The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History: Eastern and Western Visions in the Long Nineteenth Century

A growing flow of visitors in the 19th century turned the Alhambra into a touristic destination and a major trope of Orientalism, created by Western authors and artists from Fran?ois-Ren? de Chateaubriand to Owen Jones and from Washington Irving to Jean-L?on G?r?me. Yet behind this Western infatuation lie scores of 'Oriental' observers of the monument, as revealed by its visitors' book, kept since 1829.
This book uses this untapped source to analyse the perceptions of the Alhambra by multiple actors, including Westerners, Spaniards, Maghrebines, Ottoman Turks, Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs from the Mashreq. In doing so, it reveals the existence of significant variations in both Western and Oriental perceptions of the monument, from 'Oriental Orientalism' to Arab nationalism. Examining the contemporary press, memoirs, travelogues and photographs - as well as the visitors' book - it uses the Alhambra to build a history of the complex and entangled relations between East and West, North and South, Islam and Christianity, centre and periphery during the heyday of Orientalism and Western hegemony.

Edhem Eldem is a professor in the Department of History of Boğazi?i University, Istanbul. He has also taught at Berkeley, Harvard, EHESS, EPHE, ENS, Columbia and has held the International Chair of Turkish and Ottoman Studies et the Coll?ge de France. Among his fields of interest are the Levant trade in the eighteenth century, Ottoman funerary epigraphy, the development of an urban bourgeoisie in Istanbul, the history of the Ottoman Bank, the history of archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, late-nineteenth-century Ottoman first-person narratives and biographies, the history of photography in the Ottoman Empire and the interaction between Westernization and Orientalism. He is the author of L'Empire ottoman (PuF, 2022), L'Alhambra. ? la crois?e des histoires (Belles Lettres, 2021), L'Empire ottoman et la Turquie face ? l'Occident (Fayard, 2018), Camera Ottomana (Ko? University, 2015), Scramble for the Past (SALT, 2011), Un Ottoman en Orient (Actes Sud, 2010), The Ottoman City between East and West (Cambridge University Press, 1999), A History of the Ottoman Bank (Ottoman Bank, 1999), French Trade in Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Brill, 1999).