‘Much is lost when we take historiographical categories for granted’.: An Interview with Mercedes García-Arenal

Abstract

Mercedes García-Arenal has been a leading force in rethinking the role of religious minorities in early modern Iberia and Europe, showing how conversion, polemics, messianism, and practices of reading shaped Jewish, Christian, and Muslim identities across the Mediterranean and beyond. Based at the CSIC of Madrid, she has devoted much of her research to Morisco history, inquisitorial documentation, and the fabrication of sacred origins. Her work is marked by a sustained reflection on method: the weighing of sources, the competing perspectives embedded in them, and the need to read documents through the eyes of both inquisitors and their victims, Muslims and Christians, power and devotion. Among her most influential books are A Man of Three Worlds (1999, with Gerard Wiegers) and The Orient in Spain (2013, with Fernando Rodríguez Mediano). She has led two ERC projects on religious conversions and on the place of the Qur’an in European history.