The spatiality of encounters: Enslaved Muslim galley rowers in the streets of early modern Naples

FBK Aula Piccola

Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali

FBK Aula Piccola

Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali

This talk explores the mechanisms that allowed for the sale and circulation of objects and remedies at the hands of enslaved Muslim galley rowers in the streets of early modern Italy between the mid-sixteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century.
During this period, Italian sea ports held thousands of enslaved galley rowers – Arabs, Turks, Berbers and other religious minorities captured during the skirmishes occurring in the Mediterranean against Ottoman and North African forces. The captives, however, when not rowing onboard the galleys during the winter months of non-navigation, spent most of their time selling objects in the ‘Turkish’ or ‘Moorish’ manner as well as ‘exotic’ remedies to the local population. How did the encounters between the sellers and the locals occur? What were the selling venues, outlets and arrangements that were put in place to allow the captives to carry out their commercial activities? What did these activities consist of?
This talk will draw on a wealth of archival sources to investigate the spatiality of encounters between Muslim captives and Italian customers, and how things and remedies were procured and sold in Italian piazzas by captives from North African and Turkish lands.

 

FEDERICA GIGANTE | Villa I Tatti / University of Cambridge

 

Coordinamento scientifico:
Massimo Rospocher (FBK-ISIG)
Sandra Toffolo (FBK-ISIG)
Flavia Tudini (FBK-ISIG)

 

Ciclo di seminari: “Tavola ovale di storia moderna

 

L’iniziativa è valida ai fini del diritto/dovere di assolvimento all’obbligo di aggiornamento dei docenti previsto dai vigenti accordi contrattuali del comparto scuola.

 

Evento in lingua inglese.

La presentazione avverrà in presenza in Aula Piccola FBK fino ad esaurimento posti e in modalità online.

E’ obbligatoria la registrazione entro l’11 dicembre 2024 alle ore 12.00.

 

 

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Immagine: Biblioteca FBK s-ar 1 B 30

Speakers

  • Federica Gigante - Speaker
    Villa I Tatti / University of Cambridge
    Federica Gigante is a historian of the material and intellectual exchanges between the Islamic world and Europe in the early modern period. She is currently a Fellow at I Tatti, The Harvard Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, as well as Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. Previous to that she worked for several years in a curatorial capacity at the University of Oxford, in particular at the Ashmolean Museum and History of Science Museum, where she was in charge of Islamic scientific instruments. She worked extensively on Islamic art collecting in early modern Italy, with a particular focus on Bologna, on which she wrote her PhD thesis at the Warburg Institute and SOAS (soon to be published as a monograph). She has recently been awarded a ERC Starting Grant on a project entitled UNSEEN which focuses on the role of slavery in the transmission of Islamic material culture and scientific knowledge in the early modern Mediterranean.

Registration

Registration to this event is mandatory.

Registration closed on 11/12/2024.

Deadline: December 11, 2024 at 12:00

Contacts

The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.

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