Beyond Orientalism: Ahmad Ibn Qāsim al-Hajarī Between Europe and North Africa

Oumelbanine Zhiri begins her recent book—Beyond Orientalism: Ahmad Ibn Qāsim al-Hajarī Between Europe and North Africa—with a passage from Thomas Le Gendre’s seventeenth-century memoir written about his time in Marrakesh. Describing a meeting between the Sa’di Sultan Mulāy Zaydān (d. 1627) and an emissary from the Dutch Republic, Le Gendre mentions just three individuals: Thomas Erpenius, a professor of Oriental languages; Jacob Golius, his student; and Mulāy Zaydān. However, as Oumelbanine notes, Le Gendre’s account excludes one key figure: “the transnational Muslim polyglot Ahmad ibn Qāsim al-Hajarī” (2). Beginning with an anecdote that overlooks al-Hajarī, Oumelbanine clearly presents the methodological challenges of her study. With non-European actors often omitted, Oriental knowledge production has mostly been understood as a unidirectional process. Oumelbanine argues against this narrative, meticulously tracking the cultural production of al-Hajarī to show how early modern Oriental knowledge production was a “nuanced and multidirectional phenomenon” (2) wherein “the flow of knowledge, power, and diplomacy . . . circulated at crosscurrents” (4). Using al-Hajarī to chart the rise of a written middle culture and a burgeoning Arabic Republic of Letters, Oumelbanine leaves behind the category of “shadowy informants” and convincingly argues for the dialectical production of early modern Orientalism between both European and south Mediterranean actors.The success of these theoretical interventions lies in the detailed textual analysis that anchors Oumelbanine’s monograph. Split into three sections, each demonstrates a way to approach al-Hajarī as a contributor to Oriental knowledge production and, thus, global intellectual history. Part One, “A Connected Republic of Letters,” examines al-Hajarī’s role in relation to European and non-European peers. Chapter One charts the connections al-Hajarī built through his participation in the Plomos affair (18–20) and as a diplomat for Mulāy Zaydān (23–34). In these examples, Oumelbanine shows how al-Hajarī did not just transmit knowledge, but actively directed its production. This is emphasized in Chapter Two, which places al-Hajarī in the context of non-European peers like the Andalusian diplomat Leo Africanus (57–60) and the eastern Maronite deacon Ibrāhīm al-Hāqilānī (also known as Abraham Ecchellensis) (1605–64) (67), expanding the actors and geographies connected to Oriental knowledge production. More than just informants or neutral conveyors of linguistic skills, Oumelbanine shows how these individuals engaged with their own scholarly practices and prerogatives to shape knowledge on, about, and in the Orient (75).Part Two, “Ahmad al-Hajarī Becoming an Arab Writer,” situates al-Hajarī as a producer of knowledge within a self-reflective, seventeenth-century North African context. Focusing on linguistic register (88), affective polemical encounters (109), and his own world-making (134), Oumelbanine analyzes the ways in which al-Hajarī represented his own role as a member of the burgeoning Republic of Letters. Throughout his autobiography, Supporter of Religion against the Infidels, al-Hajarī presented himself as a humble figure through his use of Middle Arabic and the concession that he was not a member of the ulāmā’ (93). Nevertheless, Oumelbanine shows how he inculcated connections with some of the “most important European scholars of his time” (100). Here, al-Hajarī’s Morisco identity is used to explain his ease in navigating the different linguistic, political, and legal systems across the Mediterranean, a skill that ultimately allowed him to integrate ideas and worldviews from the Maghrib into global developments. This is highlighted in al-Hajarī’s framing and affective characterizations of religious polemic. For Oumelbanine, al-Hajarī saw these debates as an opportunity to provide his adversaries with better knowledge of Islam. Likewise, his interest in astronomy and the translation of the Atlas Minor reflects a transcultural inclination toward the natural sciences. Like his European counterparts, al-Hajarī “wove his theological views with his geographical learning” (134), translating the abstract coordinates of European cartographers from the Atlas Minor into the language of embodied travel. As Oumelbanine notes, this shows his recognition of an epistemological shift in Europe, while intentionally maintaining a humanistic meaning in his Arabic translation. This self-reflective and adaptive framework offers several examples of the multidirectional processes involved in Oriental knowledge production.Part Three, “Technology in the Contact Zone,” further situates a written middle culture within a developing Arabic Republic of Letters. Oumelbanine focuses on two case studies related to technological exchange to underscore how they reflect new “cultural modes of communication” (144). Chapter Five follows a Dutch mission to the Sa’di court that was sent to offer technical advice on building a new Atlantic-coast harbor. Chapter Six tracks the production and circulation of Ibrāhīm Ghānim’s treatise on artillery, Kitāb al-‘izz wa al-rif’a wa al-manāfi’ li l-mujāhidīn fī sabīl Allāh bi l-madāfi’ (The Book of Glory, Elevation, and Advantages of Artillery for the Righteous Warriors for God against the Infidels). Oumelbanine’s analysis of these two cases highlights how North African networks combined with a rising written middle culture shaped the “cultural processes and social and discursive practices through which technology spread in the early modern Mediterranean” (213). Here, Oumelbanine places al-Hajarī among peer actors across the Mediterranean. For the harbor project, it is the engineer—Golius—who himself was a “mediator between different observers and different forms of knowledge production” (164). Al-Hajarī understood this context, employing a conceptualization of muhandis that was more reflective of its European connotations than those in contemporary North Africa. Similarly, in the case of Ibrāhīm Ghānim’s Kitāb al-‘izz, the soldier becomes a technical practitioner, adviser, and expert who produced and codified knowledge in a written form (198). While the soldier transferred his experiential knowledge to text, al-Hajarī’s translation also had to mediate “between learned and practical writing” (202) while adding valuable context for Morocco and Tunisia in the seventeenth century (206).Oumelbanine’s Beyond Orientalism is an impressive study that will be of great value to scholars interested in the intellectual and epistemological dynamics of exchange across the early modern Mediterranean. This includes historians of science and technology, inter-cultural relations, and Arabic language. While al-Hajarī is already a well-known figure, the deep contextualization provided by Oumelbanine is a welcome and necessary addition to our understanding of the early modern Mediterranean world. This book builds on previous studies, such as Natalie Zemon Davis’s Tricksters Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006) and Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano’s Un Oriente español: Los moriscos y el Sacromonte en tiempos de Contrarreforma (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2010). Both works highlighted the porous borders of Orientalism and the deep cultural connections that sustained this field of knowledge production. What sets Beyond Orientalism apart, however, is Oumelbanine’s insistence on placing al-Hajarī within the context of a developing written middle culture and Arab Republic of Letters. This updated methodological framework will prove a valuable base from which scholars can continue to examine a much wider cadre of south Mediterranean figures, specifically those outside or adjacent to the “ulamā” class, who are oftentimes overlooked in the field of intellectual and cultural history.