Beastly Colloquies: Of Plagiarism and Pluralism in Two Medieval Disputations between

Animals and Men

Authors(s): Lourdes Mara Alvarez
Source: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2002), pp. 179-200
Published by: Penn State University Press
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BEASTLY COLLOQUIES: OF PLAGIARISM AND

PLURALISM IN TWO MEDIEVAL DISPUTATIONS
BETWEEN ANIMALS AND MEN

Lourdes Maria Alvarez

The recuperation of the riches of medieval Catalan literary history was an

essential element of the i^-century Renaixena, which promoted the re-

vival of the Catalan language and culture. While the cause of Catalan nationalism served agendas on both the political right and left, progressive,
modernizing sectors conceptualized catalanisme as the restoration of a pluralistic culture that had fallen victim to Castilian expansionism and intolerance. As posited by nineteenth-century nationalists such as Valenti Almirall,
the founder of the influential Diari Gatal, the rediscovery of Catalan history and literature brought new riches to the Peninsula as a whole.1 Among

those treasures was Anselm Turmedas Disputa de VAse (i4i;r-i8),2 which

medievalists celebrated as a bawdy, yet deeply philosophical text in the spirit

of Boccaccio s Decameron, and a proud precursor of Rabelais. It mattered

little that the original Catalan version was lost and could only be reconstructed using the 1544 French edition; indeed, its loss at the hands of the

Castilian Inquisition only served to reinforce the latent subtext of the

Catalanist revival: that a narrow-minded Castilian centralism had long ago

squelched the more cosmopolitan and universalist Catalan world view.3

Yet the prestige of Turmeda's work was dealt a serious blow when in

1914 the Spanish Arabist Miguel Asin Palacios condemned his work as a
aplagio estupendoV "fantastic plagiarism"4 citing its similarities to a tenth-

century Arabic text, Rasaillkhwn al-Safa [The Epistles of the Brethren of

Purity].5 Turmedas moral virtues had already been cast in doubt late in the

nineteenth century, as evidence mounted that the stories of his saintly

martyrdom - after abjuring the Islamic faith he had adopted upon his ar-

rival in Tunis - were fabrications. If some Catalanists had once seen in him
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2002.
Copyright 2002 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

179

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i8o COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

a figure of the stature of Ramon Llull (only with a better sense of humor),

Asin Palacios' condemnation of Turmeda's literary - and other - duplicities seriously tarnished his reputation as a writer and framed all subsequent
discussion of his works.
The accusation of plagiarism is, of course, especially problematic when

applied to works created in the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages.

Some of Turmeda's defenders have simply dismissed the charge, arguing
that copying and "borrowing" were commonplace in that environment so
alien to our modern notions of intellectual property.6 Yet such a defense
functions as a tacit acknowledgement of the "crime," thus foreclosing a reading which would highlight the radically different textual strategies and interpretative contexts of each work.7 Moreover, in this case, which traverses
the culturally and politically fraught boundary between East and West, further reflection is especially necessary on the question of how plagiarism (or
mere imitation) is to be distinguished from satire or intertextuality, or other

legitimated relationships with literary ancestors. How do we define the legitimate or authentic "inheritors" of any literary, philosophical or cultural
tradition? Are those outside of that lineage simply usurpers, plagiarists or
servile copyists? Notwithstanding the fact that philological source studies,
catalogues of "influences," and the creation of literary genealogies, (so fash-

ionable among positivist historical critics) have been repudiated by most

medievalists, it is still the case that the "originality" of any literary, cultural

and scientific patrimony remains central to many discourses of national,

ethnic and religious identity.

Thus, the scholarly concerns of Asin Palacios, who focused on the

points of literary and religious contact between medieval Christian and
Islamic civilizations, remain central to current debates about Islamic authenticity and the Arab world's relations with the "West." While he charged
Turmeda with plagiarism, in other cases he valued Islamic "influence" much
more positively. In his posthumous Sdilesy alumbrados he argues that the
sudden efflorescence of Spanish mysticism in the 16th century, emblema-

tized by two of Spain's greatest mystics: San Juan de la Cruz and Santa
Teresa of Avila, resulted from the convivencia with the inheritors of an Islamic mystical tradition dating back to 13th century al-Andalus.8 Yet Asin's

efforts to bridge the distance between religions and world views that had
once intermingled more freely in Spain frequently led him to minimize real
differences; he often stressed what he saw as the "Christian" elements in the

Arabic-Islamic sources that had influenced European works. One need look
no further than the title he gave to his study of the i3th-century Andalusian

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Beastly Colloquies 181

Sufi mystic Ibn al-cArabi: El Islam cristianizado.9 In La escatologia musulmana

en la Divina Comedia, the Spanish Arabist argued that Dante had been
inspired by the Islamic tradition of writings on the journey of the Prophet

Muhammad to the otherworld (micrf)y perhaps specifically by Ibn

al-cArabi's version of the tradition.10 Yet in Asm Palacios' view, Dante is no
plagiarist:

Y Dante, al aprovechar para su poema aquellos elementos artisticos

que el islam le ofrecia y que en nada alteraban el fondo esencial e

inmutable de los dogmas evanglicos de ultratumba, no hizo en
definitiva otra cosa que devolver al tesoro de la cultura cristiana de
occidente y reivindicar para su patrimonio los bienes raices que
ignorados para ella yacian en las literaturas religiosas de los pueblos
orientales. (421)
And Dante, in availing himself of those artistic elements that Islam
offered him for his poem and which in no way altered the essential

and immutable base of the evangelical dogmas regarding the

otherworld, did nothing but return to the treasury ofWestern Chris-

tian culture, and claim for its patrimony, the heritage that unbeknownst to it still lay dormant in the religious writings of the East.11

In this complicated web of interconnection and mutual influence, Asm insists that Dante's craft and "inspiration," indeed his artistic psychology, led
him to "assimilate" Islamic models rather than "imitate" them. By contrast,

Asin sawTurmeda's equivocation in matters religious as opportunistic and

self-serving, and was outraged by his dissimulation in writing works for a
Christian public from an apparently Christian perspective while at the same
time writing an anti-Christian polemic in Arabic. Nor did Asm conceal the
fact that he considered Turmeda a far lesser light than the Islamic philoso-

phers from which he took his inspiration. The apostate, lacking the moral
stature and artistic gifts of a Dante, could manage only a pale reflection, an
inelegant copy of the original. Here, as always, the accusation of plagiarism
rests upon a pre-existing judgment of the relative merit (both literary and
moral) of the source and the "borrower," often accompanied by some doubt
as to whether or not the "plagiarist" even fully understood the material.

Indeed, the charges leveled at Turmeda serve to obscure how the Arabic "original" thematizes and inscribes its own intellectual and literary borrowings. The question of ownership of an intellectual tradition is very present

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i82 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

in the Ikhwn's text, and in many ways the Ikhwn's insistence on the vari-

ety and universality of their sources is a key element in their argument

(both implicit and explicit) against political structures they judged to be

propped up by ethnic and religious chauvinism, closed-mindedness and a

defensive attitude against "foreign" religious and intellectual traditions. By
contrast, Turmeda fails to credit his intellectual precursors and influences,
and were it not for the striking similarity in the storyline of the Disputa and

a segment of the Epistles of the Ikhwn al-Saf', we might have never known
of Turmeda's contact with the thought of this group. The Catalan writer's
concern with fame, his frequent boasting, and the insistent presence in his
works of the author-character - whether in his Arabic-language autobiography, his lengthy poem Cobles de la divisi del Rgne de Mallorques [Verses
on the Division in the Kingdom of Mallorca]12 or the Disputa de VAse - in-

crease the suspicion surrounding his unacknowledged "appropriation" of

the basic plot of the Disputa. Nonetheless, there is more than a little irony
in the fact that the Brethren are praised for their eclecticism by Western

scholars - and a good number of contemporary Arab scholars as well while Turmeda has been condemned for taking inspiration in an ArabIslamic work.

* *

Almost all that is known to us about the secretive tenth-century group of

thinkers who called themselves the Ikhwan al-Saf' (usually rendered as

brethren of Purity* or 'Sincere Brethren') comes to us through their own
writings: the Ras'il [Epistles] and a separate volume, the Jami'a,13 an esoteric summary of the philosophy developed in their Epistles. Although the

identities of the authors are shrouded in mystery and are the subject of
contention, there is widespread agreement that they worked in Basra (situated in what is now Iraq). The location is noteworthy, for Basra's strategic

geographical situation and early history as a garrison town had long made
it a crossroads of civilizations - a focus of political strife from competing
factions in Islam, as well as a brilliant cultural center, home to prominent
Arab grammarians, poets, prose writers and religious scholars.14 Likewise,
the fourth Islamic century (10th c. CE) is noted as a time of enormous intel-

lectual ferment and pitched sectarianism, as Qarmatians, Ismcil Fatimids

and other groups directly challenged Abbasid hegemony, and the establish-

ment of the Cordovan caliphate (929 CE) dealt a further blow to the pre-

tense of an undivided Islam.

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Beastly Colloquies 183

The syncretic and esoteric aspects of the Brethren's thought have made

precise labeling of their political philosophy controversial. There is widespread agreement that their thought is closest to that of the Ismcilis, an
offshoot of Shicism which emerged from a dispute over succession to the

imamate, and that in the centuries following their composition that the
Ras'il played a prominent role defining Ismcl thought.15 However, their
self-distancing from the Fatimid (Ismf ili) immate, their attack on all forms

of partisanship and sectarianism, and their embrace of "brotherhood" as a

concept of political organization have led several scholars to voice doubt
about their actual participation in an Ismcili dacwa.16 In any case, the influence of the Ikhwn al-Saf' extended far beyond the Ismacili minority,
for despite their heterodoxy, the Rasa il found their way into many hands.

In Islamic Spain, the Raslwert actively promoted and disseminated by

mathematicians such as al-Majriti (d. 1007) and his student al-Kirmni (d.
1066).17 Later, the "Dispute between man and animals" attracted the atten-

tion of the Jewish mathematician and parodist Qalonymos ben Qalonymos

(1286 - 1328), whose Hebrew translation of the work was reprinted numerous times.18

The Epistles, which have been called the first true encyclopedia, outstripping earlier compilations in the breadth of their sources and areas of
interest, are directed to new initiates into the circles of the Brethren.19 The
Ikhwn believed that an enlightened understanding of the workings of the

cosmos and its creatures was a means to more fully apprehending the di-

vine; in this sense all branches of study contribute to and participate in

theosophy {hikma ilhyya). For them, this desire for knowledge was neither

arrogant nor self-promoting, for knowledge of God's limitlessness should

serve only to increase the seeker's humility. Spurred by that encyclopedic

impulse, an appetite for wide-ranging knowledge which the Ikhwn liken

to the body's appetite for food of different flavors, colors and scents (1: 266),

the sources of the Rasa il encompass both the Islamic tradition, strictly defined, and much that lies outside of it - from Babylonian astrology to neo-

Platonism to gnosticism, Mazdaism and other Persian pre-Islamic

theosophies. The topics of the fifty-two chapters are organized according
to a teleological logic, progressing from mathematics - which the Brethren, following Pythagoras, consider the foundation of all philosophical in-

quiry - to music, logic, the natural sciences, the rational sciences, and
theology.

Indeed, in addition to the detailed discussion on the organization of

the book that prefaces the Rasa il, its authors devote another chapter to the

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184 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

question of the categories of knowledge. It bears mentioning that the later

Western innovation of arranging encyclopedias alphabetically would not

have found favor with the Ikhwn for two reasons. First, because they hold

that human languages and the symbols that represent them are entirely
arbitrary, an alphabetical arrangement does violence to the harmonious relationships between fields of knowledge. Second, the ability to quickly con-

sult individual subjects without regard to their relationship to the larger

structure of knowledge runs counter to their ethics of epistemology, which
stresses the interdependence and inseparability of all aspects of the created

world, including knowledge.20

Notwithstanding the exuberance of their encyclopedic project, the
Ikhwn are also wary of the dangers of making arrogant claims about their

own ability to represent, even if in a schematic and allusive fashion, the

magnificence and complexity of God's creation. Thus, superimposed on
the erudite polymathy of the text is an all-pervasive mystical element, a
concern with the hidden, supersensory world, which is reinforced in con-

cluding the treatise with a discussion of magic and miracles, that is, divinely mediated suspensions of natural law: momentary tears in the orderly
fabric of the cosmos.

The largely straightforward exposition of the Epistles is itself interrupted by the "Case of the Animals," the elaborate fable in that provided
direct inspiration for Turmeda, which is interpolated in the section on the
natural sciences, specifically the epistle devoted to the scientific description

and classification of animal species (Epistle 28). No source for the tale has
been identified, and although the use of talking animals was common in
tales of Indian origin such as Kalila wa Dimna (which is also cited in the
Epistles), this particular story may indeed have been devised by the Breth-

ren. They justify the insertion of the lengthy allegorical interpolation running over 170 pages in the standard Arabic edition, saying:

Throughout most of the Epistles we have illustrated the excellence

of mankind and its praiseworthy characteristics [. . .] In this Epistle

we want to mention something of the virtues of the animal kingdom, its praiseworthy characteristics, its laudable nature and its fault-

less qualities and show something of mankind's tyranny and its

outrage, its transgressions against others subservient to him like live-

stock and animals in general. [. . .] For when Man is eminent in

goodness he is a generous angel, the best of creation, and when he is

evil, he is a cursed devil, the worst of creation. We have demonstrated this using the speech of the animals, (translation is mine)21

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Beastly Colloquies 185

At the close of the debate, the reader is enjoined to seek to understand the
deeper meaning of the debate and warned that the story is not "amusement
for children nor the prattlings of the Brethren," but rather a veil for truths

on three levels: plainly spoken (alfazan) expressed ibart) and symbolic

{'ishrt). (II: 377) Indeed, as we shall see, the complex hermeneutic estab-

lished between the "Case of the Animals" and the rest of the Rasa il makes
the search for that deeper meaning challenging.

The narration of the "Case of the Animals" is prefaced by an account

of the rise of humans and human society, and their domination over and
subjugation of the earth and its creatures. The debate takes place in the era
initiated by the arrival of the Prophet Muhammad in a remote Edenic kingdom, where faithful (Muslim) jinn and beasts live peacefully under the rule
of a wise and just king following the precepts of natural law. Their idyll is
shattered by the arrival of the survivors of a shipwreck who immediately
seek to capture and enslave animals in accordance with their common practice. The animals flee and come before the king seeking justice and a guar-

antee of freedom from persecution. The king summons representatives of

the humans to answer the charges brought against them, and the stage is
set for a debate that will ultimately bring before the king and his counselors
representatives of seven nations of men and seven classes of animals.
In the animals' detailed and scientific rebuttal to arrogant assertions of
human superiority, the Ikhwn al-Saf' draw on several sources, most nota-

bly the monumental work of medieval Islamic zoology, al-Jhizs Kitb

al-Hayawn [Book of the Animals]}2 As in the ninth-century text by their
fellow Basran al-Jhiz, the exposition of the diversity and intricate interdependence of God's creation is above all a demonstration of the infinite power
and wisdom of the Creator. The animals soundly refute the claim advanced
by the humans early in the debate that the human form is the most beauti-

ful, that an upright carriage, keen senses and superior intellect constitute

proof of human pre-eminence. It is not that most animals are irregularly

built and misproportioned - as the humans maintain - but that the long
neck of the giraffe or the trunk of the elephant are perfectly adapted to
their individual needs and are, thus, testament to God s providence. Beauty

is relative, subordinate to the needs of each species to promote its own

reproduction; as the animal spokesman points out "our males are not aroused
by the beauty of your [human] females, nor our females by the charms of

your males." (58) Nor can humans claim superior intellect or senses when
"an ass or cow is frequently observed to return to its familiar home when its
master has led it away on a path it did not know and left it. Yet there are

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186 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

men who may travel the same road any number of times and still stray from

it and lose themselves" (5c).23

In addition to the wealth of allegorical meaning in the "Case of the

Animals," which resonates with the philosophical and political thought elu-

cidated in the Ras'il as a whole, the text also documents and categorizes
the rich variety of the animal world, constructing a detailed scientific tax-

onomy and natural history. The sheer number of speakers, from humble
insects to powerful mythological creatures such as the griffin, offers a dazzling array of perspectives which destabilizes the uniqueness of human subjectivity. The world viewed from the teleological standpoint of the animals
offers curious inversions that undermine anthropocentric systems of signification or hierarchies: for example, the animals complain that it is the ass

who is insulted when a human calls another an ass. The discussion of dogs
offers a salient example of inverted discourse. The animals reproach dogs,
not for the conventional Islamic view of their uncleanliness, but because of
their vile betrayal of their animal brethren. Their sloth, love of comfort, and

gluttonous appetite for human food lead them to live with men and aid
them in hunting down and murdering their fellow animals. In the eyes of
the other animals in the debate, dogs have wrongly rebelled against their
divinely assigned role in nature and have disturbed the harmony of a system of carefully calibrated interdependence.
Much is made of the fact that the greatest and fiercest of creatures fear

the tiniest of creatures against which their mighty power offers no protec-

tion. When stung by a "tiny beast somewhat resembling a gnat or a mosquito" (133), the sea serpent s body is invaded by a poison which kills it,
whereupon the carcass is devoured by the same animals of the sea who had
once feared him. The circle of life, the ebb and flow of being in time-bounded

creaturely existence means that no hierarchy is absolute, all of life is inter-

dependent: "the corruption of one thing is the enhancement of another,

God said, These are the days whose revolutions I bring about for men.
None understands but the wise' "(133). 24
The account of man's rise from initial fear of animals - due to his pal-

try numbers and comparatively weak physique - to the establishment of a

civilization predicated on the subjugation of animals marks the narrative as
a historical allegory. The story of the changing fortunes of the seven tribes

of Man and of the seven classes of beasts, a story of the rise and fall of
civilizations, can be read as z figura of Islamic history as seen from an Ismcili

viewpoint. Ismcl gnosis posits a cyclical history composed of seven eras,

each of which is announced by the arrival of a prophet who before his death

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Beastly Colloquies 187

imparts the core of his teaching to a ntiq or speaker who in turn reveals it
to proselytes in accordance with their capacities. The first six prophets are

Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Jesus' ntiq was
Peter, to whom he entrusted the Church; Muhammad's was cAli. The seventh and last prophet will fully reveal the inner {btin) meaning of religion.

As Halm explains: "[the seventh Imam] will not, however, produce any
new religion of law but will instead declare all the old ones obsolete, including those of Islam. The 'repeal of the laws' {raf al-shar'f) will make
room for the paradisiacal original religion without cult or laws which was
practiced by Adam and the angels in Paradise before the Fall: the 'original
religion of Adam' {din Adam al-awwat) consists only in praise of the Creator and His recognition as the Only God {tawhld)."25 Their readings of
the workings of the natural world and of the cyclical movements of the
planets served to confirm their faith that the culmination of the current
cycle would restore the state of innocence that existed at the beginning of
the cycle of cycles initiated with Adam.
In the contest of the "Case of the Animals," in that allegorical space in
which the languages of man and beast are briefly mutually intelligible - in
what is, in a sense, a tear in fabric of the microcosm of the encyclopedia, the

beasts turn out to be nimble debaters, and time after time demolish the
arguments proffered by the humans. A central tenet of the animals' position is that exoteric interpretations of Qur'nic verses extolling the nobility

of humans are insufficient as proof of human mastery over animals: "The

heavenly books have interpretations which go beyond the literal and are
known by those whose knowledge is deep" (57).26 The Ikhwn's espousal of
esoteric readings of divine revelation {fa wit) challenges both political and
religious orthodoxy, and the religious sciences which served to legitimate
hegemonic power. The undermining or destabilization of the surface meaning of the Qur'an was common to a number of minority currents in Islam,

including Muctazilites, whose Aristotelianism and strict rejection of anthropomorphic representations of the divine led them to reject a literal read-

ing of many passages of the revealed text, Shicites, who hold that the
inspiration required to correctly interpret religious texts is divinely granted
to religious leaders, and Sufis, whose mystical-symbolic interpretations are

guided by personal illumination. The exegetical strategy of the Brethren who share many commonalities not only with Shicites, but also with
Muctazilites and Sufis - locates in the revealed text and, as another instrument of revelation, in the natural world, the confirmation that the future

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i88 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

will bring down corrupt and abusive leaders and restore power to the just,

rightly guided philosophers.

While the beasts often function as mouthpieces for views that the authors openly or covertly espouse in other parts of the Epistles, and as Marquet

points out, at times even represent the community of initiates, the "Case of

the Animals" resists any simple reductive reading.27 Its discourse is not
oppositional but is rather an evolutional and accretive dialectic: all of the
speakers contribute something of value. Likewise, certain positions upheld
in the "Case" seem at odds with other parts of the Rasa il. While some
commentators have explained the apparent contradictions in the work as a
whole as the result of its collective composition, I would argue that the
discrepancies are easily subsumed into their dialectical hermeneutic, that is
to say, they are productive when subjected to further interpretation (ta wit).

In this sense, the "Case of the Animals" might be read as an expression of

some of the tensions inherent in any effort at syncretizing disparate modes

of thought such as creationism and neo-Platonism.

The animals staunchly defend diversity, not only as the organizing prin-

ciple of the natural world, but also as a strategy for victory in the debate:
"For every kind [of animal] has its own virtues which belong to no other, its
own modes of good judgment and discrimination, and its own kind of elo-

quence. With enough helpers there might be hope of success and a chance
to save the day" (8i).28 If victory in the debate will come from bringing a
multiplicity of voices to the fore, so too do the Ikhwn (at least claim to) see
intellectual diversity of thought as a source of human progress. Thus, here
they seem to propose a radical solution to the problem of the fragmenting
Islamic polity and the competing interpretations of religious precepts that
were widely decried at the time. To those contemporaries who viewed Hellenistic philosophy, or even mathematics, with great suspicion, who insisted

on a return to a pure Islamic doctrine, the Ikhwn al-Saf' respond with

their mystically- tinged universalism. If generations of philosophers, most

famously Ibn Rushd, tried to prove the essential harmony between philosophy and revealed religion, the Ikhwn seem to go even further in suggesting that philosophy could be the principle that would lead to harmony
between religions and sects. For they observe that the conflicts among reli-

gions are rarely truly religious in nature, but rather tied to questions of

power. The problem of sectarianism results from the quest of individual

groups to impose hegemony, to create unity through force and intimidation, rather than allowing brotherhood and the interchange of ideas to move

humanity to a more profound knowledge of the will of the Creator and

ultimately to salvation.

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Beastly Colloquies 189

Despite the clear sympathy for the animals that is evoked in the awestruck descriptions of the natural kingdom, the injustices of their captivity

and oppression and the implied parallels with the subjugation of religious
minorities, the debate is resolved in favor of the humans. The conclusive
argument, that man is superior because he partakes of eternal life, and thus
enjoys an entelechy that is denied to the animals, brings to a head the ques-

tions of oppression and justice so central to the debate. Are we simply to

accept at face value the Ikhwan s declaration that the debate s purpose is to

act as a counterbalance to the anthropocentrism in the rest of the Ras'iR

Insofar as the animal speech in the debate provides a sort of rhetorical
cover for an Ismcli social and religious critique and is perhaps typical of
the tendency attributed to the Ismcils by their critics: "instilling doubt
and leaving in suspense"29 the resolution of the debate seems to back away
from any revolutionary solution to the problem of injustice, entreating the
Brethren/animals to accept their lot with patience. Instead, the real revolution, the completion of the great cycle of historical cycles, is accomplished
with the arrival of the Ikhwan's ideal man, a figure who embodies the best
qualities of his predecessors and transcends their differences:

^yi\ cV~Jt ^jUb j*n'H *</^ J>U3l <j*U (lull viAJS Jllp rlii

^LiJl 4^ ^JJ ij^Jj ^jyJl cvtfH ,/yJl 4<^*Aii ^ c^jJl

$J\ i<y**Sl\ ^ili iljyJ\ $y*h iS>*Jl ^ JdU (fjLJt ^U^Jl cJLJl

(2:376)[...] ccijUll ^1 ^\)\

[learned, worthy, keen, pious, Persian by breeding, Arabian by faith,

Hanafite in his Islam, Iraqi in culture, Hebrew in lore, Christian in

manner, Damascene in piety, Greek in the sciences, Indian in con-

templation, Sufi in intimations, regal in character, masterful in

thought, and divine in insight [. . .] ("Case of the Animals" 202)]
The arrival of this seventh human representative, who symbolizes the last

prophet, signals the end of the debate and the end of history, as well as,
more prosaically, the narrative. The conventions that allowed the animals'
speech to be intelligible must be undone as the text accords the weight of
transcendence to Mans speech and thus ends that brief moment in time in

which communication between man, beast and jinn could proceed without
hindrance. The glimpse into that rip is then quickly covered over again, as

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io COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

the text abandons a literary narrative and returns to a type of scientific

discourse that attempts to transcend the time-boundedness of material existence.
*

Anselm Turmeda (i352?-i424?), a Mallorcan-born Franciscan friar, led a

life full of international political and religious intrigue, which included fleeing

to Tunis, repudiating both his religious order and his Christian faith, and
converting to Islam.30 Known there as cAbd Allah al-Tarjumn, the translator, he wrote several works in Catalan for Christian readers, as well as an
influential work of anti-Christian polemic in Arabic, Tuhfat al-adibfi radd
cala ahlal-salb [The Gift of the Writer towards the Rejection of the Partisans of

the Cross].31 He achieved no small measure of fame in Europe as a moralizing didactic poet, an astrologer and prophet; his cryptic Profecies conveyed
apocalyptic messages which attracted the attention of popes and monarchs.32
Even in death, Turmeda's true religious sentiments remain a mystery; ven-

erated as a Muslim saint, his tomb in Tunis became a site of pilgrimage.

Meanwhile in Catalunya, legend had it that Turmeda - perceived to be an
unwitting prisoner of circumstance - had seen a vision which led him to
publicly repudiate Islam and die a Christian martyr s death at the hands of

an angry mob. Turmeda's life story, his liminality and equivocal status as
convert and exile - indeed, even near-sainthood in two religions - is more
than a colorful footnote to his work. It has played an integral and inescapable part in determining the reception of his books, and has been used as a

tool used by his supporters and detractors - on both sides of the Mediterranean - to neutralize his dangerous transgression of political and religious
borders.
One of the unfortunate effects of Asin's discovery of the relationship

between the Disputa and the earlier Arabic version of the tale has been a
shift away from discussion of the eclecticism of Turmeda's book. Not only
does the former Franciscan draw from multiple sources and literary traditions, he also makes use of his personal knowledge of the spheres of power

in Europe and life behind the monastery walls. The delightful a-centricity
of the work which brings together philosophical musings, dirty jokes, advice about the wiles of women, bawdy tales of clerical debauchery and trans-

gression, biting condemnations of abuses of power and cryptic prophetic

verse was, of course, what had initially attracted the attention of Catalan
scholars.

Like the "Case of the Animals," Anselm Turmeda's Disputa de VAse

takes up the question of man's place in God's creation, within the frame-

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Beastly Colloquies 191

work of a verbal contest between men and animals. The first obvious nov-

elty in Turmeda's debate is that the animals are represented by the aAse

Ronys de la CuaTallada" [Mangy Ass with the lopped-offtail], a caustic

and sharp-witted debater (and a literary first-cousin to Lucius of The Golden
Ass or Burnel the Ass of Speculum Stultorum) who defends the dignity and
worth of all animal species. Anselm, an ironic antihero, is forced to answer

for humankind's transgressions against the animals. Here the balance has
shifted away sharply from the legal questions attendant on the relationship
between master and slave that are prominent in the Arabic text, away from

a philosophical examination of the idea of hierarchy and entelechy, away

from notions of self-determination and autonomy. Whereas the animals in

the Arabic debate condemn the physical and psychological aspects of their
oppression, carefully enumerating the shackles, chains, harnesses, whips and

other instruments of their torture, Turmeda's Ass charges man with the
verbal crime of unfounded boasting of his superiority. The Catalan case is
further marked as a purely rhetorical forum because it is being tried before
the king of the beasts, a party to the conflict, who would have no power to

enforce a judgment against Man. Thus the charges made by the Ass are a
showcase for Turmeda's critique of the small-mindedness and pettiness of
men and, in the most pointed cases, the abuses committed by individualized historical actors. At the same time, the Ass remains an essentially
picaresque character and his critical stance, the authority with which he
condemns the pettiness of others, is often ironized and made subservient to

his pleasure in the act of storytelling. For example, the Ass (and Anselm)
rather enjoy the tale of how Fray Juliot tricked an innocent young bride
into "tithing" the carnal benefits of marriage, that is, giving the Church, in
the person of its representative Fray Juliot, ten percent of her unions with
her husband.
The Disputa de VAse is strikingly different from the "Case of the Animals" with regards to narrative strategy and self-awareness. First, the nar-

ration is presented as a dream, conveniently accounting for the suddenly

transparent communication between man and beast. Whereas the parties
in the Ikhwn's debate treat each other with enormous decorum - with a

plainspoken jinn occasionally stepping in to signal the logical flaws as they

appear in the dispute - in the Catalan work, the Ass' first line of rhetorical

defense against Anselm's claims is a verbal offense. The Ass taunts his opponent mercilessly, belittling not only Anselm's logic, but Anselm himself:
u[U]s tenia en gran reputaci i saviesa. Mes ara, trobant el contrari, us tine

per una ruda i llorda persona. Eh, horn de Du! Sou fora de seny i
d'enteniment? Un infant de cine anys no deuria dir tais paraules, ans tenir
vengonya de pensar-les tan solament" ["I held you in great repute and wis-

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192 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

dom. But now, finding the contrary, I hold you to be a coarse and dimwitted person. Hey, good man! Are you out of your mind? A five-year old

child would not say such things, why he would be ashamed to even think
them"] (43).

At first glance it might seem that the sometimes formulaic diction

employed in the Arabic original - as in, for example, the ritualistic diwn
al-mazallam, the somber procedure of formally lodging the charges against
man, as one animal after another steps before the king and says "Had you
seen us, your Majesty, as prisoners in the hands of the sons of Adam with
chains on our feet and cables around our neck [. . . ] you would have pitied

us and wept for us, your Majesty" (62)33 - is analogous to the Ass* use of
proverbs or sayings in the sense that they both draw upon shared linguistic

conventions which are particular to the intended audience. But unlike the
formulaic repetition in the Ikhwan's text, which gestures toward "authentic"
legal records, the earthy proverbs spoken by the Ass carry the contradictory

burden of relating a tidbit of "wisdom" while calling attention to themselves.

The Ass's rhetorical strategy shifts as he engages Anselm in his stories

of clerical debauchery (wryly presented as serving the educational purpose

of illustrating the seven deadly sins). The jokes are pushed aside as he tells

of the flagrant abuses of the power of the Church. In one case, the Great
Abbot of Perugia brings vengeance against those fathers or husbands of
women that refuse to acquiesce to his desires. Accusing them of "havien
escrit lletres als enemies de la santa mare l'Esglsia" ["having corresponded
with enemies of the Holy Mother Church"] (123), he has them imprisoned,

hung or drawn and quartered, satisfying his lust with their women and
children and then passing them on to his soldiers. When an upstanding
woman, eight months pregnant, hurls herself from a window to escape the

Abbot's advances, her outraged husband preserves the dead fetus in salt
and carries the jar with the gruesome evidence of the cleric's misdeeds to
the neighboring villages to rally their support. Here, the Church's desire to
choke off popular dissent by giving the Abbot uncontested power over the
citizens of Perugia became in itself the catalyst for revolt and the village's

reclaiming of its sovereignty. While the stories of the seven deadly sins
interrupt the immediate resolution of the contest between man and the
animals, they function as a clear illustration of the arrogance and unfounded

claims to sovereignty treated allegorically - and somewhat humorously in the discussion of man's relationship to the animals.
Like many other intellectuals of his time - and the Brethren of Purity
in theirs - Turmeda was interested in astrology's power to predict the end

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Beastly Colloquies 193

of the injustices he denounced. The Disputa closes as the Ass comes to a

recitation of cryptic political and religious prophecies, similar in form and
content to the Profecies - largely concerned with the Great Western Schism

that divided the Church in a conflict between rival Popes - that had already brought Turmeda fame in Europe. Intrigued by the mysterious verses,
Anselm hastens to conclude the debate, for the Ass has promised that their
explanation awaits the resolution of their dispute. The debate, and the trans-

species dialogue, comes to a hasty conclusion as Anselm points out that

Jesus took human, not animal, form. A self-satisfied Anselm returns home,
having apparently forgotten the question of the meaning of the prophecies.
Thus they remain a mystery that presumably can only be deciphered in the
unfolding of time.

Turmeda's Disputa eliminates the multiplicity of perspectives present

in the earlier version. The Ass* viewpoint is occasionally interrupted by the

rabbit, or by some pesky insects, but the taxonomic impulse has been re-

placed with the pleasure of storytelling. The wide range of animals who
speak in the Arabic version, as each class of animal - birds, birds of prey,
aquatic animals, etc. - gathers to choose the most suitable spokesman, serves
a specific purpose there, but also slows down the narrative. Turmeda simply
does away with all that erudite detail. Likewise, the human representatives

of diverse faiths and races have been supplanted by Anselm. Turmeda dis-

penses with the elaborate steps in the preparation of the debate and the
speculation and strategizing of each party prior to the actual convocation
before the king. Many of the arguments are streamlined: for example, when
the humans argue that the fact that they buy and sell animals proves that
they are their property, the response in the Arabic text is:

a*!, fJJ\ *L,j f jj\ ^ Ifj* #t*f J*h ^ i^ij^j W 1$ <Jy ^

ts*>j W <*4? J ** rt c*> tj~* r+A* > *M c^jU

raj ^ ri& cJisXl b,t, jlUi *L*j 4JUU1 *bt JbU b|f J*i* dUiTj

cJL^I ctfy^ cj c^U iJuLj p+A*> iJlySflj aijrtfj V*yJ* t\4 J^

(2:214) WyU-lf^jUjHltj

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194 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

He argues that they buy and sell us. The same is done by Persians to

Greeks and Greeks to Persians when they conquer one another.

Which is the slave and which is the master? The Indians treat the
Sindians the same way and the Sindians the Indians; the Abyssinians,

the Nubians and the Nubians, the Abyssinians. The Arabs, Turks
and Kurds behave the same way toward one another. Which of them,
pray, are really the slaves and which the masters? (60)

By contrast, the Ass in the Catalan version speaks only of Christians and
Moors. This narrative simplification or streamlining is significant in a number of ways. Perhaps most obviously it reflects the difference in audience:
the Epistles were written in literary Arabic for a select readership that would

scrutinize the detailed inventory of animal species and the nuances of their
arguments with an eye to the hidden allegorical and esoteric levels of mean-

ing. Turmeda chose to write not in Latin, which was still the language of
philosophy and science, but rather in the Catalan vernacular, which at the
time competed with other Romance vernaculars to be a lingua franca around
the Mediterranean. The colloquial expressions and witty jibes, the mordant
humor, the off-color stories, and the plainspoken condemnation of oppres-

sion carried out in the name of the Church ensured the Disputas appeal to
a wide audience.

The requirements of a storytelling model as opposed to an encyclopedic model dictated that the idealized types of the Ikhwn be replaced with
characters. The shift from the abstractly symbolic to the particular, however allegorical, heralds the stunning contrast between the rhetoric ofexemplarity of these two texts. In the Arabic "Case of the Animals" the frog who

represents the aquatic animals is a perfectly abstracted neo-Platonic type.

His exemplarity, as representative of the aquatic kingdom, lies not in a truth

located in his specificity, but in his resemblance to the animals he represents. He exhibits no peculiar trait that would render him different from
any other frog. It is thus with all the animals and humans who populate the

narrative. By contrast, Turmedas characters are marked by their idiosyn-

crasies and their flaws. The Mangy Ass with the Lopped-Off Tail is a particular, individualized Ass: scruffy, sometimes arrogant, often sarcastic. While

he represents all animals in the debate, he most decidedly retains his own
particularities. So too with Anselm: his past marks him as a historical actor;

he is smug, sometimes base, and no less silly than his interlocutor. The
motivations of Turmeda's characters are a far more complex mix than the
sincere earnestness of those in the Ikhwns tale: loyalty to ones own kind,

competitiveness, sometimes curiosity, hypocrisy and fear. Thus we see in

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Beastly Colloquies 195

Turmeda s adaptation of the story the same shift in the rhetoric of exemplarity that we see in Renaissance literature more generally. Each monk in

his tale has a name, is attached to a particular monastery - whether those

details are real or fictional, the stories derive their power from the appearance of realism.
Within the Rasa il the "Case" functions as a sort of rhetorical microcosm that represents and refracts both the Ikhwn's natural philosophy and
historical teleology. However, it differs somewhat from the microcosm that

Foucault sees as operative in the premodern period:

As a category of thought, it [the microcosm] applies the interplay of

duplicated resemblances to all the realms of nature; it provides all

investigation with an assurance that everything will find its mirror

and its macrocosmic justification on another and larger scale; it affirms inversely, that the visible order of the highest spheres will be
found reflected in the darkest depths of the earth.34

The constantly turning cycles, those revolutions understood only by

the wise, complicate the macrocosmic conception of the Ikhwn and undermine the "assurance" of a simple chain of reflections described by Fou-

cault. Turmeda's much more limited project of satire and social critique

appropriates the setting of a debate between animals and man not as a

grand historical allegory or a microcosm but rather as a narrative frame, not
unlike those of the 1001 Nights or the Sendebar or any number of Oriental
frames. Just as in Kali/a wa Dimna, or Cervantes* picaresque story of talk-

ing dogs, aEl coloquio de los perros," the use of talking animals offers op-

portunities to make ironic observations about human (mis)conduct.

Clearly the question of cultural competition, authenticity and pluralism is central in the Arabic text. As the Greek scholar points out: "we did
take the major part of our sciences from other nations, just as they have
taken the bulk of their sciences from us. For men do acquire the sciences
from one another. Otherwise, where would the Persians have acquired astronomy and cosmology as well as the use of astronomical instruments, if
not from the people of India?" (126). As members of a dissident Islamic
political group whose claim to authority was neither a pure Arabic lineage
nor a grammatical exegesis of the Quryny but conversely, the heterogeneity
and universality of their intellectual inspiration, the Ikhwn al-Saf' cham-

pioned a radical antisectarianism (speaking from the weak side), for they
saw in the divisions between races and religions arbitrariness, false pride
and barriers to intellective and spiritual progress.

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196 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

If the vast program of scientific, philosophical and religious synthesis

proposed by the Ikhwn was an integral part of their epistemology, crediting their sources gave their vision greater authority. By contrast, Turmeda s

argument, which is pointedly political, rather than doctrinal, would certainly not have been strengthened by citing his Islamic source. The syncretic tendencies of the Ikhwn - and the Ismacilis in general - responded
to a crisis within Islam and not to intolerance between religions. Even if
the Hanbalites and their allies, reacting to the dangers posed by the Hellenizing tendencies of Muctazilites and others, insisted on trying to craft an

"authentic" Islam based solely on the Quran and sunna, it must be remem-

bered that from its inception, Islam preached tolerance - if not respect for the "people of the Book," that is, the members of the three monotheistic

faiths. Thus most of the important urban centers of medieval Islam featured a rather cosmopolitan population. The pluralistic and universalizing
vision of the Brethren is seen as a solution for an increasingly fractious
polity.

By contrast, early in the fifteenth century, Spain was well into a program of building a Christian identity, erasing the traces of its Muslim and
Jewish heritage. It would be a long process - never fully realizable - despite
the extreme measures of forced conversions, wholesale deportations (of Jews
in 1492, of the Morisco population in 1609). The erasures took myriad forms:
architectural, linguistic, clothing, literary, etc. Monuments were especially

vulnerable (destruction is a one-time proposition). Whereas many of the

great mosques of Muslim centers had, upon their fall into Christian hands,

been initially "purified" and consecrated as Christian churches, by the beginning of the 15th century few of these mosques had been preserved. Gone

were the mosques of Huesca, Palma de Mallorca, Murcia, Toledo, Valencia,

and Zaragoza, all built over with splendid cathedrals.35 Many of the
Arabisms widely employed in Spanish in earlier centuries began to be discarded; aljdfarwas replaced by perla, trujamn became interprte and so on.36

Turmeda, who in his Cobles de la divisid delRegne de Mallorques [ Verses

on the Division in the Kingdom of Mallorca] praised the interreligious har-

mony and cooperation he claimed flourished in Mallorca under Islamic

rule, and condemned the forced conversion of the Moriscos in his Profecies,37

found in the writings of the Ikhwn al-Saf' a universal and pluralistic vi-

sion: humanistic, tolerant, intellectually adventurous. As the Brethren of

Purity had themselves done, he took what he found useful in their work,
adapted it to his own message and his intended audience. If we misread the
relationship between the two texts, it is perhaps because the Brethren s no-

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Beastly Colloquies 197

tion of a world in which knowledge and culture have no race or creed re-

mains a dream imaginable only in edenic spaces where animals and man

converse without hindrance.

Catholic University of America

Notes
1. Valenti Almirall, Lo catalanisme [1886] (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1979) 22-23. For a succinct introduction to (and select bibliography on) the subject of the Renaixena and Catalan
nationalism see: Inman Fox, La invencin de Espana (Madrid: Ctedra, 1997) 66-87, for a
more detailed treatment see Jos Trias V-yzi2XiO> Almirall y los origenes del catalanismo (Madrid:

Siglo XXI, 1975).

2. See R. Foulch-Delbosc, "La disputation de l'Asne (Anselm Turmeda)," Revue

Hispanique 24 (1911): 358-479 and Armand Llinars,^Wm Turmeda, Dispute de l'Ane (Paris:
J. Vrin, 1984). For Lluis Deztany's reconstruction of the original Catalan from the French,
see Llibre deDisputacio de Vase contra frare Encelm Turmeda (Barcelona: [ J. Horta], 1922). The
more accessible and widely available Catalan edition is that of Maral Olivar d., Disputa de

Vase (Barcelona: Editorial Barcino, 1993). An English translation is provided in an appendix

to Zaida I. Giraldo, "Anselm Turmeda: An Intellectual Biography of a Medieval Apostate,
including a translation of the Debate between the Friar and the Ass," Ph.D., CUNY, 1975.
3. On the Catalan hostility to the Inquisition, see Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition:
a historical revision (New Haven: Yale UP, 1998) 166.
4. Asin Palacios, M. "El original arabe de la Disputa delasno contra fray Anselmo Turmeda.19
Revista defilolovia espanola (1914) 1-51.
5. The standard Arabie edition Butrus Bustni, d., Rasaillkhwn al-Safa wa khiln alwafa. 4 Vols. (Beirut: Dr Sdir, [n.d.]). Ail citations of the Arabie original refer to this
edition. Lenn Evan Goodman has translated the section of the Ras'ilthat most concerns us
here: The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn (Boston: Twayne, 1978).
His lengthy introduction and notes focus on the ethics of the story, which he calls an "Eco-

logical Fable." Emilio Tornero Poveda translates the same section of the Rasa il into Spanish, promoting it as "the Arabic source for Turmeda's Dispute of the Ass? See La disputa de los

animales contra elhombre (Madrid: Editorial de la Universidad Complutense, 1984). The two
most important English-language studies of the Ikhwn are Seyyed Hossein Nasr,^ introduction to Islamic cosmological doctrines: Conceptions of nature and methods used for its study by

the Ikhwan al-Safa, al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina (Boulder: Shambhala, 1978); and Ian Richard
Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991). See also Yves Marquet, La Philosophie des Ihwan al-Safa
(Algiers: Socit Nationale d'Edition et de Diffusion, 1975).
6. Everette E. Larson examines Asn Palacios accusation, providing careful comparisons

of the passages in Turmeda's text that closely parallel the earlier Arabic source. The article
provides detailed documentation of the textual similarities, while at the same time brushing

aside the plagiarism charge. See "The Disputa of Anselmo: Translation, Plagiarism or Embellishment?," Josep Maria Sola Sole: Homage, homenaje, homenatge: Miscelnea de estudios de

amigos y discipulos, eds. Antonio Torres Alcal, Victorio Aguera, and B. Smith Nathaniel
(Barcelona: Puvill, 1984) I: 285-296. Martin Riquer also excuses Turmeda on the basis that
"aquest tipus de "hurt literari" era molt frequent a la Etat Mitjana" ["this type of literary
thievery was very common in the Middle Ages"]. See "Anselm Turmeda," Histbria de la
literatura catalana (Barcelona: Ariel, 1980) 2: 265-308, here 283.

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198 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

7. Several recent studies have addressed the question of influence and literary models in
medieval and early modern works. See Jacqueline T. Miller, Poetic License: Authority and
Authorship in Medieval and Renaissance Contexts (New York: Oxford UP, 1986) and Rachel
Jacoff, "Models of Literary Influence in the Commedia* Medieval Texts and Contemporary

Readers, ed. Laurie A. and Martin B. Schichtman Finke (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987) and

Thomas Greene, The Light at Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982).

8. Miguel Asin Palacios, Sadifiesy alumbrados (Madrid: Hiperin, 1990).

9. Miguel Asm Palacios, El Islam cristianizado; estudio del "sufismo" a trave's de las obras de

Abenarabi de Murcia (Madrid: Editorial Plutarco, 1931). Asin Palacios was by no means
alone in his portrayal of Ibn al-cArabi as a freethinker deeply marked by Christian teaching.
More recently, scholars such as Michel Chodkiewicz and William Chittick have attempted
to rectify this misreading, portraying him as a figure much closer to the mainstream of
Sunni Islam. For a concise review of Western scholarly approaches to the Greatest Master
see Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn cArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition (Albany: SUNY Press,
1999): 18-24.
10. Miguel Asin Palacios, La escatologia musulmana en la Divina Comedia; Historiay critica
de una tolmka, 3rd. ed. (Madrid: Institute Hispano- Arabe de Cultura, 1961) 420.
11. All translations here are mine, except when otherwise indicated.
12. See Llibre de bons amonestaments i altres obresy 9-49.

13. Ikhwn al-Safa, Rislat Jamat al-jmah, ed. cArif Tamir ([Beirut]: Dr al-Nashr
lil-Jamnyin, 1959). Despite the numerous references in the Rasa il to the existence of the
separate volume called the Jma, there has been some controversy about its authorship.
Scholars have attributed it to a) al Majriti (d. 1007), the mathematician credited with bringing the Risail to Muslim Spain, b) his student al-Kirmn, who continued to promote the
Rasa% and c) the Ism^l imam Ahnad b. cAbd Allah. See Fu'd Macsm, Ikhwn al-Safa:
falsafatuhum wa-ghyatuhumt (Damascus: Dr al-Mad, 1998): 106-111.
14. Basra and Baghdad were noted for a vibrant intellectual atmosphere that encouraged
the "free flow of ideas across boundaries of religions and creeds" and witnessed "assemblies
attended by the representatives of various schools of thought and religions, including Jews,
who freely debate religious questions, on the condition that the discussion be based solely on
rational arguments." See H. Ben-Shammai, "Jewish Thought in Iraq in the Tenth Century,"
Judeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997) 15-^32, here 20.

15. On the Ismjfls see Farhad Daftary, ed., Mediaeval Ismaili history and thought (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), and Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London:
Keegan Paul International, 1983).
16. Samuel Stern was the first to raise doubts on this point. See The Authorship of the
Epistles of the Ikhwn as-Safa'," Islamic Culture 20 (1946): 367^372; and "New Information
about the Authors of the "Epistles of the Sincere Brethren"," Islamic Studies 3.4 (1964): 40528, reprinted in: Studies in Early Ismcilism (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983) 155-176. See also the
discussion in Nasr, Introduction to Islamic Cosmological 25-33, and Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists
95-104. For a defense of the view that the Brethren were Ismclis see: Yves Marquet, "Ikhwn

as-Safa'" El2.

17. A number of prominent medieval Arab scholars have been accused of either plagiarizing or being heavily influenced (secretly, of course) by the group. The Arabic historian and
polymath, Ibn Khaldun was recently accused of plagiarizing the Rasa Urn Mahmd Ismcl,
Nihyat ustrah: nzariyatlbn Khaldn: muqtabasa min Rasa il Ikhwn as-Safa (al-Qhirah:

Dr Qiba, 2000). It should be noted however that the book's strident and polemic tone

detracts from its message.

18. See Qalonymos ben Qalonymos ben Meir, Igeret baale hayim (Mantua: 1557; Hanau:
1718; Vilna: 1878; Warsaw, 1879).
19. As the Ikhwn explain in several places, the work is not meant to be exhaustive, but
rather an introduction for students: "We produced these Epistles - keeping them succinct in

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Beastly Colloquies 199

their expression - like an entre and an introduction, so as to bring their understanding
closer to students, and to make it easier for beginners to penetrate them" (2: 20).
20. The compilers of medieval Arabic dictionaries experimented with a number of organizational principles, including a complex anagrammatical system using an alphabet whose
letters were arranged according to their point of articulation. By the tenth century, Arabic
lexicographers had developed dictionaries based on alphabetical arrangements (the most
common system classifying words in rhyming order, starting with the last letter of the triliteral

root). For details on the development of Arabic dictionaries see John A. Hxyvrood, Arabic
Lexicography: Its history, and its place in the general history of lexicography (Leiden: Brill, i960).

Other Arabic encyclopedias such as Ibn Qutayba's, used a thematic approach beginning
with power, war and nobility and ending with food and women. A 10th-century Persian
encyclopedia by al-Khawarzimi started with jurisprudence and scholastic philosophy, and
relegating other sciences to a second group labelled foreign knowledge. Early European
experiments with alphabetically arranged encyclopedias (Suidas, 10th or nth c.) did not really take hold in Europe until early in the 16th century when a series of encyclopedic Latinlanguage dictionaries appeared. Thematically organized encyclopedias were still favored by
some, most notably by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who in his "Treatise on Method" argues
that a philosophical arrangement would "present the circle of knowledge in its harmony."
See Robert Collison, Encyclopedias: Their History Throughout the Ages (1966).

C4..1...H l^lA^j *->>! l^'Ltj i>fJ>\ Ul^j oWjJ-1 JJUi ja U> JtfL^I
f uSh & j 'J if #i j~ 1* J* *&** *"j 0LJV* *w* <y *> Ut J*j

(II: 179)

22. Aljafnz Kitab alHayaw'an, (Beirut: Dr al-Kutub al-cIlmiyah, 1998).

^ Jbrji JJ .4-iJ ^i *J^I l^^J l^J UlC Jl C-iUrj ^ cU^U

(2: 213).Vij v J* *! f ^^^ U> ^U * if u^V1

24. vlJUj ^ :4GU^- 1 JU .^T fr(/i ^!>U j^d jpJ ^ il-i ^ Jl
(2: 297; Qurcn 3:140) .^ OjlUJi Vi WUi ^J u** 0 ^J1^ fWV*

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2OO COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

25. Heinz Halm, Shiism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991), 169.

(2: 210) .pJUIl ^ j*-^ *UJUJl

27. See Marquet La philosophie 117; 186-187.

4CUJij C^UJI ^ jU;V jJS" lib g*aJl >*j Uij a>.Ui3ij

(2:238).>Jlj
29. Ibn Tahir al-Bagddi,^/-i^ry bayna al-Fimq, (Cairo: Maktabat Ibn S_na, 1988).
30. Turmeda's life-story is explored in Agustfn Calvet, FrayAnselmo Turmeda: Heterodoxo

espanol (Barcelona: Casa Editorial Estudio, 1914); J. Miret i Sans, "Vida de fray Anselmo
Turmeda," Revue Hispanique 24 (1911) 261-296; and Mikel de Epalza, "Nuevas aportaciones
a la biografa de fray Anselmo Turmeda (Abdallah riL-Taichumzn)" Ana/ecta Sacra Tarraconesia
38 (1965) 87-158.
31. Mikel de Epalza, FrayAnselm Turmeda (Abdallah al-Taryuman) y su polmica islamo-

cristiana (Madrid: Hiperin, 1994).

32. The various Profecies are collected in Anselm Turmeda, Llibre de bons amonestaments i

altres obres, ed. Mikel de Epalza (Palma de Mallorca: Editorial Moll, 1987).

(2: 216) . villil W U* '^^J VJ C-'jj Ui- ) [-..] \*Uj

34. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York:
Vintage, 1994) 31.

35. The two noteworthy exceptions were Cordoba and Sevilla, where the mosque itself
was destroyed but the Giralda, converted from almuezin to belltower, was retained. See
Carlos Sarthou Carreres and Pedro Navascus Palacio, Catedrales de Espanat 11 ed. (Madrid:
Espasa-Calpe, 1994), and Jos Pefia Martinez, Catedrales de Espana (Madrid: Rueda, 1995).
36. See John Kevin Walsh, "The Loss of Arabisms in the Spanish Lexicon," Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1967, and Felipe Maillo Salgado, Los arabismos del castellano en la baja
edad media: Consideraciones histricasyfilolgicas (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1991)
<5o-r<;o6.

37. "La gent morisqua/ prs tal Jornada/ [sera forada]/ prendre baptisme/ de que gran
cisme/ cert si engenra." ["After that day, the Moriscos will be forcibly baptized, which will
certainly cause a great schism"]. Llibre de bons amonestamentsf 100.

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