road_vous_etes_ici
Home
>
The institute
>
Organisation
>
The staff
>
John TOLAN

The staff

John TOLAN

Membre associé de l’IEA de Nantes

33 (0) 253009347

FELLOW FOCUS

John Tolan’s seminar will take place on Monday 14 November 2022:

Tracking the Qur’an in European Culture

Suggestions of the week:

Film: Islam pour mémoire, un voyage avec Abdelwahab Meddeb, by Bénédicte Pagnot

With Islam for memory, the director, Bénédicte Pagnot, signs her first feature-length documentary and invites us on a journey from Isfahan to Sidi-Bouzid, from Jerusalem to Baghdad, passing through Brittany, Hebron, Istanbul, Fez, Cordoba, Toulouse, Dubai, Tunis... A journey of discovery of Islam with a capital I, that of complexity and universality, the one that Abdelwahab Meddeb, born in Tunis in 1946, director of the journal Dédale, poet, novelist, essayist, translator, professor of comparative literature at Paris X-Nanterre, columnist, and host of the programme Cultures d’Islam on France Culture for ten years until his death in 2014. Between past and present, the film travels between history and politics, poetry and music.

Reading: Seniguer, Haoues. La République autoritaire: islam de France et illusion républicaine (2015-2022). Collection « Documents ». Lormont: Le Bord de l’eau, 2022.

The logic of suspicion has become the compass of the French state.

Since 2015 and the attacks of January and November, the preventive and repressive policy of the State has been inflected, through a whole series of new legal devices and means, to the detriment of individual and collective freedoms, and to the great displeasure of human rights organisations. Authoritarian practices, which can be seen here and there, have developed and spread from the centres of institutional power, with the direct or indirect support of certain associative actors, activists and, more rarely, some researchers.

The deployment of a security arsenal is neither a novelty nor an incongruity in a democracy, especially when exceptionally serious and deadly phenomena occur. On the other hand, what is certainly new is the target of the repression; today it is concentrated more than in the past on minority groups, perceived as deviant, or supposedly more deviant than others, because of their origin and presumed religion, despite the denials and the conventional speeches.

It is then that republicanism falters, its principles crumble on the altar of, among other things, a blatant instrumentalisation of secularism, transformed by some into a disciplinary tool for bodies and minds, or even a catechism without a Church. It is therefore no longer just the law that is being tightened, but the political discourse that is becoming more rigid, more martial and moralising. The state, its representatives and its relays no longer target exclusively the fomenters and perpetrators of acts of terrorism. An overbidding can now be seen in the appreciation of lifestyles and the content of religious doctrines professed and taught in particular in Muslim circles. A logic of suspicion is thus being insinuated and established, in which the media regularly participate, breaking with the ethics of responsibility. This logic of suspicion bypasses the legalism embodied by Muslim actors and social agents, who are increasingly called upon to prove their republican attachment, while the financial and economic elites, supported or endorsed by the state, have long since seceded.

Image: Congressman Keith Ellison taking his oath on Thomas Jefferson’s copy of George Sale’s 1734 translation of the Qur’an, 5 January 2007

Membre associé de l’IEA de Nantes

John Tolan est spécialiste des contacts culturels et religieux entre mondes arabe et latin au Moyen Âge. Formé à Yale (BA en lettres classiques), à Chicago (Master & PhD en histoire), puis à l’EHESS (HDR), il a enseigné dans des universités en Amérique, en Europe, en Afrique et au Moyen Orient. Il est actuellement professeur d’histoire à l’Université de Nantes et membre de l’Academia Europæa et de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona. Il a reçu de nombreux prix et distinctions, dont deux bourses du Conseil Européen de la Recherche (ERC) et le Prix Diane Potier-Boès de l’Académie Française. Il est auteur de nombreux articles et ouvrages, dont Les Sarrasins (Flammarion/Aubier 2003), Le Saint chez le sultan (Le Seuil 2007), L’Europe latine et le monde arabe au Moyen Age (Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2009) et Mahomet l’européen : une histoire des représentations du Prophète en Occident (Albin Michel 2018). Il est un des quatre directeurs du programme du Conseil de Recherche Européen, “The European Qur’an” (2019-2025; euqu.eu).

Bibliography

Projets en cours

Faces of the Prophet: A History of Western Portrayals of Muhammad (Princeton : Princeton University Press, publication prévue 2018); version française, Mahomet l’Européen: une histoire des représentations du Prophète en Occident (Paris: Albin Michel, publication prévue 2018).

The king’s Jews: The Jewish community of England caught up in the conflicts between Henry III and his clerical and lay opponents, 1218-1266 (publication prévue 2020).


Livres

L’Europe latine et le monde arabe au Moyen Age : Cultures en conflit et en convergence. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009.

Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008.

Le Saint chez le Sultan : la rencontre de François d’Assise et de l’islam. Huit siècles d’interprétations (Paris : Seuil, 2007).
--principaux comptes rendus: Journal du Dimanche (19/8/2007); Le Monde (7/9/2007); Livres Hebdo (7/9/2007); Le Monde de la Bible (9/2007); L’Humanité (26/9/2007); Suisse (8/10/2007); L’Histoire (11/2007); Libération (1/11/2007); La Croix (22/11/2007); Le Bulletin des Lettres (12/2007); L’Orient-Le Jour (Beyrouth 6/12/2007); Etudes (1/2008); Ouest France (26/1/2008); La Quinzaine littéraire (1-16/2/2008). --”le choix du Monde de Livres”, essais, (14/9/2007)
--lauréat du Prix Diane Potier-Boès 2008, Académie Française
--Traduction anglaise: St. Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
--principaux comptes rendus: The Catholic Herald (24/7/ 2009); The Daily News Egypt (24/9/2009); Catholic San Francisco (4/11/2009); Church History 79 (2010), 445-447; The Catholic Historical Review 96 (2010), 751-752; Journal of Islamic Studies 22 (2011), 128-131; The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61 (2010), 834-835; Speculum 86 (2011), 560-2.
--Traduction italienne: Il santo dal sultano: L’incontro di Francesco d’Assisi e l’islam (Rome: Laterza, 2009).
--principaux comptes rendus: Il Sole (1/4/2009); La Stampa (17/4/ 2009);Corriere della sera (29/4/2009); Il Manifesto (8/8/2009); L’Osservatore Romano (12/9/2009)

Les Sarrasins: l’Islam dans l’imaginaire européen au Moyen Âge. Paris: Aubier (collection historique), 2003. Edition poche, Paris: Flammarion poche, 2006.
--principaux comptes rendus: Marianne (25-31/8/2003); Tendances (28/8/2003); La Libre Belgique (5/9/2003); Libération (18/9/2003); L’Humanité (24/9/2003) Le Monde (26/9/2003); Lire (10/2003); Le Figaro (2/10/2003); La Quinzaine littéraire (1-15/10/2003); Le Nouvel Observateur (30/10- 5/11/2003); L’Histoire (11/2003); Historia (11/2003).
--Choisi “Livre du Mois” par “Le Club Histoire” (8/2003).
--finaliste pour le prix Augustin Thierry du livre d’histoire (2004).

Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
--comptes rendus: History (Fall, 2002); Choice (12/ 2002); The Medieval Review (3/1/2003); Times Literary Supplement (6 Mar. 2003); Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 14 (2003); Comitatus 34 (2003); American Historical Review (10/2003); Speculum (4/2004).
--traduction espagnole: Los Sarracenos: el Islam en el imaginario europeo en la Edad Media. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia, 2007.

Les Relations entre les pays d’Islam et le monde latin du milieu du Xème siècle au milieu du XIIIème siècle. Paris: Bréal (Série CAPES-Agrégation), 2000. (Avec la collaboration de Philippe Josserand).

Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993.