{"title":"Da Venezia al Cairo: Il viaggio di Zaccaria Pagani nel primo Cinquecento","authors":"Juraj Kittler","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2200629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2200629","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"145 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43862479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Insights from a travel journal: travel knowledge in the late sixteenth-century Mediterranean","authors":"Ana Struillou","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2192159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2192159","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the travel journal of Joan Seguí, a Menorcan merchant and slave redeemer apprehended by the Inquisition of Mallorca in 1582. Drawing from this overlooked journal, composed by its owner during his travels to Constantinople and preserved within Inquisition records, the article simultaneously explores what kind of knowledge was necessary for Seguí to travel and trade across the Mediterranean and the evolution of his expertise in travel across the years. Exploring the question of language acquisition and mercantile information, it analyses how Seguí built his expertise exploiting the practical knowledge circulating within merchant circles in Marseille and the Menorcan diaspora residing in the Ottoman capital. Finally, this article addresses the question of how Seguí’s writings and familiarity with Ottoman territories were reflected on by various actors: his family; the people of Menorca; the Inquisitors; and Seguí himself.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"71 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46671493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How al-Andalus wrapped itself in a silk cocoon: the ṭirāz between Umayyad economic policy and Mediterranean trade","authors":"Eneko Lopez-Marigorta","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2181525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2181525","url":null,"abstract":"Sericulture and the state supervision of textile production was a longstanding tradition in the Middle East during the pre-Islamic period. However, neither were known in the Iberian Peninsula. With the rise of Islam, the luxury fabrics produced by the state institution of ṭirāz became a prominent symbol of sovereignty, encouraging the Umayyads of al-Andalus (138 h./756–422 h./1031) to create their own ṭirāz workshop, which specialized in silk fabrics, after sericulture was introduced in Iberia under their rule. Little was known about this productive process, as existing studies have tended to focus exclusively on one of the multiple types of evidence available: Arabic, Latin and Hebrew textual sources; chemical, technical and decorative analysis of preserved textiles; and others. This paper uses all the evidence available to undertake a comprehensive study of the operation of the Umayyad ṭirāz workshop in al-Andalus. Beginning with the tributary and administrative factors that surrounded the institution, the process by which demand for silk in the Mediterranean markets gave private merchants the instruments to control the Andalusi textile sector is analysed. By the fifth h./eleventh century, al-Andalus had become the main supplier of silk goods in the Mediterranean.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"1 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43756413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Societies in transition in early Greece: an archaeological history","authors":"M. Santini","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2200630","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2200630","url":null,"abstract":"historical documents that not only corroborate, but often significantly complement, the information provided by Pagani. The most valuable among them may be the letters written by Trevisan’s son, Marcantonio, a future doge who accompanied his father during the mission. One of them offers fascinating insights into the lengthy and complicated trade agreement negotiations that took two-and-a-half months to conclude. In this letter, sent during a layover in Crete, Marcantonio Trevisan finally felt free to speak about the Egyptian sultan, describing him as an egomaniac, avaricious and choleric by nature, and all this endorsed by the fourth character trait that was his ignorance (è superbissimo, avarissimo, colerico et la quarta, che inchandisse ogni cosa, è ignorante). The volume also includes three colour illustrations. One is the illuminated frontispiece from the ducal commission of Trevisan’s embassy; the other two are from the sixteenth-century manuscript preserved in Paris that contains the only known surviving copy of Pagani’s account. Benedetti and Musacchio compare the two drawings taken from the manuscript to the famous 1590 volume De gli habiti antichi, et moderni di diverse parti del mondo, illustrated by Titian’s cousin Cesare Vecellio, and point out remarkable similarities between the figures of the Mamluk sultan and his courtiers in both volumes. The only thing the reader may find missing in this small masterpiece are the maps that would allow us to follow the movements of the embassy through geographic space, also capturing its progress in time. To top the superbly contextualized account that Benedetti and Musacchio offer in this volume, one would have to delve into the surviving unpublished Mamluk, Ottoman, or Persian primary sources in order to find the additional documents that can shed even more light on the embassy from the perspectives of other powers involved directly or indirectly in this mission.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"147 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43881554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"All the grand dukes’ men: an overview of the Persian information network of Medici Tuscany between 1600 and 1639","authors":"Davide Trentacoste","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2190573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2190573","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an overview of the Tuscan information network on Safavid Persia, paying particular attention to the first decades of the seventeenth century. Since Tuscany established diplomatic relations with Persia in an anti-Ottoman spirit, the issue of how the grand dukes were able to obtain information on Persia was also of primary importance. This was because important strategic and diplomatic decisions in the eastern Mediterranean could also depend on the situation in Persia, particularly the military one. Through the analysis of largely unpublished documentation, this article aims to clarify, at least in part, the functioning of the information network concerning Persia, as part of the Tuscan Eastern network, especially focusing on the issue of informers. This will also provide some insights into the evolution of the Persian (and Levantine) information network of Medici Tuscany and on (almost) all the grand dukes’ men involved in it.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"93 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48888793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The story of one acquisition: Hebrew manuscripts from Venetian Candia","authors":"Ilona Steimann","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2176688","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2176688","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on a large group of Hebrew manuscripts that members of the Jewish community in Candia sold to an anonymous Christian in 1541–1543. Not only was selling Jewish books to Christians on such a large scale unusual in the Jewish context, but also many aspects of the acquisition remain unknown. Largely based on the owners’ entries and purchase notes found in the acquired manuscripts and other documentary sources, this study examines the circumstances of the acquisition and its details from both Jewish and Christian perspectives and scrutinizes how each of the parties involved approached the acquisition.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"25 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46843821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"War and religion: Europe and the Mediterranean from the first through the twenty-first centuries","authors":"B. Catlos","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2200530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2200530","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"143 - 144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47188616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Wolf King: Ibn Mardanīsh and the construction of power in al-Andalus","authors":"M. Ballan","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2200504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2200504","url":null,"abstract":"and culture across the northern and southern shore, in some cases determining the postcolonial destiny of entire communities: think of the Jews of Algeria and their resettlement in France in the early 1960s, after the Algerian War. That said, this collection opens important research paths, thanks to a careful blending of more theoretical contributions with others that instead take their cue from specific case studies and on a close reading of archival sources. Jews and the Mediterranean ultimately helps us reflect in original ways on the relation between Mediterranean history, its most renowned contributors – from Braudel to Abulafia – and the field of Jewish history. By doing so, it underlines the importance of rethinking Jewish history through categories that do not, or at least not exclusively, refer to imperial or national boundaries, but are centred around a Mediterranean continent – as the French writer Gabriel Audisio wrote in 1935 – which includes the sea, its coasts, and the internal areas interconnected to it, whose investigation appear nowadays more relevant than ever.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"135 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47630642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Expressly Orient? Britain’s railway-making in pre-colonial Egypt","authors":"Ben Zarhi","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2177816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2177816","url":null,"abstract":"Constructed in the 1850s with heavy British involvement, the Egyptian railway was the first to be built in a non-European Mediterranean territory. Britain – which neither financed nor owned this railway – nonetheless came to view it as a British possession. Originally envisioned as a highway for connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and India, the railway became a means unto itself in Britain’s drive for a foothold in Egypt. Taking place in a period of both expanding British influence in the Mediterranean and technological innovation, this article centres on the largely overlooked interconnectivity between the railway and Britain’s march to dominance in Egypt. To secure a railway, Britain systematically undermined Ottoman sovereignty in semi-independent Egypt. Britain’s efforts ranged from gunboat diplomacy to combating Ottoman legal reform intended to limit capital punishment, which Britain saw as a prerequisite to safeguarding its interests in Egypt. Moreover, Britain de facto supported the railway’s construction through mass Egyptian forced labour. Once in operation, the railway became a social site that produced de facto colonial racial hierarchies. Combined, the article shows how, decades before the 1882 British occupation of Egypt, the railway project irrevocably contributed to Britain’s gradual colonization of Egypt.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"113 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44942482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Habsburg Mediterranean 1500–1800","authors":"Caleb Karges","doi":"10.1080/09518967.2023.2200515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2023.2200515","url":null,"abstract":"in a second edition or paperback of this title. Despite these minor quibbles, The Wolf King is an original piece of scholarship that is thoroughly researched and beautifully written. It will be useful for historians and art historians, medievalists, and Islamicists alike, seeking to think critically about the articulation of kingship in the Islamic world, the historiographical legacies of alAndalus, and the manner in which borderland dynamics and political legitimation were deeply intertwined in medieval Iberia. The Wolf King is an important work of interdisciplinary and comparative history that employs an array of textual, visual, and material evidence to reincorporate al-Andalus into the broader world of the medieval Mediterranean. There are very few studies that are capable of weaving together various threads and histories into such a rich tapestry with such erudition.","PeriodicalId":18431,"journal":{"name":"Mediterranean Historical Review","volume":"38 1","pages":"140 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48539452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}