Anselm Turmeda/ Abdullāh al-Tarjumān’s influential and extremely popular writings in both Catalan and Arabic make him one of the most intriguing characters in literary history. The quandaries caused by Anselm/ Abdullāh’s “duality” (for some, “duplicity”) are compounded by the fact that both the Christian-themed works in Catalan and the stridently anti-Christian work in Arabic were written at the time that Anselm/ Abdullāh was serving as a prominent Muslim official and translator in the customs office of Tunis. He is an author difficult to categorize, then, according to most modern understandings of the ways in which identities are formed. What we know of his life comes from a few documentary sources, numerous autobiographical references in his Catalan works and, most…
1919 words
Citation: Dagenais, John. "Anselm Turmeda". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 August 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13592, accessed 21 November 2024.]
