Mathieu Grenet: Tripoli as seen by a captive (1660s)

Autor del Documento: Anónimo, Antoine Quartier,

Descripción / Resumen:

The following text is taken from chapter 2 of L’Esclave religieux et ses avantures [The Religious Slave and His Adventures], an account of captivity published anonymously in Paris in 1690 and recently reissued in a modernized and annotated edition[1]. Its author, Antoine Quartier, from Burgundy (France), was captured off the coast of Crete in 1660 by “Barbary” corsairs; he then spent eight years as a captive in Tripoli; upon his return to France, he entered the priesthood and later recounted his ordeals in his book, which, despite its obvious documentary and literary merits, remained largely unknown for a long time[2].

Quartier’s description of Tripoli is one of the few accounts by European witnesses from that period that have survived to the present day. The reliability of the information it contains is generally corroborated by cross-references that can be made elsewhere, particularly with the Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoli [Chronological History of the Kingdom of Tripoli], a (very long) unpublished manuscript in which the Huguenot physician Pierre Girard recounts his captivity in Tripoli from 1668 to 1676—that is, immediately after Quartier’s[3]. Other such accounts, both earlier and later, include notably Father Dan’s Histoire de Barbarie et de ses corsaires [History of Barbary and Its Corsairs] (1637), the fourth section of which partly focuses on Tripoli, as well as the monumental—and also unpublished—Historie van het Rijk van Tripoli in Barbarijen [History of the Kingdom of Tripoli of Barbary] written by Philipp Gerbrands, the consul general of the United Provinces in the Libyan city from 1713 to 1750[4].

[1] Anon., L’Esclave religieux et ses avantures, Paris: Daniel Hortemels, 1690; republished as Antoine Quartier, Tripoli. Tribulations et aventures d’un captif dans une cité corsaire, ed. by Mathieu Grenet, Toulouse: Anacharsis, 2026.

[2] Exceptions include studies by Hugues Cocard, “Antoine Quartier (vers 1632-1702). Voyageur, captif, mercédaire. Un précurseur de l’orientalisme, au xvii^e siècle,” Analecta mercedaria 22 (2003): 123–301 (in particular p. 125–32), and Salvatore Bono, “L’Esclave religieux di Antoine Quartier (Tripoli, 1660-1668), come fonte storica,” Mediterranea – ricerche storiche 45 (2019): 155–66.

[3] The manuscript is kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, French Manuscripts division n° 12219–12220. Fellow historians Louis Fandre and Aurélien Montel have undertaken to publish a partial edition, focusing on the sections devoted to the medieval period: Tripolitaine et Cyrénaïque médiévales. Édition, modernisation et analyse des chapitres relatifs à l’époque islamique de l’Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoly de Barbarie (Leiden-Boston: Brill, forthcoming). On the authorship of Girard’s work, see Gillian Weiss, “A Huguenot captive in ‘Uthman Dey’s court. Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoly (1785) and its author,” in Mario Klarer (ed.), Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean, 1550–1810, London-New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 234–57. Also worth noting are the five letters that Philip Gell, son of an English parliamentarian, sent to England during his captivity in Tripoli from 1675 to 1676 (Derbyshire Record Office, D258/24/49); see Colin Heywood, “People-Taking across the Mediterranean Maritime Frontier, 1675–1714,” in Felicia Roşu (ed.), Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900-1900, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2022, pp. 387–417.

[4] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie et de ses corsaires des royaumes et des villes d’Alger, de Tunis, de Salé et de Tripoly, Paris, Pierre Rocolet, 1637. Gerbrands’ manuscript is preserved at the “F.D. Guerrazzi” Library in Livorno; see in particular Calogero Piazza, “Settecento libico. Philipp Gerbrands console generale delle Province Unite,” Africa 42/4 (1987): 527–55.

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003_Grenet_Tripoli-1660

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Ficha Técnica y Cronológica

• Personajes: Antoine Quartier; Mehmet Sakizli; Osman Sakizli
• Palabras clave: antropología, frontera, Tripoli; Libya; “Barbary”; Ottoman empire; topography; privateering; captives; renegades; trade; Jews; desert
• Autor de la fuente: Anónimo, Antoine Quartier,
• Título de la fuente: L’Esclave religieux et ses avantures
• Impresor:
• Ediciones / Ediciones Críticas: L’Esclave religieux et ses avantures, París, 1690
• Archivo de procedencia: - / Volumen: - Sección: - - Legajo: - Documentos:
• Tipo de documento: Relaciones / Estado: Transcripción, Actualización, Fragmento, Traducción
• Época: Moderna / Siglo: XVII DC / Año: 1690
• Zona geográfica: África, Mediterráneo, Eurasia / Localización: Paris, 1690