A Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada
ISBN: 9780226547282
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / University of Chicago Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Political History; Early Modern History (1500 to 1700) European History;

Conquered in 1492 and colonized by invading Castilians, the city and kingdom of Granada faced radical changes imposed by its occupiers throughout the first half of the sixteenth century--including the forced conversion of its native Muslim population. Written by Francisco Núñez Muley, one of many coerced Christian converts, this extraordinary letter lodges a clear-sighted, impassioned protest against the unreasonable and strongly assimilationist laws that required all converted Muslims in Granada to dress, speak, eat, marry, celebrate festivals, and be buried exactly as the Castilian settler population did.

Now available in its first English translation, Núñez Muley's account is an invaluable example of how Spain's former Muslims made active use of the written word to challenge and openly resist the progressively intolerant policies of the Spanish Crown. Timely and resonant--given current debates concerning Islam, minorities, and cultural and linguistic assimilation--this edition provides scholars in a range of fields with a vivid and early example of resistance in the face of oppression.

Vincent Barletta is associate professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford University. He is the author of Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain, winner of the 2007 La corónica International Book Award and Death in Babylon: Alexander the Great and Iberian Empire in the Muslim Orient .

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