Global Middle Ages – Page 2 – Medieval Studies Research Blog: Meet us at the Crossroads of Everything

June 8, 2022July 13, 2022

St. Augustine: Florida’s Medieval City (Part I)

Along oyster beds, sand dunes, and marshy coastal lowlands rise the church spires and walls of a medieval coastal city. This isn’t Northumbria’s Holy Island or Normandy’s Mont-St-Michel, though. This is the City of St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city continuously occupied by Europeans and African-Americans in North America. This settlement on Florida’s First Coast predates the arrival of the Mayflower pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620 and even the 1607 founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement.

The Age of Reconnaissance

St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565 as part of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European push to discover, explore, and settle new lands beyond Europe. This “Age of Reconnaissance” is one of the hallmarks for historians of the transition from the late Middle Ages into the Early Modern period in Europe.

Historian J. H. Parry describes the medieval beginnings of this push, especially in Spain:

“The initial steps in expansion were modest indeed: the rash seizure by a Portuguese force of a fortress in Morocco; the tentative extension of fishing and, a little later, trading, along the Atlantic coast of North Africa; the prosaic settlement by vine and sugar cultivators, by log-cutters and sheep-farmers, of certain islands in the eastern Atlantic. There was little, in these early- and mid-fifteenth-century ventures, to suggest world-wide expansion.”

In the later fifteenth-century, though, this expansion indeed exploded globally. [1] The desire to expand wealth through acquisition of new lands, slave labor, and precious metals and stones, as well as the desire to convert any newly-discovered peoples to Catholicism, were powerful enticements for Spain to explore. Developments in nautical navigation, map-making, and ship technology made exploration possible.

“Americae sive qvartae orbis partis nova et exactissima descriptio” (“A new and most exact plan of America, or the fourth part of the world”), created by Diego Gutiérrez and Hieronymus Cock in 1562. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650 USA dcu.

Spain’s first encounter with the Florida coast came during the explorations of a medieval Spaniard, Juan Ponce de Léon (b. ca. 1460 in Léon, Spain). In early April 1513, with a license from Spain’s King Ferdinand II (1452–1516), Ponce de Léon sailed from Puerto Rico looking for Bimini (the Bahamas) and, legend has it, the Fountain of Youth. He found Florida instead, landing somewhere between St. Augustine and Melbourne Beach.

Claiming it for Spain, he gave the supposed island its Spanish name of La Florida, or Pascua Florida, depending on which source you look at; both names suggest Ponce de Léon was struck by the abundance of flowers he must have seen. (“Pascua Florida Day” is a state holiday and is celebrated on or around April 2nd each year.) He then sailed southward around the peninsula to explore further. [2] Ponce de Léon returned to Spain and procured Spain’s consent to colonize the New World; thus Spanish settlement began. [3]

“La Florida,” printed in Geronimo Chaves, *Theatrum orbis terrarum* (Antwerp: Abraham Ortelius, 1584). Special Collections Department, University of South Florida.

The Settlement of St. Augustine

Fifty-two years later, with a new French settlement threatening Spain’s claim to this territory, King Philip II commissioned Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to colonize the area and remove the French. On August 28, 1565, the feast of St. Augustine, Menéndez, his crew, soldiers, and settler families, over 2,000 souls traveling in 11 ships, sighted this land from sea and named it after the saint.

Menéndez and the settlers built defenses (pictured below, top center, which St. Augustinians replaced a little over a hundred years later with a stone fort, the Castillo de San Marcos) and laid out homes and plots for cultivation (pictured below, top left). St. Augustine was thus established and remained a hub of Spanish Florida, both for military defense and as a home base for Catholic missionaries.

Map of St. Augustine, created in 1589 by Baptista Boazio. Oriented with north to the right. The Castillo de San Marcos is pictured at top center. Held in the Hans and Hanni Kraus Sir Francis Drake Collection (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division).

Sadly, the next 50 years saw the Spanish settlers nearly annihilate the native Timucuan peoples of the area through disease and war. [4] The Spanish did aid escaped slaves, though, albeit conditionally. As early as 1687, Blacks escaping slavery in the nearby British colonies of Georgia and the Carolinas sought asylum in St. Augustine, the second-largest town in the southern colonies. [5] They received freedom in exchange for converting to Catholicism and, for men, joining the Spanish military. (In 1738 this settlement became a fortified town, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the first free Black community in the colonies, at the north end of St. Augustine. The settlement is now commemorated as Fort Mose Historic State Park.) [6]

“Plano de la ciudad y puerto de San Agustin de la Florida” (Map of the City and Port of St. Augustine, Florida”), created in 1783 by Tomás López de Vargas Machuca. Held in Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650 USA dcu. The Castillo de San Marcos and town plan to the west are pictured top, slightly right of center. Fort Mose is north of the Castillo de San Marco and labeled as “Fuerte Negro” (Black Fort).

St. Augustine’s Coat of Arms

The later settlers of St. Augustine remained close to their medieval and colonial Spanish roots. In 1715, in fact, the city residents petitioned King Philip V of Spain for a coat of arms of their own, to reflect that heritage (they had previously used a version of the coat of arms of Castile and León, which appears on a lintel in the Castillo de San Marcos). They wrote to the king “to grant to them for arms, a ‘flor de lis, lion, castle and strong arm with cross in the middle’ and the title ‘Most Loyal and Valorous’ for their faithful and courageous service to Spain.” [7]

Philip did indeed grant the request, but neither the news nor the design of the coat of arms reached the city. In 1911 the City renewed its request with Juan Carlos I, King of Spain. Vicente de Cardenas y Vicent, Herald, King of Arms, Dean of the Corps of Heralds for Spain, informed St. Augustinians that indeed, the Coat of Arms had been granted on November 26, 1715, along with the title of “Most Loyal and Valorous” city. [8]

Photo by the author, Dr. Megan Hall (2022).

St. Augustine’s coat of arms contains the requested elements displayed on a shield, all topped by a crown. The seal and its elements draw on the medieval tradition of heraldry, which developed in Europe in the eleventh century as a way to visually distinguish and identify armor-covered knights on a battlefield. [9] In the next century heraldry grew to encompass family identity and then shortly after corporate identity, such as for monasteries, universities, and towns. [10]

Welcome Gateway in St. Augustine, Florida. Photo by the author, Dr. Megan Hall (2022).

St. Augustine’s seal visually marks the city’s medieval history and Spanish heritage as well as its city-hood (signified by the crown above the shield). In particular, the shape of the coat of arms’s shield is medieval and its golden cross signals the city’s Christian origins; the golden castle of Castile and the purple lion of León call back to the city’s Spanish heritage. St. Augustine proudly employs this coat of arms and crown on their city seal today, at a gateway that greets visitors to the city.

Join me later this summer for the second part of this series, when we’ll take a deeper dive into the medieval heritage of the city that you can still enjoy today!

About the Author

Dr. Hall earned her Ph.D. in Medieval English Literature from the University of Notre Dame and her M.A. and B.A. in English Literature from the University of Georgia. She has authored a number of publications including essays in Journal of the Early Book Society, Early Middle English, and History of Education Quarterly. She is also a native Floridian who enjoys defending her claim that Florida has a medieval past. She’s written about her home state’s early history since her first historical fiction novella, Gold Coast (1997), about the Spanish exploration of Florida.

Email meganjhall@nd.edu
Twitter @meganjhallphd

Works Cited

[1] J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450–1650, pg. 15.

[2] “Native History: Ponce de Leon Arrives in Florida; Beginning of the End,” Indian Country Today (online), 2 Apr 2017; updated 13 Sep 2018.

[3] “Juan Ponce de León: Spanish explorer,” from Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

[4] “Timucua,” in “Cultural Histories,” Peach State Archeological Society.

[5] Jane Landers, “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida,” The American Historical Review 95.1 (Feb 1990): 9–30.

[6] “The Fort Mose Story,” Fort Mose Historical Society.

[7] Mayor’s Proclamation, City of St. Augustine

[8] Mayor’s Proclamation, City of St. Augustine

[9] For a discussion of the development of heraldry in Spain, see the 2007 doctoral thesis by Luis Valero de Bernabé y Martín de Eugenio, “Análisis de las características generales de la Heráldica Gentilicia Española y de las singularidades heráldicas existentes entre los diversos territorios históricos hispanos.”

[10] Learn more about heraldry in Europe and around the world in “The Scope of Heraldry,” Encyclopædia Brittanica, and more about heraldry in Spain.

May 25, 2022June 8, 2022

The Global Middle Ages for High School

The concept of a Global Middle Ages has shifted the paradigm of medieval studies over the past two decades. [1] It’s impelled scholars to look beyond their particular region or language of expertise to explore the interconnectivity of the world circa 500 to 1500 C.E. New research and publications are examining how commercial, intellectual, artistic, and cultural exchange brought different areas of the globe into contact. New graduate programs and undergraduate courses are training students to dialogue across disciplines, combining the humanities with computer science and bioarcheology. This approach promises to transform medieval studies for the twenty-first century.

Transformation is needed if we want secondary-school students – our future undergraduates – to continue learning about this period. Many state curricula have dropped the requirement to study anything premodern, implying that history began in 1500.

Happily for us, talking about the Global Middle Ages sparks young peoples’ curiosity. They are intrigued by historical narratives that overturn popular notions of the Dark Ages and lift up the cultural achievements of places other than Western Europe.

I speak from experience. This spring I taught an introductory medieval studies course at John Adams High School in South Bend, IN, through a partnership between Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute and the South Bend School Corp. The MI approached John Adams because it is an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School. The IB is a global educational program that aims to form “internationally minded young people” ready to meet the challenges of world citizenship in the twenty-first century. The IB history curriculum is designed to “develop intercultural understanding” though the comparative study of more than one region. The ultimate goal is to “increase students’ understanding of themselves and of contemporary society by encouraging reflection on the past.”

*Dr. David T. Gura, curator of ancient and medieval manuscripts at the University of Notre Dame, guides students from John Adams High School, South Bend, IN, on a tour of* *“The Word Throughout Time” exhibit*.

Teaching the Global Middle Ages can meet these IB learning objectives by introducing high schoolers to the pluralistic cultures of the deep past. By reading travel narratives students learn that medieval merchants, envoys and missionaries needed to develop intercultural understanding in order to survive. After a guest lecture on trade, travel and migration by MI Mellon Fellow Mohamad Ballan, the John Adams students read excerpts from the tenth-century Travels of ibn Fadlan and the thirteenth-century Journey of William of Rubruck. These texts helpfully debunk the myth that all cross-religious encounters in the Middle Ages erupted in violence.

At the same time, medieval travel narratives describe the terror that humans feel when interacting with those who do not speak the same language or who subscribe to alternate belief systems.[2] Students reading these texts come to see the difficulty of acquiring cultural competence – a task that remains difficult today. That knowledge can foster humility, a virtue needed in globally minded citizens.

The John Adams course succeeded in helping students perceive the medieval globe as a place of cultural and religious diversity. One wrote in a final reflection:

One aspect of the Middle Ages that I was clueless about at the beginning of the semester is the significance of Islam in the medieval world, and the effect that Muslims had on architecture, technology, language, and philosophy in the Middle Ages.

Another reported gaining an “understanding of how every country and culture was connected and in relation to one another. It would be unfair to continue believing that the Middle Ages were this dark and clueless when it came to things that they had to use in their everyday lives.” Looking ahead to next year, I’m excited to help students explore this interconnectivity in greater depth and breadth.

*Students from John Adams High School, South Bend, visited the Rare Books & Special Collections room in Hesburgh Library to see some of Notre Dame’s medieval manuscripts.*

The MI hopes our school partnership will serve as inspiration for other medieval studies programs wanting to do public humanities and engagement work. Collaborating with an IB school proved fortuitous. Both parties share the goal of enabling students to understand our world today by reflecting critically on the deep past.

Annie Killian, Ph.D.
Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

[1] On coining the term and conceptualizing “The Global Middle Ages,” see Geraldine Heng, “The Global Middle Ages: An Introduction,” Elements in the Global Middle Ages, November 2021. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009161176.

[2] On Rubruck’s disorienting experience at a Mongol court, see Shirin Azizeh Khanmohamadi, “Worldly Unease in Late Medieval Travel Reports,” in Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages, ed. John M. Ganim and Shayne Legassie (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 105-20.

April 27, 2022May 14, 2022

The Nasrid College: Knowledge and Power in a Medieval Islamic City-State

Today’s blog continues from last week’s discussion of the Nasrid College and the multicultural exchange it fostered in Medieval Iberia by shifting the focus to the intellectual and political.

In Muḥarram 750/April 1349, the Nasrid College, located directly across from the former Great Mosque of Granada (today the cathedral) and near the main market, was completed.[1] It reflected the intersection between knowledge and power, cosmopolitanism and learning, in Nasrid Granada. Although the Nasrid College was certainly the most significant example of an Andalusi madrasah during the Middle Ages, the Granadan scholar-statesman and historian Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374) states that “the admirable college was constructed during the reign of Yūsuf and was the most illustrious of all the colleges in his capital,” indicating that there may have been other such colleges in the kingdom.[2] The Nasrid College sought to establish the preeminence of the Granada as a leading intellectual and cultural center in the Islamic West. Its prominence reflected the transformation of Granada from an embattled frontier polity into a major center of learning in the Islamic West, competing with other intellectual centers such as Fez, Tlemcen, Tunis, Marrakesh and Meknes. Although law, Arabic grammar, and theology constituted the integral components of the curriculum, the subjects taught at the Nasrid College encompassed both the “traditional sciences” (al-‘ulūm al-naqliyyah) as well as the “philosophical sciences” (al-‘ulūm al-‘aqliyyah), and included jurisprudence, logic, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, arithmetic, and geometry. Some of these subjects would also be studied with professors from the Nasrid College in other spaces in Granada, including the home and chancery. The students and teachers at the Nasrid College included some of the greatest luminaries from al-Andalus as well as North Africa during the 14^th and 15^th centuries. The Nasrid College contained a significant library that housed many of the most important works produced in the late medieval Islamic West, as well as many books from across the Islamic world. According to a note by the 15^th-century Andalusi scholar Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad b. al-Ḥaddād al-Wādī Āshī, for example, an ornamented and calligraphic manuscript of the monumental “Comprehensive History of Granada” (al-Ihāṭah fī Akhbār Gharnāṭah, authored by Ibn al-Khaṭīb) was deposited in the library of Nasrid College during the reign of Muḥammad V (r. 1354-1359, 1362-1391), where it remained as an endowment (taḥbīs), and was consulted by subsequent generations of scholars.

Details of the *miḥrāb* of the Nasrid College. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.

Following the Iberian Christian conquest of Granada in 1492, the Nasrid College survived largely intact, until much of it was demolished during the early 18^th century to make way for a new Baroque structure. Although only the prayer niche (miḥrāb) and the Oratory of the Following the Iberian Christian conquest of Granada in 1492, the Nasrid College survived largely intact, until much of it was demolished during the early 18^th century to make way for a new Baroque structure. Although only the prayer niche (miḥrāb) and the Oratory of the Nasrid College survives to the present day, recent studies by historians and archaeologists have sought to reconstruct the original structure, which included a monumental gate and pool.

Bilal Sar and Luca Mattei. “La Madraza Yusufiyya en época andalusí: un diálogo entre las fuentes árabes escritas y arqueológicas,” *Arqueología y Territorio Medieval* 16 (2009), p. 73.

The survival of several contemporary Marinid colleges in North Africa, including those in Fez, Meknes, and Salé built during the 1340s and 1350s, may also provide an idea of both the scale and style of the Nasrid College.

College of Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī in Salé, Morocco, completed around 1341. Source: Wikimedia.

*Miḥrāb*, or prayer niche, of the College of Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī in Salé, Morocco. Source: Wikimedia.

Bou Inania Madrasa, Fez. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.

Bou Inania Madrasa in Meknes, built in the 1350s. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.

Like the monumental colleges constructed by Marinid rulers in North Africa, especially Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī (r. 1331–1348) and Abū ‘Inān (1348–1358), this structure was intended to c

Like the monumental colleges constructed by Marinid rulers in North Africa, especially Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī (r. 1331–1348) and Abū ‘Inān (1348–1358), this structure was intended to celebrate the elaborate wealth and power of the sovereign, while proclaiming his commitment to knowledge. There are remarkable architectural and artistic similarities between the Nasrid College and other royal monuments in Granada, including the Alhambra, as well as with Marinid colleges in North Africa, particularly the College of Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī in Salé, which was built several years earlier. Similar to the Marinid colleges, the verses inscribed on the walls of the Nasrid College, which were preserved in medieval and early modern texts, were authored by leading scholars, litterateurs and courtiers. These celebrated the patronage of learning by Yūsuf I, and illustrate the interrelationship between royal power and learned elites in the Nasrid kingdom.[3]

Nasrid dynastic slogan—“There is no Conqueror except God” (*wa lā ghālib illā Llāh*)—inscribed on the prayer niche of the Nasrid College. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.

Another instance of the Nasrid dynastic slogan—“There is no Conqueror except God” (*wa lā ghālib illā Llāh*)—inscribed on the prayer niche of the Nasrid College. Photo by Mohamad Ballan.

In addition to reflecting a shared idiom of sovereignty and learned kingship across both Islamic Spain and North Africa, the similarities between these colleges, which were built within several years of one another, provides an important indication of the cultural and artistic exchange across the Islamic West. It also illustrates the role of interregional connections in strengthening the ties of affiliation and the diffusion of institutions between Iberia and North Africa during this period. Itinerant scholars, administrators and artisans served as cultural intermediaries and conduits for the exchange of ideas and institutions between Nasrid Granada and Marinid Morocco. The Nasrid College was merely one illustration of this broader phenomenon.

Some of the epigraphic poetry [formerly] adorning the gates of the madrasa, extolling the virtues of knowledge and learning. Source https://revistaseug.ugr.es/index.php/meaharabe/article/view/14938/12931.

While the College came to be known in later sources as al-Madrasa al-Yūsufiyya or “The College of Yūsuf,” and came to be associated with the name of Yūsuf I (r. 1333-1354), it was in fact the creation of Abū Nu‘aym Riḍwān al-Naṣrī (d. 1359), this Nasrid sovereign’s royal chamberlain.[4] Abū Nu‘aym Riḍwān was a prominent example of a particular class of Nasrid society that modern scholarship has referred to as “renegades,” enslaved people and freedmen and their descendants who were an integral part of Granada’s population. Riḍwān was born into a Castilian Christian family in Calzada de Calatrava before being enslaved as a child during a Nasrid raid in the late 13^th century. Following his captivity, he was converted to Islam and manumitted, received an education in the Nasrid court, and eventually appointed to leading positions of executive authority, including royal chamberlain, chief minister and commander of the military. The rise to prominence of Riḍwān during this period is also corroborated by contemporary Castilian and Aragonese sources, including the Crónica de Alfonso XI, which describes him as “a Muslim knight known as Reduan, the son of a Christian man and Christian woman, whom the king of Granada trusted immensely (un cavallero moro que dezian Reduan que fuera fijo de christiano e de christiana e era ome quien fiava mucho el rey).”[5] There is substantial evidence that Riḍwān served as an intermediary with the Iberian Christian kingdoms, and corresponded directly with Alfonso IV (r. 1327–1336) and Pedro IV (r. 1336–1387) of Aragón in order to secure a peace treaty between the Nasrids and Aragón. In these documents, four of which have been preserved in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Riḍwān consistently refers to himself as “Riḍwān, son of God’s servant, the chief minister of the Sultan” (Riḍwān ibn ‘Abd Allāh wazīr al-sulṭān).

Signature of Abū Nu‘aym Riḍwān on surviving document produced by the Nasrid chancery during the 1330s.

Alongside his prominent role in politics, diplomacy and administration, Riḍwān was also among the most important patrons of scholars and learning within Nasrid Granada. According to the Granadan scholar-statesman Ibn al-Khaṭīb, one of the beneficiaries of Riḍwān’s patronage, the latter invested considerable funds into a pious endowment (waqf),[6] which formed the foundation of the College’s existence (and stipends for its students), personally financed its decoration and ornamentation, and linked it with the urban system of waterworks to ensure it had a steady supply of water from the river.[7] Such details enable us to appreciate the role of the endowment, or waqf (pl. awqāf), as one of the avenues in which scholar-officials and palace functionaries, particularly upwardly-mobile ones, invested their wealth to leave their imprint on the kingdom. The construction of the Nasrid College, in addition to fortifications and mosques by Riḍwān, demonstrates how his own personal wealth, accumulated over decades while in royal service, played an important role in developing the urban space of Granada. The centrality of a Castilian-born freedmen in the emergence of Granada’s most important institutions of learning illustrates the ways in which the Nasrid College embodied the intersection of traditions of learning, notions of sovereignty and borderland realities in Nasrid Granada.

Fragments of the foundation inscription of the Nasrid College. Source: andalfarad.com.

This concerted program of urban expansion and elaborate construction in Granada during the 14^th century was accomplished through the close collaboration between the secretarial class, nobles, artisans, and craftsmen. The establishment of the Nasrid College and its transformation into one of the most important institutions of learning in Granada was made possible by the close relationship between the sovereign, leading statesmen such as Riḍwān and the various secretaries and functionaries within the Nasrid chancery. The construction of the Nasrid College and the circumstances surrounding it demonstrate that, far from being a period of “intellectual decline,” the 14^th and 15^th centuries in the Islamic West witnessed the emergence of a rigorous scholarly culture that produced brilliant individuals and prolific scholars. The Nasrid College, which has now become the subject of numerous interdisciplinary studies that have included historians, philologists, and archaeologists, has the potential to shed light on this larger cultural renaissance.

Ceiling of the Oratory of the Nasrid College, Granada. Source: flickr.com

Mohamad Ballan
Mellon Fellow, Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame (2021-2022)
Assistant Professor of History
Stony Brook University

Further Reading

Abu Rihab, Muhammad al-Sayyid Muhammad. al-Madāris al-Maghribīyah fī al-ʻaṣr al-Marīnī : dirāsah āthārīyah miʻmārīyah. Alexandria: Dār al-Wafāʼ li-Dunyā al-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, 2011.

Acién Almansa, Manuel. “Inscripción de la portada de la Madraza.” Arte Islámico en Granada, pp. 337-339. Granada, 1995.

Al-Shahiri, Muzahim Allawi. al-Ḥaḍārah al-ʻArabīyah al-Islāmīyah fī al-Maghrib : al-ʻaṣr al-Marīnī. Amman: Markaz al-Kitāb al-Akādīmī, 2012

Bennison, Amira K ed. The Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Buresi, Pascal and Mehdi Ghouirgate. Histoire du Maghreb medieval (XIe–XVe siècle). Paris: Armand Colin, 2013

Cabanelas, Dario. “La Madraza árabe de Granada y su suerte en época cristiana,” Cuadernos de la Alhambra, nº 24 (1988): 29–54

________. “Inscripción poética de la antigua madraza granadina” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos Sección Árabe-Islam 26 (1977): 7-26.

Ferhat, Halima. “Souverains, saints, fuqahā’.” al-Qantara 18 (1996): 375–390

Harvey, Leonard Patrick. Islamic Spain, 1250–1500. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990

Le Tourneau, Roger. Fez in the Age of the Marinides. University of Oklahoma Press, 1961

Makdisi, George. “The Madrasa in Spain” http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/remmm_0035-1474_1973_num_15_1_1235

Mattei, Luca. “Estudio de la Madraza de Granada a partir del registro arqueológico y de las metodologías utilizadas en la intervención de 2006.” Arqueología y Territorio 5 (2008): 181-192

Prado García, Celia. “Los estudios superiores en las madrazas de Murcia y Granada. Un estado de la cuestión.” Murgetana 139 (2018): 9-21.

Rodríguez-Mediano, Fernando. “The Post-Almohad Dynasties in al-Andalus and the Maghrib.” In The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume II: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Maribel Fierro, pp. 106–143. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Rubiera Mata, María Jesús. “Datos sobre una ‘Madrasa’ en Málaga anterior a la Naṣrí de Granada.” Al-Andalus 35 (1970): 223–226

Sarr, Bilal and Luca Mattei. “La Madraza Yusufiyya en época andalusí: un diálogo entre las fuentes árabes escritas y arqueológicas.” Arqueología y Territorio Medieval 16 (2009): 53–74.

Secall, M. Isabel Calero. “Rulers and Qādīs: Their Relationship during the Naṣrid Kingdom.” Islamic Law and Society 7 (2000): 235–255

Seco de Lucena Paredes, Luis. “El Ḥāŷib Riḍwān, la madraza de Granada y las murallas del Albayzín.” Al-Andalus 21 (1956): 285–296.

Simon, Elisa. “La Madraza Nazari: Un centro del saber en la Granada de Yusuf I.” https://andalfarad.com/la-madraza-nazari/

[1] The most important scholarship about the Nasrid College includes La Madraza: pasado, presente y futuro (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2007), eds. Rafael López Guzmán and María Elena Díez Jorge; La Madraza de Yusuf I y la ciudad de Granada: análisis a partir de la arqueología (Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada, 2015), eds. Antonio Malpica Cuello and Luca Mattei.

[2] Ibn al-Khatīb, al-Lamḥa al-Badriyya fī al-Dawla al-Naṣriyya (Kuwait, 2013), p. 153. For a discussion of an earlier college built in the Nasrid kingdom, see María Jesús Rubiera Mata, “Datos sobre una ‘Madrasa’ en Málaga anterior a la Naṣrí de Granada,” Al-Andalus 35 (1970), pp. 223–226.

[3]Darío Cabanelas, “Inscripción poética de la Antigua madraza granadina,” Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos, Sección Árabe-Islam 26 (1977), pp. 7–26.

[4] For an overview of this figure’s life and career, see Luis Seco de Lucena Paredes, “El Ḥāŷib Riḍwān, la madraza de Granada y las murallas del Albayzín,” Al-Andalus 21 (1956), 285–296.

[5] Fernán Sánchez de Valldolid, Crónica de Alfonso XI, BN MS 829, ff. 190r–190v.

[6] For a comprehensive study of awqāf in al-Andalus, see Alejandro García-Sanjúan, Till God inherits the Earth: Islamic Pious Endowments in al-Andalus (9-15^th centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

[7] Ibn al-Khaṭīb, al-Iḥāṭa, 1: 508–509.