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.
Robert G. Morrison is a professor at Bowdoin College. He is the author of The Light of the World: Astronomy in al-Andalus (2016).
Note on Translation and Transliteration Preface Map of the Eastern Mediterranean ca. 1500 CE Introduction 1. The Network of Merchant-Scholar Families of Candia 2. Astrology, a Shared Hermeneutic 3. Transactions of Astronomical Tables and Instruments 4. Aristotelianism across Borders 5. Aristotelianism and Qabbalah 6. Theoretical Astronomy between Renaissance Italy and the Ottoman Empire 7. Tricks of the Trade in Mechanics and Medicine Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
"Merchants of Knowledge offers excellent work on Jewish scholarly networks in the Eastern Mediterranean and their unexpected significance for both Ottoman and early modern European history. There are few scholars who would attempt such a demanding project, and fewer yet who could carry it out with such erudition and style as Robert Morrison." -Justin Stearns, NYU Abu Dhabi "Robert Morrison displays a virtuosity and mastery of Renaissance-era debates and substantially shifts how we narrate the mobility of knowledge between 'East' and 'West.' An extremely important book of impressive intellectual breadth." -Harun Kuecuek, University of Pennsylvania "A groundbreaking study of intellectual exchange in the early modern Mediterranean. Masterfully weaving together stories of Jewish scholars and their commercial and intellectual connections across the Ottoman Empire, Crete, and the Veneto, Robert Morrison revolutionizes our understanding of the making of the European Renaissance." -Nuekhet Varlik, Rutgers University
