verses later, at 19:12– 15, he has grown somewhat (al-Hilālī–Muhsin Khān, 403): 12

(It was said to his son): “O Yaḥyā (John)! Hold fast the Scripture [the Taurāt (Torah)].” And We gave him wisdom while yet a child. 13And (made him) sympathetic to men as a mercy (or a grant) from Us, and pure from sins [i. e. Yaḥyā (John)] and he was righteous, 14And dutiful towards his parents, and he was neither an arrogant nor disobedient (to Allāh or to his parents). 15And Salām (peace) be on him the day he was born, the day he dies, and the day he will be raised up to life (again)!³²

Thus it would not have been unreasonable to say that the veneration for John the Baptist would have grown directly from the positive words that the Qur’an uses to describe him. But our grammaticus does not stop at this point: there follows an explicit command from Muḥammad, “id eos agere sanxerit” (9). One might assume he is referring to the Qur’an, because he refers to Muḥammad as “legislator”, and, as Tischler has pointed out, reference to the Qur’an or Islamic belief as the “lex Mahumeti” became a commonplace in Western Europe shortly after this point.³³ Admittedly, the Bazan cleric offers an oxymoronic play on words, “sacrilegus legislator”, presenting Muḥammad as an anti-lawgiver, an impious version of Moses, or, for monastic writers, St Benedict.³⁴ The description of Muḥammad as legislator (al-shāri’) is more than justified by the Islamic tradition; the philosophers, particularly after al-Fārābī, had used Plato’s Republic to discuss ideal rulership which also involved describing Muḥammad’s (by definition) ideal rule of Medina.³⁵ In truth, Muslim fiqh is inconceivable without the narratives of Muḥammad’s logia or deeds communicated through the Prophetic agrapha, in which stories his authority is lent to interpre-

 Al-Hilālī and Muhsin Khān, The Noble Qur’an, 402.  Al-Hilālī and Muhsin Khān, The Noble Qur’an, 403.  Matthias M. Tischler, “Lex Mahometi: The Authority of a Pattern of Religious Polemics,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 2 (2015).  Potentially (although it would be wise not to overestimate the allusion), making Muḥammad to be comparable to the Antichrist: Bruno of Würtzburg (d. 1045), Expositio psalmorum, IX.21, “Tamen legislator verissimus solus Deus, Antichristus vero male et false legislator erit” (PL 142, 49 – 529 at 72C; Just as the most true lawgiver is God alone, the Antichrist will be, through evil and deceit, a lawgiver).  Ishraq Ali and Mingli Qin, “Distinguishing the Virtuous City of Alfarabi from That of Plato in Light of His Unique Historical Context,” HTS Theological Studies 75, no. 4 (2019); Frank Griffel, “Muslim Philosopher’s Rationalist Explanation of Muḥammad’s Prophecy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad, ed. Jonathan E. Brockopp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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tions of qur’anic verses or the establishment of laws regarding the many matters over which the Qur’an passes in silence. Sacrilegus in the Bazas text may simply have the force of “sacrilegious”, “blasphemous”; but its twelfth-century use still cleaved closely to its etymological sense, săcer + lĕgo: sacer defined as something consecrated to the gods;³⁶ lego, to remove.³⁷ Thus a sacrilegus was primarily one who steals sacred things, or robs a temple —the associated senses of one who profanes the sacred, who is impious or wicked, followed on from this primary reference.³⁸ A sacrilegus was thus a type of fur. ³⁹ The same emphasis was found repeatedly in canon law.⁴⁰ Sacrilegus then points (as “acerrimi hostes” did regarding Muslims as a whole earlier) to Muḥammad’s opposition to the Christian sacred, be that through warfare against Christians, the destruction of and pillaging of ecclesiastical buildings and the conversion of churches, as in Damascus, to mosques; be that through the impiety towards Christian belief with which Muḥammad was characterized already in European discourse.⁴¹ These are not just empty tropes, though, required by the mention of the Prophet; they are being put to work, and (6–9) are written with the adeo from (3) still in mind: even though Muḥammad was a “sacrilegus legislator”, one utterly opposed to Christianity, he still instituted —not adopted, not re-interpreted, but directly established— a parallel feast in honour of the birth of the Baptist. This injunction on the Muslim faithful is set out “in decretis legum eius” (10). The phrasing is concrete, and far removed from the intellectual characterization of Islamic-ness which was contained in the phrase lex Mahumeti. The actual in Robert A. Kaster, ed., Macrobius: Saturnalia. Books 3 – 5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 54– 55 (III.7.3), who translates: “For everything marked out for the gods is said to be ‘consecrated’.” For a discussion of the broad terms, Duncan Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult in the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, 2 vol. (Leiden: Brill, 1991), II.1, 438 – 39.  Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary: Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary, Revised, Enlarged, and in Great Part Rewritten (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. lĕgo, def. I.B.1.  Lewis & Short 1879, s.v. săcrĭlĕgus: “I. that steals sacred things, that robs a temple, sacrilegious; II. that violates or profanes sacred things, sacrilegious, impious, profane, II.b. an impious, wicked, or profane person.”  For the distinction between furta and sacrilegium, see Oliva Robinson, “Blasphemy and Sacrilege in Roman Law,” Irish Jurist 8 (1973).  Burchard of Worms, Libri decretorum, I.xciv.38 (PL 140, 537 A–1058C, at 575CD) simply defines the sacrilegus as a robber of churches; see, further, the definition in Gratian, Decretum Pars IIa, C.17 q.4 c.21 (Aemilius Friedberg, ed., Decretum magistri Gratiani. Leipzig: 1879).  Michelina di Cesare, The Pseudo-Historical Image of the Prophet Muḥammad in Medieval Latin Literature: A Repetory (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 49 – 71.

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structions are contained “in decretis”: a decretum, in Classical Latin, was an ordinance, a decision, a decree from a governing body, and had become increasingly associated in the middle ages with ordinances and decisions emanating from authoritative ecclesiastical bodies —here decreta respects the religious character of Islamic sharīʿa and its judicial basis by using an analogous Christian term to describe it. And these decreta are a part of the “laws” (plural), again a concrete term referring to a coherent body of justice. Unfortunately, this is just where our problems begin. If we look to the Qur’an as the “laws” which Muḥammad has “legislated”, then there is no injunction in the book to celebrate the feast —nor is there, to my knowledge, any tafsir which interprets, for example, “peace be on him the day he was born” (19:15, above) as a clear instruction, on the part of Allāh, to party, every year, on that day. It is not impossible that there might be, of course; but it is far from likely. Thwarted by the Qur’an, then, we might express hope that “in decretis” will refer to fatwas: and so the phrase “in decretis legum” is deployed because the decreta are based upon or extrapolated from the hadiths which may thus be defined as “leges” (and Muḥammad was considered to be a lawgiver in this sense).⁴² Yet, again, there would seem to be no hadiths about the feast of St John at all, neither commending it nor criticising it —if the latter existed, they would certainly have been used by the jurists in their discussions, or rather condemnations, of practices associated with its celebration. Nevertheless, as a reaction to the ferocity of the qadis’ disdain, it is possible that a hadith might have been invented to justify what was clearly a popular and widespread practice.⁴³ We might note that there was at least some push-back against the inflexibile puritanism of the jurists, and, towards the beginning of the following century, the independent ruler of Ceuta and noted legal scholar, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-ʿAzafī (d. 1232), bemoaned the affection with which Muslims followed Christian feasts whilst invoking the usual condemnatory hadiths, but went on to note, with grave disappointment, that the people had started to assert that such festivities ought to be followed.⁴⁴ This response was not wholly without support amongst the vast ocean of the hadith; and a prophetic example emphasising the need for tolerance of, and even more importantly being present as a spectator at, a spe-

 Joseph E. Lowry, “The Prophet as Lawgiver and Legal Authority,” in The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad, ed. Jonathan E. Brockopp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). The connexion is not inevitable: it might be possible to understand the decreta are themselves logia within the hadiths that relied upon the verses of the Qur’an (leges) to make sense.  For the phenomenon of widespread falsification, see Joseph Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950).  Shafa, De la Persia, 500.

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cifically Christian commemoration of a feast-day, finds its support in a narration whose source is A’isha; there are numerous versions of this story, and I cite one of those given in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: The Messenger of Allāh came [to my apartment] while there were two girls with me singing the Song of the Battle of Buʿāth. He lay down on the bed and turned away his face. Then came Abū Bakr and he scolded me and said, “Oh! this musical instrument of the devil in the house of the Messenger of Allāh!” The Messenger of Allāh turned towards him and said, “Leave them alone.” And when he [the Holy Prophet] became unattentive, I hinted to them and they went out, and it was the day of ʿId and the black men [i. e. Ethiopian Christians] were playing with shields and spears. [I do not remember] whether I asked the Messenger of Allāh or whether he said to me if I desired to see [that sport]. I said, “Yes”. I stood behind him with his face parallel to my face, and he said, “Yā banī Arfada [or Arfida],⁴⁵ be busy!” till I was satiated. He said [to me], “Is that enough?” I said, “Yes”. Upon this he asked me to go.⁴⁶

The tale was particularly popular in ṣūfī circles as it could be used to justify various forms of liturgical, celebratory and hypnotic dance.⁴⁷ As a response —clearly despairing of eradicating the attachment of the people to this innovation— Abū al-ʿAbbās al-ʿAzafī adopted for Ceuta what had become the Fatimid feast of the Prophet’s birthday, the mawlid,⁴⁸ as a means of instituting an annual feast which was tied to the Islamic, that is lunar rather than solar, calendar, and which would exclude Christians and Jews from the festivities.⁴⁹ The Bazas schoolmaster has not exhausted his mysteries, however. After describing Muḥammad as legislator (although as we have seen, it is not exactly

 It was not clear to later commenters who or what Arf·da might be: possibly a nickname, or an ancestor (see Kister, “Exert Yourselves,” 57).  Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim VIII.20/892e (sunnah.com/muslim/8/20). For the manifold variants of the tale, and the difficulties it caused legists, see Kister, “Exert Yourselves”; a conflated version is usefully provided by Ze’ev Maghen, After Hardship Cometh Ease: The Jews as Backdrop for Muslim Moderation (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 59 – 60.  Kister, “Exert Yourselves,” 63 – 67, 70 – 71.  Pessah Shinar, Modern Islam in the Maghrib (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2004), 9; De la Granja, “Fiestas cristianas,” 245; Halima Ferhat, “Le culte du Prophète au Maroc au XIIIe siècle: organisation du pèlerinage et célébration du mawlid,” in La Religion civique à l’époque médiévale et moderne (chrétienté et islam) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1995).  Now the wheel has turned, and this most popular of Muslim festivals has come under concerted attack by, in the main, Salafists because it is itself an unacceptable innovation (see, for example, Salih al-Fawzan, “Ruling on Celebrating the Birthday of the Prophet,” Sunna on-line (2001); Muḥammad Sālih al-Munajjid, “Clarification Regarding Celebrating the Birthday of the Prophet,” Sunna on-line (2013).

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clear what laws he is supposed to have ushered in), he is now described as auctor (8). Yet this is not “author of the Qur’an,” but rather auctor (originator, source, fashioner) “totius… paganismi” (8).⁵⁰ In sum, then, the text which our man from Bazas remembered reading in Toledo is difficult to identify; indeed, “me… memini legisse” is very much a set phrase to indicate a degree of uncertainty beyond the blunt and definitive past perfect, legi, I read.⁵¹ This adds a further veil of doubt, which is perhaps inevitable: what was important to our author was, first, that the Muslims celebrated the feast of John the Baptist fittingly; and, second, that this celebration was a fundamental part of their own tradition and not a syncretic outgrowth due to the Christians in their midst. As the instruction to celebrate the feast comes directly from Muḥammad, it cannot be bid‘a —an observation which suggests that we do have an originally Islamic argument being repeated here. The Baptist’s nativity, then, is an occasion for the Christian cleric to show esteem for the devout behaviour of Muslims, emphasised right at the end of this section by venerabliter in his final recapitulation (13–14), even whilst that devotion is contrasted yet again with the otherwise fundamental wrongness of Muslim belief and behaviour in general (“a gentilis superstitionibus cultoribus”), and the irreligiousity of the founder of that religion (“sacrilegus legislator”).⁵² What the schoolmaster is not concerned about, though, is providing the information we seek: the nature of the text or texts he was able to consult in Toledo. One assumes that he would have known no Arabic, since, if he did, he would presumably have had access to texts throughout Spain. There would have been  The aside, “qui nunc habetur” that describes the paganismus is a glance at Aeneid XII.134, “qui nunc Albanus habetur” (which is now called Albano) —since before that name there was nothing. It is, further, perhaps just a co-incidence based upon concepts common to medieval Mediterranean monotheists, that the practices which the priest finds wholly in tune with religion are decried as examples of “paganism” (jāhilīya, the ignorance that preceded Islam) by Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā. Evidently, such a connexion would provide an intertextual reference that only our author could appreciate; nevertheless, it must be said that it is wholly apparent that he is thoroughly enjoying himself in his writing.  Anselm provides a good example: “In quibus si aliquid quod alibi aut non legi, aut non memini me legisse…” (De fide trinitatis IV; PL 158, 260 – 84, at 272D). Alcuin used the phrase to create a similar distancing technique (De incarnatione Christi XVII; PL 101, 271– 86, at 283B), “Haec dico, quia memini me scriptum legisse inter alias huius novae sectae ineptias…,” following in the gentle footsteps of Augustine (Quaestiones veteris et novi testamentis CXXV; PL 35, 2213 – 386, at 2373).  The theft in question, given that the Bazan cleric had probably read a section on the nativities of Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, may well have been of the sacred stories, which had then been put to an unholy end; sacrilegus may therefore have another layer of meaning, beyond the political and economic: Muḥammad as plagiarist of the gospel narratives.

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no need to be so geographically specific. Toledo was the place where there was an intellectually active, Arabic-speaking Christian community, engaged at various levels with polemicizing against Islam. Thus the source he refers to might have been a Latin Qur’an, although it is not wholly clear why a Mozarab would dedicate the time needed for such an enormous labour. Or his source might have been a polemical text, stringing together extracts from Qur’an and hadiths through a commentary that linked the words to local behaviour and comportment. We may conclude by observing that such a text would seem to be more likely than a complete translation of the Qur’an with necessarily copious marginal annotations (which would look, and be, as unweildy as the first folios of the Alchoran latinus). Again, the latter is far from impossible, although if this is the case, it is difficult to understand why Peter the Venerable commissioned an entirely new translation of the text rather than emeliorating the previous one’s dubious Latinity, which was the process he used with the Risāla, Letter, or Apology of al-Kindī, mandating his secretary, Peter of Poitiers to polish and tidy the phrasing, which he described as “confuse et impolite” (confused and rough), offered by the original translator, Master Peter of Toledo, We shall return to Peter the Venerable’s motives later.

Evidence from the Alchoran latinus In describing his new translation of the Qur’an, Peter the Venerable stressed how it had been made “per integro ex ordinem” (completely, following the order). Pointing to the completeness and the respect for the original order of the translation would have been an unnecessary observation, had there not been another, incomplete and re-arranged translation of the Qur’an to bear in mind. Nevertheless, there is more than a faint trace of an earlier translation preserved in the glosses to the beginning of the Alchoran latinus, an alternative translation of al-Fātiḥa, termed by its alternative title, the “mater libri”, and attributed to an unnamed “alius traductor”.⁵³ Further, the phrasing used in the Alchoran latinus for Q. 19:15, “super quem die sui natalis et mortis ac resurrectionis salus quieuit” (Azoara XXVIII. 23 – 24, p. 214; on him rested peace, on his birth-day, and on his death-day, and on his resurrection-day), does, to Christian eyes, look like an ap-

 “Capitulum primum per alium translatorem” (The first chapter by the other translator; Anthony John Lappin, ed., Alchoran latinus, vol. I: Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, ms. 1162 [Rome: Aracne, 2022], 438 [at 0.1, ad Capitulum Azoare]).

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proval of the celebration of the Baptist’s birth and death; the annual celebration or commemoration implicit in the use of dies natalis looks back at not only the Christian tradition of Christ’s birth but the pagan Roman tradition of the dies natalis: that is, of the city of Rome itself (21 April) and also that of numerous emperors.⁵⁴ John’s dies mortis was well-known from its celebration in Damascus and approval by the early caliphs (as discussed above). The past perfect quieuit represents the past tense expressed by the passive perfect wulida (19:15.4) “he was born”, yet also conveys the underlying sense of permanent election (drawing on, for example, how the Spirit of God requievit [rested] on the chosen at Numbers 11:26, or how the spirit of Elijah came to rest on Elisha at IV Kings 2:15). There may thus be an underlying translation which took into account the midsummer feastday which might well reach back to multi-cultural Toledo. The indulgent reader may well have become somewhat impatient with the succession of suppositions, suggestions, the quaking mire of “might”s and “should”s which we have traversed. Where we may spy firmer ground, however, is in the discussion of divorce at 4:20, wherein we find the following: Sed licet mutande, unum quintar, seu quantumlibet daretur, nichil inde resumere licet, sin autem iniustum atque peccatum facietis.⁵⁵ Yet a quintar or however much was given that belongs to a [wife] you would change may not be taken back; if you do, you commit both an injustice and a sin.

The pecularity of this sentence is both the use of the indefinite article, unum, and the non-Latinate form quintar, both of which translate the indefinite noun qinṭāran. The word has a complex history, reaching Arabic through Syriac, Syriac through Greek, and Greek through Latin, the original being centenarius, “containing a hundred” items or units.⁵⁶ The word (in its many forms) was widely applied in measurements of solids (including precious metals and coins), liquids and land. It is found in two earlier verses of the Qur’an: 3:14, 75. In the latter, it appears as a singular indefinite noun, qinṭārin, and it is meant to provide an antithesis to dīnārin (a hapax in the Qur’an), which in turn also represents another lexical borrowing, again via Syriac (dīnarā) via Greek (δηνάριον) from

 Peter Herz, “Sacrifice and Sacrificial Ceremonies of the Roman Imperial Army,” in Sacrifice in Religious Experience, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 98 – 100.  Lappin, ed., Alchoran latinus, I, 62 (Azoara VIII.50 – 52).  Michael Carter, “Foreign Vocabulary,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān, ed. Andrew Rippin and Jawid Mojaddedi, 2nd edn. (London: Wiley, 2017): 141; Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’an (Benoda: Bhattacharya, 1938), 243 – 44; Alphonse Mingana, Syriac Influence on the Style of the Ḳur’ān (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1927), 15.

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Latin (dēnārĭus); the rhetorical point of this verse is to contrast a large amount of (probably) money with a single coin. And this is just what the Alchoran latinus does: Sunt quidam legi subditi qui auri talentum sibi commendatum optime reddunt, quidam uero solidum commissum abnegant, de postulante se minime curare dicentes, et de deo scienter mentientes.⁵⁷ There are those under the law who will give back most excellently a talent of gold left in trust with them, some though deny a sou entrusted to them, saying they could not care less regarding the claim, and lying knowingly about God.

Here qinṭār is substituted by a similar measure, the talentum, familiar from classical and biblical sources, both as a measure of weight and as monetary wealth. Dīnārin is represented by solidus, another coin, originally of gold, but in the middle ages corresponding to a silver shilling (equal to 12 denarii):⁵⁸ either way, a small coin, compared to the vast wealth expressed by the talentum. At 3:14 (Azoara V.23 – 28), the use is rather more literary, as part of the enumeration of the good things in this life, which are contrasted in the following verse with the goods of paradise: Mulierum coitus et filiorum amplexus, et auri argentique pondus innumerum et equos bonos ac pecora simul et agriculturam, quę cuncta secularia sunt, quibus meliora deus timentibus eum pollicetur… God promised to those who fear him better than intercourse with women, and the embrace of sons, and the immense weight of gold and silver, and good horses and cattle, together with the care of fields, which are all things of this world…

“Pondus innumerum” (“immense weight”) provides the translation of the emphatic traductio of al-qanāṭīri al-muqanṭarati (3:14.8 – 9), where the plural noun is modified by the passive participle formed from the same root; these “qintar’d qintars” are further specified as being of gold and of silver (3:14.10 – 12) directly rendered as “auri angentique”. Thus we have two serviceable translations for qinṭār: pondus and talentum, both of which look back to the original uses of centenarium, to which qur’anic use was still connected. There was no obligation, then, upon the translators to use quintar in their translation of 4:20 —perfectly good alternatives existed, which, moreover, they knew.  Lappin, ed., Alchoran latinus, I, 48 (Azoara V.143 – 46; Q. 3:75).  Peter Spufford, Money and its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 7– 20, 397– 98. Not to be discounted is a wish to avoid too Christian a resonance with the use of denarii combined with talentum, which would ineluctably recall the parables of Christ.

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On the other hand, quintar responded to the sense of the word in postqur ’ anic Arabic, where the connexion with weight predominated since the qinṭār took its place within the system of official measures, being the equivalent of a hundred librae and so a hundredweight (equivalent to a very, very rough 50 kg), and which was adopted throughout the Islamic world and Europe. For example, regarding Spain: The standards for weight were the riṭl (in Spanish, arrelde) or pound, consisting of 16 ounces (ūkīya). Multiples of the riṭl were the quinṭār (in Spanish, quintal) of 100 pounds, and the rub’ (in Spanish, arroba), a quarter of a quinṭār, or 25 pounds.⁵⁹

The vernacular forms in Spain were quintal or quintar; however, neither the one nor the other is a Latin form, something recognized by the scribe of the Arsenal manuscript, who wrote quintar with a line above it. Such a sign was meant to indicate (in the manner of the use of italics in a modern text) that it was a foreign word, and so he was guilty of neither misspelling nor ignorance. The Latin form was either quintale or quintallus. ⁶⁰ Quintallus was a common word in documentation, and even generated its own feudal right, quintalgium, that of weighing heavier or larger goods (du Fresne 1887: VI, 614a).⁶¹ The inclusion of the indefinite article, “unum quintar”, also points towards a vernacular usage. Unus in the Alchoran is not used as an indefinite article; it is used to indicate “one”, as in “one God” or “one Creator”;⁶² “single”;⁶³ “singular, of the same species.”⁶⁴ Generally, unless there is a complex web of adjectives, unus follows the noun, unless it means “(just) one” (that is explicitly “fewer

 Joseph F. O’Callaghan, “Weights and Measures,” in Medieval Iberia, ed. E. Michael Gerli (London: Routledge, 2003), 846.  Ronald E. Zupko, A Dictionary for the Weights and Measures of the British Isles: From the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1985), 342.  Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (enlarged edn; Niort: L. Favre, 1883 – 87), VI, 614a.  “Creatorem unum” (Lappin, ed., Alchoran latinus, I, 16; Azoara I.219; Qur’an 2:213); “Creatorem non nisi solum unum incomprehensibilem et sapientem” (I, 47; Azoara V.122; 3:26); “Non est deus nisi unus” (I, 69; Azoara X.3; 4:87); “ego uero non alium nisi ipsum unum preter quem non est alius” (I, 95; Azoara XIV.35 – 36; 6:19); “cum ipsis preceptum sit non nisi deum unum adorare” (I, 136; Azoara XVIII.68; 9:32), etc.  Lappin, ed., Alchoran latinus, I, 307; Azoara XLV.56 (Qur’an 36:53): “per sonitum unum omnes ad deum reuocabitur,” translating wāḥidatan; “dei demonesque populus unus sunt” (I, 313; Azoara XLVII.98; 37:158).  Relating to animals mating, “par unum” (I, 307; Azoara XLV.56; 36:53; and I, 338; Azoara LII.12; 43:12).

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than two”).⁶⁵ Together with the impression of poor style created by the repetition of licet within the same phrase, compounded further by two earlier uses of licet in preceeding lines without any attempt at variation (I, 60; Azoara VIII.43, 40) — quite contrary to the normal proceeding of the necessarily accomplished stylists employed by Peter the Venerable—, we might suspect that this verse and its surroundings have not been fully revised by the translators. This re-use might be explained by a need for speed in working over a passage on Islamic religious law, whose strictures on divorce had no real Christian analogues, nor offered any opportunities for stylistic experimentation; or might be excused due to the translators’ having become inured to a vernacularized Latin produced by the locals, and therefore let the phrase pass even though they would never have produced such barbarism themselves. Either way, the passage offers us good reason to believe that Robert and Herman were working, in part, with already existent Latin materials; perhaps this was simply inevitable, given the speed with which they must have been expected to work. It is, however, noticeable that the text which would seem to have come from a Mozarabic translation is set within a section of law, rather than, say, moral exhortation. The cleric from Bazas, then, may well have read a set of excerpta, qur’anic and agraphic, which had been collected to provide a book of laws. If this is the case, then it cannot have been composed before 1085, since Mozarabs had no need for a translation into Latin of this material. In fact, the beginning of that century had seen a remarkable translation of their own canon law into Arabic, the Jamāʿa al-qawānīn al-muqaddas, authored by a team under the direction of one Binjinshīsh (i. e., Vincentius to the Latinist).⁶⁶ It is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that a profoundly Arabized Christian culture in Toledo may well have produced a handbook of Muslim laws and customs, in all probability thematically arranged, for the perusal of the mainly French clergy who had taken the reins of ecclesiastical governance.⁶⁷ Such a tome would thus be the ideal

 “Sintque duo uiri testes, uel unus uir duęque mulieres idonee” (I, 38; Azoara IV.89; 2.282); “unus idemque sermo” (I, 47; V.126; 3:64); “Deo iubente quantum due filie unus habeat filius” (I, 61; VIII.24– 25; 4:11).  Ana Echeverría Arsuaga, “Los marcos legales de la islamización: el procedimiento judicial entre cristianos arabizados y mozárabes,” Studia historica 27 (2009); Hannah E. Kassis, “Arabic-Speaking Christians in al-Andalus in an Age of Turmoil (Fifth/Eleventh Century until A.H. 479/A.D. 1085),” Al-Qanṭara 15 (1994), 414– 16; Jareer Abu-Haidar, “A Document of Cultural Symbiosis: Arabic MS. 1623 of the Escorial Library,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 119 (1987).  The choice to take an integrationalist line probably reflects both social custom in Toledo and the Mozarabs’ wish to head off any rigorist insistence on separation should representations be

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reading material for an itinerant French cleric who showed an interest in the local example of convivencia and a passing curiosity about the Muslim minority in the city, and would explain why the cleric of Bazas used such circumlocution to describe it. If this is the case, we do not need to look far for the individual who would have brought this text to Robert and Hermann’s notice: Peter of Toledo, who had presented Peter the Venerable with his translation of (or perhaps his ability to translate) the Apology of al-Kindī. No mention is made of the previous (and almost certainly partial) translation (or translator), because by then it was just a text, shorn of any living representative, and with no surviving author to engage in dialogue over the re-stylization of its phrases, as occurred with al-Kindī. It could be silently, or almost silently, assimilated. If the existence of this Mozarabic fragmentary Alchoran is credible, then, we have something of Peter the Venerable’s project in nuce already in Toledo. Given that all we have is Peter the Venerable’s account, it has been reasonable to assume that Peter of Toledo, well-meaning but unskilled, had required the input of the Cluniacs to bring his own, limited, project to fruition, and it further required the French abbot’s genius to seize on the Apology (or simply commission it), and use this as a springboard to produce an encylopedic window onto Islam through the translation of originally Islamic works. Thus D’Alverny, referring to the letter of al-Kindī: Pierre de Tolède, qui entreprit à la requête de Pierre le Vénérable la version de l’Apologie du Pseudo-Kindi, version révisée par le sécretaire de l’abbaye de Cluny, pour en améliorer le style…⁶⁸ … Pierre de Tolède entreprit de la traduire en latin pour répondre à l’appel de Pierre le Vénérable, qui cherchait à constituer une collection de textes propres à faire connaître l’Islam aux occidentaux.⁶⁹

This is very much the accepted story, and it is a good one; in focusing on Peter the Venerable’s actions, it appeals to those possessing sound judgement of character, appreciation of true nobility, and a vague but determined dislike of St Bernard of Clairvaux. Nevertheless, it has an unfortunate ring of French imperialism

made, by local or further-flung imams, to the bishop (who might, in any case, have been sympathetic to the idea of strict social divisions being instituted).  Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny, “Notes sur les traductions médiévales d’Avicenne,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire 27 (1952), 339.  D’Alverny, “La connaissance de l’Islam en Occident du IXe siècle au milieu du XIIe siècle,” in L’Occidente e l’Islam nell’alto medioevo, 2 vols. (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1964), vol. II: 594.

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to it, describing how the crude raw materials of a culturally backward out-group are processed, transforming them into luxury goods that could be duly appreciated in the properly Latinate north of Europe. It might, therefore, be worth our while wondering, beyond the normatively Franco-centric narrative, about Peter of Toledo’s own motives in establishing contact with the abbot of Cluny. He may well have been sent by his bishop —like a number of bishops in Castile at the time, a Cluny ex-alumnus—⁷⁰ who seems to have favoured the business of translation. Peter the Venerable’s fight against local heretics, the Petrobrusianos, may have reached their ears; possibly his connexions to Pierre Abélard encouraged them to think he would be favourable to their philosophico-theological position; or possibly he was seen as an important link to the intellectual circles of France, particularly that of Abélard and of the Victorines. Peter of Toledo, rather than being recruited as a subordinate advisor, may have hoped to recruit the French to a particularly Mozarabic project, having them provide a crucial sophistication to a range of texts which were geared to the intellectual struggle against Islam since they were written in Arabic and infused with Islamic as well as Christian thought. The Apology which he translated was certainly available in al-Andalus by the beginning of the century, since Petrus Alfonsi had made his own translation of the material —something which seems not to have registered with either Peter of Toledo or the French cohort.⁷¹ Yet that was not the only, or the best, anti-Islamic Arabic work being read in Toledo at the beginning of the twelfth century. There was also the famed dispute between Timothy I, Catholicos of the Church of the East, and the Caliph al-Mahdī.⁷² And there were also more contemporary contributions. The previous century had seen two seriously sophisticated polemics on

 Raymond de Sauvetat (archbishop of Toledo between 1126 – 50, after a number of years serving as bishop of Osma, 1109 – 25), had arrived in 1096 as one of the Cluniac recruits for the cathedral chapter of Toledo at the invitation of the Cluniac Bernard de Sauvetot (archbishop of Toledo 1085 – 1125). See Bernard F. Reilly, “Raimond, Archbishop of Toledo,” in Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, ed. E. Michael Gerli (New York: Routledge, 2003), 692.  It goes without saying that Petrus Alfonsi is not to be identified with Peter of Toledo. There is really nothing to add to Fernando González Muñoz, Exposición y refutación del Islam. La versión latina de las Cartas de al-Hāshimī y al-Kindī (A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña, 2005), lxiii–lxiv.  Thomas E. Burman, “Tathlīth al-waḥdānīya and the Twelfth-Century Andalusian-Christian Approach to Islam,” in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam: A Book of Essays, ed. John Tolan (New York: Garland, 1996), 124 n. 32. The work is preserved in a probably fourteenth-century manuscript which was in modern times first attested at Kairouan; judging by the manuscript description, this is a recognizably Christian work, as it contains no Islamic rebuttals of the material; the texts were thus most probably brought over in the twelfth century during the explusions and subsequently copied.

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Islam. The later one was probably the work now known by the title of its thirteenth-century Latin translation, the Liber denudationis, a complex and highlyengaged refutation of Islam.⁷³ This was preceded by an ingenious diplomatic missive written in collaboration with a Cluniac-papal emissary to Zaragoza in 1074, which received an immediate response from the leading Ash’arite in al-Andalus.⁷⁴ This letter, like the Mozarabic works from the following century, is only preserved by its inclusion in subsequent Muslim refutations: despite the works being encased within a pro-Muslim discourse, and despite the possibility of subsequent garbling or mis-direction of what was being said,⁷⁵ we should recognize that, at this point, it was Christians who were writing against Islam, rather than defending Christianity from a culturally dominant Muslim critique; and it was Muslims who were forced into a defence of their faith. Of course, to engage Muslim intellectuals, these Christian texts were inevitably written in Arabic, were of course drenched in qur’anic concepts and phrasing, made obligatory reference to the techniques of Islamic systematic theology, kalām, and necessarily engaged with Ash’arite thought together with, perforce, Muslim norms of devotion and behaviour; but were no longer being written by individuals who lived in the Islamic commonwealth. In other words, these Christian Arabic authors were no longer bound by the multifaceted constraints of dhimmitude. A sense of the confidence felt by Mozarabs in assailing Islam is presented in the vignette provided by the Cordoban scholar, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad alKhazrajī, who was a precarious resident in Toledo between 1145/6 – 47, perhaps as a captive, although more probably a refugee.⁷⁶ A “priest of the Goths”  The general assumption is that the work dates to after the conquest of Toledo in 1085; Thomas E. Burman, Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050 – 1200 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 52– 53.  Abdelmagid Turki, “Le lettre du ‘Moine de France’ à al-Muqtadir billāh, roi de Saragosse, et la réponse d’al-Bāŷī, le faqīh andalou,” Al-Andalus 31 (1966).  All of the texts have survived as single-manuscript copies. With only one witness to the text, it is extremely difficult to identify errors and lacunae, to separate conscious alteration from uninterested and careless copying by scribes whose concerns were evidently not in preserving the precious testimony of Christian thought in Arabic.  For the discrepency between the sources on this matter, Fernando de la Granja, “Milagros españoles en una obra polémica musulmana (el ‘Kitāb Maqāmi‘ al-ṣulbān’ del Jazrayī),” Al-Andalus 33 (1968), 322– 24; Maribel Fierro, “Christian Success and Muslim Fear in Andalusī Writings during the Almoravid and Almohad Periods,” in Dhimmis and Others: Jews and Christians and the World of Classical Islam, ed. Uri Rubin and David Wasserstein (Jerusalem: Eisenbrauns for Tel Aviv University, 1997), 169 n. 72. As with many intellectuals, the arrival of the Almohads required a creative re-interpretation of biography to allow their, or their children’s, re-insertion into Alhmohad structures of governance. For Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ’s reinvention as a supporter of the Almohads by his son, see Camilo Gómez-Rivas, “Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ (d. 544/1149),” in Islamic Legal

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would assail Muslims with a denunciation of Islam as they entered the city. He encouraged further discussions in the city and even wrote a letter, now known as the Risālat al-Qūṭī, to al-Khazrajī, who had taken on the role of theological advisor to the locals. Al-Khazrajī, however, did not reply to the missive, preferring to leave this long refutation in the hands of his local co-religionaries as, perhaps, a source-book for further disputation. Or as a weighty tome to reassure them that they did not need to engage in further disputation. Given his damning assessment of some of the locals (“unintelligent people”),⁷⁷ the latter is the more likely. Thus, roughly contemporarily with Peter of Toledo’s translation of al-Kindī’s risāla, a well-placed priest⁷⁸ was leading a mission to those Muslims who came as merchants or artisans to the city, asking them questions about Islam they could not answer (even when they had been coached), and encouraging them to convert to Christianity. This was someone, of course, whom Peter of Toledo would have known well. Other works from the twelfth century are unfortunately not as easy to date, as they are not mentioned by al-Khazrajī —this does not indicate that they are later than his Maqāmiʿ al-ṣulbān, since that was ostensibly motivated by alQūṭī’s direct address to him— and like al-Qūṭī, these works show a double engagement, not only with the traditional themes of apologetic in Arabic, but also with a Latin tradition of philosophical reflexion which had been rapidly assimilated. Indeed, with al-Qūṭī, and his Arabic calques on Latin words,⁷⁹ one has the sense of a truly bilingual author, ensuring his Mozarabic Christianity is also a reflection of a wider, Catholic world.⁸⁰ Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists, ed. Oussama Arabi, David Powers and Susan Spectorsky (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 328.  De la Granja, “Milagros,” 327.  Important enough for al-Khazrajī to refuse to reply directly, fearing the consequences. In other words, this was neither a local hot-head with a grudge nor a recent convert from Islam with a point to prove, but a significant player in Toledo’s ecclesiastical politics.  Khalil Samir, “Maqāmī‘ al-ṣulbān li-Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd aṣ-Ṣamad al-Khazrajī (519/1125 – 582/ 1186), éd. critique par ʿAbd al-Magīd ash-Sharfī, Tunis, 1975,” Islamochristiana 6 (1980), 253.  There has been much debate over the status of the text, since there are schoolboy errors in its presentation of Christian doctrine: see, for example, Samir, “Maqāmī‘ al-ṣulbān,” 245 – 48; Burman, Religious Polemic, 66, 69; Charles L. Tieszin, Christian Identity amid Islam in Medieval Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 216; Diego R. Sarrió Cucarella, Muslim-Christian Polemics across the Mediterranean: The Splendid Replies of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (d. 684/1285) (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 92. It would seem that the text itself was taken down by a student from al-Khazrajī’s lectures, and so the Risāla al-Qūṭī was presumably reconstructed from memory. As Fierro, “Christian Success,” 170 – 71, points out, al-Khazrajī selects a number of “miracles” for criticism in his own, Islamicized, version of them, and so the same may have ocurred with examples of Christian doctrine. Perhaps more importantly from a social point of view, familiarity with Christian apol-

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Our knowledge of the other works from the twelfth century depends on their discussion, in greater or lesser detail, by al-Qurṭubī in the first two decades of the thirteenth.⁸¹ Al-Qurṭubī mentions three works, one of which in passing, and which is now lost. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ġ·ṣ·n⁸² was the author of this apology, which, according to al-Qurṭubī, was written at the instigation of “the bishops”.⁸³ It would be tempting to suggest that these bishops are the new French, mainly Cluniac, hierarchs, continuing Cluny’s previous century’s engagement, as seen with the emissary to Zaragoza. Nevertheless, it is clear that there was a functioning episcopate in al-Andalus, and, after the waves of expulsions of the twelfth century, also a functioning episcopate “in exile”, in Salé, Mekinès and Fez.⁸⁴ As the Church of the East found, under Timothy I, presence within an Islamic empire eased the possibilities of expansion and intellectual engagement rather than imposed an inevitable decrease and diminution. The Mozarabic copy of Timothy’s dispute with the caliph is bound with another as-yet unidentified apologetic work, very probably from the Mozarabic milieu.⁸⁵ Fortunately, the other two works are cited in rather more detail by al-Qurṭubī, and this aids somewhat with their dating. The earlier may well be the Muṣḥaf al-ʿālam al-kā’in (“Book of the World that Is”) by Aghushtīn, whose use of a formulation to define the Trinity which had become popular in French schools during the latter part of the second decade of the twelfth century would put his writing in the 1120s or 1130s. The dating is necessarily hazy, since the formulation used (that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were defined as being Power, Knowledge, Will), seems to have been first used by Hugh of St Victor,

ogetics had become part of a Muslim educational curriculum, indicating the seriousness of the threat that it posed.  Abū l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUmar al-Anṣārī l-Qurṭubī (1182– 1258), whose transferred his residence to Egypt rather than return to al-Andalus after his ḥajj of 1220. The title of the work in question is often given as al-I‘lām bi-mā fi dīn al-naṣārā min alfasād wa-l-awhām wa-iẓhār maḥāsin dīn al-Islām wa-ithbāt nubūwat nabiyyinā (Information about the corruptions and delusions of the religion of the Christians and presentation of the merits of the religion of Islam and the establishment of the prophethood of our prophet Muḥammad), atlhough it went under other titles as well: Al-i’lām bi-wafayāt al-a‘yān (“Knowledge of the evanescence of the not-Unseen”).  It is not clear how the final name should be vocalized; possibly a form derived from gaza (magpie)?  Burman, “Tathlīth al-waḥdānīya,” 78.  Note Bishop Miguel ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, for example, who made a copy of the Arabic translation of the Gospels whilst in Fez between 1126 and 1137: Vincent Lagardère, Les Almoravides (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989), 114.  Burman, “Tathlīth al-waḥdānīya,” 114.

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taken up by Abelard, and redefined by Hugh in distinction to Abelard’s thought.⁸⁶ The attraction of the formulation was that it moved away from the apologetically-fruitless language of hypostases and substance and instead offered a means of describing a conceptually robust divine unity whilst affirming the divine attributes —and also, crucially, limited those attibutes to three. The nomenclature, then, enabled a significant advance on previous eastern Christian attempts to justify the Trinity in terms of the attributes of Allāh. It had, in other words, been long evident where the soft underbelly of Ash’arite theology lay, but it had just not proven possible to launch a particularly penetrating attack. The Ash’arites accepted that God might have attributes which did not detract from His divine unity —a position developed not in dispute with Christians but with fellow Muslims. And although Christians could see how similar the Ash’arite position was to their own beliefs in those three hypostases which, they insisted, nevertheless did not take anything away from the divine unity, traditional Trinitarian formulations could be brushed away by Muslim thinkers, basing that rejection on those formulations’ seeming arbitrariness, either in the terms chosen to characterize the Trinity, or in their limiting those terms to three and only three and no more.⁸⁷ So whilst the Ash’arites might be forced to cede ground on the basic idea that the Trinity could be considered something like that which they considered the divine attributes to be (and which in turn depended upon the deeply-engrained Islamic devotion to the “names of Allāh” and the constellation of beliefs which surrounded the “uncreated” Qur’an), it was very much a Pyrrhic victory for the Christians, as Muslim controversialists could still ridicule a belief in the Trinity as something illogical, and therefore unworthy of both God and the belief of a rational being; any concession Muslim thinkers might make was thus almost completely harmless, and could be easily turned around to stress how much better the Muslim position was. The Abelardian-Victorine formulation, though, addressed the question in a much more fundamental fashion, producing a basic trinity of relational concepts

 Dominique Poirel, “Scholastic Reasons, Monastic Meditations and Victorine Conciliations: The Question of the Unity and Plurality of God in the Twelfth Century,” in The Oxford Handbook on the Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 176 – 77. As Constant J. Mews, “Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard,” in A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. Brian P. McGuire (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 146, points out, both thinkers were developing an idea whose origin probably lay with William of Champeaux.  David Thomas, Christian Doctrines in Islamic Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 134.

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from which all other attributes were derived.⁸⁸ Thus the Ash’arite attributes could be shown to ultimately derive from the Trinity, and, since they derived from it, also attest to it. It is worth noting at this point how much effort Mozarabs put in to the business of sifting Islamic belief and qur’anic expression so that what was acceptable could be absorbed within their expressions of Christianity.⁸⁹ In marked contrast to the thundering denunciations that one would expect from un-Arabized Christians in the North, this approach to Islam was careful and thought-through. Thus, for example, al-Qūṭī presented key parts of Islam as propadeutic to Christianity.⁹⁰ We can witness the same approach from Aghushtīn, but at a much higher intellectual level. The adoption of the formula which came from France, then, represented a significant advance. Al-Bāqillānī, the great star of Malikite jurisprudence and Ash’arite theology of the end of the tenth century, had laboured quite unsatisfactorily to reject the basic similarity between the idea of the Trinity and Ash’arite attributes.⁹¹ If we move forward to the beginning of the thirteenth, al-Qurṭubī was simply forced to concede defeat on this point, and so was forced into distinguishing “philosophical” Christians like Aghushtīn from others,⁹² such as the author of the text he cites in its seeming entirety, the Tathlīth al-waḥāniyya, which was also dependent upon the Abelardian definition of the Trinity. Al-Qurṭubī criticized this latter work for its sub-standard Arabic and the looseness of its terminology and method. This is undoubtedly correct, but to characterize the work in this way may be just to miss the point. The title, with its knowing evocation of Almohad self-identification,⁹³ expresses a certain con Jason Busic, “Christian Theology in Arabic and the Mozarabs of Medieval Toledo: Primary Texts, Main Themes, and Potential Problems,” in A Companion to Medieval Toledo: Reconsidering the Canons, ed. Yasmine Beale-Rivaya and J. Busic (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 149.  This is something found reflected in Abelard’s thought of the time as well, and his doctrine of the Trinity was specifically designed to be appealing to natural reason: Poirel, “Scholastic Reasons,” 170.  Tieszin, Christian Identity, 208; and, further, that the Tathlīth al-waḥadānīya suggested that the basis of Islam was a misapprehension of Christian doctrine.  Thomas, Christian Doctrines, 131.  Busic, “Christian Theology,” 155.  Tieszin, Christian Identity, 206, “an audaciously succinct denial of the Almohad’s fervent belief in God’s oneness”; Burman, Religious Polemic, 79: its “very title is a brash and etymologically apt denial of the passionate belief in God’s absolute oneness which informed Ibn Tūmart’s movement (al-Muwaḥḥidūn, those who affirm the oneness of God’).” The title has been variously translated as “Trinitizing the Unity” (Burman) or “The Trebling of the Oneness” (Clint Hacken̄ al-waḥ dāniyya (The Trebling of the Oneness): Translated from Arabic,” in A Comburg, “Tathlith panion to Medieval Toledo). Tathlīth, however, does contain a direct reference to the Trinity (althālūthu); perhaps “The Singularity’s Threefolding” might be a suitable mid-point between the

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fidence in the solidity of the new theology and, with its “sub-standard” (leg.: demotic) phrasing, was reaching out to a very different readership than the highlytrained greybeards who appreciated the rigour of Aghushtīn’s prose. The evident anti-Almohad tone would suggest a date sometime in the 1150s, as a response to the upheavals brought by the Almohads and their own missionary zeal. Aghushtīn would be correspondingly earlier, as we have said, writing in the 1120s or ’30s.⁹⁴ Over this period, then, we see a modulation of approaches to Islam: highlevel theological engagement via kalām-type reasoning; personal approach and dialogue; popular works aiming at a less sophisticated audience. One of the particularly interesting elements of the Tathlīth al-waḥāniyya, amongst its compilation of the greatest hits of previous Mozarabic polemic, is its concentration on Muslim marriage law.⁹⁵ This has been compared to later Latin “obsession” with the salacious details of one hadith or another regarding Muḥammad’s behaviour. This, though, shows how far an approach which tasks itself with describing a “(false) image of Islam,” begun many years ago by Norman Daniel, has dominated our critical analyses of these texts to the exclusion of an inquiry after the specific type of audience to whom the texts were addressed. It seems to me that an approach which, in general, approves of large segments of Muslim practice and culture, and yet aims to demonstrate that Christianity is superior in key areas is aiming directly for conversions to Arabic Christianity. Conversions, particularly high-profile conversions, were a feature of the times;⁹⁶ the chaotically-oscillating pendulum of military advance and retreat on the peninsula after the implosion of the Caliphate in 1030 had provided an opportunity for expansion, conversion, and a spectacular growth in self-confidence amongst the Mozarabs. In reprising the theme of the inequity of Muslim marriage law from the Liber denudationis, the author was most probably directing himself towards a female audience, making a conversion to Christianity not only attractive, but

two translations. The important point, though, is the rather mocking reference to the Almohad credal insistence. And disaffection with the Almohads was not limited to Christians, either in alAndalus or in Christendom.  My assumption regarding the relative dating of these two Christian works is that the highlevel assimilation of French Trinitarian theology represented by Aghushtīn (Busic, “Christian Theology,” 154) would have come first, and it then have spread at a more popular level once its efficacy had been tested. The proclamation of victory over Muslim interlocutors which is found in Tathlīth al-waḥadānīya after the (Abelardian) definition of the Trinity (Busic, “Christian Theology,” 154), again, would be relying on the more serious and structured arguments of Aghushtīn and, very possibly, others.  Which was a focus of the wide-ranging Liber denudationis (Burman, Religious Polemic).  Burman, Religious Polemic, 53.

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decidedly advantageous. The females in question may have been the wives and daughters of Muslims in the hinterland of Toledo, whose families may have been there for generations; or they might well have been recent arrivals, refugees from the Almohads, since dislocation is often a powerful driver of conversions.⁹⁷ In an interestingly hybrid approach, then, the Mozarabs were offering a Christianity as close to Islam as possible, and, where one differed from the other, the Christian option was presented as a fulfillment of or an improvement over the Islamic. Evidently this is not the whole story, but it is important to stress that Mozarabic Christianity was expansive and confident, and filled with individuals of quite extraordinary abilities. It was also —as the tile of Tathlīth al-waḥāniyya reminds us — particularly sensitive to changes in the Islam of al-Andalus, and able and willing to capitalize on political and theological shifts. It was, though, a form of “Latin” Christianity, and would eventually be absorbed within the wider European world. The eventual atrophy of this remarkably interesting current of LatinoArabic Catholicism should not, however, blind one to its vibrancy between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. And it is this picture that we should have of the bilingual community that lay behind Peter of Toledo when he met Peter the Venerable. The Mozarab could present the Burgundian with a range of confutations of Islam, produced at a moment of intellectual excellence and, certainly, of enormous interest. The earliest of these authentically Mozarab productions, the Liber denudationis, was translated in the thirteenth century, and formed the backbone of Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s Libellus contra legem sarracenorum, combined with some variouslysourced elements of the Corpus cluniacense. ⁹⁸ Riccoldo preferred the Liber denudationis, however, to the al-Kindī, and so, it would seem, did later medieval readers as a whole, since the numbers of copies of Riccoldo’s work simply dwarf the surviving manuscripts of the Risāla. The latter is a rollickingly good read; but the Liber denudationis was much more suitable in its type of serious theological analysis. Peter the Venerable, in other words, backed the wrong horse in getting Peter of Toledo to translate al-Kindī rather than the Liber denudationis or —even better — Aghushtīn. The question as to why he chose the already passé al-Kindī over the moderns is filled with hypotheticals. Certainly he wished for a Latin-authored

 The fundamental study is Rubem Alves, O Sospiro dos Oprimidos (São Paulo: Edições Paulinas, 1984).  See Anthony John Lappin, “Riccoldo’s Use of the Corpus cluniacense in the Libellus contra legem sarracenorum,” in Riccoldo da Monte di Croce: Essays, ed. Kurt Villads Jensen and Davide Scotto (Stockholm: Viterhetsakademin, forthcoming).

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refutation,⁹⁹ and so chosing a modern Mozarab author would render such a task nugatory. Yet this does not really answer why he should have desired a Latin refutation, why he should have set aside works that could be happily translated into Latin, or even sent directly to the Crusader states and used there. Peter’s reason may well have been also the reason for which Peter of Toledo approached the abbot of Cluny in the first place. Pierre de Montboissier’s presence in the peninsula, by any standards, was a major ecclesiastical event: the abbot of what was still the most important monastery in Christendom travelling through northern Spain with his own staff, revitalizing contacts with Cluniac monasteries en route; an abbot who was known to be interested in theological and political questions; an abbot who presided over a monastic confederation with resources second to none. Mozarabic authors had profitted enormously from French theology, and it is possible that magister Petrus Toletanus, as the abbot refers to him, had come looking to establish or develop ties, perhaps even direct contacts, with some of the leading lights of the French intellectual scene. And one of those, of course, was Abelard. Mozarabic theology, as we have noted, was drenched in Abelardian Trinitarianism. Mozarabic controversialists would, of course, have wanted more ideas along the same lines, more adventurous thinking which could be massaged into their own kalām. But that, in 1142– 43, was a problem, particularly the connexion, any connexion, to Abelard. The latter had only just been accused and convicted of heresy by Bernard of Clairvaux for his Trinitarian theology before the Council of Sens.¹⁰⁰ Given our quasi-Abelardian triad of qudrah–ʿilm–irādah, or power–knowledge– will, most troubling was Bernard’s accusation that Abélard taught heretically

 The reasons for which I have explored elsewhere: see Anthony John Lappin, “On the Genesis and Formation of the Corpus cluniacense,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021).  Constant J. Mews, “The Council of Sens (1141): Abelard, Bernard and the Fear of Social Upheaval,” Speculum 77 (2002); Gilbert Boss, “Le combat d’Abélard,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 31 (1988); Mews, “The Lists of Heresies Imputed to Peter Abelard,” Revue bénédictine 95 (1985); Lothar Kolmer, “Abaelard und Bernhard von Clairvaux in Senss,” Zeitschfrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, kanonistische Abeteilung 98 (1981); Jean Leclercq, “Autour de la correspondance de S. Bernard,” in Sapientiae doctrina: mélanges de théologie et de littérature médiévales offerts à Dom Hildebrand Bascour OSB (Louvain: Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 1980); Thomas J. Renna, “Abelard versus Bernard: An Event in Monastic History,” Cîteaux: commentarii cistercienses 29 (1976); David E. Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard: The Influence of Abelard’s Thought in the Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 103 – 42.

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that “only the Father was omnipotent,” an accusation that had dogged him since his condemnation at Soissons twenty years earlier.¹⁰¹ The Council of Sens took place at the end of May 1141, and by mid-July Innocent II had quashed Abelard’s hopes of appealing to Rome by imposing perpetual silence upon him. The case was closed, and Peter the Venerable could arrange, in August, a “reconciliation” of the theologian with the Cistercian, by which Bernard promised to desist from preaching against Abelard, and the latter agreed to become a Cluniac (and thereby definitively cast aside his teaching in the schools), a solution which also fulfilled the pope’s determination that Abelard should be enclosed within a monastery.¹⁰² Fortunately, the further determination —that Abelard’s writings be burned— did not come to pass.¹⁰³ The excommunication, thanks to Peter the Venerable, was quietly lifted.¹⁰⁴ Bernard may not have been formally notified of this last act of clemency, but he had undoubtedly triumphed, and the publication of his own role in the affair via the circulation of his letters to Rome created the influential “image… of an arrogant logician hostile to a great man of God.”¹⁰⁵ Nevertheless, Bernard’s actions still unleashed a storm of controversy,¹⁰⁶ and left a number of cardinals decidedly unhappy at his behaviour.¹⁰⁷ Peter the Venerable was already fire-fighting Cluny’s difficulties with Bernard, and it is highly unlikely that he would wish to provoke him further, at a point when the Cistercian was in the ascendent, having gained the unquestioned backing of the pope. With whom, it should be remembered, Peter would also be required to intercede on behalf of Alfonso VII in the crucial matter of the election of the royal candidate to the see of Compostela, and on which his visit to Spain was very much predicated.¹⁰⁸

 Mews, “Bernard of Clairvaux,” 146 – 47, 165. Poirel, “Scholastic Reasons,” 170 is apt: “these theses do not reflect the real doctrine of Abelard, but rather manifest a real difficulty of his accusers in understanding it.” Jan M. Ziolkowsky, The Letters of Peter Abelard: Beyond the Personal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 84, thought that Sens might be in part a riposte to Abelard’s criticism of Cistercian innovations in liturgical observance.  Mews, “The Council of Sens,” 381– 82.  Mews, “Bernard of Clairvaux,” 167.  Mews, “Bernard of Clairvaux,” 168.  Constant J. Mews, The Lost Love-Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 174  E. Rozanne Elder, “Bernard and William of Saint Thierry,” in A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. Brian P. McGuire (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 122.  Mews, “The Council of Sens,” 371.  Charles Julian Bishko, “Peter the Venerable’s Journey to Spain,” Studia anselmiana 40 (1956), 170.

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Innocent II died towards the end of September 1143, and was succeeded by Master Guido di Castello as Celestine II. Guido was a good friend of Peter the Venerable, and an admirer of the recently deceased Abelard. But by the time Guido took the reins, the die was cast for the course of Peter the Venerable’s translation project, and the Corpus cluniacense had been conceived. So just as theological developments in France produced a remarkable breakthrough in Christian-Muslim debate, so ecclesiastical and political developments in France cut off those advances, and Peter the Venerable felt that, whilst some fragments could be used, after some rigorous prettification (the museum-piece of al-Kindī, the fragments of Qur’an translation), the work would have to be begun again.

Conclusion Our focus has widened somewhat from purely philological questions to take in a post-colonial vision of the relations around the first translations of the Qur’an in western Europe. In doing so, I hope to have drawn a more complete picture of the motivations of those taking part, their mutual interests and also significant differences. The slow and irretrievable break-down of the Islamic commonwealth in Iberia over a couple of centuries trapped many Christians in descending spirals of violence and social discrimination. It also, with the slow advance of Christian power, opened a space for some of them to establish an Arabic Christianity no longer in the oppressive shadow of the mosque, and to look towards its growth and expansion, working on both the intelligentsia and common folk. This was hardly an exercise in sowing the wild sea; part of their target was to have families revert to Christianity who had been cajoled or menaced into “accepting” Islam during the ups-and-downs of the previous century, and would by then have reason to wonder whether their forebears’ choice had really brought the benefit it should, since the religion accepted for the sake of peace had continued with its inveterate internecine wars and veered from extremism to disaster. Such, we might say, was the promising mission-field that spread out before the Mozarabs. The geopolitical reality in which they found themselves, however, was not quite as propitious. Earlier experimentation with Mozarabic bishops on the frontier had given way to an open-armed welcome of French monastics on the part of the Christian kings. Some of the motivation behind episcopal recruitment from the north was a desire to modernize, to enter into tight relations with European Christianity, to develop the right diplomatic channels, and tidy up internal ecclesial arrangements. Some of the motivation, though, was based on a realism about how the newly conquered lands would be settled: with Latin Christians from the north, Christians who bore a different cul-

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ture and required a suitable, episcopally-led organization to survive on the frontier. The Mozarabs, too, were intellectually dependent upon Latin Christianity; the remarkable ferment of ideas in twelfth-century France allowed them spectacular apologetic break-throughs. But those multiple dependencies also limited them as northern ecclesiastical politics determined their ability to interact with and guide the interests of the French with whom they engaged. Thus the initial wave of French bishops to arrive in the late eleventh century probably gave rise to the first Mozarabic translation of Islamic material into Latin; Peter the Venerable’s visitation unearthed some traditional texts for Latinate readers (and would thus play a vastly important role in the understanding of Islam in Europe over the succeeding centuries), but left aside more actual and innovative work by the Mozarabs themselves. And so, rather than being translated, preserved and transmitted in numerous manuscripts throughout the middle ages and becoming required reading at the major councils —as Peter the Venerable’s Corpus cluniacense did— we are left with unsatisfactory and scattered fragments, sometimes submerged in other works, as occurred with the early Mozarabic translation of parts of the Qur’an and the Liber denudationis, or otherwise having to be pieced together from hostile and garbled refutations.

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Davide Scotto

Projecting the Qur’an into the Past. A Reassessment of Juan de Segovia’s Disputes with Muslims in Medina del Campo (1431) I see it –the past– as an avenue lying behind; a long ribbon of scenes, emotions. There at the end of the avenue still, are the garden and the nursery. Instead of remembering here a scene and there a sound, I shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen in to the past. Virginia Woolf, A Sketch of the Past, 1939

1 On the Prehistory of the Trilingual Qur’an The name of Juan de Segovia (1393 – 1458) is, among medievalists and scholars of Islam, inseparably intertwined with the innovative and unfortunately lost trilingual edition of the Qur’an in Arabic, Castilian and Latin which he accomplished at the Savoy monastery of Aiton, between 1455 and 1456, in collaboration with Yça Gidelli (Yça de Gebir), faqih and qadi of the aljama of the city of Segovia.¹ The trilingual Qur’an, which in recent years has been investigated thanks to the extensive Latin preface that survives,² represents nevertheless only the latest

 On Yça Gidelli’s biography and offices, see Gerard A. Wiegers, Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors (Leiden: Brill, 1994).  José Martínez Gázquez, “El Prólogo de Juan de Segobia al Corán (Qur’án) trilingüe (1456),” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 38 (2003); Leyla Rouhi, “A Fifteenth-Century Salamancan’s Pursuit of Islamic Studies,” in Under the Influence. Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, ed. Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’ān in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 178 – 188; Ulli Roth, “Juan of Segovia’s Translation of the Qur’an,” Al-Qanṭara 35 (2014); Davide Scotto, “‘De pe a pa’. Il Corano trilingue di Juan de Segovia (1456) e la conversione pacifica dei musulmani,” in Storie e miti di conciliazione, ed. Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti and Chiara Pilocane, monographic issue of Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 48 (2012). Note: This essay is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (SyG grant agreement no. 810141), project EuQu “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” I expresss my gratitude to Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers for the fruitful comments they made on this paper during the Madrid conference (5 – 6 May, 2021) and, later on, on an earlier draft of the essay. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-005

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achievement of a quest for Islam and the conversion of Muslims that goes back, in Segovia’s perception, to “thirty years” earlier, that is, to the decade in which he worked as a magister in theologia at the University of Salamanca and a diplomatic advisor to Juan II of Castile (1422– 33). If one orders the available sources chronologically, it becomes clear that Segovia started to tackle theologically the existence and dissemination of Islam for the first time in his Repetitio de fide catholica from 1427. This extensive annual lecture, given before students and colleagues of the University of Salamanca, aimed to illustrate the prerogatives of “true religion” (vera religio), showing that the characteristics of the secta Mahumeti are not sufficient to consider its religious proposal as authentic and legitimate, as was the case for Judaism. The shortcomings of the Islamic “sect” are demonstrated by reworking the twelve “pillars of faith” (fundamenta fidei) discussed in a non-systematic way in Augustine’s De civitate Dei —from the power of prophesying (prenunciacio prophetica) to the production of authentic miracles (claritas miraculorum)— and in the short yet influential description of the birth and the dissemination of Islam provided in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa contra gentiles, where Muslims are depicted as “bestial men coming from the desert” who rely on lust and violence to spread their new faith.³ In the section on Islam of the Repetitio de fide catholica, the Qur’an is never mentioned. There is no trace of its contents nor of its existence as a law or a book. When reading this university lecture alone, one has the clear impression that Segovia, at the time of his teaching at Salamanca (1422– 33), was completely unaware of both the existence of the Qur’an and possible translations of it into Latin. In the same months of 1427, however, during a diplomatic mission to Rome on behalf of the University of Salamanca, he was urged by the “patriarch of Constantinople” to search “in Spain” (in Hispania) for a copy of the Qur’an that, apparently, could not be found in Italy.⁴ We do not know whether in the following

 See Davide Scotto, “Inseguire l’islam tra memoria e teologia. Spigolature su Juan de Segovia intorno al 1427,” in Ottant’anni da maestro. Saggi degli allievi offerti a Giorgio Cracco, ed. Daniela Rando, Paolo Cozzo and Davide Scotto (Roma: Viella, 2014), 106 – 26; Anne Marie Wolf, Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace: Christians and Muslims in the Fifteenth Century (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 51– 59.  See Scotto, “Inseguire l’islam tra memoria e teologia,” 126 – 36. In this study, I showed that Segovia could not have met the Greek patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph II, in Rome, as had been argued until then in scholarship. I suggested, on the contrary, that the request of the patriarch must have necessarily reached Rome by letter, since Joseph II was then in Constantinople and traveled to the Italian Peninsula only in 1437. Recently, Wolfgang Decker and Daniela Rando, whom I thank very much for pointing this out to me, have questioned with convincing reasons that by “patriarch of Constantinople” Segovia referred to Joseph II, claiming rather that the al-

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years, once he returned to Salamanca, Segovia actually set forth in search of a Qur’an copy. Between December 1431 and late February 1433 he was in Rome again for other diplomatic commitments on behalf of his university, but this mission has no connection, as far as we know, to his nascent interest in Islam. We do know, however, that between these two stays in Rome, Segovia was engaged in the diplomatic service for King Juan II. Travelling with the king’s court across Castile allowed him to participate in a series of discussions with Muslim interlocutors who belonged to the entourage of the Nasrid infante, Yūsuf IV ibn al-Mawl. These conversations with Muslims were held in late summer and early autumn 1431 between Cordoba and Medina del Campo, where the Castilian court temporarily settled down to manage the war negotiations with the Nasrids and administer the kingdom’s ordinary business. It was there that Segovia, for the first time, put to the test his theological skills and the embryonic knowledge of Islam acquired at university in oral confrontation with a Muslim. We shall see how, according to his own testimony, in Cordoba he found no Muslims prepared or willing to discuss “Islamic law”, namely the Qur’an, with a Christian expert in theology, and how, on the contrary, with the learned Muslims Segovia met one month later in Medina del Campo the Qur’an was apparently at the core of the discussion, being quoted several times both in general terms and regarding specific suras and ayas. Juan de Segovia’s knowledge and use of the Qur’an in the interfaith disputes of Medina del Campo, along with the facts and theological arguments underlying them, are the focus of this study. Following the groundbreaking notes on the Castilian disputes by the Franciscan Arabist Darío Cabanelas Rodríguez,⁵ three scholars have recently focused, from different research perspectives, on specific aspects of these encounters. Anne Marie Wolf addressed the discussions of Cordoba and Medina del Campo in light of the presence of Mudejars in Castile at the time of Segovia’s teaching at the University of Salamanca and his service for Juan II.⁶ Ulli Roth highlighted the relationship between the theological issues raised during the Medina del Campo dispute and an extensive section on the doctrine of the Trinity (Intelligentiae ad exponendum trinitatis mysterium) in De gladio divini spiritus mittendo in corda Sarracenorum, a monumental treatise on the peaceful conversion of Muslims that Segovia wrote after the fall of Constantinople, beginning in Sep-

lusion must be to the Latin patriarch of Constantinople. The matter deserves further investigations.  Darío Cabanelas Rodríguez, Juan de Segovia y el problema islámico (Granada: Universidad de Granada y el legado andalusí, 2007 [anastatic edition based on the original 1952 edition]), 100 – 7.  Wolf, Juan de Segovia, 61– 94.

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tember 1453.⁷ Finally, Tristan Vigliano, from a literary-historical perspective, focused on the dialectical and provocative lexicon used by Segovia with one of the Muslim interlocutors in Medina del Campo and the impact of his account of the dispute on possible Christian readers.⁸ While taking into account the results of these works, a careful and systematic analysis of the available sources shows that Segovia’s narrative of the Castilian disputes requires a critical reading that goes into more depth and, at the same time, beyond the letter of the text. The events and the arguments related to the Castilian disputes, in fact, can be historically reconstructed only through the reports of the events that Segovia himself wrote twenty years later, during his retreat at the monastery of Aiton following the dissolution of the Council of Basel (1449 – 58). Only then did he write extensively about the disputes of 1431, both in De gladio divini spiritus of 1453 and in the equally extensive epistles on Islam sent to Nicholas of Cusa and Jean Germain in 1454 and 1455 respectively, which elaborate and develop the arguments he had made in the earlier treatise on conversion.⁹ There is no doubt that the issues addressed in the Castilian disputes reflect some of the theological topics that animated discussions between Christian and Muslim scholars in the Iberian Peninsula of the late Middle Ages.¹⁰ While the genre of imaginary dialogues between two or three religious representatives — Christians, Jews, Muslims, or “pagan” philosophers— reflects an artificial and stylized literary reworking of interfaith discussions of abstract character, which can take place anywhere and at any time,¹¹ Segovia’s reports, which record facts and arguments stemming from oral disputes between Christians and Muslims that actually occurred, provide a remarkable heuristic exception. And yet,

 Ulli Roth, “Einleitung,” in Juan de Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Sarracenorum (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), I, xxxiv-xxxv; cf. also lviii.  Tristan Vigliano, Parler aux musulmans: quatre intellectuels face à l’islam à l’orée de la Renaissance (Genève: Droz, 2017), 220 – 34.  The text of De gladio divini spiritus is quoted according to Ulli Roth’s edition: see above, note 7. For the text of Segovia’s extensive epistles on Islam —the Epistola to Nicholas of Cusa of 1454 and the Replica magne continencie to Jean Germain of 1455— I refer to the provisional edition I presented in Scotto, “‘Via pacis et doctrine’. Le Epistole sull’Islam di Juan de Segovia,” PhD diss. (Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane: Florence, 2012), 2– 81 and 82– 281. The publication of the critical edition of Segovia’s Epistola to Cusa is forthcoming.  A still-fruitful collection of case studies on this topic is provided in Horacio Santiago-Otero, ed., Diálogo filosófico-religioso entre cristianismo, judaísmo e islamismo durante la edad media en la península ibérica (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994).  On the critical distinction between dialogue and trialogue, see Reinhold F. Glei, “Religious Dialogues and Trialogues in the Middle Ages: A Preliminary Essay,” Medievalia et Humanistica 38 (2012).

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despite the high degree of realism of these reports, if one analyzes Segovia’s narrative of the Castilian disputes in relation to the extensive writings on Islam he produced in the Aiton years, an obvious and yet entirely overlooked problem emerges: it concerns precisely the use of that Qur’an which Segovia intends to present to his readers as the main object of the oral discussion with Muslim scholars.¹² Reading the reports of the disputes of 1431 may give at first glance the impression that, between Cordoba and Medina del Campo, Segovia discussed Islamic doctrine with Muslims starting from the text of the Qur’an. Shall we thus infer that Segovia knew scrupulously and was able to quote the Qur’an literally already in the years of his university teaching and diplomatic service for Juan II? Is there any evidence that, on the contrary, Segovia pretends to have known the Qur’an since his time in Castile out of specific rhetorical aims? In order to answer these questions, I will examine the reports of the Castilian disputes on two levels: that of the chronicle, to reconstruct the political and cultural context in which the disputes took place and the arguments emerged in the interfaith conversations; and that of the rhetorical strategy and theological programme, where accurate knowledge of the Qur’an assumes a central role.

2 Chronicle of the Disputes of Medina del Campo (1431 – 35?) After two decades of stalemates since the conquests of Enrique III and Fernando de Trastámara at the expense of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the kingdom of Castile marked a new stage in its southward advance by occupying Jimena de la Frontera on March 11, 1431. Four months later, the victory of La Higueruela of July 1, 1431, although more brilliant than decisive according to Spanish historiography, was perceived by contemporaries as a memorable success in the military campaign resumed by Fernando’s nephew, the young King Juan II, under the influential leadership of Minister Álvaro de Luna.¹³ Following the war victory, the Nasrid infante Yūsuf ibn al-Mawl, successor to Muḥammad IX al-Ṣaghīr and fu On Segovia’s use of the Qur’an in the Aiton writings, see the stimulating study by Jesse Dayton Mann, “Throwing the Book at Them: John of Segovia’s Use of the Qur’an,” in Responding to the Qur’an: Cusanus, his Contemporaries and Successors, ed. Donald F. Duclow, Rita GeorgeTvrtković and Thomas M. Izbicki, monographic issue of Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval 26 (2019).  Cf. Luis Suárez Fernández, Ángel Canellas López and Jaime Vicens Vives, Los Trastámaras de Castilla y Aragón en el siglo XV (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964 [Historia de España, dir. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, XV]), chap. V: El gobierno de don Álvaro de Luna (1431 – 37), 130 – 33.

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ture Yūsuf IV, sultan of Granada from 1432, abruptly switched to the side of the kingdom of Castile.¹⁴ Evoking “the victory achieved in the pitched battle” of La Higueruela, Segovia recalls the moment when Yūsuf, whom he correctly mentioned as “brother” of Muḥammad IX al-Ghālib, together with a conspicuous number of knights in arms who escorted him, entered the city in the retinue of King Juan II. Regardless of the La Higueruela victory’s impact on the Christian imagination and on modern historiography, the conquest was not sufficient to take Granada, the capital of the last Islamic outpost of the Iberian Peninsula: Juan II had to settle pro tempore in Cordoba together with his court and the Council of Justice. Involved as a diplomatic advisor of the king, in late summer 1431 Segovia managed to get in touch with some Nasrid Muslims, taking advantage of the temporary presence of an Islamic delegation in the Christian lands. He insistently asked the leader of the knights attending the Nasrid court (principalis miles de curia infantis) to be allowed to speak with some of the scholars belonging to Yūsuf’s entourage (“cum aliquo ex sapientibus suis”).¹⁵ Since the Muslim knight “did not dare to talk in the land of Christians”, Segovia suggested a secret meeting, to be organized in private rooms or open spaces in the fields. In the end, however, it was impossible to discuss doctrine, both because of the risk of being seen or heard and because of the lack of doctrinal preparation of the Muslim interlocutors. According to the Nasrid knight, the Muslims he knew were capable of carrying out liturgical tasks, celebrating and praising God with song (“ad cantandum in ecclesia,” that is, in the mosque) like the Christian “chaplains”, but not of arguing about the “law” (lex). The latter reference is clearly to the Qur’an.¹⁶ In Segovia’s eyes, the outcome of the Cordoba encounter was a further proof of the intellectual deficiency regarding the proper knowledge

 The episode is also attested in the Crónica del Halconero de Juan de II attributed to Juan II’s confessor, bishop and member of the Order of Preachers, Lope de Barrientos, Refundación de la Crónica del Halconero, ed. Juan de Mata Carriazo, in Colección de Crónicas Españolas IX (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1946), lxxxix, 104.  Segovia, Replica magne continencie, III, de difficultatibus 5 – 9, ed. Scotto, 136, ll. 16 – 22: “Etenim, cum rex Castelle, victoria obtenta in bello campali de Sarracenis, rediens de mense iulii anno XXXI et cum eo frater quidam regis Granate cum multis centenariis equorum in armis regi ipsi adherens, Cordubam introisset, principalem de curia infantis illius militem rogabam quatenus verbum habere possem cum aliquo ex sapientibus suis.”  Segovia, Replica magne continencie, III, de difficultatibus 5 – 9, ed. Scotto, 136, ll. 22– 28: “Respondenti vero quod ille non auderet in terra Christianorum loqui, cum replicassem circa hoc teneri posse modum, quia secreto in camera unius ex nobis vel in campis ubi nullus audiret loqueremur. Ultimo ille dixit, quamvis in societate eorum quales Christiani capellanos habent ad cantandum in Ecclesia plures essent, nullus tamen, qui loqui sciret de lege.”

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of the Muslim and Christian scriptures that he attributed to all Muslim scholars. In this regard, he claims that “several Knights of St. John” —members of the military order of the Hospitallers who had been guarding Jerusalem since the end of the eleventh century— “as well as other numerous Christian witnesses of daily conversations with Muslims” could unanimously confirm the scarce number of “men of letters” among Muslims.¹⁷ This fresh testimony adds to the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century proofs regarding the legal and doctrinal prohibitions against discussing “the laws” in public with Jews, heretics, and “infidels”, which John Tolan has recently discussed, a further reason for reflection. Regarding eminent papal and theological authorities from the thirteenth century, Tolan concludes that Thomas Aquinas’s threefold elaboration of the prohibition of discussing religious laws with “the infidels” echoes Gregory IX’s previous bull Sufficere debuerat perfidie Iudeorum. Aquinas’s reflection provides useful criteria for distinguishing illicit from licit disputation. From both a legal-canonical and a doctrinal perspective, disputations had to be undertaken with caution lest they lead to the weakening of the faith of Christians. Moreover, Christians ought to be participating in the dispute not out of doubt, but with the aim of rejecting doctrinal errors. Finally, Christians were discouraged from engaging in dispute in the presence of simple people, whose religious convictions were regarded as more firm because they had never heard anything different from what they believed.¹⁸ Juan de Segovia’s scrupulousness and complaints regarding the reasons, the interlocutors, and the protocol behind the dispute with well-prepared Muslim scholars he was eager to hold in Cordoba, adhere to these well-established recommendations. Segovia’s second attempt to discuss doctrine with a Muslim dates to a few weeks after the secret conversation in Cordoba. Moving away from the borders of the kingdom of Granada, in the late summer of 1431 Juan II left Cordoba, determined to move north. In mid-September he reached Medina del Campo, where he established his court and stayed for several days, taking care of diplomatic affairs, providing for the ordinary administration of the kingdom and reorganizing the military campaign against the kingdom of Granada. Still engaged as a

 Segovia, Replica magne continencie, III, de difficultatibus 5 – 9, ed. Scotto, 136, ll. 28 – 32: “Hoc ipsum nec minus precepi a multis militibus ordinis sancti Iohannis aliisque plurimis inter Sarracenos diu conversatis, unanimiter contestantibus plurimum inopem esse viris litteratis Sarracenorum multitudinem.”  See John Tolan, “Ne De Fide Presumant Disputare: Legal Regulations of Interreligious Debate and Disputation in the Middle Ages,” in Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal, Gerard A. Wiegers and Ryan Szpiech, monographic issue of Medieval Encounters 24 (2018), 23 – 24.

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diplomatic advisor of the king, in October Segovia managed to meet one of Yūsuf IV’s two ambassadors who were engaged in mission at the Castilian court settled in Medina del Campo. Segovia travelled in the company of a relative, a sororius, that is, a relative on his sister’s side, the jurisconsult Diego Fernández de Úbeda, with whom, since they were in its vicinity, he visited the residence of the Nasrid ambassador, who spoke perfect Castilian (conscio plene Hispani idiomatis). First of all, Segovia asked the ambassador for news regarding “some of his friends from Cordoba” detained by the Nasrids in the Alhambra because of the ongoing war, in particular “a jurist from Magdala.” Reassured about the treatment of this prisoner, he suddenly changed the subject and dragged his interlocutor into a doctrinal dispute.¹⁹ At the beginning of the discussion Segovia noticed and denounced the unusual and, in his opinion, unacceptable frequency with which the Muslim ambassador invoked the name of God. Segovia recalled that the first commandment of the lex Moysis forbade worshipping more than one god, while the second one established that invoking the name of God in vain was a serious crime.²⁰ In the Medina del Campo conversation it was actually the common filler word wallahi (‫ )ﻭﷲ‬that emerged, which the ambassador pronounced in Castilian (“por Dios”) while Segovia must have misunderstood, influenced as he was by the Christian concept —politically relevant, morally execrable and legally binding— of swearing on the name of God.²¹ The misunderstanding, however, offered Segovia the dialectical cue to launch a theological dispute that lasted several days. At first, the Nasrid ambassador assumed a polemical tone (velut furore debacatus), formulating in a loud voice (stomacho plenus irrupit) accusations of polytheism and idolatry against Christians. According to him, the infidelitas Christianorum was proved by the fact that Christians “worshiped two gods, one in heaven

 Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 78, ll. 25 – 34; 89, ll. 35 – 36: “De mense quippe octobris anno domini MCCCCXXXI, dum essem in oppido Medina del Campo Salamanticensis dioecesis, serenissimo rege Castellae et sua curia ibidem existente, collationes habui multas cum primo ex duobus ambaxiatoribus regis Granatae ibidem constitutis, conscio plene Hispani idiomatis, quarum prima ut de sublimiori sacramento ita fuit tempore diuturnior. Uno etenim die assumpto iurisperito sororio meo Didaco Fernandi de Ubeda, civitate regno Granatae confini, adii Sarracenorum ipsorum hospitium ei, quod morabar vicinum. Cum autem Sarracenus ipse locutione praeveniens velut congratulans de visitatione adventus causam interrogasset dixissemque, ut scirem de aliquibus amicis meis Cordubensibus proxime apud.”  Cf. Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, 80, ll. 37– 51.  On the history of the politically meaningful oath on God between medieval and early modern times, see Paolo Prodi, Il sacramento del potere. Il giuramento politico nella storia costituzionale dell’Occidente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); Diego Quaglioni, “Cristianesimo e potere: il giuramento politico nella storia dell’Occidente,” Pensiero politico 25 (1992).

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and the other on earth, one creator and the other son of Mary, one alive and the other dead.” He also found it unacceptable for God to show himself powerless in the face of his own son’s suffering, lamenting that Christians “firmly believed that God had delivered up his son to die for their salvation, while every father, knowing that his son has been led to prison, begs for his release, kisses the judge’s hands and sends gifts.”²² Like anti-Trinitarian arguments, those against divine paternity and the sacrifice of God’s son for the salvation of mankind were well established in anti-Christian Islamic literature. They were elaborated in the Christian-Islamic controversy in Arabic produced in the Near East between the eighth and tenth centuries²³ and then widely spread in Latin Christendom through the translations from Arabic made in the Iberian Peninsula between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in particular through the Liber denudationis and the writings collected in the Corpus Cluniacense. ²⁴  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 80, ll. 44– 51: “Tunc ille stomacho plenus irrupit dicens: ‘Quomodo igitur vos Christiani plures habetis et adoratis deos, unum in caelo, alium in terra, unum creatorem, alium hominem filium Mariae, unum patrem, alium filium, unum immortalem, alium mortuum, crucifixum atque sepultum? Et dicitis, quod deus pater eum tradidit, ut pro salute vestra moreretur. Est tamen ita, quod pater habens filium, si sciat eum carceri traditum, rogat, quo potest, iudicem, munera mittit et osculatur manus eius, ut liberet eum’.” Cf. Segovia, Epistola ad Nicolaum, II, ed. Scotto, 5, ll. 5 – 15: “Descripsi namque veluti proposito attinentem collacionem quandam de misterio Trinitatis dudum habitam in Hyspania cum ambasiatore quodam regis Granate, plene conscio yspani ydeomatis, qui, velut furore debacatus, detestabatur infidelitatem Christianorum, illis imponens duos adorare deos, unum in celo alium in terra, unum creatorem alium filium Marie, unum vivum alium mortuum et quod pro fide tenerent Deum dedisse filium suum pro eorum salute moriturum, cum omnis pater sciens filium suum esse traditum carceri, ut liberetur, deprecatur, osculatur iudicis manus et munera mittit.”  Exemplary of the Islamic polemic against the Trinity is the case of the Shiite Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq, on which see Anti-Christian Polemic in Early Islam: Abū ʻĪsā al-Warrāq’s “Against the Trinity,” ed. and transl. David Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Early Muslim Polemic Against Christianity: Abū ʻIsā al-Warrāq’s Against the Incarnation, ed. and transl. David Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). On the Christian-Muslim dispute about the incarnation, see Thomas W. Ricks, “The Doctrine of the Incarnation in Dialogue with Islam: Four Lines of Argumentation,” in Heirs of the Apostles: Studies on Arabic Christianity in Honor of Sidney H. Griffith, ed. David Bertaina et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2019). For further research on single authors and literary works see vol. 1 (600 – 900 CE) and vol. 2 (900 – 1050 CE) of the book series Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History (Leiden: Brill, 2009 and 2010), respectively ed. David Thomas and Barbara Roggema, and David Thomas and Alexander Mallett.  Cf. Thomas E. Burman, Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050 – 1200 (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Giuseppe Rizzardi, Domande cristiane sull’islàm nel Medioevo. Edizioni e studi sul Corpus Cluniacense a proposito dei saraceni (San Cataldo-Caltanissetta: Centro studi Cammarata-Lussografica, 2001); Ludwig Vones, “Zwischen Kulturaustausch und religiöser Polemik. Von den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen christlich-muslimischer Verständigung

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From the first exchange of ideas between Segovia and the Muslim ambassador two issues emerged, which were considered essential by Christians and, on the contrary, absurditates by Muslims: the Trinitarian concept of God the Father and the death and resurrection of Christ the Son for the salvation of mankind. Segovia suggested to the ambassador that they discuss the two issues separately, leaving him the possibility of choosing which one to start with. Begun around the first topic, the debate must have been organized according to the practice of the university disputatio between master and students, arranged by topics and spread over several days —following a dialectical trajectory that leads from the quaestiones to the determinatio. Segovia’s difficultates initially confused the Muslim interlocutor, so much so that for the rest of the first day and for the others that followed the two did not return to the Trinitarian issue. Then the discussion resumed, following a typical circular pattern. After dwelling on the definition of Christ as the son of God and on the doctrine of the Incarnation, Segovia returned to the Trinity, introducing the concept of the Holy Spirit and treating it in relation to the forms of divine love.²⁵ Despite the preliminary agreements on order and topics, the Medina del Campo dispute must have taken a scholastic, pedantic tone, complicated by the Muslim’s obvious misunderstandings in matters of Christian theology. In the end, the ambassador must have been convinced not so much of the two Christian mysteria, but rather of Segovia’s skills as an orator and professor of theology: “For God! There is no one among Christians who can explain these things but you!”. According to the report, this is how the ambassador reacted on listening to Segovia illustrate “peacefully”, after the sacrament of the Eucharist, the Christian conception of the remission of sins. Vis-à-vis Segovia’s argumentative clarity, the Muslim ambassador was astonished and surprised (stupidus quasi effectus), and invoked once again the name of God (per Deum) as at the beginning of the dialogue. Reacting to his astonishment, Segovia underlined the doctrinal preparation of Christian scholars, claiming that in Medina

zur Zeit des Petrus Venerabilis,” in Wissen über Grenzen. Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), On the genesis of the Corpus see the essential recent study by Anthony John Lappin, “On the Genesis and Formation of the Corpus Cluniacense,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).  Cf. Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, 80, ll. 52– 63; 82, ll. 64– 87. Segovia, Epistola ad Nicolaum, II, ed. Scotto, 5, ll. 27– 30; 6, ll. 1– 34; 7, ll. 1– 15.

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del Campo alone at least “twenty” —a clear rhetorical device— would be able to offer the same explanations he had given to the ambassador.²⁶ Scholarship on Segovia’s disputes in Castile inexplicably overlooked the follow-up of the Medina dispute. If one reads Segovia’s reports in full, it appears that the interfaith discussion begun in Medina del Campo in October 1431 saw the participation of two other Muslim interlocutors, lasted longer, and involved more topics and more places where the meetings were held. After “a long time” spent discussing with Segovia, the Nasrid ambassador left his own house. After that Segovia had no occasion to visit the Muslim’s residence in Medina del Campo again. It was only then that a second Muslim interlocutor, “more learned, who knew Castilian perfectly,” went several times to Segovia’s “house”, where “many questions and answers, on both laws, were raised.” It is clear that both the meeting place and the interlocutor changed, and that sometime later a third Muslim joined the dispute. One Friday, the second and “more learned” Muslim, having by his own admission felt the need for help, brought with him a third Muslim interlocutor, “a certain faqih from Spain” (alfaquinum quendam Hispanum) whom he had met at the Yūsuf IV’s court (in curia regis), a scholar who was even “more learned in their law” (sapientiorem legis suae).²⁷ With this third interlocutor meetings and discussions repeated cyclically and lasted for days, perhaps months or even years, until 1435, according to a stimulating hypothesis that emerged in the field of Oriental studies five years ago and has remained undisputed in research on Segovia. In a brilliant research presented at the 2016 international congress held in Tétouan, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld argued that the third Muslim scholar with whom Segovia discussed doctrine

 Segovia, Epistola ad Nicolaum, XXI, ed. Scotto, 75, ll. 9 – 17: “Expertus id novi in collacionibus habitis cum ambasiatore supra mencionato regis Granate, obiciente magno cum improperio quod Christiani comederent Deum suum et a peccatis absolverent in Deum commissis. Cum autem pacifice audivit me loquentem super secundo, stupidus quasi effectus, illa protulit verba: ‘Et per Deum! Nullus est inter Christianos qui sciat hec declarare, nisi vos solus;’ cui respondi quod adhuc in illo opido essent viginti quod illi ego exposueram declarare scientes.”  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, consideracio IV, ed. Roth, I, 82, ll. 88 – 91; 84, ll. 92– 93: “Cumque in eiusmodi ratiocinatione multum transierat temporis, valedicto Sarracenis ipsis recessum est non visitata amplius illorum habitatione, sed ille doctior ac idiomatis Hispani plene conscius frequenter visitavit domum loquentis utrumque multis legum interrogationibus et responsionibus datis. Persentiens autem auxilio opus esse die uno veneris adduxit secum alfaquinum quendam Hispanum sapientiorem legis suae, quem invenerat in curia regis.” Cabanelas Rodríguez’s statement (Juan de Segovia y el problema islámico, 106, note 1) according to which the second interlocutor was the same ambassador of Yūsuf IV —with whom the dialogue had begun and who later visited Segovia— must be corrected. Instead, it was a second interlocutor, a faqih, who was later followed by a third one.

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is to be identified with Muḥammad al-Anṣārī, author of the Risālat al-sā’il wa-almujīb wa-rawḍat nuzhat al-adīb, dedicated to Abū Zakariyyā’ Yaḥyā ibn ʿUmar ibn Zayyān al-Waṭṭāsī, minister to the Moroccan sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Marīnī, who died in 1448 – 1449. Chapter XXXV of this literary work, discovered and attributed to Muḥammad al-Anṣārī by Iḥsān ʿAbbās, records the oral dialogue between the Muslim author and “the bishop of Salamanca.” With compelling notes on the diplomatic context of the meetings between Juan II and the subsequent Nasrid sultans, on the chronology of the meetings and on the arguments of the dispute, Van Koningsveld identified “the bishop of Salamanca” with Juan de Segovia, who had returned to his university seat in Salamanca, where he usually lived, after the mission to Medina del Campo. For this reason, Segovia was mentioned by the Islamic interlocutor as “bishop of Salamanca,” either in a proper sense, even if he had never taken up that title, or more probably in a generic and imprecise sense, as a high Christian ecclesiastical authority.²⁸ The reconstruction provided by Van Koningsveld, who had already dwelt at length on al-Anṣārī’s presence in Salamanca in a previous article on learned Muslim captives in Christian lands,²⁹ is persuasive and confirms the realism of Segovia’s reports with respect to the political and interreligious context, Iberian and Mediterranean, in which the Medina and Salamanca disputes took place. From Segovia’s writings alone, little is known about the last stage of the dispute. Al-Anṣārī was questioned, among other things, about the thorny issue of the antiquity of the different laws (leges). Pressing him dialectically, Segovia argued that the law of Christ (lex Christi), like the Jewish law (lex Moysis), was older than the Islamic one, pointing out that “the Muslim sect” had blossomed “only eight hundred years ago.” If what was older was also more authoritative and binding, Muslims should have believed “the oldest servants and friends of God, who have been in the world from the beginning,” namely Christians and Jews.³⁰ Al-Anṣārī, in response, defended the idea that Muslim believers had al-

 Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, “‘Muḥammad al-Anṣârî’ et ‘l’évêque’ à Salamanca. Essai d’identification,” in Mudéjares y moriscos en las fuentes textuales y documentales. Actualidad de su memoria histórica, ed. Mustapha Adila (Tetuan: Publicaciones de la Asociación Marroquí de Estudios Andalusíes, 2016). I am particularly grateful to Gerard A. Wiegers for promptly bringing this contribution to my attention. A focused study of chapter XXXV of the Risālat would allow us to investigate al-Anṣārī’s arguments and perceptions and, at the same time, to study an interfaith dispute, as it is rarely possible to do, on a philological and comparative level.  See Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, “Muslim Slaves and Captives in Western Europe during the Late Middle Ages,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 6 (1995), 13 – 14.  Following Augustine’s widespread view of the testimonium fidei, Segovia places the Jews in the history of salvation in the light of the plenitudo temporis opened by Christ’s resurrection. In order to emphasize the universalistic character of the Christian mission, in Liber de substancia

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ways existed, well before Muḥammad’s advent: “Although they have not always called themselves Muslims, they are those who have always believed in God.”³¹ This short allusion seems to refer to the qur’anic and post-qur’anic idea that Muslims ante litteram believed in one God (tawḥīd) and were against idolatry since the very beginning of salvation history, following the prophetological line which goes from Adam to Abraham and concludes with Muḥammad. This exchange of arguments suggests that, during the conversation, Segovia had the chance to reflect on the age-old dispute on the genesis and succession in time of the three so-called Abrahamic laws or revelations, i. e., lex Moysis, lex Christi, lex Mahumeti, a fundamental question starting from which, years later, he would interpret the overall history of the relations between Christians and Muslims in terms of salvation history.³² In the conclusion of the report, Segovia makes brief, scattered references to the reversion of the conversation to the Trinity and the Incarnation —with particular emphasis on the Christian concept of divine love— and other theological topics raised during the discussion. Among these, the qur’anic episode of the descent of a table prepared in heaven and sent by Christ to the apostles as proof of God’s proximity and guidance granted to Muslims, turns out to play a significant and hegemonic role. Mentioned by the Muslim faqih, this qur’anic episode was interpreted by Segovia as a clear reference to the Gospel narrative of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.³³ Other theological issues are mentioned in the report but not further developed: the doctrine of original sin, the accusation of anthropophagy against Christians stemming from the Islamic interpretation of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and finally the absence of the main

ecclesie (1449 – 53) he elaborates on the so-called first council of Jerusalem, where the controversial issue of the addressees of Christ’s message was tackled, through Paul’s letters and the Acts of the Apostles. See Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, El pensamiento eclesial de Juan de Segovia (1393 – 1458). La gracia en el tiempo (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2004), 117fols.  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 84, ll. 93 – 98: “Hic argumentationi ex tempore factae, quia religio Christiana antiquior esset, lex quoque Iudaeorum, secta vero sua nisi ab DCCC annis cepisset, ideoque oportebat Sarracenos credere antiquioribus servis dei et amicis, sine quibus numquam fuit mundus ab initio, respondit: Et si vocati Sarraceni non semper fuissent ipsi, tamen erant illi, qui semper fuerunt credentes in deum.”  See Santiago Madrigal Terrazas, “Lex Christi, lex Moysi, lex Machometi. Juan de Segovia y la polémica anti-islámica,” in Umbra, imago, veritas, Homenaje a los Profesores Manuel Gesteira, Eusebio Gil y Antonio Vargas-Machuca, dir. Pedro Rodríguez Panizo, Secundino Castro Sánchez and Fernando Millán Romeral (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2004).  Cf. Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 86, ll. 124– 32.

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Christian sacraments in Islamic doctrine and religious practices.³⁴ In spite of the many misunderstandings between him and his interlocutor, Segovia was convinced from then on —and he states it clearly— that Muslims could understand the main mysteria of the Christian faith and convert through doctrinal confrontation.³⁵

3 References to the Qur’an in the Accounts of the Disputes (1453 – 55) Written in Aiton between 1453 and 1455, the rich reports of the Castilian disputes allow us to analyze precisely the way in which Segovia legitimizes the arguments brought up during the dialogues with the Muslim interlocutors by resorting to the authority of the Qur’an. In some cases, he makes generic but significant allusions to the lex Sarracenorum, while in other cases he instead makes precise references to the liber Alchorani. We have seen how the report of the Medina dispute, which began with the objections of the Nasrid ambassador regarding the Trinity and the Incarnation, ends with the Muslim’s amazement at Segovia’s ability to explain the Christian mysteria in a brilliant and persuasive manner. In this passage of the report, a brief but enlightening note reveals Segovia’s intention to place the Qur’an at the core of the interfaith dispute. After having mentioned the theological objections made by the Muslim, and before providing a summary of the arguments discussed in the following days, Segovia writes: “Neither on that day nor on the many others in which we discussed the law did he dare to reply anything about it.”³⁶ What he means to say is clear: regardless of the debated arguments, it was around the Qur’an (de lege) that the discussion with the Muslim ambassador took place. What is more, when he lingers on the Trinity to reject the accusations of idolatry reiterated in Medina del Campo by the Nasrid ambas-

 Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 90, ll. 195 – 97; 92, ll. 198 – 99, 204– 7: “Sed et multae aliae fuerunt collationes utrumque exprobriationum illius, quibusdam iuxta opportunitatem responso, aliis quandoque etiam silentio praeteritis. Siquidem aliquando velut furiens obloquebatur, ex quo intelligi manifeste potuit, quam magno odio et despectu quodam Sarracenorum animi vehuntur in Christum a nemine audientes illam nimiam caritatem […]. De originali peccato etiam nullam vel minimam habent notitiam, absurdissimum reputantes, quod Christiani dicunt se comedere deum suum. Itaque maximus est in ipsis intelligentiae defectus quantum ad principalia sacramenta dei.”  Cf. Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 92, ll. 207– 9.  Segovia, Epistola ad Nicolaum, II, ed. Scotto, 6, ll. 6 – 8: “Nec die illo aut eciam aliis multis quibus invicem de lege contulimus replicare desuper hoc quicquam fuit ausus.”

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sador, he states that in more than a hundred passages (plus centum passibus) the words of their law (legis sue verba) condemn worshippers, companions and associates of God. He notes, moreover, that these charges are correlated to the various epithets, which he considers derogatory and offensive, with which Christians are defined “in that book” (in libro ipso): “It is no wonder that he [the Muslim ambassador] externalized all this in fury by adhering to the dictate of his law, which is pronounced against those who worship the companions and associates of God in more than a hundred passages, noting regarding many of them, precisely on this, that Christians in that book are often defined as unbelievers, vagabonds, quarrelsome, ignorant and even liars.”³⁷ The report of the conversation on the antiquity of the laws with the “most learned” of the three Muslim interlocutors ends, in turn, with a reference to the Qur’an. Segovia states that no evidence can be traced in the Qur’an to support the faqih’s claim that Muslims were the oldest believers in God, recalling that only those who believe in God and his prophets (“Moses, David, Isaiah, and all the other prophets”) can be considered authentic believers. On this point Segovia mentions the Qur’an several times in a few lines. Quoting it explicitly for the first time, he notes in particular that “in the Qur’an” (in Alchorano), where the opponents of Muslims advance such an objection, no answer is given. Ultimately, it was because of the doctrinal shortcomings of the Qur’an that, according to Segovia, the faqih decided not to pursue the oral dispute over the “difference between the laws” (de legum differencia), perhaps, he adds, because he was ashamed to “give the answer of his book” on this point (dare responsionem libri sui). Segovia’s interpretation of the Muslim’s withdrawal from the dispute aims to emphasize, once again, the centrality of the Qur’an in the interreligious dispute of Salamanca: without the support of the Qur’an, it was impossible to prove anything with respect to the superiority of Islam over the Christian faith.³⁸ While up to this point the qur’anic references increase but remain imprecise, in the last part of the report Segovia paraphrases some arguments of the Qur’an

 Segovia, Epistola ad Nicolaum, II, ed. Scotto, II, 5, ll. 15 – 21: “Haud mirum hoc illum in spiritu vomuisse furoris, legis sue verba attendentem, que plus centum passibus mencionem facit contra adorantes, socios et participes Dei, in eorum multis de hoc expresse notans Christianos in libro ipso vocatos sepe incredulos, girovagos, ventilantes, inscios atque mendacissimos.”  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, consideracio IV, ed. Roth, I, 84, ll. 98 – 104: “Ostenso autem minime esse in Deum credentes, qui Deo non crederent, hoc est omnibus verbis eius revelatis amicis suis, quos prophetas constituit, quia non crederent omnibus dictis Moysi, David, Isaiae aliorumque prophetarum, sicut in Alchorano de hac obiectione mentione facta non respondetur, ita hic superductus alfaquinus non amplius comparuit elocutionem de legum differentia continuaturus fortasseque erubuit dare responsionem libri sui.”

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and quotes some of its verses, suggesting a Christian interpretation of them. Following up on the dispute about the antiquity and authenticity of God’s believers, he provides a summary of five statements drawn from Sura 5, to which he adds a brief mention of Sura 6. He consistently presents them as the five justifications that Muslims are asked to give, according to the Qur’an, when they are accused by Jews and Christians of not being the authentic believers in God.³⁹ After summarizing these five arguments, in the conclusion Segovia reiterates how everything he reported is found in the Qur’an, and seems to question the persuasive character of its arguments: “Are these the five answers contained in the book of the Qur’an to justify its [followers] who do not possess the faith and law of their predecessors?”⁴⁰ The last reference to the Qur’an, which is the most extensive and pointed, concerns the discussion around the episode of the table that descended from heaven following the Apostles’ request to Christ that he give them a divine sign. On a subsequent day of discussion, the faqih asked Segovia “whether it was written in the Gospel that Christ had [sent] two tables from heaven and that, if he wished, he would set one and eat with everyone he wished until they were full.” At first, without thinking about it, Segovia answered negatively. However, after considering the topic more carefully, he told the Muslim “that those who had said this about Christ had spoken poetically and had alluded to the table as spiritual nourishment.” Finally, he explains that the sending of the table is attributed in the Gospels to Christ, who “once fed 5,000 men, including children and women, with five loaves and two fishes, and at another 4,000 men with seven loaves.”⁴¹ In his report of the dispute, after the explanation given

 Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, consideracio IV, ed. Roth, I, 84, ll. 104– 12: “(1) quod Christiani obicientes eis talia sunt insipientes, et (2) propterea, si Sarraceni boni sunt, nullatenus eos participes nec suorum tractatores negotiorum statuant, et (3) quia cum Sarracenis Christiani peiores sint, ‘quosdam simias et porcos et idolatras constituit deus’, et (4) quod Christiani confitentur fidem suam, sed semper adventu atque discessu corda gestant incredula [cf. Q 5: 57– 61]. (5) Alio rursus loco respondet, quod, si solum deo placeret, quod et praedecessores sui fecerunt, usque dum malum gravissimum eis incubuit, et si quid constans atque scitum habent, coram veniat nec ulterius pro more suo rem incertam sequantur [cf. Q 6: 148].”  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, consideracio IV, ed. Roth, I, 84, ll. 113 – 14: “Haeccine sunt responsa quinque contenta in libro Alchoran excusante suos, ne teneant fidem legemque praedecessorum suorum .”  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, consideracio IV, ed. Roth, I, 86, ll. 124– 32: “Altero vero die interroganti, utrum in evangelio contineretur, quod Christus duas haberet mensas e caelo et, quando volebat, posita aliqua earum convivabat omnes, quos vellet usque ad saturitatem, absque deliberatione maiori responsum fuit, quod non. Recordatione autem facta ad statim illi dictum est, qui hoc de Christo dixerant, poetice fuisse locutos mensam pro refectione sumentes.

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to the Muslim, Segovia quotes in full ayas 112– 15 of the Qur’an, drawing on the Latin translation by Robert of Ketton (1143), “which states in fact thus” (dicit enim sic): Deus Christum filium Mariae affatus, cui tribuit animam mundam atque benedictam, qua iuvenes et infantulos affatus est et formis volatilium a se factis insufflans volatum praebuit, caecum natum ac leprosum curavit, mortuos resuscitavit, quem item librum et sapientiam nec non evangelium et testamentum docuit, inquit: Te sic ad filios Israel cum virtutibus et meo velle venientem increduli magum esse perhibent. Tu vero de bonis tibi matrique tuae divinitus datis mihi gratias redde. Deo item a viris vestibus albis indutis quaerente, an in se nuntiumque suum crederent, responderunt: Ita credimus, et tu testis es. Inde eisdem a Iesu Mariae filio quaerentibus, an Deus super eos [omnes] mensam celestem ponere potens esset, Iesus [om.] ipse respondit: Si creditis in Deum, ipsum timete. Illis autem dicentibus: Volumus inde comedere ad nostrorum cordium confirmationem, utrum [ut cum] te verum dixisse sciamus, cum nostro testimonio confirmemus Deum. [Deus] Inde sic exorat: O Deus, nobis mensam celestem que sit nobis pascha omnibusque praesentibus primis scilicet atque ceteris atque miraculum tribue. Quem Deus exaudiens inquit illi: [Illis] Eam praebebo. Sed quisquis eorum deinceps incredulus factus fuerit, eum prae cunctis mundi gentibus poenis atque miseriis affligam.⁴²

As I mentioned, Segovia interprets the qur’anic episode of the table as the Islamic version of the narrative of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes performed by Christ after John the Baptist’s death, which is attested, in two literary variants that point to a different number of men fed and food multiplied, in the four canonical Gospels (Mt 14:13 – 21; Mk 6:30 – 44; Lk 9:12– 17; Jn 6:1– 14). In doing so, Segovia unwittingly places himself within the Islamic exegetical tradition that elaborates upon ayas 112 – 15 in light of the narratives of the Gospels. The possible analogies between the Qur’an and the Gospels around the episode of the table, indeed, have been pointed out critically in the most recent commentaries on the Qur’an, where the enigmatic image of Sura 5 is associated, alternatively, with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, with Jesus’s last supper with the Apostles, or with the vision which Peter had on the roof of centurion Cornelius’s house in Caesarea, narrated in Acts 10:9 – 17: a sheet laden with fish and colorful animals descending from heaven is offered to Peter so that he can eat in abundance, without dietary restrictions of any kind.⁴³ Though

Namque in evangelio legebatur, quod semel de quinque panibus et duobus piscibus saturavit Christus V milia hominum praeter parvulos et mulieres, et iterum IV milia de septem panibus. In Alchorano autem, ut postea visum est, de una mensa fit mentio.”  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, consideracio IV, ed. Roth, I, 86, ll. 133 – 48; 88, l. 149.  Preliminary hints on this topic are provided in two qur’anic commentaries of the last decade: Il Corano, ed. Alberto Ventura, Italian transl. by Ida Zilio-Grandi, commentary by Alberto Ven-

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less common, this exegetical reference to Peter’s vision holds special meaning for the role of the scriptures in the history of Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations. In Acts 10, indeed, it provides a narrative prelude to the opening of the apostolic mission to the pagans, which was previously oriented to the Jews alone.⁴⁴ Around spring 1456, Segovia went back to the same passage of this report to add by his own hand, in the upper and lateral margins of the manuscript of De gladio divini spiritus he was working on (Seville, Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina, MS 7– 6 – 14), the new Latin translation of the Qur’an which he had meanwhile completed in Aiton with Yça Gidelli’s collaboration. The autographic marginalia to the Seville manuscript transmit the new translation of ayas 112– 15, where, as we know, the table is mentioned. Segovia introduced his own version with the explicit purpose of reconstructing the episode of the table according to what he considered, after having worked on the Arabic Qur’an with Gidelli, the most authentic lesson of the Qur’an (Textus igitur Arabicus quantum ad huiusmodi historiam de Christi mensa sic ait):⁴⁵ Quando dicet deus: Iam Iesu, fili Mariae, nomina gratiam meam super te et super matrem tuam, quando te vigoravi cum spiritu sancto, alloquebaris gentem in infantia et maioritate, et quando docui te scripturam et iudicia et tabulas et evangelia et quando creabas ex luto quomodo similitudinem avium cum licentia mea, et sufflabas in eo, et erat avis cum licentia mea, et sanabas caecos et leprosos cum licentia mea et quando extrahebas mortuos cum licentia et quando detinui filios Israel de te, quando veneras eis cum declarationibus, et dixerunt illi increduli de ipsis: Si ipse nisi phitonitus manifestus. Et quando influxi ad apostolos, quod crederent in me et nuntiis meis, dixerunt: Credimus. Et testificamini, quod nos deliberamus. Quando dixerunt apostoli: Iam Iesu, fili Mariae, si potuerat dominus tuus, quod descenderet super nos mensa una ex caelo. Dixit: Timebitis deum, si fueritis credentes. Dixerunt, quod nos comederemus de ipsa, et sederent corda nostra et scieremus, quod verificasses nobis et erit nobis super ipsa ex testificantibus. Dixit Iesus, filius Mariae: Deus, dominus noster, descendet super nos mensam unam de caelo, et erit nobis festum ad primos nostros et postremos nostros et1 visus de te. Et provide nobis. Et tu es melior provisorum. Dixit deus: Ego descendam eam super vos. Igitur qui discredet postea de vobis, igitur ergo tormentabo eum tormentis, quod non dabo ipsa alicui ex hiis, qui mundorum.⁴⁶

Segovia openly explains, still writing in the margin, why on this point he decided to replace Ketton’s translation with his own Latin version. He argues that the

tura et al. (Milano: Mondadori, 2010), 497; The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al. (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 771– 74.  For an introduction to this exegetical issue see the narratological analysis of the text in Atti degli apostoli. Introduzione, traduzione e commento, ed. by Gerard Rossé (Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2010), 133 – 43.  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 90, ll. 172– 73.  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 90, ll. 174– 83.

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Arabic Qur’an does not contain the expression “men dressed in white,” interpolated by the English translator, but rather “apostles”, a term that he says precisely confirms the lesson of the Gospels.⁴⁷ As with original sin and the table coming down from heaven, Segovia strives to identify stringent analogies between the Bible and the Qur’an. Discussing this and other fragments of Segovia’s Latin translation that survived the loss of the trilingual Qur’an manuscript, Reinhold Glei and Ulli Roth pointed out that the Arabic plural noun, probably of Ethiopian origin, ḥawāriyyūn, rendered by Ketton as “men dressed in white” (de viris indutis albis vestibus), inspired Segovia to establish significant connections between the qur’anic lesson and the figure of the righteous evoked in John’s Apocalypse.⁴⁸ What appears to Segovia as a linguistic imprecision, and which in fact is a deliberate interpretation of the Arabic Qur’an by Ketton, becomes, in the rhetorical strategy developed in the writings on Islam during the years of Aiton, a reason to start an elucubration on the Final Judgment that leads to a further analogy, this time of eschatological character, between the Gospels and the Qur’an.⁴⁹

4 Debating the Qur’an without the Qur’an Segovia’s reports of the Castilian disputes testify to his eagerness to discuss the contents of the Qur’an with Muslim interlocutors. Given what it is known of Segovia’s biography and from the autobiographical accounts in his writings on Islam, however, the references to the Qur’an in the reports of the disputes cannot be accepted uncritically. In fact, we know from his own testimony that Segovia became familiar with the text of the Qur’an —according to Ketton’s translation — only in the years of the Council of Basel (1431– 49). In 1437, or from 1437 onwards, he obtained three copies of Ketton’s translation by exploiting ecclesiastic contacts and the missions he carried out as a member of the Council. In summer 1437 Nicholas of Cusa, before leaving for Byzantium as a representative of the Council’s minority in charge of convincing the Greeks to reach Florence to dis-

 Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 88, ll. 167– 71; 90, l. 172: “[?] translationem insertam[?] huiusmodi[?] historia de mensa appellata primo libro Alqurani psalmo quinto de mensa appellato non faciente quidem mentionem de viris indutis albis vestibus, sed de apostolis, nominando eos expresse, de quibus est titulus psalmi XXIIII. in quarto libro Alqurani. Reperiuntur etiam nominati psalmo III. libri primi, sed, ut apparet translatio illa, ubi in Alqurano nominantur apostoli, inquit ‘viri vestibus albis’.”  Ulli Roth and Reinhold Glei, “Die Spuren der lateinischen Koranübersetzung des Juan de Segovia – alte Probleme und ein neuer Fund,” Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 11 (2009), 123 – 25.  Cf. Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 88, ll. 151– 64.

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cuss the Filioque and other contested theological issues, lent a copy of the Corpus Cluniacense, which included Ketton’s Qur’an, to his colleague and friend Juan de Segovia. The same year, Segovia found a Qur’an “enchained” (inchatenatum) in an unspecified library in Germany and had it transcribed for him, noting that it was the same version which he already knew through Cusa. Finally, he found a third copy of the Qur’an at the library of the Dominican convent of Basel and, again, had a transcription of it made for him. It was the manuscript of the Corpus Cluniacense that included Ketton’s translation and that the Dominican John of Ragusa, himself a diplomat of the Council, had brought with him from Byzantium together with a copy of the Arabic Qur’an now kept at the University Library of Basel (MS A III 19).⁵⁰ Segovia kept the three copies of Ketton’s Qur’an in the private library he set up at the Aiton monastery, which in 1457, according to his donatio inter vivos, counted 108 “books”. The three manuscripts, which Segovia briefly describes in the donatio, were placed in different sections of the library, one of which was explicitly aimed ad confutationem sectam Mahumeti. ⁵¹ Their destiny was to be donated to the University of Salamanca and the convent of Santa María de la Merced in Valladolid after their owner’s death (May 1458), but for controversial reasons they were lost sometime after February 1459.⁵² Given these research outcomes, how can one explain that, in October 1431 and in the following months, Segovia was engaged in the oral discussion of a series of passages of the Qur’an? In the same writings wherein he scrupulously reports the Castilian events, he claims to have obtained the Qur’an six years later, starting from 1437, thanks to the exchange and search for books surrounding the Council of Basel. There is no reason to doubt that the topic inspiring the

 Cf. Davide Scotto, “Sulla soglia della ‘Cribratio.’ Riflessi dell’Islam nell’esperienza di Niccolò Cusano,” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 45 (2009), 238, 243. Scotto, “De pe a pa,” 523 – 24. On John of Ragusas Qur’an and its scribe, see the recent monograph by Jacob Langeloh, Der Islam auf dem Konzil von Basel (1431 – 1449). Eine Studie mit Editionen und Ü bersetzungen unter besonderer Berü cksichtigung des Johannes von Ragusa (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019), esp. 22– 25. From the third manuscript of the Corpus transcribed by Segovia descends, as was recently shown, MS lat. 3669 of the Bibliotèque nationale de France: see Fernando GonzálezMuñoz, “Juan de Segobia y los manuscritos de la traducción latina del Corán de Robert de Ketton,” Al-Qanṭara 42 (2021).  Juan de Segovia, Donatio inter vivos, ed. in Benigno Hernández Montes, Biblioteca de Juan de Segovia. Edición y comentario de su escritura de donación (Madrid: CSIC-Instituto ‛Francisco Suárez’, 1984), 75 – 115, libri n. 25, 71, 107, and the respective “Notas al texto.”  See Davide Scotto, “Juan de Segovia’s Last Manuscript (MS Vat. Lat. 2923). The Quest for Islam from the Aiton Library to Pope Pius II,” in Der Papst und das Buch im Spätmittelalter (1350 – 1500). Bildungsvoraussetzung, Handschriftenherstellung, Bibliotheksgebrauch, ed. Rainer Berndt SJ (Münster: Aschendorff, 2018).

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title of Sura 5, Al-Māʾidah, “the Table”, was central to the interreligious dispute begun in Medina del Campo in 1431. But to what extent was this dispute conducted by drawing on a direct, careful knowledge of the Qur’an? In De gladio divini spiritus Segovia resorts to the Qur’an to legitimize the interpretation of the episode of the table as an analogy of the miracle tale of the Gospels. Hence he specifies: “In the Qur’an moreover, as I saw later, a table is mentioned.”⁵³ This brief note is essential to understanding Segovia’s rhetorical use of the Qur’an in the reports of the disputes. He reiterates the same strategy in the conclusion of his comparison between the “men dressed in white” of Ketton’s Qur’an and the “righteous” of the Apocalypse of John, clarifying that this topic was not part of the 1431 dispute: “However, this passage from the Book of Revelation and the Book of Qur’an, which I had not seen before, were not explained to the said Saracen at that time.”⁵⁴ First Segovia describes the oral disputes with Muslims in Castile as if they had developed around the text of the Qur’an; then, between the lines, he admits to having understood what the contents of the Qur’an were only later (ut postea visum est; quem adhuc non videram). It was only in 1453, twenty years after the interfaith disputes in Castile, that he was able to notice how in Sura 5 only one table was mentioned and not two, as inferred by al-Anṣārī in his question. It was only then, moreover, that he was able to notice the “mistakes” made by Ketton in his translation of the Qur’an. The heuristic method and the rhetorical strategy underlying Segovia’s reports of the Castilian disputes are clear: by introducing qur’anic quotations into the reports written in 1453, he refutes ex post facto the opinion which the Muslim faqih expressed in 1431. Al-Anṣārī, a real person with whom Segovia engaged in doctrinal discussion between Medina del Campo and Salamanca, becomes the literary prototype of the Muslim scholar capable of rationally understanding the pillars of Christian doctrine. The qur’anic allusions and quotations interpolated within the narration of the Castilian disputes aim to show to the archbishop of Seville, Juan de Cervantes, who was the original recipient of De gladio divini spiritus, and then to the epistolary correspondents to whom the treatise was sent between 1454 and 1455 from Aiton, how Muslims deceived themselves about their own law and how they could be corrected and educated by looking at the authentic meanings of the Qur’an.

 Cf. Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 86, ll. 131– 32: “In Alchorano autem, ut postea visum est, de una mensa fit mentio.”  Cf. Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 88, ll. 164– 66: “Haec autem de libro Apocalypsis et de libro Alchoran, quem adhuc non videram, non fuerunt tunc exposita praedicto Sarraceno.”

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The linguistic, systematic, and comparative analysis of the two Latin versions of the four ayas following the discussion of the table is a task that awaits scholars of Arabic and Islamic studies. Here I limit myself to pointing out how Segovia decided to provide an explicit explanation of the rhetorical and literary strategy used in De gladio divini spiritus. After the transcription of the four ayas according to Ketton’s version, he openly states: “This sura 13 [according to Ketton’s version: i. e., Sura 5 in the Arabic Qur’an] was inserted here because it offered the aforementioned Muslim the subject of his question.”⁵⁵ An unexpected, disarming honesty. In 1453, Segovia felt the need to introduce a long literal quotation of the Qur’an in order to enrich and legitimize the report of an interfaith oral dispute that took place starting from autumn 1431. Though until that time Segovia might have received oral information that allowed him to figure out the existence and importance of the Qur’an to Muslim eyes, the confessions he made in his reports provide an undeniable proof that, when he dwelt, travelled and taught theology in Castile, he did not yet know the Latin translation of the Qur’an, let alone the Arabic version of it. Later on, during his investigations at the Council of Basel and his intensive study at the Aiton monastery, he realised that proper knowledge of the full text of the Qur’an was central to tackling the “difference between the Laws” (differencia legum) that caused, in his opinion, the persistence of wars between Christians and Muslims. He thus made the authority of the Qur’an the narrative core of his Castilian accounts, which provide the legitimizing premise to his sophisticated arguments on conversion. After the fall of Byzantium, placing the Qur’an at the core of the Castilian disputes allowed Segovia to legitimize a conversion strategy that was critical: towards the fatalistic wait for divine miracles wars against Muslims, and Christian missions in Islamic lands, and instead based on the preliminary negotiation of peace and the mutual exchange of doctrinal arguments. By projecting into the past the qur’anic knowledge he progressively acquired between Basel and Aiton, he aimed to show his politically influential correspondents that he had always been interested in the Qur’an and had discussed it orally with Muslim interlocutors, receiving good impressions of their rational capacity and the receptiveness of their minds. They could be converted via pacis et doctrine, as he repeats in his epistles: a strategy which in mid-fifteenth-century Europe, within an anti-Turkish crusading atmosphere strenuously promoted by the papacy, very few ecclesiastics, humanists and secular rulers would have shared. In the introductory lines of his report of the Medina dispute, Segovia attempts to persuade

 Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 88, ll. 49 – 50: “Haec Azoara XIII. ex incidenti hoc inserta loco, quia materiam dedit praefato Sarraceno, ut desuper interrogaret.”

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his readers that this conversion plan, which he elaborates extensively on a theological level in the following pages of De gladio divini spiritus, was based on his personal experience in Castile (quod expertus sum).⁵⁶ In the conclusion of the report, he refers again to experience as evidence, insisting on the close connection between careful study of the Qur’an and trust in the voluntary and peaceful conversion of Muslims: “But as many who know their situation have experienced, there is great hope that, if we succeed in making them listen to us, a great number of them will convert.”⁵⁷ Isolated at the Aiton monastery after the end of the Council of Basel, Segovia supplied his reports of the Castilian encounters with the Qur’an authority which he had lacked twenty years earlier in the oral disputes with the Nasrid ambassadors and learned fuqahāʾ he had met in Castile.

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 Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 78, ll. 22– 24: “Eorum autem intelligentiae defectum, desiderium etiam audiendi veritatem, quod expertus sum, necessitas cogit me ista scribentem referre.”  Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, IV, ed. Roth, I, 92, ll. 207– 09: “Sicut autem perceptum est a multis, qui eorum noverunt condicionem, si audientia obtineri posset, magna spes foret permaximae ipsorum multitudinis convertendae.”

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Scotto, Davide. “‘De pe a pa.’ Il Corano trilingue di Juan de Segovia (1456) e la conversione pacifica dei musulmani.” In Storie e miti di conciliazione, edited by Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti and Chiara Pilocane. Monographic issue of Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 48 (2012): 515 – 77. Scotto, Davide. “Inseguire l’islam tra memoria e teologia. Spigolature su Juan de Segovia intorno al 1427.” In Ottant’anni da maestro. Saggi degli allievi offerti a Giorgio Cracco. Edited by Daniela Rando, Paolo Cozzo and Davide Scotto, 101 – 39. Roma: Viella, 2014. Scotto, Davide. “Juan de Segovia’s Last Manuscript (MS Vat. Lat. 2923). The Quest for Islam from the Aiton Library to Pope Pius II.” In Der Papst und das Buch im Spätmittelalter (1350 – 1500). Bildungsvoraussetzung, Handschriftenherstellung, Bibliotheksgebrauch. Edited by Rainer Berndt SJ, 61 – 81. Münster: Aschendorff, 2018. Segovia, Juan de. Donatio inter vivos. Edited in Benigno Hernández Montes, Biblioteca de Juan de Segovia. Edición y comentario de su escritura de donación, 75 – 115. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas–Instituto Francisco Suárez, 1984. Segovia, Juan de. De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo Sarracenorum. Edition and German translation with introduction and comments by Ulli Roth, I-II, 1 – 897. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. Segovia, Juan de. Epistola ad Nicolaum de Cusa. Edited in Davide Scotto, “‘Via pacis et doctrine.’ Le Epistole sull’Islam di Juan de Segovia,” 2 – 81. PhD diss., directed by Mariarosa Cortesi. Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane: Florence, 2012. Segovia, Juan de. Replica magne continencie ad Iohannem Cabilonensem episcopum. Edited in Davide Scotto, “‘Via pacis et doctrine.’ Le Epistole sull’Islam di Juan de Segovia,” 82 – 281. PhD diss., dir. by Mariarosa Cortesi. Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane: Florence, 2012. Suárez Fernández, Luis, Ángel Canellas López, and Jaime Vicens Vives. Los Trastámaras de Castilla y Aragón en el siglo XV. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964 [Historia de España, dir. by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, XV]. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. Edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief), Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E. B. Lumbard and Mohammed Rustom (assistant editor). New York: HarperOne, 2015. Tolan, John. “Ne De Fide Presumant Disputare: Legal Regulations of Interreligious Debate and Disputation in the Middle Ages.” In Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, Gerard A. Wiegers and Ryan Szpiech. Monographic issue of Medieval Encounters 24 (2018): 14 – 28. Van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd. “Muslim Slaves and Captives in Western Europe during the Late Middle Ages.” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 6 (1995): 5 – 23. Van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd. “‘Muḥammad al-Anṣârî’ et ‘l’évêque’ à Salamanca. Essai d’identification.” In Mudéjares y moriscos en las fuentes textuales y documentales. Actualidad de su memoria histórica. Edited and coordinated by Mustapha Adila, 9 – 15. Tetuan: Publicaciones de la Asociación Marroquí de Estudios Andalusíes, 2016. Vigliano, Tristan. Parler aux musulmans: quatre intellectuels face à l’islam à l’orée de la Renaissance. Genève: Droz, 2017. Vones, Ludwig. “Zwischen Kulturaustausch und religiöser Polemik. Von den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen christlich-muslimischer Verständigung zur Zeit des Petrus Venerabilis.” In

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Ulisse Cecini

Germanus de Silesia’s Qur’an Translation in the MS K-III-1 of the El Escorial Library: Newly Discovered Revised Versions 2 General Features of the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis 1 Introduction Dominicus Germanus de Silesia’s Qur’an translation is certainly a fascinating chapter in the history of Qur’an translations in the Iberian Peninsula. It was written, in fact, in the Escorial monastery, where its author, the Franciscan friar Dominicus Germanus de Silesia (1588 – 1670), spent the last part of his life working on it.¹ It is in many respects a unique translation and, even if it was basically concluded in 1664,² we could say that Dominicus saw it as a lifetime work. This

 The most exhaustive contribution to Dominicus’s biography remains Bertrand Zimolong, P. Dominicus Germanus de Silesia O. F. M. Ein biographischer Versuch (Breslau: Otto Borgmeyer, 1928). A more recent summary of Dominicus’s life can be found in Hartmut Bobzin, “Ein oberschlesischer Korangelehrter: Dominicus Germanus de Silesia, O.F.M. (1588 – 1670),” in Die oberschlesische Literaturlandschaft im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Gerhard Koselleck, Tagungsreihe der Stiftung Haus Oberschlesien 11 (Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2001). See also the introduction to García Masegosa’s edition of Dominicus’s Qur’an translation: Antonio García Masegosa, ed., Germán de Silesia. Interpretatio alcorani litteralis (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009), 13 – 22. This introduction draws mainly on Marcel Devic, “Une traduction inédite du Coran,” Journal Asiatique VIII, no. 1 (1883), 343 – 64, and Francis Richard, “Le Franciscain Dominicus Germanus de Silésie, grammairien et auteur d’apologie en persan,” Islamochristiana 10 (1984).  The terminus post quem comes from a donation text to the Propaganda Fide Congregation, dated 30 June 1664, in which Dominicus says that his translation is about to be finished (“foetus Note: Ulisse Cecini is currently Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (RYC2020 – 029328-I). Previously to such affiliation, the research leading to these results has received support by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 810141, project EuQu: “The European Qu’ran. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-006

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fact emerges from the continued work of revision he undertook on it, literally — as we will see— until his own demise in the year 1670. We have in fact a number of copies of the translation, almost all in the Escorial Library, in which one can see his continuous interventions, corrections and revisions. Nonetheless, the manuscripts known up to today present one and the same translation, revised as it may be, which we may call “the first final version” of 1664. Now, however, we can add a further link to this chain of copies and manuscripts. In the very same Escorial library, there is a manuscript that was hitherto practically ignored by scholarly research, the manuscript with the signature K-III-1. In it we find textual evidence that points to a new and last effort by Dominicus to undertake a deeper revision of his translation after it was completed. This not only presents the translation in an aesthetically polished edition with neat writing and a pleasant layout, but also revises it in its wording and structure, encompassing both the translation and the commentary parts. We should in fact remember that the main feature of Dominicus’s Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis, as the translation is entitled, is that it consists not only of the Latin translation of the qur’anic text but also of the presentation and discussion of Islamic qur’anic exegesis, offered in Latin translation and, at times, also in Arabic transcription.³ The present chapter will be structured in two parts: First, I will present briefly the general features of the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis concerning its manuscript tradition, its structure and its concept as a translation. Even though each of these aspects, because of the work’s complexity, would require a paper or book chapter of its own, it will suffice here to introduce them sufficiently to appreciate the subsequent and main section of the chapter: the description of manuscript KIII-1 and its striking features.

[…] urget ad partum, nempe Alcorani interpretatio litteralis”) and asks for a scribe to help him revise and copy the text along with other complementary works (the letter is transcribed in Zimolong, P. Dominicus Germanus, 12– 13). The praefatio of the translation mentions at the end King Felipe IV, who died on September, 17th, 1665, so it was surely completed before this date, see Devic, “Une traduction inédite du Coran,” 357– 58.  While the Latin translation has been critically edited by Antonio García Masegosa in 2009 (see above, n. 1) (of course, without considering —or only partly, as we will see— the textual evidence we are presenting in this contribution), the scholia, as the exegetical parts are called, have not yet been published. Thus, I am currently preparing the critical edition of the scholia, which, as we will see below, should not be considered as an appendix but as the most significant part, if not the core, of Dominicus’s work.

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2 General Features of the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis 2.1 Manuscript Transmission Until now, the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis is known to have been transmitted in the following manuscripts, which are the ones used by García Masegosa for his critical edition: – MS 1624, Real Biblioteca del Escorial, 528 fols., dated 1669, called by García Masegosa MS E. According to him it is Dominicus’s working exemplar, with Arabic text, and rich in corrections. It contains the entire work, translations and scholia, but lacks the title page. – MS H 72, Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de Montpellier, 488 fols., Masegosa’s MS M, dated by him 1670. It is a copy of the complete work, title page included; Arabic text and corrections are present only up to fol. 54r, then we find blank spaces where the Arabic text should go. – MS L-I-3, Real Biblioteca del Escorial, 336 fols., divided by Masegosa into three codicological units and dated by him to the year 1670. – A: 1– 113r: Title Page (1r-v); “Introductory section” (2r-6r);⁴ Text of the Interpretatio from sura 1 to sura 5, textus I (= vv. 1– 5), including the scholium related to this last textus (14r-113r); blank spaces for text in Arabic not filled. – B: 122r-319v: “Introductory section” (122r-125v); Text of the Interpretatio from sura 1 to sura 11, textus II (=vv. 25 – 49), with relative scholium (126r-319v). – P: 154r-155v: Preface of the Interpretatio – Moreover, in the same manuscript, we find at folios 333r-335v another incomplete copy of the work, consisting only of the Title Page (333r-v); an additional preface Ad lectorem (inc: Semper fuit…; edited by García Masegosa, p. 33) (334r-v); and an Admonitio ad eundem (inc.: Mirari desine, Oprime Lector…; still unedited) (335rv).⁵

 For the explanation of what the “introductory section” consists of, see further below, in section 2.2.  To these manuscripts, García Masegosa (p.26) adds a fragment from MS &-IV-8 of the Escorial Library, fol. 8r-10v, which he calls L. These folios should contain only the praefatio of the Interpretatio. However, if we look at the manuscript in question (which contains, as García Masegosa

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This last manuscript gives us an idea of Dominicus’s method of working, reworking and recopying the translation, inserting corrections and amendments. However, in contrast to what we will see in manuscript K-III-1, the modifications are applied to the same base text, the one we have called “the first final version,” which is copied and modified but not radically changed, as one can see also from its fixed structure, the next point of our general presentation.

2.2 Structure of the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis The general structure of the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis is the following: – Title page – “Introductory section” – Main text We will discuss the title page in more detail below. Now we will illustrate what the so-called “introductory section” consists of: – The Preface [Praefatio] – The original Arabic text of the sources quoted in the preface in Latin translation, to wit, al-Qarāfī and al-Kāshānī [Sententiae Alcoranistarum superius allatae contra nos Christianos] – The Names of the Prophet’s main disciples, who are quoted by the Islamic commentators as the most authoritative sources [Nomina praecipuorum discipulorum, quos Expositores ceu Archigerontes et majoris autoritatis prae ceteris citant]. Here a prominent place is given to Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, who are listed in this order, with a short description for each of them. These are followed by a list of 55 names both in Arabic writing and in Latin transcription. These are the names of the first commentators and the “Anṣār Allāh wa-n-nabī,” the “coadjutores Dei et Prophetae” (God’s and the Prophet’s helpers), as Dominicus calls them, both in transliteration and in Latin translation, adding the explanation that they were “those who followed the Prophet when he fled from Medina to Ethiopia and whose sayings are collected together with the Prophet’s sayings and are of great authority.”⁶ rightly observes, Robert of Ketton’s Qur’an translation) we do not find the said praefatio. We will solve this mystery below in the description of manuscript K-III-1.  MS E, fol. 3v: “Isti vocantur Ansar allah ua ennabi Coadiutores Dei et prophetae, quia secuti eum quando fugit de Maedina in Aethyopiam, quorum dicta connumerantur inter sententias prophetales, suntque magnae autoritatis.”

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The Names of the “most classical” commentators [Nomina Expositorum Magis Classicorum]. We have here a list of 11 commentators whom Dominicus considered the most classical, each of whom is provided with a short description and a categorization of his style of commentary. Dominicus writes their full names both in Arabic script and in Latin transliteration. Here, for the sake of clarity and conciseness, we report the names only in short form: they are al-Kāshānī, al-Baqāʿī, al-Zamakhsharī, al-Bayḍāwī, al-ʿAmādī, Abū Ḥayyān, al-Bukhārī, Abū-l-Ḥasan al-Ḥarālī, al-Jurjānī, Burj ad-Dīn ibn ʿĀdil al-Ḥanbalī and Ibn Kamāl. The categories by which they are classified are: mysticus, historicus, tropologicus, moralis, literalis, allegoricus, grammaticus, expositor, imitator, postillator, scholiastes. ⁷

After this “introductory section” we find the main text of the Interpretatio itself, whose structure and concept will now be the object of our consideration.

2.3 Structure and Concept of the Translation What is the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis? As we have already seen, in the mind of its author it is a literal rendition of the qur’anic text united with a commented interpretation of its meaning according to the Muslim commentators. The translator himself points this out in the complete title of the Interpretatio and in its preface. The former appears as follows (e. g., from MS A, fol. 1): “INTERPRETATIO ALCORANI LITERALIS. Cum scholiis ad mentem authoris, ex propriis domesticis ipsius expositoribus, germanè collectis per P. Fratrem Dominicum Germanum de Silesia… etc.,” i. e.: “Literal interpretation of the Qur’an, with scholia according to the intention of the author [meaning the Prophet Muḥammad, n. Cecini], truthfully collected from its native expounders by Father friar Dominicus Germanus de Silesia…etc.”. The Praefatio begins with these words: “I would not think to have spent badly my leisure time and my efforts, once I had hunted down [venatus fuero] the interpretation of the Qur’an, not in dictionaries and lexica, but in the thoughts and statements of the disciples of its very author, or other contemporaries of theirs —or people from a time close to theirs— and from the

 Except for the praefatio, all the other parts of the “introductory section” are missing from García Masegosa’s edition. Their full edition and description has now been submitted for publication and should appear in the following contribution: Ulisse Cecini, “The Qur’ān Translation by Germanus de Silesia OFM (ca. 1650 – 1670): Observations About Its Inedited Sections,” in Documenta Coranica Christiana. Christian Translations of the Qur’an. Preliminary Considerations of the State of the Art, ed. Manolis Ulbricht (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

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native expounders of the Qur’an.”⁸ The scholia are thus an essential complement of the translation, as they are the bearers of the interpretation of the meaning of the text given by the translation. This is made clear also by their place in the work: not in a separate second part after the translation, or in its margins, but inserted inside the main text of the translation. This does not mean that the translation is interspersed with glosses: translated text and commentary are separated and clearly recognizable, however every sura has a translation part and a commentary part. In the case of the shorter suras the whole sura translation is followed by the scholium. A good example of this is represented by the Opening Sura (MS E, fols 5r-6r): first comes the translation of the sura, about 5 lines long in the manuscript (which does not start a new line for each verse),⁹ then the ca. 2-pages-long scholium, at whose end we find a few lines in Arabic. These are a passage from al-Kāshānī’s commentary that was quoted in Dominicus’s Latin translation inside the scholium itself. It concerns the question of why the letter alif (in Arabic “‫ )”ﺍ‬is missing in the basmala (bi-smi l-lāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi, the first verse of the sura = “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate”) in the expression bi-smi (= in the name [of], written in qur’anic text ‫ﺑﺴﻢ‬, instead of ‫ )ﺑﺎﺳﻢ‬and ar-raḥmāni (= the Merciful, written in the qur’anic text ‫ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻤﻦ‬, instead of ‫)ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻤﺎﻥ‬. The text appears as follows¹⁰: From the scholium to the Opening Sura (MS E, fol. 5r-v)

Lines at the end of the scholium (MS E, fol. r)

¹¹Alii autem (refert Kasciani) percunctantes causam omissionis literae ‫ ﺍ‬aleph in hoc no-

‫ﺣﻴﻦ ﺳﺌﻞ ﺭﺳﻮﻝ ﷲ ﻋﻦ ﺍﻟﻒ ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻤﻦ ﺍﻳﻦ ﺫﻫﺐ ﻗﺎﻝ ﺳﺮﻗﻬﺎ‬ ‫ﺍﻟﺸﻴﻄﺎﻥ ﻭﺍﻣﺮ ﺑﺘﻄﻮﻳﻞ ﺑﺎ ﺑﺴﻢ ﷲ ﺗﻌﻮﻳﻈﺎ ﻋﻦ ﺍﻟﻔﻬﺎ ﺍﺷﺎﺭﺓ ﺍﺣﺘﺠﺎﺏ‬

 García Masegosa, Interpretatio, 35: “Non male me otium ac studium meum impendisse arbitratus sum, si interpretationem Alcorani; non ex dictionariis lexicisque, sed ex ipsiusmet autoris discipulorum, aliorumve ipsis coaevorum, vel aevo proximorum, ac ipsiusmet Alcorani domesticorum expositorum sententia et declaratione, venatus fuero.” (The italics are from the edition, not from the manuscript).  Edited in García Masegosa, Interpretatio, 39. See also below, the first table of chapter 3.2.  This example is dealt with more extensively in my aforementioned forthcoming contribution in the volume Documenta Coranica Christiana. I repeat here the textual quotation along with the English translation below for the sake of clarity.  At the margin of the manuscript we read the name of the commentator in Arabic script: ‫( ﺍﻟﻜﺎﺷﺎﻧﻰ‬al-Kāshānī).  Here the bāʾ is written with a longer shaft.  Transliteration of the Arabic: ḥīna su’ila rasūlu l-lāhi ʿan alifi r-raḥmān ayna dhahaba qāla saraqa-hā sh-shayṭānu wa-amara bi-taṭwīl bā bi-smi l-lāhi taʿwīẓan [sic, pro taʿwīḍan] ʿan alifihā ishārat iḥtijābi l-huwiyyat al-ilāhiyyati fī ṣūrat al-raḥmati l-intishāriyyati wa-ẓuhūru-hā fī ṣūrat al-insāniyyati bi-ḥayṯu lā yaʿrifu-hu illā ahlu-hu wa-li-hādhā unkirat fī-l-waḍʿi wa-qad war-

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Continued From the scholium to the Opening Sura (MS E, fol. r-v)

Lines at the end of the scholium (MS E, fol. r)

mine, dixerunt ad illum, quorsum absit? Quoniam haec litera ‫ ﺍ‬est de sphaera Divina, hoc est absolute posita in fronte alicuius textus, occulte essentiam Divinam denotat, cum attributis et operationibus. Respondit furatus est illam Diabolus. Statimque praecepit, ut loco illius prolongaretur litera ‫ ﺏ‬in hac voce ‫ ﺑﺴﻢ ﷲ‬¹² in nomine Dei. Quo indicatur ipseitatem Divinam esse occultam in forma diffusiva attributi misericordiae, manifestatam autem in forma humana: in quantum nemo cognoscit illum, nisi qui familiaris eius fuerit. Idcirco amissa fuit, h.e. litera illa ‫ ﺍ‬in illo maximo attributo Miseratoris. Fertur autem in narratione antiqua: Deum excelsum creasse Adan ad imaginem suam, i. e. tribuit ei attributa sua et operationes suas universas. Sic quoque [f. v] concessit illa Mohhammado. Id est, explicant alii, dedit illi scientiam seu notitiam eorum. Hucusque Al-Kasciani.

‫ﺍﻟﻬﻮﻳﺔ ﺍﻻﻟﻬﻴﺔ ﻓﻰ ﺻﻮﺭﺓ ﺍﻟﺮﺣﻤﺔ ﺍﻻﻧﺘﺸﺎﺭﻳﺔ ﻭﻇﻬﻮﺭﻫﺎ ﻓﻰ ﺻﻮﺭﺓ‬ ‫ﺍﻻﻧﺴﺎﻧﻴﺔ ﺑﺤﻴﺚ ﻻ ﻳﻌﺮﻓﻪ ﺍﻻ ﺍﻫﻠﻪ ﻭﻟﻬﺬﺍ ﺍﻧﻜﺮﺕ ﻓﻲ ﺍﻟﻮﺿﻊ ﻭﻗﺪ ﻭﺭﺩ‬ ‫ﻓﻰ ﺍﻥ ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﺧﻠﻖ ﺁﺩﻡ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺻﻮﺭﺗﻪ ﺍﻯ ﺍﻋﻄﺎﻩ ﺻﻔﺎﺗﻪ ﻭﺍﻓﻌﺎﻟﻪ‬ ¹³ ‫ ﻗﺎﻝ ﺍﻟﻜﺎﺷﺎﻧﻰ‬:‫ﻭﻛﺬﺍ ﺍﻋﻄﺎﻫﺎ ﻣﺤﻤﺪ‬

If we look at the English translation of these texts¹⁴ we can see that Latin and Arabic are, respectively, translation and original of the same source, apart from very few differences: English translation of the Latin

English translation of the Arabic

Others, however —as al-Kāshānī reports— asking about the cause of the omission of the letter Alif in such word, said to him [scil. Muḥammad]: Why it is absent? As a matter of fact, this letter alif is from the divine sphere, which means that if it is put by herself at the beginning of a text, it implicitly marks the divine essence, with its attributes and acts. He answered: the devil stole it. And he im-

When the Messenger of God was asked about the Alif of Raḥmān, where it went, he said: ‘Satan stole it,’ and he ordered to elongate the letter bāʾ of bismi l-lāh to compensate for its Alif, an allusion to the veiling of the divine ipseity (al-huwiyya al-ilāhiyya) in the diffusive form of mercy and its manifestation in human form, such that nobody knows him but his people. For this reason it was omitted in the

ada fī anna Allāh taʿālā khalaqa ādaman ʿalā ṣūrati-hi wa-ifʿāli-hi wa-kadhā aʿṭā-hā Muḥammad: qāla al-Kāshānī.  All English translations, if not otherwise stated, are mine.

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Continued English translation of the Latin

English translation of the Arabic

mediately ordered that in its place the letter bā was to be elongated in that expression bismi l-lāh, in the name of God. Which indicates how the divine ipseity is concealed in the diffusive form of the attribute of mercy, it is however manifested in human form: as nobody knows him, but who was familiar with him. For this reason it was omitted, i. e., that letter Alif, in that supreme attribute of the Compassionate. It was transmitted in an ancient story that the sublime God created Adam in his image, i. e., he gave him his attributes and his all acts. So he conceded them also to Muḥammad. Which means —others explain— he gave him the knowledge or the awareness of them. So al-Kāshānī

writing. Indeed, it was transmitted that the sublime God created Adam in his form, i. e., he gave him his attributes and his all acts. So he conceded them to Muḥammad. So said alKāshānī

This was an example of a short sura. On the contrary, if the sura in question is not overly short it is divided into different sections, called textus, and each section is followed by the correspondent scholium. For example, the second sura is divided thus: :

Textus : Textus  Textus 

Basmala-v. ( line) Scholium ( page) vv.  –  ( page) Scholium ( pages) vv.  –  (/ page) Scholium (. pages) vv.  –  ( page) Scholium (. pages) vv.  –  (/ page) Scholium (. pages)

[…] Textus 

vv.  –  (. pages) Scholium ( page)

This does not mean that we do not occasionally find short glosses inside the translation, indeed we do. However, when short glosses are inserted inside the text of the translation they are distinguished clearly by underlining them, or by marginal

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notes. The marginal notes point out the name of one or more commentators that may have inspired a particular gloss or translation —as we have seen for al-Kāshānī, or the abbreviation in Arabic script ‫( ﺟﻢ‬i.e., “jm” from the Arabic jamīʿ = “totality of”), if Dominicus means that a certain interpretation is supported by all commentators. Dominicus himself explains this in the preface: Whenever the [qur’anic] words are overly synthetic or there is clearly an implicit reference, I will underline the words of the reference I made explicit, and put in the margin the name of the commentator [from whom I had the explanation], or more than one name, or these letters “‫”ﺟﻢ‬, which mean that all the commentators agree on such an explanation.¹⁵

Now that we know the basics about the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis and we have seen the structure of the Opening Sura as it is in the “first final version,” we can appreciate better the subsequent part of this chapter: the description of the special features of manuscript K-III-1 of the Escorial library.

3 Manuscript K-III-1 of the El Escorial Library 3.1 General Description Like the majority of the manuscripts presented here, manuscript K-III-1 of the Escorial library, to which I will give the siglum K, is also an autograph by Dominicus. In the online catalogue of the Escorial library it is entitled Interpretatio Alcorani, so at first I thought that it was just one more manuscript of Dominicus’s Interpretatio which had been overlooked during the production of the critical edition, as well as by other scholars who worked on Dominicus Germanus de Silesia.¹⁶ However, once I had the opportunity to consult it, I was confronted with something else.  Interpretatio Alcorani Litteralis, praefatio, MS E, fol. 2r: “In mancis autem dictis et suppositionibus evidentibus, subintellecta linea subducta notabo, nomen verò expositoris pluriumve, aut has literas ‫ ﺟﻢ‬quae significant omnes in eo convenire, in margine è regione collocabo.”  A mention of the manuscript can be found in Bertrand Zimolong, “Neues zu dem Leben und zu den Werken des P. Dominicus Germanus de Silesia O. F. M.,” Franziskanische Studien 21 (1934), 168 – 69, who, however, did not have direct access to manuscript, thus being unable to make the discovery I am presenting here. He drew his information on the manuscript from Arduino Kleinhans, Historia studii linguae arabicae et Collegii Missionum Ordinis Fratrum Minorum in Conventu ad S. Petrum in Monte Aureo Romae erecti (Firenze: Collegio di S. Bonaventura, 1930), 84– 85, who only partially quotes the titles of the works contained in the manuscript. I thank Jaume Sepulcre of the Escorial Library for mentioning to me Zimolong’s article.

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The manuscript contains 223 folios and unites different works in their status of work in progress. Apart from the last codicological unit of the manuscript, it is a very clean copy, written in a very tidy manner and in a clear hand. Therefore, I assume that it was supposed to be the “good” final copy of previously worked material. This is the description of its contents, in which we can recognize six units, each separated from the next by one or more blank folios, to wit: K: fols. r-v Prognosis interpretationis literalis Alcorani, in qua traditur synopsis, seu brevis doctrina cognoscendi quavis lethifera venena quae propinat, proponunturque salutifera antidota, nec non et pharmaca curativa.

This work is supposed to be a propedeutical work to the translation, which explains in a simple style the most important qur’anic contents and their relation to Christian contents for the use of missionaries in the Orient. Here we can find no more than the introduction and the beginning of the “Synopsis sacrilegae doctrinae Alcorani,” which, however, already stops before beginning the summary of the second sura. fols. r-v: blank K-K: fols. r-v: Interpretatio Alcorani literalis cum scholiis ad mentem authoris, ex propriis domesticis ipsius expositoribus, germanè collectis per P. Fratrem Dominicum Germanum de Silesia. K fols. r-v: Title page (r-v); Introductory section (r-v).¹⁷ This part is basically identical to the one we already know, only in a clean copy fol. rv: blank K: fols. r-r: Opening Sura (Textus Proëmialis) with scholion [sic] fols. r-r: Sura  (Collectio Prima. Textus de Vacca) fol. r: ,  –  fols. r-r: Scholion fols. r-r: Quaestio prima. De literis Mysteriosis.

This is the surprise finding and the central feature of this chapter. Here we find a new version of both translation and scholia, but only for the Opening Sura and

 In this section the praefatio is found on folios 8r-10v, so this must be the fragment called L by García Masegosa and not the same folios of manuscript &-IV-8. This section is separated from the rest by the blank folio 14. This is probably why García Masegosa missed the translation contained in the unit K3, see below in the table (which, however, is different from the first final version he edited, and probably for this reason was not considered), and, more importantly, the version contained in K4, which is indeed a further copy of the first final version.

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for sura 2, vv. 1 to 5. As we will see in more detail below, the translation is more accurate and the scholia are far longer and better written and structured than in the first version, leading me to think that this is a subsequent work destined to replace the first version if its author could finish it. fols. v-v: blank K: fols. r-v: [Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis: first version] fols. r-v: Opening Sura with scholium fols. r-v: Sura  (Textus Primus. De Vacca) to sura ,  (Textus Tertius. De Mulieribus. Textus X), with scholium.

This unit should be collated with the critical edition, as it is a further witness for it. fol. rv: blank K: fol. r-r: Prodromus interpretationis literalis Alcorani fol. v-r: Prologus interpretis

Here we find only the prologue of the planned further work, in which once again Dominicus would like to reorganise the qur’anic material in a clearer way for the purpose of its refutation. fol. v-v: blank K: fol. r-: Working exemplar of yet another version of the Interpretatio Alcorani Literalis, somehow between the first final version and K. r-r: Textus Proemialis, with scholium r-r: Textus Primus (sura , vv.  – ), with two scholia r-r Textus Primus, Textus nr.  to  (,  – ), with respective scholia fol. v: Transcription in Arabic of passages from commentaries on sura , 

Unit K6 if full of marginal annotations made in a completely disorderly fashion. Its textuality, somehow between the first final version and K3, at least in the translation part, makes me think that these are working papers, maybe in preparation of K3, thus chronologically earlier, even if they come later in the manuscript. Nonetheless the scholia do not coincide 100 % with either version, so a more careful study is required to determine more exactly the relation of this unit to the rest.

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3.2 Textual Evidence In order to appreciate the peculiarity of the textual evidence of this manuscript, I present in the following table a comparison of the translation of the Opening Sura in the three versions we have spoken of thus far: the “first final version,” contained in manuscripts E, A, B, M and K4; the “new” version of K3 and the “intermediate” version of K6. Bi-smi l-lāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi (1) Al-ḥamdu li-l-lāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīna (2) Ar-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi (3) Māliki yawmi d-dīni (4) Iyyā-ka naʿbudu wa-iyyā-ka nastaʿīnu (5) Ihdi-nā ṣ-ṣirāṭa l-mustaqīma (6) Ṣirāṭa l-ladhīna anʿamta ʿalay-him ghayri l-maġdūbi ʿalay-him wa-lā ḍāllīna In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate () Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being, () the All-merciful, the All-compassionate, () the Master of the Day of Doom. Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succour. () Guide us in the straight path (), the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray. () (A. J. Arberry’s translation)

IAL, Sura , MSS E, A, B, M, K

MS K, fol. r

MS K, fol. r

K, in marg.

[M ‫ ]ﺳﻮﺭﺓ ﺍﻟﻔﺎﺗﺤﺔ‬Textus Proëmialis In nomine Dei miseratoris misericordis Laus Deo Domino saeculorum. Miseratori misericordi, dominatori diei Judicij. Te colimus, et imploramus opem tuam. Dirige nos in viam rectam. Viam illorum quos tua gratia cumulasti. Non eorum super quos ira tua requiescit, neque illorum qui errorem sequuntur.

Textus Proëmialis ‫ﺳﻮﺭﺓ ﻓﺎﺗﺤﺔ ﺍﻟﻜﺘﺎﺏ‬ In nomine Dei miseratoris misericordis Laus Deo domino saeculorum. Miseratori misericordi, praesidi diei iudicij. Te colimus, te deprecamur. Dirige nos in viam rectam, in viam, inquam, illorum quos gratia cumulasti. Non illorum quibus iratus es, neque illorum qui errantes sunt.

Hic dicitur Textus Proe‫ﺳﻮﺭﺓ ﺍﻟﻔﺎﺗﺤﺔ‬ mialis In nomine Dei miseratoris misericordis. Laus Deo, domino saeculorum. Miseratori misericordi, praesidi diei iudicij. ‫ﺟﻢ‬ Te solum colimus, et tuam opem supplices imploramus. Dirige nos in viam rectam, in viam, inquam, illorum quos gratia tua Alcoranistae cumulasti. Non illorum quibus semper indignaJudaei. tus es, neque eorum qui Christiani. in errore perseverant.

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In the table we see the Arabic text of the Opening Sura, its English translation proposed by Arberry¹⁸ and the three versions by Dominicus Germanus de Silesia. The differences among the translations are highlighted in italics. The translation of K3 seems to strive for a even more literal translation. If this may be questionable about the praesidi, instead of dominatori, for the Arabic Mālik (= i. e., the one who rules), this is certainly the case for te deprecamur, which reflects, if not 100 % of the meaning, at least the structure of iyyā-ka nastaʿīnu (= You [obj.] we ask for help). Imploramus opem tuam from the first version perhaps renders more the meaning, but te deprecamur does not fail in the meaning (see also Arberry’s translation “to Thee we pray [like te deprecamur] for succour”) and also reflects the structure of the Arabic. The same can be said for verse 7. The tua in tua gratia is removed because it is absent from the Arabic, and the super quos ira tua requiescit is replaced with iratus es, a predicative syntagm with a past participle, referring directly to God, closer to the Arabic past participle al-magḍūbi; likewise the Arabic present participle al-ḍāllīn is rendered with a Latin present participle, errantes, instead of the periphrasis qui errorem sequuntur. The third version should be placed between the first two, in my opinion. It agrees with K3 in the translation praesidi, but adds te solum colimus (not present in the other two) and is more similar to the first version in the solution tuam opem supplices imploramus and in keeping the tua in gratia tua. In verse 7 we have a mixed solution: on the one hand the past participle indignatus, but on the other hand the periphrasis qui in errore perseverant. The fact that K6 is not at all as tidy as K3, but full of corrections and with textual fragments and notes written in the margins in a chaotic way, following all possible writing directions (one has to rotate the manuscript right-to-left or upside-down to read some of the text in the margins), lets me suppose that it is a working exemplar between the first version and K3. To conclude the comparison, we offer now also a little taste of the scholium to the sura, the beginning of which we report in the following table according to the three versions: IAL, Opening Sura, MS K, fol. r Scholium, MS E, fol. 5r

MS K, fol. r

Scholium Hunc textum vocant

Scholium Praefatiuncula: In no-

SCHOLION Hunc textum vocant

Marginalia to the text in MS K.

 Arthur J. Arberry, trans., The Koran Interpreted (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 29.  English translation: “They call this text ‘the mother of the Qur’an’ because –they say– it is fruitful with a progeny of many of God’s mysteries, precepts and prohibitions, promises and

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Continued IAL, Opening Sura, MS K, fol. r Scholium, MS E, fol. r

MS K, fol. r

matrem alcorani, quia est, aiunt, foecunda prole[s] multorum arcanorum Dei, mandatorum et interdictorum, promissionum et comminationum. Ac ut ipse quoque novatoris particularitate insigniretur, in ipsa fronte utitur introitu generali, quo omnia capita incipit, excepto de paenitentia: quae ego potius Textus vocare volui, quia originalia non sunt, sed transcripta e diversis schedu-

mine Dei miseratoris misericordis: quam in fronte omnium textuum totius alcorani praemittit, uno excepto, nempè de Poenitentia, est protestativa fidei alcoranicae, quam sic definiunt. Fides sincerae religio- ‫ﺍﻻﺳﻼﻡ ﺍﻻﻧﻘﻴﺎﺩ ﻻﻣﺮ ﷲ ﻭﻧﻬﻴﻪ‬ nis, et inconcussa in‫ﻭﺍﻋﺘﻘﺎﺩ ﻣﺎ ﺟﺎﺀﺕ ﺑﻪ ﺍﻟﺮﺳﻞ‬ tegritate prompta ‫ﻣﻦ ﺻﻔﺎﺕ ﷲ ﺗﻌﺎﻟﻰ ﻭﺍﻟﺒﻌﺚ‬ mandatorum Dei obe‫ﻭﺍﻟﺠﺰﺍﺀ ﺃﻫﻠﻬﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻫﺪ ًﻯ ﻣﻦ‬ dientia, et fuga pro‫ﺭﺑﻬﻢ‬ ²³ hibitorum, nec non et tenax religione adhaesio ijs quae tradunt nuncij id est prophetae

matrem alcorani, non quidem, ait ‫ ﺍﻟﺒﻴﻀﺎﻭﻯ‬²⁰: quod tota machina alcorani ex hac praefatione generetur, sed quia est introitus universalis omnium capitum libri caelitus missi cum laudibus divinis. Propter quod incipit. In nomine Dei miseratoris misericordis. Et hoc dicunt maximum nomen ex nominibus Dei. […]²¹ [ pages long. Each quoted text is present-

Marginalia to the text in MS K.

menaces. In its very beginning it uses the general incipit, with which every chapter begins, except the one about repentance [i. e., sura 9, n. Cecini], so that it, too, is marked with the peculiarity of the renewer. I wanted to call the chapters ‘texts,’ because they are not originals but have been transcribed from different leaves.”  Al-Bayḍāwī.  English translation: “They call this text ‘the mother of the Qur’an,’ but not, as al-Bayḍāwī says, because all the mechanism of the Qur’an is generated by this prefatory text, but because it is the universal beginning of all chapters of the book sent from heaven with the praises of God. Which is why it begins ‘in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.’ They say that this is the greatest among the names of God.”  English translation: “Short preface: In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. He puts this at the beginning, before all texts in the entire Qur’an, except one, namely the one about repentance. It is a profession of the qur’anic faith, which they define as follows: ‘Faith of the pure religion, with unshaken integrity, eager obedience to God’s precepts, and avoidance of His prohibitions, as well as tenacious adhesion in worship to all that has been transmitted by the messengers, i.e., the Prophets, about the attributes of God, the Most High. As well as to believe in universal resurrection and retribution, i. e., for the good ones and the wicked ones.’  Transliteration: “Al-islām al-inqiyād li-amri l-lāhi wa-nahī-hi wa-iʿtiqād mā jā’at bi-hi r-rusul min ṣifāt Allāhi taʿālā wa-l-baʿṯ wa-l-jazā’ ahlu-hā ʿalā hudan min rabbi-him.” English translation: “Islam is the obedience to God’s precepts and prohibitions, the belief in what has been transmitted by the Messengers about the attributes of God, the Most High, as well as in the resurrection and the reward. Its people are on guidance from their Lord.”

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Continued IAL, Opening Sura, MS K, fol. r Scholium, MS E, fol. r

MS K, fol. r

lis.[…]¹⁹ ed both in translation [ pages long. At the and in Arabic.] end a short Arabic text which was quoted in the scholium]

de attributis Dei excelsi. Item credere resurrectionem universalem atque retributionem, bonorum scilicet ac malorum. […]²² [ pages long. Unpolished version, in the margins Arabic sources of underlined quotations in the text]

Marginalia to the text in MS K.

From the first version to the other two there is a great enhancement in Dominicus Germanus’s exegetical research and in the argumentation. We keep in mind that the scholium of the first version was two pages long, with just a short Arabic text quoted and reproduced at the end. The scholion of K3 is 10 pages long with twelve quotations from Muslim commentators, each of which is both translated into Latin and presented in the original Arabic, following an ordered structure that alternates the texts in Latin and their Arabic sources in the original language. The scholium from K6 is six pages long and, as in the sura translation, we find in it contacts and intersections with both the first version and K3. My hypothesis, which I still hope to verify more carefully, is that it is a working repository, maybe between the first version and K3, though this is not visible here at the beginning. We find in it some argumentation synthetically explained in the first version, but broadened and provided with more quotations, in Latin translation inside the text and in Arabic in the margins. I plan to publish these newly discovered versions and witnesses of work in progress in a commented edition, which would be a remarkable complement to the edition of the scholia of the first version and will add a further piece of the puzzle to this exciting chapter of the history of Qur’an in the Iberian Peninsula.

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Bibliography Arberry, Arthur J., trans. The Koran Interpreted. New York: Macmillan, 1955. Bobzin, Hartmut. “Ein oberschlesischer Korangelehrter: Dominicus Germanus de Silesia, O.F.M. (1588 – 1670).” In Die oberschlesische Literaturlandschaft im 17. Jahrhundert. Edited by Gerhard Koselleck, 221 – 31. Tagungsreihe der Stiftung Haus Oberschlesien 11. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2001. Cecini, Ulisse. “The Qur’ān Translation by Germanus de Silesia OFM (ca. 1650 – 1670): Observations About Its Inedited Sections.” In Documenta Coranica Christiana. Christian Translations of the Qur’an. Preliminary Considerations of the State of the Art. Edited by Manolis Ulbricht. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming. Devic, Marcel. “Une traduction inédite du Coran.” Journal Asiatique VIII, no. 1 (1883): 343 – 406. García Masegosa, Antonio, ed. Germán de Silesia. Interpretatio alcorani litteralis. Nueva Roma 32. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009. Kleinhans, Arduino. Historia studii linguae arabicae et Collegii Missionum Ordinis Fratrum Minorum in Conventu ad S. Petrum in Monte Aureo Romae erecti. Firenze: Collegio di S. Bonaventura, 1930. Richard, Francis. “Le Franciscain Dominicus Germanus de Silésie, grammairien et auteur d’apologie en Persan.” Islamochristiana X (1984): 91 – 107. Zimolong, Bertrand. P. Dominicus Germanus de Silesia O. F. M. Ein biographischer Versuch. Breslau: Otto Borgmeyer, 1928. Zimolong, Bertrand. “Neues zu dem Leben und zu den Werken des P. Dominicus Germanus de Silesia O.F.M.” Franziskanische Studien 21 (1934): 151 – 70.

II Muslims in Christian Spain: From Arabic to Aljamía

Gerard A. Wiegers

The Office of the Four Chief Judges of Mamluk Cairo and their views on Translating the Qur’an in the Early Sixteenth Century: Iberian Islam in a Global Context 1 Introduction At the beginning of the sixteenth century the chief judges of the Office of the four Chief Judges of Mamluk Cairo gave their views on a number of religious issues in written responsa (fatwas), and did so very likely upon the request of a group of Mudejars from Aragón who had put some pertinent questions to them. The judges expressed these views shortly before the forced conversions to Christianity in the territories of these Mudejars, which led to the disappearance of publicly practiced Muslim religious life in the Iberian Peninsula and emigration of parts of the Mudejar population to Islamic territories.¹ Among the questions asked by the said Mudejars to the judges was one about translating the Qur’an into nonArabic languages. In a previous article, the late Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld and myself edited and translated the unique Arabic manuscript that included these fatwas, adding a brief introduction, in which we did not go, however, into a detailed analysis of the fatwas.² In the present contribution, I will first of all discuss in the light of new evidence the historical context of these fatwas. Then, I will discuss the views of the four qadis on the Qur’an and discuss the  Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld and Gerard A. Wiegers, “Islam in Spain during the Early Sixteenth Century. The Views of the Four Chief Judges in Cairo (Introduction, Translation and Arabic Text),” in Poetry, Politics and Polemics. Cultural Transfer between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, ed. Otto Zwartjes, Geert Jan van Gelder and Ed C.M.de Moor (Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997).  See Kocku von Stuckrad, “Historical Discourse Analysis: The Entanglement of Past and Present,” in Discourse Research and Religion: Disciplinary Use and Interdisciplinary Dialogues, ed. Jay Johnston & Kocku von Stuckrad (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021). Note: This essay is part of a project that had received funding by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 810141, project EuQu: “The European Qu’ran. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-007

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differences and commonalities between the views of the judges from a juridical and theological perspective. Next, I will ask how these views on the translation of the Qur’an should be interpreted against the wider background of Muslim views on translation, commentary and ritual use the translated Qur’an in different parts of the Mediterranean Islamicate world.

2 The Historical Context In all likelihood, Islam in Medieval and early sixteenth-century Christian Iberia was not an exception to the developments in the Islamicate world with regard to its use of the vernacular in devotional and didactic practices. These developments have been analysed in recent years by Travis Zadeh with regard to Persian translations, and by Gulnaz Sibgatullina with regard to Turkic translations and vernacular religious literature.³ From these studies it appears that in the case of Christian Iberia, we are dealing with a corpus of religious texts, among which we find numerous manuscripts which include Qur’an and interlinear commentaries, often paraphrasing c.q. translating the text of the Qur’an in Romance in Arabic script. In recent years it has also become clear that the use of the Arabic alphabet for religious texts in the vernacular —or Aljamiado, as it was called in Iberia— can also be seen as a “global” phenomenon found in many Muslim communities throughout the world.⁴ A difference with many other parts of the world is that in our case we are dealing with a phenomenon that occurs in non-Muslim territory. This fact not only has consequences for the Islamic status of the writings, it also raises a number of additional issues for Arabic and vernacular texts, including the Qur’an and the interpretation of the Qur’an. However, Muslim and non-Muslim territories were to a large extent entangled and numerous issues demonstrate the relevance of these entanglements with regard to the Qur’an.

 Travis E. Zadeh, The Vernacular Qur’an. Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Gulnaz Sibgatullina, “On Translating the Qurʾān into Turkic Vernaculars: Texts, Ties and Traditions,” in European Muslims and the Qur’an: Practices of Translation, Interpretation and Commodification , ed. Gerard A. Wiegers and Gulnaz Sibgatullina [forthcoming]; see also Gerard A. Wiegers, Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 103.  Gulnaz Sibgatullina and Gerard A. Wiegers, “Aljamiado” forthcoming; Manuel A. Vásquez and David Garbin, “Globalization,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion, ed. Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

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I will discuss three examples. Explaining his reasons for cooperating with Cardinal Juan de Segovia, the Segovian scholar Yça de Gebir details in the middle of the fifteenth century his hesitations about cooperating in translating the Qur’an, balancing negative and positive factors. Very important here was the fact that he had been ordered by the Castilian King to do so.⁵ In addition, he felt that by interpreting (Sp. ynterpretar) the Qur’an in Romance he would be able to respond to allegations by some “cardinals” that Muslims hide the Qur’an as something unpleasing,⁶ and to answer to that lofty authority (God) who “tells us that a creature who knows something of the Law should show this to other creatures in a language they would understand.” It was for that reason that he put it into Romance, with the commentary (tafsir) before him. The hesitation that can be noticed may well stem from a negative attitude towards teaching the Qur’an to non-Muslims. This negative attitude also appears from a second example, that of the Leuven scholar of Arabic and the Qur’an, Nicolaes Cleynaerts (1493 – 1542), whose Tunisian Arabic teacher, the freed slave Kharūf al-Tūnisī, was confronted with a fatwa issued by the scholar from Fez, al-Yasīsatnī. The gist of that fatwa was that it was not allowed to teach this Christian student the Qur’an. The mufti based himself on the dominant point of view in the Malikite school of law that it is forbidden to teach unbelievers the Qur’an and Arabic script, for they may tarnish it.⁷ The third example is from the Morisco Aḥmad ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī (c. 1570after 1640), who tells us the following about a meeting in Paris in about 1611: In that city I met one of their learned men who was studying Arabic. His name was Hubert.⁸ He said to me: “I will serve you in your needs, by talking on your behalf with the important people etcetera, and I do not want anything from you in return other than to read with you the books I have in Arabic and that you will explain some of their contents to me.

 Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 70 – 71; see also the contribution by Davide Scotto in this volume.  This wording is found in the Spanish National Library [BNE], MS 2076; see Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 115, 236.  Van Koningsveld, “‘Mon Kharûf’. Quelques remarques sur le maître tunisien du premier arabisant néerlandais, Nicolas Clénard (1493 – 1542),” in Nouvelles approches des relations islamochrétiennes à l’époque de la Renaissance (Zaghouan: Fondation Temimi, 2000), 124.  Étienne Hubert, born in Orléans in 1568, was sent on a mission to Morocco in 1598. He was a physician to sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr for one year, which he also used for studying Arabic and collecting Arabic books. Upon his return to Paris he remained a physician and between 1600 and 1613 he was Royal lecturer of Arabic. He died in 1614. See Pieter S. van Koningsveld, Qasim al-Samarrai and Gerard A. Wiegers (eds.), Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī: Kitāb Nāṣir alDīn Alā ‘l-Qawm al-Kāfirīn (The Supporter of Religion against the Infidel) (Madrid: CSIC, 2015), 130 – 31.

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I told him: “Bring them to me!” One of the books he brought was the Noble Book.⁹ I asked him: “Where did you get this Qur’an?” He answered: “In the City of Marrakesh. I learnt to read Arabic there. I stayed there by order of the Sultan of France to inform him in secret letters about everything happening in the court of the Sultan of Marrakesh, concerning his government and his movements”. I became angry when I saw the Book of the Exalted God in the hands of an impure infidel.

The entangled nature of Muslim-Christian relations in Iberia also appears from the fact that Muslims in Christian territories consulted Muslim scholars in Muslim territories. This included consultations about the interpretation of the Qur’an. The Arabic manuscript BNE MS 4950, for example, includes twenty fatwas given by the Nasrid mufti al-Ḥaffār (d. 1408) to Mudejars from Aragon, who at the end of the fourteenth century had travelled to Granada to ask the questions and copy out the answers.¹⁰ That such contacts were indeed not an exception appears from the text that I will discuss here as the focus of my paper. An Arabic manuscript from a village close to the Moroccan city of Tetuan includes fatwas dealing with questions asked by Mudejars from Aragon or Valencia. They date from the beginning of the sixteenth century, very likely between 1508 and 1513, and shed light on the views of the four Chief Judges of Cairo on various issues, including translating the Qur’an into non-Arabic languages.¹¹ First some words on the manuscript.¹² We are dealing with an Arabic manuscript that can be dated to the sixteenth century, written in an Andalusian/Maghribi hand that we find in other manuscripts copied in Christian Spain by Muslims living there. It was probably taken to Morocco by Muslims from Iberia during their migration. The manuscript includes a fatwa by the fourteenth-century Granadan scholar Ibn Rabī’ on migration to Islamic Territory and the fatwas by the four chief judges. A date between 1508 and 1513 means that the fatwas were issued very shortly before the conquest of Mamluk Egypt in 1517 by the Ottomans. How were the questions asked? The text does not tell much about this. The identities of the questioners are not revealed; it is clear, though, that they were posed to all four and that the questions are meant to enlighten those Muslims who live in subjection (al-muslimīn al-mudajjanīn) in the land of the Christians (bi-bilād al-naṣāra).

 The Qur’an.  Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 83. I am preparing, with Mònica Colominas Aparicio, an edition and translation of these fatwas.  Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, “Islam in Spain,” 136.  Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, “Islam in Spain,”; see also Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, “The Islamic Statute of the Mudejars in the Light of a New Source,” Al-Qanṭara 17 (1996).

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3 The Questions and the Office of the Four Chief Qadis of Cairo Five questions were being asked to the office of the four chief qadis of Cairo, all of them in a different way related to the position of Muslims living among Christians and in Christian territories, viz. about (1) whether it is allowed to consider the consequences of a possible loss of property in a Muslim’s decision to leave Christian lands to perform the emigration (hijra) to Muslim territory, (2) whether is it allowed or not to return to Christian territory after performing the pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj), (3) returning or not for religious scholars, whose emigration will cause a weakening of the faith of Muslims living among Christians, (4) whether it is allowed to return to Christian territories if someone has left his children there and wants to rescue them, and (5) about the use of non-Arabic languages in ritual and religious-educational contexts. That the questions were submitted to the four chief qadis of Cairo and not, for example, to a Malikite scholar alone is interesting and deserves an explanation which we did not address in the earlier article. I will briefly explain why, on the basis of some recent historical studies. The office of the four chief qadis of Cairo was founded by the Mamluk sultan Baybars in the thirteenth century. He did this, as Yossef Rapoport has demonstrated, in order to institutionalize flexibility in the Mamluk judicial framework.¹³ So, next to the Shafiite chief qadi, Baybars and his Mamluk successors appointed chief qadis from the other schools as well. Thenceforth, in theory, people would turn to the qadis of their own madhhab, while for particular issues one might turn to one of the qadis of one of the other schools. The office of the four chief qadis continued to function until the very end of the Mamluk period, when the Ottoman conquest in 1517 led to the end of legal pluralism and the beginning of the domination of the Hanafite school (“Hanafitization”).¹⁴ The fatwas in question, therefore, date from a very late period in the history of the office of the four qadis, only a few years before Cairo was conquered in 1517.

 Yossef Rapoport, “Legal Diversity in the Age of Taqlīd: The Four Chief Qāḍīs under the Mamluks,” Islamic Law and Society 10, no. 2 (2003); Stephan Conermann and Gül Şen (eds.), The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition. Continuity and Change in Egypt and Bilād al-Shām in the Sixteenth Century (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2017); Yousif Ali al-Thakafi, “The Diplomatic Relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Empire in the First Quarter of the Sixteenth Century” PhD Diss (Michigan State University, 1981).  Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim, “Al-Shaʿrānī’s Response to Legal Purism: A Theory of Legal Pluralism,” Islamic Law and Society 20 (2013), 118.

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How representative is it that all four qadis answered these issues? As the preceding passage suggests, it would have been far more logical to assume that Muslims from Iberia, where the Malikite school dominated, would have turned to the Malikite qadi only. And this was also the custom for them. So why consult the four qadis? What else do we know about their fatwas? There is indeed some, but so far scanty, evidence about other examples of fatwas that were given by all four qadis.¹⁵ One instance are the fatwas about the views of the Egyptian Shafiite scholar Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar b. Ḥasan al-Biqāʿī (1407– 1480), in his defense of the orthodox nature of quoting the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels in works of tafsir. Al-Biqāʿī wrote a lengthy treatise called Al-aqwāl al-qawīma fī ḥukm al-naql min kutub al-qadīma (“the Just Verdict on the Permissibility of quoting from Old Scriptures”), quoting in it the positive views of the four qadis of Cairo whom he had asked to give fatwas in his defense against the attacks of those who rejected that this was permissible on account of taḥrīf. ¹⁶ Al-Biqāʿī rejected in his work the legal position that the writings of Christians and Jews should not be quoted nor deserve a worthy treatment in such works on the Qur’an. He defended their use and indeed used them in his own commentary on the Qur’an, to explain qur’anic passages related to the Bible. This example is the only other case I know in which the four views of the qadis survive. In addition to the remote possibility that there also exists a connection between al-Biqāʿī’s case and that of the Mudejars and Moriscos,¹⁷ it seems certain that there were other examples of Muslims from Iberia who turned to the Mamluks (and the Ottomans) for help in the face of the direct threat to their religious and material interests, conquest of their territories, and imminent conversion to Christianity.¹⁸ In fact, Mudejars travelled to Egypt back and forth from the fourteenth century onwards. From these contacts it may be concluded

 I am grateful to Walid Saleh (Toronto) who drew my attention to this example.  Walid A. Saleh, In Defense of the Bible. A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʿī’s Bible Treatise (Leiden: Brill, 2008) 31– 32.  Such a connection is suggested by the existence of two important manuscripts of his work which are extant in El Escorial and originally belonged to the Moroccan sultans. This also suggests that the aforesaid Morisco al-Ḥajarī may have had access to this source in his capacity as secretary to the Moroccan sultan, Zīdān, between 1608 and the moment the sultan’s library was brought to El Escorial (Saleh, In Defense of the Bible, 43 – 44). Indeed, al-Ḥajarī hints at Muslim discussions about quoting the Gospels, see: Koningsveld, al-Samarrai and Wiegers, Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim Al-Ḥajarī: Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, 77.  See, for example, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld and Gerard A. Wiegers, “An Appeal of the Moriscos to the Mamluk Sultan and its Counterpart to the Ottoman Court: Textual Analysis, Context, and Wider Historical Background,” Al-Qanṭara 20, no. 1 (1999).

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that the Mamluks acknowledged the Muslim identities of those who lived among Christians.¹⁹ In the framework of the present study, however, the most important question that arises is how the views on the translation of the Qur’an and the ritual use of non-Arabic are connected to the literary culture of Muslims in Iberia.²⁰ Let me now turn to these views. The question reads as follows:²¹ Is it permissible or not to express the Venerable Qur’an (al-taʿbīr can al-Qur’ān al-ʿazīz) in non-Arabic words so that those who do not understand the Arabic language can understand it? And if you hold the second opinion (i. e. if it is not permissible), is it then makrūh or ḥarām?

The answer of the Malikite imam reads: “it is not permissible (lā yajūz) to recite the Qur’an in any language other than Arabic for the person who is able to do so, except for a pupil to a teacher²², who perforce cannot do it otherwise.” There follow a few remarks on the khuṭba in non-Arabic, to which I will return below. By way of comment I would add that the Malikite imam seems to follow a view expressed by the fourteenth-century Egyptian Malikite scholar Khalīl ibn Isḥāq al-Jundī (d. 1365), in his well-known and authoritative Mukhtaṣar fi-‘l fiqh (Summary of Religious Jurisprudence). His work can be seen as the backbone of Malikite fiqh as it was administered in the Nasrid courts from the fif-

 This is meaningful in view of another point that I need to discuss briefly here. With regard to the position of Muslims outside Muslim territories, two contrary positions maybe be discerned. A hardline position stresses the dangers of a minority position, and the urge to perform the hijra to dar al-islam, and a tolerant, or flexible position. The fourteenth-century Granadan jurist Ibn Rabic, whose points of view were adopted by the late fifteenth-century jurist from Fez, al-Wansharīshī, was among the hardliners. But the hardline position is not the one adopted by the four qadis. In their answers to the questions posed all four acknowledged the possibility of living a pious life as a “mudajjan”, coinciding in this with the other, “flexible” position. See on this, for example, Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, “The Islamic Statute,” 49 – 55.  Let me add, however, that perhaps the fact that all qadis answered the questions points to the possibility that the Mamluk authorities were aiming to send a message not only to Muslims in Christian Iberia, but also to other parts of the Muslim world, and to Muslims living in minority situations elsewhere. In other words, there may well be an element of globalization, a phenomenon we witness in the world from the late fifteenth century onwards. See Vásquez and Garbin, “Globalization.”  The question about the Qur’an is the fifth and last, which may be meaningful, for the answer on how to deal with the Qur’an in Christian territory is of course also dependent on the question of whether your stay there is legal in the perspective of Muslim law.  Slightly revising our translation of 1996.

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teenth century onwards, and continued to play an important role in the Maghreb when the Nasrid Kingdom had disappeared. It is also known to have circulated among the Moriscos.²³ Khalīl is even cited for this view in Morisco texts written in seventeenth-century Tunis.²⁴ According to Khalīl, then, it is reprehensible (makrūh) for someone to recite the Qur’an in a non-Arabic language (Ar. aʿjamī), [even] if that person is able to do so. Thus, it seems that the Malikite chief qadi of Cairo expresses himself in the same way as his predecessor. He seems to say that it is only permissible, i. e., the second position, for Muslims living in Christian territories to recite the Qur’an in another language in a teaching setting to those who are learning it, and that it is reprehensible if one is able to recite it in Arabic. It is clear that in his answer the Malikite qadi limits himself to the public, ritual practice of reciting a translation of the Qur’an and does not refer to the uses of translations and comments in other settings. The Hanbalite imam states the following: “Concerning the translation of the Qur’an (tarjamat al-Qur’ān) into a non-Arabic language, that is forbidden, because of its iʿjāz (i. e. miraculous character), which is in the wording and construction, and this [iʿjāz] is lost when it is translated into non-Arabic.” This position of the Shafiite imam is that “It is not permitted to recite [qirā’a] the Qur’an in non-Arabic because in this way its iʿjāz, intended by the Arabic text, will be lost.” Both imams approach the matter from the theological perspective of the doctrine of iʿjāz, but the answer of the Hanbafite imam is more categorical and general and does not consider the context, while the Shafiite imam limits himself to the context of recitation. The Hanafite imam, finally, states that: “To explain (tafhīm) the meaning (maʿnā) of the Qur’an in non-Arabic is permitted and it does not fall into the category of makrūh.” This last, brief, answer matches what is known about the Hanafite position.²⁵ It is also interesting that the Hanafite qadi answers both parts of the question, and makes it understandable why at a very early stage in Hanafi dominated territories vernaculars such as Turkish and Persian were used for translations of

 Muhammad Fadel, “Rules, Judicial Discretion, and the Rule of Law in Nasrid Granada: An Analysis of al-Ḥadīqa al-mustaqilla al-naḍra fī al-fatāwā al-ṣādira ‘an ‘ulamā’ al-ḥaḍra,” in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice, ed. Ron Gleave and Eugenia Kermeli (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997).  See Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 212; Wiegers, “Language and Identity.” There is a copy in Arabic among the manuscripts discovered in Almonacid de la Sierra: Madrid, Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás [BTNT] MS RESC 50 (likely a commentary on the Mukhṭaṣar by al-Damīrī).  See Tibawi, “Is the Qur’ān translatable?” 8, 15.

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the Qur’an, which were seen as explanations of its meaning and not as intimately and sensibly connected to the notion of iʿjāz. All imams, except for the Hanafite imam, add a few considerations about the use of non-Arabic in the sermon (khuṭba), which is relevant in view of the restrictions voiced, since sermons usually include quotations from the Qur’an. The Malikite imam does not allow preaching in a language other than Arabic for the preacher (khaṭīb) who is able to use Arabic, since the sermon is a substitute for two prostations (rakʿas) of the afternoon salat (ṣalāt al-zuhr).²⁶ The answer leaves open the possibility that a preacher who does not speak Arabic but rather a vernacular would use that language. The Malikite imam does not allow commenting on the Qur’an in non-Arabic during the sermon, word for word or within a longer unity (of texts), since that would be against the sanctioned custom (sunna) of the Friday prayer.²⁷ The Hanbalite imam agrees with this point of view, but allows the khuṭba to be explained in non-Arabic after the sermon in Arabic, except for the qur’anic verses. The Shaffiite imam allows the community to deliver a sermon in non-Arabic if no one is able to do it in Arabic, but adds as a condition that someone within the community should learn to do so. If the time needed for that shall have passed, it is no longer allowed for that community to perform a collective ṣalāt al-jumʿa, and instead an ordinary afternoon prayer (ṣalāt al-zuhr) must be performed. No precise time frame is mentioned, however.

4 Analysis and Conclusions Let us first return briefly to the question asked by the Mudejars. Is it permissible or not to express the Venerable Qur’an (al-taʿbīr ʿan al-Qur’ān al-ʿazīz) in nonArabic words so that those [Muslims] who do not understand the Arabic language can understand it? And if you hold the second opinion (i. e., if it is not permissible), is it then makrūh (reprehensible) or ḥarām (forbidden)? We have seen that, in their answers, three of the four qadis deal with the ritual uses of translations of the Qur’an. Only the Hanbalite qadi rejects translation in a general way, while the Hanafite judge allows translation in a general way. But none of the qadis rejects vernacular tafsir, which seems very much in line with the general opinion that translation in the sense of commentary was not  Wa-lā yakhtubu ’l-qādir ʿalā ’l-ʿarabiyya bi-ghayrihā, khuṣūṣan in qulnā: innahā badalun ʿan rakʿatayn wa-‘l-imām al-qādir ʿalā ’l-ʿarabiyya lā yaqra’ bi-ghayrihā li-ghayrihi.  Wa-ammā tafsīruhā bi-ghayri ’l-ʿarabiyya jumlatan wāḥida aw shay’an fa-shay’an fa-dhālika mukhrijun lahā ʿan sunnat al-jumʿa.

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only allowed but widely used in the Islamicate world. Hence, the fatwas seem to aim at limiting the ritual and visible use of Romance. Taken together, all the answers, the common points and the differences among the four judges reflect a non-rejective, affirmative view on the possibility of Islam in the minority position. Their views about the obligation of the hajj, about travelling to Islamic territory and returning from there to Christian territory, explaining and commenting on the Qur’an in non-Arabic languages in didactic settings, all show that such acts fall within the scope and practice of all the orthodox Sunni schools of law.²⁸ Such views must have functioned discursively as an endorsement of Mamluk political and religious claims in the wider Mediterranean, and vis-a-vis Christian claims to power, especially those of Castile and Aragon. Those kingdoms still contained Mudejars, while mass conversions under duress of Muslims in the Kingdoms of Granada and Castile had turned the Muslims there into New Christians; they had revolted against the policies promulgated by their rulers that, in the views of the Mudejars, contradicted the agreements between the Granadan authorities and the conquering Christians during the rendition of Granada in 1491. Isabel and Fernando, the Catholic Monarchs, then sent their envoy, the historian Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (1457– 1526), to Cairo to explain to the Mamluks why the Catholic Monarchs had been forced to decree the conversion of the Castilian Mudejars, a diplomatic action that may offer a further background to our fatwas.²⁹ This, in turn, means that we cannot detach the cultural role of the Qur’an in Europe from that of the Muslim world either, especially if we assume that the range of opinions included the opinion most open to the ritual and religious uses of vernacular: that of the Hanafite madhhab and the territories where it dominated. This is corroborated by the activities of Muslims in Christian territories regarding such practices, and in the last few decades it has become increasingly clear that these groups were far less marginal than has hitherto been assumed.³⁰ Thus we come across travel accounts (riḥlas) by Castilian Mudejars attesting to their ḥajj, written in Romance with Arabic script, as well as translations of the Qur’an, sermons in Spanish, etc.³¹ Many of the Romance texts are written in Ara-

 This seems to confirm the conclusions of Jamal Abbed-Rabo, “Islamic Law and the Problem of Christian Hegemony in Late Nasrid Granada,” PhD Diss. (The University of Chicago, 2020).  See Leonard P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 66 – 67.  See, for example, Wiegers, “Moriscos,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE.  See on the ḥajj, for example, Pablo Roza Candás, Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka. La peregrinación de Omar Patón (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 2019); On preaching: Linda G. Jones, The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World (Cambridge: Cambridge University

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bic script, but increasingly the Latin script was chosen. This is the case for the so-called Toledo Qur’an, a complete quite literally paraphrasing commentary into Spanish which was copied in 1606, probably in Villafeliche by a Morisco scribe who, for practical reasons, used Christian letters instead of Arabic ones. The manuscript was not taken to Tunis like so many others, and is now preserved in a collection of manuscripts in Toledo.³² The examples can be extended with many more, and it is clear that the use of the Romance language in religious literature by Mudejars had started well before the Mamluk judges gave their opinions, thus making it unlikely that there is a historical connection between that practice and these fatwas. Unfortunately, nothing is known about their influence either within or outside the Mudejar and Morisco community. We know of no citations or other external historical evidence. However, as I have argued, the significance and scope of the fatwas as issued by the four chief qadis in Mamluk Cairo transcends the situation of Muslims in Christian Iberia, and suggests that it was the wider Muslim world in interaction with Muslims in minority situations that was the theatre of the communications and the discourse offered in these texts. That wider global context deserves further attention. Two interesting avenues for further research come to mind: the use of Scriptures in a comparative Muslim, Jewish and Christian perspective, and the question, which cannot be answered here, of why the Mudejars sought an answer from the office of the four qadis, and not from a scholar from their own school of law, a Malikite mufti. Were they seeking a broader answer, and therefore the flexibility that other points of view offered in their situation, for example the Hanafite, “liberal” view? This may well be the case. But these are questions that may be answered when more fatwas of the Office of the Four Qadis of Cairo become known, or we have more historical evidence of the fatwas in question.

Press, 2012), 93 ff; Olivier Brisville-Fertin, “La predicación aljamiada, en torno a la religiosidad mudéjar y morisca,” in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Preaching in the Mediterranean and Europe, ed. Linda G. Jones and Adrienne Dupont-Hamy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), passim; Kathryn Miller, Guardians of Islam. Religious Authorities and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 142; Luce López Baralt, La literatura secreta de los últimos musulmanes de España (Madrid: Trotta, 2009); and see the contribution by Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias in this volume on the phenomenon of the so-called abbreviated Qur’an in Arabic and Aljamiado among the Mudejars and Moriscos.  Consuelo López Morillas, El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-la Mancha (Gijón: Trea, 2011), 27– 29.

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Bibliography Abbed-Rabo, Jamal. “Islamic Law and the Problem of Christian Hegemony in Late Nasrid Granada.” PhD Diss. The University of Chicago, 2020. Brisville Fertin, Olivier. “La predicación aljamiada: en torno a la religiosidad mudéjar y morisca.” In Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Preaching in the Mediterranean and Europe. Edited by Linda G. Jones and Adrienne Dupont-Hamy, 69 – 91. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. Conermann, Stephan and Şen, Gül (eds.). The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition. Continuity and Change in Egypt and Bilād al-Shām in the Sixteenth Century. Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2017. Fadel, Muhammad. “Rules, Judicial Discretion, and the Rule of Law in Nasrid Granada: An Analysis of al-Ḥadīqa al-mustaqilla al-naḍra fī al-fatāwā al-ṣādira ‘an ‘ulamā’ al-ḥaḍra.” In Islamic Law: Theory and Practice. Edited by Ron Gleave and Eugenia Kermeli, 49 – 86. London: I. B. Tauris, 1997. Ibrahim, Ahmed Fekry. “Al-Shaʿrānī’s Response to Legal Purism: A Theory of Legal Pluralism.” Islamic Law and Society 20 (2013): 110 – 40. Harvey, Leonard P. Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. Jones, Linda Gale. The Power of Oratory in the Medieval Muslim World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. López Baralt, Luce. La literatura secreta de los últimos musulmanes de España. Madrid: Trotta, 2009. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha. Gijón: Trea, 2011. Miller, Kathryn. Guardians of Islam. Religious Authorities and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Rapoport, Yossef, “Legal Diversity in the Age of Taqlīd: The Four Chief Qāḍīs under the Mamluks.” Islamic Law and Society 10, no. 2 (2003): 210 – 28. Roza Candás, Pablo. Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka. La peregrinación de Omar Patón (Colección de Literatura Española Aljamiado-Morisca). Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 2019. Saleh, Walid A. In Defense of the Bible. A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʿī’s Bible Treatise. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Sibgatullina, Gulnaz. “On Translating the Qur’an into Turkic Vernaculars: Texts, Ties and Traditions.” In European Muslims and the Qur’an: Practices of Translation, Interpretation and Commodification, edited by Gerard A. Wiegers and Gulnaz Sibgatullina (forthcoming). Sibgatullina, Gulnaz, and Gerard A. Wiegers. “Aljamiado.” In Encyclopedia of Islam, THREE. Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denise Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson. Leiden: Brill (forthcoming). Stuckrad, Kocku von. “Historical Discourse Analysis: The Entanglement of Past and Present.” In Discourse Research and Religion: Disciplinary Use and Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Edited by Jay Johnston & Kocku von Stuckrad, 77 – 88. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Al-Thakafi, Yousif Ali. “The Diplomatic Relationship between the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Empire in the First Quarter of the Sixteenth Century.” PhD Diss., Michigan State University, 1981.

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Tibawi, A.L. “Is the Qur’ān Translatable?” The Muslim World 52, no. 1 (1962): 4 – 16. Van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd. “‘Mon Kharûf’. Quelques remarques sur le maître tunisien du premier arabisant néerlandais, Nicolas Clénard (1493 – 1542).” In Nouvelles approches des relations islamo-chrétiennes à l’époque de la Renaissance. Actes de la troisième Rencontre scientifique tenue du 14 au 16 Mars 1998, 123 – 41. Zaghouan: Fondation Temimi, 2000. Van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd and Gerard A. Wiegers. “The Islamic Statute of the Mudejars in the Light of a New Source.” Al-Qanṭara 17 (1996): 19 – 58. Van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd and Gerard A. Wiegers. “Islam in Spain during the Early Sixteenth Century. The Views of the Four Chief Judges in Cairo (Introduction, Translation and Arabic Text).” In Poetry, Politics and Polemics. Cultural Transfer between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Edited by Otto Zwartjes, Geert Jan van Gelder and Ed C.M. de Moor, 133 – 52. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. Van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd and Gerard A. Wiegers. “An Appeal of the Moriscos to the Mamluk Sultan and its Counterpart to the Ottoman Court: Textual Analysis, Context, and Wider Historical Background.” Al-Qanṭara 20, no. 1 (1999): 161 – 89. Van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd, Qasim al-Samarrai and Gerard Albert Wiegers (eds.), Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim Al-Ḥajarī: Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn Alā ‘l-Qawm al-Kāfirīn (The Supporter of Religion against the Infidel). General Introduction, Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. Reedited, Revised, and Updated in the Light of Recent Publications and the Primitive Version found in the Hitherto Unknown Manuscript Preserved in Al-Azhar. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2015. Vásquez, Manuel A. and David Garbin. “Globalization.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Study of Religion. Edited by Michael Stausberg and Steven Engler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Wiegers, Gerard A. Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors. Leiden: Brill 1994. Wiegers, Gerard A. “Language and Identity: Pluralism and the Use of Non-Arabic Languages in the Muslim West.” In Pluralism and Identity. Studies in Ritual Behaviour. Edited by Jan Platvoet and Karel van der Toorn, 303 – 26. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Wiegers, Gerard A. “Moriscos.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE. Edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson. Brill online, 2020. [accessed 07 – 03 – 2022] Zadeh, Travis E. The Vernacular Qur’an. Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias

New Models of Qur’an Abridgment among the Mudejars and Moriscos: Copies in Arabic Containing three Selections of Suras 1 Introduction The Qur’an, the sacred text of Islam, was repeatedly copied by the Mudejars and Moriscos both in Arabic and in Romance vernacular. The holy book’s central role at the heart of Islamic societies is also reflected in the everyday life of the Iberian Muslim communities under Christian rule; indeed, Qur’an copies make up a large proportion of these communities’ extant written output. In these codices, the holy text could be copied either in whole or in part, and they could be prepared in Arabic, in Arabic alongside a Romance version, or solely in Romance. Thus, some codices contain the entire Qur’an, as in various Arabic-language manuscripts,¹ for example Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE) MS 5212, a copy dated in 1505.² As for copies in Romance, Biblioteca de Castilla-

 According to Monika Winet, MS BNE 5293, 5227 and 5016 contain the complete Arabic text of the Qur’an, as she writes in “Alcorán abreviado,” in Alfredo Mateos Paramio and Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva, eds., Memoria de los moriscos (Madrid: SECC, 2010), 144– 45. However, ms. BNE 5016 contains only Suras 38 – 114; in other words, the final fourth of the Qur’an. The other two manuscripts (MS BNE 5293 and 5227), along with MS BNE 5249, are also complete Qur’ans in Arabic, according to Mokhles Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado. II-IV-701 de la Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana de Florencia,” PhD diss. (Universidad de Oviedo, 2005), 107. These three manuscripts (BNE 5293, 5227 and 5249) from the BNE are originally from the library of Cardinal Zelada, as indicated in catalogue entries CLXXIX, CLXXXV and CCXXV by F. Guillén Robles in his Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes existentes en la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1889), 84, 86 and 100. Of them, at least BNE 5249 (online at http://bdh.bne.es/bne search/detalle/bdh0000258172), given its Eastern calligraphy and format, is clearly not of Mudejar or Morisco origin. As such, this may very likely be the case of the other two manuscripts as well.  In his catalogue, Guillén Robles mentions the date and the fact that it is “part IV” of the Qur’an, i. e. the last fourth, in index card DLXXII, Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, 233. However, through personal communication, Juan Pablo Arias Torres has informed me that the manuscript in fact contains a complete copy of the sacred text, and that Guillén RoNote: This essay is part of the EuQu project, ERC grant agreement no. 810141. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-008

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La Mancha MS T235, dated in 1606, which was edited and studied by Consuelo López Morillas,³ contains the only complete, extant translation of the sacred text into Castilian made by the Iberian Muslim communities. In other cases, the text of the Qur’an is only partially copied, in the form of subdivisions that can take on a variety of structures. A common format is to copy one quarter of the Qur’an, whereby the 114 suras are distributed into four parts. In Mudejar and Morisco manuscripts, this division relates to the four-part model proposed by Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān al-Dānī (d. 444/1053)⁴ in his work al-Bayān fī ʿAdd Āy alQur’ān, aimed at evenly dividing the Qur’an into equal sections, as noted by Juan Pablo Arias Torres.⁵ To this end, the Andalusi author made use of subdivisions smaller than the quarter, in this case a canonical qur’anic subdivision called the ḥizb,⁶ which is the unit that results from dividing the sacred text into sixty parts:

bles’s faulty note is probably based on an annotation at the end of the manuscript indicating the date that the final quarter was completed.  Consuelo López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha (Gijón: Trea, 2011). Years earlier, the same researcher published various monographs on marginal notes, authorship, and the relationship between this manuscript and the rest of the corpus of Qur’ans by Mudejars and Moriscos: Consuelo López-Morillas, “‘Trilingual’ Marginal Notes (Arabic, Aljamiado and Spanish) in a Morisco Manuscript from Toledo,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103, no. 3 (1983); López-Morillas, “Lost and Found? Yça of Segovia and the Qur’an among the mudejars and moriscos,” Journal of Islamic Studies 10, no. 3 (1999); López-Morillas, “La autoría del manuscrito coránico morisco T235,” in Morada de la palabra: homenaje a Luce López-Baralt (San Juan (Puerto Rico), 2002); López-Morillas, “El Corán romanceado: La traducción contenida en el manuscrito T 235,” Sharq Al-Andalus: Estudios Mudéjares y Moriscos, no. 16 (1999). Likewise, Raquel Montero Muñoz has compared the text of BLCM T235 to MS S5 of the Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), putting forth various traits that characterize this Islamic variety of Spanish, Raquel Montero Muñoz, “Las traducciones moriscas y el español islámico: los manuscritos Toledo 235 y RAH 11/9397 (olim S 5),” in Volumen IV Sección 5: Edición y crítica textual. Sección 6: Retórica, poética y teoría literaria (Berlin: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2015), 215 – 22.  For more on this author, see “al-Dānī, Abū ʿAmr,” in Biblioteca de al-Andalus. Enciclopedia de la cultura andalusí (Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, 2012).  Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “‘Sicut Euangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros’: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500 Translation, Transition, Interpretation, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).  In this article I will follow the opinion that a ḥizb (pl. aḥzāb) is one sixtieth of the Qur’an, as expressed by H. A. R. Gibb in the entry “ḥizb,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, III (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 513. This unit, along with others such as the juzʾ, which is one thirtieth of the Qur’an, are tied to the transmission and organization of the text, and make it possible, for example, to easily establish how much text one must read each day in order to read the entire sacred

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[H]e proposes an exact division based on the ḥizb, the basic structural unit of the qur’anic text, with part one going through 7:3 (aḥzāb 1– 15); part two, through 18:73 (aḥzāb 16 – 30); part three, through 37:144 (aḥzāb 31– 45); and part four, through the end (aḥzāb 46 – 60)⁷

Thus, the first fourth contains suras 1– 6, the second spans suras 7– 18, the third comprises suras 19 – 37, and the fourth includes suras 38 – 114. This is the division we find, for example, in various manuscripts of the Biblioteca Nacional de España, such as MS BNE 5242, which contains the first fourth of the Qur’an (suras 1– 6), or MS BNE 5350, which contains the first and second fourths (suras 1– 18). In this particular case, it is significant that the manuscript itself states that it is a copy of one half of the Qur’an.⁸ However, the majority of extant Mudejar and Morisco copies of the Qur’an contain neither the complete text, nor the text divided into fourths, but rather a selection of suras and ayas known as “abridged Qur’ans,” which indicates that this type of manuscripts must have been very widespread. This particular structure garnered the attention of Eduardo Saavedra⁹ and Guillén Robles,¹⁰ who, in the late 1800s, began to catalogue and describe this unique corpus. Apart from proposing a structural model, Saavedra pointed out various unique traits of these “abridged Qur’ans,” which set them apart from the output of other regions of the Islamic world.¹¹ Thus, in the author’s view, there are grounds to believe that it is an exclusively Iberian phenomenon resulting from text in one month. However, as Juan Pablo Arias Torres has rightly pointed out, in manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula, the exact meaning of these divisions is not always clear: “Although we currently use the term ŷuz’ in a specialized sense to indicate 1/30 of the Qurʾān, which consists of two aḥzāb, and it appears in this way in typical printed editions, it is also used more generally to mean a ‘fraction of the text of the Qurʾān’ or ‘volume.’ In the manuscripts that I have worked with, it is used with this sense of 1/30 in MS T 504 at the Biblioteca de CastillaLa Mancha but also, for example, with the sense of 1/60 (equivalent to a ḥizb) in MS 26.IV.9 at the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan (Madrid), 1/4 (equivalent to rubʿ) in BnF ar. 395, 1/27 (equivalent to tajziyat ramaḍān) in RAH LXXXIII, and 1/8 (equivalent to thumn) in BnF ar. 423 and Uppsala University Library, O.Bj. 48.” Arias Torres, “‘Sicut Euangelia,” 430.  Arias Torres, “‘Sicut Euangelia,” 236.  Juan Pablo Arias Torres, via personal communication, has told me that this manuscript’s colophon contains the expression al-niṣf al-awwal (Ar. “first half”), after which the copyist explicitly mentions that it is a copy of one half of the text.  Eduardo Saavedra Moragas, “Discurso que el Excmo sr. Don Eduardo Saavedra leyó en Junta pública de la Real Academia Española el día 29 de diciembre de 1878 al tomar posesión de su plaza de académico de número,” Memorias de la Real Academia española 6 (1889), 237– 38.  In Section 2, I will discuss in greater detail the various types of abridged Qur’ans catalogued by Guillén Robles in his Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes.  For a detailed analysis of the corpus of abridged Qur’ans, as well as issues of dating and circulation, see Section 2.

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the translation of the text, and from the unique religious needs of the Hispanic Muslim communities. However, some manuscripts written exclusively in Arabic involve this same structure, e. g. Fondo Documental Histórico de las Cortes de Aragón MS L5271. In other words, it is not a textual model exclusive to translations. Moreover, despite the fact that the model proposed by Saavedra rightly reflects the content of some of the extant abridged Qur’ans, in this article I will propose a new type of abridged copy of the Qur’an, based on a different selection of suras and ayas, which appears in four Morisco manuscripts written in Arabic. These are MS Arabe 774, of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), BNE MS 5313 of the Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE), MS RESC 43D of the CSICCCHS’s Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás (BTNT), and MS N-21-S-6 of the Museu de Lleida (ML).¹² Because the four Arabic-language copies share a series of traits in common with the previously known model in terms of both form and content, the two corpuses are evidently interrelated. Nonetheless, in terms of content, this new model includes a greater number of sura fragments, and, in terms of form, these contents are grouped together in a specific fashion. All of this results in a more complex structure, which serves to underscore the textual richness of the abridged Qur’ans from the Islamic communities of Iberia.¹³ This proposed structure likewise opens up new perspectives on the study of Mudejar and Morisco religiosity, as well as a new conception of the textual typology of the models of Qur’an abridgment current among Mudejars and Moriscos.

2 Abridged, Aljamiado or Morisco Qur’an? Manuscripts with a Specific Selection of Sura Fragments The structure of the abridged Qur’ans caught the attention of the first scholars to catalogue Arabic manuscripts in the late nineteenth century. The first instance of the term “abridged Qur’an” (Alcorán abreviado) being applied to this compendium is found in Eduardo Saavedra’s Índice General de la Literatura Aljamiada. Saavedra opens his work with the description of a manuscript that was already

 For a detailed description of these four manuscripts, see Section 3.  For more on the structure of this “new” model proposed here, see Section 4.

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lost at the time, MS BNE D113, basing his entry on a prior catalogue that he attributes to Iriarte: The Alcorán, abridged and translated into Spanish. Year 1462. According to Iriarte’s catalogue of manuscripts, this codex, written in Latin characters, once existed, alongside a copy of the Breviario çunní with the name of don Yça Sedih (no. II, III, LXXII); but today it is lost. We mention it, however, in case this fascinating book turns up elsewhere. It must have contained the usual Alcorán compendium, i. e. the passages customarily read at the açalaes or public prayers. These passages consist of the more important ayas or verses of the suras or long chapters, and in the short complete ones found at the end of all of them. The typical composition of this compendium is as follows, included here so as not to repeat it in the many instances where it will be mentioned, except where it differs: I; II, 1– 4, 256 – 259; 284– 286; III, 1– 4, 16, half of 17, 25, 26; IX- 129, 130; XXVI, 78 – 89; XXVIII, part of 88; XXX, 16 – 18; XXXIII, 40 – 43; XXXVI, LXVII; LXXVIII – CXIV.¹⁴

The author thus provides a name for the phenomenon, and offers various interesting bits of information. On the one hand, he indicates that it is a translation, and, moreover, that the Spanish is written in Latin characters and not in Aljamiado. On the other, he describes the contents, and indicates that he lists them so as to mention, in subsequent descriptions, only the parts that diverge from this description. In other words, Saavedra appears to be aware of the fact that there is an underlying model common to all of these copies. Lastly, he attributes a justification for this type of copies, which, in his opinion, were motivated by their contents’ relevance for religious practice. Likewise, this is the name used by Guillén Robles in his 1889 catalogue of the manuscripts of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, although his use of the term is inconsistent. For example, he titles MS BNE 5313¹⁵ Alcorán abreviado (“abridged Qur’an”). However, his description of the contents is rather brief, indicating that the manuscript “begins with Sura II, of which it contains several ayas” or that it “continues with the ayas of the following Sura, citing others until number LVIII”.¹⁶ In other cases, e. g. the description of MS BNE 5228,  Saavedra Moragas, “Discurso,” 237– 38 (all translations of Saavedra are our own).  The non-qur’anic portion of the manuscript was edited in an unpublished research paper by Raquel Suárez García, “Un misceláneo aljamiado-morisco (Ms. 5313 BNM)” (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1999).  Specifically, the description reads, “an abridged Qur’an as used by the Moriscos: it starts with Sura II, of which it includes various ayas up to Sura XXVI: followed by various ayas from II and others, until XXXVI: then there is a folio missing: it continues with the ayas of the following Sura, citing some other ones up to LVIII-ii: next comes a prayer, the Muḥammedan profession of faith or attaxhid and the alkonut of azzohni, followed by the rest of the Suras until the end,” XLVII,Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, 21– 22 (all translations of Guillén Robles are our own).

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when he wishes to indicate that a sura is incomplete, he states, for example: “the text begins with Sura I in full, and continues with II to XXXVII abridged”.¹⁷ That the author is drawing a connection between this type of abridged copy and the textual production of the Moriscos is clear even in the description of some of the manuscripts. For instance, while the author titles MS BNE 5310¹⁸ an “abridged Qur’an,” in his description he indicates that “it is a Morisco Qur’an,” without backing this opinion up with any further details. This, however, does not prevent him from describing its contents in the following terms: “it comprises from ayat 5, Sura XXXVIII, up to the last [ayat] of the Alcorán: followed by Sura I in full, in turn followed by II and III, along with various others, abridged.” Guillén’s largely unsystematic approach to cataloguing the codices containing abridged Qur’ans is also reflected in some of his more detailed descriptions, which, although titled “Alcorán” and not “abridged Alcorán,” would appear to be just that. This is the case, for instance, with MS BNE 4938,¹⁹ to which we will return later on, and whose description is rather detailed in terms of the fragments in contains.²⁰ The same can be said of MS BNE 4948, titled “Alcorán,” but whose description indicates that the suras are given in abridged form (“en abrevio”).²¹ There are several other such cases, such as MS BNE 5364.²²

 Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, LI, 24.  Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, LXIII, 30.  The lexicographical and etymological study of the Aljamiado text of this manuscript was the subject of Consuelo López-Morillas’s PhD diss., “Lexical and Etymological Studies in the Aljamiado Koran Based on Manuscript 4938 of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid” (University of California, Berkeley, 1974). Likewise, López-Morillas continued to work on the manuscript in the subsequent paper “Etimologías escogidas del Corán Aljamiado (Ms 4983 de la Biblioteca Nacional),” in Actas del Coloquio Internacional sobre Literatura Aljamiada y Morisca (Gredos, 1978), 365 – 72. Moreover, she compared this Aljamiado text with five other Aljamiado versions in The Qurʼān in Sixteenth-Century Spain: Six Morisco Versions of Sura 79 (London: Tamesis Books, 1982). A fragment of this manuscript was also edited by Teresa Losada Campo for the purpose of comparing it with other manuscripts in her PhD diss., “Estudios Sobre Coranes Aljamiados” (Universidad de Barcelona, 1975).  According to the catalogue description, the manuscript “comprises the end of the Aljamiado version of aya 286, Sura II: Sura III, 1 and 2, text and Aljamiado version, 3 and the beginning of its version: end of the version of 25: text and version of 26: Sura IX, 129 – 130, text and version: Sura XII, 102, text and version; Sura XXVI, 78 to 89, text and version: Sura LIX, 22 to 24, text and version: Sura LXVII, 1, text and version, and a prayer, on 6 fol., incomplete: Sura LXVIII, 14, text and version, continuing through Sura CV”; Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, LXVII, 33.  Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, LXXXII, 40.  Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, XC, 44.

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As we have just seen, in his catalogue entries Guillén Robles seems to have suspected that there were certain differences between Mudejar and Morisco Qur’an manuscripts, along with a unique template for the copies, which he attributes to the Moriscos. However, this stands in stark contrast with the stance of Julián Ribera and Miguel Asín in their 1912 catalogue of the manuscripts of the library of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios,²³ a collection currently held at the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás. In this catalogue, the authors’ descriptions are written in general terms, leaving out any opinion that might indicate whether or not a manuscript is an “abridged Alcorán” or not.²⁴ Such is the case, for example, of MS BTNT RESC 43, titled, “File of miscellanea. Religious matters.”²⁵ As to the contents, they indicate that it contains “twelve booklets with fragments of the Alcorán in Arabic, bits of various prayer books,” without further details. In the same vein, in the description of MS BTNT RESC 3,²⁶ the heading of states “(Codex of miscellanea). Namely: Koranic suras, profane narrations, and issues of jurisprudence and morals,” and its description, apart from mentioning “Koranic suras,” provides no further details. However, there is one characteristic that they do point out, which is that “the first seven folios include an interlinear translation in Aljamiado.”²⁷ Similar, but slightly more developed, is the description of MS BTNT RESC 25 from this same collection, in which the authors insist that the manuscript contains “Koranic suras written in Arabic with interlinear translation in Aljamiado.”²⁸

 Julián Ribera and Miguel Asín Palacios, Manuscritos árabes y aljamiados de la biblioteca de la Junta: noticia y extractos (Madrid: Junta para ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1912).  MS BTNT RESC 3 and BTNT RESC 25 discussed here are codices containing abridged Qur’ans, whereas MS BTNT RESC 43 is a group file containing various Qur’ans, among them one abridged Qur’an, as can be confirmed via the literature cited in the footnotes to each one, or in the description in Nuria Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts from Late Muslim Spain: The Collection of Almonacid de La Sierra,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16, no. 2 (2014).  Ribera and Asín Palacios, Manuscritos árabes y aljamiados, XLIII, 154.  The qur’anic text in Aljamiado was edited by Reinhold Kontzi, Aljamiadotexte: Ausgabe mit einter Einleitung und Glossar… (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, 1974), 348 – 56.  Ribera and Asín Palacios, Manuscritos árabes y aljamiados, III, 10.  The description states: “After the endpapers comes: 1st (Fol. 1– 100). Koranic suras written in Arabic with interlinear translation in Aljamiado (1). They are fragments of numbers 1, 2, 3, 36 and 67, and are complete from 78 to 114,” XXV, Ribera and Asín Palacios, Manuscritos árabes y aljamiados, 110. The footnote (1) indicates that “three of them have been reproduced in the Colección de Textos Aljamiados,” 158 – 63. However, note that while the description states that suras 36 and 67 are abridged, in the manuscript they are in fact complete, as can be corroborated both in the original and in the edition. This manuscript was the subject of a PhD dissertation by Vic-

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In other words, in their catalogue, Ribera and Asín are more interested in identifying qur’anic codices containing Aljamiado translations than in actually describing their contents. In my opinion, this is likely part of the reason why there has been more research on abridged Qur’ans in the field of Romance studies, while in the fields of Islamic studies and cultural studies there has been relatively little research, most which is much later, while the field of translation studies has paid next to no attention to the phenomenon. In the following subsections, I will discuss the issue of their contents; the body of manuscripts that may participate in this abridged model or variations thereof; and, lastly, specific aspects that enable us to date and contextualize the circulation of such textual models in the Mudejar and Morisco periods.

2.1 Structure and Description of an “Abridged Qur’an” The Qur’an, as is well known, is divided into suras and ayas. However, within these divisions, the canonical reading (qirā’a) is a decisive factor. These canonical readings are the consequence of divergences that arose as the definitive text of the Qur’an was established during the tenth century.²⁹ While at first, seven different readings were deemed canonical, the number later grew to fourteen. Moreover, each of them tends to have two different transmissions (riwāya).³⁰ The choice of reading dictates not only the vocalization of certain words — thus giving rises to different interpretations of certain passages— but also the division and organization of the text, in addition to the number of ayas making up each sura. Therefore, each qur’anic reading has direct bearing on how the sacred text is subdivided into smaller units, such as the ḥizb or juzʾ.

toria Luisa Moraleda Álvarez, “Edición de un manuscrito morisco del Corán (número 25 de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Madrid)” (Universidad de Barcelona, 1965), which culminated in the publication of an edition of the qur’anic text co-authored by Vernet: Joan Vernet and Victoria Luisa Moraleda Álvarez, “Un Alcorán fragmentario en aljamiado,” Boletín de la Real Academia de las Buenas Letras de Barcelona 33 (1970). Likewise, María Victoria Viscasillas Seguí undertook a linguistic study of the text in her PhD dissertation, “Traducciones aljamiadas del Coran: estudio linguístico de unos fragmentos. Manuscrito 25 de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Madrid” (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 1973).  On the establishment of the canonical readings, and the differences between them, see: Shady Nasser, The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān (324/936): Ibn Mujāhid and the Founding of the Seven Readings (Leiden: Brill, 2020).  On the different transmissions, see: Shady Nasser, The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

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Only on rare occasions do the catalogue descriptions indicate which reading is followed in the manuscripts. However, they usually follow the reading (qirā’a) of ʿĀṣim al-Kūfī, according to the transmission (riwāya) of Ḥafṣ, as this has become the most widespread reading in the Muslim world. For this reason, it is the ʿĀṣim-Ḥafṣ reading that is used in the catalogue of Guillén Robles,³¹ and even in more recent efforts, such as Mokhles Hajri’s inventory³² of Aljamiado-Morisco Qur’ans, or the description of the Qur’an manuscripts from Almonacid in the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás.³³ In the same way, this qur’anic reading is also followed for the segmentation and distribution of the text in the editions that have been made of abridged Qur’ans, as can be seen in the first edition of an abridged Qur’an, MS BTNT RESC 25, first in María Luisa Moraleda’s PhD dissertation,³⁴ and subsequently as published alongside Joan Vernet.³⁵ This is not an isolated case; other editions of abridged Qur’an manuscripts, some of them much more recent, follow this canonical reading. One recent example is Consuelo López-Morillas’s edition of Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha MS T235,³⁶ where, as Juan Pablo Arias Torres pointed out in his review of the edition,³⁷ the result for the reader can be confusing at times. The same can be said of Biblioteca Centrale di Firenze MS II-IV-701, which Hajri edited in his PhD dissertation.³⁸ In the extreme case of the edition of BNE MS 4963 prepared by Mariam Medhat Saada,³⁹ the Arabic text that appears in the edition is not, in fact, the text contained in the manuscript, but instead that of a modern edition of the Qur’an. However, the most common reading in the Islamic West, including the Iberian Peninsula, where studies on qur’anic readings were quite popular during the

 Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes.  Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado,” 105 – 27.  Catalogue of the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomas, CCHS-CSIC. The library’s Hebrew, Arabic, Aljamiado, Persian and Turkish holdings were catalogued within the framework of the project Manuscript@, http://manuscripta.csic.es/.  Moraleda Álvarez, “Edición de un manuscrito morisco del Corán.”  Vernet and Moraleda Álvarez, “Un Alcorán fragmentario en aljamiado.”  “In the case of the Qur’an of Toledo, it has been crucial to compare its text word by word with the Arabic original (in the canonical 1923 Cairo version).” López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo, 83. This is the same edition she used in her prior study, “El Corán Romanceado.”  Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “Reseña de El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla La Mancha,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos. Sección Árabe-Islam 65 (2016), 293.  Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado.”  Mariam Medhat Saada, “Edición y Estudio del Manuscrito Aljamiado-Morisco Ms. 4963 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid” (University of California, 2011).

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Andalusi period,⁴⁰ was not the qirā’a of ʿĀṣim al-Kūfī in the riwāya of Ḥafṣ, but rather the qirā’a of the Medinan Nāfiʿ in the riwāya of the Egyptian Warsh. As pointed out by Juan Pablo Arias Torres, the Mudejar and Morisco communities were aware of both transmissions of Nāfiʿ, namely the readings of Warsh and Qālūn, as evidenced by various Aljamiado texts that discuss the differences between the two: [A] second riwāya was known among Spanish Islamic communities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in at least two manuscripts held at the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás in Madrid: MS RESC 13, which contains the opuscule La kontradiçion y deferençia ke ay entre Wars y Qalun (fols. 148 – 57), and MS RESC 60, whose “regla de la lienda del Alcorán” (fols. 120 – 22) mentions “Qalu y Warxi” explicitly. [… I]t remains to be seen what influence the Qālūn recitation may have had on the copying of other Iberian qur’anic manuscripts preserved from earlier periods.⁴¹

The relevance of this reading for Aljamiado Qur’an translations has been demonstrated by Daniela-Corina Chiru, who, after comparing over 150 fragments from all of the Aljamiado versions, concluded that all of them follow the canonical reading of Warsh.⁴² As such, as a matter of methodological rigor and given that the varia lectio (qirā’a) of Warsh was the most common qur’anic reading in both the Andalusi written production, as well as in the documented Aljamiado versions, all descriptions offered in this article will follow this same reading. To synthesize and illustrate what we have seen so far, what follows is a description of the contents of the abridged Qur’an contained in MS BTNT RESC 3 (fols. 1v-47v)⁴³ following the Warsh reading. I have marked in bold the ayas

 See e. g. the studies on the qur’anic school of Denia that arose around al-Dānī, by Wilhelmina T. F. Wagner al-Gannabi, “La escuela coránica de Denia: Abu ‘Amr ‘Utman B. Sa‘id Ad-Dani, figura, obra formativa y obra escrita” (Universidad de Granada, 1988), or Abdullah Al-Uwisheq’s critical edition in his monograph on the Nāfiʿ reading, “A Critical Edition and a Study of the Commentary on the Qur’anic Reading of Nāfi‘ Sharh ̣ al-Durar al-Lawāmi’, by Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mintūrī” (SOAS University of London, 1988).  Arias Torres, “Sicut Euangelia,” 427. Note that La kontradiçión y deferençia ke ay entre Wars y Qalun (fols. 148 – 157) refers to MS BTNT RESC 12 and not to the one cited, which is clearly a typo.  Daniela-Corina Chiru, “Influencias lingüísticas del árabe en las traducciones coránicas aljamiado-moriscas” PhD diss. (University of Bucharest, 2015).  In the codex, following the described contents, there is further material, including an ʿaqīdat al-murshida (fols. 48r – 50r) in Arabic, followed by three complete suras (fols. 50r – 64r), specifically Q. 1, Q. 38, Q. 39, and one incomplete sura (fols. 64r, 73r), namely Q. 40: 1– 84. This is not the only such case; on the contrary, it is quite common. For example, in MS BTNT RESC 25, after an abridged Qur’an (fols. 1v-85r), we find various sura fragments (fols. 93r-100r), specifically Q. 2:

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wherein the numbers diverge from the Ḥafṣ reading, and have indicated in the footnotes the corresponding numbers as per Ḥafṣ. BTNT RESC  (fols. v-v) Complete sura



Ayas selection

: – ; ;  – ;  – ⁴⁴ : – ;  – *;⁴⁵  –  : – ⁴⁶ : –  : : – *⁴⁷ : – 

Complete suras

 

Final fragment

 – 

This structure of the abridged model⁴⁸ is therefore composed of: one complete sura (Q. 1), a selection of fragments of seven suras, two complete suras (Q. 36 and Q. 67) and a final fragment, suras 78 – 114, amounting to the final thirtieth of the Qur’an, i. e. the canonical juzʾ ʿamma qur’anic subdivision. I have found this exact same selection of fragments of seven suras in at least ten other manuscripts. Specifically, three of them are manuscripts with Romance translations,⁴⁹ and seven contain the sacred text only in Arabic.⁵⁰

151– 156; 18:107– 110; 56: 75 – 96; 59: 18 – 24; 37: 180 – 82, introduced with headings such as, “Estas son aleas ḏel-alquren ḏe mucha alfaḍila i son las siguientes” (93r) or “otra alea in shā’ Allāh” (94r). The fact that they are separated from the rest is why they have not been included in the table of the abridged model.  Q. 2:1– 5; 163; 255 – 57; 284– 86 Ḥafṣ.  Only the beginning of the aya Q. 3:19 Ḥafṣ/Q. 3:18 Warsh is given. Because it recurs throughout the corpus, it is marked with an asterisk.  Q. 9:128 – 29 Ḥafṣ.  Q. 30:17– 19 Ḥafṣ.  This selection described according to the Ḥafṣ reading coincides except in one aya with the contents consigned by Saavedra as “abbreviated Qur’an” already mentioned, just in this case the selection is termed “Morisco Qur’an” by Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 117.  Namely, MS BTNT RESC 25 and the aforementioned MS Flo II-IV-701, as well as MS BTNT RESC 58 (fols. 3v-48r). However, in the catalogue of manuscripts of the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, Martínez-de-Castilla writes that RESC 25 (MS 8) contains sura Q. 35 in full, instead of Q.

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In this sense, there are two traits that characterize this abridged structure: the selection of fragments of seven suras, and the presence of several complete suras in consecutive order included at the end. This final fragment usually corresponds with a canonical qur’anic subdivision (juzʾ, ḥizb, etc.), which, moreover, makes it possible to identify variations on the model, depending on the subdivision that appears in this section.⁵¹ In this final section it is possible to find at least four canonical subdivisions: suras 38 – 114, i. e. fifteen aḥzāb, which likewise make up the final fourth of the Qur’an; 72– 114, i. e., the last three aḥzāb; and suras 87– 114, which make up the final ḥizb. The description of this model has taken shape over time, alongside the tasks of cataloguing and describing this corpus, which has shed light on certain variations on this model that include one or more additional ayas, e. g. Q. 59:18 – 24.⁵² Along these lines, it is worth recalling that Saavedra’s description of the lost BNE MS D114 indicated that it was a “typical composition” which he included “so as not to repeat it in the many instances where it will be mentioned, except where it differs”. In other words, Saavedra himself already believed that there were variations on this model. Lastly, it should be pointed out that the abridged Qur’ans are often found in codices that also include additional material, and therefore the textual context in which they are inserted is of particular interest for further research. This is the case, for example, with al-ʿaqīdat al-murshida ⁵³ prayer, which appears in several of the manuscripts containing abridged Qur’ans.

36, in Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 117. This must be a typo, since, given its importance for Islamic funeral rites, this sura can hardly be overlooked in an Islamic Studies analysis. Moreover, this sura (Q. 36) is the same one that appears not only in the rest of the abridged models in Guillén Robles’s catalogue, but also in the aforementioned edition by Moraleda and Vernet.  Specifically, in BNE MS 5228, Fondo Documental Histórico de las Cortes de Aragón MS L5271, Real Academia de la Historia (RAH) MS T8, and BTNT MS RESC 28/1, RESC 42/B, RESC 43/A and RESC 43/E.  For more on this subject, see Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias, “La producción coránica abreviada en árabe y en español aljamiado entre mudéjares y moriscos. Aproximación a su tipología textual” [forthcoming].  Martínez-de-Castilla has identified a variation on the textual model that points back to Saavedra in BTNT MS RESC 24.1 and RESC 41B, in Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 98. In her study, BTNT MS RESC 24.1 is referred to as MS 6, and RESC 41B as MS 17. A variation that Saavedra already pointed out in MS BNE 4963, Saavedra Moragas, “Discurso,” CXXXVI, 319.  This prayer also shows up in various manuscripts containing abridged Qur’ans, such as BNE MS 4938 (fols. 12r-15v) or RAH MS T18 (fols. 184r-196r). The versions of this prayer that appear in eighteen Mudejar and Morisco manuscripts have been documented and studied by Xavier Casa-

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2.2 The Abridged Qur’an Corpus The “inventory of Aljamiado-Morisco Qur’ans” presented by Mokhles Hajri as a work in progress within his PhD dissertation marks a first attempt at compiling this corpus.⁵⁴ Hajri’s inventory includes twenty-one manuscripts deemed to be abridged Qur’ans in Arabic,⁵⁵ and another ten, also in Arabic, described as fragmentary.⁵⁶ Likewise, it covers eleven abridged Qur’ans in Romance⁵⁷ and eleven codices containing fragmentary abridged Qur’ans in Romance.⁵⁸ However, the chapter, as the author states, is not intended as a catalogue, though the data it provides are mostly drawn from an exhaustive review of the available catalogues, which is accompanied by an impressive compilation of all the literature published on each of the manuscripts cited. Still, there are some methodological issues, such as the distinction drawn between fragmentary and abridged Qur’ans, in addition to reproducing certain mistakes present in the original catalogues. Such is the case, for example, in the assessment of BNE MS 5212, whose faulty catalogue entry we have already discussed. In this inventory, it is classified as an abridged Qur’an, and the description states that it is one fourth of the Qur’an; however, the manuscript is in fact a complete Qur’an. A more accurate, although necessarily less far-reaching, approach to classifying the manuscripts based on their abridged structure is the corpus of sixteen manuscripts from the collection of the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás that Martínez-de-Castilla has identified as “Morisco Qur’ans.”⁵⁹

ssas Canals, “Difusión de copias y traducciones de la ʿaqīda ‘al-murshida’ de Ibn Tūmart entre los musulmanes españoles (ss. XV-XVII). Fijación del texto y materiales para su estudio,” Al Irfan 4 (2018), 176.  Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado,” 106 – 27.  It includes MS BNM 5313, BNM 5228, BNM 5310, BNM 5097, BNM 4948, BNM 5273, BNM 5242, BNM 4982, BNM 5364, BNM 4983, BNM 4907, BNM 5376, BNM 5368, BNM 5373, BNM 5113, BNM 5341, BNM 5350, BNM 5212, RAH T1, RAH T6, RAH T8, J16, J24, J28, J34, J41, J42, J43, Biblioteca de la Iglesia del Pilar de Zaragoza, AIP Bibliothèque Méjanes, Aix-en-Provence 1367 and MS British Museum Or. 6640, Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado,”107– 15.  Specifically, MS BNM 4907, BNM 4976, BNM 5061, BNM 4919, BNM 5051, RAH V13, J46, BnF 410, BnF 1163 and Biblioteca Universitaria de Barcelona 1794, Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado,” 116 – 17.  Specifically, MS BNM 4938, BNM 4963, RAH T5, RAH T13, RAH T18, J3, J25, BnF Ar 425, BnF Ar 447, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana of Florence II-IV-701 and BNM 5078, Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado,” 119 – 22.  MS RAH V8, RAH V9, RAH V10, J18, J39, J40, J47, J51, J58, J59 and BnF 774, Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado,” 122 – 27.  She specifically designates as “Morisco Qur’ans” the following manuscripts: RESC 3.1, RESC 25, RESC 28.1, RESC 39C.2; RESC 39E, RESC 41C, RESC 42 A, RESC 42B, RESC 43 A, RESC 43B.1,

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As for myself, I have made a first attempt at an inventory of the corpus, which I will present here as a mere summary of a work in progress.⁶⁰ This systematization covers a total of forty manuscripts housed in twelve different institutions,⁶¹ which I have organized by language, i. e., Arabic; Arabic alongside a version in Romance, which can consecutive or interlinear; or Romance alone: Type of manuscript Bilingual (Ar./Sp.) Spanish

Interlinear translation

Consecutive translation

Arabic

RAH T RAH V

BnF Arabe  RESC  RESC 

BNE  BNE  BNE  BnF Arabe  Flo II-IV- RAH T RAH  RAH T RAH V RAH V RESC  RESC  RESC D.

AIP  (ol. ) BC  Brit Mus.  BNE  BNE  BNE  BNE  BNE  BNE  BNE / BnF  BPL Aitona CUL Or.  FDHCA L –  FDHCA L FDHCA L ML N--S- RAH T RESC  RESC  RESC  RESC 

RESC 43B.2, RESC 43C, RESC 43E, RESC 58B.1, RESC 24.1 and RESC 41B, which the author lists as MS 1, 8, 9, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 37, 6, and 7, in Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 115.  Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias, “La producción coránica abreviada en árabe y en español aljmiado entre mudéjares y moriscos: Aproximación a su tipología textual” [forthcoming].  Apart from the institutional acronyms we have already seen, the table also includes the following: BnF = Bibliothèque nationale de France; AIP = Aix-en-Provence, Bibliothèque de Méjànes; BC = Biblioteca de Catalunya; Brit. Mus. = British Musem; BPL = Biblioteca Pública de Lleida; CUL = Cambridge University Library; ML = Museu de Lleida.

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Although the goal is to offer an overview of the extant corpus of “abridged Qur’an” manuscripts, this inventory does not include all manuscripts with content related to the abridged model, for a variety of reasons.⁶²

2.3 Dating the Abridged Textual Model It is often difficult to determine whether these abridged manuscripts belong to the Mudejar or Morisco periods, as they do not indicate when they were copied. Moreover, when they do include exact chronological information, it does not usually refer to when they were copied, but rather belongs to subsequent marginalia detailing events unrelated to the text, such as births in the family. This difficulty is explicitly reflected in some of the catalogues, as has in turn been taken up by some authors. Thus, in a recent catalogue from Catalonia,⁶³ Pablo Yzquierdo has proposed the title “Mudejar or Morisco prayer book” (devocionario mudéjar o morisco)⁶⁴ for MS BC 1420, which contains an abridged Qur’an (fols. 1v-39v). Likewise, as mentioned, “abridged Qur’an” has been the most commonly used term to describe this textual model since the nineteenth century, from Guillén Robles down to Hajri. However, other terms have also been proposed, such as “fragmentary Qur’an” (corán fragmentario), as used by Vernet and Moraleda⁶⁵ in their edition of MS BTNT RESC 25,⁶⁶ or, as we have seen, “Morisco Qur’an”

 Notably absent from this list are those manuscripts whose state of preservation is so fragmentary as to render it impossible to determine whether their structure was in fact abridged, or whether they belonged to a complete Qur’an or some other subdivision. In particular, I am referring to BNE MS 4976 and 5061, as well as RAH V13. Likewise, there is another series of manuscripts whose content is closely related to the abridged versions, but which have not been included since their final portion is missing. This is the case, for example, with BNE MS 5368 and 5373; RAH T1 and T16; BTNT RESC 41; and Fondo Documental de las Cortes de Aragón MS L5362-C, which only contain fragments of the selection of suras and ayas. Lastly, it should be mentioned that, due to their poor state of preservation, it has been impossible to identify which qur’anic subdivision would have made up the final portions of MS RAH V9 and V10, and BTNT RESC 101D.2, which is why they have not been included either.  Entry 19, Pere Balaña et al., Joyas escritas. Los fondos bibliográficos árabes de Cataluña (Barcelona: Lunwerg, 2002), 196.  Previously, Guillén Robles used the same term, “Morisco prayer book” (devocionario morisco) for manuscripts with different sorts of content, such as MS BNE 5223 or BNE 5378, Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, CVX, 56 and LXXXIX, 43, respectively.  Vernet and Moraleda Álvarez, “Un Alcorán fragmentario en aljamiado.”  On the various terms scholars have used to refer to this textual model (Aljamiado Qur’an, Morisco Qur’an, etc.), see Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias, “La producción coránica abreviada en

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(corán morisco), put forward by Martínez-de-Castilla, the only one directly related to an explicit time period.⁶⁷ Indeed, most of the extant abridged Qur’ans are copies from the sixteenth century, which have been dated by analyzing the paper on which they are written. However, based on the data I will detail in the following paragraphs, there is evidence that these textual models were already in circulation in the late fifteenth century, and this circulation may very well have begun even earlier. In this sense, it is worth mentioning that the description of this abridged textual model has been made following, first and foremost, those abridged copies containing a version in Romance, but it would be a mistake to overlook the corpus of abridged Qur’ans in Arabic, if only for the purpose of dating the textual model, since these Arabic manuscripts contain some very important precise references. Thus, some of the Arabic-language manuscripts that take part in this textual model, e. g. MS BNE 4948, include clear chronological references in their colophons (Fig. 1). About this manuscript, whose structure is a variation on the abridged model, with one fourth of the Qur’an (suras 38 – 114) followed by a selection of suras,⁶⁸ Guillén Robles states that, “according to its colophon, this copy was completed by Yaḥyā ben Gálib, a servant at the mosque of Letosa (province of Huesca), on a Wednesday of the 2nd ten-day period of Shaaban, 896, which corresponds to 22 June 1491.”⁶⁹ Not only does this information situate this copy, too, in the Kingdom of Aragon,⁷⁰ it also situates it at a precise moment in time, as the manuscript indicates árabe y en español aljmiado entre mudéjares y moriscos. Aproximación a su tipología textual” [forthcoming].  Martínez-de-Castilla argues their name should be specifically tied to the Morisco period, as this is when manuscripts of this sort first arose, Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 91.  MS BNE 4948 (fols. 146v– 55v) contains: Q. 2:1– 4, 162, 253 – 56, 283 – 85. 3: 1– 6; 18 – 19*; 26 – 27; 33:40 – 44; 36; 59:18 – 24. As such it is very similar, a variant whose content has been further reduced.  Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, LXXXII, 40.  As for the manuscript’s place of origin, Cervera Fras also links this copy to the “assistant at the mosque of Letosa (Huesca)” in María José Cervera Fras, Manuscritos moriscos aragoneses (Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo, 2010), 63. However, the place name that appears in the colophon is Letūsh, (Fig. 1) which could refer either to Letosa or to Letux, a town in the province of Zaragoza, on the south side of the Ebro. The ambivalence in the transliteration of this place name also appears to have been discussed by Martínez-deCastilla (however, we cannot be sure, as she does not provide any signature) in her lecture, “¿Se conocía en Corán en la España moderna?” Casa Árabe’s Aula Árabe Universitaria program.

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Fig. 1: BNE, MS 4948, close-up, fol. 161v. Image from the Biblioteca Nacional de España’s collection.

the day and month in both the Islamic and Christian calendar, the latter referred to as “bi-l-ʿajamī,” i. e., non-Arabic. Thus, the day and month in the Islamic system are given as “yawm al-ʾarbʿa fī al-ʿashar al-thānī min hilāl shaʿbān” (Ar. “Wednesday of the second ten days⁷¹ from the crescent moon of Shaʿbān”), while the Christian date is recorded as “ithnān w-ʿashrīn yawm khalawn min shahr yunyo” (Ar. “twenty-two days of the month of June having passed”), while only the Islamic year, 896, is given, which would correspond to the year 1491 in the Christian calendar.⁷² Based on the precise information given in the document, we can date the circulation of this copy to the late fifteenth century —in other words, just prior to the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, and decades before the forced conversion laws would go into effect in the Kingdom of Aragon. Older still is the date of lost manuscript BNE D 113, cited by Saavedra as 1462.⁷³ Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to corroborate this date via a codicological analysis of the manuscript. However, Saavedra also indicates that this manuscript was preserved alongside a copy of the Breviario Sunní, the extant

 Literal translation of the Arabic expression used in the manuscript, although it could be rendered as “twenty days after the crescent moon of Shaʿbān.”  Guillén Robles’s description suggests that the year 1491 appears in the manuscript; however, only the Islamic year is given.  Saavedra Moragas, “Discurso,” 237– 38.

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copies of which carry this same date.⁷⁴ In other words, and not without certain reservations, if we accept the validity of this indirect source, the textual model at hand would have been in circulation already in the mid-fifteenth century, and, in my opinion, may have arisen at an even earlier date. Based on all of the foregoing, we can tentatively situate the earliest copies and circulation of this textual model to the mid-fifteenth century. As such, the term “Morisco Qur’an” would be somewhat inaccurate, as the textual model employed in these manuscripts clearly seems to date at least as far back as the Mudejar period.

3 Four Abridged Mudejar and Morisco Arabic-Language Qur’an Manuscripts So far I have presented the abridged Qur’an model found in these AljamiadoMorisco texts, and which was first described in the nineteenth century. In the following section, however, I will turn to four manuscripts in Arabic whose structure not only participates in that of the abridged model, but also develops it by lending it further complexity. I am therefore proposing this new model of abridgment based on similarities I have found⁷⁵ between the contents of four Arabic-language Qur’an manuscripts, with the knowledge that in the future it will probably prove necessary to add more Qur’ans with this same model or variants thereof.

3.1 Manuscript Corpus 3.1.a MS Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arabe 774 This manuscript contains 345 folios comprising various Aljamiado texts,⁷⁶ among them an abridged Qur’an that takes up 99 folios (89r-188v). It forms  Gerard A. Wiegers, Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (Fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 115 – 50.  In Section 4 I will analyze the similarities and differences between the contents of these four manuscripts in depth.  The manuscript also contains numerous texts in Aljamiado, which can be seen in greater detail in the PhD dissertation of Mercedes Sánchez Álvarez, published as El manuscrito misceláneo 774 de la Biblioteca Nacional de París, published by CLEAM. Leyendas, itinerarios, profecías sobre la destrucción de España y otros relatos moriscos (Madrid: Gredos, 1982).

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part of a volume that once belonged to the Bibliothèque de Renaudot, before being bequeathed to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (former call number 290), and first reported by Silvestre de Sacy.⁷⁷ Both Slane’s catalogue,⁷⁸ and that of Vajda and Sauvan,⁷⁹ both state that it is a manuscript from the sixteenth century, without going into further detail, although it contains a single watermark in the shape of a hand.⁸⁰ As for its contents (fols. 89r- 188v), this manuscript contains the following material, in this order: 1; 2:1– 4, 162, 253 – 56, 283 – 85; 3:1– 6, 18 – 19*, 26 – 27; 9:129 – 30; 26:78 – 89; 28:88; 30:16 – 18; 33:40 – 44; 36; 37:35; 39:7; 40:2, 62, 65; 44:6 – 7; 47:20; 59:18 – 24; 64:12 – 13; 67;⁸¹ 37:180 – 82; 9:33; 40:65,⁸² 33:56 and 37:180 – 82; 72– 114.⁸³

3.1.b MS Biblioteca Nacional de España 5313 This 251-folio manuscript was catalogued by Saavedra⁸⁴ and by Guillén Robles, who states that the first 45 folios (1r-45v) of the codex contain “an abridged Alcorán as used by the Moriscos,”⁸⁵ while the rest of the material in non-qur’anic.⁸⁶  A. L. Silvestre de Sacy, “Notice d’un manuscrit espagnol écrit en caractères arabes,” Journal Des Sçavants 16 nivose an 5 (1797).  M. le Baron de Slane, Catalogue des manuscrits arabes, Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883), no. 774, 163. As for the classification of this manuscript, Consuelo López-Morillas, “The Genealogy of the Spanish Qurʾān,” Journal of Islamic Studies 17, no. 3 (2006), indicates that Saavedra had catalogued it in two sections, LX and LXIII, a mistake reproduced, following Saavedra, by Antonio Vespertino Rodríguez Rodríguez in his article on dating these manuscripts, “Una aproximación a la datación de los manuscritos aljamiado-moriscos,” Estudios románicos 5 (1987).  Georges Vajda and Yvette Sauvan, Catalogue des manuscrits arabes, deuxième partie, manuscrits musulmans, No 589 – 1120, vol. 2 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1978), 126 – 27.  Similar to no. 2492 of Edward Heawood’s repertoire, Watermarks, Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Hilversum: Paper Publications Society, 1969).  Between folios 118r-122v there are ḥadīth and an ʿaqīdat al-murshida in Arabic, in addition to other fragments in Aljamiado.  The italics indicate ayas in Arabic that also include a version in Romance.  The final fragment contains two lacunae: Q. 74:25 – 50 and Q. 96:9 – 98:5. Several folios are inserted at the point where the first lacuna occurs (fols. 138 – 44), containing varied religious subject matter and ḥadīth clearly written in another hand, and very probably inserted at a later date.  Saavedra Moragas, “Discurso,” no. XV, 250.  Guillén Robles, Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes, XLVII, 21– 23.  The non-qur’anic portion in Aljamiado was edited by Raquel Suárez García, “Un misceláneo aljamiado-morisco (Ms. 5313 BNM),” doctoral research paper (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo,

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Although it does not contain any specific datable references, the catalogue of the Biblioteca Nacional has assigned it to the sixteenth century. As for its contents, the manuscript is missing both its first and its last pages. The descriptions of the contents offered by both Saavedra and Guillén Robles provide few details as to the sura fragments they contain, while Hajri’s inventory⁸⁷ records some, but not all. After consulting the original, the qur’anic contents (fols.1r-45v) can be described as follows: 2:1– 4; 162; 253 – 56; 283 – 85; 3:1– 6; 18 – 19*; 26 – 27; 9:129 – 30; 26: 78 – 86; (…); 36:12– 83; 37:35; 39:7; 40:2, 62, 64,⁸⁸ 65; 44:6 – 7; 47:20; 59:18 – 24; 64: 12– 13; 67; 28:7; 73:8;⁸⁹ 78:1– 114:6.

3.1.c MS Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás (CCHS-CSIC) RESC 43D The manuscript contains 241 folios, the first 135 of which contain “twelve quires with fragments of the Alcorán in Arabic,” according to Ribera and Asín’s catalogue⁹⁰ of the manuscripts of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios. As for its origins, it is important to highlight that, unlike the other two manuscripts described so far, whose origins are unknown, in this case we know that it was part of the famous find at Almonacid de la Sierra. Along these lines, it is important to bear in mind that among the other manuscripts from this same town held at the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, there are several manuscripts that employ the abridged model, both in Arabic and in Spanish translation, several of which have already been mentioned. As such, Almonacid appears to have been an important center in the production of this type of abridged qur’anic literature, where, moreover, codices were produced following different models of abridgment, all of which makes the vitality of this genre still more patent. Likewise, a great deal is known about the historical and sociocultural context in which this manuscript was produced, as the manuscripts from the Almonacid de la Sierra find belonged to a clandestine writing workshop run by the Escribano family, which made the town an important center for the book trade.

1999). The digitized text is available at Corpus de Textos Aljamiado-Moriscos (COTEAM): https:// www.arabicaetromanica.com/coteam/.  Hajri, “Un Corán aljamiado,” 107.  Only the end of ayas Q. 40:64 is included.  The MS also includes al-tashahud and dūʿa (fols. 16v-17v).  Ribera and Asín Palacios, Manuscritos árabes y aljamiados, XLIII, 154– 55.

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Moreover, there is also evidence of a Morisco-period madrasa in the town, a cultural and educational institution that enabled the community to maintain its knowledge of Arabic and of Islamic teachings.⁹¹ As for file BTNT RESC 43, Martínez-de-Castilla has catalogued three fragments under a category she has called “family/popular copies”.⁹² These are RESC 43D, RESC 43F and RESC 43.1, to which the author has assigned her own numbering system, as manuscripts 26, 28 and 29. These three fragments are, respectively, this abridged Qur’an (fols. 1v-23v), one of the inverse Qur’ans (fols. 130r-122r)⁹³ that Pablo Roza Candás and I study in this same volume,⁹⁴ (1r-3r) and a copy of the first sura (Q. 1) (fol. 206v-207r), which, according to Martínez-de-Castilla, “heads a series of prayers” written in a different hand, and which, as she explains in a note, she does not describe in the appendix.⁹⁵ Following Martínez-de-Castilla’s description, section RESC 43D is a single 23folio manuscript that dates from the sixteenth century and was arbitrarily group-

 In this sense, in the Inquisition documents from Zaragoza that deal with this town in the Jalón Valley, we find Morisco teachers, such as Diego de Mendoça, who taught reading and writing from his home, or Luis de Barbaza, in whose home several young people were arrested after confessing to be his students. They also record cases of people who possessed books in Arabic, and even testimonies, such as that of Luis Obex, which illustrate the importance that parents placed on their children being instructed in the Islamic faith, Jacqueline Fournel Guerin, “Les morisques aragonais et l’Inquisition de Saragosse (1540 – 1620)” (Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III, 1980), 159, 161 and 162, respectively.  The rest of the manuscript sections that she includes in this category are the manuscripts of the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás (CCHS-CSIC): BTNT RESC 3.2 (which Martínez-de-Castilla refers to as MS 2), described briefly in the appendix; MS BTNT RESC 24.2 (MS 7), a copy of a ḥizb described as spanning ten folios (48r–59r), which does not quite match up with the collation described as “one denion, one quire of 11 bifolia and two of 12 bifolia” (perhaps it is a copy of a ḥizb in a single quire?); MS BTNT RESC 42C (MS 21), which is not described; MS BTNT RESC 55 (MS 35), described as containing various qur’anic suras (Q. 2: 152– 7; Q: 107– 10; Q. 56:75 – 96; Q. 59:18 – 24), as well as prayers; and MS BTNT RESC 58 A (MS 36), which contains suras 93 – 105, along with other additional suras (Q. 104, Q. 103, Q. 80, Q. 87 and Q. 89), Martínez-de-CastillaMuñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 129 – 33.  In her description, Martínez-de-Castilla indicates that MS 26 (RESC 43D) occupies folios 1v32v, while MS 28 (RESC 43F) is described as occupying part of these same folios (1r-3r), which must be a mistake, Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 130 – 32. Unfortunately, the BTNT denied my request to consult the original document. Meanwhile, the microfilm copy is difficult to read, and does not allow one to determine the proper order of the contents. As for RESC 43F, Pablo Roza Candás and I have been able to identify its modern folio order since it appears at the beginning of this quire.  Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias and Pablo Roza Candás, “Morisco Method for Memorizing the Qur’an,” in this volume.  Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 136.

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ed together with other materials in the early twentieth century. The manuscript’s state of preservation is very poor, in addition to being unbound and incomplete. As the description of the qur’anic content follows the Ḥafṣ reading for the sura count, I will convert the description into the Warsh reading, and with it the qur’anic content contained in this section of manuscript BTNT RESC 43 (fols.1v23v): 1; 2:1– 4, 162, 253 – 6, 283 – 5; 3:1– 6, 18 – 19*; 26:89*; 27:26 – 7; 28:70, 88; 30:16 – 18; 33:40 – 4; 35:3; 37:35; 39:7; 40:2, 64*–65; 44:6 – 7; 47:20; 59:18 – 24; 64:12– 13; 71:28; 73:8, 20*; 82:9 – 19; 85:20 – 22 and 36:50*–62*.

3.1.d Devocionari Mudèjar, MS Museu de Lleida N-21-S-6 This codex,⁹⁶ from the town of Seròs in Lleida, was discovered in 1985 inside the wall of a private home, where it appeared alongside other materials, as catalogued by Yzquierdo. Said materials are one ḥirz, one duʿā, an alphabet primer, and private correspondence. The codex can be contextualized based on this external documentation, which contains references to a qadi and a Christian notary, to the towns of Lleida and Fraga, and to two dates, which appear to be the year 900 or 902 of the Islamic calendar (1494 or 1496 AD), as recorded in the catalogue entry: [A] Muslim judge from Lleida and a Christian notary from Fraga, with mention of a possible date of 900 or 902 H (1494– 1495 AD or 1496 – 1497 AD). The fact that the cities of Lleida and Fraga are mentioned in the documents of the book’s covers is important, as it indicates that the book, or at least its binding, was made in or very near to Catalan lands, which provides grounds for dating the manuscript. In any case, book rebinding was a common practice, and so the binding may not have been contemporary to the manuscript itself. Still, the date of the documents in the cardboard of the covers matches that of the paper used in the manuscript.⁹⁷

The fact that the paper used for the manuscript matches up with that of the documents used for the covers may indeed serve to help date the manuscript, situating its composition in the final decade of the fifteenth century. Likewise, in terms of geographic context, the presence of the Aragonese town of Fraga is a strong indicator that Seròs in the neighboring province of Lleida must have formed part of the Mudejar and Morisco networks that crisscrossed

 I would like to thank Josep Giralt, director of the Museu de Lleida, and the rest of his team for generously allowing me to work on this codex during the month of November 2021.  Pablo Yzquierdo, Entry 106, Institut Català de la Mediterrània, L’Islam i Catalunya (Barcelona: IEMed, Lundwerg, 1998), 142 (translation ours).

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the region. Pablo Roza Candás and I have studied the relations between the town of Almonacid in Zaragoza and Calanda in Teruel, another major hub of the Morisco book trade,⁹⁸ and of Islamic education in the Kingdom of Aragon during the Morisco period.⁹⁹ In this sense, because the manuscript dates back to the Mudejar period, and given the relative proximity of Seròs and Calanda, people and goods may well have moved between these two towns, within a travel network that fostered relations and strengthened ties between the Islamic communities of Aragon and those of the Catalan lands. In terms of its content, the manuscript contains two qur’anic fragments separated by other religious material (fols. 19v–26r). It is the first of these two fragments that interests us here,¹⁰⁰ as it is an abridged Qur’an. The contents of this first fragment (fols. 1v–19r) are as follows: 1; 2:1– 4, 162, 253 – 56; 283 – 85; 3:1– 6; 18 – 19*, 26 – 27; 30:17– 19; 33:40 – 44; 36; 59:18 – 24; 64: 12 – 13; 73:8, 20*; 85:20 – 22; 89:30; 94; 97; 99; 102; 105; 108 – 14.

4 The Internal Structure of the New Model: An Abridged Qur’an with Three Selections of Sura Fragments The four manuscripts share enough common elements for us to propose a new model of Qur’an abridgment. If we recall the structure of the known abridged Qur’an model described at the outset of this chapter, it is characterized by comprising one complete sura (Q. 1), a selection of fragments of seven suras (S = fragments of Q. 2, Q. 3, Q. 9; Q. 26, Q. 28, Q. 33), two complete suras (Q. 36 and Q. 67) and a final fragment (F), in this case suras 78 – 114, i. e., the juzʾ ʿamma. This structure can also be expressed as follows: [Q. 1 + S + Q. 36 + Q. 67 + F] By contrast, the structure of the four manuscripts described above differs significantly. In three of them, after each complete sura (Q. 1, Q. 36, Q. 67), a section is

 Pablo Roza Candás, Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka. La peregrinación de ‘Omar Paṭon (Oviedo: Ediuno, 2018), 120 – 25.  Rodríguez Iglesias and Roza Candás, this volume.  The second section of qur’anic content (fols. 26v–80v) contains the last two ajzāʾ of the Qur’an (suras 67– 114), and the codex ends with a prayer in Aljamiado (fol. 80v) and two folios of religious matter (fols. 81r–82v).

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inserted that differs from the one that appears in the abridged model first discussed by Saavedra. This selection, moreover, is very similar, and in some cases exactly the same, throughout the four manuscripts in the corpus. As such, it appears that each section of sura fragments comprises a smaller structural unit, i. e., a substructure within this second model of abridgment. Specifically, there is one complete sura (Q. 1), followed by a first substructure (S1), which is a selection of seven sura fragments, then a second complete sura (Q. 36), followed by a second substructure (S2), which once again is a selection of fragments from seven suras, then a third complete sura (Q. 67), followed by a third substructure (S3), whose content, however, is not homogeneous; lastly, the structure concludes with a final fragment (F), just like in the previously described model. This structure can therefore also be expressed as follows: [Q. 1 + S1 + Q. 36 + S2 + Q. 67 + S3 + F] On a formal level, this three-part substructure arrangement is more elaborate, while also considerably expanding the number of sura fragments, as compared to the other model, which has a mere seven fragments. This fact sets these copies apart from the rest, both in terms of containing more qur’anic content, and in terms of their peculiar composition, which had never before been described. Likewise, the structure of one of the four manuscripts is very striking in that it seems to eschew the structural framework offered by the complete suras. In other words, it only contains the initial complete sura (Q. 1), the three substructures (S1, S2, S3) and one sura fragment (Q. 36: 50 – 62), whose function as a final fragment is unclear (F?). However, it is precisely the similarity between the contents of the first two substructures (S1 and S2) here and in the rest of the copies that has made me classify it as taking part in this new model, and regard these selections of sura fragments as substructures. Thus, the structure of BTNT RESC 43D can also be expressed as follows: [Q. 1 + S1 + S2 + S3 + F?] Moreover, another unique aspect of this copy is that its substructures are made up of fragments of eight suras, not seven as in the other three manuscripts. In the following section, I will juxtapose the structure of each of these sections, and describe in detail their similarities and differences, based on the contents of each of the manuscripts in the corpus.

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4.1. Q. 1: Sura al-Fātiḥa The structure of this new model begins with the first sura, given in full, as in the model first proposed by Saavedra in the nineteenth century. While this is not true of MS BNE 5313, recall that the beginning of the manuscript is missing, and the missing portion in all likelihood contained this sura.

4.2 Substructure 1 (S1) Next we find fragments of seven suras, i. e., the first of the substructures. As can be seen in the table below (bold indicates common elements), the sura fragments are very similar, and in some cases identical, to those that appear in MS BTNT RESC 3, which I have used to exemplify the structure of the abridged model: BTNT RESC 3

BnF 

: : : :

: : : :

 – ; ;  – ;  – 

 – ; ;  – ;  – 

BNE 

BTNT RESC D

ML N--S-

:  – ; (…) :  – 

:  – ; :  – 

: : : :

 – ; ;  – ;  – 

:  – ; :  – * :  – 

:  – ; :  – * :  – 

:  – ; :  – * :  – 

:  – ; :  – * :  – 

:  – ; :  – * :  – 

:  –  :  –  :  :  –  :  – 

:  –  :  –  :  :  –  :  – 

:  –  :  –  (…)

(…) : : : : :

  – ; ,   –   – 

:  –  :  – 

Given the similarity between the contents of these four manuscripts,¹⁰¹ it may be the case that the ones which diverge from the model originally contained more text; MS BNE 5313, for example, seems to follow the same structure as the rest,

 In the following tables, common contents among manuscripts are indicated in bold, while other contents in Arabic are in normal and other contents in Arabic and its Romance version are in italic characters.

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and may simply have lost several folios containing the remaining sura fragments.¹⁰² The homogeneity of the contents is only broken in two instances: in one case by addition, and in the other by omission. Specifically, in MS BTNT RESC 43D, which may also have originally contained more text,¹⁰³ this substructure incorporates a fragment of another sura that does not appear in either of the other two manuscripts (Q. 27:2– 7). If these manuscripts did in fact once contain more text, and this text was the same as in the rest of the corpus, then the first substructure of this manuscript would have actually contained eight suras. MS ML N-21-S-6, in turn, leaves out fragments of three suras (Q. 9:129 – 30; Q. 26:78 – 89, Q. 28:88), and in this case, given its position within the manuscript, it seems more likely that this composition of the substructure was a shorter variant.

4.3 Q. 36: Sura Yāʾ Sīn Mss. BnF 774 and ML N-21-S-6 contain this sura in full. Although in MS BNE 5313 the first eleven ayas of this sura are missing, in all likelihood this copy originally contained more text and this sura was complete. As mentioned above, the structure of MS BTNT RESC 43D is striking in that it does not include either of the two complete suras (Q. 36 and Q. 67) that we find in the previously known abridged structure.

 Note that BNE 5313 jumps from Q. 26:86 to Q. 36:12. In other words, as compared to the standard composition in the rest of the manuscripts, where sura 26 includes up to aya 26:89, here it is missing the last three ayas; likewise, the first 11 ayas of sura 36 are missing. It therefore seems likely that this manuscript would have originally contained the exact same contents as the rest of the corpus.  Note that, unlike the others, MS BTNT RESC 43D does not contain the end of the fragment of Sura 3 (Q. 3:26 – 27), and the text resumes at Q. 26:89, at the end of the fragment of sura 26, which usually contains the preceding ten ayas. It is therefore likely that this manuscript once had the same structure as the rest of the corpus.

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4.4 Substructure 2 (S2) This second substructure is the main innovation of this new abridged model. Its seven sura fragments are identical in two of the manuscripts (see table), BnF 774 and BNE 5313. BnF 774

BNE 

BTNT RESC D

ML N--S-

-

-

:

-

:

:

:

:

:

:

:, , 

:, , , 

:, , 

: – 

: – 

: – 

:

:

:

: – 

: – 

: – 

: – 

: – 

: – 

: – 

: – 

By contrast, MS MLI N-21-S-6 contains only two of these seven fragments, which is further evidence that this manuscript may have been a variant with shorter substructures. Indeed, ML N-21-S-6 further diverges from the variant in MS BTNT RESC 43D in that it also contains a fragment of an eighth sura (Q. 35:3), such that substructures 1 and 2 both contain the same number of fragments (eight).¹⁰⁴

4.5 Q. 67: Sura al-Mulk Mss. BnF 774 and BNE 5313 contain this second sura in its entirety (Q. 67), as is also true of the previously known abridged model. However, the other two manuscripts once again diverge somewhat. N-21-S-6 again leaves out content, containing only the first of the two complete suras that appear in the abridged model (Q. 36). Meanwhile, as mentioned, MS BTNT RESC 43D presents a unique variant that leaves out both of these two complete suras, and instead is made up exclusively of sura fragments.

 Note that in substructure 1, the manuscript has been preserved up to Q. 3:19*, followed by a gap until Q. 26:89. This fragment of sura 26 usually begins, in all the copies, at aya 76.

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4.6 Substructure 3 (S3) Whereas in the classic abridged Qur’an model the third complete sura (Q. 67) is followed by the final fragment, these four manuscripts contain additional sura fragments. However, this third substructure does not contain a uniform selection of fragments, whether in terms of form or of content. It is most fully developed in MS BnF 774, which contains fragments of five suras, although with the peculiarity that the final three fragments include a Romance translation. In the other three, this substructure comprises selections of two, three and four suras, as shown in the following table: BnF 774

BNE 

BTNT RESC D

: – 

:

:

:

:

:; 

: ¹⁰⁵

: – 

: 

: – 

: – 

ML N--S-

:; 

: –  :

Despite the clear formal differences, there are several similarities in terms of content. In my opinion, there is sufficient overlap to infer the existence of a third substructure as such, despite the heterogeneity of the available manuscripts, which appear to be variations upon a common model. Thus, one of the fragments (Q. 73:8) shows up in three manuscripts (BNE 5313, BTNT RESC 43D and ML N-21-S-6), and two further fragments (Q. 73:20 and Q. 85:20 – 22) show up in two manuscripts (BTNT RESC 43D and ML N-21-S-6) as well as one other fragment (Q. 71:30) does in other two manuscripts (BNE 5313 and BTNT RESC/43.D).

4.7 Final fragment (F) The known abridged model contains, after the second complete sura (Q. 67), a final fragment, usually suras 78 – 114, although in this position we may also find other canonical qur’anic subdivisions (one fourth of the Qur’an, various aḥzāb, a juzʾ or a ḥizb).¹⁰⁶ Likewise, three of these four manuscripts contain a

 The ayas in Aljamiado Spanish are marked in italics.  Rodríguez Iglesias, “La producción aljamiada” [forthcoming].

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canonical qur’anic subdivision (see table below), while BTNT RESC 43D contains only a single aya: BnF 774

BNE 

BTNT RESC D

ML N--S-

 – 

 – 

: – 

, , , , ,  – 

Suras 78 – 114, present in MS BNE 5313, correspond to the juzʾ ʿamma, which matches up with the content that appears in the known model. This is not the only case, in MS BnF 774, there is also another canonical qur’anic subdivision, suras 72– 114 which is the last three aḥzāb. However, variation is frequent as said, that is the case of MS MLI N-21-S-6 which contains some suras from the end of the canonical text. As we have seen, the structure of BTNT RESC 43D once again stands out from the rest, here concluding with a fragment (Q. 36:50 – 62). However, given its incomplete state of preservation, it may very well have originally contained further text, which probably would have brought it more in line with the new model described here. On the whole, there is clearly an affinity between these four copies, on and beyond their relationship to the known model characterized by containing a single selection of ayas. By way of synthesis, the overview table in appendix shows the similarities and differences between the four manuscripts in the corpus upon which I have based my description of this new proposed model containing three substructures, alongside MS BTNT RESC 3, with which I have exemplified the previously known model.

5 Conclusions The extant copies of the Qur’an produced by the Mudejar and Morisco communities present the sacred text in a variety of formats, ranging from the full text, to smaller formats such as one half or one fourth of the Qur’an. However, the majority of the preserved copies contain a largely regular selection of sura fragments. The structure of these copies containing sura fragments was already described in the nineteenth century by Saavedra, and they have been referred to as “abridged Qur’ans.” Based on the data presented in this article, the earliest copies and circulation of this model date back to the mid-fifteenth century. This phenomenon of abridging the sacred text of Islam was to flourish throughout the sixteenth century, the period to which the majority of the extant copies

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belong, and was mainly produced by the Mudejar and Morisco communities of the Kingdom of Aragon. However, the structure of four Mudejar and Morisco manuscripts containing abridged Qur’ans in Arabic (BnF Arabe 774, BNE 5313, BTNT RESC 43D and Museu de Lleida N-21-S-6) differs from that of the previously described model. The similarities between these four copies make clear that they all take part in a common model characterized by greater formal complexity. Thus, whereas the known model contains one substructure with fragments of seven suras, in these copies we find three substructures of this sort, considerably increasing the total number of sura fragments in each copy. The analysis of this selection of contents will surely prove a fruitful topic for further research. Likewise, the differences between these four copies indicate that they are all variations on the new model proposed here. As we have seen, various textual models of Qur’an abridgment were in circulation simultaneously among the Aragonese Mudejars and Moriscos from the late fifteenth century through the sixteenth century. The present discovery of an expanded model of abridgment underscores the potential value of completing a definitive catalogue and description of the corpus of Mudejar and Morisco Qur’an manuscripts. In this sense, it is worth adding that descriptions of this corpus have frequently relied on prior catalogues without checking against the originals, and have thereby inadvertently reproduced their mistakes. Ultimately, this work will enable us to better our understanding of the typology of these texts, and will open up new perspectives on the religious life of the Mudejar and Morisco communities.

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Appendix: Contents of the manuscripts studied Table comparing the contents of MS BTNT RESC 3 with the contents of the four manuscripts in the present corpus: BTNT RESC 3

BnF 



BNE 

BTNT RESC D

ML N--S-







: – ; ;  – ;  –  : – ;  – *;  –  : –  : – 

: – ; ;  – ;  –  : – ;  – *;  –  : –  : – 

: – ; ;  – ;  –  : – ;  – *; (…)

: – ; ;  – ;  –  : – ;  – *  –  : –  : – 

: : –  : – 

: : –  : – 





: – 

: : :, ,  : –  : : –  : – 

: : :, ,  : –  : : –  : – 







–

: –  : : ¹⁰⁷ : : –   – 

: –  : – ;  – *;  –  : –  : –  (…)

–

 – 

: : – ; :,  : –  : –   : : : :, ,  : –  : : –  :  – 

: –  :  – 

: :

: :,  : –  : – 

:;  : –  :

 – 

: – 

 The ayas with Aljamiado Spanish are marked in italics.

, , , , ,  – 

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Bibliography “Al-Dānī, Abū ʿAmr.” In Biblioteca de Al-Andalus., 1. De al-Abbādīya a Ibn Abyad:308 – 22. Enciclopedia de La Cultura Andalusí. Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, 2012. Al-Uwisheq, Abdullah. “A Critical Edition and a Study of the Commentary on the Qur’anic Reading of Nāfi’: Sharh ̣ al-Durar al-Lawāmi’, by Muḥammad Ibn ’Abd al-Malik al-Mintūrī.” PhD Diss., SOAS University of London, 1988. Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “‘Sicut Euangelia Sunt Quatuor, Distribuerunt Continentiam Eius in Quatuor Libros’: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts.” In The Latin Qur’an. Transition, Translation, Interpretation. Edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan, 425 – 54. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “Review of El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha.” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos. Sección Árabe-Islam 65 (2016): 283 – 96. Balaña, Pere, Dolors Bramón, Mikel de Epalza, Josep Giralt, Pascual Ortega, Julio Samsó, Mercé Viladrich and Pablo Izquierdo. Joyas escritas. Los fondos bibliográficos árabes de Cataluña. Barcelona: Lunwerg Editores, 2002. Casassas Canals, Xavier. “Difusión de copias y traducciones de la ʿaqīda ‘al-muršida’ de Ibn Tūmart entre los musulmanes españoles (ss. xv-xvii). Fijación del texto y materiales para su estudio.” Al Irfan 4 (2018): 165 – 78. Cervera Fras, María José. Manuscritos moriscos aragoneses. Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo, 2010. Chiru, Daniela-Corina. “Influencias lingüísticas del árabe en las traducciones coránicas aljamiado-moriscas.” PhD Diss., University of Bucharest, 2015. Fournel Guerin, Jacqueline. “Les Morisques Aragonais et l’Inquisition de Saragosse (1540 – 1620).” PhD Diss., Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III, 1980. Gibb, H.A.R. The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill, 1986. Guillén Robles, F. Catálogo de los manuscritos árabes existentes en la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1889. Hajri, Mokhles. “Un Corán aljamiado II-IV-701 de la Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana de Florencia.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Oviedo, 2005. Heawood, Edward. Watermarks, Mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Hilversum: Paper Publications Society, 1969. Institut Català de la Mediterrània. L’Islam i Catalunya. Barcelona: IEMed, Lundwerg, 1998. Kontzi, Reinhold. Aljamiadotexte: Ausgabe mit einer Einleitung und Glossar… Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, 1974. López-Morillas, Consuelo. “Lexical and Etymological Studies in the Aljamiado Koran Based on Manuscript 4938 of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.” PhD Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1974. López-Morillas, Consuelo. “Etimologías escogidas del Corán Aljamiado (Ms 4983 de la Biblioteca Nacional).” In Actas del Coloquio Internacional sobre Literatura Aljamiada y Morisca, 365 – 72. Madrid: Gredos, 1978. López-Morillas, Consuelo. The Qurʼān in Sixteenth-Century Spain: Six Morisco Versions of Sura 79. London: Tamesis Books, 1982.

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López-Morillas, Consuelo. “‘Trilingual’ Marginal Notes (Arabic, Aljamiado and Spanish) in a Morisco Manuscript from Toledo.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103, no. 3 (1983): 495 – 503. López-Morillas, Consuelo. “El Corán Romanceado: La traducción contenida en el manuscrito T 235.” Sharq Al-Andalus: Estudios Mudéjares y Moriscos 16 (1999): 265 – 86. López-Morillas, Consuelo. “Lost and Found? Yça of Segovia and the Qur’an Among the Mudejars and Moriscos.” Journal of Islamic Studies 10, no. 3 (1999): 277 – 92. López-Morillas, Consuelo. “La autoría del manuscrito coránico morisco T235.” In Morada de la palabra: homenaje a Luce López-Baralt, 980 – 88. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2002. López-Morillas, Consuelo. “The Genealogy of the Spanish Qurʾān.” Journal of Islamic Studies 17, no. 3 (2006): 255 – 94. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha. Gijón: Trea, 2011. Losada Campo, Teresa. “Estudios sobre coranes aljamiados.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Barcelona, 1975. Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, Nuria. “Qur’anic Manuscripts from Late Muslim Spain: The Collection of Almonacid de La Sierra.” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16, no. 2 (2014): 89 – 138. Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, Nuria. “¿Se conocía en Corán en la España moderna?” Lecture at Casa Árabe, 6 April 2021 https://www.casaarabe.es/canal_youtube/show_video/7ov3 f-ado-4/pag/85 [accessed: 17 – 11 – 21]. Mateos Paramio, Alfredo and Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva, eds. Memoria de los moriscos: escritos y relatos de una diáspora cultural. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2010. Medhat Saada, Mariam. “Edición y estudio del manuscrito aljamiado-morisco ms. 4963 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid.” PhD Diss., University of California, 2011. Montero Muñoz, Raquel. “Las traducciones moriscas y el español islámico: los manuscritos Toledo 235 y RAH 11/9397 (olim S 5).” In Volumen IV Sección 5: Edición y crítica textual. Sección 6: Retórica, poética y teoría literaria, Actas del XXIII Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Románica, 215 – 22. Berlin: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2015. Moraleda Álvarez, Victoria Luisa. “Edición de un manuscrito morisco del Corán (número 25 de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Madrid).” PhD Diss., Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona, 1965. Nasser, Shady. The Second Canonization of the Qurʾān (324/936): Ibn Mujāhid and the Founding of the Seven Readings. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Nasser, Shady. The Transmission of the Variant Readings of the Qurʾān: The Problem of Tawātur and the Emergence of Shawādhdh. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Ribera, Julián and Miguel Asín Palacios. Manuscritos árabes y aljamiados de la biblioteca de la Junta: noticia y extractos. Madrid: Junta para ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1912. Rodríguez, Antonio Vespertino Rodríguez. “Una aproximación a la datación de los manuscritos aljamiado-moriscos.” Estudios románicos, no. 5 (1987): 1419 – 39. Saavedra Moragas, Eduardo. “Discurso que el Excmo sr. Don Eduardo Saavedra leyó en Junta pública de la Real Academia Española el día 29 de diciembre de 1878 al tomar posesión

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de su plaza de académico de número.” Memorias de la Real Academia española 6 (1889): 140 – 328. Silvestre de Sacy, A. L. “Notice d’un manuscrit espagnol écrit en caractères arabes.” Journal Des Sçavants 16 nivose an 5 (1797): 205 – 13. Slane, M. le Baron de. Catalogue des manuscrits arabes. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883. Suárez García, Raquel. Un Misceláneo Aljamiado-Morisco (Ms. 5313 BNM). Doctoral research paper. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1999. Vajda, Georges, and Yvette Sauvan. Catalogue des manuscrits arabes, deuxième partie, manuscrits musulmans, No 589 – 1120, vol. 2. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1978. Vernet, Juan and Victoria Luisa Moraleda Álvarez. “Un Alcorán fragmentario en aljamiado.” Boletín de la Real Academia de las Buenas Letras de Barcelona 33 (1970): 43 – 75. Viscasillas Seguí, María Victoria. “Traducciones Aljamiadas del Corán: estudio linguístico de unos fragmentos. Manuscrito 25 de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Madrid.” PhD Diss., Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona, 1973. Wagner al-Gannabi, Wilhelmina T. F. “La escuela coránica de Denia: Abu ‘Amr ‘Utman B. Sa‘id ad-Dani, figura, obra formativa y obra escrita.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Granada, 1988. Wiegers, Gerard. Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (Fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors. Leiden: Brill, 1993.

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Dialectal Variations in Aljamiado Translations of the Qur’an Although several authors, starting with the pioneering studies of Darío Cabanelas and Juan Vernet,¹ have taken an interest in different aspects the Aljamiado Qur’an corpus, few have truly engaged with the linguistic status of these copies. Most of the editions and studies that have appeared in recent decades have lacked a rigorous linguistic analysis of the translations, relegating this aspect to the background while other elements take the fore, such as the genealogy and typology of the copies, qur’anic exegesis, or the translation process itself. However, a detailed study of the use of language in the copies would shed light on these and other aspects.² In most cases the linguistic study or characterization of the Aljamiado Qur’an translations comes down to merely assigning them to the Aragonese sphere, without providing even a minimal linguistic analysis to support such a claim. And still, one finds a certain vagueness in the linguistic identification of these translations. For example, Vernet and Moraleda refer to these texts as being “written in Castilian (almost always Aragonese),”³ Hermosilla alludes to a language with “peculiarities common in Aragonese Aljamiado texts,”⁴ and,

 Darío Cabanelas, “Juan de Segovia y el primer Alcorán trilingüe,” Al-Andalus 14 (1949). Juan Vernet, “Traducciones moriscas de El Corán,” in Der Orient in der Forschung. Festschrift für Otto Spies zum 5. April 1996, ed. Wilhelm Hoenerbach (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1967). Repub. in Vernet, De cAbd al-Raḥmān I a Isabel II. Recopilación de estudios dispersos sobre Historia de la Ciencia y de la Cultura Española ofrecida al autor por sus discípulos con ocasión de su LXV aniversario (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1989).  As expressed in 1982 by Consuelo López-Morillas, for whom “an understanding of the language of these texts provides in most cases the only key to their date and place of origin.” See López-Morillas, The Qur’ān in sixteenth-century Spain: Six Morisco Versions of Sūra 79 (London: Tamesis Books Limited, 1982), 16.  Juan Vernet and Luisa Moraleda, “Un Alcorán fragmentario en aljamiado,” Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 33 (1970), 45.  María José Hermosilla Llisterri, “Una traducción aljamiada de Corán 38, 34– 36 y su original árabe,” Anaquel de estudios árabes 3 (1992), 48. Note: This essay is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (SyG grant agreement no. 810141), project EuQu “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-009

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more recently, Martínez de Castilla alternates between the descriptors “Castellano aragonesizado” (“Aragonese-inflected Castilian”), “Castilian,”⁵ and “Romance.”⁶ As for López-Morillas, to whom we owe the most extensive incursion to date into this corner of Aljamiado-Morisco literature, as well as a marvelous edition of the celebrated Qur’an of Toledo,⁷ she has consistently shown interest in the language of these texts, from lexicographical and, in particular, etymological aspects,⁸ to issues related to syntax or dialectology.⁹ She has stated that Aragonese is invariably present in these translations, and that from a linguistic perspective there is no purely Castilian Qur’an.¹⁰ In this regard, López-Morillas speaks of “Aragonesisms” belonging to the religious sphere, fossilized in the language, and which never or almost never appear in the form of their Castilian equivalents.¹¹ Such is the case of Aragonese forms like judiçio (judgment), fuesa (tomb) or soflo (puff of air), which, based on López Morillas’s findings, appear to mark the discourse more from a diastratic perspective (as an Islamic language) than from a diatopic one (despite the terms’ dialectal nature). Still, López-Morillas bases her conclusions as to the language of these texts on a repertoire of linguistic phenomena centered on those elements that differ with respect to contemporary Spanish. The result of this partial vision is a somewhat biased analysis of these copies’ linguistic reality. Only through the systematic comparison of the different translations of the Qur’an will it be possible to determine these texts’ linguistic status and variability. In any case, based on our knowledge of the Aljamiado corpus and of the samples extracted from the differ-

 Nuria Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, “La transmisión de textos entre los moriscos: dos copias del tafsīr abreviado de Ibn Abī Zamanīn,” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 26 (2015), 148 – 49.  A term that Martínez de Castilla employs in opposition to “Spanish” in discussing the Thessaloniki Qur’an: “nous appelons romance et non espagnol la variante linguistique du castillan employée par les Morisques et fortement marquée par des traits aragonisants, arabisants et archaïques, tant du point de vue du lexique que de la morphologie et de la syntaxe.” See Nuria Martínez de Castilla, “Deux corans aljamiados de Salonique,” Bulletin de la Fondation Max Van Berchem 23 (2009), 4.  Consuelo López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha (Gijón: Trea, 2011).  López-Morillas, The Qur’ān.  López-Morillas, “The Genealogy of the Spanish Qur’ān,” Journal of Islamic Studies 17, no. 3 (2006).  López-Morillas, “The Genealogy,” 269.  López-Morillas’s hypothesis does not take into account the existence of glossaries of qur’anic terms used by translators, which might explain the preference for certain forms.

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ent versions, we can already make some affirmations as to certain linguistic aspects of the Aljamiado translations of the Qur’an.

1 Time-Space Coordinates of the Aljamiado Qur’an In the first place, it is important to keep in mind the chronology and geography of these texts —aspects that will enable us to more precisely define their linguistic status. There are twenty-eight extant manuscripts that contain translations of the Qur’an (both monolingual, and bilingual Arabic/Romance), most of them written in Arabic characters and only two in Latin characters. Although few of these codices expressly state when they were copied (exceptions being the Qur’an of Toledo, copied in 1606, or the Qur’an of Florence, copied in 1612), the preliminary linguistic samples we have been able to analyze so far have allowed us to situate the bulk of this production within the sixteenth century. However, there remains the possibility, based more on codicological than linguistic traits, that some copies, such as MSS T-5 and T-12 of the Real Academia de la Historia, or MS 4938 of the Bibiblioteca Nacional de España, were copied in the Mudejar period, in the late fifteenth century. In the same way, other volumes, such as MS RESC 40 of the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás CSIC, could date from as late as the first decade of the seventeenth century, in the years immediately prior to the expulsion.¹²

 The paper of manuscripts RAH T-5 and BNE 4938 dates from the late fifteenth century, while that of RAH T-12 can be dated to between the mid-fourteenth and the early sixteenth century. Martínez de Castilla has dated the latter to the sixteenth century, based on the fact that “there is no known copy of the Qur’an in Castilian made before the sixteenth century.” See Martínez de Castilla, “La transmisión,” 148. As for those dated to the early seventeenth century, alongside the Qur’an of Toledo (1606) and the Qur’an held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence (1612), Junta 40 contains a booklet that bears the dates 1559 and 1602.

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Tab. 1: List of Aljamiado Qur’an Manuscripts¹³. Monolingual copies

BCLM T-,  RAH T-, late th-th cent.? RAH V , late th cent.?

Bilingual copies Interlinear translation

Consecutive translation

BnF Arabe ,  CSIC RESC ,  –  CSIC RESC , th cent. CSIC RESC , th cent. CSIC RESC ,  – 

BNCF II-iv-,  BNE , late th-th cent.? BNE , th cent. BNE ,  –  BNE ,  BnF Arabe , th cent. BnF Arabe ,  CSIC RESC , th cent. CSIC RESC , late th cent.? CSIC RESC , th cent. RAH T-, late th-th cent.? RAH T-,  –  RAH T-, th cent. RAH T-, late th cent.? RAH V , th cent. RAH V , th cent.

Tafsir AHB A- CSIC RESC  CSIC RESC  CSIC RESC .

th th th th

cent. cent. cent. cent.

On the other hand, there is much less question as to the place of origin of these codices, all of which were composed, with the well-known exceptions of the copies made in exile, in the lands of Aragon.¹⁴ It is worth stressing at this point that Aljamiado, taken in the strict sense as Romance text transcribed in Arabic characters, is a fundamentally Aragonese phenomenon that is alien to the Castilian corpus. Thus, only texts written in Latin characters might raise doubts as to whether or not they were written in Aragon. Another issue is that the transla-

 Hereinafter I will use the following abbreviations for the various libraries and archives: Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat, Barcelona [AHB]; Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo [BCLM]; Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze [BNCF]; Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE]; Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF]; Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, CSIC, Madrid [CSIC]; Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid [RAH].  López-Morillas, “The Genealogy,” 293.

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tions upon which these Aragonese copies are based may have entered Aragon from the intellectual centers of Castilian Mudejar Islam, such as Segovia, in the context of the circulation of Islamic texts that took place between the two kingdoms in the early sixteenth century. That said, we know that a large portion of the preserved copies of the Qur’an come from the famous Almonacid de la Sierra cache, along with finds in other nearby towns such as Morés, Muel and Villafeliche, although the codices generally do not state where they were copied. In these cases, based on the linguistic status of the samples analyzed so far, we can hypothesize that, as with Aljamiado production generally, virtually the entire corpus comes from the well-defined and linguistically homogeneous area along the southern bank of the Ebro River, in what is today the province of Zaragoza. Outside this core production area, we know of Qur’ans copied in other parts of Aragon, such as Huesca or the Calanda area of Teruel, although the copies that have survived into the present are written for the most part in Arabic. Only two of these Morisco copies were made outside the territory of Aragon and, indeed, outside the Iberian Peninsula altogether, in the city of Thessaloniki, at the other end of the Mediterranean. On the one hand, there is the Qur’an held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, which was copied by Muhamad Rabadán, a Morisco from Rueda de Jalón, a town in the province of Zaragoza, within the core production area I have just mentioned, and which is linguistically very similar to the copies made in the Iberian Peninsula. A very different case is that of the volume held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, made by the enigmatic Ybrahim Izquierdo, which from a linguistic perspective undoubtedly constitutes the most unique of all the Morisco translations, and to which we will return further on.

2 Castilian and Aragonese in the Aljamiado Qur’an This geographical distribution allows us to conclude that the bulk of these materials come from these central areas of Aragon located to the south of the Ebro (the Jalón and Jiloca valleys), historically subjected to a dual process of language shift that is worth emphasizing, since it is crucial in order to understand the linguistic status of these copies. In the first place, early on, in the context of the advance of the Christian conquests southward from the counties of the Pyrenees, and the subsequent spread of the Aragonese Romance vernacular, these territories in central Aragon under-

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went a process of dialectal leveling, fixing those traits common to the various High Aragonese varieties, to the detriment of other more specific or local traits that would remain relegated to their specific territories.¹⁵ Later on, due to the political and cultural supremacy of Castile, as the Castilian language penetrated further eastward, by the sixteenth century it had reached full dominance, replacing the local Romance vernacular in these areas of the Ebro valley. Still, the Castilianization of Aragon was a long, complex and asymmetrical process, and occurred at different rates and intensities at the diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic levels.¹⁶ This is firmly attested to not only in notarial and chancery texts from the same period in central Aragon, but also, as we will see, in the Aljamiado Qur’an translations themselves, carried out over the course of the sixteenth century. Both factors —dialectal leveling and subsequent Castilianization— would explain the reduction in native Aragonese elements, which occurs in both Morisco and Christian texts during this period. We might call the result a “minimal Aragonese,” where only the language’s most vital traits remain, diluted into the Castilian. We can therefore conclude that not only is there no sixteenth-century translation of the Qur’an into Aragonese, but that such a translation would have by this time been impossible, despite the fact that in 1515 Juan Andrés, in Confusión de la secta mahomética, states that he had translated the sacred text “from Arabic into the Aragonese language,”¹⁷ which misled Everette E. Larson and others into identifying Aragonese passages in this work.¹⁸ In fact, the language used in both the Confusión and in the qur’anic quotations it contains is unequivocally Castilian, even though there are numerous eastern Romance elements (but

 For instance, the retention of plosive and liquid clusters (pluvia, plorar, etc.) is a trait common to all High Aragonese varieties, and as such is pervasive in Aljamiado copies of the Qur’an. Other traits typical of areas further north and absent from the central regions of Aragon are likewise absent from our corpus.  María Luisa Arnal Purroy and José María Enguita Utrilla, “Particularidades lingüísticas en textos notariales zaragozanos de finales del siglo xvii,” Archivo de Filología Aragonesa 50 (1994), 44.  In another passage of the Confusión he refers to “the book of the Alcorán, which I translated from Arabic into Romance.” On the language used in this book, see Everette E. Larson, “A Study of the Confusión de la Secta Mahomática of Juan Andrés” PhD diss. (The Catholic University of America, 1981), 21– 25.  López-Morillas, by contrast, indicates that “the high proportion of Aragonese in the qur’anic quotations from Juan Andrés is deceptive (…). The language is for the most part Castilian.” See López-Morillas, “The Genealogy,” Appendix C: 2.

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more Catalan than Aragonese), as well as over-corrected elements that clearly point to the author’s Valencian origins. Juan Andrés’s statement clearly denotes that the issue of naming the various Romance languages was a complicated one at this time. Thus, we know that in the sixteenth century, following the processes of leveling and Castilianization in the region, the vernacular language of Aragon, the Aragonese Romance in its dialectal diversity, had been relegated to the valleys of the Pyrenees. As a result, by this period it was considered a rustic and vulgar language, in opposition to Castilian, and in the cultivated circles of Zaragoza it was referred to as the lenguaxe grosero aragonés (rude Aragonese language) ¹⁹ or lengua de montaña (mountain tongue).²⁰ It is therefore easy to understand why this non-prestigious language of the mountains of Aragon would have been considered unfit for literary pursuits, much less for the translation of a sacred text, whether the Qur’an or otherwise. Thus, the term “Aragonese language” as used by Juan Andrés²¹ and other authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, does not refer to Aragonese Romance, but rather to the Castilian of Aragon (or, in other words, the Aragonese “standard” for Castilian), the variety that during this period constituted the prestige language of the Kingdom and of the Zaragozan elite. That said, the term’s ambiguity reflects an attempt to preserve, if nominally, Aragon’s linguistic independence from Castile, even if the language was essentially the same.²² The Morisco translations of the Qur’an are a prime example of this “Aragonese language.” The concept of “minimal Aragonese” mentioned above there-

 Terms used by archbishop Hernando de Aragón y Gurrea, who also alternates between the terms montañés and aragonés. See Guillermo Tomás Faci, “Las lenguas de Aragón en el siglo xvi según el arzobispo Hernando,” Alazet 28 (2016), 151.  María Pilar Benítez and Óscar Latas, “Sobre los villancicos barrocos en aragonés de los siglos xvii y xviii,” Alazet 25 (2013), 16.  Contrary to what has been argued by Larson, who states that in the Confusión “there are lexical elements, phonological variants, and verbs forms which are undeniably Aragonese” (Larson, “A Study of the Confusión,” 24), Juan Andrés wrote the book in Castilian, not Aragonese. The author’s Valencian origins are most patently clear in his phonetics, with over-corrected diphthongs and hiatuses (ceno for ‘cieno,’ pensa for ‘piensa,’ negas for ‘niegas,’ but contientos for ‘contentos,’ atormientado for ‘atormentado’), apocopated forms (ningú for ‘ningún,’ tant for ‘tanto’), initial l- palatalization (llagremas for ‘lágrimas,’ llevantar for ‘levantar’) and certain cases of -es for feminine plurals (viandes celestiales for ‘viandas celestiales’). Likewise, in terms of lexicon, there are fully Catalan forms such as puput for ‘hoopoe’ (Cast. ‘abubilla’), bevenda (‘drink,’ Cast. ‘bebida’), tristicia (‘sadness,’ Cast. ‘tristeza’), Març (‘Mars,’ Cast. ‘Marte’), Capricorn (Cast. ‘Capricornio’), encara (‘yet,’ Cast. ‘aún’), degà (‘dean,’ Cast. ‘decano’), terratrèmol (‘earthquake,’ Cast. ‘terremoto’), etc.  On this topic, see Félix Monge, “Notas para la historiografía del habla de Aragón,” Boletín de la Real Academia Española 31 (1951); and Tomás Faci, “Las lenguas de Aragón,” 146.

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fore involves a series of traits that are all possible and frequent, but which rarely all coexist in a single text. Here it is worth briefly mentioning, as an example of this “minimal Aragonese” element, a few local solutions that, in the majority of cases, alternate with their Castilian equivalents (not just within one text, but even within a single statement), and often oscillate based on date, provenance, the copyist’s education, and the original being copied. As an illustration of what we have seen thus far, let us examine a short excerpt (Sura 103 and part of Sura 104) of MS BNE 4963 (fols. 126r-126v), one of the most Aragonese of the preserved copies of the Qur’an, in which we can see some of the local elements that had most consistently lived on in the language:²³ [Sura 103]²⁴ Juro por Allah tacālà, por-el tienpo i por el día i por la noche. Otro dize por alcaṣar, que la presona está en perdición sino aquellos que creyerán i farán buenas obras, i se castigarán con la verdat de creyer en-un-solo Allah, i se castigarán con sufrir sobre los mandamientos de Allah tacālà. [Sura 104]²⁵ ¡Mal día vino i tan way a todo profaçitador, malsinador, trastallador, aceñant con los güellos, i dizidor de las tachas en presencia! Aquel que conplega algo i dize: “mi algo”. I lo trova de nuey i de día, que no piensa en-otro sino en plegar. Piénsase que su algo lo fará seyer perdurable.

Thus, in terms of the vowel system, we find the diphthongization of short ĕ and ŏ before yod in güellos or nuey (cfr. Castilian ojos and noche); the instability of the unstressed vowels (dizidor); the avoidance of a hiatus between vowels via a palatal element (creyer, creyerán, seyer) or the apocope of -e in aceñant (cfr. Castilian ceñante), a word which also illustrates the Aragonese tendency to add the prefix a-. As for the consonant system, we find the retention of the Latin word-initial f(farán, fará), which often alternates with the Castilian aspirated or silent h-; the retention of plosive-liquid clusters (plegar, conplega); the palatal lateral solution for clusters containing yod (trastallador); the retention of the vowel element gen-

 I have marked in italics those forms that can be identified as Aragonese, even though some of the phenomena that these terms reflect (such as the instability of the unstressed vowels or the persistence of the world-initial Latin f‐) also show up in Castilian proper.  Cfr. Arberry: “Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being, / By the afternoon! / Surely Man is in the way of loss, / save those who believe, and do righteous deeds, and counsel each other unto the truth, and counsel each other to be steadfast.”  Cfr. Arberry: “Woe unto every backbiter, slanderer, / who has gathered riches and counted them over / thinking his riches have made him immortal!”

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erated in the evolution of the cluster -kt- (nuey), which in Castilian evolved into an affricate (noche); the metathesis present in presona or the word-final consonant muting in verdat. Nevertheless, the wealth of Aragonese traits in this translation of the Qur’an is something of an exception within this Hispanic corpus, and should perhaps be interpreted as signalling an early date of composition. The norm in these copies is for the proportion of Aragonese elements to be much lower. To illustrate the variability between these texts, in the table below I have selected several different versions of Sura 101 (ayas 1– 5),²⁶ highlighting aspects of linguistic status, and certain problems that its study entails (see Table 2). As can be seen, the language in all of these copies is essentially Castilian, and only in the first four do we find phenomena (all of them purely phonetic) that we might classify as Aragonese.²⁷ Such is the case of the apocopated form ferient, which likewise exhibits unstressed-vowel instability, as we find both ferient and firient; the etymological form crieman as opposed to the Castilian metathetical form queman; the retention of intervocalic -d- in judiçio, as well the transformation of a hiatus into a palatal consonant in cayer. By contrast, later copies no longer contain any trace of vernacular elements, and even phenomena that are common to both Romances —essentially restricted to the retention of word-initial Latin f- (fiere, fazen, etc.)— are progressively phased out in favor of the modern Castilian form (hiere, hazen, etc.). With all of this in mind, and in light of these parallel passages but in the absence of a complete and systematic comparison of the corpus, we could say that most of these translations of the Qur’an present a similar linguistic pattern, possibly through reliance on similar earlier translations, with a minimal and variable alternation between Castilian and Aragonese that depends more on the period and copyist than on the codex’s place of origin.

 Cfr. Arberry: “The Clatterer! / What is the Clatterer? / And what shall teach thee what is the Clatterer? / The day that men shall be like scattered moths, / and the mountains shall be like plucked wool-tufts.”  On the other hand, these translations do not appear to exhibit internal dialectal variation, which we do find in other Aljamiado texts from peripheral areas of Aragon, in particular the east, where there are traits belonging to local varieties, or even to Catalan.

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Tab. 2: Aljamiado versions of Sura 101. MS BNE 4963 (Aragon, 16th c.)

MS BNE  (Aragon,  – )

MS BnF Arabe MS RAH T-  (Morés, th c.) (Aragon, th c.)

MS RAH T- (Aragon,  – )

El ferient. ¿I qué cosa es el ferient? ¿I qué sabes qué cosa es el ferient? Es el día que serán las gentes como las mariposas que se lançan en la candela i se queman o se afogan. Así es aquel día que fiere a las gentes con sus espantos i lánçalos en-el fuego como fazen las mariposas en la candela. I serán los montes como la lana escarmenada i cardada.

El firient. ¿I qué cosa es el firient? ¿I qué sabes qué es el firient? Es el día que serán las gentes como las mariposas que se lançan en la candela i se crieman i se afogan. Asī es aquel día que fiere a las gentes con sus espantos i lánçanlos en-el fuego como fazen las mariposas en la candela i serán los montes como la lana escarmenaḏa.

El feriente. ¿Qué cosa es el firiente? ¿I qué sabes qu-es el firiente? Es el día que serán las gentes como las mariposas que se lançan en la candela i se crieman i se afogan. Así es aquel día que fieren a las gentes con sus espuntos i lánçanlos en-el fuego como fazen las mariposas en la candela i serán los montes como la lana escarmenada.

El ferimiento. ¿I qué cosa es el ferimiento? ¿I qué sabes qué cosa es el ferimiento? Es el día que serán las gentes como las mariposas que se lançan en la candela i se queman o se afogan. Ansí es aquel día que fiere a las gentes con sus espuntos i lánçalos en-el fuego como fazen las mariposas en la candela i serán los montes desfechos como la lana escarmenaḏa.

MS BnF Arabe 447 (Thessaloniki, 1569)

MS CSIC RESC  MS CSIC RESC  MS BCLM, T- (Almonacid de la (Almonacid de la (Villafeliche, Sierra, th c.) Sierra, th c.) )

MS BNCF, II-iv (Thessaloniki, )

El tiempo. ¿Qué es el tiempo? ¿Y no te alcançó qué es el tiempo? Día que será la gente como la pavesa menuda i serán las sierras como la lana carmenada.

El firimiento. ¿I qué es el ferimiento? ¿I no sabes qué es el ferimiento? Es el día que serán las gentes como las mariposas estenḏiḏas que se lançan en la cande-

El firiente. ¿Qué es el firiente? ¿Qué sabes qu-es el firiente? Es el ḏía que serán las gentes como las mariposas que se lançan en la candela i se queman o se ahogan. Asī

El firiente. ¿I qué cosa es el firiente? ¿I no sabes qué es el firiente? Es el día que serán las gentes como las mariposas que se lançan en la candela i se queman i se aho-

El día ḏel judiçyo o como será tan fuerte el día que serán las gentes como langosta cuando caye en la tierra unos sobre otros. Quiere ḏezir que así estarán las gentes el día ḏel judiçio derramaḏos i serán los montes como la lana carmenada.

El ferimiento de los espantos. ¿Qué es el ferimiento de los espantos? ¿Y no sabes, ye Muhamed, qué es el ferimiento de los espantos del día del judiçio? Es el

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Continued MS BnF Arabe  (Thessaloniki, )

MS CSIC RESC  MS CSIC RESC  MS BCLM, T- (Almonacid de la (Almonacid de la (Villafeliche, Sierra, th c.) Sierra, th c.) )

MS BNCF, II-iv (Thessaloniki, )

la. I serán los montes como la lana escarmenaḏa.

es aquel día que hiere a las gentes con sus espantos i lánçalos en-el fuego como hazen las mariposas en la candela i serán los montes como la lana escarmenada i cardaḏa.

gan. Así es aquel día que fiere a las gentes con sus espantos i lánçalos en-el fuego como hazen las mariposas en la candela i serán los montes como la lana escarmenaḏa.

día que serán las gentes como la langosta estendida, y serán los montes como lana escarmenada, colorada.

3 On the Translation of Ybrahim Izquierdo That said, only one of these Qur’an translations, Ms BnF 447, clearly falls outside this linguistic model and translation style. Copied in Thessaloniki in 1569, the copyist, Ybrahim Izquierdo, about whose identity we know little to nothing, appears to also be the translator, as he does not share the common pattern observed among the rest of the Morisco Qur’ans.²⁸ Although the Thessaloniki translation is written in a pure Castilian without any trace of Aragonese elements, we nevertheless find certain peculiarities, essentially in terms of lexicon, that are very rare in Aljamiado texts. Such is the case of words such as percança (8v)²⁹, tremía (89v)³⁰, tremimiento (90r), sollarán

 López-Morillas, “The Genealogy,” 289 – 90. On this manuscript, see also Martínez de Castilla, “Deux corans,” 4– 5.  Meaning “reach, obtain” this term remained in common usage in Castilian at the end of the fifteenth century, appearing in works by authors such as Juan del Encina, Lucas Fernández and Rodrigo de Reinosa. See Joan Corominas and José Antonio Pascual, Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (DCECH), (Madrid: Gredos, 1984– 91), 932.  Meaning “tremble.” In old Castilian and Astur-Leonese, forms such as tremió, tremíen, tremían, etc. are well documented. By the fifteenth century they had become antiquated, and were soon after replaced by the modern variants temblar or estremecer, although Cervantes, for one, continued to use the form tremía (DCECH, 455).

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(32v)³¹, revivar (15r)³², revivaçión (16r), recercador (59v)³³, etc., which are uncommon or unheard of in Aljamiado texts. Likewise, alongside high-register phonetic forms such as sancto for santo (44v), sanctiffica for santifica (60r, 101r), ausentia for ausencia (21v), subjecta for sujeta (51v), or morphosyntactic innovations such as the synthetic superlative ending in -ísimo,³⁴ grandísimo (5r), we also find, by contrast, a certain folk flavor in words such as mijor (82v), mijores (88v) for mejor/mejores, enantes (2v) for antes, criador for creador (41r), ansí for así (17v, 62v, 66r), mintroso for mentiroso (84v), etc. One of the reasons that López-Morillas has posited for this distance from the peninsular model is the fact that Ibrahim Yzquierdo made his copy in exile, but prior to the 1609 expulsion, and thus at a remove from the bulk of the Spanishspeaking Morisco population.³⁵ However, the fact that Ybrahim Izquierdo translated his Qur’an outside the Iberian Peninsula does not necessarily mean he was not working in a Hispanic context. This was certainly the case with Thessaloniki, where we have accounts from Spanish Muslims who had settled in the city already in the second half of the sixteenth century,³⁶ and who maintained regular contact with their coreligionists in the peninsula,³⁷ even traveling to and from Aragon.³⁸  Ancient form based on the Latin cluster -ffl- (sufflare), documented at least until the fifteenth century in Aragonese and Astur-Leonese (DCECH, 305 – 7).  Corominas records it for Aragonese with the hypothetical meaning of “to finish off” (DCECH, 835), although in Catalan it is a common word meaning “to revive.” See Antoni Maria Alcover, Francesc de Borja Moll, [Manuel Sanchis Guarner], Diccionari català-valencià-balear (DCVB), (Moll: Palma de Mallorca, 1930 – 1962), last modified 9 July 2021. https://dcvb.iec.cat/  Eastern form, common in modern Catalan (DCVB, s.v. recercador).  Although documented in the Middle Ages, its use seems to have become widespread only in the sixteenth century, although Correas writes in 1626 that it is a “forma latina y no española, y en pocos usada” (“Latin form, and not Spanish, and is used by few”). See Rafael Lapesa, Historia de la Lengua Española (Madrid: Gredos, 1981), 396 – 97.  She also emphasizes the exceptional nature of this copy, which she considers “our only true outlier, the one Spanish Qur’an from that period that seems to have been translated without reference to an earlier model.” See López-Morillas, “The Genealogy,” 290 – 92.  We have little information about the Morisco community of Thessaloniki, beyond the fact that Moriscos appear to have lived there in considerable numbers. Marcos de Guadalajara, a Carmelite from Zaragoza, wrote in 1614 that the city was home to approximately 500 Moriscos. See Miguel Ángel Extremera Extremera, “Los moriscos en Estambul y Anatolia. Una aproximación a su estudio,” MEAH. Sección árabe-islam 60 (2011), 108. Míkel de Epalza has noted that the Moriscos who settled in Thessaloniki were merchants that had trade relations with the Moriscos of Tunisia, and that they expressed interest in the Spanish-language books copied there. See Míkel de Epalza, Los moriscos antes y después de la expulsión (Madrid: Mapfre, 1992), 283.  Thus, in the itinerary contained in MS BnF 774 (fol. 38v–39r), while in Piazza San Marco, in Venice: “The ones you will see there with the white turbans are Turks, the ones you will see with

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However, I find it much more interesting to emphasize here the fact that, alongside these Moriscos who had ended up in Thessaloniki, the city was also home to an extremely important and prosperous Spanish-speaking Sephardic community descended from Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula a century earlier. Apart from the obvious linguistic differences, the Thessaloniki translation is, in general, quite literal and much more succinct than the other Morisco versions. Part of what makes Ybrahim Izquierdo’s translation so unique is his moderate use of tafsir, which is often embedded in the text. While the aim of this chapter is not to analyze the qur’anic exegesis found within these translations, it is nevertheless worth pointing out certain aspect that I find particularly significant, given that the use of one work of tafsir or another is certain to condition the copyist’s lexicon. Let us take by way of example the four ayas of Sura 101 that we saw above, about the day when people will be like scattered moths or butterflies: yawm yakūnu an-nāsu k-al-farāshi al-mabthūth. Most Aljamiado copies, faithful to the Arabic, translate farāsh as mariposas (butterflies), likening the mass of people to the fluttering of these insects. Thus, farāsh al-mabthūth is interpreted by al-Qurṭubī, following Qatāda, as butterflies or moths that, fluttering about, run into each other and end up falling into the flame of an oil lamp.³⁹ As we have seen, this is the interpretation taken up by most Aljamiado versions: las mariposas que se lançan en la candela [or candil], and is also the same one we find in the annotations to the Qur’an of Bellús, which state, in Valencian: les palometes que van a la llum. ⁴⁰ The same image appears in the Qur’an of Toledo’s version, as well as in MS T-18 of the Real Academia de la Historia, although in this case based on the Arabic jarād (locusts), an interpretation offered by other exegetes such as Ibn Kathīr

yellow turbans are Jews, merchants of the Great Turk, ask them all you want and they will set you on the right path. Tell them you have brothers in Thessaloniki and that you want to go there.” See the edition of this text in Mercedes Sánchez Álvarez, El manuscrito misceláneo 774 de la Biblioteca Nacional de París (Madrid: Gredos, 1982), 153 – 54.  This is the case of Juan Azar, from Aragon, tried by the Inquisition in Barcelona in 1578, who was taken by his parents to Thessaloniki and returned to Aragon three times. On two occasions other Moriscos accompanied him on the trip back to Thessaloniki. See Bárbara Ruiz-Bejarano, “Praxis islámica de los musulmanes aragoneses a partir del corpus aljamiado-morisco y su confrontación con otras fuentes contemporáneas” PhD diss. (Universidad de Alicante, 2015), 469.  Al-Qurṭubī, Abū ‘Abdullah, Compendio del tafsir del Corán Al-Qurṭubī, trans. Zakaríya Maza Abu Mubarak (Granada: Comunidad Musulmana Española, 2005), vol. 1, 271.  Note the use of palometa, commonly used in Valencian and eastern Catalan to refer specifically to moths, as opposed to butterflies. The Castilian mariposa can refer to both.

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(jarād muntashara, “scattered locusts”)⁴¹ or aṭ-Ṭabarī (ghawghā’ al-jarād, “mob of locusts”).⁴² By contrast, the Qur’an of Thessaloniki takes a completely different approach, translating farāsh as pavesa modified by the adjective menuda (fine), an interpretation that, to my knowledge, is not found in any work of qur’anic exegesis. The word pavesa (or povisa, in some areas of Spain), which means “ash dust,” is very rare in this period (a mere ten cases recorded in CORDE for the whole sixteenth century).⁴³ Thus, it is highly significant that the exact same expression, pavesa menuda, used here to refer to the image of the mob or mass of people, also appears in the translation of another sacred text, in this case a Jewish one: the Bible of Ferrara, published just a few years before Ybrahim Izquierdo translated the Qur’an in Thessaloniki. Specifically, Isaiah 29:5 contains an eschatological passage that is very similar to Sura 101. In the same context of the description of the Final Judgment, the original Hebrew states that the enemies shall perish ‫( ְכָּאָבק ַדּק‬ke’abac dac), i. e. like fine dust, an expression that appears in virtually all medieval translations (pulvis tenuis, in the Vulgate)⁴⁴. However, the Judeo-Spanish version of Ferrara is unlike any of its predecessors and, while maintaining the noun + epithet structure, comes up with the same innovative reading as the Qur’an of Thessaloniki, of pavesa menuda, as opposed to polvo menudo, arriving at a more precise interpretation of the passage, in the specific sense of “the dust resulting from fire.” Thus, the entire phrase  Ibn Kathīr, Abu al-Fiḍā ‘Imād Ad-Dīn Ismā‘īl ibn ʿUmar, Tafsir Ibn Kathīr [abridged] (Riyadh: Darussalam, 2003), vol. 10, 571.  Aṭ-Ṭabarī, Abī Ja‘far Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, Tafsīr aṭ-Ṭabari: Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy alQur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh at-Turkī (Cairo: Markaz al-buḥūth wa-l-dirāsāt al-‘arabiyya wa-l-islāmiyya, 2001), vol. 24: 593.  Corominas states that it is an exclusively Castilian term, and appears in Nebrija, Cervantes, Calderón, Moreto and Covarrubias. However, the CORDE database contains only a handful of instances from the sixteenth century. See Real Academia Española, Corpus diacrónico del español (CORDE), http://www.rae.es [consulted 9 July 2021].  The same reading appears in the Bible of Thessaloniki. This partial translation of the Bible was published with the aim of rounding out the Pentateuch of Constantinople, with Isaiah and Jeremiah (1568), Job and Daniel (1570), the twelve minor prophets (1571), Psalms (1571), Proverbs (1572) and Ezequiel (1572). The series of books of this edition was republished in Thessaloniki between 1583 and 1585. On this topic see Elena Romero, La creación literaria en lengua sefardí (Madrid: Mapfre, 1992): 36 – 37 and Moshé Lazar, “Ladinando la Biblia entre los sefardíes mediterráneos: Italia, Imperio Otomano y Viena,” in Hassán and Berenguer Amador, Introducción a la Biblia de Ferrara. Actas del Simposio Internacional, Sevilla, 25 – 28 de noviembre de 1991 (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario, 1994), 347– 442.

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reads: “Y será como pavesa menuda muchedumbre de tus estraños” (cfr. KJV: “the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust”). Tab. 3: Comparison of the qur’anic and biblical translations.⁴⁵ Qur’an, : ‫ﭐ ْﻟ َﻔ َﺮﺍﺵ‬ MS MS MS MS MS MS MS MS MS MS MS

BNE  BNE  BnF  RAH T- RAH T- CSIC RESC  CSIC RESC  BnF  BCLM T- BNCF II-iv- CSIC RESC 

Isaiah, : ‫ָאָבק ַדּק‬ mariposas mariposas mariposas langosta mariposas mariposas mariposas pavesa menuda langosta mariposas mariposas

Vulgate Escorial I.i. Escorial I.i. Escorial I.i. Santillana RAH  Arragel Ferrara Oso

pulvis tenuis polvo menudo polvo menudo farija menuda polvo menudo polvo menudo polvo menudo pavesa menuda polvo menudo

This type of concomitance or familiarity between the language of the Sephardim and the Moriscos clearly speaks to a suggestive world of relations, contacts and mutual influence between the Hispanic religious minorities both in the Iberian Peninsula and, more importantly, in exile around the Mediterranean —a world that, at least in linguistic terms, remains largely to be explored. Could it be the Hispanic context of the Thessaloniki Sephardim that, in one way or another, set the qur’anic language of Ybrahim Izquierdo so far apart from the rest?

4 Conclusion With these notes I have simply hoped to highlight the potential contribution of linguistics to the study of the Qur’an among the Mudejars and Moriscos, as it is a field that has traditionally been overlooked. A rigorous linguistic analysis of these copies —an endeavor that has yet to be undertaken— would enable us to move forward in areas such as the chronology of the texts, the provenance and educational background of their copyists, the translation processes, and the socio-cultural contexts in which they were made.

 For the Bible references I have used the digital corpus directed by Andrés Enrique-Arias, Biblia Medieval. http://www.bibliamedieval.es [consulted on 9 July 2021].

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Bibliography Alcover, Antoni Maria, Francesc de Borja Moll, [Manuel Sanchis Guarner]. Diccionari català-valencià-balear (DCVB). Moll: Palma de Mallorca, 1930 – 1962. Last modified 9 July 2021. https://dcvb.iec.cat/ Arnal Purroy, María Luisa and José María Enguita Utrilla. “Particularidades lingüísticas en textos notariales zaragozanos de finales del siglo xvii.” Archivo de Filología Aragonesa 50 (1994): 43 – 64. Benítez, María del Pilar and Óscar Latas. “Sobre los villancicos barrocos en aragonés de los siglos xvii y xviii.” Alazet 25 (2013): 9 – 30. Cabanelas, Darío. “Juan de Segovia y el primer Alcorán trilingüe.” Al-Andalus 14 (1949): 149 – 74. Corominas, Joan and José Antonio Pascual. Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (DCECH). Madrid: Gredos, 1984 – 91. Enrique-Arias, Andrés (dir.). Biblia Medieval. Last modified 9 July 2021. http://www.bibliamedieval.es. Epalza, Míkel de. Los moriscos antes y después de la expulsión. Madrid: Mapfre, 1992. Extremera Extremera, Miguel Ángel. “Los moriscos en Estambul y Anatolia. Una aproximación a su estudio.” MEAH. Sección árabe-islam 60 (2011): 107 – 21. Hermosilla Llisterri, María José. “Una traducción aljamiada de Corán 38, 34 – 36 y su original árabe.” Anaquel de estudios árabes 3 (1992): 47 – 52. Ibn Kathīr, Abu al-Fiḍā ‘Imād Ad-Din Ismā‘īl ibn ‘Umar. Tafsir Ibn Kathīr (abridged). Riyadh: Darussalam, 2003. Lapesa, Rafael. Historia de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Gredos, 1981. Larson, Everette E. “A Study of the Confusión de la Secta Mahomática of Juan Andrés.” PhD Diss., The Catholic University of America, 1981. Lazar, Moshé. “Ladinando la Biblia entre los sefardíes mediterráneos: Italia, Imperio Otomano y Viena.” In Introducción a la Biblia de Ferrara. Actas del Simposio Internacional, Sevilla, 25 – 28 de noviembre de 1991, ed. Hassán and Berenguer Amadorn, 347 – 442. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario, 1994. López-Morillas, Consuelo. The Qur’ān in sixteenth-century Spain: Six Morisco Versions of Sūra 79. London: Tamesis Books Limited, 1982. López-Morillas, Consuelo. “The Genealogy of the Spanish Qur’ān.” Journal of Islamic Studies 17, no.3 (2006): 255 – 94. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha, Gijón: Trea, 2011. Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, Nuria. “Deux corans aljamiados de Salonique.” Bulletin de la Fondation Max Van Berchem 23 (2009): 4 – 5. Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, Nuria. “La transmisión de textos entre los moriscos: dos copias del tafsīr abreviado de Ibn Abī Zamanīn.” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 26 (2015): 147 – 61. Monge, Félix. “Notas para la historiografía del habla de Aragón.” Boletín de la Real Academia Española 31 (1951): 93 – 120. Al-Qurṭubī, Abū ‘Abdullah. Compendio del tafsir del Corán Al-Qurṭubī, trans. Zakaríya Maza Abu Mubarak. Granada: Comunidad Musulmana Española, 2005, vol 1: 271.

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Real Academia Española. Corpus diacrónico del español (CORDE). Last modified 9 July 2021. http://www.rae.es. Romero, Elena. La creación literaria en lengua sefardí. Madrid: Mapfre, 1992. Ruiz-Bejarano, Bárbara. “Praxis islámica de los musulmanes aragoneses a partir del corpus aljamiado-morisco y su confrontación con otras fuentes contemporáneas.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Alicante, 2015. Sánchez Álvarez, Mercedes. El manuscrito misceláneo 774 de la Biblioteca Nacional de París. Madrid: Gredos, 1982. Aṭ-Ṭabarī, Abī Ja‘far Muḥammad ibn Jarīr. Tafsīr aṭ-Ṭabari: Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl āy al-Qur’ān, ed. ‘Abd Allāh at-Turkī, Cairo: Markaz al-buḥūth wa-l-dirāsāt al-‘arabiyya wa-l-islāmiyya, 2001. Tomás Faci, Guillermo. “Las lenguas de Aragón en el siglo xvi según el arzobispo Hernando.” Alazet 28 (2016): 145 – 57. Vernet, Juan and Luisa Moraleda. “Un Alcorán fragmentario en aljamiado.” Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona 33 (1970): 43 – 75. Vernet, Juan. “Traducciones moriscas de El Corán.” In Der Orient in der Forschung. Festschrift für Otto Spies zum 5. April 1996, ed. Wilhelm Hoenerbach, 686 – 705. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1967 (Repub. in De ‘Abd al-Raḥmān I a Isabel II. Recopilación de estudios dispersos sobre Historia de la Ciencia y de la Cultura Española ofrecida al autor por sus discípulos con ocasión de su LXV aniversario, ed. Juan Vernet, 35 – 54. Barcelona: Instituto “Millás Vallicrosa” de Historia de la Ciencia árabe [Universidad de Barcelona], Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 1989.

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Morisco Methods for Memorizing the Qur’an: Fragmentary Copies with the Suras in Reverse Order 1 Introduction The Qur’an, the sacred book of Islam, circulated among the Muslim minorities of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon both in the Mudejar period, while it was still legal for them to observe their faith, as well as later on, in the Morisco period, when they had to choose between forced conversion or exile. A large portion of the extant copies of the sacred text belong to this last period, and bear witness to a Spanish Islam with many aspects that must still be disentangled. As with any community of Muslims, use and knowledge of the Qur’an was highly important for Mudejars and Moriscos, and, as is well known, Islamic practice requires the memorization of a minimum number of suras, which is why the faithful begin the task of memorization from an early age. This practice, recommended by Islamic tradition in a number of hadiths,¹ constitutes an essential part “of learning to be human and Muslim”² and the beginning of formal education, as well as a process by which one may attain the social status of ḥāfiẓ. ³

 For example, al-Bukhārī, h. 3497, Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, vol. 6 (Riyāḍ: Darussalam, 1997), 384; alTirmidhī, h. 2914 and 2915, Jāmi‘al-Tirmidhī, 2nd ed. (Riyāḍ: Wizārat al-shu’ūn al-’islāmiyya wa al-dawa wa al-’irshād al-sa‘ūdiyya, 2000), 655.  Dale F. Eickelman, Knowledge and Power in Morocco. The Education of a Twentieth-century Notable (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 63.  “One of the most respected religious titles a Muslim can bear is that of haafiz, one who knows the entire Qur’an by heart. Qur’an recitation and memorization have always been central to deep spirituality as well as to everyday life in Muslim societies”; William A. Graham, “Orality,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, vol. III, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 584– 87. Note: This essay is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (SyG grant agreement no. 810141), project EuQu “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” See in this volume, Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias, “New Models of Qur’an Abridgment among the Mudejars and Moriscos: Copies in Arabic Containing three Selections of Suras” and Pablo Roza Candás, “Dialectal Variation in Aljamiado Translations of the Qur’an.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-010

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Despite the keen interest in such educational processes in Islamic societies, most prior studies, and especially those related to Mudejars and Moriscos, have largely overlooked the specific mnemonic devices employed, focusing instead on the cultural practices and social dimensions of this learning, for example in terms of the standing acquired by those who acquired this knowledge (malaka al-ḥifẓ).⁴ The references we find in Aljamiado literature itself about taḥfīẓ seem to refer to various distinct phases in how the Qur’an is approached and used: memorization (ḥafẓar), recitation (dezir) and reading (leer). So, for example, the famous Alkitāb de Çamarqandī states: To memorize (ḥafẓara) the Qur’an by heart, one must read it (leerlo) day and night. For if one reads (lee) the suras he has memorized (ḥafẓaḏas) night and day, and Allah knows about him, that if he is to memorize (ḥafẓará) the entire Qur’an, he must read it (lo leiría) just like this. For this is the one whom Allah will reward for memorizing (ḥafẓa) the entire Qur’an, and he reads it (lo liye) with true intention (āniya) and manifest will. And if he recites (ḏize) it with his tongue and does not read (liye) that which he has memorized (ḥafẓaḏo) from the Qur’an, Allah already knows his intention (āniya) – that his recitation (ḏezir) lacks true intention (intinçión), and will bring him no reward.⁵

Likewise, the loanword ḥafẓar (and its variant form habdar)⁶ sometimes alternates in a single text with the Romance term decorar to express the specific process of memorization: “the first man on the list who will be called before Him (i. e. Allah) will be a man who memorized (ḏecoró) the Qur’an and read it (lo liyó)”.⁷

 On the other hand, it constitutes a “recommended act of piety (…) classified as farḍ kifāya, which means an obligation always to be observed at least by some members of a community on behalf of the whole community.” See Anna M. Gade, “Recitation of the Qur’an,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, vol. IV, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 367– 84.  Biblioteca Nacional de España [hereinafter BNE] MS 4871, fol. 324v. Juan Carlos Busto Cortina, “El alkitāb de Çamarqandī. Edición del ms. aljamiado 4871 de la B.N.M. con un vocabulario completo y un estudio de algunos cuentos que en él aparecen” PhD diss. (Universidad de Oviedo, 1991), 323 – 24; “Si ḥafẓara ḏe corazón el-al-Qur’ān, leerlo ía ḏe noche i de ḏía. Pues si es que lee las alçūras que tiene ḥafẓaḏas ḏe noche i ḏe ḏía, i sabe Allah ḏ-él que si él ḥafẓará el-alQur’ān toḏo, que él lo leiría así mesmo. Pues este es aquel que le ḏa Allah la ivantalla ḏe aquel que ḥafẓa el-al-Qur’ān toḏo, i lo liye con verḏaḏera āniya y-apuraḏa voluntaḏ. I si es que ḏize aquello con su lengua i no liye aquello que á ḥafẓaḏo ḏel-al-Qur’ān, pues ya sabe Allah ḏe su āniya que su ḏezir no es con verḏaḏera intinçión en-ello, y-es ḏe sin el gualarḏón sobr-él.”  Bibliothèque nationale de France [hereinafter BNF] MS 397 Esp., fol. 72r. See Raquel Suárez García, El compendio islámico de Mohanmad de Vera (Oviedo: Ediuno, 2016), 279.  MS BNE 4871, fol. 8r. See Busto Cortina, El alkitāb de Çamarqandī, 12; “el primer onbre que será clamaḏo ḏelante ḏ-él (de Allah) a la cuenta, será onbre que ḏecoró el-al-Qur’ān i lo liyó.”

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However, in certain contexts, the distinction between the processes of memorization and recitation are clearly more blurred, whereby decorar fully takes on the sense of ‘to memorize,’ displacing the original ḥafẓar, which in turn takes on the meaning of ‘to recite’: “and he gets it into his heart that he shall be a memorizer (ḏecoraḏor) of the Qur’an and its reciter (ḥafẓaḏor)”.⁸ In response to this terminological ambiguity that the Aljamiado texts themselves reflect with regards to the processes of memorizing and reciting the sacred text, it is worth asking how the Moriscos actually approached the Qur’an, based on their own written accounts. To this end, we have assembled a corpus of Qur’an copies that share a series of particularities shedding light on this forgotten aspect of Morisco society. What ties these materials together is that they are all connected, as we will see, with pedagogical contexts, as evidenced by the particular layout of the qur’anic text. In these copies, the suras are presented in inverse consecutive order with respect to the canonical text. In other words, the text begins at the end – a distinctive trait that sets these materials apart from the rest of the qur’anic production studied till now. This particular order is a characteristic that we have only been able to document, for the modern period, in some of the few descriptions made of these teaching methods and, in particular, in relation to Malikite qur’anic pedagogy in Mauritania, as well as the methods employed in various countries in Southeast Asia, according to certain Islamic teaching institutions there.⁹ In discussing the Mauritanian context, Fortier states that students “according to custom, memorize the Qur’an in the opposite order to that of the Book”¹⁰ and, in the same way, she asserts that this particularity can be extrapolated to Islamic contexts generally: “as with the rest of the Muslim world, the memorization of the Book begins with the first sura, then moves on to the shortest ones, which

 Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomas, CSIC [hereinafter BTNT] MS RESC/3, fol. 141v. See Reinhold Kontzi, Aljamiadotexte. Ausgabe mit einer Einleitung und Glossar (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1974) vol. 2, 470. We have adapted Kontzi’s edition to CLEAM’s transliteration system; “i mete en su corasón que sea ḏecoraḏor del-al-Qur’ān i su ḥafẓaḏor.”  We have been able to track down contemporary uses of reverse sura order in a description of the memorization methods employed by the Islamic universities of Malaysia. See Mariam Adawiah Dzulkifli and Abdul Kabir Hussain Solihu, “Methods of Qur’ānic Memorisation (ḥifẓ): Implications for Learning Performance,” Intellectual Discourse 26, no. 2 (2018), 938 – 40.  Corinne Fortier, “‘Une pédagogie coranique’. Modes de transmission des savoirs islamiques (Mauritanie),” Cahiers d’Études africaines 169, 70 (2003), 253. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the French and Spanish are ours.

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come at the end of the text, until the longer ones at the beginning, and lastly the 114th sura.”¹¹

2 The Corpus’s Geographic and Socio-Cultural Coordinates Islamic religious education revolves, initially, around the place of worship, the mosque, which in the long term leads to an overlapping¹² of the religious and educational functions of this space, ultimately giving rise to two institutions aimed at covering these educational needs: the maktab or kuttaba, for initial education based on the memorization of the Qur’an, and the madrasa, which are public centers (unlike the mosque itself, which is usually privately owned) for research and higher learning in the arts, law and other subjects, and which were first promoted by the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk in eleventh-century Seljuk Baghdad. In the specific case of al-Andalus,¹³ pedagogical matters remained beyond the purview of the central government until the tenth century, when Cordoban Caliph al-Hakam II founded the first state-run school. These institutions reached their peak in the fourteenth century, when Nasrid sultan Yūsuf I legislated free state-sponsored education. It is also in this same period, in the mid-fourteenth century, when the Iberian Peninsula saw its first madrasas, whose absence had been noted in the thirteenth century by Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī, who wrote that “the inhabitants of al-Andalus did not have any madrasas to help them study science, since all teaching was offered in the mosques in exchange for a fee.”¹⁴ It seems that initially the Islamic education systems of the Iberian Peninsula followed a similar methodology to those of the Maghreb. Thus, in the Islamic

 Fortier, “Une pédagogie coranique,” 249.  García Gómez and Lévi-Provençal transmit Ibn Abdun’s description of the education system in twelfth-century Seville, which makes very clear the space’s dual function: “after finishing with the great mosque, Ibn Abdun goes on to discuss the secondary mosques, which interest him especially insofar as they are at once places of worship and schools where children learn the Qur’an and receive their primary schooling.” Emilio García Gómez and E. Lévi-Provençal, Sevilla a comienzos del siglo XII. El tratado de Ibn Abdun (Madrid: Moneda y Crédito, 1948), 20.  Manuel Espinar Moreno, “Escuelas y enseñanzas primarias en la España musulmana. Noticias sobre el reino nazarí y la etapa morisca (siglos XIII-XIV),” Sharq al-Andalus 8 (1991), 190.  Rafael López Guzmán and María Elena Díez Jorge, La madraza, pasado, presente y futuro (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2006), 17.

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West, the memorization of the Qur’an took precedence over all other subjects —a system that was championed by the likes of Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba—¹⁵ whereas in the Islamic East students received a certain degree of philological training before they were tasked with studying and understanding the sacred text. The situation described for the Iberian Peninsula must have changed as of the eleventh century under the taifa kingdoms, based on the account of Ibn ‘Arabī of Murcia, who was a detractor of this Western teaching model, and whose words were recorded by Ibn Khaldūn in the Muqaddima. According to Ibn Khaldūn, Ibn ‘Arabī described schooling as beginning with knowledge of grammar and literature, in addition to other subjects, before moving on to the Qur’an, in the following terms: Since, for the ancient Arabs, poems were considered records, students should begin by studying poetry and its mode of expression; the corruption of the language makes this absolutely necessary. The student would then go on to study arithmetic. (…) Next, he would start reading the Qur’an, which he would find easy to study thanks to this preliminary work.¹⁶

The turn of the sixteenth century brought with it the disappearance of Islamic educational institutions, such as the madrasa of Granada, attacked and burned down on the orders of Cardinal Cisneros in a flagrant breach of the Capitulations of Santa Fe, along with a whole series of policies that, beyond the confines of Granada, would put an end to Mudejar culture and give rise to the Morisco period. It is precisely in this crypto-Islamic period where we find the materials selected for this study. Therefore, although we will continue to use the term madrasa when referring to the issue of Islamic pedagogy in Morisco contexts, we are aware of the fact that the institutions, spaces and methodology were necessarily very different in this period, as compared to the Mudejar and Andalusi periods. The Morisco corpus we are presenting here is made up both of previously unknown documents, as well as others that have already been studied, but

 Lévi-Provençal indicates that Ibn Ḥazm “addresses the issue of pedagogical methods in a short work that has yet to be published, entitled Maratib al-ulum or Classification of the Sciences. In it, he argues that the Qur’an should be studied before any other subject; the child, after learning to read and write, at approximately five years of age, and following the sacred text, will then move on to philological studies and poetry, before taking up higher-level studies.” Évariste Lévi-Provençal, La España musulmana hasta la caída del Califato de Córdoba (711 – 1031 de J.C:). Instituciones y vida social e intelectual, n. 30, 226. Historia de España, dir. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, vol. V (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1957).  Henri Pérès, Esplendor de al-Ándalus. La poesía andaluza en árabe clásico en el siglo XI (Madrid: Hiperión, 1983), 32.

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whose peculiar order went unnoticed in earlier catalogues. The corpus presents us with an unexplored context in the religious life of these communities, and, in particular, of the communities that gave rise to these copies: Lower Aragon, the Jalón Valley, and Valencia’s Ribera Alta. Although it is well known that traditionally wood tablets (alwāḥ) were used to memorize the Qur’an, our materials are written on paper. In this sense, the medium itself bears witness to this paradigm shift from wood tablet to paper. For example, Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī, the famous Morisco from Hornachos, describes the use of paper among the Moriscos. In our opinion, this reference clearly opposes this new material to the wood tablets (alwāḥ) used in the qur’anic schools during the Andalusi period.¹⁷ A large portion of the copies that make up this corpus come from the Calanda area¹⁸ of Lower Aragon, whose Muslim population grew significantly between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,¹⁹ and whose relevance as a center of Islamization extended beyond its immediate surroundings. The circulation of individuals from Calanda, who were able to teach the Arabic language and Islam, shows up in several accounts, such as that of Adrián Rincón, who had moved to the town of Arcos, where “he dogmatized and taught people to give alms to the poor Moriscos,”²⁰ or that of Juan Compañero, a Morisco from Huesca, who declared before the Inquisition that he had been taught

 See Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva, “Desde el exilio morisco. Las glosas de al-Ḥajarī Bejarano al códice leidense del Kitāb al-musta‘īnī de Ibn Buklariš” [forthcoming], which contains his account of how he learned to read Arabic, from his Kitāb nāṣir al-dīn ‘alā al-qawm alkāfirīn (Madrid: CSIC, 2015), 271– 71.  On this community, see Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, “Las comunidades mudéjares de la Corona de Aragón en el siglo XV,” in De mudéjares a moriscos: una conversión forzada (Teruel: Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, 2003), vol. 1, 27– 154, 58; Roberto Ceamanos Llorens and José Antonio Mateos Royo, Calanda en la Edad Moderna y Contemporánea (Teruel: Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, 2005), 132; Manuel García Miralles, Historia de Calanda (Valencia: Tipografía Artística Puertes, 1969); Bárbara Ruiz Bejarano, “Praxis islámica de los musulmanes aragoneses” PhD. diss., (Universidad de Alicante, 2015), 42, 44, 108, 148 – 49, 161 et passim; and Pablo Roza Candás, Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka. La peregrinación de ‘Omar Paṭon (Oviedo: Ediuno, 2018), 120 – 25.  Between 1495 and 1514, the influx of Muslims was so great that they came to outnumber the Christian population. See Eliseo Serrano Martín, “Los moriscos de Calanda y Foz Calanda. Condición social y consecuencias de su expulsión,” in Destierros aragoneses I. Judíos y moriscos (Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico” 1988), 365 – 67.  Mercedes García-Arenal, Inquisición y moriscos. Los procesos del Tribunal de Cuenca (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1978), 96.

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by a person from Calanda.²¹ Likewise, other accounts mention people who went to and from Calanda in search of teachers, for example Aldonza Samperuelo, who, along with her parents and three siblings, regularly went to Calanda to visit an alfaquí there.²² As to the existence of educational institutions in the context of the Moriscos of Calanda, there is evidence of a functioning madrasa or qur’anic school, both in the accounts of students²³ and based on the number of people from very diverse professional backgrounds who knew how to read and write in Arabic. Among them we find soap maker Alonso Tristán, sawyer Amador Espartero, mule driver Daniel de Laxosa, blacksmith Daniel de Aínsa, hemp worker Joan Ezquerro, trader Lope Pinginet, and others tried by the Inquisition, such as Hyerónimo Pallares, “found with a book in Moorish letters,” or Adam Ayu Menor, tried for “reading in Arabic in the house of an alfaquí.”²⁴ Moreover, that qur’anic education proper was taught by numerous inhabitants of Calanda is also demonstrated in multiple accounts, such as that of mule driver Adam El Conde, who was also a Qur’an teacher, or that of Blanca Ezquerro, who “taught the Qur’an and Moorish ceremonies,”²⁵ and whose case makes clear that there were also female religious instructors. In this educational context, the copying, production and distribution of the Qur’an was an essential activity in the life of the community. This shows up in several accounts, such as the report filed against the alfaquí Alexandre Peñalosa, who “acts as a scribe, writing in Arabic the Moorish ceremonies, because he has been seen writing many books of the Alcorán,”²⁶ which he would subsequently sell. All of this seems to indicate that this town in Lower Aragon was an important center of

 Jacqueline Fournel-Guérin, “Les morisques aragonais et l’Inquisition de Saragosse (1540 – 1620)” PhD diss. (Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III, 1980), 76.  Jacqueline Fournel-Guérin, “La femme morisque en Aragon,” in Les morisques et leur temps (Paris, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983), 532.  We know, for example, the case of the brothers Hiéronimo and Juan Sifuentes, aged twentyfour and twenty-two, respectively, who attended the school in order to learn to read and write in Arabic (Archivo Histórico Nacional [AHN], Inquisición, Libro 989, fols. 769r and 789v–790r). See also Jacqueline Fournel-Guérin, “Le livre et la civilisation écrite dans la communauté morisque aragonaise,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 15 (1979), 245.  Roza Candás, Memorial de ida, 120 – 25.  AHN, Inquisición, Libro 988, fol. 514r and AHN, Inquisición, Libro 989, fols. 682r, 719r and 757r; fol. 758v; fol. 795v; fol. 790r; fol. 769r; fols. 688r and 727r–727v; fol. 681r; fols. 682r–682v, 719v–720r and 757r; fols. 681r–681v, 717v–718r and 757r; fols. 686v and 725r–725v. See Roza Candás, Memorial de ida, 124.  AHN, Inquisición, Libro 989, fols. 688v, 727v and 758v. See Fournel-Guérin, “Les morisques aragonais,” 129.

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clandestine book-making, home to a nascent publishing industry whose trade networks distributed these copies to other parts of Aragon, such as the town of Almonacid de la Sierra, where one of the copies in our corpus was found. As for this renowned town of the Jalón Valley, whose book-related activities are well known, there is also evidence of a madrasa that operated during the Morisco period, as well as various individuals who taught Arabic and Islam privately. Such is the case of Diego de Mendoça, who taught groups of children to read and write out of his own home,²⁷ or Luis de Barbaza, in whose home fifteenyear-old Juan de Aranda was arrested one night, while there in the company of other students²⁸ who had gathered “to learn to read Moorish and write it.” Other accounts of youths from Almonacid include the case of Luis Obex, “who had one of his sons locked up for several days with an alfaquí who was supposed to teach him things of the Moors.”²⁹ Alongside these accounts that speak to the existence of Islamic centers of learning both in the Jalón Valley and in Lower Aragon, it is also important to mention the role played by itinerant instructors who traveled between the kingdom’s smaller morerías. A telling case, especially as regards the corpus that we will present below, is that of Joan Ezued, arrested at the gates of Bureta with a sack full of alphabet primers, Qur’ans and writing materials.³⁰ Lastly, there is no shortage of accounts of Moriscos who were taught by their parents or other relatives, such as sisters Ana and María Aquem, whose father had taught them using primers (con unas cartillas).³¹ Paradoxically, this situation of the Moriscos of Aragon stands in contrast with what we know about various regions of Valencia, such as the Ribera Alta, and more specifically the town of Benimuslem,³² from which one of the copies in our corpus is drawn. As Bernard Vincent has pointed out, unlike neighboring morerías, here by the end of the sixteenth century the townspeople exhibited a dearth of knowledge of both Arabic and qur’anic studies —in other words, an unraveling of Islam itself:

 Fournel-Guérin, “Les morisques aragonais,” 159.  Fournel-Guérin, “Les morisques aragonais,” 161.  Fournel-Guérin, “Les morisques aragonais,” 162.  Fournel-Guérin, “Les morisques aragonais,” 160.  Fournel-Guérin, “Les morisques aragonais,” 161.  On the people of this town, see María del Carmen Barceló Torres, “Notas tipológicas sobre un procedimiento foral: dos cartas árabes del alamín de Benimuslem” Al-gezira. Revista d’Estudis Històrics de la Ribera Alta 2 (1986): 119 – 32; Ferrer i Mallol, “Las comunidades mudéjares,” 93 – 94.

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Sound knowledge of Islamic books, and in particular the Qur’an —in its written form, not just memorized— appears to have been on the verge of disappearing. Let us take a closer look at the qualitative difference in the fragility of this community. Benimuslem, with just one man, aged sixty, able to read in Arabic, found itself at a dramatic turning point.³³

Faithful evidence of this situation is the document found on the person of Francisco Choplón, which exhibits a manifestly imperfect command of Arabic. Indeed, this low level of Islamic training did not differ significantly from that of neighboring towns, as can be seen in the case of Sebastián Xativí, who could hardly recite the shahada, whereas, by contrast, his wife, Ángela Barber, still observed Ramadan and was able to recite full suras of the Qur’an.³⁴ Therefore, there seems to have been a difference in the territories along the Mediterranean coast and those of Aragon, in terms of the Moriscos’ knowledge of both Arabic and the Qur’an. As we have seen, in this context, the survival of small local madrasas played a crucial role in the lands of Aragon, e. g., in Calanda or Almonacid de la Sierra, in stark contrast to the disappearance of this knowledge in certain parts of Valencia, where the transmission of Islamic knowledge seems to have taken place on a much more informal, or even self-taught, level.

3 Corpus of Manuscripts with Suras in Reverse Order In this section we will identify the various manuscripts that make up the corpus of this study, indicating simply, in order from shortest to longest, the qur’anic contents having a reverse sura order:

 See Bernard Vincent, “Benimuslem, un village de la Ribera valencienne,” in L’histoire grande ouverte: hommages à Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, coord. by Joseph Goy, Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide and André Burguière (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 459 – 64; see the Spanish translation of this study in the chapter “Benimuslem, pueblo de la Ribera valenciana,” in El Río morisco (Valencia: Universitat de València, Universidad de Granada, Universidad de Zaragoza, 2006), as well as the chapter from this same volume, “Reflexión documentada sobre el uso del árabe y de las lenguas románicas en la España de los moriscos (ss. XVI-XVII),” 113.  See Vincent, “Benimuslem, un village de la Ribera valencienne,” 28.

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a) Ms. Foz-Calanda, private collection Call number: none. ³⁵ Title: [Qur’an]. Author: anonymous. Incipit: “Bismi-llāhi-lraḥmāni-l-raḥimi. Al-taḥiyā li-l-lāhi-l-zakiyā li-l-lāhi.” Explicit: “yo Rodrigo de Macho beçino de Calanda” (“I, Rodrigo de Macho, resident of Calanda”). Date: 16th c. Contains a note dated 1586. Place of origin: Foz-Calanda (Teruel). Dimensions: quarto (215 x 151 mm). Collation: 1 quire of 12 bifolia [1 singleton interpolated between fols. 6 and 7] (36), 1 quire of 12 bifolia, missing leaf 21 (59), 1 quire of 12 bifolia (83), 1 quire of 12 bifolia, missing leaf 7 (106); 106 [=104] f. Inverse qur’anic content: a) fols. 7r – 18v b) Q: 92 (7r); 91 (8r); 90 (8v); 89 (9v); 88 (11v); 87 (13r); 86 (14r); 85 (14v); 84 (16v); 83: 1– 24 (17v). c) fols. 19r – 84v³⁶ d) Q: 1 (19r); 114 (19v); 113 (20r); 112 (20v); 111 (20v); 110 (21r); 109 (21v); 108 (22r); 107 (22r); 106 (23r); 105 (23v); 104 (24v); 103 (25v); 102 (25v); 101 (26v); 100 (27v); 99 (28r); 98 (29r); 97 (31r); 96 (31v); 95:1 (33r); 95: 2– 7 (34r); 94 (35r), 93 (35v); 92 (36v); 91 (38r); 90 (39v); 88 (41v); 89 (43v); 88 (46v); 87 (49r); 86 (50v); 85 (51v); 84 (53r); 83 (54r); 81: 1– 3 (56v)³⁷; 82 (57r); 81 (58r); 80 (59r); 79 (61r); 78 (63r); 77 (65v); 76 (68r); 75³⁸ (71r); 74 (73r); 73 (76r); 72 (78r); 67 (81r). b) Ms. L527 – 1, Fondo Documental Histórico de las Cortes de Aragón, Zaragoza (fols. 83r-85v) Call number: L527– 1.³⁹ Title: none. Author: anonymous. Incipit: “A‘udh bi-l-lāh min al-shayṭāni-l-rajīm.” Explicit: Q: 114:5. Date: 16th c. Place of origin: Calanda (Teruel). Dimensions: quarto (230 x 165 mm). Collation: undetermined. 85 f. Inverse qur’anic content: Q: 114 (84r); 113 (84r); 112 (84r); 111 (84v); 1 (85r); 114:1– 2 (85v).

 We plan to publish a full description of this newly discovered manuscript shortly. See Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias, Pablo Roza Candás and Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva “Un nuevo manuscrito morisco de Calanda: un Corán abreviado y un texto aljamiado” [forthcoming].  This fragment includes a prayer of al-taḥāya (fols. 33v–34r) and is followed by a blank folio (fols. 81r–84v).  Followed by evidence of torn-out folio.  Aya 37 is missing.  María José Cervera Fras, “Descripción de los manuscritos mudéjares de Calanda (Teruel),” Aragón en la Edad Media, no. 10 (1993), 168.

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c) L527 – 2, Fondo Documental Histórico de las Cortes de Aragón, Zaragoza Call number: L527– 2.⁴⁰ Title: none. Author: anonymous. Incipit: Q. 1. Explicit: Q. 106:4. Date: 16th c. Place of origin: Calanda (Teruel). Dimensions: quarto (190 x 145 mm). Collation: 1 union (2), 1 loose folio (3), 1 loose folio (4), 1 loose folio (5); 5 f. Inverse qur’anic content: Q: 1 (2v); 114 (3r); 113 (3r); 112 (3v); 111 (3v); 110 (4r); 109 (4v); 108 (5r); 107 (5r); 106 (5v).

d) Ms. L536 – 2, Fondo Documental Histórico de las Cortes de Aragón, Zaragoza Call number: L536 – 2.⁴¹ Title: none. Author: anonymous. Incipit: Q. 1. Explicit: Q. 2:256. Date: 16th c. Contains a note dated 5 September 1589. Place of origin: Calanda (Teruel). Dimensions: quarto (205 x 155 mm). Collation: 1 binion (4), 1 binion (8), 1 quire of 10 folios, missing one leaf (27), 1 union (30); 30 [=29] f. Inverse qur’anic content: a) fols. 2r – 6r: b) Q. 1 (2r); 114 (2v); 113 (2v); 112 (3r); 111 (3r); 110 (3v); 109 (3v); 108 (4r); 107 (4r); 106 (4v); 105 (4v); 104 (5r); 103 (5v); 102 (6r). c) fols. 10v – 29v: d) Q: 1 (10v), 114 (11r); 113 (11r); 112 (11v); 111 (12r); 110 (12v); 109 (12v); 108 (13r); 107 (13v); 106 (14r); 105 (14v); 104 (14v); 103 (15r); 102 (15v); 101 (16r); 100 (16v); 99 (17r); 98 (18r); 97 (19r); 96 (19v); 95 (20v); 94 (21r); 93 (21v); 92 (22r); 91 (23v); 90 (24v); 89 (25r); 88 (27r); 87: 1– 14 (28r); 87: 15 – 19 (29v). e) RESC/43.F, Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás (CSIC), Madrid (fols. 130r-132r) Call number: Resc/43 F.⁴² Title: none. Author: anonymous. Incipit: Q. 1. Explicit: Q. 109:3. Date: 16th c. Place of origin: Almonacid de la Sierra (Zaragoza). Dimensions: octavo (168 x 109 mm). Collation: 1 ternion (3); 3 f.

 Quire with loose leaves in Document 2 at Cervera Fras, “ Descripción de los manuscritos”, 169.  Document 8 at Cervera Fras, “Descripción de los manuscritos”,182- 87.  Foliation according to the original. See an alternative description of the manuscript in Nuria Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts from Late Muslim Spain: The Collection of Almonacid de La Sierra”, Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16, no. 2 (2014), 132.

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Inverse qur’anic content: Q: 1 (130r); 114 (130v); 113 (130v); 112 (131r); 111 (131v); 110 (131v); 109 (132r).

f) Ms. Inquisición, MPD 517.2, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid Call number: Inquisición MPD 517.2 (olim AHN Inq. Legajo 550/25 or 550 Exp 25).⁴³ Title: [Trial of Francisco Choplón]. Author: anonymous. Incipit: “w lā ḍa līna/ En 9 de mayo de 1581 los truxo debeni/muzlem Jo Lemosí noto bezo de alzira/ antel sor inqor Carate hallaronsele/ afrances choplo del pujol” (On 9 May 1581 they were brought from Benimuslem by J. Lemosí, notary of Alzira, before the Inquisitor Carate; they were found on the person of Francisco Choplo de Pujol”). Explicit: “‘alayhim ġayri lm ‘ṭubi ‘alayhim.” Date: 16th c. Place of origin: Benimuslem (Valencia). Dimensions: octavo (160 x 110 mm). Collation: undetermined. 14 f. Inverse qur’anic content: Q. 114 (4v) 113 (3v), 105 (1v), 105 (2v), 1 (14v); 94:1– 2 (13v).

4 From Copies of the Qur’an to Educational Materials The only available descriptions of the materials that make up our corpus are found in catalogues, with the exception of the manuscript from Foz-Calanda that we have reported elsewhere. Thus, Cervera Fras, in her description of the find at Calanda, writes about fragment L527– 1 that it is made up of “two leaves written backwards, as if the book began on this side and with worse handwriting than that of the rest of the book,”⁴⁴ whereas for L527– 2, found in the same volume, she writes that it contains “five loose leaves belonging to a single quire.”⁴⁵ As for manuscript L536, the author merely mentions that it is a “loose quire.”⁴⁶

 Ana Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores de árabe en la Inquisición valenciana (1565 – 1609)”, Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid, 21 (1981– 82), 121– 24; Carmen Barceló and Ana Labarta, Archivos moriscos. Textos árabes de la minoría islámica valenciana 1401 – 1608 (Valencia: PUV, 2009), 253 – 54.  Document 2, Cervera Fras, “Descripción de los manuscritos,” 168.  Document 2, Cervera Fras, “Descripción de los manuscritos,” 168.  Document 8, Cervera Fras, “Descripción de los manuscritos,” 186 – 87.

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Carmen Barceló and Ana Labarta, in their catalogue of the “fragments of the Qur’an” contained in AHN Inquisición MPD 517.1, describe it as an “unordered quire.” As a result, in their edition of the text, the authors maintain “the modern folio order,” adding that they have rearranged the materials to match the canonical sequence of the Qur’an, thereby changing the original layout of the folios.⁴⁷ As for the manuscript RESC/43, it was identified by Martínez de Castilla as a “book of prayers, apparently incomplete,”⁴⁸ within a larger section covering supposed “family copies” of the Qur’an. However, this corpus, whose materials have never before been placed in connection with one another, takes into account both formal and codicological issues, as well as issues of content. Here we will pay special attention to textual contexts, copyists and hands, and the quality of the transmission of the qur’anic text, as well as the contents and their arrangement, all of which are aspects that will enable us to infer the existence of an overarching method, of a specific common intention underlying all of these copies.

4.1 Textual Contexts These inverse Qur’an copies always appear alongside other materials, whether as part of volumes containing multiple texts, or in loose booklets preserved inside such volumes. However, this does not mean that these are marginal copies of a longer text (table 1). Thus, the content in reverse order may encompass the majority of the codex, as in the Foz-Calanda manuscript, or only a small part of it, as in manuscript L527– 1.⁴⁹ The rest of the materials are all found in loose booklets.

 Document 101, Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos, 253.  Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 132.  Whose reverse Qur’an fragment (fols. 83r–84r) takes up two folios, in contrast to the copy in proper order, L527 (fols. 1v–39v), within which there is an abbreviated Qur’an of the final juz’ (fols. 1v–39v), containing part of sura 78 and missing sura 101.

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Tab. 1: Content of the manuscripts containing fragments of the Qur’an in reverse sura order. Ms.

Contents

Foz-Calanda [Note in Aljamiado] (r) Al-taḥiyā li-l-lāhi (v-v) [Esta as rigla para tomar al-wadū] (r-r) (“This is a rule for performing al-wadū”) Inverse qur’anic content a) (r-v) Inverse qur’anic content b) (r-r) Al-taḥiyā li-l-lāhi (r) Qur’anic content in proper order (r–v): Q. ; : – ,  – ,  – ; : – , -halfway ,  – ; : – ; : – ; :: : – ; : – ; :; ; :: :; : –  L –  [Ista‘ādha] (v) Abridged Qur’an, final juz’ (v–v): Q. ; : – , ,  – ,  – ; : – , -halfway ,  – ; : – ; : – ; :; : – ; : – ; ; ;  –  Al-taḥiyā li-l-lāhi (r) Q:  (v) Inverse qur’anic content (r–v) L –  Inverse qur’anic content (v–v) L –  [Alphabets] (r) Inverse qur’anic content (r–r) Al-taḥiyā li-l-lāhi (v–r) Note in Spanish (r) Inverse qur’anic content b) (v–v) Qur’anic content in proper order (r–r): Q. , : – ; ; - beginning of . RESC/F Inverse qur’anic content (r–r) [Alphabets] (v–r) AHN . Inverse qur’anic content [Alphabet]

In this corpus, alongside the inverse copies, there is a certain homogeneity in the materials that make up the volumes containing them, all of which are related to teaching either Arabic or the sacred text and religious practice. Two of these manuscripts include copies of the Qur’anic text in proper order: Foz-Calanda (85r–105v) and L536 – 2 (fols. 29r–31r), which also contain prayers, namely the Malikite version of the tašahhud: Foz-Calanda (2v–3v) and (32v), and L536 – 2

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(6v), and this same prayer also shows up in L527 (41r). Moreover, in shorter materials such as L536 – 2 (fol. 1r) [Fig. 1], we find content related to learning Arabic and how to write it —in this case, the Arabic alphabets that appear in manuscripts RESC/43 (133r) [Fig. 2] and AHN MPD 517.2 (4v).

Fig. 1: Zaragoza, Fondo Documental Histórico de las Cortes de Aragón [FDHCA], MS L536 – 2, fol. 1r.

Fig. 2: © Courtesy of Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás – CSIC, MS RESC/43.F, fols. 132v–133r.

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4.2 Copyists and Hands Just as, from a textual perspective, there is a certain homogeneity in terms of the textual contexts of these copies, the same is true of their formal aspects, as can be seen in the different hands and calligraphic styles. Thus, some are written by a single copyist, as in L527– 2 and RESC/43.F, while we find two hands in L527– 1 and AHN MPD 517.2, and as many as three in Foz-Calanda and L-536 – 2. That there is a close relationship between these manuscripts is clear, as three of them involve the same copyist from Calanda: L536 – 2 (fols. 10v–28v) [Fig. 3] and L527– 2 [Fig. 4], as well as a fragment in proper order in L527– 1 (fols. 1v–39) [Fig. 5]. This hand is characterized by a series of traits in the consonant ductus, such as the stylized elongation of consonants such as nūn or lām, the markedly rectangular stroke of the emphatic consonants, and the alif of prolongation ending in a stroke that forms a shaft curving to the left in the shape of the hook of a kāf.

Fig. 3: MS FDHCA, L536 – 2, fol. 11r.

Fig. 4: MS FDHCA, L527 – 2, fol. 3r.

Fig. 5: MS FDHCA, L527 – 1, fol. 33r.

As for the Foz-Calanda manuscript, it contains three hands: a (fols. 1v-5r); b (fols. 7r-18v and 49v-105v), and c (fols. 19r-49). Hand b [Fig. 6] has some traits in common with the hand described above. What we might term ‘the Calanda style’ is

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characterized by well-proportioned, harmonious and angular handwriting, with very clear strokes that make it easy to read.

Fig. 6: MS Foz-Calanda, fol. 7r.

Alongside this main hand, hand c of the Foz-Calanda manuscript [Fig. 7] is characterized by handwriting that is clear and legible, but with shorter and more schematic strokes, despite closely adhering to the line and to the distribution of the text across the page.

Fig. 7: MS Foz-Calanda, fol. 40v.

Whereas the copyists who took part in these manuscripts had some degree of scribal training, the same cannot be said of the rest of the materials. The handwriting in document AHN MPD 517.2 is much sloppier, indicating not only less ease with the pen, but also a poor command of Arabic, with anomalous word segmentation and a general confusion as to the writing system [Fig. 8].

Fig. 8: Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte. Archivo Histórico Nacional [AHN], INQUISICION, MPD. 517.2, fol. 13v.

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And yet, the Inquisitorial trial documents accompanying this document⁵⁰ include information linking it directly to a context of Arabic and Islamic learning. Its owner, Francisco Choplón, confessed under torture that a Morisco from Benimuslem, named Mançor, gave him the papers “that they found about his breast”⁵¹ and that Mançor “had been teaching him to read Arabic and, since he had died, did not teach him any more.”⁵² To which he added that he did not know “how to read these papers, but that he had given them to him to show him how to read”⁵³ and that he did not know “what else said papers contained other than the ABCs, and that in them was also the halandu prayer, which is a prayer of the Moors.”⁵⁴

4.3 Quality of the Transmission of the Qur’anic Text Broadly speaking, these are copies that, independently of how they are ordered, faithfully transmit the qur’anic text. The suras are given without titles, references to their place of revelation, or number of ayas, whereby it is the Basmala that indicates the beginning of each sura. We also find this in certain Aljamiado translations, although in the case of manuscript RESC/43.F, it has been suggested that the interlinear space left between the ayas was set aside for “sura headings.”⁵⁵ The only recitation marks are symbols indicating the end of an aya, which consist of three dots arranged in a pyramid, except in manuscripts L527– 1 and L536 – 2 (fols. 3r-6r), where these marks are totally absent. As for the text itself, we find a series of scribal errors analogous to those found in many other Mudejar and Morisco Qur’an manuscripts. Such mix-ups usually take the shape of left-out words, in passages that are amended by adding in text between the lines [Fig. 9] or in the margins [Fig. 10]: However, along with these common slips, we find some instances of text that has been crossed out, frequently due to confusion over the sura order (standard/  AHN, Inquisición, Legajo 550, exp. 25.  “que le allaron en el seno”. See the edition of this text in Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores,” 122.  “le enseñava a leer algaravía e que como murió no le enseñó más”; Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores,” 122.  “leer los dichos papeles más de que se los avía dado para a mostrarle a leer por ellos”; Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores,” 122.  “qué otra cosa contenían los dichos papeles más del abeçe e que también avía en los dichos papeles la oración del halandu ques oración de moros”; Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores,” 122.  Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, “Qur’anic Manuscripts,” 132.

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Fig. 9: MS Foz-Calanda, fol. 11v (Added text in Q. 88:4).

Fig. 10: MS FDHCA, L527 – 2, fol. 4v (Added text in Q. 109:5).

reverse). For example, in the following case [Fig. 11], the copyist, instead of copying sura 113, has repeated the beginning of 114 because of their similar initial structure. However, instead of correcting the mistake by partially crossing out the common elements, the entire text is crossed out from the beginning of the corresponding sura, i. e. 113. This way of amending scribal errors leads us to believe that this type of texts may have been a writing exercise, and not a professional copy:

Fig. 11: MS L536 – 2, fol. 11v.

Another example, in this case from the Foz-Calanda manuscript, shows how the copyist starts sura 81, when in reverse order sura 82 should have been copied

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[Fig. 12]. The remnants of a torn-out folio indicate that the copyist probably did not discover this mistake until far into the copy.

Fig. 12: MS Foz-Calanda, fol. 56v.

In other cases, as in the following example [Fig. 13], the mistakes seem to have been made in the course of an internal dictation process. Thus, we find mix-ups over the phonetic similarity between the form maymanati and marḥamati and, later on, in a much clearer instance, between the incorrect wa ayna and the correct form wa-allaḏīna, which is added in above the line:

Fig. 13: Ms. Foz-Calanda, fol. 40r (Series of mistakes at the beginning of Q. 90:19).

By contrast, other errors give reason to believe the copyist’s knowledge of the sacred text may have been faulty, in keeping with their learning process, as seen in the following case [Fig. 14], in which, in the middle of the text of sura 92, the beginning of the sura is repeated, in all likelihood because both begin with the copulative conjunction wa.

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Fig. 14: MS Foz-Calanda, fol. 35v (Repetition of the beginning of Q. 92:1).

4.4 Contents The textual selection present in these copies corresponds, in most cases, with the canonical subdivisions of the Qur’an. The exception to this is the first fragment of Foz-Calanda (7r-18v), which spans the content from suras 92 to 83 and is contained in an interpolated quire, which would seem to indicate that it must at one time have been longer, and might have followed one of these subdivisions. These copies are likewise preceded by the first sura, as is common at the beginning of any sort of qur’anic content. In this way, L536 – 2 (fols.10v–29v) is the last juz’;⁵⁶ L527– 2, whose inverseorder fragment stretches from sura 106 till the end, matches the canonical ṯumun subdivision; and L536 – 2 (fols. 2r–6r), whose inverse-order fragment ends at sura 101, is just one sura short of constituting the final ḥizb of the Qur’an. This eye to the canonical subdivisions becomes more complex in the second fragment of the Foz-Calanda manuscript (fols. 19r–84v), wherein hand c copies the final ḥizb (19r–49r), while hand b expands this inverse-ordered content until sura 72, i. e. the content corresponding to the last three aḥzāb ⁵⁷. What is more, hand b continues this inverse content with sura 67, and then goes on to copy, from the start, the selection of ayas that essentially make up the beginning of an abridged Qur’an. In this way, taken all together, these materials

 Note that this copy is preceded by two blank folios, and is followed by a fragment (fols. 29r– 31r) containing the beginning of the characteristic ayas selection found in “abridged Qur’ans,” i. e. Q: 1; 2:1– 5; 163; 255 – 56 and the beginning of 257.  The three aḥzāb constitute one of the canonical qur’anic subdivisions that can appear in the final fragment of an abridged Qur’an. See in this volume, Rodríguez Iglesias, “New Models.”

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in the Foz-Calanda manuscript seem to constitute a three-ḥizb abridged Qur’an, but with an unusual distribution that makes it unique. Lastly, the brevity of the inverse qur’anic content in RESC/43, L527– 1 and AHN MPD 517.2 falls short of constituting the complete lesser canonical qur’anic subdivision. The consideration for these subdivisions is especially interesting, given that their use is also related to Islamic teaching methods, and in particular to Qur’an memorization. Indeed, some traditional Islamic education systems, for example the teaching models observed in certain parts of North Africa,⁵⁸ involve memorizing the text by segmenting its contents into such subdivisions. This process begins at a very young age, with the progressive memorization first of half a ḥizb, then one, two and finally three aḥzāb. Likewise, more generally, other sources point to a minimum content believers should memorize, which is also based on these subdivisions. In Gade’s words, “for educated Muslims who do not memorize the Qur’an, it is still a basic goal to have memorized the final, thirtieth part (juz’) of the Qur’an, as well as to have read the entire Qur’an through with a teacher.”⁵⁹

4.5 Distribution of the Text Whereas, as we have just seen, the various hands all follow the canonical qur’anic subdivisions, the same cannot be said of the distribution of the text across a specific number of folios. In this sense, divergent approaches to the spatial distribution of a single passage can be seen very clearly in the fragment from suras 92 to 83, which is repeated twice by the same hand in the Foz-Calanda manuscript, but in the first case takes up twelve folios (7r–18v), and in the second spans twenty (36v–56v). This is especially interesting given that in some of the standards for copying the Qur’an, the canonical subdivisions correspond with a specific number of folios, which moreover helps with the task of memorization.⁶⁰ In this way, the re-

 Jarmo Houtsonen, “Traditional Quranic Education in a Southern Moroccan Village,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26, no. 3 (1994).  See Anna M. Gade, “Recitation of the Qur’an,” in Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2004), vol. IV, 367– 84.  This is, for example, the case of the ayet ber kenar system, developed starting in the late sixteenth century, which shows up in some Ottoman Qur’ans. One of the system’s characteristic traits is the fact of distributing each juz’ over twenty pages (i. e. ten folios), and making the end of each page coincide with the end of an aya. This system of distributing the text is not

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lationship between the text and how it is distributed across the page emerges as a crucial aspect in order to study the different processes of textual standardization in qur’anic copies throughout history. One further aspect among many in this process of standardization is the number of lines per page.⁶¹ In this regard, the copies in our corpus do not follow a homogeneous distribution. For example, throughout the Foz-Calanda manuscript, the number of lines per page fluctuates between nine, ten and, for the most part, eleven, except one fragment (fols. 19r–50v) with seven lines per page. Manuscript L 527–1 consistently uses twelve lines per page, except in the last four folios, with nine, ten and eleven lines. As for manuscripts L 527–2 and L 536–2, as a rule they have nine or ten lines per page, with a few exceptional cases of eleven or twelve in the latter. Lastly, manuscripts RESC/43.F and AHN 517.2 vary between 8, 9 and 10 lines. That said, and although these copies do not appear to adhere to a standardized set of rules, there does seem to be a concern for how the text is distributed across each line, as can be observed in the following examples. In some cases this takes the form of a word-initial [Fig. 15] or word-final [Fig. 16] elongation of the stroke of the ductus, wider character spacing [Fig. 17], or even the addition of small decorative elements to justify the line [Fig. 18, Fig. 19]. Of course, even if an exact relationship between the coetaneous qur’anic standardization norms is not obvious, what does seem clear is that behind all of these copies there is a common education system. This system was based on copying the text in quires, whose dimensions could be the quarto, as we find in this corpus with the longer volumes, or the octavo, as in the case of

the only one used, even among the Ottomans themselves. However, although there are others, the ayet ber kenar became so popular that its use and influence spread even to regions as far away as Southeast Asia. A possible relationship between certain Mudejar and Morisco copies of the Qur’an and this Ottoman standard was put forth by Nuria Martínez de Castilla in her study, “Were the Moriscos in Touch with Contemporary Ottoman Developments? Twin Qur’anic Copies from the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 4 (2016).  As the qur’anic copying norms became standardized, there was an evolution in the number of lines. For example, in those that follow the ayet ber kenar, the oldest copies contain fourteen lines per page, while the number shifts to fifteen in the mid-eighteenth century, among the twenty-nine rules that were to be taken into account in this type of Qur’an production, according to a treatise preserved from the nineteenth century. See Jan Just Witkam, “Twenty-Nine Rules for Qur’an Copying. A Set of Rules for Lay-Out of a Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Qur’an Manuscript,” Essays in Honour of Barbara Flemming, vol. 2, ed. Jan Schmidt, Cambridge, Journal of Turkish Studies 2 (2002), 339 – 48; Tim Stanley, “Page-Setting in Late Ottoman Qur’ans. An Aspect of Standardization,” Manuscripta Orientalia 10 (2004), 56 – 63.

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Fig. 15: Ms. Foz-Calanda, fol. 14r (Justification of the line and the sura ending by elongating the letters).

Fig. 16: Ms. FDHCA, L536 – 2, fol. 11r (Justification of the line and the sura ending by elongating the letters).

Fig. 17: Ms. FDHCA, L536 – 2, fol. 15r (Line justification via letter spacing).

Fig. 18: Ms. Foz-Calanda, fol. 25r (Justification of the lines and the sura ending with various motifs; note the scribal error in the last line).

manuscripts AHN MPD 517.2 and RESC/43.F. Moreover, it seems that they were all created expressly for learning contexts, and we have contemporary accounts attesting to this use. In this sense, within our corpus, in the Foz-Calanda manu-

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Fig. 19: Ms. Foz-Calanda, fol. 25r (Line justification with three dots; note the unusual segmentation of bi-aḥ/kami).

script we can see that it is made up of quires that were sewn prior to copying out the text, a format whose use, as we have seen, is attested to among the Moriscos for learning Arabic and memorizing the Qur’an.

5 Conclusions Memorization of the sacred text of Islam is one of the components that make up Muslim life. The memorization of a minimum number of ayas enables ordinary Muslims to fulfill their mandatory prayers, while through the complete memorization of the text one can attain a new social status. This practice is so significant in Arab-Islamic societies that in many cases it constitutes one’s entry into the education system, and in some contexts the only formal education children will receive. What is more, throughout the Middle Ages, the fact of placing Qur’an memorization before or after all other subjects was a distinguishing factor between the educational curricula of the Islamic West and East. However, little is known about what methods Mudejars and Moriscos used to memorize the Qur’an following the demise of traditional Andalusi institutions of learning. For this reason, we have gathered together a corpus of fragmentary copies of the Qur’an from the Morisco period, most of them from Lower Aragon, but some from Valencia’s Ribera Alta as well, all of which share a common peculiarity: their sura order is the inverse of the canonical order. This phenomenon shows up in Qur’an memorization methods in other areas of the world as well, some of them nearer to the Andalusi sphere, such as Malikite teaching methods in Mauritania. Thus, the context of these copies can be narrowed down to this realm of education, as corroborated by the textual contexts in which these copies are inserted. Indeed, this production is framed by a series of clearly didactic materials, such as alphabet primers, prayers in Aljamia-

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do, and even the description of practices related to the use of the sacred text, such as the ritual ablution or al-waḍū. Moreover, the paleographic traits of the materials from the town of Calanda, in particular their calligraphic style, point to professional teachers who may have been connected to the local madrasa. Meanwhile, the material from Valencia confirms this same context, from a learner’s perspective, as attested to in the testimony contained in the Inquisition trial documents that accompany the text. Likewise, this corpus constitutes a unique vestige due to the material it is written on, given that traditionally this sort of mnemonic learning in Arab-Islamic societies —al-Andalus included— was done on wood tablets. By contrast, in this crypto-Muslim context, we find these paper booklets, whose use, moreover, is recorded and sanctioned in a contemporary source, al-Ḥajarī . The quality of the copies and singular correction of some of their mistakes, along with the relevance of the canonical qur’anic subdivisions when indicating the content copied out by each hand, and, most of all, their characteristic inverse sura order, taken all together constitute a set of traits whose analysis can only point toward contexts of education. In light of all these aspects, the corpus we have described here presents us with a new dimension in how the Qur’an was transmitted among Mudejars and Moriscos. In short, the importance of these traces lies in their hitherto unknown character, for several reasons. They constitute the first extant proof of a Qur’anic pedagogical method among Mudejars and Moriscos, and, in turn, are the oldest written evidence ever documented among the Islamic communities of Iberia of a method that employs an inverse sura order, and, given the uncommon writing material used, which has enabled their conservation, this may be true not just of Iberia, but of the entire Muslim world.

Bibliography Abdel Latif, Sherry Mohamed. “Edición y estudio de un texto aljamiado, comparado con sus fuentes árabes.” PhD Diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1988. Al-Bukhārī. Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Ryāḍ: Darussalam, 1997. Barceló Torres, María Teresa. “Notas tipológicas sobre un procedimiento foral: dos cartas árabes del alamín de Benimuslem.” Al-Gezira. Revista d’Estudis Històrics de la Ribera Alta 2 (1986): 119 – 32. Barceló, Carmen and Labarta, Ana. Archivos moriscos. Textos árabes de la minoría islámica valenciana 1401 – 1608. Valencia: PUV, 2009.

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Busto Cortina, Juan Carlos. “El alkitāb de Çamarqandī. Edición del ms. aljamiado 4871 de la B.N.M. con un vocabulario completo y un estudio de algunos cuentos que en él aparecen.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Oviedo, 1991. Ceamanos Llorens, Roberto and Mateos Royo, José Antonio. Calanda en la Edad Moderna y Contemporánea. Teruel: Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, 2005. Cervera Fras, María José. “Descripción de los manuscritos mudéjares de Calanda (Teruel).” Aragón en la Edad Media 10 (1993): 165 – 88. Dzulkifli, Mariam Adawiah and Hussain Solihu, Abdul Kabir. “Methods of Qur’ānic Memorisation (ḥifẓ): Implications for Learning Performance.” Intellectual Discourse 26, no.2 (2018): 931 – 47. Eickelman, Dale F. Knowledge and Power in Morocco. The Education of a twentieth-century Notable. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Espinar Moreno, Manuel. “Escuelas y enseñanzas primarias en la España musulmana. Noticias sobre el reino nazarí y la etapa morisca (siglos XIII-XIV).” Sharq al-Andalus 8 (1991): 179 – 209. Ferrer i Mallol, Maria Teresa. “Las comunidades mudéjares de la Corona de Aragón en el siglo XV: la población.” In De mudéjares a moriscos, una conversión forzada, vol. 1, 27 – 154, Teruel: Instituto de Estudios Turolenses, 2003. Fortier, Corinne. “‘Une pédagogie coranique,’ Modes de transmission des savoirs islamiques (Mauritanie).” Cahiers d’Études africaines 169 – 70, nos. 1 – 2 (2003): 253 – 60. Fournel-Guérin, Jacqueline. “Les morisques aragonais et l’Inquisition de Saragosse (1540 – 1620)” PhD Diss., Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III, 1980. Fournel-Guérin, Jacqueline. “La femme morisque en Aragon.” In Les morisques et leur temps. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983. Fournel-Guérin, Jacqueline. “Le livre et la civilisation écrite dans la communauté morisque aragonaise.” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 15 (1979): 241 – 60. Gade, A.M. “Recitation of the Qur’an.” In Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, vol. IV: 367 – 84. Leiden: Brill, 2004. García-Arenal, Mercedes. Inquisición y moriscos. Los procesos del Tribunal de Cuenca. Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1978. García Gómez and E. Levi-Provençal. Sevilla a comienzos del siglo XII: El tratado de Ibn Abdun. Madrid: Moneda y Crédito, 1948. García Miralles, Manuel. Historia de Calanda. Valencia: Tipografía Artística Puertes, 1969. Graham, W.A. “Orality.” In Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān. Edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe, vol. III: 584 – 87. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Houtsonen, Jarmo. “Traditional Quranic Education in a Southern Moroccan Village.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 26, no. 3 (1994): 489 – 500. Kontzi, Reinhold. Aljamiadotexte. Ausgabe mit einer Einleitung und Glossar, vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1974. Labarta, Ana. “Notas sobre algunos traductores de árabe en la Inquisición valenciana (1565 – 1609).” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid 21 (1981 – 82): 101 – 33. Levi-Provençal, Évariste. “La España musulmana hasta la caída del Califato de Córdoba (711 – 1031 de J.C:). Instituciones y vida social e intelectual.” Vol. 5, Historia de España, dir. by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1957.

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López Guzmán, Rafael and Díez Jorge, María Elena. La madraza: pasado, presente y futuro. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2006. Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, Nuria. “Qur’anic Manuscripts from Late Muslim Spain: The Collection of Almonacid de La Sierra,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 16, no. 2 (2014): 89 – 138. Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, Nuria. “Were the Moriscos in Touch with Contemporary Ottoman Developments? Twin Qur’anic Copies from the End of the Sixteenth Century.” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 4 (2016): 245 – 64.Pérès, Henri. Esplendor en al-Ándalus. La poesía andaluza en árabe clásico en el siglo XI. Sus aspectos generales, sus principales temas y su valor documental. Madrid: Hiperión, 1983. Roza Candás, Pablo. Memorial de ida i venida hasta Maka. La peregrinación de ‘Omar Paṭon. Oviedo: Ediuno, 2018. Ruiz-Bejarano, Bárbara. “Praxis islámica de los musulmanes aragoneses.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Alicante, 2015. Serrano Martín, Eliseo. “Los moriscos de Calanda y Foz Calanda: condición social y consecuencias de su expulsión.” Destierros aragoneses I. Judíos y moriscos, Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico (1988): 365 – 67. Suárez García, Raquel. El compendio islámico de Mohanmad de Vera. Colección de Literatura Española Aljamiado-Morisca, 15. Oviedo: Ediuno, 2016. Al-Tirmidhī. Jāmi‘ al-Tirmidhī. 2nd ed. Riyāḍ: Wizārat al-shu’ūn al-’islāmiyya wa al-dawa wa al-’irshād al-sa‘ūdiyya, 2000. Stanley, T. “Page-Setting in Late Ottoman Qur’ans. An Aspect of Standardization.” Manuscripta Orientalia 10 (2004): 56 – 63. Vincent, Bernard. “Benimuslem, un village de la Ribera valencienne.” In L’histoire grande ouverte: hommages à Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. Coord. by Joseph Goy, Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide and André Burguière, 459 – 64. Paris: Fayard, 1997. Vincent, Bernard. “Benimuslem, pueblo de la Ribera valenciana.” In El Río morisco, 25 – 30, Biblioteca de Estudios Moriscos. Universitat de València, Universidad de Granada, Universidad de Zaragoza, 2006. Vincent, Bernard. “Reflexión documentada sobre el uso del árabe y de las lenguas románicas en la España de los moriscos (ss. XVI-XVII).” In El Río morisco, 105 – 118, Universitat de València, Universidad de Granada, Universidad de Zaragoza, 2006. Witkam, Jan Just. “Twenty-Nine Rules for Qur’an Copying. A Set of Rules for Lay-Out of a Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Qur’an Manuscript.” In Essays in Honour of Barbara Flemming, vol. 2, ed. Jan Schmidt, Journal of Turkish Studies 2 (2002): 339 – 48.

Mercedes García-Arenal

The Inquisition and the Search for Qur’ans 1 Introduction

In 1646 a certain Juan de Vides was interrogated by officers of the Holy Office regarding the denunciation he had previously brought forth against Don Gaspar de Guzmán, Conde-Duque de Olivares. I am referring to the famous CondeDuque who till 1643 had been the principal minister and favorite (valido) of King Felipe IV, and for more than twenty years the most powerful person in the realm. He had fallen from grace, and, since being deposed and banished from Madrid in 1643, had been living in isolation in the small town of Toro in Zamora.¹ The disgrace for him and for his family was as absolute as his power had once been. The Inquisition had initiated a trial against the Conde-Duque in 1644 to investigate his orthodoxy, placing enormous pressure on him during his last months, when his mental and physical health was already failing.² And yet, nine months after his death the Inquisition was still interrogating witnesses about him. Juan de Vides’s accusation was that Don Gaspar used to have someone read to him from the Qur’an in the evenings before going to sleep.³ The questions the inquisitors addressed to the accuser, Juan de Vides, and to other witnesses (namely the winebottler Francisco López and two nuns of the household) were mainly two: in what language the Qur’an was read to Don Gaspar, and whether there was a gathering of people present while the Qur’an was read to him. Just for a moment let us assume the accusation was true, or rather, consider whether there are explanations for such an accusation, a historical kernel of truth. What Qur’an might the Conde-Duque have owned? Olivares was a bibliophile. During his lifetime he had amassed a considerable library which, against

 John H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (London: Yale University Press, 1986).  Elliott, The Count-Duke, 668 and ff.  Archivo Histórico Nacional [AHN], Inquisición, Leg. 1867, exp. 4. Note: This essay is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (SyG grant agreement no. 810141), project EuQu “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-011

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his express wishes, was fragmented and dispersed by his heirs after his death.⁴ There are several catalogues of the parts of his library which were sold or deposited in other libraries, mainly of his Latin books and his manuscripts and documents.⁵ While there is no Qur’an mentioned in these inventories, they do not cover the whole library. Indeed, it is well known that Olivares took for his library a large number of Arabic books that the Inquisition had confiscated in 1631 from the abandoned house of a Morisco in Pastrana, some of which were said to be beautifully adorned. One Qur’an or several must have been among them, according to the scant descriptions we have.⁶ Unfortunately, we have no inventory or catalogue of this Arabic lot, although some manuscripts pertaining to it have been identified in the library of the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid, and five others were bought and taken to Rome by nuncio Camillo Massimo and are now kept at the Bibliotheca Vaticana. Olivares, who was, as I have said, a keen collector and bibliophile, knew no Arabic, but did know Latin and could very well have had a copy of Theodore Bibliander’s edition of 1550 (a Protestant translation), one copy of which is currently in the Real Academia de la Historia, where according to Gregorio de Andrés a large part of his library is now kept as part of the Salazar y Castro collection. However, what interests me here is not so much the possible Orientalist interest of the Conde-Duque and other bibliophiles and scholars of his time (though I will come back to this point at the end of this contribution), but the two questions posed by the inquisitors regarding the language of the book and the possibility of a group of people being present at the reading session. These were questions with a long history: they were routinely asked of Moriscos accused of having a Qur’an in their possession. I also want to bring to your attention the extent to which the accusation of possessing and reading a Qur’an, or listening to it being read, was a serious crime, worth investigating even after the death of the alleged culprit, and long after the expulsion of the Moriscos. The aim of my presentation here is to scrutinize Inquisition documents to gather information about the existence and circulation of copies of the Qur’an in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spain. This will allow us to see, as

 Gregorio Marañón, “La biblioteca del Conde-Duque,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 107 (1935).  Gregorio de Andrés, “Historia de la biblioteca del Conde duque de Olivares y descripción de sus códices,” Cuadernos bibliográficos 28 (1972).  Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 278 ff.; García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, “Los libros de los moriscos y los eruditos orientales,” Al-Qanṭara 31, n.o 2 (2010).

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I will argue, that in contrast to the small number of extant Morisco Qur’ans (the subject of both Adrián Rodríguez, and Pablo Roza’s contributions to this volume), the archives of the Inquisition provide important information showing that copies of the Qur’an were extremely abundant in all the territories of early modern Spain. The Inquisitorial documents also provide information about the use of the Holy Book by the alfaquíes, for reading, explaining and teaching, as well as interesting information about memorization, copying, circulation, borrowing and translation. They also illustrate the Inquisition procedure to determine which of the Arabic books confiscated were Qur’ans. It is, therefore, a story of censorship and coercion but also of transmission of knowledge, of translation and textual expertise. I will argue here that the Qur’an remained the backbone of Morisco Islam, as the Inquisition was well aware, and also try to trace a general overview of the extent and consequences of the Inquisition’s persecution and never totally successful eradication of the sacred text of Islam.

2 The Inquisition and Books in Arabic Let me begin by recalling a few well-known facts, including a summary of the action undertaken by the Inquisition towards the Morisco minority. The Muslims living in medieval Christian Spain (known as Mudejars) were obliged to convert to Christianity or go into exile about ten years after the conquest of Granada. The decree making conversion compulsory was issued in 1502 for the inhabitants of the Crown of Castile and in 1526 for the Crown of Aragon. In both cases, it was determined that the converts were to hand over to the local authorities any Arabic and Islamic books they had in their possession. In October 1501 the Catholic Kings, Fernando and Isabel, issued an edict ordering that all the copies of the Qur’an found in the Kingdom of Granada must be burned.⁷ There is a famous anecdote, told as an exemplary tale (though not certified since only one source mentions it), whereby in Granada, Cardenal Cisneros witnessed the public burning of the religious books that had been confiscated or handed in by the new converts —about 5,000 according to his secretary and

 October 12, 1501. The document is published by Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, Los mudéjares de Castilla en tiempos de Isabel I (Valladolid: Instituto Isabel la Católica de Historia Eclesiástica, 1969), doc. nº 146. “los quales deven ser quemados en el fuego porque dello no aya memoria e ninguno tenga ocasión de herrar… todos los libros… syn que ninguno quede del Alcorán ni de la seta mahomética e los fagáys quemar públicamente.” Death and confiscation of property will befall those who do not comply and bring their books.

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apologist Juan de Vallejo.⁸ And yet Cisneros, who had been named head of the Inquisition by Queen Isabel, also selected a good number of books of science to be sent to the library of his newly created Universidad de Alcalá de Henares. This story of burning books had antecedents in the action of the Roman Inquisition and the Dominican campaigns against heretics. In Spain a famous case was the burning of books of the library of Enrique de Aragón, Marquis of Villena (1384– 1434) ordered by King Juan II and carried out by the Dominican Fray Lope de Barrientos, bishop of Cuenca. The humanist Enrique de Villena was reputed to know many languages and be an astrologer and practitioner of the arts of divination. He had an important personal library in his house in Iniesta (Guadalajara) that contained books in Arabic and Hebrew. Lope de Barrientos is also said to have kept for himself some of the books of science of the library he had examined and from which he burned 50 volumes.⁹ Verifiable or not, this stories about Lope de Barrientos and Cisneros indicate the strong symbolic meaning of Arabic books, as an important legacy to be erased in the field of religion as soon as possible, but also, somehow, to be treasured, appropriated. However many books were burned under the direct orders of Cisneros¹⁰ the royal decree of 1501 of burning qur’ans prevailed. Different kinds of documents certify that after the decrees of forced conversion the Moriscos were indeed obliged to bring to the Inquisition or the civil authorities all the Arabic books in their possession. A good example is the document published by Ana Labarta containing an inventory of the library of two alfaquíes from the town of Borja in Aragon, named Ali Alguaquiel and Amet Abranda, who handed over their collection of 56 books to the authorities upon converting in 1526. They gave them up  Juan de Vallejo, Memorial de la vida de fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (Madrid: [n.p.], 1913), 35; Mercedes García-Arenal, “Granada as New Jerusalem: The Conversion of a City,” in Space and Conversion in Global Perspective, ed. Giuseppe Marcocci (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 15 – 43, esp. 34.  Sagrario Muñoz Calvo, Inquisición y ciencia en la España moderna (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1977); Mónica Marcos Celestino, “El Marqués de Villena y La cueva de Salamanca. Entre literatura, historia y leyenda,” Estudios humanísticos. Filología 26 (2004). The books have been probable been revised and selected; one of the books was “Mushaf Alzimar, el corto, según oy decir a un sabidor morisco que decían el Xarafi, el viejo, de Guadalfajara”; in Marcos Celestino, “El Marqués de Villena,” 159. This Xarafi was Ali Xarafi (member of a famous family of translators and interpreters, who was the tax collector for the Mudejars in times of Juan II. Manuel C. Feria García and Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “Un nuevo enfoque en la investigación de la documentación árabe granadina romanceada (ilustrado con dos traducciones inéditas de Bernardino Xarafí, escribano y romanceador del Reino de Granada),” Al-Qanṭara 26, no. 1 (2005).  Gerard A. Wiegers, “The Christianization of the Mudejars of Granada and the Persistence of Islam after the Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain (1492-ca. 1730),” in The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada between East and West, ed. Adela Fábregas (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 519 – 43.

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to carry out and exercise all of the acts and exercises for the conversion of the Moors to the Holy Catholic Faith, and, lest they be fined more than two-hundred gold ducats, as set forth in an edict contained in a proclamation delivered by the town crier, they were both ordered and required to give and release all of the books and writings in their possession, or whose whereabouts they know of, that are about or have to do with the Muḥammadan sect and law,¹¹

Among them “three volumes, each containing one quarter of the Qur’an.”¹² I cannot review here all the restrictive measures imposed upon the Moriscos from the 1520s onwards. Suffice it to say, for the sake of our subject here, that the use of both written and spoken Arabic was forbidden in 1526 by Queen Juana. The Moriscos of Granada negotiated and obtained a forty-year moratorium, but in 1564 Arabic was forbidden in Valencia, and in 1567 the decree of 1526 finally came into effect in Granada —one of the leading causes that led to the rebellion of the Alpujarras. Although the Inquisition had been established already in 1478, and was extended to Granada in 1499, in its early decades it had focused its efforts first on Judaizers and later on Lutherans. Its pressure on the Moriscos did not become truly onerous until the 1540s. In fact, the crucial year was 1533, when Grand Inquisitor Manrique lost influence and a new, harsher attitude bore down on the Moriscos in particular. In the mid-sixteenth century, a new direction in policy toward the Moriscos coincided with a general hardening of religious positions all over Europe, especially after the conclusion in 1563 of the Council of Trent.¹³ The Moriscos were subjected to persecution by the Inquisition as apostates, and were accused of mahometizar (lit. “Muḥammadizing”). They were apostates if they behaved or believed as Muslims after being baptized, as the belief in “the sect of Muḥammad” was equivalent to heresy. Therefore the Inquisition persecuted Moriscos suspected or proven to have engaged in Islamic activity, and catalogued in great detail the religious practices, prayers, beliefs, knowledge and in-

 “para hazer y exercir todos los actos e exercicios para la conversión de los moros a la Sancta Fee Cathólica e dins pena de las penas en el edito siguiente pregón manifestado contenidas en más de dozientos ducados de oro les mandaban y requería entrambos ensembles les diesen y librassen todos los libros e scripturas que ellos tienen o saben dónde están concernientes y tocantes a la secta y ley maomética”. Ana Labarta, “Inventario de los documentos árabes contenidos en procesos inquisitoriales contra moriscos valencianos conservados en el Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid (legajos 548 – 556),” Al-Qanṭara 1, no. 1– 2 (1980).  J. Carlos Escribano and Ana Labarta, “Las bibliotecas de dos alfaquíes borjanos,” Anaquel de estudios árabes, no. 11 (2000), 356.  Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “La Inquisición ante los moriscos,” in Historia de la Inquisición en España y América. Vol. 3, Temas y problemas, ed. Bartolomé Escandell Bonet and Joaquín Pérez Villanueva (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2000), 721– 30.

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tentions of the Moriscos it brought to trial. Because of these trial records we know that a significant part of the Morisco population continued to observe Islamic practices within a family and communal structure which remained very closely knit in the areas where there were dense populations of Moriscos —always taking into account that Islam remained legal in Aragon and Valencia for a quarter of a century longer than in Castile. Spain’s tribunals did not all maintain the same level of activity, nor pursue Moriscos with equal zeal; Valencia, Zaragoza and Granada stood out from the rest in this regard.¹⁴ Between 1566 and 1620, case summaries (relaciones de causas) identify 1,265 Moriscos tried in Granada, 2,883 in Valencia, and 2,504 in Zaragoza. The percentages are even more revealing. In Valencia nearly 75 % of all people tried were Moriscos, compared to 63 % in Zaragoza and fewer than 40 % in Granada. Repression in Granada was greatest between 1561 and 1575, especially in the years leading up to and during the War of the Alpujarras: from 1566 to 1570 the 425 Moriscos tried made up 85 % of the total. The number then declined markedly, except for a spike at the beginning of the seventeenth century, which arose after the discovery of an important Islamic network or complicidad in Baza, with branches in Granada and Caniles, consisting of families who had been allowed to remain in the Kingdom and were of relatively high social status. We will see more on how this “complicity” was broken up further along. The Inquisition in Valencia had lost its jurisdiction over the local Moriscos by mid-century, but in many places the Muslims’ public apostasy gave rise to protests directed at the Court that demanded a solution. After a series of meetings by prelates, advisers and inquisitors, Felipe II finally approved the reactivation of the Inquisition in 1564. Even before this, the Holy Office had begun to pursue the tagarinos (Aragonese Moriscos), who were emigrating to the Mediterranean coast in a steady stream, attempting to flee to Muslim lands abroad. The initial repression fell on the bellicose Moriscos of Gea de Albarracín and Teruel. The Inquisition’s activity with respect to Moriscos was now taking place in the three regions where their numbers were greatest: Granada, Valencia, and Aragon.

 Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, “La Inquisición ante los moriscos,” tables at 733 – 36. The basic sources are: for Zaragoza, Raphaël Carrasco, “Le refus d’assimilation des Morisques: aspects politiques et culturels d’après les sources inquisitoriales,” in Les morisques et leurs temps, ed. Louis Cardaillac (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1983), 209; for Valencia, Carrasco, “Historia de una represión: los moriscos y la Inquisición en Valencia, 1566 – 1620,” Areas: revista internacional de ciencias sociales, no. 9 (1988), 28; for Granada, Flora García Ivars, La Represión En El Tribunal Inquisitorial de Granada, 1550 – 1819 (Madrid: Akal, 1991), 164– 66, 188 – 89, 254– 55.

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When the Cortes Valencianas banned the use of spoken and written Arabic in 1564 and Felipe II followed suit through a 1567 decree which applied to the territories of the Crown of Castile, the Inquisition launched an intense campaign directed against all traces of the Arabic language, written or spoken, which were unfailingly identified with the practice of Islam. The Inquisition discussed within the bosom of its own institution the question of the status which should be granted to the Arabic books it was constantly confiscating.¹⁵ In practice, possession of a text written in the Arabic alphabet or the mere use of the spoken language led almost always to a conviction for heresy. Identification of the language with the religion was unswerving and knew very few exceptions.¹⁶ Inquisition proceedings contain extremely detailed information on the persistence of the Arabic language and its written forms, whether in trial records or in reports on visits and confiscations. Books were found as a consequence of denunciations made against those who owned them, by confiscation during raids of homes made specifically for that purpose, or accidentally during the course of searches for other items forbidden to the Moriscos, such as weapons. Culprits paid a high price for possessing such books. Proof of the eagerness with which the Inquisition sought out and confiscated Arabic texts can be found in the records of every tribunal of the Holy Office, although such records have come down to us unevenly. For example, complete trial records only exist for Zaragoza, Toledo, Cuenca and Valencia (and do not include all those which were initiated), whereas from Granada or Llerena only the relaciones de causa, i. e. lists of summarized cases, have survived. In Valencia, while between 1585 and 1595 over a thousand Moriscos were tried, the records of fewer than three hundred complete cases have survived. It is therefore impossible to draw a complete and all-inclusive picture. However, the material which we do possess makes it possible to sketch out the following summary: the possession of books written in Arabic, among which the Qur’an had pride of place, was, in Valencia, the accusation which most frequently brought Moriscos before the Inquisition.¹⁷ In Zaragoza, some 900 Inquisition records of trials against Aragonese Moriscos have survived, dated between 1568 and 1609: 409

 AHN, Inquisición, Libro 1239, fols. 411– 16.  Mercedes García-Arenal, “The Religious Identity of the Arabic Language and the Affair of the Lead Books of the Sacromonte of Granada,” Arabica 56, no. 6 (2009).  Tulio Halperin Donghi, Un conflicto nacional: moriscos y cristianos viejos en Valencia (Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 1980), 115 – 64; Ana Labarta, “Los libros de los moriscos valencianos,” Awraq 2 (1979).

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of these Moriscos were accused of owning books written in Arabic.¹⁸ Inquisition records show that in Aragon there existed a veritable hive of bookselling activity, which involved the sale, above all, of copies of the Qur’an, and was particularly intense during the last third of the sixteenth century. There were also a number of qur’anic schools, such as the one which was found to exist in Calanda in 1580, or the one in Almonacid de la Sierra. During Inquisition interrogations, Moriscos mentioned schools where as many as fifty young men would gather to learn from a master the rudiments of the Arabic language and Islamic law, and there was also a network of contacts with alfaquíes from Valencia and Aragon who provided consultation services and books.¹⁹ It should be noted that the possession of books was not, however, necessarily indicative of knowledge of Arabic.²⁰ This was the case in Castile, where there was a clear general decline of both spoken and written Arabic from as early as the first quarter of the sixteenth century, and where Moriscos relied greatly on the communities of Aragon and Valencia to obtain religious books, translations or instructions on ritual, as we will see below.²¹ After the arrival in Castile of the Granadan Moriscos who had been deported in 1570, following the War of the Alpujarras, the picture shifted, and there was a certain revival in knowledge of the language and in the ownership of books and writings. This revival intensified, for reasons still not well known, in the decade before the expulsion. It is remarkable, then, that only one complete Qur’an translated during the Mudejar-Morisco period has reached us, the so-called Corán de Toledo, copied in 1606 in Castilian language and script from an Aljamiado copy.²²

 Jaqueline Fournel-Guérin, “Le livre et la civilisation écrite dans la communauté morisque aragonaise (1540 – 1620),” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 15 (1979), 243 – 45.  Nuria Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, “The Copyists and Their Texts. The Morisco Translations of the Qur’ān in the Tomás Navarro Tomás Library (CSIC, Madrid),” Al-Qanṭara 35, n.o 2 (2014).  Bernard Vincent, El río morisco (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2006), 105 – 17.  Vincent, El río morisco, 105 – 17. One remarkable example is the magnificent Qur’an of 1587 from Aranda de Moncayo in the the Gayangos collection in the RAH or the one of 1700 in Granada. See Cristina Álvarez Millán, “Un Corán desconocido de D. Pascual de Gayangos en la Real Academia de la Historia,” in La memoria de los libros. Estudios sobre la historia del escrito y de la lectura en Europa y América, vol. II, ed. Pedro M. Cátedra (Salamanca: Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura, 2004); and Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “The last Qur’an from al-Andalus?” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 24, num. 2 (2022).  Edited and studied by Consuelo López Morillas, El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha (Gijón: Trea, 2011).

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3 Qur’ans or Other Books? As I have said, the Inquisition had a keen interest in finding not just Qur’ans, but all sorts of books in Arabic or written in Arabic script, especially if they were related to religious matters, and deployed all its zeal to confiscate them and hinder their circulation from the 1540s onward. Did the inquisitors know which of the books they were confiscating were Qur’ans and which were not? The Inquisitors produced their own material to know the qur’anic text better, as proved by a compendium of 1569 that deals with content, divisions in four books, number of suras, etc.²³ As they did not read Arabic, the Inquisitors did not always know, but several tribunals, in particular Granada and Valencia, had Arabic translators and interpreters who were able to interpretar y calificar, “translate and evaluate” and figured as expert witnesses in the trials.²⁴ Other tribunals, as Toledo or Cuenca, asked for professional opinions of official translators when needed. Sometimes the interpreters were respected members of the community appointed for the task, such as the well-known case of the Valencian translator Jerónimo Mur studied by Ana Labarta. The famous Morisco priest Ignacio de las Casas also assisted the inquisitors as interpreter and calificador, for example in the trial of María Catalán and her husband in 1603. It was found that the couple had in their possession an illuminated Qur’an and, since María could only speak Arabic, De las Casas was called in to translate for her.²⁵ Diego de Urrea, professor of Arabic at the Colegio Trilingüe of the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, also translated for the tribunals of Cuenca and Toledo.²⁶ Other times the interpreters were Morisco prisoners in the Inquisition’s jails who were attempting to gain the officials’ goodwill for their own trials.²⁷ This is the case, for example, of Jaime Paxarico. He was imprisoned because witnesses denounced him as an alfaquí who could read the Qur’an, and read it aloud to other Moriscos. While in prison, a book belonging to another defendant was brought to his cell for him to evaluate or calificar. It was a book painted in green, red and black, and Paxarico certified that it was a Qur’an. We have other cases in which Inquisition interpreters were able to determine if a book in Arabic  BNE MS 2076. I am grateful to Juan Pablo Arias, who is studying this document, for the reference.  Ana Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores de árabe en la Inquisición valenciana (1565 – 1609),” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos 21 (1981); Gilbert, In Good Faith, 177.  Labarta, “Inventario de los documentos árabes,” 74. Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores,” 115 – 16.  García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain, 227– 29.  Labarta, “Notas sobre algunos traductores.”

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was religious or not. When the Valencian Morisco physician Miguel Xeb was found with an Arabic book, Jerónimo Mur evaluated it for the Inquisition and certified that it was a copy of the Al-Urjūza fi-l-Ṭibb of Ibn Sīnā (Avicena). In 1566, the archbishop of Valencia, Martín Pérez de Ayala, granted Xeb permission to continue using the book.²⁸ In 1608 another Morisco, probably a relative, also named Miguel Xeb, was imprisoned by the Inquisition after being accused of attending Qur’an reading sessions. As with Paxarico, an Arabic text that had been confiscated from another Morisco, Gaspar Febrer, was brought to Xeb’s cell. He certified that it was a marriage contract stipulating a dowry (carta de dote). This is also the case of the alfaquí Adam Xubich,²⁹ charged in 1532 with bringing books over from Algiers and of trying to recover for himself the books of the deceased alfaquí Yaḥyā Moroni. In 1543 Xubich received a copy of the Gospels in Arabic sent by Antonio Ramírez de Haro, bishop of Calahorra. This was the same version of the Arabic Gospels that was lent to Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, the author of a famous Antialcorano, by the Valencian inquisitors. The collaboration and mediation between Morisco translators, inquisitors and polemicists was a dangerous one —dangerous for the Moriscos performing this task. Bartolomé Dorador was the author of an Arabic catechism written at the request of Martín Pérez de Ayala during his tenure as bishop of Guadix (1548 – 60). Dorador involved himself in translation projects that would help missionary and Inquisitorial programs. During this activity he denounced another Morisco who was helping him, Diego Çaybon, for inducing him, Dorador, to buy a Qur’an, which, according to Çaybon, was God’s book: On Sunday, Saint Gerome’s day and the last day of September, said Moor came to my house and we discussed many things, and he told me to procure the Alcorán, which was the book of God and his words, and that God had made it and given it to Muḥammad.³⁰

We can infer, therefore, that the Inquisition in most cases managed to determine whether or not a book was a Qur’an, or rather we can be sure that, at the very least, the Holy Office had a keen interest in detecting which Arabic books were Qur’ans, even if other books were equally suspicious and indicative of Islamism. Indeed, this was due to the fact that the possession of a Qur’an was a fair

 Labarta, “Nota sobre algunos traductores,” 117. Gilbert, In Good Faith, 178.  Gilbert, In Good Faith, 180 – 81.  “Domingo, día de San Hierónimo postrero día de septiembre vino este dicho moro a mi casa i tratamos en muchas cosas que me dixo fue que procurase el Alcorán que era el libro de Dios i palabras suias i que Dios lo avía hecho i se lo avía dado a Mahoma”; Gilbert, In Good Faith, 159.

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indicator that the owner might be an alfaquí and act as a teacher and religious leader. For the Inquisition, the alfaquíes were the relevant target.

4 Teaching, Reading Aloud and Explaining: The Role of the Alfaquíes In the Morisco period, these alfaquíes were no longer fuqahā’ in the classical sense of the term, but men with a grounding in reading and writing who had access to legal and religious works. The alfaquíes were teachers and transmitters of various forms of knowledge to relatives, friends or neighbors, and their knowledge and wisdom were recognized and acknowledged within the community.³¹ An extensive semi-clandestine network of cultural transmission took shape in the mid-sixteenth century which can be well traced through the Inquisition records. The Inquisition was particularly harsh against the alfaquíes: the different tribunals were on the lookout for them as dogmatizadores, and were quick to act on any evidence or suspicion that they gathered around them small communities or groups of people in what the Inquisition referred to as complicidades (accomplices) or juntas. The Council of the Inquisition had specific instructions about what to do with alfaquíes and how they deserved harsher penalties, since the staying power of the secta depended on their role.³² Alfaquíes were the ones who could read out passages from the Qur’an to an illiterate audience, and they generally had learned the Qur’an by heart. The importance of the alfaquíes and their efforts to have their coreligionists memorize the Qur’an is the object of Pablo Roza and Adrián Rodríguez’s contribution to this volume, and therefore I will not delve further into this aspect of learning by heart and memorizing the Qur’an. Morisco populations were mainly rural and, like their Christian contemporaries, a high percentage of them were illiterate. Statements made to all the Inquisition tribunals provide ample proof of this act of reading aloud texts which were translated and interpreted in the moment, as they were being read out. The importance of oral recitation, of hearing the holy text read out loud, was on par with the materiality of the book itself, which was also cherished and coveted.

 Kathryn A. Miller, Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).  AHN, Inquisición, Libro 1229, fol.199 “Motivos para relaxar un morisco” “conviene que los alfaquíes sean condenados con rigor porque de otra manera no se puede esperar que en muchos tiempos cese la dicha secta”.

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One example of an alfaquí and his complicidades is provided by Juan de Hinestrosa, of Daimiel.³³ He is said to have met other Moriscos “in a certain gathering place where they read aloud a Moorish book written in the Arabic language containing prayers of the Moors […] and the person who read it out explained in Spanish what was written in Arabic in said book.” Or, as another witness declared, many distinguished people, New Christians who were Moors and descendants of those whom said Lope de Hinestrosa knew well, gathered together, while another person read out to them from a book of the Alcorán and from other books of the sect of Muḥammad which were written in the script of the Moors, all of which was done with the doors of his home locked and even with a guard at the door so that no one but those people they desired could enter [… And t]he person who read aloud then explained the text in the Castilian language.

The people who attended these gatherings were also sought out and tried by the Inquisition: such is the case of Brianda Suárez, tried in Toledo in 1546 – 47, who participated in meetings of the same kind as those just described. Alfaquíes could be found in any town in Valencia³⁴ or Aragon, but also throughout Castile: any place with a significant Morisco population. In Valencia we find, for example, Miguel Polopí, whose trial documents are particularly interesting because they contain two confiscated booklets in Arabic that contain fragments of the Qur’an. He knew how to read and write in Arabic, his children had Arabic names, and he was circumcised.³⁵ In Castile, there is, to name but one, the case of Mateo Pérez, from Daimiel, could read Arabic and had an Arabic Qur’an, which he read and translated to his friends in secret. In 1541 in Daimiel, Juana López attended gatherings “where a book of the Alcorán, written in the Moorish language, was read, about the law [and] precepts of Muḥammad, and the one reading said book read it out loud in the Castilian language.”³⁶ In other words, it was written in Arabic, but the reader translated it out loud into Spanish for the benefit of the audience. Fernando de Mendoza y Escobar, a Morisco from Daimiel, used to read the Qur’an to others and trasladarlo. ³⁷

 Miller, Guardians of Islam. AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 3205, exp. 2.  The existence of alfaquíes in almost every locality in Valencia has been so well documented by the work of Labarta and Barceló that I will not pursue it here; Carmen Barceló and Ana Labarta, Archivos moriscos. Textos árabes de la minoría islámica valenciana 1401 – 1608 (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2009).  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 554, exp. 6.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 196, exp. 19 and Leg. 195, exp. 4.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 1953, exp. 31, fol. 20r–20v.

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The alfaquí of Almagro in 1602, Martín de Jaén, was arrested, and in his home the authorities found various books and papers in Arabic. He had a Qur’an, and brought people together to read and explain it to them.³⁸ One of the loose papers confiscated from him was an alphabet used to teach pupils how to read and write in Arabic, and, based on the trial proceedings, other Arabic papers appear to have included grammar exercises. Several Moriscos from Almagro were tried for having taken part in these Qur’an readings organized by Martín de Jaén, among them husband and wife Luis Hernández and Isabel Fernández, residents of Almagro, who were accused and sentenced for gathering at the alfaquí’s home alongside other Moriscos in order to have the Qur’an read to them. In Almagro, Martín de Jaén also had another interlocutor with whom he would meet, and who in turn owned his own copy of the Qur’an, and from time to time would take part alongside the alfaquí in reading and commenting on the Qur’an for the Moriscos of Almagro. This second man was Hernando de Palma,³⁹ whom the local Moriscos referred to as el bendito (the blessed). Palma could understand and write Arabic, and in turn taught others to write it. Jaén and Palma appeared together in a 1602 auto-da-fé in Toledo, and were burned at the stake. Also in Almagro, Miguel Ruíz de Mendoza was arrested when a young woman testified that in his house he had papers written in Arabic “that, once translated, appeared to be the Alcorán of Muḥammad,” and that he would gather to read them with other Moriscos.⁴⁰ He was ultimately sentenced to death. In 1594, several Moriscos of Almagro were tried and sentenced for having a Qur’an and gathering with their neighbors to read it. Such is the case of Luis Hernández and his wife Isabel,⁴¹ and a whole group of Moriscos including Luciana and Isabel de Nájera, and her husband Alonso de Mendoza.⁴² But lets continue with other alfaquíes. Juan de Vargas, from Seville, was accused in 1580 of being an alfaquí. He had a Qur’an and taught it to many people. In his house he had a room that served as a mosque and was visited by many Moriscos, several of whom also appear in the Inquisition records.⁴³

 Julio Sierra, Procesos en la Inquisición de Toledo (1575 – 1610): Manuscrito de Halle (Madrid: Trotta, 2006), 152, 547.  Sierra, Procesos en la Inquisición, 547.  Sierra, Procesos en la Inquisición, 546.  Sierra, Procesos en la Inquisición, 541.  Sierra, Procesos en la Inquisición, 544.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2075, exp. 13.

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Another important case, this time from the tribunal of Llerena in Extremadura, was a thirty-four-year-old alfaquí named Juan López Uleyles Haleb, one of the group from Granada that had been resettled in Pastrana and formed a network around him, a complicidad, before later settling in Extremadura. No fewer than thirty-three witnesses testified that he taught Islam in Mérida, through preaching and with books that he owned. He taught the precepts and duties of the religion and explicated its finer points, charging each head of household one-fortieth of his assets, in addition to performing Muslim marriages. Although he firmly denied possessing Arabic books, it was found that he had buried five of them in a garden: they were damaged by dampness, but they clearly contained Arabic writing, and one of his pupils had thrown two more into the Guadiana river before his arrest. Juan López Uleyles was tortured repeatedly and accused other Moriscos from Mérida, Trujillo, Pastrana, and Zafra, but even then did not reveal all he knew (he was deemed negativo, i. e. “unrepentant”). He was sentenced to death and, when already tied to the stake, in the presence of a Theatine monk and a scribe, recanted almost everything that he had confessed under torture, before being burned alive. Also from Granada was Luis de Castro, an alfaquí. In 1584 he was tried in Murcia, where he had settled, on the accusation of reading aloud and explaining the Qur’an to a whole complicidad. In the end, fourteen people were put in jail for participating in these reading sessions.⁴⁴ A further significant figure is Gaspar de Don Juan, a Morisco born in Valladolid who settled in Segovia, and was fifty-six years of age at the time of his arrest. In his auto-da-fé on July 6, 1597 there were also two Moriscos from Villafeliche (Zaragoza), a village close to Calatayud and to the frontier with Castile; at least one of these two was of Granadan origin.⁴⁵ Their story was as follows: Gaspar had welcomed into his house some Aragonese Moriscos with whom he discussed religious matters. As he told the inquisitors, these conversations “had confused his mind”: the men had informed him that in following Christianity he had “strayed from the path,” and that he “should believe in the sect of Muḥammad.” Hoping to learn more about Islam, he had asked them to send him someone who could teach him and could bring him “the book”, i. e. the Qur’an.⁴⁶ As late as 1606 there was an auto-da-fé in Granada in which a significant number of Moriscos appeared.⁴⁷ Although by this period Granada is usually  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2022, exp. 14.  Sierra, Procesos en la Inquisición, 456 – 57.  Sierra, Procesos en la Inquisición, 457.  María Isabel Pérez de Colosía Rodríguez, “El Auto de Fe de 1606,” Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie IV, Historia Moderna 2, no. 7– 2 (1994). I am grateful to Aaron Stamper for bringing this ar-

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thought of as having already deported all of its Moriscos, this auto-da-fé demonstrates that significant numbers remained in Baza, Caniles and Granada proper. Most of them were the followers of the alfaquí and dogmatizador Ambrosio Ruiz. More than thirty witnesses had testified that he read aloud and explained the Qur’an to his congregation. His wife, likewise condemned in the same autoda-fé, also taught how to fast and to perform various ceremonies.⁴⁸ In the same year we have other Moriscos reading the Qur’an to groups of people or juntas: Juan Martín de Santa Cruz, a shoemaker from Andarax, who had his own Qur’an and came to Granada to join the gatherings organized by Ambrosio, or Luis de Toledo, a Granadan merchant who also had his own Qur’an.⁴⁹ We also find Miguel López Catalán, from Baza, who taught the Qur’an to others, and from whom the Inquisition confiscated several copies.⁵⁰ At the next auto-da-fé in Granada, in 1608, a man named Jerónimo de la Rúa was burned at the stake. This exector y escrivano (therefore somebody who worked for the municipality as tax collector and scribe) also possessed a Qur’an that he read to others who gathered at a special room in a certain house that they used as a mosque, and where they washed and prayed.⁵¹ As in the case of the previous auto-da-fé, many Moriscos and Moriscas were condemned for participating in such meetings at which the Qur’an was read, explained, and trasladado into Spanish.

5 Borrowing and Circulation The expulsion of the Moriscos of Granada after the War of the Alpujarras in 1570, but also the considerable number who had previously managed to flee to other regions during the war, brought a considerable number of copies of the Qur’an into circulation. This is attested, for example, in the cases tried by the Tribunal of Murcia, which borders on Granada, during the 1570s and ‘80s. Through these cases we know that Morisco homes and individuals were subjected to random searches by the justicias seculares, the civil authorities and guards, who would call in the Inquisition whenever they found books in Arabic.⁵² This is the case of Rodrigo Azcar. In 1584, “in the course of a search the secular authorities

ticle to my attention and pointing to the importance of AHN Leg 1953, which contains a mine of information about gatherings and readings of the Qur’an.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 1953, exp. 31, fols. 5v–6r.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 1953, exp. 31, fols. 13r–13v.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 1953, exp. 31, fol. 19v.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 1953, exp. 32, fol. 1r.  Abundant cases are to be found in AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2022.

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found in his possession four small books written in Arabic which were the Alcorán of Muḥammad,” or Anton Caçal: “during the course of an arrest on suspicion of robbery, the secular authorities found hidden in his house three books written in Arabic, which, once interpreted, turned out to be the Alcorán,” or Francisco Sánchez, Luis Castro and many others, all of them from Granada.⁵³ The scale of the proliferation and circulation of copies of the Qur’an throughout the Kingdom of Valencia was extraordinary. To quote the testimony of an individual arrested by the Inquisition in 1584: he has read another Alcorán belonging to Sangarrén, an inhabitant of Segorbe […] and another Alcorán belonging to Miguel Marrán —a prisoner— he has read many times, when he and the daughter and all of them lent it to him over the balcony […] and he has also read the Alcorán in other places, wherever he went, asking for it from those who had it, for it is everywhere

to which the accused added that “some know how to read and others do not, but a good Moor is proud to have it at home; and it used to be only the alfaquíes who had them all together, but now they can be found in many homes because they are inexpensive.”⁵⁴ During the 1578 trial of Salama ibn ‘Ali, an alfaquí from Yátova in Valencia, the defendant, after expressing his desire to see “the sect of Muḥammad spread and grow,” noted that he had “studied and read Arabic books for many years, and has two sacks full of them so that as an alfaquí he may teach New Christians.”⁵⁵ Contacts with Valencia are frequently mentioned in the Castilian tribunals, for example in the case of Álvaro de Córdoba, a Morisco from Granada who was tried in Toledo between 1589 and 1592 because he “had had in his possession some books of the sect of Muḥammad in which there were lists and prayers from the Alcorán, and he had read aloud from them in the presence of others of his caste.” Moriscos from Toledo were found guilty of bringing Arabic books over from Valencia.⁵⁶ They also received translated Islamic writings from this region, as well as from Aragon. In the mid 1560s, a group of Moriscos from Deza in Soria paid an alfaquí from Aragon to come to their town and tutor them in “Moorish writing” and in reading the Qur’an.⁵⁷ Various Moriscos from the village of

 AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2022, exp. 14 (1584).  Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos, 57.  Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos, Doc. 98.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 192, exp. 3.  Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca (ADC) Leg. 249, exp. 3352, fols. 48v–49r; Patrick J O’Banion, This Happened in my Presence: Moriscos, Old Christians, and the Spanish Inquisition in the Town of Deza, 1569 – 1611 (North York: University of Toronto Press, 2017), xxxiv.

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Arcos, near Deza, were tried in 1524, accused of inviting the alfaquí of Ariza, Mahomat el Monje, into their homes to organize gatherings where he would read them the Qur’an and teach them “Moorish things” (cosas de moros). They were likewise accused of giving him alms so that he could continue his work in other towns.⁵⁸ Juan Andrés, from Borja in Aragon, was apprehended by the Inquisition in Arcos, where he had arrived carrying qur’anic writings.⁵⁹ Francisco Renday, from Cuenca, was taught by alfaquíes from Valencia, who assisted him in memorizing the Qur’an.⁶⁰ In the years prior to the expulsion, covert missions transported copies of the Qur’an from place to place, or distributed new copies. Such is the case of Juan López and Francisco de Murcia, from Granada and Aragon, respectively, both of whom were living in Villafeliche, near Zaragoza. They were taking a Qur’an to Segovia, where they planned to read it to other Moriscos, when they were detained in Uceda (Guadalajara), and their Qur’an was confiscated. They were given a life sentence in Toledo.⁶¹ The Qur’ans were carried clandestinely out of Aragon, sometimes at the bottom of the baskets carried by fruit and vegetable merchants.⁶² A Qur’an, or any other book on religious matters written in Arabic, was a highly prized possession in the region of Cuenca, which shares a long border with Aragon. Luis de Córdoba, a jeweler from San Clemente, had asked another Morisco for a Qur’an in Arabic, and paid a scribe who knew how to write in Arabic to copy it for him. This same Morisco was punished by the Inquisition for possessing a polemical tract referred to in the trial as “Sermons of the Antialcorán.”⁶³ It is just one example of a genre called antialcoranes, which, although works of anti-Islamic polemics, were so replete with qur’anic quotations in translation that they were much sought after by the Moriscos. In fact, it was this subversive interest in these books that eventually landed them on the Index of Forbidden Books. Moriscos loaned each other their copies of the Qur’an, which they guarded with great respect and devotion. Alonso Ximénez was tried for having “sung and read” his copy alongside Lorenzo López.⁶⁴ Juan Pérez Mozagués, a Morisco from Toledo executed in effigy, had a Qur’an that had cost him thirty ducats (a hefty sum, meaning it must have been a fine copy), along with other books that

      

ADC, Leg. 88 no. 1239; Leg. 89 nos. 1300 and 1307; Leg. 91 no. 1330. ADC, Leg. 208 no. 2402. ADC, Leg. 236 no. 3056. Sierra, Procesos de la Inquisición, 152. ADC, Leg. 377, no. 5342. ADC, Leg. 356, no. 5066. Sierra, Procesos de la Inquisición, 153.

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Moriscos in his close circle had hidden for him.⁶⁵ Juan de Molina, a Morisco from Granada who lived in Toledo, where he was tried in 1594, was also accused of having an Alcorán that he read with another two Moriscos.⁶⁶ In Catalonia, the very year of the mass expulsion, an alfaquí hiding in a Morisco house read passages of the Qur’an at night before an audience gathered there. In Segorbe in 1605, on Friday nights the Moriscos would gather “where the alfaquí Miguel Gavany read the Alcorán.”⁶⁷ There seems to have been an increase in the production of Qur’ans in the years just before the expulsion, and even in the years just after. After the expulsion, in Miravete (Teruel), in the house of the expelled Moriscos Cabosa and Roig, parchments and books in Arabic characters turned up “that were said to be the Alcorán.” According to Aznar Cardona, when the Aragonese Moriscos were expelled, they left behind many of these volumes, to the extent that that “books of their sect and their rites and superstitions —there is a bottomless sea of these things. In every house, in every nook and cranny, we have found them, even primers and alphabets for children, with the commandments of Muḥammad written in rhyme, along with all the other heresies of their venomous doctrine.”⁶⁸ Such was also the case of Hornachos in Extremadura, where many Muslim religious books, Qur’ans elaborately signed with red and blue letters, with curious paints and characters that, being a natural part of their customs, were seen by the Old Christians as proof of their perjuries and excesses, and more than a few of them believed them to be works of witchcraft and spells.⁶⁹

6 Copying the Qur’an Copying the Holy Book was for these Aragonese, Granadan and Valencian scribes an act of worship. We have a small corpus of Qur’ans that are quite lavish and well-decorated manuscripts, showing the patronage of wealthy families and

 Sierra, Procesos de la Inquisición, 437 (auto-da-fé, 1595).  Sierra, Procesos de la Inquisición, 427.  Louis Cardaillac, Moriscos y cristianos: un enfrentamiento polémico (1492 – 1640) (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1979), 75 – 76.  Pedro Aznar Cardona, Expulsión justificada de los Moriscos españoles, y suma de las excelencias Christianas de nuestro Rey Don Felipe el Cathólico Tercero deste nombre (Huesca: Pedro Cabarte, 1612), vol. I, 102.  Florencio Janer, Condición social de los moriscos de España. Causas de su expulsión, y consecuencias que esta produjo en el orden económico y político (Sevilla: Espuela de Plata, 2006), 117.

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the existence of copyists, calligraphers and illustrators, their access to fine paper and ink, etc. It was also an act of worship to possess a copy of the Qur’an or any fragment of it —so much so that Juan Andrés, the author of the polemical Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética, accuses one of his Muslim interlocutors of holding the Qur’an “in such esteem that you kiss it when you take it into your hands and you swear by it, and you mistake it for God.”⁷⁰ There is frequent and clear evidence in the Inquisition records of how much the copies of the Qur’an were deeply prized by their owners, for whom they had an added emotional value: they touched them, kissed them, carried them close about their person or in their clothing, and often kept them under their mattresses, and were deeply upset when these books were confiscated from them. Such was the case of Francisco de la Guerra, a Morisco from Osuna, who was found in possession of a Qur’an and tried to recover it by bribing an Inquisition official, whom he also sought to persuade not to file a report on the finding.⁷¹ Another inhabitant of Osuna, Alonso de Madrid, had a book in Arabic taken from him, and was deeply troubled by the confiscation. Inquisition experts later determined it was the “Alcorán of Muḥammad.”⁷² There were also many cases among women, most of whom were illiterate. One example is the case of Catalina Mandarán:⁷³ a neighbor saw her leaving her home on an errand carrying a bundle beneath her shawl. And going after her [he saw that] she reached out with her hand to pass the bundle on to another Morisco woman. And not being able to do so, she hid it under her skirts. And taking it from her with great force and in the face of great resistance he saw that it was a book written in Arabic.

Or there was the case of Ángela Mayor, an inhabitant of Elda⁷⁴ who had placed in her bed, beneath the mattress, a little book like a book of hours, and she tried to hide it and keep it from sight, and then they took it from her and saw that it was written in Arabic … and because she cried and protested so much, they gave it back to her and then the priests came and took it from her and having found out that said book contained prayers taken from the Alcorán of Muḥammad, she was taken prisoner.

 Teresa Soto González and Katarzyna Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García,” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 219.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2075, exp. 14.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2075, exp. 15.  AHN, Inquisición, Libro 938, fol. 263r.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2022, exp. 9.

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In a separate case, this time from Granada in 1664, Isabel de Figueroa was declared an accomplice of her servant Juan Restán because she had hidden for him a large number of Arabic books.⁷⁵

7 Talismans The Arabic language, especially in its written form, acquired a talismanic power, such that Moriscos regarded the revealed written Word as their best protection. A very large number of trial records make reference to the possession by Moriscos of papers or small fragments written in Arabic and containing cédulas (sheets) or nóminas (amulets/lists), often described in trials with the Arabic loanword erce or herce (Ar. ḥirz, “amulet”). These were amulets or talismans containing an aya from the Qur’an together with magical tables, signs or symbols which had various protective, preventive or curative properties. They were generally wrapped in a small piece of waxed cloth like a scapulary and kept close to the body, under the arm, or sewn into the skirts of women. Ana Labarta has analysed the significant collection of amulets gathered for the trials of Valencian Moriscos, but references to them abound in the records of the Inquisition tribunals of every region.⁷⁶ Moriscos, and especially Morisco women, put up tremendous resistance whenever Inquisition officials tried to prise such amulets from them. For example, there was the woman called Beatriz Zahori who was found to be carrying a piece of writing in her clothing and who defended herself vigorously against attempts to take it from her, although she later alleged “that she was not defending the piece of paper but was angry with the man because he put his hands on her breasts, and being an unmarried woman she took this as an affront.” When she was eventually deprived of the text “she became overwhelmed with grief and crying.” In almost every case where an amulet was discovered and confiscated, the owner wept, fainted, struggled and fought, showing signs of extreme pain and consternation. These signs of pain were carefully recorded by the officials of the Inquisition as proof of the importance the culprit conceded to these texts, such that afterwards they could not allege in their defense that they did not belong to them or that they did not know they were there. The woman in this case, as in many others, was in fact illiterate. The case of Angela Morrut of Albalat de Villarrasa is similar. In 1586 they found on her a “a canvas amulet [nómina] tied with long strings.” The witness

 AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 2022, exp. 72.  Labarta, “Inventario de los documentos.”

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wrenched it away from her, and she fought fiercely with him to try to grab it back. While doing so, a small book that she was hiding under her arm fell to the floor and, in an attempt to cover it up, she quickly tore off her skirt and dropped it on the book, while at the same time removing her shirt so as to distract the witness with her sudden nudity. To no avail. The interpreter Jerónimo de Mur was called in and testified that the book that had fallen to the floor and was covered by Ángela’s skirt was a part (cuarto) of the Qur’an.⁷⁷ There are also instances of men possessing and wearing these erces, among them Pedro Pedraza, a small merchant who in 1581 was passing through Elche when the guards searched his belongings to see if he was carrying undeclared goods, and “they found inside the lining of his smock an amulet, inside of which was a paper written in Arabic […]. He made a great display of emotion when it was found.”⁷⁸ Likewise, Juan Martín, from Málaga, had “hidden about his person, as nóminas” papers containing various suras.⁷⁹ The function of the written word was not dependent on its being read and understood, but was instead related to the power which the believer assigned to it. The word did not necessarily form part of an act of communication, but took on a magical or talismanic character, and was used as such. This magical function of writing was not independent from the work of the alfaquíes, who were generally the makers of such talismans. Thus, in Arévalo, Francisco Hernández was said to have given a Morisco woman a whole series of Arabic books in his possession with instructions to keep them safe, at a time when Inquisition officials were about to seize them from him. Francisco Hernández had once argued with another Morisco about fasting regulations and “he said that he had the book of the Qur’an at home and that he was learning to be an alfaquí in his home town and that he knew more about that law in his sleep than [St.] Augustine did when awake.” We do not know what his home town was, but when Francisco left the Inquisition jail, he went to Arévalo to ask the converts for help in paying the fine imposed upon him by this Holy Office, and they helped him as best they could, and the said Francisco gave certain cédulas in Arabic to many of the converts of Arévalo. The accused says he does not remember the name of these cédulas in Arabic […]. They are good for fevers and other illnesses which people have.⁸⁰

   

AHN, AHN, AHN, AHN,

Inquisición, Inquisición, Inquisición, Inquisición,

Leg. 553, exp. 13. Leg. 2022, exp. 11. Leg. 2075, exp. 14. Leg. 192, exp. 15.

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Excerpts from the holy book were also used in medicine, either diluted in water to be ingested by the ill person, or carried close to their body for a time. The suras had an important talismanic power but also a healing power. Diego de Urrea translated several of these healing suras, for example those confiscated from the Morisco physician Román Ramírez in Cuenca,⁸¹ as well as those (five in all) included in the trial of Francisco de Córdoba, from Toledo, whose suras are transcribed and translated in Urrea’s own hand. Francisco gave them to his patients to drink diluted in water or in wine.⁸² I will not go into this aspect here, but suffice it to mention Aḥmad ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī and how he describes the cures he carried out using bits of paper with verses of the Qur’an written on them, as an example of the uses of the holy text in Morisco medicine.⁸³ One last, important example of the devotion for and attribution of healing powers to the revealed Word is the use of coins from Nasrid Granada as talismans, as in the fascinating case of the Granadan Morisco Bartolomé Sánchez of Ocaña, tried in 1596 – 97.⁸⁴ His trial is connected with the trials of other Moriscos from Ocaña, among them his own wife Petronila Sánchez, who required an Arabic interpreter for her interrogations since she did not speak Spanish well enough. Bartolomé had several Arabic coins, one of which he had been wearing as a pendant, and which the Inquisition forwarded to Diego de Urrea at the University of Alcalá for him to interpret and classify. Urrea wrote a very interesting report on these coins, wherein he shows that the one that Bartolomé was wearing around his neck was a Nasrid coin minted in Granada by sultan ʿAlī ibn Saʿd. Inscribed on it, and duly translated by Urrea, were two fragments of sura Q. 3:200. In his notes, Urrea explains that “the Moors often wear these coins around their throats out of devotion to the king who minted them and to the words from the Alcorán that they contain.”⁸⁵

8 Translation All of this pertains to texts in Arabic or in Arabic script. But Inquisition documents also reflect, as we have seen, the question of translation, of rendering

 ADC, Leg. 343, no. 4876.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 192, exp. 4.  P. Sj van Koningsveld, Qasim al-Samarrai, and Gerard A. Wiegers, eds., Aḥmad b. Qâsim alḤajarî. Kitab Nasir al-Din ‘ala ’l-Qawm al-Kafirin (Madrid: CSIC, 2015), 254.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 197, exp. 13.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 197, exp. 13, fol. 31. For a complete analysis of this case see, Mercedes García-Arenal, “Diego de Urrea translator of the Qur’an” (forthcoming).

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the qur’anic text into the vernacular, of using the text for prayers that could be readily understood by the believer. This need included not only the holy book, but also texts on law and rituals. I will cite some examples from the Tribunal of Toledo: in the trial records of one Juan de Sosa there is a letter sent by a Morisco from Valencia which relates miracles performed by Muḥammad, and explains the hours at which the five daily prayers were to be said. The letter was written in Spanish, and many copies of it were made for circulation among the New Christians of Arévalo.⁸⁶ Juan de Sosa was the main figure touting as a prophet a boy named Agustín de Ribera, from the same town of Arévalo, who was said to have visions. Juan de Sosa promised his followers that the boy would provide them with a Castilian version of the Qur’an, and they had meetings at night where they waited “for an angel who was to bring them a book of the Qur’an that had been translated.”⁸⁷ Then there is the case of Antonio Casado, who had a book in which “on one side the prayer was written in Moorish and on the other it was written and translated into Romance [Castilian in this case], and in this manner all the prayers in said book were laid out.” Mariana, the wife of Íñigo Franco, a Morisco from Guadalajara, had a translation of the Qur’an that was given to her by a Morisco from Aragon. Unfortunately, not much is said in the trial about this translation.⁸⁸ These Castilian Moriscos, who had no real knowledge of the Arabic language, were assailed by doubts about whether to pray in Arabic or in Spanish. In the trial of the aforementioned Juan de Sosa, the accused said that he had asked if it was better for the New Christians who met him in Toledo to pray in Arabic or in Spanish (although he himself apparently did speak Arabic) and he was told that they ought not to pray in Arabic but in Spanish because if they prayed in Arabic, as they did not understand what they were saying, they could have no devotion in what they were praying and would be thinking of other things, and the said Juan de Sosa asked what prayers they should say, and was told that they should praise the Lord as well as they could, and the said Juan de Sosa, with the belief that he has had and continues to have as a Moor, has always said and continues to say his Moorish prayers in Arabic.

This statement is complemented by another made by Jerónimo de Rojas, a Morisco from Toledo burned at the stake in 1604, who said that the Christians were deceived by their priests and councils, who used Latin, which was understood  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 197, exp. 6.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 192, exp. 15. García-Arenal, “A Catholic Muslim Prophet: Agustín de Ribera, the Boy ‘Who Saw Angels’,” Common Knowledge 18, n.o 2 (2012), 284.  AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 195, exp. 17.

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by no one —a statement which implicitly includes the need to understand the holy texts. In any case, the process of translation (traslado, as it is expressed in the records) was a constant one. This is confirmed by the same trial of Jerónimo de Rojas, who had told another New Christian that he would like to know whether in Toledo he would find very wise men who would sell him books translated into Castilian so that he could understand them all very well, and, when he asked if they would be clearly written, he was told that it depended on how much money he could pay, and that there are very learned and wise men who revise them, and these men will explain to him all that the other has written.

He even mentions one Gaspar de Soria “who was able to give him very good books from his sect translated into Spanish.”⁸⁹ The trial of Jerónimo de Rojas reveals the respect and care with which alfaquíes and “learned persons” were sought out and treated both in Valencia and Granada. Rojas had heard “news of a great alfaquí in Málaga or in a small town nearby, whose name is García and who knows a great deal about the law and has large books.” And another witness at the same trial said that “Rojas had been given the news that a great alfaquí had been condemned to row in the galleys and was attempting with the assistance of the merchants” —Moriscos of Toledo— “to raise 500 ducats, for he could not be ransomed for less.” Teaching the Qur’an was often carried out privately by fathers, often after the child knew how to read and write in Spanish, or even knew parts of the Qur’an in Spanish. We have the important testimony of Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ who, from his exile in Tunis, tells how after going to school and learning to read and write Spanish, his father, without even his mother knowing, used to teach him to read and write in Arabic, showing him the script on a very clean and polished board that they washed afterwards, much as Moroccan children today learn the Qur’an by heart using a polished piece of wood that can be repeatedly washed clean.⁹⁰ Al-Ḥajarī, another Morisco in exile, tells us how he learned the Qur’an by heart in Spanish before he had learned Arabic, and then read the text in the original:

 Mercedes García-Arenal and Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, The Inquisition Trial of Jerónimo de Rojas, a Morisco of Toledo (1601 – 1603), (Leiden: Brill, 2022).  Miguel de Epalza and Ramón Petit, Recueil d’études sur les Moriscos andalous en Tunisie (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura, 1973), 117– 18.

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I say: one of the graces God (bestowed) upon me is that He created in me the love to learn the Qur’an in Arabic after I had spent five years to learn it in Spanish. After I had reached the age of ten, a pious man came to our home, who was a cousin of my father and who knew to read Arabic. I asked him to write for me the letters of the alphabet, which he did. I learnt the letters quickly. My parents were afraid that it might become known that I was reading Arabic because of the hard sentences the Christians pronounced against the person who was known to be occupied with the books of the Muslims.⁹¹

This need expressed by al-Ḥajarī can be connected to the commentary of Joan Martí de Figuerola, saying that the Muslims learn the Qur’an by heart but do not understand it, as well as the need, of which we have recorded so many cases, for the Qur’an to be read aloud and commented and interpreted in Spanish.⁹² Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón records that in Valencia all the alfaquíes know the Qur’an de coro (by heart) but holds that they do not actually understand it. Valencia in this period remained an Arabic-speaking region, unlike Aragon and Castile.⁹³ There was, then, a constant need for translation. But the references we find in the Castilian trials are to translations into Spanish written in Latin script. There is the famous example of the aforementioned Corán de Toledo,⁹⁴ in which the copyist apologizes for writing the Qur’an “in Christian letters”, stating that he had been loaned a Qur’an in Castilian written in Arabic script and, having little time before he had to return it to its owner, he decided to write it in Spanish or Latin script because he could write this script more quickly. The need not just for translated texts, but ones written in Latin script, seems to have been particularly urgent in Castile, an area from which very few Aljamiado texts have come down to us. A particularly interesting case in this respect is that of Jerónimo Pintor de Arcos. He lived in the mid 1560s in Arcos but also in Calanda in Aragon, where witnesses said, in 1568, that everybody “lived openly as Moors.” He had a room in his house in Arcos that he kept closed off; it was removed from the rest of the house and empty, with only a mat and some boards by the door where he would leave his shoes as he entered. In a larder in this room they found several “chapters” of the Qur’an in Romance translation, according to

 Koningsveld, Samarrai, and Wiegers, Kitâb Nâṣir Al-Dîn, 255.  Soto González and Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion,” 223.  “Los alfaquíes moros, los quales saben bien de coro el alcorán”; Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano; Diálogos cristianos: conversión y evangelización de moriscos, ed. Francisco Pons Fuster (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2000), 87.  Toledo, Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha, MS 235; López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo.

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the charges made against him by the Inquisition in Cuenca.⁹⁵ The two sewn booklets, totaling seventeen well-worn pages, are included in the trial materials, written in Spanish in Latin script, except the name of Allāh, which appears in Arabic (Each booklet has been edited, along with a linguistic analysis, in respective articles by L.P. Harvey).⁹⁶ The two booklets are written by different hands, both with good Spanish handwriting. The first is a calendar or religious manual starting with the month of Ramadan and listing all the feasts in each month of the Islamic year, and some prayers to be said on those occasions, in phonological transcription from Arabic. The second contains an apocryphal legend of Ibrahim along with hadith-related material. It is the exact same story contained in two manuscripts, one Aljamiado and one Arabic, held at the BNE, as Harvey has shown. It is of great interest that we have the legend of Ibrahim and the frog in the three versions —Spanish with Spanish script, Aljamiado and Arabic— which indicates three contemporary layers of reading among the Moriscos. Both booklets are extremely interesting. We do not know if they were copied from Aljamiado material or translated from Arabic. In any case, it is no wonder that the inquisitors thought it was the Qur’an, because both are written in a Castilian that uses the same vocabulary and turns of phrase as Morisco translations of the Qur’an, so that if read superficially it does indeed sound like a Morisco Qur’an, with phrases like el más piadoso de los piadosos, que tu eres sobre toda cosa poderoso, verbs like halecar, and many syntax calques (sobre tu arrizque m’esdayuno). The Moriscos, as I have said, were undertaking the translation of their scriptures into the vernacular. Parting from this fact, Harvey posits the very suggestive idea that “[a] new translation of the scriptures gives to a community the linguistic self-confidence to develop their vernacular as a means of general expression.”⁹⁷ The relationship between the vernacular and translations of holy texts is an interesting phenomenon which has been studied in depth for the contemporaneous translation in Reformation Europe of the Christian scriptures into the vernacular, and how those translations impacted the development and reinforcement of said vernaculars as full-fledged languages. But for the moment, a detailed analysis of these two small booklets and other Morisco material would help us determine the extent to which the “creation” of a Morisco idiom was

  n.o 

ADC, Leg. 237, no. 3072. Leonard P. Harvey, “Leyenda morisca de Ibrahim,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 30, 1 (1981). Harvey “Leyenda morisca,” 82.

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based or depended on the contemporary translations of the Qur’an made by their own alfaquíes. ⁹⁸ This case of Jerónimo Pintor is also indicative of how Inquisition trial documents provide information on the qur’anic materials used by the Moriscos alongside or together with the possession of a Qur’an. Of interest to us in these domains is a detail that the anonymous betrayer attributes to Lorenzo López, who we have already seen on trial alongside Alonso Ximénez. He reports that Lorenzo, in his presence and that of other Moriscos there, had been “singing and playing [instruments],” and then someone had read aloud, from an Arabic book, Islamic versions of two incidents in the life of Jesus: his birth and his crucifixion. In the first one Mary, ashamed of her pregnancy, went out into the desert, and on feeling the first birth pangs hugged a dead tree which at once grew green, blossomed, and bore dates. In the second narrative, Jesus fled his crucifixion and survived, while a double replaced him on the cross. The denouncer claimed that Lorenzo López, pointing to a place in the book, had asked, “Do you see it there, the error of the Christians? That is what sends them to hell.” The two tales are versions of qur’anic stories that circulated widely among the Moriscos, who were strongly drawn to the beautiful narrative of Jesus’s birth and how the Virgin, in labor and afraid, crept into the hollow of a tree or a dry date palm, where the child was born; the palm immediately brought forth dates, even though it was winter. The tale, a mainstay of Aljamiado literature, is based on the Qur’an,⁹⁹ but was embellished by commentators, particularly al-Zamakhsharī, who was much read by the Moriscos.¹⁰⁰ We should note that Jerónimo de Rojas (mentioned above) cited the same story in one of his statements before the inquisitors. The second narrative involves the double who sacrificed his own life in Jesus’s place, something to which Rojas also refers. The story makes frequent appearances in Inquisition trials and in Morisco anti-Christian polemical treatises, especially by contemporaries of Rojas such as al-Ḥajarī. Lorenzo Pérez was part of the group of Toledan Moriscos that used to meet at the house of Álvaro de Córdoba, who had obtained from a Valencian a book in Ara-

 Leonard P. Harvey, “The Terminology of Two Hitherto Unpublished Morisco Calendar Texts,” in Actes de la première table ronde du CIEM sur la littérature aljamiada-morisque. Hybridisme linguistique et univers discursif, ed. Abdeljelil Temimi (Tunis: Centre de Recherches en Bibliotheconomie et Sciences de l’Information, 1986).  Q. 19:22– 26, Sura Maryam: Arthur J. Arberry, trans., The Koran Interpreted (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 332.  Francisco Guillén Robles, Leyendas moriscas, sacadas de varios manuscritos existentes en las bibliotecas Nacional, Real y de P. de Gayangos, 3 vols. (Madrid: Arrayán, 1993), vol. 1: 126 – 27. Among many other references see Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano.

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bic called Repertorio, which he would often read at home with his companions. He wanted a translation of it, so Luis de Guzmán gave the book to Lorenzo Pérez —with such bad timing that two royal constables entered the house and caught Pérez with the book in his hands. After a struggle he was arrested and brought first before the corregidor and then before the Holy Office. We have described the importance that Moriscos placed on possessing a copy, or at least a fragment, of the Qur’an, and the evidence that this possession of Qur’ans was widespread in the territories of both the Crown of Aragon and Castille. This possession was in itself an act of worship.

9 What happened to the confiscated books? What did the Inquisition do with all these confiscated books? In many cases (in most, I would say) they were burned. Moriscos commented and resented the fate of their books, as attested by inquisitorial denunciations. As an example, the case of Francisco de Talavera, a Morisco from Guadalajara who in 1611 was accused by several witnesses of angrily declaring in public that the Inquisition had been very wrong in burning the books of the Marquis of Villena (whom I mentioned at the beginning of this essay).¹⁰¹ The long memory of what had happened to Villena’s books almost two centuries before is remarkable, even in a cultivated person as was the case of Francisco. They were also stored in places where they suffered deterioration, including the prisons of the Holy Office. Ana Labarta records the curious and significant anecdote of the Morisco prisoners Jaime Alturi and Salvador Zuncar, from whom their prison alcaide had taken a Qur’an which they had hidden under a pillow. Zuncar declared that he had picked up the Qur’an after being taken prisoner “from a corner where there are many books lying around” and as they were “rotting away in the room they passed some of the time reading from the said book.”¹⁰² On a few occasions, though not many, confiscated books were preserved or sold and went on to form part of collections in Spanish¹⁰³ and foreign libraries, as in the case with which we began this essay, of the Conde-Duque de Olivares. However, the proportion of books “saved” is very low if we consider the

 AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 198, exp. 1  Labarta, “Inventario de los documentos,” 125.  An interesting example is the half of a Qur’an (suras 1– 18) copied by a Morisco in Ciudad Real in 1596 and now kept at the library of El Escorial MS 1406 (the Derenbourg cathalogue dates it wrongly as 1558). I am grateful to Juan Pablo Arias for this reference.

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extent of ownership and circulation of books attested in Inquisition records as we have seen in this essay.

10 Hidden Libraries The Inquisition trials report discoveries of small libraries. The information can be as tantalizing as that included in the trial of García Díaz, a Morisco from Ciudad Real, tried in 1613.¹⁰⁴ García Díaz lived with his sister Lucía and his brother-inlaw Martín Alcázar in a large house “in the morería”. They were Moriscos “who had stayed behind,” and were “very Moorish and kept many Morisco friends.” A servant reported them after she saw them open a space hidden behind a door and take out an object wrapped in red cloth. Later, the servant had a look for herself, thinking that they had hidden money “from some robbery” and found instead “fourteen bound books and others unbound, all of them written in Arabic characters.” The Inquisition came to confiscate them and to arrest the Moriscos. The attorney had a cousin in Granada, whom he asked to send someone to Ciudad Real who could tell them what the books were about. The trial documents include a description of the volumes that focuses mainly on their physical characteristics. Some were bound with cardboard, with silk and gold threads, and one of them, “which looks like an Alcorán,” was kept inside a case of red cloth. There was also a leather-bound Qur’an sewn in some places with white thread. There were some small books containing only part of the Qur’an; “Another is the universal book of sayings and deeds of Muḥammad,” in other words, a hadith compendium. There was a book on Islamic law, bound in parchment, “papers in Arabic with healing formulas,” “another with sermons,” “another in white parchment containing superstitions,” “the Almagest of Ptolemy,” “a smaller book bound in parchment that, based on the interpretation, is the book of the principles and precepts of said law of Muḥammad,” “another bound in parchment that, according to the interpreter, is a book of prayers and rituals, and what Muḥammad entrusted to his son-in-law ʿAlī,” “another book bound with crimson, blue, white and brown colors, which is the Alcorán,” and “accounting papers detailing the sale of wheat.” There was also “another book bearing a copper plate written in Arabic, and a ring, also of copper, stuck to it,”¹⁰⁵ most likely a metal plate containing suras. On

 AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 192, exp. 14.  “quatorze cuerpos de libros encuadernados y otros sueltos todos escritos en caracteres árabes”; “Otro que es el libro universal de dichos y hechos de Mahoma”; “papeles en arábigo con

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the whole, it is the usual compendium we find in Morisco collections, along the lines of those found in Ocaña or in Villarrubia, and a good reflection of Morisco Islam and its main ingredients: Qur’an, hadith, laws and sermons, alongside a mixture inseparable from local religion consisting of medicine, astronomy, formulas and magic. Near Ocaña, in Villarrubia —that town in La Mancha where so many Moriscos managed to stay on after the expulsion, as studied by Trevor Dadson in his important monograph—¹⁰⁶ the demolition of a house brought to light a plastered-over larder containing four books and seven booklets (cuadernos), all written in Arabic. This took place in 1787. Also found there was an abridged Qur’an and a sort of calendar with the holidays according to the Islamic months of the year: “a bit smaller than a missal, it is bound in black sheepskin or kidskin. It contains 200 pages, many of them with writing in the margins as well, and with some of the titles of the chapters or treatises in red.”¹⁰⁷ Caches of manuscripts hidden away in old houses constitute an invaluable source. The only ones to have come down to us are those found from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century: Muro de Alcoy (Alicante), Albalat de Segart (Valencia), Ocaña, Villarrubia, Ciudad Real, Caniles (Granada), or Baza (Jaén), with the majority coming from Aragon: Ricla, Agreda, Morés, Sabiñán and Almonacid de la Sierra. The books that have been preserved are mostly those found after the Inquisition was abolished in 1834. In previous cases, such as the books of Pastrana, or of García Díaz or the alfaquíes of Borja, all we have to go on are the descriptions made at the time, usually by the Inquisition itself.

recetas para curar”; “otro de sermones”; “otro en pergamino blanco que contiene supersticiones”; “el Almagesto de Tolomeo”; “un libro más pequeño encuadernado en pergamino que conforme a la interpretación es el libro de fundamentos y preceptos de la dicha ley de Mahoma”; “otro encuadernado en pergamino que según dice el intérprete es un devocionario y ritos y lo que Mahoma dejó encomendado a Ali su yerno”; “otro libro encuadernado de labors de colores carmesí, azul, blanco y pardo que es el Alcorán”; “papeles que contienen cuentas de ventas de trigo”; “Y otro libro que contenía una placa de cobre escrita en arábigo y una sortija también de cobre pegada a ella”; AHN, Inquisición, Leg. 192, exp. 14.  Trevor J. Dadson, Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos (siglos XV-XVIII). Historia de una minoría asimilada, expulsada y reintegrada (Madrid, Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2007).  Eulogio Varela Hervias, “Descubrimiento de manuscritos arábigos en Villarrubia, en 1787,” Al-Andalus 30, no. 2 (1965).

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11 Were copies of the Qur’an also available to contemporary Christians? I also want to reflect briefly on whether copies of the Qur’an would have been available for Christians who might have been interested in it for different reasons —whether polemics, evangelization, or religious or even Orientalist knowledge. All we have said till now indicates just how difficult and risky this would have been. And we have to take into account that from 1622 a scholar who wanted to consult a book in Arabic had to have a special license issued by the Inquisition.¹⁰⁸ Clerics involved in missionary campaigns and in polemical writing did have Qur’ans, at least during the first decades of the sixteenth century. The famous archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, had one, as did Martín García, archbishop of Daroca and of Barcelona. Preachers working in the milieu of these two archbishops also had copies, and in fact wrote treatises to argue against and convert Muslims based exclusively on refuting the qur’anic text, for which reason they are known as Antialcoranes. Juan Andrés, Lope de Obregón, Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón and Martí de Figuerola all included in their texts long quotations from the Qur’an, in translation and in phonological transcription from the Arabic, or “inverse Aljamía”.¹⁰⁹ Juan Andrés, a convert from Islam, from Xátiva in Valencia, seems to have translated into Romance the whole qur’anic text for bishop Martín García, though this translation has only reached us through the quotations he includes in his Confutación. Martí de Figuerola had the help of another convert, Juan Gabriel, former alfaquí of Teruel. I want to insist on the fact that, because they included such long excerpts from the Qur’an, all the antialcoranes ended up being forbidden, and were included in the Index of 1559. Figuerola had his own Arabic Qur’an that he carried with him when he went to disputes with local Aragonese alfaquíes in the 1520s. And so, when challenging an Aragonese alfaquí to religious disputation, he tells him: “bring your Qur’an and I will bring mine” (Trahet vuestro Alcorán que yo traheré el mío). It seems that Moriscos (as we have already seen in one particular case) coveted those antialcoranes, eager to get their hands on qur’anic material wherever they could. During his dispute with Muslims on June 5, 1517, Figuerola apologizes for not having been able to come earlier, offering as an excuse that he was “busy

 Gilbert, In Good Faith.  Soto González and Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion.”

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having [a copy of] the Alcorán written.”¹¹⁰ As for his own credentials, he states that he has “been well instructed in [Islamic] history and how he [i. e. Muḥammad] was born, by one called Johan Gabriel, an alfaquí from Teruel who is now, by the grace of God, a Christian”, backing up his arguments with phrases such as, “their own Alcorán says this”, and touting that he has “looked at very closely and read [the Alcorán], and many other things that I took [with me] to dispute.”¹¹¹ And he continues: “And I took the Alcorán and began to leaf through it looking for the texts that my questions required.”¹¹² On September 20, 1517, during a dispute between an alfaquí and Martí de Figuerola, the former said to the latter: “Sir, these matters that you bring up are not in the Alcorán, and whoever wrote for you wrote wrong”, to which Figuerola responded: I did not write the Alcorán, or your books; it is your alfaquíes who have written and interpreted them. But in order to know whether these matters are true, bring your Alcorán next Friday, and I will bring mine, and we will confirm here whether what I say is true, and look, Sirs, that none of you be absent next Friday.¹¹³

The cases of Martí de Figuerola and of Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón concur with the Inquisition material presented in this essay, showing how widespread and available the Qur’an was in the territories of the Crown of Aragon (which included Valencia), even for the use of Christian polemists and clerics. After the 1540s such practices grew increasingly difficult. Evangelization methods shifted, that the importance of the indexes of forbidden books issued by both Rome and Spain draw a close connection between the history of missionary endeavors and the history of censorship. It was even more difficult for scholars, however. In a letter to theologian Jacques Latomus written from the Alhambra in 1539, the Flemish scholar Nicolas

 Guillén Robles, Leyendas moriscas, LIX “por estar algo occupado en azer escribir el alcorán.”  Guillén Robles, Leyendas moriscas, 66. “siendo bien informado de la historia y de cómo nació, por uno que se decía maestre Johan Grabiel, alfaquí que era de Teruel, y ahora, por la gracia de Dios, xpno, … su mismo alcorán se lo dize; el cual yo tengo muy bien visto y leydo, y otras muchas cosas que traya para desputar.”  Guillén Robles, Leyendas moriscas, 74 “Y yo tomé el alcorán, y empecé de cartear para buscar los textos que mis questionen tenían.”  Guillén Robles, Leyendas moriscas, 73. “Señor, estas cuestiones que vos trais no están en el Alcorán; y quien vos á escrito esso scrivió mal”; “Yo no é scrito el Alcorán, y vuestros libros, antes los an scrito y declarado alfaquíes; pero, para conocer si son verdaderas estas questiones, trahet vuestro alcorán para el viernes que viene, que yo traheré el mío, y aquí comprobaremos si es verdad lo que yo digo, y mira, Señores, no falte ninguno para el viernes que viene.”

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Cleynaerts (Clenardus) —who had come to Spain to better learn Arabic and to find books in that language— describes his endeavours to find Arabic manuscripts in Granada, among which, the Qur’an. The governor of the city, Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis of Mondéjar found him a qur’an and a slave from Tunisia who could help him read it.¹¹⁴ In his search for books and manuscripts he was helped by Mondéjar, and also as Cleynaerts himself explains, by the Bishop of Burgos and later cardinal and Inquisitor in Rome, the Dominican Fray Juan Álvarez de Toledo (who had come to Granada for the funeral of Empress Isabel in 1539) who promised to help him by getting some of the Arabic books that were in possession of the Inquisition “so that they might be more useful to me than to Vulcanus”, as Cleynaerts says. To no avail.¹¹⁵ Let us now go back to the Conde-Duque to reflect on the frustration and the danger for Christian scholars who wished to study Muslim religious texts, given the actions of the Inquisition, and its constant and efficient confiscation of such materials. The case of bibliophiles and noblemen such as Diego (brother of Luis) Hurtado de Mendoza¹¹⁶ o Juan Páez de Castro, who amassed large libraries of which Arabic manuscripts were an important part, is different from the case of clerical men and evangelizers. The former often aroused the mistrust and antagonism of the Inquisition, and in any case the Suprema had to inspect the books and issue a “Licencia” when the libraries were to be inherited, sold or bequeathed. This occurred, for example, with the splendid library of Juan Lucas Cortés in Seville, and the still more fabulous library of Hernando Colón.¹¹⁷ Hernando bequeathed his library to the Cathedral of Seville, where at the time of his death it was undervalued and improperly stored. Many of Hernando’s books were destroyed when the Inquisition inspected the library after his death, many were sold to foreign collectors, and others deteriorated because of careless handling. But throughout his life he had drawn up careful lists of his books, the price he had paid for each of them, and the method of cataloguing and organising his books and his large collection of prints. Hernando had acquired a manuscript of the Qur’an in 1510, the beauty of whose calligraphy he noted in his cata-

 Alphonse Roersch, Correspondance de Nicolas Clénard (Brussels: Académie Royal de Belgique, 1941), vol. III: 133.  Roersch, Correspondance, Vol. III: 96.  Javier Castillo-Fernández, “Hurtado de Mendoza: humanista, arabista e historiador,” El Fingidor: Revista de Cultura, Universidad de Granada 21 (2004), 25 – 27; Nemesio Morata, “Catálogo de los fondos árabes primitivos de El Escorial,” Al-Andalus 2, no. 1 (1934): 87– 182. One of the qur’ans of El Escorial, MS 1258, comes from the library of Hurtado de Mendoza.  Gregorio de Andrés, “Un erudito y bibliófilo español olvidado: Juan Lucas Cortés (1624– 1701),” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 81 (1978), 29.

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logue, though he almost certainly knew nothing of what it meant.¹¹⁸ The matter of Arabic books was “a sad case” as Bernardo de Aldrete said. Aldrete, canon of the cathedral of Córdoba and author of a famous work on the origins of the Castilian language (Del origen y principio de la lengua castellana, Rome 1606), wrote in 1623 to a colleague about Arabic books sent to the Inquisition by those who had discovered them. Specifically about the books found in Pastrana he says, “This matter of the Arabic books is a sad case, for they are so valuable […]. They must all have been scattered, if no one gathered them up to bury them together with Mawlāy Zīdān’s in El Escorial”.¹¹⁹ He was well aware of the fate that lay in store for Arabic books in Spain, whether those confiscated by the Inquisition, or even the great library of the Moroccan sultan, intercepted only to be locked away and forgotten at El Escorial. Aldrete’s correspondence (as the correspondence of Nicolas Cleynaerts) betrays the disappointment that some scholars felt on seeing how collections of Arabic works were dispersed, sold to foreign scholars or collectors, and destroyed or locked away in the Inquisition’s cellars and the royal libraries. Even today, we cannot but share this great disappointment.

Bibliography Aldrete, Bernardo José. Un epistolario de Bernardo José Aldrete (1612 – 1623). Edited by Joaquín Rodríguez Mateos. Seville: Consejería de Cultura, 2009. Álvarez Millán, Cristina. “Un Corán desconocido de D. Pascual de Gayangos en la Real Academia de la Historia.” In La memoria de los libros. Estudios sobre la historia del escrito y de la lectura en Europa y América, vol. II. Edited by Pedro M. Cátedra, 367 – 83. Salamanca: Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura, 2004. Andrés, Gregorio de. “Historia de la biblioteca del Conde duque de Olivares y descripción de sus códices.” Cuadernos bibliográficos 28 (1972): 1 – 12. Andrés, Gregorio de. “Un erudito y bibliófilo español olvidado: Juan Lucas Cortés (1624 – 1701).” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 81 (1978): 3 – 72. Arberry, Arthur J., trans. The Koran Interpreted. New York: Macmillan, 1955. Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “The last Qur’an from al-Andalus?” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 24, num. 2 (2022): 1 – 20.

 Edward Wilson-Lee, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library (London: William Collins, 2018), 132– 33.  García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain, 278 – 79; Bernardo José Aldrete, Un epistolario de Bernardo José Aldrete (1612 – 1623), ed. Joaquín Rodríguez Mateos (Seville: Consejería de Cultura, 2009), letters 67 and 68, at 215 and 219.

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Aznar Cardona, Pedro. Expulsión justificada de los moriscos españoles, y suma de las excelencias Christianas de nuestro Rey Don Felipe el Cathólico Tercero deste nombre. Huesca: Pedro Cabarte, 1612. Barceló, Carmen, and Ana Labarta. Archivos moriscos. Textos árabes de la minoría islámica valenciana 1401 – 1608. Valencia: Universitat de València, 2009. Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, Rafael. “La Inquisición ante los moriscos.” In Historia de la Inquisición en España y América. Vol. 3, Temas y problemas. Edited by Bartolomé Escandell Bonet and Joaquín Pérez Villanueva, 695 – 736. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2000. Cardaillac, Louis. Moriscos y cristianos: un enfrentamiento polémico (1492 – 1640). Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1979. Carrasco, Raphaël. “Historia de una represión: los moriscos y la Inquisición en Valencia, 1566 – 1620.” Áreas: revista internacional de ciencias sociales, no. 9 (1988): 27 – 50. Carrasco, Raphaël. “Le refus d’assimilation des Morisques: aspects politiques et culturels d’après les sources inquisitoriales.” In Les morisques et leurs temps. Edited by Louis Cardaillac, 171 – 216. Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1983. Castillo-Fernández, Javier. “Hurtado de Mendoza: humanista, arabista e historiador.” El Fingidor: Revista de Cultura, Universidad de Granada 21 (2004): 25 – 27. Dadson, Trevor J. Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos (siglos XV-XVIII): historia de una minoría asimilada, expulsada y reintegrada. Madrid Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2007. Donghi, Tulio Halperin. Un conflicto nacional: moriscos y cristianos viejos en Valencia. Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 1980. Elliott, John H. The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline. London: Yale University Press, 1986. Epalza, Miguel de and Ramón Petit. Recueil d’études sur les Moriscos andalous en Tunisie. Madrid: Dirección General de Relaciones Culturales, Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura, 1973. Escribano, J. Carlos and Ana Labarta. “Las bibliotecas de dos alfaquíes borjanos.” Anaquel de estudios árabes, no. 11 (2000): 355 – 68. Feria García, Manuel C., and Juan Pablo Arias Torres. “Un nuevo enfoque en la investigación de la documentación árabe granadina romanceada (ilustrado con dos traducciones inéditas de Bernardino Xarafí, escribano y romanceador del Reino de Granada).” Al-Qanṭara 26, no. 1 (2005): 191 – 247. Fournel-Guérin, Jaqueline. “Le livre et la civilisation écrite dans la communauté morisque aragonaise (1540 – 1620).” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, no. 15 (1979): 241 – 60. García Ivars, Flora. La represión en el tribunal inquisitorial de Granada, 1550 – 1819. Madrid: Akal, 1991. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “A Catholic Muslim Prophet: Agustín de Ribera, the Boy ‘Who Saw Angels.’” Common Knowledge 18, no. 2 (2012): 267 – 91. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “Granada as New Jerusalem: The Conversion of a City.” In Space and Conversion in Global Perspective. Edited by Giuseppe Marcocci, 15 – 43. Leiden: Brill, 2015. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “The Religious Identity of the Arabic Language and the Affair of the Lead Books of the Sacromonte of Granada.” Arabica 56, no. 6 (2009): 495 – 528.

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García-Arenal, Mercedes and Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco. The Inquisition Trial of Jerónimo de Rojas, a Morisco of Toledo (1601 – 1603). Leiden: Brill, 2022. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. “Los libros de los moriscos y los eruditos orientales.” Al-Qanṭara 31, no. 2 (2010): 611 – 46. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Gilbert, Claire M. In Good Faith: Arabic Translation and Translators in Early Modern Spain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Guillén Robles, Francisco. Leyendas moriscas, sacadas de varios manuscritos existentes en las bibliotecas Nacional, Real y de P. de Gayangos. 3 vols. Madrid: Arrayán, 1993. Harvey, Leonard P. “Leyenda Morisca de Ibrahim.” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 30, no. 1 (1981): 1 – 20. Harvey, Leonard P. “The Terminology of Two Hitherto Unpublished Morisco Calendar Texts.” In Actes de La Première Table Ronde Du CIEM Sur La Littérature Aljamiada-Morisque: Hybridisme Linguistique et Univers Discursif. Edited by Abdeljelil Temimi, 70 – 83. Tunis: Centre de Recherches en Bibliotheconomie et Sciences de l’Information, 1986. Janer, Florencio. Condición social de los moriscos de España. Causas de su expulsión, y consecuencias que esta produjo en el orden económico y político. Sevilla: Ediciones Espuela de Plata, 2006. Labarta, Ana. “Los libros de los moriscos valencianos.” Awraq: Estudios sobre el mundo árabe e islámico contemporáneo, no. 2 (1979): 72 – 79. Labarta, Ana. “Inventario de los documentos árabes contenidos en procesos inquisitoriales contra moriscos valencianos conservados en el Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid (legajos 548 – 556).” Al-Qanṭara 1, no. 1 – 2 (1980): 115 – 64. Labarta, Ana. “Notas sobre algunos traductores de árabe en la Inquisición valenciana (1565 – 1609).” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos 21 (1981): 101 – 33. Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel. Los mudéjares de Castilla en tiempos de Isabel I. Valladolid: Instituto “Isabel la Católica” de Historia Eclesiástica, 1969. Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel. “Los mudéjares de Castilla cuarenta años después.” En la España medieval, no. 33 (2010): 383 – 424. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha. Gijón: Trea, 2011. Marañón, Gregorio. “La biblioteca del Conde-Duque.” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 107 (1935): 677 – 92. Marcos Celestino, Mónica. “El Marqués de Villena y La cueva de Salamanca. Entre literatura, historia y leyenda.” Estudios humanísticos. Filología 26 (2004): 155 – 86. Martínez-de-Castilla-Muñoz, Nuria. “The Copyists and Their Texts. The Morisco Translations of the Qur’ān in the Tomás Navarro Tomás Library (CSIC, Madrid).” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014): 493 – 525. Miller, Kathryn A. Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Morata, Nemesio. “Catálogo de los fondos árabes primitivos de El Escorial.” Al-Andalus 2, no. 1 (1934): 87 – 182. Muñoz Calvo, Sagrario. Inquisición y ciencia en la España moderna. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1977.

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O’Banion, Patrick J. This Happened in My Presence: Moriscos, Old Christians, and the Spanish Inquisition in the Town of Deza, 1569 – 1611. North York: University of Toronto Press, 2017. Pérez de Chinchón, Bernardo. Antialcorano; Diálogos cristianos: conversión y evangelización de moriscos. Edited by Francisco Pons Fuster. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2000. Pérez de Colosía Rodríguez, María Isabel. “El Auto de Fe de 1606.” Espacio Tiempo y Forma. Serie IV, Historia Moderna 2, no. 7 – 2 (1994): 121 – 44. Roersch, Alphonse. Correspondance de Nicolas Clénard. 3 vols. Brussels: Académie Royal de Belgique, 1941. Schiff, Mario. La Bibliothèque du Marquis de Santillana. Paris: E. Bouillon, 1905. Sierra Benayas, Julio. Procesos en la Inquisición de Toledo (1575 – 1610): Manuscrito de Halle. Madrid: Trotta, 2006. Soto González, Teresa and Katarzyna Starczewska. “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García.” In After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 199 – 228. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Van Koningsveld, P. Sj, Qasim al-Samarrai, and Gerard Albert Wiegers, eds. Aḥmad b. Qâsim al-Ḥajarî. Kitab Nasir al-Din ‘ala ’l-Qawm al-Kafirin = (The Supporter of Religion against the Infidels). General Introduction, Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. Reedited, Revised, and Updated in the Light of Recent Publications and the Primitive Version Found in the Hitherto Unknown Manuscript Preserved in Al-Azhar. Madrid: CSIC, 2015. Vallejo, Juan de. Memorial de la vida de fray Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. Madrid: [n.p.], 1913. Varela Hervias, Eulogio. “Descubrimiento de manuscritos arábigos en Villarrubia, en 1787.” Al-Andalus 30, no. 2 (1965): 381 – 85. Vincent, Bernard. El río morisco. Valencia: Universitat de València, 2006. Wiegers, Gerard A. “The Christianization of the Mudejars of Granada and the Persistence of Islam after the Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain (1492-ca. 1730).” In The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada between East and West. Edited by Adela Fábregas, 519 – 43. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Wilson-Lee, Edward. The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library. London: William Collins, 2018.

III Antialcoranes. Polemicists, Converts, Scholars

Ryan Szpiech

Sounding the Qur’an: The Rhetoric of Transliteration in the Antialcoranes In April 1500, Martín García —Zaragozan canon, inquisitor in Aragon, and confessor to Queen Isabel— received a letter from King Fernando and Queen Isabel, describing the “great need” for “people of the Church who know Arabic in order to instruct the newly converted.” Moreover, it continues, “because we know that you know Arabic,” the rulers urge García to come to Granada to begin missionizing and pastoral work there.¹ While García may have had some familiarity with Arabic, his level seems to have been elementary, and thus when he did embark on a preaching campaign in Granada in subsequent years, continuing a successful preaching career begun already in the previous decade, he relied on the assistance of others.² García continued his work in Granada for some years, until he was later appointed Bishop of Barcelona in 1512, assuming his post there in 1515. 156 of his sermons —perhaps only a selection of his work— were collect-

 García received a letter from King Fernando and Queen Isabel dated 4 April, 1500, affirming that “ay mucha necesidad especialmente agora en los comienzos que no hay en aquella ciudad [Granada] personas de iglesia que sepan arábigo para instruir a los dichos nuevamente convertidos y porque sabemos que vos sabéys arábigo y que con vuestras letras y predicación y buen ejemplo podréys muchos aprovecharles poronde nos vos rogamos encargamos que pues vedes quanto en ellos será servido nuestro Señor queráys disponer os a venir a estar algun tiempo a la dicha ciudad para aprovechar el lo susodicho.” Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón [ACA], Reg. 3614, fol. 107v. On García’s preaching campaign in Granada, see Teresa Soto and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García,” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016).  Manuel Montoza Coca, “Los Sermones de Don Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. Edicio´n y estudio” PhD Diss. (Universitat Auto`noma de Barcelona, 2018). As Montoza Coca suggests, García cited only a limited selection of Arabic texts and apparently “no sabía a´rabe como para leerlo en profundidad” (xxiv). See also Xavier Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur’an and its use in the Sermones de la Fe and the disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Interpretation, eds. Candida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 464– 65. Where García may have learned the little Arabic he did know is unclear. He could have learned during his childhood in Caspe, which consisted of a Muslim population of approximatlely ten percent. See Andre´s Alva´rez Gracia, “El Islam y los judíos en Caspe,” in Comarca de Bajo Arago´n-Caspe, ed. Miguel Caballu´ Albiac and Francisco Javier Corte´s Borroy (Zaragoza: Gobierno de Arago´n, 2008), 115. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-012

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ed and published in Latin in 1520, and over a quarter of these contain references to the Qur’an. Over the subsequent half century, a number of works were written in Spain that followed in García’s footsteps, attempting to appeal to the Muslim or Morisco population through recourse to citations of the Qur’an in Romance. Working directly under García in his years in Granada was a converted alfaquí (religious leader) from Xàtiva (near Valencia) named Juan Andrés. Andre´s claims to have provided his patron with material to support his preaching, which he gathered in his subsequent polemic against Islam, Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán (published in Valencia in 1515 and subsequently republished and translated widely).³ Over the next few years in and around Valencia, Joan Martí de Figuerola, also connected with García and his circle, worked to evangelize the Moriscos of the area, eventually composing (around 1519‒21) the Lumbre de la fe contra la secta machomética, which still remains in manuscript.⁴ In the 1520s, Erasmist writer Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón also worked on evangelizing missions around Gandía (near Xàtiva), eventually publishing his Antialcorano in Valencia in 1532, followed by his Diálogos christianos in 1535.⁵ Finally, around 1550, a priest in the Basilica of San Vicente in Ávila worked to evangelize the Moriscos of that city, eventually publishing the Confutación del alcorán y secta mahometana, sacado de sus proprios libros, y de la vida del mesmo Mahoma in Granada in 1555.⁶ All of these works include passages from the Qur’an in Castilian (or in García’s case, Latin) translation; some of them also include Arabic text in transliteration in Latin letters and, in some cases, in Arabic letters as well. While all include at least a few examples of transliterated Arabic, some of them incorporate many quotations amounting to scores or even hundreds of qur’anic

 Juan Andrés, Libro nuevamente imprimido que se llama confusión dela secta mahomática y del Alcorán (Valencia: Juan Joffre, 1515). The modern edition was published as Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán, ed. Elisa Ruiz García and María Isabel García-Monge (Mérida: Ed. Regional de Extremadura, 2003).  Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia [RAH], MS Gayangos 1922/36. This text has been edited by Elisa Ruiz García and Luis Bernabe´ Pons and is forthcoming in print.  Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, Libro llamado Antialcorano que quiere dezir contra el Alcorán de Mahoma, repartido en XXVI sermones (Valencia: Juan Joffre, 1532); Pérez de Chinchón, Diálogos christianos contra la secta mahomética y contra la pertinacia de los judíos (Valencia: Francisco Díaz Romano, 1535). Both texts have been edited and reprinted in Antialcorano. Diálogos christianos. Conversión y evangelización de Moriscos, ed. Francisco Pons Fuster (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2000).  Lope de Obregón, Confutación del alcorán y secta mahometana, sacado de sus propios libros y de la vida del mesmo Mahoma (Granada: [n.p.], 1555).

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verses in Arabic. These texts —which we can call Antialcoranes, “anti-Qur’ans”, by adopting Pérez de Chinchón’s title— cultivate a dual focus on language and doctrine that combines attention to the Arabic language as well as discussion of qur’anic content. The prominence of Arabic can lead us to ask what role the ability to read Arabic —on the page or out loud— played in the missionary campaign of García and his circle. What is the motivation of these writers to provide the original text of the Qur’an in their works? While there are numerous questions about the use of the Qur’an in these works that could be pursued, this chapter will focus only on the role of transliteration in García’s sermons and subsecuent works of the Antialcoranes genre. It will propose that written transliteration plays a valuable role in highlighting the place of oral presentation of the Qur’an in preaching campaigns to Muslims and Moriscos from Granada to Valencia. Whereas earlier polemical writers sought authority in the presentation and translation of content from the Qur’an, authors of the Antialcoranes added transliteration as a rhetorical tool to appeal to listeners both through the appropriation of the shape of the Qur’an through the transliteration of Arabic into Latin letters, and also through the sound of Arabic through attention to the oral modality of Muslim engagement with the text.

1 Approximating Arabic in Martín García’s Sermones Martín García’s published sermons have now been edited and studied in a doctoral disertation by Manuel Montoza Coca, whose work provides the basis of a close analysis of their sources and language.⁷ The quantity of qur’anic material in García’s sermons is extensive and shows a broad familiarity with some key passages that were of particular interest to Christian polemicists. As Montoza Coca shows, of the 156 sermons made available in publication,⁸ some thirtyeight (twenty-four percent) cite the Qur’an, including over two hundred different ayas drawn from fourty-eight diferent suras.⁹ Unsurprisingly, García does not fol Montoza Coca, “Los Sermones.” My observations here are based directly on his foundational work.  On the count of 156 rather than 155 sermons, which takes account of the repetition of count at 115, see Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” xiii, n. 48.  These include over 350 citations, found in the following sermons: 3, 5‒7, 11, 14‒39, 68‒69, 83, 86, 90, 106, 122, 125, 127, 130, 138, 144. These figures are drawn from Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” xxiv and 1654– 57. Cf. Miguel Ángel de Bunes Ibarra, “Martín García,” in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History. Volume 6. Western Europe (1500 – 1600), eds. David Tho-

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low a modern numbering of qur’anic suras, but instead divides the Qur’an into four volumes of varying length, similar to what is found in numerous Western Islamic and European Qur’ans.¹⁰ Within this relatively broad corpus of citations, however, there is a decided focus on a few key passages dealing with Jesus and Mary, such as Qur’an 3:42 – 55, 4:171, 5:110 – 15, 19:16 – 33, and 66:12. These verses had long been stock-in-trade of Christian anti-Muslim writing, and appear in many medieval polemics, including De Seta Machometi [On the Sect of Muḥammad] of Ramon Martí (d. after 1287) and most importantly, Contra legem Sarracenorum [Against the Sarracen Law] of Riccoldo da Monte di Croce (d. 1320), which appeared in Castilian translation in the very period that García began his preaching work in Granada.¹¹ Montoza Coca has noted, moreover, that García makes use, on at least one occasion (sermon 86), of the Cribatio Alchorani [Sifting the Qur’an] by Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) to access some of his qur’anic material.¹² In addition to the Qur’an itself and a selected number of citations of a few Arabic works of philosophy and geography,¹³ García also makes reference to two works of qur’anic exegesis (considered below). While virtually all of the qur’anic citations in García’s work are given in Latin translation only, there is a small handful of references that also include Arabic transliterated into Latin characters. In a few places, García transliterates the

mas and John Chesworth (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 85 – 88 (87); and the foundational work of José María Ribera Florit, “La polémica cristiano-musulmana en los sermones del maestro inquisidor don Martín García” PhD Diss. (Universidad de Barcelona, 1967). Also relevant is Sebastia´n Cirac Estopañán, Los sermones de Don Martín García, Obispo de Barcelona sobre los Reyes Católicos (Zaragoza: La Academia, 1956).  On this phenomenon, see Hartmut Bobzin, Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation (Beirut: Ergon Verlag Wü rzburg, 2008), 343‒44.  For Martí’s De Seta, see Josep Hernando, “Ramon Martí (s. XIII): De Seta Machometi o de origine, progressu et fine Machometi et quadruplici reprobatione prophetiae eius,” Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia 4 (1983): 9 – 63, including citations on 24 (Q. 3:42; 3:52; 4:171) and 26 (Q. 19:28; 66:12). On Riccoldo’s citations of these or related verses, see Jean-Marie Mérigoux, “L’ouvrage d’un frère Prêcheur florentin en orient à la fin du XIIIe siècle: le ‘Contra legem Sarracenorum’ de Riccoldo da Monte di Croce,” Memorie domenicane: Fede e Controversia nel ‘300 e ‘500, 17 (1986), chapters two, three, nine, and fifteen, 68 – 69, 75, 102, 105, 127 (Q.4:171) and 129 – 30 (Q.3:42, 3:45; 4:171), for example. García makes use of both of these works by Martí and Monte di Croce elsewhere in his sermons, although he does not name them directly (Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” 1699).  Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” xxx. See Nicholas de Cusa, Nicolai de Cusa Opera Omnia, ed. Ernst Hoffmann, Raymond Klibansky et al., 20 vols in 24 (Leipzig and Hamburg: Meiner, 1932– 2014), vol 8, ed. Ludwig Hagemann (1986), 90 – 91.  He includes a few references to writers such as Al-Ghazā lī, Ibn Rushd, and most notably, the geographer Al-Masʿū dī. For a full index of his citations, consult Montoza Coca, “Los sermones.”

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names of qur’anic books such as çuratu ela ahymaran, “Sura Ā li ʿImrā n”, i. e. Sura 3, or Çuratu Marian, “Sura Maryam”, i. e. Sura 19, mentioned in sermon 32.¹⁴ In a few select places, he adds common words from Arabic religious prose, such as the honorific aleyiççalem [ʿaleyhi as-salām; Peace be upon him), or drops in a select phrase such as eruhu ulcudduçu [rū ḥ al-qudus; Holy Spirit], e. g. from Q. 5:110 or 2:87.¹⁵ In one sermon —sermon twenty-two— García also transliterates a few verses of Arabic text: In book one, sura four, aya one hundred thirteen, it says “Christ created birds by blowing in”, saying thus innya haclucu lacum minattini quahayati ittayri faanfuhu fayaquunu tayran [annī akhluqu lakum min aṭ-ṭṭīni ka-hayʾati aṭ-ṭīri fa-anfukhu fahakūnu ṭayran; “I will make for you the likeness of a bird from clay. I breathe, and it will become a bird”].¹⁶ And that according to him only God is a creator is evident in book three, sura fifteen, which is called “The Angels,” aya three, which says hal mimha liquin gayrullay [hal min khaliqin ghayru llāh; “Is there any creator other than Allah?”].¹⁷ If you say, alright, it is true that God is a creator, but he is not the creator of all, well this is proven according to Muḥammad himself in another place, which says alla alladi alaqua cullaxay [Allāh aladhi khalaqa kullī shay; “God is the one who creates all things”], etc.¹⁸

A number of interesting details present themselves here. In the first transliterated verse, García cites “sura four, aya one hundred thirteen”, which seems to indicate Q. 5:110, a verse that contains material very similar to what is presented here. However, the transliteration does not match Q. 5:110, but rather quotes Q. 3:49, which has similar content but different wording. Secondly, the transla-

 Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” 250.  García’s use of Arabic phrases has been considered by Teresa Soto and Katarzyna K Starczewska, “Authority, Philology, and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García,” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 203n16; and by Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” xxv.  Q. 3:49. In this and all subsequent citations that include transliterated Arabic, I include the transliteration as given in the original source, followed in brackets by a modernized philological transliteration and an English translation. In this passage, the Arabic is missing the phrase fīhi, “into it,” and should state one word, … fa-anfukhu fīhi … [ … I breathe into it …]. The text is not fully translated in the Latin, which abbreviates the meaning.  Q. 35:3.  “Primo libro, azora quarta, alea centisima decima tertia dicit ‘Christus insufflando creauit aues’, sic dicens innya haclucu lacum minattini quahayati ittayri faanfuhu fayaquunu tayran. Quod etiam secundum eum solus Deus sit creator patet libro tertio, azora decima quinta que dicitur “Angelorum,” alea tertia dicens hal mimha liquin gayrullay. Si dicis bene est uerum quod Deus sit creator, sed non creator omnium. Tamen probatur hoc secundum ipsum Machometum in alio loco dicentem alla alladi alaqua cullaxay, etcetera” Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” 161.

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tion does not reproduce the verse, but only paraphrases it in a few short words, as if it were a marginal note or summary of what the passage says. Thirdly, the transliteration lacks the prepositional phrase “into it” (fīhi), present in both Q. 5:110 and Q. 3:49. García is generally very consistent in giving the corresponding verse for all of his citations, and thus this mismatch between the citation and the transliteration stands out. In the third verse, the ambiguity of Garci´a’s reference to “another place” similarly stands out, a fact that is even more striking when we consider that the passage as translated is not found as such in the Qur’an, but is instead an amalgam of a few similar verses such as Q. 41:21 (Allāh al-ladhī antāqa kulli shayʾin, “God is the one who gives speech to all things”) and Q. 39:62 (Allāh khalaqa kulli shayʾin) or the similar verse 6:101. This combination of details —the inclusion of a paraphrase rather than translation, a missing preposition in transliteration, and an unspecified and slightly confused combination of two similar passages— suggests that García was not consulting a written Qur’an to make these transliterations, but was instead relying on oral information from a Muslim or former Muslim who knew the material by heart. Such a fact is not surprising, given that García was known to have received the assistance of Juan Andre´s. What little is known of Andre´s comes from his own testimony in his published work Confusio´n o confutacio´n de la secta Mahome´tica y del Alcora´n, published in Valencia in 1515. In the prologue to that work, Andre´s describes his background and conversion to Christianity in 1487,¹⁹ after which he claims he was sent to Granada “where by preaching and the will of God, who wanted it so, an uncountable number of Moors converted to Christ, denying Muḥammad.”²⁰ While the details of Andre´s’s biography  Juan Andrés, Confusión, 89. For an analysis of his conversion, see Ryan Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 33‒41. On Juan Andrés, see also Zachary Zuwiyya, “Juan Andrés,” in Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 6 (Western Europe 1500 – 1600), ed David Thomas and John Chesworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Hartmut Bobzin, “Observaciones sobre Juan Andrés y su libro Confusión dela secta mahomática (Valencia, 1515),” in Vitae Mahometi: reescritura e invención en la literatura cristiana de controversia, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and Óscar De la Cruz Palma (Madrid: CSIC, 2014); Ryan Szpiech, “A Witness of Their Own Nation: On the Influence of Juan Andrés,” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016).  “donde por predicacio´n y voluntad de Dios, que así lo quería, infinita morisma, renegando a Mahoma, a Cristo se convertio´.” Juan further describes his call to Granada: “I was called by the most Catholic Princes, King Fernando and Queen Isabel, to go to Granada to preach to the Moors to that kingdom, which their Highnesses had conquered […] I was again called by the most Christian Queen Isabel to come to Aragon in order to work for the conversion of the Moors of these kingdoms.” [“Fui llamado por los más cathólicos príncipes, el rey don Fernando y la reyna doña Ysabel, para que fuesse en Granada a predicar a los moros de aquel reyno que

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have been much debated, there is sound evidence to link the author directly to Martín García.²¹ Andre´s returned to Aragon, but when his missionary activity was cut short by the death of Isabel in 1504, he claims to have undertaken a project to translate into Romance the Qur’an “with its glosses and seven [sic] books of Sunna” [“con sus glosas y los siete libros de la Çuna”]. Andre´s specifies that he pursued this enormous translation task by order of the very reverend Master Martín García […] my patron and lord […] so that, in the charge that I had from their Highnesses to preach to the moors he might, with authorities of their own law, confuse and conquer them, which would be difficult to do without my work.²²

Andre´s’s statement suggests that García’s Arabic was, despite the praise of the monarchs, not sufficiently strong to read and translate independently without assistance.²³ There is, moreover, clear evidence that García depended on Andre´s’s translation for information on the Qur’an and other Islamic texts, and Montoza Coca has identified nearly eighty concrete parallels between the sermons and Andre´s’s Confusión. ²⁴ To take just a few examples, García’s sermons reproduce numerous idiosyncrasies and errors that are found in Andre´s’s text. Although García refers to “glosses” on the Qur’an, he actually only names and cites a few Muslim exegetes, including (almost always as pair) the Persian exegete al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144, whom he calls Azamahxeri, mentioned 19 times) and the Andalusi exegete Ibn ʿAṭiyya (d. 546/1152, called Abuatia, mentioned 20 times). Tellingly, Andre´s makes this same curious pairing while recounting the legend of Ḥ abīb al-Najjā r (the carpenter), which developed in Muslim exegetical tradition on the basis of Q. 36:13‒20, which describes a legend about “messengers” who preached in a “city,” usually understood to be Antioch. Both authors wrongly at-

sus Altezas avían conquistado […] fuy otra vez llamado por la cristianíssima reyna doña Ysabel para que veniesse en Aragón a fin de trabajar en la conversión de los moros destos reynos.”] Juan Andrés, Confusión, 90.  On the question of Andre´s’s identity, see Szpiech, “A Witness of Their Own Nation,” 177. As noted there, a book on accounting, published by the same printer in the same year under the name “Juan Andrés,” was dedicated to Martín García in one of the two print runs.  “por mandado del muy reverendo señor maestre Martín García, mi patrón y señor … porque en el cargo que tenía de sus Altezas de predicar a los moros podiesse, con las auctoridades de su misma ley, confundirlos y vencerlos, lo que sin aquel trabajo mío con dificultad podiera hazer.” Juan Andrés, Confusión, 91.  See above, n. 2.  Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” xxvi.

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tribute to al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya the same claim that one of the messengers was Saint Paul. Andre´s explicitly adds that, “Lord Bishop of Barcelona master Martín García has this very account in his book of the Qur’an, which I translated from Arabic to Romance for his most reverend lordship, and he himself has the said two glosses in Arabic.”²⁵ A second example of the collaboration of Andre´s and García can be found in their respective accounts of the apocraphyal tradition of the so-called “Satanic Verses.” According to debated legend, Muḥ ammad claimed that upon revealing the verses in Q. 53.19‒20, which condemns the preislamic idols al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt, Satan momentarily made him offer praise. Both Andre´s and Garci´a draw their information from the summary of tenth-century historian al-Ṭ abarī in his History of Prophets and Kings, but also add the same words that are not found in that source text. Whereas Ṭ abarī claims that Muḥ ammad stated about the idols that “their intercession is to be hoped for” (shafāʿatahunna la-turtajā), García does not mention intercession, stating only that “one should have put hope in them” (“erat ponenda spes in eis”), which resembles Andre´s’s statement that “hope in them is a good thing” (“la esperanza en ellos era cosa buena”).²⁶ Ṭ abarī writes that according to this legend, when Muḥ ammad told his listeners that the Devil made him say this, “Some men undertook to return while others remained behind.” García interprets this departure as a “scandal,” claiming that “multi scandalizati abierunt” (“many departed scandalized”), an interpolation that also appears in Andre´s’s words, “many Moors were scandalized and returned to their sects” (“muchos moros y escandalizáronse y bolvieron en sus sectas”).²⁷ These and many other similar coincidences reinforce the circumstantial connection between Andre´s and García, and support Andre´s’s own claims

 “la qual historia tiene puesta el señor obispo de Barcelona, maestre Martín García en su libro del Alcorán que yo trasladé de arávigo en romançe a su reverendíssima señoría, y el mesmo tiene las susodichas dos glosas en arávigo” Juan Andrés, Confusión, 216. For García’s reference in sermon 30, see Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” 229. For analysis of Andre´s’s text, see Ryan Szpiech, “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos: The Confusión o Confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) of ‘Juan Andrés,’” La Corónica 41 (2012), 323‒27.  As Shahab Ahmed notes, Ṭ abarī’s Qur’an commentary says “their intersession is approved” (la-turtaḍ ā), while his version of this comment in the Tārīkh al-Rusul wa-l-Mulūk reads “hoped for/anticipated” (turtajā). See Shahab Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), 49. This indicates that Andre´s and Martín García were both following the version in the History, not the exegesis.  Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy, 50. For another example, both Andre´s and García relate the legend of Ḥ abīb al-Najjā r (the carpenter), which developed in Muslim exegetical tradition on the basis of Q.36:13, 20, wrongly attributing to al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya the same claim that the Qur’an refers to Saint Paul.

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about the latter’s dependence on his work. This example, among others, makes it clear that although García first delivered his sermons a decade or more before Andre´s published his Confusio´n, the latter assisted Garci´a with concrete details of translation during his missionizing campaign in Granada. Andre´s’s comments about providing García with translations indicates that his work in Granada fed directly into his own writing, which he published before García published his sermons. In this way, Andre´s’s Confusio´n can be taken as the principal work of the Antialcoranes genre, fulfilling the mixed intentions of polemic and philology that guided the initial evangelization and education efforts in newly conquered Granada under Hernando de Talavera.

2 Orality and Aurality in Juan Andrés’s Confusión Although there are no surviving copies of Andre´s’s alleged translations, the Confusio´n itself cites over seventy-five qur’anic passages and also offers abundant citations of the Qur’an, tafsir, and Sira, cited not only in Castilian translation or paraphrase, but also, in most cases, in Arabic transliterated into Latin letters. The very first qur’anic passage, which appears in the first chapter of the work, is representative of the scores more citations that follow in the work, and provides a clear example of how the Arabic languages is incorporated into the text. André s states, “It says in the Qur’an, chapter two, book one, that this temple in Mecca was the first temple built for men in the world. The words in Arabic say this: inne aguele beytin o diha linneci le lledi bi bequete [inna awwala baytin wuḍiʿa li-l-nnāsi lalladhī bi-bakkata; ‘Indeed, the first house set up for men is the one in Bakkah/Mecca’].”²⁸ The Arabic text is translated accurately and the phonetic transcription coherent and comprehensible. At the same time, the rendering of the verb “set up” (wuḍ iʿa) as o diha suggests that the text was transcribed according to the sound of the words rather than their written form. Numerous critics have affirmed the oral basis of his Arabic texts, although the reason for his use of transliteration is not certain and continues to be debated.²⁹ Shifting

 “Dice en el Alcorán, capítulo segundo, libro primero, que este templo de Mequa fue el primero templo que fue edificado en el mundo para los hombres; las palabras en arávigo dizen así: inne aguele beytin o diha linneci le lledi bi bequete.” Juan Andrés, Confusión, 99.  Everette Larson has studied the transliteration habits in the 1515 Castilian edition of the Confusión of Juan Andrés, proposing that Juan Andrés was transcribing based on an oral presentation of the text, that the text was cited from memory and not according to a written copy of the Qur’an, that the transliteration system is “regular and follows the established patterns of Arabic.” See Everette Larson, “A Study of the Confusión de la secta mahomática of Juan Andrés,”

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and peculiar transliterations might indicate that Andre´s was citing everything from memory, but the abundant references to “book” and “chapter” numbers (and not only Sura names) point to the consultation of a written copy in some cases at least. On the other hand, the texts he cites, while mostly accurate, do also sometimes combine or confuse verses or parts of verses, suggesting that the text often being reproduced from memory and not copied from a written version.³⁰ The most logical interpretation of this mixed information is that he used a written text as a base but often recited partly from memory, even after locating the references to passages he aimed to quote. The hypothesis that at least some of the Arabic passages in the Confusio´n are, as in García’s sermons, based on oral recitation rather than exclusively on a written text can be confirmed by a subsequent example later in the first chapter, in which Andre´s describes the resistance of the denizens of Mecca to the new prophecy. “It says this in book two, chapter two, in Arabic gua id yamcoro bique alledine quafaro liyactuloque au yazbitu que au yohri juque, [wa-idh yamkuru bika aladhīna kafarū li-yaqtulūka aw yuthbitūka aw yukhrijūka; ‘and when the disbelievers plotted against you to kill you or capture you or drive you out’], which says how those of Mecca conspired to kill him or exile him or jail him.”³¹ Like García, Andre´s gives his references according to a four-book division of the text,³² and the passage cited here corresponds to Qur’an 8:30 (wa-idh yamkuru ̄ kafarū li-yuthbitūka aw yaqtulūka aw yukhrijūka, “and when the bika aladhina disbelievers plotted against you to capture you or kill you or drive you out.”) The phonetic transcription of the text, while again comprehensible and not random, evinces the certain influence of oral pronunciation and recitation from memory.

PhD Diss. (Washington DC, Catholic University of America, 1981), 190. He further notes that transcriptions follow what seems to be a regular pronunciation that betrays certain characteristics such as a consistent identification of classical Arabic’s long vowels but not always the short ones. Larson concludes that the transliterations offer “an insight into the phonological transcription of [classical Arabic] as pronounced by a Valencian native speaker” (197).  For one example of Andre´s’s confusion of verses, possibly indicating citation by memory, see Szpiech, García-Arenal, and Starczewska, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 119‒22.  “Esto dize libro secundo, capítulo secundo, en arávigo gua id yamcoro bique alledine quafaro liyactuloque au yazbitu que au yohri juque, que quere dezir cómo los de Mequa tomaron consejo de matarlo o de desterrarlo o de encarcerarlo.” Juan Andre´s, Confusio´n, 115.  On the division of the Qur’an into four books, see Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “Sicut Euangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143‒1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation, ed. Ca´ndida Ferrero Herna´ndez and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).

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Rather than rendering the vowels according to an Arabic system in which there is only long or short a, i, or u, the text captures an accented pronunciation that includes a close-mid rather than close back sound for “u” (“yamqoro” rather than “yamkuru”) and a mid-front rather than open front sound for “a” (“bique” rather than “bika”). More significantly, the verse itself is misquoted, transposing the order of the verbs in Arabic (reading liyactuloque au yazbitu que au yohri juque [li-yaqtulūka aw yuthbitūka aw yukhrijūka, “to kill you or capture you or drive you out”] rather than following the original verse, li-yuthbitūka aw yaqtulūka aw yukhrijūka, “to capture you or kill you or drive you out”). This transposed order in the transliterated Arabic, moreover, is not reflected in the order of verbs in the Castilian translation, which reads “matarlo o de desterrarlo o de encarcerarlo” [“to kill him or exile him or capture him”]. Finally, the Castilian also renders the verbal direct object in the third rather than second person (matarlo, “to kill him,” rather than li-yaqtulūka, “to kill you”). These subtle differences in transliteration and translation suggest that, just as was the case in García’s sermons, the Arabic of the Qur’an as quoted in Andre´s’s Confusio´n is, at least sometimes, being recalled from memory or copied down from oral reading rather than transliterated directly off a written copy. In numerous cases, his citations, while grammatically correct and logically appropriate in the representation of Arabic, are only approximate paraphrases of original sources. There is also evidence that, even if consulting written text, Andre´s did not rely on existing material in translation (such as previous translations into Latin or Romance) in order to create his own Castilian versions. In addition to the Andre´s’s claims to have himself already translated the Qur’an into Romance, we must also consider the fact that he includes numerous citations in Arabic taken directly from Hadith, passages that were not available in any known translation. For example, also in chapter one of the Confusión, he speaks about the custom of fasting on the Day of Ashurah, the tenth day of the month of Muḥarram, which he claims is a custom held over from idolatrous pre-Islamic times. Muḥarram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, is one of four “prohibited” months, in which war and hunting is disallowed. This prohibition is one of a number of elements connecting Islam with pre-Islamic idolatry, about which Andrés asserts: “I prove it with a saying of Muḥammad from the six books of the Sunna, which says that, being idolatrous, the Quraysh and the people of Mecca fasted on this tenth day. The words in Arabic read thus: guaquenet coraysin teçomo yaumihasora filgehilia [wa-kānat qurayshun taṣʾamu yawm al-ʿāshūrāʾa fī l-jāhiliyya; “The Quraysh fasted on the day of Ashurah in the pre-Islamic

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period”].³³ Andre´s is correctly citing a standard Hadith about the origins of the recommendation to fast on the Day of Ashuraʾ, the tenth day of the month of Muḥarram. The text reads wa-kānat qurayshun taṣʾamu yawm al-ʿāshūrāʾa fī l-jāhiliyya [“The Quraysh fasted on the day of Ashurah in the pre-Islamic period”].³⁴ Andre´s’s transliteration of this does not follow strict divisions between words but instead reflects the natural clustering of phrases (e.g in rendering “the Day of Ashurah in pre-Islamic times”, yawm al-ʿāshūrāʾa fī l-jāhiliyya, becomes yaumihasora filgehilia). The fact that the divisions in the transliteration as they appear in the printed edition of Andre´s’s work reflect possible phonetic groupings also suggests they are not random divisions of a typesetter or printer. Andre´s’s citations of extra-qur’anic material is not limited to traditional Hadith material. He also cites works of jurisprudence that were well known among Muslim readers in Aragón, including texts available in Aljamiado versions. In chapter one, in discussing the Ḥ ajj pilgrammage, he quotes traditions about the Black Stone of the Kaaba in the foundational Epistle on Malikite law (the Risālah) of Tunisian Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawā nī (d. 386/996): Muḥammad […] ordered it and made it an article of his law and sect that this stone be adored and kissed. I prove it with books of he Sunna and with a book called Arricele [al-Risālah, “The Epistle”], in the chapter on the ceremonies of alhage [al-Ḥ ajj, “the pilgrammage”], where he says and commands that all Moors who go on journey and pilgrammage to Mecca, when they enter in the house of Mecca, the first thing they should do is approach the abovementioned stone and kiss it and adore it, and kiss the right corner. The words in Arabic say: guahanlequlli muzlimi ide de ahala albeyti an yicabele alhagera alazhade gua rocno al yameni [wa-an li-kulli muslimin idhā dakhla al-bayti an yuqabbila al-ḥ ajara al-aswada wa-l-rukna al-yamānni;̄ “that every Muslim, when he enters the house, kiss the black stone and the right corner”], ³⁵ which means that every Moor who enters into the house of Mecca should first kiss and greet the Fortunate Stone and the right corner.³⁶

 “Próvolo por un dicho de Mahoma en los seys libros de la Çuna que dize que los coraxistas y la gente de Mequa ayunavan este dezeno día siendo ydólatras. Las palabras en arávigo dizen así: guaquenet coraysin teçomo yaumihasora filgehilia.” Juan Andrés, Confusión, 106.  Al-Bukhā rī, Ṣ aḥ īḥ , vol. 3, book 31, #117.  Cf. the approximate passage in Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawā nī, The Risāla, or Epistle on the Elements of Dogma and the Law of Islam according to the Maliki Rite, Trans. Caroline-Meriem Khelifa (Beirut: Dar al-Kotob al-Ilmiyah, 2015), 183.  “Mahoma […] mando´ y puso por artículo de su ley y secta que fuesse adorada y besada esta piedra; y esto lo pruevo por los libros de la Çuna y por un libro que se llama Arricele, en el capítulo de las cerimonias de alhage, donde dize y manda que todos los moros que van en romiage y peregrinación a Mequa, entrando en la casa de Mequya, la primera cosa que deven fazer es llegar a la piedra susodicha y besarla y adorarla, y besar en el rincón drecho. Las palabras en arávigo dizen así: guahanlequlli muzlimi ide de ahala albeyti an yicabele alhagera alazhade gua rocno al yameni, que quiere dezir que qualquiere moro que entra en la casa de Mequa

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The Risālah was a central work of Malikite jursipruence and it is not a surprise to find it cited by a former Muslim who claims to have been an alfaquí in Xàtiva. Indeed, the text was certainly read and copied in the Aragonese community of Andre´s’s day, as is attested by the Aljamiado version of the text from 1495.³⁷ Andre´s’s citation in Arabic does not exactly match the original Arabic text or the Aljamiado version, but it does offer a close approximation of the chapter and statement in question. Another revealing example of Juan Andrés’s independence from other polemical sources shows how adapted familiar sources without copying them directly in all cases. In chapter seven, he refers to a book he calls Assameyl, i. e. ash-Shamāʾil al-muḥ amadiyya (The Sublime Qualities of Muḥammad), a collection of Hadith about Muḥ ammad’s private habits and manners by ninth-century scholar Tirmidhī (d. 279/892). He states: If you, Moor, deny that Muḥammad had eleven women together, I will prove it with a book called Assemeyl [ash-shamāʾil], which means “Book of the Good Qualities of Muḥammad,” in which it says, praising Muḥammad and talking about his virility, that he slept with his eleven wives in one hour. The words in Arabic in the above book Assemeyl say: guami coguatihi haleyhi celem annehu quane y adoro hale niceyhi ficehatin guahidetin guahunne yhde haxar [wa-mi-zawjatihi, aleyhi al-salām, kāna yadūru ʿalā nisāʾatihi fi ̄ as-sāʿati l-wāḥ idati wa-hunna iḥ dā ʿasharah].³⁸

This anecdote is found in Hadith collections, but not in ash-Shamāʾil al-maḥ madiyya, but in Saḥ īḥ Bukhārī (1.5.268). Andre´s’s Arabic version comes close to this text, but leaves out “night and day” [mīn al-layli wa-n-nahār] as found in the origdeve primeramente besar y saludar la Piedra Bienadventurada y el rencón derecho.” Juan Andrés, Confusión, 105.  This manuscript was among those found in Almonacid de la Sierra in 1884 and was first housed in the Colegio de los Padres Escolapios in Zaragoza, where it was described in a catalogue by Julián Ribera and Miguel Asín Palacios Ribera y Asín, Manuscritos árabes y aljamiados de la Biblioteca de la Junta (Madrid: JAE, 1912), 266 (olim “ms. C”). It went missing at some point after it was catalogued, perhaps during the Civil War. It then passed through France and England and eventually was acquired by Columbia University Library (around 2016), where it is now MS Or. 515, and is fully digitized online: https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/12411428. Its Aljamiado version of the passage in question about the kissing of the Black Stone does not match Andre´s’s version in the Confusión. See MS Or 515, fol. 95r.  “Y si tu´, moro, negas que Mahoma no uvo juntamente onze mugeres, yo lo pruevo por un libro que se llama Assameyl, que quiere dezir, Libro de las condiciones buenas de Mahoma, donde dize loando a Mahoma y diziendo de sus fuerças viriles que en una sola hora echava con sus mugeres siendo ellas onze. Las palabras en arávigo puestas en el suso libro de Assameyl dizen así: guami coguatihi haleyhi celem annehu quane y adoro hale niceyhi ficehatin guahidetin guahunne yhde haxar.” Juan Andre´s, Confusio´n, 167.

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inal text. He also adds the beginning words “About his (peace be upon him) wife” [wa-mi-zawjatihi, aleyhi al-salām]. This confusion of sources, shortening of the text, and addition of a topic phrase at the beginning all suggest that Andre´s was recalling the phrase from memory rather than checking his text with a written source. These details are even more telling when we consider that, as Montoza Coca points out, Marti´n Garci´a cites this tradition but correctly names his source, perhaps copying his material directly from Ramon Martí, who cites the passage in his De Seta Machometi. ³⁹ Andre´s similarly cites the same qur ’ anic verse that appears in García and Martí, Q. 33:50‒52, but he tellingly leaves out a phrase, both in the Arabic and in the Castilian translation, that appears in García’s version.⁴⁰ One possible explanation, which must remain purely speculative for lack of information, is that García came to know of this passage through Andre´s’s assistance but provided the correct source in the Latin translation. This examples shows how the Confusio´n often shortens, adapts, and paraphrases sources, suggesting that Andre´s did not copy directly from a written source but instead adapted his text according to his explanation. While Andrés was not the first Christian writer to transcribe, transliterate, and translate Hadith passages and works of Islamic religious thought —the twelfth-century translators had done so over two centuries earlier⁴¹— he was the first convert from Islam to do so, and his transliterated transcriptions of Arabic sources are the first to appear in a Romance polemic against Islam. His transliteration of snippets from these, like his quotations from the Qur’an itself, are not empty tokens but are authentic reproductions of remembered passages reproduced by a former Muslim possessing broad familiarity with relevant Islamic sources. His occasional errors in attribution and selective editing in quotation suggest he may also have been working partly from memory. In all of his citations, the importance of oral pronunciation as the foundation of his transliterations of Arabic underscores the primary role of the Antialcoranes genre as an aid to preachers, not an intellectual manual for formal written polemics. Oral pronunciation determines not only his citations of the Qur’an but also affects his incorporation of Arabic terms and phrases that would be fa-

 Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” xxxi. See García’s sermon 16.  The passage in question is fa-lā junāḥ a ʿalayka, “there is no blame on you,” which appears in García as “non est tibi peccatum.” Martí does not include this section of the quotation so no comparison is possible.  The Dominican Ramon Martí (d. after 1284) did so in the Pugio fidei in the 13th century. On Martí’s Hadith passages in Arabic, copied in Hebrew letters along with some passages from the Qur’an, see Ryan Szpiech, “Citas árabes en caracteres hebreos en el Pugio fidei del dominico Ramón Martí: entre la autenticidad y la autoridad,” Al-Qanṭara 32 (2011).

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miliar to practicing Muslims, whether fully literate in Arabic or not. Apart from references to the çuna (Sunna) which includes Hadith material, and “a book called Azear [Sīra], which is a very authentic book among the Moors,”⁴² Andre´ s also peppers his writing with abundant other Arabic terms from Islamic belief and practice that would be familiar to virtually any Muslim: the Alcabba y Alquible (al-kaʿbah and al-qiblah), Beytillah alharan (bayt Allāh al-ḥarām), jadde alarab (jadd al-ʿarab, “grandfather of the Arabs”); Quiteb alannar (kitāb alanwār, “Book of Lights”); çufehe (sufahāʾ, “fools”); and dozens more.⁴³ By using such terms, many of which were first employed in García’s sermons, Andre´s’s text aims to represent what his Morisco audience, even an illiterate or semi-literate one, could have recognized from an experience of Islamic practice and prayer. Such strategies surely became more significant in subsequent writers as the level of Arabic proficiency declined among the Morisco population over the course of the sixteenth century. The presence of Arabic serves as, in Soto and Starczewska’s words, an “authoritative rhetorical token,”⁴⁴ a manner of evoking an aura of Islamic authenticity, even though it is made in the services of an anti-Islamic argument. The clear role of orality —the transliteration of Arabic on the basis of oral pronunciations, and the intended use of such transliterations for reading aloud in the context of preaching and oral dispute— underscores also the fundamentally aural reality of Islam for Moriscos. In the context of populations of Muslims with a high degree of religious literacy, including broad familiarity with Islamic prayers and qur ’ anic passages but perhaps a limited ability to read written text, the capacity to reproduce an aural modality of belief and worship was a necessary rhetorical tool. Andre´s explicitly addresses the importance of sound in his rendering of the Qur’an, recognizing it as a key element in Muslim experience and practice. Unlike many medieval polemics focused on authentic content of scriptural passages —such as Riccoldo da Monte di Croce’s careful translations of the Qur’an in Latin

 “un libro que se llama Azear, un libro muy auténtico entre los moros,” Juan Andrés, Confusión, 98.  Juan Andrés, Confusión, 98. See also 101‒05. These were already noted by Soto and Starczewska, “Authority,” 208. The Kitāb al-anwār was one of the most popular and read Aljamiado texts of the sixteenth century. See L.P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain 1500‒1614 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 149, and Emil Leonardo Cruz Ferna´ndez, “Mahoma en dos textos aljamiados del siglo XVI. La filosofía perenne y el monomito de los moriscos,” PhD Diss. (CUNY, 2018), 96‒ 145; Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodriguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, The Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 285‒89. Also García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, “Los libros de los moriscos y los eruditos orientales,” Al-Qanṭara 31 (2010), 622‒24.  Soto and Starczewska, “Authority,” 209.

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— or other polemics focused on the authenticity of the original language of scripture as written on the page —for example Ramon Martí’s rendering of Hebrew and Aramaic in his Pugio fidei— Andre´s’s extensive use of transliteration stands out for its attention to the oral pronunciation of the text. Rather than overlooking the importance of orality for Muslims in Islamic worship and culture, Andre´s carefully cultivates and evokes the oral aspect of the qur’anic text trying to give the same flavor to his own text through transliteration, and presenting sound as a first step to understanding beyond which a learned Muslim is obliged to progress. Andre´s makes numerous explicit references to the fact that he is addressing listeners as well as readers. For example, in chapter five, after citing a story about the death of Solomon in Q. 27:17– 44, he concludes “I include all of the above in this chapter […] so that listeners and readers will know what fictions and tales the Qur’an tells.”⁴⁵ He also makes reference to the importance of orality and listening for Muḥammad and the first Muslims themselves, noting “When Muḥammad had this chapter written in a letter to his scribe and had it read to the Moors, and when the Moors heard it and read it, they were very pleased with the law it gave them.”⁴⁶ Even more telling is his reference to Q. 72:1– 20, which tells how many Jinn were converted to Islam by hearing the Qur’an. A certain company of demons went one night to listen to Muḥammad and to the Moors reading the Qur’an. It says in the two chapters named above [Q. 46 and Q. 72] how these demons were so pleased with the Qur’an that they then believed in Muḥammad and became Moors. The words of the Qur’an in Arabic in the “Chapter of the Jinn” [Sura alJinn] say: coluhia ileye annehitaz tanraha nafaron nunelgi nui facalu inne çeinihne corhenen hageben yahdi ilarofdi fa amenne bihi gualem inuf crique birabine ahedem [Q. 72:1‒2, qul uwḥ iya ilaya annahu istamaʿa nafarun mina l-jinni fa-qālū innā samiʿnā Qurʾanan ʿajabā. Yahdī ilā l-rrushdi fa-ʾamannā bihi wa-lan nushrika bi-rabbinā aḥ ada], which means in Arabic “Oh Muḥammad, tell the Moors how a host of demons hear the Qur’an and how they said to each other how they had heard the very marvellous Qur’an and they believed in it and did not disbelieve in their creator.”⁴⁷

 “Todo lo sobredicho pongo en este presente capítulo […] porque sepan loy oyedores y leedores de qué rondallas o consejas trata y escribe Alcorán.” Juan Andrés, Confusión, 151.  “Quando Mahoma fizo escrevir este capítulo en una cédula a su escrivano y fízolo leer a los moros y quando los moros lo oyeron y lo leeron, tomaron mucho plazer por la ley que les dio.” Juan Andre´s, Confusio´n, 172.  “Cierta compan˜ ía de los demonios fueron una noche a escuchar a Mahoma y a los moros leyendo el Alcora´n. Dize en los dos capítulos suso allegados co´mo estos demonios se agradaron tanto del Alcora´n que luego creyeron en Mahoma y fizie´ronse moros; las palabras del Alcora´n en ara´vigo en el ‘capítulo de los demonios’ dizen así: coluhia ileye annehitaz tanraha nafaron nunelgi nui facalu inne çeinihne corhenen hageben yahdi ilarofdi fa amenne bihi gualem inuf crique

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Andre´s presents these and other examples of the importance of hearing the Qur’an, stressing how that aural modality of experience had the power to convert listeners. This emphasis on sound and hearing explains the constant recourse to transliteration of the qur’anic text as a missionary tool. At the same time, despite this stress on the power of hearing, Andre´s also stresses that his readers and listeners must consider the meaning of the text and not simply be content with the sound. After presenting the Qur’an in its authentic aural form through transliteration of the sounds into Latin letters, he then addresses the Muslim who is carried away by the sound without thinking about what the text says. “Tell me, Muslim, reader of the Qur’an, how many times have you read this passage and enjoyed the sweet sound of the passage but did not think about the words? Look from now on and read and consider what you are reading, and you will find many things beyond the limits of reason and justice.”⁴⁸ By urging the reader to “look” and “consider what you read,” he replaces the original form of the Arabic Qur’an with a new, transformed Qur’an in Christian letters, a new form that exposes its “irrational” and “unjust” errors. Transliteration of Arabic is thus a key missionizing tool for Andre´s, one that he employs first to appeal to his Muslim reader or listener on the basis of a shared oral culture and finally to lend his own text authenticity as a true reading of the Qur’an’s errors. In the face of Morisco strategies at using Arabic to preserve an Islamic identity in the face of Christian pressure, Andre´s’s transliteration of Arabic in Latin letters thus represents a strategic inversion. Andre´s directly addresses his Morisco listener or reader, challenging him to not only listen to the words but to check the authenticity of the text. He admits about his arguments that, “I believe that many Moors will hear this statement and not believe it,” but as he affirms repeatedly, “the text says all of this word for word.”⁴⁹ The fact that the authentic sound of the text can be verified in the written copy —not in Arabic letters but in Latin

birabine ahedem, que quiere dezir en ara´vigo: O Mahoma, di a los moros co´mo una compan˜ a de los demonios oyeron Alcora´n y dixieron unos a otros co´mo havían oy´do Alcora´n muy maravilloso y que ellos creyeron en e´l y no descreyeron en su Criador.” Juan Andre´s, Confusio´n, 145. See also 195 for similar remarks. Cf. Martín García, Sermon XXVII, in Montoza Coca, “Los sermones,” 202, which only mentions the fact but does not stress the power of hearing or sound.  “Pues dime tú, moro y leyedor del Alcorán, ¿quántas vezes leeste este passo y deleytaste del dulce sono del dicho passo y no pensate en las palabras? Pues mira de oy adelante y lee y considera en lo que leerás, que muchas cosas fuera de razón y justicia fallarás”; Juan Andrés, Confusión, 169.  “Yo creo que muchos moros oyrán esta declaración y no la creerán”; Juan Andrés, Confusión, 216. “Todo esto lo dize el testo y la glosa verbo ad verbum”; 165. See also 146, 172, 182, 198 – 99, for similar language.

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ones— transforms the transliterated Qur’an into a Christian tool, an “AntiQur’an.” This linguistic inversion mimics his own trajectory as author. Because he opens the text with a lengthy conversion narrative describing his transformation from alfaquí to Christian preacher, he hopes his listeners and readers will be “convinced by a witness of their nation.”⁵⁰ Just as he was converted, so the “word-for-word” text, another kind of authentic witness, can be transliterated into a Christian, Latin garb and translated into the language of the new Spanish nation. This parallel offers a similar path toward conversion of his readers. Just as the Qur’an itself can become an authority affirming Christian truth and the Arabic text can take on a non-Arabic guise in assuming Latin letters, so the Morisco, clad in a new outer form of Christian culture, can also become a Christian convert through a redirecting of his Muslim faith toward Christian belief. Throughout the Confusión, conversion and translation rest on the same appeal to authenticity and originality, mirroring each other across the bridge of transliteration as parallel operations of evangelization and cultural conquest.

3 Arabic Echoes after Juan Andre´s Juan Andrés was a pioneer in the writing of anti-Mulim polemic, and his book marks a number of important firsts in the European encounter with Islam. The Confusio´n is, first of all, one of the first books ever printed with moveable type to offer selections of the Qur’an in Arabic.⁵¹ It was, moreover, among the first datable examples of the Qur’an in Romance translation to have survived.⁵² Perhaps

 Juan Andrés, Confusión, 92.  Block printing existed in the Arabic-speaking world —including al-Andalus— for the making of amulets with text —including qur’anic passages— as early as the 10th century. See Karl R. Schaefer, Enigmatic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Museums (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 38.  As far as is known, the earliest Romance Qur’an translation was made from Latin into Catalan in 1382 at the behest of King Pere III, el Ceremoniós (Pere IV of Aragon, d. 1387), now lost. For references to its production, see ACA, Reg. 1274 (fol 192v), 1276 (fol. 91r), 1438 (fol. 168v), 1105 (fol. 172r), all summarized and reproduced in Míkel de Epalza Ferrer, Josep V. Forcadell Saport and Joan M. Perujo Melgar, El corán y sus traducciones. Propuestas (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2008), 100‒101. Similarly, a multi-lingual Qur’an was commissioned seven decades later by the Spanish theologian Juan de Segovia (d. 1458) and made by Mudejar Muslim ʿĪsa (Yça) de Segovia, and included Latin and Castilian translations presented alongside the original Arabic text. While only the Latin prologue has survived, scholars are certain the text was realized. José Martínez Gázquez, “El prólogo de Juan de Segobia al Corán (Qurʾan) trilingüe (1456),” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 38 (2003). On Juan Andrés’s writing in the context of these translations, see

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most imporatantly, it also set a pattern for the subsequent works in the Antialcoranes genre, both those addressed to the Moriscos of Castile (such as Lope de Obregón) and those missionizing to the remaining Muslims of Aragon (such as Martí de Figuerola). Only a few years after Andre´s published the Confusión, Martí de Figuerola, working in the same circle of Bishop García in Valencia, undertook active missionizing campaigns in the region, apparently taking over the tasks of García himself as the ageing bishop retired. This work culminated around 1518 in his lengthy missionary polemic Lumbre de la fe contra la secta machomética, which runs in manuscript to over 250 folios in two dense columns per side.⁵³ While limitations of space here prevent a full comparison of Andre´s and Martí de Figuerola, a few observations can be offered here as a prompt to further work on the subject. Both Andre´s and Martí de Figuerola, working in the sphere of Martín García, made use of Arabic as a conversionary tool and a foundation of a claim to authenticity in argumentation. Unlike Andre´s’s printed text in the Confusio´n, which lacks Arabic letters, Martí de Figuerola’s text in the Lumbre includes abundant citations of Arabic material given first in Arabic letters, followed by transliteration into Latin letters, followed by translation into Castilian. Given the novelty of printing Arabic characters in this period of book printing —the earliest book with Arabic characters from moveable type was of Christian content printed in 1514 in Fano, Italy, and the earliest printing of the entire Qur’an as a book was not attempted until 1537‒38 in Venice⁵⁴— the lack of Arabic characters in Andre´s’s Confusio´n was likely not reflective of the original text, and it is very possible that the manuscript of Andre´s’s original text also included Arabic letters before transliteration just as Martí de Figuerola’s does. In any case, the citation and transliteration practices in Andre´s and Martí de Figuerola represent two parallel aspects of a single polemical campaign. By appropriating and transforming Arabic text, they transformed it into a polemical weapon to weild against their Mudejar and Morisco interlocutors in Granada and Valencia, respectively.

Ryan Szpiech, Mercedes García-Arenal, Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras: Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no. 1 (2018). On undated aljamiado Qur’ans estimated to be from the fifteenth century, see below, n. 83.  On Martí de Figuerola, see Mercedes García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán,” in Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers (Univesity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019).  Dagmar A. Riedel, “Books in Arabic Script,” in Companion to the History of the Book, 2nd ed., ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Chichester: Blackwell, 2020), 325.

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Martí de Figuerola knew Andre´s’s work and refers to him as an “expert,” and thus it is logical to consider the latter’s influence on the Lumbre. ⁵⁵ Nevertheless, a comparison of the two authors shows that the Lumbre is not copied from the Confusio´n, even if it is modeled on Andre´s’s work in some way and even though the two texts interpret a number of the same passages. It is known, moreover, that whereas Andre´s was, by all estimates, a source of information about Arabic for his colleagues, Martí de Figuerola had to rely on the help of a Morisco by the name of Juan Gabriel de Teruel, an Aragonese convert and ex-alfaquí like Juan Andre´s. Juan Gabriel gained a reputation as a valuable translator and informant, beginning in 1518, the same year of Martí de Figuerola’s work on the Lumbre, by collaborating on a Qur’an translation into Latin comissioned by the Italian Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, a text later to be edited and corrected by the illustrious convert Leo Africanus.⁵⁶ Roberto Tottoli considers, in his chapter in this volume, the peculiar way the Qur’an was copied, including many telling details. Here, I wish to briefly consider the relationship between the Arabic script text and the transliteration below it in order to make some observations about the order of the writing of each piece and the nature of Martí de Figuerola’s qur’anic reading. To begin, we can ask: How do the citations of both Arabic letters and transliteration in the Lumbre, elaborated with the assitance of Juan Gabriel, differ from Juan Andre´s’s transliterations in the Confusio´n? As we have noted, Andre´s’s texts are designed to highlight the importance of sound as a tool of missionizing and argumentation. While the same might be said for Martí de Figuerola, whose text includes even more examples of transliteration the Confusio´n, it is clear that Marti de Figuerola’s use of transliteration is tied much more closely to his written text. For example, like Andre´s, Martí de Figuerola cites numerous passages related to Jesus and Mary. In one such passage, he states, But these my fellow moors will say that we Christians invented it and for that reason they should not belive it. As a proof of this [against them], their Qur’an says it in book one, chapter four, verse forty, if Jesus Christ is true in his things. It says thus [see Fig. 1]:

 Martí de Figuerola states that “lo que se dirá será de un libro que hizo Mossen Johan Andrés antiguo alfaquí de Xàtiva y que por ser persona experta.” See Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 30r.  The translation has been edited and studied by Katarzyna K. Starczewska: Latin Translation of the Qur’ān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Introductory Study (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018); García-Arenal and Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Qurʾān Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo,” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014).

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Fig. 1: Joan Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe contra la secta mahometana y el Alcorán. Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia [RAH], MS Gayangos 1922/36. fol 50v. Guacafayne ala exiriim bi isa abnu mariama muçadi felmine bayna yadai mina altaurata gaetyne ulingili [Wa-qaffaynā ʿalā ithārihim bi-ʿīsā ibnu maryama muṣaddifan (leg. muṣaddiqan) li-mā bayna yadayhi min al-ttawrati wa-ataynāhu al-injīla; “In their footsteps we sent Jesus son of Mary, confirming what was in his hands from the Torah and the Gospels”], which means: “and they have send after them Jesus son of Mary, true in what he brought in his hands of the Torah and the Gospels.”⁵⁷

This passage reproduces more or less accurately the Arabic text Q. 5:46, albeit with a few small variants. The division of the transliteration follows closely the written divisions of words rather than only relying on the sounds. A comparison of the Arabic letters and the transliteration show that the latter was made directly on the basis of the former. One telling detail in the word muṣaddiqan (“confirming,” which the text translates as “true”) shows this: the word is split over two lines and is written as muṣaddifan, with a dot under the letter qāf rather than over it. (The text consistently writes qāf with a single dot over the letter and fāʾ with a single dot below, as is evident in the beginning of the quotation, wa-qaffaynā). This error in the copying of the Arabic text —one of many considered by Tottoli in his chapter here— would not be important, were it not for the fact that the transliteration reproduces it, blending the fāʾ with the next word and writing muçadi felmine… [muṣaddifan li-mā…]. Numerous other examples of this kind show that the transliteration of the sounds was made by reading the text as written above it, not as read from a written

 “Pero dirán estos próximos míos de moros que nosotros los xristianos lo inventamos y por tanto ellos no lo deven creher. Para en prueva de esto diga lo su Alcorán libro primero capítulo quarto alea cuarenta si Jesu Christo fue verdadero en sus cosas dize assí… Guacafayne ala exiriim bi isa abnu mariama muçadi felmine bayna yadai mina altaurata gaetyne ulingili. Quiere dezir: ‘y havemos enviado empues dellos a Jesus hijo de María verdadero en la que truxo en sus manos de la Thora y de los Evangelios’”; Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 50v.

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Qur’an. In this, the copying of the written Qur’an in Arabic letters was a primary step, preceding and determining the transliteration. A second example shows how both the Confusio´n and the Lumbre deal with the same Arabic text in slightly different ways. In chapter 47, Martí de Figuerola discusses the Hadith tradition afirming that Jesus and Mary were the only humans not touched by Satan.⁵⁸ He suggests that the Qur’an affirms this in discussing the birth of Mary in Q. 3:36: Book one, chapter two, aya 36, says [Fig. 2]:

Fig. 2: Joan Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe contra la secta mahometana y el Alcorán, RAH MS Gayangos 1922/36. fol. 120r. Falame dacate quelat guain çamay tue Mariama guainia hui due biqua guaduri yatahe mina axayteni hirraimi [fa-lammā waḍ aʿathā qā lat wa-innī sammaytuhā maryama wa-innī uʿiydhuhā bika wa-dhurriyatahā min ash-shayṭ ā n ar-rrajīm; “When she delivered her, she said ‘I have named her Mary and I seek protection for her in you from Satan, the evil one.’”], which means, “After Saint Anne gave birth, she said, ‘Oh Lord I have given birth to a female and I have called her Maria’. God said, ‘I will protect her along with you and her son from the evil Devil.’”⁵⁹

Andre´s also cites this passage as chapter two, book one, beginning his citation one verse before, with Q. 3:36. The overlapping portion begins at Q. 3:37, and reads faleme guad ahothe unça calet jni ceniey tuhe jnarieme gua jni uhiduhe bique gua durri yatihe mine assaytani aragina [fa-lammā waḍ aʿathā unthā qā lat innī sammaytuhā maryama wa-

 For example, Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol. 4, Book 55, # 641; or Vol. 4, Book 54, # 506, among other examples.  “Libro po, cao 2o alea 36 y dize… Falame dacate quelat guain çamay tue Mariama guainia hui due biqua guaduri yatahe mina axayteni hirraimi Quiere dezir, y después que parió santa anna dixo o señor yo e parrido fembra y la e llamada María dixo dios yo la defenderé contigo y a su hijo del diablo malvado”; Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 120r.

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innī uʿiydhuhā bika wa-dhurriyatahā min ash-shayṭ ā n ar-rrajīm; “When she delivered her, a female, she said ‘I have named her Mary and I seek protection for her in you from Satan, the evil one.’”], which means… that she gave birth and she was born a female, and her birth was holy. She named her Mary and asked God that she and her son be kept far from and defended from the temptation of the Devil.⁶⁰

There are various key differences between these passages that show that the Lumbre was not copied directly from the Confusio´n. First, both texts abbreviate and alter the passage they cite, but do so in slightly different ways. Q. 3:36 begins by explaining, “When she delivered, she said, ‘My Lord! I have given birth to a girl,’ —and Allah fully knew what she had delivered— ‘and the male is not like the female. I have named her Mary…’ [wa-lammā waḍ aʿathā qālat rabbi innī waḍ aʿtuhā unthā wa-llāhu aʿlamu bi-mā waḍ aʿat wa-laysa al-ththakaru ka-l-unthā wa-innī sammaytuhā maryama…]. Both Martí de Figuerola and Andre´s leave out the phrase “‘My Lord! I have given birth to a girl,’ —and Allah fully knew what she had delivered— ‘and the male is not like the female,’ but the former adds nothing in its place, proceeding with the next sentence (“I named her Mary”), whereas the latter adds the word “a female” before continuing. Second, Martí de Figuerola translates what he quotes and transliterates, whereas Andre´s paraphrases part of the meaning rather than translating directly. In doing so, Andre´s changes the tense of the verbs from Anne’s first-person statement “I have given birth…” (preserved in Martí de Figuerola) to a third-person “She gave birth to a girl….,” to which he adds the comment (not in the qur’anic text) “her birth was holy.” Andre´s’s version continues the third-person paraphrase by noting that she “asked God” for protection from the Devil. In contrast, Martí de Figuerola’s version alters the text in a different way by inserting a firstperson statement by God (“I will protext her”) in place of Anne’s request (“I seek your protection”). In addition to a few other notable differences in the respective translations and transliterations, one important detail in the transliteration stands out and sheds light on Martí de Figuerola’s reading process. Whereas Andre´s’s transliteration more or less follows the Arabic text (apart from his shortening of the verse), Martí de Figuerola misreads the opening words. Andre´s begins by stating faleme guad ahothe unça calet… [fa-lammā waḍ aʿathā unthā qālat; “When she delivered her, a female, she said…”], but Martí de Figuerola states, Falame dacate quelat…

 “faleme guad ahothe unça calet jni ceniey tuhe jnarieme gua jni uhiduhe bique gua durri yatihe mine assaytani aragina… que quere dezir… que parió y nasció fembra, el qual nascimiento fue santo. Llamola María y rogó a Dios que ella y su Fijo fuessen muy apartados y defensados de la temptación del diablo”; Juan Andre´s, Confusio´n, 211‒12.

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[fa-lammā waḍ aʿathā qālat…; “When she gave birth to her, she said…”] How does Martí de Figuerola transform waḍ aʿathā (which Andre´s reads as guad ahothe) into the transliteration dacate? Martí de Figuerola ignores the waw and trasliterates the sound of the ayn+tāʾ as ca because he apparently could not hear and perceive the ayn sound correctly, instead perceiving the gutteral sound (a “pharyngeal fricative” in phonetic terms) ʿat as a simple palatal cat. Similarly, Tottoli notes in his chapter here that the Arabic text confuses, on more than one occasion, alif and hamza with ʿayn. ⁶¹ This suggests that the text in Arabic letters was being dictated and/or copied by a non-native speaker who had trouble differentiating between these two sounds. Such an error could only be made by a reader who lacked a full command of the text’s meaning or who lacked a full familiarity with the verse at hand. Such confusion of letters is often reproduced in the transliteration of the text, suggesting that the sounds were transliterated based on what was read off of the Arabic as it was copied (or miscopied), not as it was recited orally.⁶² Whereas Andre´s’s slight but logically plausable alterations of the text in both Arabic and (in a different way) in translation suggest he may have been recalling the text from memory, Martí de Figuerola’s careless misreading of Arabic letters shows that he was clumily working off of the Arabic script, first copying (or miscopying) the text and then sounding it out. Taken together, these telling differences show that Martí de Figuerola was not copying directly off of Andre´s’s text and that in fact, the two authors followed a different procedure in reading and rendering the Arabic text in transliterated form. While Martí de Figuerola and Andrés both wrote and worked before the forced conversion of the Muslims of Aragon in 1526, two subsequent writers of Antiaclorano texts, Erasmist writer Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón and Castilian priest Lope de Obregón, from Ávila, ministered to converted Moriscos. Both writers pattern their work on that of Andre´s, drawing from the content of the Confusio´n and continuing to highlight the centrality of the original Arabic text. In the 1530s, the Pérez de Chinchón wrote the eponymous Antialcorano (1532), a collection of twenty-six sermons, in an effort, as he says, to “to instruct and teach the newly converted and to refute the Muḥammadan Sect.”⁶³ For this explicit reason, he defends, against the criticism of his colleagues, his insistence on using Cas-

 See Tottoli’s chapter here, n. 82.  Another example noted by Tottoli in which the Arabic script mistakenly inserts a bāʾ in place of a hamza is reproduced in the transliteration. See Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 8b, noted by Tottoli in his chapter, n. 80.  “Para insruyr y enseñar a los nuevamente convertidos y para confutar la secta mahomética”; Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 79.

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tilian rather than Latin for his text. As he puts it, “to begin to christianize them with the [Latin] mass is like starting the house with the roof, so that, lacking foundation, it never gets built.”⁶⁴ Language is, as in previous works, a central aspect of the polemical argument. Although most of the Arabic passages that appear in translation in Pérez de Chinchón’s work lack a corresponding Arabic version, this is not because the work itself lacked Arabic text, but because, as he complains in his prologue, “the verses of the Qur’an are not inserted here because the Arabic language is much corrupted in the printing.”⁶⁵ But the text leaves spaces where the Arabic should be, suggesting that Arabic script was used in the original manuscript text (see Fig. 3). Chincho´n does not claim knowledge of Arabic himself, he says he checked his text “with alfaquíes and learned people from their law” (“con alfaquíes y personas doctas en su ley”) naming “Moscayre, alcadí of Gandía, and Mangay, and alfaquí Zumilla, and others I do not name. Let the reader at least be satisfied with one thing, which is that I do not pretend or lie about anything I say about the sect of Muḥammad.”⁶⁶ This lack is striking, giving that Pe´rez de Chinchón stresses repeatedly the critical importance of hearing for salvation and the acceptance of divine law. As he notes, “Hearing is the best of all the senses, and thus God made it so that by hearing there could enter doctrine, faith, and the law, which is the best thing in the world.”⁶⁷ He also makes reference to the difficulty of making his audience listen to what he says. “And you who says to me that you do not want to hear reason or advice or disputation or examination of your law — who will pull you out of error?”⁶⁸ Hearing Arabic in particular was certainly a part of Pe´rez de Chincho´n’s sermons. He frequently signals that he is introducing a sentence in Arabic, stating “in Arabic the sunna says,” or “as it says in the Qur’an… which means…” a statement that he follows with a translation into Cas-

 “Empeçarlos a christianear por la missa es como empeçar la casa por el tejado para que sin fundamento nunca se haga”; Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 80.  Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 87.  “comuniqué todas las materias, que aquí trato del Alcorán y cuna y otros libros, con alfaquíes y personas doctas de su ley, quales fueron Moscayre alcadí de Gandía, Mangay y el Alfaquí Zumilla, y otros que no nombro, para que a lo menos este el Lector satisfecho de una cosa, que no finjo, ni miento en nada de quanto digo ser en la secta de Mahoma”; Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 81‒82.  “el oyr es mejor sentido que todos, y assí dios le hizo para que por el oyr entrasse la doctrina, la fe, la ley, que es la cosa mejor del mundo.” Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 72.  “Mas de ti, que me dizes que no quieres oyr razon ni consejo, ni disputa, ni examinación de tu ley, ¿quién te sacará del engan˜ o?”; Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 322.

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Fig. 3: Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, Libro llamado Antialcorán, que quiere dezir contra el Alcorán de Mahoma, repartido en veynteyseys sermones (Valencia: Juan Jofré, 1532), fol. 61r. Biblioteca Virtual del património bibliográfico (CC BY 4.0).

tilian. While blank spaces are left where Arabic once was, it seems clear that Arabic text was included. Moreover, there are also vestiges of what were transliterations. For example, he states “the Qur’an calls Jesus Christ qualimetu a allah, which is to say ‘word of God.’”⁶⁹ He mentions the Angel of Death, “this Angel was called Melech almenti, which means ‘Angel of Death,’ and he wrote in a book called the allauhe almafod, which means ‘the preserved tablet.’”⁷⁰ He includes many such transliterated phrases, insisting that “all of these things said above that you have heard, my brothers, are taken from the Qur’an and from the six books of the Sunna, and the Book of the Flowers, which you call  “el alcorán llama a jesu Christo qualimetu a allah que quiere decir palabra de Dios”; Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 191.  “Este a´ngel se llamava melech almenti, que quiere deir a´ngel de la muerte: y que escrevía en un libro que se llamava allauhe almafod, que quiere dezir la tabla reservada”: Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 155.

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[blank space].”⁷¹ He states that he drew this material from earlier writers having “looked over three or four” Antialcoranes as well as the sermons of Martín García, noting that “compared with what you find there about this (polemic against Islam), I believe I have given, if not more instruction, at least better order for persuading this people.”⁷² If Pe´rez de Chincho´n’s text shows a marked simplification in the engagement with the qur’anic text and a decline of first-hand knowledge of the text, these trends are even more evident in final work in the Antialcoranes to use Arabic, the Confutación del Alcorán y secta mahometana (1555) by Castilian priest Lope de Obregón from Ávila.⁷³ Basing his work directly on Andrés, he not only reproduces many of the translations of Arabic verses but also copies —or attempts to copy— the transliterations of Arabic text. Thus Obregón’s rendering of Q. 3:169 is almost identical to the citation of the same passage published in Andre´s’ Confusio´n, although somewhat garbled: He promised glory to those who should die in battle, and after this he repeated it again in another chapter copied in book one, chapter one of the Qur’an, which in Arabic says: guale tehçibnne alledine cutelu fiçebili illehi amguetun bel ahie hun hinde rabihin yorzacon [wa-lā taḥsabanna al-adhịna qutilū fị sabīli allāhi amwātā bal aḥyāʾu ʿinda rabbihim yurzaqūna], which means, “Do not think that those who shall die in battle will be dead. Rather, they will be alive, eating and drinking with their creator.”⁷⁴ [See Fig.4]

 “Todas estas cosas sobredichas, que auéys oydo hermanos mios, son sacadas del Alcorán y de los seys libros de la cuna y de libro de las flores, que llamays vosotros […]”; Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 157.  “He visto y rebuelto tres o quatro reprovaciones que ay del Alcorán, y algunos sermones que el muy Reverendo maestro Martín García arçediano de Zaragoça en su tiempo hizo contra esta secta, y que cotejando lo que allí se trata con esto, creo auer dado, sino más doctrina, a lo menos mejor orden para persuadir a esta gente”; Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 81.  For an overview of Lope de Obrego´n’s work, see Ryan Szpiech, “Lope Obregón,” in ChristianMuslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. VI: 1500‒1600 (Western Europe), ed. David Thomas and John Chesworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014); and Bernard Ducharme, “La déchéance d’un prophète: La biographie de Mahomet sous la plume du polémiste Lope de Obregón (1555),” The´ologiques 28, no. 1 (2020). For information about the populace to which he preached, see Serafín de Tapia, La comunidad morisca de Ávila (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1991).  “Les prometió su gloria a los que muriessen en las batallas, y después desto se lo tornó a prometer otra vez por otro capítulo que esta copilado en el libro primero y capítulo primero de su Alcorán en arábigo dize assí. guale tehçibnne alledine cutelu fiçebili illehi amguetun bel ahie hun hinde rabihin yorzacon. Que quiere dezir, no penséis que los que murieren en las batallas que serán muertos, antes estarán biuos con su criador comiendo y beuiendo”; Lope de Obregón, Confutación, fol. 40v.

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Fig. 4: Lope de Obregón, Confutación del Alcorán y secta mahometana, sacado de sus propios libros y de la vida del mesmo Mahoma (Granada: n.p., 1555), fol. 40v. Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB). Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Although Obregón cites over thirty passages in transliterated Arabic, his text is in most of these cases copied directly from Andrés.⁷⁵ His own limited ability in Arabic forced him, as he notes, to rely on a local convert to insert other texts in Arabic in transliteration, all of which evinces, as in previous examples, a strong oral character. Even so, the mere attempt to insert these passages —perhaps rendered by his assistant— into his Castilian sermons, provide another example of the ongoing appeal of language as a simultaneous bridge to evangelization and tool of polemic. His strained efforts at rendering the Arabic text for fellow Christian preachers calls to mind the words of thirteenth-century Dominican Ramon Martí (d. after 1284), who states in his anti-Jewish text Capistrum Iudaeorum (Muzzle for the Jews), which is filled with transliterations of Hebrew text into Latin letters, “It will be best if this treatise [be written] not only in Latin, but

 For a developed comparison between the two, see Jane El-Kolli, “La polémique islamo-chrétienne en Espagne (1492‒1640) à travers des refutations de l’Islam de Juan Andrés et Lope Obregón,” PhD Diss. (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier III, 1983).

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also in Hebrew, and that one have the knowledge of reading Hebrew [aloud], even if they cannot understand it.”⁷⁶ Twelve years after Lope de Obregón published his Confutación, and only one year after clergyman Martín Pérez de Ayala published his Morisco catechism Doctrina Christiana, en lengua aráuiga y castellana (1566), Felipe II instated a law imposed first by his father Carlos V, making the Arabic language illegal in all contexts. While this prohibition soon helped precipitate the second Alpujarras rebellion, it also marked a sharp turn in attitude about the role of language in assimilation and conversion. As Granadan clergyman Pedro Guerra de Lorca states in his later Catecheses mystagogicae pro aduenis ex secta Mahometana (Mystagogical Catechism for Those Coming from the Muhammadan Sect, 1586), “let him be called a Moor on account of the unjust retention of his dress and of the Arabic language.”⁷⁷ In all of the examples presented above, from Juan Andrés and Martín García to Lope de Obregón, the attempt to transliterate Arabic in order to facilitate oral recitation reflects the mixed attitude embodied in the conflicting views of Granadan Bishop Hernando de Talavera and Toledan Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros. While the difference between these two figures, suggesting that Talavera was less polemical or intolerant than Xime´nez de Cisneros, has been exaggerated, it is certain that Talavera was much more concerned with missionizing and polemicizing through attention to Arabic. Xime´nez de Cisneros, by contrast, showed little interest in the language of the Muslim population of Granada, evangelizing by force alone. The Antialcoranes are a blend of these two approaches, approaching Arabic as a bridge to persuasion but also reshaping and denaturing Arabic text with violence through the imposition of a Christian understanding and a Latin form. One way to highlight the mixed aspects —polemical violence and attention to Arabic and the details of tranlation and transliteration— is to consider the transliterated Arabic material in the Antialcoranes in contradistinction to the practice in Morisco communities of using transliteration to preserve some vestige of its own Muslim cultural sensibility. In the face of Mudejar and Morisco Alja-

 “Optimum erit si istud opusculum non solum in Latino, sed etiam in Hebraeo, et scientia legendi, etsi non intelligendi Hebraicum habeatur” (“It will be best if this treatise [be written] not only in Latin, but also in Hebrew, and that one have the knowledge of reading Hebrew, even if they cannot understand it”; Ramón Martí, Capistrum Iudaeorum, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Adolfo Robles Sierra (Würzburg: Echter, 1990), vol. 1, 56.  “Qua de causa ob iniustam retentionem habitus et Arabicae linguae Maurus ille dicetur …” Pedro Guerra de Lorca, Catecheses Mystagogicae pro aduenis ex secta Mahometana (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1586), fol. 25r.

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miado (Castilian text written in Arabic letters and sometimes blended with Arabic text), these Christian authors employed what might be called “Anti-Aljamiado” (Arabic text written in Latin letters, blended with Castilian writing).⁷⁸ Seeing the Arabic of the Antialcoranes as a kind of “Anti-Aljamiado” is logical if we view the wider context of Christian-Morisco polemical engagement in the first half of the century. We can read the Arabic language in the Antialcoranes not only as a case of the practical use of language —a pragmatic treatment of alphabets to bypass the impossibility of printing Arabic letters and to facilitate preaching by Christians who may not have been able to read the Qur’an with fluency— but also as a deliberate polemical act. I propose we view this Arabic material as a means of Christian “making its own” of a central aspect of Morisco identity — the preservation of Arabic letters. Transliteration is not here a culturally neutral process, but rather one that undermines the practice in Morisco communities of using transliteration to preserve some vestige of its own Muslim cultural sensibility. Thus, in place of defenses of Morisco belief and practice, such as the work of the Mancebo de Arévalo, or Morisco attacks on Christian beliefs written in Aljamiado, such as the anti-Christian polemical tract found in BNE MS 4944, we encounter precisely the opposite. If Morisco Aljamiado can be considered, as the etymology of the word itself suggests, a case of ʿAjamiyya (non-Arabic language) presented in the garb of Arabic letters, the Arabic of the Antialcoranes constitutes the opposite: a form of ʿArabiyya (Arabic language) transliterated in Latin letters. To understand what is at stake in the representation of the Qur’an in translation and transliteration, we might consider the words of Q. 12:2, in which God says, “I have revealed the Qur’an in Arabic so that you can understand.” Q. 41:44 addresses even more directly the importance of the Arabic language as the only suitable medium for God’s words. “If we sent down a Qur’an in a foreign language (ʿajamiyyan), they would have said, ‘Why are its verses not made clear? What? A foreign language and an Arab [speaker]?’” If the very notion of the

 Carlos Sainz de la Maza calls this phenomenon “inverse Aljamiado.” See his discussion in “Aljamías inversas,” in Aljamias in memoriam: Álvaro Galmés de Fuentes y Iacob M. Hassan, ed. Raquel Suárez García and Ignacio Ceballos Viro (Gijón: Trea, 2012). He notes: “Todo proceso de escritura de una lengua usando el alfabeto propio de otra que sea la lengua de referencia identitaria de un grupo social distinto, que, mediante este procedimiento, hace suyo algún aspecto propio de la cultura representada por la lengua así transcrita” (253 – 54). On this phenomeon, see also Pier Mattia Tommasino, “Eteroglossia e propaganda religiosa nel Mediterraneo moderno,” Lingua e Stile 45, no. 2 (2010), 233 – 34; García-Arenal and Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic,’” 415; M.A.S Abdel Haleem, “Qur’anic Orthography: The Written Representation of the Recited Text of the Qur’an,” Islamic Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1994).

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Qur’an in Aljamiado is problematic, it is especially so in the mouth of a “nonArab.”⁷⁹ The rendering of the Qur’an not only as a translation into ʿajamiyya but also as a transliteration into an “inverse Aljamiado” constitutes a double polemical gesture, both a challenge to the divine status of Arabic and an appropriation and repackaging of that status in a Latin guise. The presentation in Latin letters of material from the Qur’an and other Islamic sources, as we find in the Antialcoranes, can be placed in the context of contemporary polemical and apologetic literature of the Moriscos themselves, constituting a kind of Christian alternative to the two dozen or so manuscripts of Mudejar or Morisco Qur’ans in Aljamiado Castilian (including two in Latin script), studied in depth by Consuelo López Morillas.⁸⁰ Anti-Aljamiado in the evangelization and polemical literature of the first half of the sixteenth century can thus be read as a deliberate and strategic reversal of the Morisco use of Aljamiado, a way of employing transliteration not to preserve Morisco identity but to undermine it through conversion and polemic. The emphasis on oral presentation, above all, adds to this inversion of letters a claim of the living and performed nature of engagement with the Qur’an. The twopronged claim of these Christian writers, laying claim to both the sound of the Qur’an as well as its letters, was to have enduring appeal, at least among later Christian polemicists. The long influence of texts like Juan Andre´s, being cited and copied by later Christian writers well into the eighteenth century, suggests that Anti-Aljamiado, the strategic inversion of the linguistic habits of the Moriscos, overlaps with the origins of European Arabic philology, quietly representing a dark polemical legacy behind modern-day Arabic and Islamic studies.

Bibliography Abdel Haleem, M.A.S. “Qur’anic Orthography: The Written Representation of the Recited Text of the Qur’an.” Islamic Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1994): 171 – 92. Ahmed, Shahab. Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017.

 On the question of the rendering of the Qur’an in writing, see Abdel Haleem, “Qur’anic Orthography.”  Consuelo López Morillas gives a list twenty-five manuscripts, suggesting only four (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 4938; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Arabe 1163; Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, MS 9402 and a section of MS 9409), might date to the fifteenth century. Consuelo López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo (Gijón: Trea, 2011), 46. All are copied in aljamiado and none are complete.

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Alva´rez Gracia, Andre´s. “El Islam y los judi´os en Caspe.” In Comarca de Bajo Arago´n-Caspe. Edited by Miguel Caballu´ Albiac and Francisco Javier Corte´s Borroy, 109‒22. Zaragoza: Gobierno de Arago´n, 2008. Andrés, Juan. Libro nuevamente imprimido que se llama Confusión dela secta mahomática y del Alcorán. Valencia: Juan Joffre, 1515. Andrés, Juan. Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán. Edited by Elisa Ruiz García and María Isabel García-Monge. Mérida: Ed. Regional de Extremadura, 2003. Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “Sicut Euangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts.” In The Latin Qur’an, 1143‒1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation. Edited by Ca´ndida Ferrero Herna´ndez and John Tolan, 425‒54. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Cirac Estopañán, Sebastián. Los sermones de Don Martín García, obispo de Barcelona, sobre los Reyes Católicos. Zaragoza: La Academia, 1956. Bobzin, Hartmut. Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation. Beirut: Ergon Verlag Wü rzburg, 2008. Bobzin, Hartmut. “Observaciones sobre Juan Andrés y su libro Confusión de la secta mahomática (Valencia, 1515).” In Vitae Mahometi. Reescritura e invención en la literatura cristiana de controversia. Edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and Óscar De la Cruz Palma, 209‒22. Madrid: CSIC, 2014. Bunes Ibarra, Miguel Ángel de. “Martín García.” In Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History. Vol. 6, Western Europe (1500 – 1600). Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth et al., 85 – 88. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Casassas Canals, Xavier. “The Bellús Qur’an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur’an and Its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and The Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century.” In The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Interpretation. Edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan, 455 – 74. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Ducharme, Bernard. “La déchéance d’un prophète: La biographie de Mahomet sous la plume du polémiste Lope de Obregón (1555).” The´ologiques 28, no. 1 (2020): 223‒52. El-Kolli, Jane, “La polémique islamo-chrétienne en Espagne (1492‒1640) à travers des refutations de l’Islam de Juan Andrés et Lope Obregón.” PhD Diss., Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier III, 1983. Epalza Ferrer, Míkel de, Josep V. Forcadell Saport, and Joan M. Perujo Melgar. El Corán y sus traducciones. Propuestas. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2008. García, Martín. Sermones eminentissimi totiusque Barchinonensis gregis tutatoris acerrimi, necnon imarcessibilis sacre theologie paludamento insigniti Martini Garsie. Zaragoza: Georgius Coci, 1520. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán.” In Polemical Encounters Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and beyond. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A.Wiegers, 155 – 78. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2019. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. “Los libros de los moriscos y los eruditos orientales.” Al-Qant ̣ara 31 (2010): 611‒46. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, The Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

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García-Arenal, Mercedes and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “The Law of Abraham the Catholic: Juan Gabriel as Qurʾan translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo.” Al-Qant ̣ara 35 (2014): 409‒59. Guerra de Lorca, Pedro. Catecheses Mystagogicae pro aduenis ex secta Mahometana. Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1586. Harvey, L. P. Muslims in Spain 1500‒1614. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Hernando, Josep. “Ramon Martí (s. XIII): De Seta Machometi o de origine, progressu et fine Machometi et quadruplici reprobatione prophetiae eius.” Acta Historica et Archaeologica Mediaevalia 4 (1983): 9 – 63. Larson, Everette. “A Study of the Confusión de la secta mahomática of Juan Andrés.” PhD Diss., Catholic University of America, 1981. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha. Gijón: Trea, 2011. Martí, Ramon. Capistrum Iudaeorum, 2 vols. Edited and translated by Adolfo Robles Sierra. Würzburg: Echter, 1990. Martínez Gázquez, José. “El prólogo de Juan de Segobia al Corán (Qurʾan) trilingüe (1456).” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 38 (2003): 389 – 410. Mérigoux, Jean-Marie. “L’ouvrage d’un frère Prêcheur florentin en orient à la fin du XIIIe siècle: le ‘Contra legem Sarracenorum’ de Riccoldo da Monte di Croce.” Memorie domenicane: Fede e Controversia nel ‘300 e ‘500 17 (1986): 1‒144. Montoza Coca, Manuel. “Los Sermones de don Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio.” PhD Diss., Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018. Obrego´n, Lope de. Confutación del Alcorán y secta mahometana, sacado de sus propios libros, y de la vida del mesmo Mahoma. Granada, Sancho de Nebrija, 1555. Pérez de Ayala, Martín. Doctrina Christiana en lengua aráviga y castellana. Valencia: Ioannes Mey, 1566. Pérez de Chinchón, Bernardo. Libro llamado Antialcorán, que quiere dezir contra el Alcorán de Mahoma, repartido en veynteyseys sermones. Valencia, Joan Joffre, 1532. 2nd ed. Salamanca: Juan y Andres Renaut, 1595. Pérez de Chinchón, Bernardo. Diálogos christianos contra la secta mahomética y contra la pertinacia de los judíos. Valencia: Francisco Díaz Romano, 1535. Pérez de Chinchón, Bernardo. Antialcorano. Diálogos cristianos. Conversión y evangelización de Moriscos. Edited by Francisco Pons Fuster. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2000. Riedel, Dagmar A. “Books in Arabic Script.” In Companion to the History of the Book. 2nd ed. Edited by Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose, 315‒34. Chichester: Blackwell, 2020. Ribera Florit, José María. “La polémica cristiano-musulmana en los sermones del maestro inquisidor Don Martín García.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Barcelona, 1967. Ruiz García, Elisa. “Joan Martí Figuerola.” In Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History. Vol. 6, Western Europe (1500 – 1600). Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth et al., 89 – 92. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Sainz de la Maza, Carlos. “Aljamías inversas.” In Aljamías: In memoriam Álvaro Galmés de Fuentes y Iacob M. Hassan. Edited by Raquel Suárez García and Ignacio Ceballos Viro, 253 – 70. Gijón: Trea, 2012. Schaefer, Karl R. Enigmatic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Museums. Leiden: Brill, 2006.

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Soto, Teresa and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García.” In After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 199 – 228. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Starczewska, Katarzyna. Latin Translation of the Qur’ān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Introductory Study. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018. Szpiech, Ryan. “Citas árabes en caracteres hebreos en el Pugio fidei del dominico Ramón Martí: entre la autenticidad y la autoridad.” Al-Qanṭara 32 (2011): 71‒107. Szpiech, Ryan. Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Szpiech, Ryan. “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos: The Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) of ‘Juan Andrés.’” La Corónica 41 (2012): 317‒43. Szpiech, Ryan. “Lope Obregón.” in Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. VI: 1500‒1600 (Western Europe). Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth et al., 169 – 75. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Szpiech, Ryan. “A Witness of Their Own Nation: On the Influence of Juan Andrés.” In After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 174‒98. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Szpiech, Ryan, Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras: Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no. 1 (2018): 99‒132. Talavera, Hernando de. Breue y muy prouechosa doctrina de lo que deue saber todo christiano. Granada: Meinardo Ungut and Juan Pegnitzer, ca. 1496. Talavera, Hernando de. Católica impugnación. Edited. by F. Martín Hernández. Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1961. [Reprint with added introduction by Stefania Pastore: Córdoba: Almuzara, 2012]. Tapia, Serafín de. La comunidad morisca de Ávila. Salamanca, Universidad de Salamanca, 1991. Tommasino, Pier Mattia. “Eteroglossia e propaganda religiosa nel Mediterraneo moderno.” Lingua e Stile 45, no. 2 (2010): 223 – 58. Zuwiyya, Zachary. “Juan Andrés.” In Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 6 (Western Europe 1500 – 1600). Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth et al., 79 – 84. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

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Preaching, Polemic, and Qur’an. Joan Martí de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán 1 Introduction Anti-Islamic polemic in the Iberian Peninsula, which was explicitly anti-qur’anic, reached a peak at the turn of the sixteenth century. The political environment of Castile and Aragon —after the long-awaited conquest of the Kingdom of Granada and the forced conversions of Jews and Muslims, and amid messianic dreams of spreading the Christian faith by defeating Islam everywhere both physically and theologically— created an urgent need for evangelization and its militant arm, religious polemic. The conquest of 1492 added to the Kingdom of Castile thousands of Muslims who were significantly different from the relatively few and peaceful Castilian Mudejars. In the Crown of Aragon Muslims were a much larger proportion of the population, in some places outnumbering Christians. Fernando and Isabel, aware that a conquest in itself did not change a people’s faith, called a meeting in Granada to determine how to evangelize their new Castilian but Arabic-speaking subjects. Some of the figures who met in Granada were well versed in Arabic, Islam, and the Qur’an. Hernando de Talavera and Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, who directed Granada’s religious politics, both highly educated, were confronted with two possible models: that of Ramon Llull, who proposed conversion through persuasion and knowledge of the other, and that of Duns Scotus, who maintained that persuasion could be furthered by some degree of coercion. In principle, the conditions existed for a style of preaching that was peaceful and based on reason —but that was not to be. In a symbolic final gesture, Cardinal Cisneros ordered the public burning of copies of the Qur’an in Granada. The story may be apocryphal,¹ but it remained vivid in the cultural imaginary as a defeat of

 Nicasio Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada y la quema de libros islámicos,” in La Biblia Note: This article has been prepared within the frames of the research project “A Renaissance Religious Controversy. Catechisms for the Conversion of Muslims in Sixteenth-Century Spain” (PGC2018 – 093472-A-C33), leaded by Jorge Ledo (Universidade da Coruña). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-013

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the essential symbol of Islam —as well as the defeat of Ramon Llull’s apologetic method, based on the power of reason and faith in the word. The triumph of Scotus’s notions about religious coercion and forced baptism (which have lately received scholarly attention),² did not wholly extinguish the influence of Llull’s model, which lived on in the Peninsula with varying degrees of intensity. Nonetheless, while the fate of Llullian philosophy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has been fairly well studied, his views from that time on theology and preaching remain unclear and, paradoxically, have drawn little attention. His model of preaching shared conceptual space with other views on the evangelization of the Muslims, elements of which still remain. Some of the experts in Arabic who had met in Granada did so again in Aragon, where after 1501 King Fernando had permitted the free practice of Islam, respecting medieval laws that were still in force. There the Granada protagonists and others continued their apologetic and polemical task, using translations as a weapon for assailing Muslims.³ Once again, in that northeastern region, the Qur’an became the symbolic target, through diatribes against its teachings and attacks on the Prophet Muḥammad. It was also the part of Spain in which Mudejars, and later Moriscos, shared copies of the Qur’an most widely;⁴ protected by their feudal lords, they were best placed to defend their religion against the preachers’ assaults. Before Islam was forbidden in 1521, polemicists attacked the arguments, the form, and the very nature of the Qur’an, deploying a strategy of quoting it in Arabic to demonstrate its falsity.⁵ In their minds, Muslims would realize that the whole structure must collapse under its own weight. Políglota Complutense en su contexto, coord. A. Alvar Ezquerra (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2016).  Isabelle Poutrin, Convertir les musulmans (Espagne, 1492 – 1609) (Paris: PUF, 2012). Especially important for its wide range of perspectives is Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan (eds.), Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Coercion and Faith in Premodern Spain and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2019).  Teresa Soto and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García,” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016).  Jaqueline Fournel-Guérin, “Le livre dans la communauté morisque aragonaise,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 15 (1979).  Figuerola states the case as follows in his Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán: “Next, you must go further in such a dispute: if you cite a passage from the Qur’an in your favor, be sure that you show them the text in their own book. If you cannot, show them the precedents that we have put into their own language in this book, so that they and others present may realize how the faqih has deceived them in not showing them just what Muḥammad says” (“Ítem as de azer más en dicha disputa, si alguna auctoridad traherás del Alcorán en tu favor, trabaja que en el mismo libro dellos les muestres el texto y si no, muéstrales las autoridades que en el presente libro ha-

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2 Joan Martí de Figuerola and Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán In 1517 Joan Martí de Figuerola, a cleric from Valencia who had been preaching to Aragonese Mudejars in Zaragoza, returned home discouraged and angry. His sermons in the Muslim quarter and in the cathedral had not ended well. His preferred tactic —to enter the mosque on a Friday, Qur’an in hand, and dispute its teachings— had infuriated local Muslims.⁶ Scandalized by his total lack of respect for their holy book and their places of worship, they had complained bitterly to the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. Those officials had had to remind Figuerola of the statute that protected the Mudejars of Aragon; he was allowed to continue preaching, but had to refrain from insulting Muslims and threatening them with forced conversion. Since he remained defiant, he was forced to leave Aragon and settled again in Valencia. Thwarted in his public preaching but still burning with missionary zeal, Figuerola would devote his early years in Valencia to composing a lengthy anti-Islamic treatise, Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán (“Light of faith against the Qur’an”), in which he brought to bear his full knowledge of theology and the Qur’an to combat and demolish, one by one, every lesson of Islam as expounded in the holy book.⁷ He spent four years immersed in qur’anic suras and the biography of the Prophet Muḥammad so as to argue, intellectually and theologically, how mistaken, absurd, and even indecorous many passages were. His direct experience with the Muslims of Zaragoza clearly had left its mark on him: he ap-

vemos puesto en su lengua para que ellos y los que presentes estarán conoscan el enganyo que el alfaquí les á puesto en no haver manifestado lo que Mahoma dize”; Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fols. 246rb-246va.  Figuerola conceived of his theological disputes as genuine duels over the Qur’an: “It was not I who wrote the Qur’an and your books, rather they were written and taught by faqihs; but to determine if these things are true, bring your Qur’an next Friday, I will bring mine, and then we will see if what I say is right. Look you, gentlemen, let none of you fail to come next Friday” (“Yo no é scrito ell Alcorán ni vuestros libros, antes los an scrito y declarado alfaquís, pero para conocer si son verdaderas estas questiones, trahet vuestro Alcorán para el viernes que viene, que yo traheré el mío, y aquí comprobaremos si es verdad lo que yo digo y mira[t], señores, no falte ninguno para el viernes que viene”); Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 259rb.  MS 1922/36 of the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia [RAH]. F. Guillén Robles published the complete text of the Disputaciones in the introduction to his Leyendas de José, hijo de Jacob, y de Alejandro Magno sacadas de dos manuscritos moriscos de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, 1888). Elisa Ruiz and I have just completed an edition of Figuerola’s two treatises.

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pended to his long work a series of Disputaciones in which he defended his preaching in the mosque there, to justify and vindicate his earlier actions. This long process culminated in a book that is very dense, sometimes incoherent and disorganized, but highly erudite and full of citations from Scripture, the Church Fathers, philosophers, theologians, and ecclesiastics. Many of his theological digressions are too subtle to be grasped by most readers, while others demand a strong intellectual foundation. The book is thick with quotations from the Qur’an in Arabic (with their transliteration and translation), lending it an air of originality and philological soundness. There is also material drawn from the classic commentators on the Qur’an and from the traditions of the Prophet (hadith). Clearly the intended audience for the work was the priests and monks who would be evangelizing Muslims; in it they would find apologetics and rich polemical arguments to use in their preaching and in religious disputations. The passages written in Arabic (in their original script and in transliteration) would help to address the Moriscos of the Kingdom of Valencia, who would remain Arabophone up to the time of their expulsion. Lumbre de fe, however, never saw the light of day. Perhaps its size, and its abundance of Arabic-script quotations and illustrative drawings, made it too expensive to publish —especially since there were lighter polemical works, such as that of Juan Andrés, in circulation. Further, at about the time that Figuerola was completing his work, in 1521 all Muslims in the Crown of Aragon were forced to convert; he actually includes scattered references to the fact, probably added after he had finished the manuscript. The fate of the publication may have been sealed once there were no longer any Muslims with whom to dispute openly about their religion and their Qur’an.

3 A Preacher among Llullians The story of Figuerola’s life is already known, so we will only review a few features of it here.⁸ It is almost certain that he was born between 1475 and 1485, and studied in Valencia. Around 1507 he was in Naples, where he witnessed the ex-

 Bernard Ducharme, “De Talavera a Ramírez de Haro: actores y representaciones de la evangelización de los mudéjares y moriscos en Granada, Zaragoza y Valencia (1492– 1545),” in I Encuentro de jóvenes investigadores en Historia Moderna (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2013); Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Qur’an Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo,” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014); Elisa Ruiz García, “Joan Martí Figuerola,” in Christian-Muslim Relations 1500 – 1900, ed. David Thomas and John Chesworth (Leiden: Brill, 2014), vol. 6, 89 – 92.

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pulsion of the Jews from that kingdom. In about 1516 he was called to Zaragoza to replace Bishop Martín García Puyazuelo in preaching the so-called “Sermones de fe” in the cathedral, and it was there, in 1517 and 1518, that the events occurred that he later related in his Disputaciones. It is significant that he belonged to a very good family, with connections to highly placed civil and ecclesiastical authorities: he seems to have enjoyed ready access to the elite of Aragonese society, and even tried to meet King Carlos V shortly after the latter’s arrival in Spain. His relations with the Cardinal of Spain, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, appeared to be cordial: they spoke shortly before Cisneros’s death, while both men were hoping for a meeting with the new monarch. We know little about Joan Martí de Figuerola’s education. He may have studied theology at the University of Valencia, where he perhaps earned the degree of magister. Either there or in Cocentaina, the probable seat of his family, he would have lived among a large Muslim population: Muslims were everywhere in the Kingdom of Valencia and maintained a flourishing Arab-Islamic culture. We also know that during his stay in Aragon a former alfaquí from Teruel, Juan Gabriel/Alí Alayzar, instructed him in Arabic and in Islamic doctrine.⁹ A piece of indirect evidence, however, tells us more about Figuerola’s intellectual background and the academic milieu he frequented in Valencia. In 1510 Alonso de Proaza, Llull’s renowned editor,¹⁰ published on the presses of Joan Joffre, in a single volume, four works by Llull: Disputatio Raymundi Christiani et Hamar Sarraceni, Liber de demostratione per equiparantiam, Disputatio quinque hominum sapientium, and Liber de accidente et substantia. These, according to D.W. McPheeters, were the most “missionary” of the Majorcan scholar’s writings.¹¹ In 1512, again, Proaza issued from Jorge Costilla’s press another volume

 Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Juan Gabriel of Teruel,” in Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, vol. 6, Western Europe (1500 – 1600), ed. David Thomas and John Chesworth (Leiden: Brill, 2014).  Dean W. MacPheeters, El humanista español Alonso de Proaza (Madrid: Castalia, 1961); José Luis Canet, “Alonso de Proaza,” in Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (Valencia, Juan Joffre, 1514). Estudios y edición paleográfica y facsimilar, ed. Nicasio Salvador Miguel and Santiago López-Ríos (Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim,1999), vol. I, 31– 38; Jordi Pardo Pastor, “Alonso de Proaza, ‘homo litterarum, corrector et excelsus editor’,” in Convenit. Selecta-3 (Porto: e-dition-Editora Mandruvá, 2000).  “…[S]on tratados prácticos ‘misioneros’, esto es, el primero es una demostración famosa de la Trinidad; todos fueron dedicados a la conversión de los infieles y presentan elementos fundamentales del lulismo en su forma más sencilla” (“They are practical, ‘missionary’ treatises: that is, the first is a famous demonstration of the Trinity; all were devoted to the conversion of the infidels, and present fundamental elements of Llullism in its simplest form”): MacPheeters, El humanista, 167.

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containing three Llullian works: Liber de Logica Nova, Liber correlativorum innatorum, and Liber de ascensu et descensu intellectus. Proaza appended to the book a letter addressed to his friend Joan Martí Figuerola: in it he praised the “Doctor Illuminatus” (Llull) for the superior intellectual value of his writings, and expressed gratitude to Figuerola for the latter’s efforts to see Llull’s works into print.¹² This letter by Alonso de Proaza places Figuerola within a well-defined milieu, that of the Llullism that characterized academic circles in Valencia, and other parts of Spain, in the early decades of the sixteenth century.¹³ In 1500 Jaume Janer, a pupil of the Barcelonan Llullist Pere Daguí, had received permission from King Fernando to begin teaching Llull’s works in Valencia. There Janer had three main collaborators: Joan Bonllavi (who would later publish Llull’s Blaquerna), the Genoese Bartolomeo Gentile, and the Asturian Alonso de Proaza. This group promoted the spread of Llull’s works and teachings in Valencia, although their relationship to the university there is not clear. They were also in contact with other Llullian circles all over Spain. Llullism, in fact, had been revitalized in Spain during the second half of the fifteenth century, after having been persecuted and having languished during the previous one. It was not until the first decades of the sixteenth that Llullism would be renewed as an academic subject in the universities of Barcelona, Majorca, Salamanca, and Valencia. Important names in the vanguard of that movement were Joan Llovet, Pere Daguí, and others.¹⁴ It would be Cardinal Cisneros, however —a Franciscan, like Llull himself— who would strive the hardest to protect and spread the master’s teachings in Spain. Under the influence of Pere Daguí’s lessons, Cisneros was powerfully drawn to Llull’s personality and doctrine. It was he who brought Nicolau de Pacs to the University of Alcalá to occupy the chair of Llull studies, and who

 “And finally [this book is] for you, my dear Joan, thanks to whose support and protection this volume has been revised, has appeared in print, and has been offered in advance for the benefit of the public” (“Et tibi denique, mi Joannes, cuius impensis et auspicio aureum hoc opus recognitum, impressum et bono publico demandatum prius extitit. Ut gratias habeant inmortales iterum atque iterum rogo. Bene vale”): Raymundi Lullij Doctoris illuminati de noua logica, de correlatiuis, nec non et de ascensu et descensu intellectus, (Valencia: Georgium Costilla, 1512), fol. 64r (of the third book).  Jordi Pardo Pastor, “El cercle lu·lià de València: Alonso de Proaza y Joan Bonllavi,” Zeitschrift für Katalanistik 14 (2001); Rafael Ramis Barceló, “Un esbozo cartográfico del lulismo universitario y escolar en los reinos hispánicos,” Cuadernos del Instituto Antonio de Nebrija 15, no. 1 (2012).  José Maria Sevilla Marcos, “El lulismo en España a la muerte de Cristóbal Colón,” Memòries de l’Acadèmia Mallorquina d’Estudis genealògics, heràldics i històrics 18 (2008).

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saw many of Llull’s writings into print. He spoke openly about the pleasure he took in hearing the Doctor’s teachings expounded and commented on, and Proaza testified to how many of Llull’s books the cardinal owned. The two men were close: Proaza dedicated an epistle to Cisneros in another edition of Llull’s writings, and served as a sort of secretary to the cardinal in the latter’s declining years. Figuerola’s inclusion in this Llullian circle in Valencia, and his promotion of some of Llull’s writings, throws an interesting light on his history. The many quotations from Llull in Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe show how close he felt to the “Doctor Illuminatus”: he cites nineteen of the Doctor’s works in fifty-three different places, making the Franciscan the second-most-quoted author in the treatise, after the omnipresent Saint Augustine. Figuerola also, it seems, assumed ownership of the books by Llull that Alonso de Proaza left at his death. All this allows us insight into how well our author knew Llull, and obliges us to see Figuerola’s work from the viewpoint of his familiarity with and use of the Llullian canon. Llullism —understood as a heterogeneous, multiform current of interest in the works of Ramon Llull that was put to diverse uses— circulated widely in fifteenth-century Europe thanks to writers such as Ramon Sibiuda, Heymeric de Campo, Lefevre d’Étaples, and Nicholas of Cusa, some of whom were engaged in debates with the infidels. Ramis Barceló has observed that within the Iberian Peninsula, it was in the Crown of Aragon that the teaching of Llull took root officially in an academic context. The Aragonese monarchs always favored such teaching, and protected and patronized it throughout their kingdom.¹⁵ The principal figure of the time was undoubtedly Pere Daguí, a priest from Barcelona who moved to Majorca to teach Llull’s Arte; he occupied the first chair in the school of higher learning that King Fernando founded there in 1483. The Cistercian Jaume Gener, one of Daguí’s star pupils, received permission from Fernando in 1500 to establish a school of Llull studies in Valencia. There he set about to spread the master’s teachings, helped by three disciples: Alonso de Proaza, Bartolomeo Gentile, and Bonllavi. This Valencian nucleus played an important role in propagating Llull’s works, by publishing careful editions and maintaining relations with Llullian circles elsewhere in the Peninsula. There was an especially strong tie with Alcalá and its university (as we saw above, Proaza was close to Cisneros and served as his secretary) after Nicolau de Pacs began teaching Llull’s works there in 1508.

 Álvaro Fernández de Córdova Miralles, “El ‘otro príncipe’: piedad y carisma de Fernando el Católico en su entorno cortesano,” Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia 26 (2017).

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This necessarily brief review of the extent of Llullism in Valencia and Alcalá in the sixteenth century demonstrates, first, that Figuerola was closely entwined with its study and propagation; and second, that he had ready access to Cardinal Cisneros through their mutual friend Alonso de Proaza. There can be no question, therefore, about his familiarity with Llull’s work and thought. In principle it may seem paradoxical that two men as imbued with Llullism as Cardinal Cisneros and Joan Martí de Figuerola should be remembered as ardent enemies of Islam, who used violence —physical in the first case, verbal in the second— in their dealings with the Mudejars of Granada and Valencia. This contradiction can be explained away, however. In the case of the evangelization of the Muslims of Granada after its conquest, a well-known opposition has been drawn. The first bishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, chose to approach the Muslims by peaceful and empathetic means: he had his preachers study Islamic texts and accept the cultural realities of the territory. But when Talavera achieved few conversions, Jiménez de Cisneros was called in, and as a follower of Duns Scotus who believed in conversion through coercion, he employed harsher methods. A number of scholars, however, have now modified this framing of the issue. Talavera’s labors did not cease upon Cisneros’s arrival; they continued for several years, during which the two men worked in tandem. The contrast between them was chiefly a matter of style —Talavera’s tolerance versus Cisneros’s fanaticism— but they shared the goal of combating Islam. Neither showed the slightest sympathy toward that religion, and both accepted that some pressure could be brought to bear on its faithful.¹⁶ One additional element has rarely been considered: Talavera and Cisneros both knew the work of Ramon Llull and could use him as one model for their pastoral activity. García-Arenal has noted that we can discern, behind many of Talavera’s actions and projects, Llull’s legacy of approaching Muslims through reason, trying to make them sincerely convinced that Christianity was the one true faith.¹⁷ To that end he and his associates promoted the study of Arabic and the Qur’an —a copy of which, “in two volumes and in Romance,” he owned at the time of his death.¹⁸ While we do not yet know all the details of Ta-

 For brevity’s sake I will cite only the recent brilliant article by Davide Scotto, “’Neither through Habits, nor solely through Will, but through infused Faith’: Hernando de Talavera’s Understanding of Coercion,” in Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Coercion and Faith in Premodern Spain and Beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan (Leiden: Brill, 2019).  Mercedes García-Arenal, “Moriscos e indios. Para un estudio comparado de métodos de conquista y evangelización,” Chronica Nova 20 (1992), 165 – 66.  Aldea, “Hernando de Talavera,” 536.

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lavera’s intellectual formation or all the byways of his complex spirituality, it is reasonable to assert that Llull and Llullian doctrine were among his influences. He had read Ramon Sibiuda or Sabunde, who kept Llullian thought alive from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries,¹⁹ and he is known to have admired Francisco Eximenis and his defense of Franciscan spirituality.²⁰ We are much more certain about Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros’s relationship to Llullism: aside from his contacts with eminent Llullists like Proaza and Nicolau de Pacs (who was appointed to teach the Doctor’s works in Alcalá), he promoted the printing of Llull’s works and collected them himself. The most important factor, however, may be that Cisneros first approached Llull’s thought through Pere Daguí. That scholar from Barcelona taught Llullism occasionally at the court of the Catholic Monarchs, with Fernando’s approval, and it was there that Jiménez de Cisneros heard him in 1487 and became devoted to the master’s thought.²¹ The contact between Daguí and Cisneros is essential for understanding the form of Llullism that the cardinal absorbed, and would later pursue through the Valencian circle and through Nicolau de Pacs. Historians know Daguí principally for his original synthesis of the philosophies of Duns Scotus and Ramon Llull, which would dominate Llullian circles in Spain. Daguí had been shaped by the Scotist tradition of the Barcelona Studium, and in fact would grow closer to Scotism as the years went by.²²

 Sibiuda’s Theologia naturalis [Liber creaturarum, seu Naturae seu Liber de Homine propter quem sunt creaturae aliae], much admired by Montaigne, also formed part of Talavera’s personal library; Aldea, “Hernando de Talavera,” 546.  Albert G. Hauf i Valls, “Fray Hernando de Talavera, O.S.H., y las traducciones castellanas de la Vita Christi de Fr. Francesc Eiximenis, O.F.M.,” in Essays on Medieval Translation in the Iberian Peninsula, ed. Tomás Martínez Romero and Roxana Recio (Castelló de la Plana, Omaha: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I, Creighton University, 2001); Josep Puig Montada, “Francesc Eiximeniç y la tradición antimusulmana peninsular,” in Pensamiento medieval hispano: homenaje a Horacio Santiago-Otero, ed. J. M. Soto Rábanos (Madrid: CSIC-Junta de Castilla y León, 1998); Isabella Iannuzzi, El poder de la palabra. Fray Hernando de Talavera (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y Leon, 2009). Further, Díaz Marcilla claims that in the fifteenth century it was the Hieronymites (Talavera’s order) who most promoted the reading and teaching of Llull’s doctrine: Díaz Marcilla, “Una ‘disputatio’ no resuelta: ¿fue franciscano el lulismo castellano?” Archivo Íbero-americano 76, no. 282 (2016).  Teresa Jiménez Calvente, “Raimundo Lulio, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros y la política de Fernando el Católico,” Revista de lenguas y literaturas catalana, gallega y vasca 25 (2020).  Rafael Ramis Barceló, “En torno al escoto-lulismo de Pere Daguí,” Medievalia 16 (2013); Fr. Xavier Calpe, “Sentido histórico y perspectivas del Escoto-Lulismo,” Boletín de Historia de la Tercera Orden Franciscana 7 (2018).

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We therefore find in Granada after the conquest two religious authorities who professed great respect for Ramon Llull, but who arrived at it from two different directions. While Talavera accepted Llull’s classic proposals about openness to and knowledge of the other, Cisneros inclined toward the Llull who was compatible with Scotus: willing to convince, but not opposed theologically to a strong dose of coercion. Two men, and two Llulls, who differed from each other and took separate approaches to the Muslims of Granada. They shared the Doctor’s ideal of converting the infidel. Both breathed the messianic zeal that had dominated the Peninsula since the late fifteenth century, inspired by the fall of Granada and the chance to seize more territory from Islam. They each knew that to fight against the enemy, one had to know him: Talavera owned a Qur’an, while Cisneros ensured that the library he founded in Alcalá contained qur’anic and other Islamic texts.²³ Talavera, however, wanted New Christians who were sincere, convinced converts; Cisneros’s Llullism leaned on Scotus in dealing with the urgent political issues that arose in Granada in the early sixteenth century.²⁴

 Cecilia Fernández Fernández documents, in the first inventory of the library from 1512, one Qur’an and 65 other books in Arabic. Several of those are listed in the second inventory of 1523: “Doctrina de enseñar algaravía; Leyes de repartimiento de herencias; Libro de matrimonio, de como se han de casar y descasar los moros; Glosa sobre ell Alcorán una parte de las deziseis; Como juzga el Cadí et de los derechos que lleua; La octava parte de venyanuz de leyes; Libro de lógica et philosophia del sabio Alicena [sic]; Libro de leyes; Libro de la theología de los moros; Glosa de una parte de las catorce del Alcorán; Leyes de cautivos y como los han de ahorcar; Libro de medicinas; Libro de leyes de cómo han de justiciar a los que matan; Libro de ley, de cómo han de tomar los testigos; Libro de cómo se han de casar y descasar; Libro de cómo deben de pelear los moros; Glosa dell Alcorán sobre una parte de dos; Glosa de una de las cinco partes dell Alcorán; Glosa del almohata de leyes; Libro de leyes de Procuradores; Quinta parte de ebux, la gramática de los alárabes; Leyes de los jornales de los trabajadores; Prima parte de las cirimonias de los moros; El cuarto libro daben ruyz de leyes; Libro de cómo se han de hacer las oraciones; Libro de leyes; Tercero libro de algaz el que se llama vida de la sabiduría; Libro de los captivos cómo los han de tractar; Libro de cómo habían de pagar los derechos a Dios; Glosa sobre el libro del apartamiento de los casados; La segunda parte de benharaphe; De lo que han de hacer los moros cuando van a Mecha; Glosa sobre la cuarta parte de las leyes del almohata; Libro de la salua de Mahoma que escusa muchos errores que Mahoma dixo; Libro de justicia sobre una de diez partes; Glosa dell Alcorán sobre una parte de seis; Octavo libro de la çuna de Mahoma; El segundo sobre ell Alcorán; El cuarto libro del Alhatiz de leyes; La cuarta parte del Benharaph de cómo deben de repudiar; Glosa del Alcorán sobre una de cuatro partes; Glosa dell Alcorán de un cuerpo”; Cecilia Fernández Fernández, “La labor educadora de Cisneros y la primera biblioteca del renacimiento en España,” Anales de Documentación 5 (2002).  Antonio Cortijo Ocaña, Conquistar o convencer. De Llull a Cisneros en la conversión del otro (Madrid: Pórtico, 2021), 158 – 59.

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4 Figuerola the Polemicist The spread of Scotism-Llullism in Spain, especially in Valencia, helps us to understand Figuerola’s positions in his anti-qur’anic diatribe. First, we should note that Figuerola, after he was expelled from Zaragoza and forced back to Valencia, probably felt just as discouraged as his idol Ramon Llull had been: his loud calls to inspire rulers and churchmen to his mission and crusade had fallen on deaf ears. Like the master, he was not only fighting against Islamic dogma: in Lumbre de fe he also addressed the ecclesiastics²⁵ who had not provided —as true Christians should— the tools required for conquering the infidel.²⁶ At the same time, Figuerola’s knowledge of the adversary’s beliefs and ceremonies conforms to the Llullian model, while his desire to learn Arabic, and to obtain a Qur’an and works of the sunna for personal study, bears Llull’s stamp. We see how Figuerola, like the master, in his disputes in the mosque in Zaragoza did not try to confute the Qur’an with teachings of the Church; he preferred to confound the alfaquíes with evidence from their own holy text. Also in the style of Llull were his focus on muftis and religious leaders, so that they would later persuade their followers; his disappointment with the lukewarm stance of nobles, governors, and ecclesiastics; and his dismay at having failed in his mission. His zeal to learn Arabic to support his preaching echoes the Llibre de la contemplació: the truth of Christianity should be couched in terms that Muslims could understand.²⁷

 “And so I beseech theologians, or those who read the present work, to insist that kings and officers recall the honor of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and think and consider how much scandal this sect of Mohammed commits, writes, and preaches. Let those Christians who cannot write, preach; let those who cannot preach, lead those infidels to abandon their faith and sect; and if they do not wish to do so, let [Christians] speak with the lords of those lands and remind them of the unspeakable harm that our holy Christian faith suffers on account of these Moors” (“Y, así, supplico a los teólogos, o a los que la presente obra leyeren, insisten a los reyes y presidentes que se acuerden del honor de nuestro señor Jesuchristo y piensen y miren quánto desonor esta dicha secta de Mahomet haze, scrive y predica. Y los christianos que scrivir no pudieren, prediquen, y los que predicar no supieren, condusqan a los dichos infieles que dexen la tal credulidad y secta y, si dexar no la quizieren, hablen con los señores de lugares y encárguenles el impensado danyo que nuestra sancta fe christiana recibe por estos moros”); Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fols. 8rb-9va.  As García-Arenal observed in “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán,” in Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019).  Llull, Llibre de la contemplació, vol. II, 16.

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By using the qur’anic text directly —quoting it, translating it, refuting it— Figuerola follows the method of Juan de Segovia (though his tone is less conciliatory than Juan’s), Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, and, closer to home, Bishop Martín García and his collaborator, the converted alfaquí Juan Andrés.²⁸ He cites some of the same Islamic texts as the latter two, and sometimes adopts a similar tone. The originality of Figuerola’s works lies in their great variety: their several levels of polemic were written at different times and addressed to different kinds of audiences. We have the Figuerola of the Disputaciones, who dared to preach inside the mosque and force Muslims to hear him —who hoped to discredit the mufti by leading him into a contradiction or an error, but who does not launch a diatribe, far less insult the figure of the Prophet. As Ramon Llull and Juan de Segovia had done in their time, he tries to approach the Muslims carefully, seeking to base his polemic on the qur’anic text itself. But there is also the Figuerola of Lumbre de fe, a harsher text that deploys two methods: a discussion (addressed to Muslims) of qur’anic passages based on reason that contrasts them with Christian “truth,” and a theologically based frontal attack on those same selections, meant for missionaries who would be preaching to the infidels. Naturally Figuerola, like Cisneros, chooses his own preferred Llull: the one who had abandoned his early optimism and hardened his view of Islam. It is no coincidence that Lumbre de fe should contain not one quotation from Llibre del gentil i los tres savis (1276), the work by Llull that is most neutral on the subject of Islam and Judaism. In it, wise men from the three monotheistic religions explain their respective creeds to the Gentile; they do not choose to hear his preference, leaving the decision “open,” as if to place the three on an equal plane. Though it might appear that Llull accepted that result, many details reveal —as the author later made explicit— that Christianity was the winning faith. Even so, such a neutral exposition of the three creeds was a daring step in the thirteenth century. Perhaps it was still so in the sixteenth, for Figuerola ignores that work entirely while citing, in reference to Islam, Llull’s Disputatio Raymundi Christiani et Hamar Sarraceni (1308), a much more aggressive and pessimistic treatise. Llull’s openly apologetic tone would coincide with that of Duns Scotus, and together they would dominate the textual space from the late fifteenth century onward. Figuerola could not use Llull to construct his violent anti-qur’anic argument, because the master never composed an organized diatribe against Islam. As Óscar de la Cruz has shown, while Llull was clearly familiar with Islam, he  Ryan Szpiech, “A Witness of Their Own Nation: On the Influence of Juan Andrés,” in GarcíaArenal, After Conversion; Juan Andrés, Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán [Valencia, 1515], ed. Elisa Ruiz García and María Isabel García-Monge (Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2003).

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very rarely quotes the Qur’an directly. Although he sometimes repeated the negative medieval clichés about Muḥammad, his chief aim was to offer his Muslim adversary the absolute conviction of his own truth.²⁹ Figuerola did not, however, ignore entirely the potential inherent in Llull’s polemic; he made abundant use of the Doctor’s descriptions of Christianity’s blessings while contrasting them with passages from the Qur’an, although Llull had never done so. Sometimes he selects phrases or suggestions by Llull and applies them to his own case: I said: “Sir, it is better to dispense with worldly goods in order to gain glory and spiritual goods, than for a man to displease God by using worldly goods to sustain such blasphemy. Because, sir, master Ramon Llull says in his Proverbios, in the chapter ‘De infidelitate’: Quod parum diligit Deum, qui infideles sustinet,³⁰ etc. With which, sir, you should be content with this reasoning of mine.” Thus, the illuminated master Ramon Llull says in the second book of his Proverbios, in the chapter “De infidelitate”: Eo retardatur dies iudicii quia sunt infideles in mundo. Which means, “This is why the Day of Judgment is delayed, because there are so many infidels in the world.”³¹

Figuerola also cites Llull to criticize Christians’ unseemly behavior in their churches and contrast it to Muslims’ decorum in their mosques. Both authors share this concern, a classic trope of polemic:³² In the Kingdom of Aragon women come to the mosque, and elevated choirs are set aside for them, with screens so they cannot be seen by the Moors. Would to God that Christians did the same, because less dishonor would be done to God! And so says master Ramon Llull in a book called Blanquerna, when speaking of religions, and Francisco Eximenis says the

 Óscar de la Cruz Palma, “La información sobre Mahoma en la Doctrina pueril de Ramon Llull,” Taula: Quaderns de pensament 37 (2003); De la Cruz Palma, “Raymundus Lullus contra Sarracenos: el islam en la obra (latina) de Ramon Llull,” Cahiers d’études hispaniques médiévales 28 (2005).  Ramon Llull, “De infidelitate,” vol. III, 89; Liber proverbiorum, Raymundi Lulli Opera omnia, Tomus VI, (ex Oficina Typographica Mayeriana, 1787), 414.  “Dixe: ‘Señor, más vale çoffrirse de los bienes temporales por ganar la gloria y bienes spirituales que con los bienes temporales hombre desirva a Dios en sostener tanta blasfemia. Porque, señor, dize mastre Ramon Lull en sus Proverbios, en el capítulo De infidelitate: Quod parum diligit Deum, qui infideles sustinet, etc. En que su señoría por estas razones mías bien es quede muy contento’”; Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 262rb. […] “Por tanto, dize el illuminado mastre Ramon Lull en el segundo libro de sus Proverbios, en el capítulo De infidelitate: Eo retardatur dies iudicii quia sunt infideles in mundo. Quiere dezir: ‘Por esto se retarda el día del Juhizio Final, porque ay tantos infieles en el mundo’”; Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 38va.  Riccoldo employs it as well: Tolan, Saracens. Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 284.

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same, in the first book, chapter 223:³³ that because of the great abuse and descourtesy performed in those temples, a time will come when men will not see women nec e contra, as was done in the Temple of Solomon. The illuminated master Ramon says in that book³⁴ that in a certain city there was a most holy bishop who, on going to church one day, saw many people standing and gazing at a lady who had come to mass richly dressed and thickly painted. The bishop approached her and fell on his knees before her, at which she and all the others were amazed that such a worthy and holy person like the bishop should kneel in that way. He told them not to marvel, for he had thought that she was some varnished saint who had descended from the altarpiece, and he assumed that all the people were praying to her. At that the lady was forced to leave the mass in confusion and shame, and the bishop laid down a rule: that no woman dare to come to church in such garb, and that the women be separated from the men and not be seen during the service.³⁵

All this means that although Figuerola knew Llull’s writings fairly well, he must have found his anti-qur’anic materials elsewhere. His chief source was Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, whose classic polemical work circulated in Spain in both Latin and Spanish.³⁶ His Improbatio Alcorani, published by Estanislao Polonno in 1500, had been translated as Reprobación del Alcorán and published in Seville

 Eiximenis, Lo Crestià, vol. I, 223.  Llull, Blaquerna, vol. III, 78, 5.  “En el regno de Aragón las mugeres vienen a la mesquita y tiénenles hechos unos choros altos con unos raxados que no pueden ser vistas de los moros. ¡Ploguesse a nuestro señor Dios que los christianos lo hiziessen assí, porque no se siguiría tanto deshonor a Dios! Y assí lo dize mastre Ramon Lull en un libro que se dize Blanquerna, en la materia de religiones, y esto mismo dize Fransisco Eximenis, en el primero libro, capítulo 223, que por la grande abusión y descortesía se haze en dichos templos, verná tiempo que los hombres no verán las mugeres nec e contra, como se hazía en el templo de Salomón.”[…] “Recuenta el illuminado mastre Ramon en el dicho libro que en una ciudad havía un obispo muy sancto, el qual, hyendo un día a la yglesia, vio mucha gente que estavan parados mirando una dama que era venida a missa muy vestida y muy pintada. Llegó el obispo azia ella y pónesele de rodillas delante, de lo qual ella y todos fueron muy admirados, que una persona tan digna y tan sancta como el dicho obispo se havía puesto assí de rodillas. Díxoles que no se maravillasen, que cierto se pensó que era algún sancto que era abaxado del retablo, que estava enverniçado, y que por esso pensó que la tanta gente le azía oración. En que la dicha dama, confusa y de vergüença, se huvo de hir del officio, y el dicho obispo hizo un statuto: no fuesse hosada muger alguna venir a la yglesia de tal arte, y que las mugeres estuviessen apartadas de los hombres y no se pudiessen ver haziendo el officio”; Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fols. 58rb-59va.  Cándida Ferrero Hernández, “De la Improbatio Alcorani a la Reprobación del Alcorán de Riccoldo da Montecroce, o la fortuna hispana de un texto apologético,” Miscellanea Latina; Ferrero, “Lectio et disputatio en el prólogo del Contra legem Sarracenorum de Riccoldo da Monte di Croce,” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 49, no. 1 (2019); Kate Waggoner Karchner, “Deciphering the Qur’an in Late Medieval Europe: Riccoldo da Montecroce, Nicholas of Cusa and the TextCentered Development of Interreligious Dialogue,” Journal of Medieval History 46, no. 2 (2020).

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(Magno Herbst and Juan Pegnitzer, 1501) and Toledo (Pedro Hagenbach, 1502). Hernando de Talavera had encouraged and patronized its translation and publication, and one of his fellow Hieronymites had made the Romance version.³⁷ Riccoldo offered Figuerola the polemical tools that he had not found in Llull: a mixture of qur’anic verses with episodes from the life of Muḥammad, mockery of “absurd” Islamic beliefs found in the Qur’an (like the foods that the faithful would eat in paradise), and the contrast of those absurdities with the “rational” Christian scriptures. While Figuerola cites Riccoldo explicitly a mere four times, he takes other passages (such as the names of suras and references to Aristotle and Averroes) directly from the Italian’s work. Figuerola had other anti-Islamic sources even closer at hand in the work of Bishop Martín García and his collaborator, the convert Juan Andrés. The bishop had become famous in Aragon for his sermons larded with quotations from the Qur’an in Arabic, which he proceeded to refute; Queen Isabel then invited him to preach in Granada. The convert translated the Qur’an and works of the sunna for García’s use, as well as composing his own polemic, Confutación del Alcorán, which would enjoy great success in Spain and Europe.³⁸ Figuerola copied Martín García’s outwardly friendly tone, addressing his Muslim interlocutor as “Próximo mío de moro” —an approach belied by everything else he said.³⁹ From Juan Andrés he borrowed specific qur’anic passages for debate, as well as his general polemical argument. However, Figuerola must get his controversial material on Muḥammad from other sources, since the figure of the Prophet is hardly attacked in Juan Andrés’ book. A further source for Figuerola, especially for his knowledge of Arabic and the Qur’an, must have been the convert Juan Gabriel de Teruel. From him he may have learned to open his treatise with the twenty-three articles of the Islamic faith, as set down by Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī in a caqīda that circulated among the Moriscos of Aragon.⁴⁰ In Lumbre de fe he undoubtedly adopted Juan Gabriel’s Qur’an translations, drawing on the version that the convert

 “…romançada por un religioso de la Orden del bienaventurado Sant Jeronimo”; Monte di Croce, Reprobación del Alcorán, fol. 44r.  Szpiech, “A Witness of Their Own Nation.”  In Martín García, proximi mei ismahelite or proximi mei. M. Montoza Coca, “Los sermones de Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio,” PhD Diss. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018), vol. I, 6, 204, 236, 242, 248, 289, 296; vol. II, 1063, 1196, 1198, 1343.  Xavier Casassas Canals, “Las ʿAqīda-s entre los musulmanes castellanos y aragoneses de época mudéjar y morisca: las ʿAqīda-s de Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī (s. X), Ibn Tūmart (s. XII) e Isa de Jebir (s. XV),” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Historia Medieval 33 (2020).

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from Teruel had made for Egidio da Viterbo.⁴¹ It is also possible that the Qur’an copy that Figuerola requested for himself reached him from, or with the help of, Juan Gabriel in Aragon. Figuerola’s work differs from its sources in its systematic refutation of the suras he chooses from the four quarters into which his Qur’an was divided. His polemical argument, which proceeds chapter by chapter, is based on three preestablished notions: 1) Muḥammad was an impostor who wrote a book full of falsehoods (a view shared by the whole polemical tradition); 2) the religion of Islam is full of absurdities that cannot stand up to reason or to comparison with Christian scripture; and 3) Muslims are an ignorant people and have been tricked by equally ignorant religious leaders, whose nature must be unmasked. Figuerola disputes his chosen passages one by one on the basis of these premises, making an exception only for those that praise Jesus or the Virgin Mary, or that make clear to Muslims that Jews and Christians share a particular belief. In these last cases, Figuerola assails Muslims for having strayed from the right path. His attacks on the Qur’an can be classified into three types. The first is a contrast between its verses and Christian scripture, or opinions of fathers of the Church. Though Riccoldo da Monte di Croce used the same technique, with Figuerola it is his strongest suit: his knowledge of Christian sources is exhaustive and sometimes even overwhelms other aspects of his discourse. The second type consists of passing the verse under discussion through the filter of “natural reason,” as Llull used to do, to prove that there is only one truth in religion. Both strategies are directed both to missionaries —who had been Llull’s chief object, and who required this ammunition for successful preaching— and to Muslims, who would be impervious to the words of the authorities but who might heed reason-based arguments that could shake their simple faith.⁴² Figuerola’s third modus operandi goes further than merely modulating his message for different audiences. He actually alters the text, twisting the meaning of a verse deliberately: he may find contradictions where none exist, mistranslate the verse to his own advantage, or interpret its meaning to favor Christianity. It is here that we find him most zealous in polemic, and here that he goes be-

 Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Los primeros orientalistas frente al islam: la traducción latina del Corán del círculo del cardenal Egidio de Viterbo (1518),” in Religio in labyrintho. Encuentros y desencuentros de religiones en sociedades complejas, ed. José J. Caerols (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Ciencias de las Religiones – Escolar y Mayo Editores, 2013); Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Qur’an Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo,” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014).  Disputatio eremitae et Raymundi super aliquibus dubiis quaestionibus (MOG IV, 226).

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yond his predecessors. While in some cases he might simply have been mistaken, closer analysis usually reveals an intentional attack on Islam and a defense of Christian “truth.” García-Arenal and Starczewska had already called our attention to the term “Catholic” that Figuerola applies to Abraham in his translations of Q. 3:66, 3:95, 15:40, and 16:23.⁴³ “Catholic” as an epithet for Abraham seems to span the semantic fields of Arabic ḥanīf (“sincere Muslim” or “believer in one God”),⁴⁴ mukhlaṣ (“devoted servant”),⁴⁵ and ṣiddīq (“true, righteous”).⁴⁶ When ḥanīf modifies muslim (“one who submits to God”), the Spanish translation is “verdadero Moro.” By choosing these translations Figuerola (like Juan Gabriel) attacks one of Islam’s fundamental beliefs, that the only religion acceptable to God is the one He revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad. Since God’s revelation to humanity is eternal, Muslims revere the Old Testament prophets and identify them as “ones who have submitted” and therefore as followers of Islam: Abraham, Jacob, Ishmael, and Jesus’s apostles are all so described in the Qur’an (Q 3:52, 5:111). Joan Martí Figuerola, cognizant of this belief, combats it from the viewpoint of Christianity, in which God’s revelation is likewise unchanging. He notes that these figures were considered prophets long before the advent of Islam, and calls them “Catholics” when translating ḥanīf and mukhlaṣ. Therefore, the connotations of those words, which suggest sincerity and submission to God, are attributed to the Catholic religion —the only true “end” of the revelation granted to the Old Testament prophets. Lumbre de fe (f. 90) furnishes another interesting example. Figuerola quotes Q. 16:103: “And We know very well that they say, ‘Only a mortal is teaching him.’ The speech of him at whom they hint is barbarous; and this is speech Arabic, manifest.”⁴⁷ The verse was revealed in response to Meccans’ accusations that Muḥammad had been inspired by a Christian blacksmith or carpenter. The

 García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic.”  The term ḥanīf, which has received multiple explanations in qur’anic exegesis, implies a person who holds a true belief in the face of the erroneous beliefs of others; perhaps for that reason it is applied to Abraham but not to Moses or Jesus. Cf. Q 2:129, 3:60, 3:89, 4:124, 6:79, 6:162, 10:105, 16:121, 16:124, 22:32, 30:29, 98:4.  The root kh-l-ṣ is frequent in the Qur’an, always related to notions of devotion and sincerity: 2:133, 7:28, 10:23, 29:65, 31:31, 39:2, 39:14, 39:16, 40:14, 40:67, 98:4; 12:24, 15:40, 19:52, 37:39, 37:72, 37:128, 37:160, 37:169, 38:84.  The epithet ṣiddīq applied to a prophet in the Qur’an confirms the exemplary character of his life and message. Cf. Q 4:71, 5:79, 12:46, 19:42, 19:57, 57:18.  English Qur’an quotations are from Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York: Allen & Unwin, 1955).

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Qur’an counters that he could not have been led by such a one because the Christian did not speak Arabic. Juan Gabriel and Figuerola, however, both translate the words lisānu-lladhī yulḥidūna ilayhi acjamiyyun as “ellos dizen que un hombre es el que le aveza la lengua christianega,” making “non-Arabic language” (acjamī) into “Christian language.” In this context, the substitution can open the way to immense controversy: it affects the fundamental concept of the Qur’an as Arabic (as the text itself insists), and declares that any non-Arabic tongue must be Christian. Qur’an therefore equals Arabic, while Christianity equals any other language. Simultaneously, Arabic and the Qur’an are linked to falsehood, or departure from the Christian message that came before Muḥammad. Identifying Islam with the Arabic language is a locus classicus of MuslimChristian polemic, and was certainly a hotly debated question in sixteenth-century Spain. It affected the evangelization of the Moriscos, raised doubts about whether Arabic was a valid vehicle for science and history, and muddied perceptions of Arabic-speaking Eastern Christians.⁴⁸ Another instance of translation that is biased for polemical ends occurs on folios 223va and 223vb of Figuerola’s treatise. There he first cites Q. 52:30: “Or do they say, ‘He is a poet for whom we await Fate’s uncertainty’? I shall be awaiting with you.” This is a verse often quoted traditionally to show both the Qur’an’s and Muḥammad’s distrust of poets. But Figuerola offers a personal interpretation: It means, “And if they say that you are a poet, etc.” Here Muḥammad could not suppress what was suspected about him, and it was true, for he couched his whole Qur’an in rhymes and rhythms, which do not not appear in the laws of God. But, as the other said, he did not conceal his thought: in this text he stated that those who called him a poet would receive their punishment after death.

Figuerola goes on to explain that the Prophet, to deny his own versifying, issued another verse (Q. 53:48) suggesting that this was God’s form of speech: “‫َﻭﺃَﻧَّ ُﻪ ُﻫ َﻮ َﺭ ُﺏ‬ ‫ ﺍﻟ ِﺸ ْﻌ َﺮ‬Guainuu uguarabu ulxira. This means: ‘And He is the Lord of meters, etc.’ See what a deceiver! He wished to claim that it was not he who made the rhymes, rather that God revealed them.”⁴⁹  Mercedes García-Arenal, “Is Arabic an Islamic Language? The Religious Identity of the Arabic Language and the Affair of the Lead Books of Granada,” Arabica, 56 (2009); Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden: Brill, 2013).  “Quiere dezir: ‘Y si ellos dirán que eres trobador, etc.’ Aquí Mahomet no pudo callar de lo que se sospechava d’él y era verdad, que todo su Alcorán puso en versos y coplas, lo que no pareçe en las leyes de Dios. Pero él, como dezía el ageno, no calló lo suyo: dixo en este texto que los que le dezían trobador a la muerte pagarían su pena […] ‫ َﻭﺃَ ّﻧَ ُﻪ ُﻫ َﻮ َﺭ ُﺏ ﺍﻟ ِﺸ ْﻌ َﺮ‬Guainuu uguar-

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Both Muslim traditionists and commentators on the Qur’an agree that this verse refers to a bright star (shiʿrā) that the ancient Arab pagans had worshipped; some translations call it Sirius.⁵⁰ But Lumbre de fe chooses to read it as shiʿr, “poetry.” This was Juan Gabriel’s choice, since it also occurs in the Qur’an translation by Egidio da Viterbo.⁵¹ Since it is hard to imagine that Juan Gabriel, a former faqih, would have misunderstood the verse, this was undoubtedly a translation twisted so as to stress the Qur’an’s poetic character as proof of its falsity.⁵² Riccoldo and other polemicists⁵³ had already insisted that God’s true revelation cannot take the form of meter and rhyme. Another of Figuerola’s strategies, demonstrates his knowledge of the qur’anic text, is his ability to manipulate verses —combining, abridging, or contrasting them— where it suits his purpose. In fols. 32va-34rb of Lumbre de fe he comments on the last article of the Islamic faith, which forbids Muslims from disputing on matters of religion. Figuerola insists that the Qur’an contradicts itself, here as elsewhere, on this point, confronting Q. 29:46 with Q. 16:125: [Q. 29:46] Dispute not with the People of the Book save in the fairer manner, except for those of them who do wrong; and say, “We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered.”⁵⁴ [Q. 16:125] Call thou to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and good admonition, and dispute with them in the better way. Surely thy Lord knows very well those who have gone astray from His way, and He knows very well those who are guided.⁵⁵

abu ulxira. Quiere dezir: ‘Y Él es el Señor de los metros, etc.’ Mira el enganyador cómo se quería desculpar que él no azía las coplas, sino que Dios las embiava.”  Arberry: “He who is the Lord of Sirius.”  “Et ille est dominus uersuum”: Katarzyna K. Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qur’ān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2018), 597.  As Soto and Starczewska observed: “Authority, Philology and Conversion,” 218.  “Quarto sciendum est quod alchoranum non est lex Dei quia non habet stilum nec modum consonum legi Dei. Est enim metrica uel rithmica in stilo, blanditoria in uerbis et fabulosa in sententiis”: Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, Contra Sectam Sarracenorum, chap. 4, ed. Jean-Marie Mérigoux and Emilio Panella (2011). http://www.e-theca.net/emiliopanella/riccoldo2/cls001.htm [Consulted 12 March 2021].  “Quiere dezir: ‘Y no queráys disputar con los que tienen la Scriptura, sino con lo que es mejor, sino a los que injuriaron dellos’, y dezid: ‘Nosotros havemos crehído en lo que fue descendido a nos y fue descendido a vosotros, y nuestro Dios y vuestro Dios es un solo, al qual somos moros.’”  “Quiere dezir: ‘Ruega tú por el camino de tu creador con la amonestación y con la sabiduría sancta y disputa tú con ellos en lo que es mejor, car tu creador es sabidor de los que hierran en su camino y Él es sabidor de los bien encaminados.’”

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From the Islamic point of view these verses are not contradictory but wholly complementary: both insist that if an argument over religion should arise, it should be pursued in the fairest manner possible. Figuerola, however, through a biased translation of the first one, hammers home a basic point of his polemical, anti-Islamic vision: that the qur’anic text is full of internal contradictions. At the same time he contrasts this supposed aspect of Islam with Christians’ drive to proclaim and expand their faith.⁵⁶ Another clear example of biased translation of a verse comes in chapter 32. Here Figuerola again takes up Q. 29:46 and compares it to 2:61 (“Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians, and those Sabaeans, whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness —their wage awaits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow”)⁵⁷ and 42:11 (“He has laid down for you as religion that He charged Noah with, and that We have revealed to thee, and that We charged Abraham with, Moses and Jesus”).⁵⁸ He concludes that, since God sent the Christians a true revelation, Muslims should abandon Muḥammad’s teachings and return to the truth. Here he rejects one of Islam’s central tenets, that Jews and Christians altered (taḥrīf) Holy Scripture:⁵⁹ It is very clear that these Muslim neighbors of mine should abandon their obstinate belief in their Scripture, for there are things in it that they cannot follow: they say, very truly, that they cannot be saved without holding and keeping the law of Abraham and Jesus, as is said in their Qur’an.⁶⁰

 “Jesus our Redeemer did not order it so, as is written by Saint Matthew in his tenth chapter and Saint Luke in his twelfth: preach ‘upon the housetops,’ so that all may see and know it. Not like Muḥammad, who says that they should not dispute” (“No lo mandó assí Jesuchristo nuestro Redemptor, como está scrito por sanct Matheu, en el capítulo décimo, y sanct Lucas en el capítulo dotzeno: ‘Lo que yo digo predicaldo ençima de los tejados, para que todos lo vean y conoscan’, y no como Mahomet, que dize que no disputen”); fol. 32vb.  “Y todos los que creyeron en Dios y los que fueron judíos y christianos y los que adoraron a los ángeles creyendo en Dios y en el día del Judicio y hizieron buenas obras, ellos avrán su gualardón de su creador y no avrán miedo ni tristura, etc.”; fol. 77va.  “Y mando a vosotros de la ley lo que mando con ello a Noé y a los que revelamos a ti y lo que mandamos a Abraham, a Moysén y a Jesuchristo, etc.”; fol. 77vb.  Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “Taḥrīf,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2000), vol. X, 111– 12.  “[S]e paresce muy claro cómo estos próximos míos de moros devrían dexar la obstinación que tienen en querer guardar su Scriptura, porque hay cosas en ella que no las pueden observar, en que dizen y de muy cierto que no se pueden salvar sin que tengan y guarden la ley de Abraham y de Jesuchristo, como parece por su Alcorán”; Figuerola, Lumbre de fe, fol. 77vb.

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5 Conclusion In the motley Spanish spirituality that spanned the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, certain religious authorities who had laid the foundations of Early Modern sensibility in Spain were transformed, filtered through other authors, or quoted selectively. This is what happened to Saint Augustine, for example, who symbolized at the time both tolerance and maximum rigor against heretics.⁶¹ Likewise, few of these authorities were considered in themselves, but rather underwent interference from other writers who had, over the years, left their mark on the spiritual realm. This was especially the case with Ramon Llull, who was widely read and studied in the sixteenth century but whose doctrines were received through the filter of some of his readers and commentators like Daguí, Janer, Pacs, etc. Llull’s message competed with those of Duns Scotus, Juan de Segovia, Nicholas of Cusa, and others whose works were devoted to relations with non-Christians. Even the political conditions of those years might, and in fact did, come to bear on how a message such as Llull’s was received. Joan Martí de Figuerola had to consider all these conditioning factors as he composed his anti-qur’anic polemic. While he admired Llull’s work greatly, his personal situation had frustrated him; he consoled himself for his failed preaching by looking to Cardinal Cisneros, who was as Llullian as he but had acted decisively in Granada. Figuerola believed in about 1517 that few were as capable as he of disputing with Muslims, and he hoped that future missionaries could meet his standard. But when in came to refuting verses of the Qur’an he did not rely on either Llull or Cisneros, but reached into the tradition of polemic, which he hoped to enrich with his lengthy anti-qur’anic diatribe. He attacked the qur’anic text from every angle that tradition and his own fund of knowledge offered him. While Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán is not the most readable of anti-Islamic polemics, it is certainly the most complete in its scope and in its strategies of textual and religious disputation.

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 J.M. Forte Monge, “San Agustín, vencedor de herejes en el siglo XVI español,” Criticón 118 (2013).

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García-Arenal, Mercedes. “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán,” in Mercedes García-Arenal – Gerard A. Wiegers (eds), Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, 155 – 178. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Leiden: Brill, 2013. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “The Law of Abraham the Catholic”: Juan Gabriel as Qur’an Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo.” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014): 409 – 59. Guillén Robles, Francisco. Leyendas de José, hijo de Jacob, y de Alejandro Magno sacadas de dos manuscritos moriscos de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, 1888. Hauf i Valls, Albert G. “Fray Hernando de Talavera, O.S.H., y las traducciones castellanas de la Vita Christi de Fr. Francesc Eiximenis, O.F.M.” In Essays on medieval translation in the Iberian Peninsula. Edited by Tomás Martínez Romero and Roxana Recio, 203 – 50. Castelló de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I – Omaha, Creighton University, 2001. Iannuzzi, Isabella. El poder de la palabra. Fray Hernando de Talavera. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2009. Jiménez Calvente, Teresa. “Raimundo Lulio, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros y la política de Fernando el Católico.” Revista de lenguas y literaturas catalana, gallega y vasca 25 (2020): 339 – 44. Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava. “Taḥrīf” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, edited by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs, vol. X, 111 – 12. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Llull, Ramon. Liber proverbiorum, Raymundi Lulli Opera omnia, Tomus VI. Maguncia: ex Oficina Typographica Mayeriana, 1787. Llull, Ramon. Llibre de la contemplació, II, 16, Beati Raymundi Lulli Opera omnia, Magni Libri Contemplationis in Deum. Maguncia: ex Oficina Typographica Mayeriana, per Joannem Henricum Haeffner, 1787. http://bvpb.mcu.es/ca/consulta/registro.cmd?id=397831 [accessed 12 – 03 – 2021]. Llull, Ramon. Disputatio eremitae et Raymundi super aliquibus dubiis quaestionibus, Raymundi Lulli Opera omnia. Edited by I. Salzinger, 8 vols., IV, 226. Maguncia: ex Oficina Typographica Mayeriana, 1721 – 42. Llull, Ramon. Romanç d’Evast e Blaquerna. Edited by A. Soler and J. Santanach. Barcelona: Barcino, 2016. MacPheeters, Dean W. El humanista español Alonso de Proaza. Madrid: Castalia, 1961. Montecroce, Riccoldo da. Contra Sectam Sarracenorum. Edited by Jean-Marie Mérigoux and Emilio Panella (2011). http://www.e-theca.net/emiliopanella/riccoldo2/cls001.htm [accessed 12 – 03 – 2021]. Montoza Coca, Manuel, Los sermones de Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio. PhD Diss. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 2018. Pardo Pastor, Jordi. “Alonso de Proaza, ‘homo litterarum, corrector et excelsus editor.’” In Convenit. Selecta-3. Porto, e-dition-Editora Mandruvá, 2000.

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Pardo Pastor, Jordi. “El cercle lu·lià de València: Alonso de Proaza y Joan Bonllavi.” Zeitschrift für Katalanistik 14 (2001): 33 – 45 Poutrin, Isabelle. Convertir les musulmans (Espagne, 1492 – 1609). Paris: PUF, 2012. Puig Montada, Josep. “Francesc Eiximeniç y la tradición antimusulmana peninsular.” Pensamiento medieval hispano: homenaje a Horacio Santiago-Otero. Edited by J. M. Soto Rábanos, vol. 2, 1551 – 78. Madrid: CSIC-Junta de Castilla y León, 1998. Ramis Barceló, Rafael. “Un esbozo cartográfico del lulismo universitario y escolar en los reinos hispánicos.” Cuadernos del Instituto Antonio de Nebrija 15, no. 1 (2012): 61 – 103. Ramis Barceló, Rafael. “En torno al escoto-lulismo de Pere Daguí.” Medievalia 16 (2013): 235 – 64. Ruiz García, Elisa. “Joan Martí Figuerola.” Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, vol. 6, Western Europe (1500 – 1600). Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth, 89 – 92. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Salvador Miguel, Nicasio. “Cisneros en Granada y la quema de libros islámicos.” In La Biblia Políglota Complutense en su contexto. Edited by A. Alvar Ezquerra, 153 – 84. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2016. Scotto, Davide, “’Neither through Habits, nor solely through Will, but through infused Faith’: Hernando de Talavera’s Understanding of Coercion.” In Forced conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Coercion and Faith in Premodern Spain and Beyond. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, 291 – 327. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Sevilla Marcos, José María. “El lulismo en España a la muerte de Cristóbal Colón.” Memòries de l’Acadèmia Mallorquina d’Estudis genealògics, heràldics i històrics 18 (2008): 17 – 27. Soto, Teresa and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García.” In After conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 199 – 28. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “Los primeros orientalistas frente al islam: la traducción latina del Corán del círculo del cardenal Egidio de Viterbo (1518).” In Religio in labyrintho. Encuentros y desencuentros de religiones en sociedades complejas. Edited by José J. Caerols, 145 – 55. Madrid: Sociedad Española de Ciencias de las Religiones, Escolar y Mayo Editores, 2013. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “Juan Gabriel of Teruel.” Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History, vol. 6, Western Europe (1500 – 1600). Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth, vol. 6, 415 – 19. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. Latin Translation of the Qur’ān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2018. Szpiech, Ryan. “A Witness of Their Own Nation: On the Influence of Juan Andrés.” In After Conversion. Iberia and tbe Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 174 – 98. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Tolan, John. Saracens. Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Waggoner Karchner, Kate. “Deciphering the Qur’an in late medieval Europe: Riccoldo da Montecroce, Nicholas of Cusa and the Text-centered Development of Interreligious Dialogue.” Journal of Medieval History 46, 2 (2020): 1 – 23.

Roberto Tottoli

Quoting the Original: Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe and the Arabic Qur’an 1 Introduction In knowledge of the Arabic Qur’an in Europe, the Iberian Peninsula played a fundamental and primary role at least through the sixteenth century. As regards access to and knowledge of the original Qur’an, the religious and political activity sponsored by the Catholic Crown after the fall of Granada (1492) prompted the composition and diffusion of polemical works that display a specific use of the Muslim holy text. Through the quotation of or intention to quote the Qur’an in translation, transliteration, and even in the original Arabic, a few works in the first half of the sixteenth century were written for the purpose of confuting Islam and trying to convert Muslims. Consequently, a deep knowledge of Qur’an and a display of confidence with the original text were probably considered as fundamental and much more fruitful than a clear-cut polemical rejection based on some untrustworthy previous translation in Latin. They constitute, therefore, a significant testimony to the reception of the Arabic Qur’an in the history of Europe. Such an enterprise had to face various limits and shortcomings. First of all, the protagonists of these operations could differ in their depth of knowledge of Islam and the Qur’an, ranging from an Arabophone convert like Juan Andrés (d. after 1515) to those who were not so expert; some were even only pretending to possess such knowledge and could have difficulty in managing the original Qur’an. However, all of them were located in Iberia, where the circulation of Arabic manuscripts and of potential informants —i. e., Muslims who knew, read, and even copied the Qur’an— was supposedly higher than in the rest of Europe. This was probably true, even though restrictions on the diffusion and use of such materials after 1492 were enforced up until the final prohibition of the use of Arabic

Note: The research leading to these results has received support by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 810141, project EuQu: “The European Qu’ran. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” I would like to thank Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers who read a first version of this article, Federico Stella who helped me with its final revision, and Consuelo López-Morillas who revised my English text. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-014

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(1567) —notwithstanding its use and presence in realms other than religious polemics and literature.¹

2 The Qur’an in the Polemical Literature of Sixteenth-Century Iberia Missions and preaching by Christian priests and preachers among Muslims or in their mosques were considered fundamental to serving the purposes defined above after the fall of the emirate of Granada and the subsequent restrictive policy against Muslims. A number of polemical literary works were produced in the first half of the sixteenth century, and a few of them are of particular interest with regard to the specific use of the Qur’an in translation or in the original Arabic; these have also been the object of recent attention by scholars. These works have been broadly classified as Antialcoranes (“anti-Qur’ans”) by recent research, in a number of articles and papers that have dealt with the question of how they quoted and used the Arabic Qur’an. Their authors have also focused on a few principal issues: the Spanish translations used for such works; the Islamic sources dealt with as a whole; and the religious, cultural, and political meaning and features behind such complex enterprises. The principal works considered to belong to this genre are the Confusión o confutacion de la secta mahometica by Juan Andrés (publ. 1515), the sermons of Martín García (active until 1515, d. Zaragoza 1520), the Lumbre de fe contra la secta mahometana by Joan Martí de Figuerola (unpubl., written 1521), the Antialcorano (publ. Valencia 1532) by Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, and the Confutación del alcorán y secta mahometana (Granada 1555) by Lope de Obregón.² Among these figures and this collection of works, the key figure in the early sixteenth century was probably Martín García, archdeacon of Daroca and then bishop of Barcelona, under whose auspices Juan Andrés and Figuerola worked.³

 See on this Claire Gilbert, In Good Faith. Arabic Translation and Translators in Early Modern Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).  Ryan Szpiech, Katarzyna K. Starczewska and Mercedes García-Arenal, “‘Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras.’ Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no. 1 (2018), 103 – 4.  On his sermons see the edition in Manuel Montoza Coca, “Los sermones de don Martín García, Opisbo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio,” PhD Diss. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018); Xavier Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: the Study of the Qur’an and Its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and the Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Inter-

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Martín García was the one who promoted the attitude and conceptual approach of using knowledge of the Qur’an in the activities of conversion or preaching among Muslims. Juan Andrés worked with him in this endeavor and probably helped him by providing him with his own Qur’an translation. Figuerola mentions Juan Andrés and his work but does not seem to have met him. Figuerola makes reference in his Lumbre de fe to another key figure in these activities, Juan Gabriel de Teruel, also known under the name of Ioannis Gabriel Turolensis, who was the converted alfaquí of Teruel and accompanied Martí de Figuerola in his campaigns. Figuerola introduced him to Egidio da Viterbo (d. 1532) when Egidio was in Spain in 1518. Juan Gabriel provided him with an Arabic Qur’an and was instrumental in the translation of the Qur’an commissioned by Egidio.⁴ These works as a whole can be considered as the main testimonies to a specific interest in modern European history in dealing with the Arabic Qur’an. Not surprisingly, this took place in Iberian Peninsula where Muslim presence continued and where, consequently, knowledge of or acquantaince with the Arabic Qur’an was supposedly easier. This was still true in the first half of the sixteenth century, but the rigid policy of the Catholic Crown led to a growing marginaliza-

pretation, eds. Candida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), in part. 464– 65 on his knowledge of Islamic sources he quoted in his Sermons; Mercedes García-Arenal, Katarzyna K. Starczewska and Ryan Szpiech, “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qurʾanic Quotations in Iberian Polemics after the Conquest of Granada (1492),” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 20, no. 3 (2018), 51; on Martín García, see also Teresa Soto and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García,” in After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Mercedes García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán,” in Polemical Encounters. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond, ed. M. García-Arenal and G.A. Wiegers (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2019), 157.  On the role and significance of Juan Andrés and his life see Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “No es isto sino hystorias de los antiguos: Between Medieval and Early Modern Narrations in Juan Andrés’s Confusión,” Medievalia 18 no. 1 (2015); on the work by Juan Andrés see Hartmut Bobzin, “Bemerkungen zu Juan Andrés und zu seinem Buch Confusion de la secta mahometica (Valencia 1515),” Festgabe für Hans-Rudolf Singer zum 65. Geburtstag am 6. April 1990, ed. M. Forstner (Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang, 1991); Ryan Szpiech, “A Witness of their Own Nation: on the Influence of Juan Andrés,” in After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Szpiech, “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos: The Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) by ‘Juan Andrés’,” La Corónica 41 no. 1 (2012). On Juan Gabriel and Egidio da Viterbo, see Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qur’ān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018); García-Arenal and Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Qur’ān Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo,” Al-Qanṭara 35 no. 2 (2014), 413.

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tion of this specific attitude in the following decades when Spain lost this favored position and, consequently, its advantage in the knowledge of the Qur’an. As regards the topic of our specific interest, i. e., the knowledge and use of the qur’anic text in its original Arabic, the works quoted above share a common attitude although they followed slightly different procedures. The Lumbre de fe by Figuerola and the Confutación by Lope de Obregón were deliberately conceived to include quotations of qur’anic material in Arabic characters. Juan Andrés, instead, included the transcription in Latin characters of some verses in only some passages where he refers to the Qur’an.⁵ Along with these, the original text of the Antialcorano by Pérez de Chinchón is supposed to have been conceived as also including the original Arabic, given the blank spaces that precede the translation of certain verses.⁶ Pérez de Chinchón left a dotted line before the translation, to be filled in by the qur’anic text in Arabic, which was, however, not added later on. Pérez de Chinchón explained in his text why the Arabic Qur’an was left out: for the problems in having it printed, for the mistakes that would occur in it, and because such an operation would need reviewing by Muslim experts.⁷

3 Joan Martí de Figuerola and his Lumbre de fe It is in this historical situation that Joan Martí de Figuerola conceived his work with the intent of participating in the literary efforts of producing works to  See Juan Andrés, Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán, ed. E. Ruiz García and M.I. García-Monge (Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2003), 109; Ruiz García states that Juan Andrés probably knew the Qur’an he quoted by heart and did not rely on a written version, at 53.  Szpiech, Starczewska and García-Arenal, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 105; García-Arenal, Starczewska and Szpiech, “The Perennial Importance,” 68.  See Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano. Diálogos christianos (conversión y evangelización de moriscos) (San Vicente del Raspeig: Universidad de Alicante, 2000), 189 – 92, 240, 263 – 66. In these passages the space for the quotation is followed by the explanation of the meaning/translation and introduced by the title of the sura or by reference to the volume and chapter according to the division into four parts. Further, at 81– 82, Pérez de Chinchón claims to have read three or four refutations of the Qur’an and sermons like those of Martín García, and to have discussed them with other people well versed in this field; see on this also García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 416; see Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano, 87. The publication or not of some of these works, and the extent of the use of Arabic quotations in them, were factors impacted by the problems relating to the printing of texts which included Arabic, which was difficult in the Iberian Peninsula (as in the rest of Europe) during all of the sixteenth century.

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help preachers and polemicists in their activities among Muslims. A manuscript preserved today in the library of the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid includes the only extant copy of this work, titled Lumbre de fe contra la secta mahometana y el Alcorán and ascribed to Figuerola. The manuscript includes a substantial number of pages at the beginning, with drawings relating to episodes of the life of Muḥammad and connected to the contents of the book, which deserve further inquiry. Most of the 253 folios of the manuscript are then occupied by the Lumbre de fe, a work in two densely written columns and in which the most evident feature is the insertion in the text of more than three hundred short passages written in Arabic.⁸ We have a few data about the author and his work. Most of the main information we have on Joan Martí de Figuerola and his work Lumbre de fe has been outlined recently in a number of studies by Xavier Casassas Canals, Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. The manuscript copy was probably the one kept by Cardinal Camillo Massimo in Rome; significantly, however, it is not possible to ascertain if it is an autograph.⁹ According to historical testimony, Camillo Massimo had a copy of the work made by the Maronite Nicola Naironi, but that copy is no longer extant in Roman libraries and only this Madrid manuscript survives. Accordingly, this could be the autograph copy made for Camillo Massimo, or another unspecified copy. The quality and style of the Arabic suggest that it was written by someone who had a neat hand in writing Arabic, knew it well, and probably came from the Iberian Peninsula. It has been suggested that the hand is characteristic of Mudejar writing, hence the probable production of the copy in Iberia.¹⁰ In addition, the clearly written quality of the manuscript suggests that it could be a copy ready for the typographer and publisher.¹¹ Some data on the author and his work come from the extant manuscript, and some from other sources. Historical sources define him as a sacerdote valenciano (a priest from Valencia), a doctor of theology with good proficiency in Ara-

 Madrid, Real Academia de la Historia, MS Gayangos 1922/36; I am indebted to Mercedes García-Arenal for sharing her copy of the reproduction of this manuscript with me. The full title is Lumbre de fe contra la secta mahometana y el Alcorán.  García-Arenal and Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 417– 20.  García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 417. The quality of Arabic writing, even if given in excerpts, indicates if the copyist was well versed in it or not, as is evident, for instance, from the manuscript copies of the translation of the Qur’an ascribed to Cyril Lucaris (d. 1638). See Roberto Tottoli, “La traduzione latina del Corano attribuita a Cirillo Lucaris (m. 1638) nel Ms Berlin, SBPK ar. 1032 e in altri manoscritti,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi, n.s. 11 (2016) (Studi in onore di Francesca Lucchetta).  García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic,” 156.

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bic, who spent a lot of time preaching to the Moros. ¹² Xavier Casassas Canals thinks that he belonged to the group of Aragonese scholars engaged in the study of Arabic and trying to attain through it a deeper knowledge of Islam for a proselitizing mission.¹³ To this end Figuerola, and the other figures involved, had Qur’an manuscripts and were helped by Muslims or converts.¹⁴ Martí de Figuerola finished his work in 1521 and dedicated it to the Emperor Carlos V, explaining the reasons for it and trying to promote an aggressive polemical strategy.¹⁵ For this task Figuerola, in 1515, had replaced the elderly Martín García in delivering four sermons a year to Jews and Muslims as an official appointed by the king. In 1517, however, he was rebuked for the tone of his preaching by the archbishop of Zaragoza and finally withdrew from Valencia for the substantial failure of his aggressive preaching.¹⁶ His sermons are not extant. In this regard, and also in relation to the contents of the Lumbre de fe, the rapports of Figuerola with Juan Gabriel, as already stated above, were fundamental: Juan Gabriel provided books and knowledge, and instructed Figuerola and even accompanied him in his campaigns in the morerías. Figuerola himself describes his personal activity and involvement: he states that he had some knowledge of Arabic and the Qur’an, and that he used to go to mosques to challenge the faqihs, bringing his own copy of the Qur’an, which he had probably copied for himself.¹⁷ Therefore Figuerola had some copies of the Qur’an; further, in a recent contribution, Casassas Canals has suggested that the Catalan and other notes on the Qur’an then owned by Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter (d. 1557) and now in Munich could be his or by Juan Gabriel.¹⁸ Both had a role in, or  See Francisco Ortí y Figuerola, Memorias históricas de la fundación y progressos de la insigne Universidad de Valencia (Madrid, 1730), I, 144– 46, as quoted by Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an,” 169. On Figuerola’s activities as a preacher and his confrontations in mosques and with faqihs, see Francisco Guillén Robles, Leyendas de José hijo de Jacob y de Alejandro Magno (Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, 1888), lviii-lxxxi.  Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an,” 455 – 80.  Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an,” 457.  For a comprehensive description of Figuerola’s activities in relation to Muslim communities and the various approaches, as described by Figuerola himself, see García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic”.  Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an,” 456 n. 4, 463, 464, 468; see also Guillén Robles, Leyendas de José hijo de Jacob, lviii-lxi, lxxvii-lxxxi.  García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic,” 157. See on this, and in particular on the fact that he possessed a written Qur’an, Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an,” 460 n. 14, 469 – 70. See also Guillén Robles, Leyendas de José hijo de Jacob, lix, lxvi.  See Xavier Casassas Canals, “El Alcorán de Bellús: un Alcorán mudéjar de principios del siglo XVI con traducciones y comentarios en catalán, castellano y latín,” Alhadra 1 (2015), 170; Casassas Canals and José Martínez Gasquez, “Scholia Latina, Arabica et in uulgari lingua

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in any case a connection to, the translation commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo, as recent scholarship has suggested.¹⁹ Apart from this information, nothing more can be stated on Figuerola and the work. The attitude and approach of the author can be argued from the contents of this long work which is very rich and still awaiting a comprehensive discussion and a proper edition.²⁰ Its polemical contents and theological attitude are fundamental aspects of the work that deserve further inquiry, and represent a unique testimony to proselitizing activity in the first half of the sixteenth century in Iberia. One specific element of this broader attitude is provided by the quotation of the Qur’an in Arabic: it is only one element but a substantial one, given the number of quotations (more than 300) and their significance in the economy of the work. In fact, it is clear that the use of the Qur’an was central in this strategy. For its sake the Qur’an was quoted in the original Arabic, then through a phonological transcription and the translation.²¹ The transcription and then printing of the Arabic original were deemed a fundamental testimony to the knowledge of its author and the level of the polemics. But in fact this goal was never achieved for a wider public of readers, for the simple reason that in the first half of the sixteenth century it was no easy task to have an Arabic text printed and there was no Arabic type in the Iberian Peninsula at that time. Consequently the work was not published, and this failure could have also been caused by the high number of quotations of the Qur’an in Arabic.²²

ad Alphurcanum Mohamedis BSB-Hss Cod. Arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús),” Medieval Encounters 27 (2021); Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an,” 462, esp. 468 – 69.  García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic,” 157; García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 412.  As this paper is being written an edition and study of the work by Elisa Ruiz García and Luis Bernabé Pons has been announced for some time (2016: see Soto and Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion,” 200 n. 5), and is probably delayed on account of the complexity and dimensions of the work.  García-Arenal Rodríguez, Starczewska and Szpiech, “The Perennial Importance,” 61; on the meaning of the use of Arabic as a way of combating Islam through the use of Islamic sources, see Soto and Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion,” 203 – 5.  García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic,” 156.

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4 The Quotations from the Arabic Qur’an in the Lumbre de fe The Qur’an is usually quoted in the Lumbre de fe with a reference to the book, chapter and verse numbers, the original Arabic, the transcription in Latin characters and then the Spanish translation, all this constituting four layers of data which are all of particular and specific significance. The first one is the indication of book, chapter and verse (alea), which testify to the kind of manuscript of the Qur’an the author relied upon: one divided into four parts or volumes. The number of the sura and in particular the number of the verse(s) are also a significant testimony in relation to the complex problem of verse numbering and are, consequently, an attestation of a specific tradition or way of numbering, maybe by the author himself, which deserves further inquiry. Evidence, for example, seems to point to the fact that the basmala is usually numbered. The third element of the quotations is the phonetic transcription from the Arabic into Latin characters; what is significant here is how it was formulated —based on the written text or not, maybe from recitation. Further, and the main object of the work, there is the fourth level represented by the Spanish translation on which the polemical discussion of the contents is based (see Fig. 1). I have omitted from this introductory listing the second element, the original Arabic Qur’an, since it is the topic of this paper. In the following paragraphs I will discuss the formal devices and specific features which emerge from these quotations. My approach is connected to research into the use and reproduction of the Arabic Qur’an in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe that resulted in printed editions of the whole text or parts of the text, or prompted the production of manuscripts realized by Europeans who aimed to edit and publish the Arabic Qur’an. Therefore I do not discuss the context of the use of these qur’anic quotations in the cultural history of polemics; I connect them only to their relation to the original Arabic Qur’an, as a testimony to a European attitude in copying and producing excerpts from the original Qur’an. The questions raised by this are, accordingly: how those who produced these Qur’ans accessed the original manuscripts, read them, understood all their formal devices, conceived a product that represented the Arabic Qur’an for European readers, and then produced a copy of it according to the author’s experience and attitude through all these steps. Consequently, the following part of this chapter is organized according to the features of the Arabic Qur’an which are the most sensitive: they display ways of reading and reproducing, or highlight how their reception and interpretation by a European reader and writer testifies to the relation between European recep-

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tion and original Islamic manuscript productions circulating or owned by the author/writer himself. It should be clear that we face not a simple question of reception alone (including misreadings, errors and faults of various origin), but mainly of interpretation and representation of knowledge. Rather than a simple relationship between an original and a copy, we are dealing here with a general attitude of perceiving a text and reproducing it for a new audience. And in this regard the Lumbre de fe by Figuerola, in the general economy of European reception and reproduction of the Arabic Qur’an, is one of the first and more remarkable examples.

4.1 Scriptio Plena and Defectiva The hand that wrote the Arabic of the surviving copy of the work of Figuerola is without doubt the hand of someone, maybe Figuerola himself, who could write Arabic not perfectly but fairly well, with some specific features. It belongs to someone with knowledge of Arabic and writing in a Mudejar style, thus attesting that this is the autograph or a copy produced in the Iberian Peninsula.²³ The first question to consider in evaluating the formal features of the Arabic quotations in the work of Figuerola is the scriptio used in the reproduction. The choice was between the defective writing that followed the so-called ʿUthmānic style, and the scriptio plena which was also in use through the ages. Though the formal devices of the qur’anic manuscripts that circulated after the eleventh century have not yet been the object of systematic research, the few studies and a simple inquiry into some collections demonstrate that different choices coexisted, in accordance with the typology and function of the extensive manuscript production in different regions of the Islamic world. Defective writing, with various ways to signal and mark the “missing” letters above the ductus, were produced along with items in scriptio plena. All of them used various ways of completing the simple ductus with dots, vocalization, and also recitation signs, displayed in a variety of solutions and styles. The quotations from the Qur’an in the Lumbre de fe are eclectic in this regard, and do not follow coherently one specific means of reproducing those words and verses in which the possibility of using different scripts is attested. As a general rule, Figuerola or the copyist who produced this manuscript

 García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 417. The Maghrebi script and the qāf with one dot are the most evident elements attesting the Western (i. e., West of the Islamic world) origin of the writing.

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shows a preference for the scriptio plena for those terms that the ʿUthmānic script usually writes in a scriptio defectiva (i. e., wih no alif in the ductus) (Fig. 2).²⁴ This is also clearly attested in proper names, which are always given in scriptio plena (Fig. 3).²⁵ The preference accorded to scriptio plena for the names, which are mostly names of Biblical prophets, could reflect a preference

 For quotations from the Qur’an we cite the folio number as written in the manuscript, the qur’anic sura and verse/verses quoted, and, in brackets, the part/volume, chapter and verse(s) as given in the manuscript. Words in scriptio plena: fol. 10b: Q. 85:3 – 4 (IV, 48, 4): aṣḥāb; fol. 18b Q. 19:72: al-ẓālimīn; fol. 24a Q. 32:11 (III, 14, 12): yatawaqqākum; fol. 25b Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): albayyināt; fol. 32b Q. 29:46 (III, 11, 47): tujālidu, al-kitāb; fol. 32b Q. 16:125 (II, 10, 125): jādilhum; fol. 17a Q. 7:11 (II, 1, 11): khalaqnāhum; fol. 77b Q. 29:46 (III, 11, 47): tujādilū; fol. 79a Q. 5:46 (I, 4, 50 – 51): āthārihim; fol. 79b Q. 7:168 (II, 1, 173): wa-qaṭaʿnāhum; fol. 80a Q. 2:63 (I, 1, 64): mithāqakum; fol. 82a Q. 25:4 (III, 7, 5): hādhā; fol. 84a Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): darajāt; fol. 84b Q. 59:21 (IV, 22, 22): hādhā, khāshiʿan; fol. 85b Q. 59:2 (IV, 22, 3): diyārihim; fol. 87a Q. 109:4– 6 (IV, 72, 4– 6): ʿābidīn; fol. 89b Q. 2:130 + 10:19 (I, 1, 130): wa-mā kāna, wāḥida; fol. 91a Q. 2:93 (I, 1, 94): mithāqukum plena; fol. 94b Q. 2:115 (I, 1, 116): wāsiʿ; fol. 98b Q. 2:119 (I, 1, 120): arsalnāk, aṣḥāb; fol. 99a Q. 9:59 (II, 3, 57): ātāhum, rāghibūn; fol. 108b Q. 6:89, 90 (I, 5, 88, 89): ataynāhum; fol. 116b Q. 4:24 (I, 3, 25): al-muḥṣināt, aymānukum; fol. 116b Q. 23:1– 2, 6 (III, 5, 2?): khāshiʿūn, azwājihim; fol. 117a Q. 66:1 (IV, 29, vv. 2,3,5): azwājika; fol. 117a Q. 66:1 (?): aymānikum; fol. 117b Q. 2:229 (I, 1, 229): al-ṭalāq, bi-iḥsān; fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): yā laytanī; fol. 123a Q. 4:171 (I, 3, 175): alqāhā; fol. 124b Q. 19:14 (III, 1, 13): bi-wālidayhi; fol. 126a Q. 4:159 (I, 3, 154): al-qiyāma; fol. 129a Q. 3:96 (I, 2, 95): li-l-ʿālamīn; fol. 129a Q. 3:121 (I, 2.120): maqā‘id; fol. 134a Q. 5:51 (supra, 55): al-naṣārā; fol. 135a Q. 6:75 (I, 5, 74): wa-kadhālika; fol. 136b Q. 67:5 (IV, ?, 6): maṣābīḥ, jaʿalnāhā; fol. 140a Q. 7:47 (supra, 48): abṣār; fol. 140b Q. 7:50 (supra, 51): aṣḥāb; fol. 140b Q. 7:73 (II, 1, 74): ṣāliḥan; fol. 146a Q. 12:24 (supra, 25): burhān, dhālika; fol. 146b Q. 12:56 kadhālika; fol. 147a Q. 13:11 (II, 7, 13): muʿaqqibāt; fol. 148a Q. 49:2 (IV, 12, 3): aṣwātakum; fol. 157b Q. 57:10 (IV, 20, 11): qātala; fol. 164b Q. 17:40 (II, 11, 40): aṣfākum; fol. 164b Q. 17:40 (II, 11, 40): ināthan; fol. 166a Q. 15:44 (II, 9, 43): abwāb; fol. 179a Q. 22:78 (III, 4, 75): jāhadū; fol. 180b Q. 19:90 – 91 (III, 2, 90): al-raḥmān; fol. 181a Q. 20:99 (III, 2, 100): kadhālika; fol. 182b Q. 21:79 (III, 3, 78, 79): fa-fahhamnāhā; fol. 184a Q. 27:28 (III, 9, 29) hādhā; fol. 194a Q. 25:7 (III, 7, 8): hādhā; fol. 198b Q. 29:58 (III, 11, 59): al-ṣāliḥāt; fol. 201a Q. 22:14 (III, 4, 22): al-anhār, jannāt; fol. 201b Q. 55:54.56 (IV, 18, 53.55): qāṣirāt; fol. 201b Q. 47:15 (IV, 10, ?): anhārun (two occurrences); fol. 204a Q. 37:62 (III, 19, 15): dhālika; fol. 204a Q. 108:1 (IV, 71, ?) aʿṭaynāka; fol. 211a Q. 34:17 (III, 16, 18): dhālika; fol. 217a Q. 38:71 (supra, 71): khāliqun; fol. 217b Q. 19:87, al-shafāʿa; fol. 220b Q. 41:10 (IV, 4, 10): bāraka.  See fol. 6a Q. 2:136 (I, 1, 137): Ibrāhīm, Ismāʿīl, Isḥāq; fol. 11b Q. 66:12 (IV, 29, 13): ‘Imrān; fol. 12a Q. 3:67 (I, 2, 65): Ibrāhīm; fol. 163b Q. 16:123 (II, 10, 123): Ibrāhīm; fol. 77b Q. 42:13 (IV, ?, 12): Ibrāhīm; fol. 86a Q. 2:140 (I, 1, 140): Ibrāhīm (but without yāʾ), Ismāʿīl and Isḥāq; fol. 86a Q. 3:67: (‐-‐) Ibrāhīm; fol. 95b (Q. 2:125) (I, 1, 126): Ibrahīm (without alif); fol. 120b Q. 19:2 (III, 1, 2): Zakariyyāʾ; fol. 121a Q. 19:28 – 29 (III, 1, 27): Hārūn; fol. 135a Q. 6:75 (I, 5, 74): Ibrāhīm; fol. 179a Q. 19:41 (supra, 39): Ibrāhim; fol. 179b Q. 19:58 (supra, 58): Ibrāhīm, Isrāʾīl; fol. 182b Q. 21:79 (III, 3, 78, 79): Sulaymān; fol. 182b Q. 21:81 (supra, 80): Sulaymān; fol. 183b Q. 38:34 (IV, 1, 35): Sulaymān; fol. 184a Q. 27:17 (III, 9, 18): Sulaymān; fol. 197b Q. 28:76 (III, 10, 76): Qārūn; but fol. 91b (Q. 2:102) (I, 1, ?): Sulaymān, Hārut (with no wāw).

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accorded to one name in one form when dealing with figures also related to Christian faith. The prevalent use of the scriptio plena rather than the defective ʿUthmāni script of the early Qur’an manuscripts is not a surprise and deserves further attention. First of all, it attests to the circulation of the Arabic Qur’an in this form in the Qur’an manuscripts that were in general use. Qur’anic studies that focus on artistic items or manuscripts of some calligraphic value are usually dealing, in the case of medieval qur’anic materials, with items in ʿUthmāni script. The general circulation of Qur’an manuscripts was a different matter, and, alongside these more “artistic” Qur’ans, items in scriptio plena circulated in large numbers. Further, we need to stress that all the European editions and partial versions of the Qur’an are invariably in scriptio plena. This fact must reflect their sources, but there may be something more: perhaps not in Figuerola’s rendering, but in the history of the European approach to the Qur’an in general, scriptio plena was probably easier to manage in relation to one’s knowledge of Arabic grammar and in relation to exegetical literature. However, this is just a hypothesis for future work. Nonetheless the use of scriptio plena is not always coherent, since in some cases the writing adopted is defective (although not in a consistent way) (Fig. 4).²⁶ The author/writer of the manuscript is clearly aware of the formal features of qur’anic scripts, though his final choices show an inconsistent alternation: this fact is clearly displayed by the inclusion in a few passages of the small alif ṭawīla written above and separated from the defective ductus, a well-known device employed in manuscripts in ʿUthmānic writing to complete the scriptio defectiva. Though in a number of cases the small dimensions of the letters attest

 Words in scriptio defectiva (given here in the correct transcription) are in fol. 10b: Q. 85:3 – 4 (IV, 48, 4): wa-shāhid; fol. 12a Q. 3:67 (I, 2, 65): lākin; fol. 17a Q. 7:11 (II, 1, 11): al-sājidīn; fol. 18a Q. 108:1– 3 (IV, 71, …): aʿṭaynākum; fol. 18b Q. 19:71 (III, 1, 69 – 70: wāriduhā; fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 54): qāla, anṣārī; fol. 32b Q. 29:46 (III, 11, 47): ilāhunā, ilāhukum, wāḥid; fol. 47b Q. 3:86 (I, 2, 84): īmānihim; fol. 50b Q. 5:46 (‐-‐): āthārihim; fol. 87b Q. 5:111 (I, 4, 117): al-ḥawāriyīn; fol. 95b Q. 2:125 (I, 1, 126): maqām; fol. 101a Q. 16:98 (II, 10, 99): Qurʾān; fol. 110a Q. 2:191 (I, 1, 192) and fol. 110b Q. 2:193 (‐, -, 194): wa-qātiluhum (wrong word in the first instance); fol. 115b Q. 2:217 (I, 1, 217): al-ḥarām; fol. 116a Q. 2:223 (I, 1, 123[sic]): nisāʾukum; fol. 120b Q. 3:42 (supra, 41) iṣṭafāka (two occurrences), al-ʿālamīn; fol. 129a Q. 3:124 (I, 2, 123,124): bi-thalātha, ālāf; fol. 130b Q. 3:184 (I, 2, 181): bayyināt; fol. 146b Q. 12:55 (supra, 56): qāla; fol. 150a Q. 24:6 (supra, 8): shahādhāt; fol. 151b Q. 33:36 (III, 15, 37): kāna; fol. 164a Q. 2:178 (I, 1, 179): alqisāṣ; fol. 174b Q. 3:55 (I, –, 53): rāfiʿuka; fol. 182a Q. 21:31: rawāsī; fol. 210b Q. 31:19 (III, 13, 18): al-aṣwāt; fol. 220b Q. 41:10 (IV, 4, 10): rawāsī.

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to an informed accuracy (Fig. 5),²⁷ in a few others the dimensions of the alif written above the ductus are similar to the full size of the letter. We know, therefore, that the writer was aware of the devices of the script and interpreted it correctly by paying attention to the supposed dimensions required when choosing to add a superscript alif (see for ex. Fig. 6, in the name ʿĪsā).²⁸ Combined with the versions in small size, this practice provides evidence that the author/writer was aware of the exact rendering of this formal device and knew that it corresponded to an alif of normal size; accordingly, he realized that he could choose a personal, eclectic solution by combining in an original way the defective script with additions above the ductus. The attitude that we have defined as “eclectic” is highlighted by those cases in which scriptio plena and scriptio defectiva of some words alternate in the same verse and are quoted close to one another, with no apparent consistency (Fig. 7).²⁹ It is difficult to imagine an original qur’anic manuscript that would include such contrasting formal features in one and the same verse, but at the same time the author/writer’s knowledge lay at the origin of the choice to combine the two. The solution seems to suggest that if the base copy was a written Qur’an manuscript it was most probably in scriptio plena, and that the author/ writer realized independently, based on other sources, the alternative way of rendering the text in scriptio defectiva; furthermore he added, in full size and in the script, what in the original could be written or indicated with dagger alifs. The same alternation between solutions can be observed in the rendering of the same word in scriptio plena or defectiva in various passages. This is evident in

 See fol. 9b Q. 17:88 (II, 11, 87): hādhā; fol. 88a Q. 13:7 (II, 7, 9): hādin; fol. 88b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): bi-l-āyāt; fol. 88b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): bi-l-āyāt; fol. 90a Q. 16:103 (‐-‐): hādhā, but without the final alif; fol. 93a Q. 11:114 (II, 5, 114): al-ḥasanāt; fol. 105b Q. 2:178 (I, 1, 179): al-qiṣāṣ; fol. 116b Q. 23:1– 2, 6 (III, 5, 2): ṣalātihim; fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): hādhā; fol. 120b Q. 3:42 (supra, 41): iṣṭafāki; fol. 122a Q. 19:18 (–-, 17): bi-l-raḥmān; fol. 132b Q. 5:5 (I, 4, 7): al-ṭayyibāt; fol. 211a Q. 34:17 (III, 16, 18): jazaynāhum; though not completely clear, this could also be the case of fol. 91b (Q. 2:102) (I, 1, ?): lākin.  fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 54): ʿĪsā; cf. also, for ex., fol. 77b Q. 2:43 (I, 1, 111?): al-zakwāt; fol. 121a Q. 19:28 – 29 (III, 1, 27): kāna; fol. 174b Q. 3:55 (I, –, 53): yā ʿĪsā.  See for ex. fol. 6b, Q. 1:2– 7: al-raḥmān plena, mālik defectiva; fol. 12a Q. 3:67 (I, 2, 65): Ibrāhīm plena, lākin defectiva; fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4): yujādilu plena and shayṭān defectiva; fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): ṭā’ir plena, al-kitāb with small alif; fol. 25b Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): darajāt defectiva with small alif, al-bayyināt plena; fol. 104a Q. 16:67 (II, 10, 68): thamarāt defectiva, al-aʿnāb plena; fol. 117a Q. 66:2: aymānikum plena, mawlākum defectiva.

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the attestations of frequent words, such as al-kitāb (Fig. 8)³⁰ and al-shayṭān (Fig. 9)³¹ or the numerous attestations of qāla and its related forms.³² The alternation between scriptio plena and defectiva testifies to the author/ writer’s awareness of the formal features of qur’anic scriptural styles, as he proves that he knows the different possibilities of writing the Qur’an. And if he is not consistent in using one, he understands and wants to convey that both are possibile and legitimate; by feeling free to use them both, even if not consistently, he demonstrates that he knows that using one or the other is indifferent for meaning. As a result, the burden is shifted to the receiver and reader, who has evidence of the different scripts and can understand that one is like the other. Using only one could have been detrimental to the comprehensive knowledge of the written Qur’an in Arabic.

4.2 Features of the Consonantal Ductus In addition to the scriptio used, a number of questions relate to the features of the consonantal ductus, i. e., the way that the letters were written. The ductus gives evidence of the relation between the source or sources and the final product offered to the reader, the whole mediated by the knowledge of the author/ writer. It is not always easy to draw a line between specific authorial choices in the rendering of some letters and lapses or mistakes, even repeated ones. The clear perception of the meaning of the small superscript alif (alif khanjariyya) accompanying the scriptio defectiva of some words, even if not always systematic, is evident also in some trascriptions of alif maqṣūra. In a number of cases the alif maqṣūra bears the sign of this small alif in accordance with qu-

 Al-kitāb in scriptio plena: fol. 8b, Q. 32:23 (III, 14, 24); fol. 32b Q. 29:46 (III, 11, 47); fol. 81b (Q. 2:79) (I, 1, 80); fol. 126a Q. 4:159 (I, 3, 154); fol. 128b Q. 3:75 (I, 2, 73); fol. 130b Q. 4:47 (I, 3, 47); fol. 131b Q. 4:105 (I, 3, 104); fol. 179a Q. 19:41 (III, -, 39); fol. 184a Q. 27:28 (III, 9, 29). Al-kitāb in scriptio defectiva with long alif above the line: fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39); fol. 126a Q. 2:87 (I, 1, 88); fol. 130b Q. 3:184 (I, 2, 181); fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39); fol. 105a Q. 2:176 (I, 1, 177).  Attestations of shayṭān: fol. 120a Q. 3:36 (I, 2, 36): plena; fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4): defectiva without small alif; fol. 18a Q. 19:68 (III, 1, 67): defectiva; fol. 224b Q. 58:10 (IV, 21, 11): al-shayṭān without yāʾ but with alif; fol. 18a Q. 19:68 (III, 1, 67) and fol. 101a (Q. 16:98) (II, 10, 99): defectiva: al-shayāṭīn with no alif.  Attestations of qāla and derivates in defectiva: fol. 12b Q. 20:123 (III, 2, 122): qāla; fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 52): qāla; fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14): fa-qālū; fol. 65b Q. 41:11 (IV, 4, 11): fa-qāla; fol. 181b Q. 20:133 (III, 3, 132): wa-qālū; fol. 186a Q. 27:39 (III, 9, 39): qāla; fol. 187a Q. 27:36 (III, 9, 36): qāla; fol. 217a Q. 38:71 (supra, 71): qāla.

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r’anic calligraphic devices (Fig. 10).³³ This reveals a clear perception of the meaning of the letter and the sign above it, but such accuracy is not always present in the quotations as a whole. The variety of renderings of the alif maqṣūra attests in any case that the author/writer did not follow one system of transcription consistently, though it is difficult to argue that this was simply due to lack of knowledge. For some reason he used the alif ṭawīla instead of the maqṣūra (Fig. 11) in some cases,³⁴ or occasionally even omitted the alif maqṣūra. ³⁵ The omission after the letter lām suggests that its absence in some cases is to be related to calligraphic personal choice or style (Fig. 12).³⁶ The issue of the rendering of the alif maqṣūra introduces two main points about the habits of the author/writer, and a reference to the fact that some letters are more significant for the way they were written or because they attest to different choices. First, the author/writer is inconsistent in writing some letters: in some choices he appears well aware of the formal devices and features of qur’anic calligraphy, while in other cases his choices are less clearly motivated; in a word, he is not consistent in writing some letters. The second point is that our observation applies to a number of letters that also partially reflect problems in the writing, and that are attested throughout the history of Arabic philology. We have already touched on some questions concerning the letter alif, and others surrounding the writing of lām. If we add to these two the well-known and widely attested problematic hamza, and the peculiar case of the writing of dhāl/ dāl, we discover other specific features to be noted in the Arabic quotations in Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe. In these cases the number of alternative and original writings of these letters and of some of their related combinations highlight that these phenomena cannot be dismissed as mistakes or recurring errors, but are probably deliberate writing devices.

 See fol. 6a (Q. 2:136) (I, 1, 137): Mūsā; fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 54): ʿĪsā; fol. 126a Q. 3:50 (I, 2, 48): yadayya; fol. 128a Q. 16:102 (II, 10, 103): bushrā; fol. 169a Q. 4:3 (I, 3, 4): al-yatāmā, mathnā; fol. 177a Q. 18:74 (II, 12, 69): ḥattā (the transcription of ḥattā here and in the following occurences is rather problematic); fol. 177b Q. 18:85 – 86 (II, 12, 80): ḥattā; fol. 178b Q. 19:12 (supra, 11): yaḥyā; fol. 187b Q. 27:18 (III, 9, 19): ḥattā; cf. also the writing in fol. 188b Q. 21:96 (III, 3, 94): ḥattā.  Fol. 107a Q. 8:17 (II, –; 18): ramā with alif ṭawīla; fol. 169a Q. 24:32 (III, 6, 33): al-ayāmā; Cf. also the other way, i. e., an apparent alif maqṣūra instead of an alif ṭawīla, see fol. 188a Q. 21:84 (III, 3, 82): istajabnā.  See fol. 137a Q. 6:160 (supra, 169): yujzā; fol. 145a Q. 9:111 (II, 3, 106): ishtārā; fol. 149a Q. 33:51 (III, 15, 2): turjā; cf. fol. 164a Q. 17:23 (II, 11, 23): qaḍā; fol. 179a Q. 19:72 (supra, 70): nunajjī ; fol. 223b Q. 53:49 (supra, 16, 49): al-shiʿrā.  Se for ex. fol. 140b Q. 7:73 (II, 1, 74): ilā without ā; fol. 145b Q. 11:7 (II, ?, 8): ‘alā; fol. 148b Q. 33:6 (III, 15, 7): awlā; fol. 164a Q. 2:178 (I, 1, 179): al-qatlā; cf. fol. 187b Q. 27:18 (III, 9, 19): ʿalā; fol. 199a Q. 52:20 (IV, 15, 19); fol. 201b Q. 55:54.56 (IV, 18, 53.55): ʿalā without ā.

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The alif (regardless of the scriptio used) was evidently a problematic letter: the author/writer may adhere to his original, omit the alif, or vary its written form. For instance, he omits the alif in some places where its presence is prescribed by Arabic grammar and is required by the qur’anic script (Fig. 13).³⁷ Further, the alif with nunation (indicating the final tanwīn in –an) is also omitted in a few instances (Fig. 14).³⁸ The opposite is also attested, i. e., that an alif is added where it should not be (Fig. 15),³⁹ and in the transcription of ka-dhālika where an alif appears after the letter kāf (Fig. 16).⁴⁰ The lām’s similarity in shape to the alif also gives rise to some problems in the written form. The sequence lām+alif, which also has a specific calligraphic shape, is in some instances rendered as separated and not connected (Fig. 17).⁴¹ In other cases when the two letters are together one of them is omitted or the sequence is changed: for instance, the sequence of two lāms appears as alif + lām (Fig. 18).⁴² In the article al-, in some cases the lām is written as a second alif, disconnected from the initial one (Fig. 19).⁴³ Furthermore, the word allayl is written with one lām in accordance with a specific style of qur’anic writing

 See the silent alif as part of the third person masculine plural past tense inflection, fol. 80a Q. 2:65 (I, 1, 66): iʿtadaw; fol. 182a Q. 21:30 (III, 9, 31,32): kafarū; fol. 211a Q. 34:17 (III, 16, 18): kafarū; see also fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57): ṣallū and sallimū. Cf. also fol. 126a Q. 2:87 (I, 1, 88): the second wa-ataynā is missing the final alif; fol. 176b Q. 18:61 (II, 12, 59): balagha instead of balaghā.  See fol. 82a Q. 25:4 (III, 7, 5): wazūran; fol. 98b Q. 2:119 (I, 1, 120): bashīran, nadhīran; fol. 119a Q. 2:230 (I, 1, 230): zawjan; fol. 120a Q. 3:37 (supra, 37): nabātan with tanwīn but no alif; fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): mansiyyan with tanwīn and no alif; fol. 126b 19:32– 34 (III, 1, 31,32,33): barran; fol. 132a Q. 4:156 (I, 3, 151): ʿaẓīman; fol. 136a Q. 46:29 (IV, 9, 28): nafaran; fol. 165a Q. 17:60 (II, 11, 60): ṭughyānan. But cf. fol. 128a Q. 16:102 (II, 10, 103): hudan rightly written; and fol. 138b Q. 7, 25, 26 (II, X?): anzalnā with a final nūn + tanwīn.  Cf. fol. 104b Q. 47:15 (IV, 10, 17): instead of wuʿida there is waʿadā; fol. 136b Q. 67:5 (IV, ?, 6): ‘adhāba with a final alif; cf. also fol. 201a Q. 43:70 (IV, 6, 71): udkhul instead of udkhulū, but with final alif.  Fol. 146a Q. 12:24 (supra, 25); fol. 146b Q. 12:56 (supra, 57).  Fol. 54a Q. 2:272 (I, 1, 270): wa-lākin, see also García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 451; cf. fol. 80b (Q. 2:68) (I, 1, 69) dhālika with two lāms. But cf. fol. 141a Q. 54:27 (IV, 17, 28): al-nāqa with two alifs.  Cf. fol. 49a Q. 3:48 – 49 (I, 2, 47): al-tawrāt is missing the first alif of the article; fol. 91a (Q. 2:93) (I, 1, 94): al-ṭūr with no lām; see fol. 81b Q. 2:79 (I, 1, 80): li-lladhīna is written alladhīna; fol. 102b Q. 2:173 (I, 1, 174) al-damm is missing the lām; fol. 108b Q. 2:187 (I, 1, 188): al-rafath with no lām.  See for ex. fol. 12a Q. 3:67 (I, 2, 65): al-mushrikīn; fol. 12b Q. 39:11– 12 (IV, 2, 13): Allāh; fol. 134a Q. 5:51 (supra, 55): al-yahūd. But see also the opposite case: fol. 219b Q. 39:68 (IV, 2, 65): alsamāwāt written li-l-samāwāt; fol. 228a Q. 82:1 (IV, 45, 2.3): al-samāʾ with two lām instead of alif+lām.

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(Fig. 20).⁴⁴ In a final emblematic example, attested in a number of cases, the lām is lost in the article in the almost complete quotation of the Fātiḥa (Fig. 21).⁴⁵ In other cases the opposite happens: the alif of the article is connected to the following lām resulting in a double lām, or the words introduced by the particle liare also written differently from the norm (Fig. 22).⁴⁶ The large number of times that the author/writer made this choice, i. e., the alternation between the correct rendering and this erroneous solution, testifies to a degree of liberality on the part of the author/writer, who is aware that these are complex letters for writing the Qur’an. Accordingly, this variation is clearly a stylistic choice and a way for the author/writer to communicate his vision of the Arabic script, as easily recalled by the straight alif as a prevailing sign to be recognized in the work. Although perhaps dictated by haste or a lack of patience with standardization, this is a choice and not a simple error. It originates in the author/writer’s assumption that an audience which was probably not so proficient in Arabic, and for which a disconnected lām did not constitute a problem, could better perceive the Arabic this way, in particular when the lām is close to an alif. As to the writing of the hamza, we touch on a well-known special case; the way of writing it has been a complicated issue in the history of Arabic writing. Qur’anic scriptural practices are also relevant here. Accordingly, it is not easy to discuss its features in relation to a supposed norm or standard, since the variability is high. However, more can be said about the way the hamza was written in the Lumbre de fe, with a variety of solutions that range from the exact rendering of the most difficult words and constructions to specific original features and even mistakes. A consistent number of occurrences of the hamza show the same eclectic attitude signaled above: in some cases the hamza is perfectly written, even when

 See fol. 93a Q. 11:114 (II, 5, 114) and fol. 163b Q. 17:12 (II, 2?, ?): al-layl with one lām only; see also fol. 224a Q. 52:49 (IV, 15, ?).  On the Fātiḥa, see fol. 6b, Q. 1:2– 7, in part. a-dīn, v. 3 a-raḥmān, v. 7: al-ṣirāṭ without article (but it may be a homoteleuton), the problematic writing of the lām is also in al-ḍāllīn as al-ḍā ibn.  See for ex. fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57): li- instead of al-nabī; fol. 48a Q. 9:113 (II, 3, 108): almushrikīn instead of li-l-mushrikīn; fol. 62b Q. 12:111 (II, 6, 112): al-albāb written ilālnalab, li-ūlī written lālī (missing the wāw), see on this García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 455; fol. 65b Q. 41:11 (IV, 4, 11): li-l-arḍ written al-arḍ; fol. 95b (Q. 2:125) (I, 1, 126): lil-nās > al-nās; fol. 127a Q. 27:65 (III, 9, 65): al-samāwāt without alif of the article; fol. 129a Q. 3:96 (I, 2, 95): awwal without final lām, li-l-nās > al-nās; fol. 147b Q. 15:40 (II, ?, 39): li-l-mukhliṣīn written lkhamliṣīn; fol. 189a Q. 22:30 – 31 (supra, 30): li-Llāh > Allāh.

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indicated in cases of scriptio defectiva (Fig. 23).⁴⁷ In some other cases it is simply absent (forgotten or deliberately omitted) (Fig. 24),⁴⁸ or inserted where it is not indicated (Fig. 25).⁴⁹ There seem to be instances of indecision where the hamza is written incorrectly as a consequence of a problematic reading. A list of the cases would be too long. No less significant, and a further proof of the author/writer’s attitude, are those passages that reveal contradictory choices, e. g., putting in the hamza and omitting it in the same passage (Fig. 26).⁵⁰ In any case, we find adherence to the qur’anic script coming from written sources or knowledge of written Qur’ans in the rendering of some specific cases that act as markers of this attitude: for instance in the writing of the word al-nabī (the prophet), since the current transcription mentioned above is usually given in the Qur’an with the hamza. The author/writer of the Lumbre de fe is well aware of this fact, and the occurrences of the word all include the final hamza over the yāʾ (Fig. 27).⁵¹ Further, in some passages, the hamza is overwritten or written on the side in the middle of the alif; this choice imitates a graphic feature of writing the combination of the two letters in some words which is also attested in the Qur’an (Fig. 28).⁵² A noteworthy case is the several ways of writing words derived from āmana, in particular āmanū, which often

 Fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14): ilayhim, inna; fol. 98b (Q. 2:119) (I, 1, 120): tus’al; fol. 123a Q. 4:171 (I, 3, 175): yā ahl; fol. 133a Q. 5:29 (I, 4, 33): tabū’a, bi-ithmī; fol. 142b Q. 7:163 (supra, 168): was’alhum; fol. 182a Q. 21:7 (?, 3, 8): ilayhim.  The sign omitted in the ductus: fol. 137b Q. 7:9 (II, 1, ?): ūlāʾika; see for ex. fol. 8b, Q. 32:23 (III, 14, 24): ataynā; fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): al-arḍ; fol. 33a Q. 2:285 (I, 1, 282): al-mu’minūn; fol. 61b Q. 12:106 (II, 6, 107): yu’min with no hamza but yāʾ; fol. 77a Q. 2:62 (I, 1, 63): al-ṣābiʾīn; fol. 78a Q. 7:158 (II, 1 v. 163): yuʾmin; fol. 83a Q. 2:185 (I, 1, 186): al-Qurʾān; fol. 116a Q. 2:223 (I, 1, 123[sic]): shi’tum; fol. 126a Q. 4:159 (I, 3, 154): la-yu’minanna; fol. 128b Q. 3:75 (I, 2, 73): yu’addihi; fol. 129a Q. 3:124 (I, 2, 123,124): li-l-mu’minīn; fol. 130b Q. 4:47 (I, 3, 47): ūtū; fol. 143b Q. 36:7 (III, 18, 6): yu’minūna, and passim for other similar cases related to āmana; fol. 181a Q. 20:109 (supra): yawma’idhin, with hamza without consonantical sign; fol. 181b Q. 20:133 (III, 3, 132): ya’tīnā; fol. 199a Q. 52:20 (IV, 15, 19): muttakiʾīn; fol. 225b Q. 60:12 (IV, 23, 12): jā’aka.  See for ex. fol. 6b, Q. 1:2– 7, ihdinā: with hamza and alif; fol. 24a Q. 32:11 (III, 14, 12) bi-kum is given as hamza + kum; fol. 82a (Q. 25:4) (III, 7, 5): jā’ū with hamza over the waw; fol. 182a Q. 21:31: fī al-arḍ; it is the case of some occurrences of alif waṣla, see fol. 89a (Q. 54:1– 2) (IV, 17, 2– 4): iqtarabat, inshaqqa; fol. 99b (Q. 2:158) (I, 1, 159): iʿtamara; fol. 145b Q. 12:8 (II, 6, 11).  See for ex. fol. 9b Q. 17:88 (II, 11, 87); fol. 12b Q. 39:11– 12 (IV, 2, 13).  See fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57); fol. 48 a Q. 9:113 (II, 3, 108); fol. 83b Q. 33:1 (III, 15, 1); fol. 148b Q. 33:6 (III, 15, 7); fol. 149b Q. 33:28 (III, 15, 29); fol. 225b Q. 60:12 (IV, 23, 12).  See fol. 25b Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): wa-ataynā; fol. 50b Q. 5:46 (‐-‐): wa-ataynāhu; fol. 79a Q. 5:46 (I, 4, 50 – 51): āthārihim; fol. 81b (Q. 20:115): Ādam; fol. 84b Q. 59:21 (IV, 22, 22): al-Qurʾān; fol. 88a Q. 13:7 (II, 7, 9): āya; fol. 88b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): ataynā; fol. 150a Q. 24:11 (III, 6, 12): jāʾū without wāw while correct in the transcription.

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lack the final wāw plus alif, but of which other versions are given, generating many doubts about the interpretation of this combination (Fig. 29).⁵³ The combination of hamza and alif shows a variety of eclectic solutions in different words; alternative choices covering various possibilities emerge. For instance, the expression yā ayyuhā is written perfectly with scriptio plena or defectiva or in other ways (Fig. 30, see also Fig. 29).⁵⁴ Other words that contain these letters or others reflect an attitude to eclecticism which is evidence not of a lack of knowledge but of a less coherent approach to the ways of writing complex words which in the Qur’an can be given in different scripts and with some specific formal features. We see this in the writing of the words al-malāʾika (angels) and al-samāwāt, which are frequent in the holy text and combine variation in script and in the use of the hamza (hamza in the case of al-malāʾika) (Fig. 31).⁵⁵ Among these scriptural features one emerges in particular, since it is not related to the letters quoted above whose variability is attested in the centuries-old history of Islamic writing and in the specific calligraphy and scripture of the Qur’an. It is the way of writing the dhāl without its dot in the Lumbre de fe. This peculiarity happens so frequently that it is hard to dismiss it as a scribal error. It is to be connected to some inference from the pronunciation of words such as alladhī or alladhīna, or to some other reasons that are difficult to ascer-

 See fol. 32b Q. 29:46 (III, 11, 47): āmannā; fol. 33a Q. 2:285 (I, 1, 282): āmana; fol. 77a Q. 2:63 (I, 1, 62): āmanū; fol. 180a Q. 19:60 (III, 1, 60): āmana. But cf. fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4): Allāh, alif at the beginning; fol. 104a Q. 5:90 (I, 4, 95); fol. 148a Q. 49:2 (IV, 12, 3): āman instead of āmanū; fol. 144b Q. 9:23 (supra, 22): amīn instead of āmanū while the transcription is correct; fol. 199b Q. 4:122 (I, 3, 119): āmanā instead of āmanū; fol. 222a Q. 46:31 (IV, 9, 30): āminū without waw and final alif; fol. 95a Q. 62:9 (IV, 26, 10) āmanū without waw but with final alif; fol. 134a Q. 5:57 (supra, v. 62): āmanū without final alif; fol. 87b Q. 5:111 (I, 4, 117): āminū without wāw.  Well written in fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57); fol. 52a Q. 61:14 (IV, 24, 15); fol. 103b Q. 4:43 (I, 3, 44); fol. 117a Q. 66:1 (IV, 29, vv. 2,3,5); fol. 132a Q. 5:2 (I, 4? 3); and fol. 108a Q. 2:183 (I, 1, 184): without superscript small alif; fol. 130b Q. 4:47 (I, 3, 47): written as one word; fol. 225b Q. 60:12 (IV, 23, 12): in scriptio plena.  On the various ways of writing al-malāʾika, see for ex. fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57): malā’ikatuhu is written mālā’ikatuhu; fol. 75a Q. 2:34 (I, 1, 34): li-l-malā’ika, with hamza but no alif; fol. 217a Q. 38:71 (supra, 71); fol. 129a Q. 3:124 (I, 2, 123,124), fol. 190a Q. 22:75 (III, 4, 72): almalīka with small alif instead of li-l-malāʾika; cf. fol. 17a Q. 7:11 (II, 1, 11), fol. 124b Q. 3:39 (I, 1?, 38) with neither alif nor hamza; fol. 120b Q. 3:42 (supra, 41): with yāʾ and no hamza; fol. 125b Q. 3:45 (I, 2, 44): al-malā’ika well written in defectiva. See also al-samāwāt written with two alif (plena): fol. 86b Q. 3:83; fol. 127a Q. 27:65 (III, 9, 65); fol. 135a Q. 6:75 (I, 5, 74); fol. 164b Q. 6:111 (I, 5, 110); fol. 196a Q. 25:25 (III, 7, 27): al-samāʾ written with two alifs; fol. 219b Q. 39:68 (IV, 2, 65); written with the first small alif, see fol. 94b Q. 30:18 (III, 12, 17); fol. 165a Q. 35:1 (III, 17, 2); written with a different sign instead of the first alif: fol. 130a Q. 3:133 (I, 2, 132).

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tain. The most frequent cases are in fact those of alladhī/alladhīna, which are most often written with dāl instead of dhāl (Fig. 32),⁵⁶ while they are written correctly with dhāl only occasionally (Fig. 33).⁵⁷ Other words beside alladhī are also written with dāl instead of dhāl (Fig. 34),⁵⁸ though cases of correct writing also occur, even for the same words.⁵⁹ There are even quotations in which the correct or incorrect rendering of the dhāl (with or without its dot) is attested in the same verse (Fig. 35) —this being the same eclectic attitude already signalled in other cases, such as the inclusion or omission of the hamza. ⁶⁰ Our hypothesis is that, in the Lumbre de fe, dhāl and dāl are treated as one letter which may be dotted or not: this conjecture is further supported by the fact that a few words include a dotted dhāl instead of a correct dāl (Fig. 36).⁶¹ One significant formal device which receives different solutions in Arabic manuscripts, including those of the Qur’an, is the placing of dots in the letter yāʾ; this involves some regional habits, but also an eclectic attitude in relation the writing of yā’, hamza and alif maqṣūra. The author/writer of the Lumbre de fe sometimes adds dots under the yāʾ where certain qur’anic written features include the letter without dots (Fig. 37).⁶² In some other cases the dots are correctly

 alladhī or alladhīna wit no dot in the dhāl: fol. 21b Q. 3:169 (I, 2, 167); fol. 24a Q. 32:11 (III, 14, 12); fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57); fol. 32b Q. 29:46 (III, 11, 47); fol. 48a Q. 9:113 (II, 3, 108); fol. 52a Q. 61:14 (IV, 24, 15); fol. 65b Q. 2:29 (I, 1, 29); fol. 77a Q. 2:62 (I, 1, 63); fol. 78a Q. 7:158 (II, 1, 163); fol. 78b Q. 3:57 (I, 2, 54– 55); fol. 80a Q. 2:65 (I, 1, 66); fol. 81b Q. 2:79 (I, 1, 80); fol. 82a Q. 25:4 (III, 7, 5); fol. 83a Q. 2:185 (I, 1, 186); fol. 85b Q. 59:2 (IV, 22, 3), passim.  Fol. 50a Q. 94:2– 3 (IV, 57, 3 – 4); fol. 129a Q. 3:96 (I, 2, 95); fol. 179a Q. 19:72 (supra, 70); fol. 191a Q. 24:4 (supra, 5); fol. 199b Q. 4:122 (I, 3, 119).  Fol. 48a Q. 19:18 (III, 1, 17): aʿūdhu; fol. 84b Q. 59:21 (IV, 22, 22): hādhā; fol. 88b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): kadhdhaba; fol. 90a Q. 16:103 (II, 10, 104): hādhā written had plus an alif above the ductus; fol. 105a Q. 2:176 (I, 1, 177): dhālika; fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): jidhʿ; fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): hādhā; fol. 126b 19:32– 34 (III, 1, 31,32,33): dhālika; fol. 130b Q. 3:184 (I, 2, 181): kudhdhiba; fol. 135a Q. 6:75 (I, 5, 74): wa-kadhālika; fol. 146a Q. 12:24 (supra, 25): dhālika; fol. 155b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): kadhdhaba; fol. 173b Q. 18:4– 5 (II, 12, 4): yundhira; fol. 177a Q. 18:74 (II, 12, 69): idhā; fol. 184a Q. 27:28 (III, 9, 29): hādhā; fol. 211a Q. 34:17 (III, 16, 18): dhālika.  Fol. 47a Q. 19:22 (III, 1, 21): intabadhat with dhāl; fol. 95b Q. 2:125 (I, 1, 126): idh; fol. 101a Q. 16:98 (II, 10, 99): idhā; fol. 146b Q. 12:56 (supra, 57): ka-dhālika; fol. 150a Q. 24:6 (supra, 8): shahādhāt; fol. 187b Q. 27:18 (III, 9, 19): idhā.  Fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14) idh (written here idhā) with dot while kadhdhabū has no dot; fol. 134a Q. 5:51 (supra, 55): alladhīna with dāl, but yahūdh instead of yahūd.  Cf. fol. 64b Q. 2:23 (libro I, 1, 23): ‘aydhina instead of ‘abdinā; fol. 83a Q. 2:185 (I, 1, 186): the final hudan is written hudh; fol. 89b Q. 2:130 + 10:19 (I, 1, 130 + II, 4?, 17): wāḥida apparently with dhāl; cf. also fol. 179a Q. 22:78 (III, 4, 75): jāhidū apparently written jāhadhū.  Fol. 48 a Q. 9:113 (II, 3, 108): ūlī; fol. 54a Q. 2:272 (I, 1, 270): yahdī; fol. 148b Q. 15:88 (II, ?, 84?): ‘aynayka.

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not added to the letter (Fig. 38),⁶³ but the opposite, e. g. points are added where qur’anic defective script would allow them to be omitted, is more frequent (Fig. 39).⁶⁴ Some other formal choices are less systematic and more difficult to assess, though all suggest that, along with eclecticism, some personal graphic choices were also in use and reflected a personal way of writing some letters more or less influenced by the sources or the hand of the writer.⁶⁵ A few of these features are significant because they raise the question of a possible oral or recited influence on a written source. However, given the fact that the evidence is not clear cut, it is difficult to use these to indicate that in some cases the Qur’an was quoted with an original Qur’an manuscript at hand, while in some others this process could have been mediated or slightly altered by recitation orally or from memory (Fig. 40).⁶⁶

4.3 Errors and Lapses The manuscript that contains the Lumbre de fe testifies to a level of proficiency in writing Arabic which is, as already stated, significant for a non-native speaker. Nevertheless, every copying activity includes the possibility of introducing some unintentional errors, mainly through imperfect knowledge of what is being read. Others are attributable to the attitudes of some copyists to correcting the text they read, and to lapses committed when writing down what is copied. The dif But cf. fol. 124b Q. 3:39 (I, 1?, 38): fī, cf. also qā’im with hamza plus yāʾ with dots; fol. 197b Q. 28:26 (III, 10, 26): iḥdāhumā.  Fol. 190a Q. 22:75 (III, 4, 72): yaṣṭafī, f. 165a Q. 35:1 (III, 17, 2): ūlī.  See for example instead of final alif of the tanwīn, a sign similar to an alif maqṣūra, see fol. 21b Q. 3:169 (I, 2, 167): amwātan; With letters written in strange ways, see fol. 88b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): takhwīfan with a final fāʾ similar to a hāʾ; fol. 106b Q. 5:110 (I, 4, 107): yā ʿĪsā¸ the final alif maqṣūra is written like a waw; fol. 129a Q. 3:96 (I, 2, 95): hudan, with an alif maqṣūra written like a lām; cf. the final wide bāʾ of rabb in fol. 185a Q. 27:26 (supra, 27, 28); see also in fol. 195b Q. 43:2 (IV, 7, 1). The tāʾ can also be written with a wide curl, see fol. 185b Q. 27:23 (supra, 24, 25, 26): wajadtu; fol. 186a Q. 27:39 (III, 9, 39): ʿifrīt; fol. 197b Q. 28:26 (III, 10, 26): abat, qālat; cf. fol. 201a Q. 43:70 (IV, 6, 71): al-janna; fol. 201b Q. 55:54.56 (IV, 18, 53.55): furush. See also fol. 191b Q. 24:26 (‐—-‐): khābithāt, the first alif is written like a lām; fol. 201a Q. 55:76 (‐—‐): rafraf with a wide final curl; with a qāf written like a wāw: fol. 217a Q. 39: (IV, 2 -‐): ḥaqq; fol. 219b Q. 39:68 (IV, 2, 65): fa-ṣaʿiqa.  See for ex. fol. 121b Q. 19:24 (supra, 23): fa-nādāhā, the author/writer reads the nūn as a hamza; cf. also fol. 127a Q. 19:26 (III, 1, 25); fol. 140b Q. 7:73 (II, 1, 74): ya qawmi ‘budū Allāh, written with alif with hamza+kasra in i‘budū (from recitation or reading and not from written text?); fol. 144b Q. 9:36 (II, 2, 35): also in this case the transcription seems influenced by recitation.

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ficulty in evaluating a text of this kind (i. e., a Qur’an copied supposedly by a non-native speaker with an imprecise knowledge of the language) is to discern what comes from features and formal devices consciously chosen by the author/writer. In the preceding paragraphs we have discussed features attributable to the personal choices of the author/writer, as a sign of the mediation between his knowledge and his capacity or will to find a balance between his sources and the final product he wanted to realize. The choice of the scriptio and the multiple solutions in the rendering of the ductus and the letters discussed above belong to this realm. However, as already stated above, it is not always clear, especially in unique or rare attestations, how to distinguish between chosen features and mistakes and lapses. In any event, the cases we are going to list are those that are easier to distinguish and can suggest to us something about the author/writer of the Lumbre de fe. The number of qur’anic verses quoted permits us to isolate some recurrent errors and some others which, though less frequent, are significant for other reasons. The most typical error and the one constituting clear evidence that the basis of the qur’anic verses copied and transcribed was a written copy (even if, in some cases, by silent reading and copying, or by dictation) is the homeoteleuton which is attested in a few passages (Fig. 41).⁶⁷ Apart from these, the other most significant passages are those that include more than one lapse or error, causing us to suspect that the author/writer did not understand the original verse. These parts are significant since they attest to a relation with the original source: where in many other regards the author/writer seems perfectly aware of the contents and features of the verses he quotes from the Qur’an, in these cases the situation is completely different. The number of verses of this kind is significant and includes different types of misreadings and lapses (Fig. 42).⁶⁸ It

 See fol. 25b Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251) with baʿḍuhum; fol. 87a Q. 6:14 (I, 5, 16): qul; fol. 132b Q. 5:6 (supra, 8): missing ilā al-ṣalāt fa-’ghsilū wujūhakum wa-aydiyakum; fol. 140b Q. 7:48 (idem, 51): instead of aṣḥāb al-aʿrāf it is aṣḥāb al-nār as the line above; fol. 150a Q. 24:6 (supra, 8): al-kadh instead of al-ṣādiqīn; cf. also fol. 87a Q. 109:4– 6 (IV, 72, 4– 6): missing dīnukum maybe influenced by the other mention of dīn later on. Though not a proper case of homoteleuton but evidence of a written source is also the case of fol. 49a Q. 3:46 (I, 2, 45): adding al-muqarribīn from the end of the preceding verse.  See for ex. fol. 48a Q. 9:113 (II, 3, 108): aṣḥāb al-jaḥīm, transcribed w.a.ṣ.ḥ.y.h al-ḥayīm; fol. 54a Q. 2:272 (I, 1, 270): hudāhum written hudhanuhīm; fol. 117a Q. 66:1 (IV, 29, vv. 2,3,5): tuḥarrimu mā written tuḥarriṣāb [?]; fol. 121b Q. 19:26 (supra, 25): various lapses maybe coming from oral transmission?; fol. 133b Q. 5:38 (supra, 42): it is apparently written al-yadayhimā, and after there is an instead of juz’an; fol. 217a Q. 38:76 (supra, 76): khalaqtahu written ḥ.l.m.y.t (and the following transcription in Latin is also different); fol. 141b Q. 20:19,20

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is not easy to provide a final answer on these faults. Unlike the simpler errors in one letter or word, these imply some problems in the comprehension of the terms or some confusion related more probably to reading. In other cases, a lapsus calami is the most likely answer: confusion in some letters, revealed by the placing of dots over or under the ductus, deletions of parts of words, or even words which are repeated or cut short; all are apparently the result of distraction and lack of attention while copying or writing down. The omission of some letters with no correction in the margin is a typical procedure in copying activities, and in most of these cases reflects a lack of revision (Fig. 43).⁶⁹ One common feature is the omission of long vowels, also to be connected to the problematic rendering of the alif, yāʾ and wāw mentioned above (Fig. 44).⁷⁰ We must stress that the cases relating to these letters are numerous, (supra, 21): fa-alqāhā is written qāla lqihā; fol. 165b Q. 18:9 (II, 12, 7): am asiba instead of ḥasibta, ayna instead of anna; fol. 174b Q. 4:157 Q. 4 (I, 3, ?): qawlihim without hāʾ, followed by a wāw hamza, innā without final alif, al-masīḥ is badly written and Maryam is repeated twice, rasūl without wāw; fol. 75a Q. 2:35 (supra, 35): wa-qāla instead of wa-kulā, minhu instead of minhā; fol. 86a Q. 3:67: Ibrahim written Ibyrāhīm, ḥanīfan without yāʾ, muslimān with final nūn; see fol. 144b Q. 9:36 (II, 2, 35): from oral or aural communication; fol. 105b Q. 2:178 (I, 1, 179): alladhirafw instead of alladhīna; fol. 78a Q. 7:158 (II, 1 v. 163): kāmāya instead of kalimātihi, laʿallakum with wāw instead of ‘ayn; fol. 23b Q. 6:61 (I, 5, 62): al-quhiru instead of al-qāhiru, and adding kum in the middle of ‘ibādihi, from the line above; fol. 50b Q. 4:105 (I, 3, 104): innamā instead of inna, ilaykitāb instead of ilayka al-kitāb, bi-l-ḥaww instead of bi-l-ḥaqq. Badly written words: fol. 88a Q. 13:7 (II, 7, 9): anta written atutā; cf. fol. 103b Q. 2:219 (I, 1, 219); fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 52); see also fol. 64b Q. 68:1– 2 (IV, 31, 1– 2), mentioned in García-Arenal, Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 456.  See fol. 6a Q. 2:136: al-asbāṭ withour sīn; fol. 83a (Q. 5:15) (I, 4, 22): al-kitāb is written al-kīlab; fol. 84a Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): bnu instead of ibnu; fol. 223b Q. 49:9 (IV, 12, 10): al-muʾminīn written with alif e missing the nūn; fol. 48a Q. 9:113 (II, 3, 108): yastaghfirū without the sīn; fol. 48b Q. 5:75 (I, 4, 81): al-masīḥ written as al-masī; fol. 125b Q. 3:45 (I, 2, 44): yubashshir with shīn without dots, al-masīḥ without ḥāʾ, ʿĪsā without yāʾ, wajīhan without yāʾ; fol. 88b Q. 13:27 (II, 7, 28): wayaqūlu with no wāw; fol. 12b Q. 20:123 (III, 2, 122) ihbitā without the final alif; fol. 77b Q. 2:43 (I, 1, 111?): ātū without alif-hamza; fol. 82a Q. 25:4 (III, 7, 5): iftarāhu omitting the tāʾ; fol. 82b Q. 6:25 (I, 5, 26): yastamiʿu, omitting the sīn; fol. 82b Q. 32:5 (III, 14, 5): al-samā’ without alif; fol. 85b Q. 59:2 (IV, 22, 3): ahl without alif; fol. 119a Q. 2:249 (I, 1, 248): al-junūd missing the final dāl; fol. 141a Q. 54:27 (IV, 17, 28): mursalū without lām; fol. 149b Q. 33:28 (III, 15, 29): li-azwāj missing the jīm; fol. 155b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): nursilu without the nūn; fol. 179b Q. 19:58 (supra, 58): dhurriyya without the rāʾ; fol. 181a Q. 20:102 (III, 2, 103, 109): yunfakh without the final khāʾ; fol. 199b Q. 2:25 (I, 1, 25) tajrī missing the final yāʾ.  Fol. 17a Q. 7:11 (II, 1, 11): Iblīs withour yāʾ; fol. 18b Q. 19:72: nunajjī withour yāʾ; fol. 86b Q. 10:72 (II, 4, 70): ajriya written as ajrina, al-muslimīn without yāʾ; fol. 123a Q. 4:171 (I, 3, 175): al-masīḥ with no yāʾ and kalimātuhu has the wrong alif; fol. 18b Q. 19:72: alladhīna without yāʾ; fol. 50b Q. 5:46 (‐-‐): al-injīl with no yāʾ; fol. 86a Q. 2:140 (I, 1, 140): taqūlūna without the first wāw and tāʾ instead of yāʾ (on this last feature see below); fol. 87a Q. 51:36 (IV, ?4, 36):

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thus attesting to some problems which are in line with similar dynamics in the history of Arabic philology. Not only addition of letters is another typical lapse (Fig. 45);⁷¹ whole words may also be omitted (Fig. 46),⁷² or cut short (Fig. 47).⁷³ In other cases the lapse generated the repetition of a word (Fig. 48).⁷⁴ Further, it can also happen that the emendation is placed in the margin, attesting to the author/writer’s ability to recognize the lapse or fault (Fig. 49).⁷⁵

al-muslimīn without the final yāʾ; fol. 94b Q. 2:115 (I, 1, 116): ʿalīm without yāʾ; fol. 104b Q. 47:15 (IV, 10, 17): fīhā without the yāʾ; fol. 107a Q. 6:21 (?, 5, 22): iftarā without alif; fol. 129a Q. 3:121 (I, 2.120): samīʿ, ʿalīm missing the yāʾs; fol. 129a Q. 3:124 (I, 2, 123,124): munzalīn without yāʾ; fol. 130b Q. 3:184 (I, 2, 181): al-munīr without yāʾ, wa-bi-l-bayyināt omitting the wāw; fol. 131a Q. 4:82 (supra, 81): kāna without alif; fol. 134b Q. 5:113 (supra, 119): nurīd without yāʾ; fol. 141b Q. 20:18 (III, 2, 19,21): ʿaṣāyya without alif; fol. 147a Q. 12: 93 (supra, 94): bi-qamīṣī without the final yāʾ; fol. 148b Q. 33:6 (III, 15, 7): al-muʾminīn without yāʾ; fol. 160b Q. 18:56 (II, 12, 51): al-mursalīn without yāʾ; fol. 104a Q. 16:67 (II, 10, 68): tattakhidhūna without wāw; fol. 129a Q. 3:124 (I, 2, 123,124): taqūl without wāw; fol. 145a Q. 9:62 (II, 3, 60): wa-rasūluhu without wāw; fol. 229a Q. 112 (IV, 75, -): yūlad without wāw; fol. 201a Q. 55:68 (IV, 18, 66 – 73 – 77) fī-himā without yāʾ; fol. 201b Q. 47:15 (IV, 10, ?): fīhā without yāʾ; fol. 143b Q. 9:30 (II, 2 [sic], 31) kafarū with no wāw; fol. 151b Q. 33:36 (III, 15, 37): rasūluhu is written rasul + wāw and hamza; fol. 131a Q. 4:82 (supra, 81): kāna with no alif. Cf. also fol. 141b Q. 7:115 (…. 104): qālū written qāl + wāw.  Fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14): idhā instead of idh; fol. 169a Q. 4:3 (I, 3, 4): ṭāba with an alif at the end; fol. 18b Q. 19:71 (III, 1, 69 – 70: wa-illā instead of illā; fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14): bi-lthālith instead of bi-thālith; fol. 62a Q. 7:159 (II, 1, 164) yahdūna is written yahyadūna, see also García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 454; fol. 82a Q. 16:102 (II, 10, 103), fol. 128a Q. 16:102 (II, 10, 103): al-qudūs instead of al-qudus (the same verse written in the same way); fol. 86b Q. 10:72 (II, 4, 70): fa-in with two alifs; fol. 87a Q. 51:36 (IV, ?4, 36) fāmā with two alifs; fol. 121a Q. 19:28 – 29 (III, 1, 27): fa-ashārat with two alif: fā-ashārat; fol. 134b Q. 5:113 (supra, v. 119): before minhā there is a wāw; fol. 151b Q. 33:36 (III, 15, 37): al-khiyara written with an alif.  Fol. 79a Q. 5:46 (I, 4, 50 – 51): instead of li-mā only mā; fol. 86b Q. 10:72 (II, 4, 70): tawallaytum fa-mā is omitted; fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4): fī is missing; fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): without thumma at the end; fol. 95a Q. 62:9 (IV, 26, 10): min yawm, omitting min; fol. 134b Q. 5:82 (I, 4, ?): omitting ashadd; fol. 108a Q. 2:183 (I, 1, 184): laʿallakum is omitted. But also added: fol. 107a Q. 8:17 (II, –, 18): adding ramā after wa-lakinna Allāh.  Fol. 46b Q. 21:91 (III, 3, 89): rūḥinā omitting -inā; fol. 91b Q. 2:102 (I, 1, ?): kafarū without finale wāw and alif, unzila without final lām; fol. 102b Q. 2:173 (I, 1, 174): al-khinzīr written al-khinz; fol. 103b Q. 4:43 (I, 3, 44): lā taqrabū missing abū; fol. 107a Q. 8:17 (II, –; 18): omitting from the verse mā ramayta idh ramayta; fol. 146b Q. 12:56 (supra, 57): makān instead of makannā; fol. 174a Q. 23:50 (III, 5, 49): missing -humā after wa-awaynā (and a problematic transcription); fol. 198b Q. 15:47 (II, 9, 46): ṣudūrihim without him. See also fol. 220b Q. 41:10 (IV, 4, 10): fawqihā without faw; fol. 164a Q. 17:23 (II, 11, 23): idhā added in wa-idhā qaḍā; fol. 230a Q. 6:101 (I, 5, 110): badīʿ without yāʾ and ʿayn.  Fol. 217b Q. 19:87, (‐—-‐): al-shafāʿa repeated.  See for ex. fol. 6a Q. 2:136 (I, 1, 137): the incorrect qulū is added in margin.

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Lapses relating to single letters are, understandably, by far the most common and are a constant phenomenon in the quoted verses. In some cases letters are added, including letters which are not supposed to be there (Fig. 50).⁷⁶ As expected, in a variety of possible cases, letters can also be changed (Fig. 51).⁷⁷ In the substitution/changing of letters, sometimes happening by chance, the most typical phenomenon is connected to the dots that distinguish between different letters. To place one or two dots above or below the ductus makes the difference, but lapses in this regard are a widely attested phenomenon in Arabic philology. In the case of the text copied in the Lumbre de fe this takes place in a consistent number of cases, beside the many more correct versions. This condition demonstrates that the problem is not the author/writer’s knowledge and ability to read the original source, but his choice to take less care in the accuracy of the transcription in some occurrences of some letters. The most attested lapses are connected to the simple sign in the ductus that becomes bāʾ, tāʾ, thāʾ, nūn, or yāʾ according to the number of dots written above or below it. One common mistake confuses the letters nūn and bāʾ, an easy occurrence since they are distinguished by the addition of the dot below or above the ductus (Fig. 52).⁷⁸ Another frequent lapse is the alternation tāʾ and yāʾ, playing on the two dots inserted above or below the ductus (Fig. 53).⁷⁹ The possible

 Fol. 17a Q. 7:11 (II, 1, 11): a dāl added to yakun; fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 54): al-kufr written alyakfur; fol. 117a Q. 66:2: a zāʾ before lakum; fol. 131a Q. 4:82 (supra, 81): a-falā, written a-fālā; fol. 176b Q. 73:1– 2 (IV, 36, 1): al-muzzammil with alif; fol. 201b Q. 55:54.56 (IV, 18, 53.55): furush written furūsh; fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14): idhā instead of idh; fol. 77b Q. 29:46 (III, 11, 47): aḥsayn instead of aḥsan; fol. 169a Q. 4:3 (I, 3, 4): ṭāba with an alif at the end. See the variance relating to janna: fol. 198b Q. 18:31 (II, 12, 30): jānnat; fol. 198b Q. 37:43 (III, 19, 43?): jānnāt; fol. 199b Q. 2:25 (I, 1, 25): jānnat; fol. 201a Q. 13:35 (II, 7, 36): al-jannāt; fol. 201a Q. 35:33 (III, 17, 32): jannāt and open tāʾ; fol. 131b Q. 4:105 (I, 3, 104): al-nasā instead of al-nās; fol. 141b Q. 7:143 (supra, 138): li-mīqātinā written li-minqāti?ā.  Fol. 12a Q. 3:67 (I, 2, 65): musliman with a final nūn; fol. 99a Q. 9:59 (II, 3, 57): rasūl written with ṣād; fol. 138a Q. 7:20 (supra, v. 20): al-shayṭān; fol. 182a Q. 21:7 (?, 3, 8): yawḥā instead of nūḥī; fol. 198b Q. 29:58 (III, 11, 59): li-nubawwiʾannahum: instead of the final mīm a wāw; cf. fol. 130a Q. 3:153 (I, 2, 151): ‘alā written as ʿal + hamza; fol. 87a Q. 109:4– 6 (IV, 72, 4– 6): ʿābidīn instead of ʿābidūn; fol. 149a Q. 33:51 (III, 15, 2): minhunna is written minhīn; fol. 188b Q. 22:27 (III, 4, ?): al-nās written al-sās.  Fol. 12a Q. 3:67 (I, 2, 65): naṣrān(b)iyyan; fol. 84a Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): baʿḍ(n)uhum; fol. 107b Q. 24:63 (III, 6, 63): bayn(t)akum, b(y)aʿḍikum; fol. 116b Q. 23:1– 2, 6 (III, 5, 2?): al-mu’minūn(b); fol. 119a Q. 2:249 (I, 1, 248): mub(n)talīkum; fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): mittu with nūn; fol. 220b Q. 41:10 (IV, 4, 10): b(n)āraka; fol. 223b Q. 52:30 (IV, 15, 29): n(b)at(n)arabbaṣa.  See for ex. fol. 25b Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): al-bayyināt; fol. 86b (Q. 3:83) (‐-‐): yabghūna; fol. 104b Q. 47:15 (IV, 10, 17): al-aḥsayn yuthabbit written li-yuthayyit; fol. 151b Q. 33:36 (III, 15, 37): yakūnu; fol. 155b Q. 17:59 (II, 11, 59): bi-l-āyāt; fol. 160b Q. 16:92 (II, 10, 93): allātī; fol. 181b Q. 20:133 (III, 3,

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combination of other cases is less frequent.⁸⁰ This phenomenon attests to how the confusion/alternative choice is offered for pairs of letters with the same dots written above or below, a phenomenon more typical of lapses than of bad reading or interpretation. Such an interpretation is confirmed by the alternations rāʾ/zāʾ and ʿayn/ghayn, where the difference between the two letters consists of the use or not of one dot – a distinction that is made correctly in most cases but is sometimes forgotten (Fig. 54).⁸¹ However, one significant substitution that deserves particular attention is the case (infrequent but attested more than once) of the replacement of the ʿayn by alif + hamza. This is something one might expect from a non-Arabophone reading and dictating to the author/ writer (Fig. 55) and not being able not pronounce the ʿayn (as many non-natives cannot).⁸² However, the substition is rare and an explanation is problematic unless there were more than one person reading aloud and dictating. Leaving aside the simple substitution of letters and turning to other features related to the ductus, the number of errors is significant. Some errors attested more than once seem to indicate a specific choice: for instance, the defective rendering of kāna without the alif, or the related alternative writing of mā kāna omit-

132): ya’tīna; fol. 193b Q. 24:43 (supra, 43): tara; cf. also fol. 126a Q. 2:87 (I, 1, 88): ataynā apparently with two bāʾs; fol. 78a Q. 7:158 (II, 1 v. 163): written yahyadūna.  Fol. 32b Q. 16:125 (II, 10, 125): sabī(na)lihi; fol. 171a Q. 3:50 (I, 2, 48): bayn(ī)a; fol. 184a Q. 27:17 (III, 9, 18): al-ins; fol. 50a Q. 15:37– 38 (IV, 2, 81– 82): al-mun(y)ẓarīn; fol. 58b Q. 3:95 (I, 2, 94): fa-ttabiʿū with yāʾ instead of tāʾ; fol. 64b Q. 2:23 (I, 1, 23): ‘abdinā written ʿaydhin; fol. 79a Q. 5:46 (I, 4, 50 – 51): Ib(n)n. See for other cases involving other letters: fol. 84b (Q. 59:21) (IV, 22, 22): jayl instead of jabal; fol. 103b (Q. 4:43 (I, 3, 44): abtum instead of antum; fol. 117b Q. 2:229 (I, 1, 229): insāk instead of imsāk; fol. 201b Q. 76:5 (IV, 39 / 41, 6.7.12 / 24.29.30): mafāzan, the zāʾ is written like a nūn; fol. 129b Q. 3:128 (I, 2, 127,128): instead of alamr is al-amn; on the confusion fāʾ/qāf, see Szpiech, Starczewska, García-Arenal, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 121; and fol. 129a Q. 3:121 (I, 2.120): maqāʾid. One significant substitution is the introduction of letters in the place of hamza, see fol. 8b, Q. 32:23 (III, 14, 24): liqābihi instead of liqā’ihi; fol. 9b Q. 17:88 (II, 11, 87): lā ya’tūna written lā yayatūna; fol. 50a Q. 15:37– 38 (IV, 2, 81– 82)  Raʾ instead of ẓāʾ: fol. 8b, Q. 32:23 (III, 14, 24): mirya; fol. 150a Q. 24:6 (supra, 8): arbāʿ. Viceversa: fol. 84b Q. 59:21 (IV, 22, 22): anzalnā; fol. 53a Q. 5:112 (I, 4, 118): yunazzil. See on this Szpiech, Starczewska and García-Arenal, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 118. ʿAyn instead of ghayn: fol. 61b Q. 5:64 (I, 4, 70): ghullat, see García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 453; fol. 89b Q. 2:130 + 10:19 (I, 1, 130): yarghabu; fol. 117a Q. 66:1 (IV, 29, vv. 2,3,5): tabtaghī; fol. 129a Q. 3:121 (I, 2, 120): ghadawta; fol. 148a Q. 48:2 (IV, 11, 3): yaghfira; fol. 183a Q. 34:12 (III, 16, 13): ghuduwwuhā. We do not consider here the jīm where the dot is missing and is thus written as ḥāʾ, see fol. 49a Q. 3:48 – 49 (I, 2, 47): al-injīl; fol. 120a Q. 3:36 (I, 2, 36): al-rajīm, passim.  See for ex fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): jidhʿ with alif hamza instead of the ‘ayn; fol. 24a Q. 32:11 (III, 14, 12) bi-kum written hamza + kum.

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ting the first alif and sometimes writing the expression in a continuous ductus, thus also indicating a specific way to write mā. A related and rather unusual feature is kamā written with two alifs instead of only the final one. It is particularly significant that this specific error appears more than once (Fig. 56).⁸³ One other special feature of the quoted qur’anic passages is that some letters are written disconnected. The author/writer is perfectly aware of the correct way of writing these letters, since usually they are written appropriately. However, a few cases are exceptions (Fig. 57).⁸⁴ Such a practice is puzzling and seems to arise from a personal stylistic choice in producing the script, probably as a way to distinguish between the various letters; it goes beyond the known rules of Arabic calligraphic traditions. We stress that in the list of these occurrences given above in the footnotes, only a few letters attest to such a phenomenon, and in the first line there is the lām as already discussed in the previous paragraph (see above, 357– 58). The list could go on, if we add to the lapses discussed above according to typology the cases of letters and words which are simply badly written (Fig. 58).⁸⁵ Some errors are the result of lapses rather than misinterpretations or misreadings of the original, as we see in those cases where the Arabic is wrong but the transcription in Latin characters is correct. See, e. g., the quotation of Q. 9:23, in which the erroneous amīn of the Arabic appears as the correct āmanū of the transcribed text. Such examples are few, but highlight that the

 See for ex. fol. 86a Q. 3:67 (?, 2, 65): mā kāna written makāna; fol. 102b Q. 2:173 (I, 1, 174): wamā ahl written māhil; fol. 230b Q. 23:91 (III, 5, 87): mā kāna without alif; fol. 52a Q. 61:14 (IV, 24, 15): kāmā instead of kamā.  Lām: fol. 10b Q. 112:1 (IV, 64, …): qul; fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): amthālu(a)kum; fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14) and fol. 194a Q. 25:7 (III, 7, 8): qālū, wāw disconnected from the lām; fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57): yuṣallūna; cf. also fol. 54a Q. 2:272 (I, 1, 270): wa-lākinna. Mīm: fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14) humā disconnected from the alif; fol. 63b Q. 53:1– 3 (4, 14 1, 2, 3, 4): al-ḥāmilāt, see also García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 455; fol. 77a Q. 2:63 (I, 1, 63): ʿamala disconnected from lām; fol. 119a Q. 2:249 (I, 1, 248): fa-lammā, mīm and alif are disconnected. Other letters: fol. 91b Q. 2:102 (I, 1, ?) al-shayāṭīn, shīn and yāʾ are disconnected.  See for ex., regarding the words, fol. 115b Q. 2:194 (I, 1, 195): al-shahr written al-shamr; fol. 224a Q. 52:49 (IV, 15, ?): wa-idbār badly written,, al-nujūm written najmin; fol. 141b Q. 7:115 (…. 104): immā an written imān; or written as one word: fol. 129a Q. 3:124 (I, 2, 123,124): an yumiddakum written anyumiddakum; fol. 130b Q. 3:184 (I, 2, 181): qablika jā’a; fol. 199b Q. 2:25 (I, 1, 25): alladhīna āmanū written alladhāwanū; fol. 221a Q. 45:14 (IV, 8, 13): li-lladhīna written li-Lah y.n. Just a few samples for letters badly written: fol. 58b Q. 3:95 (I, 2, 94) ḥanīfan with fāʾ written as a ʿayn, see on this García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 452; fol. 62a Q. 7:159 (II, 1, 164): bi-l-ḥaqq with qāf written as a wāw, see García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 454.

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transcription was not necessarily, or not only, based on the quoted Arabic as it is attested in this text; it could depend to some extent on recitation or oral channels (Fig. 59).⁸⁶ Errors generated by lack of knowledge and lapses are not easy to distinguish from each other, but all the phenomena listed here can give an idea of the number of their features and peculiarities. It is important to stress that all these features exist alongside correct versions that, in many cases, are more numerous than the faulty or variant ones. In general it is true that the number of these errors and lapses clearly reflects a general inaccuracy, but the presence of correct versions even of words that are formally complicated, and maybe even mediated by qur’anic calligraphic style, seems to indicate that inaccuracy is not to be ascribed to lack of knowledge. Something else prompted the author/writer to insert Arabic quotations in which correctly copied verses alternate with others that display repeated errors. All those errors cannot be explained as lapses in writing nor related to a poor comprehension of the source.

4.4 Divisions and Versification Figuerola, like the other authors mentioned at the beginning of this paper, and in accordance with what is attested in the Sermons of Martín García and in the Confusion by Juan Andrés, refers to the Qur’an as divided into four parts. This is the first datum which is also particularly significant in relation to the formal organization of the Qur’an which emerges in the quotations from the Qur’an by the author/writer of the Lumbre de fe. Before each quotation Figuerola gives the numbers of the part or volume, the chapter and the verse or verses, then follows with the original Arabic, the transcription and the translation. The other Spanish authors refer to this fourfold division in their work in similar ways. The Morisco Qur’an preserved in Toledo, Biblioteca de Castilla La Mancha, MS 235 also reflects this division into four parts.⁸⁷ Juan de Segovia was the first to mention such a division, and after that it is attested in a number of Iberian sources; from there it was adopted by scholars such as Guillaume Postel, Egidio da Viter-

 Fol. 150a Q. 24:8 (supra, 8): the Arabic has al-kadh while the transcribed text has the complete al-kādhibīna. Cf. also for ex. among other cases, fol. 150a Q. 24:11 (III, 6, 12): jāʾū without wāw while the transcription is correct. In other instances, in any case, the transliteration depends on the Arabic script as written in the manuscript, and thus the Arabic text was not added later on, see Szpiech, Starczewska and García-Arenal, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 122.  See Consuelo López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha (Gijón: Trea, 2011).

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bo and Johann Widmanstetter.⁸⁸ Some differences emerge, for instance around the question of whether to consider the first sura in the numeration, and there are other slightly different opinions on what suras are included in each of the four parts. One particular feature in this regard —attested in Figuerola in line with some of the previous authors and works, such as Martín García— is that the numbering of the chapters starts anew with every part.⁸⁹ The Qur’an manuscript of Bellús, now preserved in Munich and originally belonging to Widmanstetter, provides a further significant attestation of this way of dividing the Qur’an. This manuscript, written by a Muslim hand in 1518, includes Latin, Catalan and Castilian annotations on the margins and interlinear translations. It also includes at the top of the page and at the beginning of every sura an indication of the part and chapter, with a specific feature of starting the numbering of the chapter with each part: so that, for instance, sura 19 is indicated as part/volume III sura 1.⁹⁰ In addition the Fātiḥa is usually not numbered as the first sura, but is given as an introduction to the book, and as such is also quoted in Arabic and translation at the beginning of the Lumbre de fe with no reference to part and chapter numbers.⁹¹ A recent contribution by Juan Pablo Arias Torres has comprehensively discussed the origin of this division, its attestation in the Maghreb and al-Andalus, and the strict connection between divisions designed for worship and practical organization of some Qur’an manuscripts into four parts or volumes.⁹² He con-

 On Martín García, see Montoza Coca, “Los sermones de don Martín García opisbo de Barcelona,” xxvii; Szpiech, Starczewska and García-Arenal, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 109: I: suras 2– 6; II: 7– 18; III: 19 – 37; IV: 175 suras, according to the numering by Juan Andrés (a total of 221 suras); for Figuerola, see García-Arenal and Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic,’” 420. Lope de Obregón also divided the Qur’an into four books. On Egidio da Viterbo see Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qur’ān; Szpiech, Starczewska and García-Arenal, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 114; García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 414: 113 chapters, 420, 450: 113 chapters; Starczewska, “Apologetic Gloses, Venues for Encounters: Annotations on Abraham in the Latin Translations of the Qurʾān,” Medieval Encounters 24 (2018), 264.  Casassas Canals, “El Alcorán de Bellús,” 466.  See Casassas Canals, “El Alcorán de Bellús,” 160 – 3 on the division into four parts; see also Hartmut Bobzin, Der Koran in Zeitalter der Reformation. Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde in Europa (Berlin: Stuttgart, 1995), 344– 46.  See fol. 6b (Q. 1:2– 7).  Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “Sicut Evangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros: On the Divison of Iberian Qur’ans and their Translations into Four Parts,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Interpretation, ed. Candida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).

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cludes that a probable version of the Qur’an in four volumes/parts could be at the origin of such a conception and organization of the text in Iberia, and then in its reception. Accordingly, the origin of the numbering in four volumes probably arose for practical reasons, as a way to quote the text in non-Muslim sources but based on a version of the Qur’an that was physically constituted in four volumes. One other significant point is the numbering of the verses, a question which puzzled European scholars for centuries. The relation of the numbering of the verses in Figuerola’s and other medieval and modern-age works to contemporary printed editions is a question badly posed. The numbering that follows the number of the book in every quotation does not correspond to the most widely circulated versions of the contemporary printed Qur’an, which are based on the socalled 1924 Cairo edition. Medieval practices and Islamic exegetical literature mention different ways of numbering the verses of the suras, not to speak of the different “readings” that circulated, and the manuscripts attest to this. Thus, the difference in the verse numbers given by Figuerola and those of contemporary printed editions (seen in our footnotes here) is not surprising. Further, manuscripts from the Maghreb and al-Andalus usually used readings from Warsh’s lines of transmission of the text, which differ from those of Ḥafs on which the 1924 Cairo edition is based.⁹³ Secondly, individual manuscripts included variation in the divisions of verses, also distant from what is attested in the exegetical literature. Another factor to consider is that Islamic manuscripts do not always include numbering: they may indicate verse division with dots, circles or other devices, and the number was added and given for the sake of quotation. This fact can often give rise to mistakes or lapses. In any case, the verse numbers as given by Figuerola when introducing his quotations from the Arabic Qur’an are also a significant testimony to the complex problem of verse numbering. Consequently they attest to a specific tradition or way of numbering, maybe by the author/writer himself, which deserves further inquiry. The first question to consider in relation to verse numbering concerns the basmala, which is traditionally numbered in the first sura and not in the following ones: there it appears as an unnumbered introductory formula. For Europeans who worked on only a few Qur’an manuscripts that sometimes included only the signs of division and not the numbers, this often presented a puzzle. In the work of Figuerola the numbering of passages quoted from early verses in the suras indicates that the basmala was counted as verse one (Fig. 60).⁹⁴ In these

 Arias Torres, “Sicut Evangelia sunt quatuor,” 425 – 26.  See for ex. fol. 89a, Q. 54:1– 2 (IV, 17, 2,3,4); fol. 143a Q. 8:1 (II, 2, 2); fol. 228a Q. 82:1 (IV, 45, 2.3.

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and most other passages the indication is clear: if the beginning of the sura is quoted as verse no. 2, the basmala must be verse no. 1. This indicates that the original Qur’an, like most others, probably included divisions of verses but not numbers, and that the verses were numbered by someone who was not perfectly aware of the status of the basmala. Though that situation obtains in the majority of cases, the picture is made more complicated by an alternative case in which the basmala is apparently not numbered.⁹⁵ As regards the division into verses, without entering into the question of the actual numbering and to what it refers —i. e., the division as such in an Islamic manuscript, or numbering added to it by the author/writer or another hand— the most significant aspect is the indication of verse divisions. Some of the passages quoted, as stated above, include more than one verse and are referred to as such in the reference before the quotation. In most of these quotations the Arabic text is quoted as a continuum without any sign.⁹⁶ This is, in fact, the normal way to quote the Qur’an, privileging the text itself and not any formal features that might have been added. Therefore the few passages in which there are signs that clearly refer to the division of verses are much more significant. These are inserted between the Arabic words of the quotations or, strangely enough, may also appear at the end of an individual verse, therefore in a position which is not funcional to anything but simply imitates the original source. The most common indication is a sign in the written line made of a circle with a line or dot in the middle (Fig. 61);⁹⁷ another typical sign to mark the division is given as three dots written as a triangle (Fig. 62).⁹⁸ Other signs are not so clear but seem to refer to some original sign in the source, imitated and inserted to mark a verse ending or not fully understood and simply copied (Fig. 63).⁹⁹ This generic, even if partial, adherence to the formal aspects of the qur’anic quotations reflected in the formal devices of the source(s) combines with a less significant attention to the contents of the Qur’an quotations themselves. The three hundred quotations are surely meant as precise references to the topics dealt with, and thus show clearly the author/writer’s knowledge of the contents

 fol. 227a Q. 68:1 (IV, 31, 1).  See for ex. fol. 87a Q. 109:4– 6 (IV, 72, 4– 6); not even when quoting two verses from different suras: fol. 89b Q. 2:130 + 10:19 (I, 1, 131); fol. 116b Q. 23:1– 2, 6 (III, 5, 2?).  fol. 50a Q. 15:37– 38 (IV, 2, 81– 82); fol. 50a Q. 94:2– 3 (IV, 57, 3 – 4); fol. 77a Q. 2:62 (I, 1, 63); fol. 78b Q. 3:57 (I, 2, 54– 55): in this case the sign is put after āmanū though this is not traditionally the verse ending; fol. 82a Q. 25:4 (III, 7, 5); fol. 82b Q. 32:5 (III, 14, 5); fol. 86a Q. 2:140 (I, 1, 140): after the name Ismāʿīl.  fol. 6b, Q. 1:2– 7; fol. 18a Q. 108:1– 3 (IV, 71, …); fol. 89a Q. 54:1– 2 (IV, 17, 2– 4): after al-qamar.  Fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4).

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of the Qur’an. However, some of the quotations seem not very accurate as regards the unity of verse or verses and the meaning of the Arabic text. In the first place, this practice combines with the general tendency to quote the verse from the beginning, as a unit, and not only its specific words of interest. But on the contrary, in some cases, the author does not hesitate to end the quoted verse or verses in the middle of a sentence (Fig. 64),¹⁰⁰ or even truncate the words (Fig. 65).¹⁰¹ It is not easy to evaluate the approach of the author/writer of the manuscript of the Lumbre de fe to the verses and their division in the Qur’an passages quoted in the work. He appears to be aware of the presence of verse division in the original source, and in a few cases these divisions are included in the quoted Arabic passages, even when, at the end of one verse, they are not functional. However, the fact that for most of the quotations the verse divisions are not indicated, and that the verses are almost always quoted from the beginning and sometimes even cut in the middle of what gives meaning to sentences or in the middle of a word, reveals that the Arabic is not always a useful and precise reference to the topic in question. Instead, the performative character of presenting the original along with its transcription and translation is meant to assure the reader that the author/writer is well informed and thus can inform the reader. In this way he preserves the reference to an apt verse according to its contents, but not the exact reference to the specific Arabic words of the original Qur’an. The result in relation to the verses chosen and what parts of the verses are quoted is a step behind a faithful and accurate quotation of the original, but still constitutes a collection of parts which reflect good knowledge of the text of the Qur’an but not a comprehensive, fully informed reproduction of it. Inner coherence in the whole manuscript, and a completely faithful copying of the quoted verses, were not considered essential to the work. Another element to consider is that the author/writer’s attitude probably also changed in the course of writing down this long work, and his attention and accuracy were not always the same in the weeks and probably months that the writing took. Nonetheless we see the author/writer’s primary intention to offer a faithful image of the Arabic accord-

 Cf. fol. 47b Q. 3:86 (I, 2, 84); fol. 62b Q. 5:45 (I, 4, 49): only wa-katabnā; fol. 120a Q. 3:36 (I, 2, 36); fol. 126a Q. 2:87 (I, 1, 88); fol. 138b Q. 7: 25 – 26 (II, …?); fol. 142b Q. 7:163 (supra, 168). See also cf. fol. 165a Q. 17:60 (II, 11, 60); fol. 173b Q. 18:4– 5 (II, 12, 4); fol. 180b Q. 19:90 – 91 (III, 2, 90).  Fol. 88a Q. 7:203 (II, 1, 20?); fol. 181b Q. 20:133 (III, 3, 132); fol. 187a Q.34:15 (III, 16, 16); fol. 188b Q. 21:96 (III, 3, 94); fol. 190b Q.24:2 (III, 6, 3). Cf. fol. 191a Q. 24:4 (supra, 5): yarmūna missing of yar, while transcription is complete; fol. 201b Q. 76:5 (IV, 39 / 41, 6.7.13/ 24.29.30): cutting the quotation of Q. 76:5 with yashrabū (without the final nūn).

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ing to his own concept and his vision of the potential readers, rather than of the Arabic which is in the qur’anic manuscripts.

4.5 Vocalization and Other Signs One of the factors that display knowledge of Arabic and the ability to read and interpret the formal features of manuscript copies of the Qur’an is the system of signs that surround the consonantical ductus. Punctuation of the letters, vocalization and, at times, the signs for the pausal system connected to recitation, as well as other signs that could be included mainly in luxury and larger Qur’ans, were not always easy for non-Muslims to undertsand. Iberian scholars, for the reasons stated above, were in a privileged position in this regard, and we suggest as a working hypothesis that they did not face the problems met by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholars in other parts of Europe: lack of material, of Qur’an manuscripts and of exegetical literature on these aspects of the Qur’an. The Lumbre de fe does not include signs relating to pausal and recitation systems or any other sign apart from what is connected to the letters of the words. However, it does include the vocalization for all the quotations according to what is normal in a manuscript of the Qur’an. As a matter of fact, the vocalization of the quoted verses is generally quite accurate and reflects a solid knowledge. The author/writer faithfully follows his source(s) and includes a wrong vocalization only in some cases. If compared to the variants and lapses mentioned above, the accuracy in the vocalization, which is in any case a secondary, though important, aspect of the text, is striking and significant. In some instances the accuracy goes beyond the plain vocalization of the words and includes some specific features that reflect a comprehensive evaluation of the recited text and of the traditional signs added in qur’anic manuscripts —to the point that we sometimes find a correct vocalization with a faulty or variant ductus (Fig. 66).¹⁰² Notwithstanding this general statement, some passages include a wrong vocalization, raising the same questions regarding the balance between the author/ writer’s knowledge, his confidence in his sources, and his attitude in presenting

 See for ex. fol. 6b, Q. 1:2– 7: a tashdīd on the ḍād of the last word; cf. fol. 80a Q. 2:63 (I, 1, 64): fawqakum with sukūn instead of the ḍamma of the Qur’an manuscript, but correct according to grammar, see also on this fol. 80a Q. 2:65 (I, 1, 66): ʿalimtum; cf. the perfect vocalization in fol. 18a Q. 108:1– 3 (IV, 61, …); fol. 79a Q. 5:47 (I, 4, 51): wa-l-yaḥkum with a sukūn on the lām and another sukūn on the last letter of the second yaḥkum; fol. 146b Q. 12:56 (supra, 57): liyūsuf; fol. 171a Q. 3:50 (I, 2, 48): the correct vocalization with the wrong ductus of bayna.

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to the reader the quotations from the Qur’an in the economy of a text such as the Lumbre de fe. The wrongly vocalized words are of different types, though rarely is the complete vocalization of a sentence or a word wrong (Fig. 67).¹⁰³ Relatively more common are those cases where only one vocalized letter is changed (Fig. 68),¹⁰⁴ and some other cases include a different vocalization of a word as if it had been interpreted differently, e. g., in the form of a verb (Fig. 69).¹⁰⁵ One specific case is the use of the tashdīd, since the Qur’an manuscript(s) which were probably used as source(s) may have included these signs to mark recitation devices and attitudes. The rest of the quoted passages include a vocalization which is mainly faithful to an original Qur’an manuscript, copied by the author/writer. No other sign is included and only a few passages suggest that the source(s) did include other signs along with the vocalization, but the evidence is too scanty to permit us to consider other hypotheses (Fig. 70).¹⁰⁶

5 Conclusion The review of the peculiarities of the Arabic in Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe can easily be seen in terms of correspondence or not to an original or originals and, consequently, of deviation from a supposed norm, defined as closeness to the Islamic Qur’an manuscripts and testimonies that circulated at the time. This simple

 Cf. fol. 124b Q. 3:39 (I, 1?, 38): al-miḥrāb is vocalized al-maḥirāb; cf. fol. 198b Q. 29:58 (III, 11, 59): li-nubawwiʾannahum badly vocalized.  Fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4): yattabi(a)ʿu (the wrong vocalization is given in brackets); fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): amthālu(a)kum; fol. 49a Q. 3:46 (I, 2, 45): al-muqarra(i)bīn; fol. 61b Q. 5:64 (I, 4, 70): ghu(a)llat and with ʿayn instead of ghayn, see also García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 453; fol. 63b Q. 53:1– 3 (IV, 14, 1, 2, 3, 4): yu(a)sran, see also García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 455; fol. 84a Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): ba(i)ʿḍin; ba(i)ʿḍuhum; fol. 85b Q. 59:2 (IV, 22, 3), fol. 88a Q. 13:7 (II, 7, 9): kafa(u)rū; fol. 98b Q. 2:119 (I, 1, 120): tu(a)sʾal; fol. 108b Q. 6:89, 90 (I, 5, 88, 89): ha(u)dā; fol. 108b Q. 2:187 (I, 1, 188): u(a)ḥilla; fol. 110a Q. 2:191 (I, 1, 192): tha(u)qiftumūhum; fol. 136a Q. 46:29 (IV, 9, 28): na(u)far; fol. 145b Q. 11:7 (II, ?, 8): ‘arshu(a)hu; fol. 147b Q. 13:38 (II, 7, 39): ru(a)sulan; fol. 176b Q. 18:61 (II, 12, 59): ma(u)ǧmaʿ; bayni(a)hi(u)mā; fol. 179a Q. 22:78 (III, 4, 75): jāhi(a)-dū; fol. 180b Q. 62:10 (IV, 26, 11): quḍiyati(a); fol. 182a Q. 21:7 (?, 3, 8): qabla(i)ka.  Fol. 83a Q. 2:185 (I, 1, 186): anzala instead of unzila; fol. 120b Q. 19:2 (III, 1, 2): dhakara instead of dhikr; fol. 139a Q. 7: 31 (II, 1, 31): khadha instead of khudhū; fol. 201b Q. 47:15 (IV, 10, ?): waʿada instead of wuʿida.  Fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): above shayʾ there is a sign similar to a recitation sign, a small jīm; fol. 77a Q. 2:63 (I, 1, 63): above hadū and a small alif maqṣūra; fol. 85b Q. 59:2 (IV, 22, 3): above the alif maqṣūra a sign similar to a madda.

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approach is in any case not clear cut, since variation can be everywhere, comprehension of what is read or used may prove problematic, and interference between written and oral knowledge are all factors that complicate the process. From such a perspective, even with all the caveats, the qur’anic passages quoted in the Lumbre de fe include many inaccuracies, lapses, and errors. However, errors versus correct versions are only part of the story. There is also the rhetoric of representation, and the significance of what the author/writer wanted to convey to his potential readers. Figuerola, or whoever helped him, may have missed perfection in copying and transcription through not understanding the original or through lapses and many other factors, and, consequently may have opted for different solutions while redacting such a complex volume.¹⁰⁷ However, in light of the accuracy of many passages in terms of ductus, vocalization, and specific formal devices of the qur’anic calligraphy used in some manuscripts, there is no doubt that he had good knowledge of qur’anic Arabic and the original Islamic sources. How are we to explain his faults, errors and, above all, different solutions? To answer this question, we must try to understand his conception of what quotations of the Qur’an must be in a work of this kind. He wished to show that he was informed about the contents of the Islamic holy text and, above all, about the features of the Arabic original, and could prove his own ability to provide the Arabic Qur’an for the topics dealt with in his polemical approach. To this end, and with his mastery of the contents, the best solution for Figuerola was to find a good balance between a convincing fidelity to the original to the maximum degree and the need to produce an acceptable reference in Arabic that showed this knowledge —even if he did not produce a perfect copy of the Qur’an. It had to be a credible Arabic Qur’an for preachers who needed a reference to the original, and might have to show it to Muslims. Consequently it could not be an imitation of a few words in a poor hand, but needed to constitute a convincing visual Qur’an whose pages contained exact references (to book, chapter, and verse), good Arabic, a transcription to help those who did not know Arabic, and a translation. From this persepctive I agree that the use of Arabic is an “authoritative rhetorical token” and also a symbolic element – but to be such it had to be a credible Arabic, maybe not perfect but representing a proficiency that must be convincing.¹⁰⁸ Accordingly, the closer

 On Figuerola’s limited competence in Arabic and his absolute reliance on Juan Gabriel, see Szpiech, Starczewska and García-Arenal, “Deleytaste del dulce sono,” 125.  Soto and Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion,” 209, 211; see also García-Arenal, “The Double Polemic,” 159 – 60. This notwithstanding the limits in the quality of writing and

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it was to an Islamic original the better it was for potential readers: these had to be at the same time confident of what must be Arabic but not necessarily perfectly versed in the Qur’an, e. g., Morisco or Christian preachers using such a book. The original Arabic, while attesting to the proficiency of the author/writer, had to speak to this audience and reflect what was deemed fundamental: using the Qur’an with a sufficient balance between what the preacher must say and display and what the recipient must perceive as more tempting and touching her/ his notion of originality and closeness to the holy Qur’an. If compared to the Arabic Qur’an as known, copied, and used in the history of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the numerous quotations in Figuerola’s work display a good knowledge of the original Qur’an. Complexities of script, vocalization, division into verses, and formal devices in general are copied with an awareness of what they are and how they work, even if in a consistent number of cases they are not faithfully reproduced. Lapses are present and numerous, but in general do not seem to reflect a mistaken understanding of the original, rather a less stringent adherence to it and less attention to consistency throughout the various parts of the work. In some cases, where lapses or choices are repeated, we cannot exclude the supposition that a problematic written or oral reception of some letters or words, or other reasons that need further inquiry (e. g., dhāl/dāl), may have influenced the final result. Such an attitude is significant whether the manuscript we have analyzed is an autograph or a copy. In the latter case, the Arabic quotation could be a faithful reproduction of an antigraph or autograph, and as such reflect the use of the Qur’an that goes back to the author. If, on the other hand, a supposedly perfect Qur’an in Figuerola’s original manuscript was reproduced by a copyist, our analysis in any case would testify to the knowledge and the visual reproduction of excerpts of the Qur’an offered by a copyist in a European environment. My review of the Arabic in the Lumbre de fe attests that these passages were copied by someone well versed in Arabic. What we know about Figuerola and the level of accuracy of the manuscript brings the item close to the author rather than pointing to a copyist. In any case, the Iberian environment was the only place where proficiency in copying an Arabic Qur’an, even with faults and inaccuracies, made it possible to find both an author and a copyist who were able to produce a manuscript copy of a remarkable and unique work such as this.

of the features discussed above; see Soto and Starczewska, “Authority, Philology and Conversion,” 213.

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Appendix: Figures © Reproductions of Real Academia de la Historia, MS Gayangos 1922/36. Joan Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán.

Fig. 1: fol. 88a, Q. 13:7 (II, 7, 9).

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Fig. 2: fol. 136b Q. 67:5 (IV, ?, 6): maṣābīḥ, jaʿalnāhā.

Fig. 3: fol. 91b (Q. 2:102) (I, 1, ?): Sulaymān, Hārut (sic).

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Fig. 4: fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 52): qāla, anṣārī.

Fig. 5: fol. 132b Q. 5:5 (I, 4, 7): al-ṭayyibāt.

Fig. 6: fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 52).

Fig. 7: fol. 25b Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251): darajāt defectiva with superscript small alif, al-bayyināt plena.

Fig. 8: fol. 184a Q. 27:28 (III, 9, 29).

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Fig. 9: fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4) shayṭān defectiva without small alif.

Fig. 10: fol. 169a Q. 4:3 (I, 3, 4): al-yatāmā, mathnā.

Fig. 11: fol. 107a Q. 8:17 (II, –; 18): ramā with alif ṭawīla.

Fig. 12: fol. 145b Q. 11:7 (II, ?, 8): ‘alā.

Fig. 13: fol. 31a Q. 33:56 (III, 15, 57): ṣallū and sallimū.

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Fig. 14: fol. 120a Q. 3:37 (quo supra, 37): nabātan with tanwīn but no alif.

Fig. 15: fol. 136b Q. 67:5 (IV, ?, 6): ‘adhāba with a final alif.

Fig. 16: fol. 146a Q. 12:24 (supra, 25).

Fig. 17: fol. 80b (Q. 2:68) (I, 1, 69) dhālika with two lāms.

Fig. 18: fol. 102b (Q. 2:173) (I, 1, 174) al-damm is missing the lām.

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Fig. 19: fol. 134a Q. 5:51 (supra, 55): alladhīna, al-yahūd.

Fig. 20: fol. 93a Q. 11:114 (II, 5, 114).

Fig. 21: fol. 6b, Q. 1:2 – 7.

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Fig. 22: fol. 65b Q. 41:11 (IV, 4, 11): li-l-arḍ written al-arḍ.

Fig. 23: fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14): ilayhim, inna etc.

Fig. 24: fol. 61b Q. 12:106 (II, 6, 107): yu’min with no hamza but yāʾ.

Fig. 25: fol. 89a (Q. 54:1 – 2) (IV, 17, 2 – 4): iqtarabat, inshaqqa with wāw instead of qāf.

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Fig. 26: fol. 9b Q. 17:88 (II, 11, 87).

Fig. 27: fol. 149b Q. 33:28 (III, 15, 29).

Fig. 28: fol. 50b Q. 5:46 (‐-‐): wa-ataynāhu.

Fig. 29: fol. 144b Q. 9:23 (supra, 22): Ar. amīn instead of āmanū while the transcription is correct.

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Fig. 30: fol. 225b Q. 60: (IV, 23, 12): in scriptio plena.

Fig. 31: fol. 190a Q. 22:75 (III, 4, 72): al-malayka with small alif instead of li-l-malāʾika.

Fig. 32: fol. 21b Q. 3:169 (I, 2, 167).

Fig. 33: fol. 50a Q. 94:2 – 3 (IV, 57, 3 – 4).

Fig. 34: fol. 105a Q. 2:176 (I, 1, 177): dhālika, also defective.

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Fig. 35: fol. 28a Q. 36:14 (III, 18, 14) idh (written here idhā)with dot while kadhdhabū has no dot.

Fig. 36: fol. 83a Q. 2:185 (I, 1, 186): the final hudan is written hudh.

Fig. 37: fol. 54a Q. 2:272 (I, 1, 270): yahdī.

Fig. 38: fol. 197b Q. 28:26 (III, 10, 26): iḥdāhumā.

Fig. 39: fol. 190a Q. 22:75 (III, 4, 72): yaṣṭafī.

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Fig. 40: fol. 140b Q. 7:73 (II, 1, 74): ya qawmi ‘budū Allāh, written with alif with hamza+kasra in i‘būdū (from recitation or reading and not from written text?).

Fig. 41: fol. 132b Q. 5:6 (supra, v. 8): missing lā al-ṣalāt fa-‘ghsilū wujūhakum wa-aydiyakum.

Fig. 42: fol. 174b Q. 4:157 Q. 4 (I, 3, ?): qawlihim without hāʾ, followed by a wāw hamza, innā without final alif, al-masīḥ is badly written and Maryam is repeated twice, rasūl without wāw.

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Fig. 43: fol. 125b Q. 3:45 (I, 2, 44): yubashshir with shīn without dots, al-masīḥ without ḥāʾ, ʿĪsā without yāʾ, wajīhan without yāʾ.

Fig. 44: fol. 104b Q. 47:15 (IV, 10, 17): fīhā without the yāʾ.

Fig. 45: fol. 121a Q. 19:28 – 29 (III, 1, 27): fa-ashārat with two alif: fā ashārat.

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Fig. 46: fol. 86b (Q. 10:72) (II, 4, 70): tawallaytum fa-mā is omitted.

Fig. 47: fol. 174a Q. 23:50 (III, 5, 49): missing -humā after wa-awaynā (and a problematic transcription).

Fig. 48: fol. 217b Q. 19:87, (‐—-‐): al-shafāʿa repeated.

Fig. 49: fol. 6a (Q. 2:136) (I, 1, 137): the incorrect qulū is added in margin.

Quoting the Original: Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe and the Arabic Qur’an

Fig. 50: fol. 26a Q. 3:52 (I, 2, 52): al-kufr written al-yakfur.

Fig. 51: fol. 188b Q. 22:27 (III, 4, ?): al-nās written il-sās, cf. also the transcription.

Fig. 52: fol. 107b Q. 24:63 (III, 6, 63): bayn(t)akum.

Fig. 53: fol. 25b Q. 2:253 (I, 1, 251) al-bayyināt with tāʾ istead of yāʾ.

Fig. 54: fol. 89b Q. 2:130 + 10:19 (I, 1, 130): yarghabu.

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Fig. 55: fol. 120b Q. 19:23 (III, 1, 22): jidhʿ with alif hamza instead of the ‘ayn.

Fig. 56: fol. 102b Q. 2:173 (I, 1, 174): wa-mā ahl written māhil.

Fig. 57: fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): amthālu(a)kum.

Fig. 58: fol. 199b Q. 2:25 (I, 1, 25): alladhīna āmanū written alladhāwanū.

Fig. 59: fol. 150a Q. 24:6 (supra, 8): the Arabic has al-kadh while the transcribed text has the complete al-kādhibīna.

Quoting the Original: Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe and the Arabic Qur’an

Fig. 60: fol. 89a, Q. 54:1 – 2 (IV, 17, 2,3,4).

Fig. 61: fol. 50a Q. 15:37 – 38 (IV, 2, 81 – 82).

Fig. 62: fol. 6b, fol. 89a Q. 54:1 – 2 (IV, 17, 2 – 4): after al-qamar.

Fig. 63: fol. 15b Q. 22:3 (III, 4, 4).

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Fig. 64: fol. 47b Q. 3:86 (I, 2, 84).

Fig. 65: fol. 181b Q. 20:133 (III, 3, 132).

Fig. 66: fol. 79a Q. 5:47 (I, 4, 51): wa-l-yaḥkum with a sukūn on the lām and another sukūn on the last letter of the second yaḥkum.

Quoting the Original: Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe and the Arabic Qur’an

Fig. 67: fol. 124b Q. 3:39 (I, 1?, 38): al-miḥrāb is vocalized al-maḥirāb.

Fig. 68: fol. 179a Q. 22:78 (III, 4, 75): jāhi(a)dū.

Fig. 69: fol. 83a (Q. 2:185) (I, 1, 186): anzala instead of unzila.

Fig. 70: fol. 16b Q. 6:38 (I, 5, 39): above shayʾ there is sign similar to a recitation.

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Bibliography Andrés, Juan. Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán. Preliminary study by Elisa Ruiz García, transcription of the text by María Isabel García-Monge. Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2003. Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “Sicut Evangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros: On the Divison of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts.” In The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Interpretation. Edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan, 425 – 53. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Bobzin, Hartmut. “Bemerkungen zu Juan Andrés und zu seinem Buch Confusion de la secta mahomética (Valencia 1515).” Festgabe für Hans-Rudolf Singer zum 65. Geburtstag am 6. April 1990. Edited by Martin Forstner, vol. 2: 529 – 48. Frankfurt a. Main: Peter Lang, 1991. Bobzin, Harmut. Der Koran in Zeitalter der Reformation. Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde in Europa. Berlin, Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995. Casassas Canals, Xavier. “El Alcorán de Bellús: un Alcorán mudéjar de principios del siglo XVI con traducciones y comentarios en catalán, castellano y latín.” Alhadra 1 (2015): 155 – 78. Casassas Canals, Xavier. “The Bellús Qur’an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur’an and its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and the Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century.” In The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Interpretation, Edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan, 455 – 74. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Casassas Canals, Xavier and Martínez Gasquez, José. “Scholia Latina, Arabica et in uulgari lingua ad Alphurcanum Mohamedis BSB-Hss Cod. Arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús).” Medieval Encounters 27 (2021): 1 – 49. García-Arenal, Mercedes. “The Double Polemic of Martín de Figuerola’s Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán.” In Polemical Encounters. Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard A. Wiegers, 155 – 78. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2019. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Qur’ān Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo.” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014): 409 – 59. García-Arenal, Mercedes, Katarzyna K. Starczewska and Ryan Szpiech. “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur’anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics after the Conquest of Granada (1492).” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 20, no. 3 (2018): 51 – 80. Guillén Robles, Francisco. Leyendas de José hijo de Jacob y de Alejandro Magno. Zaragoza: Imprenta del Hospicio Provincial, 1888. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha. Gijón: Trea, 2011. Montoza Coca, Manuel. “Los sermones de don Martín García opisbo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio.” PhD Diss., Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018. Ortí y Figuerola, Francisco. Memorias históricas de la fundación y progressos de la insigne Universidad de Valencia. Madrid: Antonio Marín, 1730.

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Pérez de Chinchón, Bernardo. Antialcorano. Diálogos Christianos (Conversión y evangelización de moriscos). San Vicente del Raspeig: Universidad de Alicante, 2000. Soto, Teresa and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “Authority, Philology and Conversion under the Aegis of Martín García.” In After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 199 – 228. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Szpiech, Ryan. “A Witness of their Own Nation: On the Influence of Juan Andrés.” In After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal, 174 – 98. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Szpiech, Ryan. “Preaching Paul to the Moriscos: The Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (1515) by Juan Andrés.” La Corónica 41, no. 1 (2012): 317 – 43. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “Apologetic Glosses – Venues for Encounters: Annotations on Abraham in the Latin translations of the Qurʾān.” Medieval Encounters 24 (2018): 252 – 85. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. Latin Translation of the Qur’ān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “No es esto sino hystorias de los antiguos: between Medieval and Early Modern Narrations in Juan Andrés’s Confusión.” Medievalia 18, no. 1 (2015): 217 – 27. Tottoli, Roberto. “La traduzione latina del Corano attribuita a Cirillo Lucaris (m. 1638) nel Ms Berlin, SBPK ar. 1032 e in altri manoscritti.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi n.s. 11 (2016) (Studi in onore di Francesca Lucchetta): 135 – 48.

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Translations from Arabic of Iberian Origin in Egidio da Viterbo’s Qur’an In 1518 Italian cardinal and humanist Egidio da Viterbo travelled to Spain on a papal mission. Although we do not know his exact route, it is known that he obtained, among other books, a translation of the Qur’an into Latin. This translation was made, or compiled, by Juan Gabriel, an alfaquí who had converted to Christianity, probably ca. 1502. Juan Gabriel’s translation was not considered perfect, and this is one of the reasons why shortly after its completion, in 1525, it was corrected by another convert of Iberian origin, Leo Africanus. However, while these characteristics account for two versions of the extant translation —Juan Gabriel’s original and Leo Africanus’s corrections— this article argues that a close scrutiny of the extant translations makes clear that a third version of the qur’anic translation can be retrieved once we separate the main text from the interlinear annotations and marginal glosses. The author of this third version remains unknown, but we surmise that it was incorporated by the scholar David Colville during his sojourn in the library of El Escorial.¹

1 Egidio da Viterbo in the Quest for Oriental Wisdom The recipient of the Latin translation of the Qur’an, Egidio Antonini, was born in 1469 and died in 1532 in Rome. He devoted his life to serving the Catholic Church and studying languages. In 1488, Egidio entered the Augustinian order in Viterbo, and then furthered his studies in Padua, Naples, Florence and Rome, where he earned his magisterium in theology (1496/97). Egidio taught theology in Flor This essay is a revision and development of several aspects of my book: Katarzyna K. Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qurʾān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2018). Note: The research leading to these results has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 810141, project EuQu: “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850”. I would like to give my most heartfelt thanks to the editors of the volume, Mercedes and Gerard, and to Juan Pablo Arias (Universidad de Málaga) for their attentive readings of the draft of this paper and their valuable comments. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-015

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ence until he left for Naples in 1498. As a Scripture scholar,² Egidio’s activities consisted in studying the Cabbala, and to this end he felt obliged to gain proficiency in Hebrew. It is likely that he first began to learn the language in Florence in the late 1490s, when he was also learning Greek. It seems that the cardinal was fluent in Hebrew by the first decade of the sixteenth century.³ Egidio was in contact with Hebraists of the time, notably with the Jewish grammarian Elijah ben Asher Halevi, also known as Elia Levita. This Jewish scholar was invited in 1515 to copy cabbalistic texts for Egidio, and he remained in Rome under the friar’s patronage until 1527, producing books on Hebrew grammar and lexicography, the Aramaic language, and the textual tradition of the Hebrew Bible. Among the cardinal’s entourage, together with the Hebrew teacher Elia Levita and the Arabic scholar Leo Africanus, there was the Maronite Elias bar Abraham, who was tasked with transcribing the Syriac texts. Regarding Egidio’s career within the church, in 1506, in Rome, Pope Julius II appointed him vicar general, and a year later he was elected prior general of the Augustinians, and was re-elected in 1511 and 1515. In 1509 Egidio met Erasmus, and was also the superior whom the young Augustinian friar Martin Luther met during his visit to Rome (1510/1511). Pope Leo X made Egidio cardinal in 1517; in 1523 he was appointed the Latin patriarch of Constantinople and the bishop of Viterbo by pope Clement VII.⁴ However, in 1515 Egidio was still serving as Leo X’s papal agent to Emperor Maximilian, and was also papal legate to Carlos V, whom he met in Spain in 1518. Although the main purpose of his trip to Spain was to ask the king to fight the Turks, the cardinal used this opportunity to obtain a Latin translation of the Qur’an, prepared for him by a Muslim convert to Christianity, Juan Gabriel. Undoubtedly, beyond the increasing fear of the Turkish threat, Egidio da Viterbo was eager to gain competence in Arabic. From his journey to Spain, Egidio brought not only the translation of the Qur’an discussed here, but also two gram-

 A sobriquet coined by Francis X. Martin, “Giles of Viterbo as Scripture Scholar” in: Egidio da Viterbo, O.S.A., E Il Suo Tempo. Atti Del V Convegno Dell’Istituto Storico Agostiniano, Roma-Viterbo, 20 – 23 Ottobre 1982, Vol. 9 of Studia Augustiniana historica, Ed. “Analecta Augustiniana” (Rome: Institutum Historicum Augustinianum, 1983).  This is attested to by his note on the Codex Neofiti 1, a copy of the Jerusalem/Palestinian Targum, ed. by A. Diez Macho, Neophyti 1: Targum Palestinese, (Madrid: CSIC, 1974). See Martin, “Giles of Viterbo,” 197– 201, and p. 201, n. 29.  G. Ernst and S. Foà, s.v. “Egidio da Viterbo,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, (XLII, 1993); Francis X. Martin, Friar, reformer, and Renaissance scholar: life and work of Giles of Viterbo, 1469 – 1532, (Villanova: Augustinian Press, 1992); Egidio da Viterbo, O.S.A., e il suo tempo.

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mars of Arabic.⁵ In 1519 he received introductory notes on Arabic compiled especially for him. Then, a year later, in 1520 Egidio met another scholar who would become his tutor, namely al-Ḥasan al-Wazzān, also known as Leo Africanus or Yuḥannā al-Asad. In fact, when al-Ḥasan al-Wazzān was baptised by pope Leo X in 1520, Egidio da Viterbo was one of his godfathers. Five years after his baptism, at the cardinal’s residence in Viterbo, Leo Africanus corrected Egidio’s translation of the Qur’an. Further proof of the cardinal’s interest in Arabic studies is provided by a copy of the elements of Arabic grammar sent to him by Agostino Giustiniani, the bishop of Nebbio in Corsica. In 1616, in Genoa, the bishop published a Psalter in eight languages, including a column of Arabic text (one of the earliest printed texts in Arabic). For Egidio he wrote a small Arabic grammar, which later passed into the hands of Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter. Hartmut Bobzin mentions that Egidio compiled an extensive Hebrew and Chaldean Vocabularium which contained more than 120 citations taken from the Qur’an. Moreover, in his library there was a Tabula alphabeti in Alcoranum in lingua spagnola. ⁶

2 Two Cross-Cultural Translators The first translator of Egidio’s Qur’an was Juan Gabriel, known before his conversion as Alí Alayzar, the alfaquí of Teruel.⁷ Juan Gabriel was also a close collaborator of the Catholic preacher Joan Martí de Figuerola. This is an important fact, as a large part of the philological analysis presented in the following pages stems from that collaboration; namely, I attribute to Juan Gabriel those parts of the translations of the Qur’an that coincide with the citations included in Figuerola’s work. Fray Joan Martí de Figuerola explains in his work Lumbre de fe contra el

 Alastair Hamilton, “‘Nam tirones sumus’. Franciscus Raphelengius’ Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, Leiden, 1613” in Ex Officina Plantiniana. Studia in memoriam Christophori Plantini (ca. 1520 – 1589), ed. M. de Schepper and F. de Nave (Antverpiae: Vereeniging der Antwerpsche Bibliophielen, 1989), 561– 62. On the circulation of these works, especially in the Spanish context, see Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain. Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 255, 339 – 43.  Hartmut Bobzin, Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation. Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde im Europa (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995), 84– 88.  Archivo Histórico Provincial de Teruel, Consejo de Teruel, Carpeta Azul, Documento 274, quoted in Ernesto Utrillas Valero, “Los mudéjares turolenses. Los primeros cristianos nuevos de la Corona de Aragón,” in De mudéjares a moriscos, una conversión forzada; Teruel, 15 – 17 septiembre 1999, Actas (Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2003), 820, 823.

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Alcorán that he owed his knowledge of Arabic and of the Qur’an to the teaching of “Maestre Johan Gabriel,” who had converted to Christianity from Islam.⁸ Juan Gabriel was most probably forced to convert in 1502, together with other ‘Moors’ of Teruel, who were baptised at the time of the Castilian conversion, and not that of Aragon (1526). Moreover, in the prologue to a later copy of Egidio’s Qur’an, it is claimed that Juan Gabriel was “either Hispanic or Hispano-Italian by birth,” (later it is specified that he was Hispanic, from Zaragoza).⁹ It is also stated in this copy that Juan Gabriel “only calls himself a scribe” as opposed to translator or interpreter. In addition, it should be noted that the original translation that he had prepared for Egidio was designed in such a way as to suit Egidio’s philological interests: it was copied in Arabic, transliterated into Latin script, and then translated into Latin, in addition to glosses of the text in adjacent columns. This original text was corrected for the first time in 1525 by Egidio’s godson, Leo Africanus, in Viterbo. Apart from these pieces of information, very little is known about Juan Gabriel. Much more is known about Leo Africanus. He was born al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad in Granada ca. 1486 – 1494.¹⁰ Together with his family he moved to Fez shortly before or after the fall of Granada in 1492. The first wave of Muslim migrants left Granada for Morocco in 1496, including possibly part of his father Muḥammad al-Wazzān’s family, who were hosted and employed at the Fez court. Al-Ḥasan’s uncle served as a diplomat for Sultan Muḥammad al-Shaykh, founder of the Waṭṭāsid dynasty. Al-Ḥasan began his education at a neighbourhood school, and then continued at a madrasa in Fez, where the curriculum included grammar, rhetoric, religious doctrine and fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence) according to the Malikite school of law. Upon completing his studies (1506/7), he became a faqih, a scholar trained in law.¹¹ He accompanied his uncle on embassies for Muḥammad al-Burtughālī to the ruler of Timbuktu (possibly in 1510/11) and to Gao, where he would return several years later. He also travelled through other parts of North Africa, went to Cairo (probably three times, in 1513, 1517 and 1518), to the

 Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Qur’ān Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo,” Al-Qantara 35, no. 2 (2014).  Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qurʾān, xxxiv-xxx.  In 1494, according to Dietrich Rauchenberger, Johannes Leo der Afrikaner seine Beschreibung des Raumes zwischen Nil und Niger nach dem Urtext (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1999), or 1486 – 88, according to Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 17, 279 – 80.  Davis, Trickster Travels, 23.

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central Maghreb and Istanbul (1515 – 16), and then to Medina and possibly Mecca. The same year that Egidio visited Spain, in 1518, al-Ḥasan left Cairo and boarded a boat to return to Fez. On the journey, he was captured by a Spanish ship, and handed to Pope Leo X. He was imprisoned in Castel Sant’Angelo, though he was allowed to borrow Arabic manuscripts from the Vatican Library soon after his arrival. He probably used the time of his imprisonment to improve whatever skills he had in Italian and Latin. His Latin teacher may have been the Dominican Zenobi Acciaiuoli, who was a librarian at the Vatican. Al-Ḥasan was baptised by Leo X at St Peter’s on 6 January 1520, and was given the new name of Joannes Leo de Medicis, which linked him to the pope. After his baptism, he was free to leave Castel Sant’Angelo. He may have worked as a translator of documents from Arabic in the papal chancery and for papal secretaries, as well as helping in the Vatican Library. As mentioned above, one of his patrons and students was Egidio da Viterbo, for whom he revised and corrected the Latin translation of the Qur’an in 1525. Most probably, Leo Africanus left Rome after it was sacked by Carlos V’s troops in 1527. In 1532, Egidio da Viterbo informed Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter that Africanus had settled in Tunis.¹²

3 The Extant Latin Versions of Egidio’s Qur’an The Latin translation of the Qur’an commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo is preserved in two manuscripts, Cambridge University Library, MS Mm. v. 26 (abbreviated here as C) and Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS D 100 Inf. (abbreviated here as M). Only the M manuscript preserves a complete Latin translation; the C manuscript is incomplete both at the beginning and at the end, and is also incorrectly assembled. The Latin translation in the C manuscript begins with verse 2:17 and finishes with verse 49:11, and then continues on C 284. The manuscript folios are bound in such a way that the last folio of the translation is in fact C 323 (67:27). The sequence of the text in reference to the scanned images is as follows: from 5 (2:17) to 109 (every other folio, 3:49), from 110 (3:53) to 122 (3:102), then 283 (3:106), then 123 (3:110) to 126 (3:121), then 282 (3:126), from 127 (3:131) to 156 (4:25), from 158 (4:29) to 281 (7:54), then from 324 (37:25) to 379 (49:2), then from 284 (49:11) to 323 (67:13). There are lacunae in the text between 2:129 and 2:164, 2:196 and 2:230, 2:258 and 3:42, 6:100 and 6:110, and

 Davis, Trickster Travels, 251.

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6:128 and 7:12. All of the text between 7:58 and 37:25 is missing. In both manuscripts, C and M, the suras are titled and the place of revelation is mentioned. Moreover, they are numbered, often according to a double organizational system, one of which divides them into four parts.¹³ Nevertheless, if we take a closer look at these titles, we discover that they often differ between the two manuscripts. Below are some examples of these divergences:¹⁴ Sura 39: The title in C is “de Congregationibus” (the gatherings), whereas M adds two alternatives: “de Arena” (sand) and “Cateruarum” (of the crowds). Sura 40: According to C the title is “de Parcente” (forbearing), whereas M relates it as “Indulgentia” (indulgence) or “Fidelis” (faithful). Sura 43: While C gives the title “Purpura” (purple), M again offers two alternatives: “de Fumo” (smoke) and “Ornamenti” (adornment). It is more than likely that the first alternative title, “de Fumo”, is a result of scribal error, as this is in fact the title of the following sura (‫)ﭐﻟ ُّﺪ َﺧﺎﻥ‬. This hypothesis is corroborated by the copyist’s note next to the title: “De isto fumo non est uerbum in tota azoara, sed in alio libro erat titulus uerus ‫ﻑ‬ ِ ‫ﺍﻟ ُّﺰ ْﺣ ُﺮ‬, id est ‘De Ornamento,’ de quo uide uersum 33, estque uerus titulus, quod iste est titulus sequentis azoarae.” (“There is not one word regarding this smoke in the entire sura, but in the other book there was the true title ‫ﭐﻟْ ُّﺰ ْﺧ ُﺮﻑ‬, which means “adornment”, which is mentioned in the 33rd verse, and this is the title of the next sura”). The mention of the other codex, or book, that the copyist was consulting is as recurring as it is tantalizing. For instance, although both manuscripts title sura 38 “David,”¹⁵ in M we find the following note next to the title: “in alio codice titulus erat iste ‫ ﺳﻮﺭﺓ ﺹ‬a prima uoce azoarae et uersus dabantur tantum 85” (“in the other codex there was this title ‫ﺳﻮﺭﺓ ﺹ‬, taken from the first word of the sura, and it is said that there were 85 verses”). Another set of notes accompanies sura 38 in the M manuscript, which are said to come from Juan Gabriel, and it is also added in the prologue to the translation that the corrector Leo Africanus did not agree with them. If my

 A four-part division was widespread in the Iberian Peninsula, most thanks to the Andalusi heritage. See Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “‘Sicut Euangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros’: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021). Xavier Casassas, “The Bellús Qur’an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur’an and Its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and the Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Latin Qur’an.  A comprehensive table of the Qur’an titles and the accompanying glosses can be found in the appendix.  David, or Dawud, would be the obvious choice given that this was the customary title of the 38th sura found in Andalusi Qur’ans. See Arias Torres, “Sicut Euangelia sunt quatuor.”

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corroborations of the text are correct, these notes make precise reference to two famous qur’anic exegetes, al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ‘Aṭiyya. For instance, next to the letter Ṣād of 38:1 I tentatively read: d Z q D h iurauit per primam literam huius capituli, quod significat nomen sanctum ex 99 nominibus quae Deus etiam dixit; quod Deus est ueritas, et quod hic Alcoranus est uerus delatus a Deo licet multum displiceat Coraxistis.¹⁶ (Al-Zamakhsharī said that God swore it by the first letter of this chapter, which means a sacred name of the 99 names that God also said; that God is the truth, and that this Qur’an is truly received from God, although it greatly displeases the Quraysh.)

As we can see in the notes included in Table 1, the M copyist paid special attention to these three aspects: chapter titles, number of verses,¹⁷ and place of revelation (“Mecha” or “Almedina” in M; C translates the names of the cities as “Meccha” and “Tribula,” although it does mention that the latter also goes by the name of “Almedina”).¹⁸ We know a great deal about this scribe, who was so obsessed with comparing these manuscripts about which, by contrast, we know very little. His name was David Colville; he was an erudite member of the Catholic clergy, versed in several languages. He was probably born in 1581 in eastern Scotland. There, at St Andrews, he studied Greek, some Hebrew, and the basics of Chaldean and Syriac. In 1606, he left for Avignon, converted to Catholicism, and commenced his theological studies, which he later completed in Rome. After travelling and studying in Italy, Colville reached Spain in 1617, where he worked as a librarian at El Escorial from 1617 to 1627. Among other activities, he worked on the library’s collections of Arabic manuscripts and served as a royal interpreter by appointment of Felipe III and Felipe IV of Spain. It seems that Colville began studying Arabic in 1621, the year he copied Egidio’s Qur’an. In 1627, Colville left El Escorial to return to Italy, where he hoped to find well-stocked libraries. In 1629, he arrived in Milan with a good number of manuscripts in Greek and Arabic, copied  Cf al-Zamakhsharī: ِ ‫ ﻓﻤﺎ ﻭﺟﻪ ﺍﻧﺘﻈﺎﻣﻪ؟ ﻗﻠﺖ‬،‫ﻓﺈﻥ ﻗﻠﺖ ﻗﻮﻟﻪ } ﺹ َﻭﭐ ْﻟ ُﻘ ْﺮ َﺀﺍ ِﻥ ِﺫﻯ ﭐﻟ ّﺬ ْﻛ ِﺮ َﺑ ِﻞ ﭐﻟَّ ِﺬﻳ َﻦ َﻛ َﻔ ُﺮﻭ ْﺍ ِﻓﻰ ِﻋ َّﺰ ٍﺓ َﻭ ِﺷ َﻘﺎ ٍﻕ { ﻛﻼﻡ ﻇﺎﻫﺮﻩ ﻣﺘﻨﺎﻓﺮ ﻏﻴﺮ ﻣﻨﺘﻈﻢ‬ ،‫ ﺃﺣﺪﻫﻤﺎ ﺃﻥ ﻳﻜﻮﻥ ﻗﺪ ﺫﻛﺮ ﺍﺳﻢ ﻫﺬﺍ ﺍﻟﺤﺮﻑ ﻣﻦ ﺣﺮﻭﻑ ﺍﻟﻤﻌﺠﻢ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺳﺒﻴﻞ ﺍﻟﺘﺤ ّﺪﻱ ﻭﺍﻟﺘﻨﺒﻴﻪ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺍﻹﻋﺠﺎﺯ ﻛﻤﺎ ﻣ ّﺮ ﻓﻲ ﺃ ّﻭﻝ ﺍﻟﻜﺘﺎﺏ‬،‫ﻓﻴﻪ ﻭﺟﻬﺎﻥ‬ ِ ‫ ﻛﺄﻧﻪ ﻗﺎﻝ } َﻭﭐﻟْ ُﻘ ْﺮﺀﺍ ِﻥ ِﺫﻯ ﭐﻟ ّﺬ ْﻛ ِﺮ { ﺇﻧﻪ ﻟﻜﻼﻡ ﻣﻌﺠﺰ‬،‫ﺛﻢ ﺃﺗﺒﻌﻪ ﺍﻟﻘﺴﻢ ﻣﺤﺬﻭﻑ ﺍﻟﺠﻮﺍﺏ ﻟﺪﻻﻟﺔ ﺍﻟﺘﺤ ّﺪﻱ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ‬  Other seventeenth-century European scholars of the Qur’an also found the question of verse numbering particularly challenging. Roberto Tottoli associates the problem with the fact that Christian translators were unable to identify an undisputed standard in this matter. Reinhold F. Glei and Roberto Tottoli, Ludovico Marracci at Work: The Evolution of his Latin Translation of the Qurʾān in the Light of his Newly Discovered Manuscripts with an Edition and a Comparative Linguistic Analysis of Sura 18 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016), 20 – 31.  See Table 1, note to Q. 5.

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from El Escorial, together with his commentaries and translations. In Milan, the scholar was hosted by cardinal Federico Borromeo, to whom he bequeathed around twenty manuscripts copied from El Escorial, half of which were in Arabic. These manuscripts are currently preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Colville’s annotations left in M are fairly informative as to the materials available in the Royal Library of El Escorial before the 1671 fire. They tell us that the scholars working there on Arabic had at their disposal not only the famous collection of Mawlāy Zīdān al-Nāṣir, but also Thomas Erpenius’s grammar book that featured the qur’anic text in Arabic (printed in Arabic type) and a Latin translation of the sura Historia Iosephi Patriarchae ex Alcorano arabice. From the notes to Egidio’s Qur’an, we know that it was possible to consult Robert of Ketton’s translation and more than a few Arabic dictionaries.¹⁹ Should we now add to this list a still unidentified translation of the Qur’an? While M still has its handful mysteries, C is replete with them. To begin with, we do not know how this manuscript found its way into the Cambridge Library. In any case, it is not entirely surprising, since the most active centre of Arabic scholarship in sixteenth-century England was considered to be Cambridge, where there was great interest in translating, as well as refuting, the Qur’an.²⁰ Abraham Wheelock (1593 – 1653), the first Cambridge professor of Arabic, was himself interested in writing “notes against the Alcorán in the language of the Alcorán, which is the Arabick.”²¹ It was during Wheelock’s tenure as librarian when the Cambridge Library saw a substantial increase in its collections, due in part to the acquisition of the manuscripts of the above-mentioned Thomas Erpenius (1584– 1624). One can clearly distinguish two hands in the annotations to C. Throughout the entire manuscript there are words and phrases inserted above the lines, written by the same hand as the main body of the text. This first hand —which seems to be if not identical then at least contemporaneous with the one that copied the main text— makes annotations that, to my eyes, link C with the Qur’an of Bellús,

 Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Beyond Religious Polemics: An Arabic-Latin Qurʾān Used as a Textbook for Studying Arabic,” Latin and Arabic: Entangled Histories, ed. Daniel G. König (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2019).  Gerald J. Toomer, Eastern Wisedome and Learning. The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 85 – 91.  The Hartlib Papers: A Complete Text and Image Database of the Papers of Samuel Hartlib (c.1600 – 1662) Held in Sheffield University Library (Sheffield: HROnline, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, 2002), 33/4/2 (12 Nov. 1647), quoted in Toomer, Eastern Wisedome, 89.

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a copy of the Qur’an made in 1518 near Valencia.²² The similarities that I see there have to do both with the handwriting and with the informative character of the annotations. In C the insertions appear at random, and tend to clarify the text rather than provide a different version of it. The most frequent clarifications are repetitive and often appear above the pronouns, for instance “Mauri” as an elaboration on “quidam” or “uos,” “Alcoranum” as an elucidation of “hoc,” or “Corascitae” written above “isti.” A note concerning verse 4:147 can be quoted as an example of a comment from the first group. Here the author of the comment specifies how to interpret the phrase “Quid faciet Deus de poenis uestris” (“What will God do about your punishments?”): “quasi dicat quod non inferat poenas” (“it is almost said that God does not inflict punishments”). A comment of a similar type can be found in verse 6:14, where, above the phrase “Et sine Deo accipiam amicum” (“and would I accept a friend without God”), the following is written: “quasi dicat: ‘Non’” (“it almost says ‘No’”). This serves to clarify that the meaning is that it is impossible to have a friend without God, as opposed to any other possible interpretation. Given the apparent similarities between the type of annotations in C and the ones in the Qur’an of Bellús, we can tentatively assume that these annotations made in C also come from Mudejar circles: they focus on correct understanding of the qur’anic text and are not at all polemical. The second hand visible in C is of a completely different nature. The interlinear and marginal notes of the second hand are in a cursive script that is often difficult to read. The author of these annotations was the Huguenot classical scholar and Hebraist Isaac Casaubon, who meticulously commented on almost every aya from 2:46 to 2:231.²³ Casaubon’s interest in the Qur’an began in 1602 with his first reading of it, and, like so many other Arabic scholars of that time, he had no words of praise for its contents. In spite of this contempt, Casaubon showed vivid interest in the Qur’an itself, very much like his predecessor Egidio da Viterbo. He even discussed some qur’anic terms with Thomas Erpenius. According to the lists of his books, apart from the copy of the Qur’an obtained by Egidio da Viterbo, Casaubon was in possession of “at least three copies of the Koran, a Latin transla-

 This manuscript is the object of study of Maxime Sellin, Université de Nantes, member of the EuQu project. See also Xavier Casassas, “El Alcorán de Bellús: un Alcorán mudéjar de principios del XVI con traducciones y comentarios en catalán, castellano y latín,” Alhadra 1 (2015). And Xavier Casassas and José Martínez-Gázquez, “Scholia Latina ad Alphurcanum Mohamedis BSB-Hss Cod.arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús),” Medieval Encounters 27, no. 1 (2021).  Casaubon’s annotations coincide with two lacunae in the manuscript, so what is preserved are the glosses from 2:46 to 2:129, then from 2:164 to 2:196 and finally from 2:230 to 2:231, where the annotations cease, although the manuscript remains intact.

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tion which must have been the Bibliander edition of 1543, and the so-called Epitome Alcorani, an anonymous Latin abridgement of the text edited in 1543, together with medieval material and other pieces of his own, by Johann Albrecht von Widmanstetter.”²⁴ Widmanstetter was invited to study Arabic under the aegis of the cardinal himself after Leo’s disappearance from Rome.²⁵ Furthermore, there is another link between Casaubon and Leo Africanus. Casaubon was in possession of a copy of De totius Africae descriptione (1566 Antwerp edition of the Cosmographia), which he read in search of information on Arabic poetry, underlining and commenting on the passages that interested him.²⁶ The notes Casaubon left in C perfectly reflect the humanist spirit, as they underscore the literal meaning of the Arabic and show no interest either in qur’anic exegesis or in the polemical potential of the text (although, if my reading of the one note in question is correct, there is at least one point where Casaubon acknowledges his outrage at the content of the Qur’an).²⁷ The erudite nature of these annotations is further reinforced by the frequent use of Greek words, in addition to those in Latin and Arabic.²⁸ It appears that Casaubon would browse the manuscript until he encountered a passage that captivated his interest, namely a passage dedicated to the “sons of Israel,” which is where he started glossing. As Thomas Burman has observed, Casaubon focused on the literal meaning of the Arabic phrases that had been wrongly, imprecisely or not literally translated by Juan Gabriel.²⁹ Not surprisingly, sometimes Casaubon’s corrections in C coincide with those made by Leo Africanus in M. For instance, in 2:104 the original translation states, “increduli habebunt poenam crudelissimam” (“the disbelievers will have the cruellest punishment”). Both Casaubon and Leo disagree with this

 Alastair Hamilton, “Isaac Casaubon the Arabist ‘Video longum esse iter,’” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 72 (2009), 166 – 67, literal quotation p. 167. See also Alastair Hamilton, “Appendix I. The Long Apprenticeship: Casaubon and Arabic” in Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I have always loved the Holy Tongue” Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge Massachusetts, London England: Harvard University Press, 2011), 305.  Casassas, “El Alcorán de Bellús,” 172– 73.  Alastair Hamilton, “Isaac Casaubon the Arabist,” 166.  Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qurʾān, 45, note regarding 2:187.  See Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 168 – 73. See also Burman, “Cambridge University Library MS Mm, v 26 and the History of the Study of the Qur’ān in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” in Religion, Text, and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honor of J.N. Hillgarth, ed. Thomas E. Burman et al., (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002).  See Burman, Reading the Qur’an, 169 – 72.

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translation on the premise that ‫ ﺃَﻟِﻴﻢ‬should be translated instead as “painful,” which they annotate respectively as “ dolorifica” (Casaubon) and “tormentum dolens” (Leo Africanus). Similarly, in 2:165 Juan Gabriel translates ‫ﺃَ َﺷ ُّﺪ‬ ِ ّ‫ ُﺣﺒﺎ ﻟّﻠَ ِﻪ‬as “sunt dilecti a Deo” (“they are loved by God”), whereas the two critical readers point out the fact that ‫ ﺃَ َﺷ ُّﺪ‬is the elative degree of ‫ﻳﺩ َﺷ ِﺪ‬, and therefore the phrase should be rendered as “sunt amantiores Deo” (Leo) or, even more verbatim, as “uehementiores sunt in amore Dei” (“they are stronger in God’s love”). Finally, Juan Gabriel ventured to translate ‫ ﺃ ْﺳﻠَ َﻢ‬as “esse catholicus” (“to be Catholic”). Leo Africanus and Casaubon must have at least raised their eyebrows in surprise while reading this original appropriation. Leo patiently corrected it, translating it literally as “reddit faciem suam” (“surrender their face”), while Casaubon wrote in the C manuscript, “qui tradiderit faciem suam” (“would have handed over their face”).³⁰ So far, I have focused on the notes and annotations found in Egidio’s translation. They help us understand the context of production and the various approaches of the readers, but in some cases, they reveal much more than that, constituting qur’anic translations in their own right. This is the situation of M, where it is clear that the manuscript copied by Colville can be read, quite literally, between the lines. There are some words and phrases which had been left above the text. In some instances, when the main text is underlined, the textual alternative is provided above. If we replace the underlined parts of the main text with the words and phrases written above them, a new version of the translation can be established. The version encountered between the lines is most probably the effect of the corrections made by Leo Africanus. We can establish Leo’s contribution with more confidence, given that Juan Gabriel’s version coincides with the quotations found in Figuerola’s text, and that the copyist claims in the prologue that he left Leo’s corrections in the same place where he found them.³¹ When we carefully compare the main text with the corrections left above it, we can conclude from these substitutions that Leo Africanus was able to detect if not all then at least some of the errors committed by Juan Gabriel. Moreover, Leo’s corrections attest to his literal understanding of qur’anic Arabic, although there is reason to doubt his ability to express himself correctly in Latin; sometimes the translation choices attest to Leo’s lack of fluency in the target language.³²

 Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qurʾān, xcii -xcv.  Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qurʾān, xxviii.  Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “Leo Africanus’ Contribution to a Latin Translation of the Qurʾān. A Case Study of Intellectual Activity after Conversion,” SMSR 84, no. 2 (2018).

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4 More on the Differences between Manuscripts C and M Although at the beginning of the translation C and M render the same text with minor discrepancies, further along in the text, starting in chapter seven, which seems to be a critical point, the differences between the manuscripts become more visible. We encounter what Thomas Burman called “different recensions of the same translation.”³³ These recensions occur on three levels: the first one is the text in C, the second is the text in M, and the third is the text in M with interpolated corrections, in other words, M read between the lines. When we compare the extant text in C and the hypothetical corrections we have attributed to Leo Africanus, we can see more clearly the role of qur’anic exegesis in the translation. For instance, in sura 4:57,³⁴ we encounter a tautological term ‫ ِﻇ ًّﻼ َﻇﻠِﻴ ًﻼ‬, which Yusuf Ali rendered into English as follows: But those who believe and do deeds of righteousness We shall soon admit to gardens with rivers flowing beneath their eternal home: therein shall they have companions pure and holy: We shall admit them to shades cool and ever deepening.³⁵

In his version (C), Juan Gabriel translates this “shadowy shadow” as “perpetuum” (“forever”), whereas Leo Africanus gives the literal translation “umbraculo umbrae” (“a shadow’s shade”): Juan Gabriel: illos autem, qui crediderunt et fecerunt bona opera, ponemus in paradisis sub quibus fluunt fontes, ubi erunt in aeternum et habebunt mulieres mundas; quos faciemus ingredi in perpetuum. Leo Africanus: Et illi qui crediderunt et fecerunt opera bona faciemus ingredi in paradisum sub quibus fluent flumina, ubi stabunt in aeternum et habebunt in ea uxores mundas; et faciemus ingredi in umbraculo umbrae.

Clearly, Leo’s translation is the most word-for-word; nevertheless, to simply label Juan Gabriel’s translation as incorrect would tell only part of the story. Indeed, Juan Gabriel’s translation was in accordance with the exegesis that circulated among the Mudejars: Ibn ‘Aṭīya, whose tafsir was read by this community, as we have seen, hints in his explanation of the term ‫ َﻇﻠِﻴ ًﻼ‬that it denotes perpetuity:

 Burman “Cambridge University Library MS,” 361. َ َّ ‫َﻭﺍﻟَّ ِﺬﻳ َﻦ ﺁ َﻣﻨُﻮﺍ َﻭ َﻋ ِﻤﻠُﻮﺍ ﺍﻟ‬  ‫ﺼﺎﻟِ َﺤﺎ ِﺕ َﺳﻨُ ْﺪ ِﺧﻠُ ُﻬ ْﻢ َﺟﻨَّﺎ ٍﺕ ﺗَ ْﺠ ِﺮﻱ ِﻣ ْﻦ ﺗَ ْﺤ ِﺘ َﻬﺎ ﺍ ْﻷ ْﻧ َﻬﺎ ُﺭ َﺧﺎﻟِ ِﺪﻳ َﻦ ِﻓﻴ َﻬﺎ ﺃَ َﺑ ًﺪﺍ ﻟَ ُﻬ ْﻢ ِﻓﻴ َﻬﺎ ﺃَ ْﺯ َﻭﺍ ٌﺝ ُﻣ َﻄ َّﻬ َﺮ ٌﺓ َﻭﻧُ ْﺪ ِﺧﻠُ ُﻬ ْﻢ ِﻇ ًّﻼ َﻇ ِﻠﻴ ًﻼ‬  Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur-ān: English Translation & Commentary (With Arabic Text) (Lahore: Shaik Muhammad Ashraf, 1934).

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“In Paradise there is a tree in whose shade a rider can travel for a hundred years without ever crossing it.”³⁶ When we scrutinize the short verses towards the end of the Qur’an, we find examples of three different transmissions of the text. Let us examine two examples of the three different interpretations.³⁷ The very short verse 55:64³⁸ has been translated as “Dark green in colour (from plentiful watering).”³⁹ In this case only C gives a literal translation, “Valde uirides” (“very green”), whereas both versions in M seem to be based on other premises. The version of the main text in M reads “Et multum uerax” (“And very true”), and we could possibly assume that “uerax” (true) is a faulty reading of “uirides” (“green”). In turn, Leo Africanus’ correction “propinqui sunt” (“they are near”) might be based on al-Zamakhsharī, who says that “the gardens are promised to the near ones.”⁴⁰ Verse 55:72⁴¹ was very familiar to those who engaged in anti-qur’anic polemics; it promises that the Houris, beautiful-eyed females, will accompany the believers in paradise. Here C offers an interpretative translation, mediated by the qur’anic exegeses: “Virgines clausae in arcibus” (“virgins enclosed in castles”).⁴² Leo Africanus provides us with another exact version: “Et oculati retenti in tentoriis” (“And the eyers withheld in the tents”).⁴³ By contrast, the version preserved in the main body of M seems to be the result of another copyist’s error: “Et horti uirides aptati” (“And the green, accommodating gardens”). Therefore, we are faced with the question of whether the version preserved in the main body of M is simply the result of scribal error. As I have argued elsewhere, the copyist David Colville was particularly prone to making mistakes while working on the Qur’an.⁴⁴ According to the notes that this copyist has left us, these could also be mistakes carried over from the other copy, or the other codex that Colville was consulting in the library of El Escorial, about which we know virtually nothing.

 { ‫ ﻓﺄﻛﺪﻩ ﺑﻘﻮﻟﻪ } ﻇﻠﻴ ًﻼ‬،‫ ﻛﻤﺎ ﻳﻔﻌﻞ ﻇﻞ ﺍﻟﺪﻧﻴﺎ‬،‫ ﻭﻳﺼﺢ ﺃﻥ ﻳﺮﻳﺪ ﺃﻧﻪ ﻇﻞ ﻻ ﻳﺘﺴﺤﻴﻞ ﻭﻻ ﻳﻨﺘﻘﻞ‬،‫ ﻋﻨﺪ ﺑﻌﻀﻬﻢ ﻳﻘﻲ ﺍﻟﺤﺮ ﻭﺍﻟﺒﺮﺩ‬:‫} ﻇﻠﻴ ًﻼ { ﻣﻌﻨﺎﻩ‬ ‫ ﺇﻥ ﻓﻲ ﺍﻟﺠﻨﺔ ﺷﺠﺮﺓ ﻳﺴﻴﺮ ﺍﻟﺮﺍﻛﺐ ﺍﻟﺠﻮﺍﺩ ﺍﻟﻤﻀﻤﺮ ﻓﻲ ﻇﻠﻬﺎ ﻣﺎﺋﺔ ﺳﻨﺔ ﻣﺎ ﻳﻘﻄﻌﻬﺎ‬:‫ ﻓﻘﺪ ﻗﺎﻝ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﺍﻟﺴﻼﻡ‬،‫ ﻭﻳﺼﺢ ﺃﻥ ﻳﺼﻔﻪ ﺑﻈﻠﻴﻞ ﻻﻣﺘﺪﺍﺩﻩ‬،‫ﻟﺬﻟﻚ‬  A more comprehensive table is included in the Appendix.  ‫ُﻣ ْﺪ َﻫ ٓﺎ َّﻤ َﺘﺎ ِﻥ‬  Translation Yusuf Ali.  ‫} َﻭ ِﻣﻦ ُﺩﻭ ِﻧ ِﻬ َﻤﺎ{ ﻭﻣﻦ ﺩﻭﻥ ﺗﻴﻨﻚ ﺍﻟﺠﻨﺘﻴﻦ ﺍﻟﻤﻮﻋﻮﺩﺗﻴﻦ ﻟﻠﻤﻘﺮﺑﻴﻦ } َﺟ َّﻨ َﺘﺎ ِﻥ{ ﻟﻤﻦ ﺩﻭﻧﻬﻢ ﻣﻦ ﺃﺻﺤﺎﺏ ﺍﻟﻴﻤﻴﻦ } ُﻣ ْﺪ َﻫﺎ َّﻣ َﺘﺎﻥ{ ﻗﺪ ﺍﺩﻫﺎ ّﻣﺘﺎ ﻣﻦ ﺷ ّﺪﺓ‬ َّ ‫ﺍﻟﺨﻀﺮﺓ } َﻧ‬ ‫ﻀﺎ َﺧ َﺘﺎ ِﻥ{ ﻓ ّﻮﺍﺭﺗﺎﻥ ﺑﺎﻟﻤﺎﺀ‬  ‫ﺼﻮ ۖﺭﺕ ِﻓﻰ ﭐﻟْ ِﺨ َﻴﺎﻡ‬ ُ ‫ُﺣﻮﺭ َّﻣ ْﻘ‬  For example, cf. al-Zamakhsharī: ‫ﻳﻘﺎﻝ ﺍﻣﺮﺃﺓ ﻗﺼﻴﺮﺓ ﻭﻗﺼﻮﺭﺓ ﻭﻣﻘﺼﻮﺭﺓ ﻣﺨﺪﺭﺓ‬.  According, for example, to Tafsir al-Jalalayn, Houris had large and beautiful eyes.  Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qurʾān, xcv – cix.

412

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While it is clear that there are two Latin translations preserved within Egidio’s Qur’an, at times we can also discern a third translation. It is still unclear what the origin of this third translation is. Does it come from a translation lost to us in the fire that struck El Escorial in 1671? Or could it be a result of the copyist’s erroneous corrections to the original translation? There is also a possibility that the third version of qur’anic translation preserved in M is a combination of both the collation with an unknown codex, and the copyist’s unsuccessful attempt to improve upon the original.

Translations from Arabic of Iberian Origin in Egidio da Viterbo’s Qur’an

413

Appendix Table 1a: Sura titles and the accompanying notes. Book  (Liber Primus) Sura C number

M



Capitulum tertium, de Mulieribus, in Tribula, continet centum septuaginta et quinque uersus. Note: Tribula add. nomen loci

a De Mulieribus seu Azoara a liber us



Caput quartum, de Mensa, in Tribula, continet  uersus. Notes: de Mensa add. id est, de quadam mensa, quam apostoli petierunt a Iesu, ut habetur infra. in Tribula add. scilicet, fuit reuelatum, quae ciuitas alio nomine uocatur Almedina.

a De Mensa seu Azoara a liber us Notes: Mensa add. meidati uersus add. reuera tamen sunt  et in ea (?) cui (?) erant .



Capitulum de Pecoribus, in Meccha, continet  uersus. Note: de Pecoribus add. scilicet, quae pecora sint licita uel illicita mauris.

a De Pecoribus seu Azoara a liber us Notes: Pecoribus add. armentis. In alio codice correctissimo erat scriptum ‫ﻣﺎﺋﺔ‬ ‫ ;ﻭﺳﺘﻮﻥ ﻭﺧﻤﺲ ﺍﻳﺔ‬de titulo azorae loquitur in fine uersu sa (?) uersus add. Expresse tum in arabico tum in translatione non erant plures  uersibus et non ‫ ﻣﺎﺋﺔ‬fuit audita in arabice. Reuera tamen no reperi plures  et imposuerunt si non .

Table 1b: Sura titles and the accompanying notes. Book  (Liber Quartus) Sura C number

M



a De Dauide seu Azoara a liber us Note: Dauid add. in alio codice titulus erat iste ‫ ﺹ ﺳﻮﺭﺓ‬a prima uoce azoarae et uersus dabantur (?) tantum .

XXXVIII ; Capitulum primum, de Dauid, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

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Table b: Sura titles and the accompanying notes. (Continued) Book  (Liber Quartus) Sura C number

M



XXXIX ; Capitulum secundum, de a De Arena seu Congregationibus seu Congregationibus, in Mecha, continet  Azoara a liber us uersus. Notes: Caput de Arena add. Cateruarum uersus add. in isto codice erant  sed correxi, in illo alio titulus erat ‫ ﺍﻟ ُﺰ ُﻣﺮ‬non ‫ ﺍﻟﺮﻣﻞ‬et reuera non reperi plures  in mg. M



Capitulum tertium, de Parcente, in Mecha, a De Indulgentia seu Fidelis seu Azoara continet  uersus. a liber us Notes: Caput de Indulgentia add. fidelis quia in isto codice scriptum erat ‫ ﺟﺎﻓﺮ‬et uidetur legendum ‫ ﻏﺎﻓﺮ‬de uersu  uersus add. non reperi tamen plures , et maximum , sed nihil desideratur (?)



XLI ; Capitulum quartum, de Declarationibus, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a De Declaratione seu Azoara a liber us Notes: Declaratione add. in alio codice erat ‫ﺍﻟ َّﺴﺠ َﺪﺓ‬ uersus add. in alio dicebantur esse  tantum neque plures hic scripti sunt, sed reperi reuera esse



Capitulum quintum, de Secreto, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a E. Z. C. seu Consilii seu Azoara a liber us Note: Caput E. Z. C. M • E. Z. C. add. Consilii



XLIII ; Capitulum sextum, de Purpura, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a De Fumo seu Ornamenti seu Azoara a liber us Notes: Caput de Fumo add. Ornamenti De isto fumo non est uerbum in tota azoara, sed in alio libro erat titulus uerus ‫ﻑ‬ ِ ‫ﺍﻟ ُّﺰ ْﺣ ُﺮ‬, id est “De Ornamento,” de quo uide uersum , estque uerus titulus, quod iste est titulus sequentis azoarae. uersus add. Reuera autem non reperi plures uersus quam  ut legendum uideatur ‫ ﺳﺒﻊ‬loco ‫ﺗﺴﻊ‬

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Table b: Sura titles and the accompanying notes. (Continued) Book  (Liber Quartus) Sura C number

M



XLIV ; Capitulum septimum, de Fumo, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a De Fumo seu Azoara a liber us Notes: Fumo add. uide uers.  ‫ُﺳﻮﺭﺓ ﻣﻜ َّﻴﺔ‬ ‫ ﺧ ْﻤﺴ ُﻮ َﻥ ﺃَﻳَ ًﺔ‬⁴⁵‫ِﻓﻴ َﻬﺎ ﺳ ْﺒﻊ ﻭ‬ Male in exemplare meo scriptum erat in titulo ⁴⁶‫ ﺍﻟﺪﺧﺎﻝ‬et in interpretatione dicebatur esse “de deliberatione”. Ac denique in alio codice dicebantur esse uersus , reuera tamen non numerantur hic neque ibi plures .



XLV ; Capitulum octauum, de In- a De Clamatione seu Genuflectentis seu clinatione, in Meccha, continet  uersus. Azoara a liber us Notes: de Clamatione add. Genuflectentis uersus add. reuera tamen non reperi plures .



XLVI ; Capitulum nonum, de Harena, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a De Arditate seu Colliculorum seu Azoara a liber us Notes: de Arditate add. Collinarum. Ecce barbariem, uoluit dicere “Colliculorum” uersus add. Vide uersum  pro titulo



XLVII ; Capitulum decimum, de Pugna, in Tribula, continet  uersus.

a De Bello seu Azoara a liber us Notes: de Bello add. Pugnationis s.l. et in alio exemplari titulus erat “Muchamedi” ‫ ﻣ َّﺤﻤﺪ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﺍﻟ َّﺴﻼ[ﻡ‬et uide uersum  et  pro utroque et  uersus  add. et in alio  et reuera non reperi plures.



XLVIII ; Capitulum undecimum, a De Victoria seu Azoara a liber us Expugnatione, in Tribula, continet  Note: uersus add. non reperi plures , uersus. pro titulo lege primum uersum et alibi.



XLIX ; Capitulum duodecimum, a Alchugiurat seu Cameris seu Azoara de Parietibus, in Tribula, continet  uer- a liber us sus. Notes: Alchugiurat add. Cameris et pro titulo uide uersum .

 Please note that ‫ َﻭ‬is detached from the following word as in the manuscript.  ‫ﭐﻟ ُّﺪ َﺧﺎﻥ‬

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Table b: Sura titles and the accompanying notes. (Continued) Book  (Liber Quartus) Sura C number

M



L Ar; Capitulum tertium decimum, de Monte Qaf, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a Caf seu Monte seu Azoara a liber us Note: Caf add. in alio exemplari titulus erat iste ‫ ُﺳﻮﺭﺓ ﻭﻕ ﻭ ﺍﻟ ُﻘ ْﺮﺍَﻥ‬, uide primum uersum et ultimum.



LI Ar; Capitulum quartum decimum, a De Ventis seu Azoara a liber us de Ventis, in Meccha, tenet  uersus. Note: uersus add. non reperi plures  notatos.



LII Ar; Capitulum decimum quina De Sinai seu Montis seu Azoara a tum, de Monte Sinai, in Meccha, continuit liber us  uersus. uersus add. in alio codice sic ‫ ﺍ ْﺭ َﺑ ُﻌﻮﻥ َﻭ ﺛﻤﺎﻥ‬et sed diuersitas est solum in numero et (?) in nullis aliis.



LIII Ar; Capitulum decimum sextum, de Stellis, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a De Stellis seu Azoara a liber us Note: uersus add. in alio codice solum  dicebantur.



LIV Ar; Capitulum decimum septimum, de Luna, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

a De Luna seu Azoara a liber us Note: Luna add. titulus in alio codice erat ‫ ﺍﻟﺴﺎﻋﺔ‬pro quo uide primum uersum, et non pro alio titulo, eodem necque plures reperi quam .



LV ; Capitulum decimum octaa De Pio seu Azoara a liber us uum, de Misericorde, in Meccha, continet Note: uersus add. non reperi tamen  uersus. plures .



LVI Ar; Capitulum decimum nonum, a De Cadente seu Azoara a liber us de Ruina, in Meccha, continet  uersus. Ruina] Casu M Notes: de Casu add. Cadentis uersus add. in isto codice erratum fuit, nam scriptum erat ‫ ﺗ ْﺴﻊ ﻭ ﺍ ْﺭ َﺑ ُﻌﻮ َﻥ‬numerant tamen , sed  sunt hi isdem  hi isdem .



LVII Ar; Capitulum uigesimum, de Ferro, in Tribula, continet  uersus.

a De Ferro seu Azoara a liber us Notes: uersus add. in alio numerabant  sed sunt iidem. Pro titulo uide uers. .

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Table b: Sura titles and the accompanying notes. (Continued) Book  (Liber Quartus) Sura C number

M



LVIII Ar; Capitulum de Disputatione, in Tribula, continet  uersus.

a De Disputatione seu Azoara a liber us Notes: uersus add. in codice pessime erat scriptus titulus ‫ﺍﻟﻤﺤﺎﺩﻳﺔ‬, praeterea in eodem notati erunt in principio uersus ‫ﺍ ْﺣ َﺪ َﻭ ﻋﺸﺮﻭﻥ‬. De titulo uide primum uersum.



LIX Ar; Capitulum uigesimum sea De Exitu seu Azoara a liber us cundum, de Exitu incredulorum, in Tribula, Note: uersus add. in alio codice erant ‫ِﺗ ْﺴﻊ‬ continet  uersus. ‫ﻭ َﻋ ْﺸﺮﻭﻥ‬.



LX Ar; Capitulum de Examinatione, a De Prostratione seu De Expertis seu in Tribula, continet  uersus. Azoara a liber us Notes: Prostratione add. Experta uersus add. in alio exemplari titulus erat ‫ ﺍﻟ ُﻤ ْﻤ َﺘ ِﺤ َﻨ ُﺔ‬ideo correctio latina erat “Experta”; uide uers. , debebat dixisse “expertis.”



LXI Ar; Capitulum uigesimum quartum, de Apostolis, in Meccha, continet  uersus.

Apostolis] Aciebus M Notes: Aciebus add. Ordinis uersus add. in alio codice erat ‫ َﻣﻜﻴَّﺔ‬scripِّ َّ ‫ﺍﻟ‬. tum et ‫ﻒ‬ ‫ﺼ‬



LXII Ar; Capitulum uigesimum quintum, de Die Veneris, in Tribula, continet  uersus.

Note: uersus add. pro titulo uide uersum  in mg. M



LXIII Ar; Capitulum uigesimum Notes: Rebellibus add. Impiis sextum, de Rebellibus, in Tribula, continet uersus add. in utroque exemplari scriptum  uersus. erat ‫ ﺍﻟﻤﻨﺎﻓﻘﻮﻥ‬et non ‫ﺍﻟ ُﻤ َﻨﺎ ِﻓ ِﻘﻴﻦ‬.



LXIV Ar; Capitulum uigesimum a De Iniuriis seu Azoara a liber us septimum, de Iniuriis, in Tribula, continet Note: uersus add. pro titulo uide uersum  uersus. .



LXV Ar; Capitulum uigesimum oc- a De Repudiatione seu Azoara a liber tauum, de Repudiatione, in Tribula, conti- us net  uersus. Note: uersus add. in meo codice erat scriptum ‫ ﺍﻟ َّﻄﻠَﻖ‬et uersus  dicebantur esse. Vide uersum primum.



LXVI Ar; Capitulum uigesimum a De Repudiatione seu Azoara a liber nonum, de Prohibitione, in Tribula, conti- us net  uersus.

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Table b: Sura titles and the accompanying notes. (Continued) Book  (Liber Quartus) Sura C number 

M

LXVII Ar; Capitulum trigesimum, de a De Regno seu Azoara a liber us Regno, continet  uersus. triginta add. in alio tantum dicebantur esse ‫ﺛﻠﺜﻮﻥ‬

Table 2: Three different transmissions of the text. C

M

M with Leo’s corrections

:

Igitur isti erunt uicti tunc a congregationibus.

Gens qui erunt segregati a Exercitus est, ibi erit certificatione. fractus.

:

Et aues omnes simul cum illo deuotae.

Et aues omnes iunctae pro Et aues congregatae sunt eo praeceptae. ei deuotae.

:

Iusti enim stabunt in paradisis quietis,

Et quod iusti in paradiso erunt glorificantes,

Certe quod timentes erunt in paradiso laetitiae,

:

Quae illi fecerunt sunt in libro,

Et omnem rem fecimus et posuimus in psalterio,

Et omnes res quam fecerunt est in registro libri,

:

Valde uirides.

Et multum uerax.

Propinqui sunt.

:

Virgines clausae in arcibus. Et horti uirides aptati.

:

Quando mouebimus terram, et aequabitur terra aequa- quando terrae motus erit tione terrae motu

Et oculati retenti in tentoriis.

: –  Vna societas priorum, et alia pars posteriorum

Partis primae et partis ultimae

Triplices ex primis et triplices ex ultimis

: –  Igitur ille habebit sedem ignis, et intrabit in infernum.

Igitur deferemus ei ignem et habitatio eius infernus.

Munus eius erit ex calore et calefactione inferni.

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Bibliography Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “‘Sicut Euangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros’: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts.” In The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation. Edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan, 425 – 54. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Bobzin, Hartmut. Der Koran im Zeitalter der Reformation. Studien zur Frühgeschichte der Arabistik und Islamkunde im Europa. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995. Burman, Thomas E. “Cambridge University Library MS Mm, v 26 and the History of the Study of the Qur’ān in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” In Religion, Text, and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honor of J.N. Hillgarth. Edited by Thomas E. Burman, JN Hillgarth, Mark D Meyerson and Leah Shopkow. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002. Burman, Thomas E. Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Casassas Canals, Xavier. “El Alcorán de Bellús: un Alcorán mudéjar de principios del XVI con traducciones y comentarios en catalán, castellano y latín.” Alhadra 1 (2015): 155 – 78. Casassas Canals, Xavier. “The Bellús Qur’an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur’an and Its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and The Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century.” In The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500. Translation, Transition, Interpretation. Edited by Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan, 455 – 74. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Casassas Canals, Xavier and José Martínez-Gázquez. “Scholia Latina ad Alphurcanum Mohamedis BSB-Hss Cod.arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús).” Medieval Encounters 27, no. 1 (2021): 1 – 49. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Diez Macho, Alejandro. Neophyti 1: Targum Palestinese, Madrid: CSIC, 1974. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain. Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada and the Rise of Orientalism. Leiden: Brill, 2013. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Qur’ān Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo.” Al-Qantara 35, no. 2 (2014): 409 – 59. Glei, Reinhold F. and Roberto Tottoli. Ludovico Marracci at Work: The Evolution of his Latin Translation of the Qurʾān in the Light of his Newly Discovered Manuscripts with an Edition and a Comparative Linguistic Analysis of Sura 18. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016. Hamilton, Alastair. “‘Nam tirones sumus’. Franciscus Raphelengius’ Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, Leiden, 1613” in Ex Officina Plantiniana. Studia in memoriam Christophori Plantini (ca. 1520 – 1589). Edited by M. de Schepper, F. de Nave, 557 – 89. Antverpiae: Vereeniging der Antwerpsche Bibliophielen, 1989. Hamilton, Alastair. “Isaac Casaubon the Arabist ‘Video longum esse iter.’” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 72 (2009): 143 – 68. Hamilton, Alastair. “Appendix I. The Long Apprenticeship: Casaubon and Arabic.” In “I have always loved the Holy Tongue” Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in

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Renaissance Scholarship. Edited by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, 293 – 306. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011. Martin, Francis X. “Giles of Viterbo as Scripture Scholar.” In Egidio Da Viterbo, O.S.A., E Il Suo Tempo. Atti Del V Convegno Dell’Istituto Storico Agostiniano, Roma-Viterbo, 20 – 23 Ottobre 1982, Volume 9 of Studia Augustiniana historica. Ed. “Analecta Augustiniana”, 191 – 222. Rome: Institutum Historicum Augustinianum, 1983. Martin, Francis X. Friar, Reformer, and Renaissance Scholar: Life and Work of Giles of Viterbo, 1469 – 1532. Villanova: Augustinian Press, 1992. The Qurʾān: Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. The Holy Qur-ān: English Translation & Commentary (With Arabic Text) (Lahore: Shaik Muhammad Ashraf, 1934). Rauchenberger, Dietrich. Johannes Leo der Afrikaner seine Beschreibung des Raumes zwischen Nil und Niger nach dem Urtext. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. Latin Translation of the Qurʾān (1518/1621) Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2018. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “Leo Africanus’ Contribution to a Latin Translation of the Qurʾān. A Case Study of Intellectual Activity after Conversion.” SMSR 84, no. 2 (2018): 439 – 49. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “Beyond Religious Polemics: An Arabic-Latin Qurʾān Used as a Textbook for Studying Arabic.” In Latin and Arabic: Entangled Histories. Edited by Daniel G. König, 179 – 99 Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2019. Toomer, Gerald J. Eastern Wisedome and Learning. The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Utrillas Valero, Ernesto. “Los mudéjares turolenses. Los primeros cristianos nuevos de la Corona de Aragón.” In De mudéjares a moriscos, una conversión forzada; Teruel, 15 – 17 septiembre 1999, Actas, 809 – 26. Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2003.

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To Translate is to Interpret: Exegetic Annotations in the Qur’an of Bellús (Valencia c. 1518) 1 Introduction In 1499, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros started an intensive campaign of conversion of the Muslims in Granada. Among his strategies, he chose to target the elite to subject them to different measures of pressure and coercion.¹ His aim was to publicly convert the elite in the hope that the Muslim population of Granada might follow them in their conversion. Martín García, bishop of Zaragoza and later of Barcelona, was in Granada with Cisneros. Inspired by his experiences in Granada, he later started a campaign to convert the Muslims of Aragon. He began to actively confute Islam based solely on qur’anic material. He was conscious that in order to preach and convert the elite, a profound understanding of the Qur’an and Islam was needed. With that objective in mind, he commissioned a treatise on conversion that was published in 1515 in Valencia, the Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán, authored by Juan Andrés.² This text uses the Islamic tradition to refute the Qur’an.³ Martín García continued his strategy in his Sermones, in which he also seems to target the Muslim elite (mainly the alfaquís).⁴ In 1521, Joan Martí de Figuerola, who was also connected to Martín García, wrote a refutation of the Islamic faith called Lumbre de Fe contra el Alcorán, with the help of Juan Gabriel de Teruel. All these books  Isabelle Poutrin, Convertir les musulmans: Espagne, 1491 – 1609 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2012), 49 – 76.  Juan Andrés, Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán, ed. Elisa Ruiz and M. Isabel García-Monge (Mérida: Regional de Extremadura, 2003).  Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “‘No es esto sino hystorias de los antiguos’: entre la narración medieval y la de la primera edad moderna en Confusión de Juan Andrés,” Medievalia 18, no. 1 (2015).  Manuel Montoza Coca, “Los sermones de don Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio,” PhD Diss. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018). Note: The research leading to these results has been funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. 810141, project EuQu: “The European Qu’ran. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-016

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(and other after them also based in refuting the Qur’an) were known as the Antialcoranes. It seems likely, therefore, that in the surroundings of Martín García different persons were working on translating the Qur’an. In fact, Juan Andrés, Martín García and Juan Gabriel all claim to have translated the Holy Book, but no complete translation has reached us. Martí de Figuerola quoted exegetic material in the verses that he translated.⁵ He seems to have often relied on Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s tafsir.⁶ Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo’s Latin translation, edited by Katarzyna K. Starczewska,⁷ is the only complete translation connected to the Antialcoranes that has come down to us. By collating the works of Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo, Mercedes García-Arenal and K. Starczewska demonstrated that Egidio’s translator, Ioannis Gabriel Turolensis, and Figuerola’s collaborator, Juan Gabriel de Teruel, the converted alfaquí of Teruel, were one and the same person.⁸ Indeed, the Italian cardinal came to Spain as papal legate (nuncio) in the spring of 1518 to convince the newly nominated Emperor Carlos V get involved in the fight against the Ottomans. While in Spain, where he was in Zaragoza and Barcelona, he requested, probably of Martín García, an Arabic Qur’an and somebody to help him to do a translation. He was in contact with Figuerola and with Juan Gabriel. The former alfaquí of Teruel may have sent or given his translation later on to Egidio da Viterbo. It was during Egidio’ s visit to Aragon that the manuscript Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek [BSB], MS cod. arab 7, a complete codex of the Qur’an, was copied in the city of Bellús, near Valencia in 1518 (924 of the Hijrī calendar according to the colophon).⁹ It is therefore one of the last Mudejar copies of the Qur’an. In recent years this manuscript has been the subject of several studies, beginning with the publication of its marginalia by Xavier Casassas Canals and

 Ryan Szpiech, Katarzyna K. Starczewska and Mercedes García-Arenal, “‘Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras’. Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no. 1 (2018); García-Arenal and Starczewska, “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Quran Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo,” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014), 411.  García-Arenal, Starczewska and Szpiech, “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur’anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics After the Conquest of Granada (1492),” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20, no. 3 (2018), 55.  Katarzyna K. Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qur’an (1518/1621): Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo: Critical Edition and Case Study (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018).  Starczewska, Latin Translation of the Qur’an.  Munich, BSB, MS cod. arab 7, fol. 202v.

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José Martínez Gázquez.¹⁰ Martínez Gázquez also wrote a study that compares the Qur’an of Bellús with two other manuscripts, Paris BnF arabe 384 and Granada, Escuela de Estudios Árabes, A-5 – 2.¹¹ In 2015 Xavier Casassas Canals wrote a presentation of the codex and a new paper that appeared at the end of 2021.¹² In it he first showed that this Qur’an is divided into four parts,¹³ the same division that occurs in the sermons of Martín García, Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética, Lumbre de la Fe, and the “Qur’an of Toledo”, and that originates in a preexisting Andalusian tradition.¹⁴

1.1 Codicological remarks We can distinguish several paleographic and codicologic characteristics. The qur ’ anic text is written on paper in a round Maghrebi script characteristic of Mudejar and Andalusian manuscripts. Every folio presents 19 lines of text. After a quick study and a comparison with the help of the book Al-Ta’rīf fī Ikhtilāf al-Riwāyah ‘an Nāfi‛,¹⁵ we find that the text seems to follow the reading of Warsh from Nafīʿ. In the first folios of the codex, we see a watermark of a hand with closed fingers crowned with a five-petalled flower. The letters “P.M.” are inscribed in the center of the hand. With the exceptions of these letters, this watermark is similar to a group of watermarks pointed out by Briquet.¹⁶ Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter also owned codices with this tyoe of watermark, such as Munich, BSB, MS

 Xavier Casassas Canals and José Martínez Gázquez, “Scholia Latina, Arabica et in uulgari lingua ad Alphurcanum Mahumedis: BSB-Hss Cod.arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús),” Medieval Encounters 27, no. 1 (2021).  José Martínez Gázquez, “Glosas latinas al corán árabe 384 BNF París, al cod. arab. 7 de la BSB Corán de Bellús y al MS. A-5 – 2,” EEAG 46 (2021), 16.  Xavier Casassas Canals, “The Bellús Qur’an, Martín García, and Martín de Figuerola: The Study of the Qur’an and Its Use in the Sermones de la Fe and the Disputes with Muslims in the Crown of Aragon in the Sixteenth Century,” in The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500 Translation, Transition, Interpretation, ed. Cándida Ferrero Hernández and John Tolan (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).  Xavier Casassas Canals, “El Alcorán de Bellús. Un Alcorán mudéjar de principios del siglo XVI con traducciones y comentarios en catalán, castellano y latín,” Alhadra 1 (2015): 160 – 63.  Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “Sicut Euangelia Sunt Quatuor, Distribuerunt Continentiam Eius in Quatuor Libros: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts,” in The Latin Qur’an.  ʿUthmān al-Dānī, Al-Ta’rīf fī Ikhtilāf al-Riwāyah ‘an Nāfi‛, ed. Muḥammad as-Saḥābī (Rabat: Muṭaba‛a warāqa al-faḍīla, 1995).  Charles-Moïse Briquet, Les filigranes: dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600 (Geneve: A. Jullien, 1907), vol 3, 567– 68.

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cod. arab 342, a commentary on Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawanī’s al-Risāla, and Munich BSB cod.arab 234 first folio, an Arabic translation of the Pentateuch from Latin, with what seem to be Castilian annotations¹⁷. We also see traces of mistakes later corrected, and passages that were omitted and then inserted in the margins.¹⁸ The volume also lacks a sarlowh or frontispiece,¹⁹ a feature that normally denotes the beginning of a sacred text. The text is introduced only by a decorated rectangle and a marginal circle. These two facts may show that this manuscript did not have a high value in terms of sanctity: the person who commissioned it cared more for the time it would take to copy the Qur’an than for the sacred character of the text itself. Indeed, we can see that some of these mistakes were corrected afterwards by a hand different from the one in the colophon or in the core text, but similar to the marginal annotation that appears on folio 49v. On folio 17v the word kāna has been added by a different hand from that of the principal copyist. The ink, lighter than that of other corrections, seems to be the same color as the interlinear annotations.

1.2 Background and use of the MS The first copyist made constant mistakes, mixed up words and missed out passages. These mistakes look like mistakes by someone who recites the Qur’an by memory. The copyist did not bother using another folio to correct and adjust the mistakes. Rather this has been done in the margins or between lines, which shows that it has been made in a rush. As it has been copied in Valencia, where the Mudejars still practiced Islam, we can deduce that it may have been commissioned by a Christian who urgently needed a copy of the Qur’an. The more probable hypothesis is that this manuscript was sent or given by Juan Gabriel de Teruel to Egidio, who was asked to translate the Qur’an into Latin by Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo. He may have asked for other manuscripts, such as a complete Arabic Qur’an. At the cardinal’s death his library was taken over by Girolamo Seripando, who gave this codex to Widmanstetter. Widmanstetter’s library forms the core of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich.²⁰

 At present I am doing more studies on these manuscripts and others from the Widmanstetter library.  Casassas Canals and Martínez Gázquez, “Scholia Latina,” 8.  François Déroche and Annie Berthier, Manuel de codicologie des manuscrits en écriture arabe (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2000), 258.  Casassas Canals, “El Alcorán de Bellús,” 171– 75.

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The objective of this paper is to look closely at the interlinear annotations, more precisely the annotations that are not word-for-word translations. I have extracted the annotations that are preceded by scilicet, which can be translated as “it means.” Then I have compared these annotations with the three tafsirs from which the annotations could have come. Before exploring the interlinear annotations, we will first consider three works of exegesis. They are often quoted by the Early Modern humanists, and later by Orientalists up to the present time. However, their significance in the exegetic literature and their popularity in the Iberian Peninsula is scarcely explained. Then we will study their links with the Iberian polemicists and translators, Muslim and Christian, Aragonese and Castilian, in Latin and Romance, and their peculiarities. Then we will look at the interlinear annotations and their different categories. To finish we will compare some annotations with these tafsirs.

2 Overview of the Tafsirs most likely used in the Qur’an of Bellús Before looking at the exegetic annotations in the Qur’an of Bellús, we may look at the most common tafsirs used in some sixteenth-century works. Then we will consider the peculiarities of these exegetic works.

2.1 Polemic and Tafsir Literature The translators of the Qur’an used to work with exegetical sources to achieve a better understanding of the Qur’an and to convey the exact meaning of difficult words or sentences in their translations. The polysemy of some Arabic words in certain syntagms, and the differences of opinion held by exegetes about these phrases, can help us to understand more about the translators of the Qur’an. Thomas E. Burman showed, for example, how Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo used the tafsir literature to translate the Qur’an.²¹ They sought to choose the right word not only to convey the meaning of an Arabic word or sentence but also to convey the understanding of the Muslim exegetes. The tafsir literature is helpful not only for a non-Muslim translator who can use it as a philological tool, but also for an authoritative figure who hopes to convince a Muslim public.  Thomas E. Burman, “Tafsīr and Translation: Traditional Arabic Qurʾān Exegesis and the Latin Qurʾāns of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo,” Speculum 73, no. 3 (1998).

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Moreover, it is helpful for a Muslim translator who seeks to shed light on some difficult passages in the Qur’an. We know that the alfaquí of Segovia, Yça de Gebir, had a tafsir in front of him while he was translating the Qur’an from Arabic to Romance.²² In the seventies, Juan Vernet already saw the use of Ibn ‘Aṭiyya and al-Zamakhsharī in the sermons of Martín García, who might have had access to them through Juan Andrés, the former alfaquí of Xativa.²³ As for Egidio’s translation, we know that the main references were the exegeses made by al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ‘Aṭiyya.²⁴ We also know that other exegeses were used in this translation but not quoted by name.²⁵ Juan Gabriel de Teruel, the former alfaquí who made the translation for Egidio da Viterbo, may have used other references from memory, showing that he had a good knowledge of Islamic literature. He may have learnt the Qur’an by heart and been able to explain it to the Mudejar aljama of Teruel. For example, in (Q. 2:1) an annotation gives as an interpretation of the verse “Alīf Lām Mīm”: Deus, Gabriel, Mahom.²⁶ This interpretation is absent from al-Zamakhsharī’s and Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s tafsirs.²⁷ Juan Gabriel de Teruel may have quoted it from memory. Ibrahim Izquierdo, in the translation of the Qur’an that he made in Salonica, offered the same translation.²⁸ As the two men came from almost the same time and place but then went to very different environments (Ottoman Salonica for Izquierdo, a Christian Spanish milieu for Juan Gabriel), it is possible that the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula had learnt that interpretation in the sixteenth century. A study that compared Egidio’s commissioned translation with the translations made by the Moriscos could isolate the common denominator that was learnt in Spain by the two translators.

 Gerard A. Wiegers, “ʿIsà b. Yabir and the Origins of Aljamiado Literature,” Al-Qanṭara 11, no. 1 (1990), 158 – 59.  Juan Vernet, “Le Tafsir au service de la polémique antimusulmane,” Studia Islamica 32 (1970), 305 – 9.  García-Arenal and Starczewska, “The Law of Abraham the Catholic,” 414.  “Not all the commentators mentioned can be identified, but references to al-Zamakhsharī are frequent, and in at least two cases he is cited alongside one Abanatia or Bnatia. This very probably transliterates Ibn ‘Aṭīyya.” Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qurʾān in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 161.  Starczewska, “Latin Translation of the Qur’an,” 11.  This interpretation can be found in other Andalusi exegetes such as Ibn Abī Ṭālib and Ibn ‘Arabī.  Paris, BnF, MS Arabe 447, fol. 2r.

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Ibn ‘Aṭiyya and al-Zamakhsharī are also a reference for Joan Martí de Figuerola. In his work Lumbre de la fe, we can see a drawing of the Prophet Muḥammad describing a scene to Ibn ‘Aṭiyya and al-Zamakhsharī. ²⁹ As Juan Gabriel de Teruel worked with both Egidio and Figuerola, he may be the one who introduced them to the two exegetes. The use of both al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ‘Aṭiyya can be seen as a bringing together of two exegeses that contrast with each other in place of origin (one from Persia and the other from alAndalus), in dogmatic school (the Mutazilite and the Asharite), in methodology (one more linguistic and the other more focused on narrative) and in school of tafsir (the Andalusī and the Nisaburī).³⁰ That is to say, each one completes the other. This is not the only case of the use of these two works together: for example, al-Qurtubī seems to have used both works when he wrote his own tafsir.³¹ The third tafsir that appeared to be known in sixteenth-century Spain and seventeenth-century Europe³² is Muḥammad Ibn Abī Zamanīn’s summary of Yaḥyā ibn Salām’s tafsir. It was known by the Muslim communities of Castile and Aragon. Clear evidence is found in two manuscripts from Madrid, BTNT MS RESC/51 and RESC/52.1, Aljamiado translations of the tafsir of Ibn Abī Zamanīn (d. 399/1008).³³ It may have circulated in the aljamas and it is possible that someone like Juan Gabriel de Teruel, who was the former alfaquí of Teruel, read or consulted it. Now that we have selected the exegeses of Ibn ‘Aṭiyya, al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn Abī Zamanīn as the three most likely used in the Qur’an of Bellús, we may look at their peculiarities.

2.2 About these Particular Tafsirs As we have seen before, the three tafsirs seem to have been very popular in Early Modern Spain, used by the Moriscos and by the Christian polemicist from Spain  García-Arenal, Starczewska, and Szpiech, “The Perennial Importance,” 59.  Walid Saleh, “Medieval Exegesis, the Golden Age of Tafsīr,” in The Oxford Handbook of Qur ’ anic Studies, ed. Mustafa Shah and Muhammad Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 675.  Saleh, “Medieval Exegesis,” 676.  Reinhold F. Glei and Roberto Tottoli. “Marracci and the Islamic Sources,” in Ludovico Marracci at Work: The Evolution of His Latin Translation of the Qurʾān in the Light of His Newly Discovered Manuscripts. With an Edition and a Comparative Linguistic Analysis of Sura 18 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016).  Nuria Martínez de Castilla, “La transmisión de textos entre los moriscos: dos copias del tafsīr abreviado de Ibn Abī Zamanīn,” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 26 (2015).

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to Rome. At least one of these may have been used in the Qur’an of Bellús to explain the Qur’an with the interlinear annotations introduced by scilicet. In chronological order of appearance they are: Ibn Abī Zamanīn’s al-Mukhtṣar, al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Kashshāf ‘an Ḥaqā’iq at-Tanzīl, and Al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz fī Tafsīr al-Kitāb al-‘Azīz by ‘Abd al-Haqq ibn Ghālib ibn ‘Aṭiyya. While all three are relatively well known,³⁴ we should first consider what seems to make them relevant, popular and well studied during Early Modern times by Christians and Muslims.

2.2.1 Ibn Abī Zamanīn Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Isa ibn Abī Zamanīn was a poet, an ascetic and a Malikite jurist in Cordoba during the Califal period.³⁵ He may have been one of the judges of the capital city, as he is described as “The Sheikh of Cordoba” by al-Dhahabī.³⁶ He studied with some great scholars (such as Wahb ibn Masarra, 346/958) and had some students of genius (such as Abu ‘Amr ‘Uthmān alDanī, who wrote abundantly on the different qur’anic variæ lectiones). During the fourth/tenth century, the summary genre was growing: Ibn Abī Zamanīn summarized, in addition to tafsir of Ibn Salām, the Muwaṭṭā of Mālik ibn Anas and the Mudawanna of Saḥnūn. The purpose of the mukhtaṣar genre (abridgment) was to make an older work easier to grasp and be taught by correcting, adjusting and deleting redundancies. As Ibn Abī Zamanīn said: “I have abridged in it some redundancies of the hadiths, and I have added to it what was not in the book of Yaḥyā and explanations that were not given by Yaḥyā.”³⁷ The second purpose was to select some opinions, keeping only what might be correct according to the summarizer. From this core, Ibn Abī Zamanīn came up with a totally new book.³⁸

 Al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Kashshāf is the only tafsir of the three that has been studied fully. See: Kifayat Ullah, Al-Kashshāf: Al-Zamaksharī’s Mu’tazilite Exegesis of the Qur’an (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017).  Muḥammad ibn Abdallah Ibn Abī Zamanīn, Tafsīr Al-Qur’ān al-ʿazīz, ed. Hussein ʿAkasha and Muhammad Mustafa al-Kanz (Cairo: al-Farūq al-Ḥaditha, 2002), vol. 1, 20 – 27.  Shams ad-dīn Muḥammad al-Dhahabī, Siyār aʿlām al-Nubbalā’ (Beyrouth: Bayt al-afkar aldawliya, 2004), vol. 3, 3521.  Ibn Abī Zamanīn, Tafsīr Al-Qur’ān al-ʿazīz, vol. 1, 111.  Ulrika Mårtensson, “Early Medieval Tafsīr (Third/Ninth to the Fifth/Eleventh Century),” in The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies, 658.

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As this tafsir is helpful for learning, we can understand why the Moriscos chose to translate the work. Shorter and easier, but still complete, it permitted them to learn and teach the interpretation of the Qur’an according to a direct student of Mālik ibn Anas. In the far West, under Christian dominion, they were in the process of forgetting the Arabic language; seven to eight centuries after the death of the famous Mālik ibn Anas, they might have felt the taste of the fresh dates of Medina from the transmission of Yaḥyā ibn Salām and with the help of Ibn Abī Zamanīn and their Morisco translators.

2.2.2 Al-Zamakhsharī Jār Allah (Neighbor of God) Maḥmud ibn ‘Umar al-Zamakhsharī was a Persian scholar from the region of Khawarizm, in Turkmenistan. He learnt locally with his father before moving abroad, first to Jurjan and then to Baghdad and Mecca. He studied with numerous scholars, mostly Mutazilites and Zaydis.³⁹ He became famous for his contributions to numerous subjects such as exegesis, traditions, jurisprudence, grammar and lexicography. Al-Zamakhsharī’s exegesis, al-Kashshāf ‘an Ḥaqā’iq at-Tanzīl, is one of the most renowned tafsirs of Islamic literature. For the Mutazilites it represented the “peak of intellectual achievement in Qur’an commentary.”⁴⁰ The Sunnis criticized certain aspects of it, but approved the linguistic part of his commentary.⁴¹ Kifayat Ullah’s thesis underlines the peculiarities of his magnum opus. He shows that this tafsir is unmatched, and that al-Zamakhsharī’s methodology has some unique features: question-and-answer to clarify or refute, use of proofs based on language (grammar, rhetoric), explanations of the Qur’an with the Qur’an (tafsīr al-Qur’ān bi-l-Qur’ān), and an original point of view on al-Muḥkam and al-Mutashābih that echoes Mutazilite doctrine. He also uses other known features in the exegetical field such as Tradition (al-Ḥadith), and variæ lectiones (al-Qirā’āt).

2.2.3 Ibn ‘Aṭiyya ‘Abd al-Haqq ibn Ghālib ibn ‘Aṭiyya came from an Andalusi family of scholars. His father, Abu Bakr Ghālib ibn ‘Aṭiyya, was known to be a Ḥāfiẓ li-l-Ḥadīth,⁴²    

Ullah, Al-Kashshāf, 14– 19. Ullah, Al-Kashshāf, 2. Ullah, Al-Kashshāf, 4– 6. Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 4002.

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meaning that he was among the greatest scholars of hadith in his place and time. The son learnt most of what he knew about hadith sciences from his father, but he also had other teachers in this discipline, in law, and in language. In contrast to his father, he remained all his life in al-Andalus. He was appointed Judge of Almeria under the Almoravids and was recognized as a great jurist. He later became popular for his tafsir Al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz fī Tafsīr al-Kitāb al-‘Azīz. ⁴³ Some scholars came to compare his tafsir with that of al-Zamakhsharī:⁴⁴ for example, Taqī al-Dīn Ahmād ibn Taymiyya views it as a better exegesis in precision and research. But little has been written in Western academia on this monument of Islamic exegesis.⁴⁵ It is clear that Ibn ‘Aṭiyya was inspired by earlier tafsirs such as those of alṬabarī and Ibn Abī Ṭālib, even if he took issue with some of their opinions. Ibrahim al-Mashanni showed the different tools that he used.⁴⁶ Among them were linguistic tools such as grammar, and Arabic poetry to make an analogy between a word and its traditional meaning. He also used the opinions of Muḥammad’s companions and their followers (al-ṣaḥāba and at-tabi‛īn). From a methodological perspective he quoted less oral tradition than al-Ṭabarī; but he compensated by quoting other tafsirs from books, starting with al-Ṭabarī himself but also consulting the companions and their students. What strikes us is the diversity of opinions on Arabic language and the variæ lectiones that he quotes, despite the fact that he did not travel and remained on the borders of Islamic civilization.

3 The Interlinear Annotations of the Qur’an of Bellús, an Example of Teamwork To get closer to the original text of the Qur’an, Christian readers, acting as intermediaries, needed to comment on and translate at least some parts of the Arabic text and even to comment on some translations. One evocative example is the manuscript Troyes, Médiathèque Grand Troyes, 1235, which is a copy of Ketton’s translation of the Qur’an full of marginalia. In the Qur’an of Bellús the annotations are scattered throughout the manuscript, and may answer some Christian

 Mustafa Ibrahim al-Mashanni, Madrassa al-Tafsīr fī al-Andalūs (Beyrouth: Muasasa al-risala, 1982), 851.  Al-Mashanni, Madrassa al-Tafsīr.  Saleh, “Medieval Exegesis, the Golden Age of Tafsīr,” 667.  Al-Mashanni, Madrassa al-Tafsīr, 680 – 90.

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queries that sought to understand certain verses of the Qur’an. This copy and its annotations may have had two goals, as Xavier Casassas Canals accurately showed.⁴⁷ The Qur’an of Bellús and its annotations may have been used as an aid in composing a polemic text or a sermon to the Muslims. It could also have been used in disputes between Muslim and Christian preachers. But rather than a supplementary tool for another work, the Qur’an of Bellús and its annotations may have been used as an ultimate authority among the Muslims themselves. In a debate, it would have been difficult to argue against the Qur’an and against the most highly regarded scholars. I have identified two groups of interlinear annotations in the Qur’an of Bellús. The first group is composed of raw annotations that I have called annotations without “scilicet.” The second group is composed of annotations introduced by an abbreviated “scilicet” written “.S.” in the text.

3.1 Without “scilicet” These annotations compose the majority in this manuscript. They can be divided into two categories: word-for-word translations and interpretative annotations. Word-for-word translations: These annotations are very common. They comprise a simple translation of an Arabic word of the Qur’an with a Castilian-Aragonese, Latin or Catalan word with the literal meaning. For example, the word al-ṣayf in Q. 90:12 is translated verano (summer),⁴⁸ the word al-shahwāt Q. 3:14 (desire) is translated apetitos,⁴⁹ the syntagm ya’murūn bi-l-qisṭ (order with/for justice) is translated en lo just ⁵⁰ in Q. 3:21, and a slightly different syntagm, qā’iman bi-l-qisṭ in Q. 3:18, is translated de los justo matenidor. ⁵¹ The translators clearly chose to render some words that they didn’t understand directly or were not familiar with. They were more given to translating the verses that appealed to them as Christians or polemicists. What is actually difficult to interpret is the choice of the different languages. It is possible that these are the languages of different scholars or different Muslim collaborators.

    

Casassas Canals, “The Munich, BSB, MS cod. Munich, BSB, MS cod. Munich, BSB, MS cod. Munich, BSB, MS cod.

Bellús Qur’an,” 460. arab 7, fol. 199v. arab 7, fol. 17r. arab 7. fol. 17r. arab 7, fol. 17v.

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A paleographic and comparative analysis should tell us more about the choice of these languages. Interpretative annotations: Even without scilicet, some annotations remain interpretative, a concept I define as a translation of an Arabic word from the Qur’an in its figurative meaning. For example: the word al-sharī‛a (literally the path) is translated in its figurative meaning regla o lley (rule or law).⁵² This type of annotation implies more than a linguistic knowledge of Arabic, also a cultural knowledge. It implies that the annotator had an understanding of the connotations that this word has in the Islamic world. Some other annotations are exegetical. For example, the figure of Dhū-l-Qarnayn in Q. 18:83 is annotated as Alexander.⁵³ Here again, knowledge of Arabic is not sufficient to supply this translation, but the annotator clearly was helped by a Muslim who consulted an exegesis. We can see that this interpretation of Dhū-lQarnayn as Alexander is given by Ibn ‘Aṭiyya and al-Zamakhsharī in their works. Another example out of dozens illustrates this notion. In Q. 43:31 the word al-qaryatayn (the two cities) is annotated with “Meca u Tayf.”⁵⁴As in the previous example, the reference of this verse is present in the tafsirs of al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn ‘Aṭiyya and Ibn Abī Zamanīn. These few examples out of many clearly illustrate the fact that the annotator worked with a Muslim scholar, a Morisco or Mudejar who was quite knowledgeable and at least had access to an exegesis of the Qur’an.

3.2 With “scilicet” The scilicet annotations are fewer in number than the raw annotations, but central for our subject. They are meant to comment on the Qur’an according to the requirements of the commissioner. We can separate them into two subgroups: some annotations consist of interpretations extrapolated from the context of the verse, while others are extracted from the tafsir literature. Interpretations extrapolated from the context of the verse:

 Munich, BSB, MS cod. arab 7, fol. 165v.  Munich, BSB, MS cod. arab 7, fol. 101v.  Munich, BSB, MS cod. arab 7, fol. 162v.

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These use a previous verse (or sometimes an earlier part of the same verse) to clarify a part of the Qur’an. Most often they explain who is actually speaking in the verse. Most of the time we do not find these comments in the tafsirs, but can understand them by looking back at the context. For example, in verse 2:71 we read in the Qur’an of Bellús: “Qāl (scilicet Moyses) innahu yaqūl (scilicet Dios).”⁵⁵ We see that the verb Qāl (he said) designates Moses as the speaker and innahu yaqūl (indeed He says) designates God. These interpretations can be explained by looking back a few verses: we read in Q. 2:67: “And remember Moses said to his people: “God commands that…” In a passage where the verb Qāl is used numerous times, these annotations are written down to prevent the reader from being lost and let him handle the text quickly and easily without looking at the preceding pages. If this example illustrates what happens in the majority of the annotations, some others have slightly different peculiarities. Some words are translated and interpreted according to a syntagm in the verse. For example, in Q. 99:7:⁵⁶ “faman ya‛mal mithqāla dharrat (formiga scilicet de be) khayrān yarāhu.”⁵⁷ The word dharra (ant) is annotated according to the word just after khayr (good). We can see that the annotator translated the word (dharra by formiga) and followed it with an explanation (scilicet de be). These two types of interpretation replicate a concept of exegesis that exists in the Islamic exegetic literature: tafsīr al-qur’ān bi-l-qur’ān (explaining the Qur’an with the Qur’an). It consists of an interpretation of an ambiguous verse according to another verse. If in the exegetic literature this concept is used to comment on and clarify some difficult verse with a verse which is usually in another chapter, here it is used at a basic level to clarify the subject or the person speaking according to a verse which has been seen before. The last type of interesting commentary that can be seen is interpretation that uses logic and deduction. For example, in Q. 78:33⁵⁸ we read: “wa kawā’ib (de tetas scilicet mujeres) atrābān.”⁵⁹

 Munich, BSB, MS cod. arab 7, fol. 5r.  “Then shall anyone who has done an atom’s weight of good, see it!” Abdallah Yusuf Ali (trans.), “Az-Zalzala [99:7],” Tanzil-Quran Navigator [accessed 24– 03 – 2022]. https://tanzil.net/#trans/en.yusufali/99:7.  Munich, BSB, cod arab 7, fol. 200r.  “And voluptuous women of equal age.” Yusuf Ali, “An-Naba’ [78:33],” https://tanzil.net/ #trans/en.yusufali/78:33 [accessed 24– 03 – 2022].  Munich, BSB, cod arab 7, fol. 193v.

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Here the word kawā’ib (literally meaning breasts) is first translated de tetas and interpreted as women (scilicet mujeres), with a simple deduction and understanding of a figure of rhetorical style. Al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn ‘Aṭiyya and Ibn Abī Zamanīn did not address this particular word in this way. It shows the profound understanding of an annotator who can use his knowledge of rhetorical figures to derive a closer meaning of a word without the need of any tafsir. But the fact that it is annotated also shows that it was not obvious, and that it needed to be clarified for the person who commissioned the translation. These annotations helped a Christian reader to handle the qur’anic text easily and quickly. These annotations show the profound and intrinsic knowledge of the annotators. Without the use of a tafsir they could have composed the majority of the interlinear annotations written in this manuscript. The “word-to-word translations” show that they did not fall into the trap set by cultural differences. They imply that the team was composed of at least one Muslim, Mudejar or Morisco, who helped to grasp directly the meaning implied by the text. The use of a dictionary or a glossary alone might have led to some misinterpretations. The annotations with scilicet show also that the tafsir literature was not the only set of references. References to a past verse, and the use of logic without reference to a tafsir, also show that the annotator was helped by a Muslim scholar. But some annotations can be traced back to the tafsir literature.

4 Interpretations Exegetical in Nature, from Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s Tafsir These annotations with scilicet consist of interpretations that are external to the qur’anic text, and can be found only by looking at the qur’anic commentaries. For example, verse Q. 66:3: “when he told her thereof, she said (scilicet Hafsa), ‘Who told thee this?’”⁶⁰ The subject of the verb qālat (she said) is interpreted as Hafsa. In contrast to the aforementioned group, we cannot find any clear mention of Hafsa in the Qur’an nor deduce it by logic. But we find that al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn Abī Zamanīn and Ibn ‘Aṭiyya explained in their commentaries on the Qur’an that this verse speaks of Ḥafsa bint ‘Omar.

 Yusuf Ali, “At-Tahrim [66:3],” https://tanzil.net/#trans/en.yusufali/66:3 [accessed 24– 03 – 2022].

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Other examples: Number of Number the folio of verse fol. r.

:⁶¹

fol. r.

:⁶²

fol. v.

:⁶³

fol. r.

:⁶⁴

Verse in Arabic

Annotation concerning the bold part of the text

ِ ‫ﺼﺎﻟِ ِﺤﻴ َﻦ‬ َّ ‫ َﺭ ّﺏ َﻫ ْﺐ ﻟِﻲ ِﻣ َﻦ ﺍﻟ‬Me da scilicet filium

ِ ‫ ﻟِﻠَّ ِﺬﻳ َﻦ ﺍ ْﺳ َﺘ َﺠﺎﺑُﻮﺍ ﻟِ َﺮﺑّ ِﻬ ُﻢ ﺍ ْﻟ ُﺤ ْﺴ َﻨ ٰﻰ‬scilicet parays ‫ ﺃَﻟَ ْﻢ َﺗ َﺮ ﺇِﻟَﻰ ﺍﻟَّ ِﺬﻳ َﻦ َﺗ َﻮﻟَّ ْﻮﺍ َﻗ ْﻮ ًﻣﺎ‬Toman amigos scilicet ‫ﻀ َﺐ ﺍﻟﻠَّ ُﻪ َﻋﻠَ ْﻴ ِﻬﻢ‬ ِ ‫ َﻏ‬judeos َ ‫ﺻ ْﺪ َﺭ ُﻩ ﻟِ ِْﻺ ْﺳ َﻼ ِﻡ‬ َ ‫ ﺃَ َﻓ َﻤﻦ َﺷ َﺮ َﺡ ﺍﻟﻠّ ُﻪ‬scilicet hemze tio ali ّ‫ َﻓ ُﻬ َﻮ َﻋﻠَ ٰﻰ ﻧُﻮ ٍﺭ ِّﻣﻦ َّﺭﺑِ ِﻪ‬ibine abi talib

Interpretation present in the tafsir of: al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn Abī Zamanīn, Ibn ‘Aṭiyya Ibn Abī Zamanīn, Ibn ‘Aṭiyya al-Zamakhsharī, Ibn ‘Aṭiyya Ibn ‘Aṭiyya

In the first example the word “son” is omitted but implied as complementing the word ṣālihīn. It recalls the story of Abraham asking God to give him a (pious) son. This interpretation can be found in the three exegeses studied, with the syntagm “it means a son” or “he wants a son.” In the second example the word ḥusnā is interpreted as paradise. Here again nothing clearly says that this word designates paradise, since it can be synonymous with worldly good. While al-Zamakhsharī makes a linguistic analysis, Ibn Abī Zamanīn and Ibn ‘Aṭiyya interpret it as meaning paradise. The third example, the syntagm tawala qawmā (literally: “making ally with a people”), is interpreted: toman amigos scilicet judeos. The word interpreted, qawm, designates the Jews in the tafsirs of al-Zamakhsharī and Ibn ‘Aṭiyya. In the last example, the word ṣadrahu (his chest) is interpreted in the Qur’an of Bellús as the chest of “Hemze tio ‘Ali ibine Abi Talib.” Ibn ‘Aṭiyya is the only commentator who associates this verse with Hamza ibn ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib. He also

 “O my Lord! Grant me a righteous (son)!” Yusuf Ali, “As-Saffat [37:100],” https://tanzil.net/ #trans/en.yusufali/37:100 [accessed 24– 03 – 2022].  “For those who respond to their Lord, are (all) good things.” Yusuf Ali, “Ar-Ra’d [13:18],” https://tanzil.net/#trans/en.yusufali/13:18 [accessed 24– 03 – 2022].  “Turnest thou not thy attention to those who turn (in friendship) to such as have the Wrath of Allah upon them?” Yusuf Ali, “ Al-Mujadila [58:14],” https://tanzil.net/#trans/en.yusufali/ 58:14 [accessed 24– 03 – 2022].  “Is one whose heart Allah has opened to Islam, so that he has received Enlightenment from Allah.” Yusuf Ali, “Az-Zumar [39:22],” https://tanzil.net/#trans/en.yusufali/39:22 [accessed 24– 03 – 2022].

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refers to ‘Alī ibn Abu Ṭālib, who is designated in this annotation. Al-Zamakhsharī speaks of the openness of the heart: that is, when the light of Allah enters one’s heart. Ibn Abī Zamanīn speaks of the opposition between one whose heart is open and one whose heart is closed. They do not mention if this verse was revealed for a particular person.

Commentaries from Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s Tafsir? If we compare all the annotations of the Qur’an of Bellús with the tafsirs, as we did in the previous table, we see that most of the time the exegetical annotations fit with Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz. I have counted 40 exegetical annotations with scilicet throughout the manuscript, and 37 of them correspond to an explanation that is in the tafsir of Ibn ‘Aṭiyya, while 30 can be found in Ibn Abī Zamanīn’s tafsir and only 18 in the tafsir of al-Zamakhsharī. Indeed, there is much more similarity to the two Andalusi and Malikite tafsirs than to the exegesis of the Persian Mutazilite scholar. The doctrinal differences and the methods are the main reasons why al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz coincides with Ibn Abī Zamanīn’s summary much more than with al-Kashshāf. Moreover, some annotations fit almost perfectly with the tafsir of Ibn ‘Atiyya. If quantitative data indicate that these annotations have a high probability of being from Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s tafsir, qualitative data can confirm our assumption. For example, in Q. 58.14 the word alladhīna is annotated scilicet al-munafiquin. This word can be found in the three tafsirs but not written in the same way: the word is transliterated in its manṣūb or majrūr form with the letter ya, which is not a lemma form. We can deduce that it is transliterated directly from a text with a sentence in the manṣūb or majrūr form. When we look at the three analysed tafsirs we see that Ibn Abī Zamanīn and al-Zamakhsharī use the marfū‛ form of the external plural with the letter waw: Ibn Abī Zamanīn comments: “hum al-munāfiqūn” and al-Zamakhshari comments: “Kāna al-munāfiqūn.” But Ibn ‘Aṭiyya says: “nuzilāt fī qawmi min al-munāfiqīn.” We can deduce that this word in this form is more likely transliterated directly from the tafsir of the qadi of Almería. Moreover, we saw earlier that the word “ṣadrahu” in verse 39:22 is annotated “Hamze tio ‘ali ibine Abi Talib” in the Qur’an of Bellús. The word alqāsiya is annotated in the same Qur’an “ibu laheb tio y son fill.” These two annotations can be found only in the tafsir of Ibn ‘Aṭiyya, who says: “It has been sent [down] upon ‘Ali and Hamza, Abu Lahab and his sons are those whose hearts are hardened.”

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In this sentence alone, we can trace the annotation that is written in the Qur’an of Bellús. Not only can this annotation be found only in al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz, but it fits perfectly with this exegesis. We can also see that the word tío, uncle, is an addition to the tafsir of Ibn ‘Aṭiyya. For a Mudejar or a Morisco who knows Islamic literature and history, like this annotator, this addition may be superfluous. The sons of ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib are well known by the Muslim community. But for someone who does not know it, who is unfamiliar with the Islamic faith and its history, as an Early Modern Christian polemicist might be, this addition can teach more about the prophet’s family. Thus we can see that these annotations are more likely to be commissioned by a Christian polemicist from a Mudejar or Morisco. It is possible that the commissioner or his scribe, while reading the Qur’an of Bellús, asked someone knowledgeable for some indications about the identity of the people in the tafsir of Ibn ‘Aṭiyya and then had them written down. Sometimes he certainly must have used the tafsir of Ibn ‘Aṭiyya as an aid. For this annotation, the commissioner might have asked who Hamza and Abu Lahab were, and the commentator may have answered that they were the uncles of ‘Alī Ibn Abī Ṭālib. When we add this to the examples given before, we can see that it is more than probable. Finally, the last indication of the use of the Ibn ‘Aṭiyya‘s tafsir is the marginalia in Arabic,⁶⁵ which have been copied from his tafsir as has been demonstrated by Martínez Gázquez and Casassas Canals.⁶⁶ Except for two or three words that differ between the editions, a divergence between copyists, the annotation is exactly the same as in Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s tafsir.

5 Conclusion We saw that the tafsir literature was used since the Middle Ages in the Latin translations of the Qur’an. The exegetes of the Qur’an sometimes held different opinions on the meaning of a verse. They chose an interpretation that conformed to their dogmas, their understanding, and the narrations that they preferred, or according to their places and times. These differences of opinion, when studied with a comparative methodology, can give us some indication of the processes of translation and the references used in the translation. After having studied the different types of annotation, we have compared the exegeses that most likely could have been used for annotating the Qur’an of Be-

 Munich, BSB, MS cod. arab 7, fol. 48v.  Casassas Canals and Martínez Gázquez, “Scholia Latina,” 31.

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llús. We have seen that it agrees with Ibn ‘Aṭiyya’s tafsir in number of annotations and in similarity of expression. To conclude, we can try to construct a profile of the team that carried out these annotations. We see that they were made with the help of someone who was knowledgeable in Arabic, the tafsir literature, and qur’anic rhetoric: in short, someone who knew the Qur’an very well. A current or former alfaquí such as Juan Gabriel de Teruel fits this profile. Sometimes the annotator does not even need the tafsirs to explain a verse; knowledge of the Arabic stylistic figure is sufficient. We also see that the commissioner needed clarification regarding some particular passages that repeated the verb qāl/yaqūl (he said, he says), in order to follow some parts that interested him from beginning to end. For an individual study of the Qur’an it is not necessary to repeat who is behind these verbs. But it can be helpful in the case of a public debate, with the pressure and adrenaline felt by the person who is debating in front of a crowd, to find a passage quickly and not lose track when someone quotes a passage. We know that both Martín García during his sermons, and Joan Martí de Figuerola and his team, used to display the Qur’an and its passages directly to convince the crowd of Mudejars to whom they were preaching. But these Qur’ans were certainly not used only to preach but also to study. We can sense the curiosity of the commissioner, as many passages translated and commented are not especially polemical. We see that the tafsir was used simply to understand some passages of the Qur’an. The identity of the annotators and the places of annotations are not known for sure. The similarities between Egidio da Viterbo’s translation of the Qur’an and the annotations of the Qur’an of Bellús may indicate that Juan Gabriel made the majority of them. The existence of different languages in the annotations (Catalan, Castilian, Latin, and one in Hebrew), of different hands in the margins (three at least in Latin letters, with two inks —one black, one red— two at least in Arabic with the exception of the qur’anic text)⁶⁷ may suggest that the annotations had been done in at least two or three different places (Spain, Rome, and Rome or Munich by Widmanstetter), therefore at different moments. Moreover, it is possible that Juan Gabriel sent some other manuscripts to Egidio along with his translation, such as Munich, BSB MS cod. arab 234, an Arabic translation of the Pentateuch with Castilian annotations, written in a different hand from the one in the Qur’an of Bellús or Munich BSB cod. arab 342, a commentary on Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawanī’s Risāla.

 The colophon’s hands differ from the hand at fol. 49, which is similar to the different corrections made in the margin.

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Bibliography Az-Zamakhsharī, Maḥmud ibn ‘Umar. Al-Kashshāf ‘an Ḥaqāiq at-Tanzīl. Beyrouth: Dar al-Marefah, 2009. Briquet, Charles-Moïse. Les filigranes: dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600. Geneve: A. Jullien, 1907. Burman, Thomas E. “Tafsīr and Translation: Traditional Arabic Qurʾān Exegesis and the Latin Qurʾāns of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo.” Speculum 73, no. 3 (1998): 703 – 32. Burman, Thomas E. Reading the Qurʾān in Latin Christendom, 1140 – 1560. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Casassas Canals, Xavier and José Martínez Gázquez. “Scholia Latina, Arabica et in uulgari lingua ad Alphurcanum Mahumedis: BSB-Hss Cod.arab. 7 (Corán de Bellús).” Medieval Encounters 27, no. 1 (2021): 1 – 49. Al-Dhahabī, Shams ad-din Muḥammad. Siyār Aʿlām Al-Nubbalā’. Beyrouth: Bayt al-afkār al-Dawliya, 2004. Al-Dānī, ’Uthmān. “Al-Ta’rīf Fī Ikhtilāf al-Riwāyah ‘an Nāfi.” Edited by Muḥammad as-Saḥābī. Rabat: Muṭaba‛a warāqa al-Faḍīla, 1995. Déroche, François, Annie Berthier and Jean-Pierre Angremy. Manuel de codicologie des manuscrits en écriture arabe. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2000. Ferrero Hernández, Cándida and John Tolan, eds. The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. García-Arenal, Mercedes. After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity. Leiden: Brill, 2016. García-Arenal, Mercedes, and Katarzyna K. Starczewska. “‘The Law of Abraham the Catholic’: Juan Gabriel as Quran Translator for Martín de Figuerola and Egidio da Viterbo.” Al-Qanṭara 35, no. 2 (2014): 409 – 59. García-Arenal, Mercedes, Katarzyna K. Starczewska, and Ryan Szpiech. “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur’anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics After the Conquest of Granada (1492).” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20, no. 3 (2018): 51 – 80. Gázquez, José Martínez. “Glosas latinas al corán árabe 384 BNF París, al cod. arab. 7 de la BSB corán de Bellús y al MS. A-5 – 2 EEAG.” Dimensões 46 (2021): 67 – 81. Ibn Abī Zamanīn, Muḥammad. Tafsir Al-Qur’an al-’aziz. Edited by Hussein ’Akasha and Muḥammad Mustafa al-Kanz, 5 vols. Cairo: al-Faruq al-Haditha, 2002. Ibn ‘Aṭiyya, ‘Abd al-Haqq ibn Ghālib. Al-Muḥarrar al-Wajīz Fī Tafsīr al-Kitāb al-‛Azīz. Edited by ‛Abd as-Salām ‛abd ash-Shāfī Muḥammad, 6 vols. Beyrouth: Dar Al Kotob Al Ilmiyah, 2001. Martínez de Castilla, Nuria. “La transmisión de textos entre los moriscos: dos copias del tafsīr abreviado de Ibn Abī Zamanīn.” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 26 (2015): 148 – 61. Al-Mashanni, Mustafa Ibrahim. Madrassa At-Tafsīr Fī al-Andalūs. Beyrouth: Muasasa al-risala, 1982. Montoza Coca, Manuel. “Los sermones de don Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. edición y estudio.” PhD Diss. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018. Poutrin, Isabelle. Convertir les musulmans: Espagne, 1491 – 1609. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2012.

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Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. “Mawqi‛ at-tafsīr.” Altafsir.com. https://www.al tafsir.com [accessed 24 – 03 – 2022]. Shah, Mustafa and Muhammad Abdel Haleem (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Qur’anic Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Szpiech, Ryan, Katarzyna K. Starczewska and Mercedes García-Arenal. “‘Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras’. Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no. 1 (2018): 99 – 132. Starczewska, Katarzyna K. “‘No es esto sino hystorias de los antiguos’: entre la narración medieval y la de la primera edad moderna en Confusión de Juan Andrés.” Medievalia 18, no. 1 (2015). Starczewska, Katarzyna K. Latin Translation of the Qur’an (1518/1621): Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo: Critical Edition and Case Study. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2018. Tottoli, Roberto and Michael Robertson. Biblical Prophets in the Qurʾān and Muslim Literature. Curzon Studies in the Qurʾān. Richmond: Curzon, 2002. Ullah, Kifayat. Al-Kashshāf: Al-Zamaksharī’s Mu’tazilite Exegesis of the Qur’an. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017. Vernet, Juan. “Le Tafsir au service de la polemique antimusulmane.” Studia Islamica, no. 32 (1970): 305 – 9. Wiegers, Gerard A. “’Isà b. Yabir and the Origins of Aljamiado Literature.” Al-Qanṭara 11, no. 1 (1990). Yusuf Ali, Abdallah (trans.). “The Qur’an.” Tanzil-Quran Navigator. https://tanzil.net/#trans/ en.yusufali/1:1 [accessed 24 – 03 – 2022].

IV Modern Times

Juan Pablo Arias Torres

Rediscovering the Qur’an in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Allure and Aversion in the Shadow of A. B. Kazimirski’s French Edition 1 Qur’an Translation in Modern Spain: Over Two Centuries Wandering Through the Desert (1606 – 1844) It is a well-known fact that from the early seventeenth century, when Aljamiado literary production came to a halt, and the mid-nineteenth century, in Spain there was virtually no interest in Arabic and Islamic studies generally, much less in translations of the Qur’an into Spanish.¹ This attitude stands in stark contrast to that of other European countries, where complete translations of the Qur’an into various European languages began to appear as early as the mid-sixteenth century, but especially as of the early seventeenth century.² Meanwhile, Spain entered a period dominated by “apologetic Orientalism” and an “eager-

 In any case, this general lack of interest in Arabic studies does not mean there was a total absence, as professors García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano have consistently argued in a number of studies. See, for example, Fernando Rodríguez Mediano and Mercedes García-Arenal, “Diego de Urrea y algún traductor más: en torno a las versiones de los Plomos,” Al-Qantara 23, no. 2 (2002); García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism (Leiden: Brill, 2013). On the origins of scientific approaches to Arabic Studies in the eighteenth century, see Paz Fernández, Arabismo español del s. XVIII: Origen de una quimera (Madrid: ICMA, 1991).  For a quick overview of these translations, see e. g. Ziad Elmarsafy, “Translations of the Qur’an into Western Languages,” Religion Compass 3, no. 3 (2009). Note: This essay is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (SyG grant agreement no. 810141), project EuQu “The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150 – 1850.” I thank to Consuelo López Morillas for her translation of the original text. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-017

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ness to convert.”³ This vast expanse of time begins in 1606, with the Alcorán in Christian letters (MS 235 of the Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo),⁴ the finest Aljamiado version of the Islamic holy book. After this point, the only other reference to a Spanish translation of the Qur’an is an indirect translation via French to be used by missionaries, published in 1672.⁵ By all indications it was based on the version of André Du Ryer (1647)⁶, a merchant as well as French consul in Cairo and Istanbul. Du Ryer’s translation spread across Europe and was extremely successful (with five editions in five years), and was immediately translated into English, German, Dutch and other languages.⁷ As Míkel de Epalza has surmised,⁸ while the Count of Oropesa ⁹ has been credited with the translation, he was more likely a patron than a direct participant in the process. This translation foreshadows a phenomenon that would be a constant in Spain through the mid-twentieth century, and which persists even today: that of indirect translations based not on original Arabic text, but rather on prior translations into other languages, first and foremost among them French. Moreover, it illustrates a constant in the history of translation: the reuse of one version of a text for purposes other than those originally intended. Du Ryer’s original work, as many researchers have pointed out, does not fall into the category of refutations of Islam or proselytism, but rather, despite the translation’s various missteps (some scholars have called it a tedious monotone rhapsody) and the various paratextual elements that remain a product of their time and seek to situate the work within a fully Christian context, it does attempt to provide the

 The words of Spanish Arabists J. Bosch and P. Chalmeta —orientalismo apologético and afán de conversión—, respectively, cited in Bernabé López García, “Treinta años de arabismo español: el fin de la almogavaría científica (1967– 97),” Awraq 18 (1997), 13.  Consuelo López-Morillas, El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del ms. 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha (Gijón: Trea, 2011). MS II-IV-701 of Florence’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana holds an Aljamiado version of the Qur’an with a later date (1612), linked to the figure of Mohamed Rabadán and the city of Salonica, but it is only a partial translation.  While its whereabouts are currently unknown, it is cited by Tirso Gonzalez de Santalla, Manuductio ad conversionem mahumetanorum: in duas partes divisa: in prima, veritas religionis christianae catholicae romanae manifestis argumentis demonstratur: in secunda, falsitas mahumetanae sectae conuincitur (Madrid: Juan de Goyeneches, 1687). See Rafael Cansinos Assens, El Korán, versión literal e íntegra (Madrid: Aguilar 1951), 41; Gregorio Sánchez Doncel, La verdad histórica del islam de ayer y hoy (Madrid: [n.p.], 2004), 215.  Andre Du-Ryer, trans., L’Alcoran de Mahomet (Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1647).  On this translation, see e. g. Elmarsafy, “Translations,” 432; Olivier Hanne, L’Alcoran: comment l’Europe a découvert le Coran (Paris: Belin, 2019), chapter 16.  Míkel de Epalza, L’Alcorà: traducció de l’àrab al català, introducció a la lectura i cinc estudis alcorànics amb la col.laboració de Joseph Forcadell i Joan M. Perujo (Barcelona: Proa, 2001), 545.  Probably Manuel Joaquín Álvarez de Toledo-Portugal, 4th Count of Oropesa (1671– 1707).

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reader with honest information about the contents of the Islamic holy text, and, as such, it was the preferred translation of the eighteenth century. The interest in the Qur’an in ecclesiastical circles during this period can be perceived in a new translation, this time into Latin: Interpretatio Alcorani litteralis cum scholiis ad mentem Autoris et propiis domesticis ipsius expositoribus germane colectis Rev. P. Frem Dominicum Germanum de Silesia. Carried out between 1650 and 1665 by Franciscan friar Dominicus Germanus de Silesia, who, though from Germany, taught Arabic at the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, this Latin version, “written in an elegant Latin that is very precise,”¹⁰ was only recently published,¹¹ and is currently being studied by Ulisse Cecini.¹² However, until well into the nineteenth century, the majority of efforts related to the qur’anic text have to do with the refutation of Islam.¹³ The list of Spanish refuters from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries is considerable. In addition to the well-known pioneers Juan Andrés de Játiva (Confusión de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán, 1515)¹⁴ and Martín García (Sermones, 1520),¹⁵ there were also Joan Martí Figuerola (Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán, 1519),¹⁶ Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón (Libro llamado antialcorano, 1532, and Diálogos christianos contra la secta mahomética, 1535),¹⁷ Lope de Obregón (Confutación del alcorán y la secta mahometana, 1555),¹⁸ Pedro Guerra de Lorca (Catacheses mystogogicae

 José Montero Vidal, Mahoma. Su vida. El Corán (Madrid: Editorial Reus, 1927), vol. II, 344– 45. On this translator, see also Braulio Justel, La Real Biblioteca de El Escorial y sus manuscritos árabes: sinopsis histórico-descriptiva (Madrid: IHAC, 1978), 93, 171 and 226.  Antonio García Masegosa, ed., Germán de Silesia. Interpretatio alcorani litteralis, Nueva Roma 32 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009).  See Ulisse Cecini’s contribution to this volume.  The Inquisition was not definitively abolished in Spain until 1834 and, as we will see, the first nineteenth-century Spanish translation of the Qur’an did not appear until ten years later (1844).  Juan Andrés, Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán / Opera Chiamata Confusione della setta machumetana, ed. Ma Isabel García-Monge and Elisa Ruiz García, 2 vols (Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2003).  Manuel Montoza Coca, “Los Sermones de Don Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio,” PhD Thesis (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018).  Real Academia de la Historia, Colección Gayangos MS 19 – 36, Juan Martín Figuerola, “Lumbre de fe contra el Alcorán y la secta mahomética.”  Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón, Antialcorano; Diálogos cristianos, conversión y evangelización de moriscos, ed. Francisco Pons Fuster (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2000).  Lope de Obregón, Confutación del Alcorán y secta mahometana, sacado de sus proprios libros y la vida del mesmo Mahoma (Granada: Sancho de Nebrija, 1555).

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pro advenis ex secta Mahometana, 1586)¹⁹ and, in the period that concerns us here, Tirso González de Santalla (Manuductio ad conversionem Mahumetanorum, 1687),²⁰ Fray Félix de Molina o Alamín (Impugnación contra el Talmud de los judíos, Alcorán de Mahoma y contra los herejes, 1727),²¹ Ioachin Casses Xaló y Granel de Ribas Altas (Theatro cathólico ruina de la puerta othomana, de su Alcorán y secta, 1738),²² Joseph Martin (Historia verdadera del falso, y perverso profeta Mahoma, 1781),²³ Fray Manuel de Sto. Tomás de Aquino (Verdadero carácter de Mahoma y de su religión, 1793 – 95).²⁴ Interestingly, as Fray Manuel himself declares,²⁵ this last work came as a reaction to the sudden appearance in Spain of the historical study of Islam initiated in France during the Enlightenment period, which reframed Islam as a non-clerical religion, spawning new translations of the Qur’an aimed at better understanding the legacy of Islam, accompanied by more rigorous historical studies of the figure of the Prophet Muḥammad. Once again, in Spain this new trend shows up in the form of a Spanish translation of a French text: Compendio histórico de la vida del falso profeta Mahoma que escribió en francés en

 Pedro Guerra de Lorca, Catecheses Mystogogicae pro advenis ex secta mahometana ad parrocos et potestades (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1586).  Gonzalez de Santalla, Manuductio ad conversionem mahumetanorum (Madrid: Juan de Goyeneches, 1687).  Félix de Alamín (O.F.M.Cap.), Impugnación contra el Talmud de los judíos, al Corán de Mahoma, y contra los hereges, y segunda parte de la religión christiana (Madrid: Imprenta de Lorenço Francisco Mojados, 1727).  Joaquín Casses Xaló Granel de Ribas Altas, Theatro cathólico, ruina de la puerta othomana, de su Alcorán y secta y progressos de la Iglesia por las aguilas del imperio (Madrid: [n.p.], 1738).  Manuel José Martín, Historia verdadera del falso y perverso profeta Mahoma, sacada de San Eulogio, Juan Sagredo, Fray Jayme Bleda y otros historiadores (Madrid: Manuel Martín, 1781).  Manuel de Santo Tomás de Aquino, Verdadero carácter de Mahoma y de su religión: Justa idea de este falso profeta, sin alabarle con exceso, ni deprimirle con odio (Valencia: Francisco Bruguete, 1793). On this field of anti-Islamic apologetics both prior and contemporary to the work of Juan Andrés, see e. g. Elisa Ruiz García “Estudio preliminar,” in Confusión o confutación, 13; Ryan Szpiech, Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna K. Starczewska, “‘Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras’: Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes,” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no.1 (2018); García-Arenal, Starczewska and Szpiech, “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur’anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics After the Conquest of Granada (1492),” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20, nº 3 (2018). For subsequent figures, see e. g. Montero, Mahoma. Su vida, II, chapter V, 329 – 47; Cándida Ferrero Hernández, “Pervivencia de tópicos medievales en el humanista Pedro Guerra de Lorca,” Humanismo y pervivencia del mundo clásico, ed. José María Maestre et al. (Alcañiz-Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos and CSIC, 2015); Míkel de Epalza, “El profeta del islam, según el P. Traggia: una evolución católica de fines del XVIII,” Al-Andalus-Magreb 4 (1996).  Epalza, “El profeta,” 97.

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1787 Mr de Pastoret. As Epalza notes in his study, and as an example of contradictory feelings in the face of the Arab-Islamic, to Fray Manuel’s credit, although his work clearly falls within Catholic apologetics in favor of Christianity and against all other religions and, in particular, French rationalist Islamophilia, it nevertheless marks a serious attempt at approaching Islam via reputable Latin, French and Italian sources, which was only made possible by the new sociopolitical context of peace between Spain and the Islamic powers of the period.

2 Indirect Translations via French in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth centuries: In the Shadow of A. B. Kazimirski Now let us turn to the tumultuous nineteenth century; a great deal can happen in one hundred years. To quote María Jesús Viguera, in discussing the Spanish historiography of al-Andalus, Islam in this century will be the subject of “alternating and at times entangled currents of phobia and sympathy, of rejection but also of acceptance, of closing off and opening up, both deep and superficial.”²⁶ Spain would thus hang on to its age-old anti-Islamic tradition, while at the same time, following in the path of European scientific and intellectual progress, would begin to rediscover Arab-Islamic heritage through the cornerstone of its sacred literature, the Qur’an, but also through the profane, through the Thousand and One Nights and poetry, with a particular focus on that of al-Andalus. However, these works were received via the intermediation of foreign translations: the French versions of Galland and Mardrus, for example, for the tales of Scheherazade as rendered into Spanish by Blasco Ibáñez and others;²⁷ or Shack’s acclaimed anthology of Andalusi poetry in German translation (1865),

 María Jesús Viguera, edition and study of Francisco Codera y Zaidín, Decadencia y desaparición de los almorávides en España (Pamplona: Urgoiti, 2004), xix.  For the Spanish translations of the Thousand and One Nights, see Salvador Peña Martín, “La recepción iberoamericana de las Mil y una noches,” Castilla. Estudios de Literatura 8 (2017). Granadan Arabist Antonio Almagro Cárdenas made a pioneering attempt at translating excerpts directly into Spanish from the original Arabic. Published in the late nineteenth century in the newspapers La Estrella de Occidente and La Alhambra, they have yet to receive any scholarly attention.

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translated in turn into Spanish by Juan Valera under the title Poesía y arte de los árabes en España y Sicilia (1867– 71).²⁸ As we have pointed out, the Qur’an was no exception in terms of the use of intermediate or indirect translations. While we find three different approaches — from the versions motivated by the echoes of the Enlightenment and the later Romantic movement, with its ethnocentric Maurophilia and idealization of the Orient (taken to include al-Andalus) as a land of sensuality as well as mysticism and spirituality; those belonging to the liberalism and new scientific approaches to Islam of the nineteenth century, or to colonial enterprise itself; as well as those that picked up the mantle of the anti-Islamic Christian apologetics— the starting point in all cases is the same French translation: Albin de Biberstein Kazimirski’s Le Koran (1808 – 87).²⁹ Originally from Poland, upon emigrating to France he was appointed interpreter to the French Legation in Persia, and subsequently translator and interpreter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and secretary-interpreter to the Emperor for Oriental languages. A student of Silvestre de Sacy, he was profoundly knowledgeable in Arabic and Persian, and left behind a translation of the Qur’an, an excellent Arabic-French dictionary, and a translation of the eleventh-century Persian poet Manuchehri, among other works. His first translation of the sacred text of Islam dates from 1840. However, this edition contained few notes, and so in the 1841, 1842, and especially 1852 editions, the notes and indices were expanded and the text revised. Since then it has been republished on multiple occasions down to the present, and, while it is not without its critics, it has continued to enjoy a positive reputation among specialists.³⁰  Adolf Friedrich von Schack, Poesía y arte de los árabes en España y Sicilia, trans. Juan Valera (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1871). There were a small number of attempts to translate Arabic poetry directly into Spanish. In 1861 Pedro Lahittete published Orientales, the first anthology of Eastern and Andalusi poetry rendered into Spanish verse; see María Paz Torres Palomo, “Las Orientales de Pedro de Lahitte[te]: una traducción ¿exótica? del XIX,” in El papel del traductor, ed. Esther Morillas and Juan Pablo Arias (Salamanca: Colegio de España, 1997).  On this translator and his version, see Abdelhamid Drira, “Kazimirski dans l’histoire du Coran: histoire de la traduction du Coran du XIIe s. au début du XXe s.,” The Arabist. Budapest Studies in Arabic 40 (2019); Drira and Grzegorz Kubacki, “Wojciech Biberstein-Kazimirski – orientalista i dyplomata,” Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kornickiej 37 (2020).  Contemporary French reprints with introductions by leading Arab and Islamic Studies experts such as Maxime Rodinson or Mohamed Arkoun contain words of praise for the translation such as: “An excellent [translation…] that was able to retain the poetic air of many passages of the Qur’an,” or “This translation remains admirable, and because of several brilliant solutions, recommendable […]. It is unfortunate for Kazimirski’s successors that we can still write this about his translation, a century after its publication.” However, these contemporary editions of Kazimirski’s translation follow the original 1840 text, omitting the notes and interpretations

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The first of these nineteenth-century Spanish versions of the Qur’an in the shadow of Kazimirski’s translation is a partial translation attributed to Andrés Borrego (Málaga 1802–Madrid 1891),³¹ one of the foremost politicians and journalists of the nineteenth century, who represented both conservative liberalism and Romanticism, and was a pioneer of so-called parliamentary journalism, in addition to founding the newspapers El Español and El Correo Nacional. ³² Little is known about his work as a translator. He likely mastered French during his long stay in Paris into the 1830s, and in 1837 translated Chevalier Artaud’s history of Pope Pius VII, as Historia de la vida y del pontificado del Papa Pío VII. As to his decision to render the Qur’an into Spanish, we can only guess at the hypothetical influence of his childhood friend Estébanez Calderón, an author known for his Arabophilia, as well as his relationship with Arabists of the period such as Pascual Gayangos, Emilio Lafuente Alcántara and Eduardo Saavedra. From among his vast body of writings, it is worth highlighting the tolerant stance toward other religions in his lecture, “De la tolerancia religiosa y de la aplicación del artículo 11 de la Constitución” (Madrid, 1876). So far, all of our attempts to locate this translation have failed, and it is only attested to indirectly by references in other works.³³ Let us now turn to another four versions —all of them extant— that drew directly on the legacy of Kazimirski.

3 The Rediscovery of Islam as Adversary: Benigno de Murguiondo y Ugartondo There is no better representative of the islamophobic trends of the nineteenth century than Benigno de Murguiondo y Ugartondo’s version of the sacred text

added in later editions, which reflect an enthnocentrism typical of the period, with a non-neutral stance toward Islam that would run afoul of today’s standards.  Andrés Borrego, El Corán traducido al castellano (Madrid: [n.p.], 1844).  For his biography, see Consuelo de Castro, A. Borrego. Periodismo Liberal Conservador 1830 – 1846 (Madrid: M. Castellote, 1972) and María Celia Fórneas, “Andrés Borrego pionero del periodismo parlamentario,” Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico 5 (1999). Unfortunately, none of these texts mentions his version of the Qur’an. His newspapers ushered in a new style of journalism, introducing specific sections on music, books, etc., which leads us to suspect that perhaps his partial translation of the Qur’an was somehow related to these dailies.  Their source seems to be Victor Chauvin, Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes publiés dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885, x 78n, who in turn cites Dionisio Hidalgo, Diccionario general de bibliografía española (Madrid: Imprenta de las Escuelas Pías, 1862– 81).

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of Islam. Published in Madrid in 1875³⁴ under the title El Alcorán otomano en español (The Ottoman Koran in Spanish), suffice it to reproduce the cover text to illustrate the spirit of this version: THE KORAN, faithfully translated into Spanish, ANNOTATED AND REFUTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DOGMA, THE HOLY DOCTRINE AND PERFECT MORALS OF THE HOLY ROMAN APOSTOLIC CATHOLIC CHURCH, THE ONE TRUE CHURCH, preceded by an introduction, the first chapter of which comprises a succinct explanation, in alphabetical order, of various terms and names that appear in the historical compendium of the life and most important deeds of the false prophet Mohamed, and in the false, ignorant and contradictory code that said malicious leader dictated to his countrymen the Arabs, which in Spanish is called the Alcorán, and of other names subsequently introduced in the Ottoman Empire; the second chapter contains preliminary remarks by the author comparing Catholicism and Mohammedanism; the third contains the historical compendium of the life and most important deeds of the false prophet Mohamed; and the fourth, a brief and succinct overview of said code.

We know little to nothing about how the translation originated or was commissioned³⁵ —if it was commissioned at all— nor about the translator, beyond where and when he was born (Oñate, 1805) and the information provided in the book itself: that he held a doctorate in Jurisprudence, was a lawyer in the Tribunals, and was an honorary War Auditor.³⁶ However, anyone who so much as leafs through this hefty tome will quickly realize that the aim of the volume is less the translation of the Islamic holy book per se than its refutation. For example, the first seven ayas of the first sura are the subject of sixty pages of notes and refutation, and the same is true of the second sura.  As pointed out by Epalza, Alcorà, 546, the date and place of publication coincide with an anonymous translation that appears in several bibliographic repertoires, El Alcorán, traducido fielmente al castellano y anotado, precedido de una introducción explicativa de la vida de Mahoma y del Código que dictó (Madrid 1875), which is almost certainly an inaccurate reference to Murguiondo’s translation.  It is worth noting that throughout history refutations have appeared in periods in which the climate of hostility toward Islam has been relaxed. In the nineteenth century, the East generally, and in particular the Islamic world, captured the attention of intellectuals, writers and artists throughout Europe and Spain. As we will see shortly, in addition to the partial versions of Borrego and Gerber de Robles, three years earlier Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla had published his Corán o Biblia Mahometana, which exhibits an overall positive approach to the holy text and the figure of Muḥammad: El Corán o Biblia mahometana, seguido de la biografía de Mahoma, primera versión española anotada y comentada según los más distinguidos comentadores del Corán (Barcelona: Juan Aleu, 1872).  Interestingly, he is the only translator of the Qur’an cited by Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Biblioteca de traductores españoles (Madrid: CSIC, 1952– 53), vol III, 409, although he does not add any information about him.

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Although it is usually referred to as a retranslation of Kazimirski’s French version, the translator himself never states this clearly.³⁷ Unlike later retranslations, while many traces of Kazimirski’s translation are plain to see, even a quick comparison of the two reveals that Murguiondo’s version retains a certain degree of independence from the French text, from the fact that the ayas are numbered differently, to a variety of solutions that differ from those preferred by Kazimirski. Using suras I and II as a reference in order to highlight some of these divergences, it is striking how the text includes —without italics or any other marking— formulas in the aya headings such as “Remember Mohamed” or “Remember that day,” which are nowhere to be found, whether in the French version or the original Arabic. Murguiondo also expands upon certain concepts, as in verdaderos creyentes (“true believers”) for the Arabic mu’minūn, which Kazimirski translates simply as croyants, or the notions of God’s perdón gratuito (“free forgiveness”), or buena fe (“good faith”), all adjectives absent from the French version. Thus, it is plausible that Murguiondo had other translations on hand. His notes cite the French translation by Savary and, especially, the Latin translation of Ludovico Marracci, “the most learned, erudite, complete and perfect of all those I have encountered.” ³⁸ Murguiondo uses it both for the text of his version³⁹ and, even more so, for his refutations.⁴⁰

 In the copy of this translation held in the library of the Escuela de Traductores de Toledo, which belonged to the well-known Hebrew scholar David Gonzalo Maeso, there is a note in his hand stating “it is a (correct) retranslation of Kazimirski’s French translation, although it does not say so. Subsequent translations, into any language, will not necessarily be any better.”  Murguiondo, El Alcorán, 82.  By way of example, he translates the Basmala as “In the name of God the compassionate and merciful” (compasivo y misericordioso), specifically explaining that he preferred this translation as per Marracci instead of the habitual French translation, “clement and merciful” (clemente y misericordioso) (Murguiondo, El Alcorán, 86).  In their defense, we might point out that, mixed in with the predictably pejorative tone of the refutations, there are bits of relevant information about certain aspects of Arab-Islamic culture, as well as minor observations as to the translator’s decisions (see previous note).

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4 The Birth of a Bestseller: The Versions of José Gerber de Robles and of Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla The multiple versions, editions and reprints of the Qur’an from the nineteenth century up to the present have proven it to be a safe bet for publishers. While there may be other factors, in general it can be said that a bestseller depends on at least four factors: 1) the name/fame of the author or book, 2) the size of the publisher; 3) timing; and 4) the book’s marketing campaign. In the specific case of the Qur’an, there are other concrete motivations behind its success among all sorts of audiences: 1. The desire for a scientific/intellectual approach in order to better understand the most important aspects of Arab-Islamic civilization in the past (when it included al-Andalus) or present. 2. An approach to the sacred text of Islam in contrast (including refutation) with other religions, especially Judaism and Christianity, or with other expressions of a new religiosity, as a counter-cultural phenomenon combining a growing interest in Eastern thought (Buddhism, Taoism and, of course, Sufism or Islamic mysticism) with esoteric, psychological, scientific and ecological elements, a trend best represented by the New Age movement.⁴¹ 3. The notion that the Qur’an is the paramount text of Arabic literature and, by extension, is a classic of Universal Literature. 4. Also, over the course of the last century, the number of Spanish-speaking Muslims in Spain and America has steadily risen, and with it the demand for Spanish translations of the Qur’an for devotional purposes.⁴² In Spain, this publishing phenomenon got off to a mild start with the version of José Gerber de Robles,⁴³ who justified the publication of his translation in the following terms (III–IV):

 On this new religiosity, see e. g. the pioneering work of Antonio Jiménez Ortiz, “New Age: el espejismo de una religiosidad sin Dios,” Revista de Fomento Social 48 (1993).  On early Spanish translations in Argentine for muslim communities see Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “El Alcorán viaja a ultramar: las traducciones argentinas de mediados del siglo XX,” De Homero a Pavese: hacia un canon iberoamericano de clásicos universales, ed. Juan Jesús Zaro and Salvador Peña (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2017).  José Gerber de Robles, Al Koran o Dogmas y doctrinas civiles, morales, políticas y religiosas de los musulmanes precedido de la vida de Mahoma. Traducido exactamente del original árabe por Mr. Kazimirski (Madrid: Imprenta de D. Dionisio Hidalgo, 1844). In the bibliographic repertoires

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It is pertinent to everyone if the political and religious laws of the sons of Ishmael may be of some use to the Spanish; if it can show us their true principles and destroy the absurd errors circulating about them; if it can help illustrate the most outstanding period of our own history; if it can give us an idea as to that of the Arabs, as well as their habits, customs and religion prior to the appearance of the Prophet; if it can serve, lastly, as a sample of a literature with which we are wholly unfamiliar.

The cover of his Elementos de Historia Natural (Cáceres, 1843) outlines the translator’s curriculum vitae: a doctorate in medical science, chair of natural history at the Instituto de Enseñanza Secundaria in Cáceres, and member of the Sociedad de Amigos del País of Cáceres, as well as other scientific and literary societies. He also translated from French the Nueva clasificación de las facultades cerebrales o la frenología, by G. L. Bessières (Valencia, 1837), as well as the Compendio práctico de las enfermedades de la piel, by A. Cazenave and H. E. Schedel (Valencia, 1839). We have no information about who commissioned the translation, other than the brief note from the translator (containing the passage quoted above), which mentions the success of Kazimirski’s 1841 version. The version online (scanned from a copy held by the National Library of Israel),⁴⁴ which is the only one we have been able to access, presents the translation of the first six suras (up to Q. 6:61), preceded by Kazimirski’s prologue (III–IV) and a short biographical sketch of Muḥammad (V–XXI). The dependence on the original French translation is absolute, both in the main text and in the notes. The French transcriptions are reproduced without any attempt to adapt them to Spanish phonetics. The scarce number of extant copies in public libraries speaks to the project’s limited success. By contrast, in the version of Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla,⁴⁵ the desire for the book to be a success is more palpable. Pseudonym of Francisco Nacente y Soler (1841– 94),⁴⁶ was a man of letters, publisher, historian and translator born in Reus (Catalonia), where he studied through secondary school with excellent grades, especially in Latin and Greek. He later moved with his family to Barcelona, where he worked at the publishing house Espasa as literary director and

on Qur’an translations this version was erroneously cited as being published by Editorial Cuesta. See e. g. Juan Pablo Arias Torres, “Bibliografía sobre las traducciones del Alcorán en el ámbito hispano,” Trans 11 (2007.  José Gerber de Robles, Al Koran. Available on Google Books. I am grateful to Isabel Boyano for bringing it to my attention.  Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla, El Corán o Biblia mahometana.  See his biography in Francisco Gras y Elías, Hijos ilustres de Reus (Barcelona: Imprenta F. Giró, 1899), 131– 33.

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translator. In 1880 he founded his own publishing house, Nacente y Monrós. A pioneer in the world of bookmaking, he was the first publisher in Barcelona to insert printed images within text. Likewise, in line with his entrepreneurial spirit (he was vice president of the Industrial Center of Catalonia, and honorary chairman for Industrial Development), he published translations of the first books on engineering to appear in Barcelona (Tratado general de mecánica para uso de ingenieros, Química industrial y agrícola: tratado teórico-práctico, Zoología). He wrote a well-known tract on anthropology (Antropología) and, as a historian, wrote general histories of various countries (France, England, the United States, and others), as well as the curious Historia Universal de la Mujer, and translated Cesare Cantù’s Storia universale from the Italian. As literary translator, apart from overseeing the publication of Shakespeare’s dramas, he translated into Spanish Victor Hugo ’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (as La Esmeralda: Nuestra Señora de París). A prolific author in his own right, he wrote a novel, La esposa enamorada, and a grammar of Latin American Spanish, Gramática hispanoamericana. He died in Sant Genís dels Agudells, on the outskirts of Barcelona. Ortiz de la Puebla writes in his introduction that he has followed the 1869 edition of Kazimirski’s French translation (“more than a mere translation, a true masterwork”)⁴⁷ although with the help of other versions, in particular George Sale’s English translation. He asserts that his version is “the most accurate of any published abroad, because wherever we have lacked talent, we have made up for it with work.”⁴⁸ The result, however, is a translation that closely follows both the French text⁴⁹ and the corresponding notes, with very few original contributions.⁵⁰ Even the French transcriptions of Arabic terms are maintained, without adapting them at all to Spanish spelling conventions. In practical terms, this translation amounts to the first attempt at a scientific approach to the Qur’an (“a study source for the learned and erudite”) from a stance of respect —within the context of the nineteenth century— toward the holy text, which “does not contain any of the immoralities that some would be-

 Ortiz de la Puebla, El Corán, VII.  Ortiz de la Puebla, El Corán, VIII.  However, he does not maintain the italics of the French version, which Kazimirski used to signal his own insertions in the main text.  In all of sura 2, we have found just one minor reworking of two notes: one on the Shebans (Q. 2:59) and the addition of note 53 (Q. 2:118), of debatable accuracy, about the term ‘imam’: “he is the Mohammedan priest who recites the prayers, reads out the Koran, preaches, aids the sick and says the blessing at weddings.”

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lieve before having read it.”⁵¹ It is this desire that led him to base his Spanish version on a praiseworthy intermediate translation reputed to be the best available, and particularly useful in light of its many notes, which Kazimirski translated directly from the best Arabic commentators. To highlight this claim to quality, the cover of Ortiz de Puebla’s version reads: “First Spanish version, with notes and commentary in accordance with the most distinguished commentators of the Koran.” The translator’s brief résumé aims in the same direction, framing him as “author of the History of Switzerland and of other books on history and science.” In pursuit of commercial success, the book was published both in a thrift edition “so it may be purchased by all social classes,” as well as another luxury edition “adorned with [fifteen] plates by the reputed artist Mr. Puiggari,” executed in an orientalist style very much in tune with the Romantic tastes of the period (see Appendix). The plates are inserted in the text in passages that discuss the figures or events portrayed in the prints, ranging from the Ḥ ajj, to Moses, Jesus, Satan, Muḥammad and his wives, Paradise, and Hell, or even Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, depicted on one plate titled “Lifting her skirts.” Indeed, the illustrations were no doubt intended to allure a public eager to read versions of the Qur’an and other works from the Arab-Islamic sphere. The influence of these translations can be seen in the work of the late-century Spanish Modernists, who, as a form of rejecting the reality around them, found in an exoticized Islamic realm a refuge and constant source of inspiration. In Spain the work of Granadan author Isaac Muñoz is paradigmatic in this respect.⁵² But he is far from the only example. In the words of Litvak,⁵³ “Islamic phrases open and close chapters and narrations… Paragraphs of the Koran and other Islamic holy books are scattered throughout texts, along with psalmodies recited while thumbing the rosary.” Because of its singularity and relation to our topic, take by way of example the reimagined version of the first sura of the Qur’an in “Al-Fa-teha” (sic), the opening chapter of Juan García Goyena ’s book Al-lanhkbar (Alá es el más grande), Leyendas árabes: ⁵⁴  The quoted fragments that follow are all taken from the presentation of the Biblioteca Escogida de Juan Aleu collection, with which the book opens.  See, for example, Amelina Correa, “Ensoñación y conocimiento del oriente islámico. El caso de Isaac Muñoz, escritor y periodista finisecular,” in Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción, ed. Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla and Manuel C. Feria García (Cuenca: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Univ. Castilla-La Mancha, 2000), 93 – 108.  Lily Litvak, El jardín de Aláh. Temas del exotismo musulmán en España (1880 – 1913) (Granada: Don Quijote, 1985), 144.  “¡En el nombre de Alá clemente y misericordioso! ¡Alabado sea Alá, señor del Universo! ¡Al clementísimo, al piadosísimo, al soberano, a quien está sujeto el día del Juicio! ¡Juez supremo, nosotros te veneramos e imploramos tu protección! ¡Guíanos por el camino recto, por el camino

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In the name of Allāh, the compassionate and merciful! Praise be to Allāh, Lord of the Universe! To the most merciful, the most pious, the sovereign, the master of Judgment Day! Supreme judge, we worship you and beg for your protection! Guide us along the straight path, along the path of those whom you have showered with benefits, of those who stray not!

But in Spain there were other reasons behind the Islamic fad. On the one hand, as we have already mentioned, there was the Andalusi past, which had for decades received the sole attention of Spanish Arabists, who were keen to highlight the importance of al-Andalus for the formation of Spain as a nation and for Western culture more generally, and also to argue for the existence of a unique Andalusi Islam. However, with the focus solely on the particulars of the Andalusi experience, the study of the Qur’an was not a top priority, although there were some scholars who sought to integrate al-Andalus within a broader Islamic context, such as Eduardo Saavedra, who discussed the issue in his essays.⁵⁵ On the other hand, the public’s interest in Islamic affairs was inextricable from Spain’s colonial policies in North Africa. Everyone is familiar with Europe’s easy shift from the Romantic exaltation of the Orient to the political project of subjugating ‘the Other’. Authors such as Montero Vidal put forward Spain’s colonial interests in Morocco as a justification for studying the biography of Muḥammad. In his own words: “In our relations with the Moroccans we mustn’t overlook religion, which is even more important than politics”;⁵⁶ “from a political standpoint, it would prove impossible to govern any Muslim people without understanding the key aspects of their religion, which is the basis of their social system.”⁵⁷ The conditions for new versions of the Qur’an were finally right.

5 Echoes of Colonialism: The Translation of Joaquín García Bravo It is within this framework, at the turn of the twentieth century, that we find the last retranslation of Kazimirski’s Qur’an, carried out by Joaquín García Bravo description of pre-Islamic Arabia and a series of stereotypical attribute in 1907.⁵⁸

de aquellos a quienes has colmado de beneficios, de aquellos que no yerran!”; Juan García Goyena, Al-lanhk-bar (Alá es el más grande) Leyendas árabes (Madrid: Impr. Barea, 1905), 7.  Eduardo Saavedra y Moragas, “El Alcorán,” in Conferencias (Madrid: Inst. Libre de Enseñanza, 1877– 78), 123 – 38.  Montero, Mahoma, 106.  Montero, Mahoma, 110.  Joaquín García Bravo, El Corán (Barcelona: Impr. Viuda de Luis Tasso, 1907).

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After a brief description of pre-Islamic Arabia and a series of stereotypical attributes of the Hagarenes (“faithful guardians of their genealogy,” “independent and pure of any union with foreigners and of any yoke,” “savages”) and an introduction to the life of Muḥammad extracted from the work of Kazimirski,⁵⁹ the prologue ends on the following illustrative terms:⁶⁰ The general message is that the Qur’an presents a wholly imperfect moral code and religion, and it is nearly impossible to explain the immense revolution it brought about in an entire people, or the respect and faith it is accorded, without first coming to terms with this people’s prior state and the peculiar nature of the Arab race. The Qur’an did away with idolatry and prescribed a furious monotheism, prayers, ablutions, charity, respect for the elderly, women and children, pilgrimage to Mecca and fasts at specific times of the year; but, in exchange, it instituted polygamy, eye-for-an-eye justice, and holy war, and as such is the cause of the backwardness and semi-savage state of the nations that have not managed to free themselves of the Mohammedan faith.

We have very little information about this translator. The cover presents him as holding a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters, and it seems that he was a professional translator, as with the same publisher he translated various works by French authors such as Honoré Balzac, Alexandre Dumas or Guy de Maupassant. He also wrote a French grammar book, Gramática francesa, ó Método prácticoteórico para aprender á leer, hablar y escribir… el idioma francés (1902). He is extremely faithful —much more so than his predecessors— to the French version, not only in terms of his word-for-word translation of its content,⁶¹ but also in terms of page layout, with the exact same arrangement of  This unsigned prologue is a heavily summarized version of Kazimirski’s original (1859), which has been reorganized and worded in a tone that is generally more pejorative than the original, e. g. “Selon ces récits (de la pieté musulmane)” p. vii; “According to these accounts (of devout Muslims)” is translated into Spanish as, “Al decir de los secuaces del pseudo profeta de los árabes” p. xii; “According to the henchmen of the false prophet of the Arabs”.  García Bravo, El Corán, xvi.  García Bravo has the striking habit, throughout the text, but not systematically, of choosing the terms most graphically similar to the French over other viable synonyms. For example (Q. 2:2) [my emphasis]: – Kazimirski: De ceux qui croient aux choses cachées, qui observent exactement la prière et font des largesses des biens que nous leur dispensons. – García Bravo: De los que creen en las cosas ocultas y de los que observan puntualmente la oración y hacen larguezas con los bienes que nosotros les dispensamos. – Gerber de Robles: De los que creen en las cosas ocultas, de los que observan exactamente la oración, de los que son liberales con los bienes que les hemos concedido. – Ortiz de la Puebla: De los que creen en las cosas ocultas, que hacen con exactitud la oración y son pródigos de los bienes que les concedemos.

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text and notes on the page, an equivalent typeface, and a rigorous adherence to Kazimirski’s use of italics for his inline notes.⁶² The final product is something of a Spanish clone of the French version. As proof that translations enjoy a life of their own once they have left the hands of the translator, with minor changes García Bravo’s version is the source of the abundant qur’anic quotes in the legal tract Derecho Musulmán by Nido y Torres (1927),⁶³ which was officially sanctioned by the qaḍī al-quḍāt and Justice Minister, Sidi Hamed ben Mohamed el Erhoni,⁶⁴ making it essentially the “official translation” of the Spanish colonial apparatus in Morocco. And yet, years before, this same colonial apparatus had already spawned an attempt to translate the Qur’an directly into Spanish: the version of Aníbal Rinaldi, with which we will close this chapter.⁶⁵

6 Aníbal Rinaldi: The Spanish Kazimirski In his article “Galería de antiguos tangerinos,” Ruiz Orsatti⁶⁶ writes: “Don Aníbal has left us a Spanish translation of the Koran, which he spent his whole life

– Murguiondo: De los que creen en las cosas ocultas, cumplen exactamente con la oración, y hacen la limosna conveniente de los bienes, que les hemos dispensado.  However, unlike his predecessors, he adapts the French phonetic transcriptions to the Spanish vowel system, and substitutes the term “sura” with “chapter” (capítulo).  Manuel Nido y Torres. Derecho musulmán (Tétouan: Ed. Hispano-Africana, 1927). On this law manual, see Manuel C. Feria García, “Conflictos de legitimidad jurídica en Marruecos: el impacto del Protectorado,” in El Protectorado español en Marruecos: Gestión colonial e identidades, ed. Fernando Rodríguez Mediano and Helena de Felipe (Madrid: CSIC, 2003).  In his report, Erhoni states that the book “has provided an accurate translation of the quotes [from the Qur’an and Hadith].” Moreover, in the absence of direct translations into Spanish, these indirect translations via French became an indispensable source for studies on Islam by the so-called Spanish Africanists, and are thus cited in the bibliographies of authors such as Tomás García Figueras.  In 1913, the journal África española (30 – 7– 1913) announced a serialized and ready-to-bind direct translation of the Qur’an from the Arabic, accompanied by a biography of the Prophet by Augusto Vivero (Madrid: Impr. J. Martínez). However, based on the copies available through the Biblioteca Nacional de España’s Hemeroteca Digital online periodicals archive, it appears that only the biography was ever actually published, between the months of July 1913 and May 1914. In the same journal (15 – 9 – 1913) we also find a review of García Bravo’s indirect translation, about which it is said, “If a translation is like the reverse side of a tapestry, what is the translation of a translation? We find it unfortunate that we are still faced with just this.” I am grateful to Fernando Rodríguez Mediano and Isabel Boyano for this information.  Ricardo Ruiz Orsatti, “Galería de antiguos tangerinos,” Mauritania 18, no. 211 (1945), 174– 75.

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working on, and it has yet to be published. We are unaware of any other direct Spanish translation of The Book, par excellence, with the authority of someone like Kazimirski.” Immortalized by Benito Pérez Galdós in the novel Aita Tettauen and by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón in his Diario de un testigo de la Guerra de África, he had until recently remained a little-known figure.⁶⁷ There are clear parallels between the life of Aníbal Rinaldi (also Rinaldy or Reinaldi) (1829 – 1923) and that of Kazimirski. Both men not only translated the Qur’an, but also spent their lives working in diplomacy. Rinaldi was the head interpreter and backbone of the Spanish Legation in Morocco, in which capacity he became a key figure in Spanish-Moroccan negotiations from 1859 – 60 until his retirement in 1893. Born in Damascus,⁶⁸ from an early age he began to work as an official in the language interpretation division of the Spanish Ministry of State, and was posted to the Consulate General of Spain in Jerusalem in 1857. Two years later he was sent to Morocco as interpreter to the Headquarters of the Army of Africa, a post that would become permanent in 1866, after a brief interlude in Beirut and Syria. In addition to his official activities, he worked as secretary of the editorial team at the paper El Eco de Tetuán, and as an interpreter for various expeditions to Morocco, such as the one led by Granadan painter Mariano Bertuchi. His mastery of both Spanish and Arabic are beyond question. He is described as an astute interpreter who, in the course of diplomatic negotiations, was able to engage with his Moroccan counterparts in an in-depth linguistic debate as to the political ramifications of various Arabic legal terms’ semantic valences. He was not only an extraordinary polyglot, but also a devout bibliophile. He must have owned an impressive collection of Qur’ans and books on Morocco, and is known to have bought the best copies available by mail-order catalogue from antique book dealers in Paris. Both qualities afforded him a privileged starting point from which to take on the task of translating the core text of Islam.  Since being rediscovered by Jaume Bover, “Hoja de servicios del intérprete y arabista tangerino Aníbal Rinaldy, s. XIX,” Kasbah 7 (1996), 26 – 27, in recent years he has been studied by Manuel C. Feria García, “La traducción fehaciente del árabe: fundamentos históricos, jurídicos y metodológicos” (PhD diss., Universidad de Málaga, 2001), and especially by Mourad Zarrouk, Los traductores de España en Marruecos (1859 – 1939) (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2009), which are the two main sources for the biographical information about him that appears in this paper.  According to the certificate of his marriage to Esperanza Parisi (4 October 1869): “Aníbal Rinaldy, of Damascus, widower of Mrs. Dorlisca Guarnani, […] legitimate son of Mr. Miguel [Rinaldi], of Naples, and of Mrs. Teresa de Fabri, of Malta,” in Registros matrimoniales de la iglesia de Tánger (Libro tercero de Matrimonios, fol. 42, no. 192) published by P. José López in the journal Mauritania (1942).

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But, once again, history seems to repeat itself, and his version has yet to resurface. The former medic of the Spanish Legation in Tangier, Felipe Ovilo y Canales, in a brief book on Moroccan women, offers a succinct description of, in his words, Rinaldi’s “magnificent translation”:⁶⁹ The many years the translator has lived in Morocco and in the East, his vast philological knowledge, the languages he has mastered, which make him a true polyglot, his scrupulous study of the Qur’an, to which one could say he has dedicated his existence, endow Mr. Rinaldy with authority. He has not simply translated into our language as literally as possible the book of Mohamed: the translation is accompanied by a great number of erudite notes, some of them his own, others taken from Muslim commentators, and others extracted from the ideas about the matter issued by the most distinguished historians, philosophers and writers of Europe and the Americas. As a whole it provides a detailed overview of the religious status of Arabia prior to Mohamed, the results and changes obtained and introduced by the latter, and the history of his life and mission and his wars. When it is complete, this work is bound to powerfully draw the attention of all those working in this field of study.

The handful of translated and commented ayas cited in Ovilo y Canales’s essay offer a tiny glimpse of Rinaldi’s work,⁷⁰ demonstrating on the whole that the translator had a firm command of Spanish, and took a literal approach, in the best sense of the word, to the original Arabic.⁷¹ The insertions not present in the original are set in parentheses in the text. Some of his most apparent choices as translator are to translate Allāh as Dios (“God”), the use of the phrase en verdad (“truly”) to translate the Arabic particle inna, and the use of personal solutions that are infrequent among other translators, and thus speak to his version’s independence from those that came before it, e. g. raḥīm as hacedor de misericordia (“maker of mercy”), or mushrikūn as los que asocian (“those who associate”).

 Felipe Ovilo y Canales, La mujer marroquí. Estudio social (Madrid: Impr. M.G. Hernández, 1886), 28 – 29.  Index of the ayas translated and commented (according to his own numbering): Q. 2: 220, 222, 223, 226 – 36, 238; Q. 4: 1, 3, 8, 12– 14, 19, 23 – 24, 26 – 30, 38 – 39; Q. 24: 2– 4, 6 – 9, 23, 26, 31, 59; Q.30: 20; Q. 33: 35, 49, 51– 52, 55; Q. 60: 12. In P. Antonio de Alarcón’s Diario de un testigo de la Guerra de África (Madrid: Ediciones del Centro, 1974, 260) alongside various allusions to Rinaldi we find the following ayas translated: Q. 16: 106 – 8, 111.  See, for example, Ovilo, La mujer marroquí, 41– 42: “Del capítulo IV, Sura de las Mujeres”: “Versículo 3. Y si temiereis que no seréis equitativos con los huérfanos, casaos, entre las mujeres que os agraden, con dos, ó tres, ó cuatro (note); y si aún temiereis que no sereis justos, entonces con una, ó con lo que posea vuestra diestra (note); esto será más propio para que no os torzáis. Y dad á las mujeres su dote (note) libremente, pero si las pluguiere dejaros algo de él, de buen grado, gozadlo á gusto y solaz.”

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The content and abundance of the notes is striking,⁷² showcasing Rinaldi’s profound knowledge not only of the Arabic language, but also of Tafsīr (Islamic exegesis) and the Sunna (tradition). They also show that he was familiar with the bibliography on Aljamiado literature.⁷³ Lastly, he makes recourse to a tactic common to the period and used by Kazimirski as well (and, by extension, Ortiz de la Puebla and García Bravo): the use of Latin in notes commenting on morally delicate subject matter (e. g. Q. 2:223, 230). Unfortunately, his was a sad fate for a great translator. His longstanding and irreplaceable services as a translator were not rewarded in his later years with the position of consul that he so eagerly sought, and which was granted to many other fellow interpreters of Spanish origin. What is more, as his life’s work, the translation of the Qur’an, remains unpublished and missing, in the academic world he has likewise been unjustly forgotten.

Appendix Illustrations in Ortiz de la Puebla (1872):

 The notes that appear in Ovilo y Canales’s book may very well not be exactly the same as those that Rinaldi intended to accompany his version, as they may have been adapted for the purposes of the former’s arguments.  In addition to a reference indicating that in Aljamiado “dowry” was called acidaque (Ovilo, La mujer marroquí, 43, n.1), he reproduces (Ovilo, La mujer marroquí, 76 – 77, n.1) verses by the “Morisco poet Mohamed Rabadán, from Rueda del Río Jalón” attributing men’s privilege over women in inheritances to Eve’s disobedience.

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Fig. 1: “Mahoma y una de sus mujeres”.

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Fig. 2: “Levantándose las faldas”.

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Bibliography Alamín (O.F.M.Cap.), Félix de. Impugnación contra el Talmud de los judíos, al Corán de Mahoma, y contra los hereges, y segunda parte de la religión christiana. Madrid: Imprenta de Lorenço Francisco Mojados, 1727. Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de. Diario de un testigo de la Guerra de África. Madrid: Ediciones del Centro, 1974. Andrés, Juan. Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán / Opera Chiamata Confusione della setta machumetana. Edited by Ma Isabel García-Monge and Elisa Ruiz García, 2 vols. Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2003. Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “Bibliografía sobre las traducciones del Alcorán en el ámbito hispano.” Trans 11 (2007): 261 – 72. Arias Torres, Juan Pablo. “El Alcorán viaja a ultramar: las traducciones argentinas de mediados del siglo XX.” In De Homero a Pavese: hacia un canon iberoamericano de clásicos universales. Edited by. Juan Jesús Zaro and Salvador Peña, 16 – 38. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2017. Borrego, Andrés. El Corán traducido al castellano. Madrid: [n.p.],1844. Bover, Jaume. “Hoja de servicios del intérprete y arabista tangerino Aníbal Rinaldy, s. XIX.” Kasbah 7 (1996): 26 – 27. Cansinos Assens, Rafael. El Korán, versión literal e íntegra. Madrid: Aguilar, 1951. Casses Xaló Granel de RibasAltas, Joaquín. Theatro cathólico, ruina de la puerta othomana, de su Alcorán y secta y progressos de la Iglesia por las aguilas del imperio, Madrid: [n.p.], 1738. Castro, Consuelo de. A. Borrego. Periodismo Liberal Conservador 1830 – 1846. Madrid: M. Castellote, 1972. Codera y Zaidín, Francisco. Decadencia y desaparición de los almorávides en España. Edited by María Jesús Viguera Molins. Pamplona: Urgoiti, 2004. Compendio histórico de la vida del falso profeta Mahoma que escribió en francés en 1787 Mr de Pastoret, Traducido al castellano por D.J.D.T. Madrid: Oficina de Don Antonio de Sancha, 1788. Correa Ramón, Amelina. “Ensoñación y conocimiento del oriente islámico. El caso de Isaac Muñoz, escritor y periodista finisecular.” In Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción. Edited by Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla and Manuel C. Feria García, 93 – 108. Cuenca: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Castilla–La Mancha, 2000. Drira, Abdelhamid. “Kazimirski dans l’histoire du Coran: histoire de la traduction du Coran du XIIe s. au début du XXe siècle.” The Arabist. Budapest Studies in Arabic 40 (2019): 11 – 46. Drira, Abdelhamid and Grzegorz Kubacki. “Wojciech Biberstein-Kazimirski – orientalista i dyplomata.” Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kornickiej 37 (2020): 129 – 44. Du-Ryer, André (trans.). L’Alcoran de Mahomet. Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1647. Elmarsafy, Ziad. “Translations of the Qur’ān into Western Languages.” Religion Compass 3, no.3 (2009): 430 – 39. Epalza, Míkel de. “El profeta del islam, según el P. Traggia: una evolución católica de fines del XVIII.” Al-Andalus-Magreb 4 (1996): 91 – 104.

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Epalza, Míkel de. L’Alcorà, traducció de l’àrab al català, introducció a la lectura i cinc estudis alcorànics per Míkel de Epalza amb la col.laboració de Joseph Forcadell i Joan M. Perujo. Barcelona: Proa, 2001. Feria García, Manuel C. “La traducción fehaciente del árabe: fundamentos históricos, jurídicos y metodológicos.” PhD Diss., Universidad de Málaga, 2001. Feria García, Manuel C. “Conflictos de legitimidad jurídica en Marruecos: el impacto del Protectorado.” In El Protectorado español en Marruecos: Gestión colonial e identidades. Edited by Fernando Rodríguez Mediano and Helena de Felipe, 37 – 63. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2003. Fernández, Paz. Arabismo español del s. XVIII. Origen de una quimera. Madrid: ICMA, 1991. Ferrero Hernández, Cándida. “Pervivencia de tópicos medievales en el humanista Pedro Guerra de Lorca.” In Humanismo y pervivencia del mundo clásico. Edited by José María Maestre et al., 695 – 705. Alcañiz, Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Humanísticos, CSIC, 2015. Fórneas, María Celia. “Andrés Borrego pionero del periodismo parlamentario.” Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico 5 (1999): 143 – 57. García-Arenal, Mercedes, Katarzyna Starczewska and Ryan Szpiech. “The Perennial Importance of Mary’s Virginity and Jesus’ Divinity: Qur’anic Quotations in Iberian Polemics After the Conquest of Granada (1492).” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 20, no. 3 (2018): 51 – 80. García-Arenal, Mercedes and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Leiden: Brill, 2013. García Bravo, Joaquín. El Corán. Barcelona: Imprenta Vda. de Luis Tasso, 1907. García Goyena, Juan. Al-lanhk-bar (Alá es el más grande), Leyendas árabes. Madrid: Impr. Barea, 1905. García Masegosa, Antonio (ed.). Germán de Silesia. Interpretatio alcorani litteralis. Nueva Roma 32. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2009. Gerber de Robles, José. Al Korán o Dogmas y doctrinas civiles, morales, políticas y religiosas de los musulmanes precedido de la vida de Mahoma. Traducido exactamente del original árabe por Mr. Kazimirski. Madrid: Imprenta de D. Dionisio Hidalgo, 1844. Gonzalez de Santalla, Tirso. Manuductio ad conversionem mahumetanorum: in duas partes divisa: in prima, veritas religionis christianae catholicae romanae manifestis argumentis demonstratur: in secunda, falsitas mahumetanae sectae conuincitur. Madrid: Juan de Goyeneches, 1687. Gras y Elías, Francisco. Hijos ilustres de Reus. Barcelona: Imp. F. Giró, 1899. Guerra de Lorca, Pedro. Catecheses Mystogogicae pro Advenis Ex Secta Mahometana Ad Párrocos et Potestades. Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1586. Hanne, Olivier. L’Alcoran: comment l’Europe a découvert le Coran. Paris: Belin, 2019. Hidalgo, Dionisio. Diccionario general de bibliografía española. Madrid: Imprenta de las Escuelas Pías, 1862 – 81. Justel, Braulio. La Real Biblioteca de El Escorial y sus manuscritos árabes; sinopsis histórico-descriptiva. Madrid: IHAC, 1978. Jiménez Ortiz, Antonio. “New Age. El espejismo de una religiosidad sin Dios.” Revista de Fomento Social 48 (1993): 67 – 93.

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Litvak, Lily. El jardín de Aláh. Temas del exotismo musulmán en España (1880 – 1913). Granada: Don Quijote, 1985. López García, Bernabé. “Treinta años de arabismo español: el fin de la almogavaría científica (1967 – 97).” Awraq 18 (1997): 11 – 48. López-Morillas, Consuelo. El Corán de Toledo. Edición y estudio del manuscrito 235 de la Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha. Gijón: Trea, 2011. Martín, Manuel José. Historia verdadera del falso y perverso profeta Mahoma, sacada de San Eulogio, Juan Sagredo, Fray Jayme Bleda y otros historiadores. Madrid: Manuel Martín, 1781. Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino. Biblioteca de traductores españoles. Madrid: CSIC, 1952 – 53. Montero Vidal, José de. Mahoma. Su vida. El Corán. Madrid: Editorial Reus, 1927. Montoza Coca, Manuel. “Los Sermones de Don Martín García, obispo de Barcelona. Edición y estudio.” PhD Thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2018. https://hdl.handle.net/10803/650416. Murguiondo y Ugartondo, Benigno. Alcorán traducido fielmente al español, anotado y refutado según el dogma, la doctrina santa y la moral perfecta de la Santa Religión Católica Apostólica Romana. Madrid: Oficina tipográfica del Hospicio, 1875. Nido y Torres, Manuel. Derecho musulmán. Segunda edición cuidadosamente corregida y aumentada, en especial en la parte relativa a las costumbres jurídicas de las kábilas. Tétouan: Ed. Hispano-Africana, 1927. Obregón, Lope de. Confutación del Alcorán y secta mahometana, sacado de sus proprios libros y la vida del mesmo Mahoma. Granada: Sancho de Nebrija, 1555. Ortiz de la Puebla, Vicente. El Corán o Biblia mahometana, seguido de la biografía de Mahoma, primera versión española anotada y comentada según los más distinguidos comentadores del Corán. Barcelona: Juan Aleu, 1872. Ovilo y Canales, Felipe. La mujer marroquí. Estudio social. Madrid: Impr. M.G. Hernández, 1886. Peña Martín, Salvador. “La recepción iberoamericana de las Mil y una noches.” Castilla. Estudios de Literatura 8 (2017): 27 – 61. Pérez de Chinchón, Bernardo. Antialcorano; Diálogos cristianos, conversión y evangelización de moriscos. Edited by Francisco Pons Fuster. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2000. Rodríguez Mediano, Fernando and Mercedes García-Arenal. “Diego de Urrea y algún traductor más: en torno a las versiones de los Plomos.” Al-Qantara 23, no. 2 (2002): 499 – 516. Ruiz Orsatti, Ricardo. “Galería de antiguos tangerinos.” Mauritania 18, no. 211 (1945): 174 – 75. Ruiz García, Elisa. “Estudio introductorio.” In Juan Andrés, Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán. Edited by Mª Isabel García-Monge and Elisa Ruiz García, 2 vols. Mérida: Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2003. Saavedra y Moragas, Eduardo. “El Alcorán.” In Conferencias, 123 – 38. Madrid: Inst. Libre de Enseñanza, 1877 – 78. Sánchez Doncel, Gregorio. La verdad histórica del islam de ayer y hoy. Madrid: [n.p.], 2004. Santo Tomás de Aquino, Manuel de. Verdadero carácter de Mahoma y de su religión: Justa idea de este falso profeta, sin alabarle con exceso, ni deprimirle con odio. Valencia: Francisco Bruguete, 1793. Schack, Adolf Friedrich von. Poesía y arte de los árabes en España y Sicilia. Translated by Juan Valera. Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1871.

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Szpiech, Ryan, Mercedes García-Arenal and Katarzyna Starczewska. “Deleytaste del dulce sono y no pensaste en las palabras: Rendering Arabic in the Antialcoranes.” Journal of Transcultural Medieval Studies 5, no. 1 (2018): 99 – 132. Torres Palomo, María Paz. “Las Orientales de Pedro de Lahitte[te]: una traducción ¿exótica? del XIX.” In El papel del traductor. Edited by E. Morillas and J.P. Arias, 195 – 215. Salamanca: Colegio de España, 1997. Zarrouk, Mourad. Los traductores de España en Marruecos (1859 – 1939). Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2009.

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José Filiberto Portillo: Qur’an, Poetry and Exile in the Court of Isabel II 1 Introduction This chapter deals with a document that we will refer to as “The Queen’s Qur’an,” whose existence was brought to our attention by Fernando Bouza, to whom we are deeply grateful. “The Queen’s Qur’an”¹ is a unique document: as we shall see when we describe it further along, it comprises multiple parts, the most important of which is, without a doubt, the translation in verse of various suras of the Qur’an. Its author is Filiberto Portillo, who wrote the text in Paris in 1850, and addressed it to the mother of Isabel II, Queen Mother María Cristina de Borbón de las Dos Sicilias. To better understand the circumstances which gave rise to this document, we will begin by setting out some of the most important events in the life of Filiberto Portillo, whose fate was tied up with the fraught events of the nineteenth-century Spanish political sphere. Portillo was a military man and minister who was caught up in corruption scandals, exiled, nearly married an infanta, and, finally, succumbed to mental illness. “The Queen’s Qur’an” was written at a critical juncture in his life and, as we will see, constitutes a very personal take on certain cultural elements of the period’s liberal movement.

2 Spain, 1843 Around 1843, Spanish political life underwent one of the many upheavals and changes of course that characterized the entire nineteenth century. At the end

 José Filiberto Portillo, “El Korán,” 14 March 1850, Paris. Private collection, Madrid. Note: This article has been made possible by the European Research Council Synergy Grant: “The European Qur’an: Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion, 1150 – 1850,” (Grant Agreement 810141-EuQu), coord. and PI: Mercedes García-Arenal; and “Orientalismo y verdad: la influencia de la erudición oriental en el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico en la España Moderna” (FFI2017 – 86538-P), PIs: Fernando Rodríguez Mediano and Mercedes García-Arenal; in the framework of the CSIC Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform (PTI) “Social and Cultural History of the Mediterranean: Local Contexts, Global Dynamics” PTI MEDhis. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-018

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of the war against the Napoleonic occupation, known in Spain as the War of Independence (1808 – 14), the Bourbon monarch Fernando VII reclaimed the throne. In broad terms, his reign was characterized by absolutist policies and a harsh repression of liberalism. Upon his death in 1833, his daughter Isabel was a mere three years old. Royal succession had, by this time, become a fraught issue for several reasons. Fernando VII had taken care to repeal the law that had barred women from the direct line of royal succession so that his daughter Isabel would inherit the throne, as long as there was no male heir. However, the most radical faction of the absolutist wing refused to accept a female heir and denied Isabel’s right to the throne, creating an ultra-Catholic and traditionalist movement called Carlism (after the name of the pretender Don Carlos). Carlism’s dire opposition to liberalism, especially in the Basque Country and Catalonia, set in motion a grueling chain of civil wars that left a bloody stain on the nineteenth century in Spain. Faced with this problematic context, and because Isabel II was still a child, at first Fernando VII’s widow, María Cristina, acted as regent. After Fernando’s death, María Cristina contracted a morganatic marriage with royal guard Fernando Muñoz, who through this union was able to join the ranks of the nobility as the Duke of Riánsares. Fernando Muñoz was to play a crucial role in the politics of the period, as we will see. Without going into the convoluted details of the Spanish political history of the 1830s and 40s, we can pick out some of its overarching structural aspects. On the one hand, there is a shift from the absolute monarchy of Fernando VII toward a constitutional monarchy. This transformation was brought about in particular by the constitution of 1837, promoted by progressive liberals. On the other, throughout the nineteenth century the Spanish army played a preponderant role in politics. Many of the period’s political shifts were brought about by military coups, revolts or uprisings, creating a situation in which it seemed only natural for the top generals to also lead the various political parties, and to intervene by force in public matters. The clash between moderate and progressive liberals in the late 1830s sparked a military uprising known as the Revolution of 1840, which brought to power the most prestigious general of the period, Baldomero Espartero, a hero of the Carlist Wars and ally of the progressive wing. In 1840 Espartero was named regent, and María Cristina, the mother of Queen Isabel II, went into exile. Espartero’s regency lasted three years, and was equally full of troubles. In 1841 there was a failed uprising of moderate generals and politicians that, nevertheless, left Espartero in a position of weakness, which was compounded by the growing opposition of the most radical liberals to what was becoming a de facto personal dictatorship. The result was another military rebellion, supported by a

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coalition of moderates and progressives, which in 1843 managed to strip Espartero of the regency. Between 1843 and 1844, during a period of severe political instability, several far-reaching events took place. In terms of the Crown’s standing, the end of Espartero’s regency once again brought the problem of Queen Isabel II’s age to the fore. It was an important issue in a context where political decisions often played out in the courtly sphere, and depended on each party’s ability to sway the will of the girl queen. In the end, in November 1843, Isabel II was declared to be of age at just thirteen years old. Her mother, María Cristina, returned to Spain in February 1844, once again taking on a central role in the politics of the period. As for the government, the instability of these months gave rise to a succession of governments that fell one after another due to the bitter clashes between the progressive and moderate parties. In the end, the balance of power shifted in favor of the latter, with the formation of a government led by Luis González Bravo. This government is regarded as one of transition, insofar as, while not all of its members belonged to the Moderate Party, it did signal the beginning of this party’s hegemony for over a decade, presided over (regardless of whether he was actually prime minister at any given time), by general Ramón María Narváez. Although González Bravo’s government lasted only a matter of months, from December 1843 to May 1844, its political actions were very significant. Taking advantage of an armed uprising in Alicante and Cartagena, it set in motion a fierce policy of repression against the progressive liberals, imposing a state of exception, shutting down parliament, removing progressive civil servants from the government, reinstating the censorship bureau, disbanding the Milicia Nacional (seen as allied with the progressives), and promoting the foundation of a new branch of the armed forces: the Guardia Civil. Because of these measures, when the González Bravo government fell in May of 1844 and a new government was formed by General Narváez, the groundwork had already been laid for a decade of political control by the moderate wing, via a new constitution ratified soon thereafter, in 1845. The reason we have lingered on the subject of the first González Bravo government is that his Minister of the Navy, Commerce and Overseas Governance was José Filiberto Portillo, the author of “The Queen’s Qur’an”.

3 José Filiberto Portillo José Filiberto Portillo Fernández de Velasco was born in 1810 in Valencia, although his family hailed from Cuenca. Like his father before him, he pursued a career in the military, and began his studies at the Spanish Army’s Academy

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of Engineers, although he was forced to quit in 1831 after the death of his father. From there he took up active duty in various units, and garnered attention for his performance in the First Carlist War (1833 – 1840). He rose through the ranks until being named field marshal. His political career began in 1843, when he was elected to parliament. That same year, as we have seen, he was appointed Minister of the Navy, Commerce and Overseas Governance under the González Bravo administration. His term in office, however, was short-lived; the González Bravo administration lasted mere months, and the ability of a ministry like Filiberto’s to take meaningful political action was scarce. One can get an idea of what Portillo thought of the current state of the Spanish Navy from a small booklet addressed to Queen Isabel II and published in 1844. The title itself refers to the “decadent state of the Spanish Armada,”² and gives an idea as to his pessimism, not only toward the purview of his own ministry, but also toward Spanish politics in general. In comparing his own period with the key moment in the decline of the Spanish Empire in the late seventeenth century, Portillo writes, “then, as now, the country was gripped by the consequences of a civil war, commerce and industry were barely limping along, crops failed, the public treasury was penniless, the political parties were fiercely divided, the Navy was overlooked by all, and the overseas dominions were left unprotected.”³ Portillo’s pessimistic tone may be understood as part of a widespread, clichéd sentiment as to the state of Spain and its navy, but also provides clues as to how he viewed his own task as minister: a quick analysis of his initiatives while in office seems to indicate that he was keenly aware of the problems facing him, and of some potential solutions. A variety of explanations have been put forward as to the fall of the González Bravo government. When María Cristina returned from exile, the enmity between the Queen Mother and the current president resurfaced – as a journalist, González Bravo had been one of her harshest critics. Now, with María Cristina again in a position of power, and with González Bravo’s government debilitated by the effects of the prolonged state of exception and the repressive campaign against the progressives, General Narváez saw an opportunity to claim the post of prime minister for himself. However, apart from deeper political issues, the lasting

 Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the Spanish are ours. Where relevant, we have included the original in the footnotes.  José Filiberto Portillo, Exposición dirigida a Su Magestad por el Ministro de Marina, Comercio y Gobernación de Ultramar, sobre el estado decadente de la Armada española y los medios de su fomento, con algunas resoluciones consiguientes o de la misma referencia (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1844), 8.

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memory of the government’s downfall would besmirch the Minister of the Navy’s good name. Indeed, although the repression of the uprising in Alicante and Cartagena had already sparked rumors of a government crisis, such an outcome was not officially on the table until late April, when the moderate daily El Heraldo argued that Filiberto Portillo, Member of Parliament from Cuenca, had not done all he could to support the “friends of the government” in the provincial legislature of his home province, choosing instead to aid the body’s progressive members.⁴ The next day, the same paper lashed out at Portillo for forcing an elderly and prestigious general to justify the expenses of the department he oversaw. In El Heraldo’s view, this act of insolence was reason enough to unleash a crisis of government.⁵ It is not hard to read into this criticism the difficult position that Portillo had in this government: he was not a true moderate, but rather came from the ranks of the progressive wing. As such, he was regarded as a foreign body within an administration that was paving the way for the absolute hegemony of the moderate wing, generating an almost warlike atmosphere. Portillo’s weak position perhaps explains in part the aspect of his activity that, in the collective memory, would forever marry his name to the fall of the government: his implication in various corruption scandals. In late May of this same year, just weeks after Portillo was removed from office, the papers started to report on a serious case of corruption in his ministry. The progressive paper El Clamor Público broke the story that various civil servants of the Ministry of the Navy had been sacked after taking part in a fraudulent contract, while the true culprit, Portillo, had gone unpunished. In the ploy, a private financier named José Buschental had financed the construction of four steamships by issuing the government a series of promissory notes. However, Portillo had ordered he be paid back in cash, whereby the financier, who had not actually paid a penny, made off with an immense sum of money (ten million reals, as it later emerged).⁶ The next day, El Heraldo, the main moderate paper and staunch defender of the government, picked up on the story of these “serious events,” adding that, if they turned out to be true, they “could by no means go forgotten and unpunished.”⁷ However, this condemnation of Portillo by two newspapers with direly opposed political loyalties had a different slant in each case: for El Clamor Público the case exemplified the excesses of the Gonzá-

   

El Heraldo, 27 April 1844. “Crisis ministerial,” El Heraldo, 28 April 1844. “Un fraude,” El Clamor Público, 31 May 1844. “Parte política,” El Heraldo, 1 June 1844.

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lez Bravo administration, while for El Heraldo the crime was strictly on Portillo’s hands. In any case, the scandal gained momentum in the press over the following weeks, as new revelations emerged: on 5 June, El Clamor Público published an article titled “Otro milagro del Sr. Portillo” (“Another of Mr. Portillo’s miracles”), reporting that Portillo had organized an expedition to Fernando Póo (presentday Biako, Equatorial Guinea) that never actually took place. A private trader had signed three promissory notes to finance the expedition but, when the third note expired, it had already been cashed in by the person in charge of organizing the expedition.⁸ A few days later, the same paper published another article, “Tercer milagro del Sr. Portillo” (“Mr. Portillo’s third miracle”),⁹ which reported that, during his time as minister, Portillo had taken advantage of his position to buy and sell stocks through a figurehead —another corruption scandal that thus entered the realm of public opinion. Portillo tried to defend himself against this accusation in the same paper,¹⁰ but by then rumors had already spread in Madrid that he had gone into hiding, or even that he had fled to Paris. In fact, the French press had also picked up on the story, likewise reporting that he had fled to Paris. The Republican paper Le Charivari published the article “Les amis de M. Guizot” (“The friends of Mr. Guizot”), which voiced the opinion that the González Bravo government received its orders directly from François Guizot, the strongman of the French government, who in France had only managed to pull off an imperfect version of the repressive measures that González Bravo had successfully implemented in Spain. And now Portillo, one of these “friends of Guizot,” who had been caught red-handed, had sought refuge in Paris.¹¹ Whatever the case may be, Portillo’s reputation was forever tainted, and several years later, in 1848, his corruption scandals were again taken up on the floor of the Spanish parliament.¹² However, for all of the uproar they garnered in the press, none of these corruption scandals ever translated into real legal troubles for Portillo. We know that he came back to Spain shortly after fleeing, and that he carried on with his more or less irregular economic activities. For example, he was part of the company that was subcontracted to build the Madrid-Valencia railroad in 1845. The company was set up with British capital but run by Spaniards, among

 “Otro milagro del Sr. Portillo,” El Clamor Público, 5 June 1844.  “Tercer milagro del Sr. Portillo,” El Clamor Público, 8 June 1844.  “El señor Portillo,” El Clamor Público, 16 June 1844.  “Les amis de M. Guizot,” Le Charivari, 26 June 1844.  Antonio Pirala, Historia contemporánea. Anales desde 1843 hasta la conclusión de la actual guerra civil, vol. I (Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1875), 258 – 89.

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them Portillo, alongside Juan José García Carrasco, Count of Santa Olalla and Minister of Finance under González Bravo¹³ —two men who, therefore, belonged to a clearly defined economic and political group. Moreover, in February 1846 he was promoted to the rank of field marshal under somewhat unclear circumstances.¹⁴ He was also named knight of the Order of Santiago, like his father and brother before him.¹⁵ That Portillo had managed to hold onto his economic and political position despite the scandals that had forced him out of the ministry is made clear in the opinions that progressive liberals voiced about him. Comparing him to leading figures of Spanish liberalism like Pascual de Madoz, one article in the French press asked, “What will the Narváezes, the Portillos, and so many of our other adversaries say –they who yesterday were poor and today insult the destitute public by flaunting their scandalous opulence.”¹⁶ What are we to make of all of this information on Portillo and his corruption scandals? To a large extent, Filiberto Portillo is a typical politician of the period. The decade from 1844 – 1854 marked a decisive moment in the Spanish bourgeoisie’s conversion to the world of speculative capitalism (especially in Madrid). The policies of the moderate governments encouraged the accumulation of capital, which took the form of the creation of new banks.¹⁷ Likewise, the Spanish stock exchange, founded a decade earlier, expanded immensely alongside the emergence of major financiers who set the course of the period’s economics and politics. In the fraudulent shipbuilding contract of Portillo’s Ministry of the Navy, the financier was José Buschental, a well-known French businessman and speculator who spent time in Spain before settling in Uruguay. During his time in Spain, Buschental was a business partner of José de Salamanca, Marquis of Salamanca, one of the key public figures of the day. A financier and politician who at one point was the Minister of Finance, he took part in major speculative transactions that left him bankrupt, was involved in one of the period’s most lucrative sectors, the railroad, and also participated in the real estate sector (in fact, the Barrio de Salamanca, one of Madrid’s most upscale neighborhoods, still bears his name). Of course, many of these schemes were able to move forward thanks to collaboration with the political sphere. In the case of the Marquis

 Telesforo-Marcial Hernández Sempere, Ferrocarriles y capitalismo en el País Valenciano, 1843 – 1879 (Valencia: Ayuntamiento de Valencia, 1983), 34– 37; Juan Pro Ruiz, “Poder político y poder económico en el Madrid de los moderados (1844– 1854),” Ayer 66 (2007), 36.  “Más sobre crisis,” El Espectador, 13 February 1846.  Archivo Histo´rico Nacional (AHN), OM-CABALLEROS SANTIAGO, Mod.218.  “Nouvelles d’Espagne,” L’Observateur des Pyrénées, 8 January 1845.  Miguel Artola, Historia de España Alfaguara V. La burguesía revolucionaria (1808 – 1874), 3rd ed. (Madrid: Alianza Universidad, 1975), 81.

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of Salamanca, his friendship and subsequent falling out with General Narváez, which marked much of his career, is well known. Like Portillo, many of the period’s politicians took advantage of their position to get rich on the stock market. It was also a bourgeoisie that built its own cultural structure, largely on a French model: in the case of Buschental, his wife, the Brazilian-born María de Pereira, hosted one of Madrid’s most important salons.¹⁸ The Moderate decade, then, marks the birth of a speculating bourgeoisie that was able to prosper through its political connections. In this sense, Portillo is representative of the period’s economic and political sphere. The concept of a ‘relationship between the economic and political spheres’ is perhaps too inexact to describe the complex intertwining of the two in the Spain of Isabel II: the Moderate Party was built on a network of private interests intimately tied up with the Royal Court, and with almost exclusive access to the resources of political power.¹⁹ More than the political articulation of a specific ideology, the Moderate Party was made up of notables bound together by a set of common interests, organized as a network of patronage based on the exchange of favors and loyalty to a political leader.²⁰ Many of these personal and patronage relationships were forged in exile, a very common experience among those who lived through the complex and violent political universe of nineteenth-century Spain. Here Portillo’s example is once again illustrative: his time in France afforded him the opportunity to reinforce his patronage network,²¹ while at the same time giving us some insight into his French-style political and cultural leanings, so important among Spanish liberals. On the other hand, as we have said, access to the Royal Court constituted an essential resource for the period’s politics. The Queen Mother, María Cristina, and in particular her husband Fernando Muñoz, named Duke of Riánsares in February 1844, formed the core of this web of client politics. Starting with her exile during Espartero’s time in power, the couple had begun to rally the opposition against his regency, and to shape the Moderate Party that would come to power in 1843. The activities of the Duke of Riánsares are illustrative of the makeup of a clientele clan whose activity is essential in order to understand the politics of this

 Irene Mendoza Martín and Fernando Moya Berlanga, “María Buschental: una salonnière en Madrid,” Estudios de Historia de España 22, no, 2 (2020).  Pro, “Poder político,” 29 – 30.  Pro, “Poder político,” 30.  For example, in August 1844 we find a report that Portillo was in Bayonne at the same time as Carrasco, the outgoing Minister of Finance and future partner in the Madrid–Valencia railroad, in the 12 August 1844 edition of La France.

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time.²² As we will see in the next section, Portillo, who knew this world of clientelism all too well, frequently wrote the Duke of Riánsares to ask for help with what seems to have been another key moment in his life: his failed attempt to marry an infanta.

4 A Royal Marriage An issue that came to the fore in the early 1840s was who Queen Isabel II and her sister Luisa Fernanda were to marry.²³ Isabel II, as we have seen, was born in 1830, and her sister Luisa Fernanda was born in 1832. We have also seen how the issue of who was to succeed Fernando VII sparked long-lasting political and dynastic strife, with a series of bitter civil wars throughout the nineteenth century —the so-called Carlist Wars. Against this backdrop, and given the permanent political instability of these years, the issue of dynastic continuity became hugely important, and not only in Spain. The European powers, in particular France and Great Britain, had concrete political interests in the matter, in addition to the ability to veto certain candidates. Thus, in the European diplomatic circles of the period, the issue came to be known as “the Affair of the Spanish Marriages.” After many proposals, candidates, vetoes and discussions, in a joint ceremony that took place on 10 October 1846, Luisa Fernanda wed Antoine d’Orléans, Duke of Montpensier, while Isabel II married her cousin, Francisco de Asís de Borbón. The latter’s father was Francisco de Paula de Borbón, a brother of Fernando VII, while his mother was a sister of the Queen Mother, María Cristina. In other words, Isabel II was Francisco de Asís’s first cousin on both sides. Their marriage was a failure, on both a personal and political level, and was regarded, even at that time, as a “distinguished mistake” (desacierto insigne).²⁴ Already in 1847, and in part due to Isabel II’s relationship with General Serrano, the royal marriage underwent a severe crisis that saw the king consort banished from the Royal Palace. The impact of this chaotic mixture of royal immorality, economic scandal and political crisis²⁵ was so great that there was even talk

 Cristina Bienvenida Martínez García, “Política y corrupción en la corte isabelina. El ascenso del ‘Clan de Tarancón,’” Los Libros de la Corte 22 (2021).  Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II. Una biografía (1830 – 1904) (Barcelona: Penguin Random House, 2018), 159 on.  Burdiel, Isabel II, 159.  Isabel Burdiel, “La revolución del poder: escándalos, género y política de la monarquía liberal en España,” Historia y Política 39 (2018).

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of deposing Isabel in favor of her sister Luisa Fernanda, a possibility encouraged by the Duke of Montpensier, who himself sought the Spanish crown. In this context of rampant crisis, known at the time as “the Palace Affair” (la cuestión de Palacio) —which forced the monarchy to adopt a new direction, even over the objections of the queen herself ²⁶— there was an episode that seems to have left a deep mark on Portillo’s biography: his failed attempt to secure marriage with the infanta Josefa Fernanda de Borbón, a sister of the king consort Francisco de Asís and, as such, cousin and sister-in-law to Isabel II. The episode is somewhat murky: Josefa, who had a strong and independent character, was considered by her contemporaries to lead a licentious life. We know that in 1848 she contracted a morganatic marriage with poet and progressive politician José Güell, for which she was stripped of her royal privileges. However, a year before she married Güell, but when she must have already known him, there arose a plan to have her married to Filiberto Portillo. Portillo himself seems to have viewed the project as a viable option, and the royal family appears to have supported it at one point because it would have kept infanta Josefa —or Pepita, as she was known in private— in check, and kept her away from Güell. Apparently, there was a rumor in July 1847 that Portillo would be named Captain General of the Philippines, even though the government was firmly opposed to their union.²⁷ In September of that year, Portillo wrote to the Duke of Riánsares. In his letter, he asked the Duke to intercede in favor of his marrying the infanta Josefa. The text suggests that, at least in Portillo’s view, their affection was mutual, but that their marriage plans had come up against “immense obstacles.” These obstacles, although expressed as “old-fashioned worries and time-honored, or even old-fashioned, inequalities,” were in fact, to Portillo’s mind, politically motivated. He, however, claimed to have no ulterior motives, and that if the marriage were to go ahead, he intended to go live with the infanta in Paris so that she could enjoy all the city had to offer. As Portillo told Fernando Muñoz, whose family also hailed from Cuenca, if the wedding were finally held, both families would have “identical political needs” and could look out for each other; “in this and in everything,” he adds, “I think we would be able to see eye to eye in Paris.”²⁸ The letter is highly revealing, as it demonstrates that, even if the relationship between Portillo and the infanta Josefa were based on

 Burdiel, Isabel II, 209.  “Crónica de la capital. Rumores,” El Clamor Público, 6 July 1847, accessed 31 July 2021.  Letter from Filiberto Portillo to Fernando Muñoz, Burgos, 21 September 1847; AHN, DiversosTítulos Familias, 3540, LEG.4, Exp.4, doc. 17.

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mutual affection, it was also closely constrained by the political context, and, moreover, everyone was aware of the importance of establishing a relationship that would tie Portillo to the client network of Tarancón (Cuenca), headed by this same Fernando Muñoz.²⁹ From this moment on, in a series of letters sent between October and December to the Duke of Riánsares, Portillo tells how his circumstances progressively worsen: the government has barred him from entering Madrid, and, although he finally manages to reach the capital, he is arrested in his own home and banished to Valencia. He wonders whether his fall into disgrace has to do with his attempt to marry the infanta, or if the marriage is just an excuse used by his political foes in order to get rid of him. To top it off, the (not so) old shipbuilding scandal has found its way back into the political debate, as the second-to-last nail in the coffin of his political career. During this period, Filiberto Portillo wrote two books aimed at defending this political career: Memorias políticas del general Don José Filiberto Portillo,³⁰ written in 1848, is essentially an attempt to clear his name in the financial scandals, and as such only refers in passing to his failed plans to marry the infanta — a project that, he says, was not his idea, but was proposed by “people in HM the Queen’s closest circle.”³¹ Two years later, this time from Paris, he wrote a second book defending his reputation,³² this time centered directly on the matter of his unsuccessful marriage plans, and in which he defines himself as “the first person in Spain to throw his support behind repealing the death penalty, except in the armed forces, and who […] is one of the staunchest enemies of the slave trade.”³³ From the book we know that he spent several months of 1848 banished to Valencia, where he suffered from a severe eye condition, and that he finally did manage to return to Madrid and see the Queen in order to voice to her his complaints against the government’s behavior. In the course of one of these royal audiences at the Palace, on 12 February 1849, dressed in his general’s uniform, he was arrested on the orders of General Narváez himself, and was beaten and pushed around before those present, and then placed under house arrest. In the end, Portillo managed to flee, visit his mother’s grave, and request asylum in France in April of that year.³⁴

 Martínez García, “Política y corrupción.”  José Filiberto Portillo, Memorias políticas del general Don José Filiberto Portillo (Madrid: [n.p.] [1848]).  Portillo, Memorias políticas, 24– 25.  José Filiberto Portillo, Précis historique des motifs de son émigration (Paris: Imprimerie Pollet et Compagnie, 1850).  Portillo, Précis historique, 8.  Portillo, Précis historique, 20 on.

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Reading this book, one can perceive just how greatly this event affected Portillo. As we have said, exile was by no means an exceptional experience in nineteenth-century Spain. In this case, however, one gets the impression that this particular episode broke the former minister’s spirits. In 1850 we know that he was in Algeria, where many Spanish liberals sought refuge. Using a French passport, he assumed the false title of Duke of Lepanto.³⁵ The following year, Francisco Javier Istúriz, then the Spanish ambassador to London, sent back a report about “incidents involving certain sick Spaniards residing in London.” One of these Spaniards was Portillo, who continued to refer to himself as the Duke of Lepanto, and was in the grips of an “attack of dementia.”³⁶ Indeed, from this point on, all the information about Portillo points to his poor state of mental health, which had him committed to a French insane asylum for thirty years, until his death. Of interest for the purposes of the present study is the fact that already in 1849, during his time in exile in France, he began sending poems to both Queen Isabel II and her mother María Cristina, undoubtedly in an attempt to curry the favor of the Royal Household. In one of these missives, he wrote to the Queen Mother: “In exile I have taken up the odd habit of writing verses, without relinquishing my position as independent and fair […]. Your Majesty, who is familiar with my character, knows that these verses must mean a great deal, a very great deal indeed, to their author in order for him to share them […].”³⁷ Portillo also mentions sending poems to María Cristina in the book he published while in exile in Paris, in which he gave his version of the events that forced him to leave Spain. In his Précis historique des motifs de son émigration, he states (in French): Five months ago I sent Her Majesty’s Government some of my own poems, beseeching her to let me grace the title of my Literary Works with her name. The Minister has not deigned to reply to the émigré. When the public gets a hold of these works, they will do justice to both, the scholarly Minister and the General of the armed forces, who instead of conspiring, makes use of his time in exile to prove that arms and letters can march together as true sisters.³⁸

 Juan Bautista Vilar, Los españoles en la Argelia francesa (1830 – 1914) (Madrid, Murcia: CEHCSIC, Universidad de Murcia, 1989), 275.  Juan Pérez de Guzmán y Gallo, “Colección Istúriz-Baüer,” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 75 (1919), 121.  Letter from Filiberto Portillo to María Cristina de Borbón, Bayonne, 21 July 1849, AHN, Diversos-Títulos Familias, 3415, leg. 152, exp. 1.  Portillo, Précis historique, notes historiques n. 3.

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It is at this moment, in which the defeated Portillo was in exile, steadily losing control of his faculties and seeking to gain the Crown’s forgiveness through his writings, when he wrote “The Queen’s Qur’an”.

5 “The Queen’s Qur’an” In March 1849, from Paris, Filiberto Portillo sent Queen Mother María Cristina, mother of Isabel II, a text comprising three parts:³⁹ an introduction, the translation of several suras of the Qur’an, and a poem of his own. Under the title, it includes a version of aya 24:26: aya 24:26, Portillo’s version

English translation of Portillo’s version

El Koran

The Koran

Las mugeres sin rubor se hicieron para los hombres sin rubor

Shameless women were made for shameless men

Los hombres sin él para las mugeres deshonestas

Men without shame for dishonest women

Las mugeres de virtud para los hombres de honor

Women of virtue for men of honor

Los hombres honrados para las mugeres de virtud

Honorable men for women of virtue

El indulgente los premia con dones magníficos

The Merciful rewards them with magnificent gifts

Libro Canto de la luz capítulo XXIV versículo XXVI⁴⁰

Book Canto of the Light, chapter XXIV verse XXVI

This aya, which opens the text, relates to various issues that were on Portillo’s mind during this moment of his life. Male–female relations, honor, virtue and honesty, in addition to clemency on the part of a supreme authority —divine clemency in the case of the Qur’an, but, read against the backdrop of Portillo’s personal and political circumstances, it also relates to worldly authority, i. e. the clemency of Queen Isabel II, to whom he appeals in his writings.⁴¹

 Portillo, El Korán. The document has no folio or page numbers. Unless otherwise indicated, the quotes in this section correspond to the manuscript.  All of the qur’anic references in Portillo’s versions correspond to the Ḥafṣ reading of the Qur’an.  In the text analyzed here he states, “there is only one person who can erase the marks of my anger, as a woman; the Queen of Spain, doña Isabel of Bourbon.”

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The introductory text is a fifteen-page letter addressed and dedicated to María Cristina. In it, Portillo praises the merits of the qur’anic text, the importance of becoming familiar with it, and the reason why he has taken on such a task. The text begins as follows: Dear Madam, The Koran is a book that cannot be read by young ladies, much less explained in verse, let alone put to verse by men of my temperament and passions. Only men and married women, who have had children or suffered disappointments, can delve into this book, where the natural secrets are more out in the open than in the Holy Bible.

In his view, the Qur’an confirms or reaffirms the truth of the Bible. He believes that an “Enlightened Christianity,” to which he subscribes, “ought to become familiar with it.” His praise for the text walks a fine line, at once asserting that in the Qur’an “the natural secrets are more out in the open than in the Holy Bible,” while at the same time referring to it as “philosophical plagiarism,” since Muḥammad lived long after the time of Jesus. His defense of the importance and interest of the Qur’an is in all cases qualified by remarks clarifying his intentions. For example, he says, “I do not intend to celebrate the law of the Son of Amina, the Koreïchite priestess of the Hijaz, but rather to prove, with this law in hand, that the Christian religion is better than what its enemies say.” Moreover, he questions some of the more widespread clichés about Islam in this period. In other instances, he refers to polygamy and the supposed sexual liberality of Islam. About this he states, “If limitless carnal pleasure is the prize of the Prophet’s eternal life, how could it be the normal state of this transitory or trial life?” For Portillo, those who defend this reading of Islam are enemies of Christianity, who disfigure in this way the doctrine of the Qur’an. He says, “Those enthusiasts of this religion, who in its name and drawn by its appeal, try to use it to undermine our Christian beliefs, promise in this mundane life the glory of the hereafter of the resurrection. What, then, do they reserve for the afterlife? More of the same? What does it matter, then, whether one is a believer or an infidel, good or evil?” As we will see in the poetic composition included at the end of his text, Portillo offers his own interpretation of the Islamic paradise. These clichés, he argues, go hand-in-hand with atheism: the Christian religion is better than what its enemies say: Islamism is not what they would have us believe and […] social disorder is not, in principle, the work of any powerful religion, but rather is a consequence of atheism, the absence of all religions, a product of a rough and lazy mind.

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However, his exercise in qur’anic studies is ultimately just another way of talking about the wrongs and injustices committed against his person: his arrest, his expulsion from the Palace, his failed marriage to the infanta, or his implication in corruption scandals. In this fragment we can observe how he weaves together the unfair situation in which he feels he has been placed by “a portion of the Spanish people” and the queen, with his exile, his turn toward literature, and the poems of his that he sends in this period. One can also sense the frustration and hopelessness that must have taken hold of him: With my foot in the stirrup, ready to leave France behind and seek out, among the seas that surround Europe,⁴² what I need in order to escape the state I have been put in by the injustice of a portion of the Spanish people and by her majesty the queen, I have found it necessary for my honor, and for that of my surname, to lay at Your Majesty’s feet —oh lady whom I have long admired as a good mother— these: poems! That contain a veritable profession of faith, both political and religious, and demonstrate my explanation and clearly prove that I have not squandered away my youth on trifling matters, but rather have used it to study arms, letters, the humanities and theological dogmas; to observe the world; and to turn my own youthful mistakes into books of learning that, with my life laid bare, I wish to return to that very world I look at with such profound disappointment. It will be good for the Spanish nation and the females of the House of Bourbon to know before my farewell exactly what they have missed out on with their affront of February 1849.

After this introductory text begins the section containing the translations, in which he again makes clear what motivated him to translate these suras: In studying this book I was delighted to find the confirmation even of some of the mysteries of our own holy Christian religion. This has pushed me to translate with enthusiasm many of the articles or ‘revelations’ of the great legislator of the East, Mohamed, the philosopher warrior, the mover of masses par excellence.

Muḥammad: legislator, philosopher and warrior. Portillo’s description dialogues with Machiavelli’s concept of the “armed prophet,” as Muḥammad was often considered in European thought.⁴³ In his own biography, Portillo felt that the combination of these two aspects, arms and letters, was fundamental. If we add to this the use of the term “affront” to describe his treatment in the quote above, along with “martyred,” as we shall see further along, it starts to become clear that Portillo is establishing some sort of parallel between himself and the prophet of Islam.

 Portillo seems to be referring to his trip to Algeria, which we have already mentioned.  Pier Mattia Tommasino, “Reading Machiavelli, Translating the Qur’ān: Muḥammad as a Lawgiver in the Alcorano di Macometto (Venice, 1547),” Al-Qanṭara 33, no.2 (2012).

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Before moving on to the bulk of the translations, he includes sura 112, al-Ikhlāṣ, which he titles, “Artículo de fe mahometana” (“Article of Mohammedan faith”):⁴⁴ Sura 112

Sura  Portillo’s version

English translation

‫ ِﺑ ْﺴ ِﻢ ﷲ ﺍﻟ َّﺮ ْﺣ َﻤﺎ ِﻥ‬En el nombre de Dios que premia y que In the name of God, who rewards and ‫ ﺍﻟ َّﺮ ِﺣﻴ ِﻢ‬perdona. forgives. َ ‫ ُﻗ ْﻞ ُﻫ َﻮ ﷲ ﺃ َﺣ ٌﺪ‬Dí_ SayDios es uno God is one ‫ﺼ َﻤ ُﺪ‬ َّ ‫ ﷲ ﺍﻟ‬El eterno ‫ ﻟَ ْﻢ َﻳﻠِ ْﺪ ﻭﻟَ ْﻢ ُﻳﻮﻟَ ْﺪ‬El que no es Padre ni es Hijo ‫ ُﻛ ُﻔ ًﻮﺍ‬,‫ َﻭﻟَ ْﻢ َﻳ ُﻜﻦ ﻟَّ ُﻪ‬El sin igual ‫ ﺃَ َﺣ ٌﺪ‬El Dios que es Dios

The eternal He who is neither Father nor Son The unrivaled The God who is God

He goes on to include a rhymed composition of his own, inspired in the “Qur’anic Oaths,” consisting of an octava real and a serventesio. The classic Muslim topic of the Qur’anic Oaths, or aqsām al-Qurʾān, was taken up by European Orientalism due to its poetic and mysterious nature. To mention just one example that might have been available to Portillo, Cesare Cantù discusses the topic in his Storia universale, a work that enjoyed widespread popularity in mid-nineteenth-century Spain. In Cantù’s words, “The Qur’anic Oaths are as poetic as their comparisons, descriptions and imagery.”⁴⁵ Whereas the most common Islamic interpretations about the aqsām point to their theological nature,⁴⁶ there are also studies and interpretations that focus on their literary character and their communicative and rhetorical relevance. Foremost in this category is Egyptian author Bint al-Shāṭiʾ, who interprets these oaths as part of what she terms the “artistic illustration” of the Qur’an.⁴⁷ Portillo’s composition contains some of the same images analyzed by Bint al-Shāṭiʾ. For the first octava real stanza, he uses the traditional formula for oaths in Spanish, beginning with the preposition por (‘by/for’), whose simplicity can be compared to the use of the particle bi- in  We would like to thank Juan Pablo Arias for reviewing this translation and providing his own comments on it.  Cesare Cantù, Historia Universal, vol. 10 (Madrid: Imprenta de Gaspar y Roig, 1868), 206.  According to these interpretations, the Oaths reference the “existence and majesty of the Creator (bāriʾ/ṣāniʻ), the object’s utility and benefit (manfaʻah), or its virtue and glorification.” M. Zakyi Ibrahim, “Oaths in the Qur’ān: Bint Al-Shāṭi’s Literary Contribution,” Islamic Studies 48, no. 4 (2009), 476.  Ibrahim, “Oaths in the Qur’ān,” 487– 89.

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Arabic. The use of anaphor in the poem emphasizes the act of swearing. According to al-Shāṭiʾ, the use of objects, tangible realities and atmospheric phenomena has the effect of capturing the listener’s attention with an observable reality that is familiar to them, in order to then allude to a similar image on an abstract and sensorially intangible plane. In his octava real, Portillo refers to phenomena like the sky, the night or fire, which he uses to create various literary constructs around abstract subjects like eternity, God or hell. In the second part of the poem, the serventesio, he makes his own version of Q. 100:1– 5. The steeds of this sura have also been the subject of analysis and discussion in the exegetical tradition. Bint al-Shāṭiʾ uses this example as a paradigmatic case of her concept of “artistic illustration” in the Qur’an.⁴⁸ Portillo ends his poem without actually closing it, repeating four times “Etcetera,” and thus giving the sense that the poem could go on infinitely, reproducing the very eternity that it discusses. Portillo’s composition on the Qur’anic Oaths

English translation

Trozo de los Juramentos del Koran

Fragment of the Koranic Oaths

Por el azul profético portillo

By the prophetic blue gap

Por donde ha de surgir la voz del cielo

By which the voice of the heavens issues forth

Por todo lo que es doble y es sencillo

By all that is double and is simple

Por la noche tapada con su velo

By the night covered with its veil

Por los montes del fuego y del cuchillo:

By the mountains of fire and of the knife:

Por el humano fin y por su anhelo

By the human ending and by the yearning thereof

Por el que junte en uno sabiamente

By that which joins as one, wisely,

El hombre y la muger eternamente

Man and woman, eternally

Por los corceles a carrera abierta;

By the racing steeds;

Por los corceles que al herir la roca

By the steeds that, when wounding a rock

Hacen saltar de la materia yerta

Bring forth from the inert matter

Ríos de lumbre por su casco y boca

Rivers of fire across their hooves and mouths

Etcétera. / Etcétera. / Etcétera. / Etcétera

Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.

 Ibrahim, “Oaths in the Qur’ān,” 490 – 91.

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After this, we find Portillo’s version of sura 85,⁴⁹ 86,⁵⁰ and a combination of 82 and 84.⁵¹ He uses different translation approaches aimed at poetically recreating these suras, before concluding, as we will see, with a composition of his own inspired in the Qur’an. The rhymed version of these suras is made up of a string of well-structured octavas reales or octavas rimas in exact rhyme. Portillo’s choice of this type of stanza gives us an idea of the intense state of agitation he must have been in. The octava real (also known in English by its Italian name, ottava rima), was used by the leading authors of the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque, such as Miguel de Cervantes or Garcilaso de la Vega, and was also used in some of the most famous narrative poems written in Spanish, such as Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. Therefore, Portillo’s rhyming translations and his own poems seem to hearken back to a much earlier period, and inevitably have about them an air of pretentious affectation. Certainly there were other Spanish Romantic poets who used this type of stanza, but it was by no means predominant during this period. This choice of stanza, alongside Portillo’s self-proclaimed title in London and Algiers, the (Grand) Duke of Lepanto,⁵² offers us a glimpse of his self-image during this period. So far, we have not found any evidence that Portillo would have known enough Arabic to be able to consult the original text of the Qur’an. As we mentioned above, he was in Algeria in 1850, the same year he signed this text, but we do not know how long he stayed there, or whether it was this stay that kindled his interest in the sacred text of Islam. In his letter, the only reference to the Arabic language appears in a footnote to the title of sura 84, which states: “The Arabic text says ‘hole’. The French – ‘opening’.” The French title⁵³ of sura 84 is indeed L’ouverture, both in Savary⁵⁴ and in Kazimirski.⁵⁵ We know that in Spain he could have had access to Savary’s ver-

 “The signs of the heavens. Chapter 85 (Revealed in Mecca).”  “Chapter 86 (Revealed in Mecca) […] The night star.”  “Chapters 82 and 84 (Revealed in Mecca). The rip / The gap [portillo] in the heavens.” For the title of sura 84, al-Inshiqāq, which in Kazimirski’s version is translated as l’ouverture (“the opening”; cfr. Arberry: “The Rending”), Portillo uses his own last name, the less common portillo (“gap”), and elsewhere reads into the Qur’an multiple other parallels with his own personal history.  Ignacio Prat, El muchacho despatriado. Juan Ramón Jiménez en Francia (1901) (Madrid: Taurus, 1986), 25 – 26.  On the first French translations of the Qur’an, see: Sylvette Larzul, “Les premières traductions françaises du Coran, (XVIIe-XIXe siècles),” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 147 (2009).

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sion,⁵⁶ and that he may have used its preface as a source for his own introduction, where he mentions the relationship between the Qur’an and poetics —an observation that also shows up in Savary’s preface. However, it is our opinion that, like the majority of his Spanish contemporaries,⁵⁷ he more likely relied on Kazimirski’s version as his source text. In addition to an affinity with Kazimirski in terms of various lexical choices, Portillo’s introduction contains a note that is very similar to Kazimirski’s note to sura 3, regarding the family of the Virgin Mary, which was already included in the 1841 edition. In this note, on the title of sura 3, Kazimirski says, “Imran or Amran is the name of the father of the Virgin Mary according to the Koran,”⁵⁸ while Portillo says in his introduction, “See chapter 3 of the Koran, entitled the family of Ymran, which supposedly is that of the Virgin Mary.” We have found no other Spanish translation from the period containing a similar note. This, together with the lexical choices in the examples we have included below, as well as Kazimirski’s commentaries on the poetic nature of the language of the Qur’an, leads us to conclude that it is not a direct translation from the Arabic, but rather an indirect translation via Kazimirski’s French version. Although it seems clear that this was the immediate source for his versions, Portillo could have had access to other indirect translations via Kazimirski that were published in Spain during this same period. Andrés Borrego published a partial translation of the Qur’an in 1843, as did José Gerber de Robles in 1844. Later on, in 1872, Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla published another version, followed in 1875 by Benigno de Murguiondo y Ugartondo.⁵⁹ Like Portillo, some of them, in particular Andrés Borrego, straddled both politics and letters.  Le Koran précédé de la vie de Mahomet, Claude Étienne Savary (trans.) (Paris: Garnier Frères, [1883?]), 507.  Le Koran, traduction nouvelle faite sur le texte arabe par M. Kasimirski (Paris: Charpentier, 1841), 504.  The library of the Spanish Senate once held a copy of this translation, as stated in its catalogue of 1851. Reglamento y catálogos por orden alfabético y de materias de la Biblioteca del Senado (Madrid: E. Aguado, 1851), 224.  See the chapter by Juan Pablo Arias in this volume.  Le Koran, Kazimirski, 41, n. 1.  Andrés Borrego, El Corán traducido al castellano (Madrid: [n.p.], 1844); José Gerber de Robles, Al Koran o Dogmas y doctrinas civiles, morales, políticas y religiosas de los musulmanes precedido de la vida de Mahoma. Traducido exactamente del original árabe por Mr. Kazimirski (Madrid: Imprenta de D. Dionisio Hidalgo, 1844); Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla, El Corán o Biblia mahometana, seguido de la biografía de Mahoma, primera versión española anotada y comentada según los más distinguidos comentadores del Corán (Barcelona: Juan Aleu, 1872) and Benigno de Murguiondo y Ugartondo, El Alcorán otomano en español (Madrid: Imprenta del Hospicio, 1875). For more details on each of these different versions, see the chapter by Juan Pablo Arias in this volume.

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As both politician and journalist, he was fully immersed in the public life of nineteenth-century Spain, as part of the conservative liberal movement and the Romantic movement, and, like Portillo, he also maintained close ties with France.⁶⁰ Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla also published a translation of Cantù’s aforementioned Storia universale. Portillo was following in the footsteps of these Spanish translators from the nineteenth century who made their own versions based on Kazimirski, and who promoted an interest in Islam and the Qur’an that went a step beyond the polemical tracts of prior centuries. For the rhymed version of the suras, Portillo begins with a more or less literal and faithful translation of the first two or three ayas, such that readers familiar with the Qur’an can easily recognize the text. Next, he goes about expanding, paraphrasing or simplifying the content and reworking its order so that it fits the rhyme scheme. In some instances, more than a translation, his version is a recreation or reinterpretation. In others, he includes digressions that stray far off course from the original text. In a few extreme cases, there are stanzas whose source ayas have proven altogether impossible to identify. Let us turn to various examples of this approach in sura 86. At the beginning of this sura, he reproduces the first aya with a faithful and recognizable translation, but then goes on to extend the valence of the second aya’s interrogative to encompass the third and fourth ayas, ending the stanza with a free, two-verse translation of aya five. Beginning of sura 86: Kazimirski’s translation

Beginning of sura : Portillo’s version

English translation of Portillo’s version

: . Par le ciel et l’étoile nocturne,

Soy por el cielo y la nocturna estrella

I am, by the heavens and the nighttime star.

: . Qui te fera connaître ce que c’est que l’étoile nocturne?

¿Quién la estrella nocturna que despide

Who, the nighttime star that gives off

: . C’est l’étoile qui lance des dards.

dardos del fuego de su lumbre bella

darts of flame from its lovely fire

: . Qui te fera connaître ce que c’est que l’étoile nocturne?

te ha enseñado, mortal, y qué te impide conocer de tu origen la centella;

has taught you, mortal, and what prevents you from knowing, of your origin, the spark;

: . Toute âme a un gardien qui la surveille.

sino la guarda que tu tiempo mide?

if not the keeper who metes out your time?

 See the chapter by Juan Pablo Arias in this volume.

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Continued Beginning of sura : Kazimirski’s translation

Beginning of sura : Portillo’s version

English translation of Portillo’s version

: . Que l’homme considère de quoi Considera mortal de en- Consider, mortal mind, il a été créé tendimiento in the fibrin web of your en la fibrina red de tu foundations cimiento

The next stanza begins with a faithful rendering of aya six: “86:6. D’une goutte d’eau répandue,” followed by a seven-verse paraphrase based on “86:7. Sortie des reins et des os de la poitrine.” Sura 86, continued: Kazimirski’s Sura , continued: translation Portillo’s version : . D’une goutte d’eau répandue

English translation of Portillo’s version

De una líquida gota reparti- Of a liquid drop of water divda ided up

el dorsal osamento por origen; cuyos fecundos átomos de vida a femeniles pechos se dirigen :. Sortie des reins et des os y su tosca materia corromde la poitrine. pida son esos cuerpos que las almas rigen, se hace el hueso y la carne. El incentivo humano entendimiento e instintivo

the backbone as origin; whose fertile atoms of life to feminine breasts are drawn and their rough matter corrupted these are the bodies governed by souls, bones and flesh are made. The incentive of humankind: mind and instinct

From this paraphrase of aya 7, he jumps, in the third stanza, as shown in the table, to aya 13, rounding out his octava real with a reordered combination of ayas 11 to 16. He begins with a free but recognizable translation of aya 13, and, over the following three verses, paraphrases 86:12. The next two are faithful translations of 86:14 and 86:11. Lastly, he makes a free translation or reinterpretation of ayas 15 and 16.

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Kazimirski

Portillo, stanza three

English translation of Portillo’s version

:. En vérité le Koran est une pa- Es el Korán palabra role qui décide; penetrante,

The Koran is penetrating word,

:. Par la terre qui se fend pour faire germer les plantes,

abono de la tierra que germina. De su nutrida ciencia fecundante vendrá planta en el mundo peregrina.

fertilizer for the germinating ground. From its well-nourished and fertilizing science shall come a plant to wander the earth.

: . Ce n’est point un discours frivole.

No es un discurso frívolo, de instante,

It is not a frivolous discourse, of the moment,

: . Par le ciel qui accomplit ses révolutions,

por el cielo que a giros by the heavens that as they se ilumina turn grow bright

:. Ils mettent en oeuvre leurs stratagèmes, :. Et moi je mettrai en oeuvre les miens.

si hay quien hábil su fuerza la reviste en la armada verdad mi voz se viste.

if there be one who, of skillful strength, adorns it armed truth shall my voice don.

Immediately after these translations, but clearly marked as his own work, he includes an original poetic composition titled, “Mi cielo mahometano” [My Mohammedan sky].⁶¹ It has the same structure as his version of the suras, i. e. a series of octavas reales. The rhythm is just as regular as in his rendering of the suras. Throughout both the versions and his poem we have found only one inconsistency, namely a stanza with only seven verses. Unlike the translations, which begin with an invocation that matches up with the original and with Kazimirski’s version – “En el nombre del Dios de las Misericordias” [In the name of the God of Mercy], in “Mi cielo mahometano” he uses an invocation with quite the opposite meaning: “En el nombre del Dios de los egércitos” [In the name of the God of Armies]. In his introduction, Portillo refers to Muḥammad as poet and soldier (“the profound meditations of the soldier! poet! […] inspired philosopher of Mecca,”) and as a “philosopher warrior,” in the same dual terms he uses to describe himself: “poems! That contain a veritable profession of faith, both political and religious […] that I have not squandered away my youth on trifling matters, but rather have used it to study arms, letters, the humanities and theological dogmas.”

 Note that the Spanish cielo means both “heaven” and “sky”.

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As to the subject matter of the poem, it contains Portillo’s interpretation of the Islamic paradise. Once again it begins with an octava real based on the Qur’anic Oaths, and continues with another seven stanzas full of descriptive imagery depicting a paradise dominated by love, and in which women are always at the ready to satisfy men’s desires: “The bitterness of life’s passing / Offset by a woman’s constant passion.”⁶² In the future we plan to publish a complete edition of both Portillo’s translations and this text; in the meantime, we will offer the following stanza, which illustrates the various aspects we have mentioned: Stanza from Mi cielo mahometano, by Portillo

English translation of the same stanza

Cama de flores, sin ramal ni espina

Bed of flowers, with neither branch nor thorn.

Aroma en torbellinos perfumantes.

Aroma of fragrant whirlwinds.

Raudal de luz ardiente, purpurina.

Torrent of burning, purplish light.

Yncitadores coros de vacantes [sic]

Stirring choirs of bacchants

De una faz femenil la que camina

With feminine face, the one who walks,

Tinta en los labios, lívida, de amantes.

Her lips painted, livid, from her lovers.

Y el olvido del mundo en los abrazos

And to forget the world in her embrace,

Y en la finura de redondos brazos.

And in the refinement of rounded arms.

In the course of his various stays in Paris, Portillo must have gained considerable knowledge about the French poetry of his day. His use of the Qur’an to compose a poem infused with his vision of the Islamic paradise could be influenced by Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales,⁶³ some compositions of which share a certain aesthetic affinity with those of Portillo, as they are lengthy compositions made in the image of the Muʻallaqāt.

6 In a French Sanatorium In May 1901, the young Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez was admitted to the Maison de Santé du Castel d’Andorte, in Le Bouscat, near Bordeaux, in the French department of Gironde.⁶⁴ Juan Ramón Jiménez is without a doubt one  “La amargura del tránsito de vida / Que paga una muger siempre encendida.”  Pierre Larcher, “Autour des Orientales: Victor Hugo, Ernest Fouinet et la poésie arabe archaïque,” Bulletin d’études orientales 62 (2014).  Prat, El muchacho despatriado.

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of the most important and influential Spanish poets of the first half of the twentieth century, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956, shortly before his death in exile in Puerto Rico. Juan Ramón Jiménez had a very complex personality: diagnosed as a hypersensitive, depressive hypochondriac, his life was punctuated by a series of nervous breakdowns. During his time at the French sanatorium, which has been studied in detail by Ignacio Prat, he quickly befriended the institution’s owner and director, the psychiatrist (and amateur archeologist) Gaston Lalanne. After an initial appraisal of the poet’s state of health, Lalanne decided that what he needed was a light treatment consisting of leisurely walks and a close personal relationship with the doctor and his family. Juan Ramón Jiménez’s stay in France would last until September of that year, and was to have a profound and direct impact on his work. For example, it was then that the young poet came into close contact with the poetry of the French Symbolists. Although he had little contact with the “true madmen,”⁶⁵ in some of his texts from this period they are explicitly described. This is the case, for example, of an article first published in the newspaper ABC on 30 June 1903, titled just that: “Los locos” [The Madmen]. In it, among other figures, he describes a mentally ill artist who had been living for many years in the sanatorium: I have had the opportunity to see an entire collection of watercolors by a former Spanish minister who died in the sanatorium of Castel d’Andorte after being locked up there for thirty years. All the dreams of our feverish nights; those same apparitions of gardens and palaces that sometimes pass before our misty eyes while wide awake, like a distant and fantastical memory; chimeras of the Orient, magical landscapes, lands of gold and of diamonds, all of the exotic visions that at times begin and then are lost in the fog of our brains, have been interpreted with striking faithfulness by the strange and nervous brush of that madman.

Apart from these strange watercolors, the elderly ex-minister who had succumbed to mental illness had also left behind “an album of verses, written in regular, well-scanning and well-rhyming meter. On each page of the album there is a single verse and beneath it a date; the verse looks like it has been engraved in a clear, firm hand; and to read a single stanza one must turn several pages. Their concepts are unintelligible.”⁶⁶ Indeed, Juan Ramón Jiménez had stumbled upon the papers and paintings that Filiberto Portillo had left behind when he passed away after more than thirty years at the same sanatorium. The material greatly impressed the poet, who even  Prat El muchacho despatriado, 23.  Juan Ramón Jiménez, “Los locos,” ABC, 30 June 1903, 4; Prat, El muchacho despatriado, 24.

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had the idea of publishing the paintings under the title Acuarelas lunáticas ⁶⁷ [Lunatic watercolors]. Prat has included two of these pictures, which give a good idea of the strange poetics that fascinated Juan Ramón Jiménez, and in which Portillo depicted his own vision of his life’s tragedies from the perspective of the sanatorium: one shows him in a general’s uniform, acting out the “Martyrdom of Portillo.” In the same image, there is also a group of women described as “martyr wives” or as “wives of Portillo the Holy.”⁶⁸ Prat has also included one of Portillo’s texts from this collection of papers, “Tiberio ó una ángela” [Tiberius or a she-angel],⁶⁹ a text written in a convoluted language with chaotic punctuation and extravagant word agreements, based on a free chain of unintelligible figures, but which nevertheless possesses the sinister force of a dark and Romantic pathos. It is no surprise that Juan Ramón Jiménez was attracted to the texts’s impassioned poetics and to the outlandish imagery that he fancied as Oriental chimeras. In any case, it is impossible not to connect Jiménez’s fascination with these “lunatic” creations with the discovery taking place in other parts of Europe, at roughly the same time, of “outsider art.” There are two key works on the subject: L’art chez les fous, by Marcel Réja (pseudonym of French psychiatrist Paul Meunier)⁷⁰ and, in particular, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (known in English as Artistry of the Mentally Ill) by Hans Prinzhorn,⁷¹ whose influence on the art of the twentieth century was immense. Both books speak to the new conceptualization of madness and the unconscious developed in Europe from the end of the nineteenth century, and of the ways in which the avant-garde understood the relationship between madness and artistic creativity.

7 Conclusion The case of Portillo and his partial translation of the Qur’an in verse is at once unique and paradigmatic. On the one hand, his text reflects, to a large extent, the impact of Kazimirski’s translation on the European and Spanish culture of

 Prat, El muchacho despatriado, 25.  Prat, El muchacho despatriado, 96 – 97.  Prat, El muchacho despatriado, 26.  Paul Meunier, L’art chez les fous. Le dessin, la prose, la poésie (Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1907); Lydia Couet, “Marcel Réja: médecin, poète symboliste et historien de l’art asilaire,” Sociétés et Représentations 41, no.1 (2016).  Hans Prinzhorn. Bildnerei der Geisteskranken. Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie und Psychopathologie der Gestaltung (Berlin: Springer, 1922); spanish trans., Expresiones de la locura. El arte de los enfermos mentales (Madrid: Cátedra, 2012).

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the period. A model of faithful translation (not only in linguistic terms, but also in terms of poetic expression and force), Kazimirski’s Koran was immediately rendered into Spanish. To read and translate the Qur’an was, then, not unheard of in the culture of Spanish liberalism at this time. In this sense, the example of Andrés Borrego is illustrative: culturally the two have numerous points in common. As we have tried to explain over the course of this chapter, Filiberto Portillo belonged to a well-defined political and economic group that attained a hegemonic position in Spain in the mid-nineteenth century. In this sense, his biography largely makes sense against the backdrop of this group and its particular sociology. On the other hand, when Juan Ramón Jiménez saw Portillo’s watercolors as “Oriental chimeras,” beyond whether or not this is the correct reading (without being able to see the images in question it is impossible for us to judge), it is, at any rate, not at all far-fetched. The culture of Spanish Romanticism, as with European Romanticism more generally, was marked by an obsession with an exotic idea of the Orient. It would not have been unusual for a Spanish Francophile like Portillo to have been familiar with Kazimirski’s translation of the Qur’an, or Victor Hugo’s massively influential Les Orientales, which was somewhat influenced by classical Arabic poetry via Ernest Fouinet, but which by no means amounted to a “naturalization” of Arabic poetic forms within French poetry.⁷² We might also mention the work of Gaspar María de la Nava, Count of Noroña, who was the author of a book of Poesías asiáticas ⁷³ [Asian poems], that rendered poems from Arabic, Persian, Turkish and other Middle Eastern languages into Spanish verse, not directly, but rather via translations into various European languages, preceded by a Spanish translation of William Jones’s On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations. However, none of these texts involves a poetic translation of the Qur’an, despite the fact that, as we have said, Portillo and many of his contemporaries in Europe were well aware of the poetic value and expressive force of the Qur’an. In this regard, Portillo’s work, as with his person, stands out from the rest. A translation in verse of a handful of suras from the Qur’an does not seem to be a logical choice for a text addressed to Queen Mother María Cristina. As with his pictures and poems from the sanatorium at Castel d’Andorte, madness appears here as a subject both terrible and fascinating. For a poet of the likes of Juan Ramón Jiménez, mental illness is cast not as a blight, but rather as the symptom of a poetic personality that has gained access to distant reaches from which nor-

 Larcher, “Autour des Orientales.”  Count of Noroña, Poesías asiáticas (Paris: Julio Didot Mayor, 1833).

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mal people are usually barred.⁷⁴ As we have seen, Juan Ramón felt that, to a certain extent, these were the realms that Portillo frequented. In any case, madness, and in particular Portillo’s madness, is a vague enough and complex enough concept to be put forth as an explanation for anything. Portillo’s story serves as a reminder of all the work that lies ahead as we attempt to understand the forms and extent of the knowledge and uses of the Qur’an in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain, in particular in the country’s role as colonial power in Morocco.

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 Prat, El muchacho despatriado, 22.

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Burdiel, Isabel. “La revolución del poder: escándalos, género y política de la monarquía liberal en España.” Historia y política 39 (2018): 23 – 51. Cantù, Cesare. Historia Universal, T. 10. Madrid: Imprenta de Gaspar y Roig, 1868. Conde de Noroña. Poesías asiáticas. Paris: Julio Didot Mayor, 1833. Couet, Lydia. “Marcel Réja: médecin, poète symboliste et historien de l’art asilaire,” Sociétés et Représentations 41, no. 1 (2016): 229 – 46. Gerber de Robles, José (trans.). Al Koran o Dogmas y doctrinas civiles, morales, políticas y religiosas de los musulmanes precedido de la vida de Mahoma. Traducido exactamente del original árabe por Mr. Kazimirski. Madrid: Imprenta de D. Dionisio Hidalgo, 1844. Hernández Sempere, Telesforo-Marcial. Ferrocarriles y capitalismo en el País Valenciano, 1843 – 1879. Valencia: Ayuntamiento de Valencia, 1983. Ibrahim, M. Zakyi. “Oaths in the Qur’ān: Bint Al-Shāṭi’s Literary Contribution.” Islamic Studies 48, no. 4 (2009): 475 – 98. [accessed 31 July 2021], http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 20839181. Isabel Sánchez, José Luis. “José Filiberto Portillo Fernández de Velasco. Conde de Campo Arcís.” In Real Academia de la Historia, Diccionario Biográfico electrónico. [accessed 5 July 2021], http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/14251/jose-filiberto-portillo-fernandez-de-velascoconde-de-campo-arcis Jiménez, Juan Ramón. “Los locos.” ABC, 30 June 1903. Larcher, Pierre. “Autour des Orientales: Victor Hugo, Ernest Fouinet et la poésie arabe archaïque.” Bulletin d’études orientales 62 (2014): 99 – 123. DOI: 10.4000/beo.1304. Larzul, Sylvette. “Les premières traductions françaises du Coran, (XVIIe-XIXe siècles).” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 147 (2009): 147 – 65. DOI: 10.4000/assr.21429. Martínez García, Cristina Bienvenida. “Política y corrupción en la corte isabelina. El ascenso del ‘Clan de Tarancón.’” Los Libros de la Corte 22 (2021): 95 – 136. Mendoza Martín, Irene and Fernando Moya Berlanga. “María Buschental: una salonnière en Madrid.” Estudios de Historia de España 22, no. 2 (2020): 160 – 77. Meunier, Paul. L’art chez les fous. Le dessin, la prose, la poésie. Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1907. Murguiondo y Ugartondo, Benigno de (trans.). El Alcorán otomano en español. Madrid: Imprenta del Hospicio, 1875. Ortiz de la Puebla, Vicente (trans.). El Corán o Biblia mahometana, seguido de la biografía de Mahoma, primera versión española anotada y comentada según los más distinguidos comentadores del Corán. Barcelona: Juan Aleu, 1872. Pérez de Guzmán y Gallo, Juan. “Colección Istúriz-Baüer.” Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 75 (1919): 101 – 27. Pirala, Antonio. Historia contemporánea. Anales desde 1843 hasta la conclusión de la actual guerra civil, vol. I. Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1875. Portillo, José Filiberto. Exposición dirigida a Su Magestad por el Ministro de Marina, Comercio y Gobernación de Ultramar, sobre el estado decadente de la Armada española y los medios de su fomento, con algunas resoluciones consiguientes o de la misma referencia. Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1844. Portillo, José Filiberto. Memorias políticas del general Don José Filiberto Portillo. Madrid: [n.p.], [1848].

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Portillo, José Filiberto. Précis historique des motifs de son émigration. Paris: Imprimerie Pollet et Compagnie, 1850. Portillo, José Filiberto. “El Korán.” 14 March 1850, Paris. Private collection, Madrid. Prat, Ignacio. El muchacho despatriado. Juan Ramón Jiménez en Francia (1901). Madrid: Taurus, 1986. Prinzhorn, Hans. Bildnerei der Geisteskranken. Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie und Psychopathologie der Gestaltung, Berlin: Springer, 1922 (spanish trans., Expresiones de la locura. El arte de los enfermos mentales. Madrid: Cátedra, 2012). Pro Ruiz, Juan. “Poder político y poder económico en el Madrid de los moderados (1844 – 1854).” Ayer 66 (2007): 27 – 55. Tommasino, Pier Mattia. “Reading Machiavelli, Translating the Qur’ān: Muḥammad as a Lawgiver in the Alcorano di Macometto (Venice, 1547).” Al-Qanṭara 33, no. 2 (2012): 271 – 96. Vilar, Juan Bautista. Los españoles en la Argelia francesa (1830 – 1914). Madrid, Murcia: CEH-CSIC, Universidad de Murcia, 1989.

Isaac Donoso

The Qur’an in the Spanish Philippines 1 The Global Islamic Word While Moriscos produced and circulated Qur’ans in the Iberian Peninsula under the Habsburg monarchs, on the other side of the globe the Catholic empire encountered the easternmost expansion of Islam. It was a natural extension towards Southeast Asia that, by the end of the sixteenth century, was entering the Pacific region. When Luis Váez de Torres discovered the strait that bears his name in New Guinea in 1606, he found Muslims preaching Islam to the Papuans: Observations were made of the water throughout this land of New Guinea as far as the Moluccas, and the compass was set to fall on the Meridian of the Isles of the Thieves [Guam] with the Philippine Islands: at the end of this land we found Moros dressed with ready artillery, such as small cannons [falcones] and berzos, arquebuses andswords: they are conquering these people who are called Papuans, and they preach the sect of Muḥammad to them: these Moros made trade agreements with us.¹

Since ancient times, Arabs had connected Mediterranean products with the Indian Ocean and China. As early as 651 A.D. / 30 H. the expansion of the new Arab religion reached China.² The legend narrates that the caliph ‘Uthmān sent a diplomatic mission that year to the court of the Tang dynasty.³ Khānfū (Canton) became a commercial entrepôt for Muslims in China until the Guangzhou Massacre in 878 – 79.⁴ After that, Zaytūn (Quanzhou) emerged as a commer-

 Pedro Fernández de Quirós, Descubrimiento de las regiones austriales, ed. Roberto Ferrando (Madrid: Historia 16, 1986), 325. Spanish original: “Hízose observación del Agua por toda esta tierra de la nueva Guinea hasta las Molucas, por todo esto fixa la Aguja que viene a caer en el Meridiano de las Islas de los Ladrones con las Islas Filipinas: al remate desta tierra hallamos Moros vestidos, con artillería de servicio, como son falcones y berzos, arcabuces y armas blancas: estos van conquistando esta gente que dicen de los Papúes y les predican la Secta de Mahoma: tuvieron estos Moros con nosotros contratación.”  George Fadlo Hourani, “Direct Sailing between the Persian Gulf and China in Pre-Islamic Times,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 2 (1947).  Barbara L. K. Pillsbury, “Muslim History in China: A 1300-Year Chronology,” Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 3, no. 2 (1981).  C. E. Bosworth, M. Hartmann, R. Israeli, “China,” Encyclopaedia of Islam II (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 843. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-019

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cial and cultural center for Islam in eastern Asia, influencing decisively the Islamization of neighboring regions.⁵ Accordingly, the world was connected from al-Andalus to China —as Ibn Khaldūn records⁶— and Andalusians were not absent from this global oikoumene. We can mention two narratives: the legendary tenth-century seaman from Cádiz who survived Women’s Island near Borneo in the Kitāb ‘Ajā’ib alHind, and the more realistic twelfth-century story of Sa‘d al-Khayr al-Balansī al-Ṣīnī, a Valencian trader who spent time in China and was known as “the Chinese.”⁷ Arabic sources describe the route towards eastern Asia⁸ as far as Korea (alSīlā)⁹ and Japan.¹⁰ In the process of commercial expansion, the people of the ancient Golden Chersonese (the Malay Peninsula) assumed agency and adopted Islam so as to be part of this lucrative market.¹¹ In consequence, Malay polities  See Billy K. L. So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: the South Fukien Pattern, 946 – 1368 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000); Angela Schottenhammer, The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000 – 1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), and especially John W. Chaffee, The Muslim Merchants of Premodern China: The History of a Maritime Asian Trade Diaspora, 750 – 1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).  “And this was considered in the Islamic State of the Arabs, which originally extended from alAndalus to India and China”: Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddimah (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā’ al-Turāth al‘Arabī, 1999), vol. I, 294; (Tunis: Sīldām, 2006), 451.  Isaac Donoso, “Viajeros y aventureros andalusíes en Asia oriental,” eHumanista/IVITRA 3 (2013); and Donoso “El viaje andalusí al Extremo Oriente: peregrinación, comercio y diáspora,” Unterwegs im Namen der Religion II / On the Road in the Name of Religion II. Wege und Ziele in vergleichender Perspektive, ed. Klaus Herbers and Hans Christian Lehner (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016).  See Gerald Randall Tibbetts, A Study of the Arabic Texts Containing Material on South-East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1979), and Isaac Donoso, Islamic Far East: Ethnogenesis of Philippine Islam (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2013).  Hee-Soo Lee, “Early Korea-Arabic Maritime Relations Based on Muslim Sources,” Korea Journal 31, no. 2 (1991).  Some initial references to al-Wāqwāq perhaps refered to Japan, after the Japanese wokou sea raiders. Gabriel Ferrand already inquired about it: “Le Wākwāk est-il le Japan?” Journal Asiatique 20 (1932).  Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1961). “In view of the existence of maritime commercial relations between the Middle East and China since before the birth of the new religion, it is very probable that the coastal zones of Southeast Asia have had some contact with Muslims from the very first period of Islam […] Many adherents both of the early Arab origin theory and of the later Indian origin standpoint indicated international maritime trade as the main mechanism,” in Johan H. Meuleman, “The History of Islam in Southeast Asia: Some Questions and Debates,” Islam in Southeast Asia. Political, Social and Strategic Challenges for the 21st Century, ed. K.S. Nathan and Mohammad Hashim Kamali (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005), 25.

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developed the Islamic sultanate as a model for regional supremacy. When Ibn Baṭṭūṭah arrived in northeastern Sumatra in 1345, sultan Malik al-Ẓāhir was promoting theological discussion and qur’anic reading, the call to jihad and payment of the jizya: This is Sultan al-Malik al-Ẓāhir, one of the most illustrious and generous kings. He follows the shāfi‘ī school and is a lover of the alfaquis, who attend his meetings to read the Qur’an and engage in theological discussions. He makes many razzias and expeditions against the infidels, and as a humble man, he walks to the Friday prayer. The Sumatran people are all shāfi‘īs and like jihad, for which they volunteer. They have thus succeeded in subduing the infidels bordering on their territory, who, according to the peace treaty, pay capitation tribute.¹²

Several sultanates emerged in Southeast Asia in the fifteenth century, especially around the thalassocracies of Malacca in the Malay Peninsula and Brunei in northern Borneo.¹³ Therefore, to sustain the legitimacy of the sultanates and to apply Islamic law, a more sophisticated conduct of policies was needed in administrative and juridical matters. Muslim preachers known as makhdūms introduced a new writing system and the holy word of God, together with theological discussions. Thus, while the Portuguese were bombarding Malacca in 1511, the sultan discussed mystical lessons with his makhdūm: And the king went forth onto the bridge and stood there amid a hail of bullets. But Makhdum Sadar Jahan, clasping the pannier with both hands, cried out to Sultan Ahmad Shah, “Sultan, this is no place to study the Unity of God, let us go home!” Sultan Ahmad smiled and returned to the palace. And the Franks shouted from their ships, “Take warning, you men of Malaka, tomorrow we land!” And the men of Malaka answered, “Very Well!”¹⁴

The History of Malacca, Sejarah Melayu (ca.1612), testifies that the sultan conversed about the concept of wujūdiyyah following the Andalusian Ibn ‘Arabī.¹⁵ Malay Muslim thinkers emerged in Aceh between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries from this milieu, among them Ḥamzah al-Fanṣūrī (d.

 Our translation from Ibn Baṭṭuṭah, Riḥlah (Beirut: Dār Bayrūt li-l-ṭabā‘a wa-l-nashr, 1985), 618.  For a general introduction see Peter G. Riddell, “The Implanting of Islam in Southeast Asia,” in More Islamic than We Admit. Philippine Islamic Cultural History, ed. by I. Donoso (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2017).  C. C. Brown, Sĕjarah Mĕlayu or Malay Annals (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1970), 162.  Syed Muhammad Naguib al-Attas, Ranīrī and the Wujūdiyyah of the 17th Century Acheh (Singapore: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1966).

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1590) and Shams al-Dīn al-Sūmaṭrānī. These first thinkers founded the study of Islamic mysticism,¹⁶ Qurʼanic exegesis¹⁷ and Arabic literature.¹⁸ In the end, the model of Malacca as a cultural medina and commercial empire was exported to other areas of Southeast Asia. The old entrepôt became a city-state under the authority of a sultan. Thus, in addition to the religious preaching, international scholars and officials settled in the new Malay Islamic courts during the Early Modern era, and it seems that Andalusians were also part of these developments. In fact, when Vasco de Gama arrived in India, a Morisco from Tunis addressed him in Spanish: Just arrived to Calicut […], they [the Portuguese] meet Monçaide (El-Mas‘ud), a Muslim from Tunis, who welcomes them in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese: E veio con ele un daqueles mouros, o qual, tanto que foi em os navios, começou de dizer estas palavras: ―Buena ventura! Buena ventura! Muitos rubis, muitas esmeraldas! Muitas graças debéis de dar a Deus por vos trazer a terra onde há tanta riqueza! Era para nós isto de tanto espanto, que o ouvíamos falar e não o críamos―que homem houvesse tão longe de Portugal que nos entendesse nossa fala! What Monçaide spoke was not Portuguese, but a corrupt form of Spanish. Despite this, finding the familiar in the unknown had a very strong effect on the seamen.¹⁹

William Henry Scott has questioned how so many people, from Granada to Manila, were able to speak Spanish when the Iberian polities entered Southeast Asia, since the sources describe many Muslim individuals able to communicate with the newcomers.²⁰ What Scott called “the Mediterranean connection” is in fact

 Al-Attas, The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1970).  Peter G. Riddell, Malay Court Religion, Culture and Language: Interpreting the Qur’ān in 17th Century Aceh (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2017).  Vladimir Braginsky, The Heritage of Traditional Malay Literature: A Historical Survey of Genres, Writings and Literary Views (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2004).  Elena Losada Soler, “The Encounter of Languages: Reflections on the Language of the Other in Roteiro da Primeira Viagen de Vasco da Gama,” in Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe and Asia, ed. by Anthony Disney and Emily Booth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 207– 8.  “These questions [usual presence of Spanish-speaking people in the Indian Ocean] suggest that the presence of a Spanish-speaking slave on the Luzon caracoa may not have been an isolated phenomenon. Perhaps further research on the Mediterranean connection will provide the final explanation by exploring the question of just how many people between Granada and Manila could speak Spanish in 1521.” William Henry Scott, Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino and Other Essays in Philippine History (Quezon City: New Day, 1992), 35 – 36.

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a testimony to the Andalusian diaspora to the Far East. Perhaps the lenguas (interpreters) who interpreted the “Paces del Maluco” during Magellan-Elcano’s expedition were also part of this diaspora.²¹ For instance, a Muslim taken in Luzon was the interpreter in the treaty with Tuan Muhammad, lord of Palawan and vassal of Brunei, because entendía algo el castellano: With the lord of Palawan, a Muslim, on Monday 30 September 21 in the ship Vitoria, holding as captives the said lord of the said island and a brother and son of his and others who came with them in a junk from the city of Brunei [bound] for the said island of Palawan. His name was Tuan Muhammad, vassal of the King of Brunei, with whom peace was made while the Trinidad and Vitoria were anchored in the Brunei channel […] It was carried out by interpretation of a Muslim who was taken on the island of the King of Luzon who understood some Castilian. The brother was named Guantail, and the son Tuan Muhammad, aged about eighteen. On the first of October the Spaniards swore to keep the peace by taking a crucifix in their hands for God and Holy Mary, and [making] the sign of the cross. Tuan Muhammad and his brother and son put their fingers in their mouths and then on their heads.²²

It is interesting to note the way the Muslim rulers of Palawan —a long, narrow island in the western Philippines— swore to the agreement. They “put their fingers in their mouths and then on their heads,” most probably because they did not have a material copy of the Qur’an over which conduct the oath properly. The ritual conducted by other Muslim rulers in the region did involve the holy book: Then, to assure us against any suspicion we might have of his good faith, he ordered his Qur’an to be brought to him; he kissed it devoutly and placed it on his head four or five times, mumbling between his teeth certain words which were an invocation called zambe-

 Libro de las pazes y amistades que se an hecho con los Reyes y Señores de las yslas y tierras donde hemos llegado, siendo los capitanes Gonçalo Gómez Despinosa y Juan Sevastián del Cano, y el maestre Juan Batista, governadores del Armada quel Emperador nuestro señor envía al descubrimiento del Espeçiería, y yo, Martín Méndez, contador della. Archivo General de Indias, Seville, INDIFERENTE, 1528, N.1.  “Con el señor de Poluan [Palawan], moro, en lunes 30 Setiembre 21 en la nao Vitoria, teniendo captivos á dicho señor de dicha isla y á un hermano é hijo suyo y otros que con ellos venían en un junco de la ciudad de Burney para dicha isla de Poluan. Llamábase el señor Tuan Mahamud, vasallo del rey de Burney, con quien se hicieron paces estando la Trinidad y Vitoria surtas en la canal de Burney […]. Tratose por lengua de un moro que se tomó en la isla del rey de Lozon [Luzón] que entendia algo el castellano. Llamábase el hermano señor Guantail, el hijo Tuan Mahamed, de diez y ocho años poco más o menos. En 1.º Octubre juran de guardar las paces los dichos españoles tomando un crucifijo en las manos por Dios é Santa María é la señal de la cruz. Tuan Mahamud y su hermano é hijo poniendo el dedo en la boca é luego en la cabeza.” Martín Fernández de Navarrete, Colección de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1837), 4: 296.

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han. He then said aloud, in the presence of all, that he swore by Allāh (God) and by the Qur’an, which he held in his hand, that he would always be a faithful friend of the King of Spain.²³

The invocation sounds like Subḥān Allāh, but is more properly the Malay sembahyang,²⁴ also found in Tagalog —in the adoration (simba) and the place for worship (simbahan):²⁵ The Ramasan or Ramadan of the Mohammedans is called Sambayang, a word that seems to be related to Simbahan or simba of the Christian Indians of the Philippines. During the sambayang (which lasts seven days) they all maintain rigorous fasting; after this time they all purify themselves with a general bath and celebrate the feast.²⁶

Regardless of whether Subḥān Allāh and Sambayang are etymologically related or not, they are the same thing: a prayer over the holy word, inspeech and thought and, if possible, over the manuscript as well. Therefore, these are factual testimonies in European sources of the circulation of the Qur’an as a material object around the Philippine archipelago during the first circumnavigation of the globe, testifying that the Qur’an had already made the complete journey in the opposite direction than the conquistadores.²⁷

 “Entonces, para asegurarnos contra toda sospecha que pudiéramos tener de su buena fe, mandó que le llevasen su alcorán; le besó devotamente y púsole sobre su cabeza cuatro o cinco veces, mascullando entre dientes ciertas palabras que eran una invocación llamada zambehan. Después dijo en voz alta, en presencia de todos, que juraba por Alá (Dios) y por el Corán, que tenía en la mano, que sería siempre un fiel amigo del rey de España,” in Antonio Pigafetta, Primer viaje alrededor del mundo, ed. Federico Ruiz Morcuende (Madrid: Calpe, 1922), 159 – 60.  Annabel Teh Gallop, “Qur’an Manuscripts from Mindanao: Collecting Histories, Art and Materiality,” South East Asia Research (2021), 3.  See Pedro de San Buenaventura, Vocabulario de la lengua tagala (Pila: Thomás Pinpin, 1613), 570.  “Al Ramasan ó Ramadan de los mahometanos lo llaman Sambayang, palabra que parece tener parentesco con Simbahan ó simba de los indios cristianos de Filipinas. Durante el sambayang (que dura siete días) permanecen todos en riguroso ayuno; pasado este tiempo se purifican todos con un baño general y celebran la fiesta,” in Fernando Blumentritt, “Los maguindanaos. Estudio etnográfico,” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica 35 (1893), 281.  “And then Çuratan Mançor king of the said island of Tidore ordered to bring from the land to the said ship a Qur’an and put his hand over and under the Qur’an and made his oath as Muslim”: our translation from Pablo Pastells, El descubrimiento del estrecho de Magallanes en conmemoración del IV Centenario (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1920), 129.

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2 The Islamic Mission in the Philippines and the Written Holy Word Preachers and missionaries “from above the winds” changed the spiritual and political life of the Malay world. Numerous missionaries, traders, and adventurers, makhdūmūn, shurafā’ and awliyā’, are recorded in shrines, traditions and local silsilas (tarsilas in the Philippine case). Trade, mission, and conquest were the forces that Islamized coastal areas of maritime Southeast Asia, but interracial marriages between foreign Muslims and local aristocracies were also important. Afterwards a political institution was organized under the power of a sultan, as a central government or as a coalition of parties. The Sulu Sultanate was founded as a political institution, approximately during the mid-fifteenth century, around the settlement of Jolo, populated by local communities and exiles from Butuan who imported a Hindu-Buddhist tradition. Its main source of prosperity was the exploitation of the pearl trade. In fact, the Philippine entrepôt attracted Southeast Asians, Chinese from Quanzhou, and other Muslim merchants (Arabs, Persians, and Indians) at least from the fourteenth century, as proven by Tuan Maqbalu ’s tombstone, dated 1310. This inscription begins with a hadith that blesses those who have died far away; therefore it must be inferred that the deceased was a Muslim buried far from his home. In the last line a date is indicated: Rajab 710 A.H., corresponding to November-December 1310 A.D. Majul noticed the great similarities between the form of this tombstone and others from Quanzhou.²⁸ (1) The Prophet said, upon him be peace: () Whoever dies in the distance dies as a martyr () In memory of the blessed martyr () Tuhān Maqbālū in the month of God () Sacred of Rajab, God Almighty () blesses him [in] the year .

‫( ﻗﺎﻝ ﺍﻟﻨﺒﻲ ﻋﻠﻴﻪ ﺍﻟﺴﻼﻡ‬١) ‫( ﻣﻦ ﻣﺎﺕ ﻏﺮﺑﺎ ﻓﻘﺪ ﻣﺎﺕ ﺷﻬﻴﺪﺍ‬٢) ‫( ﻭﻓﻲ ﺍﻟﻤﺮﺣﻮﻡ ﺍﻟﺴﻌﻴﺪ ﺍﻟﺸﻬﻴﺪ‬٣) ‫( ﷲﺗﻬﺎﻥ ﻣﻘﺒﺎﻟﻮ ﻓﻲ ﺍﻟﺘﺎﺭﻳﺦ ﺷﻬﺮﺍ‬٤) ‫( ﺍﻟﺮﻣﻀﺎﻥ ﺭﺟﺐ ﻋﻈﻴﻢ ﷲ‬٥) ‫( ﺭﺣﻤﺘﻪ ﺳﻨﺔ ﻋﺸﺮﺓ ﻭﺳﺒﻌﺔ ﻣﺌﺔ‬٦)

Ibn Mājid mentions the port of Ṣūluk (Sulu) in 1462, so commercial prosperity would certainly have been well established by that time.²⁹ After the arrival of sev-

 César Adib Majul, Muslims in the Philippines (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1999), 437. For the transcription see Donoso, Islamic Far East, 258 – 59.  Donoso, Islamic Far East, 258.

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eral makhdūmūn (Tuan Masha’ika, Karīm al-Makhdūm, Hoy Hoy al-Ṣīnī, and Raja Baguinda of Minangkabau), it was Sayyid Abū Bakr of Palembang who adopted the title of Sultan of Sulu around 1450 as Sharīf al-Hāshim.³⁰ During this longue durée it is feasible that the Qur’an circulated as a principal tool in the process of Islamization. Similar activity took place on the western coast of the island of Mindanao. Sharīf Awliyā’ was the first to teach Islam on the island, according to the tarsilas of Maguindanao.³¹ Sharīf Awliyā’ travelled to the end of the world in search of the garden of the Paradise —Jannah al-Firdaws—, and found it in Mindanao: The land of paradise was brought by the angels from the west (Arabia) to Mindanao. Later the angels moved paradise to Madinat, but the earth did not balance and tipped on the side of Mindanao. Then they measured the earth to find its center, but it had none. Then the angels took paradise and carried it to Mecca, but a part of it remained in Mindanao. Sharif Awliya knew that and came to Mindanao to search for it.³²

This narrative is interesting indeed. It assumes the same Semitic tradition about the location of Paradise in the confines of the eastern world, the confines reached by the Qur’anic Prophet Dhū l-Qarnayn (“The Two-horned one”): [18:88] But as for him who believes (in Allāh ’s Oneness) and works righteousness, he shall have the best reward (Paradise), and we (Dhul-Qarnain) shall speak until him mild words“ [18:89] Then he followed another way [18:90] Until, when he came to the rising place of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We (Allāh) had provided no shelter against the sun [18:91] So (it was)! And We knew all about Dhul-Qarnain.³³

Although historiography has questioned the link between Alexander the Great and Dhū l-Qarnayn, for Southeast Asia the character is undoubtedly Iskandar. Al-Masʻūdī offers a valuable text that appears at the beginning of his Kitāb altanbīh wa-l-ishrāf in the section “on the earth and its form.” Here the connections

 For details on the standard historiography of the Islamization, following Majul, see Donoso, Islamic Far East, 136 – 48. A revision of the process in Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Historical Fact and Fiction (Kuala Lumpur: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Press, 2011), 96 – 105.  Najeeb M. Saleeby, Studies in Moro History, Law and Religion by Najeeb M. Saleeby and The Island of Mindanao by Antonio Martel de Gayangos, ed. César Adib Majul (Manila: The Filipiniana Book Guild, 1976), 52.  Saleeby, Studies, 24.  All Qurʼanic translations from Muhammad Taqī-ud-Din al-Hilālī, and Muhammad Muhsin Khān, Translation of the Meaning of the Noble Qurʼān in the English Language (Medina: King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qurʼān, 1417 H.)

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between Dhū l-Qarnayn’s mission, Alexander/Iskandar, and the wall raised from Korea across the Chinese border against Gog and Magog can be clearly understood: On the edge of the inhabited world in the far east towards the limits of China and Sila [Korea] is the wall of Gog and Magog that was built by al-Iskandar, to protect the earth from their chaos.³⁴

Indeed, Iskandar Dhū l-Qarnayn became of first magnitude in justifying the expansion of Islam in eastern Asia. Mention of him as the first messenger to the confines of the Far East was conditio sine qua non in the adoption of Islamic polities in the region. The sultanate of Samudra-Pasai in the thirteenth century, and then the sultanate of Malacca in the fifteenth, mentioned Iskandar Dhū l-Qarnayn in the genesis of the process of Islamization. In the end, the presence of Alexander the Great in Moro sources goes further than a mere anecdote: The Iskandar (Alexander the Great) legend which figures prominently in the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) is not found in the Sulu Genealogy. However, Alexander the Great is found in various oral traditions in Sulu either as having come to Sulu or to have sent there some of the first inhabitants. There has been no serious attempt to link Alexander the Great to any of the Sulu sultans. As it is, with the elaborate ancestry claimed for the Sulu sultans, one more Greek on the list would have been superfluous.³⁵

Sharīf Muḥammad Kabungsuwan from Johore launched a military campaign in the eastern coast of Mindanao in 1515 that lasted twenty-five years. Afterwards a sultanate was established along the river Pulangi, with political centers in Sibugay, Tamontaca and Buayan. A part of the Sibugay branch eventually swore loyalty to Spain and became the Spanish Zamboanga. A silsila written in a creolized Spanish narrates this progress from indigenous and Islamic to Hispanic rule.³⁶ The people of the island of Luzon participated as well in the activities of the region from Malacca to Brunei. The entrepôt of Manila consolidated a local

 Our translation from Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, edidit M. J. de Goeje. Pars octava. Kitāb at-Tanbīh wa’l-Ischrāf, auctore al-Masūdī (Leiden: Brill, 1894).  Majul, Muslims, 7.  Isaac Donoso, “Muḥammad Anwār al-Dīn,” in Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History Volume 16. North America, South-East Asia, China, Japan and Australasia (1800 – 1914), ed. David Thomas and John Chesworth (Leiden: Brill, 2020).

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Malay aristocracy in the sixteenth century.³⁷ Because of international trade, Tagalog society from Manila Bay and southern Luzon adopted Islamic practice. Spaniards noticed the Islamization of the Tagalogs and called them Moros. The sources mention people capable of reading the Qur’an in Arabic: It is true that some people who have been in Brunei understand a little, and can read some words of the Qur’an, but these are very few. They consider among themselves that if a person has not been in Brunei he can freely eat pork. I have heard many of them say this.³⁸

In parallel with the acculturation that came from commercial ties, Muslim preachers may have taught in Manila Bay and other areas of the archipelago, altering the literacy of the people. Baybayin, a Brahmic-oriented local script, probably was starting to be replaced by the Arabic script in writing Tagalog.³⁹ In other words, the written word transcended from an earthly activity to a metaphysical means of accessing the holy message —the Qur’an. Important parts of the Philippine archipelago were under the dominion of Brunei: Palawan, Mindoro, Sulu, Manila, Balayan and Bombon. Consequently, Brunei kept sending preachers to these areas even after the founding of the Spanish settlement in Manila in 1571.⁴⁰ Governor Francisco de Sande (1575 – 80) decided to invade Brunei Sultanate and created a casus belli. Magachina, a Tagalog Moro from Balayan, testified to a general Islamic conspiracy: Asked where he learned the religion of Muḥammad and who taught it to him, this witness said that in his town of Balayan people from Brunei taught it to him, and he also learned it when traders from Brunei came to him, for their ancestors were natives of Mecca, so far as he knew. Hence the people from Balayan, Bombon, Manila and Mindoro have learned that religion from the Borneans, because they did not know it before. And consequently they all,

 See José Manuel Garcia, As Filipinas na Historiografia Portuguesa do Século XVI. Philippines in the Portuguese XVIth Century Historiography (Porto: Centro Português de Estudos do Sudoeste Asiático, 2003).  Relación del descubrimiento y conquista de la isla de Luzón y Mindoro, Manila, 1572, in Wenceslao E. Retana, Archivo del bibliófilo filipino. Recopilación de documentos históricos, científicos, literarios y políticos y Estudios bibliográficos (Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez, 1898), IV: 29. Original text: “Verdad es que algunos que han estado en Burney, entienden alguna cosa, y saben leer algunas palabras del Alcorán; empero estos son muy pocos y tienen entre ellos opinión que el que no hubiere estado en Burney puede comer puerco, y esto yo se lo he oído decir a muchos dellos.”  Isaac Donoso, “Letra de Meca. Jawi Script in the Tagalog Region in the 16th Century,” Journal of al-Tamaddun 14, no. 1 (2019).  See Julkipli M. Wadi, “Rajah Sulayman, Spain, and the Transformation of Islamic Manila,” in More Hispanic than We Admit. Insights into Philippine Cultural History, ed. by Isaac Donoso (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2008).

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and this witness, are Muslims now, since their ancestors learned the religion from the Borneans. Thus the writing and language that they hear and speak are from Mecca. The natives of Siam and Patani also have their Qur ’ans, which is the law and sect of Mohammed. From the written book of the Qur’an he has seen, and also heard it preached, that they are the enemies of the Christians. They find it also in other books read by the catip, their best preacher and others; through them they believe in the religion of Mohammed and hold fast to it, saying that the Christian faith is bad and theirs is good. It is well known that in the last year, seventy-four, the king of Brunei tried to come to Manila and defeat the Spaniards who live there. To that end he prepared a navy of one hundred galleys and one hundred small boats. […] He knows, since it is public and notorious, that the king of Brunei had sent many Muslims to preach Islam to Mindanao, Manila, Bombon, Balayan, Mindoro and other places.⁴¹

The report gave Sande a suitable reason to declare war against Brunei. Besides sending Muslim preachers, Brunei was encouraging Manila’s rulers to revolt against the Spaniards. What is important for us is that this information is transmitted by a Moro from Balayan, a Muslim from Southern Luzon whose ancestors were Islamized by people from Borneo. Furthermore, the southern Tagalog Muslims declares that his writing and language (letra y lengua) is from Mecca, and they have Qur’ans too. That is to say, this person from Balayan represents at least the second or third generation of Muslims in Southern Luzon, since he clearly says that “his ancestors were Islamized by Borneans” (al presente son moros por haber sus antepasados deprendido la dixa secta de los borneyes). In consequence, the Islamization took place some time before the Spanish con-

 Our translation from Archivo General de Indias, Seville: Jornadas a Borneo, Joló, Mindanao, en Filipinas (1578), PATRONATO, 24, R.48, 3v-4v. Original text: “[…] preguntado dónde deprendió este testigo la secta de Mahoma y quién se la mostró dixo que en su pueblo de Balayán se la mostraron borneyes y también viniéndole a contratar borneyes la deprendió que es porque los antepasados de los borneyes eran naturales de Meca a lo que este testigo supo y así los de Balayán, Bonbón y Manila y Mindoro han deprendido la dixa secta de los borneyes porque ellos no la sabían y así todos ellos y este testigo son al presente moros por haber sus antepasados deprendido la dixa secta de los borneyes y así la letra y lengua que oyen y hablan es de Meca y los naturales de Siam y Patan tiene asimismo sus alcoranes que es la ley y secta de Mahoma y que el libro que tienen escrito del alcorán que este ha visto y oído predicar oyen que son enemigos de los cristianos y también lo delatan en otros libros en que leen por su catip que es su mejor predicador y estos con semejantes con los cuales creen la dixa secta de Mahoma para que la guarden y en ella declaran ser la fe de los cristianos mala y la suya buena y que cosa notoria es que el año pasado de setenta y cuatro el Rey de Borney quiso venir sobre Manila y conquistar los españoles que en ella residen y para ello tuvo una armada de cien galeras y cien navíos pequeños […] y que sabe por público y notorio que el Rey de Borney había mandado muchos moros a Mindanao, Manila, Bonbón y Balayán, Mindoro y otros lugares a que prediquen la secta.”

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quest, together with the process of cultural transformation. And it is here that we must place the introduction of Letra de Meca, the use of Arabic script by Tagalog people, and the circulation of Qur’ans in Manila.

3 The Pandita The idea of a general “Islamic conspiracy” was still present within a sector of the colonial administration of Manila during the first period. Oidor Melchor de Ávalos sent the King two apologetic letters against Tagalog Muslims in 1585. After the pertinent legal arguments against the Qur’an, he defended the destruction of Brunei by Governor Sande in 1578 and the persecution and punishment of Muslim preachers in the Philippines: While Governor, Doctor Francisco de Sande issued bans and punishments against the alfaquíes who had come here to dogmatize and teach the sect, and this was the reason and occasion for the war that he waged against Borneo.⁴²

This testimony is of utmost importance, since it demonstrates an official Spanish campaign to eradicate Islam in Luzon, which involved persecuting Muslim preachers and, certainly, Arabic writings and Qur’ans used by Tagalogs. In fact, the sources reveal a long list of names related to Islamic preachers and their roles: sayc (shaykh), catip (khatīb), kali (qāḍī). The Boxer Codex, a Spanish-language manuscript containing Chinese drawings of nations and regions of sixteenth-century Asia, includes a very interesting description of how the initial Islamic mission took place among Tagalogs, whom the manuscript calls “Moros”: When their ancestors had news of this god which they hold as their highest, it was through some male prophets whose names they no longer know, because as they have neither writings nor those to teach them, they have forgotten the very names of these prophets, aside from what they know of those who in their tongue are called tagapagbasa, nansulatana

 Francisco Franco-Sánchez and Isaac Donoso, “Moriscos peninsulares, moros filipinos y el islam en el extremo oriental del imperio español: 2. Edición de la Primera carta para la S.C.M.R acerca de los mahometanos de las Philipinas de Melchor de Ávalos (1585),” Sharq al-Andalus. Estudios Mudéjares y Moriscos 21 (2014– 16), 159. Original: “El doctor Francisco de Sande, siendo governador, hizo proçesos y justiçia contra los dichos alfaquíes que aquí halló haver venido a dogmatizar y enseñar la secta, y de aquí tomó fundamento y ocassión la jornada que el dicho doctor Sande hizo a Bornei.”

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Fig. 1: Islamization of the Philippine Archipelago. Source: Donoso, Islamic Far East, 157.

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dios —which means readers of the writings of god— from whom they have learned about this god.⁴³

The Tagalog have “characters that serve as letters, which they use to write whatever they want, different from any script known by us [the Spaniards]” (Tienen ciertos caracteres que les sirven de letras, con los cuales escriben lo que quieren. Son de muy diferente hechura de los demás que sabemos). In matters of religion “they do not have a text to read” (porque como no tienen escritura que se lo enseñe), only “those who read the word of God,” called tagapagbasa nansulatana dios, or in Spanish declaradores de los escritos de dios. This notion reveals that religious preachers —makhdūmūn and shurafā’, or other names used in the sources: catip, gazi, pandita, etc.— read, taught and spread the qur’anic message to the masses. We must remember again what Magachina said: “they have the Qur’an and other books which they read through their catip, their best preacher” (tienen escrito del Alcorán […] y también lo delatan en otros libros en que leen por su catip que es su mejor predicador). Therefore, the catip (khaṭīb) read the qur’anic word to the people. In parallel, the Letra de Meca was being introduced and Arabic cartillas (readers, primers) circulated as well: There are in this island [Manila] and in that of Tondo many Mohammedans, to whom the sect had become attached through the contract they had in Borneo. They married in the islands and settled here, and had them adhere [to Islam] by giving them primers, ceremonies, and the the manner of keeping them. In this way many from the island [of Luzon] began to be Moros, practicing circumcision and taking Moorish names; and the cancer spread so quickly that if the arrival of the Spaniards had been delayed, all would be Muslims today, as are already all the islanders who are not in the government of the Philippines. These have been worked on by gacizes and other moravitos who come to preach to them by way of the Strait of Mecca and the Red Sea.⁴⁴

 Boxer Codex: A Modern Spanish Transcription and English Translation of 16th-Century Exploration Accounts of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific, transcription and edition by Isaac Donoso, translation and annotations by María Luisa García, Carlos Quirino and Mauro García (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2016), 65.  Juan de Grijalva, Crónica de la orden de nuestro padre san Agustín en las provincias de Nueva España (Mexico: Porrúa, 1985), 492. Original: “Hay en esta isla [Manila] y en la de Tondo muchos mahometanos, a quienes se les había pegado la secta por la contratación que tenían en Borneo. Los cuales, habiéndose casado en las islas, y avecindándose en ellas, se la habían pegado, y enseñado, dándoles cartillas, ceremonias y forma de guardarlas. Y así muchos de la isla [de Luzón] comenzaban a ser moros retajándose y poniéndose nombres de moros; y cundía el cáncer tan de prisa que a tardarse más la llegada de los españoles todos fueran hoy moros, como lo

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Consequently, all the elements of an Islamic milieu can be found in early modern Manila, and certainly to a greater extent in the southern Philippines. Beyond the initial Islamic roles that emerge in the historical sources, the pandita had capital importance. He was the spiritual leader of a community: the alfaquí, imam, guro (teacher), ulama, legal adviser, even ambassador. In any diplomatic negotiation with the Spanish administration, notarial agreement, or embassy, the pandita was always present as witness and legal guarantor. The word pandita was repeated constantly in the Spanish historiography to the point that Wenceslao Retana proposed to include it in the dictionary of the Spanish academy: Pandita. m. Among the Malay Mohammedans, Priest: “Next, the Most Excellent Sultan [of Jolo] Harun, placing his hands on the Qur’an, with his Pandita Tuan Mustafa officiating, the Hon. Governor General swore him in…” – Minutes of the oath taken in Manila, September 24, 1886.⁴⁵

Across the centuries, the application of Islamic law in the Philippine sultanates was carried out by a supreme qāḍī (the ‘datu Kali,’ a post normally held by a foreign Muslim: Turkish, Afghan, Indian or Arab). Panditas worked at the local level (in the so-called rancherías) as fuqahā’. ⁴⁶

4 Historical Qur’ans in the Philippines A general idea of how the Islamic administration functioned in the sultanates during the modern period can be seen in the following text: In each ranchería there is a pandita or priest. His costume and turban are white. The occupation of the pandita is limited to reading the Qur’an, copies of which they hold in high esteem. Some of them date from the sixteenth century and are true bibliographic jewels. Almost all panditas make the pilgrimage to Mecca. The pandita has a voice and vote when the council discusses matters of interest or importance, and also takes an active part in campaigns. Among the sultans and dattos, there are quite intelligent ones, most

son ya todos los isleños que no están en el gobierno de Filipinas, a los cuales tienen muy industriados gacizes y otros moravitos que les vienen a predicar por el estrecho de Meca y Mar Rojo.”  Wenceslao Emilio Retana, “Diccionario de Filipinismos,” Revue Hispanique 51 (1921), 143 – 44.  Saleeby, Studies, 68.

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of them replacing a lack of solid instruction with their extraordinary sagacity and sharpness. They are enthusiastic admirers of personal courage.⁴⁷

Juan Salcedo, a military official, reveals in this quotation the bibliographic value of some Qur’ans preserved in the Philippines, “verdaderas joyas bibliográficas” from the sixteenth century. The text also notes the “gran estima” with which copies of the Qur’an were preserved. We have already mentioned that oaths and treaties were sworn over the physical book, and therefore the material Qur’an played a role in the most powerful and solemn political acts. In addition, each Qur’an had its own proper name, at least in Lanao at the end of the nineteenth century.⁴⁸ Disertación histórico-política en que se trata de la extensión del Mahometismo en las Islas Filipinas is a political dissertation in a literary style about the history of Muslims in the Philippines, written by the Franciscan José Torrubia and originally published in Madrid in 1736. This eighteenth-century literary dialogue is the first general account of the spread of Islam in the Philippine islands, and gives us some clues to the circulation of Qur’ans in the archipelago: Since our entrance into this land the number of Muslims has increased greatly, through the regular traffic with the Macassars and because holy men from Mecca, leaving the strait, come as far as Sumatra, and from there by its strait pass to our islanders with a sectarian spirit; they bring Qur’ans in Arabic to instruct them: a great portion of these books were taken in the Sabanilla, and I saw them in Manila in the hands of Sergeant Major Ponce in the year 1724.⁴⁹

Torrubia mentions that shurafā’ from Mecca introduced Qur’ans into the islands. The Franciscan confessed that he saw many of them in Manila in 1724, seized in the southern fort of La Sabanilla (still extant) and transferred to the capital. Ac-

 Juan Salcedo y Mantilla de los Ríos, Proyectos de dominación y colonización de Mindanao y Joló, (Gerona: [s.n.], 1891), 28 – 29. Original text: “En cada ranchería hay un pandita o sacerdote. Su traje y turbante es blanco. La ocupación del pandita se reduce a leer el Corán, cuyos ejemplares tienen en gran estima. Algunos datan del siglo XVI, constituyendo verdaderas joyas bibliográficas. Casi todos los panditas verifican la peregrinación a la Meca. El pandita tiene voz y voto cuando el consejo ventila asuntos de interés o gravedad, y también toma parte activa en campaña. Entre los sultanes y dattos, los hay bastante inteligentes supliendo en los más, su extraordinaria sagacidad y agudeza a la falta de instrucción sólida. Son admiradores entusiastas del valor personal.”  Annabel Teh Gallop, “Islamic Manuscript Art of the Philippines,” The Qur’an and Islamic Manuscripts of Mindanao, ed. by Midori Kawashima (Tokyo: Sophia University, 2012), 94.  José Torrubia, Disertación histórico-política en que se trata de la extensión del Mahometismo en las Islas Filipinas (Madrid: [n.p.], 1736), 1– 2.

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cordingly, these books were not destroyed, at least not deliberately, but secured in Manila. Destruction of materials could have taken place during the sixteenth century, as Ávalos narrated, but it is anachronistic to believe that the whole three centuries of colonial government were based on systematic religious intolerance.⁵⁰ Certainly intolerance does not explain the current limited existence of primary sources, since regions free from colonial rule, such as Brunei, manifest a similarly poor written heritage. Scarcity of paper could be one reason: The fact that this aspect [reparation of paper] is more pronounced in Mindanao than in other parts of the Malay world may in part be interpreted as reflecting the relative rarity of books in the society. The supply of paper might also have been a factor, for although locally made paper was available it was coarse, and we do not know how easy it was to make in quantity. Certainly there does not seem to have been the same easy access in Muslim regions of Mindanao to Italian and other European papers on which, for example, nearly all Aceh manuscripts are written.⁵¹

Arabic paper declined in the modern era⁵² and was practically replaced by European manufactures in the eighteenth century.⁵³ Therefore, many Southeast Asian Islamic manuscripts were written on European paper, and for the Philippine case the studies of Midori Kawashima prove the use of papel catalán for many of them.⁵⁴ Obviously Chinese paper was accessible as well, and interestingly local handmade paper too. In any case, we are still in a very initial stage regarding the culture of the book in the Islamic Philippines, and current research in public and private repositories still needs to recover more sources to obtain a clear picture of the real scope of this heritage. In his Bibliografía de Mindanao (1894) Wenceslao Retana mentioned some samples: “Número 167: Alcorán. – En moro de Mindanao – Ms. Fue de un pandita. Está escrito en papel muy ordinario. Parece ser copia de la segunda mitad

 Gallop, “Qur’an manuscripts from Mindanao,” 5.  Gallop, “Qur’an manuscripts from Mindanao,” 31.  See Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).  See Terence Walz, “The Paper Trade of Egypt and the Sudan in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Modernization in the Sudan, ed. by M.W. Daly (New York: Lilian Berber Press, 1988), 29 – 48.  Midori Kawashima, “Papers and Covers in the Manuscripts Comprising the Sheik Muhammad Said Collection in Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, Philippines,” The Library of an Islamic Scholar of Mindanao: The Collection of Sheik Muhammad Said bin Imam sa Bayang at the Al-Imam AsSadiq (A.S.) Library, Marawi City, Philippines: An Annotated Catalogue with Essays, ed. by Midori Kawashima (Tokyo: Sophia University, 2019), 179.

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del presente siglo.”⁵⁵ However, many materials from the Colección de la Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas were destroyed during World War II. We located some items from Medina ’s catalogue in the National Library of the Philippines (numbers 1643, 1645a and 1645b),⁵⁶ but what we found were printed Indian mawlids (a matter that deserves further research). Similarly, an item catalogued as Qur’an in the Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental in Madrid is in fact a Malay compilation.⁵⁷ The Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid secured another Malay compilation,⁵⁸ but none of the Qur’ans preserved there are described as having originated in Southeast Asia.⁵⁹ In the Archivo General de Indias in Seville some important documents can be found —for example, the only identified letter in the Arabic language issued by a Philippine sultanate,⁶⁰ and one of the earliest Jawi manuscript preserved from the Malay world—⁶¹ but not examples of the Qur’an. Finally, we can point to the reproduction of Sura al-Kāfirūn among the materials used by a Jesuit in his mission in Sulu, from the Arxiu Històric de la Companyia de Jesús a Catalunya in Barcelona.⁶² In sum, there is no doubt that a very important part of the Philippine Islamic heritage remains in Spain, but more exhaustive research is needed.

 W. E. Retana, Bibliografía de Mindanao (Epítome) (Madrid: Minuesa de los Ríos, 1894), 59.  Isagani R. Medina, Filipiniana Materials in the National Library (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1971), 199. A separate issue is the almost two hundred letters that we have located in the National Archives of the Philippines, whose catalogue will appear soon. See Isaac Donoso, “Islamic Manuscripts in the National Archives of the Philippines,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 7 (2016).  AFIO: Caja 1014, folder 5. “Alcorán de los moros de Mindanao y Joló, en caracteres árabes, a dos tintas. 87 h. en 4. (Este ejemplar fue recogido por nuestros misioneros de Samar a los moros piratas que afluían a las costas de dicha isla de Filipinas).” We thank Regalado Trota José for the reference.  The document was reviewed by Ph. S. van Ronkel, “L’unique manuscrit en langue indonésienne dans la péninsule Ibérique,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 101, no. 4 (1942). The BNE has informed us that it is currently inaccessible.  Perhaps a full analysis of the material features of some of the Qur’ans digitalized in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica can provide elements from Southeast Asia.  Isaac Donoso and Mourad Kacimi, “A Royal Letter, in Arabic, by Sultan ʿAẓīm al-Dīn I of Sulu (1747),” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 10 (2019).  Isaac Donoso, “Philippine Islamic Manuscripts and Western Historiography,” Manuscripta Orientalia 16, no. 2 (2010).  See the study of this bundle, with translation of other Arabic material used by the Jesuit missionary, in Mourad Kacimi, “Un manuscrito jesuita de Filipinas con ‘La fábula del León y su corte’ en lengua árabe: Edición, traducción y estudio,” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos 47 (2019).

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Some Qur’ans produced during the Spanish period found their way to American repositories and have been brilliantly studied by Annabel Teh Gallop.⁶³ In short, all the Philippine qur’anic examples located so far come from Mindanao, and none from Sulu.⁶⁴ Their materiality is similar to that of other examples from Southeast Asia —sometimes with paper locally made —, displaying the typical frames enclosing the text, with the initial sura illuminated. The decoration follows Malay schemes, sometimes with Tausug ukkil or Maranao okir designs.⁶⁵ The most important singular copy is the Qur’an of Bayang, called “Maradika” and held by the Philippine National Museum.⁶⁶

6 The Qur’an and the Moro Standard historiography on Moros has focused its lens on political struggle and national understanding. Yet beyond the traditional ethnographic descriptions, limited attention has been given to the philology and cultural history of Muslims in the Philippines. Samuel Tan did pioneer a new scholarship by recovering and studying indigenous sources.⁶⁷ The recent publication of the catalogue of the Sheik Muhammad Said Collection in Marawi, directed by Midori Kawashima,

 Puzzled by some Dagestani Qur’ans sold in the British auction houses as originating in the Philippines, she spent time attending to this matter: “However I would argue that the final group of enhanced manuscripts –Daghistani Qur’ans with added colophons relating to Brunei and the southern Philippines– are in a different category. Here I would not recoil from using the word ‘fake’ in relation to these added textual elements, and would also wish to highlight the great potential damage that can be caused to scholarship, and the distortion of our understanding of the cultural history of the region, by such embellishments seeking to maximise the commercial value of the manuscripts”: A. T. Gallop, “Fakes or Fancies? Some ‘Problematic’ Islamic Manuscripts from South East Asia,” Manuscript Cultures 10 (2017).  Gallop, “Qur’an manuscripts from Mindanao,” 33.  See Abraham P. Sakili, “Philippine Muslim Arts. Affirming Their Space in History and Islam and Asserting a Place for Muslim Figurative Arts,” in More Islamic than We Admit. Philippine Islamic Cultural History, ed. by Isaac Donoso (Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2017). Also Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa, Ukkil: Visual Arts of the Sulu Archipelago (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008).  The years-long efforts of Midori Kawashima achieved the restoration of this manuscript as a national treasure. Details and images of the document can be seen in The Qur’an and Islamic Manuscripts of Mindanao, downloadable through her personal website: https://kawashimamidori.jp/  From his first Filipino Muslim Perceptions of Their History and Culture as Seen Through Indigenous Sources (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2003).

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has proved decisive in opening a door to the study of Moro Islamic intellectual activity within Southeast Asian thought.⁶⁸ Thus, within this new scenario the studies done by Peter Riddell on Tafsīr Jalālayn and the early Malay qur’anic exegesis by ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf al-Singkilī (c. 1615 – 1693)⁶⁹ make sense from a Philippine point of view. Many references to these works can be seen in the index of the Marawi collection.⁷⁰ The same can be said of the pioneering works on Malay tafsir by Anthony H. Johns,⁷¹ since it is now clear that Moros consumed Malay qur’anic exegesis and theology from the main intellectual centers of Southeast Asia: Aceh, Pattani, Banten, Cirebon, Palembang… to the point that practically all the relevant Malay Islamic intellectuals are present in the Marawi repository: al-Fanṣūrī, al-Sūmaṭrānī, al-Rānīrī, al-Faṭānī, al-Makassārī, al-Bantanī, al-Banjārī and al-Palembānī: The content of the manuscripts also shows us that in the intellectual tradition of the Malays in Mindanao not only works from Middle Eastern scholars are quoted, but also texts from Southeast Asian scholars that were written in the 17th and 18th centuries. This not only underlines the importance of these scholars but also suggests that the development of an Islamic intellectual tradition and its integration into the Malay world came rather late in the 19th century.⁷²

In Riddell’s groundbreaking volume Islam and the Malay-Indonesian World no single Philippine Islamic author was mentioned.⁷³ Yet Moro ulama are now starting to be recovered: ‘Abd al-Majīd al-Mindanāwī (c. eighteenth century), author of an ash‘arī compendium of theology in Arabic and Malay written in Aceh;⁷⁴ Sayyidnā Muḥammad Sa‘īd from Binidayan, who wrote a riḥla to Mecca in

 Kawashima, The Library of an Islamic Scholar of Mindanao.  Riddell, Malay Court Religion.  Kawashima, The Library of an Islamic Scholar of Mindanao, p. 439 for al-Singkilī and p. 458 for Tafsīr Jalālayn.  A.H. Johns, “Islam in the Malay World: An Exploratory Survey with Some Reference to Quranic Exegesis,” in Islam in Asia, ed. by R. Israeli & A.H. Johns (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1984).  Oman Fathurahman, “A New Light on the Sufi Network of Mindanao (Philippines), Indonesia and the Malay World, 47– 137 (2019):121.  Peter G. Riddell, Islam and the Malay-Indonesian World. Transmission and Responses (Singapore: Horizon Books, 2003).  Description of this manuscript —preserved at the National Library of Indonesia— in Midori Kawashima and Oman Fathurahman, “Islamic Manuscripts of Southern Philippines: A Research Note with Description of Three Manuscripts,” The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies 29 (2011).

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Malay in the nineteenth century and other religious texts;⁷⁵ and probably Muḥammad Sharīf ‘Ālī from Tongkil, author of the Malay Kitāb suatu al-qima held at the AFIO. However, beyond the intellectual use of the Qur’an as a primary source of knowledge and speculation, of exegesis and mysticism, the holy word reached the common Moro through popular belief. Indeed, Islamic intellectual activity was limited in the whole Malay world to pesantren or pondok,⁷⁶ religious madrasas, courts and chanceries of the sultanates, and those individuals who travelled to Mecca. Religious books —afterwards printed on yellow paper and known as kitab kuning ⁷⁷— circulated, but many of the more common materials were prayers, treatises, admonitions, calendars, diagrams of ‘ilm al-ḥurūf, esoterism, calligraphy, talismans, or texts on ilmu tabaruk (the science of seeking blessings). Certainly, folk Islam was shaping the ethos of Muslims in the Philippines, just as folk Christianity was adopted by Christian Filipinos to create new meanings, as the pervasive reading, representing, and living of the Passion of Jesus Christshows: The masses’ experience of Holy Week fundamentally shaped the style of peasant brotherhoods and uprisings during the Spanish and American colonial periods. Instead of glorifying the ancient rituals of the babaylanes (native priests) as evocative of the true native spirit, the fact has to be accepted that the majority of the lowland Filipinos were converted to Spanish Catholicism. But like other regions of Southeast Asia which “domesticated” Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, and Islamic influences, the Philippines, despite the fact that Catholicism was more often than not imposed on it by Spanish missionaries, creatively evolved its own brand of folk Christianity from which was drawn much of the language of anticolonialism in the late nineteenth century.⁷⁸

The use of talismans is a common practice among many Filipino ethnic groups. The so-called anting-anting has many inner significances and ways to represent protection. Latin words and images of angels and saints are engraved on small metal amulets hung around the neck. Moros were familiar with other symbology,

 Midori Kawashima, “The Journeys of Two Mindanao Ulama in the Late Eighteenth Century to the Early Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Philippine Local History & Heritage 3, no. 1 (2017).  A very interesting reference in this sense is Hasan Madmarn, The Pondok & Madrasah in Patani (Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2002).  Martin van Bruinessen, “Kitab kuning: Books in Arabic Script Used in the Pesantren Milieu; Comments on a new collection in the KITLV Library,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 146, no. 2– 3 (1990).  Reynaldo Clemeña Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution. Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840 – 1910 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003), 11– 12.

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for instance the “Three fish with one head” or the “Ring of Solomon.”⁷⁹ But invariably the holy word was present in the manufacture of Islamic talismans. Perhaps the most interesting one is the pis siyulatan: A square piece of yellow or white cloth […] the most potent expressions or symbols are placed at the center and at the four corners of the cloth. The expressions do not always convey logical sense, although in many cases qur’anic verses are distinguishable from a mixture of Arabic and Malay language expressions.⁸⁰

The pis siyulatan —as a handkerchief on the forehead— was an important element in performing parang sabil, when the Moro in older times followed the steps fī sabīl Allāh towards jihad. Spaniards called him the juramentado: Juramentado: (From juramentar, 2nd meaning) m. It is said of the Moro of the Philippines who is sworn to kill Christians, in hand-to-hand fighting, until he dies. It is widely used, and has been used more [in the past], always in the masculine form, since juramentadas are unknown […] The juramentados have been the nightmare of our garrisons in Mindanao and Jolo. Many times it has happened that an oath-taker would enter thefort, slashing with a blade to left and right, until he was killed. But he sold his life dearly, because before losing it he caused as many misfortunes as he could.⁸¹

César Majul clarified also the extra-Islamic sense of the juramentado, beyond the mujāhid: There is no doubt that non-Islamic elements might have entered in the institution of the original juramentado. The use of certain kinds of amulets as well as the shaving of the eyebrows do not appear to have similarities to those warriors of Islam in Spain who were charged with the protection of the frontiers. Although the mujahid’s action was sanctioned in Islam, the manner the system evolved in the Philippines reveals that it was partly associated with a code of honor that might have been pre-Islamic in character. Its emphasis was

 See the excellent analysis by Annabel Teh Gallop, “Cultural Interactions in Islamic Manuscript Art: A Scholar’s Library from Mindanao,” in The Library of an Islamic Scholar of Mindanao, ed. by Midori Kawashima.  Abraham P. Sakili, Space and Identity: Expressions in the Culture, Arts and Society of the Muslims in the Philippines (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2003), 226 – 27.  Retana, “Diccionario,” 171. Original: “Juramentado: (De juramentar, 2ª acep.) m. Dícese del moro de Filipinas que se juramenta para matar cristianos, en lucha cuerpo a cuerpo, hasta morir él. Se usa mucho, y se ha usado más, siempre en masculino, pues no se sabe de juramentadas […] Los juramentados han sido la pesadilla de nuestras guarniciones en Mindanao y Joló. Muchas veces se ha dado el caso de penetrar en la plaza un juramentado repartiendo campilanazos a diestro y siniestro, hasta que lo mataban. Pero vendía cara la vida, porque antes de perderla causaba cuantas desgracias podía.”

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on some of these non-Islamic elements that made a few Muslim visitors deny that the juramentado system had an Islamic basis. The fact was that the system of the original juramentado had degenerated to purely criminal acts.⁸²

The Malay amok and the Acehnese perang sabil are obviously related to the ritual of the Moro juramentado or parang sabil, but in Philippine Christian areas similar practices have been observed historically. As Majul pointed out, the origin of this social phenomenon predates the adoption of international religions. In sum, like the passion of Christ for Christianized Filipinos, the Qur’an was similarly incorporated into the ethos and cosmovision of the Moro, to the utmost level, the level of feeling protection and transcendental hope by living the holy word.

7 Spaniards and the Philippine Qur’an Spanish penetration into Eastern Asia challenged centuries of Islamic trade and missions. War against Muslims moved the Christian Iberian kingdoms from the Middle Ages to the monarchic union between Castile and Aragon. After the fall of Granada, Isabel’s will was to extend the war into North Africa and reach as far as Jerusalem. Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros epitomized the policy by publicly burning thousands of Qur’ans and Arabic books in Granada⁸³ and leading the conquest of Oran in 1509. The spirit of religious crusade undoubtedly led Spanish policy makers, and justified war as a major legitimator of the crown. The conquest of the Philippines took place half a century later, but traditional historiography has taken note of the extension of the Reconquista to the other side of the world: The coming of two of the great world religions to the archipelago is an epic story. Islam came from the southwest […] Christianity came from far across the oceans to the east […] The Muslim-Christian confrontation in the archipelago was part of a long conflict played out on a global scale […] The Moorish occupation was to last for almost eight hundred years, and finally ended with the reconquest of Granada in 1492 […] When they [the Span-

 Majul, Muslims, 426.  A fact —the proscription and destruction of Arabic religious books in early modern Granada — that historiography has not yet been able to deny despite some conjectural efforts, as in Nicasio Salvador Miguel, “Cisneros en Granada y la quema de libros islámicos,” in La Biblia Políglota Complutense en su contexto, ed. Antonio Alvar Ezquerra (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2016).

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iards] crossed the Pacific Ocean and arrived in the archipelago, they again met their ancient enemy, halfway around the world from the arena of their earlier conflict […] The old war from across the world was resumed in the archipelago.⁸⁴

This argument was rightly targeted by Scott, who recalled the commercial goals of the European expansion.⁸⁵ However, it is a fact that the Spanish settling of Manila halted the natural development of Islam in the region.⁸⁶ In this context, Philippine historiography has centered on the possible destruction of pre-Hispanic relics and written testimonies in Baybayin, the vernacular script. Yet we have argued the opposite, that is to say: Baybayin was promoted by the first Christian missionaries in Manila as a way of blocking the emerging introduction of Arabic script and the Qur’an among Tagalogs.⁸⁷ Melchor de Ávalos mentioned Sande’s policy against Bornean missionaries in the Philippines, to the extent that he conquered the Sultanate of Brunei in 1578. At this early moment, destruction of Islamic materials could have been taking place, including that of the main mosque of Brunei and the golden plate with the Silsilah of Brunei.⁸⁸ Nevertheless, the campaign of Philippine governor Francisco de Sande was more a private venture than a metropolitan mandate. In fact the Spanish monarch was not aware of his campaign, and the Synod of Manila condemned the illegality of the attack and the destruction of the mosque.⁸⁹ Although Islam vanished abruptly in Luzon, the next centuries saw a permanent relation between the Spanish administration and Muslim materials in the region. We have testimonies of the circulation and existence of Islamic books, sometimes seized by the Spaniards, as Torrubia mentioned; in that case the collection was transferred from La Sabanilla in Zamboanga to Manila. It is under-

 Onofre D. Corpuz, The Roots of the Filipino Nation (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2005), vol. I, 53 – 58.  William Henry Scott, “Crusade or Commerce? Spanish-Moro Relations in the 16th Century,” Kinaadman, A Journal of the Southern Philippines 6, no. 1 (1984).  “The Spanish arrived in time to halt the Islam expansion; therefore, Spain was responsible for stopping the Muslims in Asia. In dealing with the Muslims, Spain did not follow the peaceful policy that it applied in the other parts of the Philippines. The Spanish policy for the Moros was to conquer first and convert afterwards […] This was looked upon by the Spanish as a continuation of the ‘holy war’ they had fought against the Muslims in their homeland for over seven centuries”: Robert Day McAmis, Malay Muslims. The History and Challenge of Resurgent Islam in Southaest Asia (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002), 33.  Donoso, “Letra de Meca.”  Boxer Codex, ed. by Donoso, 116 – 17.  Domingo de Salazar, Sínodo de Manila de 1582, estudio introductorio, glosa y transcripción de los textos sinodales por José Luis Porras Camúñez (Madrid: CSIC, 1988), 232– 33.

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standable that if an effort was made to transport those items, the purpose was preservation and not destruction. The establishment of a permanent settlement in Zamboanga in 1718 created a constant necessity for translators and communications with the sultanates. Moro chancelleries were provided with Spanish-speaking secretaries, usually from Zamboanga, and many letters from the sultans’ offices were written directly in Spanish or in bilingual versions.⁹⁰ Eventually this relation produced a growing process of aljamiado,⁹¹ and the role of the sikritaryū (secretary) changed the habitus. The letters began to be introduced (as a kind of basmala) by the formula “Excelentísimo Señor,” Ī’ksirintīsimu Siñūr (Very Honourable Sir):

Fig. 2: NAP: Petición del Sultán de Joló para tener el monopolio del anfión, December 22, 1855, Mindanao y Sulú, SDS 9330 (1860 – 1896), Exp. 34, S. 414.

Names like Cipriano Enrile, Pedro Ortuoste, Plácido Alberto de Saavedra, Vicente Narciso and, above all, Alejo Álvarez, appeared constantly in official documents from both the Philippine government and the sultanates. They worked as official translators in the office of “Interpretación del idioma moro de Mindanao.”⁹² In-

 Donoso, “Islamic Manuscripts in the National Archives of the Philippines.”  Isaac Donoso, “Aljamiado Hispanofilipino: Spanish Language in Philippine Jawi Script,” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 66, no.1 (2018).  See National Archives of the Philippines (NAP): Cuadernillo con la lista de intérpretes. Intérpretes, SDS 2498, Libro 1, S. 217– 225; NAP: Dos informes de la sección de la interpretación del idioma moro de Mindanao, firmado por Alejo Álvarez, al Gobernador General de Filipinas, ponien-

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deed, interest in and care for the materiality, features and composition of the Moro letter was consolidated among the Spanish administration, to the extent that official letters were issued in Jawi as well.⁹³ For our current concern, we can mention as sample the four pages on brown paper (probably locally made) of Sura al-Tawba, preserved in the Spanish Biblioteca Nacional. They are accompanied by a letter to the Governor General in Maguindanao, in the Tausug language and Jawi script, dated 1275 H. by Datu Muḥammad ‘Abnān. On a sheet neatly folded as an envelope, the addressee appears as: Sinyur Kūbirnadur Kumandantī Hi’niral ha-Sambuwangana; this is to say: Señor Gobernador Comandante en Zamboanga. The sentence shows the use of Spanish in Jawi script, but incorporating the Tausug preposition ha(meaning ‘in’): These documents are collected as Documentos arábigos cojidos [sic] en la Sultanía de Matuguy, en la expedición de Davao, marzo de 1863, Arabic documents taken from the Sultanate of Matugay, in the expedition to Davao in March 1863. The Sura al-Tawba that accompanies the letter is reproduced on a single piece of paper folded in half to form four pages. Each page has 17 lines of black ink text of vocalized Arabic, and the sura heading is in red ink. There is no clear separation between ayas and the text is continuous, by a proficient scribe without excessive adornment. We note that a letter was called sulat in Tagalog, Tausug⁹⁴ and Maguindanao; however, it always appears as sura in the Philippine Jawi documents preserved, in both Tausug and Maguindanao. Pedro de San Buenaventura, in his 1613 Vocabulario de la lengua tagala, included the entry sulat as “Billete o papel escrito.”⁹⁵ Since we know that texts in Baybayin were written on pieces of bark and leaves, most probably texts on paper (containing single suras) were introduced by Muslim missionaries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Accordingly, the word sulat originated in Arabic suras written on single sheets of paper, as this Sura al-Tawba preserved in the BNE exemplifies.⁹⁶ do en su conocimiento noticias importantes sobre la situación del comercio en Joló, etc. (1875). Mindanao y Sulú, SDS 9259, Exp. 58, fol. 598 – 615.  NAP: Expediente de la moneda, August 9, 1896. Mindanao y Joló, SDS 9287 (1839 – 1899), S. 1330. Letter in the Tausug language and Jawi script signed and sealed with the Spanish coat of arms and motto “Gobierno Político Militar de Joló” letter. Heading in the Spanish language written in Jawi: “Don Luis Huerta y Urrutia, General de Brigada, Gobernador Político Militar.”  Hamsali S. Jawali, Ta’u-Sug-English Dictionary (Manila: National Book Store, 2006), 423.  San Buenaventura, Vocabulario, 149.  Jean-Paul G. Potet does not agree that Philippine and Malay sulat/ surat comes from the suras of the Qur’an, and considers it of Austronesian rather than Arabic origin. See Arabic and Persian Loanwords in Tagalog (Raleigh: Lulu Press, 2013), 214.

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Fig. 3: BNE, Documentos arábigos cojidos [sic] en la Sultanía de Matuguy, en la expedición de Davao, marzo de 1863, Yslas Filipinas. SG.MSS/21/14. Image from the Biblioteca Nacional de España’s collection.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the cultural construction of new modern identities affected even the Spaniards. As we have already indicated, the Moros were not the only agents writing in Jawi; Spanish people in Sulu and Mindanao started to use the script as well. At this moment in time written culture was at the centre of modern education, and the key factor of development was ‘to be literate.’ Cartillas, catones and silabarios emerged to answer the needs of literacy, and in Muslim areas they could only be in Jawi. This is how Aljamiado hispanofilipino came to be expressed in the astonishing Cartilla moro-castellana para los maguindanaos (Manila: Imprenta y Litografía de M. Pérez hijo, 1887). Its unnamed author was the Catalan Jesuit Jacinto Juanmartí (1833 – 97). Juanmartí started by working with the Tiruray tribe, learning the language and rescuing slaves. Tamontaca became the central point in the region, and eventually Cotabato became the capital of all of Mindanao. In this strategic town Juanmartí created schools for girls and boys, together with residences for rescued children, from 1874 until his death more than twenty years later.⁹⁷

 María Aguilera Fernández, “Literatura misional y hagiografía en el siglo XIX: Jacinto Juanmartí, un misionero jesuita en Filipinas (1833 – 1897),” Hispania sacra 70, no. 141 (2018).

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Fig. 4: Sura al-Tawba from BNE, Documentos arábigos cojidos [sic] en la Sultanía de Matuguy, en la expedición de Davao, marzo de 1863, Yslas Filipinas. SG.MSS/21/14. Image from the Biblioteca Nacional de España’s collection.

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Using new missionary methods, Jacinto Juanmartí devoted himself to the study of the Maguindanao language and Moro culture. He wanted to provide a way to preach Christianity without altering the vernacular cosmos, and the process was to learn, teach and preach in the vernacular idiom. Accordingly, he became the pioneer of Moro philology through the study of the language, writing, grammar and lexicography of Maguindanao. Interestingly, in his Cartilla morocastellana, together with the study of the Jawi script and transcriptions of Spanish words into Jawi, he also reproduced qur’anic suras. The purpose was to read in Jawi first, to be literate, and then to have access to Spanish and the Christian doctrine. To that end, Juanmartí included in his Cartilla qur’anic ayas for the Maguindanao students. For instance, Lesson 9 is the beginning of Sura al-Fātiḥa, in Arabic with a translation into Spanish written in Aljamiado. After the first four ayas the fifth is given only in Spanish, to introduce the first of the Ten Commandments in Maguindanao with a Spanish translation in Jawi. Lesson 12 is the Fātiḥa in Arabic and Maguindanao, and Lesson 13 is the first nine ayas of Sura al-Baqarā in Spanish with Roman script, with reproduction of only the first four ayas in Arabic. In sum, if some Spaniards during the sixteenth century were concerned about the spread of Islam in the Philippines and the circulation of qur’anic materials, by the end of the nineteenth even Jesuits wrote qur’anic suras, including Spanish translations in both Roman and Jawi scripts. While the Qur’an was important for Moros it also proved important in the end for Spaniards too, as they rendered and preserved its contents.

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Fig. 5: Cartilla moro-castellana para los maguindanaos (Manila: Imprenta y Litografía de M. Pérez hijo, 1887), 41 – 42.

Bibliography Aguilera Fernández, María. “Literatura misional y hagiografía en el siglo XIX: Jacinto Juanmartí, un misionero jesuita en Filipinas (1833 – 1897).” Hispania sacra 70, no. 141 (2018): 321 – 38. Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naguib. Ranīrī and the Wujūdiyyah of the 17th Century Acheh. Singapore: Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1966. Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naguib. The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1970. al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naguib. Historical Fact and Fiction. Kuala Lumpur: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Press, 2011. Bloom, Jonathan M. Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Blumentritt, Fernando. “Los maguindanaos. Estudio etnográfico.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica 35 (1893): 267 – 85. Bosworth, C. E., M. Hartmann, R. Israeli, “China.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, II 839 – 54. Leiden: Brill, 1987. Boxer Codex: A Modern Spanish Transcription and English Translation of 16th-Century Exploration Accounts of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific, transcription and edition by Isaac Donoso, translation and annotations by María Luisa García, Carlos Quirino and Mauro García. Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, 2016. Braginsky, Vladimir. The Heritage of Traditional Malay Literature: A Historical Survey of Genres, Writings and Literary Views. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2004. Brown, C. C. Sĕjarah Mĕlayu or Malay Annals. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1970.

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Bruinessen, Martin van. “Kitab kuning: Books in Arabic Script Used in the Pesantren Milieu; Comments on a new collection in the KITLV Library.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde 146 – 2/3 (1990): 226 – 69. Chaffee, John W. The Muslim Merchants of Premodern China: The History of a Maritime Asian Trade Diaspora, 750 – 1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Corpuz, Onofre D. The Roots of the Filipino Nation, 2 vols. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2005. Donoso, Isaac. “Philippine Islamic Manuscripts and Western Historiography.” Manuscripta Orientalia 16, no. 2 (2010): 3 – 28. Donoso, Isaac. Islamic Far East: Ethnogenesis of Philippine Islam. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2013. Donoso, Isaac. “Viajeros y aventureros andalusíes en Asia oriental.” eHumanista/IVITRA 3 (2013): 257 – 65. Donoso, Isaac. “El viaje andalusí al Extremo Oriente: peregrinación, comercio y diaspora.” In Unterwegs im Namen der Religion II / On the Road in the Name of Religion II. Wege und Ziele in vergleichender Perspektive – das mittelalterliche Europa und Asien / Ways and Destinations in Comparative Perspective – Medieval Europe and Asia. Edited by Klaus Herbers and Hans Christian Lehner, 241 – 55. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016. Donoso, Isaac. “Islamic Manuscripts in the National Archives of the Philippines.” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 7 (2016): 195 – 216. Donoso, Isaac. “Aljamiado Hispanofilipino: Spanish Language in Philippine Jawi Script.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 66, no. 1 (2018): 49 – 76. Donoso, Isaac. “Letra de Meca. Jawi Script in the Tagalog Region in the 16th Century.” Journal of Al-Tamaddun 14, no. 1 (2019): 89 – 103. Donoso, Isaac. “Muḥammad Anwār al-Dīn.” In Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History Volume 16. North America, South-East Asia, China, Japan and Australasia (1800 – 1914). Edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth, 511 – 14. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Donoso, Isaac and Mourad Kacimi, “A Royal Letter, in Arabic, by Sultan ʿAẓīm al-Dīn I of Sulu (1747).” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 10 (2019): 24 – 43. Fathurahman, Oman. “A New Light on the Sufi Network of Mindanao (Philippines).” Indonesia and the Malay World, 47 – 137 (2019): 108 – 124. Fernando-Amilbangsa, Ligaya. Ukkil: Visual Arts of the Sulu Archipelago. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008. Ferrand, Gabriel. “Le Wākwāk est-il le Japan?” Journal Asiatique 20 (1932): 193 – 243. Franco-Sánchez, Francisco and I. Donoso. “Moriscos peninsulares, moros filipinos y el islam en el extremo oriental del imperio español: 2. Edición de la Primera carta para la S.C.M.R acerca de los mahometanos de las Philipinas de Melchor de Ávalos (1585).” Sharq al-Andalus 21 (2014 – 16): 137 – 63 Gallop, Annabel Teh. “Islamic Manuscript Art of the Philippines.” In The Qur’an and Islamic Manuscripts of Mindanao. Edited by Midori Kawashima, 71 – 98. Tokyo: Sophia University, 2012. Gallop, Annabel Teh. “Fakes or Fancies? Some ‘Problematic’ Islamic Manuscripts from South East Asia.” Manuscript Cultures 10 (2017): 101 – 28. Gallop, Annabel Teh. “Cultural Interactions in Islamic Manuscript Art: A Scholar’s Library from Mindanao.” In The Library of an Islamic Scholar of Mindanao: The Collection of Sheik Muhammad Said bin Imam sa Bayang at the Al-Imam As-Sadiq (A.S.) Library, Marawi

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Notes on Contributors Arias Torres Dr. Juan Pablo Arias Torres is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the Universidad de Málaga (Spain). His academic work focuses primarily on the fields of History of Translation, Qur’an manuscripts in Spain and the translation of the meaning of the Holly Qur’an into Spanish. He is advisor of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project. Bernabé Pons Luis F. Bernabé Pons is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Alicante. His main research focus on Islamic post-Andalusian societies (Mudejars and Moriscos), their religious survival and their cultural and literary traits. He has also worked on the influence of the Arabic/Islamic element in Spanish literature and the Islamic-Christian polemics. Some of his works on these areas are El cántico islámico del morisco hispanotunecino Taybili (1988); El Evangelio de Bernabé. Un Evangelio islámico español (1995); “Identity, Mixed Unions and Endogamy of the Moriscos: The Assimilation of the New Converts Revisited,” Mediterranean Historical Review 35, no. 1 (2020). He has just finished with Elisa Ruiz the edition of Joan Martí de Figuerola, Lumbre de fe contra la secta mahomética y el Alcorán (1521). Boyano Guerra Isabel Boyano Guerra (BA in Humanities and BA in Arabic Philology) works as Academic Manager for the CSIC Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform (PTI) Social and Cultural History of the Mediterranean: Local Contexts, Global Dynamics (PTI-MEDhis). As a researcher, she has conducted investigations on the Sacromonte’s lead books, on the Moriscos and on tunisian documents preserved in Spanish Archives. Among her last publications, “Una biblioteca en los márgenes: Pedro de Castro aprende árabe”, with Patricia Sánchez-García. Burnett Charles Burnett, MA (Camb.), PhD (Camb.), LGSM (London), is Professor of the History of Arabic/Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London. His research centres on the transmission of texts, techniques and artefacts from the Arab world to the West, especially in the Middle Ages. He has documented this transmission by editing and translating several texts that were first translated from Arabic into Latin, and also by describing the historical and cultural context of these translations. Among his books in this subject area are The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England (1997) and Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages: The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context (2009). Cecini Ulisse Cecini, Latin philologist, Arabist and Hebraist, is Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Among his latest publications are “Qurʾān Quotations in the Liber de Doctrina Mahumet,” in J. Tolan and C. Ferrero Hernández (eds.), The Latin Qur’an, 1143 – 1500: Translation, Transmission, Interpretation (2021); Masāʾil ʿAbdallāh ibn Salām (Doctrina Mahumet) (2021); and Extractiones de Talmud. Per ordinem thematicum (2021). He is advisor of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-020

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Donoso Isaac Donoso, professor at the University of Alicante in Spain, Doctor in Philology (2011), with grades in Arabic (2001) and Hispanic Philology (2003), Humanities (2003), and Musicology (2014). He also finished a Master of Arts in Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines (2008). Author of Islamic Far East: Ethnogenesis of Philippine Islam (2013), and editor of More Islamic than We Admit. Philippine Islamic Cultural History (2018). García-Arenal Mercedes García-Arenal (PhD Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Chicago, 2022; Spanish National Research Award 2019) is a Research Professor at the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) in Madrid. PI Coordinator of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project, was also PI of a previous ERC Advanced Grant, “CORPI”. She is a cultural and religious historian specialised in religious minorities on which she has many publications, such as, with Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain. Converted Muslims, The Forged Lead Books of Granada and the Rise of Orientalism (2013); and with Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, The Inquisition Trial of Jeronimo de Rojas, a Morisco of Toledo (1601 – 1603), (2022); also edited many books and journals, as with Gerard A. Wiegers The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. A Mediterranean Diaspora (2016), and Polemical Encounters: Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (2019). Lappin Anthony John Lappin is lecturer in Spanish literature at the Department of Romance and Classical Languages in the University of Stockholm. He gained his doctorate at Oxford, and his since taught at the universities of Manchester, Maynooth, and Uppsala. He has published widely on medieval Iberia, as well as the Baroque and modern periods, and is particularly interested in the role of textual criticism in the process of interpretation. He has most recently published a study of the genesis of the Corpus cluniacense and an edition of the Alchoran latinus, and is working on a project concerning Mozarabic and corresponding Muslim polemic, with in particular a consideration of the origin and development of the Liber denudationis. Rodríguez Iglesias Adrián Rodríguez Iglesias, Romance philologist and Arabist, is researcher at the ILC-CCHSCSIC. He is a PhD candidate at the Universidad de Oviedo and the Universiteit van Amsterdam whose PhD project focus on qur’anic production among Mudejars and Moriscos. He was a member of the staff of the Applied Languages Department at the Institut Supérieur des Sciences Humaines de Tunis (Université de Tunis-El Manar), and he has been a researcher visitor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2021 – 22). Concerns Aljamiado manuscripts, he has presented together with the researchers Pablo Roza Candás and Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva the description of one of the latest finds of manuscripts from a private collection in “Nuevo manuscrito morisco de Calanda: un Corán abreviado y un texto aljamiado.” Rodríguez Mediano Fernando Rodríguez Mediano is Research Scientist (CSIC, Spain), and senior researcher of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project. His areas of expertise are: Sociology of religious elites in Morocco; Spanish Protectorate over Northern Morocco; history of Spanish Early Modern Orientalism. Author, with Mercedes García-Arenal, of The Orient in Spain. Converted Muslims,

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535

The Forged Lead Books of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism, eng. trans. Consuelo LópezMorillas (Brill, 2013). Roza Candás Pablo Roza Candás is a postdoctoral researcher of the Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, and advisor of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project. He has specialized in the study of the Aljamiado manuscript production of the Mudejar and Morisco minorities. Besides the edition and study of the Aljamiado corpus, his research interests focus on the cultural and religious practices of the Iberian crypto-Islamic communities. Scotto Davide Scotto works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples L’Orientale of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project. He specializes in the study of intellectual Christian interactions with Judaism and Islam in premodern Europe and the Mediterranean. Between 2013 and 2021, he has worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Center for Islamic Theology and the Protestant Faculty of Theology of the University of Tübingen, the Department of History of the University of Basel, and the Department of History of the Goethe University Frankfurt. Concurrently, he has participated in the ERC Advanced Grant Project CORPI at the CSIC, Madrid, and has been a visiting lecturer at the Department for the Study of Religions of the Masaryk University, Brno. He lectures in the history of the Abrahamic religions at the University of Pavia and is an editorial assistant of the Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa. In 2019, he was among the co-founders of the Centro di Studi Interreligiosi, Almo Collegio Borromeo, Pavia. Starczewska Katarzyna K. Starczewska is a post doctoral researcher of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project, currently based at the Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale (Italy). Her research trajectory has been shaped by a deep interest in close reading of primary sources with a special interest in inter-cultural encounters. She has carried out research on the relationships between religious controversy and the transmission of knowledge in early modern Spain and Italy. She is author of Latin Translation of the Qur’ān Commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo. Critical Edition and Case Study (2018). Szpiech Ryan Szpiech is Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Middle East Studies, and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, and Director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies. He has published numerous articles on medieval polemics, translation, and religious conversion, as well as Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic (2013). Among other titles, he has edited Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean (2015), co-edited Interreligious Encounters in Polemics between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond (Brill, 2018) and Astrolabes in Medieval Culture (2019), and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Medieval Encounters. He recently completed the documentary film “The Birth of Spanish in 3D” (https:// birth-of-spanish.rll.lsa.umich.edu/).

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Tottoli Roberto Tottoli (PhD, 1996) is Professor of Islamic Studies at the Università di Napoli L’Orientale, Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo. He is PI of the ERC-Synergy “EuQu” project. He has published on early Islamic literature, focusing on patriarchs and prophets in the Qur’an and Medieval literary genres: Biblical Prophets in the Qur’an and Muslim Literature (2002); The Stories of the Prophets by Ibn Mutarrif al-Tarafi (2003,). He has also edited works on contemporary Islam, Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West (2nd ed. 2022). His most recent books dealing with the Qur’an are (co-authored with Reinhold F. Glei, Ludovico Marracci at work: The evolution of his Latin translation of the Qur’ān in the light of his newly discovered manuscripts with an edition and a comparative linguistic analysis of Sura 18 (2016) and Leggere e studiare il Corano: una guida (2021). Wiegers Gerard A. Wiegers (PhD Leiden University, 1991) is Full Professor of History and Comparative Study of Religions at the University of Amsterdam and member of the ERC-Synergy “Euqu” team. He has published on the relations between Islam and other religions in Europe and the Muslim West and the history of Islamic and Jewish minorities. He is a member of the editorial boards of a number of books series in the field, such as the Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World (MEMIW) and the Numen Book Series. With P.S. Van Koningsveld has been engaged in preparing a critical edition of the Sacromonte Lead Books. Among his recent publications are: with P.S. van Koningsveld and Q. al-Samarrai (eds.): Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim Al-Ḥajarī: Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn ‘alā ‘l-Qawm al-Kāfirīn (The supporter of religion against the infidel) (second expanded edition, 2015) and, with M. García-Arenal, eds., The Expulsion of the Moriscos of Spain. A Mediterranean Diaspora (2014) and Polemical Encounters: Polemics between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Iberia and beyond (2019). Witcombe Teresa Witcombe BA (Oxon), MA (Sorbonne), PhD (Exeter), is a Leverhulme Trust postdoctoral researcher and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research in London. She works on the cultural, religious, and intellectual history of medieval Iberia, in particular, the Arabic-Latin translation movement, the exchange of ideas and people across borders, and the ways in which Christians understood and responded to Islam. She has published in the Arabica Veritas series of the University of Córdoba Press (2022), the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (2018) and the Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies (2017), and co-edited a study of the reign of King Fernando III of Castile (2020). She also has a monograph forthcoming on the thirteenth-century Bishop Maurice of Burgos.

Index General Index ʿAbbās, Iḥsān 118 Abélard, Pierre 88, 92, 96 – 98 ‘Abnān, Datu Muhammad 524 Abraham 119, 335, 338, 435 Abraham, Elias bar 400 Abranda, Amet 248 Abū Bakr, Sayyid. Sultan Sharīf al-Hāshim 80, 136 Abū Maʿshar 33 Acciaiuoli, Zenobi 403 Adrian VI 15 Africa – Algeria 480, 483n. – Algiers 4, 254, 486 – Ceuta 74, 79, 80 – Ethiopia 80, 125, 136 – Fez 63n, 91n., 153, 402 – 3, 157n. – Gao 402 – Maghreb 72, 158, 220, 370 – 71, 403, 423 – Marrakesh 154 – Mauritania 219, 241 – Mekinès 91 – Morocco 4, 61, 153n., 154, 402, 456, 458 – 60, 495 – North Africa 20, 52, 54, 56, 238, 402, 456, 521 – Oran 521 – Tangier 460 – Tétouan 117, 154 – Timbuktu 402 – Tunis 2, 153, 158, 161, 210, 268, 277, 296, 403, 502 Africanus, Constantinus 32 ‘Ālī, Muḥammad Sharīf 519 al-Anṣārī, Muḥammad 118, 127 al-Asad, Yuḥannā See Leo Africanus al-ʿĀnṣara See Saint John the Baptist al-ʿAzafī, Abū al-ʿAbbās 79 – 80 Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de 459 Alayzar, Alí See Juan Gabriel de Teruel Aldrete, Bernardo de 278 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110778847-021

Alexander the Great (Iskandar, Dhū l-Qarnayn) 432, 506 – 7, 432 Alfonso VII 51 – 54, 58, 97 Alfonso VIII 34 Alguaquiel, Ali 248 Ali, Yusuf 410 Alpujarras rebellion 3, 249 – 50, 252, 259, 313 Alturi, Jaime 272 Álvarez, Alejo 523 Álvarez de Toledo, Juan 277, 444n. America 452, 454, 460, 517, 519 – Puerto Rico 492 – Sabanilla 514, 522 Andrés, Gregorio de 246 Andrés, Juan 2, 11 – 13, 16 – 17, 19, 204 – 5, 261, 263, 275, 286, 291n., 293 – 413, 322, 330, 333, 343 – 46, 369 – 70n, 421 – 22, 426, 445 – 46n Antonini, Egido See Viterbo, Egidio da (cardinal) Aquinas, Thomas 108, 113 Aragón, Enrique de (Marquis of Villena) 248, 272 Aranda, Juan de 224 Aranda de Moncayo 8, 252n. Arberry, Arthur J. 145 Arias Torres, Juan Pablo 19, 165 – 66, 173 – 74, 370 Aristotle 39, 333 Asín Palacios, Miguel 72n., 75n., 171 – 72, 184, 297n. Astorga, Arnaldo of 52 Ávalos, Melchor de 510, 515, 522 Averroes 39, 333 Avicena 254 Azcar, Rodrigo 259 Baal 53 Baguinda, Raja 506 Baillet, Christophe 69

538

Index

Ballester, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad 8 Balzac, Honoré 457 al-Bāqillānī 93 Barbaza, Luis de 185n., 224 Barber, Ángela 225 Barrientos, Lope de 248 Barton, Simon 52 Basel 126 Baybars (Sultan) 155 Berenguela 54 Bernabé Pons, Luis 11 – 12 Bertuchi, Mariano 459 Bessières, G. L. 453 Bibliander, Theodore 30n., 246, 408 al-Biqāʿī, Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar b. Ḥasan 156 Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente 447 Bobzin, Hartmut 401 Bonllavi, Joan 324 – 25 Borbón, Francisco de Asís de 477 Borbón, Josefa Fernanda de 478 Borbón, Luisa Fernanda de 477 Borbón de las Dos Sicilias, María Cristina de 469 – 72, 476, 480 – 82, 494 Borrego, Andrés 449 – 50n, 487, 494 Borromeo, Federico 406 Bouza, Fernando 469 Briquet, Charles-Moïse 423 Burman, Thomas E. 32, 39 – 40, 50, 93, 408, 410, 425 Burnett, Charles 5 – 6 Buschental, José 473, 475 – 76

Catalán, María 253 Çaybon, Diego 254 Cazenave., A. 453 Cecini, Ulisse 7, 445 Celestine II 98 Cervantes, Juan de 127 Cervantes, Miguel de 209n., 212n., 486 China 499 – 500, 507 – Canton 499 – Quanzhou 499, 505 Chiru, Daniela-Corina 174 Choplón, Francisco 225, 228, 234 Cicero 71 Clairvaux, Bernard of 71n., 87, 96 Clement VII 400 Cleynaerts, Nicolaus 18, 153, 277 – 78 Colón, Hernando 18, 277 Colville, David 14, 399, 405 – 6, 409, 411 Compañero, Juan 222 Córdoba, Álvaro de 260, 271 Cordoba, Eulogius of 55 Córdoba, Francisco de 266 Córdoba, Luis de 261 Costilla, Jorge 323 Council of Basel 7, 110, 125 – 26, 128 – 29 Council of Sens 96 – 97 Council of Trent 249 Cremona, Gerard of 39 Cruz, Óscar de la 330 Cusa, Nicholas of 110, 125 – 26, 288, 325, 339

Cabanelas Rodríguez, Darío 109, 199 Caçal, Anton 260 Campo, Heymeric de 325 Cantù, Cesare 454, 484, 488 Cardona, Aznar 262 Carinthia, Hermann of 29, 32 – 33 Carlos V 11, 313, 323, 348, 400, 403, 422 Casado, Antonio 267 Casassas Canals, Xavier 347 – 48, 422 – 23, 431, 437 Casaubon, Isaac 407 – 9 Casses Xaló y Granel de Ribas Altas, Ioachin 446 Castello, Guido di See Celestine II Castro, Luis de 246, 258, 260

D’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse 30n., 37 – 38, 87 D’Anghiera, Peter Martyr 160 D’Étaples, Lefevre 325 D’Orléans, Antoine (Duke of Montpensier) 477 Dadson, Trevor 274 Daguí, Pere 324 – 25, 327, 339 al-Danī, Abu ‘Amr ‘Uthmān 166, 428 Daniel, Norman 94 al-Dhahabī, Shams ad-dīn Muḥammad 428 Dhū l-Qarnayn See Alexander the Great Díaz, Rodrigo El Cid 51, 56 Don Juan, Gaspar de 258 Dorador, Bartolomé 254 Du Ryer, André 44, 444

Index

Duke of Lepanto. See Portillo, Filiberto Dumas, Alexandre 457 Elcano, Juan Sebastián 503 Elijah 53, 76n., 83 Enrique III 111 Epalza, Mikel de 210n., 444, 447 Erasmus 400 Ercilla, Alonso de 486 Erpenius, Thomas 406 – 7 Espartero, Amador 423 Espartero, Baldomero 470 – 71, 476 Estébanez Calderón, Serafín 449 Eximenis, Francisco 327, 331 – 32 al-Fanṣūrī, Ḥamzah 501, 518 Felipe II 3, 7, 18, 250 – 51, 313 Felipe III 405 Felipe IV 134n., 245, 405 Fernández de Úbeda, Diego 114 Fernando II 2, 11, 14, 160, 247, 285, 319 f., 324 – 327 Fernando III 54, 56 – 57, 60, 62, 64 Fernando VII 470, 477 Ferrero Hernández, Cándida 5 Figueroa, Isabel de 264 Fleury, Hugh of 55 Fouinet, Ernest 494 France 19, 88, 93, 98 – 99, 154, 297n., 446, 448, 454, 474 – 80, 483, 488, 492 – Aiton 7, 107, 110 – 11, 120, 124 – 29 – Avignon 405 – Bazas 69, 71, 74 – 75, 78, 80 – 81, 85 – 86 – Bordeaux 491 – Castel d’Andorte 491 – 92, 494 – Corsica 401 – Gironde 491 – Paris 153, 449, 459, 469, 474, 478 – 481, 491 Franco, Íñigo 267 Gabriel de Teruel, Juan. Alí Alayzar 13 – 16, 21, 275 – 76, 304, 323, 333 – 37, 345, 348, 399 – 402, 404, 408 – 10, 421 – 27, 438 Gade, Anna M. 238 Gálib, Yahya ben 180

539

Galland, Antoine 9, 447 Gallop, Annabel T. 517 Gama, Vasco de 502 García, Martín 11 – 13, 17, 275, 285 – 94, 303, 311, 313, 323, 330, 333, 344 – 46, 348, 369 – 70, 421 – 423, 426, 438, 445 García-Arenal, Mercedes 8, 10, 17 f., 326, 335, 347, 422 García Bravo, Joaquín 456 – 458, 461 García Carrasco, Juan José (Count of Santa Olalla) 475 García Goyena, Juan 455 García Masegosa, Antonio 134n. – 35, 137n., 142n. Garcilaso de la Vega 486 Gavany, Miguel 262 Gayangos, Pascual 449 Gener, Jaume 325 Gentile, Bartolomeo 324 – 25, 330 Gerber de Robles, José 450n., 452, 457n, 487 Germain, Jean 110 German, Herman the 39 Germanus de Silesia, Dominicus 7, 14, 133 – 147, 445 Germany 22, 126, 445 – Heidelberg 16 – Magdala 114 – Munich 348, 370, 438 al-Ghālib, Muḥammad IX 112 Giustiniani, Agostino (bishop of Nebbio) 401 Glei, Reinhold 45, 125 González Bravo, Luis 471 – 475 González de Santalla, Tirso 19, 446 González Muñoz, Fernando 55 Great Britain 477 – Cambridge 406 – England 22, 297n., 406, 454 – London 480, 486 – St Andrews 405 Gregory IX 113 Güell, José 478 Guerra de Lorca, Pedro 313, 445 Guizot, François 474

540

Index

Guzmán, don Gaspar de Guzmán (CondeDuque de Olivares) 245 – 46, 272, 277 Guzmán, Luis de 272 Hagenbach, Pedro 333 al-Ḥajarī, Aḥmad ibn Qāsim 153, 156n., 222, 242, 266, 268 – 71 Hajri, Mokhles 173, 177, 179, 184 al-Hakam II (Cordoban Caliph) 220 Harvey, Leonard P. 270 al-Hāshim, Sharīf See Abū Bakr, Sayyid Henriet, Patrick 69 Herbst, Magno 333 Hermosilla Llisterri, María José 199 Hernández, Francisco 265 Hieronymites 327n., 333 Hinestrosa, Juan de 256 Hugo, Victor 454, 491, 494 Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego 18, 277 Hurtado de Mendoza, Luis (Marquis of Mondéjar) 277 Iberian Peninsula – Agreda 274 – Al-Andalus 1, 6, 38, 51 – 56, 60, 64, 88 f., 91, 95, 220, 242, 370 f., 427, 430, 447 f., 452, 456, 500 – 3 – Albalat de Segart 274 – Alcalá de Henares 248, 253, 266, 324 – 328 – Alicante 471, 473 – Almagro 257 – Almería 52, 430, 436 – Almonacid de la Sierra 158n., 173, 184, 187, 203, 208 – 9, 224 – 25, 227, 252, 274, 297n. – Andarax 259 – Aragon 2 – 3, 7, 9 – 16, 20, 71, 154, 160, 180, 186 – 87, 194, 199 – 11n. 217, 222 – 27, 241, 247 – 48, 250 – 52, 256 – 58, 260 – 62, 267 – 69, 272, 274 – 76, 290n. – 91 297, 301 – 3, 308, 319 – 25, 331, 333 – 34, 348, 402, 421 – 27, 521 – Aranda de Moncayo 8 – Arcos 222, 261, 269 – Arévalo 265, 267

– Ariza 261 – Ávila 286, 308, 311 – Barcelona 11, 14, 211n., 275, 285, 292, 324 – 25, 327, 344, 421 – 22, 453 – 54, 516 – Basque Country 470 – Baza 250, 259, 274 – Benimuslem 224 – 25, 228, 234 – Borja 248, 261, 274 – Bureta 224 – Cáceres 453 – Cádiz 500 – Calanda 9, 187, 203, 222 – 28, 232, 242, 252, 269 – Calatayud 258 – Caniles 250, 259, 274 – Cartagena 471, 473 – Castile 2 – 3, 6, 10 – 11, 15, 20, 34, 50 – 51, 54, 56, 64, 88, 108 – 12, 117, 127 – 29, 160, 204 – 5, 217, 247, 250 – 52, 256, 258, 269, 303, 319, 427, 521 – Castile-Leon 51, 60, 64 – Catalonia 71, 179, 186 – 87, 262, 453 – 54, 470, 516, 525 – Ciudad Real 272n. – 74 – Cocentaina 323 – Cordoba 54 – 58, 60 – 63, 89, 109 – 113, 220 – 21, 278, 428 – Cuenca 248, 251, 253, 261, 266, 270, 471, 473, 478 – 79 – Daimiel 256 – Deza 260 – 61 – Ebro river 5, 180n., 203 – 4 – El Escorial 7, 14, 22, 133 – 47, 156n., 278, 399, 405 – 6, 412, 445 – Elda 263 – Extremadura 3, 52, 258, 262 – Fraga 186 – Gandía 286, 309 – Gea de Albarracín 250 – Granada 1 – 4, 11 – 14, 18, 111 – 13, 154, 157n., 160, 181, 221, 247 – 53, 258 – 68, 273 – 77, 285 – 90, 293, 303, 313, 319 – 20, 326, 328, 333, 339, 343 – 44, 402, 421, 423, 459, 502, 521 – Nasrid Kingdom 1 f., 158, 181 – Guadalajara 248, 261, 267, 272

Index

– Guadalquivir river 53 – Guadiana river 258 – Guadix 254 – Hornachos 222, 262 – Huesca 180, 203, 222 – Jalón river 203, 222, 224 – La Higueruela 111 – 12 – La Mancha 274, 444 – Las Navas de Tolosa 34, 57 – Letosa 180 – Lleida 186 – Llerena 251, 258 – Madrid 245, 347, 449 – 50, 474 – 76, 479, 514, 516 – Majorca 323 – 25 – Málaga 265, 268, 449 – Mançor 234 – Medina del Campo 7, 109 – 29 – Mérida 258 – Miravete 262 – Morés 203, 208, 274 – Muel 203 – Murcia 221, 258 – 59 – Muro de Alcoy 274 – Ocaña 266, 274 – Osuna 263 – Pamplona 27 – Pastrana 246, 258, 274, 278 – Pyrenees 203, 205 – Reus 453 – Ricla 274 – Rueda de Jalo´n 29, 203 – Sabiñán 274 – Salamanca 18, 108 – 9, 118, 121, 126 – 27, 324 – Sangarrén 260 – Sant Genís dels Agudells 454 – Segorbe 260, 262 – Segovia 6 – 7, 107, 153, 203, 258, 261, 426 – Seròs 186 – 87 – Seville 11, 18, 53, 56, 124, 127, 220n., 257, 277, 332, 516 – Soria 260 – Tarancón 479

541

– Teruel 13, 16, 187, 203, 226 – 27, 250, 262, 275 – 76, 323, 334, 345, 401 – 2, 422, 426 – 27 – Toledo 5 – 6, 34 – 36, 39, 45, 49, 52 – 53, 56 – 57, 60n., 64, 69 – 70, 81 – 90, 95, 161, 251 – 62, 266 – 268, 333, 451n. – Toro 245 – Trujillo 258 – Uceda 261 – Valencia 2 – 3, 12 – 13, 15 – 16, 18, 51, 56, 154, 205, 222, 224 – 25, 228, 241 – 42, 249 – 80, 286 – 87, 290, 303, 321 – 26, 329, 344, 347 – 48, 407, 421 – 24, 453, 471, 474, 476n., 479, 500 – Valladolid 126, 258 – Villafeliche 161, 203, 208 – 9, 258, 261 – Villarrasa 264 – Villarrubia 274 – Vitoria 15 – Xátiva 13, 275, 286, 297, 426 – Zafra 258 – Zaragoza 10, 15, 29, 51, 89, 91, 180n., 185n., 187, 203, 205, 210n., 227, 250 – 51, 261, 285, 297n., 321, 323, 329, 344, 348, 402, 421 – 22 Ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, al-Walīd 75 Ibn ‘Abd al-Muṭṭalib, Hamza 436 – 37 Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafī, Ibn 268 Ibn ‘Ali, Salama 260 Ibn ‘Arabī 221, 426n., 501 Ibn ‘Aṭiyya, ‘Abd al-Haqq ibn Ghālib 13, 291, 405, 410, 422, 426 – 438 Ibn al-Mawl, Yūsuf IV 109, 111 Ibn al-Walīd al-Ṭurṭūshī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad 74 Ibn Anas 428 f. Ibn Baṭṭūṭah 501 Ibn Ghaniya 58 Ibn Hayyan 58 Ibn Ḥazm 221 Ibn ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣubī, Abū al-Faḍl ʿIyāḍ ibn Mūsā 74 Ibn Isḥāq, Ḥunayn 36, 58 Ibn Kathīr 211 Ibn Khaldūn 221, 500 Ibn Masarra, Wahb 428

542

Index

Ibn Muḥammad, al-Ḥasan See Leo Africanus Ibn Rabī’ 154 Ibn Saʿd, ʿAlī 266 Ibn Salām, Yaḥya 427 – 29 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn Ahmād 430 Ibn Tūmart 6, 35 – 38, 40, 49, 60 – 63 Innocent II 97 – 98 Isabel II 19, 469 – 481 Isabel of Castile 2, 11, 15, 160, 247 – 48, 285, 290n., 291, 320, 333, 521 Isabel of Portugal 18, 277 Isaiah 73n., 121, 212n. Ishmael 335, 453 Isidore of Seville 54 Iskandar See Alexander the Great Istúriz, Francisco Javier 480 Italy 4 – 7, 14, 16, 18, 22, 108, 303, 405 – Fano 303 – Ferrara 212 – 13 – Florence 399 – 400 – Genoa 401 – Naples 322, 399 – 400, 459n. – Padua 399 – Rome 7, 15, 20, 83, 97, 108 – 9, 246, 276 – 78, 347, 399 – 400, 403, 405, 408, 428, 438 – Venice 19, 303 Izquierdo, Ybrahim 9 – 10, 203, 209 – 13, 426 Jacob 335 Jaén, Martín de 257 Jahan, Makhdum Sadar 501 Janer, Jaume 324, 339 Jesus 21, 55 – 56, 70, 76, 116, 118 – 19, 122 – 23, 271, 288 – 90, 304 – 6, 310, 334 – 35, 338, 455, 482, 519, 521 Jiménez, Juan Ramón 491 – 94 Jiménez de Cisneros, Francisco 14, 221, 247 – 48, 313, 319, 323 – 28, 330, 339, 421, 521 Jime´nez de Rada, Rodrigo 5, 34 – 35, 49, 56 – 62, 64 Joffre, Joan 323 Johns, Anthony H. 518 Jones, William 494

Juan II 108 – 13, 118, 248 Juanmartí, Jacinto 525, 527 Julius II 400 Juvenal 70 Kabungsuwan, Sharīf Muḥammad 507 Kawashima, Midori 515, 517 Kazimirski, Albin de Biberstein 443 – 61, 486 – 90, 493 – 94 al-Khazrajī, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad 89 – 90 Ketton, Robert of 5 – 6, 16, 27 – 45, 50, 59, 123 – 128, 406, 425, 430 Khān, al-Hilālī–Muhsin 77 al-Kindī 28, 31, 82, 87, 90, 95, 98 King Ali 52 al-Kūfī, ʿĀṣim 173 – 74 La Nava, Gaspar María de (Count of Noroña) 494 Labarta, Ana 229, 248, 253, 264, 272 Lafuente Alcántara, Emilio 449 Lalanne, Gaston 492 Lappin, Anthony 6 Larson, Everette E. 204 Las Casas, Ignacio de 253 al-Laythī, Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā 73 Latomus, Jacques 276 Leo Africanus (al-Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad, Yuḥannā al-Asad, al-Ḥasan al-Wazzān) 14, 32, 304, 399 – 404, 408 – 11 Leo X 400, 403 Levita, Elia 400 Litvak, Lily 455 Llovet, Joan 324 Llull, Ramon 2, 12, 319, 323 – 34, 339 López, Lorenzo 261, 271 López Catalán, Miguel 259 López-Morillas, Consuelo 166, 200, 210, 315 Low Countries 14, 22 – Louvain 18 Lucas Cortés, Juan 277 Luna, Álvaro de 111 Luther, Martin 400 Machiavelli

483

Index

Macho, Rodrigo de 226 Madoz, Pascual de 475 Madrid, Alonso de 263 Magachina, Tagalog Moro 508, 512 Magellan, Ferdinand 503 al-Maghribī, Ibn Saʿīd 220 Majul, César Adib 505, 520 – 21 al-Makhdūm, Karīm 506 Mandarán, Catalina 263 Manuchehri 448 Maqbalu, Tuan 505 Mardrus, Joseph Charles 447 al-Marīnī, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq 118 Marquette, Jean-Baptiste 69 Marracci, Ludovico 19, 34, 40, 44 – 45, 451 Marrán, Miguel 260 Martí, Ramon 2, 288, 298, 300, 312 Martí de Figuerola, Joan 2, 12 – 17, 21, 269, 275 – 76, 286, 303 – 8, 319 – 39, 343 – 77, 401, 409, 421 – 22, 427, 438, 445 Martin, Joseph 446 Martínez de Castilla, Nuria 9, 177, 180, 185, 200, 229 Martínez Gázquez, José 423, 437 Maser, Mattias 57 Masha’ika, Tuan 506 Massimo, Camillo 16, 246, 347 al-Masʻūdī 506 Maupassant, Guy de 457 Mawlāy Hassan 18 Mawlāy Zīdān al-Nāṣir 278, 406 Maximilian (Emperor) 400 McPheeters, D.W. 323 Medina, Isagani R. 516 Mediterranean Sea 10, 118, 152, 160, 203, 213, 225, 250, 499, 502 Mendoça, Diego de 224 Mendoza, Luis de 18, 277 Mendoza y Escobar, Fernando de 256 Meunier, Paul 493 Middle East – Antioch 291 – Aleppo 75 – Baghdad 61 – 62, 220, 429 – Beirut 459 – Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul 108 – 9, 125 – 26, 128, 403, 444

543

– Cairo 4, 7, 44, 151, 154 – 156, 158, 160 f., 371, 402 – 3, 444 – Constantinople 108 f. – Damascus 75, 78, 83, 459 – Egypt 154, 156 – Jerusalem 113, 459, 521 – Jurjan 429 – Mecca 4, 155, 293 – 96, 403, 429, 457, 490, 506 – 9, 512 – 14, 518 – 19 – Medina 5, 136, 403, 429 – Persia 427, 448 – Red Sea 512 – Salonica 9 – 10, 203, 208 – 13, 426 – Syria 459 – Turkmenistan 429 al-Mindanāwī, ‘Abd al-Majīd 518 Molina o Alamín, Félix de 446 Molina, Juan de 262 Monte di Croce, Riccoldo da 11 – 12, 18, 40, 95, 288, 299, 330, 332, 334 Montero Vidal, José 456 Montoza Coca, Manuel 287 – 88, 291, 298 Moraleda, María Luisa 173, 179, 199 Moroni, Yaḥyā 254 Morrut of Albalat, Angela 264 – 65 Moses 77, 121, 338, 433, 455 Mozarabs 1, 6, 86, 89, 93 – 95, 98 – 99 Muhammad, Tuan 503 al-Mulk, Niẓām 220 Muñoz, Fernando (Duke of Riánsares) 470, 476 – 79 Muñoz, Isaac 455 Mur, Jerónimo 253 – 54, 265 Murcia, Francisco de 261 Murguiondo y Ugartondo, Benigno de 449 – 451, 487 Nacente y Soler, Francisco 453 – 54 Naironi, Nicola 347 Narciso, Vicente 523 Narváez, Ramón María 471 – 72, 475 – 76, 479 Obex, Luis 224 Obregón, Lope de 12, 17, 275, 303, 308, 311 – 13, 344, 346, 445 ‘Omar, Ḥafsa bint 434

544

Index

Ortiz de la Puebla, Vicente 452 – 56, 461, 487 – 88 Osma, Juan of 60 – 61 Ovilo y Canales, Felipe 460 Pacific Ocean – Aceh 501, 515, 518, 521 – Banten 518 – Biako 474 – Borneo 500 – 1, 509 – 10, 512 – Brunei 501, 503, 507 – 10, 515, 522 – Cirebon 518 – Fernando Póo See Biako (Equatorial Guinea) – Golden Chersonese 500 – Japan 500 – Johore 507 – Korea 500, 507 – Malacca 501 – 2, 507 – Moluccas Islands 499 – New Guinea 499 – Patani 509 – Siam 509 – Sumatra 501, 514 Pacs, Nicolau de 324 – 25, 327, 339 Páez de Castro, Juan 18, 277 Palma, Hernando de 257 Paxarico, Jaime 253 – 54 Pedraza, Pedro 265 Pegnitzer, Juan 333 Peñalosa, Alexandre 223 Pereira, María de 476 Pérez, Lorenzo 271 – 2 Pérez de Ayala, Martín 254, 313 Pérez de Chinchón, Bernardo 10, 12, 16, 254, 269, 275 – 76, 286 – 87, 308 – 10, 344, 346, 445 Pérez Galdós, Benito 459 Pérez Mozagués, Juan 261 Peter IV of Aragon 2 Peter the Venerable 5 – 6, 27 – 29, 34, 39 – 40, 50, 82, 86 – 88, 95, 97 – 99 Petrus Pons, Na`dia 41 Philippine Islands 20, 499 – 528 – Balayan 508 – 9 – Binidayan 518 – Buayan 507

– Butuan 505 – Davao 524 – 26 – Jolo 505, 513, 520 – Maguindanao 506, 524 – 27 – Mangay 16, 309 – Manila 502, 507 – 10, 512 – 15, 522, 525 – Mindanao 506 – 7, 509, 515, 517 – 18, 520, 523, 525 – Mindoro 508 – 9 – Luzon 503, 507 – 12, 522 – Palawan 503, 508 – Pulangi river 507 – Sibugay 507 – Tamontaca 507, 525 – Tongkil 519 – Zamboanga 507, 522 – 24 Pick, Lucy 57 Pintor, Jerónimo 269, 271 Pius VII 449 Plato 77 Poitiers, Peter of 82 Poland 448 Polonno, Estanislao 332 Polopí, Miguel 256 Portillo, Filiberto (Duke of Lepanto) 19, 469 – 95 Postel, Guillaume 369 Prat, Ignacio 492 – 93 Prinzhorn, Hans 493 Proaza, Alonso de 323 – 327 Ptolemy 273 al-Qayrawanī, Ibn Abī Zayd 296, 333, 424, 438 Quintillian 70 al-Qurtubī, Abu ‘Abdullah 91, 93, 211, 427 al-Qūṭī 90, 93 Rabadan, Muhamad 9, 203 Ragusa, John of 126 Ramírez, Román 266 Ramírez de Haro, Antonio (bishop of Calahorra) 254 Rapoport, Yossef 155 Réja, Marcel See Meunier, Paul Renday, Francisco 261 Restán, Juan 264

Index

Retana, Wenceslao 513, 515 Riánsares, Duke of. See Muñoz, Fernando Ribera, Agustín de 267 Ribera, Julián 171 – 72, 184 Riddell, Peter 518 Rinaldi, Aníbal 458 – 61 Rincón, Adrián 222 Robles, Guillén 167, 169, 171, 173, 179 – 180, 183 – 84 Rodríguez Iglesias, Adrián 9, 12, 20 Rojas, Jerónimo de 267 – 68, 271 Roth, Ulli 109, 122, 125 Roza Candás, Pablo 9 – 10, 12, 20, 185, 187 Rúa, Jerónimo de 259 Ruiz, Ambrosio 259 Ruíz de Mendoza, Miguel 257 Ruiz Orsatti, Ricardo 458 Ryer, Andre´ du 444 Saada, Mariam Medhat 173 Saavedra, Eduardo 9, 167 – 9, 176, 181, 184, 188 – 89, 193, 449, 456, 523 Sacy, Silvestre de 183, 448 al-Ṣaghīr, Muḥammad IX 111 Sa‘īd, Sayyidnā Muḥammad 518 Said, Sheik Muhammad 517 Saint Anne 306 – 7 Saint Augustine 81n., 91, 93 – 95, 108, 118n., 265, 325, 339 Saint Benedict 77 Saint John the Baptist 69 – 78, 81, 83, 113 Saint Paul 292 Saint Peter 123 – 24, 403 Salamanca, José de (Marquis of Salamanca) 475 – 76 Salcedo y Mantilla de los Ríos, Juan 514 Sale, George 454 Samperuelo, Aldonza 223 San Buenaventura, Pedro de 524 Sánchez, Francisco 260 Sánchez, Petronila 266 Sánchez of Ocaña, Bartolomé 266 Sanctelliensis, Hugo 29, 31 – 33 Sande, Francisco de 508 – 10, 522 Santa Cruz, Juan Martín de 259 Santo Tomás de Aquino Traggia, Manuel de 19, 446

545

Sanz, Manuel 19 Sauvan, Yvette 183 Savary, Claude Étienne 451, 486 – 87 Schedel, H. E. 453 Scot, Michael 39 Scott, William Henry 502, 522 Scotto, Davide 5, 7 Scotus, Duns 319 – 20, 326 – 28, 330, 339 Segovia, Juan de 2, 6 – 7, 16, 33, 44, 107 – 29, 153, 203, 261, 302n., 330, 339, 369 Sellin, Maxime 13 – 15, 407n. Seripando, Girolamo 424 Serrano y Domínguez, Francisco 477 Shah, Ahmad (Sultan) 501 Sharīf Awliyā’ 506 al-Shāṭiʾ, Bint 484 – 85 al-Shaykh, Muḥammad (Sultan) 402 Sheba, Queen of 455 Sibgatullina, Gulnaz 152 Sibiuda, Ramon 325, 327 Silvestre de Sacy, Antoine-Isaac 183, 448 al-Singkilī, Abd al-Ra’ūf 518 al-Ṣīnī, Sa‘d al-Khayr al-Balansī 500, 506 Slane, M. le Baron de 183 Solomon 300, 332, 455, 520 Soria, Gaspar de 268 Sosa, Juan de 267 Soto, Teresa 299 St Victor, Hugh of 91 Starczewska, Katarzyna K. 14 – 15, 299, 335, 347, 422 Sulu Sultanate See Jolo al-Sūmaṭrānī, Shams al-Dīn 502, 518 Sura – Alī ʿImra ̄n 289 – al-Baqarā 527 – al-Fātiḥa 29 – 30, 37, 42, 82, 189, 358, 370, 527 – al-Jinn 300 – al-Kāfirūn 516 – Maryam 271n., 289 – al-Mulk 191 – al-Tawba 524, 526 Szpiech, Ryan 12 – 13, 16 al-Ṭabarī

292, 430

546

Index

Talavera, Francisco de 272 Talavera, Hernando de 11, 17, 275, 293, 313, 319, 326 – 328, 333 Ṭālib, Ibn Abī 136, 426n., 430, 436 – 37 Tan, Samuel 517 Tashufin 52 al-Thalabī 75 Timothy I 88, 91 Tirmidhī 217n., 297 Tischler, Matthias 53, 69, 77 Tolan, John 5, 113 Toledo, Mark of 5 – 6, 27 – 45, 49 – 59, 63 – 64, 425 Toledo, Peter of 82, 87 – 90, 95 – 96 Torrubia, José 514, 522 Tottoli, Roberto 11, 13 – 14, 45, 304 – 5, 308, 405n. Trastámara, Fernando de 111 al-Tūnisī, Kharūf al- 153 Tuy, Lucas of 54 – 56, 58, 64 Ubaydi, Ahmad 74 Uleyles Haleb, Juan López 258 Ullah, Kifayat 429 Urban II 5, 71n. Urrea, Diego de 253, 266 Uthmān (caliph) 499 Uthmānic writing 351 – 53 Utrecht, Adrian of 14 – 15 Váez de Torres, Luis 499 Vajda, Georges 37 – 38, 183 Valera, Juan 448 Vallejo, Juan de 248 van Koningsveld, Pieter Sjoerd 117 – 18, 151 Vargas, Juan de 257 Vernet, Joan 172n. – 73, 179, 199, 426 Vides, Juan de 245 Vigliano, Tristan 110

Viguera, María Jesús 447 Vincent, Bernard 224 Virgin Mary 21, 56, 115, 288, 304 – 307, 334, 487, 503 Viterbo, Egidio da 4, 14 – 16, 21, 304, 334, 337, 345, 349, 399 – 418, 422, 424, 426, 438 Vitoria, Francisco de 18 von Schack, Adolf Friedrich 447 al-Waṭṭāsī, Abū Zakariyyā’ Yaḥyā ibn ʿUmar ibn Zayyān 118 al-Wazzān, al-Ḥasan See Leo Africanus Wheelock, Abraham 406 Widmanstetter, Johann Albrecht 15, 348, 370, 401, 403, 408, 423 – 24, 438 Wiegers, Gerard A. 7 Witcombe, Teresa 6, 39 Ximénez, Alonso 261, 271 Xubich, Adam 254 Yça de Gebir (‘Īsā b. Jābir, Yça Gidelli) 107, 124, 153, 426 Yolles, Julian 32, 36 Yūsuf I 220 Yūsuf IV 109, 112, 114, 117 Yzquierdo, Pablo 179, 186

2, 6,

Zachariah 76 Zadeh, Travis 152 al-Ẓāhir, Malik (sultan) 501 Zahori, Beatriz 264 al-Zamakhsharī, Maḥmud ibn ‘Umar 13, 137, 271, 291 – 92, 405, 411, 426 – 36 Zamanīn, Muḥammad Ibn Abī 9, 13, 427 – 29, 432, 434 – 36 Zuncar, Salvador 272

Index

547

Index of Manuscripts Barcelona

Florence

Archivo de la Corona de Aragón [ACA]

Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana

Reg. 1105 302 n.52 Reg. 1274 302 n.52 Reg. 1276 302 n.52 Reg. 1438 302 n.52 Reg. 3614 285 n.1

MS II-IV-701 n.3

Basel

MS A-5 – 2

University Library of Basel MS A III 19 126

Cambridge Cambridge University Library MS Mm. v. 26 403 – 18

Cuenca Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca Leg. 88, no. 1239 261 n.58 Leg. 89, no. 1300 and 1307 261 n.58 Leg. 91, no. 1330 261 n.58 Leg. 208, no. 2402 261 n.59 Leg. 236, no. 3056 261 n.60 Leg. 237, no. 3072 270 n.95 Leg. 249, no. 3352 260 n.57 Leg. 343, no. 4876 266 n.81 Leg. 356, no. 5066 261 n.63 Leg. 377, no. 5342 261 n.62

El Escorial Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial MS K-III-1 133 – 47 MS 1624 135 MS L-I-3 135 MS &-IV-8 135 n.5, 142 n.17

173, 175 n.43, 177 n.57, 444

Granada Escuela de Estudios Árabes [EEA] 423

Lleida Museu de Lleida [ML] N-21-S-6

168, 186 – 87, 190 – 94, 196 – 97

Madrid Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental Caja 1014, exp. 5

516 n.57

Archivo Histórico Nacional [AHN] Inquisición, Leg. 192, exp. 3, 4, 14, 15 260 n.56, 265 n.80, 266 n.82, 267 n.87, 273 n.104, 274 n.105, Inquisición, Leg. 195, exp. 4, 17 256 n.36, 267 n.88, Inquisición, Leg. 196, exp. 19 256 n.36, Inquisición, Leg. 197, exp. 6, 13 266 – 67 n.84 – 86 Inquisición, Leg. 198, exp. 1 272 n.101 Inquisición, Leg. 550, exp. 25 234 n.50 Inquisición, Leg. 553, exp. 13 265 n.77 Inquisición, Leg. 554, exp. 6 256 n.35 Inquisición, Leg. 1867, exp. 4 245 n.3 Inquisición, Leg. 1953, exp. 31 256 n.37, 259 n.48 – 51, Inquisición, Leg. 2022, exp. 9, 11, 14, 72 258 n.44, 259 – 60 n.52 – 53, 263 – 64 n.74 – 75, 265 n.78 Inquisición, Leg. 2075, exp. 13, 14, 15 257 n.43, 263 n.71 – 72, 265 n.79 Inquisición, Leg. 3205, exp. 2 256 n.33

548

Index

Inquisición, Libro 938 263 n.73 Inquisición, Libro 988 223 n.25 Inquisición, Libro 989 223 n.23 – 26 Inquisición, Libro 1229 255 n.32 Inquisición, Libro 1239 251 n.15, 261 n.58 Inquisición, Mapas, Planos y Dibujos, 517.2 228, 231 – 33, 238 – 40 Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE] MS D113 169 MS 2076 153 n.6, 253 n.23 MS 4938 170, 176 n.53, 177 n.57, 201, 315 n.80 MS 4944 314 MS 4950 154 MS 5016 165 n.1 MS 5212 165, 177 MS 5242 167, 177 n.55 MS 5313 168 – 69, 177 n.55, 183 – 84, 189 – 94 MS 5350 177 n.55, 167 SG.MSS/21/14 524 f., 526 f. Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, CCHS-CSIC RESC 3 171, 174, 177 n.59, 185 n.92, 189, 193, 195, 219 n.8 RESC 24.1 176 n.52, 178 n.59, 185 n.91 RESC 25 171, 173, 174 n.43, 175 n.49, 177 n.59, 179 RESC 28.1 176 n.50, 177 n.59, RESC 39 177 n.59, 178 RESC 41/B 176 n.52, 177 – 78 n.59, 179 n.62, RESC 42/B 176 n.50, 177 n.59, 185 n.92 RESC 43 168, 171, 176 n.50, 177 – 78 n.59, 184 – 86, 188, 190 – 94, 227, 229, 231 – 32, 234, 238 – 40 RESC 50 158 n.24 RESC 51 427 RESC 52.1 427 RESC 58 175 n.49, 178, 178 n.59, 185 n.92 RESC 101.D 178, 179 n.62

Real Academia de la Historia [RAH] MS Gayangos 1922/36 286 n.4, 305 – 6 f., 319 – 39, 343 – 95 MS S 5 166 n.3 MS T 5 177 n.57, 201 MS T 8 176 n.50, 177 n.55 MS T 13 177 n.57 MS T 18 177 n.57, 211 MS V8 177 n.58 MS V9 177 n.58, 179 n.62 MS V10 177 n.58, 179 n.62 MS 9402 315 n.80 MS 9409 315 n.80

Manila National Archives of the Philippines Intérpretes, SDS 2498, Libro 1, S. 217 – 225 523 n.92 Mindanao y Sulú, SDS 9259, Exp. 58 523 n.92 Mindanao y Joló, SDS 9287 (1839 – 1899), S. 1330 524 n.93

Milan Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS D 100 Inf.

403 – 06, 410 – 18

Montpellier Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de Montpellier MS H 72

135

Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek [BSB] MS cod. Arab 7 422, 431 – 33 n.48 – 59, 437 n.65 MS cod. Arab 234 424, 438 MS cod. Arab 342 424, 438

Index

New York

Biblioteca Capitular y Colombina

Columbia University Library

MS 7 – 6 – 14

MS Or. 515

297 n.37

549

124

Toledo

Paris

Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha

Bibliothe`que nationale de France

MS 235 M-0190 [El Corán de Toledo] 3, 9, 166 – 67, 173, 252, 269, 369, 444

MS Arabe 384 423 MS Arabe 447 208 – 9, 426 n.28 MS Arabe 774 168, 182 – 83, 194 MS Arabe 1163 315 n.80 MS lat. 3394 41, 44 – 45 MS lat. 3669 126 n.50 MS lat. 14503 40, 41 n.42 Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 780

40

Zaragoza Fondo Documental Histórico de las Cortes de Aragón L527 – 1 168, 176 n.50, 226, 228 – 29, 231 – 32, 234 – 35, 238 L527 – 2 227, 228, 232, 237 L536 – 1 196 n.62, 227, 228, 230 – 35, 237, 240

Seville

Private collection

Archivo General de Indias

MS Foz-Calanda

INDIFERENTE, 1528, N.1 503 n.21 PATRONATO, 24, R.48 509 n.41

226, 228 – 41