A Review of the Escorial Codex Árabe 1876: A Collection of Fourteen Short Stories from North Africa

Abstract

This is a review of a collection of fourteen stories, preserved in a single manuscript, dated 5th of Rabīʾ I, 1137 H./ November 21, 1724 CE. The manuscript is held at the library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Spain, at least since the year 1848. The collection received limited scholarly uptake: it was considered an Andalusī work and was framed within the Iberian Chivalric Romances (6th/12th-7th/13th c.) as well as within the literary court of the Umayyad Chancellor Almanzor in Córdoba (late 4th/10th c.). The manuscript also was assumed to belong to the Zaydānī library (transferred to the Escorial in 1614). Through literary and contextual excavations, I argue for a different genetic history, and show how the collection shares elements with A Hundred and One Nights (Miʾat layla wa-layla), The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla), Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s travelogue, and an understudied sīra that circulated in Egypt in the latter half of the 8th/14th century. By analyzing the marginalia, furthermore, I propose the manuscript is a latecomer to Spain, produced, not in al-Andalus, but in North Africa.