In Good Faith: Arabic Translation and Translators in Early Modern Spain

353 Pages·2020·14.599 MB·English

by  Claire M Gilbert

In Good Faith

IN GOOD FAITH
Arabic Translation
and Translators
in Early Modern Spain
Claire M. Gilbert
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Copyright © 2020 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for
purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book
may be reproduced in any form by any means without written
permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available
from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-8122-5246-0
For my family, whose faith in this project
has made everything possible.

Contents
Introduction. The Arabic Voices of Imperial Spain 1
Chapter 1. The Foundations of Fiduciary Translation
in Morisco Spain 19
Chapter 2. Families in Translation: Spanish Presidios
and Mediterranean Information Networks 66
Chapter 3. Translating Empires: Spain, Morocco,
and the Atlantic Mediterranean 108
Chapter 4. Faiths in Translation: Mission and Inquisition 151
Chapter 5. The Legacies of Fiduciary Translation:
Arabic Legal and Historical Sources in Golden Age Spain 197
Epilogue. Imagining Fiduciary Translation
at the End of Imperial Spain 236
List of Abbreviations 245
Notes 247
Bibliography 299
Index 329
Acknowledgments 335
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Introduction
The Arabic Voices of Imperial Spain
Arabic translation was at the core of early modern Spanish society. So too
were the translators who carried it out, though their work was and has
remained “invisible,” to borrow Lawrence Venuti’s revealing formulation.1
Even more so than during the twelh- and thirteenth- century translation
movement around the Toledo School, the use and translation of Arabic texts
and speech shaped law, religion, and politics in Renaissance and Counter-
Reformation Spain. The legacy of this latter-day translation movement of
Islamic legal texts had enduring probative effects in later lawsuits that relied
on those same texts and their translations. Such models for creating evi-
dence through translation then came to affect the use of Arabic texts and
testimony in the Spanish Inquisition. Arabic texts were collected and trans-
lated to support national history-w riting projects and thus helped justi
political decisions about who and what languages were legitimately part of
Spain’s history, or its future. The political usefulness of Arabic translation
and translators at home and abroad mediated Spanish interests in North
Aican and Mediterranean diplomacy, which ultimately produced a market
for translations of Arabic political theory. Indeed, Arabic translation in early
modern Spain was far om the faint echo of a distant medieval past; it was,
rather, a connecting tissue in the fabric of Spanish culture.
In this book, I study the strategies of Arabic translators and the admin-
istrative functions of Arabic translation as part of a suite of techniques for
political rule and social discipline. Translation underpinned the elaboration
of Spain’s administrative empire om the expansionist policies of Ferdinand
and Isabella (r. 1474–1504) through the end of the Habsburg era.2 Using
state, local, and religious archives, this book presents individual actors who
help adjust the analytical ame of translation history away om disembodied