Infidels, Enemies or Humanists? The European–Italian “Renaissance” and the Fictional Imaginary of the Muslim–Ottoman Turk

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on the inter-connection between the Ottoman world and the Western Europe in the Quattrocento and Cinquecento; in specific, the idea is to work on the reciprocal imaginary that the Ottoman sultanate and the European–Italian potentates reciprocally played in this specific age.

The argument is open to a multi-disciplinary approach able to consider the historical, religious, political, artistic, and literary approaches as international relations topics, with the task of emphasizing an increase in the academic debate on it.

Critical studies on this subject remain quite limited: A. Contadini, C. Norton’s The Renaissance and the Ottoman World (Ashgate, 2013), N. Malcolm’s Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the Western Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2019), Christine I. Verhaaren’s Allies with the Infidel (I.B. Tauris, 2011) and Alain Servantie’s edited essay entitled L’Empire Ottoman dans l’Europe de la Renaissance (Leuven University Press, 2005) are prominent works that have only preliminarily increased the attention on the topic.

However, this Special Issue aims to expand the mutual interaction between Europe and the Ottomans starting from the bilateral influence and the alterity visio that they played to each other in this historical phase of military conflict, as well as the commercial and economic interaction, and cultural and political impact between the end of Middle Ages and early modernity.

The geography of reference includes western and eastern Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, north Africa and the Near East, while the “role game” of influences should involve a plural interdisciplinarity from political and religious adapted to the military field, from diplomatic and trade interaction to the fashion and artistic milieu.

The idea is to re-calibrate the simplistic assumption that “Umanesimo” and the Renaissance were profoundly influenced by the Islamic world: an historical aspect on which too little has been reported (Nayef N. F. al-Rodhan, 2012; M. Hamilton Morgan, 2007; Ahmed Essa and Othman Ali, 2010). In contrast, it would also be important to consider how much the Ottoman world, the fifteenth century and the Renaissance have interacted in a path of mutual outcomes.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor (marco.demichelis2@unibo.it) or to Religions editorial office (religions@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Dr. Marco Demichelis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Italian “Umanesimo” and the Renaissance
• Ottoman pre-modern and modern history
• otherness visio
• European thought and influence
• Islamic thought and influence
• Christian “Conciliarism”
• Ottoman history and thought
• art and architectural history