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Islamic Confraternities and Funerary Practices: Hallmarks of Mudejar Identity in the Iberian Peninsula? Ana Echevarria Published online: 20 Nov 2013.

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Al-Masa¯q, 2013 Vol. 25, No. 3, 345–368, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.845519

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Islamic Confraternities and Funerary Practices: Hallmarks of Mudejar Identity in the Iberian Peninsula?

ANA ECHEVARRIA

Burial rites of religious minorities in the Iberian Peninsula were dominated by strong issues of identity. Agreements and legislation permitted Jews and Muslims to have separate cemeteries, where they enjoyed absolute freedom of ritual and practice, and therefore in this framework religious ideology could be fostered, as well as the sense of belonging to a select, religiously defined group. Methodologically, this article aims at a new approach by using the archaeological information provided by the expeditions at the Mudejar cemetery in Avila and contrasting them with contemporary accounts. Mudejar burial rites were recorded during the meetings of a confraternity in Toledo (active c. 1400–1420). This description is compared with the theoretical fiqh treatises used at the time: the Aljamiado and Arabic manuscripts of Ibn al-Jalla¯b al-Basrı¯’s Kita¯b al˙ Tafrı¯ʿ (tenth century), the Risa¯la fı¯ l-fiqh, by Ibn Abı¯ Zayd al-Qayrawa¯nı¯ (d. 996), and the Sunni Breviary, compiled by Yça Jabῑr, mufti of Segovia (fifteenth century). ABSTRACT

Keywords: Islam; Iberia; Castile – Mudejars; Mudejars – burials; Burials – in Iberia; Cemeteries – in Iberia; Aljamiado literature Introduction Religious practices of minority groups such as Muslims and Jews living under Christian rule in Europe have often been approached as unchanged from their origins in the Islamic and Jewish traditions. Otherwise, they have been conceptualised as deviations from former “canonical” practices, normally in the context of corrupted Inquisitorial renderings attributed to Jewish converts and Moriscos, whose points of reference had long been forgotten in many cases, or which were “translated” by biased scribes. This article examines the case of the Iberian kingdom of Castile, where Muslims had been living under royal protection between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, with a special status that granted them the right to practise their faith and retain their places of worship – including mosques and cemeteries – and their rituals, as contexts for religious interaction. Despite these advantages, it is obvious that religious observance did suffer from the new situation, and that Christian ecclesiastical and lay authorities strove to control all public displays of Islamic

Correspondence: Ana Echevarria, Depto. de Historia Medieval, Moderna y Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, UNED, Aptdo. de Correos 60147, 28080 Madrid, Spain. Email: [email protected] © 2013 Society for the Medieval Mediterranean


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religious practice.1 In this context, the tension between normative ideal and actual practices had to be resolved in several aspects, not just those related to the transmission of Ma¯liki jurisprudence in al-Andalus and its adaptation to local use, but also with respect to the limitations imposed by Christians on the public performance of Islamic rituals. However, this article will not focus on confrontations between Muslims and Christians, but rather seeks an intra-religious perspective: an analysis of the evolution of Islamic rites in hostile conditions. The sources available for this endeavour have expanded in recent years due to discoveries in various fields. The extensive excavation of the remains of the Mudejar cemetery on the banks of the River Adaja in Avila, home to an important Muslim community from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, has provided a wealth of funerary slabs (around three hundred), and the remains of more than 3000 Muslims. This evidence can be contrasted with contemporary literary accounts. The collection of Pascual de Ganyangos, a well-known nineteenth-century orientalist and member of the Real Academia de la Historia, housed a unique testimony to practical discussion of the performance of Islamic rituals in Castile, namely the proceedings of the meetings of the ja¯miʿ al-Wadῑʿa confraternity in Toledo (active c. 1400–1420).2 Finally, a number of theoretical fiqh treatises were used by Mudejars during the fifteenth century, as they themselves state in a fatwa¯ issued by Muslim legal experts from Valladolid and Burgos. These works include classical sources such as the Kita¯b al-Tafrı¯ʿ by Ibn al-Jalla¯b al-Basrı¯ (tenth century) and the Risa¯la fı¯ ˙ l-fiqh, by Ibn Abı¯ Zayd al-Qayrawa¯nı¯ (d. 996), which were copied in both Aljamiado – Romance languages in Arabic script – and Arabic manuscripts. A new addition to the corpus was the Sunni Breviary, compiled by Yça Jabῑr, mufti of Segovia (fifteenth century) for the use of individuals and communities living in Castile.3 This wealth of information shows how religious identity was manifested and fostered by the religious and legal elites governing the Islamic community of Castile, despite limitations and prohibitions, and how this particular sense of belonging to a broader Islamic umma was fostered in their last earthly abode: their cemetery. Funerary practices among Mudejars in Castile show a good knowledge of the basic precepts of Islamic burial, a crystallisation of fixed models of prayers for the deceased brought from the Maghreb, which would keep issues of innovation at bay, and a need for discretion in public demonstration of grief in order not to bother their Christian overlords. In the burial grounds, maqbaras (graves) shared Islamic codes of identification with cemeteries from the Maghreb and Turkey – such as markers (shahῑds) at the head and feet, which included symbols to identify gender or social position of the deceased. On the other hand, some of the practices indicated the Muslims’ subjugated situation and their concerns about salvation in For a recent contribution to this problem, see Olivia R. Constable, “Regulating Religious Noise: The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World”, Medieval Encounters 16 (2010): 64–95. 2 Published in Ana Echevarria and Rafael Mayor, “Las actas de reunión de una cofradía islámica de Toledo: Una fuente árabe para el estudio de los mudéjares castellanos”, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 107. 3 (2010): 257–93. 3 Published as early as 1866 by Francisco Fernández y González, Estado social y político de los mudéjares de Castilla, (re-ed. Madrid: Hiperión, 1985), pp. 393–5. The original record has been lost in the collections of the Real Academia de la Historia and has yet to be retrieved, like the proceedings. The translation should be corrected at several points. See Ana Echevarria, The City of the Three Mosques: Ávila and Its Muslims in the Middle Ages (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2011), p. 102. 1

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these conditions. Finally, the aesthetic aspects of the funerary slabs more closely resembled their Christian counterparts in the same period than those found in Islamic cemeteries in Granada or the wider Islamic world.


Funerary practices of confraternities: the case of Toledo The huge extent of Muslim dispersion and consequently the relatively high numbers of Muslim neighbours living in Castilian towns in this period is only now beginning to be grasped.4 Medieval Christian cities in the Iberian Peninsula might have one or more mosques. Some were still in place after the Christian conquest of the territory, while others had been authorised by the city’s leaders when the Muslim community living there asked for permission to use already extant buildings or build new ones — a permission that was denied in legal codes, both ecclesiastical and royal, but which in fact was granted for practical reasons. As happened elsewhere in the Da¯r al-Islam, these buildings framed the public space in which the Muslim community would circulate and communicate, since they were adjacent to normal places of assembly: the market and the public square. That was the case with the mosque of Tornerías, in Toledo. When the Friday mosque in Toledo was turned into a cathedral in the eleventh century, Islamic rites were still authorised in several of the smaller mosques that remained,5 but by the end of the thirteenth century, only one was left as far as we know: the mosque known today as “de Tornerías” or “del Solarejo”, referring to the streets that mark its boundaries, and called ja¯miʿ al-Wadῑʿa by its members.6 The use of the mosque as a gathering place, and the need to maintain an Islamic identity and Recent studies about Castilian Mudejars include Clara Almagro, “La Orden de Calatrava y la minoría mudéjar”, in As Ordens Militares: Freires, Guerreiros, Cavaleiros. Actas do VI Encontro sobre Ordens Militares, ed. I. Fernandes, volumes 1-2 (Palmela: Cámara de Palmela, 2012), II: 617-30; Ana Echevarria, “La ‘mayoría’ mudéjar en León y Castilla: Legislación real y distribución de la población (siglos XI-XIII)”, En la España Medieval 26 (2006): 7-30, idem, “Desplazamientos de población y movilidad social en los inicios del mudejarismo castellano”, in Cristianos y musulmanes en la Península Ibérica: La guerra, la frontera y la convivencia. Actas del XI Congreso de Estudios Medievales, ed. J.I. Ruiz de la Peña (Ávila-León, Fundación Sánchez Albornoz, 2009), pp. 499-520; Pablo Ortego Rico, “Elites y clientelas mudéjares de Guadalajara durante el siglo XV”, in Actas del XI Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo (Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2007), pp. 645-57; Olatz Villanueva Zubizarreta, “La alcallería mudéjar en Valladolid con nombres propios: La familia Alcalde”, in Castilla y el mundo feudal: Homenaje al profesor Julio Valdeón Baruque, ed. Ma I. del Val Valdivieso and P. Martínez Sopena, volumes 1–3 (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2009), I: 69–86, idem, “Regulación de la convivencia con los mudéjares en las ciudades de la cuenca del Duero”, in La convivencia en las ciudades medievales: Encuentros Internacionales del medievo, ed. B. Arizaga and J. A. Solórzano (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2007), pp. 351–67; Gonzalo Viñuales Ferreiro, “El repartimiento del servicio y el medio servicio de los mudéjares de Castilla en el último cuarto del siglo XV”, Al-Qantara 24 (2003):179–203, idem, “Aproximación al estudio de la comunidad mudéjar de Guadalajara en la Edad Media”, in Actas del X Simposio Internacional de Mudejarismo (Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2007), pp. 501–12, and others cited in the latter. 5 Recent discoveries and perspectives in Mezquitas en Toledo, a la luz de los nuevos descubrimientos, ed. Antonio Romero Rabadán (Toledo: Consorcio de la Ciudad, 2006). 6 On this mosque, see Clara Delgado Valero, “La estructura urbana de Toledo en la época islámica”, in Regreso a Tulaytula. Guía del Toledo islámico (siglos VIII-XI) (Toledo: Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, 1999), pp. 83–4 ; Julio Porres Martín-Cleto, “¿Restos de una mezquita toledana?”, Al-Andalus 43 (1978): 455–9, idem, “La mezquita toledana del Solarejo, llamada de las Tornerías”, Al-Qantara 4 (1983): 411–21. The author argues that Tornerías made the mosque of El Salvador the Friday mosque for Toledo’s Muslims during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and there is in fact scarce evidence of any other. 4


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social life triggered off a particular kind of association or congregation for communal welfare in the form of a confraternity, common in most Mediterranean societies.7 The records use two words, al-jama¯ʿa or al-akhwa¯n to convey different nuances of its nature and aims. On the one hand, al-jama¯ʿa (Spanish: aljama) referred to a “meeting or assembly of the whole body of believers united by their common faith”, and might be translated as “congregation”. The people who constitute this community are those Muslims who are fully faithful to the tradition, whose faith and truth are guaranteed and are therefore in perfect line of continuity with the faith of the first Muslims. A more restricted meaning refers to every assembly of Muslims gathered together to perform the prayer, Friday zuhr being the most impor˙ continuity in the lands of tant gathering.8 Thus, the Muslims of Castile stressed their former al-Andalus, their sense of belonging to a broader Muslim community, and the truthfulness of their faith, all of them called into question by their irregular situation under Christian domination. The other word, al-akhwa¯n (from the Arabic word for “brother”), refers more clearly to a confraternity stating fictive kinship as a way to identify themselves and to create a sense of common identity.9 It seems from the numbers of members cited, probably all the adult male members as well as some women from the congregation of the Tornerías mosque, that membership was extended to all the faithful who lived permanently in the city, and received itinerant Muslims as guests. Thus, the confraternity provided a social environment based first in religious/cultic connections, but which also took into account household, ethnic and neighbourhood connections.10 The confraternity fulfilled interconnected social, religious and funerary functions, among which the performance of funerary rites was one of the most important, but not the only one.11 For instance, community banquets, as part of social and feasting activities to hold members together in a network of ultimately religious meaning, were usually held on Sundays, instead of Fridays, the day of prayer 7

Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Societies (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003), pp. 28–9 for the various kinds of associations, pp. 32–3 for the use of words that suggest family relationships as a way to increase the sense of belonging. Also Andreas Bendlin, “Associations, Funerals, Sociality, and Roman Law: The Collegium of Diana and Antinous in Lanuvium (CIL 14.2112) Reconsidered”, in Aposteldekret und antikes Vereinswesen: Gemeinschaft und ihre Ordnung, ed. Markus Öhler (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 207–96, esp. 252. The obvious connections between Roman associations and confraternities and their Islamic counterparts may be based in the influences of Roman law on the development of Islamic law, as contended by P. Crone, Roman Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 8 “Djama¯’a” L. Gardet and J. Berque in Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd edition), volumes I-XII (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2004) [henceforth EI 2], II: 411-13. 9 Philip A. Harland, Dynamics of Identity in the World of Early Christians: Associations, Judeans and Cultural Minorities (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 63–6. Although this fictive kinship is much exploited among present-day Muslims, its medieval roots remain obscure, and are seldom explained in the context of the spreading of sufi brotherhoods or guilds in the Iberian Peninsula – i.e., Mudejars and Granada – in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, nor has it been explained under the social meanings of futuwwa in this period. See the second meaning of futuwwa in Fr. Taeschner, “Futuwwa”, in EI 2, II: 966-9, and “akhῑ” Fr. Taeschner, in EI 2, I: 322-3. 10 For this classification of associations based in social linkages, see Harland, Associations, 29, following John S. Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thiasoi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy and Membership”, in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 16–30, who suggests categories based on profiles of membership than may overlap, such as common household connections, shared occupation, common cult. 11 The same is true of Roman associations, as argued by Harland, Associations, 55.



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gatherings, probably because it was easily fitted into the working calendar, conditioned by Christian working days. Both in the way it functioned and in its charitable aims, this confraternity was similar to contemporary Christian confraternities and guilds in Castile,12 as well as to contemporary congregations of Jewish synagogues (of which the Hebh’ra Qaddisha “holy society” had a clear funerary purpose).13 The emergence ˙of specifically religiously-defined confraternities with funerary functions may be seen as one of the results of demographic pressure in the minority communities – Jews and Muslims – at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and this is confirmed by the expansion of areas of residence around the walls, the most substantial Muslim occupation in Castilian cities since the conquest of the taifa of Toledo.14 Unsurprisingly, local authorities would exert some pressure to ensure the disposal of corpses, especially at times of plague or famine, which were so widespread during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and this is referred to in the records of the confraternity. For instance, the Roman circus of Toledo was brought into use as burial grounds for both Muslims and Jews, making use of the caves (caveas), which were conveniently adapted to take advantage of the vaulted structures as niches.15 But the confraternity also filled a gap in the organisation of burial within the legal system of the kingdom. By the thirteenth century, the compilation of the Partidas under Alfonso X had defined almost every aspect of life, including the disposal of the deceased in cemeteries. Regulations for Christian interments appointed the bishop and the ecclesiastical hierarchy in general as the mediators of all the procedures leading to the cemetery. Their strong religious

12

A collection of statutes in J. Sánchez Herrero and S.M. Pérez González, CXIX Reglas de Hermandades y Cofradías Andaluzas, ss. XIV, XV Y XVI (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva, 2002). Even more interesting is the professional confraternity of St Eloy and St Antón, in Segovia, which had both Christian and Muslim members among silversmiths and ironsmiths. Members used to attend the burial of other guild members, thus infringing official laws. They also used to have meals together, including Muslims explicitly, and Muslims were exempted from paying for the candles to be burnt in churches. Their oaths were taken according to Islamic law, and the money collected within the guild was equally available to Christians and Muslims. First published by Juan de Contreras, Historia de las corporaciones de menestrales en Segovia (Segovia: Mauro Lozano, 1921), pp. 120–7; a new palaeographic edition is available in Luz Gómez García, “Los mudéjares menestrales segovianos”, Sharq al-Andalus 14-15 (1997-1998): 35-45, without further explanation. See also Ana Echevarria, The Fortress of Faith: The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth-century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 178–9. 13 References in records from the city of Segovia were indistinctly made to the main synagogue or to the cofradía (confraternity) of Segovia (active 1373-1493), speaking of a confusion between the container (the synagogue itself) and the contents (the juridical and personal component, that is, the Jews who were part of the congregation). In this case, cofradía is used as a synonym for aljama, and in some cases it referred to the building of the new assembly mosque. See Yolanda Moreno Koch, “La judería y sinagogas de Segovia”, in Juderías y sinagogas de la Sefarad medieval, ed. A. López Álvarez and R. Izquierdo Benito (Cuenca: Universidad Castilla-La Mancha, 2003), pp. 383–96, esp. 388-390. The activities of these Jewish burial societies are vividly depicted in the artistic works they commissioned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; see Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley/ Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 100–8. 14 Demographic pressure resulting in a funerary purpose, together with a social purpose, for Roman confraternities have been suggested by A. Bendlin, “Associations, Funerals”, 217. For the growth of Mudejar neighbourhoods in Castilian cities, particularly in Avila, see A. Echevarria, “Los Caro de Ávila: Una familia de alfaquíes y comerciantes mudéjares”, in Biografías mudéjares: La experiencia de ser minoría: biografías islámicas en la España cristiana, ed. A. Echevarría (Madrid: CSIC, 2008): 203-32, esp. 215-17. 15 A. de Juan García, Los enterramientos musulmanes del circo romano de Toledo (Toledo: Museo Santa Cruz, 1987).


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allegiance brought into question their role in managing burial rites for adherents of other faiths, and so confraternities in the settings of mosques and synagogues emerged as interlocutors in the “business of death”.16 For their members, this was a means of guaranteeing that Islamic or Jewish rites were correctly administered for the deceased in a presumably hostile environment, that purity issues would be attended to, and the common grounds of the cemetery would be kept within the religious boundaries of the community. Since the statutes of the al-Wadῑʿa confraternity have not been preserved, the rules that applied to their funerary practices are difficult to define and can only be guessed at from a number of rulings agreed during their assemblies. Two meetings of the confraternity of Toledo (in 1408 and 1414) were especially concerned with the rites that accompanied the deceased on his way to the tomb.17 The rulings seem to be very practical in nature, and applied to both male and female members of the confraternity. Their contents will be studied below.

Funerary practices of Castilian Muslims The family, as the basic social and religious unit, was the main initiator of the first things to be done right after the death took place in the privacy of the household. This does not mean that other members of the community were not present, but that the actions at least had no public aspect. Religious treatises gave some guidelines for how good Muslims should behave in such situations. According to alQayrawa¯nῑ (922–996): When someone is at the point of death, it is recommended to turn them so that they face the qibla and to close their eyes after they have died. The shaha¯da should be said in the presence of the dying person so they will be reminded of it. It is better that the body and what it is on are free of impurity. It is better that menstruating women or anyone in a state of jana¯ba do not come near someone who is dying. Some of the ʿulama¯ʾ recommend reading Sura Ya¯ʾ Sı¯n (36) at the bedside of the dying person although according to Ima¯m Ma¯lik, this was not the usual practice. There is no harm in weeping when someone dies although self-control and patient endurance are better if that is possible, and crying out and wailing is forbidden.18 16

Partida I, title 13, law 7. I have used the edition of Siete Partidas de Alfonso X (Seville, October 1491), transcribed by Ivy A. Corfis, in Electronic Texts and Concordances of the Madison Corpus of Early Spanish Manuscripts and Printings, ed. John O’Neill (Madison/New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1999). 17 Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas de reunión”, Arabic 268-9, 272-3, 274-5; trans. 284-5, 289, 291. 18 This English translation is taken from Ibn Abı¯ Zayd al-Qayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la, trans. Aisha Bewley, http:// www.muwatta.com/ebooks/english/Risa¯la_ibn_abi_zayd_salutations.pdf (accessed 12 December 2012), from now on, Risa¯la (Bewley), since no scholarly edition is available in English. French version: La risa¯la ou Epître sur les eléments du dogme et de la loi de l’islam selon le rite mâlikite, ed. and trans. Léon Bercher (Algiers: Jules Carbonel, 1945), pp. 104–5; Spanish version: Compendio de derecho islámico, trans. Jesús Riosalido (Madrid : Editorial Trotta, 1993), pp. 87–91, esp. 87. The Sunni Breviary has a corrupted translation of the same principles: “Acuerden al que está a la muerte a nombrar Alla y non se le debe açercar a el quien non tenga atahor de que fallesçe. Y dieron lugar algunos sabios leer a su cabeçera y non fue usado ni acordado por Melique, nin den voçes ni gritos, mas paçientemente quanto mas podran lloren calladamente. 3 Yça Ja¯bir, Breviario sunni, Ms. 2076, National Library Madrid, fol. 28r. It is noteworthy that sura Ya¯ʾ Sı¯n (36), referred to as appropriate for prayer, is one of the favourite suras inscribed on gravestones, see below.



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The role of women in the mourning of the dead is not described directly, with the exception of this reference, which just describes the ways in which the community tried to control outward expressions of grief.19 Ma¯lik’s Muwattaʾ, the most important legal source followed by Iberian Muslims, and ˙˙ the works of his followers Yahya¯ al-Andalusῑ and Sahnu¯n (d. 855), have a number of chapters on washing˙ the dead, with a long list of traditions about the Companions of the Prophet. Handling corpses raised several concerns regarding purity, such as who was permitted to wash the body, following rules related to their position in the family, gender and religious adherence and what were the ablutions required for purification after the washing had taken place; discussion centred on the need for major ablutions (ghusl) to clean the filth of death, or just minor ablutions (wudu¯ʿ), how many times the body ˙ should be washed, whether perfumes were permitted and which ones, and which parts of the body should not be seen and by whom.20 The discussion of washing with sand had no significance in the context of Iberian Muslims, and therefore was not even recorded.21 The more practical Sunni Breviary is less concerned with these questions, and concentrates in ritual tidiness: And in washing there is no fixed limit, but let him wash him who knows better how to get [the corpse] cleaned, and how to squeeze the body gently, leaning over him and pouring water, and washing him as one washes, also with his wudu¯ʿ, turning him from one side to the other. And ˙ washing his wife, or a wife her husband, and a there is no harm in a man woman washing a young boy. And do not shave the deceased, nor

Recent works on this particular aspect include Nadia El-Cheikh, “Mourning and the Role of the Na¯’iha”, in Identidades marginales, ed. C. de la Puente (Madrid: CSIC, 2003), pp. 395–412, and idem, “The Gendering of ‘Death’ in Kita¯b al ‘iqd al-farῑd”, Al-Qantara 31 (2010): 411-36. See also Leor Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave. Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York: Columbia University ˙ Press, 2007), p. 114. 20 For instance, al-Qayrawa¯nı¯ says in his Risa¯la: “There is no fixed limit to the number of times you wash a dead body. The body should be thoroughly cleaned and the number of times it is washed should be odd. It should be washed with water and Sidr (Lote tree leaves) and in the last washing camphor should be added to the water. During the washing the body’s private parts should be kept covered. The nails should not be cut nor should the hair be shaved off. The stomach should be gently squeezed. It is good if wudu¯ʿ is done ˙ for the dead person although this is not obligatory. It is better if the body is turned on its side for washing although it is acceptable to wash it in a sitting position. It is good for a husband or wife to wash their dead partner although it need not be the partner who performs this act. If a woman dies on a journey and there are no other women present nor any men of mahram status then a man should do tayammum for her, ˙ wiping her face and hands. Similarly if the dead person is a man and there are no other men present nor a woman of mahram status, then a woman should do tayammum for him, wiping his face and his ˙ hands and arms to the elbows. If there is a woman of mahram status present she should wash his body, ˙ keeping his ʿawra covered. If a woman has died and there is a man of mahram status present he should ˙ wash her through a cloth covering her whole body. […] The body should be perfumed, with the perfume being put between the layers of cloth that make up the shroud and also directly on the body and the places which touch the ground in suju¯d.” Risa¯la (Bewley), 20.2; (Fagnan), 104–7, Compendio, 87. A more extended version of the same ideas, in very obscure Spanish (with Aragonese traits) Aljamiado, is found in El tratado jurídico de al-Tafrî‘ de Ibn al-G˘ alla¯b, ed. S. Abboud Haggar, volumes 1-2 (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1999), II:172-3. The latter was also used, probably in a Romance or Arabic version, by Castilian Muslims, who did not write Aljamiado. 21 For practices in early Islam, see Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 54-9, 70-2. ˙ 19

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circumcise, or cut neither his nails nor any other thing from his body, but just clean as much as possible.22 Shrouds could convey a number of meanings – social, economic and religious – which made them important in what Halevi has termed “an economy oriented toward the grave”, i. e., the investments in shrouds as one of the few objects that could convey “personal style, economic status and ideological commitment” during burial.23 According to custom derived from the Prophetic Hadı¯th, a believer should ˙ be buried in an odd number of shrouds: three, like the Prophet, or five or seven.24 Only the Tafrı¯ʿ, among the religious treatises, gives a slight hint of the social burden that buying and preparing a shroud could impose on the individual and his family, especially taking into consideration a hostile religious environment such as the case of the Mudejars. The Tafrı¯ʿ states that shrouding should not lead to debts being incurred, and there is no fixed amount that should be spent in it, nor is it inappropriate to use the clothes or the garments that the deceased wore for prayer. White garments were preferred to any other colour.25 Despite the high cost that the family might bear, the confraternity records do not mention making any contribution, so it should be assumed that the family would provide the shroud themselves. According to alQayrawa¯nı¯, money for this purpose was the first to be deducted from inheritances. Unfortunately, there are no records concerning the tastes and preferences of Mudejars in this matter, and shrouds have not been preserved given the soil and weather conditions associated with burial in Avila,26 but a number of personal objects, mainly jewellery accompanied their owners to the tomb, despite the fact that this was prohibited. In one twelfth-century grave there was an iron knife-blade, and two thirteenth-century graves provided other examples; in one, a jet pendant of trapezoidal shape hanging on a bronze ring, was found beside the head of a woman’s body, and in another there were seven bronze bracelets, in varying states of preservation, around a woman’s left arm.27 22

[“Y en el vañar del non aya tasa çierta, pero bañele quien mejor supiere como sea limpio y espremido su cuerpo cubiertamente, inclinado sobre el y echando agua y vañandole como quien vaña, asi y con su alguado, bolbiendole de cabo a cabo, y no empesse que vañe el hombre a su muger, y la muger a su marido, y la muger al moçuelo de poca edad. Y no quiten al difunto cavello, ni circunçision, ni uñas, ni cosa de su cuerpo salvo a limpiarle quanto podran.”] Breviario sunni, fol. 28r. The sixteenth-century manuscript from the Biblioteca Tomás Navarro Tomás, RESC 60, fol. 26 r, gives a very different version, more similar to the instructions of al-Qayrawa¯nı¯. No critical edition of the texts is available. 23 Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 85. ˙ 24 For the Maghreb, al-Qayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la, states briefly: “There is no harm in a dead man being dressed in a shirt and a turban” (Risa¯la (Bewley), 20.3; (Fagnan), 106–7; Compendio, 88), which may speak of ascetic burials in Almohad times, whereas the Sunni Breviary elaborates much more: “And let them shroud the deceased in three pieces of linen, or five, or seven white strips, or shirts, or a white tunic (alcandora) one over the other, layer after layer.” [“Y amortajen al defuncto en tres lienzos, o çinco, o siete blancas tiras o camisas o alcandoras una sobre otra, de grado en grado.”] Breviario sunni, fol. 28r. See Halevi, Muham˙ mad’s Grave, 85-7, for early traditions of shrouding, which differ slightly from those described in these treatises, which exemplify a more elaborate tradition. 25 al-Tafrî‘, II: 173-4. 26 al-Qayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la (Bewley), 38.25; (Fagnan), 272-3; Compendio, 142. On the high price of the shroud and who should provide for it if the deceased had not left instructions, see Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, ˙ 100-1. Perhaps the levies and fines of the confraternity could be used to pay for it in the latter case. 27 Oscar Alonso Gregorio and Inés Centeno Cea, La maqbara de San Nicolás: Trabajos de excavación arqueológica en la Parcela A del Plan Parcial San Nicolás 2 (Ávila). Unpublished report of the archaeological expedition at the Servicio Territorial de Cultura de la Junta de Castilla y León in Ávila (Ávila, 2006), p. 65. I thank Francisco J. Fabián, representative of the Junta, for his kindness in providing a copy of the report for study.



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However, legislation was firm, both from the Christian point of view, as in the Partidas,28 and from the Islamic point of view, as in the Breviary: “And do not use silk or twisted silk, nor put with him gold or silver, nor other jewels, and use good scents between the shroud and the body, and places of the juhu¯d”.29 This shift in tradition may account for the progressive differentiation of elites within the Islamic aljama, which is proved by other signs, such as investment in rural properties, loans given by Muslim proprietors, or the development of a common ethos.30 Prayers over the deceased (sala¯t al-jana¯ʾiz) were carefully ordered, and their precise timing and wording has˙ been transmitted in several treatises, because in many cases those who would pray were a group of Muslims, though not necessarily led by an ima¯m. There were three places where the sala¯ could be recited: at home, ˙ during the vigil; before the mosque, during the procession, but without entering 31 the building; and at the cemetery. By the Mudejar period, the form of this prayer was fixed in line with al-Qayrawa¯nı¯’s version, with only slight variations due to transmission in Arabic, Castilian translation or Aljamiado. In fact, the chain of transmission did not break, and leads us from the Andalusi copies of the Risa¯la to the Sunnῑ Breviary in its Spanish and Aljamiado versions, and finally to the miscellaneous Morisco manuscripts containing guidelines for their burials.32 So, even though the treatises themselves state that there were no precise formulas for the sala¯ over the deceased,33 it seems that common practice in ˙ al-Andalus and among Mudejar communities, later to become Moriscos, had sanctioned a common form of prayer. The text of al-Tafrῑ‘ omits any particular wording for the prayer, probably because it was earlier in time and no model had been produced – y no es en ella liyenda,34 but instead gives all kinds of instructions for the Partida I, title 13, law XIII: “Porque razon non deuen meter ornamentos prec’iados alos muertos.} Ricas vestiduras ni otros guarnimentos pc’iados assi como oro o plata no deuen meter a} [fol. 52r]{CB2. los muertos sino a[ ]personas c’iertas como a rey o a[ ]reyna o a[ ]alguo desus fijos: o aotro obre onrrado o cauallero aq < > e soterrase segud la costubre dela tierra: o obispo o a[ ]clerigo: o aq < > e deue soterrar colos vestimetos q les ptenesc’e segud la orde q ha. & esto defendio sta yglia por tres razones. La .i. porq no tiene pro alos muertos eneste mudo ni enel otro. La .ij. porq tiene dano alos biuos: ca los pierde metiedo los en lugar dode no deue tomar. La .iij. porq los obres malos por cobdic’ia de tomar los ornametos q les mete quebranta los luziellos & desotierran los muertos”. 29 [E non amortajen en seda ni en sirgo nin le metan oro ni plata ni otras joyas, y ponganle olores buenos entre su mortaja y cuerpo y lugares del açuchud] Breviario sunni, fol. 28r. 30 Echevarria, City of the Three Mosques, 79-81. 31 “And take him to be buried after the first hour of the prayer has passed [“Y llebenlo a enterrar quando faga la primera hora del açala sobre el”], Breviario sunni, fol. 28 r. “ If someone has been buried without the funeral prayer having been done for him and the grave has already been filled in, then the prayer should be done over his grave. You do not do the funeral prayer a second time if it has already been done once. The funeral prayer is recited for a person as long as the majority of the body remains” (al-Qayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la, (Bewley), 21.8; (Fagnan), 112–5; Compendio, 90). 32 See the Appendix for the two first versions; the prayers from the Aljamiado Morisco manuscripts T6/119403 and T19/11-9415 of the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid have been published by Miguel Ángel Vázquez in Desde la penumbra de la fosa: La concepción de la muerte en la literatura aljamiadomorisca (Madrid: Trotta, 2007), pp.182–7. Due to their length they cannot be reproduced here. 33 Daniella Tallmon-Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons Under the Zangids and Ayyu¯bids (1146-1260) (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 156, explains that only two or three words were required, which could be expanded to long, poetic forms. There were also a number of texts from which to choose; in this case it seems the choice was somewhat reduced. 34 Al-Tafrῑ‘, II: 169. 28


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performance of this prayer. First, it states who were eligible to have the prayer said on their behalf; then, it stipulates the persons who were entitled to lead the sala¯; finally, ˙ of all the when the prayer was recited at the cemetery, it lays down the position members of the community should take up around the corpse, with the ima¯m or the faqῑh closest to the bier. Visitors to the house were asked to stay after the prayer, until the body was shrouded, so that they could testify to the death, and this practice seems to have extended into the Mudejar period, according to the testimony required from the members of the confraternity of Toledo. Once visitors had left, they should not return to the house except to give their condolences, unless they had already given witness before the faqῑh, confirming the death of the person.35 Beyond the immediate household, things moved from the private to the public domain, where the confraternity had a new role. This was decided upon when its members visited the family in their home, after which the bier was escorted to its final destination. The presence of the members of the confraternity was required at the house when the deceased was carried out, since they would help carry the bier. Fines of two coins (mizcales) were in place for lack of compliance with any of these obligations, while just one was paid for not using the shovel.36 These practices strengthened the sense of belonging to the Islamic community, and therefore created a common basis of conviviality, very necessary in the hostile environment in which the Mudejar community lived. Muslims considered participation in funerary processions as meritorious, stating that God would reward them by forgiving their sins. The provosts of the confraternity – and sometimes the elders – had among their duties the task of carrying the bier in the procession, which was a sign of their special social position.37 Excavations in Avila have produced remains of iron nails, square in cross-section with an L-shaped head, which were used in the wooden bier on which the corpse was carried to the cemetery, or in the wooden structure used for some of the biers of women and children, that made it possible for part of the corpse to be hidden from view, a practice that was still common in Egypt as recently as the nineteenth century.38 According to Ma¯lik, men and women could walk together in funerary processions, but normally men would walk in front, and women at the rear, so as to reduce contact.39 The Sunni Breviary instructed as follows: Al-Tafrῑ‘, II: 169-172. “Otrosí, que cuando salgan de la aldea del funeral que no vuelvan a la casa a no ser que sea para dar el pésame y vayan al alfaquí”. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 273; trans. 289. 36 “And whosoever does not throw soil with the shovel, should pay one coin” [“Y que quien no eche tierra con la pala, (sea multado) con un metical”]. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 274-5; trans. 289, 291. 37 These provosts were in charge of collecting levies and paying for banquets, while having some representative functions at the confraternity. The Spanish word “prioste” was here transcribed into Arabic characters, sharing meaning and functions with the same office in Christian confraternities. There are several references in the records of Toledo to the designation of these provosts, for instance, “They chose master Yu¯suf of Valladolid and master Ahmad al-Saʿrı¯ as provosts from then on, to give the meals until four ˙ months were completed, and the aforementioned ought to take part in this, in being among those who carry the bier and the shovel” [“/Eligieron/ (como) priostes (in Spanish in the original) en adelante al maestre Yusuf de Valladolid y al maestre Ahmad al-Sa‘ri que den de comer desde ahora hasta completar cuatro meses y que (en) esto deben participar los citados, en ser de los que llevan el féretro y la pala”]. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 268; trans. 284. 38 Edward W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London: Cosimo Classics, 2010, first published 1836), pp. 511–13. See also A.S. Tritton, “Djana¯za”, in EI 2, II: 441-2. 39 Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 129, 144-6. For the sources, see ibid. 303 n. 3. ˙ 35


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And take him to be buried after the first hour of the prayer has passed, and if there is a great slaughter, do not wait. And go before the body, and not behind, only those who have atahor. And women should not go, except the mother or daughter, or sister or the like, or the spouse. Take the corpse facing the qibla as much as possible, on the litter, and if there is more than one bier, let the ima¯m place the males close to him and the women behind, and let them make their prayers with rogations. 40 Women were in charge of lamentations, but most of them would have taken part during the vigil, at the house of the deceased, since their wailing in the procession would go against the preference for discretion, much needed so that Christian neighbours would not complain when the procession went past their houses, since all of them lived in the same neighbourhoods.41 Since urban processions were public events, they helped promote a sense of communal identity, but could at the same time cause conflict with Christian citizens, which had to be avoided at all costs. In times of relative calm, it was socially acceptable for Muslims to attend Christian and Jewish funerary processions, although jurists felt ambivalent about the matter.42 Since cemeteries were usually placed outside the city walls, close to the river, processions could pass along one of the main roads leaving the town, until they reached the burial grounds. The Castilian word almacabra, “Muslim cemetery”, derives from the Arabic almaqbara.43 Tombs in Castilian cities were excavated directly in the ground, as in Avila, or pre-existing brick structures might be used, as in the cemetery at the Roman circus in Toledo. It seems that Mudejar cemeteries in Castile – i.e., those that were not in continuous use from the Islamic into the Christian period, but were negotiated ex profeso with Christian authorities – carefully applied Ma¯liki regulations for these sacred spaces, even more than the earlier Andalusi cemetries, since Mudejars in general preferred to be discreet and to observe religious practices strictly. Nevertheless, we have already mentioned the grave goods found in the tombs, and some monuments clearly indicate that there was some desire to individualise them.44 The first concern was the site of the cemetery, which had to be clearly separated from Christian – and Jewish – burial areas. Since there could be no burials inside the mosque or mosques inside the cemeteries, Muslims acquired other sites, more 40 [Y llebenlo a enterrar quando faga la primera hora del açala sobre el, y si fuere mortandad, no atiendan hora que sea, y vayan delante del alchaneza (cadaver o cuerpo muerto) y non detras, nin baya quien non llevare atahor, nin baya muger ninguna sino madre o fija o hermana o sus semejantes o marido. Lleben el alchaneza lo mas que puedan cara el alquibla en el nahax (las andas) y si mas de una alchaneza hubiere ponga el alimen (imam) a par de si los varones y /f. 28v/ y las mugeres detras y fagan su açala con rrogativa.] Breviario sunni, f. 28 r-v. 41 On wailing and its practical aspects, see El-Cheikh, “Mourning”, 406-11; Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, ˙ 235. Unfortunately there is no mention of them in Mudejar sources. 42 Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 156. ˙ 43 This term, together with qubu¯r, was used for Islamic burials in general, while rauda (from Arabic rawda, ˙ “garden”) applied to the pantheons of princes and important people. On terminology for cemeteries and tombs, and their markers, see Rafael Pinilla Melguizo, “Aportaciones al estudio de la topografía de la Córdoba islámica: almacabras”, Qurtuba 2 (1997): 175-214; also Javier Jiménez Gadea, “Estelas funerarias islámicas de Ávila: Clasificación e inscripciones”, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie I, Nueva época. Prehistoria y Arqueología 2 (2009): 205-52, pp. 223–24; Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 147. ˙ 44 For Ma¯liki fatwa¯s on cemeteries, see Maribel Fierro, “El espacio de los muertos: Fetuas andalusíes sobre tumbas y cementerios”, in L’urbanisme dans l’Occident musulman au moyen âge: Aspects juridiques, ed. M. Fierro, J.P. van Staevel and P. Cressier (Madrid: CSIC, 2000), pp. 153–89.


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Figure 1. View of the site where the cemetery must have been in Wyngaerde’s engraving of Avila, 1570. By permission of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

convenient to them. In Avila, for instance, given the existence of a hospital for captives on the hill of St Matthew, it is not surprising to find the Islamic cemetery just opposite it, on the other side of the river, at the ford, close to one of the main roads out of the city, and outside the walls (Figure 1). There was easy access from two gates in the city wall, so that funerary processions could proceed without disturbing the other two communities. Grave digging was a formal occupation, according to the Breviary, and was possibly carried out by specialised labourers. In Avila, where the ground was solid with granite, the grave was dug approximately one and a half metres into the ground, and the corpse was buried without a coffin. The body was carefully placed in the tomb, to ensure it was in the right position: And let them make the pit neither deep nor low, being half the height of a man, and bury him in the bottom, below the bank carved in the wall of the pit, since there should be a rock at the side of the qibla so that the deceased may fit conveniently. If the soil covers him it is better for you to place the rock in front of him, where there is no wooden [frame], and let them throw soil inside.45 Other possible practices, also used in the cemeteries of Avila and Toledo, are described in al-Qayrawa¯nı¯’s Risa¯la: “The body should be placed in the grave on 45

This part is confusing but may be completed with the information from the excavated tombs: [“Y fagan la fuesa non fonda ni baxa, sea a medio estado de hombre, y entierrale en la lauda debaxo del ribaço que es fecho la fuesa a la fondesa, que ades un risco a cabo del alquibla que quepa el muerto descansadamente. Si la tierra lo sufre es mejor y adoses delante, donde non fagan lo de madera y hechen tierra dentro.”] Breviario sunni, f. 29v. Al-Qayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la (Bewley), 20.8; (Fagnan), 108–9; Compendio, 90, gives more details: “According to the people of knowledge the lahd-type (niche) grave is better than the shaqq-type (a simple trench). A lahd-type grave is one in which, after you have dug the basic trench, you dig out a place for the body at the bottom of the side which faces the qibla so that the body is protected by an overhang. This should be done provided that the earth is firm enough and will not crumble or cave in. This was how the grave of the Holy Prophet was dug”. Al-Tafrῑ‘, II: 174-5 insists on the same points: “Dixo Malik: Y metan el muerto en su fuesa sobrel costado el derecho, de cara enta l-alqibla. Y si no podrá ser aquello, sea puesto sobre sus espaldas y de cara enta l-alqibla. Y no ay a quien es asentado en la fuesa a su envolverlo cosa asignada de que sea sobre un par o sobre una, enpero asiente[n] sobre cantidad de lo ques neçesario a él y esté enello. Y no sea labrada de aljez (gypsum) la fuesa, ni fraguada de obras de fraguamientos; y cubranla y no la aplanen mucho. Y súbanla de la tierra un poco en cantidad de lo que se puede conoçer con ello. Y bien puede concreçer la fuesa y no ay ad aquello tasa-/fol. 180r/-çion ni asignaçion conprendida, ni ora conprendida.”



Figure 2.

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Tombs excavated at the Mudejar cemetery in Avila. © Francisco Fabián García.

its right side, and slabs made of clay and straw should be laid over it”.46 Throwing soil over the corpse, following Islamic practice, was another symbolic ceremony performed by the family and the members of the confraternity. The provosts of the confraternity were in charge of carrying the shovel in the procession, and then the other members had to use it to cover the corpse with earth, after which a gravestone was placed over the grave.47 Kinsmen on the maternal side had priority in lowering the corpse, as it was symbolically considered as returning the person to his or her mother’s womb. Burials in the Avila graveyard contained the bodies in the correct canonical position (Figure 2). The features mentioned by al-Qayrawa¯nῑ and the Sunnῑ Breviary were used to cover some of the tombs, and even set into the grave to keep the body or head in the proper position: stones beside the head, outlines of rock that could support a wooden cover, or low clay walls, always keeping the earth as a base. In this way, Muslims respected the prohibition of using plaster, lime, or 46

al-Qayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la, in Compendio, 88. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 273-4; trans. 289, 291. Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 183, ˙ 189. 47


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baked brick either inside the tomb or above it, as mentioned in Al-Tafrῑ‘. These same features also appear in contemporary Mudejar cemeteries such as those in Valladolid, Murcia and Valencia.48 With regard to the orientation of the bodies and tombs, the corpse lay on its right side, oriented on a southwest-northeast axis with the face toward the south-southeast, which was thought to be the direction of the qibla from al-Andalus. In the earliest graves in Avila (twelfth-thirteenth centuries), the bodies were turned slightly more southwards, but in another series of tombs dated to the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries the bodies are carefully oriented to the south-east, that is, more accurately towards Mecca.49 It is difficult to know whether this change of practice was due to a ritual correction by more learned Muslims. Contacts with Granada, and therefore with educated Muslims, were more common in this second period, and it is possible that some learned faqῑh corrected the disposition of the tombs in the cemetery using accurate geographical measurements, but for the moment this remains speculation. The Sunni Breviary shows that the custom amont both the Mudejars and, later, the Moriscos, was to provide the dead man with a “letter of death” (carta de la muerte) written in Arabic, to give witness in the correct language of his good deeds. The fact that this practice was not canonical or contained in religious treatises was stressed by Yça Jabῑr, who stated that it did not meet the approval of Ma¯lik and his school.50 It was believed that this document would help the angels who would interrogate the deceased and weigh his or her deeds to decide that he or she had been a good Muslim. Obviously, in Arabic-speaking lands the practice would not have been necessary.51 The letter began with the shaha¯da or profession of faith, followed by exclamations in praise of God, a prayer for the deceased not to be abandoned in the darkness of his tomb, and the hope that on Judgment Day he would receive the reward of Paradise; it was always written in the first person, with saffron ink, and placed under the head of the deceased; according to Vazquez, this gave the departed a voice in Arabic.52 The importance of the angels’ examination for Muslims living under Christian rule was stated at the beginning of the Sunni Breviary, where the main articles of faith that a good Muslim had to bear witness to were summarised. Of thirteen articles, no fewer than nine had eschatological content, and the one dealing with the moment of death and the questioning was at the top of the list.53

On the prohibition against plaster see Fierro, “Espacio de los muertos”, p. 156. On particular cases, C. Peral Bejarano, ‘Excavación y estudio de los cementerios urbanos andalusíes. Estado de la cuestión,’ in M. P. Torres Palomo and M. Acién Almansa (eds), Estudios sobre cementerios islámicos andalusíes (Málaga: University of Málaga, 1995), pp. 11–35. 49 Alonso and Centeno, La Maqbara, 43-4. For orientation towards the qibla or Jerusalem, see Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 182-3, 321 n. 99. 50 ˙ “Some people started to counsel the deceased by means of questions and answers after being buried, but that was not in use nor recommended by Malik” [“Algunos usaron avisar demanda y rrespuesta al defunto despues de enterrado, y non fue fecho nin acordado por Melique”], Breviario sunni, fol. 29r. This choice of “questions and answers” refers to a very well-known genre among Mudejars and Moriscos (the demandas), which gave answer to the basic questions a believer should know about the Islamic faith. In this funerary context, it was vital to prove such knowledge before the angels of the tomb. 51 For a study of Morisco practice, see Vázquez, Desde la penumbra, 112-3. An example of such a “letter of death” is found at p. 181. 52 Vázquez, Desde la penumbra, pp. 22, 99. 53 Breviario sunni, f. 13r-v. 48



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It was considered lawful to bury several persons together in a single tomb.54 Long use of cemeteries and the impossibility of extending the site meant that this practice was widespread. There were two groups of re-used graves in Avila, and the bones were treated differently in each. The earlier of the two, dated to the end of the twelfth century, was probably used for captives or slaves, who had worked on the major civil constructions projects of the city walls and the cathedral. The graves were simple, without signs, and re-used without concer for regrouping older bones, and there are no grave goods in them. The bodies were carefully arranged in “streets”, with corridors for transit. This layout in rows was continued in later expansions of the cemetery, as the density of tombs increased within the limited space, so that sometimes three burials were superimposed, the lowest resting on the granite bedrock. In the second area, in contrast, care was taken not to disturb previous burials. Apart from three instances, where groups of bones had been pushed to one end, the new body was placed carefully on top of the older one, with a thin layer of soil between them to fulfil the Islamic requirement that the corpse must rest directly on the earth.55 It is possible that this arrangement was applied to family groups, who used the same burial space and marked it with a mausoleum, as built structures were also found in this cemetery. The burial of relatives in a shared grave might have been part of this practice, but anthropological analyses of the remains are still under way. Funerary gatherings to pray for community members took place during the two days following the death, and attendance was considered a communal duty (fard ˙ kifa¯ya) both in Castile and in the broader Islamic world.56 The phrasing of this sentence makes it ambiguous as to whether the relatives and acquaintances used to stay by the graveside to keep company with the deceased as they used to do in Egypt, but that very ambiguity means that such a practice cannot be discounted.57 It was established that funeral prayers should be said over the tomb of a relative or “the mother who pays for maintenance”, but always within these two days.58 After this period of time, funerary prayers over the tomb were forbidden to both men and women – an assertion that suggests that gender groups might attend the prayers separately at some point.59 If there were more than two funerals at one time, the confraternity “If it were necessary, let them bury in one grave more than one after another, and soil in between. And in a grave used long time ago[ “Si neçesidad oviere entierren en una fuesa mas de uno enpues de otro y tierra entre medias. Y en fuesa que largo tiempo aya pasado”]. And again in common, [“A quanto enterrar mas de uno en una fuesa, pues pongan el mas abantallado dellos delante [orientado] a la alquibla ], Breviario sunni, f. 29v and al-Qayrawa¯nı¯’s, Risa¯la (Bewley), 21.7; (Fagnan), 112-3; Compendio, p. 90 : “If a number of people are being buried in one grave the best should be nearest the qibla”. 55 Alonso and Centeno, La maqbara, 41. Two more archaeological reports from different periods of the graveyard are not yet available, so the later period will probably produce more evidence. 56 “A believer must greet another believer when he meets him, visit him when he is ill, wish him well when he sneezes, attend his funeral when he dies and defend him when he is absent, publicly and in secret”, alQayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la (Bewley), 20.26; (Fagnan), 300-1, Compendio, 197. Tallmon-Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria, 153-4. 57 Jeffrey A. Nedoroscik, The City of the Dead: A History of Cairo’s Cemetery Communities (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997), p. 2. 58 “Otrosí /decidieron/ -que Dios los guarde- que nadie se abstenga de ir a la casa del muerto y que /se guarde/ funeral más de dos días sobre la tumba del pariente o de la madre que pague el alimento”. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 274; trans. 291. 59 “Otrosí, que no haya allí funeral en el cementerio, ni de hombres ni de mujeres, después de los citados dos días y si hubiera allí más de un funeral y hubiera un entierro, que pueda salir la familia del muerto al cementerio, para leer /al-Fatiha/ en el cementerio”. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic, 273; trans. 289. 54


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members should attend the first and then leave the family to mourn the deceased for the rest of the two days, and attend the second funeral.60 It was possible in some cases for the funeral gathering to take place at the mosque.61 A curious feature of social involvement in the Castilian community is the fact that the judge, the fuqaha¯ʾ, the ima¯m and men of the aljama who were more than sixty years old were exempted from attending funerals.62 In other rulings, only the judge and the faqῑh were exempted, while the old men had to carry the bier.63 In a society where leading the funeral – and prayers in general – was an important sign of status, it is surprising to find the elite of the group being detached in this way.64 One wonders why they would voluntarily avoid a ceremony that would indicate their prominent position in the community. One of the reasons might be that their other responsibilities might prevent them from attending. The judges and fuqaha¯ʾ had professions that made them itinerant, since they had to deal with contracts forf Muslims over a wide area and so might be travelling when a death occurred. However, this would not necessarily apply to the ima¯m and the older men. It is possible that they did not attend in order not to inhibit the son or the male relatives of the deceased from leading the prayer over the deceased, or in order to avoid becoming defiled by contact with the corpse or with the cemetery. Their absence may have made the family more comfortable, especially if the family’s use of Arabic as a religious vehicle was less than competent. If there were no male relatives present during visits to the cemetery, women could take the part of the leader of the prayer, but that would have been a rare occurrence. From the thirteenth century onwards, and probably coinciding with the period of mass manumission and increasing social differentiation among the members of the aljamas, physical markers (shahı¯d: Arabic for “witness”) in the form of gravestones began to be placed on the surface, above the burials. Funerary steles or monuments followed the same tripartite model that was in use in other Islamic countries, with a quadrangular or truncated pyramid slab placed horizontally (between 1.60 and 1.70 m long) (Figure 3) and flanked by two cylindrical or rectangular stones of around 1 m in height sunk into the ground. Headstones were also common, fixed at the head-end of the grave. In Avila, all of these were made of granite, like another example from Talavera de la Reina, on the southward route from Avila to Seville, but other prestigious materials were favoured in other regions, such as marble in Toledo.65 These monuments usually indicated the presence of prominent members of the community, or tombs of particular family groups. Islamic “Y /decidieron/ que (en el caso de que) hubiera allí dos funerales o más, como es por favor de Dios, Exaltado y Excelso sea, vayan al primero y después de él como |…| y en ello que complete la familia de la casa los dos días con el difunto y después de ello que vayan a completar con |…|”. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 269; trans. 285. 61 “Otrosí que si hubiere dos funerales que completen (ellos) en sus casas aunque se permite que dos completen en la mezquita -que Dios le dé larga vida- al amanecer. Y que quien no se presente en la mezquita, como se ha mencionado, que sea multado con un metical”. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 275; trans. 291. 62 “Y /decidieron/ que (…) sean excusados los jueces y el alfaquí e imam y los viejos que tienen de sesenta años en adelante”. Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 269; trans. 285-6. 63 “Otrosí /decidieron/ que saquen el ataúd de la casa del muerto los viejos y que dentro del camino esté el resto, que son(…)Y que estén excluidos de ello (tanto) el cadí (como) el alfaquí.” Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic. 274-5; trans. 291. 64 Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 170, 174-7. ˙ 65 Javier Jiménez Gadea et al., La memoria de Alá: Mudéjares y moriscos en Ávila (Valladolid: Castilla Ediciones, 2011), pp. 40–3. 60



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Figure 3. Gravestone from the Mudejar cemetery, placed by the church of Santiago, in Avila. © Javier Jiménez Gadea.

jurisprudence discouraged the raising of elaborate monuments such as covered galleries, mausoleums and pantheons in public cemeteries, but allowed the perimeter of a grave to be marked externally with walls that rose slightly above ground level, as we have seen. Tombs could not, however, be roofed over,66 and none of those found in Avila has a roof. Gravestones (ruja¯ma, lawh) were not totally forbidden by Ma¯liki jurists, who ˙ even came to recommend them in preference to bigger monuments, but were only acceptable if they bore no written inscriptions, so that the occupant of the grave would remain anonymous and of unknown rank. Nonetheless, this stricture was systematically ignored by Andalusi political and religious figures at all levels: some stones were inscribed not only with Qurʾa¯nic or religious texts, but also with the name of the deceased.67 A significant case is the three-part sepulchre of ʿAbd Alla¯h ibn Yu¯suf al-Ghanı¯ (the Rich), a victim of assassination, whose father erected the monument to commemorate this fact. The text, inscribed in perfect Arabic (unlike other gravestones in the Avila cemetery, reads: “[Ha¯dha¯ qabr ʿAbd Alla¯h ‘This is the tomb of ʿAbd Alla¯h’] ibn Yu¯suf al-Ghanı¯, unjustly murdered, may God have mercy on him […] he died/ […] and his rule, the year of the Hijra of our Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him [the Prophet] and keep ˙ Fierro, “Espacio de los muertos”, 155-7, 166-70, 186-8; Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 32-40. ˙ The famous Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) was not opposed to the engraving of names (Fierro, “Espacio de los ˙ muertos”, 179-80; Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 32-4, 40-2). ˙

66 67


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him safe / […] hundreds. May God reunite us with him in Paradise! There is no power or […]”.68 More common were gravestones inscribed with Qurʾa¯nic passages that may have been used as prayers to be recited at the graveside. The strong symbolic content of Arabic language as a vehicle for the message of the Qurʾa¯n plays a fundamental role in upholding the Islamic faith, and therefore in maintaining the sense of distinct identity among Mudejars.69 The practice of reading a Qurʾa¯nic liturgy at the cemetery developed as early as the eighth century, and gained popularity in Islamic cities very quickly, although jurists tried to limit these recitations. It is thought that tombstone Qurʾa¯nic quotations might be intended precisely to direct or inspire the intercessory prayers of Muslims. Suras such as Ya¯ʾ Sı¯n (36), al-Baqara (2) and al-Mulk (67) were recited on the fortieth day after the funeral or during Friday visits to the grave.70 Qurʾa¯nic inscriptions from the Avila graveyard were not carved by masters who were learned in Arabic, or designed by expert calligraphers, and were dramatically different from the text on ʿAbd Alla¯h’s tomb. They used vocalised cursive script. Three of them are so fragmented that they provide hardly any useful information apart from their origin. Another inscription retrieved refers to the passage between life and death: “Death converts the passage [of time, of life] into a place of prayer, and [death] extinguishes the passage in Him. Everything will perish except his countenance. His is the command, and unto Him will you be brought back”.71 Other different types of gravestones from Avila reveal a strong acculturation to Christian artistic usage. Those carved in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had the same ornamental motifs as funerary monuments in the cathedral or the basilica of St Vincent: zigzags, scales, tiles, triangles or rosettes. Designs such as moons and stars or suns engraved on the upper part of some gravestones – where symbols of status such as turbans or caps were placed in Ottoman tombs – were also common and affordable. The patterns may have corresponded to gender differentiation: the moon, hila¯l, a masculine word in Andalusi Arabic, to indicate a man, and the sun, shams, a feminine word, for a woman. Later, The murder case and the inscription have been studied by Javier Jiménez Gadea, “Acerca de cuatro inscripciones abulenses”, Cuadernos abulenses 31 (2002): 25-71: 34-35. See this article for other sources. 69 On language and the written tradition of sacred texts as factors in ethnic and cultural identity see George de Vos, “Ethnic Pluralism: Conflict and Accommodation”, in Ethnic Identity: Creation, Conflict and Accomodation, ed. G. de Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross (London. Altamira Press, 1995), pp. 15–47, esp. 21-3. 70 Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 28-9. Sura 2 was also quoted in Islamic inscriptions from the south of Por˙ tugal, in twelfth-century Mértola. Santiago Macías, Mértola: Le dernier port de la Méditérranée. Catalogue de l’exposition “Mértola-Histoire et Patrimoine (Ve-XIIIe siècles), volumes I-III (Mértola: Campo Arqueológico de Mértola, 2006), III: 47. 71 Qurʾa¯n 28:88. The end of Sura 28, al-Qasas (The Narrative), speaks of the rewards given by God to ˙ ˙ those who follow him: “83 As for that Abode of the Hereafter We assign it unto those who seek not oppression in the earth, nor yet corruption. The sequel is for those who ward off (evil). 84 Whoso bringeth a good deed, he will have better than the same; while as for him who bringeth an ill-deed, those who do ill-deeds will be requited only what they did. 85 Lo! He Who hath given thee the Qur’an for a law will surely bring thee home again. Say: My Lord is Best Aware of him who bringeth guidance and him who is in error manifest. 86 Thou hadst no hope that the Scripture would be inspired in thee; but it is a mercy from thy Lord, so never be a helper to the disbelievers. 87 And let them not divert thee from the revelations of Alla¯h after they have been sent down unto thee; but call (mankind) unto thy Lord, and be not of those who ascribe partners (unto Him). 88 And cry not unto any other god along with Alla¯h. There is no God save Him. Everything will perish save His countenance. His is the command, and unto Him ye will be brought back.” Published and studied in Jiménez Gadea, “Estelas funerarias”, 262. 68



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gravestones were decorated with ropes, rosettes or balls, similar to those used in sarcophagi and convents built at the end of the fifteenth century in the city by renowned Late-Gothic architects such as Juan Guas and Martín de Solórzano. It is likely that the slabs were ordered for the Basque stonemasons working on site, since Muslims were hardly able to carve stone, and that would explain the strange appearance of Arabic inscriptions undoubtedly carved by craftsmen who did not themselves know Arabic.72 Another possibility, if we identify the engravings as stars, is to identify them with the metaphor for an important man who dies young, as found in elegiac poetry.73 The mourning period, during which the close family of the deceased did not have to attend social gatherings of the community, such as weddings, lasted for one month,74 although women were asked to observe a mourning period of four months after the death of their husband.75 During this time, and also perhaps later, visits to the cemetery were common, especially on Fridays, despite repeated prohibitions from jurists who rejected practices such as asking for the blessing of holy men buried there, or using such visits as an opportunity to have contact with members of the opposite sex.76 On the other hand, intercession for the dead, and remembrance of the transience of life were recommended.77 In Toledo, when a funeral gathering was taking place at the site of a recent burial in the cemetery, the family of another recently deceased person might enter the grounds and read the fa¯tiha, the first sura of the Qurʾa¯n. ˙ Apparently, visits to cemeteries took place without any particular restriction under Christian rule. Violence in the graveyards was exceptional, and took place between members of the community, rather than as a result of interreligious conflict. For instance, in 1493 Hamad Palomero (or Palomo, according to some versions) denounced an attack by his coreligionist Avdalla Redondo while he was praying at the cemetery, where he was beaten violently and received injuries to his head. Interestingly, both parties were Muslims, members of two of the richest families in the

Jiménez Gadea, “Estelas funerarias”, 38; Javier Jiménez Gadea and Olatz Villanueva, “Elementos decorativos góticos en lo mudéjar de Ávila: Las estelas funerarias”, in La arquitectura tardogótica castellana entre Europa y América, ed. Begoña Alonso Ruiz (Madrid: Sílex, 2011), pp. 377–88. 73 Because their life was short, like a short-lived star. Werner Diem, The Living and the Dead in Islam: Studies in Arabic Epitaphs. Volume I: Epitaphs as Texts (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 2004), pp. 273, 275. 74 “Item they agreed that whosoever is sad – the father for the son, and the son for the father, and brothers for brothers, and each of them for their mother – may be exempted from attendance to the aforementioned meal during the said wedding, without fine. And this from the day of the deceased’s passing away until thirty days are completed”. [“Otrosí (estuvieron de acuerdo en) que pueda abstenerse (de participar) de la citada comida en la boda citada sin caloña* quien esté triste, el padre por el hijo y el hijo por el padre y los hermanos por los hermanos y cada uno de aquellos por {su madre}, desde el día en que falleció el muerto hasta completar treinta días.”] Echevarria and Mayor, “Las actas”, Arabic 268; trans. 284. 75 Based on the hadı¯th “It is not permitted for a woman who believes in God and the last day to be in ˙ mourning more than three days except for her husband, whom she mourns for four months and ten days”. Ibn al-Jawzı¯ explained female mourning practices (ihda¯d) as refraining from adornment, and generally from anything that might lead to sexual intercourse, such as wearing jewellery, the use of perfumes, dye, henna, black kohl, and clothes in colours such as red, yelllow, green and blue. El-Cheikh, “The Gendering of ‘Death’”, 412-3. 76 Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave, 227, 335. ˙ 77 “And visiting the graves in secret and silence, without calling others is a great blessing”. [“Y vesitar las fuesas secreto y cuytos sin llamar a otros es alhassana grande”.] Breviario sunni, fol. 29v. 72


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aljama, who were quarrelling at the time.78 While jurists wrote against formal gatherings for prayer at the graveside, individual supplications for the deceased were viewed in a more positive way, and it is certain that visits to cemeteries to intercede for the deceased were a common act of piety sanctioned by the Prophet’s visit to his mother’s tomb.79 Desecration of cemeteries was severely punished by law, even in the case of nonChristian religions. Although the Partida VII, title 9, law 12 referred mainly to Christian graveyards, penalties were also applied to those who violated the sepulchres of Muslims and Jews, who were under royal protection.80 But once the Muslims were officially converted in 1502 and their burial grounds were deconsecrated, the way was open to abuse. A stone figure of an animal, described variously as either a pig or a bull (becerro), has been excavated above the level of the Muslim cemetery in Avila at a depth that suggests that it was thrown onto the graves.81 The only event reminiscient of this is the defilement of the Muslim cemetery in Huesca by herds of pigs, which left it dirty and even occasionally dug up corpses (1363), while their owners stole gravestones from the cemetery to use them as building material, even though the burial ground was still in use.82 Both Muslims and Christians accepted the cultivation of cemetery land and re-use of gravestones as construction materials once the cemeteries had been deconsecrated, but while Muslim scholars recommended ten years as a legal period of delay, Ferdinand and Isabella hastened to hand them over to private citizens and institutions once the general conversion had taken place.83 In many cases, as the land was converted to pasture for animals, or quarried for its soil and stones; corpses were exhumed, and prostitution “Being [Hamad Palomero] sound and safe at the cemetery of the aforementioned city, saying his sala ˙ and praying, the said Avdalla Redondo, treacherous and wrongly, beat him breaking his head. A lot of blood was shed and he almost died of these injuries”. [“Estándose él salvo e seguro en el alfonsario de la dicha çibdad, fazyendo oración e rezando, fue el dicho Avdalla Redondo, a trayçión e malamente, le diera de palos, de que le rompió el cuero e saliera mucha sangre que estuvo a punto de muerte de las dichas feridas”.] Carmelo Luis López, Documentación medieval abulense en el Registro General del Sello Vol. IX (30-VII-1493 a 14-IV-1494) (Ávila: Institución Gran Duque de Alba/Caja de Ahorros, 1996), pp. 36–8, doc. 12. Although the penalty initially demanded was the amputation of the right hand, in line with to Islamic law, since the record consists of an appeal to the royal court and says that the first sentence was overdue, it is suggested that it must have been changed to a fine. 79 Talmon-Heller, Islamic Piety, 172-6; Marco Schöller, The Living and the Dead in Islam: Studies in Arabic Epitaphs. Volume II: Epitaphs in Context (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz, 2004). 80 Technically, any Muslim or Jew in the kingdom could be considered to be under the protection of the king, even if they lived under other lords. “E lo que diximos enesta ley ha lugar enlas sepulturas delos cristianos non en las delos enemigos dela fe. & tal acusac’ion como esta puede fazer cada vno del pueblo quado los parientes del muerto non quisieren fazerla. Otrosi dezimos que los que fizieren alguno delos yerros sobre[+] dichos en sepultura de moro o de iudio del senorio del rey que puede resc’ebir pena segund aluedrio del iudgador.” My italics. 81 Notice of this discovery was given in J.F. Fabián García, “Los orígenes de la ciudad de Ávila y la época antigua: Aportaciones de la arqueología al esclarecimiento de las cuestiones históricas previas a la etapa medieval”, in Ávila en el tiempo: Homenaje al Prof. Ángel Barrios, ed. C. Luis López, volumes I-II (Ávila: Institución Gran Duque de Alba, 2008), I: 83-111, esp. 87. 82 “Continue de die faciunt esse et morari porchos suos intus ciminterium sive fossar”; “et alii eorum propriis audacia, palam et occulte, secum deferunt aliquos lapides, quos ipsi sarraceni super eorum tumulis ponere consueverunt”. M. Teresa Ferrer, Els sarraïns de la Corona catalano-aragonesa en el segle XIV (Barcelona: CSIC, 1987), pp. 300–1, doc. 90. I am grateful to Prof. David Nirenberg for bringing this detail to my attention. 83 Fierro, “Espacio de los muertos”, 173. On the destruction of the Ávila cemetery, see Pablo Ortego Rico, “Cristianos y mudéjares ante la conversión de 1502: Mercedes a moros. Mercedes de bienes de moros”, Espacio, tiempo y forma. Serie III, Historia medieval 24 (2011): 279-318, esp. 297-303. 78


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was practised in the area.84 The gravestones from the Avila cemetery were valued, sold and turned into building materials and can be found now in the town hall and the walls of several religious institutions built at the time, such as the old and new convents of Saint Anne and Santa María de Gracia, the monastery of St Thomas and the churches of St Nicholas and Santiago, whose bell-tower is full of re-used stone from the cemetery. Such was the uptake that by the time the convent of St Francis asked for its share of stone, the town council had to warn the monks that most of it had already been used in other building sites in the city, and it had almost run out.85

Conclusions Mudejar burial rites, as we have seen, follow the general practice in Islamic lands, though even more carefully, maybe because Muslims living under Christian rule suffered from a lack of religious authorities who could sanction variations from the standard practice. The shortage of such religious authorities during the Mudejar period gave rise to conservatism in funerary practices, which appears in several features. From the ritual point of view, the fixing of the formula of the sala¯ for the deceased, ˙ disregarding the recommendation of religious treatises stating that no standard form need be used, secured the redeeming effects of the prayer. Concerning burial, special care in the cleaning and disposal of the corpse, even in multiple graves, shows a correct knowledge of burial rites on the part of community leaders (legal scholars and shaykhs of the clans), who would have been educated in their faith within the family, but also on their business trips to Valencia and Granada. General conformity to funerary norms in this period indicates not only continuity, but also close contacts with areas where burial practices could take place unhindered. Probably some of these Mudejars had attended family funerals in Granada or Valencia, and were familiar with social behaviour on such occasions. Most of the customs mentioned in the proceedings of the al-Wadῑʿa confraternity speak of a special interest in participatory activities to strengthen ties between the Muslim families involved. Carrying or escorting the bier and sharing in using the shovel to bury the corpse in the earth united the male members of the confraternity in a communal action that fostered the sense of belonging to a broader umma.86 Testifying to the death of the deceased before the faqῑh contributed to the final acceptance of the end of the relationship between the individual Muslim and his coreligionists. The judge sanctioned the end of the existence of the person as a legal entity – a role fulfilled by the death registers kept by priests in Christian parishes – and kept the registers that would later be used for tax purposes and other tasks. Qurʾa¯nic inscriptions on gravestones, using texts common to tombs in contemporary Granada and the Maghreb, as well as to earlier Islamic periods in the Iberian Peninsula, prove that the elite who occupied senior positions in the aljama worked in a bilingual atmosphere and had sufficient command of Arabic to produce models to be used at the cemetery, as well as read legal treatises and produce accurate 84 Instances in Alagón, Vitoria, Huesca, Zaragoza, etc., are cited in José Hinojosa, Los mudéjares: La voz del Islam en la españa cristiana, volumes I-II (Teruel: Centro de Estudios Mudéjares, 2002), I, p. 168. 85 Ortego, “Cristianos y mudéjares”, 295-6. 86 George C. Decasa, The Qur’a¯nic Concept of Umma and Its Function in Philippine Muslim Society (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1999), quoting all the texts from the Qurʾa¯n, and their subsequent interpretation and use in contexts of coexistence with Christian environments .


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copies of Arabic books.87 This challenges the opinion that, by the mid-fifteenth century, Castilian Muslims had lost their Arabophone register altogether. The complaint of the muftı¯ of Segovia, ʿI¯sa¯ ibn Ja¯bir, author of the Sunni Breviary, may now be nuanced. Even if the most humble Muslims no longer used Arabic as common speech, Andalusi colloquial Arabic was still used in the records of the meetings of the confraternity, and Arabic signatures were produced to validate its accounts, keeping the Arabic style for witnessing records. Thus, at least a learned elite was still capable of producing impromptu records in Arabic – that is, not copied from formularies. These Arabic inscriptions, created in a funerary context in which Muslims could express their most personal beliefs, protected by the walls of the cemetery and the laws of the kingdom, provide a fine example of the survival of Arabo-Romance diglossia.88 It is possible to conceive that Arabic was used for religious and learned contexts and Romance for daily life, as French and Berber (as opposed to Arabic) are used in present-day Morocco. There is nothing to suggest that Mudejar Islam deviated from patterns present in other Islamic countries where diglossia, and even multilingualism, had been in common use for centuries. However, two main features may suggest a breach of tradition: the aforementioned “letters of death” and the personal grave goods found in several burials. The former is clearly an innovation provided to counteract any possible effect of the loss of Islamic tradition or Arabic language in the salvation of the faithful. Like the fixing of canonical ritual prayers for the deceased, this is a mechanism to ensure the families that their beloved would face the angels of death in their best shape. As for jewellery and personal objects, the quantity and nature of them rule out the possibility that they were offerings, suggesting rather an effort to keep tokens that were dear to the deceased, or to demonstration social status. The same is also true in many other Islamic societies, despite legal prohibitions. Indeed, Islamic tradition was preserved by fuqaha¯ʾ and ima¯ms, and through contacts with Granada, beyond obvious limitations. In summary, the contradiction between theoretical practices of Islam and actual practice among Muslims living under Christian rule in Iberia does not seem more acute than in other Islamic lands. Only after their forced conversion – which resulted in the creation of the group known as Moriscos – almost a century later, had their tradition become so entangled as to be difficult to define in other Islamic contexts. The ascription of Morisco transformations to the earlier period has resulted in scholarly misunderstanding of the Mudejar religious traditions. However, it seems that, by the fifteenth century, the role of confraternities and fuqaha¯ʾ ensured a reasonably standard practice of Islamic religiosity among Mudejars. The mixture of conservatism and adaptive practices makes their case even more fascinating, but no practice should be highlighted above the others, since it is the combination of the two that defines this particular community. 87

All specialists in Mudejar and Morisco literature agree that manuscripts exist in all three forms: Arabic, Aljamiado and Castilian. We do not know whether one type predominated over the others, at least based on the number of pre-Morisco manuscripts that have been preserved. For a summary, see C. López-Morillas, “Los manuscritos aljamiados”, Al-Qantara 19 (1998): 425-44; and more recently, Memoria de los moriscos: Escritos y relatos de una diáspora cultural, ed. Alfredo Mateos Paramio and Juan Carlos Villaverde Amieva (Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2010). 88 For the use of classical Arabic/colloquial Arabic and Romance/Arabic diglossia, see Maria Ángeles Gallego, “The Languages of Medieval Iberia and Their Religious Dimension”, Medieval Encounters 9. 1 (2003): 107-39, esp. 122-37, and Xavier Casassas Canals, “La literatura islámica castellana, siglos XIII-XVII: catálogo de textos de mudéjares y moriscos escritos en caracteres latinos”, Al-Andalus Magreb: Estudios árabes e islámicos 16 (2009): 89–113.


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Appendix


Prayers for the deceased-different versions a) al-Qayrawa¯nı¯, Risa¯la, (Bewley), 21.2; Compendio, 88-9 Chapter Twenty-One: On the Funeral Prayer and Supplication for the Dead The jana¯za (funeral) prayer contains four takbı¯rs [saying “Alla¯hu akbar” (God is most great)]. You lift your hands for the first takbı¯r and there is no harm in doing so for each of the others. If you wish, you can make a duʿa¯ʾ after the fourth takbı¯r before the sala¯m or if you like, you can say the sala¯m directly after the takbı¯r. The ima¯m stands facing the middle of the body if the dead person is a man and facing the shoulders if it is a woman. The sala¯m for this prayer is said once quietly both by the ima¯m and by those following him. There is a great reward to be gained from performing the prayer and for being present at the burial. This reward is equivalent in size to Mount Uhud. There is no specific formula for the duʿa¯ʾ to be made when performing the funeral prayer. All˙ the things that have come down [in the tradition] are acceptable. One good thing to say after the takbı¯r is: “Praise be to Alla¯h who brings death and gives life and praise be to Alla¯h who brings the dead to life. To Him belong Greatness, Sovereignty, Power, Exaltedness and He has power over all things. O Alla¯h, bless Muhammad and the family of Muhammad as You blessed and ˙ were merciful to and poured goodness on Ibrahim and the family ˙of Ibrahim. In all the worlds, You are Praiseworthy, Glorious. Alla¯h, he is your slave and the son of Your slaves. You created him and provided for him. You made him die and You will bring him to life and You know best about his outward and his inward. We have come to You as intercessors on his behalf so please accept our intercession. O Alla¯h, we seek safety for him by Your bond of protection with him. Certainly You keep Your word and promise. O Alla¯h, protect him from the trials of the grave and from the torment of Jahannam. O Alla¯h, forgive him, have mercy on him, pardon him and grant him well-being. Be generous to him when he arrives and open the way wide for him to come in. Wash him with water, snow and ice and cleanse him from his wrong actions as a white garment is cleansed of dirt. Give him a home better than the home he had, a family better than the family he had and a wife better than the wife he had. O Alla¯h, if he was right-acting, increase him in right-actions and if he was wrong-doing, then overlook his wrong actions. O Alla¯h, he has come to You and You are the Best that anyone can come to. He is in need of Your mercy and You have no need to punish him. O Alla¯h, make his speech firm when he is questioned and do not test him in his grave beyond what he can bear. Do not deprive us of our reward for doing this on his behalf and do not test us after him”. You say this after each takbı¯r and then after the fourth takbı¯r you say, “O Alla¯h, forgive those who are alive and those who are dead, those present with us and those absent, those who are young and those who are old, those who are male and those who are female. You know everything that we do and where we will end up – and forgive our parents and those who have gone before us in faith and all the Muslims both men and women and all the believers both men and women, the living and the dead. O Alla¯h, whoever of us You keep alive, keep him alive in faith and whoever You take back to Yourself take him back as a Muslim. Make us glad when we meet You. Make us pleasing at the time of our death and make death pleasant for us. Make it a source of rest and happiness for us”. After this you say the sala¯m. If the dead person is a woman you say, "O Alla¯h, she is your slave and the daughter of Your slaves" and you continue, making the object of the duʿa¯ʾ feminine rather than masculine. The only difference is that you do not say, "Give her a husband better than her husband…" because in the Garden she may be the wife of the man who was her husband in this world and the women of the Garden are attached only to their husbands and have no desire for anyone else. A man may have many wives in the Garden, whereas women only have one husband.

b) Breviario sunni, f. 28v-29r El açala del muerto89 Las loores son ad Alla que mata y abibiga y aberiguara los defunctos, a el es la grandeza y poderio y laudamiento y es sobre toda cosa poderoso. Señor Alla allega sobre Muhamad y A marginal note, “aqui ay otro capº en el libro arabigo” (f. 28v), refers to a chapter about the prayers for dead children which is not extant in any copy of the Breviary, but appears in al-Qayrawa¯nῑ, al-Risa¯la, in Compendio, 90-1.

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Ana Echevarria

sobre los de Muhamad y semejantes laudaçiones, y dirá: Señor, este este (sic) es tu siervo, este fijo de tu siervo, tu lo criaste y lo mantubiste, y lo mataste y lo altivaras y tu sabes su secreto y paladino. Venimos a te rrogar por el, Señor, a ti nos avesindamos que tu eres complidor de omenaje, Señor, defiendele del tentamiento de la fuesa [fosa]e de las penas de chehenema (sic), Señor Alla, perdonale y onrra su morada y ensancha su entrada, y labalo y alimpialo de sus culpas, y dale mejor casa y mejor compañia de la que tenia. Señor Alla, si fue bueno creçe su bondad y si fue malo perdonale sus pecados, que a ti non empeçe, Señor, es pobre ante ti y tu eres rico sin el. Señor Alla, afirma la su lengua al tiempo de la pregunta en su fuesa: que no tartalee en lo que non a fuerça sino contigo, Señor Alla, non nos harames su galardon ni nos retientes despuesdel. Esto as de deçir tres vezes, y en fin de cada vez Alla¯hu aquebar, que sera dichas quatro vezes, y asi dichas todas quatro diras: Señor Alla, perdona a nuestros bivos y nuestros muertos y a los presentes y ausentes, grandes y menores, machos y fembras, que tu sabes nuestros fines y asentamientos, y a nuestros padres y antepasados de los creyentes moros y moras creyentes, y creyentes bivos y muertos. Señor Alla, a quien dieres /f. 29r/ dias de vida de nos seya en la creyençia firme y a quien dieres fin amatalo en la creençia y danos buena ventura en tu encontramiento y buena fin a la muerte y sea nuestro descanso consolaçion de nuestras almas açalemolaley comy. Y si fuere muger faras los bocablos como de muger hembra y si fuere criatura a de deçir que perdone Alla con el a sus padres y sea paso de sus alhaçanas, y digan quando le entierran: nuestro hermano dexo el mundo y va ante ti, Señor Alla¯h, afirmale tu testigo al tiempo de la demanda, quel no ha fuerça nin oderio sinon contigo. Y daras açalem.