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Recounts a Jewish-born Catholic priest's effort to prove he was Catholic to anyone who doubted him, including himself.
For decades historians argued for the downfall of communication, when early modern societies were hit by a natural disaster. After all, earthquakes caused the destruction of infrastructure, which hindered the spread of news. Instead, the last investigations opened a new point of view about the political communication: every crisis was a catalyst for news. The book widens this reading through a comparative analysis of several earthquakes in the Hispanic Monarchy territories, from Asia to America. However, the examination of communications provided in this volume is not an end in itself but is offered as a basis for reflection and to propose the notion that earthquakes trigger change in social...
A monumental work of history that reveals the Ottoman dynasty's important role in the emergence of early modern Europe The Ottomans have long been viewed as despots who conquered through sheer military might, and whose dynasty was peripheral to those of Europe. The Last Muslim Conquest transforms our understanding of the Ottoman Empire, showing how Ottoman statecraft was far more pragmatic and sophisticated than previously acknowledged, and how the Ottoman dynasty was a crucial player in the power struggles of early modern Europe. In this panoramic and multifaceted book, Gábor Ágoston captures the grand sweep of Ottoman history, from the dynasty's stunning rise to power at the turn of the ...
This book explores an anonymous sixteenth-century portrait of Muley al-Hassan, the Hafsid king of Tunis (ca. 1528–1550), that bears witness to relations between North Africa, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans. While Muley al-Hassan appears frequently in the vast literature on Charles V Habsburg, he is overshadowed by the emperor. Here he emerges as a protagonist, a figure whose shifting reputation can be traced well into the seventeenth century. Images of the King of Tunis circulated in broadsheets, ephemeral images made for triumphal entries, manuscripts, tapestry designs, engravings, and books. The ceaseless production of Tunisian imagery allowed Europeans to face their North African counterparts through scenes of battle but also through imaginary encounters and festive cross-dressing. This book shows how portraits of Hafsid rulers challenge assumptions about the absolute divide between Christian and Muslim, sovereign and subject, the familiar and the foreign, and they put a face on the entangled histories of the early modern Mediterranean.
Translated into English for the first time, this is a fascinating history of intelligence practices and their impact on great power rivalries in the early modern era In the sixteenth century, an intense rivalry between the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish Habsburg Empire and its allies spurred the creation of early modern intelligence. Translated into English for the first time, Emrah Safa Gürkan's Spies for the Sultan reconstructs this history of Ottoman espionage, sabotage, and bribery practices in the Mediterranean world. Then as now, collecting political, naval, military, and economic information was essential to staying one step ahead of your rivals. Porous and shifting borders, the abil...
Only little is known about the book culture of Tunis, although the city had been a centre for teaching and learning throughout Ḥafṣid rule in Ifrīqiya (c. 1230 to 1574). The libraries of Tunis are considered lost since the sack of the city by the armies of the emperor Charles V in the summer of 1535. This study reconstructs for the first time the original holdings of Tunis' medieval libraries and shows what can still be learned from these recovered fragments. An in-depth analysis of a wide range of texts and artefacts shows that the Ḥafṣid libraries were looted and their collections redistributed, mostly among European collectors. The Lost Libraries of Tunis brings Early Modern scho...
In Visions of Deliverance, Mayte Green-Mercado traces the circulation of Muslim and crypto-Muslim apocalyptic texts known as joferes through formal and informal networks of merchants, Sufis, and other channels of diffusion among Muslims and Christians across the Mediterranean from Constantinople and Venice to Morisco towns in eastern Spain. The movement of these prophecies from the eastern to the western edges of the Mediterranean illuminates strategies of Morisco cultural and political resistance, reconstructing both productive and oppositional interactions and exchanges between Muslims and Christians in the early modern Mediterranean. Challenging a historiography that has primarily underst...
This volume aims to show through various case studies how the interrelations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Iberia were negotiated in the field of images, objects and architecture during the Later Middle Ages and Early Modernity. . By looking at the ways pre-modern Iberians envisioned diversity, we can reconstruct several stories, frequently interwoven with devotional literature, poetry or Inquisitorial trials, and usually quite different from a binary story of simple opposition. The book’s point of departure narrates the relationship between images and conversions, analysing the mechanisms of hybridity, and proposing a new explanation for the representation of otherness as the complex outcome of a negotiation involving integration. Contributors are: Cristelle Baskins, Giuseppe Capriotti, Ivana Čapeta Rakić, Borja Franco Llopis, Francisco de Asís García García, Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, Nicola Jennings, Fernando Marías, Elena Paulino Montero, Maria Portmann, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Amadeo Serra Desfilis, Maria Vittoria Spissu, Laura Stagno, Antonio Urquízar-Herrera.
An examination of groups and individuals in Rome who were not Roman Catholic, or not born so. It demonstrates how other religions had a lasting impact on early modern Catholic institutions in Rome.
This open access book reconstructs and examines a crucial episode of Anglo-Iberian diplomatic rivalry: the clash between the Portuguese-sponsored Jesuit missionaries and the English East India Company (EIC) at the Mughal court between 1580 and 1615. This 35-year period includes the launch of the first Jesuit mission to Akbar’s court in 1580 and the preparation of the royal embassy led by Sir Thomas Roe to negotiate the concession of trading privileges to the EIC, and encompasses not only the extension of the conflict between the Iberian crowns and England into Asia, but also the consolidation of the Mughal Empire. The book examines the proselytizing and diplomatic activities of the Jesuit missionaries, the evolution of English diplomatic strategies concerning the Mughal Empire, and how the Mughal authorities instigated and exploited Anglo-Iberian rivalry in the pursuit of specific commercial, geopolitical, and ideological agendas.