The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
-
Upload
fauzan-rasip -
Category
Documents
-
view
218 -
download
0
Transcript of The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
1/19
Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Islamic Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
THE SECRET LITERATURE OF THE LAST MUSLIMS OF SPAINAuthor(s): LUCE LÓPEZ-BARALTSource: Islamic Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp. 21-38Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, IslamabadStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23076080Accessed: 10-03-2015 16:03 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iriiiuhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/23076080http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/23076080http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=iriiiuhttp://www.jstor.org/
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
2/19
Islamic
Studies 36:1
(1997)
THE SECRET LITERATURE OF THE
LAST MUSLIMS
OF SPAIN
LUCE LÓPEZ-BARALT
"We are
not
in times of
gracc
but of
tears".
This terse statement was uttered
by
a
sixteenth
century Spanish crypto-Muslim
by
the name of
Baray
de
Reminyo
and it sums
up
the emotional situation
of
the last
Muslims of
Spain prior
to their
final
expulsion
in
1609. This sorrowful statement is echoed over
and
again
in
the
cryptic
literature of these
hybrid Spaniards
who had to have recourse
to
transliterating
the
Spanish language
of their
oppressors
with the
nostalgic
Arabic
script
of the native
tongue
of the once
flourishing
al-Andalus. To their
regret,
most
of
them
had
simply
forgotten
the sacred
language
of the
Qur'ân.
Another
Morisco
author who chose
to
hide
his real
identity
under the
pseudonym
of "El
Mancebo de Arévalo"
("The
Young
Man of
Arévalo"),
depicts
a
vanquished
community
which is
again
reduced to tears and to incessant
wailing.
The Mora
de
Ubeda.
an old Muslim
woman,
shares her
tragic personal
story
with
the
young
chronicler while
"weeping
at the fate of the
Muslims". What
the
Mora
tells her
eager
interlocutor
in dramatic detail
is how she lost
all her relatives and
possessions
during
the
siege
of Granada back in
1492.
The
world of the
saintly
old
crypto-Muslim
woman is
literally coming
apart
before
her
eyes,
and in another
heart-breaking passage
of the Mancebo's
Breve
compendio
(Abridged
Compendium)
she
grieves
at the
destruction of the
holy
books
of Islam:
"I saw el alto alkiteb al-harsidal"
[The
Exalted
Heavenly
Book], according
to L.P.
Harvey,
"in the hands of a
merchant who
made a
child's
papers
out of
it,
and
I
picked
up
these
folded
folios,
to
my great
sadness..."1
The
Mora thinks that the
Muslims of
al-Andalus,
the
Moriscos'
ancestors,
are themselves
to
blame for
the
present
collective
tragedy
because of
their
lukewarm
observation
of the tenets
of the faith:
"The
weepers
themselves
are
the cause
|of
our
present
misfortunes|.
for the
past
|weepcrs|
determined*?)
that
the
present
|weepers|
were to suffer".
But,
in
spite
of her
overwhelming
sorrow,
she is
still
hopeful
that
God
will
be
merciful towards
the
Spanish
Muslims
and
will
permit
"that
the minarets once
more
will stand in
fixed tall
peaks".'
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
3/19
luce
löpez-baralt/The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of
Spain
The
plaintive
testimonies
extant in the folios of these secret Morisco
manuscripts
—
most of which are still
unpublished
—
truly
reach the
point
of
obsession.
Now it is Yüse
Banegas,
another
crypto-Muslim
whom the Mancebo
considers a
"great
Arabist",
who
weeps uncontrollably
while
informing
the
Mancebo
of the recent historical events that had afflicted him so
poignantly.
The testimonial
writer,
being
from
Avila,
was
ignorant
of
what
really
had
happened
in Granada:
"My
son,
I do not
weep
for the
past,
for
from
the
past
nothing
returns;
but I
weep
for what
you
will see if
you
have life
|long enough|
and are
present
... in
Spain
...
I
did
not
desire
to
come to such
weeping
,.."3
We relive
again
the "acíbar doloroso" or
"paintful
bitterness" of the times
—
the
expression
is now the Mancebo's
—
when we witness the
parting
of the
clandestine Morisco author
with Yüse and his
daughter,
who
was also a devout
Muslim.
They
showed the Mancebo around their Granadan
farm-house,
which
they were about to lose, and gave him as a farewell present a ring and a pearl,
excusing
themselves for the
meagreness
of the
gift,
for
they
had lost
practically
everything.
"And
when I bade both the father and the
daughter goodbye,
there
was
weeping
on all sides".4
A
mysterious crypto-Muslim
by
the name of Muhammad
Cordillera
copied
a beautiful codex in 1577 which
today
is extant
in
the National
Library
of Madrid
(ms.
5223).
In this miscellaneous
manuscript,
whose author is
unknown,
we find a desolate
prayer
to God
—
again,
full of tears and
wailing
—
asking
Him to have
mercy
on His
algaribos
or His exiled Muslims from
Spain.
The
anonymous
author asks
the
Almighty
to show His
wrath:
. . .
against
our cruel
enemies,
always
full of
iniquity against
us,
so
that the lamentations and tears and
sighs
of
those blessed Muslims who
have
died
or
undergone prison
and
martyrdom
and other manners of
torment and
oppression
can be
avenged
in this world and
in
the
next;
and
may
God forbid that the hearts of the Muslims of
this land
ever
again
be
disturbed,
and
may
He
permit
that
they
lose no more than
what
they
have
already
lost ...5
It is no wonder that Muhammad himself is seen
to
cry
over al
Andalus's
tragic
fate
in
the
Morisco's
plaintive
literature.
We now read
in
ms. 774 of the Bibliotheque National de Paris an aljófar or prophesy in which
Ibn 'Abbäs
recounts
that one
day
the
Prophet,
after his
evening prayer,
looked
over the
setting
sun
"and
he
cried and cried
very
hard". Pressed
by
Ibn 'Abbäs
to tell him the cause for such uncontrollable sorrow:
"Why
have
you
cried until
you
have wet the hairs of
your
beard with
your
tears?" Muhammad
answered:
"I have
wept
because
my
Lord has shown me
an Island
which
is
called
Andalusia,
which will be the most distant Island
which will be
populated
of all
of
Islam,
and
will
be the first most from which
Islam will be thrown".6
The flow of
tears we find in clandestine
Morisco
literature
is
indeed
overwhelming.
No wonder the Mancebo sums
up
the
symbolic
identity
of his
fellow
crypto-Muslims by saying sternly
that
they
are
"lloradores" or
"weepers".
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
4/19
Islamic Studies 36:1
(1 997)
Why
such extreme
grief? Rendering
one's soul has
never been an
easy
experience.
And this is
precisely
what
Spanish
Morisco
literature
is
all about:
it constitutes
a
collective effort to
preserve against
all
odds of the
community's
Islamic
identity.
But
doing
so in the
midst
of
Inquisitorial Spain
was
overwhelmingly
difficult,
for all the remnants
of
Muslim
cultural-religious
ceremonies,
language,
personal
names,
regional apparel-even
the festive dance
of the
zambra
—
had
been
strictly
forbidden
by
a succession of official edicts
throughout
the sixteenth
century.
As could
be
expected,
the
prohibitions
had an
immediate
impact
on the Islamic
community.
Many
Moriscos
fled to Muslim
countries;
while those who chose to
stay
in
Spain
were
forcibly baptized (quite
often without true
religious
conviction).
But some of the most adamant
Muslims,
now
"officially"
Catholic,
went
underground.
As
crypto-Muslims
they
represented
the
epitome
of the Islamic resistance of Renaissance
Spain,
and
precisely out of their midst came the combative yet sorrowful authors we have
been
quoting
so far.
But even this
Morisco elite did-not
escape
the fatal
destiny
of
slow
absorption
into the mainstream of
official"
Spanish
culture. The sixteenth
century crypto-Muslims,
descendants of the
highly sophisticated Hispano-Arabs
from
al-Andalus, were,
in
spite
of
their heroic
cultural and
religious
resistance,
gradually
becoming full-fledged Spaniards.
Thus,
the secret literature of
the
last
Muslims
of
Spain,
for all its
tears,
all its
desperation
and all its
outrage,
is a
lasting
monument to the
hybridness
and
polyculturalismthat
was
understandably
the Moriscos' lot. We are about to browse
through
the
folios of
a
literature
which was indeed
unique,
not
only
because of its
hybrid linguistic
fabric
but
also
because
the historic and cultural
experiences
it
explores
are
exclusively Hispano
Muslim. As we
will
see,
Spanish
Morisco
literature
belongs
both to the East
and
to
the
West,
but is confined to neither.
But
precisely
out of the
crypto-Muslims'
troubled
identity
came an
unexpected literary creativity.
The
underground
Moriscos took to the task of
urgently trying
to
preserve
their rich cultural
heritage
from
receding
into
oblivion, and,
in the
very process
of
rewriting
their classical literature "del arabi
en
aljami"
—
from Arabic to
Spanish
in the Arabic
script
—
they
ended
up
reinventing
themselves
as
authors and readers.
The end result of this
long
process
of
literary
reforging
implied
indeed a
profound
innovation of the Arabic
belles lettres, of the Islamic religious treatises and even of the practical works
(medical
books, itineraries,
etc.)
that the Moriscos
had inherited from
their
ancestors. Let
us take the case of the
legend
of the hero
Buluquia,
who travels
through
time and
space
in the midst of untold cosmic
marvels in a
superhuman
effort
to meet a
yet
unborn
prophet by
the name of Muhammad.
The
story,
which an
anonymous
Morisco
translated
into
Spanish
in ms. VIII of the
Biblioteca de
Estudios Arabes of
Madrid7,
is
extant in its
original.
The Arabic
version both
in the Thousand and One
Nights
and in al-Tha'älibTs
Qasas
al
Anbiyâ'.
But it is one
thing
to
have
enjoyed
the Muslim
legend
in the
open
spaces
of a Moroccan or
Syrian
medieval
market
place
and
quite
another to have
heard
it in the hushed
silence of the
Spanish crypto-Muslims'
clandestine
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
5/19
luce López
baralt/The Secret
Literature of the Last
Muslims of
Spain
dwellings.
Furthermore,
it is
quite
a different
experience
to focus on
the
story's
unrestrained
delight
for Mirabilia that
has made Arabic fiction so
famous,
instead of assuming it as an urgent political tool for the defence of a national
identity
in
danger
of
extinction. Anwar
Chejne
is
right
when he
proposes
that
even Arabic literature
of
entertainment or
adab,
when
translated
by
the
Moriscos,
served a
utilitarian,
pedagogical purpose
of
cultural
self-affirmation.8
So even the
painfully
exact renditions of the
Arabic
originals
become
texts
with
a
new
political meaning
in
the hands of the Morisco
authors. If this
is the case
of
simple
translations,
we can well
imagine
that the
poignant
testimonial literature
of
the
underground
community
was still more
original
and
more
engaged.
Before we
begin
to read the
disturbing
old
manuscripts,
let us take a
closer look at the
drama
of
conflicting
identities that the Morisco
authors had to
undergo
between the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries-both in
Spain
and
afterwards in their
adoptive
Islamic
countries. That is to
say,
precisely
during
the
years
in
which
they
wrote most
of
their
intensely
polymorphic
literature,
the
underground
Spanish
Muslims
were
torn
between two
antagonistic
ways
of
perceiving
themselves as human
beings: they
were
Muslims,
but at the
same
time
they
were
Spaniards.
And these two
aspects
of their
legitimate'cultural
heritage
had become
simply
incompatible
in
Renaissance
Spain.
The
cultural
and
religious pluralism
and the
relative tolerance of the
Middle
Ages
was
by
now a
thing
of the
past.
The
Moriscos
who
opted
to
stay
in their
motherland
had to
accept,
as we have
already
pointed
out,
cultural
integration
into
an
official, monolithic Catholic "Spanishness". They had to either bury in oblivion
or force into
clandestinity
the Islamic
ingredients
of
their national
identity, by
now
totally
discredited. As a
result,
many
Moriscos ended
up
being culturally
hybrid
because the slow deterioration of their Islamic
heritage
did not
always
give
way
to a
complete
identification nor to a
profound
knowledge
of
the
solidly
Catholic culture of
the victors. It must be
pointed
out
that even the
Spanish
name which
now
came into
vogue
for 'Moors'.
—
Moriscos
—
ended
up
acquiring
a
very
negative
social innuendo.
But these
very
Moriscos,
by
now
profoundly
torn in
their
national
identity,
faced a new
dilemma
when
their final
expulsion
was
decreed
by
Philip
III
in 1609:
they
had not been allowed to
be bona
fide
Spaniards
in their
native
land, but
they
did not have the time either to become
full-Hedged
Muslims in the
first decades of their exile in
Barbary.
The
Morisco
community
thus
underwent
two different
processes
of
acculturation. The
Islamic
culture was
forcefully
taken
away
from
them
in
Renaissance
Spain,
and,
when
they
were
finally
in the
process
of
becoming
assimilated into the
'official'
Spanish
culture,
they
were
forced
by
the
circumstances into a new
process
of assimilation.
In
their new
adoptive
countries
they began
to
relearn their
long
forgotten
Arabic and to
acquire
a
deeper knowledge
of
their Islamic
religion, by
now
mostly
reduced to
superficial
rituals. Countries
like
Morocco,
Algeria
and
Tunisia received
the
Muslim
refugees
with
open
arms, but,
at the
same-time,
considered them to be Europeans. As Mikel de Epalza reminds us. the Turkish
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
6/19
Islamic Studies
36:1
(1997)
regent
of
Tunis,
'Uthmän
Dey, protected
the
new comers as an autonomous
foreign community
of a
high
technical and
economic
level
and
placed
them
under
his
direct
political
protection
for obvious utilitarian reasons.1'
The Moriscos found
themselves,
therefore,
in the
ironical
situation of
being
expelled
from
Spain
as Muslims
and
then
of
being
considered
Europeans
by
their
benefactors
in their new homelands.
Like the
symbolic
olive tree
(see
Qur'än
24:35),
they belonged
neither
to the
East nor
to
the
West.
While
in
Spain they
had
to hide
their Islamic
identity.
But once
in
Barbary,
even
though
they
were
overjoyed
to be able
to
practice
Islam
at
long
last,
they
felt
a
poignant,
understandable
nostalgia
for their lost
Iberian motherland. And
this,
again, proved
to be
a
difficult
undertaking:
after
so
many
decades
they
had
learned to love and to memorize their
contemporaries'
re-discovered
literary
works. It is
usual to
come
across the
Spanish
Renaissance classical authors
—
Garcilaso, Lope de Vega, Quevedo, Góngora — cautiously bui admiringly
intermingling
with Islamic authorities
in
the
proselitistic
treatises
written
in
exile.
It must also
be
said that the literature
the Moriscos
produced
as
refugees
proved
to
be as
hybrid
and
as
polycultural
as
it had been
during
the
Spanish
underground period.
But for inverse reasons: while
in
Barbary
the
Muslim
authors
could
express openly
their
allegiance
to
Islam,
a
too
enthusiastic
identification with their former
European
culture could be
suspect.
The
"lloradores" thus
took
their tears to
exile:
their
destiny
was
to
remain
landless
l'or
many
years
to
come:
this,
in
spite
of
their adamant
loyalty
to
the
Islamic
religion
of
their ancestors from
al-Andalus,
which
they
finally
recovered
in the
Muslim nations which
gave
them
refuge.
But let us retrace the Moriscos'
steps
while
they
were still in the
Peninsula,
struggling
to remain faithful
o
the
Islamic
faith.
Their
literary saga,
which
roughly
encompasses
the sixteenth
century,
began
in
earnest alter
the
Catholic Monarch's benevolent
capitulations
after
the
fall
of
Granada
began
to
be violated. This is not
to
say
that
the
Spanish
Islamic
community
had
not tried
to
reforge
their
national culture into
Spanish
prior
to the Granada debacle
or
the
forced
baptisms
(
1499-1525): let us remember the sixteenth
century
aljamiado
rendition
of
the Poema
de
Yusuf
and
'Isa
ihn Jäbir's 1456
Spanish
translation
of
the
Qur'än,
whose
momentous historical
importance
many
scholars have
recently
stressed.1" But the
sustained,
collective
effort
of
preserving
for
posterity
the
last
remnants of the Moriscos' cultural identity is, ironically, really a Renaissance
phenomenon.
Perhaps
a Renaissance
ci
l'envers
phenomenon,
l'or
no
other
European
nation
can boast of
having
produced
such a
peculiar
literary
corpus
as
Spain
did
during
its
supposed
"classical"
period,
Be
that
as
it
may,
thanks
to
these
manuscripts
which
we have
recently
begun
to discover and
to
decode"
we
have
the
impressive opportunity
of
witnessing
—
with
singular
pathos
—
the
extinction of an entire
peuple,
and we
see
as
well
their
efforts to
hold
back
the
inevitable historical forces which
were about
to
descend
upon
them,
The Morisco authors were
the
chroniclers
—
or
perhaps
the
anti
chroniclers.'
—
of a
vanishing
world.
Their
first
tragedy
was
that
they
could
produce
neither
literature nor
religious
proselitistic
treatises
in
the
language
of
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
7/19
luce lôpez baralt/The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of
Spaii
their forebears
from al-Andalus. The Arabic characters in which the Moriscos
wrote
their
Spanish,
and which were
—
with a few
exceptions
—
the full extent
of their knowledge of their holy tongue, testifyto a terrible tragedy.
The
loss of the
language
of the
Qur'än
was
grievous
to the Muslim
believers
not
only
from the
point
of view
of
culture,
but
more
particularly
from
the
point
of view of
religion,
for
in
Islam
praying
in
the
sacred
tongue
of the
revelation is an essential
part
of the
religious
ritual. This fact leads Ottmar
Hegyi
to observe that
the author of these clandestine texts
hung
to their
Arabic
characters
less from considerations
of
secrecy
than for the sacred
dignity
that the
Arabic
characters held
for them
and
their
clandestine
readers.13 Thus the
indignation
of these
crypto-Muslim
authors,
who
deeply
resented
having
to use
"al-'Ajamï"
or
aljamiado
for their
treatises:
the
expression
comes from
the
Arabic
'ajamiyyah, meaning foreign tongue.
Although
the coined
technical
term
has been
generally applied
to the
totality
of the secret
literary corpus
of the last
Muslims
of
Spain,
it
must be
acknowledged
that some
Moriscos
wrote also
in
the
Arabic
language
and
even in
Spanish
using
the
Latin
script
both before and
after their
exile in
Barbary.
That is
why
Gerard
Wiegers prefers
to
refer
to
Morisco
literature as
"Islamic
Spanish
literature".13
In
any
case,
the
Moriscos,
fully
aware of their
linguistic shortcomings,
were
outraged
to have to write in
the
foreign,
almost
heretical
aljamiado,
as
the
vitriolic tone
of this
anonymous
author
clearly
demonstrates:
Not one of
our
religious
brothers
or sisters knows the Arabic in which
our Holy Qur'än
was
revealed, nor understands
the truths of the
religion,
nor
can
appreciate
its refined
excellence,
unless these
things
be
conveniently
stated to
them
in a
foreign
tongue,
which
is
that
of
these
Christian
dogs,
our
tyrants
and
oppressors. May
Allah
confound
them
Thus, then,
may
I
be
pardoned
by
Him who reads what
is
written
in
the
heart,
and
knows that
my
only
intention is
to
open
to
the
faithful of
the
Muslim
religion
the
path
of
salvation,
even
if
it
be
by
this
vile
and
despicable
means,14
Another
anonymous
Morisco,
who
took on
the task
of
translating
the
Qur'än
into
Spanish
in
1606,
is
again quite
unhappy
over the
fact
that he
has
to
use the "letters of the Christians". He begs for his readers' understanding:
[The
writer)
begs
that on
account
of
being
in
those
letters
[his
work|
be not
belittled,
but
rather
respected;
because,
being
set
down
in
this
way,
it can better
be seen
by
those Muslims
who
know
how
to read
Christian,
but not
Muslim,
letters. For it
is
true
that the
Prophet
Muhammad
(peace
be on
him)
said
that the best
language
was the
one
that
could be
understood".15
The
process
of
learning
to
transliterate
these "letters
of
the
Christians"
with the Arabic script was not an early one, A high-n>nking sharlf of noble
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
8/19
Islamic
Studies
36:1
(1997)
origin,
Ibn 'Abd al-Rafi'
al-Andalusl
gives
us a
heart-rendering
account of how
his father
taught
him the Arabic
alphabet
and
the first notions of Islam when
he
was six years old. His testimonial account gives us a privileged access to a
crypto-Muslim
home and
forces us
to
share the fear the
youngster
must have felt
when his father
quietly approached
him
one
day
with a
walnut-wood slate
in
his
hand. Ibn 'Abd
al-Rafi' assures the reader
that after
many years
of exile in
Barbary
he can still see the
slate
graphically
inscribed in his
memory.
The
father starts
to write
upon
the slate the "letters of
the
Christians",
and
goes
over
them with his son.
Every
time the child
repeats
one of these
"foreign" signs,
the
father,
with
gentle yet
authoritative
patience,
goes
on to
instruct him
on
the
corresponding
Arabic
signs.
"Ours
are like
this",16
he
whispers
in
the startled
child's ear. 'Abd al-Rafi'
ends
up
having
to memorize a
double
alphabet neatly
inscribed
in a
double
column.
He learns
immediately
that he is
in the midst of
a very dangerous academic task: he must
keep
his father's
teachings strictly
to
himself. Not
even his mother
should
have access to
the
delicate
curving
Arabic
signs
extant
in
the wooden
slate.
He remains
alone,
memorizing
his ominous
lesson,
when
suddenly
his
mother
bursts into
the
room
and
scolds him:
"What
was
your
father
teaching you?". "Nothing",
mutters the
child,
starting
his
life
of
duplicity
as a
crypto-Muslim.17
"Don't
be
afraid,
and tell
me,
for
I
know
very
well
what
he
was
teaching
you".18
But
the
future
sharif
had learnt
to
keep
a
secret
and
proves
to
be
loyal
to the
father
who had introduced
him
with such
caution to
the
secrets
of his
threatened
community.
In the
years
to come
he will
manage
to
study
with
the
saintly
al-Üthürl of
Granada,
who
had
become
an
expert in Islamic law before the fall of the city. Al-Rafi' had to continuously
risk his life
in
order
to
further his
knowledge
of Islam
and it
is
not
surprising
that
he
finally
decided
to tlee
his
native homeland.
Not
all the
crypto-Muslims
had
the
same
scholarly
tenacity
—
nor
the
same
good
luck
—
as
had
Ibn
'Abd
al-Rafi'.
The
Morisco
Francisco
de
Espinosa
alleged
in
his
Inquisitorial
trial that
"he
knew
no more
words
in
Arabic
than
El
handurila
de
la
bradamin
hurrazmin,
and that he knew not even
what
they
meant".19
Of course the
accused
man
could
be
disguising
his
true
Islamic
knowledge
to avoid
incrimination,
but
the
truth
s
that
the
aljamiado
manuscripts
indicate
a
similar
situation. The reader
often
comes
across
the
pathetic practice
of
the
Arabic
alphabet
in
the blank
folios of
the
anonymous
codices.
Usually,
when the Arabic language is brieflyquoted in the manuscripts, it is interspersed
with
grammatical
errors.
Even the
Mancebo
de
Arévalo,
whom his collaborator
Baray
de
Reminyo
describes as
a
"scholarly
young
man...
very expert
and
educated
in
the
reading
of
Arabic,
Hebrew, Greek,
and
Latin,
and in
aljamiado
most
conversant",20
seems
to
have had
a
quite
modest
literary
and
religious
culture.
L.P.
Harvey
has
demonstrated
the
errors
our scholar
falls
into
when
he
tries
to
show
off
his
knowledge
of
these venerable
languages,21
He
was
also
ignorant
of
the
basics
of
Arabic
grammar
and
of
the rules
of
declination,
which
he
appears
to
confuse with the
attitudes
of
the
speaker,
His
Morisco friends,
ignorant
of
Arabic,
begged
the
young
man to
give
them
some
instruction in
the
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
9/19
luce López barai τ The
Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of
Spai
language.
And he
"helps"
them with this
outrageous
"lesson",
whose
original
opacity
we
respect
in the translation:"
I
wished to collect certain Arabic similes in
aljamiado
because
some
of
my
friends asked me
why
it was that in
Arabic in certain
passages
sometimes one said
Alläh,
ther times
Allähu.
and other times
Allühi....
one
is to understand
that
saying
Allah without
any
other
appearance
|addition|
is to
speak
in
absolutes.
Allähu
is to take current
|sic.,
no
doubt
meaning
"speak"
|
in
order
to
invoke some
saying
as
though
to
say
"merciful"
or
"mercy".
Saying
Allah
is
like that
man
who
suddenly
wishes
to
entrust
himself to
Allah;
he
goes directly
to
Allah
instead of
asking
his
al-rahmah or
pity.
The
man
who
says
Allahu
goes
more
slowly
in
seeking
...
pity.-·'
For
all
their
distressing linguistic
difficulties,
the
crypto-Muslims
refused
to
forget
Arabic.
And
they
did
it
against
all historical
odds;
in the
momentous
year
of
1492
-
the
fall
of
Granada and the
expulsion
of
the
Jews
-
permitted
the
nationalization
of
Spanish
territory,
while the
discovery
of
America
opened
the Peninsular culture
to
unexpected
horizons.
But
1492 was
also
a historical
year
because
Antonio
de
Nebrija
published
the first Gramática
de
la
lengua
castellana.
The
great
humanist
thought
that his
Spanish
Gramática
based on
Quintilianus
and
Diomedes, would
be
of
service
for
the
unity
of
his
recently
founded nation,
which
quickly proclaimed
Castillian as its official
tongue,
But in
a
few years
the
underground
Moriscos
will in turn
be
hurriedly
translating
the famous Arabic
grammar
Jurrûmiyyah
or
Muqaddtmah
of
Muhammad
al-Sanluiji
ihn
al-Jurrfon,
born in
Fez
(1273-1339
π
), The
anonymous
aljamiado
rendition
of
the
popular
opuscule,
extant in
ms.
Junta
XII,
probably
anteceded
the
first
European
editions
and
Latin translations
of the
text
-4
It
is no
exaggeration
to
say
that
the
clandestine
manual
was
the
Moriseo's
fierce
answer
to
Nebrija's
Gramática,
and one can
only
wonder how
many crypto-Islamic
children
used it
in
the
secrecy
of their
homes
in
their
struggle
to remain
bilingual. They
were
precisely
the future authors of our
hybrid aljamiado
texts,
Aljamiado
literature
was
indeed
so
mestizo
or
hybrid
in its
linguistic
outlook that when (he first manuscripts were discovered in the eighteenth
century,
scholars
just
did
not know
what
to
make of
them, Confused
by
texts
that were
written n the Arabic
script
but
which
at
the same time
were
not extant
in
Arabic,
researchers
like
Sylvestre
de
Saey
thought
they
must have been
written in "some
of the
languages
spoken
in
Africa,
or
perhaps
in
Madagascar".-'
Let
us
begin by opening
some of
the
most
prdselitistic
manuscripts,
for
they
constitute
the hulk
of
sixteenth-century
Islamic
Spanish
literature,
Again
it is the
Mancebo
de
Arévalo
who
describes
vividly
in his Breve
compendio
or
Brief
Compendium
a
visit
he
payed
to ΆΠ
Sarmiento,
an illustrious 'álim
or
Muslim sage from Granada. Sarmiento, already one hundred years old and
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
10/19
Islamic Studies 36:1
(1997)
infirm,
had been so afflictcd
by
the
fall of the
city
that
in order to avoid the
constant insults
his fellow Muslims were
still
being
subjected
to,
he
moved to
the outskirts
of the town. The Mancebo
went to his house
in the
company
of
two Morisco
friends and was
quite
impressed
when
he
heard
Sarmiento
formally
lecture the newcomers
from a home-made
pulpit
or almimbar:
"He stood at his
house's
almimbar,
and with the
very
same tunic
he used to
wear when he
greeted
the
Kings
of
Granada
during...
festive
occasions,
he
began
preaching...".·16
Sarmiento's
stubborn emotional
attachment
to
the
old Islamic
ways
must have
seemed heroic
yet
at the
same time
pathetic
to the newcomer
from
Arévalo.
Our
chronicler remained
optimistic
over
the
possibility
of Islam
returning
to
Spain,
for he assures
in the
prologue
of his
opus
magnas,
the
Tafsira
or
Exposition,
that he will write
yet
another
Tafsira
"when this land is
free",0 that is, when
Spain
is "liberated" from the Christians. But deep inside
the
crypto-Islamic
testimonial writer
must have felt
the
pangs
of
doubt;
almost
all the fellow
Moriscos he meets
in
Granada
have the
feeling
that
the worst was
yet
to come.
He
keeps
interviewing
the survivors
again
and
again,
and his
modern attitude
reminds Maria Teresa
Narváez,
the
Tafsira's
editor,
of that of
a
journalist
avant
la lettre. The
Mancebo
stays
for
two months
with
Yuse
Banegas,
the
"grande
arabigo"
or
"great
Arabist"
from Granada
we have
already
quoted,
to learn from him. The
old
scholar,
who makes the
Mancebo read out
several
Qur'änic
surahs
loud to correct
his
style,
had an
important
role
in
the
city's
final
capitulations.
As an
eyewitness
of these
events,
he
saw how the
Granadian
women were sold
as slaves in the
town
square
when the
city
surrendered:
"do not doubt
my
telling
thee...
for I saw
with
my eyes
all
the
noble
ladies,
both
widows and
married
women,
being
scorned and
humiliated,
and
I saw sold in
public
auction more
than three
hundred maidens.Yüse's
lament is
one of the most
poignant
the Mancebo
records
for
posterity.
At
long
last the muted
voices of the
vanquished
Islamic
community
describe the
historical
events
from their
own
point
of view:
My
son,
I know that
of the
things
of Granada
your
understanding
is
void;
and
you
should not be
frightened
when I tell
you
of
them,
because there is
no moment when
they
do
not echo within
my
heart
...
My son, I do not weep for the past, for from the past nothing returns,
but I
weep
for
what
you
will see
if
you
|stay]
in this island of
Spain.
Pray
to His
kindness,
that .
. . this
thing
that
1
say
fall into
oblivion,
and not be
fulfilled as I have
foreseen
it,
specially
with our
religion
so
scorned
... that the
people
will
say:
Where
did our
preaching
go?
What
has
happened
to the
religion
of our fathers'.'
And all
will be
bitterness
for the
man with sense
[to
feel
it).
And what
most hurts
is
that the
Muslims will imitate
the
Christians,
and
will not refuse their
dress nor
dodge |spurn]
their food.
Pray
to
His kindness that
...
they
pay
no attention
to their law with
their hearts...
You
will
clearly
see
that
I
say
all this
passionately |but|
I
did
not desire to come
to such
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
11/19
luce López baralt/The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of
Spai
weeping...
For
if
now in such short
space
it
appears
that
we sustain
ourselves
by
confrontation,
what
will
there be when the last autumns
[the
last
days]
come? If the fathers belittle the
religion,
how will the
great-great-great grandchildren praise
it?
If
the
king
of the
conquest
keeps
not his
words,
what awaits us from his successors?29
Banegas
was
painfully right
in his
historical
"prophesy":
the Catholic
Monarch
King
Ferdinand
betrayed
his own accords after the fall of Granada.
They
were hard times indeed. And
yet,
the
crypto-Muslims
did
put up
a
fight,
not
only
in the
Alpujarras
but from
important pockets
of
Islamic resistance
like
Saragossa. Again
we are in debt
to the Mancebo's sense of
history
in the
making;
in
one
of
his most dramatic
scenes,
he describes in minute detail a
secret
meeting
of "Muslims and wise men" in
Aragon,
in which he
participated,
probably as a worried observer. The chronicler skilfully records the desperation
and
anger
of his fellow
Muslims,
many
of whom could not deal with
the
difficulties involved in
keeping
Islam
alive:
...[the
gathered
Muslims
began
to
speak
of
our sorrows and each one
gave
his
harangue:
and
among
so
many things
there was one who said
our loss was indeed
great
and lamented at how little
essence
our
work
had;
and
another
'älim
[wise man]
said that
the worK which we had to
do...would
be to our
greater
merit;
but
they repudiated
his
speech,
saying
that the
work
was to no avail as far as the
precept
[or
orthodoxyl
is
concerned,
because it was
lacking
the
principal thing,
which is the
[officiali
call to
prayer,
and thus the work could not be
pleasant [spiritually
acceptable
to
God|...
And
among
all these
disgusts,
another wise
man said another
...angry
piece:
like all the
rest,
he said that
every
man
should tie
up
his skirt
about
his
waist
[so
as to move
freely
in order to
escape]
and those who
desired
salvation should
go
out and seek it.
Everyone
took his
speech
very
ill,
because it caused
great
sadness
[?fîeça\
and did not
give
the
example
of a
good
Muslim. There
many
different sorrows were
told;
and as each of those men felt the
general
harm as his
own,
I was not
surprised
that each one should
speak
his
mind,
because we were not in
any mood to jest, nor to utter improper words.30
In
spite
of all these
difficulties,
the
aljamiado
manuscripts
bear witness
to the fact that the
underground
Moriscos
did
manage
to survive as an Islamic
community,
sometimes,
barely
so. Reem Iversen31 has
documented a curious
aljamiado
letter
ms.
Junta
XV1Ï)
addressed to an
al-faqih
or
Islamic doctor of
law. It is written in
great
haste
by
an
anonymous
Morisco who
requests
that the
al-faqih
send
him
(or
her)
at once a
prayer rug
to
perform
the
saläh or Islamic
ritual
prayer.
The sender of the
undated letter also
specifies
that the mat must
be halál
(made
of licit
materials).
If the clandestine
business was discovered it
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
12/19
Islamic Studies 36:1
(1997)
would have cost both
the letter writer and the mat
provider
their
liberty
and
perhaps
even their
lives.
But the
crypto-Muslim
authors did not limit themselves
to
these
merely
ritual
aspects
of their Islamic
religion. They
attacked
Christianity
in treatises
that were much more
sophisticated
from
a
theological
point
of view. The
anonymous polemist
who authored ms. 5302 of the National
Library
of Madrid
was
quite
frontal
in his attack of
Christ,
whose
figure
he
downsizes to that of
a
simple prophet
who was
not,
as Catholics
claim,
God himself.
Reading
this
text
proves
to be an
uneasy experience
for
Spanish
readers: no wonder this
particular
manuscript
still
remains
unpublished.12
The author
first
depicts
the
circumstances
of Jesus'
gestation
and
birth,
which seems to
him
as normal
as
those of
any
other human
being:
"(Jesus|
stayed
in
|Mary's|
womb
for nine
months and then left it
through
the same
place
where Adam's sons leave it".33
Our polemist reminds his reader that Allah is Uncreated, and that he neither eats
nor drinks nor
sleeps,
and of course is never afraid.
But 'Isa or Jesus "was
born and
he ate and
drank,
and he
slept
and
experienced
fear and he fled Herod
and he walked with the sons
of Adam and
people
saw
him first as a child and
then as a
grown
man,
and he was with them
for
thirty
three
years.
So how can
you
say
that he was God
having
done all this?"34
The author's
depiction
of
Christ's crucifiction
is
truly startling
from the
point
of view
of a traditional
Catholic
Spaniard.
He died as a
man,
and as
an
anguished,
fearful
man at that:
"We have to
accept
the fact that
|Jesus]
was afraid...and that
he
complained
and
implored
|God|
that
he be excused
from
experiencing
the
process
of death.
And he asked God to let
him
rest,
and an
angel
came to
comfort
him... .So how can he be
God,
as
you
Christians
claim,
when he needed
such...and consolation
from the
Almighty?"35
As could
be
expected,
Muhammad,
a
veritable Christ à
l'envers,
is
celebrated
as the
true
Prophet
of the
crypto-Islamic
community.
Consuelo
López-Morillas's
recent
Textos
aljamiados
sobre
la vida de Mahonia:
el
Profeta
de los
moriscos
(Madrid:
Consejo
Superior
de
Investigaciones
Científicas, 1994)
offers
a
splendid
collection
of
aljamiado
texts
depicting
the
Prophet's
sacred
genealogy
and
frequent
miracles.
According
to
the
profusely copied
Kitäb al
Anwär or
Book
of Lights,36
the
Prophet
inherited from Adam and
from the
religious prophets
that
preceded
him,
a miraculous
light
which shone
on his
forehead as a sign of his future role as the spiritual leader of the
Muslims. The
famous
Kitäb
al-Mi'räj
or Libro de la
esca'a,37
on the other
hand,
describes in
vivid detail Muhammad's
ascension
on the
al-buräq
to the seventh
heaven,
where he
spoke
with
God
himself.
Again,
this well-known
text was
respectfully
copied
once and
again by
the
Spanish
crypto-Muslims.
It seems to have been
their
secret,
defiant answer
to the Christian
religious
figures
they
were forced
to
venerate
openly
in Catholic
Spain.
One
of the most
moving
testimonies of
the whole
corpus
of
Islamic
Spanish
literature, however,
is
the denunciation of
the
Inquisition.
The feared
Tribunal
not
only
constantly
violated the
crypto-Muslims'
consciences,
but took
their
children
hostage
and confiscated
their
properties.
Our
anonymous
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
13/19
luce
lopez
baralt/The Secret Literature of the
Last Muslims of
Spai
informer,
who writes l'orni the
safety
of
Tunisia,
seems to know that he is
writing
for
posterity
when he describes what it was like to live
under the
constant threat of the feared Tribunal:
Thanks
... be
given
to
our
merciful
Lord,
who
plucked
us out of the
midst of these Christian
heretics...|tor|
every day
their
abhorrence
grew greater
in their
hearts,
and it was
necessary
that one show
oneself
as
they
demanded,
for
if it was not
done.
|we|
were taken
to the
Inquisition,
where for
following
the truth we
were
stripped
of our
lives,
properties,
and
children;
for in
a thrice a
person
was thrown into a
dark
prison,
as black as
their
evil
designs,
where
they
should be left for
many years
as the
property
was consumed
...
and the
children,
if
they
were
small,
they
were
put
out to
rear,
to make of
them,
like
[the
Christiansi, heretics; and ... some said that
|we|
all should be
put
to
death,
others that we should be
castrated
{by
cauterization
in a
part
of
the
body
so that
|we|
might
not
engender
children
and
so die out
by
degrees.
Almost all
aspects
of life
were rewritten
by
the Morisco authors from
the Islamic
point
of view. The secret Muslim
community managed
to teach its
members not
only
how to
marry according
to
Islamic law but also
how
to die
within the faith. Death was
precisely
the most
critical moment that had to be
lived in the
context
of the Moriscos'
traditional beliefs. Different
religious
treatises
taught
the secret
community
all about the
processes
of
dying
and the
ensuing
afterlife.
Both Antonio
Vespertino Rodriguez19
and
Miguel
Angel
Vazquez*'
have
published excerpts
of
some
of the
most
fascinating
"death
manuals" of
itljamido
literature.
A
symbolic
skull describes in morbid detail
what it had been like for him to surrender his
soul;
"Azrail
[the
Angel
of
Death|
descended
upon
us
brandishing
fire and
received our souls with a blast of
fury.
He took
my
al-rüh
[soul]
from
me
I
tearing
it
apart]
from
joint
to
joint
and from vein to vein until
he
forced
it all the
way
to
my
throat.
Then he knocked
it with a
terrifying
club of fire.
1 felt such
pain
... that
I
can
only
compare
it to
the
experience of being skinned alive. I...have been lying here...for three
hundred
years
now and
I
still feel the
pain
in
my
throat from the
pulling
out of
my
soul...41
But
after such
eschatological struggle, many
Moriscos had the relief of
learning
that a
particularly delightful
heaven awaited them. It
was.
as was to
be
expected,
an
Islamic Paradise inhabited
by black-eyed
houris of
ravishing
beauty.
Their demeanour was so
incredibly
gentle
that
if
just
one of them were
to look down
upon
the
ocean
with
their
heavenly gaze,
its
salty
waters would
immediately
turn sweet.4'
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
14/19
Islamic Studies
36:1
(1997)
The
crypto-Muslims'
feverish
imagination
is
again
pul
to
good
use
in
another
literary genre
which the
persecuted minority exploited pro
domo sua
in
a
spectacular way.
We are
referring
to the incredible
affaire
of
the lead books
of Sacromonte and the
parchment
of the Tower of
Turpin
in Granada. When
the Torre
Turpiana.
the
old
minaret of
the
mosque,
was demolished
in 1580 in
order
to
expand
the
cathedral,
a lead box was
discovered,
containing "prophetic"
inscriptions
in
Spanish
and
Arabic
dealing
with the end of the world. Fifteen
years
later,
in
1595.
a much more remarkable
discovery
was made: lead tablets
were found
in
Sacromonte
or
"holy
mountain"
in
Granada,
written
in
angular
Arabic characters
(so
as
to look
antique)
and in crude Latin. These
thin
tablets,
which were about the si/.e
of
a communion
wafer,
had
been made to
appear
to
belong
to the first
century,
and
they
included several
books
—
The Green
Mysteries
Seen
by
St.
James,
Enigmas
and
Mysteries Seen
by
the
Virgin, among
others — attributed to Tesifón Ebnatar and his brother Cecilio Enalrabí, putative
disciples
of St. James
the
spostle,
the future
patron
saint
of
Spain.41
The
Archbishop
of
Granada.
Pedro Vaca
de
Castro,
enthusiastically
ordered
the lead
tablets or
plomos
excavated,
and the find
caused,
according
to
Harvey,
as much
uproar
as the
Dead Sea Scrolls have caused
in our own
day.44
The texts
give
us a
physical description
of Christ and
the
Virgin
Mary,
who is snatched
up
into
heaven on a mare
(a
coarse
version of the ascent of Muhammad
to the seventh
heaven
on the
burciq)
and who
replies
(in
Arabic)
to St.
Peter's
inquiries
as to
the vices that
sixteenth-century
Granada
will suffer under
and as to the
importance
of
the
Muslims in those late
years.
A
long theological dispute
followed
the
discovery,
and
although
the relics were authenticated
by
Peninsular
scholars
in
1600,
they
were
finally
moved to
Rome,
where
they
were declared
heretical.4·''
This hoax served
a utilitarian
purpose
for
the Moorish
population
on the
eve of
its final
expulsion
in
1609.
The
plomos implied
a
diplomatic
(and
truly
desperate)
attempt
to reach a
synthesis
of the Christian and the
Islamic
religions.
Here
is
one
example
of
religious
syncretism
in the texts: the
Islamic
set-phrase
"there is
no
god
but God and Muhammad
is His
Messenger"
becomes Lâ lläha
illa
Allah,
wa YasiV ruh
Allah,
or "there is no
god
but God
and Jesus
is
the
spirit
of
God".
Very
Catholic
[in
contenti
and
very
Qur'ânic [in
form]
at the
same
time,
as
Harvey aptly
observes 46
There is some
suspicion
that the
controversial pair Alonso del Castillo and Miguel de Luna, who took part in the
"official"
translations of the
tablets,
were in fact their authors.
The false
chroniclers
and the Tower of
Turpin manuscript
are seen
today
as
pathetic
in
their
theological
naiveté and
tragic
in their total failure to halt
the Moorish
expulsion
and to lend
dying
Islam some
last
prestige, yet
they
are
of interest as
a
"literary precedent"
of
the
genre
of
prophecy
in
aljamiado.
We have
documented
a few of these
literary pieces
which aimed at
manipulating
the
crypto-lslamic
community's
future.
One of the
most
colourful
is an
anonymous
author's
prophesy,
extant in ms.
774 of
the
Bibliothèque
Nationale de
Paris,
who assures the reader
that the Moriscos
are to have a merciful
fate,
for discord
will break out "between
the two
kings,
adorers of the cross
and the eaters
ol
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
15/19
luce
lópez-baralt/The Secret Literature
of
the Last Muslims
of
Spaii
pork...and
Allah...will
send
a
king
who shall be called Ahmad".47
Finally,
the
Turks will come to the aid of the
Spanish
Muslims,
and the
prophesy
closes with
an
apotheosis
of Islam: The
first
thing
that
will
return to the
religion
of al-Isläm
will be the Island of Cecilia
[Sicily],
and afterward the Island of the
Olives,
which
is
Mallorca,
and the Island of the
salt,
which is Ibiza...and the
great
Island of
Spain
...4S
The
triumph
could not be more
complete,
and the details are
startling:
And the
King
of the Christians will be
captive,
and be sent to the
city
of Valencia. There he will become a Muslim. And when the
Christians
see
that,
they
will
gather
in
the
city
of the river. Over them
will come
three Muslim
kings,
and
they
will
enter the
city
by
force of
arms,
and all three shall eat at one
table,
and afterwards
they
will bless
one another; one will move into the area of Monkayo [sic.], the other
into the area of
Çuera (sic.],
and the other
into the area of
Himça
(which
we believe
signifies
Seville).
And when the
Christians
see that
their
king
is
captive they
will turn
Muslim .... And the Muslims shall
be
conquerors,
with the
power
of Allah ta 'ala
|exalted
be
He].49
History,
of
course,
took another tum. And
so
did the
Spanish crypto
Islamic
community
who had to invent their survival as a
people
for such a
long,
strenuous
period
of time.
Many
took their
destiny
in their own
hands
and
precipitated
their
flight
to
Barbary
even before the edict
of
the final
expulsion
was decreed. Some fled as
secretly
as
they
had lived in Renaissance
Spain.
Even
this last
wilful
act of Islamic affirmation had an ironic touch: the Moriscos
had to
escape disguised
as Christian
pilgrims
on their
way
to "Santa Maria de
Lorito
ILoreto]"
in France or to St. Mark in Venice. Once
there,
they
could
assume their real
identity
again
and
continue
their
trip
to Islamic lands.
I
have
been able to document a curious
aljamiado
"Guide to the
road",
which
guided
the
fleeing crypto-Muslims
out of their
"precious
island" of
Spain:
Information for the road: in Jaka
you
will
show
gold:
if
they
should ask
you something
about where
you
are
going
—
[say]:
because of debts.
And
that
you
wish to withdraw into France. And in France
[say]
that
you are going to Santa Maria de Lorito [sic.]. In Leon, you will show
the
coin,
you
will
pay forty-one,
in silver or
gold,
you
will demand the
road to
Milan;
from there onward
you
will
say
that
you
are
going
to
visit Samarko
[St.
Mark's]
in Venice. Embark in
Padua and on a river
with destination in
Venice,
you
will
pay
half
a real
per
head,
you
will
disembark at the
plaza
of
Samarko;
you
will
enter an
inn,
[but]
first
before
entering
a room with a bed
[there],
you
must
arrange
the
price,
you
will
pay
half a real
per day,
and
take
[eat
or
drink]
nothing
from
the
inn,
for
you
will
pay
for one
thing
three times. Go out to the
plaza
to
buy
whatever
thing you
need.
There,
those that
you
see with white
headgear
are
Turks,
those with
yellow headgear
are
Jews,
merchants
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
16/19
Islamic S tu di es 36:1
(1997)
from the Grand
Turk,
and from those
you
should ask whatever it is
you
wish,
for
they
will
lead
you aright
to it. Tell them that
you
have
brothers in
Salónica
and
that
you
wish to
go
there;
you
will
pay
one
ducat
per
head,
and for the
passage you
will also
give
for water and
firewood. Purchase
provision
for fifteen
days, buy
stew
and rice
and
vinegar
and olives and
chickpeas
or other white beans
and
fresh bread
for
eight days
and cake at ten
pounds
per
man.5"
Quite
a few Morisco texts celebrate their safe arrival
in
their
new
Islamic countries
of
adoption. Again,
one of the most vivid testimonies that of
"the exile of
Tunisia",
as Jaime Oliver Asin51 calls the
profilic
author of ms. *S-2
of the Biblioteca
de
la Historia of Madrid.
He and his
entourage
reached
Africa's shores as liberated Muslims: "We wanted
to
see
ourselves in Islamic
lands, even if it had to be naked".52 Our anonymous author writes for the first
generation
of
Spanish
Moriscos born in exile: he does not want them to
forget
their immense debt of
gratitude
to
Citibulgaiz
(Síd
Abü
Ί-Gayth
al-Qashshäsh,
the
holy
man who
organized
their
arrival)
and to
Uzmanday
or 'Uthmän
Dey,
Tunisia's Turkish
regent,
who also took
special
pains
in
helping
the newcomers
adapt
to their new life as
full-fledged
Muslims:
In this land of Islam we were received
by
Uzmanday,
Tunisia's
king,
of
imposing
demeanour but to
us a
gentle
lamb;
and
by
the
saintly
Çitibulgaiz,
and
by
the Muslim
people;
and all of them
tried
very
hard
to accommodate
us,
showering
us
with
great
love and
friendship.
Uzmanday exempted
us form
paying
the one hundred escudos that
every ship
had to
pay upon
arriving
in
port,
so as
to
encourage
us.. .and
what is
more,
he even let us choose
from
among
the
different lands we
were offered to
occupy.
Some had to choose
La Mahdia
against
their
will,
and
still,
he
helped
them with
wheat,
barley
and
guns...And
I
found out
through
a friend of his that when
he was ill he said:
as soon
as I
get
well
you
and I will
go
to all these
places
to find out
what
they
need and
give
it to them. And we
were
given
three
years
during
which
we did not have to
pay anything
[any
taxes]...
and he
prevented people
from
harassing
us... on the other
hand,
Citibulgaiz
helped
us
with food
and
lodged
us
in the
zaguyas [zäawiyahs
or
sanctuaries], specially
in
Çiti
el-Zulaychi's [zâwiyah],
where he
gave lodging
to
many
women
and children
and to
many poor people.
And since it is
usual for
ignorant
children to defile
without
taking
into
consideration where
they
are,
they
soiled
[Çiti
el-Zulaychi's zâwiyah]
to
the
extreme,
until
the
guaquil
[man
in
charge]
warned
Çitibulgaiz,
telling
him that
the
zâwiyah
had been turned into
a
dungheap.
And
he answered:
"Let
them
be,
and let them defile
all
they
want,
for
if the
place
they
are in
could
talk,
it would
say: "May you
be most
welcome to
my place,
blessed
people, perfect
Muslims and
dearest brethren.
Only
he
who is
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
17/19
luce löpez-baralt/The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of
Spai
a mu'tnin
|believer)
will love
thee,
and
only
he who is a
munäfiq
[hypocrite]
will
loath
you".53
Reading Spanish
Islamic literature is a
sobering
experience
indeed.
Sometimes
we
feel
that
many
Moriscos wrote not
only
to
preserve
their Islamic
heritage,
but to
try
to sort out their troubled
identity
and to
try
to come to terms
with
it.
It is
true
that
these chroniclers of Moorish
aljamiado
literature were
unable to
halt their
destiny
in
spite
of
their
harangues,
their secret
meetings,
or
their
optimistic yet falsifying prophesies.
Yet
they
offer us an invaluable vision
of
their
gradual, painful disappearance
as a
living
culture. Thanks to the
testimony
of these
lloradores or
weepers,
we
have
been able to witness first
hand how al-Andalus ceased to be in sixteenth
century Spain.
Their
testimony,
written
in the midst of tears and
desperation,
is a
legacy
of invaluable historical
and human importance. And it belongs both to the East and to the West, for it
is
Uniquely Hispano-Muslim.
'Barary
de
Reminyo
and the Mancebo de
Arévalo.
Breve
Compendio,
fol.
225r.
:The Mancebo de
Arévalo.
Tafsira,
fol. 232r.
The
manuscript
is
found
in the old Biblioteca
de la
Junta
de
Estudios Arabes de Madrid
(currently
known as the Biblioteca
del
Instituto
de
Filologia
C.S.I.C.),
and
is
usually catalogued
as Janta LXII.
^Maria Teresa
Narváez,
"La Tafsira del Mancebo de
Arévalo.
Transcription
y
estudio del
texto"
(Puerto
Rico:
Rio
Piedras,
unpublished
Ph.D.
thesis),
p.
161.
'Ibid.,
159.
5Ms.
5223
of
National
Library
of
Madrid,
fol. 170v-18()r.
''Mercedes Sanchez
Alvarez.
El manuscrito misceláneo 774 de Ici Biblioteca Nacional de París
(Madrid:
CLEAM
Gredos, 1982),
p.
252.
7The Biblioteca de Estudios
Arabes,
which harbours a
very important
collection
of Morisco
manuscripts,
has had
many
names
in this
century.
It
has
been known as the
Biblioteca
de Estudios
Arabes,
Biblioteca de la
junta
de Estudios
Arabes,
Biblioteca
Miguel
Asin,
Biblioteca
del Instituto
de
Filologia,
etc. We have
abbreviated
the
name
of
the
Library
as 'Junta'.
"Anwar
Chejne,
Islam and the West: The Moriscos
(Albany:
State
University
of New York
press,
1983).
''Mikel de
Epalza,
Los moriscos antes
y
después
de la
expulsion
(Madrid:
Editorial
Mapfre,
1992),
p.
252.
'"Dario
Cabanellas,
Juan de
Segovia y
el
problema
islámico
(Madrid:
Facultad de
Filosofiya
y
Letras,
1952).
Leonard
Patrick
Harvey,
"The
Literary
Culture of the
Moriscos,
1492-1609:
A
Study
Based on the Extant
Manuscripts
in Arabic and
Aljamia" (Oxford:
Ph.D.
Thesis, unpublished,
1958);
Consuelo
López-Morillas.
The
Qur'ân
in
Sixteenth
Century Spain:
Six Morisco Versions
of
Sura
79
(London:
Temesis Books Ltd.
1982);
and Gerard
Wiegers,
Islamic Literature in
Spanish
and
Aljamiado,
Yça
of Segovia
(fi.
1450):
His
Antecedents
and
Successors
(Leiden:
Brill,
1994)
and
"Yça
Gidelli
(fl. 1450).
His
Antecedents
and
Successors:
A
Historical
Study
of Islamic Literature
in
Spanish
and
Aljamiado"
(Leiden:
Rijksuniversiteit,
Ph.D.
Thesis,
1991).
"The
clandestine
manuscripts
began
to be discovered
long
after the
expulsion
of 1609.
In
1728.
several
codices
which had
been hidden inside a column of a house in Riela turned
up.
and in
1884
a
substantial collection was discovered under a false floor in a demolished house in Almonacid
de la
Sierra
in
Saragossa.
In
the last
ten
years many
more
manuscripts
have been
surfacing,
and it
must also
be remembered that not all the
Morisco texts extant in the libraries ot
Spain
or other
countries of
Europe
are
properly
catalogued.
This content downloaded from 152.118.24.10 on Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:03:36 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
8/9/2019 The Secret Literature of the Last Muslims of Spain
18/19
Islamic
Studies 36:1
(1997)
'-Ottomar
Hegyi,
"El uso del alfabeto
arabe
por
minorías musulmanas
y
otros
aspectos
de la
literatura
aljamiada,
resultante de
circunstancias históricas
y
sociales
análogas"
in
Adas,
147-164.
''Gerard
Wiegers.
Yça
Gidelli,
op.
cit.,
p.
2.
"George
Ticknor.
Historia (leIci
literatura
española
(Madrid:
Rivadeneyra,
1881-85),
p.
420.
'■'López-Morillas.
The
Qur'ân, op.
cit.,
p.
13.
"'Ahdelmajid
Turki. "Documents
sur le dernier exode des andalous en Tunisie"
in
Recueil.
114-127.
Ίbid.
'"Ib iti.
"'Mercedes
Garcia
Arenal,
Los moriscos
(Madrid:
Editora
Nacional, 1975),
p.
103.
-"Il