A Juxtaposition of Happiness and Sadness on the Same Page (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
This thesis is an exercise on Seyyid Hasan Nûrî Efendi’s diary, the sâlnâmes kept between 1661-1665 and recognized as the Sohbetnâme in the secondary literature. Under the influence of recent German/Swiss scholarship on the study of self-narratives, especially the studies of such scholars as Kaspar von Greyerz and Gabriele Jancke, this thesis maintains that early modern diaries differ from the diaries written in the modern era in terms of their reflection on the individual characters of their authors, arguing that they are testimonies of culture and ethos of the social groups in which they were produced. Inserting this argument into an empirical study of Hasan Efendi’s diary, the first chapter attempts to make a technical and contextual analysis of the document, following a biography of Hasan Efendi. Based on the idea that early modern diaries can provide insight into prosopographical studies, the second chapter investigates the social relationships of the author Hasan Efendi in three expanding realms: (1) His family, (2) his everyday encounters such as his companions and people from his lodge, (3) his high-ranking acquaintances and people from rarely-encountered lines. Finally, the third chapter deals with the theme of death, which is frequently encountered in the diary as part of Hasan Efendi’s social world. Investigating the theme from social, folkloric, and historical anthropological perspectives, this chapter seeks to understand the responses to death in the sâlnâmes around the concepts of bereavement, ritual, and rivalry. Türkçe Özet: Bu tez Osmanlı edebiyatındaki ilk günlük olarak kabul edilen ve Seyyid Hasan Nûrî Efendi (ö.1688) tarafından 1661-1665 yılları arasında kaleme alınmış olan, müellifin kendi tabiriyle sâlnâme, literatürde bilinegelen ismiyle Sohbetnâme adlı metin üzerine bir egzersizdir. Bir edebî tür olarak günlüğün tarihsel devamlılık arz ettiği kabulüne şüphe ile yaklaşan bu çalışma, aralarında Kaspar von Kreyerz ve Gabriele Jancke gibi araştırmacıların da bulunduğu bir grup Alman ve İsviçreli tarihçinin iddialarından etkilenerek modern-öncesi dönemlerde yazılmış ‘günlüklüklerin’ modern dönemdeki benzerlerinden farklı olarak yazarın iç dünyasından ya da bireyselliğinden çok ait olduğu sosyal zümreyi ve kültürel altyapısını açığa vuran metinler olduğunu ileri sürecek ve bu iddiayı sâlnâme(ler) özelinde inceleyecektir. Bu amaç doğrultusunda tezin birinci bölümünde öncelikle yazarın biyografisi incelenecek ve metnin teknik ve bağlamsal bir analizi yapılacaktır. Tezin ikinci bölümünde, erken modern günlüklerin prosopografik kaynaklar olduğu fikrine binaen, Seyyid Hasan Nûrî Efendi’nin günlüğünde yansıttığı sosyal çevresinin üç katmanlı bir analizine kalkışılacaktır. Birinci katman yazarın ailesini, ikinci katman gündelik hayatını şekillendiren tekke çevresini, dostlarını ve mahalle eşrafını, üçüncü katman ise sıradışı eksenleri ve yazarın üst-tabakadan tanıdıklarını ele alacaktır. Üçüncü ve son kısımda ise günlükte bu sosyal dünyanın güçlü bir parçası olarak karşımıza çıkan ölüm teması üzerine yoğunlaşılacaktır. Bu temayı sosyal, folklorik ve antropolojik bir olgu olarak irdeleyecek olan bu kısım, metnin verdiği bazı bilgiler ışığında, Osmanlıların ölüme ve ölülerine karşı tavırlarını, yine metnin kendi terminolojisi vasıtasıyla teessür, ayin ve rekabet kavramları üzerinden sorgulamaya çalışacaktır.
YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies, 2020
(Early Career Article Prize) For students of early modern manuscript cultures, paratextual components are indispensable in inferring the ways in which people read, studied, and copied a codex. However, Ottoman manuscripts of medicine and healing have not been studied extensively by taking into account how their readers engaged with those texts. This article focuses on the entangled world of healing in eighteenth-century Ottoman manuscript culture by using paratexts that connect widely circulated codices of the era to one another and demonstrates that boundaries between scholarly and popular medicine, or alchemy and medicine, were blurry for some readers. Moreover, examples of contributions and interventions from copyists and previous owners of manuscripts reveal the necessity to better understand these figures, other than medical professionals, who had an impact on the reception of medical texts. "Ne yazdığımı fehm idüp bu fakiri yâd eyleye": On Sekizinci Yüzyıl Osmanlı Tıp Yazmalarında Metin Dışı Unsurlar Erken modern yazma kültürü araştırmacıları için ana metin dışı (paratextual) unsurlar, bir eserin nasıl okunmuş, çalışılmış ve istinsah edilmiş olduğu hakkında çıkarım yapmak için önemli ipuçları sunar. Bununla birlikte, Osmanlı tıp ve şifa yazmalarının nasıl okundukları konusunda kapsamlı çalışmalar yapılmamıştır. Bu makale, on sekizinci yüzyılın yaygın olarak okunan eserlerini birbiriyle bağlantılan-dıran metin dışı ögeleri mercek altına alarak dönemin şifa kültürünün karmaşıklığına odaklanmakta ve bu yolla, ilmi/popüler tıp ya da simya/tıp gibi alanlar arasındaki ayrımların bazı okurlar nezdinde daha bulanık olduğunu göstermektedir. Ayrıca, müstensihlerin ve kitapların önceki sahiplerinin metinlere yaptıkları yorum, katkı ve müdahalelere dair örnekler, tıbbi metinlerin nasıl algılandığı üzerinde etkisi olan ve tıp mesleğinin dışında kalan bu aktörleri daha iyi anlamamız gerektiğini ortaya koymaktadır.
Ottoman death registers (Vefeyât Defterleri) and recording deaths in Istanbul, 1838–1839
Middle Eastern Studies, 2020
This article presents an analysis of the first recognisably modern-style death registers in the Ottoman Empire. These were produced, in 1838–9, as a result of the state’s reaction to the cholera pandemic of 1831. This article shows how these registers were designed and structured, how they differed to those that preceded and came after them and so occupied a key point in the transition to the medicalisation of death and the import of Western-style statistical analysis. The article demonstrates how these registers offer details that can be used to build a picture of the social, economic and demographic profile of death in Istanbul in these years.
Philology and Aesthetics: Figurative Masorah in Western European Manuscripts, hg. von Hanna Lis in Zusammenarbeit mit Jonas Leipziger (Judentum und Umwelt / Realms of Judaism 85). Frankfurt am Main [u.a.]: Peter Lang 2021, 35-57., 2021
In an Ashkenazi Bible manuscript from 1299 (MS Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. hebr. 16), the masora magna was added to the Bible text in micrographic script. The text of the masora forms letters, which in turn form words and this design was applied to all the titles of the individual biblical books. In the same way, with the help of the micro graphic masora magna, the Masorete Aberzush added a memorial inscription to the Book of Psalms in commemoration of his murdered family members. The inscription extends across the bottom of 42 pages of the codex. There is a content related inter dependence between the sections of the inscription and the psalms on each respective page. This indicates that the place and form of the commemoration of the dead are therefore consciously chosen and executed by the Masorete when creating the masora. The relationship of the text of the psalms to Aberzush’s inscription is bidirectional. The potential reader of the manuscript should be involved with the Masorete as an active participant in the commemoration of the dead. This form of commemoration, therefore, transforms what began as a private manuscript into a “public space” in which future generations of readers will carry on the now public remembrance of the dead. The phenomena described are also observable in a 16th - century manuscript (MS Munich, BStB, Cod. hebr. 393). Known by the title “Megilat Ta‘anit Batra”, this fasting calendar was handed down in an extended version that includes addi tional fasting days. The extra days were added by an unknown author from the 14th century and represent his personal commemoration of his departed teacher and daughter. The author's intention to turn a private commemoration into a public affair through later readership became a reality through the copying of the text into a later manuscript. The new transmission context represents a transformation from a private to a public memorial. In both cases, these codices became public spaces of commemoration.
Peace be upon you Selâmi, keeper of the tomb of blessed Saint Hüdâyî Mahmûd Efendi, righteous supporter of God, the Axis of the Universe; Are you well? Are you prospering? Are you fed? Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you slaked? What do you desire of my poetry? What do you desire of my sainthood? Do not you know that the tongue leads one to a bad end? It is a disgrace! Enough! 1 This is how Niyâzî-i Mısrî (d. 1694) shows his anger in the letter he writes to Selâmi Ali Efendi (d. 1691). It is clear that Selâmi Ali criticises the famous mystic in various gathering places and here Mısrî advises him, warning him that the bad words he utters will lead him to a bad end. The diary of Mısrî 2 is very well-known; however, the collection in which this letter is
A Study on the Gift Log, MAD 1279: Making Sense of Gift-Giving in Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Society
The study of gifts, a classical theme of research in economic anthropology, involve, in broad lines, a study of the respective constitution of objects and subjects in exchange. Through gift-giving, the officialization of social relations, the reproduction of status boundaries and social cohesion, and the negotiation of social values is achieved. As such, the communicative, reproductive, and constitutive aspects of gift-giving plays on the relations of power endemic into society.
My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century
2009
This page intentionally left blank s a f f u r i y y a i the Powers That Were. In only a few instances do the people of Saffuriyya speak for themselves. Aside from several appeals on behalf of prisoners and the desperate letter of a father about the disappearance of his two boys-one of whom is preserved forever in epistolary amber as a fourteen-year-old, "wearing khaki trousers and a shirt under a yellow kumbaz [robe]" when he was last seen-there is, as far as I can tell, a single file that contains letters from ordinary citizens. Though it should be said here that the archives themselves are vast haystacks containing who-knows-how-many-needles: the Israel State Archive in particular holds a treasure trove of Mandate-era documents-everything from files called Maronite Monks to Field Mice, Erection of Electric Poles, Bomb Outrages, Nutrition in the Colonial Empire, Enumeration of Goats, Lunatics, Playing Cards, Stamp Vendors, Alleged Discovery of Gold in Palestine, Preservation of Public Morality, Search for Buried Treasures, and Manufacture and Sale of Whipped Cream. But at the time of my work there, the archive lacked a centralized cataloguing system, and to find any trace of the village at all one had to pore over long, irregular, and often incorrectly typed or scribbled (half-Hebrew, half-English) lists under an assortment of headings and flip through unalphabetized, handwritten card catalogues in search of the place, spelled variably as Saffuriyya, Saffuriya, Safuriya, Safuriyeh, Saffurieh, Saffourieh, Safourieh, Safuria, Saffuria, and by its Hebrew name, Tzippori, Tsippori, Zippori-not to be confused with a different village, in the Jaffa District, called Safiriyya or Safiriya. Each file had to be ordered up from the vaults, at which point one would inevitably be told that certain documents were "missing" or off-limits because of their fragile state. The folders that did arrive-their contents sometimes crumbling or preserved in the faintest carbon copyhad then to be sorted through carefully for clues. It seems almost certain that the archive contains other mentions of the village that I have not unearthed or been able to decipher. Once in hand, that "Saffuria Village-General Correspondence" file itself is both fascinating and frustrating. If it is an encounter with the actual voices of the villagers one is looking for, one will not find it there. Because of the tonal and formal gaps between written and spoken Arabic, and because most of the people of Saffuriyya were illiterate, the letters that have survived in the files seem oddly filtered, or displaced. A few of the authors were educated and wrote in their own 'Umar ibn al-Farid (1181-1245
Islamic Ars Moriendi and Ambiguous Deathbed Emotions
End-of-Life Care, Dying and Death in the Islamic Moral Tradition, 2023
“Modernity” is generally associated with a loss of tolerance for ambiguity (Ambiguitätstoleranz). This chapter analyses whether that also counts for deathbed emotions, juxtaposing deathbed stories in Islamic hagiographies from the formative period (first to fourth/seventh to tenth centuries) and on the verge of modernity (thirteenth/nineteenth-fourteenth/twentieth century). Sources from the fourteenth/twentieth century onwards show less space to experience and address ambiguous emotions than sources from the formative period, and a unity is imposed in emotions allowed to experience. Premodern hagiographical literature appears suitable to address a grey area in end-of-life care and ethics. It offers more space for ambiguous emotions than contemporary Islamic ethical discourse and cultural norms. Studies on Muslim patients and palliative care frequently address the concern that Muslims never want to give up treatment. This appears to be an attitude towards death that is not rooted in the pious hagiographic examples.