Moriscos read elite hadith collections popular across the entire Islamic world

Evidence

A favorite work in the field of hadith was by the Egyptian scholar al-Qudai (d. A.D. 1062), Kitab shihab al-akhbar (Book of the resplendent light of stories concerning the parables and teachings related by the most excellent Prophet). Al-Qudai was indeed read all over the Islamic world. There are four Morisco-associated manuscripts of his work, one solely in Arabic, two bilingual, and one in aljam´ıa alone (three of these from Almonacid), and in addition, there is a commentary on it by al-Warraq al-Babi in the Vatican Borgiano collection (see Brockelmann 1937–1949 [hereafter GAL], suppl. 1, 585 Cmt.). This last seems to consist mainly of brief aphorisms allegedly derived from hadith literature such as “The Koran is the remedy” (f. 5r), “The finest death is that of the martyrs” (f. 128), or “He who brings a man into Islam will enter Paradise” (f. 50v). Some would not recommend themselves to a modern taste: “A woman is like a bent rib: try to straighten her out and she will break; just take pleasure in her, even though she is bent.” — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 692

Categorization

• SHARE: The ‘bent rib’ aphorism and its framing of women is a striking primary-source artifact of medieval gender ideology in religious literature.
• CANDY: The ‘woman is like a bent rib’ proverb is a vivid, quotable medieval aphorism from a specific primary source.