The Iberian Qur An

Due to the long presence of Muslims in Islamic territories (Al-Andalus and Granada) and of Muslims minorities in the Christians parts, the Iberian Peninsula provides a fertile soil for the study of the Qur’an and Qur’an translations made by both Muslims and Christians. From the mid-twelfth century to at least the end of the seventeenth, the efforts undertaken by Christian scholars and churchmen, by converts, by Muslims (both Mudejars and Moriscos) to transmit, interpret and translate the Holy Book are of the utmost importance for the understanding of Islam in Europe. This book reflects on a context where Arabic books and Arabic speakers who were familiar with the Qur’an and its exegesis coexisted with Christian scholars. The latter not only intended to convert Muslims, and polemize with them but also to adquire solid knowledge about them and about Islam. Qur’ans were seized during battle, bought, copied, translated, transmitted, recited, and studied. The different features and uses of the Qur’an on Iberian soil, its circulation as well as the lives and works of those who wrote about it and the responses of their audiences, are the object of this book.

This edited volume aims to advance a Muslim-centered perspective on the study of Islam in Europe. To do so, it brings together a range of case studies that illustrate how European Muslims engaged with their Sacred Scripture while being part of a Christian-dominated social and political space. The research presented in this volume seeks to analyse Muslims’ practices of translating, interpreting and using the Qur’an as a sacred object and, thus, pursues three main research agendas. Part I focuses on the issues of Muslim-Christian relations in Europe and studies how these relations have engendered discursive connections between Muslim- and Christian-produced texts related to the study and interpretation of the Qur’an. Part II aims to bring scholarly attention to the under-represented cases of Muslim communities in Europe. This part introduces new research on Polish-Belarusian, Daghestani, Bosnian and Kazan Tatars and examines local traditions of producing vernacular Qur’ans and commodification of Qur’anic manuscripts. The final section of the volume, Part III, contributes to filling in the gaps related to the theoretical and conceptual framing of Muslim translation activities. The history of religious thought and practice in European history is in many ways still uncharted territory. This book aims to contribute to a better understanding of the cultural history of the Qur’an and Muslim agency in interpreting, transmitting and translating the Sacred Scripture.

In 1143 Robert of Ketton produced the first Latin translation of the Qur’an. This translation, extant in 24 manuscripts, was one of the main ways in which Latin European readers had access to the Muslim holy book. Yet it was not the only means of transmission of Quranic stories and concepts to the Latin world: there were other medieval translations into Latin of the Qur’an and of Christian polemical texts composed in Arabic which transmitted elements of the Qur’an (often in a polemical mode). The essays in this volume examine the range of medieval Latin transmission of the Qur’an and reaction to the Qur’an by concentrating on the manuscript traditions of medieval Qur’an translations and anti-Islamic polemics in Latin. We see how the Arabic text was transmitted and studied in Medieval Europe. We examine the strategies of translators who struggled to find a proper vocabulary and syntax to render Quranic terms into Latin, at times showing miscomprehensions of the text or willful distortions for polemical purposes. These translations and interpretations by Latin authors working primarily in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Spain were the main sources of information about Islam for European scholars until well into the sixteenth century, when they were printed, reused and commented. This volume presents a key assessment of a crucial chapter in European understandings of Islam.

This book is the result of two scientific encounters hosted by the University of Évora in 2012, with the theme “Muslims and Jews in Portugal and the Diaspora. Identities and Memories (16th–17th centuries)”, and co-financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology, and by FEDER, through “Eixo I” of the “Programa Operacional Fatores de Competitividade” (POFC) of QREN (COMPETE). Beginning with an analysis of the forced conversion of Iberian Jews and Muslims, this volume examines the effects of this on their respective diasporas, focusing on a variety of approaches, from language and culture to identity discourses and interchanges between those communities.

Despite its relevance to the subsequent development of Western Islamic studies, the intellectual contribution of early modern Catholicism is still an under-researched area. The aim of this volume is to fill this gap, offering a series of essays dealing with the study of the Qur’an and Arabic language in early modern Catholic Europe. Focusing on the circulation of manuscripts, translations and printed books, the essays highlight how Catholic Orientalism contributed to the birth and spread of Western Islamic studies, although sometimes it was still directed towards religious polemics. Among the protagonists of this period of Islamic studies, the volume will focus on Catholic priests, missionaries, religious orders (Jesuits, Franciscans, Carmelites) Eastern Christians, converts, and other prominent figures in the Catholic culture of the time. Special attention will be given to the work of Ludovico Marracci, author of a fundamental edition of the Arabic text and Latin translation of the Qur’an with an introduction, notes, refutations and religious and linguistic insights. The volume is of interest to an audience of specialists and non-specialists interested both in Islamic and Qur'anic studies and in the history of modern Catholicism, missions, and Orientalism

Forbidden Passages is the first book to document and evaluate the impact of Moriscos—Christian converts from Islam—in the early modern Americas, and how their presence challenged notions of what it meant to be Spanish as the Atlantic empire expanded.

For nearly eight centuries, the Iberian peninsula was remarkable for its religious, cultural, linguistic, and ethnic diversity. In Medieval Iberia Olivia Remie Constable brings together original sources that testify to its rich and sometimes volatile mix of Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula is the second comparative history of a new subseries with a regional focus, published by the Coordinating Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association. As its predecessor for East-Central Europe, this two-volume history distances itself from traditional histories built around periods and movements, and explores, from a comparative viewpoint, a space considered to be a powerful symbol of inter-literary relations. Both the geographical pertinence and its symbolic condition are obviously discussed, when not even contested. Written by an international team of researchers who are specialists in the field, this history is the first attempt at applying a comparative approach to the plurilingual and multicultural literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. The aim of comprehensiveness is abandoned in favor of a diverse and extensive array of key issues for a comparative agenda. A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula undermines the primacy claimed for national and linguistic boundaries, and provides a geo-cultural account of literary inter-systems which cannot otherwise be explained.