Interweaving Ideologies of Early Modern Empires: A Morisco View

ABSTRACT This article argues that Ahmad al-Hajarî (ca. 1569–after 1640), a Morisco exile to North Africa, helped propagate and counter the imperial ideologies of the Habsburgs in the Arab-speaking world. Thanks to his intimate acquaintance with Spain in which he was raised as a Christian, and to his knowledge of Christian scripture, he could describe and explain the apocalyptic underpinnings of imperial views of the Spanish monarchy. He could also propose his own defense of the Muslim realms, especially the Ottoman Empire, to counter the Spanish and Christian pretensions to universal millenarian monarchy. He thus helped the interweaving of imperial ideologies across boundaries and extended the domain of what the late Cornell Fleischer termed a “Mediterranean Apocalypse.”