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Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahimi wa sallallahu 'ala Sidina Muhammadin al-Karim wa 'ala alihi
It is with great humility that the contributors to the
Proyecto Breviario Sunni here express the
razón de ser of this work, the proposed task of translating this work into English (or any other of the major European languages) at this point in time.
The
Breviario Sunni of Shaykh 'Isa of Segovia is indeed one of the unique literary treasures of European Islamic literature. The self-stated purpose of the work, according to the author in his prologue, was to present to the reader, both Muslim and non-Muslim, a brief guide (
breviario) to the essential aspects of the faith and practice of Sunni Islam in the contemporary language of his Moorish countrymen. For this reason the work was composed in Spanish (Castillian), which at that point was indeed the mother tongue of the Moors of Castille, as the use of Arabic had fallen into disuse. It is important to note that the intent of the work, aside from basic religious instruction according to the Maliki
madhhab for the common believer, was also to some degree to provide certain information to both the Muslim and non-Muslim readership regarding the author's convictions, perhaps influenced by Almohad (
Al-Muwwahdun) ideology, regarding certain Messianic interpretations of contemporary events within the context of Islamic prophecies regarding events predicted "at the end of the present age" (
al fin de este presente siglo).
For many years the
Breviario Sunni has attracted the attention of innumerable scholars and authorities in the specialized fields of the Spanish Inquisition, Iberian Islamic studies, Spanish linguistics, etc. A most wondrous and exquisite scholarly work regarding the life and works of our author, Shaykh 'Isa of Segovia, by Gerard Wiegers entitled
Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Yça of Segovia (fl. 1450), His Antecendents and Successors was published in 1994 and is truly the standard text in the field (GoogleBooks link here:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Islamic_Literature_in_Spanish_and_Aljami.html?id=Z2A55_kw3F4C) which includes some portions of the Breviario Sunni translated into English. L.P. Harvey in his
Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500 (GoogleBooks link here:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Islamic_Spain_1250_to_1500.html?id=td3tcLWvSNkC) also translated certain portions of interest into English. However, up to this present time, no one that we are aware of has attempted to translate this work
in its entirety into English. That the
Breviario Sunni ought to be considered one of the treasures of European Islamic literature is evident and in our view it deserves our full attention and consideration in and of itself. Moreover, we are not aware of any translation attempts of the
Breviario Sunni that feature extensive consultation of any of the other
Morisco texts which survive up to the present day, such as are available in the most wondrous and extraordinary libraries of the
Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales of Spain. Therefore, it is with this desire to bring the
Breviaro Sunni to a wider readership, outside the realm of specialists, that we make our intention to publish, in a "Web-zine" format, the contents of the
Breviario Sunni in English translation to the Muslim and non-Muslim Web readership.
It is the hope of the contributors to
Proyecto Breviario Sunni that the work of bringing this and other related traditional Islamic texts to greater readership, both Muslim and non-Muslim, that an appreciation will be made of the sophisticated relationship between Islam and other religions, as opposed to those who monotonously declare a perpetual "clash of civilizations" between the Islamic and so-called "Western" worlds, etc. Here we present a work composed in the European vernacular for his fellow countrymen who could no longer read or understand Arabic, so fundamentally Europeanized they indeed had become, a work which, as shall be seen (
insha'Allah) casts a more sophisticated interpretation of the relationship between Islam and Christendom, especially within the context of the traditional Islamic interpretation of Messianic events.
- Abdessamad Bey (writing in America)
