Meet Me: Madiha Zahra Choksi

Hello all and welcome to our blog!

I am Madiha Zahra, a second year student at the Faculty of Information. In the pool of bibliophile's that make up our class, I come from an interesting background of language and literary studies. At the University of Toronto, I completed my undergraduate degree about a year and a half ago in English Literature and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. My primary area of interest is Andalusia and the language, literature, and beliefs of the Moorish people at the time of the reconquista and the century following it. 

Specifically, I am interested in the crypro-Arabic and Islamic literature that was produced in manuscript form - everything from fantastical Arabian stories to religious doctrine where Arabic is used to transcribe Spanish. In other words, the text is written in Arabic alphabets but reads perfect Spanish. 

This highly private and intimate genre of books and manuscripts threatens my understanding of how information is shared and disseminated between generations. What happens when a culture is facing extinction and a ban is placed on speaking or reading a specific language? Well, in this case, a crypto language is invented with rules for reading, preserving and sharing for generations to come. Within the breadth of this genre, I am most interested in researching the differences between form and content in children's stories in Aljamiado. The subtle changes in content and the quirky word choices that give the Aljmiado, or Spanish recreations of the Arabic texts a certain level of fluidity that does not exist in the Arabic versions. I believe that this is a result of the threatening pressure the authors were under to copy/reproduce the literature they had in Arabic. Moreover, that what these authors wanted to resonate to later readers is the symbiotic relationship between Arabic and Spanish and how harmoniously the two can work together to recreate the precious history of Andalusia.

14th C Aljamiado Codice