Description
Book SynopsisIn Visions of Deliverance, Mayte Green-Mercado traces the circulation of Muslim and crypto-Muslim apocalyptic texts known as joferes through formal and informal networks of merchants, Sufis, and other channels of diffusion among Muslims and Christians across the Mediterranean from Constantinople and Venice to Morisco towns in eastern Spain. The movement of these prophecies from the eastern to the western edges of the Mediterranean illuminates strategies of Morisco cultural and political resistance, reconstructing both productive and oppositional interactions and exchanges between Muslims and Christians in the early modern Mediterranean.
Challenging a historiography that has primarily understood Morisco apocalyptic thought as the expression of a defeated group that was conscious of the loss of their culture and identity, Green-Mercado depicts Moriscos not simply as helpless victims of Christian oppression but as political actors whose use of end-times discourse he
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This work adds a crucial perspective to the growing body of scholarship that challenges the conception of a fixed, monolithic Morisco identity and the perception that Moriscos were a beleaguered group in need of rescue. Visions of Deliverance offers readers a fresh perspective on Morisco social, religious, and political beliefs and practices.
* Comitatus *
Moriscos stand tall in this book as historical agents (both individually and collectively), actors on a political world stage, some with dreams of an Ottoman Last World Emperor, others of a French; some with dreams of a return of Islam to Al-Andalus, others with the hope of being able to live peacefully 'under their own law.' With Visions of Deliverance, Mayte Green-Mercado has made a significant contribution to Mediterranean history. There is much in this excellent book that will be new to both experts and students alike
* SIXTEENTH CENTURY JOURNAL *
This excellent book should find a ready audience in readers interested in Morisco history and culture, and in prophetic and political discourse in early modern Islam, Iberia, and the Mediterranean as a whole.
* Visions of Deliverance *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Note on Transliterations and Citations
Introduction
1. Christian Visionary or Muslim Prophet? Re-Creating Identities in Late Spanish Islam
2. The Return of Muslim Granada: Prophecy and Martyrdom in the Alpujarras Revolt (1568-1570)
3. Ottoman Rome: Apocalyptic Prophecies in the Mediterranean (1570-1580)
4. "The Grand Morisco Conspiracy": Prophecy and Rebellion Plots in Valencia and Aragon (1570-1582)
5. Prophetic Fabrications of a Morisco Informant: Gil Pérez and the Moriscos of Valencia
6. Prophecy as Diplomacy: The Moriscos and Henry IV of France
Epilogue
Appendix A: First Prognostication of the War of Granada
Appendix B: Second Prognostication of the War of Granada
Appendix C: Third Prognostication of the War of Granada
Appendix D: Prophecy of Fr. Juan de Rokasiya
Appendix E: Account of the Scandals That Will Take Place at the End of Times in the Island of Spain
Appendix F: Prophecy of St. Isidore
Appendix G: Plaint of Spain
Appendix H: Muhammad's Prophecy about Spain
Bibliography
Index
