“Reading Aljamiado Mansucripts”
Mediterranean Studies Summer Skills Seminar
26—29 June 2023 • Remote
The Summer Skills Seminar, “Reading Aljamiado Manuscripts” was held via TEAMS from Monday, 26 June to Thursday, 29 June from 9am to 11am and noon to 2pm MDT.
Course overview
In the decades following the conquest of Granada in 1492, the free Muslim communities of Christian Spain (Mudéjares) were subject to decrees that forced them to convert to Catholicism in 1502 (Castile), 1515 (Navarre) and 1526 (the Crown of Aragon). While some converted genuinely, most Moriscos continued to secretly practice Islam, or developed Islamic modes of religiosity inflected by Christianity and Judaism. In any event, conversion did not bring integration, and Moriscos (both converts and their descendants) continued to be subject to fiscal and legal discrimination, social marginalization, and cultural repression. Andalusi and Islamic cultural practices, including, the wearing of traditional clothes, halal butchery, traditional dances, music, and pastimes, would be eventually prohibited. From the 1560s the use of spoken and written Arabic was forbidden; however, most preserved Morisco texts were copied after that date.
Even prior to this, many or most Mudéjares spoke local Romance vernaculars, and in some areas Arabic had completely disappeared. Mudéjares in the Crowns of Aragon and Castile began writing in Aljamía - local vernaculars with some specific features using Arabic script. This movement gained momentum through the sixteenth century, and a particular variant of the Arabic alphabet developed here. Works produced in Aljamía included copies of the Qur’an, prophetic and sacred works, poetry and secular literature. These works constitute a vivid and unique source for the history and culture of the Mudéjar and Morisco communities of Early Modern Spain. [For more information, see N. de Castilla, “Uses and Written Practices in Aljamiado Manuscripts” and “Les emplois linguistiques et culturels derrière les textes aljamiados”.]
This four-day intensive skills seminar provided participants with an overview of the interests and preoccupations of the Muslim communities of Aragon in the fifteenth, sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, as expressed on their own terms, in their own texts, using this unique alphabetic system. We read, discussed and analyzed unpublished and published manuscript fragments held today in various archives and libraries around the world, from the perspective of literal meaning, linguistics, sociology, material culture, historical context, and so on. The focus was on “hands-on” skills, and we read Aljamiado manuscripts together, progressing through increasingly challenging texts as the course proceeds and students’ abilities develop. The contents were catered as much as possible to the participants’ interests and needs. Medievalists and Modernists in all fields, graduate students, and qualified undergraduate students, as well as library and archival professionals were encouraged to apply.
The goal was to provide participants with a solid foundation for reading and understanding the manuscripts and texts produced by these Muslim Spanish communities, essential to understand Spain in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. This course aimed not only to further their own research but also provide them with a bona fide (in the form of a certificate of completion for those who attend the full seminar), which may be advantageous in securing grants or other funding for research and travel. The ability to do research with primary sources is a skill relatively few doctoral students master, and it enhances the research profile and CV of academic job-seekers.
This Summer Skills Seminar builds on the experience of earlier editions, which participants signaled as “transformative” in terms of their research, and which provided them with an opportunity to network and lay the foundations for future collaborations. Please click below for information and participant reviews of our former Skills Seminars.
Faculty
The course was conducted by Prof. Nuria de Castilla (History of the Book in Arabic Script, École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL, Paris). A specialist in Arabic Manuscripts, her main research fields are Aljamiado Literature, Arabic Codicology and Paleography and Cultural History in Early Modern Europe, with special attention to Muslim-Christian relations.
Participant Impressions:
“The instructor was always patient and kind while working through the texts. She was extremely knowledgeable and helpful.”
“Prof. Nuria De Castilla is a world-class pedagogue. Her own interest in the material is without question, and that attitude of love and excitement is delightfully infectious.”
“The course was excellent. It was a little bit difficult for me to participate in it due to the time difference, but I was really satisfied with the course.”
“Despite the seminar only lasting four days, it was very well structured and we had time to cover a wide range of material, get a good understanding of the topic, the basic skills required to read the documents and a good insight into the questions the subject raises. This allowed for very interesting conversations with all the participants.”
Program
Monday, June 26, 2023
9am-11am; noon-2pm
1. Introduction. A Secret Culture in Golden Age Spain.
2. Let’s begin reading
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
9am-11am; noon-2pm
1. Preaching in Morisco times
2. Future predictions
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
9am-11am; noon-2pm
1. Cornerstone
2. Other famous texts
Thursday, June 29, 2023
9am-11am; noon-2pm
1. Problems with reading Aljamiado texts
2. Encore! The Qur’an in Mudéjar and Morisco communities
Participants
Costanza Beltrami (History of Art: University of Oxford)
Costanza Beltrami is a lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Art History at the University of Oxford. In September, she will join the department of Culture and Aesthetics at the University of Stockholm. She completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2020. Her research focuses on Gothic architecture in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, especially in Castile. Her latest publication is ‘Memory, Modernity, and Anachronism at the Convent of San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo’, in Lateness and Modernity in Medieval Architecture, eds. Alice Isabella Sullivan and Kyle G. Sweeney (Leiden: Brill, 2023). With Sylvia Alvares-Correa, she is coediting a volume titled Art, Travel, and Exchange between Iberia and Global Geographies, c. 1400–1550 (Brill, forthcoming 2024).
Courtney Knight (History: Saint Louis University)
I am a Ph.D. student at Saint Louis University where I am studying medieval and early modern Spanish cultural, intellectual, and gender history. My research interests include popular belief, medicine and science, cross-cultural and interfaith relations, and the transmission of knowledge. I received my B.A. from Loras College (‘21) in Dubuque, Iowa, where I majored in history, Spanish, and biology. My current research project examines the translation and use of the Cantica Avicennae in Western Europe from the twelfth through the seventeenth century. The first is focusing on the translation and use of the Cantica Avicennae in Western Christendom from the twelfth through the seventeenth century. The project analyzes the way that the introductory materials and use of the text reflect European receptivity toward Arabic scientific knowledge.
Alexander Korte (Spanish & Portuguese: University of Minnesota)
Alexander Korte’s scholarship focuses on premodern Iberian culture and thought with an emphasis on diasporic and interfaith communities of the larger Mediterranean world. His research interests include travel narratives and mester and aljamiado poetry. His dissertation, which he recently defended in May 2023, explores literary representations of piracy and captivity in texts like the Cantigas de Santa María, Libro de Apolonio, Poema de Yúçuf, and the fiction of Cervantes. Alex has three forthcoming publications: “Moved with Rage: The Politics of Emotion in Libro de Alexandre” (eHumanista 54); “The Exiled Pirate: Double Agents, Revenge, and Finding Home in Cervantine Fiction” (Viator Special Issue on Early Global Insularities); “Conscripting the Virgin: Holy Mary and African Crusade in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa María” (Supernatural Aid in Medieval Warfare: Holy Men at War). This summer he is starting a new project on the aljamiado text Leyenda de la Doncella Carcayona through the lens of disability studies.
Jesús C. Muñoz (Comparative Literary Studies: Northwestern University)
Jesús Muñoz is a PhD student in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. He received a B.A. in Linguistics and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Utah, as well as an A.A. in Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. His dissertation research posits a poetic relation between Chicana feminist literature, 20th century Arabic narrative and magical realist literature, which results from the historical displacement of a particular conception of the poetic image in the historical epoch of modernity/coloniality. His research reads canonical modernist European aesthetic theory through its inability to articulate a conception of art in the face of “unintended relations of correspondence,” often taking the conceptual form of the uncanny, sublimity, myth, dreams, magic and spirituality. His dissertation, then, reads across the aforementioned literary traditions as not only a recovery of a mutually constitutive poetic form, but as a means to explain how these poetic images rearticulate the relationship between aesthetics and modernity through their decolonial political investments.
Natalia Munoz-Rojas (Courtauld Institute)
Natalia Muñoz-Rojas is a PhD candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her research focuses on the works of art commissioned for the new churches of Granada after its conquest by the so-called ‘Catholic Monarchs’ in 1492. This project will examine the largely neglected iconography of their donations, considering the political motivations behind these acts of patronage, and will aim to establish the extent of noblewomen’s involvement in the process. Following this line of research, Natalia joined the research group “MARCAM. Women and the Arts in Medieval Castile”, a project organised by the UNED.
Before joining the Courtauld, Natalia worked as the Enriqueta Harris Frankfort Curatorial Assistant at the Wallace Collection, funded by the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica (CEEH). Her projects included researching the Spanish works of art in the collection and the provenance of Rubens’s landscapes, The Rainbow Landscape and View of Het Steen. This project resulted in an article co-authored with curator Lucy Davies and published in the Burlington Magazine in 2022.
Natalia completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Warwick and her Master’s degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Takashi Oshio (Intercultural Studies: Seinan Gakuin University)
Takashi Oshio, Ph.D., obtained his degree from Chiba University in 2019 and currently serves as an associate professor at Seinan Gakuin University. He specializes in the religious history of Iberia and North Africa, focusing on Muslims and converted Muslims. His main publications include: “Early Modern Spain through the Perspective of a Muslim Diplomat: An Analysis of the Documents of an Alawite Diplomatic Mission,” Seinan Journal of Cultures, 37-2 (2023), 77-106, The Converts who cross "Borders": On the trail of the Moriscos (Tokyo: Fukyosha, 2021).
Robert S. Stone (Languages and Cultures: US Naval Academy)
Robert S. Stone is a professor of Spanish language and culture at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. His areas of research include Cervantes, the picaresque novel, Spanish Golden Age drama and, currently, the Spanish Inquisition. His publications include Picaresque Continuities (U Press of the South 1998) and “Moorish Quixote: Reframing the Novel” (Cervantes, spring 2013).
Katherine Tapia (Comparative Literature: University of Michigan)
Katherine Tapia is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. She studies the interaction of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the medieval Iberian Peninsula with a focus on authorship, translation, reception, and self-inscription. Her current research project deals with questions on authorship and reception through the works of don Juan Manuel and Alfonso X, and the legacy of Arabic literature and culture in the Iberian Peninsula. Parallel to that, she is also working on understanding female presence and intervention in Aljamiado texts with a focus on the works of el Mancebo de Arévalo.
Shai Zamir (History: University of Michigan)
Shai Zamir is a PhD history candidate at the University of Michigan. He works on the early modern Iberian world and on Jewish history, especially of the western Sephardi diaspora, New Christians, and on Jewish-Christian polemics. His dissertation explores the practices of early modern friendship in Spain, Peru and among Iberian diasporas.
He holds a master's degree from Tel Aviv University (with distinction) where he wrote on gender and anti-Jewish discourse in the Trent blood-libel (1475). He won different fellowships, including from the American Historical Association, Casa de Velazquez in Madrid, and the John Carter Brown Library in Providence. He was also a fellow at Hadar Yeshiva in New York where he studied Talmud.