‘Dichos bien hermanados’. Towards a Typology of Mudéjar and Morisco Multiple-Text Manuscripts

Abstract

The main reason behind the compilation of (multiple-text manuscripts) MTMs by Mudéjares and Moriscos was the need to provide access to a basic knowledge of Islam to as many people as possible and to preserve it in spite of increasingly harsh conditions. However, functions and readers were not the same, which is the reason why I suggest a typology of Mudéjar and Morisco MTMs in two groups: on the one hand, a collection of chapters and/or small fragments copied from various works from either an earlier or a contemporaneous date; and on the other hand, the MTMs that ceased to have this miscellaneous character and began to be perceived—and therefore transmitted—as unitary manuscripts: at some point, both the copyist and the reader inevitably ended up thinking that all the texts contained in the codex were actually part of a single unit, in such a way that these MTMs started being copied and used as a unitary volume.