A Manuscript Community in Ottoman Istanbul (18th-19th Centuries): Heroic Stories, Social Profiles, and Reading Space

Abstract

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Ottoman reading and writing practices were marked by the unprecedented expansion of the reading public that went hand in hand with the changes in the social structure and urban landscape as well as the systematic transformations in Ottoman politics, economics, and education. That expansion resulted in the emergence of new literary genres, new social groups in the written world, and new definitions of literacy that have been discussed by the scholars of Ottoman history and literature. As a contribution to this scholarship, this study focuses on a group of scribes, readers, performers, and hosts of reading venues who, as this thesis argues, formed a ‘manuscript community.’ That manuscript community is formed around heroic stories, specifically, the stories of Hamza and Ebū Müslim, which gained popularity and circulated in 18th and 19th century Istanbul. Performance of these stories through reading aloud in the public spaces including but not limited to coffeehouses, shops, bachelor rooms, and schools was the main reading practice that has been recorded on the pages of the manuscripts. Scrutinizing these manuscript notes written by the members of this community alongside other paratextual elements of the manuscripts, this study discusses the features of scribalship and ownership, social and moral codes of heroism in the collective memory, social profiles of the community members, locations, and venues of collective reading, aspects of textual performance, and the issues and ways of communication between the members through the physical pages of manuscripts. In this way, this study contributes to the fields of ‘manuscript studies,’ ‘history of reading,’ and ‘book culture’ as well as ‘the Ottoman literary, social and cultural history.’