The Lead Books of Granada

The Lead Books of Granada reconstructs the discovery of relics, an Arabic parchment and inscribed lead discs in late-sixteenth-century Granada. Presented as records of the city’s earliest Christian martyrs, the texts appeared when Moriscos faced intense pressure to abandon Arabic language and inherited customs. Their hybrid religious message seemed to prove that Arabic culture had belonged to Christianity from apostolic times.

Drayson follows the Morisco translators Miguel de Luna and Alonso del Castillo, Archbishop Pedro de Castro’s determined patronage, the growth of Sacromonte and the long Roman investigation that ended in condemnation in 1682. The book treats the episode as a problem of translation, authenticity and power, arguing that the forgeries can also be read as an ingenious attempt to protect a threatened community by rewriting Granada’s sacred history.