This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work and the Islamic world, running from the Arabic roots of The Prince to its first translations into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic.

1 Introduction: Reorienting Machiavelli; Lucio Biasiori and Giuseppe Marcocci.- Part One – From Readings to Readers.- 2 Islamic Roots of Machiavelli’s Thought? The Prince and the Kitāb sirr al-asrār from Baghdad to Florence and Back; Lucio Biasiori.- 3 Turkophilia and Religion: Machiavelli, Giovio and the Sixteenth-Century Debate about War; Vincenzo Lavenia.- 4 Machiavelli and the Antiquarians; Carlo Ginzburg.- Part Two – Religion and Empires.- 5 Roman Prophet or Muslim Caesar: Muḥammad the Lawgiver before and after Machiavelli;  Pier Mattia Tommasino.- 6 Mediterranean Exemplars: Jesuit Political Lessons from a Mughal Emperor; Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam.- 7 Machiavelli and the Islamic Empire: Tropical Readers from Brazil to India (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries); Giuseppe Marcocci.- Part Three – Beyond Orientalism.- 8 A Tale of Two Chancellors: Machiavelli, Celālzāde Muṣṭafá, and Connected Political Cultures in the Cinquecento/the Hijri Tenth Century; Kaya Şahin.- 9 Machiavelli Enters the Sublime Porte: The Introduction of The Prince to the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman World; Nergiz Yılmaz Aydoğdu.- 10 Translating Machiavelli in Egypt: The Prince and the Shaping of a New Political Vocabulary in the Nineteenth-Century Arab Mediterranean; Elisabetta Benigni.

This volume provides the first survey of the unexplored connections between Machiavelli’s work and the Islamic world, running from the Arabic roots of The Prince to its first translations into Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. It investigates comparative descriptions of non-European peoples, Renaissance representations of Muḥammad and the Ottoman military discipline, a Jesuit treatise in Persian for a Mughal emperor, peculiar readers from Brazil to India, and the parallel lives of Machiavelli and the bureaucrat Celālzāde Muṣṭafá. Ten distinguished scholars analyse the backgrounds, circulation and reception of Machiavelli’s writings, focusing on many aspects of the mutual exchange of political theories and grammars between East and West. A significant contribution to attempts by current scholarship to challenge any rigid separation within Eurasia, this volume restores a sense of the global spreading of books, ideas and men in the past. 

“Machiavelli was the first Renaissance humanist to consider the Muslim world from a secular perspective, but his interactions with Islam have been little studied. This original volume will be essential reading not only for Machiavelli scholars but for students of modern global culture in its emerging intellectual stages.” (Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Renaissance History, University of Leeds, UK) “A timely, learned, and thoughtful intervention, this volume should be required reading for both students and seasoned scholars interested in the intellectual roots of Western modernity, and will surprise even those who are well acquainted with the work of Machiavelli.” (Francesca Trivellato, Frederick W. Hilles Professor of History, Yale University, USA)

Challenges conventional ideas about Machiavelli’s contribution to the foundation of the modern political thought and its limitation to the WestIncludes nine case studies of the Islamic backgrounds, circulation and reception of Machiavelli’s writings to provide a refreshing interpretation that restores a sense of the global spreading of books, ideas and men in the pastExplores the connections between Machiavelli’s work, the Muslim world, and the EastIncludes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras