Chosen by God: Providential Suffering and Divine Writing in the Morisco Diaspora

This essay reconsiders the anonymous sonnet ‘Y Dios, que a los suyos padeciendo mira’ preserved in the Prologue of MS 11/9394 S‐2 (Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia), a Morisco codex produced near Tunis between 1630 and 1650. As a key yet subtle rhetorical hinge in the text's Prologue, the sonnet establishes MS 11/9394 S‐2 within an authoritative textual lineage of Morisco manuscripts produced in the diaspora, legitimizing the use of Spanish for Islamic instruction while displaying an ambivalent engagement with Spanish literary models. The sonnet identifies the expelled Moriscos as the new Israelites—God's chosen people whose persecution in both Spain and Tunisia confirms their favoured status—offering a Morisco counternarrative to the supersessionist discourse that portrayed Old Christians as God's elect in expulsion apologies published at the beginning of the seventeenth century. By reframing the Moriscos' ongoing persecution as evidence of spiritual legitimacy and providential deliverance, the author constructs the Morisco diaspora itself as confirmation of divine favour in a sacred history that is still unfolding.