Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain

209 Pages·2008·2.19 MB·English

by  Barbara Fuchs

Exotic Nation
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Exotic Nation
Maurophilia and the Construction
of Early Modern Spain
Barbara Fuchs
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
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PublicationofthisvolumewasassistedbyasubventionfromtheProgramforCultural
CooperationBetweenSpain’sMinistryofCultureandUnitedStatesUniversities.
Copyright(cid:2)2009UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsusedforpurposesofrevieworscholarly
citation,noneofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformbyanymeanswithoutwritten
permissionfromthepublisher.
Publishedby
UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Philadelphia,Pennsylvania19104-4112
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Fuchs,Barbara,1970–
MaurophiliaandtheconstructionofearlymodernSpain/BarbaraFuchs.
p. cm.
ISBN:978-0-8122-4135-8(alk.paper)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Muslims—Spain—History. 2.Nationalcharacteristics,Spanish.
3.Spain—History—711–1516. 4.Spain—Civilization—Islamicinfluences.
5.Spain—Ethnicrelations.
DP102.F783 2009
946(cid:2).02—dc22 2008040619
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Para Luly y Javier, indispensables interlocutores
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Contents
introduction 1
1: the quotidian and the exotic 11
2: in memory of moors: history, maurophilia,
and the built vernacular 31
3: the moorish fashion 60
4: playing the moor 88
5: the spanish race 115
postscript: moorish commonplaces 139
notes 145
bibliography 179
index 193
acknowledgments 199
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Introduction
AfricabeginsatthePyrenees.
—attr.AlexanderDumas,pe`re
In the Western imaginary, Spain often evokes the romantic, colorful
cultureof‘‘Moorish’’al-Andalus.ThisistheSpainofWashingtonIrving’s
Tales of the Alhambra, of courtyards lined with azulejos, and of recent
tourismcampaignsthattoutsunnyAndaluc´ıaastheessenceofIberia.De-
spitethefallofGranadatotheCatholicKingsin1492andthesubsequent
repression of Islam in Spain, Moorish culture—dress, art, architecture—
plays an enduring role in our perception of the nation that emerged in
placeofal-Andalus.1
This book explores how Moorish culture complicates the construc-
tion of Spain in the early modern period, both by Spaniards themselves
and by other Europeans. During the eventful century between the fall
of Granada and the expulsion of the Moriscos (Muslim subjects forcibly
converted to Christianity) in 1609, an emerging Spain repeatedly at-
tempted to come to terms with its own Moorishness, both by repressing
MuslimandMoriscosubjectsandbynegotiatingtherichculturalheritage
of al-Andalus. The paradoxes in the construction of Spain in this period
arestriking:weare usedtothinkingofSpain’sself-definition asa process
wherebybothJewishandMoorishelementswereexcisedfromitsculture;
the conquest of Granada in 1492 and the concurrent expulsion of the
Jews are taken as signal events in the emergence of Spain as a nation. Yet
after 1492 Spanish culture retained and even celebrated the culture of al-
Andalus;inmanycases,itwasimpossibletoseparatewhathadbecomeby
that point hybridized and local forms. As the historiography of medieval
andearlymodernSpainputspressureonoldernotionsofconvivenciaand
mudejarismo, the field has moved to more nuanced accounts of Iberian
identities and cultural production. This new work has superseded the by
now arch-canonical debates between the philosemitic school of Ame´rico
Castroandthecasticista,ultranationalistcampthatstretchesfromthehis-
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