Ibn Abi Jum’a al-Maghrawi al-Wahrani’s (d. 917/1511) “1504 fatwa” to the Moriscos is among the most widely discussed texts on the legal status of Muslims living under non-Muslim rule in the medieval Mediterranean. L.P. Harvey has called it the “key theological document for the study of Spanish Islam” in the post-Reconquest period. Scholars have agreed that al-Wahrani must have been writing in response to a legal question, now lost, posed by Granadan Muslims, who became Iberia’s first Moriscos when they were converted forcibly to Christianity in 1501-1502. Al-Wahrani praises them for their steadfast faith and offers them practical advice as to how they might maintain adherence to Islam without being detected, and despite being forced to perform such acts as praying in church or drinking wine. He assures the Moriscos that as long as their intentions are pure, they will not sin in doing what they must to avoid persecution.
I argue that the “1504 fatwa” is not a fatwa at all (a response to a question), but al-Wahrānī’s unsolicited response to a copy of the 1501 Morisco appeal to the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II. The striking correspondence between al-Wahrani’s advice and the specific hardships described by the Moriscos in this earlier text, composed in the form of a qasida, suggests a direct textual relationship. Despite substantial, continued interest al-Wahrani’s text, and a growing interest in the 1501 appeal for aid, the connection between these two key texts has remained unnoticed and unexplored. My paper will advance the case for a textual relationship and will explore the implications of reading al-Wahrani’s “fatwa” as a response to a formal poem meant to move a sultan, not a practical question posed to a jurist.
If the Moriscos never asked al-Wahrani a question, his text would not constitute evidence that these Muslims perceived a need for legal advice, or that they assigned greater authority to North African jurists (as has been argued). Nor could we use al-Wahrani’s answer to reconstruct the question to which it logically responds, thereby illuminating the Morisco predicament (as has been done). Reading al-Wahrani’s text as unsolicited advice thus has significant implications for our understanding of Iberia’s first Moriscos and their relationships with their co-religionists in Muslim-ruled territory.
Religious Studies/Theology