About

Nabil Matar is a Professor of English, Religious Studies, and History at the University of Minnesota, holding the Samuel Russell Chair in the Humanities and participating in the President’s Interdisciplinary Initiative on Arts and Humanities. He studied English Literature at the American University of Beirut, earning his B.A. and M.A., and completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in 1976, focusing on the poetry of Thomas Traherne. His academic career includes teaching positions at Jordan University, the American University of Beirut, and the Florida Institute of Technology, where he served as Department Head. Since 2007, he has been part of the University of Minnesota faculty. Dr. Matar's research over the past three decades centers on relations between early modern Britain, Western Europe, and the Islamic Mediterranean. He has authored numerous articles, chapters, and encyclopedia entries, and has published several influential books, including a trilogy on Islam in Britain from 1558 to 1685, and a second trilogy on Arabs and Europeans in the early modern world. His scholarship explores themes such as Arab-Islamic civilization, seventeenth-century English religious literature, Arabic and European travel literature, and Euro-Islamic contacts. Recognized for his pioneering work on the relationship between Islamic civilization and early modern Europe, he has received awards such as the Building Bridges award from the University of Cambridge and the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Award. His work has been translated into multiple languages, and he has contributed to the understanding of cross-cultural interactions through his publications, translations, and conference leadership.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• History
• Ancient history
• Linguistics
• Classics
• Art
• Archaeology
• Theology
• Literature
• Geography
• Genealogy
• Religious studies

Selected publications

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

  Mediterranean Studies · 2025-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Back in my high school days in Beirut, we read in class the poem by Ahmad Shawqi about the Alhambra, and in the past few years, on 2 January, some Arabic newspapers online have published articles recalling the 1492 fall of Granada—the last piece of Al-Andalus. It was on that day that Abū ‘Abdallah Muḥammad/Boabdil (d. 1533) went into exile in Fez, Morocco. Symbolizing the grandeur of a lost Al-Andalus, the Alhambra has been a fixture in Arabic memory.In The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History: Eastern and Western Visions in the Long Nineteenth Century (first published in French in 2021), the distinguished historian Edhem Eldem shows how the Alhambra had also been the emotional and touristic destination of peoples of different religions, nationalities, and languages from the “North”/Europeans (chapter 1), the “South”/Maghribis (chapter 2), and the “East” /Ottomans (chapter 3), all of whom expressed wonder, nostalgia, admiration, or anguish upon seeing the famed palace. Visitors wandered in its halls, taking photographs, sometimes posing in “Moorish” clothes, and often signing their names in the visitors’ book, a tradition started in 1829. Using this book as his information base, Eldem traces the backgrounds and motives, both political and personal, of the palace’s sundry visitors, many of whom were ambassadors, offering a fascinating history of the place of the Alhambra in Mediterranean memory from the late eighteenth century to the first quarter of the twentieth century. Eldem consults sources in multiple languages, archives from Istanbul to Granada, and manuscripts and publications. As he demonstrates, the Alhambra was at the crossroad for visitors, unlike any other secular, Islamic site in the long nineteenth century.While the earliest visitors were European and American, the book opens with the Jerusalem scholar/‘ālim from a distinguished Palestinian family, Khalīl Jawād al-Khālidī in 1912. To describe this visit, Eldem relies, as he does in every other possible case, not only on historical records, newspaper reports, and memoirs, but also on photographs: In another publication, Eldem had written a fascinating study of Ottoman vernacular photography. At the same time, Eldem is the literary scholar who scrutinizes the scribbles, signatures, poems, and reflective paragraphs in the visitors’ book. He builds a portrait of the visitor based on memoirs, published and unpublished writings, correspondence, and contemporaneous accounts. Every entry receives an exhaustive discussion. His goal is to engage with a question: what did the Alhambra mean to visitors? How did they fashion themselves during their visits? And how did Spanish journalists and other observers describe and interpret them?The first chapter discusses the “discovery” of the Alhambra by western scholars and orientalists—French, British and German. From the late eighteenth century on, this new appreciation of the Alhambra by westerners gave rise to the Moresque style and decorations that were widely influential. In England, the Moresque appeared in the “Court” at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, in the stoves manufactured in Sheffield “with arabesque pattern of the richest expression,” and in the royal Alhambra Theatre of 1856 (37). While there was admiration and imitation, there was also the question of the Black Legend—Spain’s empire in the Americas and its establishment of the Spanish Inquisition. Eldem examines the debates that the Alhambra generated in Spain about the role of the “Moors” in Iberian history and the question of how the eight centuries of Islamic presence were to be viewed. And there is also a discussion of Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra, which every modern English-speaking tourist to the site buys. Perhaps most interesting in this chapter is the discussion of what Eldem calls “Orientalisms”—how a structure built by Arabs in the “West” became a site of European Orientalizing fantasies: thus the 1885 painting of a pasha grieving for his dead tiger in “Alhambresque setting” (53).The discussion of the “South” brings Maghribi visitors to the site who signed the visitors’ book, leaving Eldem with the question whether the few who left their names were the only visitors (79). With limited sources about the Maghribi visitors, mostly from Morocco and Mauritania, Eldem turns to contemporaneous Spanish newspapers, including local ones from Granada. He describes the various diplomatic delegations that visited the Alhambra and examines (and frequently reproduces) their entries in the visitors’ book, studying the transcription style and language. He then builds a picture of the visitors as they reflected on their past: how a member of the 1889 embassy held “the sword of the unfortunate Boabdil” (111). How did visitors actually feel is a question that Eldem frequently asks, trying to uncover “exaggerations and inconsistencies” in the reports (127).The chapter on the “East” is the longest in the book not only because of the high number of visitors from the Ottoman Empire, but also because of the diversity of visitors that included Turks, Armenians, and Muslim and Christian Arabs of varied ranks and professions. Here, Eldem has the advantage of the vast Ottoman archives containing manuscripts, printed books, photographs, and architectural designs that shed light on his visitors. Again, he starts with a notable visitor, an ambassador in 1844, Fuad Pasha, who wrote in French and in Turkish, which allows Eldem to explore the “mind and soul” of this “cultivated polyglot” (156). There were many other Turkish diplomats and emissaries, who after their visits, wrote and published the first “heterogeneous” histories of Al-Andalus, thereby placing Andalusia in “a central position in the historical imagination of the Ottoman elite” (192). And there were Christian Arabs and Armenians, although Eldem did not find much about them. Eldem then turns to the Ottomans, and shows how they, like the British and the French, adopted a Moresque style in some of Istanbul’s architecture; the list “of buildings in that style,” Eldem concludes, “is long” (209). The style reached Egypt, which was under Ottoman rule.This book might appear to be the definitive study of the Alhambra as a crossroads had it not been for the intriguing questions that Eldem frequently raises in his discussions. Notwithstanding the encyclopedic range of information that he offers, Eldem realizes there are themes and strands that can be further explored. It will, however, be a herculean task for any future scholar to add to Eldem’s erudite and enjoyable study.

  PublisherDOI

• The Synod of Dort in Arabic: Bodleian MS Marsh 268

  The Seventeenth Century · 2024-09-03

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i>Beyond Orientalism: Ahmad ibn Qāsim al-Hajarī between Europe and North Africa</i> By <scp>Oumelbanine Nina Zhiri</scp>

  Journal of Islamic Studies · 2024-12-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Arabic Printing for the Christians in Ottoman Lands: The East-European Connection. By Ioana Feodorov. Berlin<i>:</i> De Gruyter, 2024. xxiv + 441 pp. 64 illustrations. $101.99 hardcover.

  Church History · 2024-12-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Arabic Christianity between the Ottoman Levant and Eastern Europe. Edited by Ioana Feodorov, Bernard Heyberger, and Samuel Noble. Arabic Christianity: Texts and Studies. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2021. xviii + 375 pp. $134.00 hardcover.

  Church History · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Classics
  • Ancient history

  Arabic Christianity between the Ottoman Levant and Eastern Europe. Edited by Ioana Feodorov, Bernard Heyberger, and Samuel Noble. Arabic Christianity: Texts and Studies. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2021. xviii + 375 pp. $134.00 hardcover. - Volume 92 Issue 2

  PublisherDOI

• Arabic Accounts of Mediterranean Captivity, 1517–1798

  2023-01-01

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The history of captivity in the early modern Mediterranean has been studied exclusively through European and Ottoman/Turkish sources. But from Aghadir to Alexandretta, the language of piety, travel, religious disputation, and chronicle was Arabic (sometimes written as Garshuni). An extensive archive has survived in Arabic describing the experiences of Muslims, Eastern Christians, and Jews in European captivity. After all, from the middle of the seventeenth century on, British and French fleets, with their advanced naval capabilities, seized large numbers of captives from the ‘other shore’ (to cite Braudel) – captives who have been ignored in scholarship but survive in numerous sculptures from Spain and Germany to Malta and Hungary. This study continues the research into the Arabic archive by introducing further accounts about captivity by European pirates and privateers, showing how the Mediterranean became the scene of Christian masters and Arabic-speaking slaves. Not surprising, by the nineteenth century, a Moroccan traveler prayed that the Mediterranean become a barrier/hājiz against European depredations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Filasṭīn /Palestine and Filasṭīniyyīn /Palestinians in Early Modern Arabic Sources

  Studies in Romanticism · 2023-06-01

  articleSenior author

  Abstract: This paper examines the use of the terms Filasṭīn and Filasṭīniyyīn in Arabic sources, between 1517 and 1798. Contrary to the general view, Arab writers, both Muslim and Christian, always used the terms in their travelogues, religious texts, and government records. This paper situates the discussion of the use of those two terms in the Arabic tradition of geographical writings with its emphasis on deriving nomenclature from the urban context/ Ḥaḍarī , the family lineage, and synecdoche.

  PublisherDOI

• Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century by Amanda M. Burritt (review)

  Victorian Studies · 2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Reviewed by: Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century by Amanda M. Burritt Nabil Matar (bio) Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, by Amanda M. Burritt; pp. xxi + 239. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, $54.99, $59.99 paper, $44.99 ebook. The nineteenth century was the Great Age of Christian Mission. From Britain, the superpower of the century, and from other parts of Europe and America, travelers, poets, novelists, theologians, and archaeologists all ventured into the world to preach the gospels. The lands of the Bible, extending from Egypt to Palestine, drew large numbers, especially after the introduction of organized tourism by Thomas Cook. Eager to find evidence of faith in an age of growing uncertainty, Britons (and others) wandered with Bible in hand, as had their forebears for centuries, trying to verify, describe, confirm, and experience the truth of the life of Christ. In her engaging book on three British painters, Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Amanda M. Burritt, from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia, examines the works of David Roberts, David Wilkie, and William Holman Hunt. These three painters traveled to and in the Holy Land: Roberts in 1838–39, Wilkie in 1840–41, and Hunt, four times, in 1854–55, 1869–72, 1876–78, and [End Page 319] 1892. Burritt studies their paintings in the context of their religious views expressed in their memoirs, correspondence, and other personal documents. Her aim is to show how much the painters reflected, but also helped define, the distinctively Protestant character of Christianity in England and Scotland—a Christianity that treated the Bible as a historical document to be experienced in its sacred geography. Experience is key to Burritt's argument, which is why she focuses on those British painters who traveled and then imagined/depicted scenes from the Bible, rather than on those who simply relied on their readings—as was the case for two of Hunt's fellow Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Experience gave legitimacy to scriptural revelation. Although the three painters were quite different in their aesthetics, their denominational backgrounds, and their themes, they all depicted the sites and the peoples they liked to think had not changed since Jesus walked on the Sea of Galilee or in the alleys of Nazareth. Their realism was bold, sometimes audacious: they eschewed idealization, thereby assuring viewers of the historicity of the biblical past. Perhaps most dramatic in this context of authentication was Hunt, who revolutionized the figure of Jesus in British art by moving away from the complex theology of Christianity to the simplicity of Palestinian life. His The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (1854–60) showed a boy, lost and then found by his parents: a boy, just like a boy next door, being held by his mother. The painting was viewed by thousands of men, women, and children when it toured Britain: it proved by its vivid near-scientific detail that they were taking part in the life of Christ—because Christ and his parents were not very much different from them. In his most famous painting, The Light of the World (1851–53), Hunt showed Jesus knocking on the door of the soul, amidst the luminous colors of an English garden, and holding a lamp, just like the ones still used in Nazareth. When Hunt made another version of The Light (1900), it traveled the world of British colonial and religious presence, from Canada to South Africa. The painting became the emblem of British Protestantism, and Christ became English, as God had been English for Oliver Cromwell, and as Jerusalem had been in England for William Blake. Roberts, Wilkie, and Hunt (and the first two were friends) confronted the uncertainty in Britain after Charles Lyell's and Charles Darwin's works on geology and on evolution by striving to prove the inerrancy of the Bible. As Burritt points out, Britons liked to believe that archaeology confirmed sacred geography—and the painters corroborated exactly that belief. As Wilkie showed John Knox preaching, so did Roberts show the sphinx with camels and local riders, as Hunt...

  PublisherDOI

• Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century by Amanda M. Burritt (review)

  Victorian Studies · 2023-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Reviewed by: Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century by Amanda M. Burritt Nabil Matar (bio) Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, by Amanda M. Burritt; pp. xxi + 239. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, $54.99, $59.99 paper, $44.99 ebook. The nineteenth century was the Great Age of Christian Mission. From Britain, the superpower of the century, and from other parts of Europe and America, travelers, poets, novelists, theologians, and archaeologists all ventured into the world to preach the gospels. The lands of the Bible, extending from Egypt to Palestine, drew large numbers, especially after the introduction of organized tourism by Thomas Cook. Eager to find evidence of faith in an age of growing uncertainty, Britons (and others) wandered with Bible in hand, as had their forebears for centuries, trying to verify, describe, confirm, and experience the truth of the life of Christ. In her engaging book on three British painters, Visualising Britain's Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century, Amanda M. Burritt, from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia, examines the works of David Roberts, David Wilkie, and William Holman Hunt. These three painters traveled to and in the Holy Land: Roberts in 1838–39, Wilkie in 1840–41, and Hunt, four times, in 1854–55, 1869–72, 1876–78, and [End Page 319] 1892. Burritt studies their paintings in the context of their religious views expressed in their memoirs, correspondence, and other personal documents. Her aim is to show how much the painters reflected, but also helped define, the distinctively Protestant character of Christianity in England and Scotland—a Christianity that treated the Bible as a historical document to be experienced in its sacred geography. Experience is key to Burritt's argument, which is why she focuses on those British painters who traveled and then imagined/depicted scenes from the Bible, rather than on those who simply relied on their readings—as was the case for two of Hunt's fellow Pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Experience gave legitimacy to scriptural revelation. Although the three painters were quite different in their aesthetics, their denominational backgrounds, and their themes, they all depicted the sites and the peoples they liked to think had not changed since Jesus walked on the Sea of Galilee or in the alleys of Nazareth. Their realism was bold, sometimes audacious: they eschewed idealization, thereby assuring viewers of the historicity of the biblical past. Perhaps most dramatic in this context of authentication was Hunt, who revolutionized the figure of Jesus in British art by moving away from the complex theology of Christianity to the simplicity of Palestinian life. His The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (1854–60) showed a boy, lost and then found by his parents: a boy, just like a boy next door, being held by his mother. The painting was viewed by thousands of men, women, and children when it toured Britain: it proved by its vivid near-scientific detail that they were taking part in the life of Christ—because Christ and his parents were not very much different from them. In his most famous painting, The Light of the World (1851–53), Hunt showed Jesus knocking on the door of the soul, amidst the luminous colors of an English garden, and holding a lamp, just like the ones still used in Nazareth. When Hunt made another version of The Light (1900), it traveled the world of British colonial and religious presence, from Canada to South Africa. The painting became the emblem of British Protestantism, and Christ became English, as God had been English for Oliver Cromwell, and as Jerusalem had been in England for William Blake. Roberts, Wilkie, and Hunt (and the first two were friends) confronted the uncertainty in Britain after Charles Lyell's and Charles Darwin's works on geology and on evolution by striving to prove the inerrancy of the Bible. As Burritt points out, Britons liked to believe that archaeology confirmed sacred geography—and the painters corroborated exactly that belief. As Wilkie showed John Knox preaching, so did Roberts show the sphinx with camels and local riders, as Hunt...

  PublisherDOI

• <i>American and Muslim Worlds before 1900</i>. Edited by John Ghazvinian and Arthur Mitchell Fraas

  Journal of Islamic Studies · 2022-03-16

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This book is a welcome addition to studies of Islam in regions beyond the Middle East. In the past few decades, the large body of scholarship on Islam has focused on Islam’s political role or the role it is seen to play. By turning our attention to ‘Islam and the making of the early American Republic’, the editors, John Ghazvinian and Arthur Mitchell Fraas, stress the importance of studying the role played by Islam in American history and culture. The book opens with an introduction by the editors, followed by eleven studies, and ending with an epilogue by Heather J. Sharkey on ‘The global history of American and Muslim Worlds before 1900’. As with all collections, the studies range in their coverage: there are historical/archival as well as literary studies, along with essays that examine the experiences of individual Americans from Istanbul to Afghanistan to America, specifically the United States;...

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gerald MacLean

  University of Exeter

  10 shared

• Judy A. Hayden

  4 shared

• Stuart Masters

  3 shared

• Jon R. Kershner

  University of Washington

  2 shared

• Vincent Bachy

  CHU Dinant Godinne UCL Namur

  1 shared

• Tina P. Christodouleas

  Florida Institute of Technology

  1 shared

• F. Mikou

  1 shared

• Miloud Ghazli

  1 shared

Education

• B.A., English Literature

  American University of Beirut

• M.A., English Literature

  American University of Beirut

• Ph.D., Poetry of Thomas Traherne

  Cambridge University

  1976

Awards & honors

• Building Bridges Award at the University of Cambridge (2012)
• Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Award (201…
• Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Divinity School (1982-1983)