Panel 19: Transnational Identities in the Mediterranean World: Rethinking Belonging in Contexts of Interculturality (EN)

Chairs: Edite Martins Alberto (CHAM-NOVA FCSH), Paulo Catarino Lopes (IEM-NOVA FCSH) & Diogo Pereira (FCT-CCCM I.P. & CHAM-NOVA FCSH)

16 April, 11:00 am | Room C115

Fighting for the Sultan: Morroccans, Turks and Europeans

Luís Costa e Sousa (CHAM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)

The European traveller’s perspectives on the 16th century Morocco are essential to acknowledge the nature of the Saadi armies in that decisive chronology. António de Saldanha, author of the Crónica de Almaçor, the Relación by Diego Torres, alfaqueque in the service of the Portuguese Crown, the Descriptiónes by Mármol Carvajal and Jorge de Henin, and the Leo Africanus Descrittione dell’Africa, bring together a vast amount of details to be analysed: the characteristics of the soldiers, the tactical dispositions deeply influenced by the “Ottoman military school” are present in those narratives, along with almost unique graphic representations.

This presentation will analyse those texts and focus on the relations between the local military traditions, and those “imported” from the Ottoman Turkey and Europe, to provide a perspective on how the Moroccan armies fought in the late sixteenth-early seventeenth century during this turbulent period.

Keywords: Morrocco; war; 16th century; Ottomans; Europe

Negotiating Belonging: Cypriot Elites and Interculturality in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Georgios E. Markou (Cyprus University of Technology)

This paper explores how Cypriot elites under Venetian rule (1489-1571) constructed forms of belonging that challenged confessional and communal boundaries in the early modern Mediterranean. Far from embodying a fixed and homogenous “Greek Orthodox” identity, members of Cyprus’s leading families mobilized artistic and cultural patronage to assert fluid positions within a region defined by overlapping sovereignties, rival imperialisms, and competing cultural claims. Their self-representations - expressed through the commissioning of icons and altarpieces, the patronage of churches and monasteries, the circulation of manuscripts, and the cultivation of dynastic alliances - reveal strategies of self-fashioning that resisted simple categorization and transcended local divisions. Drawing on unpublished archival documentation alongside visual culture and material practices, the study situates Cypriot elites within the wider transnational networks of Venice’s maritime empire, connecting the island not only to the metropolis but also to the Levant, Crete, and the broader Eastern Mediterranean. Practices such as intermarriage across confessional lines, service within Venetian civic and military institutions, and engagement in diplomatic negotiations underscore the extent to which these elites were not passive subjects of colonial power but active participants in shaping imperial dynamics and redefining cultural affiliations. By foregrounding Cyprus not as a peripheral outpost but as a nodal point of encounter and exchange, the paper demonstrates how the island functioned as a crucible of intercultural negotiation where identity was continually redefined through contact, mobility, and alterity. In reframing Cypriot identity as dynamic, relational, and performative, this study contributes to broader debates on belonging in the Mediterranean world, while also challenging historiographical tendencies to confine local agency within rigid categories of ethnicity or religion. Ultimately, the case of Venetian Cyprus invites a rethinking of how peripheral societies in the empire actively mediated between local traditions and transnational currents, revealing the Mediterranean as a space of constant negotiation rather than fixed boundaries.

Keywords: Cyprus; Venetian empire; elite patronage; art; transnational identity

A Life Between Shores: The Shifting Identities of Leão Camelo after the Battle of Alcácer Quibir

Paulo Lopes Catarino (IEM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa) e Edite Martins Alberto (CHAM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)