Muslims in Christian-ruled Europe, fifteenth to nineteenth century (original) (raw)
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Muslims in Europe, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
BRILL eBooks, 2020
This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. chapter 1 Muslims in Europe, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries The Muslim presence in Central and Western Europe during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was greater than had been thought, at least up to a few years ago. Eastern Europe, of course, was an entirely different case, especially in the Balkans, ruled by the Ottoman Empire-though it began to lose territory in the 1700s-and in large regions of southeastern Europe that were gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire. In certain areas of these territories Muslims either ruled or formed a majority, while in others they were a significant minority. Nor did they disappear from Balkan lands altogether, for there are still nuclei of Muslim populations outside the small area of European Turkey, as well as in much of southern Russia. We shall not be concerned with those cases here, however, since they are substantially different from those of Western Europe.1 As to Central and Western Europe, it has been and to some extent continues to be thought that the Muslim presence in the Early Modern period was scarce and brief, and therefore insignificant.2 But recent research has proved that it was much more significant than has been acknowledged until now. The step from seeing Muslims as a groupe invisible to regarding them as étrangers familiers represents a significant advance in our understanding of the matter. We now have monographs on a considerable swath of European territory that show a good number of Muslims either visiting or living there for varying periods of time and many different reasons.3 We also have overall views for a few countries, particularly France,4 Great
A Brief History of Islam in Europe
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2014
This book is the result of six years teaching my BA class entitled 'The history of Islam in the West' at Leiden University. I want to thank the students for their active participation and comments, which prompted me every year further to refine my arguments, dig deeper into Europe's rich history with Islam, and to become more critical about contemporary references to 'Islam.' Annefieke Bonants was one of the first students who took that class, and she later became my assistant to do the research for this book. Her meticulous and painstaking work, and not least the friendly patience with which she reacted to the flurry of ideas and orders I hurled at her were indispensable to the finishing of the writing of this book. Anniek Meinders, the publisher of the newly established Leiden University Press, was courageous enough to take on this project that did not fit neatly into an academic category. Finally thanks to the advisory board of Leiden University Press and the three peer reviewers who spent their precious time reading the manuscript and dispensing helpful comments: Prof. M. Schrovers of the History department at Leiden University, Prof. J. Nielsen of the Theology Faculty at the University of Copenhagen, and a third reviewer who preferred to remain anonymous. The Hague, May 2014 * While the etymology of Moors is 'dark people', the name Saracene has been given different origins, ranging from the Arabic 'sharqiyin' ('Easterner') to the Greek 'skene' ('tent dweller') or the Greek 'sara kene', meaning 'empty Sarah', referring to Abraham's wife Sarah who gave birth to Isaac, the founding father of the Israelites, and who was therefore not related-'empty'-to Ishmael, who was fathered by Abraham with his slave woman Hagar, and who is claimed by the Arabs as their founding father. * In the Islamic empire under the Abbasids, on the other hand, it was not uncommon for courts to organize theological debates between representatives of various religions (obviously with the aim of proving the superiority of Islam): see, e.g., Munʾim A. Sirry, 'Early Muslim-Christian dialogue: a closer look at major themes of the theological encounter,'
Christian Muslim Relations A Bibliographical History Volume 8 Northern and Eastern Europe 1600 1700
2016
x FOREWORD many geographical as disciplinary boundaries as this it would be totally unrealistic to claim that these have succeeded. Details (hopefully only minor) must have been overlooked, authors and works have maybe been ignored, new works will have come to light, new editions, translations and studies will have appeared, and new dates and interpretations put forward. Corrections, additions and updates are therefore warmly invited. They will be incorporated into the online version of CMR, and into any further editions. Please send details of these to David Thomas at d.r.thomas.1@ bham.ac.uk.
"Western Theologies and Islam" in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600-1800
This essay provides an overview of Western theological engagements with Islam between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Three main features are highlighted: first, internal divisions within Christianity supported the use of Islam as a pretext for debates among Catholics, Protestants, and other Christian groups; second, the development of extra–European missions supported attempts to find a common ground between Christianity and Islam, developing forms of accommodation; third, the growth of Arabic and Islamic studies in Europe and the invention of the printing press facilitated the circulation of more precise information and substantial progress in the knowledge of Islam. Without completely detaching from the Christian medieval tradition, these new approaches, which culminated in works by Ludovico Marracci and George Sale, opened the door to the possibility for a reconsideration of Islam, a process that was actually accomplished in Western theologies only during the twentieth century.
2015
© bekim agai, umar ryad and mehdi sajid, ���6 | doi �0.��63/978900430�979_00� This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License. chapter 1
David Motadel (ed): Islam and the European Empires.pdf
A substantial amount of Muslim writings (as well as Western postcolonial and third-world literature) on the modern history of the so-called Islamic world make a living emphasizing the supposedly crusader-like nature of European colonial rule between the seventeenth and mid-twentieth centuries. While it is certainly true that colonialists were primarily motivated by strategic interests and economic exploitation rather than by altruism and charity, their behaviour in their colonies was anything but inevitably hostile. Pragmatism and accommodation reigned in many places, more often than not combined with condescension and paternalism, which did not, however, preclude periods of suppression and warfare. Islam and the European Empires,