Current Issue

Jump to:
Introduction
Letter
Reviews
Articles
Abstracts

Announcements
Call for papers #37

Perry, Mary Elizabeth. The Handless Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2005. Pp. 202. illus.

Mary Elizabeth Perry's sensitive study of Morisco culture deals with the Moriscos' resistance and accommodation to the dominant culture in Spain from the fall of Granada to their eventual expulsion in the early seventeenth century. The book examines the ways in which Moriscos forged their own identities within the larger drama of the formation of a collective identity for Spain as a Christian state.
In analyzing the construction of Moriscos as "others" in sixteenth-century Spain, Perry focuses on Morisco women in particular, as their twice-marginalized status made them especially adept at covert forms of resistance. According to Perry, Moriscos deployed the "weapons of the weak" in an effort to preserve their identities and their culture, and Morisco women were well situated to pursue this strategy because the domestic sphere offered many possibilities for surreptitiously transmitting Muslim rituals and customs. Teaching Islamic prayers, fasting, wearing clean clothes on Fridays, and passing down Morisco tales and legends were all activities through which Moriscas resisted cultural assimilation. Drawing on the work of scholars such as bell hooks and Trihn Minh-ha, Perry emphasizes the multivalent relationship between power and resistance in an effort to supplant the center/periphery model with a "tapestry paradigm" that recognizes the specificity and agency of her subjects.
The central thread running through Perry's tapestry is the legend of Carcayona, the Handless Maiden. The story of the Handless Maiden is a common folktale in many cultures; that the Muslim version featuring Carcayona was carefully recorded and preserved by Moriscos indicates, in Perry's view, that it resonated with their experience. While careful not to claim that the tale of Carcayona represents the thinking of all Moriscos, Perry offers the story as "one way to illuminate their complex culture and its impact on their responses to issues of faith, identity, accommodation, and resistance" (27). In this Handless Maiden tale, Carcayona, a princess in ancient India, undergoes a succession of trials. The most gruesome of these involves the amputation of her hands when she defies her idol-worshipping father, who demands that she renounce her faith in Allah. Through this and other tribulations, Carcayona remains steadfast in her faith, alternately submitting to and circumventing political and gender hierarchies in her utter obedience to the will of Allah. With Allah's blessing, Carcayona triumphs in the end-her hands are miraculously restored and she founds a new city where Islam reigns supreme.
It is not difficult to see how the strange mix of power and powerlessness in the Handless Maiden tale fit with the experience of Moriscas who were sometimes forced to accommodate to the dominant culture in order to survive and ensure their families' survival but were also able in many cases to resist attempts to obliterate not only their religion but their culture as well. Perry describes the myriad ways in which Moriscas negotiated a religious milieu that had been increasingly politicized by Christian authorities in the sixteenth century. In this highly charged environment, practices such as ritual ablutions, circumcision, and baptism were all fraught with complex power dynamics. In the case of baptism, for example, Perry describes how some Moriscas submitted to Christian regulations-presenting their children for baptism and giving them Christian names-only to later subvert these rituals by conducting clandestine ceremonies in which the children were given Arabic names that would be used at home.
It is not easy, as Perry admits, to discern the motivations and intentions at work in these forms of covert resistance. While in some instances Moriscas engaged in direct opposition, as in the Alpujarra rebellion of 1568-70 when they fought side by side with Morisco men, in most of the cases Perry examines we are presented with a subtle interaction of resistance and accommodation. Because traditional historical narratives have tended to emphasize the passivity of oppressed peoples, it is tempting for revisionist accounts to exaggerate their agency. Perry, to her credit, remains attentive to the ambiguities inherent in the evidence she works with and provides nuanced readings of source materials ranging from inquisitorial records to long-lost Morisco literature in Aljamía, a Castilian dialect written in Arabic script.
The Handless Maiden will be of interest not only to specialists in the field but will also serve as a good introduction to the history of the Moriscos in early modern Spain. Because the book does such an admirable job of weaving together politics, religion, popular culture, and folklore, it may well serve as a more engaging text for an upper-level undergraduate course on Islam in Spain than would a traditional political history.

Andrew Keitt
University of Alabama at Birmingham