Episode 452 with William Granara hosted by Chris Gratien During the 9th century, Arab armies from North Africa conquered Sicily, leading to four centuries of Muslim history on the island, which is now part of Italy. Sicily during that period has often been portrayed as an interfaith utopia where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived side by side, giving rise to a cultural synthesis, but as our guest William Granara explains, the reality was more complex. In this conversation with Granara, author of Narrating Muslim Sicily, we explore the history of Muslim societies in Sicily, grappling with questions of representation and reality as well as conflict and coexistence. We also discuss what this history means today centuries after the departure of Sicily's last Muslims, as a new wave of Muslim migration arrives on the island. « Click for More »

Episode 409 with Jennifer Sessions hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In 1827, Hussein Dey, the Ottoman governor of Algiers, hit a French consul on the nose with a fly whisk during a dispute over unpaid French debts. And as the story goes, the rest is history. France soon invaded Algeria and stayed for over 130 years. But as our guest in this episode Jennifer Sessions explains, France's decision to invade and colonize Algeria beginning in 1830 was far less arbitrary and far more intertwined with domestic French politics than lore would have it. And while the invasion was partially about political divisions in France, even as French politics transformed French colonization in Algeria became a national consensus over the course of the 19th century. In this episode, we examine the importance of the early decades of French colonialism in Algeria for understanding what followed, and we consider the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria for France and Algeria today. « Click for More »

Episode 388 with Karim Bejjit hosted by Graham Cornwell Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Tangier is in the midst of a massive renovation and expansion -- a new ferry and cruise port, a duty-free zone, and the massive Tangier Med shipping facility all meant to make the city and Morocco into a critical juncture of the global flows of goods, people, services, and capital. Of course, Tangier’s proximity to Europe and position astride the Strait of Gibraltar has long provided it with a cosmopolitan, international character, typified by the International Zone days during European colonial rule of Morocco in the first half of the twentieth century. But Tangier’s polyglot, imperial past goes back much further. In this episode, we turn to one of those more distant episodes: the English occupation of Tangier from 1661 to 1684. It was a brief interlude: control of the city itself was part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry to King Charles II, but English forces quickly found the situation (under intermittent but heavy resistance from local Moroccan tribes) unsustainable. The period produced some interesting characters on both sides--Samuel Pepys, for one, was a resident--but has generally been overlooked by scholars in favor of the Portuguese imperial enclaves on the Atlantic coast. What made English Tangier unique? Why did it fail, and how did the experience shape Moroccan-English relations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? This episode is cross-listed with tajine, our series on the history and society of North Africa. « Click for More »

Episode 351 with Seth Kimmel hosted by Nir Shafir Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In 1609 the Moriscos were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, marking the end of a hundred year effort to assimilate as New Christians these former Muslims. In this podcast, Seth Kimmel speaks to us about the impact of these conversions and expulsions on Iberian intellectual history. We discuss how Spanish officials and scholars attempted to force Moriscos to abandon practices like speaking Arabic and going to the bathhouse. In the process, each of these groups had to define the line between religion and culture, not only for Islam but also for Christianity. At the same time, the need to explain the failure of Morisco integration required new techniques of narration, source usage, and philological expertise. Taken together, these are unexpected intellectual and religious developments from a tragic chapter of history. « Click for More »

Episode 343 with Taieb Belghazi & Abdelhay Moudden hosted by Graham Cornwell Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud How do we assess fizzling protest movements? How do social scientists account for difficult-to-quantify facets of political engagement like emotion and momentum? In this episode, we discuss ihbat, or disillusionment, in the failures of Morocco’s February 20th movement. Part of the Arab Spring movements across the region, the coalition of groups that comprised February 20th rather quickly ground to a halt a few months later. In a major speech in March 2011, King Mohammed VI pledged major reforms, a new constitution, and a new election. In July of that year, Moroccans voted overwhelmingly in favor of stability and “consultation” and approved the new constitution. The euphoria of the early days of the movement subsided and gave way to feelings of ihbat. But disillusionment, as we discuss here, is not as one-dimensional nor permanent as one might think. Taieb Belghazi and Abdelhay Moudden point towards a possible new direction in political science research that uses literary and artistic sources to get at the emotional aspect of political engagement and organization. « Click for More »

Episode 302 avec Pierre Daum animée par Dorothée Myriam Kellou et Aurélie Perrier Télécharger Flux RSS | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Depuis la fin de la guerre d’indépendance, la question des harkis agite les consciences en France comme en Algérie. Pierre Daum, journaliste au Monde Diplomatique et auteur du livre Le dernier tabou : les « harkis » restés en Algérie après l’indépendance, est parti à la rencontre de ces supplétifs de l’armée française et de leurs descendants. Dans cet épisode, il explore avec nous les non-dits et tabous qui entourent cette question : qui sont ces plus de 400,000 Algériens, qui à un moment ou un autre entre 1954 et 1962, se sont engagés aux côtés de la France? Quelles étaient leurs motivations, et quel fut leur sort suite à l’indépendance de 1962? Au fil de la discussion, Pierre Daum bat en brèche un certain nombre d’idées reçues sur les harkis et explore leur signification dans l’imaginaire français et algérien. « Click for More »

Episode 296 with Sarah Ghabrial hosted by Edna Bonhomme and Sam Dolbee Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In French Algeria, the colonial imperatives of assimilation and difference gave birth to legal pluralism. In this episode, Dr. Sarah Ghabrial explains what it meant for Algerian women to have different legal structures operating at the same time. The ability to argue one's case in an Islamic court and also appeal it in French common law provided openings for women in matters of personal status. But it also had limits. They may have ultimately been able to divorce their husbands, but divorcing themselves from patriarchal structures of power proved more difficult, if not impossible. At the same time as legal codes changed, so, too, did medicine. As in much of the world, a state-sponsored scientific medicine, mostly practiced by men, began to crowd out local healing practices and knowledge of bodies, in many cases performed and possessed by women such as midwives. But it would have a particularly racialized impact in French Algeria. We also examine the impact of this change in court, where the latter form of medicine came to be an arbiter of truth, particularly in divorce cases. We close by shifting from matters of impotence to questions of agency, and how useful of a concept it is for this history. « Click for More »

with Karen Rignall hosted by Graham Cornwell Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Pre-Saharan Morocco is a transitional space between the Atlas Mountains in the north and the Sahara in the south, and the oases of pre-Saharan Morocco have long been marked by local autonomy, diversity, and particularities of agriculture, property ownership, class, and race. In this episode, we talk to Karen Rignall about her research on land, labor, and social life in a Moroccan oasis and discuss socioeconomic change in rural morocco through the lens of agricultural production in the transitional environments and political economies of the pre-Sahara. « Click for More »

with Elizabeth Perego hosted by Graham Cornwell and Soha El Achi Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud Between December 1991 and February 2002, Algeria experienced a protracted civil war, which earned the period the designation of the "dark decade." In this episode, we explore how Algerians experienced and coped with the violence and trepidation of the civil war through the lens of humor. Our guest Elizabeth Perego has studied to role of humor, jokes, and caricatures in the politics of Algeria since the struggle against French colonialism in the 1950s. In our conversation, we focus on the dark humor of the dark decade, retelling some of the most widespread jokes of the period in a discussion of how humor provided a source of relief and platform for commentary on the unsettling realities of the war. « Click for More »

with Muriam Haleh Davis hosted by Chris Gratien and Aurelie Perrier Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud The French military struggle to maintain control over Algeria throughout the war period (1954-1962) is remembered for its violent and destructive impacts. But during the war, the French administration also sought to maintain control over Algeria by attempting to build the rural economy and deepening the structures of colonial rule in the countryside. In this episode, we talk to Muriam Haleh Davis about the Constantine Plan, a project of social and economic development carried out within the context of the Algerian War and the rise of Cold War developmentalism. In our conversion, we explore the understandings of race embedded in French development in Algeria and situate the context of the Algerian War within the broader history of decolonization, the rise of the social sciences, and the making of the European Community. « Click for More »

with Jennifer Johnson hosted by Chris Gratien, Zoe Griffith, and Nora Lessersohn Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud The Algerian War is perhaps the most recognizable national and anti-colonial movement of the 20th century. From the iconic film “The Battle of Algiers” to Frantz Fanon's influential book The Wretched of the Earth, the violence of the Algerian fight for independence and the French reaction has marked depictions of not only the war but representations of Algerian history on the whole. In this podcast, however, we explore another battlefield of contention during the Algerian War: medicine and humanitarian relief. As our guest Jennifer Johnson demonstrates in her new monograph The Battle for Algeria (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), both the French government and the Algerian National Liberation Front used medicine and public health as a tactic, and the presence of humanitarian organizations in Algeria as well rendered the war not just a national struggle but in fact an international affair. « Click for More »

avec Aurélie Perrier animée par Dorothée Myriam Kellou Télécharger Flux RSS | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud L’histoire de l’Algérie coloniale est souvent abordée du point de vue des bouleversements économiques et politiques engendrés par l’occupation française. Mais cette dernière entraîna un remaniement dans la sphère de l’intime qui fut tout aussi significatif, bien que peu étudié.  Dans cet épisode, Aurélie Perrier se penche sur la question de l’évolution des formes de sexualités illicites en Algérie, particulièrement de la prostitution.  Organisée et mise en place par les autorités françaises dès l’arrivée des premières troupes en 1830, la régulation de la prostitution apparait rapidement comme un enjeu médical et social majeur pour les français : il s’agit à la fois d’enrayer le péril vénérien qui sévit au XIXe siècle et d’assurer la pureté de la race « blanche » en limitant les contacts sexuels entre les deux communautés (européenne et autochtone) au cadre prostitutionnel. Si les courtisanes existaient bien à l’époque ottomane, leur statut était très différent. Nombre d’entre elles étaient musiciennes ou poètes, ce qui leur permettait de contribuer à la vie sociale et culturelle de leur société.  Après 1830, la courtisane devient simple prostituée. Par ailleurs, les autorités françaises mettent en place de nouveaux espaces et modalités de contrôle des « filles soumises ».  Le bordel et le quartier réservé, jusque là inconnus en Algérie,  apparaissent dans une majorité de villes algériennes tandis que médecins et police des mœurs élaborent des règles rigoureuses visant à discipliner ces filles dont la sexualité et le mode de vie sont considérés comme dangereux. « Click for More »

with Jonathan Wyrtzen hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa, European colonial rule lasted only for a matter of decades, and yet its influence in the realms of politics and economy have been profound. In this episode, we talk to Jonathan Wyrtzen about the legacy of colonialism in Morocco for the politics of identity, which is the subject of his new book entitled Making Morocco. As Dr. Wyrzten explains, colonial rule shaped understandings of issues such as territoriality, religion, ethnicity, and gender that remain relevant to this day. « Click for More »

with Isabella Alexander hosted by Graham Cornwell Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | Hipcast | Soundcloud “Hrig,” the Moroccan Arabic term for “illegal” immigration, translates to “burning.” In the latest episode of Tajine, Isabella Alexander discusses the dramatic rise in sub-Saharan migrants attempting to enter the E.U. from Morocco - now the primary entry point for all African migrations north. As Spanish officials start exploring their border controls further south in response,  hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharans now find themselves trapped in Morocco. Their act of “burning” signifies the literal burning of their identification papers to avoid repatriation when arrested by European authorities, but also the symbolic burning of their pasts in hopes of a better future abroad. They wait in sprawling slums outside of Moroccan cities, scraping together enough money to attempt the journey into Spain by boat or by land once again. But, what happens when their position in this liminal space—Morocco—becomes a permanent one? « Click for More »

with Yelins Mahtat hosted by Graham Cornwell Download the episode Podcast Feed | iTunes | Soundcloud Moroccan folk literature has drawn the attention of researchers for over a century, beginning with the earliest French colonial ethnographers' exhaustive studies of Moroccan dialects through recordings of poems, folktales, and proverbs. The influence of these stories can also be found in the work of some of Morocco's most internationally acclaimed authors such as Mohammed Mrabet. On this podcast, Yelins Mahtat recounts a folktale from the region of Oulmès in the present-day province of Khemisset. Afterwards, Yelins takes us into the process of collecting and translating Amazigh folktales from the foothills of the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. His research records folktales from storytellers in his family and from the villages near where he grew up. We discuss the politics of authorship and performance as well as the utility of folktales for understanding social and cultural dynamics of the Middle Atlas (cross-listed from tajine). « Click for More »

with Sumaiya Hamdani hosted by Graham Cornwell The story of the twelfth-century scholar Umaya b. `Abd al-`Aziz Abu al-Salt al-Dani al-Ishbili starts in al-Andalus but moves eastward, to Fatimid Cairo and Zirid Tunisia. His movement across the Mediterranean illustrates a west-east transmission of knowledge and intellectual culture. A prolific scholar trained in diverse fields, Abu al-Salt's story traces scholarly links between multiple medieval Islamic states. Professor Sumaiya Hamdani joins Graham Cornwell to discuss her work on Abu al-Salt and the historiography of intellectual culture in the medieval Mediterranean. « Click for More »

with Claire Gilbert hosted by Nir Shafir With increased connections between polities on all sides of the Mediterranean during the early modern period, the importance of translators and translation grew to facilitate diplomatic and economic relations. In this episode, Claire Gilbert explores the world of diplomacy in the Western Mediterranean of the sixteenth century the role of translators in this zone of contact. Claire Gilbert is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at UCLA. Nir Shafir is a doctoral candidate at UCLA studying Ottoman intellectual history. (see academia.edu) Citation: "Between Sultans and Kings: Translation in the Early Modern Mediterranean," Claire Gilbert, Nir Shafir, and Chris Gratien, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 162 (5 July 2014) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/05/translation-mediterranean.html. Listeners might also like: #108 Dragomans | Emrah Safa Gürkan #106 Sources for Early Ottoman History | Christopher Markiewicz #141 Race, Slavery, and Islamic Law in the Atlantic | Chris Gratien #077 Did the Ottomans Consider Themselves an Empire? | Einar Wigen #003 The Ottoman-Habsburg Rivalry | Emrah Safa Gürkan SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Dario Cabanelas, El morisco granadino Alonso del Castillo, Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra, 1965. Ellen Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Mercedes García-Arenal, Ahmad al-Mansur: The Beginnings of Modern Morocco, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009. Mercedes García-Arenal, Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, and Rachid El Hour, Cartas Marruecas: Documentos de Marruecos en Archivos Españoles (Siglos XVI-XVII), Madrid: CSIC, 2002. Andrew Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Nabil Mouline, Le califat imaginaire d'Ahmad al-Mansur: Pouvoir et diplomatie au Maroc au XVIe siècle, Paris: PUF, 2009.

with Mostafa Minawi hosted by Chris Gratien The Ottoman Empire occupies an unusual place among the competing imperial powers of the nineteenth century. On one hand, a weak military position often forced the Ottomans to accept unfavorable economic and political arrangements while playing other empires off each other to maintain autonomy. On the other, we find expansion of state institutions throughout the Ottoman domains and an increased Ottoman presence in many parts of Asia and the Indian Ocean. Many even point to a form of Ottoman colonialism practiced in the frontiers of the empire. In this episode, Mostafa Minawi offers a glimpse at Ottoman practices in the realm of strategic imperial diplomacy within the context of the Scramble for Africa and European competition over influence in Sub-Saharan Africa.  iTunes Mostafa Minawi is an Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University. (faculty page) Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. (see academia.edu) Episode No. 143 Release date: 1 February 2014 Location: Feriköy, Istanbul Editing and production by Chris Gratien Citation: "The Ottoman Scramble for Africa," Mostafa Minawi and Chris Gratien, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 143 (1 February 2014)  http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/02/ottoman-empire-colonialism-africa.html. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY David Levering Lewis, The Race to Fashoda: European Colonialism and African Resistance in the Scramble for Africa (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987). Idris Bostan, “The Ottoman Empire and the Congo: the crisis of 1893-95,” in Studies on Ottoman Diplomatic History, part v, ed. Selim Deringil and Sinan Kuneralp (Istanbul: ISIS, 1990). Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Reformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Sidqi al-Dajani, Al-Haraka al-Sanusiyya, Nashʾatuha wa Numuwaha fi al-Qarn at-Tasiʿ ʿAshar (Cairo: 1967). Abdulmola S. el-Horeir, “Social and Economic Transformations in the Libyan Hinterland During the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi” (Ph.D. diss, UCLA, 1981). Claudia Anna Gazzini, “Jihad in Exile: Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi, 1918–1933” (MA thesis, Princeton University, 2004). Jonathan Miran, Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009). The Royal Geographical Society, “Delimitation of British and French Spheres in Central Africa,” The Geographical Journal 13, no. 5 (May, 1899): 524–25.

l'Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Chicago World's Fair and the Ottoman Empire Progress, colonialism, nationalism, and the civilizing mission are all concepts associated with the late nineteenth century that were on display at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In this podcast, Alma Heckman discusses the ways in which l'Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Jewish philanthropic organization founded in Paris in 1860, participated in the exposition and in doing so, highlights the ways in which the group's ideology and activities in the realm of education in the Middle East and North Africa contribute to our understanding of these important notions. Alma Heckman is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at UCLA focusing on communist movements and Jewish politics in Morocco (see departmental page) Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East (see academia.edu) Episode No. 126 Release Date: 17 October 2013 Location: Nantes, France Editing and Production: Chris Gratien Bibliography courtesy of Alma Heckman Citation: "Jewish Citizens on Exhibit," Alma Heckman and Chris Gratien, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 126 (October 17, 2010) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2010/09/jewish-education-ottoman-empire-alliance-israelite.html. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Cohen, Julia Phillips. Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2013. Cutler, Irving. The Jews of Chicago: from Shtetl to Suburb. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Fortna, Benjamin. Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Laskier, Michael M. The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco: 1962-1962.  Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983. Malino, Frances. “L'éducation des femmes.” In Histoire de l'Alliance Israélite Universelle de 1860 à Nos Jours, edited by André Kaspi and Valérie Assan, 263-293. Paris: A. Colin, 2010.    Penslar, Derek. Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870-1918. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Rodrigue, Aron. French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.  Rodrigue, Aron. "La mission éducative (1860-1939).” In Histoire de l'Alliance Israélite Universelle de 1860 à Nos Jours, edited by André Kaspi and Valérie Assan, 227-261. Paris: A. Colin, 2010.    Şar, Onur. “Alliance Israélite Universelle Schools within the Existing School Frameworks in the Ottoman Empire.” Masters Thesis at Boğaziçi Univeristy 2010.  Stein, Sarah Abrevaya. “Deaf American Jewish Culture in Historical Perspective.” American Jewish History Vol. 93, No. 3 (September 2009): 277-305.

Resettlement and transfer of populations deemed problematic has long been a strategy employed by states throughout the world from tribal settlement campaigns in the Ottoman Empire and Indian Reservations in the United States to penal colonies in Australia and Siberia. During the twentieth century, "the camp," which represents various types of improvised mass resettlement and centralization of populations, emerged in many forms including refugee camps and the infamous concentration camps of the Second World War. In this episode of the Ottoman History Podcast, Dorothee Kellou discusses regroupement, which was a tactic used by the French military during the Algeria War of Independence (1954-1962) in order to control mountain and rural populations and separate them from FLN combatants. As many as two million Algerians were removed from their villages and settled into camps called regroupment centers, many of which became the sites of permanent settlements. Dorothée Kellou is a graduate from Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies studying the history and memory of French colonialism in North Africa Chris Gratien is a PhD candidate studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu) Select Bibliography: Bourdieu, Pierre ; Abdelmalek, Sayad, 1964. Le Déracinement. La Crise de l'Agriculture Traditionnelle en Algérie. Paris, Edition de Minuit. Cornaton, Michel, 1998. Les regroupements de la décolonisation en Algérie. L'Harmattan, Paris Rocard, Michel; Duclert, Vincent, 2003. Rapport sur les camps de regroupement et autres textes sur la guerre d'Algérie, Mille et une nuits, Paris. Keith Sutton, 1999. "Army Administration Tensions over Algeria's Centres de Regroupement, 1954-1962", British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Nov., 1999): 243-270 Keith Sutton; Richard I. Lawless, "Population Regrouping in Algeria: Traumatic Change and the Rural Settlement Pattern", Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 3, Settlement and Conflict in the Mediterranean World (1978): 331-350