What is it about?
This article examines the description of pneumatic birds in the palace of the Indian king that Alexander and his troop discover in found in the Spanish Libro de Alexandre. In this fourteenth-century work, these mechanical birds are given voice and encrusted with precious gems (indebted to San Isidoro’s Etymologies) and other vestiges of the material cultural and commodities that made India an imagined space of Eastern exoticism and luxury as well as a coveted territory to be conquered. The palace architecture and the jewels and birds it contains, become, as in other instances in the Libro de Alexandre (including the description of Alexander’s tent), scenes depicting the wonders and marvels of architectural spaces—a topos common in the Arabic literary tradition of the Mediterranean. In addition to echoing the topoi of Andalusi-Arabic imaginative fiction, such mechanical automatons were also the subject of Al-Jazari’s late twelfth-early thirteenth-century Arabic treatise, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. The work includes designs for pneumatic, whistling birds suggesting that the author’s inspiration for his description of Poro’s palace may extend beyond works of imaginative fiction written in Castilian.
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Why is it important?
This article explores what is novel about this description in the Spanish text, arguing that it should be read as part of a larger Mediterranean poly-system, from which the description of the palace and its contents makes sense as ajaib wa gharib, the wonders and marvels of the Arabo-Andalusi literary world.
Perspectives
I think this article shows some of the cultural complexity of fourteenth-century Iberia. Coming out of a clerical context and derived from a Latin text, the Libro de Alexandre nevertheless brings in elements and whole narrative sections that reveal the various cultural realities of the Peninsula,. The poet's knowledge of regional wines, of lapidary knowledge, and of the advanced mechanical creations of the Arabic tradition exemplify this.
Michelle Hamilton
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Sweet Tweets and Cries’: the Wonders of Poro’s Palace in the Libro de Alexandre, June 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004698048_019.
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