Alexander Bevilacqua is Assistant Professor of History at Williams College.
Deeply thoughtful...A delight. * The Economist *
A closely researched and engrossing study of a subset of the
Republic of Letters-those scholars who, having learned Arabic, used
their mastery of that difficult language to interpret the Quran,
study the career of Muhammad, write the history of medieval Islam
and introduce Europeans to the masterpieces of Arabic
literature...[Bevilacqua] has joined the ranks of a latter-day
Republic of Arabic Letters that, in its scholarship and scholarly
cooperation, is in no way inferior to its early-modern precursor.
-- Robert Irwin * Wall Street Journal *
What makes his study so groundbreaking, and such a joy to read, is
the connection he makes between intellectual history and the
material history of books. The re-evaluation of Islam that took
place in the 17th century was closely connected to the acquisition
of a much wider range of empirical sources than had been available
before: it was the stockpiling of Oriental collections in the great
libraries of Europe that enabled this work to take place. -- Gavin
Jacobson * Financial Times *
[A] tour de force study of the origins of modern Islamic
scholarship in the West and its central role in the
Enlightenment...Bevilacqua's extraordinary book provides the first
true glimpse into this story...It has taken until now for a book to
tell the history of the origins of the Western study of Islam, as
Bevilacqua's does. Few have his linguistic and cultural expertise.
He, like the tradition he describes, is a rarity. -- Jacob Soll *
New Republic *
Erudite and eloquent...What [Bevilacqua's] meticulous scholarship
reveals is that between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries, the
engagement with Islam really did transform Europeans' understanding
not only of Islam but also of their own Christian faith. -- Dmitri
Levitin * London Review of Books *
Anyone interested in the Enlightenment, or Islam, or both, should
read Alexander Bevilacqua's The Republic of Arabic Letters.
-- Ritchie Robertson * Times Literary Supplement *
Bevilacqua offers many surprising discoveries. One of them is that
robust modern scholarship on Islam was shaped in an ostensibly
improbable source, namely the Vatican...It is indicative of the
West's tortuous engagement with Islam that the foundation of
European scholarship on Islam had to wait until now to be
uncovered; it is all the more creditable that Bevilacqua has
cleared the ground to build on it. -- Benedikt Koehler * Standpoint
*
A succinct and erudite overview of 17th- and 18th-century European
scholars and writers who focused on Islamic studies. * Publishers
Weekly *
A closely researched and elegantly written book...The Republic
of Arabic Letters brings back to life a fascinating moment in
intellectual history. -- Francis Ghiles * Arab Weekly *
An extraordinary achievement, displaying wide-ranging and often
profound scholarship...A book of great originality, based on an
astonishingly wide array of sources, some previously
uninvestigated, and all carefully interpreted...Will be essential
reading, not only for those concerned with 'Islam and the European
Enlightenment,' but for anyone interested in the intellectual
history of the eighteenth century, or in the achievements of
Arabists in the seventeenth. -- G. J. Toomer * Erudition and the
Republic of Letters *
The great names of the second phase [of reinterpretation of Islam]
are known, among them secular men of letters like Montesquieu and
Voltaire. The scholars of the first phase, however, are forgotten.
The fascinating study of the American historian Alexander
Bevilacqua studies these figures. Many of them were, unlike the
Enlighteners after them, pious Christians or even clerics. They
engaged on the basis of their faith with Islam, out of curiosity
and as scholars. Thus Bevilacqua draws the portrait of a 'Republic
of Letters' dedicated to the Islamic-Arabic world that was not
known until now. -- Rainer Hermann * Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
*
Fabulous...Bevilacqua narrates in lucid prose how the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries witnessed a transformation in European
knowledge of Islam and its peoples. -- Richard Calis * Marginalia
*
[A] fascinating book. -- Fitzroy Morrissey * History Today *
Bevilacqua explores a new humanism in early modern Europe that
sought a more accurate representation of Muslims...The resulting
wave of scholarship has impacted Europe's relations with Muslims
ever since. -- I. Blumi * Choice *
In this passionate, lucid, and enjoyable book, Bevilacqua
successfully pursues the connection between intellectual history
and material history of books, showing how new texts and new
information changed the traditional understanding of Islam. And in
so doing he considers, rightly, the birth of the republic of Arabic
letters to have been an episode in the history of the global
Enlightenment or, at least, 'a significant chapter in the long and
painstaking global advance of philological learning and
interreligious knowledge.' -- Franco Giudice * Il Sole 24 Ore *
Fascinating, eloquent, and learned, The Republic of Arabic
Letters reveals a world later lost, in which European scholars
studied Islam with a sense of affinity and respect. With deep
research and insight, Alexander Bevilacqua delivers a powerful
reminder of the ability of scholarship to transcend cultural
divides, and the capacity of human minds to accept differences
without denouncing them. -- Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn
Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World
Among the many things produced by the Enlightenment we must now
include a vast expansion of European scholarly engagement with
Arabic and Islam. That engagement shaped much of how future
Christians and Muslims would think about each other and themselves.
Alexander Bevilacqua's learned and luminous The Republic of
Arabic Letters is both a recovery of a fascinating moment in
intellectual history, and an exploration of the conditions of
thought in our own time. -- David Nirenberg, author of
Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the
Middle Ages and Today
A lucid, erudite, and in many respects engaging study of a
dimension of the European Enlightenment and its precursor
traditions that has not previously been examined. -- William Graham
* European Legacy *
The Republic of Arabic Letters contends that Maracci,
d'Herbelot, and Sale, along with a few other scholars scattered
across Europe, were responsible for transforming Europe's
understanding of Islam. A worthy chronicler of these meticulous and
erudite figures, Bevilacqua moves easily between multiple languages
to trace a trans-European story packed with colorful anecdotes and
elegantly told lives. -- Ian Coller * Journal of Modern History *
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