The Mediterranean Seminar Review
(TMSR)

The Mediterranean Seminar Review (TMSR) publishes reviews of current, cutting edge scholarship that is primarily Mediterranean in scope or focus and that engages with methodologies reflective of recent trends in Mediterranean Studies.

TMSR reviews monographs, collections of essays, and editions of primary sources addressing the various facets of Mediterranean Studies.  While we do review works that center on a particular sub-region of the Mediterranean (e.g., the Aegean), we focus on works that are more broadly Mediterranean in scope, particularly scholarship that uses methodological approaches that are “of,” rather than “in” the Mediterranean. We also spotlight work that is comparative in nature, including books that are not, strictly speaking, Mediterranean, but that employ methodologies or address questions that are relevant to Mediterranean Studies.

Reflecting the broad and interdisciplinary aims of The Mediterranean Seminar, TMSR reviews books spanning the Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern periods (with particular attention devoted to the Middle Ages and Early Modernity), in a range of fields, including Art History, Anthropology, History, Literary Studies, and Religious Studies.

A list of each month’s book reviews will be send out to Mediterranean Seminar Associates; the reviews themselves will be distributed via the Mediterranean Seminar list-server, and will be archived on this page.

Book Review Editor
• Andrew Devereux: History, University of California San Diego
Associate Editor
• Aaron Stamper: History, Princeton University

• Register as a TMSR reviewer using this form.
• To suggest a title to be considered for review , please contact the Editor.
• If you have been asked to review a book, please fill in the response form and review the terms and style here.

Reviews

Alijla, Abdalhadi. Trust in Divided Societies. State, Institutions and Governance in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. London/ New York: I.B.Tauris, 2021. ISBN: 978-1-8386-0531-5. 235 pages. Reviewed by: Jordi Quero. Date posted: 2 May 2023.

Almagro Vidal, Clara, Jessica Tearney-Pearce, and Luke Yarbrough, Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. Reviewed by: Brian A. Catlos. Date posted: 18 February 2022. [capsule review].

al-Tawil, Hashim. History of Arab Art. Ronkonkoma, NY: Linus Learning, 2018. ISBN: 160797819. 329 pages. 210 color + b/w illustrations. Hardcover $72.00. Reviewed by: Abbey Stockstill. Date posted: 24 March 2022.

Balbale, Abigail Krasner, The Wolf King: Ibn Mardanīsh and the Construction of Power in al-Andalus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023. ISBN: 9781501765872. 360pp. 64 b&w halftones, 4 maps, 1 chart. $56.95 hardback.
Reviewed by:Travis Bruce. Date posted: 1 March 2024.

Ben-Yehoyada, Naor,  Heath Cabot and Paul A. Silverstein. The Mediterranean Redux: Ethnography, Theory, Politics. Special Issue of History and Anthropology, 31(1). New York: Routledge, 2020. Reviewed by: Giovanna Summerfield. Date posted: 15 February 2022.

Barker, Hannah. That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Reviewed by: Steven A. Epstein. Date posted: 29 November 2020

Bloom, Jonathan M. Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700-1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020.  Reviewed by: Cristelle Baskins, Tufts University. Date posted: 1 March 2021

Calderwood, Eric. Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. Reviewed by: Bootheina Majoul. Date posted: 28 November 2022.

Contarini, Giovanni Pietro. From Cyprus to Lepanto. Trans. Kiril Petkov. New York, NY: Italica Press, 2019. ISBN-13:978-1599103815. Xxvi+162pp. 3 b/w images. $35.00 (Hardcover); $17.00 (Paperback); $9.99 (Kindle). Reviewed by:Brian Sandberg. Date posted: 24 March 2022.

Cooper, Kate, and Jamie Wood, eds. Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020. Reviewed by: Brian Catlos .Date posted: 6 July 2021 [capsule review]

Dangler, Jean. Edging toward Iberia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. Reviewed by: Yuen-Gen Liang, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Date posted: 6 July 2021.

Delattre, Alain, Marie Legendre, and Petra Sijpesteijn, eds., Authority and Control in the Countryside: From Antiquity to Islam in the Mediterranean and Near East (6th–10th Century) Leiden Studies in Islam and Society, 9 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Pp.: xviii + 594. 31 Figures. 4 Maps. ISBN 978-9004386358. Paper $83. Reviewed by: Brian A. Catlos. Date posted: 25 March 2022.

Dijkstra, Jitse H. F., and Christian Rudolf Raschle, eds. Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020. Reviewed by: Brian Catlos .Date posted: 6 July 2021 [capsule review]

Dupont-Hamy, Adrienne, and Linda G. Jones, eds., Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Preaching in the Mediterranean and Europe. Identities and Interfaith Encounters. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. Reviewed by: Brian A. Catlos. Date posted: 18 February 2022. [capsule review]

elhariry, yasser and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, eds. Critically Mediterranean: Temporalities, Aesthetics, and Deployments of a Sea in Crisis. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Reviewed by: Harry Kashdan. Date posted: 1 October 2021. [capsule review]

Escribano-Páez, Jose M. Juan Rena and the Frontiers of Spanish Empire, 1500-1540. New York and London: Routledge, 2020. Reviewed by: Yuen-Gen Liang. Date posted: 1 October 2021.

Folin, Marco and Antonio Musarra, eds. Cultures and Practices of Coexistence from the Thirteenth Through the Seventeenth Centuries: Multi-Ethnic Cities in the Mediterranean World, Volume 1. New York: Routledge, 2020. Reviewed by: Brian Catlos .Date posted: 29 November 2020 [capsule review]

Gottreich, Emily Benichou. Jewish Morocco: A History from Pre-Islamic to Postcolonial Times. London: I.B. Tauris, 2020. Reviewed by: Jessica M. Marglin. Date posted: 15 February 2022.

Green-Mercado, Mayte. Visions of Deliverance: Moriscos and the Politics of Prophecy in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Ithaca–London: Cornell University Press, 2020. Reviewed by: Olivier Brisville-Fertin, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, UMR 5648/CIHAM, RELGEND (AEI/FEDER, UE-PGC2018-093472-B-C32). Date posted: 1 March 2021

Hershenzon, Daniel. The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Reviewed by: James W. Brodman. Date posted: 29 November 2020

Iacono, Francesco. The Archaeology of Late Bronze Age Interaction and Mobility at the Gates of Europe: People, Things and Networks around the Southern Adriatic Sea. London; NY: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019. ISBN 9781350171060. 9 x 6 inches, 286 Pp., 68 bw illustrations. Formats: pb, hb, ebook, epub. $39.95 Reviewed by: Barbara Mendoza. Date posted: 2 May 2023

Kaiser, Reinhold. Le Monde méditerranéen et l’Europe au Bas-Empire et au haut Moyen Âge (IVe-XIe siècle). Marie-Thérèse Kaiser-Guyot, trans., Bibliothèque d’Histoire Médiévale, 29. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021. [Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte Band 3: Die Mittelmeerwelt und Europa in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter (Fischer, 2014)] Reviewed by: Brian A. Catlos. Date posted: 28 November 2022.

López García, Bernabé. El frente de Tánger (1936-1940). Crónica de la guerra civil española en la ciudad internacional. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2021. ISBN: 978-84-17945-26-8. 502 pages. Reviewed by: Eric Calderwood. Date posted: 6 October 2024

Lower, Michael. The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Reviewed by: Joel Pattison. Date posted: 29 November 2020

Mandalà, Giuseppe, Inmaculada Pérez Martín, and Alex Metcalfe, eds. Multilingual and Multigraphic Documents and Manuscripts of East and West. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2018. Reviewed by: Brian A. Catlos. Date posted: 1 October 2021. [capsule review]

Maskarinec, Maya. City of Saints: Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 978-0-8122-5008-4. 320 Pages. 21 color, 33 b/w illus. Paperback $45.00; Hardback $55.00.
Reviewed by:Robert Clines. Date posted: 1 March 2024.

Matar, Nabil. Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517-1798. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021. Reviewed by: Cristelle Baskins. Date posted: 28 November 2022

Nunziata, Daniele. Colonial and Postcolonial Cyprus: Transportal Literatures of Empire, Nationalism, and Sectarianism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Reviewed by: Gail Dallas Hook. Date posted: 15 February 2022.

Penelas, Mayte, ed. and trans., Al-Maqrīzī’s Al-Ḫabar ʿan Al-Bašar, Vol. V, Section 6: The Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, and Goths, Critical Edition, Annotated Translation and Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 2021).  Reviewed by: Brian Catlos .Date posted: 6 July 2021 [capsule review]

Renard, John. Crossing Confessional Boundaries: Exemplary Lives in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Traditions. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. Reviewed by: Robert John Clines. Date posted: 29 November 2020

Reynolds, Dwight. The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus. SOAS Studies in Music. Abingdon, Oxton: Routledge, 2021. 978-0-369-24314-2.  272pp. 17 b&w illustrations. $138 hardback, $48.95 paperback.
Reviewed by: Rachel Colwell. Date posted: 1 March 2024.

Rubin, Jonathan. Learning in a Crusader City: Intellectual Activity and Intercultural Exchanges in Acre, 1191-1291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-1-107-18718-4. 234pp. $105.00 hardback and $27.99 paperback. Reviewed by: Matt King. Date posted: 1 October 2021.

Yarbrough, Luke. Friends of the Emir: Non-Muslim State Officials in Premodern Islamic Thought. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781108496605. Pp. 378. Cloth. $120.00.  Reviewed by: Anthony Minnema, Samford University (aminnema@samford.edu) Date posted: 01 March 2021