Castilian-language manuals enabled a small town to become a Muslim resistance hub

Evidence

For reasons that are in no way clear, one center of focus of the new Islamic ideological resistance in the early mid-sixteenth century was located in the small Castilian town of Ar´evalo. Ar´evalo lies about 100 kilometers northwest of Madrid, and it fell within an area where a well-established but not dense Muslim minority had lived for centuries, mainly in urban Moorish quarters (morer´ıas). This was the zone that in the midand late fifteenth century had seen the adoption, the adaptation, of the Castilian language for use in manuals of Islamic theology. In an earlier study, Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500, and in the chapter which follows this one, I have reason to discuss the life and works of the mid- fifteenth-century imam Ic¸e from nearby Segovia. This region of Castile had thus provided leadership to the subject Mudejars in the preceding period. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 539

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why exactly Arévalo became the resistance’s center is left unexplained (‘for reasons that are in no way clear’) — worth chasing in the following chapter.
• DEFINE: Clarifies the term ‘morería’ as a Moorish urban quarter in Castilian towns.
• XREF: The pattern of a language-adapted theology manual enabling underground resistance connects to work on how vernacular scripture/liturgy sustains minority identity (similar to vernacular Bible translations sustaining Protestant communities).