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466 Rubén González Cuerva

ceremony of prostrating himself
before the pontiff and kissing the
papal slipper. He deigned merely to
kiss his knee .
71
Fully accepted as a royal figure,
Mulay was also received by the
Duke of Ferrara and his famed
court surgeons vainly tried to heal
Mulay’s burnt eyelids . Beyond
72
these courteous encounters, Mulay
failed in the main objective of
his journey. When he arrived to
Augsburg he had to settle for
limited lodgings as the city was
full with members of the Imperial
Diet and the royal family. Charles
V granted him an amicable
audience on 8 May 1548 but did
not keep his promises of sending
further military aid .
73
Fig. 9 – N. Van Der Horst, Muley Hazen Mulay Hassan was installed
Roy de Thunes, in J. Chiflet, Les in Sicily under the protection of
marques d'honneur de la maison de the viceroy, Ferrante Gonzaga,
Tassis, Balthasar Moretus, Anvers,
1645, p. 77. and died in July 1550 while taking
part in an imperial expedition sent
to conquer Mahdia in North Africa. He was finally laid to rest in a tomb
in the Tunisian holy city of Kairuan .
74
The impact of Mulay Hassan’s presence in Europe and the ambivalent
feelings he provoked led to the creation of an incredible legend in seven-
teenth-century Flanders: according to it, Mulay Hassan had also stayed
in Brussels, a visit that was supposed to have occurred in 1535 ac-
cording to one version (when he was in hiding in the mountains of the

71 P. Giovio, Segunda parte de la historia cit., f. 398r. In Ottoman protocol, kissing
the foot meant the biggest symbol of respect and submission, as happened in the
ceremonies of begging for forgiveness. P. Brummett, A Kiss is Just a Kiss cit., p. 116.
72 G. Giraldi, Commentario delle cose di Ferrara, Sessa, Venetia, 1597, p. 179; A.
Faustini, Aggiunta alle Historie del Sig. Guasparo Sardi, in G. Sardi, Libro delle historie
Ferraresi, Giuseppe Gironi, Ferrara, 1646, p. 22.
73 The prior of Granada to the master Bobadilla, Augsburg, 20 May 1548, in
Epistolae mixtae ex variis Europae locis ab anno 1537 ad 1556 scriptae, A. Avrial, Matriti,
1898, p. 505; F. Arnoulet, Les derniers princes hafsides a Tunis (1526-1574), «Arab
Historical Review for Ottoman Studies», 15-16 (1997), p. 46.
74 C. Baskins, De Aphrodisio Expugnato: The Siege of Mahdia in the Habsburg
Imaginary, «Il Capitale Culturale», 6 (2017), pp. 28-35.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)