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a sweeping historical recalibration that centers on the importance of 14th-century trade routes that crossed the Sahara Desert and drove the movement of people, goods, and culture. As one flyer exclaims: “Weaving stories about interconnected histories, the exhibition showcases objects and ideas that connected at the crossroads of the medieval Sahara and celebrates West Africa’s historic and underrecognized global significance.” This is ambitious. The show doesn’t aim for less than decentering the idea that the medieval epoch should only be envisioned through a European lens, which are typically stories of feudalism, war, chivalry, and the Bubonic plague. These European sagas are the ones I grew up with, saw dramatized on television, and valorized in film. Caravans of Gold also seeks to put Islam at this reconstructed world’s fulcrum and regard it as a force which impelled cultural advance, rather than to associate it with iconoclastic destruction of historical patrimony — stories we know too well. Even more, it subtly raises up the entire African continent, which becomes through this retelling, a force of profound socioeconomic change at the global level. As their handout highlights: “Journey to a medieval world with Africa at its center.”

“Between the eight and the 16th century, an epoch that corresponds with the medieval period, the Saharan region was the site of world-shaping events.”

Partnering with institutions and researchers in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria was the only way that Berzock could, in the first instance, begin to understand the significance of scattered bits and pieces of commercially traded items left centuries ago in those once thriving cities and towns encompassed by the Saharan trade networks

Art from the Middle East is outgrowing its "Orientalist" straitjacket.

a major exhibition in London's British Museum called Inspired by the East, that explores the significant - yet often unacknowledged - influence of Eastern culture on the West

"People might forget that there has been an exchange between East and West for centuries, much longer than we think and while, of course, some of that has been warfare, a lot of it has been diplomatic relations and artistic exchange. "Looking at this through an artistic medium and showing how there has been this interest in the 'other' from both directions over the years shows that there has been an ongoing dialogue."

Sicily has a centuries-long history of complex negotiations with its African heritage (it was ruled, among others, by the Phoenicians, Aghlabids, and Fatimids), and it continuously reexamines its role as a locus of cross-cultural encounters and imperialistic fantasies. Moreover, the island is now at the center of anti-immigration rhetorics, with episodes of xenophobia and racism directed against migrants from Africa and the eastern Mediterranean

there is a direct line of continuity between teste di moro and the head-shaped vases produced in ancient Greece and Italy, which often depicted Black African youths. In the late Middle Ages, large and elaborate flower vases in polychrome majolica (called albahaquero from the Spanish word for “basil,” albahaca) became very popular in Spain and Morocco. Further into the early modern period, Europeans’ interest in the Ottoman Empire generated a robust demand for commodities that would allow for the consumption of a culture that inspired fear and fascination. Portraits of Ottoman men and women (whether authentic or based on European subjects dressed in Ottoman garb) were sought after in Venice, Florence, and elsewhere in Italy, including Sicily: majolica vases such as this one from early modern Palermo are a close antecedent to teste di moro.

the early modern popularity of the testa di moro capitalized on the European fascination with the male Black body as a symbol of dominance over the Mediterranean

the religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity that characterized their territories in the Middle East and Eastern Europe no longer chimed with the new world order being organized around nation-states

Designing measures such as the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, the League of Nations legitimized demographic engineering policies and made migration an intrinsic part of nation-building. With international encouragement, the states with Muslim minorities in the Balkans devised multipronged policies to push out the citizens they saw as undesirable. Turkey became the only destination for Balkan Muslims, even when they were not Turkish.

in 1938 Belgrade and Ankara concluded a little-known agreement to transfer 200,000 Yugoslav citizens to Turkey. The transfer did not materialize because of the start of World War II, but the migrations did eventually take place and continued into the 1950s. For both Yugoslavia and Turkey, new states created in the aftermath of World War I, migration was an important part of nation-building.

In post-independence Algeria, autocratic elites have chosen to characterize the Algerian people as a homogenous block with a single culture (Arab-Islamic), religion (Islam), and language (Arabic) because they consider diversity to be a source of division and a threat to the country’s stability and their hold on power. Identity issues, which the regime insists on controlling, are also used to divide and rule. Aware of this, from the beginning, the Hirak downplayed identity and difference within the movement while focusing on getting rid of le pouvoir (Algeria’s military elite and their civilian allies that rule and exploit the country) as a whole, root and branch.

placing pressure on existing tensions between Arabs and Amazighs (Berbers) and between Islamists and secularists

in Saharan areas, the slave trade continued throughout the period of French settler colonialism (1830-1962)

This past October, the Italian Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee brought back to the table the discussion about a reform of the citizenship law currently in force, which dates back to 1992 and mainly awards Italian citizenship through blood ties. The so-called jus culturae (Latin for “cultural right”) would offer a third alternative to the more common jus soli and jus sanguinis, which recognize birthright citizenship and citizenship by bloodlines, respectively. The reform instead proposes citizenship by cultural assimilation, mainly through the Italian education system, and aims to support demographic growth in a country with low birth rates.

during the 2017-2018 academic year, 842,000 “foreign” students enrolled at Italian public schools didn’t have Italian citizenship. (The report labels as foreign those students who hold residence permits but not Italian nationality.) If approved, the law will deliver automatic citizenship to all those children who were born in or entered Italy before turning 12 and finished at least five years of Italian schooling.

Next Generation Italy, a grassroots group of first- and second-generation Italians. Their work aims to give a voice to young Italians with immigrant backgrounds who do not feel sufficiently represented in Italian politics and are now asserting the importance of their citizenship rights and demanding fair representation in politics. It’s a rare opportunity for Italians to hear and learn directly from those affected by Italy’s immigration policies—rather than from politicians with no skin in the game.

middle-income countries—including Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt, and Morocco—do not benefit from global initiatives like the debt relief programs led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which target less developed nations. Yet they lack the domestic resources to rebound effectively from the deep recession that awaits them. The rising risk aversion in global markets has constrained their debt-raising options. Their economic well-being has further been undermined by the coronavirus-related economic downturn, raising fears about economic dislocation and political instability.

the economic resilience of Europe’s neighbors is clearly at risk. A major revenue stream for many of Europe’s southern and eastern neighbors is tourism. In 2018, tourism revenues as a share of total exports of goods and services reached 41 percent in Jordan and 25 percent in Egypt, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization.

In absolute numbers, Turkey’s tourism revenues including international transport were the highest at $37 billion, amounting to around 5 percent of GDP. This important revenue source is now set to evaporate as the virus takes its toll. The collapse of the tourism industry will also have significant repercussions for the sustainability of employment. For Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia, tourism provided for around 7 percent of total employment, compared with the global median of 3.8 percent.

the island grew in some ways more cosmopolitan. Sicily had been something of a backwater under Byzantium, lying at the furthest reaches of the empire. Muslim Sicily was much more central to the Islamic world: it enjoyed easy communication with the friendly ports of Syria, Egypt, Spain, and North Africa.

The island’s governor transferred the capital to Palermo and undertook a major building program there. Palaces, mosques, baths, and public buildings were erected to make the city worthy of a great kingdom. The population swelled as Palermo drew people from all over, soon making it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean.

Palermo soon began to rival Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba.

The Westphalian order refers to the conception of global politics as a system of independent sovereign states, all of which are equal to each other under law. The most popular story about this political system traces its birth to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, follows its strengthening in Europe and gradual expansion worldwide, and finally, near the end of the twentieth century, begins to identify signs of its imminent decline. On this view, much of the power that states once possessed has been redistributed to a variety of non-state institutions and organizations—from well-known international organizations such as the UN, the EU, and the African Union to violent non-state actors such as ISIS, Boko Haram, and the Taliban along with corporations with global economic influence such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon. This situation, the story often goes, will result in an international political order that resembles medieval Europe more than the global political system of the twentieth century.

Over the last two decades, scholars working on the history of the global order have painstakingly shown the complete mismatch between the story of Westphalia and the historical evidence. The nation-state is not so old as we are often told, nor has it come to be quite so naturally. Getting this history right means telling a different story about where our international political order has come from—which in turn points the way to an alternative future.

Generations of international relations students have absorbed the idea of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia as a pan-European charter that created the political structure that now spans the entire globe: a system of legally (if not materially) equal sovereign states. Along with this political structure, this story goes, came other important features, from the doctrine of non-intervention, respect of territorial integrity, and religious tolerance to the enshrinement of the concept of the balance of power and the rise of multilateral European diplomacy. In this light, the Peace of Westphalia constitutes not just a chronological benchmark but a sort of anchor for our modern world. With Westphalia, Europe broke into political modernity and provided a model for the rest of the world.

The Synagogue Street, a narrow pathway with a mishmash of colors and smells from fishmongers and spice-sellers, lies at the heart of Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city. The street starts at a stone’s throw from the Hellenistic-era agora and snakes through the historical commercial center. It derives its name from the nine synagogues in its vicinity, four of which were in ruins until half a decade ago. “Unlike many cities of Europe, the Synagogue Street — or better, the Synagogue District — is right at the heart of town,” Nesim Bencoya, the coordinator of the Izmir Jewish Heritage Project, told Al-Monitor. “It is a compact neighborhood with its synagogues, cortejos [houses where families lived together], a rabbinate and numerous shops and businesses on the crisscrossing streets of Kemeralti, the commercial center. It is also an area where synagogues stand side by side with mosques, where businessmen from the Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox community engage in trade and songs in Turkish, Greek and Ladino are sung one after the other from the nearby taverns.” For the last 12 years, Bencoya has been going door to door to drum up support for his plans to revive the area and build a Jewish heritage center that would draw in locals and tourists.

At its zenith in the mid-19th century, the 50,000-strong Jewish population made up the second largest community after the Greeks in the city known in the Ottoman Empire as “Izmir, the infidel.” The city had 34 synagogues, a sophisticated hospital, local Torah schools and a posh college offering a curriculum in French. The city’s first printing press was a Jewish one, printing books in Hebrew, Ladino and eventually in English, and boyoz, the Jewish pastry whose name "bollos" means “little bread” in Ladino, became one of the city’s staple foods. 

Today, thanks to support from German Consulate of Izmir and the  Israel-based Mordechai Kiriaty Foundation, the elaborate wooden carvings at the ceiling of Ets Hayim Synagogue, the sumptuous floor mosaics of Hevra and the corridors of the Foresteros that tie several synagogues to each other have reemerged.

Turkey’s fourth drilling ship set sail today as the country continues to pursue its offshore energy exploration.  The Abdulhamid Han will conduct a two-month mission in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The ship is considered the strongest of the country’s fleet, the official Anadolu Agency reported. 

Turkey sent a drilling ship to parts of the Mediterranean Sea claimed by Greece in 2018 and began conducting exploration in maritime territory claimed by Cyprus in 2019. Turkey halted the activities ahead of dialogue with Greece that began in early 2021.  Turkey's dialogue with Greece ended in May of this year, and now tensions are on the rise again. Leaders of both states exchanged subtle threats in June. 

In June, Egyptian military leaders met with their Greek and Cypriot counterparts to discuss military cooperation. In May, the United Arab Emirates and Greece signed a $4.2 billion investment agreement. Last December, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett hosted Greek and Cypriot leaders for a meeting on their security alliance. 

The Syrian/Lebanese mercantile community of Manchester existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they were not the only Arab group in the UK during this period. Moroccan traders formed a very distinct Arab community in Manchester.

Moroccan merchants began visiting Britain as early as the sixteenth century, arriving at the port of St. Ives in Cornwall in 1589

In the nineteenth century, Moroccan Muslim and Jewish traders began to settle in Manchester on a more permanent basis. In the 1830s Britain and Morocco signed treaties permitting their subjects to travel and trade in each other’s territories.