This collection of essays commemorates the 200th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated Arabist Pascual de Gayangos (1809–97), mostly known today as one of Spain's greatest bibliophiles and as the father of modern Arabism in Spain. This volume reveals that he is a much more complex figure, with more facets and lives than hitherto recognised. A truly international scholar and a polymath, he worked on many scholarly projects connected with the culture of both Christian and Islamic Spain from the Middle Ages to the late seventeenth century. He was involved in multiple fields embracing the history, literature and art of Spain; the preservation of national heritage; formation of archives and collections; education; tourism; diplomacy and politics. An exceptionally versatile figure even by the standards of the nineteenth century, Gayangos is an ideal subject through which to examine and understand nineteenth-century Hispanism and Arabism. Not surprisingly, Gayangos has caught the attention of many. However, articles are scattered throughout academic periodicals in Spain, North America and Britain. What is now called for is a broad account of Gayangos's intellectual trajectory, which re-evaluates previous scholarship on Gayangos and incorporates new data deriving from the archives in Spain, Britain and the United States. This is what the present volume provides.

This volume, then, is the study of one man. However, it is not a comprehensive biography or account of his life, narrated in a chronological order by one author. Gayangos’s multiple lives and versatility invite a multidisciplinary and thematic approach. Ten essays shed light on the figure of Gayangos from various perspectives and distances. Microscopic viewpoints, scrutinising Gayangos’s achievements and intellectual relationships, are counter-balanced by essays adopting a bird’s eye view, carefully scanning the nineteenth-century context and the milieu in which Gayangos moved.