Nabil Matar
Biographic Data
| ID | 982307 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nabil Matar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nabil |
| FAMILY NAME | Matar |
| SIGNATURE | MATAR N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Florida Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2992-1893 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 86 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 113 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 85 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History
Beyond Orientalism
The Synod of Dort in Arabic
American and Muslim Worlds before 1900 . Edited by John Ghazvinian and Arthur Mitchell Fraas
Islam in the defence of the Anglican Church
This article examines the writings of John Gregory (d. 1646), who used the Qurʾān in resolving inter-denominational conflicts in the England of the 1640s. Living during the British Civil Wars, Gregory witnessed the assault on the Anglican Church by Presbyterians and Independents, on the one hand, and by Catholics, on the other. To defend the church of the via media in which he was ordained, Gregory took the unprecedented step of consulting the Qu…
Noel Malcolm. Useful Enemies
One of the misfortunes of early modern history is that Islam came to be known in Western Christendom as Muslim-Ottoman armies were marching into Central Europe toward Vienna. In many books printed in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the opening chapter focuses on Muhammad and the rise of Islam but then abruptly moves to the “Turke.” Islam and Ottoman military danger became inseparable in European minds. Noel Malcolm’s Useful Enemies: …
Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517-1798
"The post-Lepanto Mediterranean was the scene of "small wars," to use Fernand Braudel's phrase, which resulted in acts of piracy and captivity. Thousands upon thousands of Europeans and North African Arabs and Turks were seized into bagnios stretching from Cadiz to Valletta and from Salé to Tripoli. Europeans wrote extensively about their ordeals, and so did the North Africans and Levantines. In Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517-179…
Christian Arab Pilgrimages to Palestine and Mount Sinai
Pilgrimage studies to holy sites in early modern Palestine and Egypt have ignored Christian Arabic writings.This paper examines three accounts written by Orthodox and Catholic pilgrims to St. Catherine's monastery in Sinai and to Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine in the years 1637, 1753, and 1755.It shows the popularity of pilgrimages among Christian Arabs and the interactions they had with the various religious communities in the Ottoman wo…
Muslims and Citizens
This book is very timely. For more than a year, the French government has been addressing political and religious issues with its Muslim citizens in a deeply disturbing and disruptive manner. President Macron declared that Islam was ‘in crisis’, while members of his cabinet have accused Muslims of islamicizing university programs and of promoting a radical ideology of ‘Islamist separatism’. In such a climate of suspicion, the appearance of a hist…
Two Muslim converts to Catholicism in Arabic sources, 1656-1667
This paper examines Arabic documents about the conversion of two Muslim captives between 1656 and 1667: Muḥammad al-Tāzī (Baldassare de Mandes) and Bil-Ghayth al-Drāwī (Francesco Medici). They show how Arabic sources furnish completely different information about conversion from the information that survives in European sources
Jos.[eph] Morgan and Mohamed Rabadan
By the time Joseph Morgan died (ca. 1750), he had lived longer in, and written more about, North Africa than any other Briton. This paper examines his first published work after his return to England ca. 1720: a translation of the life of the Prophet Muḥammad which appeared in London in 1723 and 1725. While there had been previous biographies of the Prophet in English, Morgan’s was the first that was completely based on an account by a Muslim And…
The Present State of the Ottoman Empire
The Present State of the Ottoman Empire: Sixth Edition, 1686. Sir Paul Rycaut. Ed. John Anthony Butler. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 500. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017. 440 pp. $80. - Volume 72 Issue 1
The 2018 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture
This essay examines what Arabs knew about Luther, Calvin, and the Protestant-Catholic conflict in the early modern period. While there have been studies of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century impact of Protestant missions on the Arab East, there has been no study of the Protestant movement and its confrontation with Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the period between 1517 and 1698. Although Protestantism failed in gaining converts, the rivalry betw…
The Republic of Arabic Letters
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The United States Through Arab Eyes
A vibrant collection of writings about America from its earliest Arab immigrantsThe first Arab immigrants to New York or Alaska or San Francisco were 'small' men and women, preoccupied with eking a living at the same time as confronting the challenges of settling in a new country. They had to come to terms with new race communities such as Indians, Chinese and Blacks, the changing role of women, and the Americanisation of their identity.Their wri…
Cornel Zwierlein. Imperial Unknowns
Cornel Zwierlein’s Imperial Unknowns is the first detailed study of British-French relations in the Mediterranean basin. While there have been numerous economic, naval, and diplomatic studies of each of the two countries in the early modern period, this book examines them side by side. It appraises a vast amount of material: the bibliography is over fifty pages long and includes sources in English, French, German, Italian, and Greek, with special…
Karim Bejjit, English Colonial Texts on Tangier, 1661–1684
Karim Bejjit, English Colonial Texts on Tangier, 1661–1684: imperialism and the politics of resistance." The Seventeenth Century, 31(1), pp. 115–116
An Arab Ambassador in the Mediterranean World
This book provides translated selections from the writings of Muhammad Ibn Othman al-Miknasi (d. 1799). The only writings by an Arab-Muslim in the pre-modern period that present a comparative perspective, his travelogues provide unique insight with in to Christendom and Islam. Translating excerpts from his three travelogues, this book tells the story of al-Miknasi's travels from 1779-1788. As an ambassador, al-Miknasi was privy to court life, gov…
Abdallah ibn 'Aisha and the French Court, 1699-1701
Journal Article ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Aisha and the French Court, 1699–1701: an ambassador without diplomacy Get access Nabil Matar Nabil Matar * * Nabil Matar is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. He may be contacted at [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar French History, Volume 29, Issue 1, March 2015, Pages 62–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/cru119 Published: 0…
Mythologies of the Prophet Muhammad in Early Modern English Culture By MATTHEW Dimmock
This book presents an exhaustive study of the figure of the Prophet in English writings, from the medieval period until the early eighteenth century, with a conclusion that stretches into the twentieth century. It is a book of extensive scholarship and meticulous analysis to which Matthew Dimmock brings a wide range of sources: romance, chronicle, travelogue, sermon, pamphlet, disputation, drama, poetry, and prose. He also includes—the first scho…
Europe and the Islamic World
Journal Article Europe and the Islamic World: A History By John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein and Henry Laurens, translated by Jane Marie Todd, foreword by John L. Esposito Get access Europe and the Islamic World: A HistoryBy John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein and Henry Laurens, translated by Jane Marie Todd, foreword by John L. Esposito (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), xi + 478 pp. Price HB £27.95. EAN 978–0691147055. Nabil Mata…
Slaves and Englishmen
This book is an important addition to the study of early modern British slavery – both the slavery that Britons supervised and carried out in the Atlantic, and the captivity that they experienced i
England and Religious Plurality
The Elizabethan Settlement identified religious conformity with political allegiance. Not unlike the cuius regio eius religio of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg in the Holy Roman Empire, from 1559 onwards subjects in England had to subscribe to the two Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, the first declaring the monarch as head of the state and the second determining worship under the monarch as head of the Church. In such an Anglican monarchy, there cou…
Trade and Romance
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Conclusion
Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery
1. Turks and Moors in England2. Soldiers Pirates, Traders, and Captives: Britons Among the Muslims3. The Renaissance Triangle: Britons Muslims, and American Indians4. Sodomy and Conquest5. Holy Land, Holy WarConclusion: Britons, Muslims, and the Shadow of the America IndiansAppendixesNotesBibliographyIndex
Britain and Barbary, 1589-1689
Matar examines the influence of Mediterranean piracy and diplomacy on early modern British history and identity. Drawing on published and unpublished literary, commercial, and epistolary sources, he situates British maritime activity and national politics, especially in relation to the Civil War, within the international context of Anglo-Magharibi encounters. Before there was the British encounter with America, there was the much more complex and…
British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563-1760
British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563-1760 provides the first study of British captives in the North African Atlantic and Mediterranean, from the reign of Elizabeth I to George II. Based on extensive archival research in the United Kingdom, Nabil Matar furnishes the names of all captives while examining the problems that historians face in determining the numbers of early modern Britons in captivity. Matar also describes t…
Britons and Muslims in the early modern period
Matar examines the representation of Muslims in English writings in the early modern period, roughly from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. There were two views of Muslims: the first was generated by literary and theological writers whose depictions were predominantly negative and stereotypical. The second was generated by diplomats and traders who had interacted with Muslims, both in the Mediterranean and during ambassadorial visits in …
English Accounts of Captivity in North Africa and the Middle East
Between 1577 and 1625, ten Englishmen wrote or dictated accounts about their captivity among the Muslims. After examining similar accounts of captivity by continental writers, Fernand Braudel argued that European governments encouraged the publication of such accounts for an ideological purpose: to alienate readers from Islam and Muslims. A close reading of the English accounts, however, shows that there was a more personal and selfish goal for t…
Homosexuality in the Early Novels of Nageeb Mahfouz
Nageeb Mahfouz is the earliest novelist in Arabic to focus on the homosexual protagonist in his writing. Although the topic is objectionable in Islam, Mahfouz explores homosexuality in a sensitive manner, and reveals the transformation in his views regarding the dilemma of the homosexual protagonist in a hostile environment
John Locke and the Jews
In 1813, a century after the death of John Locke, an anonymous pamphleteer in London, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Abraham, saac and Jacob’, complained about the restrictions which were placed on the Jews. In The Lamentations of the Children of Israel representing the Hardships they suffer from the Penal Laws , the author recalled John Locke as a defender of the Jews, and quoted one of the philosopher's favourable comparisons between Jews and …
Muslims in Seventeenth-Century England
Journal Article MUSLIMS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND Get access N. I MATAR N. I MATAR Florida Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 8, Issue 1, January 1997, Pages 63–82, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/8.1.63 Published: 01 January 1997
The Barbary Corsairs, King Charles I and the Civil War
Historians recognize many constitutional and ecclesiastical conflicts that led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. But there was another factor that lay thousands of miles away in the Islamic Mediterranean: the Barbary captives, those English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh seamen, captains, and travellers who were captured and enslaved in Morocco and in the Ottoman regencies of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli (Libya).1 When Charles I succeeded to…
The Representation of Muslim Women in Renaissance England
John Locke and the ‘Turbanned Nations’
JOHN LOCKE AND THE 'TURBANNED NATIONS' Get access NABIL MATAR NABIL MATAR Florida Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1991, Pages 67–77, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/2.1.67 Published: 01 January 1991
Islam in Britain, 1689–1750
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Confronting Decline in Early Modern Arabic Thought
This article argues that Arabic thinkers of the seventeenth century failed to confront the problem of decline in their societies in the manner that Ottoman and Spanish writers did. Arabic writers, from Alexandria in Egypt to Miknas in Morocco, refused to concede decline and instead declared the nasr (victory) of their deen (religion) of Islam over Europe, or used Ibn Khaldun to determine the fall of the European dunya (world). Only the Moriscos, …
The 2018 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture
This essay examines what Arabs knew about Luther, Calvin, and the Protestant-Catholic conflict in the early modern period. While there have been studies of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century impact of Protestant missions on the Arab East, there has been no study of the Protestant movement and its confrontation with Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the period between 1517 and 1698. Although Protestantism failed in gaining converts, the rivalry betw…
England and Religious Plurality
The Elizabethan Settlement identified religious conformity with political allegiance. Not unlike the cuius regio eius religio of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg in the Holy Roman Empire, from 1559 onwards subjects in England had to subscribe to the two Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, the first declaring the monarch as head of the state and the second determining worship under the monarch as head of the Church. In such an Anglican monarchy, there cou…
The English Merchant and the Moroccan Sufi
This paper examines the relationship between an English factor, John Harrison, and a Moroccan Sufi rebel, Abu Maḥilli, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Although the two men never met, the revolt that Abu Maḥilli led against the Sa'dian rulers promoted mahdist/messianic goals which intersected with the commercial and eschatological strategies that Harrison was pursuing in Morocco
Arabic Books and a Moroccan Treasure
In the early modern period, there was considerable readership in North Africa among men (and sometimes women) who trained in Qur'anic elementary schools and then in mosques, madrasas, and Sufi lodges. Under learned jurists, they received an ijaza/certificate of achievement at the end of their instruction cycle. In Morocco, the ruling elite were both literate and well-educated: Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur (reg. 1578-1603) mastered Euclid,1 and his libra…
Queen Elizabeth I Through Moroccan Eyes
This article examines the image of Queen Elizabeth I (reg. 1558-1603) in Moroccan writings, focusing specifically on the period between 1588, the English victory over the Spanish Armada, and 1596, the English attack (with Moroccan logistical assistance) on Cadiz. Contrary to what some historians have claimed about Arab-Islamic ignorance of, and indifference to, Western Europe in the early modern period, the writings of Abd al-Aziz al-Fishtali (15…
Two Journeys to Seventeenth-Century Palestine
This article describes two seventeenth-century accounts of voyages to Palestine-one by an Arab, the Moroccan jurist Salim Abdallah alAyyashi, in 1663; and the other by an Englishman, one "T B.," in 1669. The two texts, though sharing a focus on holy sites inspired by their scriptures, reveal not only sharply differing views of Palestine but also widely divergent worldviews and approaches to history and the meaning of travel
Protestantism, Palestine, and Partisan Scholarship
A partisan scholarship has developed since the early twentieth century to demonstrate that British Protestant culture supports the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Both before and after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, scholars pointed to the extensive references in British thought from the Reformation through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries which purported to deal with a Jewish Restauration to Palestine. After the c…
Adam and the Serpent
Arab Renaissance
Arab Renaissance
The Idea of the Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought, 1661–1701
In a previous study, the idea of the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine between the Reformation and 1660 was examined. The result of that survey pointed to some of the causes that led to the emergence and development of that idea in English Protestant thought. Three factors were seen to be instrumental in generating a hitherto novel principle in Christian theology: the military Turko-Catholic threat to Protestant Christendom, the Puritan millen…
Alone in Our Eden’
(1987). ‘ALONE IN OUR EDEN’: A PURITAN UTOPIA IN RESTORATION ENGLAND. The Seventeenth Century: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 189-198
Protestantism, Palestine, and Partisan Scholarship
Protestantism, Palestine, and Partisan Scholarship
A partisan scholarship has developed since the early twentieth century to demonstrate that British Protestant culture supports the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Both before and after the Balfour Declaration of 1917, scholars pointed to the extensive references in British thought from the Reformation through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries which purported to deal with a Jewish Restauration to Palestine. After the c…
John Locke and the ‘Turbanned Nations’
JOHN LOCKE AND THE 'TURBANNED NATIONS' Get access NABIL MATAR NABIL MATAR Florida Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1991, Pages 67–77, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/2.1.67 Published: 01 January 1991
Islam in Interregnum and Restoration England
(1991). ISLAM IN INTERREGNUM AND RESTORATION ENGLAND. The Seventeenth Century: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 57-71
The Comenian Legacy in England
John Locke and the Jews
In 1813, a century after the death of John Locke, an anonymous pamphleteer in London, writing under the pseudonym of ‘Abraham, saac and Jacob’, complained about the restrictions which were placed on the Jews. In The Lamentations of the Children of Israel representing the Hardships they suffer from the Penal Laws , the author recalled John Locke as a defender of the Jews, and quoted one of the philosopher's favourable comparisons between Jews and …
Homosexuality in the Early Novels of Nageeb Mahfouz
Nageeb Mahfouz is the earliest novelist in Arabic to focus on the homosexual protagonist in his writing. Although the topic is objectionable in Islam, Mahfouz explores homosexuality in a sensitive manner, and reveals the transformation in his views regarding the dilemma of the homosexual protagonist in a hostile environment
The Representation of Muslim Women in Renaissance England
Muslims in Seventeenth-Century England
Journal Article MUSLIMS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND Get access N. I MATAR N. I MATAR Florida Institute of Technology Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 8, Issue 1, January 1997, Pages 63–82, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/8.1.63 Published: 01 January 1997
Islam in Britain, 1558–1685
This book examines the impact of Islam on Britain between 1558 and 1685. Professor Matar provides a perspective on the transformation of British thought and society by demonstrating how influential Islam was in the formation of early modern British culture. Christian-Muslim interaction was not, as is often thought, primarily adversarial; rather, there was extensive cultural, intellectual and missionary engagement with Islam in Britain. The author…
Two Journeys to Seventeenth-Century Palestine
Two Journeys to Seventeenth-Century Palestine
This article describes two seventeenth-century accounts of voyages to Palestine-one by an Arab, the Moroccan jurist Salim Abdallah alAyyashi, in 1663; and the other by an Englishman, one "T B.," in 1669. The two texts, though sharing a focus on holy sites inspired by their scriptures, reveal not only sharply differing views of Palestine but also widely divergent worldviews and approaches to history and the meaning of travel
Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery
1. Turks and Moors in England2. Soldiers Pirates, Traders, and Captives: Britons Among the Muslims3. The Renaissance Triangle: Britons Muslims, and American Indians4. Sodomy and Conquest5. Holy Land, Holy WarConclusion: Britons, Muslims, and the Shadow of the America IndiansAppendixesNotesBibliographyIndex
The Barbary Corsairs, King Charles I and the Civil War
Historians recognize many constitutional and ecclesiastical conflicts that led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. But there was another factor that lay thousands of miles away in the Islamic Mediterranean: the Barbary captives, those English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh seamen, captains, and travellers who were captured and enslaved in Morocco and in the Ottoman regencies of Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli (Libya).1 When Charles I succeeded to…
Britons, Muslims, and American Indians
English Accounts of Captivity in North Africa and the Middle East
Between 1577 and 1625, ten Englishmen wrote or dictated accounts about their captivity among the Muslims. After examining similar accounts of captivity by continental writers, Fernand Braudel argued that European governments encouraged the publication of such accounts for an ideological purpose: to alienate readers from Islam and Muslims. A close reading of the English accounts, however, shows that there was a more personal and selfish goal for t…
The Question of Occidentalism in Early Modern Morocco
In one of the two major Arabic critiques of Edward Said’s theory of Western Orientalism, Aziz al-Azmeh argued that the representation of the cultural and religious Other had not been exclusive to the modern Europeans on whom Said had chiefly focused. Azmeh examined medieval Arabic literature and geography and showed that it too had developed a discourse about the Other, a discourse “similar to orientalism” in its representation of the barbarians …
The Last Moors
Three Tomicus pine shoot beetles, T. yunnanensis (Kirkendall and Faccoli) (Coleoptera: Scolytidae), T. minor (Hartig), and T. brevipilosus (Wood and Bright), have been causing serious damage to Yunnan pine ( Pinus yunnanensis (Franchet) (Pinales: Pinaceae)) stands in Yunnan, southwestern China. However, their ability to coexist in the crowns of the same trees during the shoot-feeding phase has not been elucidated. In our study, we investigated an…
The Maliki Imperialism of Ahmad al-Mansur
On February 28, 1591, a Moroccan army reached Niger across the Sahara, 135 days after leaving the capital Marrakesh. The musket-wielding combatants who survived the ordeal had been sent by the Moroccan ruler, Ahmad al-Mansur, to defeat the king of Songhay, Askiah Ishaq II, who had assembled an army of 80,000 footmen and horsemen, armed with lances and javelins (al-Gharbi, 207–08). The battle took place on March 13, 1591 and ended with the slaught…
Confronting Decline in Early Modern Arabic Thought
This article argues that Arabic thinkers of the seventeenth century failed to confront the problem of decline in their societies in the manner that Ottoman and Spanish writers did. Arabic writers, from Alexandria in Egypt to Miknas in Morocco, refused to concede decline and instead declared the nasr (victory) of their deen (religion) of Islam over Europe, or used Ibn Khaldun to determine the fall of the European dunya (world). Only the Moriscos, …
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