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Introduction Introduction The Història de Jacob Xalabín (History of Yakub Çelebi) is an anonymous brief novel written in Catalan about 1400 inspired by the figure of an Ottoman prince, the son of Murad I called Yakub Çelebi, who was slain in 1389 in the aftermath of the battle of Kosovo by his half-brother Bayezid in order to seize the throne. The work mixes historical and fictional elements, as the following brief account of its plot shows. The narrator begins by setting the action in the year 1387 ad at the court of Murad (in Catalan ‘Morat’, but usually referred to in the novel as ‘l’Amorat’ or ‘l’Almorat’). The firstborn prince, Yakub Çelebi (‘Jacob Xalabín’), is harassed by his young Greek stepmother Issa Çelebina (‘Issa Xalabina’), who is hopelessly in love with him.1 Misled by the perfidious Jewish court physician Kyr Moshe (‘Quir Mossè’), she plans the murder of Yakub Çelebi, who has to flee with the aid of his ingenious and inseparable friend Ali Pasha (‘Alí Baxà’). After many vicissitudes, the two come to another beylik, or principality, where they display their prowess at court and find worthy damsels. The prince and his friend return with them to the Ottoman court, to find that Issa Çelebina is no more and Kyr Moshe departed. Murad, who had believed his favourite son to be dead, receives him with great joy and celebration. Shortly after the weddings of Yakub Çelebi and Ali Pasha, the news arrives of a Christian invasion and Murad prepares for battle with his sons and noblemen. He is wounded in the fighting; his son Bayezid (‘Beseyt Bey’) finishes him off and then strangles Yakub Çelebi, clearing his way to the throne. The narrator notes in closing that Bayezid still reigns today and Ali Pasha is his chief minister. The Història de Jacob Xalabín occupies a unique position in medieval Cata- lan literature, which has no other extant work of fiction revealing a comparable knowledge of the Turkish world. There is no doubt that the plot was invented according to contemporary taste, but it also attempts to satisfy a Catalan- speaking audience’s curiosity regarding a power which was then clearly on 1 The form ‘Jacob Xalabín’ is not documented outside this novel, and today it sounds Hebrew or biblical rather than Turkish. Therefore, the Turkish form ‘Yakub Çelebi’ has been chosen, as it is the widest known and, being already in the Latin alphabet, does not create the problems of transcription and diacritics posed by the Arabic and Ottoman forms. Suffice it to say that ⟨ç⟩ in Turkish represents /ʧ/, i.e. the sound represented by ⟨tx⟩ in Catalan and by ⟨ch⟩ in English (as in chin). ‘Issa Xalabina’ is even more problematic, since it does not seem inspired directly by the name of a historical figure, and the second part was certainly made up by the author from the hero’s name; because of this, the form ‘Issa Çelebina’ has been used here as a compromise. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/9789004302723_002 2 introduction the rise. Its observations on Turkish customs and the geography of Asia Minor and its detailed description of the final battle (unnamed in the text, but eas- ily identifiable with the battle of Kosovo in 1389) are of great interest and even cast some light on a key but poorly documented period in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Despite its unique status, the Història de Jacob Xalabín is clearly a product of the Catalan culture of its time, as it shares features with various medieval Cata- lan works and what appear at first sight surprising elements can be explained if the circumstances of its composition are taken into account. 1 The Historical Context The Història de Jacob Xalabín can only be understood in the light of the long experience of the Crown of Aragon in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1303 the Great Catalan Company, under the command of Roger de Flor, set off for Constantinople, engaged by the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos to fight the Turks. This long adventure culminated in the establishment in continental Greece of the duchies of Athens and Neopatras, subject to the Crown of Aragon, and was treated in two works considered masterpieces of Hispanic historiography: a most celebrated narrative in Catalan, the Llibre or Crònica (Book, or Chronicle) of Ramon Muntaner, who took part in the campaign and wrote his own account between 1325 and 1328, and a minor classic in Spanish, la Expedición de los catalanes y aragoneses contra turcos y griegos (Expedition of the Catalans and Aragonese against the Turks and Greeks) of Francisco de Moncada, marquis of Aytona, whose survey, printed in 1623, was based on Muntaner, supplemented with various Byzantine sources.2 2 A selection of Muntaner’s passages related to the Turks is offered in the Appendix. For full editions of both works, see Crònica de Ramon Muntaner (Les quatre grans cròniques, III), ed. by Ferran Soldevila, rev.by Jordi Bruguera and Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2011) and Francisco de Moncada, Expedición de los catalanes y aragoneses contra turcos y griegos, ed. by Samuel Gili Gaya (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1973). On the activities of the Great Catalan Company and the Crown of Aragon in the Eastern Mediterranean, see the still useful overviews of K.M. Setton, Catalan Domination of Athens, 1311–1388 (London: Variorum, 1975); ‘The Catalans in Greece, 1311–1380’ and ‘The Catalans and Florentines in Greece 1380–1462’, in A History of the Crusades, ed. by K.M. Setton, 6 vols (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969–1989), III, 167–224 and 225–277 (repr. in his Athens in the Middle Ages (London: Variorum, 1975)). On the final stage, close to the period of composition of the Història de Jacob Xalabín, Anthony Luttrell, ‘La Corona de Aragón y.
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