Johanna Tóth THE MUSLIMS OF ALGIERS IN ANTONIO DE SOSA’S TOPOGRAPHIA, E HISTORIA GENERAL DE ARGEL (1612) MA Thesis in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. CEU eTD Collection Central European University Budapest May 2013 THE MUSLIMS OF ALGIERS IN ANTONIO DE SOSA’S TOPOGRAPHIA, E HISTORIA GENERAL DE ARGEL (1612) by Johanna Tóth (Hungary) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Examiner CEU eTD Collection ____________________________________________ Examiner Budapest May 2013 THE MUSLIMS OF ALGIERS IN ANTONIO DE SOSA’S TOPOGRAPHIA, E HISTORIA GENERAL DE ARGEL (1612) by Johanna Tóth (Hungary) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU. ____________________________________________ External Reader CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2013 THE MUSLIMS OF ALGIERS IN ANTONIO DE SOSA’S TOPOGRAPHIA, E HISTORIA GENERAL DE ARGEL (1612) by Johanna Tóth (Hungary) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies. Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ Supervisor ____________________________________________ External Supervisor CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2013 I, the undersigned, Johanna Tóth, candidate for the MA degree in Comparative History, with a specialization in Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person’s or institution’s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 20 May 2013 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank Tijana Krstić and Marcell Sebők for their inspiring ideas, instructions, patience, and for all their help in giving birth to this study. I also need to thank Ferenc Csirkés, who was always of immediate help, and who also made this work nicer and richer. I wish to thank to Judith Rasson for her assistance with style and orthography. I am thankful for Hervin Fernández y Aceves for making my sweet struggle with the Spanish language sweeter; he is the one, who owns the merit for the elegance of the translations in this study. I thank all my colleagues for being my companion in this hard way and for making the moments I spent at CEU cheerful and memorable. I need to express my thanks to my family for their everlasting support and for enduring me and still loving me even after these two years. I also wish to thank to my friends that they understood and hopefully forgave my lack of visitations. Last but not least, I would like to say a big thank to János Incze, my strictest supervisor, who tried to bring structure into my writings, but definitely did bring joy and love into my days. In the end, I want to send him the message: we killed the bear! CEU eTD Collection TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... 2 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 3 Chapter One Antonio de Sosa and his Topographia ................................................................ 11 Chapter Two Historical Context: The Clash of Empires in the Western Mediterranean and North African Slavery .............................................................................................................. 23 2.1. Barbary Corsairs, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire ........................................................... 23 2.2. Population, Government, and Society of Algiers .............................................................. 29 2.3. Slavery in Algiers – “Un Cuerpo Muerto”? ...................................................................... 33 Chapter Three The Cultural Context for de Sosa’s Account: New Renaissance Genres for Ethnographic Knowledge about Muslims ................................................................................ 41 3.1. New Genres for New Knowledge: Ethnographic Knowledge, Travel Literature and Captivity Narratives ................................................................................................................. 41 3.2. Perceptions of Muslims in Europe and Spain in the Sixteenth Century ........................... 52 Chapter Four Describing and Classifying the Muslims of the Late Sixteenth-Century Algiers61 4.1. “Ethnicity” and “Religion” as Categories of Identity in de Sosa’s Topographia ............. 61 4.2. The Themes of Classification in de Sosa’s Topographia .................................................. 77 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 98 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 103 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................ 111 CEU eTD Collection 1 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1. The Western Mediterranean 1480-1580 .................................................................... 111 Fig. 2. Algiers, a print from a German manuscript c. 1550. .................................................. 112 Fig. 3. Hayreddin Barbarossa ................................................................................................ 112 CEU eTD Collection 2 INTRODUCTION After the conquest of Constantinople, the number of treatises about the “Turks” increased in great number; Carl Göllner listed 2463 editions and 500 writers, pamphlets, newssheets, memoirs, accounts, etc., which dealt with them.1 The humanists of the era were lamenting on the great loss of the classical learning and blamed the “Turks” by calling them the “new barbarians,” the enemy of civilization.2 On the other hand, the new empire was of great interest to European polities, which gathered all kinds of information on the “enemy” threatening their borders and sent diplomats and spies to Ottoman territory. There were many “unofficial spies” who helped the information-gathering of the state – like captives and travelers. Because of these many channels through which the knowledge of the “religious other” arrived to Christendom – through people from different regions, of different education, with different aims of conveying information and mode of encountering the “Turk” (if there was an encounter at all) – information on the “Turks” greatly varied. While it is true that most of the writings conceived of the “Turks” (interchangeably used term was “Moors” and even “Saracens”) as a homogenous group, with characteristics of being “infidel,” “cruel,” “sodomite,” “barbarous,” exceptions did exist. There were accounts that had a more nuanced view of the Muslims and could present a somewhat more complex picture. My argumentation goes along the lines of a recent scholarly debate that has emphasized this varied image of the Muslims in Europe.3 1 Jeremy Lawrence, “Europe and the Turks in Spanish literature of the Renaissance and Early Modern Period,” CEU eTD Collection in Culture and Society in Habsburg Spain. Studies Presented to R.W. Truman by his Pupils and Colleagues on the Occasion of his Retirement, RW Truman, ed. by Nigel Griffin, et al. (London: Tamesis, 2001), 17. 2 Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West, Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, c2004), 43. 3 Scholarly works that argue for the presence of a more nuanced image of the ”Turk” in European literature of the early modern era include David R. Blanks, “Western Views of Islam,” in Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Perception of Other, ed. by David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto (New York: St. Martin’s Press: 1999), 11-53.; Daniel J. Vitkus, “Early Modern Orientalism, Representations of Islam in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Europe,” in Blanks and Frassetto, Western Views of Islam, 207-231.; Bisaha, Creating East and West; Lucette Valensi, 'The Making of a Political Paradigm: The Ottoman State and Oriental Despotism," in The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, edited by Anthony Grafton and 3 The early modern era was