Scribal Networks and Diplomatic Knowledge Production Across North Africa
Episode 197
Scribal Networks and Diplomatic Knowledge Production across North Africa
What did trans-Maghribi society look like on the eve of colonialism? Who travelled across these spaces and for what reasons? This interview is an early exploration into Dr. Kitlas’ second project, which proposes a more attentive engagement with the history of a dynamic and multifaceted eighteenth-century trans-maghrib society. Spanning Tunis to Tangier, this project examines the networks of traders, Sufis, consuls, translators, and court advisors that embedded themselves in Maghribi locales outside their home cities and, in doing so, took part in producing a distinct trans-maghrib socio-cultural sphere. Building on his first monograph that focuses on the layers of diplomatic practice in Morocco, this interview thinks through ways to expand these networks and the knowledge production attached to them across localities in the wider Maghrib. The project questions the historiographical focus on north-south movements, and in its place adds a new east-west perspective that transcends stubborn political divides and sheds light on the ways in which a dynamic cultural and intellectual sphere developed, spread, and was sustained across the Ottoman/Moroccan Maghrib.
Peter Kitlas is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the American University of Beirut. His research focuses on the intellectual and cultural history in eighteenth-century North Africa as told through Arabic and Ottoman-Turkish sources. Exploring the intersection of scribal practice and diplomatic knowledge production in Morocco, his first monograph rethinks the influence of Islamic thought on Mediterranean conceptualizations of diplomacy. Peter has served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco and conducted research in North Africa, Spain, Croatia and Turkey through the support of fellowships from SSRC and Fulbright-Hays. His written work has been published in The Journal of Early Modern History, Mediterranean Studies Journal, The Journal of North African Studies, and The Encyclopedia of Islam Three.
This episode was recorded via Zoom on the 25th of October, 2023, at the Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) with Luke Scalone, CEMAT Chargé de Programmes.
We thank our friend Ignacio Villalón for his guitar performance for the introduction and conclusion of this podcast.
Production and editing: Lena Krause, AIMS Resident Fellow at the Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines à Tunis.
Suggested Bibliography
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Hédi Chérif, Mohamed. Pouvoir et Société Dans La Tunisie de H’usayn Bin ’Ali (1705-1740). Tunis: Centre de Publication Universitaire, 2008.
Jerad, Mehdi, and Hafedh Ben Hassine, eds. Le Journal de Suleiman Agha: Envoyé Du Bey de Tunis à Paris En 1777. Tunis: Al Massira, 2020.
Moalla, Asma. The Regency of Tunis and the Ottoman Porte, 1777-1814: Army and Government of a North-African Ottoman Eyâlet at the End of the Eighteenth Century. London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
Oualdi, M’hamed. “Mamluks in Ottoman Tunisia: A Category Connecting State and Social Forces.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 48 (2016): 473–90.
El Mansour, Mohamed. “Maghribis in the Mashriq during the Modern Period: Representations of the Other within the World of Islam.” The Journal of North African Studies 6, no. 1 (2001): 81–104.
El-Rouayheb, Khaled. Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
El Shakry, Omnia. “Rethinking Arab Intellectual History: Epistemology, Historicism, Secularism.” Modern Intellectual History 18, no. 2 (June 2021): 547–72.
Shuval, Tal. “Cezayir-Garp: Bringing Algeria Back into Ottoman History.” Edited by Çağlar Keyder and Ayşe Öneli. New Perspectives on Turkey., no. 22 (2000): 85–112.
Windler, Christian. “Diplomatic History as a Field for Cultural Analysis: Muslim-Christian Relations in Tunis, 1700-1840.” The Historical Journal 44, no. 1 (2001): 79–106.
Map of North Africa (1650) by Johannes Janssonius, North West University Library
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