Robert Morrison’s groundbreaking Merchants of Knowledge greatly expands our knowledge of how cross-cultural intellectual exchanges took place between Renaissance Europe and the Islamic world in the early modern period. Focusing on a group of Romaniote Jewish scholars hailing from merchant families engaged in the Venetian–Ottoman trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, whom he calls “merchants of knowledge,” Morrison illustrates their critical role in transmitting ideas in multiple disciplines—from astronomy, astrology, and medicine to Aristotelian philosophy and the qabbalah—across the eastern Mediterranean and Veneto. This transregional and multidisciplinary intellectual exchange demonstrates how connected the intellectual life of Renaissance Europe and Islamic societies were and how the Renaissance was shaped by protracted scholarly contacts with the Islamic world despite military conflicts and a persistent ideological hostility throughout the early modern period. The Renaissance in Morrison’s work was heterogeneous: it was the product not only of preeminent humanist scholars in Europe but also of the mediating role of lower-status intermediaries, such as Morrison’s merchants of knowledge, who shaped the intellectual exchange between Europe and the Islamic world.

As a social historian by training, rather than dwelling on the several contributions of Morrison’s book to the rapidly expanding scholarly literature on cross-cultural intellectual history and the history of science, in this review I will focus on its importance for the history of the premodern Mediterranean and the Ottoman Empire. In Merchants of Knowledge Morrison nicely follows the works of historians of the early modern Mediterranean like Eric Dursteler, Natalie Rothman, Francesca Trivellato, and John Paul Ghobrial, who in the past twenty years have studied the critical role played by liminal figures, such as renegades, translators, diplomatic mediators, and religious minorities, in diplomatic, economic, and intellectual relations between European states and the Ottoman Empire.

Morrison’s merchants of knowledge were both insiders and outsiders in the societies they lived in: in both the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian Republic, they took part in repeated social, economic, and intellectual exchanges with Muslims and Christians even as they suffered from noticeable legal and social disabilities, such as their ban from occupying positions in institutions of higher learning and in the state administration. As Jews, they nevertheless flourished at “the margins” (215) of European universities and Ottoman madrasas. The main assets of these Jewish scholars were their mobility and multilingualism: they were members of merchant and family networks spread out across the eastern Mediterranean and Venice, allowing them to interact with multiple scholars and attract patrons in both Ottoman and Venetian territories. Furthermore, as was the case for other cultural mediators in the early modern Mediterranean, rather than merely transmitting ideas between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Morrison’s merchants of knowledge shaped the intellectual exchanges according to their quest for intellectual growth and social capital. Their own academic interests in multiple disciplines and their search for clients and patrons in Veneto, Crete, and Istanbul determined which books they bought and sold, and which manuscripts they transferred and translated. Their intellectual production was, in Morrison’s words, “transactional” (2).

The most exemplary merchant of knowledge in Morrison’s book is Moses b. Judah Galeano/Musa Jalinus (d. 1542). Born in the Ottoman Empire, Galeano moved between Istanbul, Crete, and Padua to work for many Christian and Muslim clients and patrons with intellectual interests in multiple disciplines. In the Ottoman Empire, he translated Latin texts of astronomy into Arabic for the empire’s chief military judge (al-qadī bi-l-ʿaskar), Mu’ayyadzada ʿAbd al-Rahman Efendi (d. 1516), and authored a text of pharmacology in Ottoman Turkish for Ahi Çelebi (d. 1524), the chief physician of Sultan Bayezit II (r. 1481–1512), in which he incorporated medical information from Latin sources (201). Around 1500, in Venice and Padua, Galeano translated and traded late medieval Arabic texts on theoretical astronomy from the Ottoman Empire to Christian and Jewish scholars and printers, and collected Latin manuscripts for his Ottoman clients. He also wrote works in Hebrew and Latin on astrology and mathematical astronomy, drawing on Islamic sources, such as the astronomers Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274) and Ibn al-Shatir (d. 1375), who were previously unknown to European scholars.

Morrison’s book is also notably important for Ottoman history because it posits the Ottoman Empire as a vital center of scientific exchange in the early modern period. Members of the courts of Mehmed II (r. 1451–81) and Bayezit II were much interested in scientific advancements in Europe, especially in medicine and astronomy, which explains the availability of patrons and clients in Istanbul for Jewish scholars. Istanbul was a pivotal hub for bilateral intellectual exchanges between Europe and the Islamic world, facilitated by local intermediaries such as Morrison’s merchants of knowledge.

The merchants of knowledge were part of a world created by the Ottomans, an important fact that deserves more attention in studies of cross-cultural intellectual exchanges in the early modern Mediterranean. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, which led to the flight of many Christian scholars to Crete and Venice, the Ottomans settled Romaniote Jews from the Balkans and Anatolia in their new capital and welcomed Sephardic Jews fleeing Iberia in the wake of the 1492 edicts of expulsion. In Istanbul, many of these Jewish immigrants played an important role in Ottoman socioeconomic and intellectual life as physicians, translators, diplomats, and merchants for the Ottoman court. At the same time, the Ottoman–Venetian wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the resulting peace treaties established an interstate system of political and commercial relations that allowed Ottoman subjects, such as Jews, to travel, trade, and settle in Venetian territories in peace. This historical context of migration and international agreements explains why Morrison’s merchants of knowledge mastered many languages, freely moved across Venetian and Ottoman territories, and interacted with scholars and patrons from different religious, linguistic, and social groups.

Overall, Morrison’s Merchants of Knowledge is a must-read for any historian of the early modern period, regardless of geographical or research specialization. It addresses multiple fields of historical research, including the history of science, intellectual history, Ottoman history, early modern Europe, Mediterranean history, and Jewish history. To scholars working in these fields of study, Merchants of Knowledge offers a compelling case for the interconnectedness of geographically, culturally, and religiously distinct regions and groups—a dynamic that profoundly shaped global scientific and intellectual movements, such as the Renaissance.