The purpose of this brief study is to give, first, a general overview of how the process of conversion to Islam developed, as the Islamic faith, culture and social structure expanded from its Arabian heartland, and second, giving due attention to the ways in which converts to Islam--and converts from Islam to Christianity--were viewed and treated by their new and "chosen" communities of believers, to illustrate some ways in which Cervantes dramatized this social and personal problem in his works.

In the context of the history of Islam, the early concepts of conversion to the faith--along with the peculiar ways in which the intentional spreading of the Islamic domination at some times privileged largely socio-political incorporation as much or more than conventional proselytism--saw the new adherent or "Believer" as a client or mawla. This status suggested that, whether or not the new convert were an Arab (and at some stages, the ethnic Arab was seen to have a privilege of status; at other times, this status advantage was not so evident), he or she was in a position of relative social weakness or inferiority. The mawla (plural, mawali) was thus inclined to combine his acceptance of the faith with a deliberate adoption of a social or tribal association in order to assure a kind of functional social protection and well as to underscore his authentic identity as a member of the umma. Given, as well, the sharp emphasis upon the duty to marry, the concept of family, and so on, the conversion to Islam was evidently less a private matter of individual conscience, and more a case of social reconstruction of oneself within and alongside a larger group. Thus, while on a purely theoretical or doctrinal level, conversion to Islam was a simple and uncomplicated process, the real "conversion" seen as a full incorporation into a culture and society was more complex and, in a sense, demanding of the new believer.

By the time of Cervantes, the typical Arabic or more generally North African concepts of Islamic conversion (already quite familiar to the Christian Spaniard, on the basis of the centuries of shared history on the Peninsula) were joined and made more complex by the notably distinct tendencies of "conversion" (or as one might say, recruitment and incorporation) as practiced by the Islamic polity of the Ottoman Turks.

Cervantes's own life brought him into direct and dramatic contact both with important elements of the Islamic world and with the problem of conversions. As a soldier at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) and later (1575-80) as a captive in Algiers, Cervantes not only encountered parts of the Muslim world first hand, but he also experienced the usual attempts to convert him. He was also aware of the common phenomenon of the European-Christian convert to Islam, the so-called renegado. Thus, it is not surprising that, in some of his earlier works (the plays) and in key moments of his later fictions, he dramatized these issues. My project, then, will attempt to explore the varieties of conversion in his works and to show the some of the "larger implications" for personal and group identity of such conversions.

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