As far as the exact number of Moriscos expelled from Spain is concerned, the figures quoted vary so widely it would be really unhelpful to name those authors who suggest one or other figure. Perhaps, following Domínguez and Vincent, the closest we can come is their total of approximately three hundred thousand. Moreover, most of the authors who have studied the Moriscos (Janer, Lea, Domínguez and Vincent, Caro Baroja . . .) speak of the killings that took place when those deported reached Barbary. Some of them affirm that almost a third of the Moriscos expelled from Valencia were killed on arrival. In this they are following Philip III’s chronicler, Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, in his Relaciones de las cosas sucedidas en la corte de España desde 1599 hasta 1614: ‘and they [the Moriscos] are so horrified at the mistreatment and harm that the people of Valencia have received in Barbary, since a third of those who left have died, that very few of them wish to go there.’ King Philip, however, celebrated the operation and gave a gift of a hundred thousand ducats in Morisco possessions to the Duke of Lerma on the occasion of the royal adviser’s wedding to the Countess of Valencia.
After the first expulsion, a series of edicts was issued that insisted on the deportation of any Moriscos who might have remained in Spain or returned there, permitting and even rewarding the murder or enslavement of anyone found. It should also be recognized that the expulsion edicts varied according to each kingdom, although basically these different orders varied only slightly. In the novel, I have used the first of these that was passed, in the kingdom of Valencia.
Among the exceptions, the city of Córdoba is particularly interesting. On 29 January 1610 the city council petitioned the King for permission to allow two old, childless harness-makers to stay in the city ‘for the general good and for the sake of the riders’. I have no evidence to suggest that apart from these two old Moriscos, who were to carry on looking after the horses, there were any other exceptions; nor do I know what His Majesty’s reply was to the request.
In 1682, following the death of Archbishop Don Pedro de Castro, Pope Innocent XI took possession of the Lead Books of Sacromonte and the parchment from the Turpian tower, and declared them to be forgeries. Yet the Vatican said nothing about the relics, which had been certified as genuine by the Church in Granada in 1600, and which have continued to be venerated to this day. It is a situation similar to the one experienced by the protagonist of this novel: the documents – even if they were made of lead – affirming that this bone or those remains were of a specific martyr were rejected as forgeries by the Vatican; but the relics themselves, whose credibility was based precisely on those documents (how otherwise could ashes found in an abandoned mine on a hill be attributed to Saint Caecilius or Saint Ctesiphon?) were still considered authentic by the Church in Granada.
Today, most researchers agree that the Lead Books and the Turpian tower parchment were forged by Spanish Moriscos in a desperate attempt at syncretism between the two religions. In this way they hoped to find common bonds that could bring a real change in the view that the Christians held of Muslims, without renouncing their dogmas of faith.
There is also almost complete unanimity that these inventions were the work of the physicians and official Arabic translators Alonso del Castillo and Miguel de Luna, who wrote a Verdadera historia del rey Rodrigo in which he offered a sympathetic view of the Arab invasion of the Iberian peninsula and of the peaceful co-existence of Christians and Muslims. Hernando Ruiz’s participation in these events is fictional, but that is not the case with Don Pedro de Granada Venegas (mentioned in several of the studies), who eventually changed his family motto, originally the triumphant ‘Lagaleblila’ or wa la galib ilallah of the Nasrid rulers, to the Christian ‘Servire Deo regnare est’. In 1608, shortly before the expulsion, the book Antigüedad y excelencias de Granada was published. Written by the academic Pedraza, it glorified the conversion of Cidiyaya, a Muslim prince who was one of Don Pedro’s forebears, as a result of the miraculous apparition of a cross in mid-air in front of him. Many Muslim noble families, in ways similar to the Venegas, succeeded in becoming integrated into Christian society.
The link between the Lead Books of Sacromonte and the gospel of Barnabas, originally upheld by Luis F. Bernabé Pons in Los mecanismos de una resistencia: los Libros Plúmbeos del Sacromonte y el Evangelio de Bernabé and El Evangelio de san Bernabé: un evangelio islámico español is based on the discovery in 1976 of a thirteenth-century partial transcription of the supposed original, written in Spanish, to which there are several historical references, especially from Tunis. It is now in the University of Sydney. This modern theory could however call into question the purely syncretic aim that the Lead Books are said to represent. It seems logical to suppose that the authors of the Mute Book of the Virgin – whose contents, according to the prologue and another of the books (which is legible) were to be made known by an Arab king – foresaw the appearance of another text, although there is no proof this ever came to light. Whether or not this new text was the gospel of Barnabas (which bears many similarities to the Lead Books), it remains no more than a hypothesis. What is not hypothesis, but the exclusive fruit of the author’s imagination, is the link between the gospel and that fictitious copy saved from the burning of the magnificent library of the caliphs of Córdoba ordered by Almanzor, an event which unfortunately was only too real, like so many other barbaric bonfires, painful to recall, in the history of humanity when knowledge becomes the object of the anger of fanatics.
Moreover, it is also true that studies were made about the Christian martyrs in the Alpujarra, although these were carried out much later than described in the novel. The first recorded attempt, according to information collected by Archbishop Pedro de Castro, dates from the year 1600. In the annals of Ugíjar (1668) where most of the killings of Christians that occurred in the Alpujarra are recorded, a boy by the name of Gonzalico is mentioned. He described his sacrifice for God as ‘beautiful’ before he was martyred. Tearing the heart out through the victim’s back as described in the novel is repeatedly cited by Mármol in his chronicles as a sign of the Moriscos’ cruelty towards their Christian victims.
Córdoba is a marvellous city, as a consequence of which it is the largest urban area in Europe to be declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. In some parts it is still possible for the imagination to take flight and conjure up the splendid epoch of the Muslim caliphate. One of these places, of course, is the mosque/cathedral. We do not know for certain if the Emperor Charles V actually said the words attributed to him when he saw the works he himself had authorized in the interior: ‘I did not know what this was, otherwise I would not have allowed you to touch what was here before; because you are doing something that could have been done anywhere, and have undone something that was unique in the world.’ The truth is that the cathedral, as it was conceived in various stages and squeezed as it is into the forest of columns of the mosque, is a work of art. It is undeniable that the light of the Muslim place of worship was obscured, its pure lines were broken and its spirit tamed, and yet despite all this a goodly portion of the caliphate construction still exists. Why was it not demolished, as was the case with many other mosques, in order to build a completely new Christian cathedral in its place? Perhaps, leaving aside any possible interests the councillors and the nobility may have had, it is worth recalling the death sentence that the city council pronounced against anyone who dared work on the new cathedral.
Around one of the courtyards of the Christian monarchs’ fortress the ruins and marks on the ground from the former cells of the Inquisition can still be seen. Next to it is another building that can transport the visitor back to those days: the royal stables, where Philip II dreamt up and carried out the creation of a new breed of court horses, a breed which even today ennobles and defines the Spanish horse.
The hand of Fátima (al-hamsa) is an amulet in the shape of a five-fingered hand. According to some theories, these represent the five pillars of faith: the profession of faith (shahada); the five d
aily prayers (salat); the giving of alms (zakat); fasting (sawm), and the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime (haj). However, the same amulet also appears in the Jewish tradition. This is neither the place nor the moment to enter into a discussion of its real origins, still less the efficacy of amulets in general. Books on the period insist time and again, however, that not only the Moriscos but society as a whole in that period believed in all kinds of witchcraft and spells. Even by 1526, the Council of the Chapel Royal in Granada made reference to ‘hands of Fátima’, forbidding silversmiths to make them and Moriscos to wear them; similar precepts were adopted at the synod of Guadix in 1554. There are many examples of the hand of Fátima in Muslim architecture, but perhaps the most representative within the scope of this book is the hand with the five outstretched fingers carved in the keystone of the first arch in the Puerta de la Justicia (Justice gate) which forms the entrance to the Alhambra of Granada, built in 1348. Therefore the very first symbol that any visitor to that marvellous monument sees is none other than a hand of Fátima.
I could not end this note without offering my thanks to all those who, in one way or another, have helped and advised me in the writing of this novel. A special thanks goes to my editor, Ana Liarás, whose personal commitment, advice and hard work have been invaluable, as have those of all the staff of Random House Mondadori. And my gratitude goes, of course, to my first reader: my wife, a tireless companion, and to my four children, who took it upon themselves to remind me forcibly that there are many important things beyond work. It is to them that I dedicate this book, in homage to all those children who suffered and unfortunately continue to suffer the consequences of the problems of our world: problems we seem incapable of resolving.
Barcelona, December 2008
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