Anselm Turmeda

Anselm Turmeda o Abd-Allah at-Turjuman (Árabe: عبد الله الترجمان‎) (1355 - 1423) fue un escritor mallorquín born in Palma de Mallorca in 1355 and died in Tunis in 1423. Early in his life he was a Franciscan friar, but converted later to Islam and lived in Tunis. He is one of few writers who have written in Arabic and a European language, Catalan, being a classic and proficient in both languages. He became a vizier in Tunis and died there in 1423.

[edit] His works
Llibre dels bons amonestaments
Turmeda dates it to April, 1398, eleven years after his settlement in Tunis. It consists of 428 poems arranged in three rhyming stanzas followed by a ryhime-free one. Its preface says it was "composed in Tunis by monk Anselm Turmeda, also called Abdalà". The work was very popular in Catalonia until the last century where it was read in schools and as a primary reader, being called franselm (from "fra [i.e. friar] Anselm").

La disputa de l'ase
Written in 1417 in Catalan, no part survived in its original language. Current Catalan editions are available based on a medieval French translation. The Inquisition of Madrid which put it in the Index of prohibited books in 1583 contributed to its disappearance. Both for political and religious reasons, it did not square with the orthodoxy of Catholic Spain in the 16th century. It presents a dispute among a donkey and a friar, arguing about the supremacy of men over animals, each one defending their genre. Finally, men win because Christ was incarnated in a man. The work is, however, very critical towards mankind, in all the aspects: religious, moral, political, etc.

Llibre de tres
This book wants to instruct in an amusing way.

Tuhfat al-Arib fi al-Radd 'ala ahl al-Salib Arabic: تحفة الأريب في الرد على أهل الصليب‎ (1420)
The best known of his Arabic books, its a polemical work criticizing the Bible and affirming the prophethood of Muhammad. It had three editions in Arabic, three in Turkish, and one in Persian in a century (1873 to 1971). (Epalza)