About Peter

Peter Kitlas is an intellectual and cultural historian of Islam. His work contributes to the field of connected Mediterranean history by examining key concepts in diplomacy and international relations through the eyes of eighteenth-century Moroccan and Ottoman ambassadors. He is currently working on his first book, which explores the role of early modern Islamic thinkers in developing diplomatic concepts such as friendship and justice within an international space. As a foil to Enlightenment narratives, this book asks: what would a history of international thought look like if told from the non-west? Highlighting the voices of diplomats from Morocco and the Ottoman Empire, this monograph explores the Islamic intellectual genealogies of friendship and justice through correspondence, travelogues, biographical dictionaries, and chronicles. In doing so, this study complicates the secularizing narrative of modern international thought and, in its place, offers a more plural, humanistic definition that incorporates religion and non-western thinkers.