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Sava Paşa, Savvas Pacha, Ioannis or Yoannis Savvas Date of Birth: 1832 Place of Birth: Ioannina (Yanya in Turkish) Date of Death: 1904 Place of Death: Paris BiographySava Pasha was a Greek Orthodox Christian who was particularly known for his work in the field of Islamic law. He died an Ottoman statesman of Greek origin. He was born in 1832 in the city of Ioannina, in the north-west of present-day Greece and, after completing his elementary education, he studied at the Mekteb-i Tibbiye (Medical School) in Istanbul. He ser…

Date of Birth: 1788 Place of Birth: Dirʿiyya Date of Death: 1829 Place of Death: Bahrain BiographyʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Shaykh Ḥamad ibn Nāṣir Ᾱl Muʿammar was born approximately four (lunar) years before the death of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792), the eponym of the Wahhābī movement. His mother was probably one of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s daughters. Among his teachers was ʿAbdullāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the then Grand Mufti of Najd. Ᾱl Muʿammar was appointed as a judge in Dirʿiyya during the reign …

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: BiographyThe 19th century saw the publication of four noteworthy editions of the Qur’an in English. These were by R.A. Davenport (c. 1777-1852), J.M. Rodwell (1808-1900), E.H. Palmer (1840-82) and E.M. Wherry (1843-1927). Richard Alfred Davenport was born in Lambeth, south London, around 1777. He wrote a wide variety of works, including in 1822  The life of Ali Pasha of Tepeleni, Vizier of Epirus, surnamed Aslan or the Lion, a biography of Ali Pasha of Ioannina (d. 1822), a notorious Ottoman ruler who attracted…

Nawfal ibn Niʿmat Allāh ibn Jurjus Nawfal al-Ṭarabulusī; Nawfal Nawfal Date of Birth: 1812 Place of Birth: Tripoli, Lebanon Date of Death: 9 August 1887 Place of Death: Tripoli, Lebanon BiographyNawfal ibn Niʿmat Allāh al-Ṭarabulusī, also known as Nawfal Nawfal (or in antiquated transliteration, as Nofel Effendi Nofel) was a Syrian Christian translator and historian. He was born in Tripoli (Lebanon) in 1812, although soon afterwards his family moved to Egypt, where his father served in the government of Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha (…

Attilio Giovanni Battista Belzoni Date of Birth: 5 November 1778 Place of Birth: Padua Date of Death: 3 December 1823 Place of Death: Gwato, now Ughoton, Nigeria BiographyThe Paduan Giovanni Battista (Attilio) Belzoni is a particularly unusual, even eccentric example of the traveller. Of humble extraction, he fled his home at the age of 13 and settled in Rome, where he studied hydraulics and archaeology. In the wake of the Napoleonic campaigns in Italy, he emigrated to Paris and then London, where he earned his living by …

Zayn al-ʿAbidīn, Zayn al-Dīn ibn Ibrahīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr Date of Birth: 1520 Place of Birth: Egypt Date of Death: 1563 Place of Death: Cairo Biography Ibn Nujaym was born in Egypt during the early period of Ottoman rule. Biographical references do not give detailed accounts to his early life and upbringing, his family or his father’s profession. After his elementary religious education, he probably joined the circles of well-known religious Ḥanafī scholars, such as Amīn al-Dīn ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿĀl al-Ḥanafī (d. 1560), and gained his ijāza at a young age.…

‘Fatwas of Minkarizâde’ Şeyhülislam Minkarizâde Yahya Efendi Date: 1662-74 Original Language: Ottoman Turkish Description Fetâvâ-yı  Minkarizâde is one of the major Ottoman Turkish fatwa collections, composed by Minkarizâde Yahya Efendi during his tenure as şeyhülislam between 1662 and 1674. Judging by the large number of extant manuscripts in various libraries (none of them has been published), we can safely assume that it was one of the more widely used fatwa collections in the empire. The styles adopted by the copyists have …

Muṣṭafā ibn ʿAbdullāh, known as Kâtip Çelebi or Ḥājjī Khalīfa Date of Birth: 1609 Place of Birth: Istanbul Date of Death: 1657 Place of Death: Istanbul Biography Kâtip Çelebi, arguably the most important Ottoman thinker of the 17th century, was the son of a military officer and bureaucrat in the imperial chancery in Istanbul, and was himself apprenticed in the fiscal administration. Despite his achievements as an author and public intellectual, he never rose above the middle rank, as is reflected in his nicknames kâtip, meaning scribe, and  halîfe, meaning assistant clerk. As a yo…

Muḥammad ʿAyyād ibn Saʿd ibn Sulaymān ʿAyyād al-Shafiʿī l-Marḥūmī l-Ṭanṭāwī Date of Birth: 1810 Place of Birth: Nijrīd, Ṭanṭa, al-Gharbiyya, Egypt Date of Death: 29 October 1861 Place of Death: St Petersburg BiographyAlthough he never achieved the reputation of contemporaries such as Rifāʿa l-Ṭahṭāwī (1801-73), Fāris al-Shidyāq (1804-87) and Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (1766-1835), like them Shaykh ʿAyyād al-Ṭanṭāwī was a pioneering reformist Azharī scholar who dedicated his life to reviving the Muslim and Arab heritage. He was born …

Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī l-Ḥusaynī l-Qāsimī l-Shāfiʿī Date of Birth: 14 October 1801 Place of Birth: Ṭahṭā, Upper Egypt Date of Death: 27 May 1873 Place of Death: Cairo BiographyRifāʿa al-Ṭahṭāwī was born in Ṭahṭā, in Upper Egypt, to a well-respected family of ʿulamāʾ, many of whom were educated and taught at al-Azhar. His father, al-Sayyid Badawī Rāfiʿ, was a tax-farm administrator. In 1813, economic hardship caused by the abolition of the tax-farm system, drove the family out of their native town and into a wandering existence, which w…

Risāla fī l-kanāʾis al-miṣriyya‘A treatise on the Egyptian churches’ Zayn al-ʿAbidīn, Zayn al-Dīn ibn Ibrahīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr Date: 1559/60 Original Language: Arabic Description This treatise is the twelfth in Ibn Nujaym’s compilation,  Al-rasāʾ il  al-zayniyya  fi madhhab al-Ḥanafiyya, which contains 40 short chapters and fatwas collected by Ibn Nujaym’s son Aḥmad one month after his father’s death. Ibn Nujaym wrote most of these chapters at the request of the head judge in Cairo. This treatise is very short, no more than four folios in some manus…

Riḥlat al-Shaykh al-Ṭanṭāwī ilā l-bilād al-Rūsiyā‘The gift to the clever on reports of Russian lands’ Muḥammad ʿAyyād ibn Saʿd ibn Sulaymān ʿAyyād al-Shafiʿī l-Marḥūmī l-Ṭanṭāwī Date: January 1850 Original Language: Arabic DescriptionThe original manuscript of  Tuḥfat al-adhkiyāʾ bi-akhbār bilād al-Rūsiyā (‘The gift of the clever on reports of Russian lands’) is 194 pages long. The printed edition that is used for this entry is 179 pages long. The book comprises four parts, an introduction and three chapters. The introduction occupies a large part of the…

‘Translation of Al-milal wa-l-niḥal’ Nuh ibn Mustafa Date: Mid-17th century; between 1630 and 1660 Original Language: Ottoman Turkish Description Nuh ibn Mustafa reports that he translated al-Shahrastānī’s (d. 1153)  Kitāb al-milal wa-l-niḥal (‘Book of religions and sects’) into Ottoman Turkish on the recommendation of his teacher, whom he calls Yusuf Efendi Hazretleri, an important scholar in Egypt. He explicitly states that he took the initiative to change some sections of the original, sometimes by providing additional inf…

Mikhāʾīl ibn ʿAbd al-Sayyid ibn Shaḥāta ibn Abī l-Bahāʾ ibn Hawāsh Date of Birth: Uncertain; probably mid-19th century Place of Birth: Ṣanbū, Upper Egypt, or Cairo Date of Death: 1914 Place of Death: Cairo BiographyMikhāʾīl ʿAbd al-Sayyid was a disciple of Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801-73), the eminent Egyptian writer, teacher, translator, Egyptologist and intellectual, who was one of the first Egyptian scholars to write about Western cultures in an attempt to bring about reconciliation and understanding between Muslim and Chris…

'Journey' Giorgi Avalishvili Date: 6 July 1819-17 July 1820 Original Language: Georgian Description Mgzavroba (‘Journey’, in full,  Mgzavroba T‘bilisit‘ Ierusalimisadmi Saberżnet‘sa Zeda da Ukunkʻcʻevai Ierusalimitʻ Tʻbilisisadmive Kipriis Čalakisa, Mcʻirisa Aziisa da Anatoliisa Żlit, ‘Journey from Tbilisi to Jerusalem through Greece and back from Jerusalem to Tbilisi through the island of Cyprus, Asia Minor and Anatolia’) is an account of Georgi Avalishvili’s journey through countries of the eastern Mediterranean. In the For…

‘Important notes explaining the requirement on client people for a renunciation [when converting] to Islam’ Nuh ibn Mustafa Date: Mid-17th century; between 1630 and 1660 Original Language: Arabic Description This treatise, which covers folios 80-93 in the undated MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library – Hacı Beşir Ağa 652, addresses a debate on whether it is sufficient for a Christian converting to Islam to recite the  shahāda, ‘the testimony of faith’ (‘I testify that there is no god but God and I testify that Muḥammad is the messenger of God’) or whether the con…

His Majesties Lepento or, Heroricall Song being part of his Poeticall exercises at vacant hours- James I Date: 1591 Original Language: English Description The Lepanto of James Sixt, King of Scotland is a short epic poem by James when he was still king of Scotland, commemorating the defeat of the Ottoman navy in 1571 by a coalition of Catholic states known as the Holy League, led by Don John of Austria (1547-78). This was the only Ottoman set-back during the 16th century and many Europeans saw it as proof that the Ottomans could be defeated, and even as indicating their demise and imminent end. Wr…

The following overview looks at print culture as a site of encounter between Muslim and Christian communities. It traces the role of printing as a factor in the larger processes of reform, modernisation and transformation that shaped Ottoman history throughout the 19th century. Discussing trends, shifts and developments from a chronological perspective and by means of selected examples, it considers the impact of print culture on intercommunal relations in the late-Ottoman period. It emerges from this discussion that the introduction of print culture had complex, u…

The term ‘the long 19th century’ is used to describe the years between 1789 and 1918, a period that started with the French Revolution and ended with the First World War. In between, these years witnessed in Europe the industrial revolution, the expansion of colonial power and the spread of Christian missions, and in the Islamic world the complete reshaping of empires. In this introductory chapter, we shall try to sketch a few of the most important political, religious, social and institutional changes that affected the Ottoman Empire in particular. Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in th…

Patmut‘iwn‘Dawit‘ Bēk or the history of the Lap‘anc‘ians’ Łukas Sebastac‘i Date: Mid-1730s Original Language: Armenian Description Dawit‘ Bēk kam patmut‘iwn Łap‘anc‘woc‘ (‘Dawit‘ Bēk or the history of the Lap‘anc‘ians’) is based on personal accounts by Step‘anos Shahumean and Tēr Awetis, who were present with Dawit‘ Bēk during the course of the conflict. It was composed in the mid 1730s, a few years after the events it relates. The autograph manuscript (V620) is held by the Armenian Catholic Mkhitarist Library, San…

‘The military status of the Ottoman Empire’ Luigi Ferdinando Marsili Date: 1732 Original Language: Italian and French DescriptionThis work, published posthumously in the Netherlands with facing Italian and French texts and beautiful illustrations, is, according to the contract that Marsili signed with the publishers in 1728, the fruit of his visit to Istanbul and his personal contacts there, and also of his knowledge of the Ottoman Empire, which he had developed during the wars at the end of the 1600s. The origi…

‘The extraction of pure gold in the abridgement of Paris, or The precious divan in a sitting room in Paris’ Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī l-Ḥusaynī l-Qāsimī l-Shāfiʿī Date: 1834 Original Language: Arabic DescriptionThe first edition of this work was printed in Būlāq in 1250 AH (1834). It is 210 pages long. The text was revised by al-Ṭahṭāwī’s mentor, the Azharī shaykh Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, who also wrote a prefatory encomium ( taqrīẓ). The front matter, table of contents and preface have the now usual title of  Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ Bārīz (‘The extraction of pure gold in the abridgement…

‘The journey of Fatḥallāh, son of Anṭūn al-Ṣāyigh of Aleppo’ Fatḥ Allāh walad Anṭūn al-Ṣāyigh al-Lātīnī Date: About 1832 Original Language: Arabic DescriptionThe book known as The journey of Fatḥallāh  Riḥlat Fatḥ Allāh walad Anṭūn al-Ṣāyigh al-Ḥalabī ilā Bādiyat al-Shām wa-ṣaḥārā l-ʿIrāq wa-l-ʿAjam wa-l-Jazīra al-ʿArabiyya ‘The journey of Fatḥ Allāh walad Anṭūn al-Ṣāyigh al-Ḥalabī through Syria and the deserts of Iraq, Persia and the Arab Peninsula’) is based on an untitled and undated Arabic manuscript of a travelogue ( riḥla) that is 129…

Cronica‘Chronicle’ Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos Date: 1554 Original Language: Hungarian Description Sebestyén Tinódi was the earliest and most prolific Hungarian poet-performer of the 16th century, with 22 narrative songs and melodies extant in print form. He recorded the clashes involving Ottoman, Hungarian and Habsburg interests from 1540 to 1556, during the tripartite division of Hungary. The songs belong to the widespread European genre of event poetry that combines a relatively factual account of a recent, significan…

Introduction Following the expansionist campaigns of the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha (r. 1805-48), south into regions that subsequently became known as the Sudan, and particularly following the (nominal) annexation around 1870 of a province further south that was named Equatoria by Sir Samuel Baker, operating under the instructions of Ismāʿīl Pasha (r. 1863-79), huge African territories were incorporated into the orbit of European colonial interest in Africa. These included a s…

Şeyhülislam Minkarizâde Yahya Efendi Date of Birth: 1609 Place of Birth: Istanbul Date of Death: 1678 Place of Death: Istanbul Biography Of the 174 Ottoman  şeyhülislams, Minkarizâde Yahya was one of the longest serving and most influential in the Ottoman religious and political milieu. He was born into a scholarly family in Istanbul in 1609 and received an excellent education, studying with famous mystics and scholars such as the Sufi Aziz Mahmud Hüdâyî (d. 1628) and Şeyhülislam Hocazâde Esad Efendi (d. 1625). An erudi…

Risāla fī ḥukm ʿĪsā ʿalayhi al-salām huna nuzūlih‘A treatise on the verdict about the descent of Jesus (peace be upon him)' Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn al-Ṣāliḥī l-Dimashqī l-Ḥanafī Date: Before 1536 Original Language: Arabic Description Like many other works by Ibn Ṭūlūn, this treatise is not known to be extant. Its title is listed by Ismāʿīl Pasha al-Baghdādī together with Ibn Ṭūlūn's other 40 works of Hadith, while Brockelmann mentions it as  Irshād dhawi l-ʿirfān li-nuzūl ʿIsā ʿalayhi al-salām. Strangely enough, this title is not mentioned in Ib…

Mirʾâtü’l-memâlik‘Mirror of countries’Mirror of kingdoms;, Le Miroir des pays Sîdî Ali ibn Hüseyin; Sidi Ali Reis; Seyyidî ʿAlī Reʾīs Date: May-June 1561 Original Language: Ottoman Turkish Description In the earliest 1561 manuscript, Mirʾâtü’l-memâlik consists of 83 folios (99 pages in the 1895 Ottoman print edition, and 100 pages in the 1999 Turkish edition by M. Kiremit). It describes the travails of its author, the Ottoman admiral Seydi Ali Reis, between 1554 and 1557, as he departs Basra with an Ottoman fleet, encounters s…

Al-futūḥāt al-‘Uthmāniyya li-l-aqṭār al-Yamāniyya ‘Yemeni lightning, on the Ottoman conquest’‘Lightning over Yemen. A history of the Ottoman campaign 1569-71’ Quṭb al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Nahrawālī al-Makkī Date: 1573 Original Language: Arabic Description Al-barq al-Yamānī fī l-fatḥ al-ʿUthmānī is a historiographical work written by Quṭb al-Dīn at the request of Koca Sinān Pasha (Albanian: Sinan Pasha Topoyani; c. 1520-96), the Ottoman conqueror of Yemen ( Fātiḥ-i Yaman), to describe the victorious expansion of the sultan’s rule in southern Arabia and …

Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī l-Ṭayyibī l-Shāfiʿī l-Dimashqī Date of Birth: 1830 Place of Birth: Damascus Date of Death: 1899 Place of Death: Hauran BiographyMuḥammad al-Ṭayyibī was a scholar who had interest in mathematics and astronomy, as well as in the religious sciences. He lost his father at an early age, and was brought up by his grandfather, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṭayyibī (d. 1848), an eminent scholar who taught him the rudiments of the sciences. In 1847, he travelled with his grandfather to Istanbul fo…

Bir papas îmâna gelüb bunı te’lîf eylemişdür;, Mükâşefe-i Şeyh Abdurrahman;, Kitâb-ı mükâşefe;, Bahrü’l-mükâşefe‘The priest’s book’‘A priest came to faith and penned this’; ‘Vision of Şeyh Abdurrahman’; ‘The book of unveiling’; ‘The ocean of unveiling’ Derviş Mehmed Date: Possibly 1597-8 Original Language: Ottoman Turkish Description This vision narrative, which foretells the future of the Ottoman dynasty and the events of the end time, exists in seven manuscripts with various titles, and is most commonly known as  Papasnâme (‘The priest’s book’).  It takes up 30 folio…

Date of Birth: March 1840 Place of Birth: Tunisia Date of Death: 18 December 1889 Place of Death: Helwan, Egypt BiographyBorn into a family of great scholarly and political prestige, Muḥammad Bayram (his full name was Muḥammad ibn Muṣṭafā ibn Muḥammad al-Thālith ibn Muḥammad al-Thānī ibn Muḥammad al-Awwal ibn Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn ibn Bayram) followed in the footsteps of his forebears, although he had stronger political inclinations than they. His grandfather held the highest scholarly position i…

Muḥammad Ṭāhir ᶜAbd al-Wahhāb Salīm al-Tannīr Date of Birth: Unknown; late 19th century Place of Birth: Beirut Date of Death: 1933 Place of Death: Dummar, Syria BiographyMuḥammad Ṭāhir al-Tannīr was born in Beirut; the exact date is unknown. He received his secondary education at the American Protestant College in Beirut, and then travelled to Switzerland, where he studied at university level for one year, afterwards returning to ʿAyn ʿAnnūb near Beirut, where he had been living earlier.  In the course of his career, al-Tannīr owned and a primary school in Lebanon…

‘History of the Arabs’ Louis-Pierre-Eugène Sédillot Date: 1854 Original Language: French Description Histoire des Arabes was published as a volume in Histoire universelle, a series edited by Victor Duruy (1811-94) for the publisher Louis Hachette. It is 510 pages long, with three maps and five engravings, and was aimed at a general audience seeking a solid base of knowledge: its copious footnotes, enriched by a series of appendices and an index, respond to this demand for scientifically accurate knowledge. It is composed of seven books, preceded by a Foreword. The first book, Géographi…

- Eusèbe Desalles Date: 1821-45 Original Language: French DescriptionThe issue of relations between Christians and Muslims appears many times in De Salle’s works. Irner, the novel in two volumes that he published in 1821, was a work of the Romantic movement, including quotations from Sir Walter Scott, Milton, Schiller, Goethe, Rousseau, de Staël and Chateaubriand, alongside the Bible at the heads of its 15 chapters. From its very first pages, Islam is presented in a favourable light: The Saracens have rights to our recognition; they alone prevented the torch of science f…

Kemalpaşazâde, Şemseddin Ahmed ibn Süleyman ibn Kemal Paşa Date of Birth: May 1469 Place of Birth: Edirne, Tokat, Amasya or Dimetoka Date of Death: April 1534 Place of Death: Istanbul Biography Ibn Kemal, or Kemalpaşazâde, was an eminent Ottoman historian, jurist, theologian, linguist and poet, who also served as Şeyhülislam from 1526 until 1534. He owes his name to his grandfather Kemal Paşa, an emir (military official) at the time of Mehmed II, who later also served as lala (tutor) to Şehzâde Bayezid II. Ibn Kemal’s father, Süleyman Çelebi, also held military offices i…

Dhabāʾiḥ Ahl al-Kitāb‘Prohibition on the consumption of meat slaughtered by the People of the Book’ Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥārithī l-ʿĀmilī; Shaykh Bahāʾī Date: 1611 Original Language: Arabic Description Shah ʿAbbās I commissioned Bahāʾ al-Dīn to write this treatise. He intended to send it to the Ottoman ruler, Sultan Aḥmad (r. 1603-17), in 1611 with Khiḍr ibn Ḥusayn Māridīnī Efendi (d. 1613), an Ottoman envoy to the Safavid court, who had been instructed by the Grand Vizier Nasûh Pasha to conclude a peace tr…

‘Journey in the Levant in 1817 and 1818’ Louis-Nicolas-Philippe Auguste de Forbin Date: 1819 Original Language: French DescriptionIn this work, Forbin offers an authentic account of his travels in the Ottoman Empire through Greece, Palestine and Egypt. They took place over the space of a year, and Forbin recounts his impressions of different customs and religions. The work combines 122 pages of text with 78 plates of aquatint illustrations. His drawings were engraved or lithographed by about 20 famous artists. The text itself contains approximately ten passages that refer t…

- Islam and Muslims in the works of Christian Arab historians of the 18th and early 19th centuries Date: 18th and early 19th centuries Original Language: Arabic DescriptionChristians in the early modern Middle East under Ottoman rule have been variously described by scholars as a persecuted minority, active commercial agents, ‘the people of the dhimma’, or protégés of foreign powers. From the time of the Ottoman conquest of Syria, Palestine and Egypt in 1516-17, Christians in Arab lands managed to maintain the rich spiritual and intellectual life t…

Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn Yūsuf ibn Ṣiyām al-Damanhūrī Date of Birth: Possibly 1690 Place of Birth: Damanhur Date of Death: 1778 Place of Death: Cairo BiographyShaykh Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn Yūsuf ibn Ṣiyām al-Damanhūrī is famous primarily for having been the grand shaykh of al-Azhar and an encyclopaedic scholar of the 18th century. He was born in Damanhūr (the present-day capital of al-Buḥayra province in the northwest Nile Delta in Egypt), where he received his primary education and memorised the Qur’an. Orphaned and poor, al-Damanhūrī m…

‘Memoir of the captive of Malta’ Macuncuzâde Mustafa Efendi Date: 1597-9 Original Language: Ottoman Turkish Description Macuncuzâde’s treatise contains his memoirs and his poetry. While the majority of the poems are in Ottoman Turkish, some are partially or completely in Persian or Arabic (İz, ‘Macuncuzade Mustafa’nın’, pp. 74-5; all the references that follow are to this edition unless otherwise stated). Some of the poems are in the form of supplications and prayers to God for Macuncuzâde’s freedom (pp. 79-80,…

Ibrāhīm Faṣīḥ al-Dīn ibn Ṣibghat Allāh bin Muḥammad As'ad al-Ḥaydarī Date of Birth: 1820 Place of Birth: Baghdad Date of Death: 1882 Place of Death: Baghdad BiographyAl-Sayyid Ibrāhīm Faṣīḥ al-Dīn ibn Ṣibghat Allāh bin Muḥammad Asʿad al-Ḥaydarī was born in Baghdad in 1820 into a family of scholars esteemed for their learning. He was also known as Ḥaydarīzāda because his family came from the Kurdish Ḥaydar family line. He was called Faṣīḥ al-Dīn and Faṣīḥ Efendī by his grandfather Asʿad, who raised him from early c…

‘The essence of giving preference to the true religion’ Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī l-Ṭayyibī l-Shāfiʿī l-Dimashqī Date: 3 July 1861 Original Language: Arabic Description Khulāṣat al-tarjīḥ is a 50-page abridgement of  Al-baḥth al-ṣarīḥ fī ayyimā dīn huwā l-ṣaḥīḥ (‘The frank research into which is the true religion’), which was written by a convert to Islam from Christianity who lived in Syria between 1591 and 1687 and went by the name of Shaykh Ziyāda ibn Yaḥyā l-Rāsī. He seems to have had specialised knowledge of the contents and languages of the Bible. Along with  Al-…

- The massacre in Damascus, July 1860 Date: 1860 onwards Original Language: Arabic DescriptionThe massacre in Damascus in July 1860 was an event without equal, not only in the city’s urban history but in the history of the wider region and the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. Yet it was not unanticipated: a variety of processes that had been unfolding over years and also more recent events led to the violent persecutions against the Christian population in the city. One of the factors that prepared the ground for th…

Abdülazîz Çâvîş, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Šāwīš, Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Shāwīsh Date of Birth: 1876 Place of Birth: Alexandria, Egypt Date of Death: 25 January 1929 Place of Death: Cairo BiographyʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Jāwīsh, a religious scholar from Egypt, was one of the most important and influential representatives of the Egyptian national movement in Europe. He was also a proponent of the pan-Islamic movement as well as pan-Ottomanism. A gifted speaker and writer, Jāwīsh was born in 1876 in Alexandria to a Tunisian father and a Turkish mot…

- Nineteenth-century North American Muslim slave narratives Date: Before 1873 Original Language: English and other languages DescriptionFrom the late 18th century to the late 19th century the sphere of Muslim influence in sub-Saharan Africa was expanded through many jihād wars. As a consequence, Muslim states often entered into conflicts with major non-Muslim states, such as Oyo and Dahomey. These conflicts resulted in the enslavement of many Muslims in Africa, leading to the sale of Muslims to European and American merchants mainly…

Christian-Muslim Relations in Iran (1800-1914)Reza PourjavadyAs part of the Sasanid Empire, the land of Iran was invaded by the Arabs between 637 and 651. Ever since then, Iran has been under Muslim rule, except for a period of about 35 years in the second half of the 13th century, when the Buddhist Mongols ruled it. With the emergence of the Safavid Empire in 1501, the land was reunited and it re-asserted its Iranian identity. Several policies of the Safavids, including their proclamation of Twelver Shīʿism as the state religion, made its c…

Szigeti veszedelem‘The fall of Sziget’ Nikola Zrinski. Zrini. Serini Date: Between 1645 and 1648 Original Language: Hungarian Description Obsidio Szigetiana (commonly referred to as  Szigeti veszedelem in Hungarian) was published in 1651 in the author’s book of poetry, Adriai tengernek Syreneia Groff Zrini Miklos (‘The siren of the Adriatic Sea, Count Miklós Zrínyi’). Inserted among some love poems, the epic was written, according to the lyrical fiction about the volume, in order to temper the author’s amorous passion with a martial su…

Sīrat al-Ḥaymī;, Ṭaraf al-akhbār min natāʾij al-asfār;, Ḥadīqat al-naẓar wa-bahjat al-fikar fī ʿajāʾib al-safar;, Taʾrīkh al-Ḥabasha;, Sīrat al-qāḍī Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan fī dukhūlih arḍ al-Ḥabasha‘A Yemenite embassy to Ethiopia’ Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥaymī Date: Approximately 1650 Original Language: Arabic Description Sīrat al-Ḥabasha was written by al-Ḥaymī in around 1650 in Kawkābān, allegedly at the request of Imam al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh Ismāʿīl (d. 1668). The author presents his text as a travelogue narrating his…

- Gulian Lansing Date: 1862 Original Language: English DescriptionWhile published under his name,  Religious toleration (in full,  Religious toleration in Egypt. Official correspondence relating to the indemnity obtained for the maltreatment of Faris-el-Hakim, an agent of the American missionaries in Egypt) was not, in fact, written by Lansing. Rather, it is a collection of official documents that were bundled together as a ‘Message from the President of the United States’, Abraham Lincoln, to the 37th US Congress. They pertain to the case of an Egyptian Christian wh…

‘Dialogue between an Ottoman and a Christian’ Suâl-i Osmânî ve cevâb-ı Nasrânî Date: 1718 [?] Original Language: Ottoman Turkish DescriptionCopies of this short text exist in several manuscripts and in modern editions. It covers 18 fols in MS Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi – Hazine 1634, 9, which was copied by Mehmed Veliyüddin in 1719-20. In the modern editions used here, Z. Yılmazer (2000) and F.R. Unat (1941), the text covers pp. 586-606 and pp. 107-21, respectively. A copy of  Suâl-i Osmânî ve cevâb-ı Nasrânî dated 1719-20 (MS Istanbul, Topkapı Sarayı Kütüphanesi – …

'History of Syria' Jirjī Yannī Date: 1881 Original Language: Arabic DescriptionYannī’s attitude towards Islam is best expressed in his Tārīkh Sūriyā (‘History of Syria’), which appeared in Beirut in 1881. It traces the history of Syria from ancient to modern times, based mainly on Western accounts with support from Arabic sources. That Yannī called the region Sūriyā, instead of the  prevailing bilād al-Shām, is significant. Sūriyā was the term used by a number of  Nahḍa figures to designate the homeland for which they thought the Syrians should develop feelings of id…

- Richard Hakluyt Date: 1589 Original Language: English Description The first edition of Richard Hakluyt’s  Principall navigations (to give its full title,  The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the Engllish Nation Made by Sea or Over Land, to the Most Remote and Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any Time within the Compasse of these 1500. Yeeres: deuided into three seuerall parts, according to the positions of the regions whereunto they were directed ... Whereunto is added the last most renowned English nauigation, round about the whole globe of the earth) wa…

- Yūḥannā Wurtabāt Date: 1860 Original Language: English DescriptionWhen working in the 1850s as a ‘minister of the gospel’ in Ḥaṣbayyā, ‘a town at the foot of Mount Hermon’ in present-day Lebanon, Wortabet’s ‘attention was naturally drawn to the critical study of the religions professed by his countrymen’, the results of which he wanted to share with ‘the English public’ as he felt ‘that he could largely add [...] new and important matter’ to ‘the information given on this subject in English publications’ and ‘correct many misapprehensions’ ( Religions of Syria, p. [v]). Furthermore…

- Reginald Bosworth Smith Date: 1874, 1889 Original Language: English DescriptionSmith's  Mohammed and Mohammedanism. Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in February and March, 1874 was first published in 1874. The book's four chapters had been presented as lectures to a small audience at Harrow, and then at the Royal Institution, London, in February and March of that year. An American edition appeared in 1875, and a second edition followed in 1876, with revisions informed by critical comments, ma…

Introduction This is a continuation of the essay entitled  Ottoman influences on European music in  CMR 10, which briefly examines the history and characteristics of Turkish music and focuses on the influence of the Ottomans on European music to the mid-18th century. This second part covers the period from the mid-18th to the early 20th century. During this time, there was a crescendo, followed by a decrescendo, in the frequency and intensity of Ottoman-related concepts being utilised by European composers, with a climax occurring in the works o…

This essay seeks to show that among English authors the perception of Palestine changed through the course of the 19th century. It began as a land known only to explorers, and ended, for some Protestants at least, as a nascent restored Israel within a biblical temporal framework. If the volume and range of the printed word can be considered a reliable indicator, the biblical Holy Land held genuine fascination for 19th-century Britons. Richard Burton, the British consul in Damascus 1869-71, referred to a condition he called humorously ‘Holy Land on the brain’ ( Unexplored Syria, London, …

Dyaryusz legacyjej do Turek‘Diary of the mission to Turkey by Wojciech Miastkowski [sic], chamberlain of Lvov’, ‘Diary of the mission to Turkey’ Wojciech Miaskowski Date: 1640-1 Original Language: Polish Description Miaskowski’s diary contains short daily entries of various lengths (from 2 or 3 lines to half a page or more), written by Miaskowski himself, or dictated to his secretary. Its full title is: Dyaryusz legacyjej do Turek Wojciecha Miastkowskiego [sic], podkomorzego lwowskiego, w którym się opisują instrukcyje od Króla mu i hetmana dane, droga od w…

‘The six journeys of John Baptiste Tavernier, baron of Aubonne, through Turkey into Persia, and the East-Indies’ Jean-Baptiste Tavernier Date: 1676 Original Language: French Description Published in Paris in October 1676 by Gervais Clouzier and Claude Barbin, with ‘privilège du roi’,  Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, écuyer, baron d’Aubonne, qu’il a fait en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes is the fruit of a tumultuous collaboration between the author and his editor, the playwright Samuel Chappuzeau (1625-1701). In his  Défense…  contre une Satire intitulée l’Esprit…

Introduction Muslims and Christians have a shared culture, which they have built together throughout history. Whether it is the wars they fought against one another, the inventions they took from one another or the translations of works from earlier civilisations they passed to one another, it is impossible to understand the progress either has made without understanding the other. For many centuries, the ‘others’ for Europeans were the Ottomans, whom they called Turks. At first, anything conside…

Is southern European Orientalism different from northern? This overview focuses on Iberia, France and Italy. Of these three countries, France was the imperial power that colonised the largest expanse of Muslim-majority territory, beginning with Algeria in 1830 and adding French West Africa (now part of Mali) in 1880 and Tunisia in 1881. It also occupied Morocco in 1912, ending its Protectorate there in 1956. Spain’s involvement in Morocco did not begin until 1900, when France and Spain recognised each …

The history of early modern European diplomacy is heavily dependent on studies focussed on the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. The treaties that were signed in Münster and Osnabrück have been portrayed as the foundations of a ‘European diplomatic culture’ based on international law and a new order established among Christian powers, that of proto-nation states. This order was reinforced by the regular practice of multilateral negotiations at congresses that followed the numerous wars fought during …

- Nineteenth-century British novelists on Islam Date: 19th century Original Language: English DescriptionThis entry discusses the works of eight 19th-century British novelists who spent some time living and working in Muslim environments.Orientalist literary works written in Britain in the 19th century rarely departed from the tropes that Europe and Christianity were superior, that the East was despotic and that Islam was a dangerous religion, although they could also romanticise the East as an exotic, alluring venue for adventure. H…

- Victor Hugo Date: 1829 Original Language: French DescriptionVictor Hugo’s  Les orientales was published in Paris in January 1829 in an edition that was illustrated by his friend, the painter Louis Boulanger. A second edition was published in February of the same year; it was less sumptuous and a brief addition to the preface took account of initial critical reactions. The collection consists of 41 poems of varying lengths (some comprise fewer than ten verses, others more than 300) and great diversity of …

This overview will attempt to identify the political, religious, literary and intellectual developments that influenced relations between Muslims and Christians in East, Western and Southern Africa during the period of colonialism before 1914.[1]The 19th century in sub-Saharan Africa was characterised mainly by colonisation, the end of slavery, the rise of nationalism and religious expansion. This introduction will be structured under these headings.  ColonisationIn the early 19th century, Southern and East Africa were often perceived by Europeans as a vast,…

The Ottoman Empire by Claire Norton The Ottoman Empire was a poly-ethnic, multi-faith, Islamic empire with substantial Christian and Jewish populations that stretched from central Europe east to Mesopotamia, west along the north African coast to Morocco, south to the Ḥijāz and Yemen and north of the Black Sea to the Crimea. Although the 16th century, especially the reign of Sultan Süleyman (r. 1520-66), has been conventionally interpreted by modern historians and Ottoman chroniclers as a golden age of Ottoman rule, the empire continued to thrive in the 17th century, expanding terr…

- Nineteenth-century correspondence between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Ottoman Empire Date: 19th century Original Language: Various languages DescriptionFrom the second half of the 18th century, the Dutch colonial government based in Java began to expand into the island of Sumatra. This advance concerned the Sultanate of Aceh, which governed the northern parts of Sumatra. By the middle of the 19th century, most of the island of Sumatra (including the Minangkabau region) had fallen under Dutch colonial rule. Consequently, Aceh sought to establish good …

- Five Victorian women travellers in the Ottoman world Date: 1840-90 Original Language: English DescriptionVarious social, political and economic changes occurred during the mid- to late 19th century, making it possible for more English people to travel to the Middle East than ever before. The declining power of the Ottoman Empire and increasing Western influence and presence in that part of the world, combined with a growing economy in England and advances in communication and transportation, particularly steamship trav…

Croatian anti-Turkish writings during the Renaissance- Croatian anti-Turkish writings during the Renaissance Date: 1448-1600 Original Language: Various Description Croatian literary reactions to the series of Ottoman attacks, invasions and conquests during 1450-1600 were twofold. On the one hand, authors rallied to influence European (primarily Italian and German) decision-making and public opinion by penning descriptions of Dalmatian, Croatian, and Hungarian struggles for survival, the sufferings of their people…

Introduction As Fabrizio De Donno reminds us in his recent book on Italian Orientalism,[1] in 1965 Francesco Gabrieli, Professor of Arabic at the Sapienza University of Rome, felt compelled to write an essay defending Italian Islamists active in the 19th and 20th centuries from the charge of supporting the colonial policies of the Kingdom of Italy through to the Fascist era.[2] Well before Edward Said in his  Orientalism of 1978, the Egyptian sociologist Anouar Abdel-Malek published a polemical essay in 1963 in which he maintained that European studies of t…