Hafsids and Habsburgs in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Cristelle L. Baskins is Associate Professor Emeritus, Tufts University, USA.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Hafsids and Habsburgs.- 3. Sovereign Display.- 4. Italian Sojourn.- 5. Vanishing Acts.- 6. Pious Fictions.- 7. Conclusion.

“This is an ambitious book, realized through a remarkable investment in the close reading of primary sources in Italian, Spanish, Latin and Arabic––some well-thumbed, others rarely consulted. For scholars across disciplines, Facing Tunis represents the culmination of a Herculean task: the creation of a veritable archive of material for the study of Mediterranean entanglements that promises to animate scholarship for years to come.” (Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, caareviews.org, June 23, 2025)“Baskin’s masterful work has found a fitting home in the Palgrave Macmillan series New Transculturalisms, 1400-1800. … Baskin’s prose is very readable and her narrative genuinely gripping. Altogether, these attributes will make Baskins’s new monograph at home in early modern history and art history graduate seminars. I also foresee recommending this book to especially curious and intrepid undergraduates interested in the multicultural early modern world. Baskins’s contribution will enrich education on the Mediterranean for years to come.” (Frank Lacopo, Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 47 (4), 2024)“The book can open the doors of unexplored research topics, as the author has raised many issues and often answered them. In other cases, her questions about those issues seem like a generous invitation to add directly to the work of research and the analysis of the topic.” (Hespéris-Tamuda, Vol. 58 (2), 2023)