Encountering Islam


Book Description

Long before European empires came to dominate the Middle East, Britain was brought face to face with Islam through the activities of the Barbary corsairs. For three centuries after 1500, Muslim ships based in North African ports terrorized European shipping, capturing thousands of vessels and enslaving hundreds of thousands of Christians. Encountering Islam is the fascinating story of one Englishman's experience of life within a Muslim society, as both Christian slave and Muslim soldier. Born in Exeter around 1662, Joseph Pitts was captured by Algerian pirates on his first voyage in 1678. Sold as a slave in Algiers, he underwent forced conversion to Islam. Sold again, he accompanied his kindly third master on pilgrimage to Mecca, so becoming the first Englishman known to have visited the Muslim Holy Places. Granted his freedom, Pitts became a soldier, going on campaign against the Moroccans and Spanish before venturing on a daring escape while serving with the Algiers fleet. Crossing much of Italy and Germany on foot, he finally reached Exeter seventeen years after he had left. Joseph Pitts's A Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahometans, first published in 1704, is a unique combination of captivity narrative, travel account and description of Islam. It describes his time in Algiers, his life as a slave, his conversion, his pilgrimage to Mecca (the first such detailed description in English), Muslim ritual and practice, and his audacious escape. A Christian for most of his life, Pitts also had the advantage of living as a Muslim within a Muslim society. Nowhere in the literature of the period is there a more intimate and poignant account of identity conflict. Encountering Islam contains a faithful rendering of the definitive 1731 edition of Pitts's book, together with critical historical, religious and linguistic notes. The introduction tells what is known of Pitts's life, and places his work against its historical background, and in the context of current scholarship on captivity narratives and Anglo-Muslim relations of the period. Paul Auchterlonie, an Arabist, worked for forty years as a librarian specializing in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and from 1981 to 2011 was librarian in charge of the Middle East collections at the University of Exeter. He is the author and editor of numerous works on Middle Eastern bibliography and library science, and has recently published articles on historical and cultural relations between Britain and the Middle East. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.







Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History Volume 13 Western Europe (1700-1800)


Book Description

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History Volume 13 (CMR 13) covering Western Europe in the period 1700-1800 is a further volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the 7th century to the early 20th century. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and appraisals of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 13, along with the other volumes in this series, is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations. Section editors: Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabé Pons, Jaco Beyers, Emanuele Colombo, Karoline Cook, Lejla Demiri, Martha Frederiks, David D. Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan Guenther, Vincenzo Lavenia, Emma Gaze Loghin, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Radu Păun, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Charles Ramsey, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid, Cornelia Soldat, Karel Steenbrink, Ann Thomson, Carsten Walbiner.







The Eighteenth Century


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The Geography of Perversion


Book Description

A thorough, cross-cultural history of sexual categories, focusing on such subjects as puritanism, sodomy, and ethnicity in colonial North America; cross-gender behavior and hermaphroditism; and the semiotics of genitalia. The author also demonstrates that representation of cultural "otherness," as found in European thought from the Enlightenment through modern times, is closely related to modern constructions of homosexual identity. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




The House of Longman, 1724-1800


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General Catalogue of Printed Books


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Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption


Book Description

At last available in a modern, annotated edition, these tales describe combat at sea, extraordinary escapes, and religious conversion, but they also illustrate the power, prosperity, and piety of Muslims in the early modern Mediterranean.