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Aljamiado retellings of the Hebrew Bible

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Abstract

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

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Notes

  1. For introductions to aljamiado language and literature, (see Chejne 1983; Galmés de Fuentes 1996; López-Morillas 2000, 54–57.)

  2. On aljamiado narratives about Biblical figures, see Vespertino Rodríguez (1978; 1983); Pascual Asensi (2008; 2007); Wood (2020); Pauw (2021).

  3. On the history of Late Spanish Islam and the Moriscos, see Chejne, Islam and the West: The Moriscos; García Arenal; López-Baralt; Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614; Catlos 281–308; Carr.

  4. For a selection of English translations of Aljamiado legends both religious and secular, see Rosa-Rodríguez (2018).

  5. A storyworld is an audience-constructed simulated world built around a text or texts, a ‘mental [model] of situations and states of affairs’ (Martínez 2018, 28) See also Ryan (2014, 33).

  6. This appears to be a formula specific to medieval Spanish, bringing together the two binomials ‘silver and gold’ and ‘cattle and goods.’ On binomials in Spanish, see Malkiel (1959); García-Page (1998); Pérez (2006).

  7. One might read the reference to being ‘cooked’ as an anti-Christian jab at the Christian tradition of Jesus as the sacrificial ‘lamb of God.’ Moriscos read the story of the Sacrifice of Ishmael on the holiday of Eid al-Adha commemorating the near-sacrifice of Ishmael (Barletta 2005, 111).

  8. Al-Thaʿlabī relates differing traditions in which there are nine or two tablets (2002, 336 and 348), while al-Ṭabarī (1989, 3: 73–78) is silent on the question.

  9. In the Hebrew Bible, Jethro’s daughter is Tzipporah, Ar. Ṣafūrā (al-Thaʿlabī 2002, 191).

  10. This detail is absent in the traditions about Moses and Shuʿayb (Jethro) related by al-Thaʿlabī (2002, 290–92) and referenced by al-Ṭabarī (al-Ṭabarī 1989, 3: 31). The Qur’anic Shuʿayb has no apparent connection to Jethro and is only identified with him in later commentaries (al-Ṭabarī 1989, 3: 31 n 166).

  11. In pre-Islamic Arabia and in Classical Islam, one’s reputation and social worth was a balance of The excellence of ancestors [nasab]….and the generosity which procures ḥasab by religion’ (Bearman et al. 2015). See also Mottahedeh (1980, 100–104); Ephrat (2000, 122, n. 65).

  12. See the traditions related by Al-Ṭabarī (1989, 2: 94) and al-Thaʿlabī (2002, 160–61). The aljamiado text is in fact found incorporated khutba (sermon) for ʿEid al-adha (Barletta 2005, 111).

  13. The concept of divine mercy is central to Islam and especially to Qur’anic prophecy (Mir 2016, 53–54). The Qur’an states that God sent the Prophets as an act of mercy (Reynolds 2020, 101–4)

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Wacks, D.A. Aljamiado retellings of the Hebrew Bible. Postmedieval 13, 419–434 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-022-00251-1

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