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other … let the wearied and mouldering bones of Don Quixote rest in the grave [i.e., write no further sequels to his life] … in doing so thou wilt conform to thy Christian profession of doing good to those who would do thee harm; and I shall rest satisfied and perfectly well pleased, in seeing myself the first author, who fully enjoyed the fruit of his writings, in the success of his design, for mine was no other than to inspire mankind with an abhorrence of false and improbable stories recounted in books of chivalry, which are already shaken by the adventures of my true and genuine Don Quixote, and in a little time will certainly sink into oblivion. Farewell.

Was this more than an audacious literary device? Cervantes did not share the stereotypical image of the Muslim. Take his presentation of Muley Malek in his play The Dungeons of Algiers, written about 1590:

A famous Moor

and in his sect and wicked law

well versed and most devout;

he knows the language of the Turks,

speaks Spanish and German as well

and Italian and French, sleeps

in a bed and eats at a table

seated in the Christian manner;

above all he’s a great soldier

generous, wise and cool-headed,

adorned with a thousand virtues.67

Nor did William Shakespeare, Cervantes’s near contemporary with whom he shared the date of his death, in his characterization of Othello, the Moor of Venice. “Muley Malek” could have served as a model for Othello.68 Yet while Muley is all Moor, Othello is a double man, undoubtedly a Muslim Moor, and yet also a servant of Christian Venice. But for Cervantes to write as he did of Cid Hamet Benengeli, and to ascribe to him the writing of his own work, makes sense only if we understand the specific historical context. The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605, the second in 1615. Between the two publications, Spain rid itself finally of the Moors’ descendants, the Moriscos. Expelled from the kingdom of Granada after their rebellion was crushed by Don John, the Moriscos were dispersed throughout Spain. All the misfortunes of the nation were blamed upon them. In a final act of ethnic cleansing, they were marched to the seaports in 1609 and shipped to Morocco.

To make the infidel Cid Hamet the “first author” of his work was unusual and, in these years, an especially daring move. Cervantes, from the events of his life—war, slavery, penury, prison, success, and finally, preparing for death in a monk’s habit—knew that the division of the world into good Christians and bestial Muslims was false. Of the gulf between them he had no doubt, or that each was “infidel” to the other. But he was treated both worse and better in his Algerine slavery than at home in Christian Spain. His work was rooted in his own experience, but even those who had never set foot in a Muslim land were forced to struggle with the issue of the virtuous infidel.

Tho’ Arabs much to Rapine are inclin’d,

Of Nature fierce, and Manners unrefin’d,

Yet is King Halla [of Morocco] gen’rous, mild, and wise,

And with the most applauded Heroe vies;

Courteous, humane, and easy of Access

This Monarch succours Merit in Distress.

Tho’ the great Prince rejects our Creed divine,

His moral Virtues so illustrious shine,

That he like some, who Rome’s proud Scepter bore,

Excells most Kings who Christ their Head adore.69

Lepanto lay at the heart of this skein of tangled meanings. It was a stunning victory, but as the Turkish vizier Sokullu foresaw, of passing political or military importance. Seven years after La Naval, at Alcazarquivir in Morocco, a Muslim army reinforced with Ottoman janissaries killed the king of Portugal, Dom Sebastian, nephew of Don John, and most of the Portuguese nobility.70 Yet Alcazarquivir has vanished from the collective memory, while the recollection of Lepanto has been embellished and enhanced over the years. The meeting of Don John and Ali Pasha, with its attendant cast of thousands, more than any other encounter in the sixteenth century between Islam and the Christian West presented the ambivalence and the endless ambiguities of the