The Abencerraje' and 'Ozmín and Daraja': Two Sixteenth‑Century Novellas from Spain eds. by Barbara Fuchs, Larissa Brewer-García, and Aaron J. Ilika (review)

'Finely wrought literary artifacts [presenting] a more nuanced view of the Christian–Muslim divide in the early modern period' (p. 1) is how the editors characterise the two texts selected for translation and contextualisation in this volume and it is certainly a fair assessment. Anonymous, formerly popular, and genre making; these texts act as a micro-seriation of early modern Spanish maurophile literature.

The Abencerraje tells of the growth of a friendship between 'a gallant Moor' (p. 29) and his captor, a Christian governor. Published in the mid-sixteenth century, the story looks back to events and persons from over a century earlier, but spoke to contemporary questions of captivity, honour, and identity. In the longer and slightly later Ozmín and Daraja, similar issues are confronted. The Moorish protagonist here spends much of the narrative in disguise, as a servant and gardener, trying to be close to his beloved. As such, it also offers some commentary on the operations of class as a social divider, something additional to and perhaps even more important than ethno-religious identities.

The editors have done a fine job of translating these two novellas, introducing them, succinctly contextualising the texts, and providing further contextual material for comparison and reflection. They have produced a volume that is accessible and will make an excellent aid to teaching. It is also timely: a volume able to broaden scholarly understandings of early modern maurophilia is certainly welcome in an historical epoch wracked by similar questions of identity and belonging, with its own questions relating to the boundaries of class, ethnicity, and religion, and persistent tensions between maurophile and maurophobic orientations and representations.