Charles Beirouti
DPhil Student
Supervisors: Dr John-Paul Ghobrial & Dr Sarah Mortimer
College: New College
Contact: charles.beirouti@new.ox.ac.uk
Research Topic: Funded jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and New College, my DPhil research centres broadly on the depiction of religious diversity in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English and French travel accounts. I am particularly interested in accounts written by clerics who lived, worked and travelled within the Islamic world, stretching from the eastern Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, English travellers to the Islamic world commonly produced first-hand ethnographic accounts of the Mughal and Ottoman empires. In so doing, many of these travellers detailed, with varying levels of accuracy, the religious diversity, or myriad forms of religious practice and belief, that existed within those states, from varieties of Christianity and Islam to Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. Accounts of this nature existed in several forms, including unpublished journals and correspondence, in addition to published sermons, travelogues and works of devotional literature. Using a sample of these sources, my thesis will examine how a small group of seventeenth-century English travellers, all of whom served as clerics for the established English Church at a time of great religious upheaval, grappled with the diversity of the religious cultures that they encountered within the Mughal and Ottoman empires. My thesis will focus in particular on their engagement with and views of Catholicism, Eastern Christianity and Islam, for these were the three creeds that were typically most visible to them overseas. In this way, it will explore how English travellers used the religious diversity of the Islamic world to reflect on what religion, and on what the Church of England specifically, meant to them, and to think more deeply about what made their faith distinctive, not only from other forms of Protestantism and Christianity, but from other religions too.
Most recently, I have examined the writings of Sir George Wheler (1651-1724), an Anglican cleric and scholar, who visited parts of Greece and Turkey between 1675 and 1676, in the company of the French doctor and antiquarian Jacob Spon (1647-85). I have also studied the writings of Edward Terry (c. 1590-1660) and Dr John Covel (1638-1722), who served as chaplains to English ambassadors in the Mughal and Ottoman empires, respectively (served 1616-19 and c. 1670-78). Naturally I welcome any queries about any aspect of my research!
My broader research interests include seventeenth-century European travel and travel literature; Europe’s relations with and perceptions of the Islamic world from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment; seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British and French history, particularly religious and intellectual; the practice of Islam in the seventeenth-century Islamic world, particularly in the Mughal and Ottoman empires; and non-Muslim communities in seventeenth-century Islamic states, particularly Eastern Christians.
Academic Profile:
2017 - present: PhD (DPhil) in History, University of Oxford.
2015-2017: MA in Global History, University of Warwick.
2011-2015: BA (Hons) in French and History, University of Warwick, with year abroad at l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2013-2014.
Teaching & Outreach:
November 2020 - January 2021: graduate outreach tutor, Faculty of History, Oxford.
July 2020 & July 2021: graduate outreach assistant & tutor, UNIQ Outreach Programme, Faculty of History, Oxford.
2019 - present: member of research team for ‘Medieval & Early Modern Orients’, or MEMOs, https://memorients.com/, AHRC-funded project which aims to further knowledge & understanding of England’s relations with Islam & Islamic cultures & societies during the Medieval & early modern periods.
I have written several blog posts for the MEMOs website, which can be found here: https://memorients.com/members/charles-beirouti. I have also spoken at two MEMOs events on Crowdcast, recordings of which are available here (https://www.crowdcast.io/e/turkish-vanities/register) and here (https://www.crowdcast.io/e/dmteezdu/register).
November 2018: graduate outreach assistant, Oxford Pathways, Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
October - December 2018: graduate teaching assistant, 'The Crisis of the Reformation: Britain, France and the Netherlands, 1560-1610' (third-year undergraduate history module, Faculty of History, Oxford).
Sample of Conference Papers:
July 2021: ‘Anglican Debates, Ottoman Frames of Reference: John Covel (1638-1722), the Greek Church and the Sign of the Cross’; On Belonging 2: English Conceptions of Migration and Transculturality, 1550 – 1700 (via Zoom).
December 2020: ‘Church of England Clerics and the Religious Diversity of the Ottoman World: The Case of Dr John Covel, 1670-77’; Ideas of Community in the Early Modern World, 1500-1700; Oxford (via Microsoft Teams).
May 2020: ‘Using the Global to Negotiate the Local: Early Modern English Clerics & the Religious Diversity of the Ottoman World: The Case of Sir George Wheler (1651-1724)’; Graduate Conference in European History, European University Institute, Florence (via Zoom).
February 2020: ‘Restoration Clerics & the Religious Diversity of the Ottoman World: The Case of Sir George Wheler, 1651-1724’; Early Modern Britain Seminar, Merton College, Oxford.
September 2019: ‘Edward Terry, John Covel & the Depiction of Religious Practice & Belief in the Mughal & Ottoman Empires, 1616-1722’; Cambridge AHRC DTP Annual Conference (‘Trust & Truth’), Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge.
June 2019: ‘An English Chaplain & the Religious Diversity of Mughal India, 1616-1655’; Oxford Sudbury Transnational & Global History Seminar (‘Graduate Approaches to Global History’), Nuffield College, Oxford.
February 2019: ‘Edward Terry & the Muslims of Mughal India, 1616-1655’; ‘New Approaches to Cultural History in the Early Modern World’, Freie Universität Berlin.
September 2018: ‘Reassessing the Utility for Historians of Seventeenth-Century European Travel Literature: Edward Terry & the Muslims of Mughal India’; Rothermere American Institute Annual Postgraduate Conference (‘Incredible: Lying, Credibility & the Truth in Historical Research’), Oxford.
March 2018: ‘Negotiating Islam: Sir Thomas Roe & Religious Difference at the Mughal & Ottoman Courts, 1615-1628’; Early Modern Britain Seminar, Merton College, Oxford.
May 2016: ‘Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy during the Seventeenth Century: The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, 1621-1628’; Department of History Postgraduate Conference, Warwick.
March 2016: ‘Propaganda, Persuasion & the mission civilisatrice: French Cinematic & Television News during the Algerian War, 1954-1962’; British Conference of Undergraduate Research, Manchester Metropolitan University.
Other Research Experience:
August - September 2020: member of research team for Oxford-based ‘Stories of Survival’ project (https://storiesofsurvival.history.ox.ac.uk/); this was a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council (2015-20), investigating the history of Eastern Christianity from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
