Rafael Valencia Rodríguez (1952-2020): In the shadow of Pascual de Gayangos. In memoriam

The sudden death of Professor Rafael Valencia Rodríguez in Seville on June 12 was a horrible and unexpected event which, just a few days later, was compounded by the demise of Professor Federico Corriente Córdoba. As a result, we have endured two great losses in a row within the world of Arab and Islamic Studies in Spain. By Alejandro García Sanjuán.

Of Extremaduran origin (Berlanga, June 26, 1952), with a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Letters, specializing in Semitic Philology (Arabic and Islam), from the Universidad Central de Barcelona (1976, having earned the Special Award for his degree program), Rafael Valencia’s academic career took place almost entirely at the University of Seville’s School of Philology. His career then began in Iraq, first as an Assistant Professor at the University of Baghdad (1978-1979) and then as the director of the Spanish-Arab Institute of Culture and Cultural Attaché at the Embassy of Spain in the Iraqi capital. In 1982, he joined the university in Seville as an Assistant Professor giving practical courses and in just a few years earned a position as a Tenured Professor (1987), eventually performing his broad range of tasks in the field of teaching, researching and management at that university for 38 years.

His profile as a researcher is a reflection of the characteristics of Arab and Islamic Studies in Spain throughout the seventies and eighties, which were mainly dominated by study of the history of Al-Andalus in all of its many facets. In this sense, his attention was aimed from the beginning towards the study of  Arab sources from Al-Andalus, as a way of examining the Iberian Peninsula’s medieval past. His intense devotion allowed him to carry out extensive research work which took the form of very diverse activities including not only publications, but also regular participation at seminars, conferences, congresses and round tables, giving lectures, curating exhibitions, completing stays at different universities, and many other undertakings that can only be summarized here, to point out some of his most important contributions.

As a researcher, there are few fields within the world of Al-Andalus studies in which he did not take part in one way or another. History, numismatics, epigraphy, lexicography, toponymy, poetry, philosophy, translation: these are just a few of the topics on which he worked. An important part of that work as a researcher revolved around the city of Seville and its territory, a topic about which he wrote one of his earliest works, Urbanism in Arab Seville, which earned the City of Seville Research Award (1987). This first approach was later expanded upon in his doctoral thesis, read at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1986) and published with the title  Muslim Seville up to the Fall of the Caliphate: Contribution to its study (Madrid, 1988). Over the years, other more specific publications relating to the history, geography and urban planning of different towns in the Seville area were added, including Carmona, Osuna, Estepa, Alcalá de Guadaíra and Écija, among others.

This intense dedication to Arab Seville to a certain extent explains his interest in the famous Tunisian author of Sevillian origin, Ibn Khaldūn, which led him to publish an anthology of his most famous work, the Muqaddima (Ibn Khaldūn: Introduction to history. Anthology, published by Editoriales Andaluzas Unidas, Seville, 1985), as well as other works in which he analyzed different aspects of his life’s work and thought. He was highly knowledgable about classical Arab literature, above all poetry, to which he dedicated the work Erotic Poetry of Al-Andalus (published by El Carro de la Nieve, Seville, 1990), and he got the opportunity to make a record of his great knowledge of Al-Andalus history and his amazing skill at historiographical synthesis in Al-Andalus and Its Legacy (published by Los Libros de la Catarata, Madrid, 2011).

In 1998, he curated the exhibition Averroes and His Era, organized by the Institute of Cooperation with the Arab World and the El Monte Foundation, on the occasion of the Eighth Centennial of the Cordovan thinker’s death (1198), also being responsible for the publication of the accompanying catalogue, Averroes and His Era (AECI, Junta de Andalucía, Fundación El Monte, UNESCO, Seville, 1998).

His ever restless spirit and constant quest for knowledge led him to teach at several foreign universities, both in the Arab world, about which he was majorly knowledgable, and in other countries (Morocco, Qatar, Nigeria, Argentina). He was the founder and manager of the IXBILIA Research Group and directed several end-of-bachelor’s degree projects and PhD theses within his department. He also expressed a strong sense of commitment to his university by playing an active role in its sometimes unpleasant management work, both at the “local” level of his own immediate working environment and at a more general level of the institution as a whole. In this respect, he held the position of Director of the Institute of Languages, Secretary and Director (consecutively) of the Department of Integrated Philology, and was a member of the School of Philology  Board, in the University Faculty (of which he was Vice-President), as well as the Governing Board.

The final years of his career were marked by his strong commitment to the city that had taken him in, particularly as a result of his election as a member of Seville’s Royal Academy of Fine Letters, which he joined on October 24, 2010, giving a speech titled The Air of Seville: Sayings from Arab Seville. In the shadow of Pascual de Gayangos, with a response by Rafael Manzano Martos. I remember that the assembly hall inside the Casa de los Pinelo, the institution’s headquarters, was overflowing that day, and I had to listen to his speech from the courtyard, along with other friends and colleagues who could not find room on the benches either. A few years later (in 2014), he was elected to become this institution’s director, a role which he continued to hold until just a few days before his unexpected demise. His dedication to this work was very intense and was notable because of his usual enthusiasm, striving to modernize the structures of a century-old organization and increase awareness about it in Seville’s society.

It is not easy to summarize such a broad, rich, multifaceted career as Rafael Valencia’s in just a few brief lines of text. As a student of his, I can say that his classes were a fine example of his academic, dynamic, very open-minded personality. I must also thank him for his guidance in completing my doctoral thesis, which he co-directed along with Professor Manuel González Jiménez. As a colleague, I can do nothing other than admire his great ability to perform work and his great versatility as a researcher and his personal disposition, always open, cordial, kind and attentive to others. As a friend, I admire his extraordinary, natural sense of humor, the fact that he was so easy to speak with, his ingenuity, his clarity of mind, his eloquence and his personable nature. Rafael Valencia will always be remembered as a great Arabist, an excellent member of the university community and a good person.

Alejandro García Sanjuán
University of Huelva