The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant by Dana Sajdi

Author:Dana Sajdi [Sajdi, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: 18th Century, Middle East, Modern, General, History
ISBN: 9780804797276
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-10-08T21:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 8. Opening page of the manuscript of The Events of Damascus. Source: MS Chester Beatty Library, Ar 3551, f. 24b.

To sum up the discussion of the margin notes, it is quite likely that this manuscript is the same one used by al-Qāsimī for his edition. Of equal interest is that the very same manuscript was read by at least one person other than al-Qāsimī. Thus, given the posthumous interest in the book, there is indication of the circulation of not only the text (as text) but also of this particular manuscript. According to our investigation so far, the manuscript bears three sets of fingerprints: the copyist’s, al-Qāsimī’s, and an anonymous reader’s.

There is, however, another level at which we can examine the manuscript: its place in a library. The text of the chronicle is bound in a codex that contains two other manuscripts, both of which are also works of history, but are autograph copies.92 Since there is no indication of the date of the binding of the codex, any markers offered by these manuscripts may or may not be of relevance to our investigation, for they may have occurred before the three manuscripts were bound between the two covers of one book.

Of interest is that the first folio of the first manuscript in the codex contains an Ex Libris note in the margin: “This book is from the books of Ḥājj Aḥmad [illegible word] al-Ḥalabī [or al-Jalabī].” On the very last folio of codex, a similar name (among other names) appears: Aḥmad Jalabī al-Ṭārātī. This person could be one and the same as the just mentioned Aḥmad al-Ḥalabī (if we add a missing dot to the letter hā’, rendering the name al-Jalabī).93 If this is indeed the same person, then we can conclude that the entirety of the codex at one point belonged to this Aḥmad (al)-Jalabī, about whom we know nothing aside from the fact that he may have been a scribal official in the bureaucracy, as indicated by his sobriquet (al-Jalabī, Turkish çelebi), and that the man was a serious history buff.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.