Travellers from Europe in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, 16th–17th Centuries

Sonja Brentjes is researcher in a Project of Excellence of the Government of Andalucia, Departamento de Filosofía y Lógica, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

'Sonja Brentjes's work is a meticulous account of cultural transactions between the Middle East and Europe across two centuries. She demonstrated conclusively that while stereotypes about Islamic learning and sciences may have existed, these were also constantly modified - as was Western knowledge about them - because of the transactions with local scholars. The volume is an important counter to the assumption that all Western evaluations about Islam were merely orientalist; in fact, many were full of praise and admiration.' Sixteenth Century Journal '... we should welcome the apparition of this volume, which is an important contribution to Arabic and Islamic studies... the choice of the topic and, specially, the period of time considered are truly attractive. Whereas cultural interchanges between Islamic countries and Europe in Medieval or Contemporary times had been a subject of many essays, the 16th and the 17th centuries were almost forgotten by most scholars. When, in 1999, the author started to analyse these centuries, a major change happened... Sonja Brentjes covers the gap seeking for an innovative point of view, rejecting the borders between closed disciplines.' Suhayl '... a valuable collection of primary sources on learning and knowledge... Her language is clear and sober without the need for convoluted embellishment. They not only bring to the attention of the reader various unpublished works pertaining to the early modern period on the culture, sciences and knowledge in general in Iran and the Ottoman Empire, but also re-interpret and rightfully dispute a fundamental aspect of historiography on these countries.' Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient

• Contents: Preface; Introduction; The interests of the Republic of Letters in the Middle East, 1550-1700; On the relation between the Ottoman empire and the West European Republic of Letters (17th-18th centuries); The presence of ancient secular and religious texts in the unpublished and printed writings of Pietro della Valle (1586-1652); Pietro della Valle's Latin Geography of Safavid Iran (1624-1628): introduction (with Volkmar Schüller); Early modern Western European travellers in the Middle East and their reports about the sciences; Pride and prejudice: the invention of a 'historiography of science' in the Ottoman and Safavid empires by European travellers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries; Peiresc's interests in the Middle East and Northern Africa in respect to geography and cartography; Astronomy a temptation? On early modern encounters across the Mediterranean sea; Index.