“Fízose muçlim i fue buena su creyencia”:: conversions in/to Islam in Aljamiado exhortatory texts

Résumé En

The exhortations in aljamiado -translated from Arabic into Romance- are a rare case of medieval Islamic preaching in the vernacular. These Hispanic translations emerged when the dominated Muslims, then still tolerated in the Iberian Peninsula, had lost their command of Arabic and their ʿulamāʾ had to elaborate an Islam in Spanish. Although these Mudejares were subsequently forced to convert to Catholicism in the early sixteenth century, production in aljamiado and its use continued, however -despite inquisitorial persecution-, until the expulsions of 1609-1614. Characteristic of a persecuted Islam, the interest of these texts is multiple, if only to know the content of this still unexploited and mostly unpublished clandestine preaching and response to imposed conversions.The narratives of conversion to Islam are also recurrent in the preserved texts and therefore appear, beyond the polemical genre, as a privileged motif of exhortative discourse. In addition to the interest of textual transmissions and selections, the aim is to perceive, for and in this clandestine context, the intended effects of these exhortations, as a response to imposed conversions, and the strategies at work in their elaboration in order to counteract the (timid) progress of catechesis to the new converts and, above all, to strengthen the believer's faith in his or her own heart and, subsidiarily, fidelity to his or her community. Indeed, at the expense of the 'orthodox' practices imposed on the believer -ibadāt- and hunted down by the Holy Office, the exhortations support the instructive texts in establishing a purified model of the virtuous and trusting faithful in the mercy - raḥmaẗ - of his Lord: (re)converted then in or to Islam, in this sixteenth century of reform? How does the narrative motif of conversion to Islam, a medieval legacy taken up by the alfaquis, support their mission to incite obedience to the Creator -that of 'enjoining the good'- and to fight against disbelief -'forbidding evil'?