Spanish Islam in Arabic Script

Language, Identity, and Community Boundaries in the Literature of Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia

Bibliographic Data

ID22029645
AuthorsMònica Colominas Aparicio (0000-0002-0324-0777, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume8
Issue1
Pages101-127
Publication date2020-01-20
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIntellectual History of the Islamicate World (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2212-9421 • E-ISSN: 2212-943X
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/2212943x-00702012
OpenAlexW2980538037
LanguageEN
References cited8

The present study discusses language as a tool of identity construction by Muslims from the Late Medieval and Early Modern Christian Iberian Peninsula who could practice Islam by law in exchange for paying taxes (Mudejars). Their writings, as well as those of the group who were later forced to convert to Christianity (Moriscos), are in various languages and scripts. The Arabic (Aljamiado) used to transcribe Romance is distinctive and abundant evidence of it is left from the later Morisco period. The earlier uses of language by the Mudejars are nonetheless essential to understand how Muslims negotiated their community boundaries within a Christian majority society. My analysis will concentrate on two Mudejar polemics against the Christians and the Jews, which were most likely composed in fourteenth-century Aragon. In these works, approaches to language and the interplay of Arabic—both as a target language and as a script—with Romance escape discrete definitions of religion and culture.1

Ancient history · Arabic · Archaeology · Art · Christianity · Islam · Linguistics · Literature · Middle Ages · Romance · Scripting language · Classics · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Philosophy · Religious studies

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