Morisco scholars engineered forged holy texts to counter Christian intolerance

Evidence

A group of highly educated Moriscos conceived a strategy that, taking advantage of unusual circumstances, set about infiltrating into Christian society texts couched in ambiguous language that were intended to deliver the Arab people and the Arabic language (and by extension, the Hispanic Morisco community) from the extreme depths of intolerance and contempt to which they had been condemned by the mentality of their rulers. They started with what we may term “kite-flying” exercises (the Verdadera Historia of Miguel de Luna, or the parchment in the Turpian Tower), which permitted them to calculate with precision what effect these texts might produce on society, and they then went on, still sheltering with delicate prudence behind the story of the discoveries, to launch (or more exactly in this case, to bury) one text in succession after another. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1342

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘kite-flying’ strategy — testing forged texts on a public to gauge reaction before launching bigger ones — is a fascinating piece of information-warfare methodology an essay could unpack as a premodern precursor to staged disinformation.
• SHARE: A friend interested in forgery studies would love the Moriscos using ‘kite-flying’ trial texts to calibrate audience reaction before the big Gospel of Barnabas forgery.