The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History - by Edhem Eldem

About the Book

Examining the contemporary press, memoirs, travelogues and photographs - as well as the visitors' book - it uses the Alhambra to build a history of the complex and entangled relations between East and West, North and South, Islam and Christianity, centre and periphery during the heyday of Orientalism and Western hegemony.

Book Synopsis

A growing flow of visitors in the 19th century turned the Alhambra into a touristic destination and a major trope of Orientalism, created by Western authors and artists from François-René de Chateaubriand to Owen Jones and from Washington Irving to Jean-Léon Gérôme. Yet behind this Western infatuation lie scores of 'Oriental' observers of the monument, as revealed by its visitors' book, kept since 1829.
This book uses this untapped source to analyse the perceptions of the Alhambra by multiple actors, including Westerners, Spaniards, Maghrebines, Ottoman Turks, Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs from the Mashreq. In doing so, it reveals the existence of significant variations in both Western and Oriental perceptions of the monument, from 'Oriental Orientalism' to Arab nationalism. Examining the contemporary press, memoirs, travelogues and photographs - as well as the visitors' book - it uses the Alhambra to build a history of the complex and entangled relations between East and West, North and South, Islam and Christianity, centre and periphery during the heyday of Orientalism and Western hegemony.

Review Quotes

At the crossroads of a meticulous micro-historical study of the visitors' book of the Alhambra and of the grand narrative of the interaction between Arabs, Turks and Westerners in the nineteenth century, Edhem Eldem's innovative take on cultural history offers an eye-opening analysis of this historical and cultural melting pot.

--Henry Laurens, Collège de France

Edhem Eldem's rich account of the Alhambra possesses a rare virtue, that of bringing together the visions of Western Romantic and post-Romantic travellers with those of visitors from Turkey, the Levant and North Africa. Their conjunction elevates the myth of al-Andalus to its highest expression. Not to be missed.

--José Antonio González Alcantud, University of Granada

Using original and unexpected sources, Edhem Eldem follows the trail of Arab and Turkish visitors to the Alhambra in the nineteenth century. Describing with great erudition their thoughts and emotions before this icon of Islamic heritage, he offers a stimulating analysis of the many facets and layers of orientalism.

--Anne-Laure Dupont, University of Paris-Sorbonne

About the Author

Edhem Eldem is a professor in the Department of History of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He has also taught at Berkeley, Harvard, EHESS, EPHE, ENS, Columbia and has held the International Chair of Turkish and Ottoman Studies et the Collège de France. Among his fields of interest are the Levant trade in the eighteenth century, Ottoman funerary epigraphy, the development of an urban bourgeoisie in Istanbul, the history of the Ottoman Bank, the history of archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, late-nineteenth-century Ottoman first-person narratives and biographies, the history of photography in the Ottoman Empire and the interaction between Westernization and Orientalism. He is the author of L'Empire ottoman (PuF, 2022), L'Alhambra. À la croisée des histoires (Belles Lettres, 2021), L'Empire ottoman et la Turquie face à l'Occident (Fayard, 2018), Camera Ottomana (Koç University, 2015), Scramble for the Past (SALT, 2011), Un Ottoman en Orient (Actes Sud, 2010), The Ottoman City between East and West (Cambridge University Press, 1999), A History of the Ottoman Bank (Ottoman Bank, 1999), French Trade in Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Brill, 1999).