Outside the walls: Arabism beyond the Center for Historical Studies: the correspondence between Julián Ribera and José Castillejo

Abstract

Between 1907 and 1916, the group of Spanish Arabists known as the “school of Codera” (Beni Codera, as expressed by the scholar Emilio García Gómez) was part of an inclusive institution that comprised different academic fields, both scientific and humanistic, in Spain. This institution was the Junta para Ampliación De Estudios (the Council for Extension of Studies and Scientific Research). The work carried out by this group in the Center for Historical Studies (an institution dependent on the Council) represents one of its most fruitful periods of research activity. But in 1916, the participation of Asín Palacios in the Board in charge of evaluating  the candidates for the chair of Sociology at the University Complutense of Madrid  a field  foreign to the Spanish school of Arabists), and to which applied the Council’s Secretary, José Castillejo, resulted in the withdrawal of the Arabist group from both the Center and the Junta. This led to the isolation of Arabism from the development of the area of humanities in Spain. The correspondence between Julián Ribera, at the time the patriarch of Arabism, and Castillejo, describes the context of this breaking and contributes to the understanding of the evolution of contemporary Spanish Arabism.