Learning Goal: Participants, even those with no background in Spanish, Latin, or Arabic, will quickly learn how to decipher some of the very oldest instances of Spanish verse
Summary: Don’t speak Spanish? Have you forgotten your high-school Latin? Don’t read Arabic? No problem! In just one brief session, you and your partner(s) will compete against other groups in deciphering medieval aljamiado Spanish, while avoiding traps, in order to retrieve the treasure of the Alhambra.
Participants will work in groups, against the clock and random traps, in order to decipher some “Kharjas”—the earliest instances of written Spanish, in Arabic characters. The workshop will involve group play, handouts, worksheets, dice, and a willingness to say, “Why not?” Afterwards we can debrief about the significance of what we did (or didn’t) figure out. Seriously, though—when else are you going to learn about medieval Spain in a group environment involving puzzles? You know you want to.
