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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Eva Johanna Holmberg, British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century: ‘Slaves’ 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 Volume 8 Link opens in a new windowor Volume 9Link opens in a new window. [Or see the original on Google BooksLink opens in a new window].

Evliya Çelebi, Robert Dankoff, and Kim Sooyong (eds.), An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels by Evliya Çelebi (London: Eland, 2010). Read one of the Volumes (e.g. Volume 3, pp. 86-111.) LinkLink opens in a new window.

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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

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). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Cole, Juan R.I., 'Invisible Occidentalism: Eighteenth-Century Indo-Persian Constructions of the West', Iranian Studies 25.3/4 (1992), pp. 3-16. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Dabashi, Hamid, Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travelers Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Dankoff, Robert, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Çelebi (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). LinkLink opens in a new window.

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 Uthmân Al-Meknassî', in: John Chircop and Francisco Javier Martínez (eds.), Mediterranean Quarantines, 1750–1914: Space, Identity and Power (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 109-124. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Faruqhi, Suraiya, Travel and Artisans in the Ottoman Empire: Employment and Mobility in the Early Modern Era (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014). LinkLink opens in a new window.

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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Hermes, Nizar F., The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture: Ninth-Twelfth Century AD (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 1-10. LinkLink opens in a new window.

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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

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). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Landry, Donna, 'Evliya Çelebi, 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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

MacLean, Gerald M., The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004). LinkLink opens in a new window.

MacLean, Gerald, Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire before 1800 (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Matar, Nabil, An Arab Ambassador in the Mediterranean World The Travels of Muhammad ibn ‘Uthmān al-Miknāsī, 1779-1788 (London: Routledge, 2015). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Matar, Nabil, Europe Through Arab Eyes, 1578–1727 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). LinkLink opens in a new window.

McJannet, Linda, 'Purchas His Pruning: Refashioning the Ottomans in Seventeenth-Century Travel Narratives', Huntington Library Quarterly 74.2 (2011), pp. 219-242. LinkLink opens in a new window.

Meserve, Margaret, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). LinkLink opens in a new window.

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. LinkLink opens in a new window.

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). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Singh, Jyotsna G. (ed.), A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). LinkLink opens in a new window.

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Europe's India: Words, People, Empires, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). LinkLink opens in a new window.

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. LinkLink opens in a new window.