Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul: A Seventeenth-Century Biographer's Perspective / Edition 1

by Asli Niyazioglu

Overview

Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul explores biography writing and dream narratives in seventeenth-century Istanbul. It focuses on the prominent biographer ‘Aṭā’ī (d. 1637) and with his help shows how learned circles narrated dreams to assess their position in the Ottoman enterprise. This book demonstrates that dreams provided biographers not only with a means to form learned communities in a politically fragile landscape but also with a medium to debate the correct career paths and social networks in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Istanbul.

By adopting a comparative approach, this book engages with current scholarly dialogues about life-writing, dreams, and practices of remembrance in Habsburg Spain, Safavid Iran, Mughal India and Ming China. Recent studies have shown the shared rhythms between these contemporaneous dynasties and the Ottomans, and there is now a strong interest in comparative approaches to examining cultural life. This first English-language monograph on Ottoman dreamscapes addresses this interest and introduces a world where dreams changed lives, the dead appeared in broad daylight, and biographers invited their readers to the gardens of remembrance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472472298
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/11/2016
Series:	Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies , #19
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Aslı Niyazioğlu is Assistant Professor of History at Koç University, Istanbul. After receiving her PhD from Harvard University in 2003, she taught at the University of Oxford and was a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg Institute of Advanced Study at Berlin. She works on early modern Ottoman history with a special interest in the lives of poets, scholars, and Sufis of Istanbul.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Note on Transliteration and Manuscripts

Introduction

Chapter One: The Biographer Between This World and the Hereafter

Patrons and Adversaries

Sufi Sheikhs and the Very Special Dead

Father and Son

Chapter Two: Collection of Lives as a Well-Ordered Garden

Ottoman Biographers and Sufi Lives: An Overview

A Well-Ordered Garden: Empire, Decorum and Exclusivity

Gardener at Work: ‘Aṭā’ī and His Sources

Chapter Three: From This World to the Realm of Dreams

Dreams, Careers and Biographers

Nightmares on the Sufi Path

Hereafter in the Mirror of Dreams

Chapter Four: The Dead and Visits from the Hereafter

The Living and the Dead in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul

Apparitions and Embraces

Dreams and Tokens of Remembrance

Epilogue

Appendix: Sample Biographical Notice

Bibliography

Index