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Translating the Image: Art, Science and Global Imagination in the first Islamic Description of the New World (Tarih-i Hind-i Garbī / History of the West Indies), 16th-20th Centuries

Project description

Ottoman perspectives on the early Americas

The Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi (History of the West Indies) is an understudied, illustrated work written in Ottoman Turkish in the 1580s. It is the first non-Indigenous history of the Americas, based on Italian translations of Spanish accounts. Spanning several languages and regions, it reflects a rich history of translation. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the America-Islamica project will explore The Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi to introduce it to a broader audience. This interdisciplinary study will analyse the text and images in various formats and languages. It will enrich our understanding of early modern travel and colonisation from the perspective of non-colonisers – individuals who were curious about the world and engaged in its global power dynamics.

Objective

America-Islamica investigates a little-known and unstudied corpus of illustrated and painted books known as The Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi (History of the West Indies) or the New Hadith, and in Persian translation as the Tarjuma-yi tā’rikh-i yangī dunyā (Translation of the History of the New World). The first non-indigenous and non-European history of the Americas, this account of the Spanish conquest and colonization was composed in Ottoman Turkish in Istanbul based on Italian translations of Spanish sources in the 1580s. Manifesting rich layers of multidirectional translation, the work’s journeys, crossings, and circulations in text and image, geographically and temporally—from Spanish and Italian to Ottoman Turkish, Persian and French, from the Americas to Spain, Italy and the Ottoman capital to Iran and India, and more recently to Europe and the U.S. and from manuscript to printed editions in form that span three centuries—speak to the esteem, admiration, wonder, and appeal it exuded. Inherently interdisciplinary, this study will introduce the work to a wider contemporary audience. An in-depth analysis of its text and image in various formats, languages and canons, will enrich our understanding of early modern travel and colonization from the perspective of the non-colonizers, who were acutely curious and interested in knowing about the confines of the earth, and in competing for its domination.

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Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
Net EU contribution
€ 209 483,28
Address
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5
00185 Roma
Italy
Region
Centro (IT) Lazio Roma
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost
No data