- Arabic Literature, Islamic Philosophy, Philosophy, Translation Studies, History of Oriental studies, Talal Asad, and 15 moreLate Ottoman Period, Translation theory, Antiquarianism, History of Archaeology, History of Ottoman Art and Architecture, Material Culture Studies, Ottoman Studies, Italian Renaissance Art, Ottoman History, Arabic Language and Linguistics, Religious Conversion, Dante Studies, Interreligious Polemics, Machiavelli, and Renaissance Studiesedit
- Elisabetta Benigni is assistant professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Turin Comparative l... moreElisabetta Benigni is assistant professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Turin
Comparative literature in the Mediterranean context (transmission of texts, translations and cross-influence), prison and resistance literature, literary translations and translation studies, early Modern and modern contacts between Italian and Arabic.edit
Research Interests:
This article examines the ideological implications of the literary debate about the Arab-Islamic influences on Dante’s Divina Commedia and the emergence of the idea of Mediterranean literature. It traces the question of “influences” back... more
This article examines the ideological implications of the literary debate about the
Arab-Islamic influences on Dante’s Divina Commedia and the emergence of the idea of
Mediterranean literature. It traces the question of “influences” back to 16th century
Italy, casts the modern controversy about Dante and the Arabs in the broader context
of borders, and questions the definition of European and Romance literatures in relation
to Arabic literature. It then focuses on the 20th century debate about the Arabic
roots of the Commedia in Italy, Spain and the Arab world in order to account for the
reception and translation of the Commedia into Arabic.
Arab-Islamic influences on Dante’s Divina Commedia and the emergence of the idea of
Mediterranean literature. It traces the question of “influences” back to 16th century
Italy, casts the modern controversy about Dante and the Arabs in the broader context
of borders, and questions the definition of European and Romance literatures in relation
to Arabic literature. It then focuses on the 20th century debate about the Arabic
roots of the Commedia in Italy, Spain and the Arab world in order to account for the
reception and translation of the Commedia into Arabic.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Written in 1971 and published in 1974, al-Karnak is one of Naǧīb Maḥfūẓ's most explicitly political novels. The story is set in the social and collegial space of a Cairene coffee shop, illustrating the collective tragedy of mass arrests... more
Written in 1971 and published in 1974, al-Karnak is one of Naǧīb Maḥfūẓ's most explicitly political novels. The story is set in the social and collegial space of a Cairene coffee shop, illustrating the collective tragedy of mass arrests that took place during the 1960s. Published a few years after the transfer of power to president Anwar al-Sādāt, the work has been seen as a political critique against the Ğamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir era. This short novel does, however, encompass a broader meaning going far beyond the limits of its time and space determinations, as it raises a number of questions on ethical and political issues, such as the effects produced by the collapse of authority on civil society and the relationship between the individual and the notions of justice and institutional power. The purpose of this essay is to explain that al-Karnak is a hybrid work merging two genres, i.e. narrative prose and theatre, in which Naǧīb Maḥfūẓ uses characterization and dialogue so as to shatter the time-space dimension in order to create a parable that invites the reader to reexamine the set of rules governing authority and society.
This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work and the Islamic world, running from the Arabic roots of The Prince to its first translations into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. It investigates... more
This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work and the Islamic world, running from the Arabic roots of The Prince to its first translations into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. It investigates comparative descriptions of non-European peoples, Renaissance representations of Muḥammad and the Ottoman military discipline, a Jesuit treatise in Persian for a Mughal emperor, peculiar readers from Brazil to India, and the parallel lives of Machiavelli and the bureaucrat Celālzāde Muṣṭafá. Ten distinguished scholars analyse the backgrounds, circulation and reception of Machiavelli’s writings, focusing on many aspects of the mutual exchange of political theories and grammars between East and West. A significant contribution to attempts by current scholarship to challenge any rigid separation within Eurasia, this volume restores a sense of the global spreading of books, ideas and men in the past.
1 Introduction: Re-Orienting Machiavelli
Lucio Biasiori and Giuseppe Marcocci
Part One – From Readings to Readers
2 Islamic Roots of Machiavelli’s Thought? The Prince and the Kitāb sirr al-asrār from Baghdad to Florence and Back
Lucio Biasiori
3 Turkophilia and Religion: Machiavelli, Giovio and the Sixteenth-Century Debate about War
Vincenzo Lavenia
4 Machiavelli and the Antiquarians
Carlo Ginzburg
Part Two – Religion and Empires
5 Roman Prophet or Muslim Caesar: Muḥammad the Lawgiver before and after Machiavelli
Pier Mattia Tommasino
6 Mediterranean Exemplars: Jesuit Political Lessons for a Mughal Emperor
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
7 Machiavelli and the Islamic Empire: Tropical Readers from Brazil to India (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
Giuseppe Marcocci
Part Three – Beyond Orientalism
8 A Tale of Two Chancellors: Machiavelli, Celālzāde Muṣṭafā, and Connected Political Cultures in the Cinquecento/the Hijri Tenth Century
Kaya Şahin
9 Machiavelli Enters the Sublime Porte: The Introduction of The Prince to the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman World
Nergiz Yılmaz Aydoğdu
10 Translating Machiavelli in Egypt: The Prince and the Shaping of a New Political Vocabulary in the Nineteenth-Century Arab Mediterranean
Elisabetta Benigni
1 Introduction: Re-Orienting Machiavelli
Lucio Biasiori and Giuseppe Marcocci
Part One – From Readings to Readers
2 Islamic Roots of Machiavelli’s Thought? The Prince and the Kitāb sirr al-asrār from Baghdad to Florence and Back
Lucio Biasiori
3 Turkophilia and Religion: Machiavelli, Giovio and the Sixteenth-Century Debate about War
Vincenzo Lavenia
4 Machiavelli and the Antiquarians
Carlo Ginzburg
Part Two – Religion and Empires
5 Roman Prophet or Muslim Caesar: Muḥammad the Lawgiver before and after Machiavelli
Pier Mattia Tommasino
6 Mediterranean Exemplars: Jesuit Political Lessons for a Mughal Emperor
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
7 Machiavelli and the Islamic Empire: Tropical Readers from Brazil to India (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
Giuseppe Marcocci
Part Three – Beyond Orientalism
8 A Tale of Two Chancellors: Machiavelli, Celālzāde Muṣṭafā, and Connected Political Cultures in the Cinquecento/the Hijri Tenth Century
Kaya Şahin
9 Machiavelli Enters the Sublime Porte: The Introduction of The Prince to the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman World
Nergiz Yılmaz Aydoğdu
10 Translating Machiavelli in Egypt: The Prince and the Shaping of a New Political Vocabulary in the Nineteenth-Century Arab Mediterranean
Elisabetta Benigni