The Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo and the Fundación Machado will develop a programme of activities centred on the figure of Alfonso X 'The Wise' to coincide with the 8th centenary of his birth.
This is a joint initiative of both institutions to examine this legacy from different perspectives (from historical to artistic, from heritage to legal and even the customs of his time that have survived to the present day), taking into account the enormous importance of the monarch.
Issues such as these will be analysed in much greater detail in a series of lectures under the scientific coordination of Antonio ZoidoPresident of the Machado Foundation.
The series will hold a monthly session until June and will resume after the summer break with three more conferences, from September to November, which will deal with such interesting subjects as the birth of Hispanic lyric poetry, the European roots and branches of Alfonso X and the genesis of popular arts.
Fifth lecture:
Thursday 13th October, 19:00hAlfonso X the Wise, the last caliphby Emilio González Ferrín, Professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at the University of Seville.
Alfonso X the Wise undertakes an integrative task that is historically presented as a hinge period between the Andalusian and the strictly Castilian. Driven at all times by his candidacy for the imperial distinction, the Castilian king expertly manages the diversity within his domains by being able to write in Galician-Portuguese —the official language of León—, administer through an itinerant court to multiply his presence, and promote Castilian as a vehicular language, for which he had to «unpick the seams» of a vernacular language to adapt it to the requirements of an imperial language. In his undertaking, Alfonso X adopted as his own the chronicles of his cultural mentor, Jiménez de Rada, which in turn relied on Andalusian Arabic sources. Through his way of creating a cultural court tailored to an imperial projection, Alfonso X did not act like his Castilian ancestors but rather like his Andalusian predecessors. By inheriting the title of the King of Seville, the king behaved administratively like a caliph, not like a conventional king in Europe.
Free admission with prior registration at THIS LINK.
About the speaker
Emilio González Ferrín (Ciudad Real, 1965) is a lecturer in Islamology and Arabic Studies at the University of Seville. Having obtained his doctorate in 1995 with a thesis on Euro-Arab dialogue, his teaching and research profile seeks to move beyond orientalism in the interpretation of Arab-Islamic affairs.
He has published numerous articles and around a dozen monographs on subjects relating to cultural cooperation with the Arab world and Islam, and in June 2008 he received the Science Communication Prize from the University of Seville for his articles in the Spanish press.
He has been a researcher and visiting professor at several universities and is a founding member of the Observatory of Comparative Religions. Since 2020 he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the International Council for Middle East Studies (ICMES) based in Washington.
This activity is subsidised by the Junta de Andalucía, within the framework of the subsidy granted by the Consejería de la Presidencia, Administración Pública e Interior..
Portuguese