The Lyell Lectures 2026 - Muslim Books in Christian Hands: From Iberian Moriscos to Early Modern Europe

These lectures examine the books produced by Muslim minorities in Christian Iberia from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Even after the forcible conversion of Muslims at the beginning of the sixteenth century, these minorities continued to use, copy and clandestinely preserve Muslim books. Manuscripts were bought and taken outside Spain, collected and read by groups from Italian Humanists to Early Orientalist in Northern Europe.

This lecture series will analyse the itineraries of some of these Muslim Iberian manuscripts through libraries and centres of knowledge, as well as how they were used and interpreted outside their Iberian context. These phenomena include the personal contacts and collaboration between expelled Iberian Muslims and European Christian scholars, and raise the question of how Morisco literature affected Early Modern understanding of Islam.

Following the series, recordings of the lectures will be available on the Lyell Lectures series page, which you can find here: visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/the-lyell-lectures

Tuesday 28 April 2026

Thursday 30 April 2026

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Thursday 7 May 2026

Monday 11 May 2026

This series features in the following public collections: