From the Publisher
“Exploring literary salons across the early modern Middle East, Helen Pfeifer narrates a bold and unrivaled new history of the social, political, and intellectual consequences resulting from the largest territorial expansion during six centuries of Ottoman rule. Based on meticulous research, Empire of Salons offers a seamless melding of cultural and institutional history, one of empirical bravura and methodological revelation.”—Alan Mikhail, author of God’s Shadow“Empire of Salons takes its place among new, innovative works of scholarship in Ottoman intellectual and social history. Drawing from an array of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish sources, Helen Pfeifer shows how gentlemanly salons among the civilian elite of the Ottoman Arab provinces in the sixteenth century served as critical sites for status affirmation and career building, as well as the circulation of intellectual currents and literary forms.”—Jane Hathaway, author of The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800
“This eloquently written book provides the first in-depth study of the impact of the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk lands on the formation of Ottoman imperial culture. Helen Pfeifer shifts the conversation away from administrative processes to Ottoman salons and other informal settings as sites of imperial integration between Rumi and Arab cultural and intellectual outlooks. This is a timely and exciting contribution to early modern Ottoman and Islamic cultural history.”—Tijana Krstić, Central European University
“Examining the relationship between the Turkish-speaking Muslim scholars of Anatolia and the Arabic-speaking Muslim scholars of greater Syria, Helen Pfeifer’s careful study explores questions of the imperial domination of one Muslim elite over another in the Ottoman Empire. Inspired by the delicate rules of the salons where this relationship unfolded, Pfeifer approaches this complex issue in a nuanced fashion, producing a book that must be read by everyone interested in the early modern history of the Middle East.”—Baki Tezcan, University of California, Davis
