Traveling to archives in Tunisia, Morocco, France, and England, with visits to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Spain, Nabil Matar assembles a rare history of Europe's rise to power as seen through the eyes of those who were later subjugated by it. Many historians of the Middle East believe Arabs and Muslims had no interest in Europe during this period of Western discovery and empire, but in fact these groups were very much engaged with the naval and industrial development, politics, and trade of European Christendom. Beginning in 1578 with a major Moroccan victory over a Portuguese invading army, Matar surveys this early modern period, in which Europeans and Arabs often shared common political, commercial, and military goals. Matar concentrates on how Muslim captives, ransomers, traders, envoys, travelers, and rulers pursued those goals while transmitting to the nonprint cultures of North Africa their knowledge of the peoples and societies of Spain, France, Britain, Holland, Italy, and Malta. From the first non-European description of Queen Elizabeth I to early accounts of Florence and Pisa in Arabic, from Tunisian descriptions of the Morisco expulsion in 1609 to the letters of a Moroccan Armenian ambassador in London, the translations of the book's second half draw on the popular and elite sources that were available to Arabs in the early modern period. Letters from male and female captives in Europe, chronicles of European naval attacks and the taqayid (newspaper) reports on Muslim resistance, and descriptions of opera and quinine appear here in English for the first time. Matar notes that the Arabs of the Maghrib and the Mashriq were eager to engage Christendom, despite wars and rivalries, and hoped to establish routes of trade and alliances through treaties and royal marriages. However, the rise of an intolerant and exclusionary Christianity and the explosion of European military technology brought these advances to an end. In conclusion, Matar details the decline of Arab-Islamic power and the rise of Britain and France.
Author
Nabil Matar studied English Literature at the American University of Beirut where he received his B.A. and M.A. In 1976, he completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge University on the poetry of Thomas Traherne. He taught at Jordan University and the American University of Beirut, and received postdoctoral grants from the British Council (Clare Hall, Cambridge University) and from Fulbright (Harvard Divinity School). In 1986, Dr. Matar moved to the United States and started teaching in the Humanities Department at Florida Institute of Technology. In 1997, he became the Department Head and served until 2007 when he moved to the English Department at the University of Minnesota. He is Presidential Professor in the President’s Interdisciplinary Initiative on Arts and Humanities and teaches in the departments of English and History, and in the Religious Studies Program. Dr. Matar’s research in the past two decades has focused on relations between early modern Britain, Western Europe, and the Islamic Mediterranean. He is author of numerous articles, chapters in books and encyclopedias, and the trilogy: Islam in Britain, 1558-1685 (Cambridge UP, 1998), Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (Columbia UP, 1999), and Britain and Barbary, 1589-1689 (UP of Florida, 2005). He wrote the introduction to Piracy, Slavery and Redemption (Columbia UP, 2001) and began a second trilogy on Arabs and Europeans in the early modern world: In the Lands of the Christians. (Routledge, 2003), Europe through Arab Eyes, 1578-1727 (Columbia UP, 2009). He is currently working on the third installment, "Arabs and Europeans, 1517-1798." With Professor Gerald MacLean, he published Britain and the Islamic World, 1558-1713 (Oxford UP, 2011). With Professor Judy Hayden, he edited a collection of essays on travel to the Holy Land in the early modern period (in press, Brill, 2012). His forthcoming publication is a study and an annotated edition of "Henry Stubbe and the Prophet Muhammad: The Originall & Progress of Mahometanism" (Columbia UP, 2012/13), He is completing work on "Names and Numbers: British Captives in North Africa, 1578-1727." In recognition of his "pioneering scholarship on the relationship between Islamic civilisation and early modern Europe," Dr. Matar was given the Building Bridges award at the University of Cambridge (28 March 2012).
