Nyhet

Crossing Continents

Global Microhistory from Egypt and the Sudan

AvHeather J. Sharkey

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

979 kr

Kommande

Beskrivning

1825, a giraffe boarded a boat at Sennar, near the junction of the Blue and White Niles in the Sudan and sailed for Paris. In the next year, also at Sennar, a Kurdish cavalry officer named Mahu Bey Urfali, representing the Muhammad Ali Pasha regime of Egypt, died of smallpox in a military encampment. What was a Kurd from Urfa, now in southeastern Turkey, doing in the Sudan? Why did a giraffe make the long trip to Paris? And how did a sleepy town 300 km southeast of Khartoum, once the capital of a sultanate, figure in their life journeys? This book answers such questions by viewing the lives of seven remarkable individuals through the lens of global microhistory, to reveal a kaleidoscopic story of peoples, places, objects and ideas as they moved through the Nile Valley and wider world. The book connects small places and little things to big events across two centuries. It asks: Who or what counts as important in history? Which details deserve attention? And how can we assemble fragmentary sources about ordinary people to give meaningful accounts of the past? Addressing these questions, this learned but accessible study will appeal to university students and scholars of Middle Eastern, African, and global history.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-09-17
Mått:156 x 234 x undefined mm
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:304
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN:9780755692132

Utforska kategorier

Socialhistoria och kulturhistoria inom Historia och arkeologi

Mer om författaren

Heather J. Sharkey is a Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She is the author of A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East (2017), American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (2008), and Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (2003).

Recensioner i media

Crossing Continents is a book that excites wonder. Taking readers by the hand with her engaging prose, Heather Sharkey introduces us one-by-one to a set of keyholes through which she captures a view of the fascinating connected histories of Egypt, the Sudan, and the world in an age of empire, mobility, and globalization... Building from over a decade’s worth of purposeful, capacious detective work across a constellation of Middle Eastern, European and global archives, Sharkey conjures up the voices of individuals whose lives, families, and fortunes were carried on the tides of some of the most important events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the Franco-Prussian War to the Boxer Uprising to the Suez Crisis. Moreover, she brings to these ‘small worlds’ not only the precise, analytical tools of the historian, but also insights drawn from anthropology, sociology, museum studies, and the study of material culture. A testament to a scholar’s joy for the historian’s craft, Crossing Continents is global history at its best: empathetic, multilingual, and ambitious in its storytelling. This is a book that will move and inspire readers who are looking for a usable past, one in which everyone counts and every place matters.

Innehållsförteckning

List of Illustrations and Credit LinesAcknowledgementsChapter 1. Introduction: Global Microhistory and Mobility in the Nile ValleyChapter 2. Zarafa: The Giraffe Who Went to FranceChapter 3. Ali Gifoon and Abd al-Rahman Musa: The Sudanese Soldiers Who Went to MexicoChapter 4. Bamba: The Maharaja’s BrideChapter 5. Ahmed Fahmy: The Egyptian Doctor of Changchow, ChinaChapter 6. Molly Crowfoot: Scholar, Maker, Mover, ShakerChapter 7. Henry Athanassian: The Armenian Accountant Who Survived Two EmpiresChapter 8. Conclusion: History Is EverythingBibliography