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 Salâe to Tripoli. Europeans wrote extensively about their ordeals, and so did the North Africans and Levantines. In Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517-1798, Nabil Matar examines the distinct Arabic narrative of captivity. Consulting archives from Tunis to London and from Fez to Paris, Valletta and Rome, Matar has collected, translated, and contextualized the anecdotes, recollections, reports, miracles, letters, fatawa, exempla and short accounts that cumulativelyrecount the Arabic qiòsòsas al-asråa, or stories of the captives, in the captives' native language and idiom"--