This book explores an anonymous sixteenth-century portrait of Muley
al-Hassan, the Hafsid king of Tunis (ca. 1528-1550), that bears witness
to relations between North Africa, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans.
While Muley al-Hassan appears frequently in the vast literature on
Charles V Habsburg, he is overshadowed by the emperor. Here he emerges
as a protagonist, a figure whose shifting reputation can be traced well
into the seventeenth century. Images of the King of Tunis circulated in
broadsheets, ephemeral images made for triumphal entries, manuscripts,
tapestry designs, engravings, and books. The ceaseless production of
Tunisian imagery allowed Europeans to face their North African
counterparts through scenes of battle but also through imaginary
encounters and festive cross-dressing. This book shows how portraits of
Hafsid rulers challenge assumptions about the absolute divide between
Christian and Muslim, sovereign and subject, the familiar and the
foreign, and they put a face on the entangled histories of the early
modern Mediterranean.