John Tolan | Université de Nantes (original) (raw)

Books by John Tolan

England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century, 2023

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historica... more In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied important roles in medieval English society. England’s Jews revisits this neglected chapter of English history—one whose remembrance is more important than ever today, as antisemitism and other forms of racism are on the rise.

Historian John Tolan tells the story of the thousands of Jews who lived in medieval England. Protected by the Crown and granted the exclusive right to loan money with interest, Jews financed building projects, provided loans to students, and bought and rented out housing. Historical texts show that they shared meals and beer, celebrated at weddings, and sometimes even ended up in bed with Christians.

Yet Church authorities feared the consequences of Jewish contact with Christians and tried to limit it, though to little avail. Royal protection also proved to be a double-edged sword: when revolts broke out against the unpopular king Henry III, some of the rebels, in debt to Jewish creditors, killed Jews and destroyed loan records. Vicious rumors circulated that Jews secretly plotted against Christians and crucified Christian children. All of these factors led Edward I to expel the Jews from England in 1290. Paradoxically, Tolan shows, thirteenth-century England was both the theatre of fruitful interreligious exchange and a crucible of European antisemitism.

Nouvelle histoire de l’islam, 2022

Q u'est-ce qu'être musulman au xxi e siècle ? Pour certains, l'essence de l'islam serait la chari... more Q u'est-ce qu'être musulman au xxi e siècle ? Pour certains, l'essence de l'islam serait la charia, loi qui dicte le comportement rituel et social des fidèles, révélée par Dieu au prophète et à la première communauté de fidèles. Pour d'autres, l'islam serait une spiritualité ouverte sur le monde, célébrant la diversité de l'humanité et la paix. De telles divergences ne sont pas nouvelles. Avec cet ouvrage, John Tolan raconte comment ce dernier-né des trois grands monothéismes s'est développé, non pas en autarcie mais en contact avec les traditions religieuses juives et chrétiennes, dans un mélange de cultures arabe, grecque, perse… Il analyse les fondements et les mutations de l'islam. Cette histoire longue nous montre que les divergences au sein d'un monde musulman tantôt ouvert, tantôt rigoriste, sont autant de défis posés à la possibilité d'une entente entre Orient et Occident.

In 1143 Robert of Ketton produced the first Latin translation of the Qur’an. This translation, ex... more In 1143 Robert of Ketton produced the first Latin translation of the Qur’an. This translation, extant in 24 manuscripts, was one of the main ways in which Latin European readers had access to the Muslim holy book. Yet it was not the only means of transmission of Quranic stories and concepts to the Latin world: there were other medieval translations into Latin of the Qur’an and of Christian polemical texts composed in Arabic which transmitted elements of the Qur’an (often in a polemical mode).

The essays in this volume examine the range of medieval Latin transmission of the Qur’an and reaction to the Qur’an by concentrating on the manuscript traditions of medieval Qur’an translations and anti-Islamic polemics in Latin. We see how the Arabic text was transmitted and studied in Medieval Europe. We examine the strategies of translators who struggled to find a proper vocabulary and syntax to render Quranic terms into Latin, at times showing miscomprehensions of the text or willful distortions for polemical purposes. These translations and interpretations by Latin authors working primarily in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Spain were the main sources of information about Islam for European scholars until well into the sixteenth century, when they were printed, reused and commented. This volume presents a key assessment of a crucial chapter in European understandings of Islam.

En la cultura europea, Mahoma ha sido denigrado como hereje, impostor e ídolo pagano. Pero estas ... more En la cultura europea, Mahoma ha sido denigrado como hereje, impostor e ídolo pagano. Pero estas no son las únicas imágenes del Profeta del Islam que han surgido a lo largo de la historia de Occidente. También ha sido retratado como reformador visionario, líder inspirador, hombre de estado y legislador. En Mahoma el Europeo, John Tolan ofrece una amplia historia de estas cambiantes, complejas y contradictorias visiones. Comenzando por las primeras llamadas a los fieles cristianos para que se unieran a las cruzadas contra los "sarracenos", traza una evolución de las concepciones occidentales sobre Mahoma durante la Reforma, la Ilustración y los siglos XIX y XX hasta nuestros días.

Princeton University Press, 2019

Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of Muhammad In... more Heretic and impostor or reformer and statesman? The contradictory Western visions of Muhammad

In European culture, Muhammad has been vilified as a heretic, an impostor, and a pagan idol. But these aren’t the only images of the Prophet of Islam that emerge from Western history. Commentators have also portrayed Muhammad as a visionary reformer and an inspirational leader, statesman, and lawgiver. In Faces of Muhammad, John Tolan provides a comprehensive history of these changing, complex, and contradictory visions. Starting from the earliest calls to the faithful to join the Crusades against the “Saracens,” he traces the evolution of Western conceptions of Muhammad through the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and up to the present day.

Faces of Muhammad reveals a lengthy tradition of positive portrayals of Muhammad that many will find surprising. To Reformation polemicists, the spread of Islam attested to the corruption of the established Church, and prompted them to depict Muhammad as a champion of reform. In revolutionary England, writers on both sides of the conflict drew parallels between Muhammad and Oliver Cromwell, asking whether the prophet was a rebel against legitimate authority or the bringer of a new and just order. Voltaire first saw Muhammad as an archetypal religious fanatic but later claimed him as an enemy of superstition. To Napoleon, he was simply a role model: a brilliant general, orator, and leader.

The book shows that Muhammad wears so many faces in the West because he has always acted as a mirror for its writers, their portrayals revealing more about their own concerns than the historical realities of the founder of Islam.

What is a religion? How do we discern the boundaries between religions, or religious communities?... more What is a religion? How do we discern the boundaries between religions, or religious communities? When does Judaism become Judaism, Christianity become Christianity, Islam become Islam? Scholars have increasingly called into question the standard narratives created by the various orthodoxies, narratives of steadfastness and consistency, of long and courageous maintenance of true doctrine and right practice over the centuries, in the face of opposition (and at times persecution) at the hands of infidels or heretics.

The 11 chapters in this book, Geneses: A Comparative Study of the Historiographies of the Rise of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism and Islam, written by an international group of specialists the languages, religions, laws and cultures of early Judaism, Christianity and Islam, tackle these questions through a comparative study of these narratives: their formation over time, and their use today. They explore three key aspects of the field: (1) the construction (and scholarly deconstruction) of the narratives of triumph (and defeat) of religions, (2) how legal imperatives are constructed from religious narratives and sacred texts, and (3) contemporary ramifications of these issues. In doing so, they tap into the significant body of research over the last 30 years, which has shown the fluidity and malleability of these religious traditions in relation to each other and to more traditional "pagan" and Zoroastrian religions and philosophical traditions.

This book represents an important contribution to, and a valuable resource for, the burgeoning field of comparative history of the Abrahamic religions.

Table of Contents
Introduction (John Tolan)

I. Narratives of Triumph and defeat

The Contours of Abrahamic Identity: A Zoroastrian Perspective (Yishai Kiel)
The Twilight of the Ancient Gods (Danuta Shanzer)
Simon the God: Imagining the Other in Second-Century Christianity (Duncan MacRae)
Contested Ground in Gaza: Hagiography and the Narrative of Triumphalist Christianity (Claudia Rapp)
Between Jerome and Augustine of Hippo: Some Intellectual Preoccupations of Late Antiquity (Mohamed-Arbi Nsiri)
II. Forging legal paradigms

What is ‘Islamic’ about Geonic Depictions of the Oral Torah? (Marc Herman)
Reevaluating the Role of the Epigones (tabiʿun) in the Formation of Islamic Ritual and Jurisprudence (Mohammed Hocine Benkheira)
Recording Debts in Sufyanid Fusṭāṭ: A Re-examination of the Procedures and Calendar in Use in the 1st/7th century (Naïm Vanthieghem)
Marriage and Sexual Ethics: Divergence and Change in Classical Islamic Legal Texts (Karen Moukheiber)
III. Contemporary Echoes

Teaching Early Islam: The Gap Between School and the Internet in British Schooling (Philip Wood)
The Shahada and the Creation of an Islamic Identity (Suleiman A. Mourad)

Mahomet l'européen, 2018

Mahomet fascine l’Europe depuis le Moyen Âge. Les caricatures et portraits polémiques se sont rép... more Mahomet fascine l’Europe depuis le Moyen Âge. Les caricatures et portraits polémiques se sont répandus dans les pages des manuscrits, le représentant tour à tour comme un charlatan, un hérésiarque, un personnage lubrique ou l’incarnation de l’Antéchrist. Un personnage était né : le prophète de l’islam vu par les Européens.
L’historien John Tolan en retrace ici le destin dans un récit passionnant.
Alors que ce sont, tout d’abord, les peurs de la Chrétienté qui se cristallisent dans les portraits de Mahomet, celui-ci deviendra pourtant au fil des siècles un objet de fascination, comme chez Goethe ou Lamartine. De même certains théologiens le tiendront pour un grand réformateur, et il sera admiré par Napoléon. Tantôt vilipendé, tantôt glorifié, Mahomet est un adversaire ou un allié toujours profitable, instrumentalisé par les Européens depuis des siècles dans leurs polémiques internes. Ainsi éclairé par une formidable érudition, il devient une figure incontournable pour comprendre comment l’Europe s’est construite. Un livre qui fera date.

Peut-on et doit-on enseigner les faits religieux à l’école ? À quelles conditions un savoir rigou... more Peut-on et doit-on enseigner les faits religieux à l’école ? À quelles conditions un savoir rigoureux et scientifique sur cette question peut-il être dispensé ? Au moment où, plus que jamais, le religieux est l’objet de multiples projections, qu’il est invoqué, voire instrumentalisé, par des acteurs du champ politique et souvent réduit à la violence qu’il génère, il est important que tous ceux qui ont pour mission de produire et de transmettre la connaissance afin de former les futurs citoyens puissent accéder à des outils de réflexion adaptés. Face à des phénomènes religieux, souvent considérés comme excessivement porteurs de charge émotionnelle, il est tentant, pour les autorités politiques comme pour les enseignants, d’éviter de les prendre en considération. Le parti pris de ce livre, fruit du travail de nombreux spécialistes, est d’aller à l’encontre de ce point trop souvent aveugle de l’enseignement. Instruments par excellence de médiation entre les élèves et les professeurs, les manuels scolaires qui traitent des faits religieux sont ici analysés avec le souci de les objectiver au moyen de la méthode historique et de la comparaison non seulement entre des pays de cultures très différentes, mais aussi entre des conceptions idéologiques hétérogènes, voire concurrentes, au sein d’un même pays.

À la hauteur des défis éducatifs actuels, l’intention de cet ouvrage est de mettre en perspective les institutions scolaires, les contenus enseignés et les pratiques pédagogiques afin que le religieux soit apprécié de la manière la plus juste et qu’il participe à la compréhension d’un monde complexe.

The name of Bernhard Blumenkranz is well known to all those who study the history of European Jew... more The name of Bernhard Blumenkranz is well known to all those who study the history of European Jews in the Middle Ages and in particular the history of Jewish-Christian relations. Blumenkranz was born in Vienna in 1913; he left for Switzerland during the war and obtained a doctorate at the University of Basel on the portrayal of Jews in the works of Augustine. He subsequently moved to France where his numerous publications revived and renovated the field of Jewish studies. The international group of scholars who wrote the fifteen essays in this volume, beyond paying homage to Blumenkranz’s work, trace the trajectories of various lines of inquiry that he initiated: Christian theology of Judaism, problems of conversion and proselytism, geography and topography of Medieval Jewish communities, the representation of Jews in Christian art. These essays provide both an assessment of Blumenkranz’s intellectual legacy and a snapshot of the evolution of the field over the last sixty years.

Resumen. Si los especialistas de la historia de las ideas y de la historia social se han interesa... more Resumen. Si los especialistas de la historia de las ideas y de la historia social se han interesado en la percepción del «otro» religioso, pocos son los estudios que han examinado esta cuestión en la Edad Media. Esta obra ofrece una nueva perspectiva de las relaciones interreligiosas a través de una selección de estudios de carácter histórico, social, religioso o artístico de los problemas vividos entre las comunidades cristiana, musulmana y judía. Muestran cómo un autor, un artista, sea judío, musulmán o cristiano, describe o comprende las prácticas religiosas, las realidades culturales, las costumbres de sus oponentes y su evolución en el Medioevo. Estos estudios nos permiten comprender mejor los problemas de interrelación en el mundo actual, en este momento en que Europa vive cambios profundos ante la necesidad de integrar las masas de inmigrantes de diversas culturas y religiones en su propia realidad.

This volume shows through the use of legal sources that law was used to try to erect boundaries b... more This volume shows through the use of legal sources that law was used to try to erect boundaries between communities in order to regulate or restrict interaction between the faithful and the non-faithful; and at the same time show how these boundaries were repeatedly transgressed and negociated.
Muslim law developed a clear legal cadre for dhimmīs, inferior but protected non-Muslim communities (in particular Jews and Christians) and Roman Canon law decreed a similar status for Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe. Yet the theoretical hierarchies between faithful and infidel were constantly brought into question in the daily interactions between men and women of different faiths in streets, markets, bath-houses, law courts, etc. The twelve essays in this volume explore these tensions and attempts to resolve them. These contributions show that law was used to try to erect boundaries between communities in order to regulate or restrict interaction between the faithful and the non-faithful—and at the same time how these boundaries were repeatedly transgressed and negotiated. These essays explore also the possibilities and the limits of the use of legal sources for the social historian.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Ana Echevarria and Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala

I. From Sacred Texts to Social Regulation / Del texto sagrado a la regulación social

Defending Jewish Judicial Autonomy in the Islamic Middle Ages - Mark R. Cohen

The Melkites and Their Law: Between Autonomy and Assimilation - Johannes Pahlitzsch

Cadíes, alfaquíes y la transmisión de la sharī‘a en época mudéjar - Ana Echevarria

Straddling the Bounds: Jews in the Legal World of Islam - David J. Wasserstein

II. Negotiating Daily Contacts and Frictions / Negociando contactos y fricciones diarias

El criterio de los juristas malikíes sobre los alimentos y las bebidas de los dimmíes: entre la teoría y la práctica - María Arcas Campoy

‘Twenty-five hundred knidia of wine… and two boats to transport the wine to Fustāt’. An Insight into Wine Consumption and Use Amongst the dhimmīs and wider Communities in Umayyad Egypt - Myriam Wissa

In the Eyes of Others: Nāmūs and sharī‘ah in Christian Arab Authors. Some Preliminary Details for a Typological Study - Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala

Los vapores de la sospecha. El baño público entre el mundo andalusí y la Castilla medieval (siglos X–XIII) - Marisa Bueno

III. Application of the Law / La aplicación de la ley

Swearing by the Mujaljala: A fatwā on dhimmī Oaths in the Islamic West - Camilla Adang

Forum Shopping in al-Andalus (II): Discussing Coran V, 42 and 49 (Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʽArabī and al-Qurṭubī) - Delfina Serrano

Religious Minorities’ Identity and Application of the Law: A First Approximation to the Lands of Military Orders in Castile - Clara Almagro Vidal

La interacción en el espacio de dos sociedades diferentes: concordia establecida entre el bachiller Hernando Alonso y la aljama de moros de Talavera - Yolanda Moreno Moreno
What do Legal Sources Tell Us about Social Practice? Possibilities and Limits - John Tolan

Judaism, Christianity and Islam have coexisted in Europe for over 1300 years. The three monotheis... more Judaism, Christianity and Islam have coexisted in Europe for over 1300 years. The three monotheistic faiths differ in demography, in the moment of their arrival on the continent and in the unequal relations they maintain with power: Christianity was chosen by a large number of inhabitants and became — in spite of important differences according to place and time —a religion of state. The organization of the continent into states and the divisions within Christianity often placed minorities in an unstable and at times painful situation. This partially explains the fight against "heresies", the wars of religions, the expulsion of Jews from several European kingdoms (as well as the expulsion of Muslims from Sicily and the Iberian peninsula), the "Jewish question" in the 19th century up until the Holocaust. Since the 20th century, the debates concerning Islam and concerning public expression of religion are shaped in part by this past.

The 13 studies gathered in this volume explore the ways in which states have treated their religious minorities. We study various policies — repression, supervision, integration, tolerance, secularization, indifference — as well as the many ways in which minorities have accommodated the majority’s demands. The relation is by no means one-sided: on the contrary, state policies have created resistance, negotiation (on the legal, political, and cultural fronts) or compromise. Through these precise and original examples, we can see how the protagonists (states, religious institutions, the elite, the faithful) interact, try to convince or influence each other in order to transform practices, invent and implement common norms and grounds, all the while knowing the confessional dimension of "religious" majority and minority does not fully embrace the identity of each citizen in full.

Judaïsme, christianisme, islam ont en Europe une histoire millénaire. Ces monothéismes se différencient par leur poids respectif, par les moments de leur inscription sur le continent et par leurs inégaux rapports avec le pouvoir : le christianisme a été adopté par un très grand nombre d’habitants et est devenu – avec d’importantes variations selon les lieux et les époques – une religion officielle, faisant face, dès lors, à des religions minoritaires. La structuration du continent en États et la division du christianisme lui-même, entre le Moyen Age et le XVIe siècle, ont placé les minorités dans une situation souvent instable et douloureuse. Ainsi s’expliquent, pour partie, la lutte contre les « hérésies », les guerres de religion, l’expulsion des juifs de plusieurs royaumes européens (et aussi l’expulsion de Musulmans de la Sicile et de la péninsule ibérique), la « question juive » au XIXe siècle et jusqu’à la Shoah. C’est ce passé que réveille, depuis la fin du XXe siècle, le débat sur la place de l’islam et les manières de manifester sa foi dans l’espace public.

Les 13 études réunies dans ce volume étudient les manières dont les États ont traité leurs minorités religieuses. On y voit des politiques diverses envers des minorités religieuses– répression, encadrement, intégration, tolérance, laïcité, indifférence – ainsi que de diverses manières dont les minorités ont accueilli les exigences de la majorité. La relation n’est pas unilatérale : au contraire, les politiques étatiques donnent lieu à des résistances, des négociations (sur le plan légal, politique, culturel, etc.) ou compromis. À l’aide d’exemples précis et originaux, on voit comment les acteurs – États, institutions religieuses, élites, fidèles – interagissent, tentent de se convaincre, s’influencent pour transformer des pratiques, mettre au point des normes communes et inventer un terrain d’entente, sachant que la dimension confessionnelle des majorités et des minorités « religieuses » n’embrasse pas la totalité de l’identité de chaque citoyen.

This is the Arabic translation of Europe and Islam: Fifteen centuries of History (With Gilles Vei... more This is the Arabic translation of Europe and Islam: Fifteen centuries of History (With Gilles Veinstein & Henri Laurens). (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). [Original French edition: L’Europe et l’Islam : quinze siècles d’histoire. (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2009)].

The eleven essays brought together in this volume explore the relations between expulsion, diaspo... more The eleven essays brought together in this volume explore the relations between expulsion, diaspora, and exile between Late Antiquity and the seventeenth century. The essays range from Hellenistic Egypt to seventeenth-century Hungary and involve expulsion and migration of Jews, Muslims and Protestants. The common goal of these essays is to shed light on a certain number of issues: first, to try to understand the dynamics of expulsion, in particular its social and political causes; second, to examine how expelled communities integrate (or not) into their new host societies; and finally, to understand how the experiences of expulsion and exile are made into founding myths that establish (or attempt to establish) group identities.

Medieval towns, from Portugal to Hungary to Egypt, were places of contact between members of diff... more Medieval towns, from Portugal to Hungary to Egypt, were places of contact between members of different religious communities, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, who rubbed shoulders in the ports and on the streets, who haggled in the markets, signed contracts, and shared wells, courtyards, dining tables, bath houses, and sometimes beds. These interactions caused legal problems from the point of view of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim judicial scholars of the middle ages, not to mention for the rulers of these towns. These legal attempts to define and solve the problems posed by interreligious relations are the subject of this volume, which brings together the work of seventeen scholars from nine countries (France, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Portugal, Lebanon, Israel, Tunisia, USA), specialists in history, law, archeology and religion.

The sixth to eleventh centuries are a crucial formative period for Jewish communities in Byzantiu... more The sixth to eleventh centuries are a crucial formative period for Jewish communities in Byzantium and Latin Europe: this is also a period for which sources are scarce and about which historians have often had to speculate on the basis of scant evidence. The legal sources studied in this volume provide a relative wealth of textual material concerning Jews, and for certain areas and periods are the principal sources. While this makes them particularly valuable, it also makes their interpretation difficult, given the lack of corroborative sources.
The scholars whose work has been brought together in this volume shed light on this key period of the history of Jews and of Jewish-Christian relations, focusing on key sources of the period: Byzantine imperial law, the canons of church councils, papal bulls, royal legislation from the Visigoths or Carolingians, inscriptions, and narrative sources in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The picture that emerges from these studies is variegated. Some scholars, following Bernhard Blumenkranz, have depicted this period as one of relative tolerance towards Jews and Judaism; others have stressed the intolerance shown at key intervals by ecclesiastical authors, church councils and monarchs.
Yet perhaps more than revealing general tendencies towards "tolerance" or "intolerance", these studies bring to light the ways in which law in medieval societies serves a variety of purposes: from providing a theologically-based rationale for social tolerance, to attempting to regulate and restrict inter-religious contact, to using anti-Jewish rhetoric to assert the authority or legitimacy of one party of the Christian elite over and against another. This volume makes an important contribution not only to the history of medieval Jewish-Christian relations, but also to research on the uses and functions of law in medieval societies.

Table of Contents
Capucine Nemo-Pekelman & Laurence Foschia, Introduction

I Rank and status of Jews in civil and canonical law
1. Ralph W. Mathisen, The Citizenship and Legal Status of Jews in Roman Law during Late Antiquity (ca. 300-540 CE)
2. Céline Martin, Statut des juifs, statut de libre dans l’Occident du haut Moyen Âge : l’exemple ibérique
3. David Freidenreich, Jews, Pagans, and Heretics in Early Medieval Canon Law

II - Lawyers at work : from the adaptation of Roman Law to the creation of canonical collections and false canons
4. Bruno Judic, Grégoire le Grand et les juifs. Pratique juridique et enjeux théologiques
5. Jessie Sherwood, Interpretation, negotiation, and adaptation: Converting the Jews in Gerhard of Mainz’s Collectio
6. Philippe Depreux , Les juifs dans le droit carolingien
7. Capucine Nemo-Pekelman, Signum mortis : une nouvelle explication du signe de la rouelle ?

III - Juridical sources as indications of Jewish life and institutions?
8. Alexander Panayotov, Jewish Communal Offices in Byzantine Law and Jewish Inscriptions from the Balkans
9. Bat-Sheva Albert, Les communautés juives vues à travers la législation royale et ecclésiastique visigothique et franque
10. Raul González-Salinero, The Legal Eradication of the Jewish Literary Legacy in Visigothic Spain
11. Johannes Heil, Getting them in or Keeping them out? Theology, Law, and the Beginnings of Jewish Life at Mainz in the 10th and 11th centuries

IV - From the Law to Violence, from Violence to Law
12. Paul Magdalino, ‘All Israel will be saved’? The forced baptism of the Jews and imperial eschatology
13. Rachel Stocking, Forced Converts, “Crypto-Judaism,” and Children: Religious Identification in Visigothic Spain
14. María Jesús Fuente, Jewish Women and Visigoth Law
15. Oscar Prieto Dominguez, The mass conversion of Jews decreed by Emperor Basil I in 873: its reflection in contemporary legal codes and its underlying reasons
16. Amnon Linder, The Jewish Oath

Nicholas de Lange and John Tolan, Conclusion

"Les travaux réunis ici sont les fruits de deux rencontres entre chercheurs tunisiens et français... more "Les travaux réunis ici sont les fruits de deux rencontres entre chercheurs tunisiens et français : la première au Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Economiques et Sociales de Tunis à Tunis en mai 2010 et la deuxième à la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme
Ange Guépin à Nantes en juin 2011.
Le concept d’une « identité » nationale ou ethnique (et l’assimilation de l’une à l’autre) est bâti, en particulier au XIXe siècle en Europe, sur la base des histoires de « nations » dont on cherchait les origines dans l’antiquité. Certains des travaux réunis
ici mettent en lumière les processus de constructions d’identités nationales au XIXe siècle, que ce soit l’idée les visions nationalistes de l’histoire française, ou la tension, dans la Tunisie du protectorat, entre identité « nationale » tunisienne, identités arabes ou musulmanes, et la réalité du protectorat français. Ce sont les moments d’implosion ou de démantèlement de grandes unités transnationales qui exige un travail sur des identités nationales soit nouvelles, soit anciennes mais remises au goût du jour et revêtues d’une importance accrue : la décolonisation, puis l’implosion de l’URSS ont donné lieu à de nouvelles constructions identitaires plus ou moins solides. Si en France comme en Tunisie des questions d’« identité » politique, nationale, religieuse, font l’objet d’interrogations et de polémiques, les essais réunis ici nous permettent de prendre du recul et de mettre ces phénomènes en perspective.

Europe and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western c... more Europe and the Islamic World sheds much-needed light on the shared roots of Islamic and Western cultures and on the richness of their inextricably intertwined histories, refuting once and for all the misguided notion of a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and Europe. In this landmark book, three eminent historians bring to life the complex and tumultuous relations between Genoans and Tunisians, Alexandrians and the people of Constantinople, Catalans and Maghrebis--the myriad groups and individuals whose stories reflect the common cultural, intellectual, and religious heritage of Europe and Islam.

Since the seventh century, when the armies of Constantinople and Medina fought for control of Syria and Palestine, there has been ongoing contact between the Muslim world and the West. This sweeping history vividly recounts the wars and the crusades, the alliances and diplomacy, commerce and the slave trade, technology transfers, and the intellectual and artistic exchanges. Here readers are given an unparalleled introduction to key periods and events, including the Muslim conquests, the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, the commercial revolution of the medieval Mediterranean, the intellectual and cultural achievements of Muslim Spain, the crusades and Spanish reconquest, the rise of the Ottomans and their conquest of a third of Europe, European colonization and decolonization, and the challenges and promise of this entwined legacy today.

As provocative as it is groundbreaking, this book describes this shared history in all its richness and diversity, revealing how ongoing encounters between Europe and Islam have profoundly shaped both.

September, 1219: as the armies of the fifth crusade besieged the Egyptian city of Damietta, Franc... more September, 1219: as the armies of the fifth crusade besieged the Egyptian city of Damietta, Francis of Assisi and friar Illuminatus crossed over to the Egyptian camp to preach to the Sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil. After a number of days, the two friars returned to the crusader camp, having apparently spoken with the Sultan, though we know very little about what was said. This has not prevented writers from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, unencumbered by mere facts, from portraying Francis alternatively as a new apostle preaching to the infidels, a scholastic theologian proving the truth of Christianity, a champion of the crusading ideal, a naive and quixotic wanderer, a crazed religious fanatic, or a medieval Gandhi preaching peace, love and understanding. As for al-Kâmil, he is variously presented as an enlightened pagan monarch hungry for evangelical teaching, a cruel oriental despot, or a worldly libertine. This study of the varying depictions of this lapidary encounter throws into relief the changing fears and hopes that Muslim-Christian encounters inspire in European artists and writers over eight centuries.