Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean: Self-Expression in a Muslim Culture from Post-Classical Times to the Present Day (The Islamic Mediterranean)

From the mountains of Lebanon to the shores of Turkey and North Africa, the Islamic Mediterranean has always been a dynamic cultural hub, where the stories and passions of East and West collide. In a sweeping survey spanning the first Arabic edition of the Thousand and One Nights to the novels of the 20th century, Robin Ostle pours through centuries of books, art and architecture to reveal what they tell us about the changing relationship between individual and society in this distinctive culture. In pre-modern literature, individuality was expressed through a series of comic subversions which, through their resolution, ultimately strengthened the social status quo. The great 19th century travelogues represented a more transgressive exploration of the boundaries of the self. This theme was continued in the cultural forms of the 20th century, with their emphasis on self-expression and emotional liberation, something increasingly defined in opposition to the state. 'Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean' unravels the emotions, ideas and power relationships which make up the cultural fabric of this fascinating region. Contents......Page 6 List of Contributors......Page 12 Introduction: Persons and Passions......Page 14 Part One: Subversive Strategies......Page 24 1 Challenging Symbols of Power: Palaces and Castles in the 'Thousand and One Nights' ......Page 26 2 Fools and Rogues in Discourse and Disguise: Two Studies......Page 40 3 Ibrahim Pasha and Sculpture as Subversion in Art......Page 72 Part Two: Self and Journey......Page 92 Preface: The Journey as Metaphor......Page 94 4 Myths and Signs of Alienation Between 19th-Century Rihlat and Europe......Page 98 5 Portrait of the Traveller as a Young Man: Mustafa Sami Efendi and his 'Essay on Europe'......Page 116 6 Voyages of Self-definition: The Case of [Ahmad] Faris al-Shidyaq......Page 131 7 The Journey in Two Arabic Novels......Page 146 Part Three: Individual, Novel and Nation......Page 160 8 Bildungsroman, Individual and Society......Page 162 9 Individual Sentiment and National Ideology......Page 176 10 Mapping Arab Womanhood: Subject, Subjectivity and Identity Politics in the Biographies of Malak Hifni Nasif......Page 187 11 Male Author, Female Protagonist: Aspects of LIterary Representation in Resat Nuri Guntekin's 'Calikusu'......Page 208 Part Four: Individual and Community......Page 222 12 Marginalities in Palestinian Literature--Two Case Studies: Imil Habibi and Tawfiq Fayyad......Page 224 13 The Representation of the Coptic Christians of Alexandria in 'Turabuha Za'faran' and 'Ya Banat Iskandariya' by Idwar Al-Kharrat......Page 258 14 Marginalised Communities, Marginalised Individuals in Short Stories of Yusuf al-Sharuni......Page 273 15 Language, Individual and Community in Lebanese Women's Literature Written in French......Page 288 Part Five: Individual, Space, Text......Page 306 16 Redefining Urban Spaces in Cairo at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries......Page 308 17 Imagining Beirut's Reconstructed City Centre......Page 326 18 Text, Space and the Individual in the Poetry of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: Nationalism, Revolution and Subjectivity......Page 343 19 Urban Change and Literary Transformation: The Egyptian Novel in the 1990s......Page 356 Index......Page 398 "When Englishman and Turk fell side by side in the killing fields of the Crimea, it was not the first time that Christian and Muslim blood was shed, and intermingled, in the cause of battling a common foe. It is fashionable today to talk of a 'clash of civilizations', and of an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and Christendom. But in this bold and iconoclastic book Ian Almond demonstrates that in Europe, the heart of the west, Muslims and Christians were often comrades-in-arms, repeatedly forming alliances to wage war against their own faiths and peoples. As we read of savage battles, deadly sieges and many acts of individual heroism, we learn of Arab troops rallying in their thousands to the banner of a Christian emperor outside the walls of Verona. Of Spanish Muslims standing shoulder to shoulder with their Christian Catalan neighbours in opposition to Castilians. Of Greeks and Turks forming a steadfast bulwark against Serbs and Bulgarians, their mutual enemy. And of tens of thousands of Hungarian Protestants assisting the Ottomans in their implacable and terrifying march on Christian Vienna. As the author shows, any notion that 'Christian Europe' has long been opposed by a 'Muslim non-Europe' grossly misrepresents the facts of a rich, complex and - above all - shared history. The motivations for these interfaith alliances were dictated by shifting diplomacies, pragmatic self-interest and realpolitik, not by jihad or religious war. This insight has profound ramifications for our understandings of global politics and current affairs, as well as of religious history and the future shape of Europe."--Bloomsbury publishing