![Imagination & Diaspora: Best of 2019 artwork](https://is2-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts113/v4/df/3f/d4/df3fd493-11c6-7ef1-3aea-717e0061cce0/mza_2178552544018708976.jpg/100x100bb.jpg)
Nouveau Literacy in the 18th Century Levant
Imagination & Diaspora: Best of 2019
English - November 11, 2016 22:53 - ★★★★ - 2 ratingsPolitics News Music history ottoman empire turkey islam middle east Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
with Dana Sajdi
hosted by Chris Gratien and Shireen Hamza
Download the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud
In the conventional telling of the intellectual history of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamicate world, there has been very little room for people outside the ranks of the learned scholars or ulema associated with the religious, intellectual, and political elite of Muslim communities. But in this episode, we explore the writings of Shihab al-Din Ahmad Ibn Budayr, an 18th-century Damascene barber, as well as a host of writers that our guest Dana Sajdi has described as representatives of "nouveau literacy" in the Ottoman Levant. We discuss how non-elite writers left records of the people and events they encountered during a period of socioeconomic transformation in Greater Syria, and we listen to readings from the text of Ibn Budayr--the barber of Damascus--that bring to life the literary style of the unusual and extraordinary authors who wrote from the margins of the learned establishment in early modern Ottoman society.
« Click for More »