Canonical and Non-Canonical Sources for Biblical History in Two Arabic Universal Histories Written by Christians in al-Andalus

Abstract

This article examines the biblical material contained in two universal histories written by the Christians of al-Andalus: the so-called Kitāb Hurūshiyūsh (KH) and the “Mozarabic universal history” (MUH) preserved at MS Raqqada 2003/2. A thorough comparison of the parallel passages from the Books of Samuel and Kings shows that KH, which has proved to be one of the sources of MUH for profane history, was not used by the latter’s compiler for the large fragments relating to sacred history. Both KH and MUH contain copious material concerning biblical history that was derived from sources different than the Bible. Thus, Giorgio Levi Della Vida and I, as editors of MUH and KH respectively, have observed that the biblical material derived from the Vulgate in both texts was enriched with information from Jerome’s and Isidore’s works. In this article I show that both contain a substantial amount of information absent from Jerome’s and Isidore’s works and that canonical biblical material is largely interspersed with material from non-canonical and non-biblical sources, including information well rooted in the Jewish tradition. This is especially the case in MUH.