{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.026112759643916916, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004747774480712166, 'mean_word_length': 5.175824175824176, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A True Mirror of Princes: Defining the Good Governor in Miguel de Luna's Verdadera historia del rey don Rodrigo

DURING the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a small yet politically influential group of Morisco writers sought to challenge Old Christian Spain’s perception of their culture as something inferior and alien to the Peninsula. In many of their works, these authors attempted to reclaim a sense of cultural pride, and to emphasize the positive roles played by the Peninsula’s Arabicspeaking peoples throughout Spain’s history. Miguel de Luna (c. 1545-1615), an official court translator of Arabic to Phillip II and III, was one of these writers. In his Verdadera historia del rey don Rodrigo, Luna rewrites the history of the Islamic conquest of the Peninsula, and recontextualizes common stories, myths, legends, histories, literary figures and commonly held prejudices concerning Spain’s Islamic period so as to vindicate the Muslim presence in the Peninsula. But the legend that stands out most in Luna’s text is that of Rodrigo, the last Visigothic king. Whereas in Spain’s romance tradition, Rodrigo is often represented as a passionate although misguided man whose desire oversteps the boundaries of his good judgment, Luna’s Visigothic monarch is portrayed as a cowardly rapist and tyrant who corrupts the faith of his subjects. Luna criticizes Rodrigo’s reign, and by extension all of Visigothic Spain, by rewriting and recontextualizing the legendary king in such a way as to reshape Spain’s Islamic legacy. In order to understand how Luna refashions Spain’s Islamic past, it is important to grasp, inasmuch as is possible, the implications of context, both lit-