tajine ottomanhistorypodcast.com

with Jessica Marglin hosted by Brittany White | In 1873, Nissim Shamama died suddenly at his palazzo in Livorno. He was quietly one of the richest men in the Mediterranean. A Tunisian Jew born in the Ottoman Empire, Shamama had taken his place among the mercantile elite of a newly-unified Italy. He was a man who belonged to many places. But to whom would his vast inheritance belong? Our guest Jessica Marglin has published an award-winning book, The Shamama Case, that marshals an impressive array of archival sources to investigate how this question was resolved. As she demonstrates, the decade-long legal dispute over Shamama's estate was an international affair involving Tunisian officials, rabbis from throughout the Mediterranean, and some of Italy's foremost legal minds. In this conversation, we talk to Marglin about some of the highlights of the Shamama case, what it taught her about the history of citizenship and nationality in the 19th century Mediterranean, and the power of microhistory for disrupting conventional framings of the period. « Click for More »

with Justin Stearns hosted by Shireen Hamza and Taylor Moore | When you think of the history of science, what people and places come to mind? Scientific knowledge production flourished in early modern Morocco, and not in the places you might expect. This episode transports us into the intellectual and social worlds of Sufi lodges (zawāya) in seventeenth-century Morocco. Our guest, Justin Stearns, guides us through scholarly and educational landscapes far removed from the imperial urban centers of Fez and Marrakech. We discuss his new book, Revealed Sciences, which examines the development of the natural sciences through close study of works produced by rural Sufi scholars. Challenging the idea that the early modern period was one of intellectual decline, Stearns reveals the vibrant multi-ethnic, intellectual networks of the early modern Maghreb and the implications of their story for the history of science and the writing of history. We speak about paper mâché astrolabes, Borgesian fantasies, resisting the lure of triumphant narratives, and the importance of failure for creativity and innovation. « Click for More »

Episode 452 with William Granara hosted by Chris Gratien During the 9th century, Arab armies from North Africa conquered Sicily, leading to four centuries of Muslim history on the island, which is now part of Italy. Sicily during that period has often been portrayed as an interfaith utopia where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived side by side, giving rise to a cultural synthesis, but as our guest William Granara explains, the reality was more complex. In this conversation with Granara, author of Narrating Muslim Sicily, we explore the history of Muslim societies in Sicily, grappling with questions of representation and reality as well as conflict and coexistence. We also discuss what this history means today centuries after the departure of Sicily's last Muslims, as a new wave of Muslim migration arrives on the island. « Click for More »

Episode 446 featuring Emrah Safa Gürkan, Joshua White, and Daniel Hershenzon narrated by Chris Gratien with contributions by Nir Shafir, Taylor Moore, Susanna Ferguson, and Zoe Griffith Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Piracy is often depicted as a facet of the wild, lawless expanses of the high seas. But in this episode, we explore the order that governed piracy, captivity, and ransom in the early modern Mediterranean and in turn, how these practices shaped early modern politics, Mediterranean connections, and the emergent notions of international law. Emrah Safa Gürkan talks about Ottoman corsairs and the practicalities of piracy in the early modern Mediterranean. Joshua White discusses facets of Islamic law and gender in the realm of piracy. And Daniel Hershenzon explores the paradoxical connections forged by slavery, captivity, and ransom on both sides of the Mediterranean.  « Click for More »

Episode 409 with Jennifer Sessions hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In 1827, Hussein Dey, the Ottoman governor of Algiers, hit a French consul on the nose with a fly whisk during a dispute over unpaid French debts. And as the story goes, the rest is history. France soon invaded Algeria and stayed for over 130 years. But as our guest in this episode Jennifer Sessions explains, France's decision to invade and colonize Algeria beginning in 1830 was far less arbitrary and far more intertwined with domestic French politics than lore would have it. And while the invasion was partially about political divisions in France, even as French politics transformed French colonization in Algeria became a national consensus over the course of the 19th century. In this episode, we examine the importance of the early decades of French colonialism in Algeria for understanding what followed, and we consider the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria for France and Algeria today. « Click for More »

Episode 388 with Karim Bejjit hosted by Graham Cornwell Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Tangier is in the midst of a massive renovation and expansion -- a new ferry and cruise port, a duty-free zone, and the massive Tangier Med shipping facility all meant to make the city and Morocco into a critical juncture of the global flows of goods, people, services, and capital. Of course, Tangier’s proximity to Europe and position astride the Strait of Gibraltar has long provided it with a cosmopolitan, international character, typified by the International Zone days during European colonial rule of Morocco in the first half of the twentieth century. But Tangier’s polyglot, imperial past goes back much further. In this episode, we turn to one of those more distant episodes: the English occupation of Tangier from 1661 to 1684. It was a brief interlude: control of the city itself was part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry to King Charles II, but English forces quickly found the situation (under intermittent but heavy resistance from local Moroccan tribes) unsustainable. The period produced some interesting characters on both sides--Samuel Pepys, for one, was a resident--but has generally been overlooked by scholars in favor of the Portuguese imperial enclaves on the Atlantic coast. What made English Tangier unique? Why did it fail, and how did the experience shape Moroccan-English relations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? This episode is cross-listed with tajine, our series on the history and society of North Africa. « Click for More »