In 1578, Pedro Carçil was brought before the Inquisition of Valencia for possessing a forbidden text. Pedro's text, preserved by the impressive bureaucracy of the Inquisition, was a saffron-coloured single sheet of paper that measured 31 × 22. centimetres and was written in Arabic. At the bottom, a witness noted, ‘I say that this is an amulet (nómina) in which is written the names of angels and God and Muhammad and that this is a Moorish object and the Moors have the custom of carrying them to protect themselves’.2 In the decades that followed the royal decree outlawing Arabic in 1566, many Moriscos, Muslim converts to Christianity or their descendants, were prosecuted for speaking, writing or possessing Arabic. For the inquisitors, Pedro's Arabic amulet indicated his loyalty to the religion of his ancestors.

Beyond indicating Pedro's continuing adherence to Islam, this text illuminates the rich syncretism of amuletic traditions from the ancient Near East to early modern Europe. Punctuating Islamic pious phrases are names of angels derived from ancient Hebrew practices as well as a Torah passage transliterated into Arabic. At the beginning of the amulet's text and at eight other points in the first half, the legible script is interrupted by repetitive phrases written in Arabic without linguistic meaning; one is followed by a series of magical symbols.