The present volume,The Latin Qur’an, 1143–1500: Translation, Transition, Interpretation,1 highlights some of the methodological principles aimed at better understanding the process behind the genesis, spread, reading, annotation and interpretation of the Latin Qur’an translations made between 1143 and 1500 by Latin Christian authors. Our goal is to offer an extensive overview of how out of this process emerged the kaleidoscopic European Qur’an, with its multiple angles and perspectives depending on each particular historical moment in premodern Latin Europe.2
In the eastern Mediterranean, geographical proximity and diverse channels of political and cultural exchange between Christian and Islamic communities early on fostered, among Christians living in that region, an in-depth knowledge of the Qur’an and the traditions on the life of the Prophet. By contrast, in the western Mediterranean it is not until the twelfth century that we find the first systematic endeavours to study and disseminate – with polemical intent – the laws and traditions of Islam. Until then, all that was available were an array of legends about the figure of Muhammad, which historians and poets had been circulating since the mid-eleventh century. The Benedictine monk Guibert de Nogent (1055–1124), author of theGesta Dei per Francos (1109), remarked that Latin Christendom lacked the sort of solid information on the law of Muhammad that could make for sound refutations of it, himself indicating that he could only relay the information that had reached his ears.3 This idea expressed by Guibert is absolutely novel if we compare it with the stance voiced by the Mozarabic clergy in thriving ninth-century Córdoba. Despite the city’s abundance of knowledge about Islam, the surviving Christian texts merely paraphrase or reference a handful of ayas, as in the short treatise “Historia de Mohamed Pseudopropheta,” transmitted via the work of Eulogius of Córdoba (ca. 857),4 and in abbreviated form via the work of Paulus Alvarus of Córdoba (ca. 800–860), included in hisIndiculus Luminosus,5 “Adnotatio Mammetis Arabum principis,” as well as in the development of theIndiculus itself.6 However, these authors refused to engage with the Qur’an itself, rejecting it outright, refusing even to refer to Muhammad (calling him merelyPseudopropheta) or the Qur’an (Psalmi) by name. Although Eulogius and Alvarus must have known more about Islam than that which appears in their writings, their attitude, in contemporary terms, could be described as one of radical activism, and perhaps, given their monastic isolation, this really was the extent of their knowledge. However, it is highly possible that Mozarabic Christians were perhaps more directly familiar with Eastern Christian texts, as evidenced by the contemporary Latin translation of theEpistula Leonis.7
This method of using an Arabic anti-Muslim polemical source was also followed by the Judeo-Converso Petrus Alfonsi,8 whoseDialogi contra Iudaeos (1110) co
