Description:

Faculty and Grad Student Colloquium:

“Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe," with Robert G. Morrison, Bowdoin College, Maine 

Morrison will talk about his new book Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe (Stanford, 2025). Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge from the Ottoman Empire, and the courts of Mehmed the Conqueror and Bayezid II greatly benefitted from knowledge coming out of Europe, merchants of knowledge—multilingual and transregional Jewish scholars—became an important bridge among the powers. With his work, Robert Morrison is the first to track the network of scholars who mediated exchanges in astronomy, astrology, Qabbalah, and philosophy. Professor Morrison will conclude with some broader reflections on scientific exchange.

Morrison is the George Lincoln Skolfield, Jr. Professor of Religion and Middle Eastern and North African Studies, and Director of Middle Eastern and North African Studies Program at Bowdoin College. He is the author of The Intellectual Career of Niẓām al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī (Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2007) and Astronomy in al-Andalus: Joseph Ibn Naḥmias’ The Light of the World (University of California Press, 2016).