Article on Don Quixote's Mole: Two Citations

Don Quixote
By Honoré Daumier
(1868)

Here is my article on Don Quixote - ten years ago!

Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America. Fall 2009 Horace Jeffery Hodges ... journal, Cervantes 28.2 (Fall, 2008): "Our cover sports another of Jack Davis' illustrations from our bi-lingual Children's Don Quixote."] ...

And here are two citations:

Why You Can't Believe the Arabian Historian Cide Hamete ... - Jstor  by NF HERMES - ‎2014 - ‎Related articles hereafter Don Quixote - as the perfect model of a "pivotal text," that is "prescient in its formulation of the .... Horace Jeffery Hodges in turn notes that "Cervantes ...

The Conversos and Moriscos in Late Medieval Spain and Beyond, Volume ...  Kevin Ingram, ‎Juan Ignacio Pulido Serrano - 2015 - ‎Religion Don Quixote's identity and valor depend on a mole on his right side under the left shoulder, the mark of a strong man. Horace Jeffery Hodges saw that this ...

There are actually a couple more citations but again not easy to cut and paste.

Hani Nakshabandi: Islamophobe?

Hani Nakshabandi
Memri

The writer Hani Nakshabandi expresses Islamophobic doubts that Muslim Spain was a cultural light unto Europe:

I believe that we, who oppose occupation, practiced the same kind of occupation ourselves. We fought against the French occupation of North Africa, and against the French and British occupation of the Levant, but we practiced the same type of occupation in Spain . . . . Everything that is written in our history books should be reexamined. We present Europe as if it had been immersed in darkness and ignorance, until we came along and ushered in an era of light . . . . [I]n Saudi Arabia, we still have villages with no electricity. Wherever you go in the Arab world . . . you see villages where people still live like cavemen, yet you say that we ushered civilization into Europe?! . . . I lived in Spain . . . Well, I didn't really live there, but I visited there a lot, and I went to the museums and libraries. What kind of civilization did the Arabs leave behind in Andalusia? Cordoba . . . . is a Spanish city. What new things did [the Arabs] leave there? Even the Umayyad Mosque was a church they turned into a mosque, just like the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, which still bears the hallmarks of a church to this day . . . . Who created the image of Andalusia that we have in our minds? People attack me because their image of Andalusia is the Andalusia of songs and of dancing women or the Andalusia that they see on TV soap operas -- with water fountains, trees, and beautiful women . . . . This is not Andalusia. Andalusia was a real political tragedy [for the Spanish]. It is not true that the Arabs spread Islam there. Is Spain a Muslim country? It is the pinnacle of Catholicism in the world. ("Saudi Author Hani Nakshabandi: We Should Reexamine Our History Books, The Arabs Were Occupiers In Spain," Memri, Special Dispatch No. 5431, September 2, 2013)

How Islamophobic of Mr. Nakshabandi! Everyone knows that Andalusia was Europe's intellectual center, that the Muslims brought enlightenment to a continent groping in the darkness of ignorance (jahiliyya). The poor, deluded man must be suffering from Islamophobia, an irrational fear of Islam. Except that he's a Saudi Muslim:

Hani Nakshabandi was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He edited Sadiyah, a London-based Arab women's magazine, then moved to live and work in Dubai, editing Al-Majallah magazine and presenting a television news show. He has two novels, Ikhtiras [The Interloper] and Sallam, excerpted here, both with Dar al Saqi. (Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature, Banipal 34, "The World of Arab Fiction," 2013)

As a Muslim, albeit a liberal one, Nakshabandi can't be an Islamophobe. But I do wonder if he's entirely right about Muslim Spain. While the Muslim presence was an occupation and suppressed Christians and Jews as dhimmis, Islamic Spain was at times a center of learning and intellectual exchange, as often happens within empires . . . or so I read in my history-of-science days. Perhaps there's been some historical revisionism since my student years, but that sort of revising goes back and forth, and there's usually a bone of contention with a bit of meat on it, else there'd be nothing to argue about.

Whatever one might think about Andalusia -- or any other Muslim issue -- both Muslims and non-Muslims should be free to express their opinions openly without charges of 'Islamophobia' or, far worse, being charged with 'hate speech' for criticizing Islam.

Kuesta's Art: Sharing the Works . . .

On Tuesday this week, I discovered within my departmental mailbox an envelope addressed in calligraphic script to a "Mr. Dr. Horace Jefrey Hodges - Professor" -- my middle name a bit garbled, as often happens, though not usually from leaving out an "f" -- and as I puzzled over that, I turned the envelope over and discovered a wax seal stamped with an emblem that I couldn't quite make out:

Sealed Envelope

I'd never before received an envelope sealed in such a formal fashion, like a missive from the past -- or from diplomatic circles to which I have merely tangential relations. I also noticed the many ink stampings of geometric pattern, some with the capital letter "K" and others with the word "Kuesta." One of these contained a website address. I broke the seal and found a photograph depicting a scene from Ibiza, an island in the Mediterranean near the Spanish mainland. I first heard of Ibiza by overhearing the song "We're Going to Ibiza," which I misheard as "We're Going to Eat Pizza" -- and I wasn't the only one! That was back in the final summer before the year 2000, when everybody was getting ready to party like it's 1999, reasonably enough. But I digress. Here's that photograph of the Spanish isle Ibiza:

Photo of Ibiza

Turning the card over, I found more stamps, along with a very brief message: "Mr. Dr. Horace Jefrey Hodges - Share my works. Thanks. Kuesta." The sole remaining handwriting was the date: "2013." You see this below:

Mysterious Message

That was a rather mysterious message, for I didn't know the "works" of this individual, or even what they were. From the effort put into the aesthetics and even the seal, I surmised that these were artworks, and by going to the website provided, I saw that I was correct:

Untitled-K8-5
Ancient Egypt Series
José A. Kuesta

The artist was José A. Kuesta, as I discovered after a bit of searching. One website, though only one, identified him as a professor in the Ministry of Education, and I seem to recall seeing somewhere the fields of history and literature, but I didn't manage to locate those two details again when I decided to write this post. Ordinarily, I wouldn't honor a request out of the blue from someone I don't know who provides so little information, but this man went to the trouble of finding my university address and decorating his letter and envelope -- and especially of sealing the envelope with a wax seal! -- that I was charmed enough to take the time. Moreover, I liked his art.

So . . . here's his website -- share the works!

My New View on Toledo

Toledo, Spain
Carlos Luján
The New York Times

I've never paid Toledo sufficient attention, I suddenly realize, now that I've just read Geoffrey Gray's description of the city in his recent travel article, "In Toledo, Layers of Spanish History" (New York Times, December 21, 2012), for the city's layered histories, apparently, have all survived, rendering it a mysterious aspect:

The city itself sat on the hill like a medieval Oz, the river wrapped around it like a moat. There were two layers of castle walls, festooned with gargoyles, eagles and crests. On top of the bluff was the Alcázar, which looked out over the city's patchwork of Manchegan red clay tile roofs and the spires and belltowers of churches. The bells started to peal, eventually crescendoing to an explosion of noise that sounded like the finale of a fireworks show. It was still very early in the morning

Sounds like my kind of morning! But based on Gray's title, his description, and the above photo by Carlos Luján, I ask myself, how did this city get to be this way?

Some cities have old quarters. But the whole of Toledo is a historic district, indeed a Unesco World Heritage site, remaining largely intact throughout the many violent takeovers of Spain . . . . Because Toledo was considered the holiest city in Spain in the Catholic faith, its invaders were careful not to destroy hallowed ground. So it survived the Moors, Visigoths, the Spanish Civil War.

Enemies spared the city because it was so sacred for Catholics? I'm doubtful about this reasoning. Holier sites have seen utter destruction. Genghis Khan and his descendants had no qualms about razing entire civilizations, and the Mongols would have obliterated Mecca, had not a great Khan died, bringing about a military withdrawal from the Middle East. The Romans destroyed the city Carthage and later the sacred Temple in Jerusalem. Muslim armies destroyed other cities, so why not Toledo?

I don't know, but I suspect that it's not due to the city's Catholic sanctity . . .

Concha Buika: Smokin'!

Concha Buika con el Cigarrillos Peligrosas

(Image from Kadmus Arts)

I appreciate a woman who's not afraid to present herself openly smoking a cigarette despite these politically correct times . . . though I don't perceive any actual smoke rising from the tip.

I'd heard of Buika, or at least seen her image somewhere, but only Larry Rohter's recent NYT article, "A Singer From Everywhere Arrives Here" (October 21, 2010), sparked my interest in listening to her sing. Her parents fled Equatorial Guinea for Spain in the late 60s or early 70s, I gather, for she was born on the island of Majorca in 1972 and grew up there as the only black kid and hung out with the local Gypsies (no Gypsy scholars, though):

Outside the house . . . Buika (pronounced BWEE-kah) spent time with the local Gypsies and absorbed their passion for flamenco and the tradition of "cante jondo," or "deep singing."

"I identified with their solitude," she explained, speaking Spanish in an accent close to Castillian, "because we were the only black family on the island, and I was the only black kid, which was very difficult for me."

But American music also fascinated her, both jazz and pop. When asked about female singers who influenced her style, notable for its dark and raspy intonation and bent notes, she mentioned not just the flamenco singers Lola Flores and Remedios Amaya but also Bonnie Raitt, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, whom she probably most resembles. Her favorite male singers include both Michael Jackson and Julio Iglesias, and she said her preferred instrumentalists are John Coltrane and Bill Evans.

That's quite an eclectic collection, which intrigued me since I'm rather an eclectic collection of interests myself . . . in my own, obscure fashion. The good multiculturalism. I therefore went to You Tube and chose "No Habrá Nadie en el Mundo," taken by Buika's image with the cigarette that you see above. The title means something like "There Won't be Anyone in the World," but I don't know specifically what the song concerns. Love, probably. Flick away a cigarette butt anywhere, it's likely to land on a love song.

Let's find out by borrowing the Spanish lyrics and adapting the English translation from All the Lyrics:

Desde que el agua el libre,
Libre entre manantiles vive.
Jazmines an llorao,
y yo no comprendo como
en tus ojos niña solo hay desierto.

Hermosa era la tarde,
cuando entre los olivos nadie,
nadie vio como yo a ti te quise, como te quiero.
Hoy los olivos duermen y yo no duermo.

No habra nadie en el mundo que cure
la herida que dejo tu orgullo.
Yo no comprendo que tu me lastimes
con todo todo el amor que tu me diste (x2)

Pá cuando tu volvieras, pensé en cantarte coplas viejas,
esas que hablan de amores y del sufrimiento.
Cuando tu vuelvas, niña, te como a besos.

Y volaremos alto donde las nubes van despacio.
Despacio va mi boca sobre tu cuerpo,
tan lento que seguro se pare el tiempo.

No habra nadie en el mundo que cure
la herida que dejo tu orgullo.
Yo no comprendo que tu me lastimes
con todo todo el amor que tu me diste (x4)

Now for the English translation:

Since the water is free,
it lives free among springs.
Jasmines have cried,
and I can't understand my girl
why there's only desert in your eyes.

It was a beautiful afternoon,
when among the olive trees nobody,
nobody saw how I loved you, how I love you.
And now the olive trees are sleeping, but I can't sleep.

There won't be anyone in the world able to cure
the wound left by your pride.
I can't understand how you hurt me now
after having given me so much love. (2x)

I thought about singing old verses to you upon your return,
the kind that speak about love and suffering.
When you'll come back, my girl, I'll devour you with my kisses.

And we'll fly high, up to where the clouds move slowly.
My lips slide along your body slowly,
so slowly that time will stop for sure.

There won't be anyone in the world able to cure
the wound left by your pride.
I can't understand how you hurt me now
after having given me so much love. (4x)

See. I told you it would be about love. I should even have said "love gone wrong." What else is there to sing about? Except for love gone right . . .

But it sounds pretty good in Spanish, and for those interested in more by or about Concha Buika, visit You Tube, or Wikipedia, or even her official site.

"a naked green man astride a green horse"

Guillermo Pérez Villalta

"The Symbols of Love"

(Image from International Herald Tribune)

Dale Fuchs has published an article, "For Spanish tapestries, a 21st-century makeover," in the International Herald Tribune on Spain's Real Fábrica de Tapices (Royal Tapestry Factory), which was founded in 1721 by King Philip V and which sounds like a fascinating institution.

What caught my attention was a reference to an image from a painting by Guillermo Pérez Villalta that one of the tapestry makers is weaving into a tapestry:

Consider, for instance, the tapestry in progress by the veteran craftsman José Antonio Carbajal. He is weaving a Pérez Villalta composition depicting a naked green man astride a green horse, which trots into a flat horizon of multicolored Delaunay-style circles.

The "green man astride a green horse" could perhaps be a pictoral allusion to the the Green Knight in the Pearl Poet's story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but the IHT article offers no information on that possibility. I'm guessing that the scene depicted above is a detail from a larger painting by Villalta that would reveal the green man mentioned by Fuchs.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Villalta. For those who read Spanish, that edition of Wikipedia provides some information, but the English Wikipedia has no entry on him. I did find via BNET a short review by Kim Bradley for Art in America, "Guillermo Perez Villalta at Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid, Spain" (1997):

Nowhere is the artist's fondness for the Byzantine more apparent than in Faz (The Holy Face). Set against a primarily golden background, this sinewy Pantocrator with veined, marblelike flesh sports a halo of zigzaggy hair and an elaborately linear mustache and beard. His elongated face and thin lips and nose are offset by large amber-colored eyes which fix their piercing gaze on the viewer. Perez Villalta often freely intermingles Christian subjects and symbols, such as the Crucifixion, with pagan themes, gods and monsters. In Creacion (Creation), which takes both Dionysus and the Good Shepherd as its main topics, a host of satyrlike creatures and winged angels with fish tails cavort in a peculiar wilderness. Flawlessly executed, the work evidences Perez Villalta's increasingly refined technical skills as well as his highly developed personal mythology.

The free intermingling of "Christian subjects and symbols . . . with pagan themes, gods and monsters" recalls Medieval art and literature and might therefore suggest that Villalta has turned to artistic and literary sources from the Middle Ages. This intermingling is certainly consistent with the Arthurian story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Perhaps some reader happening upon this blog entry would also happen to know the answer -- or would at least be able to supply a link to Villalta's image of the "green man astride a green horse."

More on Abu Mus'ab al-Suri: The Reason "Why"

March 2004 Madrid Train Bombings

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
(Image from Newseum)

In yesterday's post, I noted that the jihadist theoretician Abu Mus'ab al-Suri argues for a jihad of individualized terrorism against infidels, and I wondered about the purpose of such terrorism since it cannot conquer territory from the realm of war (Dar al-Harb) for the realm of Islam (Dar al-Islam).

The Norwegian scholar Dr. Brynjar Lia had noted that al-Suri writes of terrorism as a means of "resisting the occupation," to which, I had queried, "[B]ut the occupation of what? The world? Withdrawal from the world would be rather difficult." I then ended my entry by asking, "So ... what's the point of the terrorism?"

A possible answer comes from Craig Whitlock's article of May 23, 2006 in the Washington Post, "Architect of New War on the West: Writings Lay OutPost-9/11 Strategy of Isolated Cells Joined in Jihad," in which we learn:

Counterterrorism officials and analysts see Nasar's theories in action in major terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In each case, the perpetrators organized themselves into local, self-sustaining cells that acted on their own but also likely accepted guidance from visiting emissaries of the global movement.

The Madrid bombing, in particular, have been interpreted as punishment for Spain's participation in the American-led Iraq War and postwar occupation, so this might be the sort of thing that al-Suri means by "resisting the occupation." If so, then his strategic advice was successful in this particular case, for Spain's conservatives (Partido Popular) lost the election, which brought into power the Socialists, who withdrew from Iraq.

Ultimately, this won't much help the Spanish to avoid terrorism, for as we've since learned, the 'occupation' includes the Spanish occupation of Andalusia, the part of Spain once ruled by Islam.

Anyway, I now understand some of the "why" behind al-Suri's Call for a Global Islamic Resistance.

Abu Mus'ab al-Suri's Call for a Global Islamic Resistance: Why?

Mustafa Setmarian Nasar

aka

Abu Mus'ab al-Suri

(The Intelligence Summit, Copyright © IHEC 2006)

Back in April of this year, a friend of mine, Greg Rhoades, emailed me an article by Dr Brynjar Lia: "The al-Qaida Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri: A Profile" (pdf). I finally found the time to read it yesterday, and it presents a fascinating portrait of the brilliant jihadist strategist Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, better known by his pen name: Abu Mus'ab al-Suri.

A jihadist intellectual, al-Suri has written a history of recent jihadist groups around the world, a 1600-page tome, The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance (Da'wat al-muqawamah al-islamiyyah al-'alamiyyah), analyzing the weaknesses of these groups and proposing ways of overcoming these weaknesses.

In his text, al-Suri identified three types of jihadist warfare (cf. pp. 16-17 of Lia's article):

1. Tanzims (Organizations): secret, hierarchical, regionally based groups, e.g., Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

2. Open Fronts: large-scale insurgencies against an occupying power, e.g., Chechnya.

3. The Jihad of Individualized Terrorism, e.g., Ramzi_Yousef.

The tanzims, according to al-Suri, are outmoded because they can be so easily countered by attacking those states that provide sanctuary or by taking advantage of the weakness inherent in hierarchical organizations. The open fronts, as insurgencies, still have a role to play -- as the jihadist insurgency in Iraq shows -- especially for recruitment and gaining experience, but the real future of jihad, according to al-Suri, lies with the jihad of individualized terrorism. Jeffrey Cozzens, at Counterterrorism Blog, excerpts a passage from Lia's paper (p. 17):

Al-Suri's slogan is: nizam, la tanzim, 'System, not organisation'. In other words, there should be 'an operative system' or template, available anywhere for anybody, wishing to participate in the global jihad either on his own or with a small group of trusted associates, and there should not exist any 'organisation for operations'. Hence, the global jihadist movement should discourage any direct organisational bonds between the leadership and the operative units. Leadership should only be exercised through 'general guidance' and the operative leaders should exist only at the level of small cells. The glue in this highly decentralised movement is nothing else than 'a common aim, a common doctrinal program and a comprehensive (self-) educational program'.

The same goal of decentralisation is applied to financing and training. All cells should be self-sustained financially, with the possible exception of start-up money from jihadist activists termed 'cell builders'. The latter category include skilled jihadists whose primary task is to create new independent cells, without connecting them to any organisational structure. The 'cell builder' is an Achilles heel in the system, and various precautions are taken to minimize the risk associated with his role. He is supposed to disappear from the scene before any operative activity commences, either by going to another country, going completely underground, or participating in a martyrdom operation.

These cells need guidance, training, and money, which the cell builder supplies but which consitutes their weak point, as Lia notes above.

I want to note something else. Such a decentralized jihad cannot seek to increase the territory of the realm of Islam, which has traditionally been an aim of jihads, so what is its goal? Lia mentions al-Suri's concept of "resisting the occupation," but the occupation of what? The world? Withdrawal from the world would be rather difficult. That leaves conversion as a possible aim, but Lia doesn't speculate on this.

If the aim is to foment widespread terror, then the logic might be this: a terrorized population is already half in submission to "The God Terror." Yet, terrorism often has the opposite effect, steeling people's nerves against the terrorists, much as the wartime bombing of civilians has often raised morale and resistance. Moreover, "al-Suri strongly cautions against operations in which many ordinary Muslims, or non-hostile non-muslims, are killed" (Lia, p. 18).

So ... what's the point of the terrorism?