Merchants of Knowledge : Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe

Robert G Morrison

ISBN 10: 1503636321 / ISBN 13: 9781503636323

Editore: Stanford University Press Apr 2025, 2025

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Neuware - Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge from the Ottoman Empire, and the courts of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II greatly benefitted from knowledge coming out of Europe, merchants of knowledge-multilingual and transregional Jewish scholars-became an important bridge among the powers. With this book, Robert Morrison is the first to track the network of scholars who mediated exchanges in astronomy, astrology, Qabbalah, and philosophy. Their books, manuscripts, and acts of translation all held economic value, thus commercial and intellectual exchange commingled-knowledge became transactional as these merchants exchanged texts for more intellectual material and social capital. While parallels between medieval Islamic astronomy and the famous heliocentric arrangement posited by Copernicus are already known, Morrison reveals far deeper networks of intellectual exchange that extended well beyond theoretical astronomy and shows how religion, science, and philosophy, areas that will eventually develop into separate fields, were once interwoven. The Renaissance portrayed in Merchants of Knowledge is not, from the perspective of the Ottoman Muslim contacts of the Jewish merchants of knowledge, hegemonic. It's a Renaissance permeated by diversity, the cultural and political implications of which the West is only now waking up to.

Codice articolo 9781503636323

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Merchants of Knowledge : Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe
• Editore: Stanford University Press Apr 2025
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1503636321
• ISBN 13: 9781503636323
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 239 L x 161 A x 27 P (millimetri) 239 millimetri di larghezza per 161 millimetri di altezza per 27 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 623 grammi

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Riassunto

Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge from the Ottoman Empire, and the courts of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II greatly benefitted from knowledge coming out of Europe, merchants of knowledge—multilingual and transregional Jewish scholars—became an important bridge among the powers.

With this book, Robert Morrison is the first to track the network of scholars who mediated exchanges in astronomy, astrology, Qabbalah, and philosophy. Their books, manuscripts, and acts of translation all held economic value, thus commercial and intellectual exchange commingled—knowledge became transactional as these merchants exchanged texts for more intellectual material and social capital. While parallels between medieval Islamic astronomy and the famous heliocentric arrangement posited by Copernicus are already known, Morrison reveals far deeper networks of intellectual exchange that extended well beyond theoretical astronomy and shows how religion, science, and philosophy, areas that will eventually develop into separate fields, were once interwoven. The Renaissance portrayed in Merchants of Knowledge is not, from the perspective of the Ottoman Muslim contacts of the Jewish merchants of knowledge, hegemonic. It's a Renaissance permeated by diversity, the cultural and political implications of which the West is only now waking up to.

Informazioni sull'autore

Robert G. Morrison is a professor at Bowdoin College. He is the author of The Light of the World: Astronomy in al-Andalus (2016).