Baskins, Cristelle L. Hafsids and Habsburgs in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Facing Tunis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
An understudied but multi-dimensional figure, the Tunisian Hafsid king Muley al-Hassan (r.1526-43) has long deserved an entry in the Mediterranean world historiography.Cristelle Baskins aptly fills the gap with this painstakingly researched and artfully written study.At the centre of Baskins's investigation is a magnificent anonymous portrait of al-Hassan now on display in Versailles.Baskins seeks to identify the creator of this so-called Versailles portrait.As quickly becomes apparent, though, Hafsids and Habsburgs in the Early Modern Mediterranean is much more than a straightforward study to nail down the attribution of a portrait.This is a broader history of European-North African relations built around a matrix of art history and biography.Like any good investigator, Baskins knows that a question of attribution and identity requires a deep familiarity with geographical, social, and political contexts as well as an intimate acquaintance with dramatis personae.With that premise, Baskins takes the reader on a journey retracing her search for the painter of the Versailles portrait.As the cliché goes, the trip proves more fulfilling than the destination.While Baskins arrives at a compelling guess for the Versailles portrait's creator, she never finds sure evidence linking a single person to the painting.But on Baskins's path, the reader learns about Muley al-Hassan's dramatic fall from power at the hands of his treasonous eldest son, his two sojourns in Europe, and his afterlife as a subject in European historical writing and mythmaking.Thus, the question Baskins originally poses becomes an entryway into a bigger Hafsid Mediterranean world.In chapter 1, which doubles as the book's introduction, Baskins introduces Muley al-Hassan.From the outset, it is clear that Baskins intends to make al-Hassan the protagonist, and his counterpart Charles V a minor, if important, character.This choice, expressed on the very first page, is a deliberate, corrective inversion of the historiographical norm.The first chapter also introduces the central problem: the lack of known evidence attributing the Versailles portrait or even placing its production in a particular city or region.With an attitude
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".