Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture in the Mediterranean: Three Ladies and a Lover (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures)

224 Pages·2006·43.1 MB·English

by  C. Robinson

MEDIEVAL ANDALUSIAN COURTLY
CULTURE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture discusses the thirteenth-century unicum manuscript
of the the only illustrated manuscript to have survived from
more than eight centuries of Muslim and Arabic-speaking presence in present-day Spain.
The manuscript is of paramount importance as it contains the only known illustrated
version of the love story of

The study will place this manuscript within the context of late medieval Mediterranean
courtly culture and offers:
• a translation into English of the entire text
• reproductions of its images
• an analysis of both text and images in a series of progressively broader contexts
including that of al-Andalus (Arabic-speaking), “reconquista” Iberia, and the larger
Mediterranean world.
Texts and images will not, as is often the case, be analyzed in separate chapters; rather,
the analysis will serve to point to the cohesion of what might be referred to as the
currency of Mediterranean courtly culture, with this latter much changed from the earliest
days of its existence as a cultural code in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture in the Mediterranean is essential reading for
scholars with interests in medieval Spain, Islamic art and Mediterranean courtly culture.
Cynthia Robinson is Associate Professor of Medieval and Islamic Art History, Near
Eastern Studies and Medieval Studies at Cornell University. She researches issues of
cultural interaction in the medieval Mediterranean, focusing on the interfaces between
literature, courts, religion and visual culture.
ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN MIDDLE
EASTERN LITERATURES
Editors
James E.Montgomery
University of Cambridge
Roger Allen
University of Pennsylvania
Philip F.Kennedy
New York University
Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literature is a monograph series devoted to aspects
of the literatures of the Near and Middle East and North Africa both modern and
pre-modern. It is hoped that the provision of such a forum will lead to a greater emphasis
on the comparative study of the literatures of this area, although studies devoted to one
literary or linguistic region are warmly encouraged. It is the editors’ objective to foster
the comparative and multidisciplinary investigation of the written and oral literary
products of this area.
1. Sheherazade Through the Looking Glass
Eva Sallis
2. The Palestinian Novel
Ibrahim Taha
3. Of Dishes and Discourse
Geert Jan van Gelder
4. Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry
Beatrice Gruendler
5. Making the Great Book of Songs
Hilary Kilpatrick
6. The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880–1985
Samah Selim
7. Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and Arabic Writerly Culture
A ninth-century bookman in Baghdad
Shawkat M.Toorawa
8. Religious Perspectives in Modern Muslim and Jewish Literatures
Edited by Glenda Abramson and Hilary Kilpatrick
9. Arabic Poetry
Trajectories of modernity and tradition
Muhsin J.al-Musawi
10. Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture in the Mediterranean
Cynthia Robinson
11. Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam
Muslim horizons
Julia Bray
MEDIEVAL ANDALUSIAN
COURTLY CULTURE IN THE
MEDITERRANEAN

Cynthia Robinson

LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2007 Cynthia Robinson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-96118-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10: 0-415-32244-8 (Print Edition)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-32244-7
FOR FAITHFUL LOVERS AND ABLE ALCAHUETAS EVERYWHERE

CONTENTS

List of figures ix
Acknowledgements xii

Introduction 1
1 translation 13
2 Love localized, science from afar: the image program of the 72

3 110
Alfonso, the Almohads and the the
courtliness and culture in thirteenth-century Iberia
4 162
Wandering in Babylon: the and the roman
idyllique

Bibliography 198
Index 205
FIGURES
Figures 1-14 from the (Vaticano
Arabo Riservato 368)

1.1 Frontispiece with dramatis personae, f. 1v 13
1.2 The counsels I, f. 2r 16
1.3 fainting, attended by the slave girls and the f. 3v 17
1.4 The Sayyida’s majlis, I; Sham(cid:460)l performs, f. 5r 19
1.5 The Sayyida’s majlis, II; performs, f. 7v 26
1.6 The Sayyida’s majlis, III; performs, f. 9r 30
1.7 The Sayyida consults with the after throwing an inkwell at 32

f. 13v
1.8 The counsels II, f. 15r 41
1.9 Sham(cid:460)l delivers a letter from to beside the banks 45

of the river Tharth(cid:407)r, f. 17r
1.10 fainted dead away beside the banks of the river Tharth(cid:407)r; 49

a funerary lament is intoned by the relative (qar(cid:431)b), f. 19r
1.11 receiving letter from the Sayyida’s slave girls in a 55

house beside the river, f. 22r
1.12 prostrate at the Sayyida’s feet, while the slave girls and 64

the look on, f. 27r
1.13 engaged in a game of chess with the relative, while 67

the observes, f. 29r