Mayte Penelas

Mayte Penelas (María Teresa Penelas Meléndez) is a historian and philologist. She specialises in codicology, history and historiography in al-Andalus. She is Director of the Escuela de Estudios Árabes at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spanish National Research Council; CSIC) at Granada, Andalucía.

Education Penelas was awarded a PhD in Philology in 1998 from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her thesis was entitled Kitab Hurusiyus: traducción árabe de las "Historiae adversus paganos" de Orosio (The Arabic Translation of the Histories of Orosius, Editing and Study).It was published in 2001 as a monograph. The Kitāb Hurūshiyūsh (Arabic: كتاب هروشيوش) is the name conventionally given to a medieval Arabic translation of Orosius's early fifth-century Historiae adversus paganos.

Research and career Penelas's research focuses on Arabic historiography, Andalusian Christian texts, and Arabic manuscripts from the ninth to the twelfth centuries CE. Penelas studied Arabic philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, before moving to Granada and then London for a postdoctoral fellowship. She returned to the School of Arabic Studies at Granada, and has been Director of the Escuela de Estudios Árabes at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas since 2017.