In 1571, the Pope formed a Holy League to oppose the growing Turkish domination of the Eastern Mediterranean. A year later a vast fleet of Christian ships confronted the Turkish fleet at Lepanto and in the course of a single day they turned the tide of history.

Interdisciplinary approach to the Iberian and Italian perceptions and representations of the Battle of Lepanto and the Muslim “other” The Battle of Lepanto, celebrated as the greatest triumph of Christianity over its Ottoman enemy, was soon transformed into a powerful myth through a vast media campaign. The varied storytelling and the many visual representations that contributed to shape the perception of the battle in Christian Europe are the focus of this book. In broader terms, Lepanto and Beyond also sheds light on the construction of religious alterity in the early modern Mediterranean. It presents cross-disciplinary case studies that explore the figure of the Muslim captive in historical documentation, artistic depictions, and literature. With a focus on the Republic of Genoa, the authors also aim to balance the historical scale and restore the important role of the Genoese in the general scholarly discussion of Lepanto and its images.

Unprecedented in its range - extending from Venice to the New World and from the Holy Roman Empire to the Ottoman Empire - this collection probes the place that the Ottoman Turks occupied in the Western imaginaire, and the ways in which this occupation expressed itself in the visual arts. Individual essays in this volume examine specific images or groups of images, problematizing the 'truths' they present and analyzing the contexts that shape the presentation of Ottoman or Islamic subject matter in European art. The contributors trace the transmission of early modern images and representations across national boundaries and across centuries to show how, through processes of translation that often involved multiple stages, the figure of the Turk (and by extension that of the Muslim) underwent a multiplicity of interpretations that reflect and reveal Western needs, anxieties and agendas. The essays reveal how anachronisms and inaccuracies mingled with careful detail to produce a "Turk," a figure which became a presence to reckon with in painting, sculpture, tapestry and printmaking.

A modern Herodotus looks at war in the ancient Middle East, Empires, Wars, and Battles is a brilliantly readable popular history from T.C.F. Hopkins. As current events have made painfully obvious, the Middle East is a region long torn by strife and traditions of warfare. In this elegant, fast-paced, and well thought out cultural and military history, T. C. F. Hopkins, author of Confrontation at Lepanto, provides a remarkable glimpse into the origins of the conflicts that formed the ancient world as well as the world we have inherited. This book examines the development of the traditions and hostilities that have grown from millennia of conflict and looks at the precarious balance between the West and the Middle East. Focusing on complex rivalries, from the Ancient Egyptians and Hittites to the five-hundred-year conflict between the Ottoman and Byzantine Empires, this book seeks to shed light on the character of the region, and why it has borne and continues to bear a critical role in world affairs. Incorporating the most recent discoveries and scholarship, Empires, Wars, and Battles provides both an account of political and military events and a survey of the cultures and societies of the ancient Near East. The straightforward, accessible text is clear and credible to the well-read history buff, but understandable and fascinating to the reader who knows nothing about ancient or military history. There are few books that can claim to cover this complex, timely material in such a comprehensive and interesting fashion. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ celebrated the Festival of Hanukkah (John 10:22). Hanukkah celebrates the heroic exploits of Judas Maccabeus and his battle for religious freedom. These events occurred during the four-hundred silent years between the Old and New Testaments. The Seleucid Greeks that ruled over the Jewish people made observing Judaism a capital offense and ordered all copies of the Bible to be collected and burned. In the year 167 Before Christ, Judas Maccabaeus led the Jewish people into battle to preserve the Holy Bible and to establish religious liberty. Judas was called Maccabeus which means "the Hammer" in Aramaic. Centuries later, in the year 732 A.D, Charles Martel, known as "Charles the Hammer," fought to defend the religious liberties of the Christians and Jews in Europe when an army of Islamic terrorists threatened to eradicate Christianity in France. In The Hammer of God learn about the history of the battle for religious freedom, a battle that continues today. Reverend Stephen Andrew Missick is the author The Words of Jesus in the Original Aramaic: Discovering the Semitic Roots of Christianity and Christ the Man. He is an ordained minister of the gospel. He graduated from Sam Houston State University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Rev. Missick has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and has lived among the Coptic Christians in Egypt and Aramaic Christians in Syria. He served as a soldier in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and 2004 and as a chaplain in the Army National Guard in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010. While serving as a soldier in Iraq he learned Aramaic from native Aramaic-speaking Assyrian Christians. Rev. Missick is the writer and illustrator of the comic book series The Hammer of God which dramatizes the story of Judah Maccabeus and Charles Martel.

Four volumes of history and biography for fans of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, with lore on the Royal Navy and much more. What is a sandgrouse, and where does it live? What are the medical properties of lignum vitae, and how did Stephen Maturin use it to repair his viola? Who is Adm. Lord Keith, and why is his wife so friendly with Capt. Jack Aubrey? More than any other contemporary author, Patrick O’Brian knew the past. His twenty Aubrey–Maturin novels, beginning with Master and Commander (1969), are distinguished by deep characterization, heart-stopping naval combat, and an attention to detail that enriches and enlivens his stories. In the revised edition of A Sea of Words, Dean King and his collaborators dive into Jack Aubrey’s world. In the revised edition of Harbors and High Seas, King details not just where Aubrey and Maturin went, but how they got there. Packed with maps and illustrations from the greatest age of sail, it is an incomparable reference for devotees of O’Brian’s novels and anyone who has dreamed of climbing aboard a warship, as well as a captivating portrait of life on the sea during a time when nothing stood between man and ocean but grit, daring, and a few creaking planks of wood. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the British navy was the mightiest instrument of war the world had ever known. The Royal Navy patrolled the seas from India to the Caribbean, connecting an empire with footholds in every corner of the earth. Such a massive navy required the service of more than 100,000 men—from officers to deckhands to surgeons. Their stories are collected in Every Man Will Do His Duty. The inspiration for the bestselling novels of Patrick O’Brian and C. S. Forester, these twenty-two memoirs and diaries, edited by Dean King, provide a true portrait of life aboard British warships during one of the most significant eras of world history. Patrick O’Brian was well into his seventies when the world fell in love with his greatest creation: the maritime adventures of Royal Navy Capt. Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin. But despite his fame, little detail was available about the life of the reclusive author, whose mysterious past King uncovers in this groundbreaking biography. King traces O’Brian’s personal history from his beginnings as a London-born Protestant named Richard Patrick Russ to his tortured relationship with his first wife and child to his emergence from World War II with the entirely new identity under which he would publish twenty volumes in the Aubrey–Maturin series. What King unearths is a life no less thrilling than the seafaring world of O’Brian’s imagination. Patrick O’Brian: A Life Revealed is a penetrating and insightful examination of one of the modern world’s most acclaimed historical novelists.

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world. In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written his most mesmerizing work to date–a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiraling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, “The King of Evil,” the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St. John, the last crusading order after the passing of the Templars; the messianic Pope Pius V; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. This struggle’s brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, seven years that witnessed a fight to the finish decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta, in which a tiny band of Christian defenders defied the might of the Ottoman army; the savage battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defense of southern Europe at Lepanto–one of the single most shocking days in world history. At the close of this cataclysmic naval encounter, the carnage was so great that the victors could barely sail away “because of the countless corpses floating in the sea.” Lepanto fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world that we know today. Roger Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality, technology and Inca gold. Empires of the Sea is page-turning narrative history at its best–a story of extraordinary color and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises, and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts. It provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilizations.

"'From Cyprus to Lepanto,' translated and edited by Kiril Petkov, is the first English translation of Gianpietro Contarini's 1572 'History...of the War Brought against the Venetians by Selim the Ottoman.' His work is the first and principal narrative of the war between the Holy League and the Ottomans, which began with the conquest of Cyprus and culminated in the battle of Lepanto. It includes Petkov's introduction on the author's sources, style, and above all, philosophy of history, as well as notes, a bibliography and an index"

The Roman Empire did not meet its end when barbarians sacked the City of Seven Hills, but rather a thousand years later with the fall of Constantinople, capital of the surviving Eastern Empire. The Ottoman Turks who conquered the city aslo known to us as Byzantium would force a tense centruy of conflict in the Mediterranean culminating in the famous Battle of Lepanto. The first book in a triptych depicting this monumental confrontation between a Muslim empire and Christendom, The Fall of Constantinople brilliantly captures a defning moment in the two creeds' history too often eclipsed by the Crusades.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.