Pascual de Gayangos: A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist

265 Pages·2010·1.61 MB·English

by  Professor Cristina Alvarez Millan

Edited by
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Cristina Álvarez Millán
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and Claudia Heide
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A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist A
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Edited by in
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Cristina Álvarez Millán and Claudia Heide t
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Pascual de Gayangos (1809–97), celebrated Spanish Orientalist and polymath, thu
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is recognised as the father of the modern school of Arabic studies in Spain. He C
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gave Islamic Spain its own voice, for the first time representing Spain’s ‘other’ n
from ‘within’ not from without. This collection, the first major study of Gayangos, tul
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celebrates the 200th anniversary of his birth. y

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Covering a wide range of subjects, it reflects the multiple fields in which Gayangos ae
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was involved: scholarship on the culture of Islamic and Christian Spain; history, isG
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literature, art; conservation and preservation of national heritage; formation of
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archives and collections; education; tourism; diplomacy and politics. Amalgamating ra
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and understanding Gayangos’ multiple identities, it reinstates his importance for b
cultural life in nineteenth-century Spain, Britain and North America. isy
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It also argues that Gayangos’ scholarly achievements and his influence have a
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political dimension. His work must be seen in relation to the quest for a national
identity which marked the nineteenth century: what was the significance of Spain’s G
Islamic past, and the Imperial Golden Age to the culture of modern Spain? The
chapters, informed by post-colonial theory, reception theory and theories of o
national identity, uncover some of the complexities of the process that shaped
Spain’s national identity. s
In the course of this book, Gayangos is shown to be a figure with many facets
and several intellectual lives: Arabist, historian, liberal, researcher, editor, C
numismatist, traveller, translator, diplomat, perhaps a spy, a generous collaborator RIS Pascual
and one of Spain’s greatest bibliophiles. T
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Cristina Álvarez Millán is a Research Fellow in the Ramón y Cajal Program at U Á
the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Madrid. Claudia Heide is D Lv
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a visiting Lecturer in the School of Arts, Culture and Environment at the H RE GayanGos
University of Edinburgh. E z
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Jacket image courtesy of Department of Islamic Studies, Instituto de Filología, CSIC. L
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A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist
ISBN 978 0 7486 3547 4 E
d
Edinburgh University Press
i
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22 George Square b
Edinburgh EH8 9LF u
r
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www.euppublishing.com h
Jacket design: clareturner.co.uk
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Pascual de Gayangos
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Pascual de Gayangos
A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist
Edited by
CRISTINA ÁLVAREZ MILLÁN
and CLAUDIA HEIDE
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© editorial matter and organisation Cristina Álvarez Millán
and Claudia Heide, 2008
© the chapters their several authors, 2008
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Goudy
by Norman Tilley Graphics Ltd, Northampton,
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts
A CIP record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 3547 4(hardback)
The right of the contributors
to be identified as authors of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements x
Notes on the Contributors xi
Abbreviations xiii
List of Illustrations xiv
I INTRODUCTION
1 The Life of Pascual de Gayangos 1809–1897 3
Cristina Álvarez Millán (Universidad Nacional de Educación
a Distancia, Madrid)
2 Gayangos and the World of Politics 24
Miguel Ángel Álvarez Ramos (Madrid) and Claudia Heide
(University of Edinburgh)
II ARABISM
3 The Estranged Self of Spain: Oriental Obsessions in the Time
of Gayangos 49
Andrew Ginger (Stirling University)
4 Scholarship and Criticism: The Letters of Reinhart Dozy to
Pascual de Gayangos (1841–1852) 68
Manuela Marín (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas,
Madrid)
III GAYANGOS IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD
5 Gayangos in the English Context 89
Richard Hitchcock (University of Exeter)
6 Gayangos: Prescott’s Most Indispensable Aide 106
C.Harvey Gardiner (University of Southern Illinois)
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contents
7 Más ven cuatro ojos que dos: Gayangos and Anglo-American
Hispanism 132
Claudia Heide (University of Edinburgh)
8 Gayangos and the Boston Brahmins 159
Thomas F. Glick (Boston University)
IV GAYANGOS AND MATERIAL CULTURE
9 Pascual de Gayangos: A Scholarly Traveller 185
Miguel Ángel Álvarez Ramos (Madrid)
10 Gayangos’s Legacy: His Son-in-Law Juan Facundo Riaño
(1829–1901) and the Victoria and Albert Museum 205
Marjorie Trusted (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Bibliography 223
Index 244
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Preface
This collection of essays commemorates the 200th anniversary of the birth of
the celebrated Arabist Pascual de Gayangos (1809–97), mostly known today
as one of Spain’s greatest bibliophiles and as the father of modern Arabism in
Spain. This volume reveals that he is a much more complex figure, with more
facets and lives than hitherto recognised. A truly international scholar and
a polymath, he worked on many scholarly projects connected with the
culture of both Christian and Islamic Spain from the Middle Ages to the
late seventeenth century. He was involved in multiple fields embracing the
history, literature and art of Spain; the preservation of national heritage;
formation of archives and collections; education; tourism; diplomacy and
politics. An exceptionally versatile figure even by the standards of the
nineteenth century, Gayangos is an ideal subject through which to examine
and understand nineteenth-century Hispanism and Arabism. Not surpris-
ingly, Gayangos has caught the attention of many. However, articles are
scattered throughout academic periodicals in Spain, North America and
Britain. What is now called for is a broad account of Gayangos’s intellectual
trajectory, which re-evaluates previous scholarship on Gayangos and incor -
porates new data deriving from the archives in Spain, Britain and the United
States. This is what the present volume provides.
This volume, then, is the study of one man. However, it is not a com-
prehensive biography or account of his life, narrated in a chronological order
by one author. Gayangos’s multiple lives and versatility invite a multi-
disciplinary and thematic approach. Ten essays shed light on the figure of
Gayangos from various perspectives and distances. Microscopic viewpoints,
scrutinising Gayangos’s achievements and intellectual relationships, are
counter-balanced by essays adopting a bird’s eye view, carefully scanning the
nineteenth-century context and the milieu in which Gayangos moved.
Section I focuses on Gayangos’s biography. Álvarez Millán draws an
updated overview of Gayangos’s life, personality and achievements, while
revising at the same time some well-rooted ideas which recent research
has shown to be biased misinterpretations. What follows is a consideration
of Gayangos’s position within the complex political panorama of his time.
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preface
Gayangos can be associated with liberal voices in Spain, yet he was not
uncritical of ‘liberalism’. Within the British political context, we find
Gayangos engaged in a whirl of political life at Holland House, thegathering
place for Whigs, where ‘Spain’ was regarded as a test case for how far
constitutionalism would be allowed to take root in western Europe. Yet
Gayangos never became an apologist for liberalism in Spain or for Whig
politics in Britain.
Section II, entitled ‘Arabism’, is concerned with Gayangos’s role as an
Arabist, a facet for which he is known best and which has received much
attention by previous scholars. Two essays offer new perspectives on
Gayangos as an Arabist. Ginger provides a bird’s eye view on Gayangos in
the Spanish context of both verbal and visual representations of Islamic
Spain. The essay queries the assumption, derived from Edward Said and
others, that the ‘Orient’ is rendered exotic in order to be ultimately sub -
jugated. Mid-nineteenth-century discussions indicate a profound uncertainty
about the borders of the Spanish imagined community, as regards both its
historical roots and its actual frontiers at any given time. The hope of
scholarship was to breed familiarity with the estranged parts of a national
self. It is within such a context that one should situate Gayangos’s magnum
opus: The History of Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain (first published in
1840–3, and recently re published in 2002). In contrast, Marín offers a
microscopic view, scrutinising the relationship between Gayangos and the
Dutch Arabist Reinhardt Dozy from Leiden. Her essay draws on a captivating
series of unpublished letters, which are kept in the Real Academia de la
Historia and at Leiden University. They represent an untapped source of
information on a fascinating dialogue between two of the most distinguished
scholars within the nineteenth-century context of Arabism in Europe.
Section III, ‘Gayangos and the English-speaking world’, deals with
Gayangos as an international scholar. The dialogue Gayangos sustained with
an intellectual milieu beyond the confines of metropolitan Spain was the
lifeblood of his own studies and the basis of his own achievements. The
leitmotiv of this section is Gayangos’s vital role in the transformation of the
Romantic attitude to Spain; a change which resulted in a more scholarly
approach, which included a critical revision of earlier writings and the
unearthing of new primary material. Hitchcock analyses Gayangos’s bibliog -
raphy written and published in Britain, particularly his many contributions
to The Penny Cyclopaedia–another medium that allowed him to reinstate the
importance of Islamic Spain and to counteract romance and inaccuracy.
The next three essays deal with Gayangos’s relationships with the most
outstanding Anglo-American scholars of the time. Harvey Gardiner was
the first to analyse Gayangos’s influence on William Hickling Prescott, the
founder of studies on Spanish history in North America. Hence, an abridged
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preface
version of Gardiner’s pioneering essay ‘Gayangos: Prescott’s most indis-
pensable aide, originally published in 1959, is re-printed in this section.
Gardiner argued that Gayangos was a ‘godfather’ to Prescott’s achievements
and success, and one whose contributions Prescott did not sufficiently
acknowledge in print. Heide’s essay develops Gardiner’s argument. Her essay
shows that the authority of three other Anglo-American writers was seriously
underpinned by Gayangos. Glick’s essay ‘Gayangos and the Boston
Brahmins’ further expands on Gayangos’s interaction with nineteenth-
century North-American Hispanism by scrutinising the dense pattern of
interplay between members of George Ticknor’s circle on subjects related
to Spain, American history, and books. Section III thus asks for a revision of
the traditional view of nineteenth-century Anglo-American Hispanism.
There was much more exchange between English-speaking and Spanish
intellectuals than has hitherto been recognised. Gayangos features as a key
figure.
Section IV is entitled ‘Gayangos and material culture’. Álvarez Ramos
offers a valuable account of Gayangos’s travels, a subject never considered
before. Gayangos’s voyages are inextricably linked to his research projects
and to his private collection of archaeological objects and books, and, most
importantly, to the governmental enterprises of the 1850s, which were aimed
at the recovery of Spanish material culture: books, manuscripts, documents
and archaeological remains. This author also addresses Gayangos’s pioneer -
ing role as editor of historical travel literature and as a promoter of activities
closely linked to travel, such as tourism and sightseeing. Finally, Trusted’s
essay offers a view on Gayangos’s impact on one of Gayangos’s closest
disciples: the eminent Spanish scholar Juan Facundo Riaño (1829–1901),
who married Gayangos’s daughter Emilia. He was a friend of Henry Cole, the
first Director of South Kensington Museum, and he served as an adviser to
the museum during the 1870s, when he wrote reports from Madrid suggesting
Spanish works of art which the museum might acquire from Spain. The essay
will examine more closely some of these objects, purchased by the South
Kensington Museum on the basis of Riaño’s advice.
This collection of essays amalgamates Gayangos’s multiple identities,
which make him one of the most outstanding intellectuals of the nineteenth
century. Much new information that has emerged from European and North
American archives is here united for the first time. Yet this volume should
not be taken as an exhaustive study of Gayangos. We hope that the included
essays provide a stimulus to others for further research into nineteenth-
century Arabism and Hispanism.
Cristina Álvarez Millán Claudia Heide
Madrid, December 2007 Edinburgh, December 2007
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