Muhammad Al-Jayyar knew about astrology, mathematics and poetry. A skilled jurist, he was interested in the superstitions and news of the turbulent times in which he lived. “On earth it never happened / what happened in Al-Andalus,” he wrote in one of his poems. He was imprisoned in Seville for years, copying books for the city’s governor, until he was released and appointed alfaquí – legal expert – and imam of Aquṭa, as modern-day Cútar was once known. The municipality in the Axarquia district in the province of Málaga, which currently has 600 inhabitants, was then just a rural farm of a similar size. He arrived there on August 9, 1490. On papyrus he described his everyday life: inheritance and divorce processes, personal thoughts, the conquest of Granada in 1492 and the earthquake that devastated Málaga shortly afterwards. When he was forced to convert to Christianity or leave his native country around 1500, he chose the latter. Hoping to return, he hid three manuscripts on a wall of his house: the two books he had written and a 12th- or 13th-century Koran. They were never seen again until workers evicted them during renovations on a house in the village.
They remained hidden for 500 years, until June 28, 2003. The owner of the house, Magdalena Santiago, remembers the 20th anniversary of the discovery: “It was a surprise. Nobody expected something like this to show up,” adding that the property almost “collapsed.” Protected by straw, they lay in the trough of a cupboard hidden in the original wide walls of the Andalusian house. Other books from this period have also been found after being hidden in walls in various parts of Spain for centuries, but this Quran is one of the two oldest ever discovered in the country. “It was an extraordinary find,” says María Isabel Calero, a retired Arabic scholar who spent a long time studying the originals at the University of Malaga 20 years ago.
María Isabel Calero shows the copy of the Koran. Alvaro Cabrera
Today, after a careful restoration – with grafted paper – they are kept in the Archivo Histórico Provincial de Málaga, managed by the Regional Government of Andalusia. The administration released a facsimile of the Qur’an in 2009, which became a ceremonial donation along with the research led by Calero on the three books entitled Los manuscripts de Cútar (The Cútar Manuscripts). The religious text is square in shape and dates from the 13th century, the Almohad period in Spain. It is made of parchment made from calf and sheep skins. Its importance is evident in the decoration: there are lace trims, Solomon’s knots, shells and flowers in red. The calligraphy is done in black and green ink, making the text a luminous composition that has endured through the ages.
There are two theories as to why it was in the hands of Al-Jayyar and why he took such care to hide it after Muslim religious books were banned in the early 1600s. The first theory is that it may have been a family heirloom. A Quran passed down from father to son that every heir wants to preserve at all costs. Secondly, it belonged to the mosque in Cutar – the village’s current church was built directly on top of it in the 16th century – and that in his role as Imam he decided to hide it lest it be destroyed. In any case, his hope was to get it back one day. “The word at the heart of this story is fear: that someone will discover the manuscript or that it will disappear,” says Calero. During her research, she was even more impressed by the other two manuscripts, which are said to be “full of curiosities” and whose last annotation dates from the year 1500.
Al-Jayyar is its main author, but there were more because the pages sewn with linen yarn have different styles of handwriting. One of these – now called L14029 – consists of 111 sheets of Arabic paper and its contents are related to the work of the Alfaquí, whom Calero defines as “a cultured man with scruples, a copyist”. [who was] probably of urban origin.” She believes that Al-Ŷayyār was assigned to Cútar for two reasons: the surrender of Málaga to the Catholic Monarchs and the family of his wife Umm al-Fath, who originally came from there. In the text, cases of land distribution, marriages, inheritances, neighborhood disputes, and separations judged by the sage are retold in the form of separate chapters. Among them that of ‘Ā’iša bint al-Qurṭubī, a woman who divorced for the second time. There are also pages devoted to mathematics – the multiplication table is fully written – some poetry and the calculation of sunrise and sunset for the dates of Ramadan.
The second book – called L14030, on 134 sheets of Italian paper – is more personal. There are portions taken from other books and sermons (“Do no wrong if you are powerful”), esoteric and superstitious questions. It contains poems written by the Imam himself. This codex also contains news that touched the author personally, such as the Christian conquest of Granada and Vélez-Málaga, and the 1494 earthquake that destroyed “150 houses” in the capital.
The restored copy is housed in the Provincial Historical Archives along with two other manuscripts from the period discovered at the same time. Alvaro Cabrera
All the books can be consulted digitally in one of the rooms of the exhibition center that opened in Cútar last autumn. Open every weekend, it contains many details both on the discovery of the manuscripts and their context when the municipality was part of the Taha de Comares (district of Comares), of which only five farmsteads have survived until the 21st century: the today’s villages of Benamargosa, Almáchar and El Borge as well as Comares and Cútar. The villages are all close together, connected by winding roads that weave through a landscape dominated by mango and avocado trees and a handful of ancient vineyards. “The environment has changed, but the municipality has remained practically the same as it was in Al-Andalus times,” says the mayor of Cútar, Francisco Ruiz.
After many disappointments, the local guide found an ally in Juan Bautista Salado, archaeologist, expert on Al-Andalus and director of the Museum of Nerja, who took charge of the exhibition project. “The idea is to add value to the books, but also to explain what Andalusian society and their way of life were like through the information we got from them,” says Salado. The expert wonders why no one thought of protecting the walls where the texts were found in addition to the texts themselves. ‘The dwelling house must have been built at least in the 15th century and today only a few original walls remain. The rest were thrown away in the renovation,” he says, although he believes Al-Jayyar’s story is one of hope, how despite being displaced, he dreamed of returning to reclaim his land, home and books.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter for more English language news from the EL PAÍS USA Edition