This book is an ambitious and innovative work of transnational history, for its narrative extends for one and a half millennia: 476 – 1952 AD. Its careful scholarship is enhanced by impressive documentation in both European and Islamic languages (Italian, French, Arabic and Turkish), full of kaleidoscopic and arresting detail. An extensive glossary covers place names, famous persons and technical terminology. The book places certain Italian cities at the front and centre of international commerce over many centuries, linking Europe with key areas of the Middle East and North Africa, a feature with tap roots in the ancient world, revealing, for example, how Carthage and Arabia fostered a global trade between West and East. Later chapters are enlivened by European travellers’ accounts of the long contact between Italy and the Muslim world, documenting the commercial links that Venice and Florence established with the Mamluks of Cairo and the Ottomans of Istanbul. Time and again, the author demonstrates how the interface between Orient and Occident surprised, fascinated and enriched both cultures.
