The 2005 film adaptation of the graphic novel V for Vendetta takes place in a dystopian Britain ruled by a totalitarian right-wing government which targets immigrants, Muslims, and homosexuals. In this society, affiliation with or support for any of these persecuted groups constitutes an act of subversion. The talk show host Gordon Deitrich exemplifies this when he sacrifices himself for the resistance movement with an overtly camp show. His fate is sealed when a copy of the Qur'an is found at his house: Deitrich had been fascinated by its aesthetic qualities. While this movie reflects anxieties specific of its time – Islamophobia, Christian conservatism, and nationalism – the idea of the Qur'an as a forbidden book with subversive aspects has a much longer history.

When Luis Antonio Jaime, the youngest son of Philip V and Infant of Spain, died in 1785, his son Luis María, after some effort, succeeded in having his books transferred to his home at the archbishop's palace in Toledo. Luis Antonio's collection contained a number of books prohibited by the Inquisition, including works by Voltaire, Machiavelli, Calvin, and Rousseau, but quite possibly also this Spanish translation of the Qur'an completed in 1606 in Aragón. The Aragonese roots of Luis Antonio's wife may explain how this unusual and precious object ended up in his private library, and ultimately in Toledo. It is not clear what attracted the Infant to this forbidden text, although elsewhere in Europe Islamic criticisms of the Trinity were sometimes favourably cited by authors of the Enlightenment.

The existence of this manuscript has been known to academics ever since it was described in 1878, in a footnote which relied on information provided by the famous Spanish Arabist Pascual de Gayangos. Since then, however, it went long unstudied as it was not part of one of the famous Spanish collections of Arabic manuscripts. For a few years now it has been attracting the attention of scholars studying the culture of Mudejars (Andalusi Muslims who maintained their religion after the Christian conquest) and Moriscos (Andalusi Muslims who converted to Christianity after the conquest), but Consuelo López-Morillas' edition and study of this Toledo Qur'an makes it possible to revisit previously presented theories and questions. Spanish scholarship too often goes unnoticed in the academic world, which is increasingly dominated by English. The following thus provides an appreciation of this publication for those outside the Andalusianist circle. This is a book that also holds appeal for scholars interested in translations of the Qur'an in the wider context of Islamic history, and in the status of the Qur'an for Muslim life under non-Muslim rule, in particular under conditions of persecution and oppression.

In the commentary and account of the manuscript's history which accompanies this edition of the Toledo Qur'an, López-Morillas identifies a number of reasons why this manuscript is interesting. First of all, T 235 is a rather unusual manuscript. 25 manuscripts of the Mudejar and Morisco periods (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries AD) contain Castilian, Aragonese, or Spanish translations of the Qur'an, but apart from the Toledo Qur'an, none offers a complete copy or gives the impression that it contains fragments of a copy which was once complete. Furthermore, while those manuscripts are written in Aljamiado (Romance languages written in Arabic script), the Toledo Qur'an is written in Latin characters. The copyist considered this use of ‘Christian letters’ an unfortunate but necessary choice. (It is faster to write in Latin characters than in Aljamiado.) In a note, he tells us that he had borrowed a translation which he had to return and that it took him three months to complete his task of copying the translation. Also unfortunately, he tells the reader, he was not able to include the original Arabic text as well. This little note supports the assumption that Qur'ans and other religious texts were rare and precious to Spain's crypto-Muslims who circulated, compared, and copied them. This assumption is further confirmed by López-Morillas' analysis of the style of the translation of the Toledo Qur'an, about which more below. That the scribe had little time is also obvious from what he did copy. While the manuscript is carefully produced and corrected, he changed his method of distinguishing the actual translated text of the Qur'an from exegetical comments during the process of transcription. The latter are initially written in red ink but later, in a less time-consuming way, he uses only black ink separated with lines. These details, as well as the marginal notes, are included in the handsome edition.

Apart from corrections and short exegetical notes, the margins also contain the mysterious letters that preface some suras, references to common divisions of the Qur'an into 30 parts, or instructions that the believer should prostrate when reciting a certain passage. A particularly curious feature are a small number of markers intended to catch the reader's attention with the word ‘nota’ and the symbol of an eye. López-Morillas compares the function of this symbol to that of the maniculae, little hands in the margins of Latin manuscripts which literally point to a specific passage in the text.

What did the scribe of the Toledo Qur'an find particularly noteworthy? López-Morillas does not go into details here, but the edition allows readers to explore this issue themselves. Q. 8:9 speaks about the addressees who ask God for help and who will receive a thousand angels to support them. The following verse is highlighted with an eye: And Allah made it not but good tidings and so that your hearts would be assured thereby. And victory comes only from Allah. Indeed, Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise. The second eye refers to Q. 9:60: Zakāt expenditures are only for the poor and for the needy and for those employed to collect [zakāt] and for bringing hearts together [for Islam] and for freeing captives [or slaves] and for those in debt and for the cause of Allah and for the [stranded] traveller – an obligation [imposed] by Allah. And Allah is Knowing and Wise. The third eye follows verse 13 in Sura 46 which promises that those who maintain their faith in God have no reason for fear or grief, marking the following verse: Those are the companions of Paradise, abiding eternally therein as reward for what they used to do. One can imagine that these three passages resonated with the experience of Iberian crypto-Muslims who were vulnerable in a variety of ways, and who through them assured themselves of their faith and God's guidance and support.

Furthermore, the scribe has divided the text into four parts, a practice attested to elsewhere in Spain, and added short notes at the end of each part with dates reflecting his progress and wishing for God's blessings for himself and his readers. The notes are composed in Aljamiado, Arabic, and Spanish and, although they may have been meant to demonstrate his linguistic prowess, the mistakes in the Arabic suggest limitations as well.

The identity of the copyist is hard to determine. While the Toledo Qur'an only conveys the impression of a learned and pious man, other manuscripts copied by the same scribe shed more light on his biography. López-Morillas concludes that he probably lived in Villafeliche (Zaragoza) where his son was born as Yaḥyā and baptised as Juan Miguel. In 1610 the crypto-Muslim population of Villafeliche was deported to North Africa. In 1635 we can find the scribe as Muhammad Rubio in Tunis translating further Islamic texts from Arabic into Spanish.

Another interesting question concerns the identity of the audience. Defending himself for his choice of Latin characters, the scribe cites an unidentified ḥadīth according to which Muḥammad said that the best language was the language which was understood. The copy may thus have been made for readers who were already more comfortable with Latin characters and relied on Spanish translations in their North African exile. As López-Morillas further speculates, the scribe may have been concerned with the spiritual wellbeing of his community and intended to copy the Qur'an and take it with him, but this plan did not materialise and the sacred text was left behind.

Another issue López-Morillas explores in her study is the relationship between the Toledo Qur'an and the earliest Spanish translation of the Qur'an, which was completed in 1456 by the religious scholar ʿĪsā b. Jābir, also known as Iça of Segovia or Yça Gidelli, This translation is lost, but fragments of it survive in the introduction which Juan of Segovia, who had commissioned this translation, wrote to his own Latin translation of Iça's Castilian version. López-Morillas examines in some detail Gerard Wiegers' hypothesis that the Toledo Qur'an is actually identical with Iça's translation and concludes that this is at best halfway persuasive, the main problem being the very limited survival of Iça's translation.¹ Another candidate seems less likely as the author of the translation preserved in the Toledo Qur'an: Juan Andrés, faqīh of Játiva who converted to Christianity in 1487 AD and mentioned in a polemical treatise that he had translated the Qur'an from Arabic into Aragonese in 1510 AD. The Toledo Qur'an too has Aragonese features, but does not contain any polemical or pro-Christian passages which would more clearly betray Juan's otherwise attested strategy of ‘Christianising’ the Qur'an.

An important conclusion which emerges from López-Morillas' comparisons with Iça's preserved fragments, as well as other examples of Islamic Spanish literature is that while the Toledo Qur'an has unique features, it generally reflects the distinct vocabulary and style of a discernible sacred language marked by Arabisms, repeated formulae, newly coined terms, and a fairly literal technique of translation. López-Morillas concludes that despite a number of minor mistakes, the translator mastered both Arabic and Spanish well. A curious category of mistakes she discusses are Arabic words which have several meanings, where the translator oftentimes chose the wrong option. As López-Morillas suggests, this may betray his use of a glossary, although that alone does not explain why he chose the wrong word from the various options available in the glossary.

An important variable among Spanish renderings of the Qur'an is the amount of exegetical material included, which ranges from a little, as in the Toledo Qur'an, to amounts larger than the text itself. The exegetical comments in the Toledo Qur'an often spell out what remains unstated in the elliptical text. They point to the use of tafsīrs, as was often the case, but they also contain references to the translator's cultural context and familiarity with Christian doctrine. When the Qur'an refers at the end of the first Sura to those who have evoked God's anger and those who go astray (Q. 1:7), the exegetical notes in the Toledo Qur'an identify the former as the Jews and the latter as the Christians. This conveys an impression of how the scripture was perceived to be related to the world the crypto-Muslims lived in.

Unlike the fictitious Deitrich or the historical Infant Luis Antonio, Spain's Moriscos needed the Qur'an as part of their spiritual life, but being discovered in possession of this text betrayed their secret beliefs and religious identities. López-Morillas quotes statistics from the Aragonese Inquisition which reveal that of the 900 Moriscos who were condemned between 1568 and 1620 AD, 409 had religious texts which were then burned. This gives us an idea of the material we are missing, but also of what it may have meant to own or produce a manuscript such as the Toledo Qur'an.