The story of the Moroccans with keys to houses in Granada is well known. La Cruz, The Cross, a Catholic periodical carried what sounds like a variant of this in 1854, claiming that Prussian Jews were about to petition the Spanish court to abolish the 1492 expulsion decree. Léon Carbonero y Sol wrote: In truth…
Translator Carlos Ferrero quotes bit of a piece called Aprender a ser libre (Learning to be free) by Jorge Edwards, whose work had the singular distinction of being banned by both the Castro and Pinochet dictatorships: I recall a Venezuelan poet of Arab origins who was contracting as a translator in North Korea. The documents…
No, not Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi. I’m talking about Noble Drew Ali, prophet of possibly “the only religion ever to be founded in Newark, NJ”, Moorish Science. Although his early career as a magician in a gypsy troupe took him to Egypt and conversations with a high priest, I don’t think he ever went to Morocco,…
A few from Jonathan Faydi, who lives in one of my favourite towns. Dunkerk is Dutch for Dunechurch; Jesuit traitor Henry Garnet and other Gunpowder Plot conspirators awaited news of Guy Fawkes in an English one (usually spelled Dunchurch), evidently unaware of the danger of shifting sands.
The otherwise excellent Margaret Marks has ruined a peaceful Saturday afternoon by pointing out that St Columba was, apart from the first person to meet the Loch Ness monster, also on the wrong side of the first copyright case–or so says the Catholic Herald. Columcille copied a Jeromian psalter belonging to Finnian, King Diarmit made…
‘Jones is convinced, for example, that Jesus was wandering through ancient Mexico around AD 600, paying calls on various Mayan villagers. He has published “evidence” that the Mayans were well aware of the “resurrected Lord” centuries before the Spanish priests crossed the Atlantic and gave them the Good News.’
Carlos Ferrera notes the bizarre preoccupations of Galician nationalist and regional deputy, Bieito Lobeira: If some catastrophe were to occur today that would lead to the partial or total eradication of human life from the part of the planet which it is our fortune to occupy, with all probability future archaelogical studies of funerary remains…