RT Article
T1 The Conversion of Iberia’s Bells
JF Material religion
VO 17
IS 1
SP 81
OP 110
A1 Katz, Dana E.
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1752718658
AB In 997 the bells of Santiago de Compostela converted to Islam. Al-Mansur, de facto ruler of al-Andalus, destroyed the Christian shrine of Santiago de Compostela and carried off its bells to Cordoba. He then transformed the bells into lamps, hanging them in the Great Mosque. This conversion story (and the bells’ subsequent return to Santiago in 1236) reverberates in the historical record through its numerous retellings in Arabic, Latin, and Spanish sources. In this article, I explore conversion as a topos to study what inanimate objects reveal about the animate world. The bells are not extant, yet the record-keeping properties of Iberian chronicles make accessible the bells’ storied past. Here I explore the material trace left by the bells in Christian and Muslim cultures. I cull diverse Iberian chronicles to investigate how Santiago de Compostela and the Great Mosque of Cordoba are bound together through the bells’ metal alloy.
K1 Materiality
K1 nonextant
K1 Islam
K1 Christianity
K1 Conversion
K1 al-Mansur
K1 Cordoba
K1 Santiago de Compostela
K1 mosque lamps
K1 church bells
DO 10.1080/17432200.2021.1874091