ABSTRACT
Captivity historiography has routinely projected the Mediterranean as a space of confrontation between the Cross and the Crescent. Europe and North Africa are often seen as two worlds separated by impenetrable borders of radical ethnic, cultural, religious, and ideological differences. This paper constructs an alternative history in which the Mediterranean is a contact zone for encounter and negotiation between geographically and culturally separated peoples, a fluid site for cross-cultural discovery and dialogue between Occident and Orient, and the circulation of geographical knowledge, cultural objects, agricultural and manufactured goods, and the movement of people.
