Report on the historical details of a number of neglected storytellers in Iran and South Asia from the 16th to 17th centuries CE, including Zain al-‘Ābidīn Takaltū Khān, ‘Ināyat Allāh Darbār Khān, Fusūnī Yazdī, Mīr Muḥammad Hāshim, Iskandar Qiṣṣah-khẉān, Ḥājī Qiṣṣah-khẉān Hamadānī, Niẓām Shīrāzī, Mīr Qiṣṣah, Muḥammad…[Read more]

Describes the storytelling techniques of the 17th-century storyteller (qissah-khwan) ‘Abd al-Nabi Fakhr al-Zamani Qazwini in South Asia and discusses the truth/falsehood binary in the context of the qissah/dastan genre.

Translation of Mīrzā Asad Allāh Ḳhān Ġhālib’s 1866 Urdu preface to the dāstān Bostān-i Ḳhayāl.

This chapter examines how twentieth century Iranian readers situated Jane Eyre within the classical genre of romance literature (adabiyāt-i ʿāshiqāna), originating from the tradition of love narratives in verse (ʿishq-nāma) pioneered by the twelfth century Persian poet Nizami Ganjevi. While romance is only one among several of the original Jane…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source of manuscripts for the study of the medieval Mediterranean world, especially Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages. However, among the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern manuscript fragments in Genizah collections are more than 12,000 moveable-type printed items, most of which come from Europe.…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source of manuscripts for the study of the medieval Mediterranean world, especially Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages. However, among the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern manuscript fragments in Genizah collections are more than 12,000 moveable-type printed items, most of which come from Europe.…[Read more]

Line breaks are arguably the defining feature of poetry, in the absence of which a text becomes prose. Consequently, the translation of line breaks is a decisive issue for every poetry translator. Classical and modern literary theorists have argued that the potential for enjambment, which we understand as the effect that makes line breaks possible…[Read more]

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when a new style of Persian poetry was developing in the Persianate world, several erudite literary critics appeared in India, whose meticulous critiques of Persian poetry was unprecedented in the long history of Persian literature. A close study of the works produced by these critics reveals their vast…[Read more]

This article explores how public health was transformed in Egypt soon after its occupation by Great Britain in 1882. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Egyptian state had invested substantially in health to boost the nation’s economic and military strength, and, especially after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, to address E…[Read more]

This working paper presents a full and annotated translation of two titles by 19th-century Ottoman author-cum-statesman Ziya Pasha: (1) a newspaper article written in exile, modern in terms of format and reformist in terms of tenor and providing an staunch and iconoclastic critique of Ottoman language and literature, and (2) the versified preface…[Read more]

This working paper presents a full and annotated translation of two titles by 19th-century Ottoman author-cum-statesman Ziya Pasha: (1) a newspaper article written in exile, modern in terms of format and reformist in terms of tenor and providing an staunch and iconoclastic critique of Ottoman language and literature, and (2) the versified preface…[Read more]

The foreword of YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies 4 (2022)

A discussion of majāz or allegory that is commonly ascribed to the 15th-century Ottoman polygraph Mollā Lüṭfī and that builds on the works of al-Sakkākī and al-Qazwīnī.
The author gives two alternative overarching classifications: a linguistic vs. cognitive allegory classification, and a metaphor vs. hypallage classification that is supplemen…[Read more]

A discussion of majāz or allegory that is commonly ascribed to the 15th-century Ottoman polygraph Mollā Lüṭfī and that builds on the works of al-Sakkākī and al-Qazwīnī.
The author gives two alternative overarching classifications: a linguistic vs. cognitive allegory classification, and a metaphor vs. hypallage classification that is supplemen…[Read more]

This working paper presents in full translation four texts of the Uzbek early 20th-century jadid reformist Abdurrauf Fitrat. Identifying educational reform as the main key to progress, he advocated for the emancipation and nationalisation of the Chaghatay/Uzbek language as a tool to educate the masses rather than to serve the interests of a…[Read more]