Nabil I Matar

In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century

Acknowledgments Introduction Arab Travellers and early modern Europeans Texts: A Note on the Translations France and Holland, Ahmad b. Qasim, c. 1611 Europe and South America, Ilyas Hanna al-Mawsuli, 1668-1683 Spain, Mohammad b. Abd al-Wahab al-Ghassani, 1690-91 France, Abdallah bin Aisha, 1699-1700 Index of Place Names

Britons and Muslims in the early modern period: from prejudice to a (theory of) toleration

ABSTRACT Matar examines the representation of Muslims in English writings in the early modern period, roughly from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. There were two views of Muslims: the first was generated by literary and theological writers whose depictions were predominantly negative and stereotypical. The second was generated by diplomats and traders who had interacted with Muslims, both in the Mediterranean and during ambassadorial visits in London. These latter writers furnished a less hostile image than the playwrights and preachers, and influenced John Locke who became the first European philosopher to argue for the toleration and the endenization of Muslims, qua Muslims, in Britain.

English Accounts of Captivity in North Africa and the Middle East: 1577-1625

Between 1577 and 1625, ten Englishmen wrote or dictated accounts about their captivity among the Muslims. After examining similar accounts of captivity by continental writers, Fernand Braudel argued that European governments encouraged the publication of such accounts for an ideological purpose: to alienate readers from Islam and Muslims. A close reading of the English accounts, however, shows that there was a more personal and selfish goal for the publication of these accounts than the polemical and the ideological.

John Locke and the Jews

In 1813, a century after the death of John Locke, an anonymous pamphleteer in London, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Abraham, saac and Jacob’, complained about the restrictions which were placed on the Jews. In The Lamentations of the Children of Israel representing the Hardships they suffer from the Penal Laws , the author recalled John Locke as a defender of the Jews, and quoted one of the philosophers favourable comparisons between Jews and Gentiles. The author evidently felt that Lockes advocacy of toleration for dissenters in the second half of the seventeenth century could be applied to the Jews of nineteenth–century England: having argued in defence of non–Anglicans, Locke was believed to have argued for non–Christians too.

Queen Elizabeth I Through Moroccan Eyes

This article examines the image of Queen Elizabeth I (reg. 1558-1603) in Moroccan writings, focusing specifically on the period between 1588, the English victory over the Spanish Armada, and 1596, the English attack (with Moroccan logistical assistance) on Cadiz. Contrary to what some historians have claimed about Arab-Islamic ignorance of, and indifference to, Western Europe in the early modern period, the writings of Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali (1549-1621), the Moroccan scribe in the royal court of Marrakesh during the reign of Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur (reg. 1578-1603), provide valuable information about English political and naval activity in the last decade of the 16th century. The letters of al-Fishtali include the only contemporary description of the English Queen by a non-European writer.

Journal of Early Modern History: Editorial

The early modern period of world history (ca. 1300-1800) was marked by a rapidly increasing level of global interaction. Between the aftermath of Mongol conquest in the East and the onset of industrialization in the West, a framework was established for new kinds of contacts and collective self-definition across an unprecedented range of human and physical geographies. The Journal of Early Modern History, the official journal of the University of Minnesota Center for Early Modern History, is the first scholarly journal dedicated to the study of early modernity from this world-historical perspective, whether through explicitly comparative studies, or by the grouping of studies around a given thematic, chronological, or geographic frame.

Confronting Decline in Early Modern Arabic Thought

This article argues that Arabic thinkers of the seventeenth century failed to confront the problem of decline in their societies in the manner that Ottoman and Spanish writers did. Arabic writers, from Alexandria in Egypt to Miknas in Morocco, refused to concede decline and instead declared the nasr (victory) of their deen (religion) of Islam over Europe, or used Ibn Khaldun to determine the fall of the European dunya (world). Only the Moriscos, who had been exposed to the empiricism of European thought, believed that war technology—and manuals about it and about other technologies—was needed to bridge the gap between a modernizing Europe and a stagnant Islamic West.

Through the Eyes of the Beholder

The collection is the first to bring together a number of accounts about the Holy Land written by early modern authors from different religious and regional backgrounds.

The Question of Occidentalism in Early Modern Morocco

In one of the two major Arabic critiques of Edward Said’s theory of Western Orientalism, Aziz al-Azmeh argued that the representation of the cultural and religious Other had not been exclusive to the modern Europeans on whom Said had chiefly focused. Azmeh examined medieval Arabic literature and geography and showed that it too had developed a discourse about the Other, a discourse “similar to orientalism” in its representation of the barbarians of Europe, Africa, and other parts of the “unknown” world.1 Representations of other peoples, he explained, are not exclusive to the Western mediation of the Orient, but are inherent in any approach that one society develops about another: “States, civilizations and cultures expend much energy, not commensurate with size, in fixing moral boundaries, consolidating their difference from outsiders, and otherwise encircling themselves with frontiers impermeable to the exotic; and this energy intensifies in circumstances of commotion, instability and conflict, turning to a frenzy of positive hostility most dramatically represented by theoretical and practical racism.”2 For Al-Azmeh, representation of other peoples was not necessarily part of a colonial (as Said had argued) but of a human discourse. All societies, Occidental as well as Oriental, European as well as Arab, essentialize the Other through a system of dichotomization and representation.

Karim Bejjit, English Colonial Texts on Tangier, 1661–1684: imperialism and the politics of resistance

English Colonial Texts on Tangier, 1661-1684: imperialism and the politics of resistance, edited and introduced by Karim Bejjit, Farnham & Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2015, xviii + 278 pp., £65.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4724-5788-2Tangier was a Portuguese outpost that was given to King Charles II as part of the dowry negotiated for his marriage to Catharine of Braganza. In 1661, the first British soldiers and some of their families arrived, beginning what was designed to be a colony modelled on an English village, and conceived as an outpost that would open up other parts of Africa. It occupied a strategic spot across from Spanish-controlled Gibraltar and was to be a kind of open harbour for Mediterranean and Atlantic trade, clandestine barter, and (chiefly) a base for the British fleet in its increasing skirmishes and battles in the Mediterranean basin.It was also the first British colony in the lands of Islam.The colony did not last and by 1684 it was relinquished. Although it had been given extensive financial support, and at one time garrisoned over 3000 soldiers and their dependents, it was always harassed by the armies of Mulay Ismail, the ruler of Morocco (reg. 1672-1727), who had initiated a war of reconquest to liberate the European-occupied outposts around his shores. At the same time, the colony failed to generate the revenues that King Charles had initially thought it would.Much has been written about Tangier from the classic Tangier: Englands Lost Atlantic Outpost1 to the edition of Sir James Halkettsdiar 2 and of John Lukesjournal3 along with numerous studies that focused on the naval and international role that the colony played in seventeenth-century British history. During the 20-odd years of British presence in Tangier, dozens of treatises were printed in London about it, ranging from descriptions of battles to celebrations of flora and fauna, with authors encouraging emigration to a land of fertility and abundance. There were accounts about the building of the mole in the harbour as well as about heroes and casualties. At the National Archives in Kew, there remains a vast record of the daily life of the community, consisting of court records about wife beating and drunkenness, sexual license and food shortages. Many maps and diagrams of the colony were drawn showing its borders and English site names: York Tower, CharlesTower,theIrishTower(which still stands) and others.From this extensive record of the history of Britains occupation of Tangier, Professor Karim Bejjit selects 18 texts which he divides among four categories: Beginnings (1661-1666); Apologias (1676-1679); Crisis (1680) and Departure (1681-1684). The chronological arrangement of the selections helps to show the changes and fluctuations in the colony at the same time that they reveal the transformation in attitude both in Tangier and in London, ranging between triumphalism and despair, victory and final defeat. Before every text, Bejjit adds a brief introduction about the political and social context. The texts are wide-ranging in their coverage: from the first declaration of Charles II identifying his goals in the colony to general promotion literature: Tangier was advertised as another location of settlement and expansion into the resource-rich regions of North Africa - a location that was near to England and less dangerous to reach than the North American shores. …