Don Quixote and its Author in the Context of the Moorish Question

Susnigdha Dey Jawaharlal Nehru University

Meeting of cultures or the clash of civilizations, whether it

is the one with the other or the one against the other, and the entire spectrum of distances in this often love-hate polarization has a complex and bizarre relationship in many shades of grey, posited between "my" kind of white and "your" (that is in all likelihood perceived by "my") kind of black. In the context of Christianity and Islam, especialIy in its south-western European dimension, the existence of the "self' and the "other" became manifest barely a century or two after the advent of the Islamic relígion. As students of Hispanic literature from the Indian sub-continent, it seems pretty important to observe two distinct phenomena, that of "La España Musulmana" and "Moghul India", which historical factors have continued to influence even in our times, though much more garrulously in South Asia.

That William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died in the same year and even on the same day, though according to

two different calendars, could be a coincidence as valid or as

inconsequential as Akbar, the Great Moghul Emperor of India who also died in 1605, i.e., just a few months after the publicatíon of the

first part of Don Quixote, which became irnmediately successful. Thís is proved by the fact that as many as sixteen editions carne out

during Cervantes' lifetime, which ineludes Avellaneda's book written in the same vein, hiding behind a pseudonym, persuading Cervantes himself to conelude it with a definitive second part in an attempt to keep the glory to him. It may also be mentioned here that Akbar developed a very special relationship with the Jesuit priests, who on his request carne to visit him from Goa and the

eastern coast of the Arabian Sea and stayed on in the emperor's court as his preferred guests for quite sorne time.

Historians have drawn our attention to "the hístory of relations between the Moghal Empire and the Estado da Índia should be dominated by the arrival of the Jesuits in Fatehpur Sikri in 1580", "the artistic impact of the Jesuit presence at the Moghal court", "the study of the imperial vocabulary, the issue of appropriating forms and ideas and the study of perceptions of each other' s culture", "the Jesuits regularly participated in the religious debates held at the lbadat Khana, as depícted in several rniniatures of that period", "the invisible world, or the intriguing links between Emperor Akbar and the priests of the Society of Jesus", etc. l

This could be constructed as an event of sorne relevance in the Christian-Islam interface in a scenario of an imaginary South­

South dialogue between Al Andalus and Moghul India. The fictional Zoraida protesting loudly, "Sí, sí, María; Zoraida macange!" (1, xxxvii) and vouching for "Lela Marién" (l, xl)

would sirnilarly urge us to recall a historical incident that took

place in the last quarter of the sixteenth century in India: "As soon

1 Jorge Flores & António Vasconcelos de Saldanha: Os Firangis na Chancelaria Mogol: Cópias Portuguesas de Documentos de Akhar (1572-1604), Fírangis in the Mughal Chancellery: Portuguese Copies of Akbar's Documents (1572-1604), 2003, pp. 42 - 46

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as he saw Father Pigneiro, he invited him to approach, receiving him with much kindness, and bidding him with uncovered head, and showed him the present he had brought. On seeing the picture of Our Lady, he bowed his head and rajsed his hands to his face, which is a sign of great reverence. He then ordered the picture to

be taken away and placed in his lodging; for he was seated upon his throne, and he deemed it unseemly that the picture of the Lady Mary should be below him" 2 • It may be mentioned that Du

Balearic's description of the Emperor Akbar and his court is taken

from Battista Peruschi's Informatione del Regno e Stato del gran Re di Mogor; and that Peruschi's description is, in tum, a reproduction, practically in extenso, of that given by Father Anthony Monserrate in his Rela<,;am del Equebar, Reí dos Mogores,

written in Goa after the author' s retum from his first Mission to the Moghul Court and completed on 26 November 1582.,,3

This is not to suggest that Don Quixote be read as an oriental fable but that it is an attempt to emphasise oriental

elements, as ones opposed to those not pertaining to the West. To cite an example, we may mention here Don Quixote's advice to Sancho, with obvious references to what is today known as Sri Lanka and meridional Africa. Don Quixote says:

Help and protect the needy and the infirm. And

understand Sancho, that the anny you see in front of us

is loo and guided by the rnagnificent Ernperor

Alifanfaron, lord of the great island of Trapobana,

while that other one, heading at rny back, is that of his

enerny, the King of Gararnantas ... (Favorecer y ayudar a

2 Father Pierre du Jarric, S.1.: Akbar and the Jesuits, 1979, p.11 O 3 lbid., "Notes to Chapter 1", p. 209

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Sus7Iigdha Dey

los menesterosos y desvalidos. Y has de saber Sancho,

que este que viene por nuestra frente le conduce y guía

el grande emperador Alifanfarón, señor de la grande

isla Trapovana; este otro que a mis espaldas marcha, es el de su enemigo, el rey de los garamantes ... (1, XVIII).

Further, in this context, it may be pointed out that in the

times of Phillip II, which is the same as that of our author, Portugal,

and for that matter, the Iberian Peninsula, was under the dominion

of Spain. Consequently, the much prized and already firmly

established Portuguese possession in India belonged to the Spanish

Imperial power over which the sun never seto

In a letter written to Phillip II from Fatehpur Sikri near

Agra sometime in March or April 1582, after a solemn formal

beginning of "Boundless homage to the true Sovereign, whose realm is preserved from the calamity of decline, and whose

dominion is safe from the shock of extinction", Akbar appeals to the Spanish monarch, "recipient of divine illumination, and

propagator of the Christian religion" for "striving to establish and

strengthen the bonds of love, harmony and union among the population" as well as "with the exalted tribe of princes." He

further requests in the same letter that "the revealed books, such as

the Pentateuch, the Gospels, and the Psalms ... whether translated

or not" be sent to him.4 "Allah be praised" but it is necessary "to

discover that which is true."

Miguel de Cervantes was bom and grew up in a country

that was liberated just half a century earlier from Arab rule and,

more importantly, from the influence of its religion. However,

4 lnsha'í Ahu'/ Faz/, V. 1, Apri11887, pp. 135-139

150

although seven centuries of polítical existence had come to an end with the end of the fifteenth century and despite tbreats issued against conversion to Christianity and of facing expulsion from Spanish territory and increasingly, particularly in our author's life time in the sixteenth century, facing expulsion froro the Spanish Mediterranean coast, faith in the proscribetl religion amongst the believers could not be banished altogether. The "Mudéjares" in such circumstances turned into "Moriscos", or in other words, the Mohammedans of Islamic faith under the Catholic roonarchy acquired a new status by getting baptized as Christians in order to be accepted in Spanish society of those times, would still have walk on the razor's edge of official versus personal dichotomy.

As the historian Charles E. Chaproan observes: "The problero of religious unity was now officially solved; all Spain legally had become Christian. The Moriscos were the objects of great suspicions, however, as regards their orthodoxy, and with reason, since most of them continued to be Mohammedans in fact. The harsh legislatíon of other days was resurrected and was applied with even greater severity. Prohibitions extended to the use of anything reminiscent of their former religíon or customs, such as amulets, the Arabic language, Arabic names, their special form of dress, their characteristic songs and dances, and their habit of taking baths."s As we can observe, just a few years later after the publication of the First Part of Don Quixote, the Moriscos were once again expelled by a Royal proclamation.

If we look at chronological events in the history of the nation together with the biographical details of the author, much of the preparation that lcd to the writing of the Pirst Part took place in

5 Charles E. Chapman: A History ofSpain, 1965, p. 277

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the reign of Phillip II - a long period of highs and lows between

1556 and 1598, that is a period of forty two years that saw

Cervantes from a nine year old boy to the ripe age of a fifty one year old author. Much of the writing took place, however, in the less insignificant reign of Phillip I1I, hardly remembered by

posterity, along with Phillip IV and Charles II who succeeded mm. Phillip III inherited the empire in trouble from his illustrious father

who always dressed in impeccable black. For that matter, he outlived our author by five years. Cervantes and, indeed, his Don

Quixote, are poised between the rise and fall of the Spanish Empire,

peaking with the victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571 and hitting an abysmal low with the disaster of the "Invincible Armada" in the English Channel in 1588, in which Cervantes was involved in sorne way or another. Such national issues, therefore, must have weighed upon the author' s mind as the First Part was in the process of being composed. Don Quixote was published seven years after the death of Phillip II and the polítical climate must have been less prohibitive for authorial expression. The whole question of the Moorish phenomenon could then, in such conditions, be seen more liberally and placed in its ambiguous ambivalence.

Even if we ponder upon the author's lífe, the battle of

Lepanto in 1571, his captivity in AIgiers that followed a few years

later and persisted for half a decade and his return to Spain and his

subsequent failures to carve out for himself an honourable place in

the Península or even in Hispanic America and finally, and very

significantly, his residence in Sevilla, all of these should have

contributed to his writing a fiction that engaged with reality.

Luis Andrés Murillo, a Harvard doctorate on Golden Age

prose, writes,

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and it" Aut}¡or in tlle Context

"In 1587 he takes up residence in Sevilla and gets

himself nominated an officer in the great administrative

enterprise of that time, which was entrusted to prepare

the fleet of Philip JI against England. Now begins the

most rich period of his artistic projects and inventions.

nevertheIess, most hazardous and anxious time for his

literary ambitions. His duties take him to the interior of

Andalusia, from village to village, to more than sixty

searching and seizing wheat, barley and oil ... Always

attentive to the details that the life drama offers. his

travelling and his work put him in touch with diverse

type of people of meridional Spain , and in Sevilla he

tastes the hidden pleasure of the misery and needs.,,6

His residence in Seville for more than a decade up to the beginning of the next century, which al so included a short sta y in the Royal Prison and his frequent travels in the southem part of Spain in order to collect and transport the provisions, which largely lay in the hands of the Moriscos under the pay of the great landlords who clearly resented their expatriation, could have reinforced his AIgerian experience and may have left an indelible imprint of Andalucía or AI-Andalus on his mind at the time when he was in the process of writing his Quixote. Andalusia remained, for several centuries after the Reconquest, oriental in essence. And more sO during Miguel de Cervantes' lifetime.

Cervantes was al so under a tutor deeply influenced by the

ideas of Erasmus. We need not relate his open mindedness to the

Dutch humanist, whom he probably read in an Italian version but we could refer to his experience in the Southem European and

6 Introducción a Don Quijote, 1ª parte, (ed. Castalia) 1987, pp. 23

153

North African sides of the Mediterranean, where customs, habits, ways of life and religious practices of people belonging to Christian and Islamic communities co-existed.

Against this backdrop of forced conversions and hapless expulsions, Michel Foucault's words do not seem to be

exaggerated in a sÍtuation where social concems overrode polítical ones. "If power were never anything but to say no, do you really think one wou]d be brought to obey it?7 John Beverley cites J.R.

Elliott's criticism of José Antonio Maravall's explanation of the Spanish Baroque as an effort to "overestimate the passivity of seventeenth century societies and to exaggerate the capacity of those in authority to manipulate those societies for their own ideological ends" and goes on to observe. "The works of Spain's Golden Age contain sufficient ambiguities to suggest that subversive subtexts are there for the reading."s

Does not Cervantes address these concems quite ear]y in his narrative? Re divided his Quixote of 1605 in four parts, in 52 chapters. In chapter IX, which is the beginning of the second part, immediately after the rnisadventure of the windrnills, we find material rerniniscent of a twenty four year old youth in the Spanish fleet in Lepanto fired by a 10ft Y but somewhat indiscreet idealismo

For the author it was necessary to take recourse to a

subterfuge of inventing another author and curiously in a language

prohibited by the adrninistration for several decades so much so that it was difficult to come across anyone who could decipher the text in the Castilian tongue-- "But although I recognised the script,

7 Michel Foucault, 1980, p.119 8 As cited by John Beverley: Against Literature, 1993, p.64

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Don and its Author in the Context

1 still didn't know how to read it, so 1 went looking for sorne Moor who could read ... "(Y puesto que aunque los conocía no los sabia leer, anduvo mirando si parecía por alli algún morisco aljamiado que los leyese ... ) (1, ii, ix). lt is, indeed, intriguing that it was so difficult to find sorne one who could read an Arabic text in the begínning of the seventeenth century. And also that Dulcinea was

from Toboso, whose populatíon consísted largely of Moriscos and newly converted Christians, and the burlesque sÍtuation arising in the allusion that "she has the best hand for salting pork" (tuvo la mejor mano para salar puercos.) Improvising from the original Arabic text to Castilian, the title of the work appeared as Historia

de don Quijote de la Mancha escrita por Cide Hamete Benengeli,

an Arab historian.

In Tobías Smollett's beautiful though not quite faithful translation of 1755, we come across words like "Moor", "Moorish", "Turk", "Arabic" etc. along with the name of the supposed Arab author several times. Maybe close to a hundred times altogether in

the two parts, though never in the titles of the chapters of the Fírst Part and only a couple of times in the Second Part, reduced to proper names. This could lead to sorne interesting conc1usions. And on several occasions, the so-called Moorish question crops up in sentences where the subject may not merit it: "And the way my feeble brain sees it, the best and also the proper thing would be to tum around and go right back home, because it is harvest time, and we ought to worry about our own affairs and stop travelling from

Ceca to Meca". (Yo lo que sería mejor y más acertado, según mi poco entendimiento, fuera el volvemos a nuestro lugar, ahora que es tiempo de la siega y de entender en la hacienda, dejándonos de

andar de Ceca en Meca ... ) (1, xviii), The last part of the sentence cited refers to the customs of the Moors who used to go for

pilgrimage to Mecca in the Middle East and to Ceca, a town in

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Córdoba - this being so out of context that in SmolIett's translation this sentence appears simply as, " ... fue best and wholesomest thing we can do; will be to jog back again to our own habitation, now while the harvest is going on, to take care of our crops, and leave off sauntering from post to pillar ... " (1, iii, 4). The Moorish

reference in the original is completely ignored and only appears later as a foot-note appended by a knowledgeable editor of our times. Do not such things suggest that these references appear in the narration naturally and automaticalIy without any perceived design from the aufuor?

That Cervantes' stand towards fue "renegados" was the

manifestation of a tolerant attitude, attributed to the captive's story and his Algerian experience, is widely accepted. Even in those times despite numerous unsuccessful attempts to escape, our author did not attract severe recriminations. He could also have gone to such lengths that he saw Muslim victory as God's punishment, "porque quiere y permite Dios que tengamos siempre verdugos que nos castiguen." (1, 478).

In an interesting presentation Ahmed Abi-Ayad of fue University of Oran in Algeria draws our attention to the Cervantes' mysterious voyage to Oran as a messenger of Phillip II during which he is supposed to have come into direct contact with some

outstanding exponents of Sufi cult who initiated him to the mystic

exercise of interiorisation and other extraordinary things. Abi­Ayad goes to the extent of saying: "M. de Cervantes was so lucky that he was taken to AIgiers, which gave him, as opposed to the

opinion of many, life, freedom and fame, and this should be recognised and underlined." 9

9 Actas del Tercer Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Cervantistas, 1988, p.99

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Don and its Author in the Context

Cervantes' attitude towards the Moorish question ís shrouded in ambiguities and marked by prudence. Texts may be cited to show that he was critical of Moors and Turks and, on the contrary, quotations could be marshalled to uphold his benevolence towards and sympathy for those of that religion and culture. A perusal of the history of Ricote, the Moor, in Chapter 54 of the Second Pan would naturally show the author in a tolerant light in trying to understand the problems of the other. The same is true of his plays, especially Los tratos de Argel and Los baños de Argel,

where Algeria and Islamic faith are referred to in positive light several times. He certainly could not have opposed the expulsion of the Moors from Spain but his conscience could not have allowed him to support anything that went against a human being, irrespective of his race and religion:

Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts Heaven gives us; no treasure buried in the earth can compare to it, nor any covered by the ocean; in the cause of freedom as in the cause of honour one can and should risk life itse1f, just as freedom's opposite, captivity is the worst evil a man can experience. (La libertad, Sancho - dice es uno de los más preciosos dones que a los hombres dieran los cielos; con ella no pueden igualarse los tesoros que encierra la tierra, ni el mar encubre; por la libertad, así como por la honra, se puede y debe aventurar la vida; y por el contrario, el cautiverio es el mayor mal que puede venir a los hombres.) (II, 58)

As many as around 2,75,000 persons were forced into exile during the reign of Phillip I1I, resulting in a serious blow to the country particularly in the area of cultivatíon in the regíon of

157

Valencia. That could probably be the reason that, contrary to bis usual narrative practice, Cervantes brought an "intensely topical interest" for his readers to share. E.e. Riley puts it very aptIy: "The question of Cervantes' personal attitude to the expulsion is a particularly difficult one, because we want to believe that he detested it. A degree of irony is virtually certain. That he accepted the measure as a regrettable polítical necessity is quite possible; that he deplored the suffering it brought to innocent familíes and individuals are evident."1O

Don Quixote constantly reminds us of the strong association that existed between North Africa and Iberia in the Middle Ages. lI

10 E.e. Riley: Don Quixote, 1986, p. 101 11 Fernand Braude1: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in

the Age 01 Philip Il, 1972, v. 1, p.165 and footnote no. 234 on the sarne page.

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Don and its Author in ¡he Con/ext

Bibliography

Jorge Flores & António Vasconcelos de Saldanha: Os Firangis na

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(1572-1604), The Firangis in the Mughal Chancellery: Portuguese

Copies of Akbar's Documents (1572-1604), Embassy of Portugal,

New Delhi, 2003.

Father Pierre du Jarric, S.J.: Akbar and the Jesuits, tr. C.H. Payne,

Reprinted by Tulsi Publishing House, New Delhi, 1979.

1nsha'í Abu'/ Fazl, vol. 1. Published in English by E. Rehatsek, HA

letter of the Emperor Akbar asking for the Christian Scriptures,"

The Indian Antiquity, vol. XVI (ApriI1887), pp. 135-139 (136-137)

Charles E. Chapman: A History of Spain, The Free Press, New

York, 1965 (first Published in 1918 by the Macmillan Company).

Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quijote, 1ª parte, Clásicos Castalia,

Madrid, 1987.

Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge: Selected Intervíews and Other Writing, New York, Pantheon, 1980.

John Beverley: Against Literature, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1993.

Actas del Tercer Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de

Cervantistas, ed. Antonio Bernat Vistarlni, Universitat de les llles

Balears, Palma, 1988.

E.C. Riley: Don Quixote, Allen & Unwin, London, 1986.

Fernand Braudel: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip Il, Collins, London, 1972.

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Thematics in Don Quixote