To the memory of my dear parents
∵
Between 1588 and 1606 a parchment and twenty-one Lead Books were found in Granada. Defended as first-century CE Christian texts from the moment the first books appeared in 1595, they were soon suspected of being Morisco inventions. Moriscos were associated with these discoveries from the outset: as persons involved in the search for and discoveries of Lead Books on the slopes of the Valparaiso Hillock (later called the Sacromonte), and as translators of the Parchment and Lead Books.
It has become clear that Alonso del Castillo, and above all Miguel de Luna, played a crucial role in the early interpretation process, especially of the Parchment. Luna, unlike Castillo, was able to present a convincing interpretation of the often fantastic forms of both the Arabic script of the Parchment and the secret codes contained in the Arabic commentary to the Spanish eschatological prophecy. Very likely Luna was one of the main authors of both the Parchment and the Lead Books, which continued to appear until 1606.1
Castillo, the older of the two, and Luna lived on in Granada until their respective deaths in 1607 and 1615. They were not included in the expulsion to Castile after the suppression of the revolt of the Alpujarras in 1571, nor was Luna included in the general expulsion of the Granadan Moriscos. It is known
Our recent edition and study of the Lead Books shows that we are indeed dealing with Islamic texts, which propose both a forged history and a prophetic future of Arabic proto-Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. The narrative of the Parchment and the Lead Books is organized around Jesus, the Virgin Mary and James/Santiago as main figures, while two Arab brothers, Tisʿūn ibn ʿAṭṭār and Cecilio ibn al-Riḍā, act as secretaries. The Virgin Mary appears as a sinless prophetess to whom a sacred scripture, the Essence of the Gospel, is revealed on the Mount of Olives. One of the books tells us about her spiritual journey to the Heavens. James and his companions took a copy of that Scripture and accompanying written texts, the Lead Books, to a Holy Mountain in Spain, where they concealed the texts from the Romans and were martyred. The books predicted that the mountain, later called the Sacromonte, would be a site of pilgrimage. James (Santiago in Spanish) died a martyr’s death. The books tell us that the true meaning of the writings, especially of the Essence of the Gospel, will be explained at the end of time, by a modest young Arab during a Council which will take place in a place called ‘Subbar,’ (Cyprus) to be presided over by a non-Arabic king who lives in the East. Thereupon all the world will convert to the true religion and “religion will be one.”2 The end of times is presented as imminent, and the Moriscos are pictured as a vanguard of Islam. The narrative is supported by Islamic notions, including literal quotations of Qurʾān and Ḥadīṯ, and is colored by mystic ideas about the Unity of being which are inspired by Ibn al-ʿArabī’s thought. Of course these sources are not mentioned by name, but a Morisco public would probably have had little difficulty in identifying them. On all these grounds we surmise that the Lead Books, even though they meant to draw the attention of the Christians, were also meant for a Muslim Morisco readership.
The characteristics of the Essence of the Gospel point very clearly to the Qurʾān. The one religion is Islam. These texts, while firmly imbedded in the Andalusi Arabic and Aljamiado text corpus, also present idiosyncrasies. Some of these can be connected to the influence of the Christian missionary campaigns and pressure on the Moriscos, to which the Parchment and the Lead
In this contribution I am interested in how the Parchment and Lead Books were received among Moriscos in exile, how and why their contents were transmitted, and whether that transmission, in the light of their original contents, took place in a faithful way. I also ask who played a role in those events, what the role was, and why. Were these Moriscos, in their new environment, interpreting the Lead Books in new ways? How did they use them, and how did they see them?
Let us start with the Morisco who wrote most about the Lead Books, and whose views on Christianity, Judaism, and Islam were profoundly influenced by them: Diego Bejarano or Aḥmad b. Qāsim al-Ḥaǧarī, the Morisco from Hornachos whose life and work has attracted much attention in recent years.4 It
Very shortly afterward he fled from Spain to Morocco, and established connections with the court of Sultan Aḥmad al-Manṣūr in Marrakesh.7 The sultan, it will be remembered, died of the plague in 1603. In his travelogue al-Ḥaǧarī mentions the names of several Moriscos who were involved in the Lead Book affair, and who have been identified in the Spanish sources as well. Some of
Autograph of al-Ḥaǧarī’s note to his translation of the parchment, the author indicating that he is “Diego Vexarano, natural de la villa de Hornachos.”
COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVO DE LA REAL CHANCILLERÍA DE GRANADA. ARCG, LEG. 2432, 4.
Al-Ḥaǧarī started to study the Parchment and Lead Books while still in Spain around 1598, but as we will see, he continued his studies of them in all phases of his life. After Granada he did so in Marrakesh at the court of Aḥmad al-Manṣūr and later during his years as secretary to sultan Mawlāy Zaydān and his sons. On his travels to France and the Netherlands which he made in order to retrieve goods stolen from Moriscos he also copied some Arabic manuscripts and made notes for Arabists such as the Dutch Arabist, Thomas Erpenius (1584–1624) and the French physician, diplomat, and Orientalist, Etienne Hubert (1576–1614). In one of them, nowadays preserved in the National Library of France and dated in Paris in about 1612 for Hubert, he briefly discusses the Parchment and Lead Books, telling his reader that they prove that the Arabic language was spoken at the time of Jesus.9 After his return to Morocco he took op his position at the court again, until he went on the Ḥaǧǧ in about 1634, then returned and stayed for some time in Cairo, where he composed in 1637 his larger, but unfortunately lost travelogue, and the summary based on it, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn. Finally in 1637 he returned to Tunis, where he continued to work on the Lead Books. But before we discuss him further, we will turn to Tetouan.
1
Tetouan was a place to which many Moriscos had emigrated, and before them other Muslims including Mudejars and other Andalusis, as well as Jews. Contacts had existed already before the expulsion between Tetouan and Moriscos in Spain.10 Moriscos in Tetouan discussed the Lead Books. Zhiri mentions a passage in a report sent by the English merchant John Harrison to the States General of the Dutch Republic, offering his services after the conclusion of the peace treaty between England and Spain. The treaty would also mean the end of his services to the English crown.11 In this memorandum Harrison tells the States General about all his experiences over the years. Here we read how, upon arrival, very likely around 1610, he had heard a story from expelled Moriscos living there about an ancient prophecy written on a lead plate (Dutch: “een plaet van loot”).12 They recounted how their predecessors (meaning the Moriscos of Granada before the expulsion) had found it in a place called Sacro Monte, not far from Granada, and it had predicted their expulsion but also a future return to Spain on Christian ships. According to Harrison, the Moriscos and other Muslim inhabitants of Tetouan had been very excited to hear about the preparation of an English fleet, seeing it as a sign of the fulfilment of the prophecy; they offered their help to Harrison and the English, claiming that they could mobilize between 40,000 and 50,000 men (Moriscos and native Moroccans) for a return to Spain. Nothing had come of this plan, to Harrison’s regret.13 The report is interesting, though Harrison may not have understood
Another view on the Lead Books that circulated in seventeenth-century Tetouan was recorded by José Tamayo y Velarde (1601–1685), a Jesuit who lived as a captive in Algiers and Tetouan between 2 May 1644 and 23 May 1645, when he was liberated. Tamayo tells us that the inhabitants of Tetouan saw all saints as Muslim prophets, including the Biblical figures and Christian saints venerated by the Spanish. This would have applied to all those who lived pious lives, as well as those whom the Inquisition burned. A person in high authority
2 Marrakesh
A much more precise type of information about the Lead Books in Morocco is provided by al-Ḥaǧarī in his Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, both in the Azhar copy of the work and the Dār al-Kutub copy, though with some differences between them, as we will see below; that information is not always factually correct either. The differences between the manuscripts can be explained by the fact that the author continued to expand his work and to work on both versions while gathering new information. As we have seen above, al-Ḥaǧarī started by telling us about his experiences in Granada before his flight. He speaks about the material aspects of the Lead Books that puzzled the archbishop and his entourage. He relates that the lead seemed to be different from normal lead, so that
Then, in Marrakesh, he showed a copy of the Parchment to Sultan Mawlāy Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, the earliest instance of how Moriscos in the Diaspora dealt with the Lead Books.20 Here again it was the prophetic and eschatological meaning that attracted attention. Al-Ḥaǧarī speaks about the passages in the Parchment that refer to the conquest of the city of the sea by an easterner (Ar. al-šarqī) and their significance. Some of the commanders suggested that he should perhaps change the qāf for a fāʾ and read “the noble one,” or šarīf, i.e., the Saʿdid sultan, who indeed was a šarīf, so that the text would mean that the Moroccan Sultan would conquer Spain. This was information, they assured him, that the Sultan would be very pleased with. Al-Ḥaǧarī dryly tells us that he refused to change the wording in this way.
The author also tells us in the first chapter about a commander (Ar. qāʾid) in Marrakesh called Fāris ibn al-ʿIlǧ, who had been a (Muslim) captive in Granada and had also read some of the Lead Books at the request of Archbishop Pedro de Castro.21 This man told al-Ḥaǧarī personally about their contents in Marrakesh. According to al-Ḥaǧarī, Fāris ibn al-ʿIlǧ spoke with him about Lead Book,14, Book of Religious Wise Sayings, a book that had come to light on 4 September 1597.22 From Lead Book 14, he quotes the third wise saying.23 This saying, one of three about the true faith (see f. 3a), deals with the promised savior, and with the names of that figure who will come to the world after Jesus’s demise. Here al-Ḥaǧarī’s renderings of the Arabic are faithful to the original Lead Book. Moreover, we can say on the basis of our overall present understandings of the Lead Books that these Moriscos correctly understood these passages as Signs of the Prophethood (Ar. dalāʾil al-nubuwwa), and that they functioned as (Islamic) references to the future coming of the Prophet Muḥammad in the
Al-Ḥaǧarī adds here that later, in Tunis, he discussed these interpretations with the Morisco Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ, who commented that the passages in question contained seven of the names of the Prophet.25 This passage about Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ occurs in both the Azhar and the Dār al-Kutub manuscripts, making it clear that the two Moriscos must have met in Tunis before al-Ḥaǧarī went on Ḥaǧǧ.26 We will return below to this figure, with whom al-Ḥaǧarī was already in contact from at least 1612 onwards.
Furthermore, following this passage about the captive commander, al-Ḥaǧarī cites a wise saying from Lead Book no. 14, the Book of Religious Wise Sayings, from the transcripts of al-Ukayḥil (Alonso del Castillo) about the Day of Judgement. He also discusses the key diagram in the form of a Seal of Solomon in Arabic from Lead Book 17, the Essence of the Gospel.27 However, he does so in a more simple form in the Azhar manuscript, which was copied under his supervision in Cairo, than in the Tunisian Dār al-Kutub manuscript (see Figure 10.2).28 Finally, he quotes a long passage from Lead Book 2, Book of Tisʿūn ibn ʿAṭṭār on the Venerable Essence. Here, he omits in both manuscripts the Trinitarian passages, which the transcript by al-Ukayḥil/Alonso del Castillo must have contained. However, the same passages occur in the original Lead Book as well.29
Seal of Solomon in the essence of the Gospel, in al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, Azhar manuscript, f. 253v
3
We also know that Moriscos were involved in discussions about the Lead Books in Rome.30 Luna’s son went there in about 1610 to mediate between possible translators of the Lead Books and the Spanish religious and political authorities.31 Miguel de Luna himself also considered moving to Rome.
4 Cairo and Tunis
The first Morisco author in Tunis who mentioned the Lead Books seems to have been the Toledan Morisco Ibrahim Taybili who briefly refers to them in a marginal note in his Cántico, which was written in the Morisco village of Testour in 1037/1628 (see Figure 10.3).32 Here he merely mentions their name
The Great of Mosque of Testour
PHOTO G. WIEGERS
The Azhar copy of Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn contains in its first chapters references to copies of the Lead Books that we have discussed above, but not yet the entire transcript of Lead Book 18, Book of the Gifts of Reward to the Servants of God who Believe in the Essence of the Gospel, that al-Ḥaǧarī included in the appendix, nor the detailed key diagram/Seal of Solomon of in Lead Book 17, the Essence of the Gospel, and its interpretation. These last texts he probably found in Tunis upon arriving there from Cairo, after the pilgrimage. He quotes them in the Dār al-Kutub manuscript in Chapter 13 on the basis of “a book” by al-Ukayḥil, Alonso del Castillo, brought to Tunis by Yūsuf Qalbu al-Andalusī, whom we have identified as the scribe Juan Calvo Navarro.33 Calvo Navarro had drawn up the last will of Alonso del Castillo and was among those who had discovered the Lead Books on the slopes of the Valparaíso Hillock.34 In a passage in Chapter One of the Dār al-Kutub copy of Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, which is lacking in the Azhar version, al-Ḥaǧarī may be referring to Calvo when he says that a man brought to Tunis two copies of Lead Book 18, Book of the Gifts of Reward to the Servants of God who Believe in the Essence of the Gospel, one in Arabic and one in Spanish, and he also tells us that this man was one of those who “used to translate,” suggesting that he was an Arabic translator.35 Al-Ḥaǧarī confirms that the Arabic text of Lead Book 18 was reliable but the Spanish was nonsensical. Interestingly, Lead Book P 18, Book of the Gifts of Reward to the Servants of God who Believe in the Essence of the Gospel as rendered here starts with an (Islamic) basmala that is not found in the original Lead Book. This indicates that it was a Christianizing translation, perhaps the one done by Adán Centurión, marquis of Estepa, who was a staunch supporter of their Christian authenticity; but far more probably it was a Spanish translation done by Castillo himself, who in all the extant translations had rendered the texts in a Christianizing way. These interpretations were rejected emphatically by al-Ḥaǧarī. Here, al-Ḥaǧarī
In Chapter Thirteen he relates that it was Calvo Navarro who apparently had kept Castillo’s book, which included Lead Book 18, Book of the Gifts of Reward to the Servants of God who Believe in the Essence of the Gospel, in Arabic and Spanish as well as other texts, and brought it to Tunis. There, the “book” (as al-Ḥaǧarī calls it) remained in the possession of some Moriscos who concealed it, according to al-Ḥaǧarī, because “some learned Andalusians were searching for it.” Al-Ḥaǧarī tells us that when he returned to Tunis after the Ḥaǧǧ, Calvo Navarro had already died. It is not clear why the book was concealed, but in any case, al-Ḥaǧarī was given access to it. It must have helped that he was a former student of its author. One reason that he added this Lead Book was that Archbishop Pedro de Castro, in a conversation in Granada, had told him that this particular book explained why the true contents of the Lead Books would not be made clear until the end of time—the time of the Fatimi, al-Ḥaǧarī adds. In other words: at the time of the coming of the messiah, the mahdī, and not before.
Another source which testifies to al-Ḥaǧarī’s continued interest in the Lead Books in Tunis can be found in the multiple-text manuscript Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria 565, which in addition to the former writings includes another interesting text which deals with the Lead Books.37
First, I will discuss the long passage written by al-Ḥaǧarī himself, in his own hand. We are dealing here with the translation of a very enlightening letter (the original is lost) which he originally wrote in Arabic and sent from Paris to a group of Moriscos in Istanbul in 1612, whence it was taken to Tunis by one of the Moriscos to whom he had originally sent the letter, Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ.38 In it he deals with the situation in which the Moriscos find themselves now that they have been expelled from Spain. The Bologna manuscript includes
Al-Ḥaǧarī translated a number of religious texts included in the Bologna manuscript from Arabic into Spanish for the benefit of older Moriscos who were unable to read Arabic; the passages about the Parchment and Lead Books included in it were apparently seen as significant by the Andalusi community in Tunis. As we have seen, he tells us that while in Tunisia he also discussed Lead Book 4, the Book of Religious Wise Sayings, with the said Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ. The dialogue with him must have taken place when al-Ḥaǧarī passed through Tunis on his way to the Ḥaǧǧ, for he mentions it already in the Azhar manuscript of Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, copied before he went to Tunis, but he would meet him later again, after returning from the Ḥaǧǧ.
The second passage occurs in a treatise in the manuscript called Fardes, Çunas y Fadilas del Guado y Çala del Madhab del Çayd Abu Hanifa (Obligatory, Voluntary and Noble aspects of the Wudūʿ and Ṣalāt according to the Law school of the Honorable Abū Ḥanīfa), written, and perhaps also translated, in Tunis, at the instigation of Ḥaǧǧi Muhamad Rubio, who at the time of writing this treatise was an inhabitant (vezino) of Istanbul. The treatise probably served to familiarize the Maliki Moriscos with the ritual forms of the Hanafi madhhab that was dominant under Ottoman rule.40 Here, in the context of a
The Villegas referred to here may be the Toledan theologian Alonso de Villegas (1534–1615), the author of the Flos Sanctorum, a work that was also
While we have no further information about the reception of the Lead Books in Tunis in the seventeenth century, we are aware of descendants of the Moriscos who came to Tunis at the beginning of the eighteenth century and who believed in their message. This group, discussed earlier in our edition of the Lead Books and the subject of a detailed discussion by Mercedes García-Arenal in her contribution to this volume, was tried by the Granadan Inquisition in the 1720s.46 The group migrated to Istanbul, and from there, as Abdel-Hakim Slama-Gafsi points out, some of the families went to Tunis, where they settled in the Andalusi quarter.47 We would very much like to know
5 Istanbul
Another place where the Lead Books must have been discussed was Istanbul, where we find not only the aforesaid Muhamad Rubio, who lived there at the time when our translator was writing in Tunis about the Lead Books, but also other Moriscos whom we can connect to the Lead Books, such as the grandson of Lorenzo Hernández el Chapiz (al-Ǧabbis), Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī l-ʿĀṣ.48 El Chapiz was also mentioned by al-Ḥaǧarī in Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn as being involved in the interpretation of the Lead Books as a member of a committee that had been appointed by Castro in 1598.49
In Istanbul we find a very active Granadan Morisco community, with strong and outspoken polemical attitudes towards Christians and Jews.50 But while we know of their interest in polemical writings, and their networks with Moriscos in the Diaspora in Bursa, Tunis, and Testour, we do not have explicit evidence of discussions about the Lead Books among Moriscos in Istanbul. What is clear, however, is that they discussed various themes and topics connected with polemical writings. One of these must have been the famous Gospel of Barnabas of which both the Italian (the most original version, as I have argued elsewhere) and the Spanish version were copied.51 The Spanish version mentions a “Muslim” from Ambel in Aragon called Muṣtafa de Aranda, as the translator of the text from Italian into Spanish.52 Muṣtafa was in Istanbul (“estante en Estambor”) at the time, as we are told in the introduction to the Spanish manuscript.53 That introduction also famously tells us that the book had been discovered by one Fra Marino in the library of Pope Sixtus V. The
But there were other Morisco texts written in Spanish about Christianity. Among the first written in exile were those composed in Tetouan, BNE Ms 9655 and 9067, by a converted priest, Juan Alonso Aragonés;57 the Apology against the Christian Faith written in Marrakesh by Muhamad Alguazir;58 and in Tunis, the manuscripts Real Academia de la Historia (RAH) S 2, Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE) Ms 9653 and BNE 9654,59 the aforesaid poem based on the work of Alguazir by Ibrahim Taybili,60 and the writings in Arabic by Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ and Aḥmad al-Ḥanafi.61
6 Conclusions
From the evidence about the exiled Morisco communities presented here we can see that different types of information about the Lead Books circulated. First of all, we have found information which seems to be based on oral transmission and memory. This information is not precise and has mythical aspects. The second type is much more factual, precise information based on eyewitness accounts, and is based on transcripts and translations brought from Spain. The first type circulated among the Moriscos in Tetouan and Tunis. With regard to the second type, we have al-Ḥaǧarī as a main source of information: first in Granada itself, subsequently when he was a courtier and Arabic interpreter at the Moroccan court of Mawlāy Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, Zaydān and his sons; then in Tunis when he arrived from Marrakesh in about 1634. Leaving Tunis again to go on the Ḥaǧǧ, during his return he wrote about them in Cairo; and finally, he did so again after returning to Tunis/Testour at the age of around seventy. The Moriscos we have encountered believed that the Lead Books dated to the first century of the Christian area, but they all saw them as proto-Muslim, containing authentic prophecies about the spiritual and territorial victory of Muslims and Islam in Spain. However, we can see that the contents of the Lead Books presented some difficulties of interpretation to them as well. As Van Koningsveld and the present author have shown, al-Ḥaǧarī’s reading of the Parchment was not entirely correct. He did not understand the intricacies of the texts included in it, nor the secret codes, as Miguel de Luna did. Al-Ḥaǧarī never refers to Miguel de Luna, which is remarkable, since Luna’s work, especially his Verdadera Historia del Rey Don Rodrigo, was widely read, including by Moriscos in exile.62 Al-Ḥaǧarī renders and interprets the maxims in Lead Book, Book of Religious Wise Sayings, and the key Seal of Solomon in Lead Book 17, the Essence of the Gospel, correctly as Islamic, but he subscribes
We may also conclude that al-Ḥaǧarī was not entirely certain about the way the Lead Books were transmitted, and it is highly likely that he had not studied them in great detail in Granada in 1598. This is why he found it important to tell his readers about Fāris b. al-ʿIlǧ’s transcript in comparison with Castillo’s, and to say that he had submitted the results to a Morisco he considered learned Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ, whom he calls a mystic and a faqīh. Mentioning al-Ukayḥil/Alonso del Castillo several times, he seems to follow the latter’s transcripts but not his Spanish translations, and, as we have just seen, he also agrees with al-Ukayḥil/Castillo’s dating of the Parchment and the Lead Books to the first century CE. Unlike Miguel de Luna, however, the latter was not initiated into the Lead Books’ secrets. Al-Ḥaǧarī could thus not accept the Trinitarian passages as genuine; either he believed the transcripts to be wrong, assuming that the readings of the original texts had been faulty, or he was simply being dishonest about the nature of his source of information. In this way he seems to “Islamize” the Lead Books, stripping from them in his writing the hard-to- interpret passages about the Trinity and making them conform to the Islamic doctrine prevalent in the Maghrib.
Our study indicates that three elements above all seem to have mattered to the Moriscos in exile: the Islamic light which the Lead Books shed on the Prophets, countering the Christian treatment of them; the value of the Prophecies about the end of time and the victories of Muslims and Islam, including the idea of Muḥammad as a Messiah, even leading to the return of the Moriscos to Spain; and the expectation that the revelation of their true contents would mean that the Christian interpretations would prove to be misguided.
Acknowledgement
This article has been prepared in the framework of the ERC Synergy Project EuQu “The European Qur’an: Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion, 1150–1850,” Grant Agreement 810141-EuQu (PL Mercedes García-Arenal). My thanks go to my friends and colleagues at the Sacromonte Abbey, Marta Luna Orihuela, Sergio Fajardo López, Antonio López Carmona, Maria Luisa
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See Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld and Gerard Albert Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte and the Parchment of the Torre Turpiana. Granada, 1588–1606. Introduction, critical edition, and translation (Leiden: Brill, 2023); see also: 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).
Gerard Wiegers, “History and the Study of Religion: a Reconsideration based on the Shifting Uses of religio in the Fifteenth Century CE. Prophecy, Imagination and Religion in the Granadan Lead Books, Nicholas of Cusa, and Jacobus Palaeologus,” Journal of Religious History 46, no. 4 (2022): 675–90.
Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, “The Islamic Image of Paul and the Origin of the Gospel of Barnabas,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996): 200–28; Van Koningsveld and Gerard Wiegers, “The Polemical Works of Muḥammad al-Qaysī (fl. 1309) and Their Circulation in Arabic and Aljamiado among the Mudejars in the fourteenth century,” Al-Qanṭara 15 (1994): 163–99; Wiegers, “Muḥammad as the Messiah: A Comparison of the Polemical Works of Juan Alonso with the Gospel of Barnabas,” Bibliotheca Orientalis 52 (1995): 245–91; Luis F. Bernabé Pons, El texto morisco del Evangelio de San Bernabé (Granada: Universidad, Instituto de cultura Juan Gil-Albert, 1998), 57.
See, most recently, Oumelbanine Zhiri, Beyond Orientalism. Ahmad ibn Qāsim al-Hajarī between Europe and North Africa (Oakland: University of California Press, 2023). See also by the same auhor, “Early Modern Imperial Philologies: Ahmad al-Hajarî and the Lead Books of Granada,” Religions 15, no. 4 (2024): 428. This article reached me too late to use it here. In an article published in 2018, “The Morisco Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī and the Egyptian Manuscript of His Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿalā ʾl-Qawm al-Kāfirīn (The Triumph of Faith over the Nation of Unbelievers),” in Book Studies and Islamic Studies in Conversation, ed. Marta Domínguez (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018), 57–70, at 58, Houssem Eddine Chachia suggests we cannot be certain about his birthplace. That al-Ḥaǧarī was born in Hornachos, as the present author argued in an article published in 1993 (“A Life between Europe and the Maghrib”) on the basis of his Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, was proven, however, by Isabel Boyano “Al-Ḥaŷarī y su traducción del pergamino la Torre Turpiana,” in ¿La Historia inventada? Los libros plúmbeos y el legado sacromontano, ed. Manuel Barrios Aguilera and Mercedes García-Arenal (Granada: Fundación El Legado Andalusí, Universidad de Granada, 2008), 146–47, 151: she identified the autograph translation of the Parchment, in which it is said that the translator was called Diego Vexarano, “natural de la villa de Hornachos.” In the said article, Chachia does not mention the second, new edition of Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn by Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, Qasim al-Samarrai and Gerard Wiegers published in 2015: Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿalā ʾl-Qawm al-Kāfirīn (The supporter of religion against the infidel). General introduction, critical edition and annotated translation by Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, Qasim al-Samarrai and Gerard Albert Wiegers. 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). In it, we studied, edited and translated the text on the basis of four manuscripts, the Azhar manuscript (copied under the supervision of the author in Cairo), the Dār al-Kutub manuscript (written by the author in Tunis), a fragment preserved in the National Library of France, also written, as we argue, in Tunis, and the fragments in Spanish in Ms BuB 565 (see for an edition of the Bologna manuscript Edición y estudio socio-lingüístico del manuscrito D.565 de la Biblioteca Universitaria de Bolonia, ed. Nezha Norri (Cordova: Editorial Universidad de Córdoba, 2017).
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿAlā ʾl-Qawm al-Kāfirīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers, 85; Patrick O’Banion, Deza and Its Moriscos: Religion and Community in Early Modern Spain (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2020), 231–32.
Boyano Guerra, “Al-Ḥaŷarī y su traducción,” passim.
See on him: Mercedes García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur. The Beginnings of Modern Morocco (London: Oneworld, 2009).
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers, 87; Jaime Coullaut Cordero, “Vida y obra de un médico morisco en el exilio: Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Abī `l-ʿĀṣ (ss. XVI–XVII),” Al-Qanṭara 40, no. 1 (2019): 73–102; Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 43.
Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], Or. Ar. Ms 4119, ff. 28b–29r.
Hossain Bouzineb and Gerard Wiegers, “Tetuán y la expulsión de los moriscos,” in Tiṭwān ḫilāl al-qarnayn 16 wa 17 (Tetouan: Université ʿAbd al-Mālik al-Saʿdī, 1996), 73–108; see also Mercedes García-Arenal, “The Moriscos in Morocco: from Granadan Emigration to the Hornacheros of Salé,” in The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 286–328.
Zhiri, Beyond Orientalism, 105. See on Harrison: Nabil Matar, “The English Merchant and the Moroccan Sufi. Messianism and Mahdism in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 65, no. 1 (2014), 47–65; García-Arenal, “The Moriscos in Morocco,” 313–15 and 324–25.
See Henry de Castries, ed. Les Sources inédites de l’Histoire du Maroc. Archives et bibliothèques des Pays-Bas, 1e serie-Saadiens, tome II (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1906), 320, 326, 506, idem, Angleterre, serie I (Paris: Ernest Leroux, London: Luzac, 1918), 1610, 1614, 1625, 1627, 1628, 1630, 1631, 1632 (see also note 1 in SIHM, Pays-Bas, série 1, II, 283). The editors of the Sources inédites date this to 1625, but Harrison’s overview suggests that he is speaking about the earliest phase of his missions.
“Arriverende tot Tetuan, vond ick niet alleen de Moriscos, die daer in grote menichte waren residerende, maer in’t generael alle de Mooren willich ende gereet, om so daer eenige occasie sich presenteerde ende ick maer wilde, my te helpen ende dienen wel met 40 of 50 duysent man, so te voet als te paert. Ende voonementlyck so waren de Moriscos verblyt, als synde gegrondeert op een oude prophetie, dewelcke (als sy seyden) heur predecesseurs gevonden hadden, geschreven op een plaet van loot, in een plaets genaemt Monte Santo, niet verre van Granada, propheterende heur banissement uyt Spagnien in Barbarie, dan dat sy wederom souden gebracht werden, ende dat in schepen van Christenen. Ende hoorende van alsulcken grote preparatie van schepen toegerust te syn in Engelant, meenden sy vastelyck, dat die armada nu quam tot de eyndelycke voldoeninge ende uytvoeringe van de voorschreven prophetie. Oversulx maecten sy henluyden gereet ende versagen haer van alle nootdruft ende geweer dat sy van doen haden, alleenlyk met een groten yver aldaer verwachtende die grote armada (als sy die noemden) om henluyden te transporteren. Maar dat groot voornemen gemist synde ende geen effect sorteerende correspondabel tot sulcken groten entreprinse gingh de schoone gelegentheyt verlooren, tot grote schande van onse natie ende myn ongeluck in ‘t particulier, als synde in dese occasie geëmployeert.” (Dutch original on 291, French translation on 284–85.)
Henry de Castries, ed. Les Sources inédites de l’Histoire du Maroc de 1530 à 1845. Archives et bibliothèques de France, 1e serie-Saadiens, tome I (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1905), 318–19, letter by Fourquevaux to Charles 1, 15 April 1572.
“Y esto lo tienen [the inhabitants of Tetouan] tan creído, que piensan que en España la gente más docta y más exemplar profesan la falsa ley de los moros, y que los que el Tribunal de la Santa Inquisición quema son moros finos. Y esto es en tanto grado que vna persona de autoridad en esta ciudad [Tetouan, GW] me dixo que entiendiese que esto era mucha verdad. Porque el señor don Pedro de Castro y Quiñones arzobispo que fue primero de Granada y después de Seuilla, era moro y auía viuido y muerto como tal. Y con mucha rissa quanto pedía semejante desatino, le pregunté me dixese qué fundamento tenía para decir este tan manifiesto engaño. Respondióme que quando el dicho señor arzobispo descubrió el santo monte de Granada halló el Alcorán escrito en lengua arábiga en láminas de metal, y conociendo la verdad se auía vuelto moro, y que los cuerpos que halló sepultados con aquellas láminas eran cuerpos de moros santos. Si eso es así, le dixe yo, cómo el señor arzobispo, auiendo juntado muchos hombres doctos en la lengua arábiga, auía hecho leer aquellas láminas y auiendo sacado dellas en limpio que aquellos huesos eran de algunos christianos a quien auían martirizado los moros por odio de la santa fee católica, auía hecho vn templo y fundado vna iglesia collegial en el mismo monte santo para culto y veneración de aquellos santos mártyres, dejando muchas rentas así para los canónigos como para la fábrica de la dicha iglesia, en que se celebran los oficios diuinos al modo de los christianos y no a la usanza de los moros. Respondióme que todo esto auía hecho para dissimular que él era moro, pero lo era con toda certeza. Porque esto lo auía él dicho a vna morisca muy íntima conocida suya y, quando auían desterrado a los moriscos de España, le auía dado vna sortija en la qual estaban escritas aquellas palabras: Le ley la Aygua. Mahamet suralla, que es la oración que ellos hacen quando hacen la zalá.” José de Tamayo y Velarde, Memorias del cautiverio y costumbres, ritos y gobiernos de Berbería según el relato de un jesuita del siglo XVII. Edición, introducción y notas de Felipe Maíllo Salgado (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 2017), 137–38.
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 59.
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 139–41.
García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, The Orient in Spain, 269; Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 45.
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers, 98; María Turégano Botija, José Puy, and Azucena Ortega Fernández, Informe de Conservación de varios discos plúmbeos de la Abadía de Sacromonte, Granada. Informe de Conservación. Área de Intervenciones en Bienes Muebles-Servicio de CROAPAE-Departamento de Conservación y Restauración de Arqueología (Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte, October 2023).
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers, 97; Mohamed Razzouk, The Andalusians and their Migrations to Morocco during the 16th and 17th Centuries (Casablanca: n.p., 2018), 309.
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers, 97.
1597 is a terminus post quem for the stay of this captive in the city of Granada.
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, Lead Book 14, Book of Religious Wise Sayings, ff. 3b–4a.
In al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn ʿAlā ʾl-Qawm al-Kāfirīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers, translation, 99, we did not consider the possibility that this was in Tunis, not Marrakesh.
See Lotfi Aïssa, Mouhamed Aouini, and Houssem Eddine Chachia (eds.), Entre las orillas de dos mundos. El itinerario del jerife morisco Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ: de Murcia a Túnez (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 2017).
Chachia, “The Morisco Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī,” 68–69. See also Chachia’s contribution to the present volume.
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 517ff.
See the photo of the original Azhar manuscript, f. 253v, in al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers.
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai, and Wiegers, 103–4, and compare the edition of the Lead Book in Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, p. 237ff.
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 71.
Bruno Pomara Saverino, Refugiados. Los moriscos e Italia (Granada: Comares, 2022) discusses Moriscos in Rome, but does not connect their presence with the Lead Books affair.
He remarks about the evangelists and their successors: “Que prebalicaron los apóstoles, y haçiendo conçilio hordenaron la missa, libros del Monte Santo de Granada, que prebaliçión fue como bieron el criçificado creyéndo ser Cristo”; Luis Bernabé Pons, El cántico islámico del morisco hispanotunecino Taybili (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1988), 189 and note 3; Teresa Soto González, “Poetics and Polemics: Ibrahim Taybili’s Anti-Christian Polemical Treatise in Verse,” in Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), 332–56.
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 154 ff.
See also Amalia García Pedraza, Actitudes ante la muerte en la Granada del siglo XVI. Los moriscos que quisieron salvarse, 2 vols. (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2002), 1: 321, note 125, where she says that Juan Calvo was not only a scribe but also acted as an (Arabic?) interpreter. It is not entirely certain that this is the same Juan Calvo who iss mentioned on 1: 474 note 66, and 476 (Calvo is mentioned in a list of interpreters in the Granada in 1564).
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, Samarrai and Wiegers, Arabic text, f. 16r. Claire M. Gilbert, In Good Faith. Arabic Translation and Translators in Early Modern Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), does not mention Calvo as an interpreter.
Al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, Samarrai and Wiegers, Arabic text, ff. 118v-119r, translation, 278–79.
The transcriptions are my own. I thank Gerdien Evertse for drawing my attention to this passage.
Edited in Gerard Wiegers, A Learned Muslim Acquaintance of Erpenius and Golius: Ahmad b. Kâsim al-Andalusî and Arabic Studies in the Netherlands (Leiden: Documentatiebureau Islam Christendom 1988), 33–44; translation into Arabic in al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Chachia, 154–65.
See al-Ḥaǧarī, Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, ed. Van Koningsveld, al-Samarrai and Wiegers, 305; Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 491. Here the name is rendered as Subbar.
Rubio is mentioned on f. 228v: “Y anssi mismo se me a pedido por el Señor mi amigo Muhamad Rruvio vezino de Aztambor, que lo mejor que pueda en castellano, le ponga alguna cosa de las açalaes boluntarias …” That he was in “this city” of Tunis appears on folio 293r. On this manuscript see Nezha Norri, “Fardes, Çunas y Fadilas del Guado y Çala del Madhab del Çayd Abu Hanifa (ms D 565 de la B.U.B.). Un tratado aljamiado-morisco con fines didáctico-religiosos y novedosos rasgos lingüísticos,” Anaquel de Estudios Árabes 29 (2018): 195–216, and by the same autor: Edición y estudio sociolingüístico del Manuscrito D.565 de la Biblioteca Universitaria de Bolonia. In neither of the two studies do we find a discussion or analysis about authorship and contents offered in the present study.
“Y el día de asora, Alah aça guachala, le dio gran potestad a su querido profeta Çulayman alayhi al çalam, [234r] le hiço merçed de que le obedeçiesen los ayres y nubes y aves y animales y los espiritus y Grandes afrites de los chines y demonios, y le dio el sello con que los sujetó y echava aprisionados en la mar y tierra y fue grande Señor y querido de Alah, no como los malditos cristianos an dicho, pues, después de aber escripto sin temor de Dios las mentiras que les pareçió como lo an hecho con otros profetas y queridos de Dios cuando fue servido y quiso descubrilles la verdad, y como an mentido en los libros que se descubrieron en el monte santo de Granada, se an hallado sellados con su sello para su firmeza, y algunos con cuatro o çinco sellos de que se an quedado [234v] atónitos y espantados por aver sido tan antiguos, pues estuvieron debaxo de tierra mil y seisçientos años, y los an dado por buenos y verdaderos, y anssí luego mandaron que en todos los libros que el perro de Villegas avía escripto la mentira que le levantaron se quitase y borrasse, y annsí cuando sea llegado el tiempo en que se descubraran los demás hierros en questán, se acabarán de desengañar.”
Villegas’s Flos Sanctorum was also read by Jewish converts, and frequently cited in Inquisition records as a text being used by the accused to learn about Judaism: see Mercedes García-Arenal, “Reading against the Grain, Readings as Substitution. Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia,” Jewish Studies in Early Modern Iberia 35 (2021): 254–55.
Mercedes García-Arenal and Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco, The Inquisition Trial of Jeró-nimo de Rojas, A Morisco of Toledo (1601–1603) (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 160.
On Morisco polemics against him see Louis Cardaillac, Morisques et Chrétiens. Un affrontement polémique (Paris: Klinksieck, 1977), 188, referring to Rome, Ms Vatican Lat. 14009, f. 41r, and a note on the flyleaves on f. 1r The note testifies about a correspondence between Moriscos in Tunis, Constantinople, and Bursa, see Gerard Wiegers, “The Expulsion of 1609–1614 and the Polemical writings of the Moriscos living in the Diaspora,” in The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 389–412. See on al-Ḥanafī: Houssem Eddine Chachia and Luis Fernando Bernabé Pons, “Aḥmad Šarīf al-Ḥanafī al-Andalusī. De la Fuga a [sic] un gran faqīh morisco en Túnez en la primera mitad del siglo XVII,” in Túnez, el Mediterráneo y los Moriscos. Homenaje a Slimane Mostafa Zbiss y Míkel de Epalza, ed. Houssem Eddine Chachia (Tunis: Centre de Publication Universitaire, Laboratoire Histoire, Societé et Patrimoine, Tunisie, Maghreb, Méditerranée 2023), 143–79.
Bologna, BuB, Ms 565, f. 228r, “pues yo no soy intérprete.”
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 150–51.
Abdel-Hakim Slama-Gafsi, “La familia Lakhoua, descendientes tunecinos de moriscos granadinos de los siglos XVII–XVIII, y sus actividades en la industria del bonete chechía,” Sharq al-Andalus 14–15 (1997–1998): 219–44; I am are grateful to Dr. Houssem Eddine Chachia for drawing my attention to this article.
Coullaut Cordero, “Vida y obra de un médico morisco.”
Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, The Lead Books of the Sacromonte, 43; see also Isabel Boyano Guerra and Patricia Sánchez García, “Una biblioteca en los márgenes. Pedro de Castro aprende árabe,” Al-Qanṭara 41, no. 2 (2020), passim.
Tijana Krstić, “Moriscos in Ottoman Galata, 1609–1620s,” in The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 269–87; Krstić, “The Elusive Intermediaries: Moriscos in Ottoman and Western European Diplomatic Sources from Constantinople, 1560s-1630s,” Journal of Early Modern History 19, nos. 2–3 (2015): 129–51.
Wiegers, “Muḥammad as the Messiah.”
The Italian manuscript lacks the introduction.
Bernabé Pons, El texto Morisco, 57–58; Van Koningsveld, “The Islamic Image of Paul”; Wiegers, “Muḥammad as the Messiah.”
For this see Gerard Wiegers, “Ludovico Marracci’s Use of Tafsīr and His Interpretation of Jesus’s Demise in the Sacromonte Lead Books” (forthcoming).
Luis Fernando Bernabé Pons, “Los mecanismos de una resistencia. Los libros plúmbeos del Sacromonte y el Evangelio de Bernabé.” Al-Qanṭara 23, no. 2 (2002), 491, referring to al-Ḥaǧarī ed. Van Koningsveld e.a., Nāṣir al-dīn, appendix (Bologna manuscript), Spanish text, 299, English translation, 304. “Y lo que contenía el livro arávigo de las dádivas del gualardón diré dello alguna cosa. Este livro dize en él que se escrivió por mandado de la virgen María en arávigo en láminas de plomo y dize que se hallaron con ella doze diçipulos de çeyidne Hiçe y entre ellos Sant Pedro y le preguntaron ocho preguntas açerca del livro que se alló, que en la primera hoja de plomo dezia que aquel livro se yntitula حقيقة الانجيل, que quiere dezir la Verificaçión del Evanjelio y lo demás del livro escripto con letras diferentes de todas las que se hallan oy en el mundo y no uvo rremedio de que nadie lo pudiese leer y dixo la virgen María que se avia de hazer una junta en la ysla de Chipre, y que alli depararia Dios en el tiempo final del mundo un ombre en aquella junta, flaco y humilde, y lo leerá y declarará lo que contiene, y será rreçevido de todos y harán con lo que dize y dexarán los herrores que de antes tenían y herejias. Y está claro que aquel evanjelio será diferente del que oy tienen porque si fuera como él, fuera sobrado, ynutil y de ningun efecto, y ansi se a de entender que no avrá en él nombre de padre y del hijo y del espiritu sancto sino solamente de un Dios”, and compare his remark in Kitāb Nāṣir al-Dīn, Arabic text at 333–34, translation, 293, which is the basis of his remark in Spanish in the Bologna manuscript.
See for this Wiegers, “Muḥammad as the Messiah,” passim.
See on him Wiegers, “Muḥammad as the Messiah,” passim.
See Gerard Wiegers and Mercedes García-Arenal, “Polemical comparisons in the Apology against the Christian Religion by Muhamad Alguazir (c. 1610),” Entangled Religions 11, no. 4 (2020): 1–28.”
On Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE] 9653 see Ridha Mami, El manuscrito Morisco 9653 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid (Madrid: Fundación Menéndez Pidal, 2002); on S2 see Tratado de los dos caminos por un morisco refugiado en Túnez (Ms S 2 de la Colección Gayangos, Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia), ed. Álvaro Galmés de Fuentes, Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva, and Luce López-Baralt (Madrid: Fundación Menéndez Pidal, 2005).
Wiegers and García-Arenal, “Polemical comparisons.”
On Ibn ʿAbd al-Rafīʿ see Aïssa et.al. (eds.), Entre las orillas de dos mundos. On these Tunisian texts in general see Wiegers, “The Expulsion of 1609–1614 and the Polemical writings of the Moriscos living in the Diaspora,” and the contribution by Chachia in this volume.
See Gerard Wiegers, “The Refugee Discourse of the Moriscos. Petitioning and Diplomacy after the Expulsion Decree of 1609,” in Refugee Politics in Early Modern Europe, ed. David de Boer and Geert H. Janssen (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), 64–88, and see the contribution by Ana Struillou in this volume.