I’ve been merrily dilettanting away recently with a couple of literary robberies and forgeries, so it’s good to see that Zazie over at cocanha found a really great one. What he has are extracts from a book published in 1842 in Porto, Portugal under the promising title, Cartas d’el Rei Don Fernando, O Catholico, a…
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…
I’ve cycled south from Albacete via Yeste twice. On both occasions it would have been really nice to have had a direct road or track from Parolis / Parolix to Los Arroyos, but there just isn’t one, whatever all the maps say. The road from Miller up to the sierra does exist, but those extra…
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,…
This bit from James Richardson, Travels in Morocco (1860) sounds like the many Spanish myths of troves (often guarded by dragons) left behind by the outscored hordes: The inhabitants of Barbary all bury their money. The secret is confided to a single person, who often is taken ill, and dies before he can discover the…
Amando de Miguel says that Zapatero is Spain’s worst ever ruler, with the possible exception of Fernando VII, Witiza and someone else. Wittiza was very naughty and nasty indeed–he “taught all Spain to sin“–and, to crown it all, he invited the Moors into Spain to help him fight Wodewic. Maybe there’s a Visigoth somewhere who’d…
I know much more about Maghrebis and Africans in colonial Spain than in the period up to 1936 and I’d like to correct that. Any books or articles out there? I’d be most grateful if you’d talk to me here.
From John Drummond Hay, Morocco and the Moors: Western Barbary, Its Wild Tribes and Savage Animals (1861): There are descendants of the Moorish families of Granada now residing in Tetuan and Fas [Fez], who still preserve the keys, and it is said also the title-deeds, of the houses of their Mauro-Spanish ancestors, in the hope…
If QEI didn’t like Catholics, then in harsher economic times she wasn’t too keen either on black people, many of whom also came from Spain, with, for example, Catherine of Aragon. Here‘s her deportation order. It’s not clear where they ended up. The site is interesting and includes the usual conjectures about the origins of…