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"This book focuses on Ahmad Ibn Qâsim al-Hajarî (ca. 1570-ca. 1641), a Morisco who fled Spain where this minority of Muslim origins was persecuted. He led a successful career in North Africa, as a secretary to several Sultans in Morocco, and as a prolific translator and writer. He produced autobiographical texts, and translations between Spanish and Arabic, which attest to the important role he played in the cultural, diplomatic, and scientific connections between Europe and North Africa during the early modern period. This book situates his work within several contexts: the development of early modern Orientalism, the intellectual life of the Maghreb, and the history of technological circulation in the Western Mediterranean"--
The first in-depth study of the collaborative intellectual exchange between the European and the Arabic Republics of Letters. Beyond Orientalism reformulates our understanding of the early modern Mediterranean through the remarkable life and career of Moroccan polymath Ahmad Ibn Qâsim al-Hajarî (ca. 1570-1641). By showing Hajarî’s active engagement with some of the most prominent European Orientalists of his time, Oumelbanine Zhiri makes the case for the existence of an Arabic Republic of Letters that operated in parallel to its European counterpart. A major corrective to the long-held view of Orientalism that accords agency only to Europeans, Beyond Orientalism emphasizes the active role played by Hajarî and other “Orientals” inside and outside of Europe in some of the most significant intellectual movements of the age. Zhiri explores the multiple interactions between these two networks of intellectuals, decentering Europe to reveal how Hajarî worked collaboratively to circulate knowledge among Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
A history of early modern libraries and the imperial desire for total knowledge. Medieval scholars imagined the library as a microcosm of the world, but as novel early modern ways of managing information facilitated empire in both the New and Old Worlds, the world became a projection of the library. In The Librarian’s Atlas, Seth Kimmel offers a sweeping material history of how the desire to catalog books coincided in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the aspiration to control territory. Through a careful study of library culture in Spain and Morocco—close readings of catalogs, marginalia, indexes, commentaries, and maps—Kimmel reveals how the booklover’s dream of a comprehensive and well-organized library shaped an expanded sense of the world itself.
In Cold War Ruins Lisa Yoneyama argues that the efforts intensifying since the 1990s to bring justice to the victims of Japanese military and colonial violence have generated what she calls a "transborder redress culture." A product of failed post-World War II transitional justice that left many colonial legacies intact, this culture both contests and reiterates the complex transwar and transpacific entanglements that have sustained the Cold War unredressability and illegibility of certain violences. By linking justice to the effects of American geopolitical hegemony, and by deploying a conjunctive cultural critique—of "comfort women" redress efforts, state-sponsored apologies and amnesties, Asian American involvement in redress cases, the ongoing effects of the U.S. occupation of Japan and Okinawa, Japanese atrocities in China, and battles over WWII memories—Yoneyama helps illuminate how redress culture across Asia and the Pacific has the potential to bring powerful new and challenging perspectives on American exceptionalism, militarized security, justice, sovereignty, forgiveness, and decolonization.
Early Modern Écologies is the first collective volume to offer perspectives on the relationship between contemporary ecological thought and early modern French literature. If Descartes spoke of humans as being "masters and possessors of Nature" in the seventeenth century, the writers taken up in this volume arguably demonstrated a more complex and urgent understanding of the human relationship to our shared planet. Opening up a rich archive of literary and non-literary texts produced by Montaigne and his contemporaries, this volume foregrounds not how ecocriticism renews our understanding of a literary corpus, but rather how that corpus causes us to re-think or to nuance contemporary eco-theory. The sparsely bilingual title (an acute accent on écologies) denotes the primary task at hand: to pluralize (i.e. de-Anglophone-ize) the Environmental Humanities. Featuring established and emerging scholars from Europe and the United States, Early Modern Écologies opens up new dialogues between eco-theorists such as Timothy Morton, Gilles Deleuze, and Bruno Latour and Montaigne, Ronsard, Du Bartas, and Olivier de Serres.
"A Strategic Nature shows how public relations has dominated public understanding of the natural environment for over one hundred years. More than spin or misinformation, PR is a social and political force that shapes how we understand and address the environmental crises we now face. Drawing on interviews, ethnography, and archival research, Melissa Aronczyk and Maria I. Espinoza offer an original account of the promotional agents who have influenced public perception of the environment since the beginning of the twentieth century, revealing how professional communicators affect how we think about public knowledge and who can legitimately produce it. Instead of focusing on just the messages...
Texts from the Middle is a companion primary source reader to the textbook The Sea in the Middle. It can be used alone or in conjunction with the textbook, providing an original history of the Middle Ages that places the Mediterranean at the geographical center of the study of the period from 650 to 1650. Building on the textbook’s unique approach, these sources center on the Mediterranean and emphasize the role played by peoples and cultures of Africa, Asia, and Europe in an age when Christians, Muslims, and Jews of various denominations engaged with each other in both conflict and collaboration. The supplementary reader mirrors the main text’s fifteen-chapter structure, providing six sources per chapter. The two texts pair together to provide a framework and materials that guide students through this complex but essential history—one that will appeal to the diverse student bodies of today.
The Sea in the Middle presents an original and revisionist narrative of the development of the medieval west from late antiquity to the dawn of modernity. This textbook is uniquely centered on the Mediterranean and emphasizes the role played by peoples and cultures of Africa, Asia, and Europe in an age when Christians, Muslims, and Jews of various denominations engaged with each other in both conflict and collaboration. Key features: Fifteen-chapter structure to aid classroom use Sections in each chapter that feature key artifacts relevant to chapter themes Dynamic visuals, including 190 photos and 20 maps The Sea in the Middle and its sourcebook companion, Texts from the Middle, pair together to provide a framework and materials that guide students through this complex but essential history—one that will appeal to the diverse student bodies of today.
Introduction -- The roots of Salafism : strands of an unorthodox past, 1926-1970 -- Conquering custom in the name of Tawhid : the Salafi expansion of worship -- Praying in shoes : how to sideline a practice of the prophet -- The Salafi mystique : from fitna to gender segregation -- Leading with a fist : the genesis and consolidation of a Salafi beard -- Between pants and the jallabiyya : the adoption of Isbal and the battle for authenticity -- Conclusion.
This book advances an Islamic political philosophy based on the concept of Ihsan, which means to do beautiful things. The author moves beyond the dominant model of Islamic governance advanced by modern day Islamists. The political philosophy of Ihsan privileges process over structure, deeds over identity, love over law and mercy and forgiveness over retribution. The work invites Muslims to move away from thinking about the form of Islamic government and to strive to create a self-critical society that defends national virtue and generates institutions and practices that provide good governance.