Europe through Arab eyes, 1578-1727 / Nabil Matar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Matar, N. I. (Nabil I.), 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Arabs--Attitudes.

Arabs.

Arab countries--Relations--Europe.

Arab countries.

Europe--Relations--Arab countries.

Europe.

Europe--Foreign public opinion, Arab.

Europe--History--17th century--Sources.

Arab countries--History--1517-1918--Sources.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (343 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Traveling to archives in Tunisia, Morocco, France, and England, with visits to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Spain, Nabil Matar assembles a rare history of Europe's rise to power as seen through the eyes of those who were later subjugated by it. Many historians of the Middle East believe Arabs and Muslims had no interest in Europe during this period of Western discovery and empire, but in fact these groups were very much engaged with the naval and industrial development, politics, and trade of European Christendom. Beginning in 1578 with a major Moroccan victory over a Portuguese invading army, Matar surveys this early modern period, in which Europeans and Arabs often shared common political, commercial, and military goals. Matar concentrates on how Muslim captives, ransomers, traders, envoys, travelers, and rulers pursued those goals while transmitting to the nonprint cultures of North Africa their knowledge of the peoples and societies of Spain, France, Britain, Holland, Italy, and Malta. From the first non-European description of Queen Elizabeth I to early accounts of Florence and Pisa in Arabic, from Tunisian descriptions of the Morisco expulsion in 1609 to the letters of a Moroccan Armenian ambassador in London, the translations of the book's second half draw on the popular and elite sources that were available to Arabs in the early modern period. Letters from male and female captives in Europe, chronicles of European naval attacks and the taqayid (newspaper) reports on Muslim resistance, and descriptions of opera and quinine appear here in English for the first time. Matar notes that the Arabs of the Maghrib and the Mashriq were eager to engage Christendom, despite wars and rivalries, and hoped to establish routes of trade and alliances through treaties and royal marriages. However, the rise of an intolerant and exclusionary Christianity and the explosion of European military technology brought these advances to an end. In conclusion, Matar details the decline of Arab-Islamic power and the rise of Britain and France.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on Transliteration

Chronology

List of Rulers

Part one

Introduction

I. Popular Sources: Accounts of Muslim Captivity in Christendom

II. Elite Sources: Muslim Ambassadors in Christendom

Conclusion: Encountering the Dunya of the Christians

Part two

Translations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-300) and index.

ISBN:

9786613628121

9781280598296

1280598298

9780231512084

0231512082

OCLC:

826476185