Admiration and Awe

Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography

Antonio Urquizar-Herrera

Asks new research questions about the relationship with the Islamic past in early modern Spain.
Engages with various aspects of early modern European history, including antiquarian studies, national and local identity formation, architectural writing, and the relationships between Christianity and Islam.
Based on research of a corpus of over four hundred primary sources of the early modern Spanish period, including religious, historical, and antiquarian writing; literature; and archival material.

Admiration and Awe

Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography

Antonio Urquizar-Herrera

Description

This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To date this process of Christian appropriation has generally been discussed as a phenomenon of architectural hybridization. However, this was a period in which the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. As a result, cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity.

Spain's Islamic past became a major concern in this period and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On the one hand, the monuments' Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates that shaped the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation as well as its ecclesiastical history.

Admiration and Awe

Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography

Antonio Urquizar-Herrera

Preface: The Islamic Stones of Spain, Today
Introduction
PART I
1. Conquest and Plunder
2. The Notion of the Loss of Spain
3. Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies
PART II
4. Historical Dislocation and Antiquarian Appropriation
5. The Foundations of an Antiquarian Literature for Islamic Architecture
6. The Antiquarian Appropriation of Islamic Monuments
PART III
7. The Religious Use of the Antiquarian Model
8. Genealogical Forgery and Continuity of Christian Worship
9. Calling on the Martyrs: The Final Atonement of Islamic Architecture
PART IV
10. Charting the Impact of Historiographical Texts?
Bibliography

Admiration and Awe

Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography

Antonio Urquizar-Herrera

Author Information

Antonio Urquizar-Herrera is Associate Professor at the History of Art Department of the UNED, Madrid, as well as Life Member at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. He has published several monographs about Early Modern Art in Spain, among them Coleccionismo y nobleza. Signos de distincion social en la Andalucia del Renacimiento (2007). He has also published more than thirty book chapters and articles in International and Spanish peer review journals. He has been principle investigator of a number of different research groups and research projects on Early Modern Art in Spain.

Admiration and Awe

Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography

Antonio Urquizar-Herrera

Reviews and Awards

"[T]he identification and analysis of historical writings from the 16th and 17th centuries, the careful citation of sources, and the extensive bibliography serve well the serious student of Spain's history....Recommended."--CHOICE

Admiration and Awe

Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography

Antonio Urquizar-Herrera

From Our Blog

The Islamic monuments of Spain: four centuries ago and today

Spanish historians and antiquarians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries revised the medieval reception of Islamic monuments in the Peninsula as architectural wonders and exotic trophies. They endeavoured to re-appropriate these hybrid architectures by integrating them into a more homogeneous cultural memory focused on Spain's Roman and Christian past.

Posted on February 6, 2018

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