İslam Korkusu: Kökenleri ve Türklerin Rolü by Özlem Kumrular (review)

398 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 3.2 and tools that will allow his counterparts to discover and explore al-Nabulusi on their own. Steve Tamari T T Southern Illinois University Edwardsville doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.3.2.17 Özlem Kumrular. İslam İ İ Korkusu: Kökenleri ve Türklerin Rolü. Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2012. 525 pp. 29.00 TL. ISBN: 978-6050911565. g]OHP.XPUXODULVDIDFXOW\PHPEHUDW%DKoHúHKLU8QLYHUVLW\ ,VWDQEXO ZKR holds a Ph.D. from Salamanca University in Spain. On her résumé Kumrular K K states that she has working knowledge of English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, German, Japanese, and Ottoman Turkish. T T øVODP Korkusu: Kökenleri ve Türklerin Rolü (The Fear of Islam: Origins and the Turkish T T Role) holds testimony to that impressive ability. With abundant references to many secondary and primary sources in multiple languages, øVODP Korkusu narrates intercultural experiences and observations recorded by and about travelers, diplomats, people threatened by expatriation, slaves, missionaries, and many other groups and individuals across the larger Mediterranean basin roughly from the 1400s through 1600s. In the introduction, Kumrular states that her book is a study in imagology K K and that it is not a thematic book in Arabic, Ottoman, or Turkish history. T T The book is organized, constructed, and researched accordingly, she adds. Indeed, regardless of geographical focus, scholars dealing with Mediterranean hisWRU \IURP¿HOGVDVGLYHUVHDVGLSORPDF\FXLVLQHVUHOLJLRQRUSLUDF\ZLOO¿QG something interesting for their own studies throughout the thirteen chapters of the book. øVODP Korkusu begins with a narrative of the traumatic impact of the fall of Constantinople and the Spanish Inquisition on the Christian, Jewish, DQG0XVOLP(XURSHDQVRIWKH¿IWHHQWKFHQWXU\7KHQH[WWZRFKDSWHUVVKRZ how reality and perception about Muslims blended in literary works and folk tales. In the following three chapters, one reads about the experiences of travHOHUV SLOJULPVDQGGLSORPDWVDFURVVWKH,VODPLFZRUOGDQGOHDUQVWKDWD¿II I teenth-century convert to Islam can be as pragmatic as a modern individual or that Muslims escaping their Iberian homeland in the 1500s were swindled by KXPDQWUDI¿FNHUVMXVWDVWKHLUSUHVHQWGD\IHOORZFREHOLHYHUVHVFDSLQJZDU torn countries. In chapter seven, the only section in the book that has direct reference to the perception of Islam in subheadings, the author recounts many well-known details from early modern orientalist literature. In the rest of the book, there are narratives of individuals who travelled among the Muslims or were interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition, remarks of travelers about the Book Reviews 399 food and status of women in the Muslim world, and different interpretations of cultural encounters and exchanges with the Muslims as well as military losses and victories against them. Layman readers will enjoy the book’s unending parade of anecdotes for 450 pages, but any academic reader will detect major problems in this QRQ¿FWLRQZRUNZLWKQHDUO\VFKRODUO\UHIHUHQFHV%RWKWKHERRNWLWOH and introduction promise to tell something about the origins of the fear of Islam in the Western world. Given the current global threats and debates origLQDWLQJ LQWKHVRFDOOHG,VODPLFZRUOGWKHXQGHUWDNLQJLVMXVWL¿HGSHUKDSV even necessary. However, merely a conglomeration of a myriad of interesting details, occasions, memories, sections from literary works and travelogues, øVODP Korkusu does not develop an argument. In fact, it does not even discuss the historical material presented in the book. Instead, the author holds the reader by the hand and gives a hurried and frenzied, descriptive, and eventually boring tour through many alleys of the past, while aiming to entertain with recurrent surprise effects. Very often, this reader craved for analysis or UHIHUHQFHVWRLPSRUWDQWVFKRODUO\GHEDWHV)RULQVWDQFHLQWKH¿UVWFKDSWHU based on numerous individual cases the author vividly describes the social atmosphere in Iberia after the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition. At the end, the chapter conveys a socially chaotic image of the peninsula. Iberia was by no means peaceful during the Reconquista. Yet, nowhere in the text does Kumrular mention different interpretations of the K K Spanish Inquisition. On page 30, there...