Week 10. "Orient" and "Occident": Travel Between Christian and Islamic Lands
As pilgrims, diplomats, traders, captives, soldiers, slaves, and tourists, countless men and women traversed the cultural and religious boundaries that criss-crossed the Mediterranean world in the early modern period. Focusing on journeys between Christian and Islamic lands, this week examines the making and unmaking of categories of "Orient" and "Occident" in travel writing and scholarship. Which factors accounted for the diverse experiences and attitudes of Christian and Muslim travellers? To what extent did their practices of and approaches to travel differ? And how fruitful is it to think in terms of an Islamic Occidentalism that mirrored Christian Europe's Orientalism? This seminar takes place on site at the Modern Records Centre (MRC)Link opens in a new window, where we will begin exploring the rich array of relevant primary sources available in collections on campus.
Core Readings
Nabil Matar, In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the 17th Century (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 'Introduction: Arab Travelers and Early Modern Europeans', pp. xiv-xlviii. .
Eva Johanna Holmberg, British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century: 鈥楽laves鈥� of the Sultan (Cham: Palgrace MacMillan, 2022), pp. 1-31.
Primary sources (select one of the following)
Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or, Purchas his Pilgrimes: Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others [4 Vols. London: 1625] (20 Vols. London: 1906). Browse the contents and read one of the accounts in or . [Or see the original on ].
Evliya 脟elebi, Robert Dankoff, and Kim Sooyong (eds.), An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels by Evliya 脟elebi (London: Eland, 2010). Read one of the Volumes (e.g. Volume 3, pp. 86-111.) .
Nabil Matar, In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the 17th Century (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), Ch. 1 (France and Holland, by Ahmad bin Qasim), pp. 54-93. .
Seminar Questions
- What were the challenges to English Protestant travellers in the early modern Mediterranean? How did they respond to them?
- Which of these experiences and challenges were particular to travel between Christian and Islamic lands?
- Matar argues that Arab travel accounts cannot be approached through the same theoretical models as European ones. How convincing do you find his distinctions and conclusions?
- How does Hermes' position on the question of Orientalism and 鈥�Ifranjalism鈥� relate to previous theories? Which position do you agree with most?
- How did the author of your primary source reflect on inter-religious encounters? How was their own religious background manifested in their text?
Further Readings
Aune, M.G., 'Review: Early Modern European Travel Writing after Orientalism', Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies 5.2 (2005), pp. 120-138.
Bisaha, Nancy, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). .
Cole, Juan R.I., 'Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West', Iranian Studies 25.3/4 (1992), pp. 3-16. .
Dabashi, Hamid, Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travelers Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). .
Dankoff, Robert, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya 脟elebi (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). .
Davis, Natalie Zemon, Trickster Travels: a Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (London: Faber and Faber, 2007).
Ezzahidi, Malika, 'Quarantine in Ceuta and Malta in the Travel Writings of the Late Eighteenth-century Moroccan Ambassador Ibn Uthm芒n Al-Meknass卯', in: John Chircop and Francisco Javier Mart铆nez (eds.), Mediterranean Quarantines, 1750–1914: Space, Identity and Power (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 109-124. .
Faruqhi, Suraiya, Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire: Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014). .
Fisher, Michael H., Visions of Mughal India: an Anthology of European Travel Writing (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007).
Games, Alison, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Ch. 2: 'The Mediterranean Origins of the British Empire', pp. 47-80. .
Hermes, Nizar F., The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture: Ninth-Twelfth Century AD (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 1-10. .
Holmberg, Eva Johanna, 'In the Company of Franks: British Identifications in the Early Modern Levant c.1600', Studies in Travel Writing 16.4 (2012), pp. 363-374. .
Jacobs, Martin, 'From Lofty Caliphs to Uncivilized 'Orientals' - Images of the Muslim in Medieval Jewish Travel Literature', Jewish Studies Quarterly 18.1 (2011), pp. 64-90. .
Kamps, Ivo, and Jyotsna G. Singh (eds.), Travel Knowledge: European "Discoveries" in the Early Modern Period (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
Karim, Karim H., and Mahmoud Eid (eds.), Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). .
Landry, Donna, 'Evliya 脟elebi, Explorer on Horseback: Knowledge Gathering by a Seventeenth-Century Ottoman', in: Adriana Craciun and Mary Terrall (eds.), Curious Encounters: Voyaging, Collecting, and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), pp. 43-70. .
Lowe, Kate, 'Representing' Africa: Ambassadors and Princes from Christian Africa to Renaissance Italy and Portugal, 1402-1608', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser. 17 (2007), pp. 101-128. .
MacLean, Gerald M., The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004). .
MacLean, Gerald, Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire before 1800 (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). .
Matar, Nabil, An Arab Ambassador in the Mediterranean World The Travels of Muhammad ibn 鈥楿thm膩n al-Mikn膩s墨, 1779-1788 (London: Routledge, 2015). .
Matar, Nabil, Europe Through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). .
McJannet, Linda, 'Purchas His Pruning: Refashioning the Ottomans in Seventeenth-Century Travel Narratives', Huntington Library Quarterly 74.2 (2011), pp. 219-242. .
Meserve, Margaret, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). .
Roddan, Hector, ''Orientalism is a Partisan Book': Applying Edward Said's Insights to Early Modern Travel Writing', History Compass 14.4 (2016), pp. 168-188. .
Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Routledge, 1978; 2nd ed. 2003).
Schleck, Julia, Telling True Tales of Islamic Lands: Forms of Mediation in English Travel Writing, 1575-1630 (Selingrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2010). .
Singh, Jyotsna G. (ed.), A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). .
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Europe's India: Words, People, Empires, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). .
Zhiri, Oumelbanine, 'Leo Africanus and the Limits of Translation', in: Carmine G.Di Biase (ed.), Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 175-186. .
. Oxford Bibliographies. By Eric Dursteler.
