Solving the "Accursed Riddle" of the Diplomatic Relations between Catalonia and Egypt around 1430

The last Arabic diplomatic document in Barcelona's Crown of Aragon Archive (ACA) that is still to be edited and studied is ACA Arabic doc. 164. The document is a preliminary draft of the commercial and peace treaty drawn up in 1430 by Alfons the Magnanimous, King of Aragon, Naples and Sicily (1396-1458), and the Mamluk Sultan al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Barsbāy (825-841/1422-1437), signed in Rhodes (Ramadān 7 833/30 May 1430, ACA Arabic doc. 145), and published in 1939 by Ruíz Orsatti. Document 164 contained 111 folios, which were not in order, and for this reason specialists called it the "accursed riddle". The document was probably prepared for discussion during the summer of 1429, a few months before the definitive version was signed. It is longer than the final agreement, and contains an additional Chapter (33) which has not been published to date. Little documentary evidence of diplomatic negotiation between Muslim and Christian powers in Medieval times has survived, and this chapter provides us with a highly unusual example. In the first part of this study the document is described and its contents outlined. In sections 2 and 3 we edit and analyse the contents of the additional Chapter 33 and the Explicit that goes with it, which is absent from Ruíz Orsatti's version. We then present some historical data regarding the Catalan embassy to Rhodes, which will shed light on the diplomatic negotiations that concern us and the historical reasons for the censoring of Chapter 33.