Algunos moros muy sabidores: Virtuous Muslim Kings in Examples 30 and 41 of El conde Lucanor

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Bulletin of Spanish Studies on 04/03/2020, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2020.1729619. For a courtesy copy of the published article, please contact the author at [email protected]u. Algunos moros muy sabidores. Virtuous Muslim Kings in Examples 30 and 41 of El conde Lucanor * Mario Cossío Olavide University of Minnesota Abstract: I analyse the representation of Muslim kings in examples 30 (King al-Muʿtamid of Seville) and 41 (Umayyad Caliph al-Ḥakam al-Mustanṣir) of El conde Lucanor by Juan Manuel, sustaining that they offer models of positive leaders whose virtues and morals help the author construct an idealised model of kingship. I examine how Juan Manuel adapts Andalusī historical chronicles and folkloric traditions in the examples in order to offer his readers exemplary, although hyperbolic, models of how a good king should behave towards his subjects. I conclude that this exercise of cultural translatio, from al-Andalus to Castile, serves a political purpose: to criticise the inefficient politics and behaviour of a bad king, Alfonso XI of Castile. Keywords: Don Juan Manuel; El conde Lucanor; kingship; al-Muʿtamid ibn ʿAbbād; alḤakam al-Mustanṣir; Fernando III; Alfonso XI * This work was supported by the Hella Mears Fellowship of the Center for German and European Studies of the University of Minnesota. I would like to thank Michelle Hamilton, Anita Savo, and Emma Snowden for their comments on earlier versions, and Leonardo Funes and Pablo Enrique Saracino for kindly making available to me a digital copy of the Crónica manuelina. 2 Juan Manuel finished writing El conde Lucanor (=CL) in 1335, a period of Castilian history that he described in this book as ‘turbio’, and in the Libro de los estados as a ‘doloroso et triste tiempo’. 1 The preceding decades were marked by an almost permanent confrontation between King Alfonso XI and the high nobility, of which Juan Manuel was one of the most important members. These events were also influenced by the emergence of a new urban aristocracy supported by weak kings (Fernando IV and the minority rule of Alfonso XI) that challenged the rights of the old noble families, and the disappearance of the figure of the rex litteratus, epitomised by Alfonso X and to a lesser extent Sancho IV. Thus, the articulating function of a courtly system of ideological and political relations that in the thirteenth century had made possible the political, military, and cultural consolidation of Castile no longer existed. 2 Having distanced himself from Alfonso XI, who managed to reestablish royal control over the nobility and institute a new model of political and courtly relations, Juan Manuel composed didactic treatises that offer a dissident political model intended to solve the problems facing Castilian society during the early fourteenth century. 3 Chief among them was the need for a reconfiguration of royal power, which he understood as the main cause of this decadence. An unusually long held consensus among Juan Manuel scholars is that the Christian rulers that appear in the examples of CL, like Richard the Lion Heart (ex. 3), Ferdinand III 1 Juan Manuel, Libro de los enxiemplos del conde Lucanor et de Patronio, preface by Germán Orduna, intro. & ed. Guillermo Serés (Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 2006), 232; Juan Manuel, Libro de los estados, ed. Ian Macpherson & Robert Brian Tate (Madrid: Castalia, 1991), 72. 2 On the appearance and roles played by the cavallería villana, see Luciana de Stefano, La sociedad estamental de la Baja Edad Media española a la luz de la literatura de la época (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1966), 143–54; José Manuel Lucía Megías, ‘Caballero, escudero, peón. Aproximación al mundo caballeresco del Libro del cavallero Zifar’, Scriptura, 13 (1993), 115–37; Teófilo Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity. Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 235–61; César González Mínguez, Fernando IV. 1295-1312 (Palencia: Diputación Provincial de Palencia, 1995), 45–7; Jesús Rodríguez Velasco, Order and Chivalry. Knighthood and Citizenship in Late Medieval Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 46–83. For Alfonso X’s cultural project, see Fernando Gómez Redondo, Historia de la prosa medieval castellana. Volumen 1. La creación del discurso prosístico: el entramado cortesano (Madrid: Cátedra, 1998), 423– 849. 3 For the idea of Juan Manuel’s “dissident history”, see Leonardo Funes & María Elena Qués, ‘La historia disidente. El lugar del Libro de las armas en el discurso historiográfico del siglo XIV castellano’, Atalaya. Revue français d’études médiévales hispaniques, 6 (1995), 71–8. 3 (ex. 15, 28, and 41), Count Fernán González (ex. 16, 37, and 41) and Emperor Frederick II (ex. 27), figure into the didactic message of the book by offering positive models of kingship. 4 Some critics have gone further and proposed that the representation of Muslim monarchs, like Saladin (ex. 25, and 50), al-Muʿtamid (ex. 30), and al-Ḥakam (ex. 41), evidences the opposite, Juan Manuel’s negative ideas about Islam and Arabo-Islamic cultures. These readings propose that the negativity of Muslim kings manifests itself in an orientalist discourse that seeks to simplify or even ridicule any presence that could be associated with Arabo-Islamic cultures. This phenomenon has been described in two recent essays as Juan Manuel’s maurophilia. 5 Certain notions associated with maurophilia, a term coined by Menéndez Pelayo to describe the sixteenth-century literary representations of Muslims that coincided with the marginalization of Spanish moriscos, have been applied in CL criticism since the twenty century. 6 Lida de Malkiel sustains that the examples of Islamic atmosphere are ‘parangón de la fascinadora desmesura oriental’, while Devoto says they announce the author’s desire of creating ‘un orientalismo avant la lettre’. Recently Adams argued that these stories offer 4 See Ian Macpherson, ‘Dios y el mundo. The Didacticism of El conde Lucanor’, Romance Philology, 24:1 (1970), 26– 38 (p. 35); Reinaldo Ayerbe-Chaux, El conde Lucanor. Materia tradicional y originalidad creadora (Madrid: Ediciones José Porrúa Turanzas, 1975), 72–91; Marta Ana Diz, Patronio y Lucanor. La lectura inteligente ‘en el tiempo que es turbio’ (Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1984), 99–111; Alan Deyermond, ‘Cuentística y política en Juan Manuel. El conde Lucanor’, in Studia in honorem Germán Orduna, ed. Leonardo Funes & José Luis Moure (Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2001), 225–39 (p. 229); Santiago Disalvo, ‘El halcón de don Manuel, visto por su hermano y su hijo. Sobre la cetrería en las Cantigas de Santa María y El conde Lucanor’, in Nuevas miradas sobre la tierra media. El cuento en el Occidente europeo, ed. Gloria Beatriz Chicote, Lidia Amor & Florencia Calvo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 2006), 39–51 (pp. 44–51). 5 Ana Adams, ‘Ser es fazer. El saber y la masculinidad de Saladín en El conde Lucanor’, La Corónica. A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, & Cultures, 40:2 (2012), 145–68 (p. 146); Ana Adams, ‘Humor étnico en El conde Lucanor’, eHumanista. Journal of Iberian Studies, 34 (2016), 407–22 (p. 407) 6 Don Marcelino writes: ‘[los moros] resultaban muy bizarros y galanes; respondían a una generosa idealización que el pueblo vencedor hacía de sus antiguos dominadores, precisamente cuando iban a desaparecer del suelo español las últimas reliquias de aquella raza’ (Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela, 2 vols [Madrid: Librería Editorial de Bailly-Ballière e Hijos, 1905-1915; repr. Madrid: Gredos, 2008], I, 587). For an in-depth discussion of maurophilia from the fifteenth century on, see Barbara Fuchs, Exotic Nation. Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 4–10. 4 ‘un enemigo digno y exótico’, humiliated by an author who applies ‘estereotipos étnicos comunes para el entretenimiento, [la] educación y [la] persuasión de los lectores cristianos’. 7 According to the last scholar, the author constructs a negative exemplarity for Muslim kings, opposed to the positive one he ascribes to Christian kings, a practice which allows him to offer his readers instances of regal excesses and display the vices he associated with Islam. Behind these interpretations of Juan Manuel’s Muslim characters lies an essentialised view of medieval Castilian identity (i.e. Christian), constructed by opposition to any Arabo-Islamic cultural element, in order to exercise domain over it. Thus, their negative representation is understood as a form of domination of the Muslim Other that is incompatible with finding any positive values in these Muslim kings. 8 Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua and Carlos Heusch have recently voiced dissenting opinions on this matter, arguing that Muslim kings in CL, far from being representations that respond to a view that opposes all elements of Andalusī or Muslim Iberian origin, tend to be positive figures that constitute a counterpoint to the overwhelmingly negative morals of Christian kings. For the latter, they act ‘de manera virtuosa y en acorde con el sistema de valores que compartía Juan Manuel con su público’. 9 In this article, I further explore how the depictions of al-Muʿtamid in example 30 and al-Ḥakam in example 41 are primarily positive ones that correspond with Cacho Blecua and Heusch’s proposals. I also propose that in the authorial reformulation of the source materials, namely Arabic historiography 7 María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, ‘El moro en las letras castellanas’, Hispanic Review, 28:4 (1960), 350–8 (p. 355); Daniel Devoto, Introducción al estudio de don Juan Manuel y en particular de El conde Lucanor (Madrid: Castalia, 1972), 433; Adams, ‘Ser es fazer’, 164; Adams, ‘Humor étnico’, 408. 8 ‘La inclusión de frases árabes y de anécdotas andalusíes son, por consiguiente, parte de la retórica de poder de Juan Manuel. No deben entenderse necesariamente como signo de la admiración o tolerancia, sino como estrategia de dominación retórica, política, económica, religiosa e incluso personal que sitúa al moro en una posición de inferioridad con respecto al cristiano que busca dominarlo’ (Adams, ‘Ser es fazer’, 156). 9 Carlos Heusch, ‘Yo te castigaré bien commo a loco. Los reyes en El conde Lucanor de Juan Manuel’, e-Spania. Revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques médiévales et modernes, 21 (2015), doi:10.4000/e-spania.24709, 19; Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua, ‘Identidad y alteridad. La representación del otro musulmán en El conde Lucanor’. e-Spania. Revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques médiévales et modernes, 21 (2015), doi:10.4000/e-spania.24697. 5 and folklore, there is an addition of seigneurial values that correspond to the ideological model constructed by Juan Manuel in his work. 10 In the framing narrative of example 30, count Lucanor tells his advisor Patronio that a man often comes to him and ‘muchas vezes me ruega et me pide quel ayude et le dé algo de lo mío’ (133), and while the man is grateful after receiving the favours, he soon changes his attitude and grows angry when the count does not comply with new requests, accusing him of doing nothing to help him. Patronio responds with an example based on the life of al-Muʿtamid ibn ʿAbbād (in CL, Abenabet), poet-king of the taifa of Seville, and his favourite wife, al-Rumaykīya (in CL, Ramayquía). As John England has pointed out, this story follows a tripartite structure common to folkloric tales: at the beginning of the tale al-Rumaykīya cries at the uncommon sight of snow in Córdoba, where this beautiful phenomenon is rare; al-Muʿtamid responds by ordering almond-groves planted throughout the mountains around the city so that ‘en el febrero paresciesen los almendrales floridos, que semejan nieve, por le fazer perder el deseo de la nieve’ (134). 11 Later, she sees women making mud bricks in the river-bank of the Guadalquivir, and her sorrow returns. AlMuʿtamid instructs his servants to fenchir de agua rosada aquella grand albuhera de Córdova, en logar de agua; et en lugar de tierra, fízola fenchir de açúcar et de canela et de gengibre et espic et clavos et musgo et ambra et algalina, et de todas buenas especias et buenos olores que pudían ser; et en lugar de paja, fizo poner cañas de açúcar. (134) He then invites his wife ‘que se descalçase et que follase aquel lodo et que fiziese adobes dél cuantos quisiese’ (134). When she grows sorrowful a third time, al-Muʿtamid inquires about the cause of al-Rumaykīya’s grief, to which she asks ‘que cómo non lloraría, que 10 In line with the analysis I have done on examples 25 and 50. See Mario Cossío Olavide, ‘The Other-for-me. The Construction of Saladin in El conde Lucanor’, eHumanista. Journal of Iberian Studies, 41 (2019), 246–65. 11 John England, ‘¿Et non el día del lodo? The Structure of the Short Story in El conde Lucanor’, in Juan Manuel Studies, ed. Ian Macpherson (London: Tamesis, 1977), 69–86 (p. 77–8); also see Cacho Blecua, ‘Identidad’, 10. 6 nunca fiziera el rey cosa por le fazer plazer’ (134). Calling attention to his wife’s forgetfulness, he replies: ‘¿Et non el día del lodo?’ (135). The last part of this example, the story of the mud and the question of alMuʿtamid, is part of a popular oral anecdote about him that was later picked up and retold by Maghrebi historian al-Maqqarī, in an account that differs only in minor details. Leaving aside the rich discussion of the gender politics involved in this story and the problematic characterization of al-Rumaykīya (an otherwise positive historical figure and famous poet whose literary talents rivalled those of her husband, but who is here depicted as a frivolous wife), I want to centre my attention on the different purposes of the stories in each context. 12 Al-Maqqarī’s Nafḥ al-ṭīb, written in the seventeenth century, offers a political and intellectual history of Muslim Iberian societies after the traumatic expulsion of the moriscos from Spain. For him the anecdote has a clearly nostalgic and elegiac tone, amplified by its location in the text, between the account of the forced exile of the royal family to North Africa after the Almoravid conquest and the account of the death of al-Muʿtamid. Thus, the story of al-Muʿtamid and al-Rumaykīya becomes a contemplation of the former glory of the taifa of Seville and the great actions carried out by its poet-king, as the ending of this version transmits: […] and it is said that when he was deposed from power and she was speaking with him, as it usually happens between husband and wife, she said: ‘By god, I have never seen any good from you’, to which he replied: ‘Not even the day of the 12 The story also appears in al-Tijānī’s Tuḥfat al-ʿarūs wa-nuzhat al-nufūs, that I will not discuss here. For this version, see Reinhart Pieter Anne Dozy, Scriptorum Arabum Loci de Abbadidis, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1852), II, 151–3. For the differences between all the versions of the story, see Celia Wallhead Munuera, ‘Three Tales from El conde Lucanor and their Arabic Counterparts’, in Juan Manuel Studies, ed. Ian Macpherson (London: Tamesis, 1977), 101–17 (pp. 112–6); Pilar Lirola Delgado, ‘al-Rumaykīya’, in Biblioteca de al-Andalus. De alQabrīrī a Zumurrud, ed. Jorge Lirola Delgado, 10 vols (Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes, 2012-2017), VII, 184–91 (pp. 187–8). 7 mud?’, reminding her of the day when he had spent an amount of money known only to God. And she felt ashamed and went silent. 13 While the capricious nature of al-Rumaykīya is also present in this account, the message of the tale seems to revolve around the two types of wealth possessed by al-Muʿtamid, features that define the figure of an ideal Muslim monarch. The first is his material wealth, manifested in the expensive spices and silk he commanded be brought to the palace; the second is his moral wealth, the regal lavishness that was a positive moral trait associated with kingly, and more broadly courtly, behaviour in medieval Arabo-Islamic societies, such as can be found, just to give an example, in the numerous anecdotes related to the ʿAbbasid Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd. 14 Juan Manuel foregoes the story of al-Muʿtamid’s exile, a feature that was either absent in his source, or purposefully redacted to protect the image of the king as representative of an unalterable order. He also conducts a slight amplificatio of the spices: to the ambergris, musk and camphor transmitted by the Arabic accounts, he adds sugar, ginger, cinnamon, clove, and civet, all spices used in al-Andalus in the production of perfumes and medicines, as medical treatises of the period attest. 15 These added elements are not intended to exoticise, as critics have argued, but rather, as al-Maqqarī’s version does, to augment the ostentatious nature of al-Muʿtamid’s actions and model an idealised image of the magnificence for which Castilian kings should strive. 13 Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Maqqarī, Nafḥ al-ṭīb min ġuṣn al-Andalus al-raṭīb, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, 8 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1968), I, 440. There is a slightly different version in IV, 272–3, that adds a famous hadith about women transmitted by al-Bukhārī: ‘If you have always been good to one of them [women] and then she sees something in you not of her liking, she will say: “I have never received any good from you”’ (273). Both translations are mine. 14 See Fahmida Suleman, ‘Gifts and Gift Giving’, in Medieval Islamic Civilization. An Encyclopedia, ed. Josef Waleed Meri, 2 vols (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), I, 295–6. 15 See Ibn Wāfid, Kitāb al-wisād fī l-ṭibb. Libro de la almohada, sobre medicina, ed. Camilo Álvarez de Morales & Ruiz Matas (Toledo: Diputación de Toledo, 2006); Jah Cherif Abderrahman, Los aromas de al-Andalus. La cultura andalusí a través de los perfumes, especias y plantas aromáticas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2001), 76–90. 8 In this story al-Muʿtamid is a perfect king, in contrast to what happens in other stories of El conde Lucanor, like example 50, where Saladin must be guided by the words of external agents (a good wife and a wise and old knight) to come to a moral anagnorisis about his behaviour. al-Muʿtamid resolves without assistance, and within the traditional tripartite structure of folk tales, the conflict that originates from al-Rumaykīya’s lack of gratitude, correcting her behaviour with words that make her realise her mistake, as a good king should do with his vassals. 16 In the final reflection offered by Patronio after telling the story, he advises Lucanor to act like al-Muʿtamid, realizing that the man he is helping is not grateful, and thus, does not deserve his help. He also makes a point of disparaging al-Rumaykīya’s ingratitude. The parallels implied by the story are obvious: al-Muʿtamid occupies the same position in the example as Lucanor in the framing narrative, a position that is then projected to the extradiegetic reality, in which al-Muʿtamid’s generosity and behaviour could be put to use to solve Castile’s political conflicts. Example 41 presents another model for good kingly behaviour. In the framing narrative Lucanor tells Patronio that he is a famed hunter: […] et he fecho muchas caças nuevas que nunca fizo otro omne. Et aun he fecho et eñadido en las pihulas et en los capiellos algunas cosas muy aprovechosas que nunca fueron fechas. (164–5) And while he is proud of his merits in this courtly pastime, those who want to criticise and ridicule him suggest that these achievements pale in comparison to those of El Cid, Fernán 16 As King Sancho IV advices his son, Fernando IV, to do: ‘Bien andantes son las gentes que Dios da rey o señor que los sepa castigar e mandar. […] El buen castigo faze a las aves bravas que se amansen e que se conoscan al omne que las guarda, e que tome el omne con ellas las otras. […] E grand avantaja llieva el que castiga de aquél a quien castiga, ca el que castiga es enseñador e el otro es desçiplo que lo aprende dél. El que castiga demuestra lo que sabe, e el que lo aprende, aprende lo que non sabe’ (Castigos del rey don Sancho IV, ed. Hugo Óscar Bizzarri [Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2001], 325–6). 9 González, and Fernando III. When asked how to avoid this, Patronio gives an example from the life of the Andalusī Caliph al-Ḥakam al-Mustanṣir (in CL, Alhaquem). Content with maintaining the status quo in the caliphate, al-Ḥakam ‘non se trabajava de fazer otra cosa onrada nin de grand fama, de las que suelen et deven fazer los buenos reys’ (165), and instead idly lived in his palace. One day, while listening to a musician play a flute (“albogón”, 165), he noticed that the quality of its sound could be improved, so he added a hole to the instrument. Upon hearing news of this, the people started to praise the caliph in jest, and every time they would praise someone, they would compare it to the ‘añadimiento del rey Alhaquem’ (166). When this saying reaches the caliph, he feels remorse and realises his actions do not correspond to his estate, but ‘como era muy buen rey, non quiso fazer mal en los que dizían esta palabra’ (166). Instead, determined to restore his good name, he commits to completing the expansion of the Mosque of Cordoba, work left unfinished by his father, ʿAbd al-Raḥman III. The narration is interrupted by Patronio, who starts describing the merits of the mosque, in a passage inspired by the description of the building in Alfonso X’s Estoria de España. Patronio says it is ‘la mayor et más complida et más noble mezquita que los moros avían en España’ (166) and recounts its consecration as a Christian cathedral after the city’s conquest by Fernando III. 17 Returning to the tale, al-Ḥakam expresses that, since people jokingly praised the addition to the flute, they would now praise him sincerely for his addition to the mosque: 17 In the Estoria de España: ‘[…] en la mezquita de Córdova, que sobrava et vençíe de afeyte et de grandeza a todas las otras mezquitas de los alárabes’ (fol. 206v). I quote from the Crónica manuelina (British Library Ms. Egerton 289), model for Juan Manuel’s Crónica abreviada. The passage itself originates from the Toledano’s chronicle: ‘Et tunc venerabilis Iohannes Oxomensis episcopus, regalis aule cancellarius, cum Gundisalvo Choncensi, Dominico Beaciensi, Adam Placentinensi, Sancio Cauriensi episcopis mezquitam ingressus est Cordubensem, que cunctas mezquitas Arabum ornatu et magnitudine superabat’ (Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Opera omnia. Pars I. Historia de rebus Hispanie sive Historia gothica, ed. Juan Fernández Valverde [Turnhout: Brepols, 1987], 299).