Lyell Lectures 2026 Focus on Muslim Books in Christian Iberia

Muslim Books in Christian Hands: From Iberian Moriscos to Early Modern Europe is the theme for Professor Mercedes García-Arenal's Lyell Lectures 2026.

Held on April 28 and 30, and May 5, 7, and 11, at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and online via zoom, the lectures are free but booking is required. Recordings of the lectures will be made and made available online.

Professor Mercedes García-Arenal, Research Professor at Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid, will look at books produced by Muslim minorities in Christian Iberia from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 17th century. Despite their forcible conversion at the start of the 16th century, these minorities continued to use, copy and secretly preserve Muslim books. Manuscripts were also taken outside the country and read by groups elsewhere in Europe.

The lectures - each runs 5.15pm-6.30pm - will follow the traveles of these manuscripts through libraries and centres of knowledge, and how they were used outside Iberia, and how Morisco literature affected contemporary understanding of Islam. 

• Lecture 1, April 28: The Morisco Polemicist Muhamad Alguazir: From Marrakech to the Bodleian
• Lecture 2, April 30: Morisco books between Spain and Rome: Morisco Islam through Eastern Christian eyes
• Lecture 3, May 5: Christian Books in Muslim Hands
• Lecture 4, May 7: Concordia mundi and the search for Qur'ans: Prophetism and Christian Kabbala
• Lecture 5, May 11: Muslims and Christian Knowledge of Islam: the participation of Moriscos