Moriscos and Arabic studies in Europe

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al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp. 587-610 ISSN 0211-3589 introduction in his thesis on Arabic studies in the renaissance robert Jones argues that circumstances in the iberian peninsula did not play a major part in the development of Arabic studies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. he writes: The astonishing revival of interest in Arabic took place in other parts of Europe that had never known sustained contact with muslim culture. by the early seventeenth century, centres of learning as far flung and as different in culture, outlook, and circumstances as rome, Vienna, and london, or breslau, heidelberg and Paris, could boast of scholars with a knowledge of Arabic and collections of Arabic manuscripts that were wholly unprecedented in those parts. 2 Jones states that in spite of the presence of sizeable muslim mi-norities, Spanish repression prevented them from playing an impor-tant role. Though this may be true, moriscos nevertheless featured conspicuously in these formative years of Arabic and islamic stud-ies. 3 in exploring their role in Arabic and islamic studies (here treated somewhat artificially as the «Western» study of Arabic) i shall expand on my previous writings in this field, 4 in which i dis-cussed a number of learned moriscos who, after their expulsion as teachers, authors, translators and copyists of Arabic manuscripts and as diplomats and merchants, rendered services to dutch scholars of Arabic. my question is why the works of a number of moriscos in-volved in post-expulsion Arabic studies, mainly in north africa, re-veal an interest in the physical sciences, whereas little or no such interest is discernible among the mudejars and moriscos writing in the iberian peninsula. First i want to determine whether the contrast itself is correct, and secondly, assuming that it is, how it can be ex-plained. in discussing these questions, then, a distinction is made between moriscos living in iberia and those living in the diaspora after the expulsion.
it seems unlikely that during the sixteenth century, when islam was repressed, moriscos would have played a role in Arabic stud-ies. The case of the well-known theologian, classicist and Semitist Nicolaas Cleynaerts (1493-1542) illustrates the point. At a time when there were no printed Arabic grammars and dictionaries, and few Arabic manuscripts were available, Cleynaerts, born in the southern Netherlands, taught himself Arabic largely by comparing it with hebrew. in search of a teacher of Arabic he travelled to Spain, having heard about the moriscos and hoping to find a teacher among them. he discovered, however, that moriscos were unwilling to share their knowledge with him for fear of the consequences. 5 This does not mean that moriscos living in the peninsula did not play a role. Some did, albeit indirectly, for example after converting to Christianity. Juan Andrés is a case in point. Originally a mudejar faq÷h from Xàtiva, he converted to Christianity, became a canon of the granadan cathedral (he is mentioned in the archival documents in about 1516), and in 1515, probably as a canon of the cathedral, published a polemical work in Spanish about islam. 6 This work re-flects Andrés's profound knowledge of Arabic sources. The Con-fusión, as it was called, was soon recognized as an authoritative treatise, was translated into many languages, and became very influ-ential among Arabists elsewhere in Europe. guillaume Postel (1510-1581) praised it, Jacobus golius (1596-1667) prepared a latin trans-lation, and the father of a more objective approach to islamic 5 Toomer, G.J., Eastern Wisedom and Learning. The study of Arabic in seventeenthcentury England, Oxford, 1996, 41. Eventually Cleynaerts found a teacher in Granada. He bought a learned slave from Tunis, whose name was Kharūf. On the identity of this slave, see Koningsveld van, P.S., "Mijn Kharūf: Over de Arabische leermeester van Nicolaas Cleynaerts", Sharqiyyāt, 9, 2 (1997), 139-161; idem, "'Mon Kharūf': quelques remarques sur le maître tunisien du premier arabisant néerlandais, Nicolas Clénard (1493-1542)", Nouvelles approches des relations islamo-chrétiennes à l'époque de la Renaissance (Actes de la Troisième Rencontre Scientifique tenue du 14  studies, Adriaan reland (1676-1718), even commended its useful-ness for the study of islam. 7 Other moriscos played a role, because they turned to the study of medicine, as will be seen below. The possession of Arabic medi-cal texts, as opposed to islamic texts, was not forbidden after the forcible conversion of mudejars between 1499 and 1526. moreover, the Arabic medical tradition remained practically relevant in the six-teenth century. morisco physicians used Arabic texts in their prac-tice of the medical profession. Some scholars have suggested that the unique possibilities that the study of medicine offered moriscos in granada to achieve high positions without being hindered by the limpieza de sangre statutes may explain why so many granadan moriscos chose to study medicine, besides the fact that the profes-sion can be practised in many places -an additional benefit if one considers that many lived in exile. 8 in his comparative studies of Arabic codices copied by various religious minorities in the iberian peninsula P.S. van Koningsveld concludes that there are some interesting differences between Ara-bic manuscripts copied by Jews and Arabic codices copied by mudejars and moriscos. 9 Whereas the Arabic manuscripts seem to include mainly islamic materials of a religious nature, the Arabic texts circulated among the Jews were largely scientific. This sug-gests that in the iberian peninsula Jews played a much larger role in scientific scholarship and medicine than moriscos did. The Spanish and Aljamiado manuscripts, on the other hand, do not reveal a dif-- ferent pattern. The overwhelming majority of these manuscripts is of a religious and moral nature. Van Koningsveld's article yielded some other important findings. it shed more light on official policies with regard to Arabic manu-scripts and the ways the authorities employed people with a knowl-edge of Arabic. For example, one of the manuscripts he discusses is ibn rushd's urjūza fī l-tibb, a medical text copied by muhammad b. ,Alī b. Shihāb al-ru,aynī. The manuscript is dated in the second decade of rabī, ii 885 (i.e. 1480 CE) and was (so it appears from notes in the manuscript) inspected by a physician, miguel Xeb, and a Jesuit called Jerónimo de mur by order of gregorio miranda, ap-ostolic inquisitor, judge and commissioner of the newly converted in the kingdom of Valencia. The note was signed by martín de Aya-la, archbishop of Valencia in 1566. 10 it is well known that after the forced conversions the possession of islamic texts was strictly for-bidden for former muslims. The goal of this inspection, therefore, was to determine whether a particular owner was entitled to possess them. it seems very likely that through inspections and confiscations Arabic manuscripts came into the possession of authorities and found their way into manuscript collections. We may assume that a steady stream of finds of Arabic and Aljamiado manuscripts re-quired a need for expertise throughout the sixteenth century. in ad-dition knowledge of Arabic was necessary for scholarly purposes, namely the study of the Arabic cultural and scientific heritage and for translating information given by informants, diplomats and those questioned by the inquisition. hence there was a need for Arabic expertise in sixteenth and early seventeenth century Spain.
A new episode began in 1588 with the demolition of an old tow-er in the city of granada. The tower (later called the Torre Turpiana), probably once the minaret of the great mosque, had to make way for the new cathedral then under construction, which still stands. during the demolition a small chest was found in the rubble. it contained some bones, part of a veil, and a parchment on which was written a prophecy. The prophecy was attributed to St. John; the texts, in al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp. 587-610 ISSN 0211-3589 Spanish, Arabic and latin, were traced to a group of Christians who, it was suggested, had lived in granada in the first century. Among the group was a bishop called Cecilius, whose name was mentioned on the parchment. The veil was purported to have belonged to mary. 11 There was enormous excitement. To grasp the magnitude of the find one must remember that the city of granada did not possess any relics. The discovery would have compensated amply for such a lack. but soon the initial enthusiasm was tempered by scepticism or complete repudiation. Critics, among them the famous Spanish schol-ar benito Arias montano (1527-1598), pointed out that it was impos-sible for the parchment to be genuine, since, to begin with, Spanish had not yet evolved as a language in the first century. 12 The interpretation of the parchment posed huge problems. The Arabic parts, allegedly historical narratives and prophecies, proved very difficult if not impossible to read. 13 From the outset two mor-isco interpreters were involved, miguel de luna (ca. 1550-1615 14 ) and Alonso del Castillo (ca. 1535-ca. 1610). both owed a lot of their reputation as Arabic interpreters to the findings and both had studied medicine at the university of granada. Alonso del Castillo became a licensed interpreter of Arabic in 1582 and compiled a catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts of El Escorial in 1574. 15 Other moriscos in-volved in the translations during these years were the Jesuit ignacio de las Casas (1550-1608), miguel de Ayala from Seville, 16 Ahmad b. Qāsim al-hajarī from hornachos (ca. 1570-after 1642, see below), and lorenzo hernández El Chapiz from granada. 17 Starting in the year 1595, seven years after the discovery of the chest in the ancient tower, a series of lead plaques with Arabic and latin texts were found in caves in a mountain just outside granada. These plaques were also accompanied by ashes and bones, which were said to be the remains of Christians who had been burnt there as martyrs under the roman emperor Nero. The remains of Cecil-ius, the same person mentioned on the parchment in the ancient tower, were also found there. The texts were all said to have been written by two brothers from Arabia, ibn al-rādī and Thesifon b. ,Attār, disciples of St. James, whose coming to Spain they con-firmed. These books contained pseudo-acts of the apostles, creeds, prayers, and prophecies of an eschatological religious reformation and conversion of the whole world to one religion.
The ideas expressed in them were condemned by the Vatican in 1682 but remained alive among small groups of moriscos, who probably managed to escape expulsion, and later generations contin-ued to practise the lead book cult well into the eighteenth century, when such a group was discovered by the inquisition. 18 The secret al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp. 587-610 ISSN 0211-3589 cult was based on the expectation of a future revelation of the truth, to be disclosed at a council to be held in Cyprus. They believed that truth to be in harmony with islamic teachings contained in the Sac-romonte books.
recent studies of the parchment and the lead books make it clear that, whatever their precise contents turn out to be when the original Arabic documents are edited, the books as a fruit of mor-isco culture attracted the attention of a much larger public than ever before. in the years following their discovery a number of miracles associated with them drew attention not only in Europe but in other parts of the world as well. in addition the problems of their interpretation resulted in the involvement of a number of scholars, not only from Spain and other parts of Europe: capable translators were sought in the islamic world as well. 19 That led to a large number of publications about religious, philological and other aspects. 20 in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries new ideas arose among the moriscos. in a recent study mercedes garcía-Arenal and Fernando rodríguez mediano discuss the discovery by the inquisi-- tion, marcos dobelio (who was, as we will see, also active in trans-lating the lead books), identifies works such as the well-known Kitāb al-shifā' by Qādī ,iyād and the very popular Kitāb al-anwār by al-bakrī. he also discusses an anti-Christian polemical text that deals with the attributes of god and stresses that muhammad was the messiah predicted in Scripture. it is identified by them as the work of muhammad Alguazir. Alguazir was a morisco, who, as i have shown elsewhere, lived in marrakesh in 1627 and was origi-nally from Pastrana. The sources indicate that this work was written at the court of the Sa,did Sultan Zaydān in about 1611. it is indeed a source of new religious ideas such as new conceptions of the mes-siah (i.e. that muhammad was the messiah 22 ), new ideas about ra-tionalism and the relations between islam and other religions de-rived from readings of the works of the famous Tilimsānī scholar al-Sanūsī, influences that had been absent in morisco texts written in the peninsula. 23 That his work now appears to have been known among the moriscos in Pastrana itself confirms what we know about networks between moriscos in the peninsula and those in the magh-rib, the Ottoman empire and the south of France in the years pre-ceding the expulsion of 1609. 24 Another work in the Pastrana col-- Although it seems more likely that his work was written in Marrakesh, the possiblitity cannot be ruled out that Alguazir wrote it in the peninsula before the expulsion. García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano (Un Oriente Español and contribution in this volume) believe that the author is identical with one Diego Alguacil who was tried by the Inquisition in 1613. This seems to indicate that they believe he was still in Spain when he wrote the polemical work. On the other hand Wiegers, G.A., A learned Muslim acquaintance of Erpenius and Golius. Ahmad b. Qāsim al-Andalusī and Arabic studies in the Netherlands, Leiden, 1988, 43, discusses a letter by al-hajarī, dated 1611, which refers to a Alguazil, who was at that time in Marrakesh and was also identified as the author of the polemical work. It is hard to imagine that the Moroccan sultan would order a Morisco living in Pastrana at the time to write a polemical work. That Alguazir wrote it at the order of the sultan is mentioned in all extant manuscripts. 24 Wiegers, G.A., "Managing disaster. Networks of Moriscos during the expulsion of 1609", Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures (forthcoming); Bouzineb, H. and Wiegers, G.A., "Tetuán y la expulsión de los moriscos", Titwān khilāl al-qarnayn 16 wa-17, Tetuan, 1996, 73-108; Bernabé Pons, L.F., "Notas sobre la cohesión de la comunidad morisca más allá de su expulsión de España", Al-Qantara, XXIX, 2 (2008), 307-332.
al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp. 587-610 ISSN 0211-3589 lection, entitled Kitāb al-asrār fī funūn madhāhib al-shattār wa-hum al-tayalīq, is described by dobelio as follows: libro de los secretos de diferentes maneras de operaçiones de los Príncipes de los demonios, donde introduçe un Príncipe dellos llamado Phitecus [Ar. Phayqaytūs, gW], y diçe hauer sido el primero que diò obediencia al rey Salomón aconsejándole que llamase a su presençia los 72 Príncipes de las le-giones para interrogar a cada uno de por sí del daño que haze al género hu-mano, y que enseñe el remedio. Todos estos después de hauer entrado a su presençia diçen el mal que hazen, después dan el remedio de cosas naturales acompañadas de Caracteres, Nóminas, Sigilos, y palabras superstiçiosas del Al-corán; donde se descubre hauerlo compuesto algún mahometano y para acredi-tar su patraña, lo apoya al rey Salomón. 25 The authors connect this work with the lead books (as dobelio does himself), suggesting that the magical tradition discussed in the manuscript can be found in the book called history of the seal of solomon. 26 however, judging by its title and the brief description (which is all we have left), the text seems identical with an early fifteenth century Arabic manuscript found several years ago in Ocaña and studied and published by Joaquina Albarracín Navarro and Juan martínez ruiz. 27 After the expulsion of 1609, besides many religious texts (most of them written in Spanish in latin script 28 ) we witness the activi-ties of a number of moriscos at the beginning of the seventeenth 25 On the Kurdish Arabist Dobelio, see Rodríguez Mediano, F. and García-Arenal, M., "De Diego de Urrea a Marcos Dobelio: intérpretes y traductores de los 'Plomos'", in Barrios Aguilera and García-Arenal, Los plomos del Sacromonte, 297-334. 26 On the Seal of Solomon as a magical (i.e. esoteric) symbol, see especially Roisse, Ph., "L'Histoire du Sceau de Salomon ou de la Coincidentia oppositorum dans les livres century in a phenomenon that muhammad al-mannūnī calls a «movement of translations into Arabic» at the Sa,did courts, not only of al-mansūr but also of his son Zaydān. 29 According to almannūnī five factors influenced this movement: the migrations of the mudejars and moriscos; the influence of maghribi muslim cap-tives who, after living in Christian territories long enough to learn the languages, had returned to North Africa; contacts between in-habitants of the maghrib states and inhabitants of the presidios un-der foreign domination nearby; the influence of high officials and sultans who were interested in these matters and knew Spanish; and finally, the desire to know renaissance Enlightened ideas. in this context al-mannūnī discusses inter alia the physician Abū l-Qāsim al-Wazīr al-ghassānī (1547/955-1611/1019), the physician Abū l-Qāsim al-masfīwī (born 1560/968), and the learned diplomat Ahmad b. Qāsim al-hajarī. We can probably add others to this list, such as 'Alī b. ibrāhīm al-Qurtubī, physician at Zaydān's court, who com-posed several Arabic poems and possibly based his practice on medical knowledge acquired in Spain: he had been born in Cordo-va, where he had practised medicine. 30 Of the aforementioned per-sons Ahmad b. Qāsim al-hajarī is obviously the best known. in his nāsir al-dīn (a work of which only fragments were known at the time al-mannūnī wrote) he also sheds light on the scientific atmos-phere at court. 31 he tells us about a translation he made on Zaydān's orders of a geographical work in latin, 32 on which, be-cause he did not know latin himself, he collaborated with a captive monk. 33 The aforementioned muhammad Alguazir, who also seems to have belonged to the category described by al-mannūnī, wrote, as we have seen, an anti-Christian polemic text at the court of Zaydān, which circulated in a latin version among anti-trinitarians in England and the dutch republic. 34 The work drew the attention of Thomas Erpenius, who is said to have worked on a translation as well. 35 it is surprising to see the number of moriscos involved in the «physical sciences» compared to the profile sketched above. but maybe it is not so surprising, if we consider that natural philoso-phies and magic were closely linked to contemporary forms of physical science, in particular in the medical profession. moreover, Thomas glick has drawn our attention to processes of technological diffusion, to which moriscos and marranos, because of their back-ground, contributed. 36 According to garcía ballester, whose studies in this field were mentioned above, as the sixteenth century pro-gressed morisco physicians increasingly worked in a way that this scholar describes as «empirical», that is they made use of religious and magic ideas and techniques in their practice, which is one rea-son why the functions of medical practitioner and the faqīh were of-ten hard to distinguish. 37 but that is not all. Another aspect may be that both magic and physical science work on the assumption that humans are able to acquire power over and knowledge of the natu-ral world, a world which, to many thinkers influenced by esoteric ideas, cannot be detached from god and might even be identical in the Lead Book entitled Ta'rīkh khātam Sulaymān (History of the Seal of Solomon) and texts in the Mudejar manuscript of ocaña (see above).
In the West the Muslim world was even seen as a Mecca of magical knowledge and power. This is illustrated by an event in 1614. I am referring to the publication in Germany of the so-called Fama Fraternitatis, one of the founding documents of the fraternity of Rosicrucians. The Fama tells about the German Christian Rosen-creutz, a fourteenth century knight, whose quest for the wisdom of Adam, Moses and Solomon and his desire to bring about a general reform of the world brought him to Fez in the Arab world -the re-gion where, according to him, esoteric wisdom had passed from the Hebrew prophets, Egypt, Greece and Rome onwards. Arabic Magia and the Cabala are mentioned in this regard, as well as mathematics and physics. Rosenkreutz travelled back north via Spain. 38 In the pamphlet it is told that brother Rosencreutz compiled a number of philosophical works, including one translated from Arabic, the book M.
[sic], which Paracelsus had studied, and he constructed a magi-cal language and script. Shortly before his death he built a sacred vault, the door of which would be opened after 120 years and would lead to the beginning of the public activities of an -until that mo-ment-secret society that would bear his name. The Fama Fraternnitatis is optimistic about the powers of reason as divinely inspired power. This «reason» is ascribed to adherents of other faiths as well, even though the pamphlet states that Arabian magic is not as pure as Western forms in fathoming the mysteries of nature. 39 The Ros-icrucian pamphlets show that Europe saw the Islamic world as a source of magic, an image that arose in the early Middle Ages.
In Western tradition magic, esotericism and hermeticism were an undercurrent, closely related to interest in a philosophy of nature and the physical sciences, which had not yet started their dazzling development at that time but were becoming manifest despite pres-sure from orthodox Christianity. The latter considered the a priori supposition that humans are capable of studying the natural world, including its divine dimensions, through the use of reason and em-pirical research to be contrary to Christian teaching. in the Western world the interest in the hermetic tradition and its neo-Platonic phil-osophical ideas went hand in hand with a positive valuation of the prisca theologia, that is pre-Christian religious thought, which in or-thodox Christian circles had always met with suspicion. in that per-spective it should be noted that the Seal of Solomon not only sym-bolized the magical traditions of islam, but also had such ancient roots as the magen David (shield of david) in the magical traditions of Judaism, and had come to serve as an occult symbol in all three monotheist religions. As such, it may have appealed to the ideal of a unity transcending the historical religions of the time and hence the social and cultural opposition that divided Spain and the West-ern world, and was perhaps part of a strategy used by the anony-mous authors to achieve their goal of justifying the existence of morisco minorities in Spain on ideological grounds. 40 it is also possible that the authors of the lead books had a genuine interest in these esoteric ideas. The idea of a unity underlying the historical religions was shared in several circles of thinkers that emerged in places spread across Europe, including the dutch republic. 41 it was here that moriscos were most active as informants and teachers of Arabic.

The dutch republic, moriscos and Arabic studies
The republic was, in the words of david Sorkin, a confessional state with a «public church» and a dominant clergy, whose religious plurality (mennonites, lutherans, Catholics, Jews, Socinians, Quak-ers) was the «unforeseen and unfortunate result of the reformation and the dutch revolt, which prioritized social «concord» prevent-ing either the reformed Church or the Catholic Church from impos-ing confessional unity». 42 From the end of the sixteenth century on-wards the dutch tried to establish treaties with several muslim powers, notably morocco and the Ottoman empire. dutch motives for estab-lishing friendly relations with morocco were closely connected with their common hostility to Spain. After some initial, rather shaky at-tempts, hindered by the civil strife in morocco after the death of sul-tan Ahmad al-mansūr in 1603, some encouraging results were achieved after one of al-mansūr's sons, mawlāy Zaydān, acceded to power in marrakesh in about 1608. With him the dutch were to establish stable relations. As a token of their good intentions the dutch sent Zaydān three warships he had requested. 43 This marked the beginning of a series of negotiations, culminating in a treaty of friendship and free commerce in december 1610, which also provided for «free access and friendly reception for their respective subjects without need for any safeguards or safe-conducts, no matter how they come to the oth-er's territory». 44 At the end of the sixteenth century the study of hebrew and Ar-abic was introduced in such cities as leiden, which had been grant-ed a university in 1575, and Amsterdam, where the inn keeper and printer Jan Theunisz started studying these languages and printing hebrew books. 45 At the recently founded university of leiden the famous Josephus Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) played a prominent role, 46 along with learned muslims and Jewish informants and teachers. Jan Theunisz, a mennonite (hence not belonging to the dominant reformed Church), started studying Arabic under the guidance of the famous Franciscus raphelengius in leiden and was a fairly accomplished Arabic scholar when, in 1610, he coinciden-tally met ,Abd al-,Azīz b. muhammad al-Taghlibī in Amsterdam, as we will see below. After the initial contacts Zaydān sent several envoys to the dutch republic to negotiate the aforementioned treaty. The first was hammū b. bashīr. he came in the company of Samuel Pallache, a moroccan Jew from Fez, whose family was to play an important role in Sa,did relations with the low Countries and who was secretary to Zaydān, ,Abd al-,Azīz b. muhammad al-Taghlibī. 47 in Amsterdam this secre-tary coincidentally met the aforementioned Jan Theunisz, and stayed with him in his house even after the embassy had left for morocco. They had frequent, frank and friendly discussions about religious mat-ters, and their meeting resulted in a polemical work about Christology in Arabic and latin, entitled inquisitio et reponsio quae fuit inter Ma-humetistam et Christianum de Mesia ad intelligendum an ille sit filius Dei, nec ne ("investigation and its response, which has come about [in a discussion] between a muhammedan and a Christian in order to un-derstand whether or not the messiah is the Son of god"). in 1610 Theunisz offered the manuscript to the States general as proof of his fluency in Arabic. in addition to the polemic itself (on f. 50v-87r) it includes the story of his meeting with ,Abd al-,Azīz b. muhammad (f. 5v-17r); some translations from sūra 3, especially the parts on Jesus (f. 22v-32v); a Christian creed by Theunisz (f. 34r-43r, and on f. 32v-33v the Apostolic creed); and a muslim creed by the said secretary (f. 44v-49v). A prominent feature of the muslim creed, as well as the discussion about Jesus, is an enumeration of muhammad's miracles, very likely based on Qādī ,iyād's Kitāb al-shifā'. 48 in the same year, 1610, the moroccan ambassador Ahmad b. ,Abd Allāh al-©ayÐī was invited by the Stadholder, maurice, to a splendid banquet (splendida mensa) in The hague. during this banquet, mau-rice, a Protestant, and his Catholic brother-in-law immanuel of Portu-gal questioned him about the muslim view of Jesus. he had two rea-sons, he explained, to answer «now» rather than on that occasion. First of all, the moment had not been suitable. An important question like that could not be answered satisfactorily in the course of a ban-quet (inter prandendum). Secondly, he felt that he first needed to con-- sult sources such as Qur'ānic commentaries (interpretatio sancti al-corani), the works on the unity [the taw¬īd, i.e. theological works] by the very learned «Zidi mehemet Elemuci» (probably al-Sanūsī, men-tioned above) and «Zidi mohamet Eleir», probably the morisco mu-hammad Alguazir, mentioned above. The answer, in the form of a po-lemic, was sent in about 1612: the latin text, as i have shown elsewhere, is largely identical with the anti-Christian polemic by mu-hammad Alguazir.
Theunisz was a scholar of hebrew as well, and in 1605 and 1606 he printed several books by hugh broughton (1549-1612), an Englishman living in the Netherlands at the time, and tried to con-vert Jews to Christianity. 49 Not surprisingly in view of their exper-tise in scientific lore in Arabic (as appears from Van Koningsveld's studies quoted above), Jews and Conversos were sought after as teachers of Arabic. 50 in addition to other Jews, some members of the Pallache family also brought Arabic learning to the Netherlands. in about 1611 Erpenius heard rumours that the curators of leiden university were considering appointing a moroccan Jew, proficient in hebrew and Arabic, as professor of Arabic at leiden universi-ty. 51 it is not clear who the person in question was, but it seems likely that we are dealing with either isaac or moses Pallache. mo-ses and isaac were both sons of Joseph Pallache. moses was born in 1592 52 and was therefore too young. Possibly it was isaac, about whom we know that he actually had ambitions to teach Oriental languages at leiden university. he converted to Christianity in 1627 in a village near utrecht, and had his son Joseph baptized at the hooglandse Kerk in this city in the presence of Constantijn l'Empereur, professor of hebrew, and Franciscus burgersdijck, then rector magnificus of leiden university. 53 Several Arabic scholars have described the motives for studying Arabic at the time. Theunisz discusses these briefly and succinctly, stressing, as others did, the use of arabic for learning Hebrew, thus highlighting their close relationship. arabic is a very old and useful language for merchants and travellers in Africa, Asia, and many parts of Europe [sic! GW] but also those who are interested in ancient philosophy and the divine languages, since, with the use of this language, the most important writings of theologians, physicists, physicians and mathematicians can be understood. Many writings that have been poorly translated into other languages, can, with the knowledge of Arabic, be improved; others, that have long been thought to be lost, can be retrieved from the underworld, and thereby light can be shed on the Hebrew sources of the Bible. In addition, many souls that have been lost to Satan, can be saved for [the service of] our Messiah [...]. 54 such motives were adduced by other arabic scholars as well. int t terest in arabic and Hebrew were loosely related. Many believed that arabic would be an aid to understanding Hebrew, considered to be the original language of humankind spoken by adam and eve in the garden of eden. 55 interest in the physical sciences is also conspicut t ous and explains why the early arabists acquired a number of wide ranging arab manuscripts, including texts dealing with the physical sciences, natural philosophy, the occult sciences and magic. as ment t tioned in my earlier publications, altHajarī met several European scholars during his travels in europe, including the French Orientalist etienne Hubert, whom he met several times in France, 56 and the Leit t den professor of arabic Thomas van erpen (erpenius), whom he met in Paris and Leiden between 1611 and 1613. 57 He probably stayed with erpenius in his house in Leiden for some time. some years ago the Leiden scholar Jan schmidt discovered two hitherto unknown lett t ters by al-©ajarī written to the Leiden Arabists among the Rylands papers kept in Manchester University library. A first letter in the rylands papers is directed to «monsuor Arpenius flamenco.» According to Schmidt the said letter discusses «[...] the value of learning (,ilm) in the islamic tradition, the quali-ties of the Arabic language, and the interpretation of certain Koranic expressions. A number of important works on grammar and rhetoric are mentioned». 59 A second letter in the manchester collection, written from mar-rakesh to the leiden Arabist Jacobus golius by al-hajarī, is dated 12 rabī, 1, 1033 (2 February 1624). The main subject is ibn baklārish's Kitāb al-Musta,īnī'. 60 in the correspondence several other moriscos are mentioned as informants and suppliers of Arabic manuscripts. 61 Through diligent work and aptitude the leiden Arabists were able to make rapid progress in the study of Arabic. No wonder, then, that in 1623 the bishop of granada called on Erpenius to trans-late the lead books. however, even though Erpenius did some initial work, he did not go to Spain. 62 From the foregoing it seems that in the last years before the ex-pulsion and the years after 1614 morisco intellectuals became in-volved in what can be called a cultural movement, of which philo-logical learning is a major aspect alongside the physical sciences, geography, and natural philosophy. in conceptualizing Arabic studies in the seventeenth century one should not forget that the natural sci-entists were often none other than the philologists and historians. both Thomas Erpenius and Jacobus golius had studied mathematics and linked their studies of Arabic to their interest in the physical sci-al-QanÐara (AQ) XXXI 2, julio-diciembre 2010, pp. 587-610 ISSN 0211-3589 ences and mathematics. in 1629 golius succeeded the astronomer and mathematician Willibrord Snellius (1580-1626) as professor of math-ematics at leiden university and was also involved in astronomy, in-cluding the building of an observatory. This is what russell describes as the «natural interest of "Arabick"»: Arabic was the medium through which one got access to theories about what we nowadays see as religious and natural knowledge that had been passed on to the Arabic world. At the time, the present-day distinctions and categories did not yet exist but in precisely this period current ideas were chang-ing rapidly. The period we are discussing here saw a change that has been aptly characterized by the dutch scholar E.J. dijksterhuis as «the mechanisation of the world picture». 63 We have seen above that religion, especially in the form of magic, also played a part in these developments. but whereas some physical scientists and natural phi-losophers turned to esoteric thought (e.g. isaac Newton), others, among them philologists of a more orthodox Christian persuasion, became critical of these ideas. isaac Casaubon, for example, criticized the dating of the Corpus hermeticum, arguing that it dated from the early Christian rather than the ancient Egyptian period. 64 We now turn to source materials that illustrate how moriscos expe-rienced these developments and were to some extent involved in them. The following passage by al-©ajarī, a crucial figure for moriscos in the diaspora, is very interesting in this respect. This passage about his stay in France, where he had gone to recover goods stolen from mor-iscos on board French ships, can be found in his nā½ir al-dīn. in it al-©ajarī compares astrology/astronomy in France and morocco: As for the goods deposited in bordeaux, which had been stolen by the cap-tain from the people of al-hajar al-Ahmar, 65 i got hold of them after one and a half years had gone by. Praise be to god that every Andalusian who appoint-ed me as his legal representative, received some money [in compensation]. Af-ter i had arranged my affairs in bordeaux, i returned to Paris, the city of the Sultan. There i met the greatest astronomer [well-trained] in the science of the stars. he told me: 'i never saw any result of this science in practice. i have tested many of the hypotheses and i did everything possible to verify the cal-culations and to measure the altitude of the constellations when ascending, in accordance with the prescriptions of the authors. i possess more than a hundred works concerning this art and i understand their contents. When the father of louis, who is now Sultan, 66 was killed. 67 i said to myself: the Sun to which authority over the Sultans is ascribed, should have been connected to misfor-tune in that hour. but when i looked for that, i found it connected to Venus which means good fortune. When the sun is connected to Venus this means that the Sultan can be subject only to good fortune. The scholars who laid down this system did not produce any rules that can be applied successfully in accordance with their own prescriptions. Nay, i find the matter to be contrary to what they pronounce'. End [of quotation]. i say: you should know that i studied the science of the a¬kām to some extent under the supervision of the faqīh Ahmad al-masyūb al-Fāsī, who was Andalu-sian by origin. he was an outstanding expert in the sciences of astrology, alkhatt al-ramlī, and of the tables with ciphers and letters. he possessed a great number of books on those arts, because i believe that moulay Ahmad 68 -may god have mercy upon him!-made the books of his library available to him, of which it is said that the total number were thirty-two thousand. This shaykh -may god have mercy upon him!-said to me repeatedly: 'When the Sultan asks me something about matters that are hidden, i leave the books for what they are, make a fivefold table and fill it with five of the names of the Exalted god, viz: al-hādī, al-Khabīr, al-Mubīn, ,allām and al-Ghayyūb, arranging them in such a manner that they can be read vertically, horizontally and diago-nally, in the following way: This quotation from al-hajarī's nāsir al-dīn, a work composed in about 1637, gives us an amusing glimpse into the transformations in science in his day and age.
Two persons occupy key positions in this passage. The first, ac-cording to al-hajarī, is a famous astronomer at the court of Paris, who tells him that he has empirically tested astrological hypotheses (ikhtiyārāt) but found them falsified by events that had taken place. The identity of this astronomer (or astrologer) has not been deter-mined yet. Al-hajarī himself speaks about his own experiences in this field (he saw himself as possessing magic powers) and tells us about his teacher, Ahmad b. Qāsim al-masyūb. The latter, a wellknown astronomer, mathematician, expert in magic and probably some sort of court astrologer at the Sa,did court, had, like al-hajarī himself, an Andalusian background. The historian al-ifrānī tells us the following about him and his death. 70 Sultan Zaydān used to consult the scholar about his future. Once he consulted al-masyūb about an ongoing military campaign and wished to know whether he would emerge victorious. Al-masyūb was afraid and refused to answer, but the sultan promised that his blood would not be spilled. he then told him that the defeat would be monstrous. The sultan, afraid that this might become public knowledge, had him poisoned, and in this way was able to maintain that he had not broken his oath: indeed, no blood had been spilled! This event is said to have occurred in 1613. Al-hajarī, writing his account of it much later, de-scribes how such astrological calculations were actually made by almasyūb. he also tells how the scholar had calculated his lifespan, along with two astrologers the author had consulted in Seville. it is amusing that al-Hajarī's commentary concludes they had all been wrong, and that he had recently reached a much higher age than any of the scholars had calculated. I interpret al-Hajarī's words as expressing distrust in astrology, possibly inspired by his belief in the omnipotence of God to do as he wills, powers that he thinks cannot be influenced by astrological operations. What is important in this context, however, is not al-Hajarī's personal view, but that he seems to be aware of the discussions about the new empirical «method»: it is no longer sufficient if a theory is consistent in itself, the important question now is its value when tested in empirical re-ality. Whereas Aristotelian theory had been based on the idea that the sublunar world was transient and the cosmos immutable, in the new paradigm the cosmos was seen as a unity governed by univer-sal laws. 71 This assumption had an inbuilt tendency to make divine intervention in the world redundant, for what place would God oc-cupy in a world governed by impersonal laws? The passage shows that the scientific changes touched the Moriscos, who were acting as mediators between two worlds and whose cultural and scholarly expertise was valued on both sides of the Mediterranean.
Future research should reveal what sort of interfaces between science, the study of languages and religion interested the Moriscos and Conversos as minority groups in both early modern Europe and the early modern Islamic world. In both these worlds there were groups who saw science, in a religious (magic) or an increasingly non-religious form, as a means of bridging opposition between ex-clusivist views, because different religious groups had a common interest in certain questions, for example interpreting the signs of the times, whether a new age was imminent, in what manner the deity would reveal himself to the world and the status of the revela-tory text. 72 Such traditionally religious questions were also the sub-ject of the new empirical sciences, which were objects of study in both Europe and the early modern Islamic world. The precise role of Moriscos in these developments is by no means clear yet, but the intense curiosity about the study of Arabic can certainly not be de-tached from these larger questions about religion, physical science and the cosmos. Similar questions were posed both in Paris and in 71 Al-Ifrānī, Kitāb safwat man intashar, 263. 72 Von Stuckrad, Western Esotericism, 88.