11.

Magical Words: Arabic Amulets in

Christian Spain
Abigail Krasner Balbale

Abstract
In Islamic Spain, amulets incorporating the names of God or passages from the Quran
were widely used, inserted into cases that could be worn around the neck or built
into the walls of houses, and were seen as offering protection to their users. In the
years after the Christian conquest, Moriscos continued using such amulets even as
the Inquisition outlawed these practices. This chapter explores the apotropaic and
theurgic qualities of the Arabic word in early modern Spain through Morisco writings,
extant amulets and Inquisition records. This evidence reveals the magical potency of
the Arabic word not only for those who produced and used these amulets, but also for
those who prosecuted them. In early modern Spain, as in Islamic territories, Arabic
was imbued with other-worldly power.

Keywords: Moriscos; amulets; Spain; Inquisition; Arabic; magic

In 1578, Pedro Carçil was brought before the Inquisition of Valencia for possessing a
forbidden text.1 Pedro’s text, preserved by the impressive bureaucracy of the Inquisi-
tion, was a saffron-coloured single sheet of paper that measured 31 × 22.5 centimetres
and was written in Arabic. At the bottom, a witness noted, ‘I say that this is an amulet
(nómina) in which is written the names of angels and God and Muhammad and that
this is a Moorish object and the Moors have the custom of carrying them to protect
themselves’.2 In the decades that followed the royal decree outlawing Arabic in 1566,
many Moriscos, Muslim converts to Christianity or their descendants, were prose-
cuted for speaking, writing or possessing Arabic. For the inquisitors, Pedro’s Arabic
amulet indicated his loyalty to the religion of his ancestors.

1 Arxiu Històric de la Universitat de València, Varios, box 26/9, fol. 3, in Barceló and Labarta, Archivos
moriscos, 244–45. This document is undated but the editors date it as circa 1578.
2 Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos, 245. My translation from the Spanish.

Ivanič, S., Laven, M., and Morrall, A. (eds.), Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press 2019
doi: 10.5117/9789462984653_ch11
212  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Beyond indicating Pedro’s continuing adherence to Islam, this text illuminates the
rich syncretism of amuletic traditions from the ancient Near East to early modern
Europe. Punctuating Islamic pious phrases are names of angels derived from ancient
Hebrew practices as well as a Torah passage transliterated into Arabic. At the begin-
ning of the amulet’s text and at eight other points in the first half, the legible script is
interrupted by repetitive phrases written in Arabic without linguistic meaning; one
is followed by a series of magical symbols.
These elements of the text, which are mirrored in numerous other surviving amu-
lets as well as books of magic, reflect an amuletic tradition with roots in Hermetic and
Aristotelian thought that flourished within the monotheistic traditions born in the
Near East, and continued in Europe among Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.3 As
Don Skemer has shown, textual amulets were ‘a geographically widespread Western
ritual practice at the nexus of religion, magic, science and written culture’.4 Far too
often dismissed as peasant superstition, and presented as deeply at odds with official
religious doctrines, the use of textual amulets connected not only to ancient pagan
practices but also to the textual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths, to long-standing
astrological and alchemical practices and to premodern traditions of medicine. The
illegibility of many amulets, sometimes described as a reflection of Morisco illiter-
acy or as ‘pseudo-Kufic’, was an intentional attempt to evoke this long magical tra-
dition. Like other Arabic amulets, those produced in Christian Spain united Qura-
nic and pious phrases with powerful symbols and illegible scripts on paper or metal
that would be folded, encased and hidden against the body or within structures. The
potency of the scripts and symbols that activated these objects was only augmented
by their inaccessibility. Although Inquisitorial documents present Arabic amulets as
evidence of crypto-Islam, visually similar objects would later be deployed to invent a
new Arabic Christian past for Spain.5

Dangerous Arabic

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Inquisition saw the production or
use of amulets as heretical and potentially demonic, and prosecuted people carrying
amulets, even those containing Christian phrases. Just three centuries earlier, amu-
letic magic, translated from the Arabic and adapted for European use in the Iberian

3 Peters, ‘Hermes and Harran’.

4 Skemer, Binding Words, 5.
5 As my notes reveal, my work here is deeply indebted to the foundational research on Morisco amulets by
Ana Labarta and to the many studies of attitudes toward Arabic in the Morisco period by Mercedes García-
Arenal. In revisiting some of the questions so ably explored by these scholars, I hope to bring new focus to the
materiality of amulets and to questions of legibility.
AR ABIC AMULE TS IN CHRISTIAN SPAIN 213

peninsula, had been employed and celebrated by popes and kings.6 From the thir-
teenth century onward, many Christians throughout Europe wore textual amulets
punctuated with holy names of God, the names of angels and illegible scripts, like
the one belonging to Pedro Carçil. But in Spain in the late sixteenth century, such
amulets – especially those written in Arabic and with Islamic messages – were seen
as threatening the unity of the Spanish church and undermining the security of its
kingdoms.
The period examined here, from the first forced conversions of Spain’s Muslims
to Christianity in 1502 until the last phase of the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1614,
was one of rapid transformation and intense political tension. With the expulsion of
the Jews and the conquest of Granada in 1492, alongside the ‘discovery’ of the New
World, the Spanish monarchy came to see itself as divinely favoured protector of the
Catholic faith. New Protestant ideas (and kingdoms), alongside the growing menace
of Barbary corsairs and Ottoman naval power, posed both real and existential threats
to this favoured position. In the sixteenth century, the Inquisition, which had been
established in 1478, began rooting out the heretical beliefs that seemed to threaten
the orthodoxy of the church and the stability of the state. Protestants and Moriscos
were of particular concern, since propagandists suggested they could serve as poten-
tial fifth columns for Protestant or Muslim powers.
After 1526, when the use of Arabic was first banned, even possessing a scrap
of paper with Arabic script could result in criminal prosecution. In 1566, Philip II
reiterated this rule, outlawing the use of Arabic and demanding that all Granadan
Moriscos learn Castilian within three years. Punishments for using Arabic, whether
publicly or privately, in writing or in speech, ranged from a month in prison to whip-
pings and years of servitude. These laws led to significant backlash among Moriscos,
including the rebellion in the Alpujarras Mountains of Granada that resulted in a
bloody war from 1568 to 1570. Using Arabic, like fasting during Ramadan, seemed
to imply continued adherence to Islam. But Arabic amulets were seen as even more
dangerous, combining the danger of Islam with that of necromancy.
Why, then, would Moriscos like Pedro Carçil risk their lives to carry Arabic-lan-
guage amulets? Inquisition records are rife with prosecutions for crypto-Islam and
for the production or use of Arabic amulets (called nóminas or herçes, from the Ara-
bic ḥirz), and they often note how vigorously those who carried them fought to keep
them out of the hands of the authorities. One Leonis Benali, stopped by guards when
leaving Valencia and asked what he was carrying on his chest, ripped his amulet off
and attempted to throw it into a valley, but since the paper was light it fell close by.
He ran to the paper and tried to chew it up, but was stopped by the guards, who

6 Skemer, Binding Words, 132; Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, 0.8.
214  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

confiscated it.7 Others are recorded as reacting to the seizure of their amulets with
extreme emotion and tears.8
Arabic’s perceived spiritual and political danger for the Spanish state only
increased its power for Moriscos. Even those Moriscos from territories long under
Christian rule who no longer spoke Arabic continued to use its script to write
Romance. Arabic came to have a near talismanic power for the Moriscos as a marker
of identity.9 Arabic could be a means of resisting the hegemony of the state and the
church, or of accessing the supernatural, even without understanding it. The focus
on Arabic by the Inquisition and the monarchy may have made its use more appeal-
ing for Moriscos, since it emphasized the centrality of the language to Islam.10
And yet, as we will see, for Moriscos, Arabic was not only an Islamic language, and
for powerful ‘old Christians’, Arabic was not simply dangerous.11 The inherently polar-
ized records of the Inquisition elide the diversity of meanings and uses both old and
new Christians attached to Arabic. For all the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula,
particularly those who lived in cities populated with demographic, architectural and
material reminders of an Arabo-Islamic past, Arabic evoked a complex web of mean-
ings, ranging from luxury, mystery and magic to antiquity, holiness and danger. The
struggle to make sense of the Islamic past and its role in the history of Spain played
out in attitudes toward Arabic amulets and those who carried them.

Magical Arabic

A good Muslim never should go out without amulets, because the person who goes
without them is like a house that cannot be locked because it has no door. In a
house that does not have a door, all those who want may enter. In a person who
goes without amulets, devils may enter from all parts.12

The ubiquity of Inquisition records regarding Moriscos and magic have led to an
emphasis on Morisco ‘superstition’ in modern historiography.13 Julio Caro Baroja,

7 AHN Inquisición, leg. 549/8, discussed in Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 120.

8 Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 120; García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y los libros’, 71.
9 García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y libros’, 70–71.
10 Writing about how Inquisitorial interrogations and anti-Jewish and -Muslim polemics gained importance
for communities deprived of their religious elite, García-Arenal notes: ‘They were, in fact, virtually the only
sources left that could teach them how to be a Jew or a Muslim.’ ‘Religious Dissent’, 905.
11 Bernabé Pons, ‘Por la lengua se conoce la nación’; García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente
español.
12 Written by an Aragonese Morisco, cited in Ribera, ‘Supersticiones moriscas’, 524.
13 In recent decades, scholars including Ana Labarta and Mercedes García-Arenal have emphasized that
this focus on Morisco ‘superstition’ reflects the fixation of Inquisitorial sources, and that magical practices
were quite common in the contemporary Islamic world.
AR ABIC AMULE TS IN CHRISTIAN SPAIN 215

the pioneering social historian and anthropologist, emphasized that although ‘old’
Christians also believed in magic, for Moriscos, ‘there is scarcely an act of life that is
not guaranteed by the use of a Morisco amulet’.14 Caro Baroja and others have seen
Morisco magic as a sign of their unorthodoxy, differentiating them not only from
their old Christian neighbours but also from standard Islamic belief and praxis. Yet,
recent scholarly interest in Islamic talismans and amulets shows a vibrant tradition
that survived across centuries and a vast geography, often incorporating pre-Islamic
elements alongside the more accepted Quranic magic.15
In the Islamic world, writing pious phrases in Arabic, especially passages from the
Quran, materialized the power of God and was central to many aspects of religious
life.16 When written on objects hung in the house or on the body, or consumed as med-
icine, commentators argued that the words of the Quran, thought to be direct from
God, could protect and cure the believer.17 The hadīth literature, the compiled sayings
and practices of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, included many pre-
scriptions for how to use particular Quranic verses (often in physical form) to solve
problems and diseases.18 The words’ (originally oral) power is translated through the
medium of writing into a physical state, capable of protecting or curing the wearer
or consumer. Although some later commentators dismissed amulets as irreligious
superstition, their usage has been widespread and continues to the present day.
Like the textual talismans and amulets produced in the rest of the Islamic world,
those made by Muslims in Spain frequently contained specific powerful verses from
the Quran, including the Throne Verse and Surah 112. They also included duas or sup-
plications and some or all of the ninety-nine Arabic names of God, or divine names
borrowed from the Hebrew tradition, as well as Arabic and Hebrew names of angels.
Islamic amulets also frequently incorporated illegible Arabic text, most commonly
made by marking ligatures between letters that would not normally be connected,
various kinds of mirror writing, or codes made from shifting the alphabet, replacing
letters with numbers, or adding small circles (known in the literature as ‘lunettes’ or

14 My translation. Baroja, Ciclos y temas, 127.

15 In addition to the foundational works on Islamic magic by Emilie Savage-Smith, as well as the excellent
new overview by Venetia Porter et al., see recent exhibits at the Ashmolean, ‘Power and Protection: Islamic Art
and the Supernatural’ (20 October 2016–15 January 2017, and the catalogue, Leoni, ed., Power and Protection),
and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Power and Piety: Islamic Talismans on the Battlefield’ (29 August
2016–13 February 2017, and the catalogue, Maryam Ekhtiar and Rachel Parikh, Power and Piety, www.
metmuseum.org/exhibitions/objects?exhibitionId=7b94fb3d-e0c8-46c0-9362-993a77a83e01&pkgids=370;
accessed 5 February 2019).
16 Sorcery and witchcraft are condemned in the Quran (i.e. 2:102), but ‘white magic’ based on the power
of the word of God or pious phrases had a central place in early Islam. Quranic amulets served a largely
protective function. See the introduction to Savage-Smith, ed., Magic and Divination, xvii.
17 This association between amuletic symbols, sacred names and medical efficacy seems also to be the case
in the use of amulets among Jews and Conversos in the Iberian peninsula. Gutwirth, ‘Cuenca Amulet’, 458.
18 Hadith allowing talismanic practices include Saḥīḥ Muslim 26:5448; Saḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 54:490, 71:635,
71:636; Sunan Abū Dawūd 1:36.
216  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

‘crowns’) onto letters or numbers.19 Alongside these various kinds of text, amulets
could contain images, especially of stars (like the seal of Solomon) or hands (the
hand of David or of Fatima), or magical symbols. This ‘magical vocabulary’, which
had been adapted from ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman magical practices,
coalesced in Islamic lands around the twelfth–thirteenth centuries and was widely
disseminated with the rise of block printing.20
Focusing on the textual amulets of the Moriscos offers several challenges. First,
Morisco writings about amulets may not accurately reflect practice. Emilie Sav-
age-Smith has shown that although many Islamic texts about magic discuss appeal-
ing to jinn or other powers, most surviving amulets and talismans use only Quranic
phrases and appeal only to God.21 Like many other books of magic, the Libro de dichos
maravillosos includes amulets of the kind recommended in the hadīth, alongside
other, more ancient forms that may or may not have been practised. The book, edit-
ed and translated masterfully by Ana Labarta, is a compilation of many earlier texts,
which also suggests that its function may have been to preserve an Andalusi Arabic
tradition of magic rather than offer instruction.22
Second, although Inquisition records frequently mention Arabic-language amu-
lets, they offer little detail. Ana Labarta and Carmen Barceló have catalogued Moris-
co manuscripts in many archives through Spain, including the texts of amulets that
the Inquisition preserved, and these offer rich insights into the words and symbols
that held significance for Moriscos.23 Although sometimes Inquisition records note
how the accused carried or used the amulet, they offer little information about the
production and circulation of these objects, or their meaning to their owner. We can
also assume that the attitudes of the accused might have been presented differently
outside an Inquisitorial trial, where many plead innocence, arguing that they had
inherited amulets from relatives or found them, and that they could not read their
words.
Third, the surviving talismans, paper amulets and amulet cases in museum and
private collections in Spain are challenging to date, and their lack of provenance
information makes determining whether they are from the Morisco period very dif-
ficult. Sebastián Gaspariño, who has catalogued amulets and talismans from collec-
tions around Spain and created a website with images and information about each
object, dates most of them according to their epigraphy.24 This standard approach

19 Lunettes served to make Arabic letters into a cryptographic alphabet, probably originally derived from
Jewish mystical alphabets. See Canaan, ‘Decipherment of Arabic Talismans’, 167; Porter et al., ‘Medieval
Islamic Amulets, Talismans and Magic’, 524, 538.
20 Porter et al., ‘Medieval Islamic Amulets, Talismans and Magic’, 535.
21 Savage-Smith, ‘Islamic Magical Texts vs. Magical Artefacts’.
22 See the introduction to Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, for discussion of the book’s
form and its predecessors.
23 Barceló and Labarta, Archivos moriscos; Labarta, ‘Inventario’.
24 Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, www.amuletosdealandalus.com(accessed 5 February 2019).
AR ABIC AMULE TS IN CHRISTIAN SPAIN 217

to dating objects with Arabic inscriptions may be less useful when approaching
amulets, however, since amulets were frequently written in a deliberately archaic
form.25 Thus objects with highly angular Kufic inscriptions without diacritical or
vowel marks, appearing to be ninth or tenth century, could easily be sixteenth cen-
tury instead. But given the continuities in amuletic practices between the eastern
and western Islamic world, and across centuries, it is likely that similar objects were
produced centuries or continents apart from each other. Whether or not the objects
discussed below were produced in the sixteenth century, evidence from Inquisition
trials and from the Libro de dichos maravillosos indicates that similar amulets were
circulating during the period considered here.

Amulets in Morisco Writing: The Libro de dichos maravillosos

The instructions for creating magical spells or objects included in the Libro de dichos
maravillosos combine textual amulets that follow Islamic tradition with Solomon-
ic and planetary magic, rooted in the practices of the ancient Near East. A chapter
that promises to revive love between a husband and wife details how a practitioner
should use illegible, Arabic-like symbols written in the blood of a raven to make
an amulet that would be placed under the threshold of their house (Fig. 11.1). The
instructions combine ancient rituals of animal sacrifice with forms based upon the
Arabic script.26 The text reads as follows:

You shall take a raven, and slay it, so that they may love one another; And you shall
take its blood, and you shall write this writing. And you shall take its heart, and dry
it, and crumble it, and you shall give it in a drink to the woman and her husband;
because it is that whoever drinks of it, it will bring to them the deadening of how-
ever much love they have for another. And this writing, write it with the blood of
the raven, and hide it under the threshold of the door where they live, and then
they shall reconcile to each other, and this is the writing, as you see […]27

The writing that follows the instructions includes magic squares with single Arabic
letters or combinations of letters, which may refer to the holy names of God. It also
includes illegible letters with lunettes, which archaicized the Arabic script even fur-
ther, creating symbols that evoked ancient alphabets.

25 On the debate over using script to date amulets, and on the use of archaic scripts, see Schaefer, Enigmatic
Charms, 41–51. As he notes, the discovery of a fifteenth-century watermark on an amulet preserved at the
Gutenberg Museum at Mainz has disproven dates set by the style of the script (44–45).
26 Using animal parts or blood was common in ancient and medieval magic, especially amulets written in
blood: Skemer, Binding Words, 130–31.
27 My translation from Labarta’s transcription, Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, 131,
original: 361v–362r.
218  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Fig. 11.1. Libro de dichos maravillosos, fols. 361v–362r, fifteenth to sixteenth century, Consejo Superior de Investi-
gaciones Científica, Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, Madrid (Fondo Antiguo TN RESC/22) © Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científica (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales), Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás

Elsewhere in the Libro are other amulets with the same goal that omit the ani-
mal-sacrifice elements. On folios 221v–222r, the Libro instructs the maker to write a
specific series of disconnected Arabic letters and illegible Arabic phrases, followed
by legible inscriptions invoking angels and quoting from the Quran on a clean textile
and bring it to the wife.28 The legible inscription is addressed to God, and asks him
to bring peace between the husband and wife equal to the love that reconciled the
angels Gabriel and Michael under his throne, and quotes from Quran 8:63, which
describes God as the power that brings hearts together. In both chapters, the key to
bringing love between a man and his wife is the ritualized creation of an amuletic
object covered with writing and its placement within their home or on their bodies,
underlining the centrality of the script in invoking supernatural powers.

Extant Amulets

A small rectangular lead case, imprinted with the Arabic word al-taqwa or piety on
one side and al-mulk, or power, on the other, and the scrap of paper it once contained

28 Labarta, ed. and trans., Libro de dichos maravillosos, 81.

AR ABIC AMULE TS IN CHRISTIAN SPAIN 219

Fig. 11.2. Amulet case with two loops for hanging. Moulded lead, thirteenth century or later, Tonegawa
Collection, Madrid; Sebastián Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, 2010 (TP1-1) © Tonegawa Collection

are preserved in Madrid’s Tonegawa collection (Figs. 11.2 and 11.3).29 These two inscrip-
tions balance God-consciousness (taqwa) with power (mulk), the term that a Moris-
co book of magic used to describe the supernatural power of Solomon’s signet ring.30
At the top of the case are two rings, presumably used to hang the object from a string
so it could be worn around the neck or sewn onto clothing. The scrap of paper con-
tained within it, now fragmentary, includes nine lines of Kufic text in black without
diacritical marks or vowels. Although the script seems archaic, suggesting that the
amulet might be quite old, its materials and means of production indicate it dates
from sometime after the mid-thirteenth century. It is made of cotton-based paper,
which began being made in Játiva, in the province of Valencia, sometime before the
mid-twelfth century.31 And though, at first glance, the object looks handwritten, a
closer examination suggests it was produced via block printing, a technology that
likely came to al-Andalus in the thirteenth century and flourished for several sub-
sequent centuries.32 All of the lines are extremely regular in length, beginning and

29 This object (TP1-1) is described by Sebastián Gaspariño on his website, Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-
Andalus’,www.amuletosdealandalus.com/TP1-1.html (accessed 5 February 2019). I follow his reading of the
inscriptions on the front and back of the case, but disagree with his assessment of this object’s epigraphy as
indicating a tenth-century date.
30 Albarracín Navarro, ‘Índice del manuscrito “Misceláneo de Salomón”‘, 369.
31 Al-Idrisi, Description, 37.
32 See Hammer-Pugstall, ‘Sur un passage curieux de l’Ithatet’, 252–55; Schaefer, Enigmatic Charms, 26–27.
220  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Fig. 11.3. Fragment of paper amulet. Block-printed on cotton-based paper, thirteenth century or later, Tonegawa
Collection, Madrid; Sebastián Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’, 2010 (TP1-1) © Tonegawa Collection

ending at precisely the same point, and the vertical strokes that mark the beginning
and the end of the lines indicate the edges of the block used to print the inscription.
Similar regularity in line length can be seen on block-printed amulets from other
parts of the Islamic world, including one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pro-
duced in Egypt and attributed to the eleventh century (1978.546.32). Like the Met-
ropolitan talismanic scroll, the right edge of the Tonegawa amulet’s inscription is
darker and slightly smudged, suggesting the uneven application of ink to a block. The
other three amulets incorporating paper that are catalogued by Sebastián Gaspariño
share the same characteristics and also seem to have been block printed.33 Like other
printed amulets from the Mediterranean world, these examples are small in scale
and were folded many times to fit into small lead cases.
The text of the paper amulet is difficult to decipher, with indistinct letters and in
the absence of diacritical marks. Gaspariño has translated a few lines as statements
of worship (‘I worship Him, from within and without […]’), but it is unclear whether
this amulet included Quranic passages or just pious phrases. Its scale and production
by printing make its decipherment more challenging, and its placement within the
lead case, via a small opening on the left-hand side, would have made it even harder

33 Gaspariño, ‘Amuletos de al-Andalus’; the amulets with paper that has been removed are TP1-2, TP1-3, and
P34.
AR ABIC AMULE TS IN CHRISTIAN SPAIN 221

for its owner to read. Christiane Gruber has described how similar amulets’ inacces-
sibility within tiny cases impedes their legibility, even as they objectify an ‘otherwise
amorphous divine energy’.34 Perhaps these tiny amulets were not meant to be read
by their owners – once placed into its lead container, an amulet could have remained
there undisturbed across decades of use, generating spiritual power without needing
to be read. Other amulets catalogued by Gaspariño contain paper that has not been
removed, like the tiny book with lead covers (Tonegawa TV1-3–10), which would have
been impossible to open without bending the metal. The impressive state of pres-
ervation of some similar paper amulets contained within lead boxes, like the one
in the collection of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto (AKM 508; Plate 11.1), implies
they were rarely removed from the case. Gruber suggests that these mass-produced
amulets would have been used by those who were too poor to afford a custom-made
handwritten amulet or not literate enough to care.35
The question of literacy appears frequently in Inquisition cases regarding amu-
lets. Pedro Alamin, a Morisco sentenced by the Inquisition of Valencia in 1586 for
carrying an amulet in Arabic, claimed he had found it on the road and could not read
it, because he was illiterate.36 The amulet itself, preserved by the Inquisition, is made
up of Quranic fragments as well as a line of six pointed stars and illegible letters with
lunettes and without spaces. Pedro Crespi, another Morisco tried by the Inquisition
of Valencia for carrying an Arabic amulet, claimed to be nearly blind and illiterate.37
Like that of Alamin, Crespi’s amulet combined the legible and illegible, with Qura-
nic fragments, a magic square filled with Arabic letters and the use of lunettes and
‘joined letters’, or long series of Arabic letters linked continuously and without dia-
critical marks.38 Even if their owners had been literate, these two amulets would have
been difficult to decipher.
For Alamin and Crespi, claiming to be illiterate proved a feeble defence in front of
the Inquisition. Possession of papers or books in Arabic was an offence against the
state and the church, and usually led to torture, lashing and imprisonment. Many of
those charged by the Inquisition with owning such papers were illiterate. Labarta has
examined 170 Inquisition cases against Moriscos in Valencia and calculated that 72
per cent of those charged were illiterate, and she suggests the actual rate of illiteracy
in the broader population would have been even higher.39 But she notes that it was

34 Gruber, ‘From Prayer to Protection’, 42–43.

35 Ibid., 43.
36 AHN Inquisición, 15 October 1584, 23 March 1586, leg. 548#1, exp. 8, cited in Haliczer, Inquisition and
Society, 251; the amulet is discussed in Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 133.
37 AHN Inquisición, 10 January 1583, leg. 550#2, exp. 18, discussed in Haliczer, Inquisition and Society, 400,
n. 40.
38 Labarta, ‘Inventario’, 134. On ‘joined letters’, see 134, n. 129.
39 Ibid., 115, n. 1.
222  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

precisely these illiterate Moriscos who fought to preserve Arabic-language texts with
the most eagerness, even though they faced severe punishments for doing so.40
Amulets were valued not for the words they communicated but the power ascribed
to their form.41 Illegibility suggested connections to ancient and esoteric practices,
and objects designed to keep the script inaccessible highlighted the secret potency
enclosed within. An amulet in a private collection highlights this combination of
illegibility and inaccessibility.42 It is a thin lead sheet, measuring 5.95 × 4.911 centime-
tres, that was folded into a square (Plate 11.2). As Tawfiq Ibrahim observed regarding
other folded lead amulets, this may once have contained a slip of paper with inscrip-
tions, but in this case, the interior of the lead itself has been inscribed with illegible
Arabic letters with lunettes and other symbols.43 As an amulet, this object was likely
conserved in its folded state, given the challenge of unfolding and refolding lead,
and might only have been opened in the modern period. The symbols, as Gaspar-
iño has noted, bear a striking resemblance to the instructions contained in the Libro
de dichos maravillosos, as well as extant Morisco amulets preserved in Inquisition
records. Here, though, the letters with lunettes and magical symbols are arranged
around the interior of a folded lead object, and are not accompanied by any legible
script. Even open, it would have been impossible to decipher by all except the adept.
Like many other mystical languages, this one served to augment the power of the
maker by casting his or her knowledge in mystery. And yet, when folded, the forms
of this strange language would have been invisible to all, including the wearer, whose
faith in the object did not require its decipherment. Today, unfolded and illegible,
this object is nothing but ‘the “technology” of spent magic’, in Michael Dols’ memo-
rable phrasing, stripped of any encoded signification.44

Holy Arabic: Magic, Monotheism and the Struggle over Christianity

in Spain

Objects are remarkably consistent and resilient in signification as well as remark-

ably labile, multivalent and adaptive. In their apotropaic and theurgic qualities,
they pass easily between cultures, often retaining similar power and meaning even
when situated in very different theologies or ideologies.45

40 Ibid., 115.
41 García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y los libros’, 71.
42 http://www.amuletosdealandalus.com/S78.html (accessed 5 February 2019).
43 Ibrahim, ‘Evidencia de precintos y amuletos en al-Andalus’, 709.
44 Dols, ‘Theory of Magic in Healing’, 88.
45 Bynum, Christian Materiality, 274
AR ABIC AMULE TS IN CHRISTIAN SPAIN 223

The amulets, texts and Inquisition records discussed above reflect a vision of Moris-
co life in which all ‘New Christians’ were in fact crypto-Muslims, who used Arabic
to reinforce and maintain their Muslim identity. But, as many scholars have empha-
sized in recent years, Moriscos’ identities were as complex and diverse as those of any
other community. Inquisition records provide a skewed vision, since they present a
unified Catholic orthodoxy that was in fact rather illusory, and since the Moriscos
portrayed in them are specifically the ‘Muslim’ ones (or at least the ones the Inqui-
sition sought to prove were crypto-Muslims).46 Other kinds of records show what
appear to be sincere conversions and Moriscos who successfully assimilated to their
host societies, including those who managed to remain (or return) after the expul-
sion.47 Objects, too, offer possible approaches to understanding the diversity of the
Morisco population, and the different roles Arabic could play in early modern Spain.
In 1588, in the aftermath of the War of the Alpujarras in Granada, workers demol-
ishing the old minaret of the former mosque of Granada discovered a box with a
bone, a handkerchief and a mysterious parchment inside. The parchment measured
63.5 × 49 centimetres and was covered with a complex mix of Arabic, Latin and
Greek letters.48 Many of these characters, written in brown or red ink, were arranged
in grids that mirrored the form of amuletic magic squares. When scholars deciphered
the text, they found it to be the narrative of Saint Caecilius, who according to Spanish
legend was one of the seven ‘Apostolic men’ who brought the message of Christianity
to the Iberian peninsula. He was said to have been the first bishop of Granada, mar-
tyred by the Roman emperor Nero. In the parchment, Caecilius said he came from
Jerusalem to Spain, via Athens, where he had translated a prophecy from John the
Evangelist from Hebrew via Greek into Arabic and Spanish. The Spanish version of
this prophecy was what was contained in one square grid, when each letter was read
according to its colour in the correct order. Like magic squares in the amuletic tradi-
tion, the grid of letters contained in this parchment was an encoded message with
divine power – in this case, foretelling the rise of Islam and of Protestantism, their
defeat, and then the end of times.49
The Arabic text contained in the parchment is, according to the only modern
scholars who have been able to access and closely study it, defined by its ‘fancy and
hybrid’ elements, including the lack of diacritical marks or vowels, the use of unnec-
essary ligatures between letters (i.e. joined letters, as seen in amulets above) and

46 Márquez Villanueva has noted this in his work El problema morisco; on the problem of Inquisitorial
sources for studying Marranos or Moriscos, García-Arenal, ‘Religious Dissent’, 903–9.
47 See, for example, the community studied by Trevor J. Dadson, in Los moriscos de Villarrubia de los Ojos.
48 García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español, 13–17.
49 Modern scholars have disagreed about whether the translations of this prophecy reflect the church’s
influence upon the translators or the reality of the text, but the recent examination of the parchment by Van
Koningsveld and Wiegers seems to definitively confirm the text’s Catholic message; see Van Koningsveld and
Wiegers, ‘Parchment of the “Torre Turpiana”’; also García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español,
17–19, 139–48.
224  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

letter forms reminiscent of Greek or Syriac script.50 As Van Koningsveld and Wiegers
write, this reflects a conscious process of ‘mystification’, emulating ‘ancient’ texts,
and results, in the case of the Arabic text, ‘in a totally incomprehensible and meaning-
less text, notwithstanding the fact that a few words might be “deciphered”, with the
help of great ingenuity’.51
Although the Arabic is at best very difficult to decipher, the early scholars of the
text produced translations that parallel the Spanish text of John the Evangelist’s
prophecy.52 These Morisco translators, Miguel de Luna and Alonso de Castillo, seem
to have collaborated with each other even though they were instructed to work in iso-
lation. Recently, scholars have suggested that these two figures may have been both
the translators and fabricators of this parchment and the lead ‘books’ that would be
excavated from the caves outside of Granada in the years that followed.53 If this is
the case, these two men used a purposefully archaic and mystifying text to invent an
Arabic Christian past for their city, Granada, and imagine a new central role for the
Arabic language in Christian Spain.
Much has been written about this ‘Turpiana’ parchment, the Lead Books of Sac-
romonte and the process of Christianizing the history of Granada, and the details of
these fascinating events and their aftermath lie beyond the scope of this chapter.54
For our purposes, what is most intriguing is the form, iconography and epigraphy of
these objects, and their relation to the amuletic tradition. The parchment simultane-
ously sent a message to the church and monarchy that Arabic belonged in Spain, and
to the Moriscos that early and illustrious Christians spoke the same languages that
they did. Alongside the Lead Books, which purported to be a lost Gospel dictated by
the Virgin Mary in Arabic, written in a script that was described by contemporaries as
‘Solomonic’, the parchment’s ‘mystifying’ language offered newly Christian Granada
an ancient and powerful history. The Arabic of the parchment linked Spain to the
Near East, and the message of the prophecy promised the dawn of the kingdom of
heaven.
The concept of ‘Solomonic’ Arabic, a language that was ancient and Near Eastern
and as yet unpolluted by Islam, attempted to neutralize the freighted cultural weight
of the language that was simultaneously being criminalized by the Inquisition and
the monarchy. Like the magical tradition whose form the parchment emulated, its
message claimed to have traversed the Mediterranean via Jerusalem and Athens. It
posited Arabic and Spanish as ancient Christian languages on a par with Hebrew

50 Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, ‘Parchment of the “Torre Turpiana”’, 329.

51 Ibid., 329–30.
52 See discussion of the early translations in Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, and of the individuals involved
in García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano, Un Oriente español.
53 See discussion throughout García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano.
54 See the fascinating body of scholarship by García-Arenal, Rodríguez Mediano, Bernabé Pons, and Van
Koningsveld and Wiegers, among others, only a fraction of which is cited here.
AR ABIC AMULE TS IN CHRISTIAN SPAIN 225

and Greek, and Granada as the centre of Spain’s Christianization. As Mercedes

García-Arenal has noted, the number of stakeholders who appreciated this message
led these improbable objects to be accepted as authentic for nearly a century.55
As we have seen, the figure of Solomon played an important role in bringing
ancient magic into a monotheistic framework. Now, as Spain’s monarchs and prelates
sought to craft a new Christian identity for their nation, they accepted as authentic
relics and texts in ‘Solomonic’ Arabic, hidden in the walls and caves of Granada, like
ancient amulets or jars of jinn. The visual and material language of these objects
echoed the forms of Arabic language amulets in the peculiarity of their script and
their use of magic squares and symbols. These holy Christian objects therefore con-
nected to the magical, religious, astrological and scientific traditions that informed
the language and design of amulets in Spain and beyond. Critics, like Benito Arias
Montana, who examined the manuscript in 1593 and deemed it to be a falsification,
recognized this relationship and wrote that the text’s enigmatic style resembled
‘alchemist’s recipes and those of some Paracelsist empiricists, who, with little sci-
ence, bewilder those who try to understand their mysteries’.56 To Arias Montana, the
Turpiana parchment belonged among the medical recipes, spells and talismans of
charlatans, rather than among the relics of the church. Van Koningsveld and Wiegers,
after their close examination of the manuscript, concur that the original context of
its production was one of ‘magic, esoteric learning and popular prophecy’.57 Another
contemporary critic of the Lead Books, Marcos Dobelio, noted that a cache of Moris-
co books discovered at Pastrana in 1631 included books of ‘necromancy, spells and
superstitions’ with seals and signs that mirrored those of the Lead Books.58
And yet, this magical and mystical form differs in important ways from the amu-
lets described above. While amulets were designed to hold illegible, often inacces-
sible texts against the skin or within clothes, the Turpiana parchment and the Lead
Books – although initially hidden – were intended to be discovered and deciphered.
The differences in the physical form of these objects from amulets suit their distinct
function: destined for veneration by the masses in a church context, they were much
larger in scale, and in the case of the Lead Books, included multiple ‘chapters’ con-
taining religious narratives. Their language and form nevertheless echoed the mys-
terious power of the texts encased in lead and worn against the flesh that brought
Moriscos before the Inquisition. If Miguel de Luna and Alonso de Castillo were the
creators of these objects as well as their translators, they positioned themselves as the
adepts, uniquely able to read the magical languages that vindicated Arabic-speaking
Christians as central to the history of Spain.

55 García-Arenal, ‘Religious Identity of the Arabic Language’, 497.

56 My translation from the Spanish, cited in Van Koningsveld and Wiegers, ‘Parchment of the “Torre
Turpiana”’, 347–48.
57 Ibid., 350.
58 García-Arenal, ‘La Inquisición y los libros’, 61–62.
226  RELIGIOUS MATERIALIT Y IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

For close to a century, until 1682, when the Vatican rejected these objects as
forgeries, the Spanish church and monarchy accepted the role of Arabic speakers
in Christianizing the peninsula and venerated objects inscribed with archaic Ara-
bic and magic symbols. This had long-lasting implications for the study of Arabic,
the ‘Orient’ and the history of al-Andalus in Spain, as García-Arenal and Rodríguez
Mediano have shown.59 Arabic was seen as a Christian, Spanish language, even as the
descendants of Muslim converts to Christianity were expelled from the peninsula
between 1609 and 1614. What the Turpiana parchment and the Lead Books represent
is an attempt to domesticate the mystical Arabic forms of Islamic amulets, and to
use their power to fabricate a Christian past for the most Islamic of Spanish cities.
They exploit the web of associations Arabic carried in early modern Spain, weaving
between heresy and holiness, foreign and familiar, to create a new history with room
for old and new Christians alike.

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About the Author

Abigail Krasner Balbale is Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
at New York University. Her research focuses on the intersection of political power,
religious ideology and visual and material culture in the Islamic world. She is cur-
rently working on a monograph about political legitimation and cultural production
in late medieval al-Andalus.