CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Tóth, Johanna |
|---|---|
| Title | The Muslims of Algiers in Antonio de Sosa's Topographia, e historia general de Argel (1612) |
| Summary | The thesis analyzes an early modern account of the Muslim society of Algiers written by a Spanish captive, Antonio de Sosa, at the end of the sixteenth century. He held a high ecclesiastical position (vicar general of Agrigento, Sicily), and was travelling to his post when he was captured by Algerian corsairs at sea, and as a slave. De Sosa spent four and a half years in captivity (1577-1581) in Algiers, while he established a good relationship with Miguel de Cervantes, also held captive there, conducted conversations with various people, and, as he states, read many books in his prison cell and wrote day by day about the happenings in the city. The result of his daily writings is the Topographia, e historia general de Argel [Topography and general history of Algiers], which consists of five books. I focus on the first one, the Topography of Algiers, which gives a colorful and detailed account of the city of Algiers, its inhabitants, the different groups of people with different customs, religions, etc. The Topography is a significant source for various reasons. First, it introduces Algiers, the “capital of the corsairs,” and the capital of a province of the Ottoman Empire seeking independence, an important trading centre in the Mediterranean with a complex multi-lingual and multi-cultural society. This is what de Sosa depicts in great detail and with much care. He organizes his writing so as to put greater emphasis on the people of the city, their customs, everyday life, characteristics, religious rites, etc. In addition, he differentiates among different “ethnic” groups within the group of “Muslims” and gives an account of the nature of their relationships, which is exceptional compared to the writings of his contemporaries. His methodology and categories of classification of different identities were new and nuanced, which makes his work outstanding. I take into consideration the political events and the possible strategic purposes of de Sosa’s work. I look at the contemporary ideas in his age of the “Turkish threat” that impacted the treatise and see how the work fits into the genres of travel literature and captivity narratives, also considering the perceptions of Muslims in general and the case of “Iberia.” My aim is to place de Sosa’s work in the series of emerging pieces of “ethnographic knowledge” of the age, which was a transformation period concerning the methods of talking about another culture, a period of new perceptions, new ideas, changing attitudes towards empirical knowledge, and a period of the rise of curiosity about distant lands. I intend to show how de Sosa’s work is exceptional among early modern accounts of Muslims because of its nuanced depiction of the “ethnic” groups in a Muslim society and because of his criteria for categorizing different identities. |
| Supervisor | Krstić, Tijana; Sebők, Marcell |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/toth_johanna.pdf |
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