Polemical Comparisons in the Apology against the Christian Religion by Muhamad Alguazir (c. 1610)

Abstract

This essay analyses the comparisons made in the Apology against the articles of the Christian Religion by Muhamad Alguazir (c. 1610). Alguazir, a Morisco from Pastrana (Spain), was one of the Moriscos living at the court of sultan Mawlay Zaydan (1608–1627). The polemical treatise he wrote was sent to Maurice of Orange shortly after the conclusion of a treaty of friendship between Zaydan and the Dutch (in 1610) and translated into Latin. The polemic had a two-pronged later influence: on European debates about the Trinity; and it was used by Anti-Trinitarians and by German Lutherans in their polemics against them, on the one hand, and by Moriscos living in Tunis, viz. the expelled Toledan Morisco Juan Pérez aka Ibrahim Taybili, on the other. We study the transformations that the polemic underwent according to the translations and the religious transfers.

Keywords

• Tunis
• Spain
• religious polemics
• Moriscos
• Morocco
• Dutch Republic