A rare Arabic manuscript, dating back to 1493, has been discovered in Antequera amongst the effects of the Marqués de la Vega de Santa María which were lodged in the Municipal History Archives.
For centuries, the manuscript was thought to be something to do with musical notation, but turns out to be something quite different and quite unique.
Dating from 1493, it is one year after the reconquest of the Nazari kingdom of Granada by the Catholic monarchs. There are some 45,000 surviving Arabic manuscripts in Spain, but what makes this one special is that it is written on parchment, not paper.
Only a few such parchment manuscripts, considered a luxury, exist. There is only one in the whole of Málaga province and Valencia boasts three.
This manuscript, known as the ‘Scroll of Antequera’, includes the documentation of a house sale by a muslim woman to a christian, one Antón Dávila, possibly a relative of the Marqués de Narváez. The sale price was 32 ‘doblas’, a significant amount of money in those days.
The classification of the document as ‘related to music’ was made in the 18th century and only now has the true meaning of the words on the parchment been discovered.