"Through the remarkable life and career of the Morisco polymath Ahmad Al-Hajarī, this book makes the case for an Arabo-Islamic Republic of Letters alongside the European one. In doing so, the author reformulates our understanding of intellectual exchange in the early modern Mediterranean."--Sharon Kinoshita, Professor of Literature at University of California, Santa Cruz and co-director of The Mediterranean Seminar. "The extent to which European Orientalism not only depended heavily on collaboration from Muslim intellectuals but was also matched by Muslim writing about the European world is the theme of Zhiri's important book. Deeply researched and clearly written, this book opens up a new world of endeavor and exchange in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."--Natalie Zemon Davis, author of Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds