Scholarly Salons in 16th-Century Damascus

with Helen Pfeifer

hosted by Maryam Patton

| In 1517, the Ottomans captured Cairo and with it, the Arabophone lands of the Mamluk Sultanate. Suddenly, scores of learned scholars who had been preparing and vying for positions of esteem in either the academy or the bureaucracy found themselves under new authority. How did these scholars navigate the new political and linguistic environments? As Helen Pfeifer argues in a new book, Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands, the answer lies in gentlemanly salons, where elite men displayed their knowledge and status. These social laboratories played a key role in negotiating Syria and Egypt’s integration into the empire. Through Pfeifer's study of the life and network of the star scholar Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi, we learn how urban elite of former Mamluk Syria and Egypt continued to exert social and political influence, rivaling powerful officials from Istanbul. The gentlemanly salons also illustrate how Ottoman culture was forged collaboratively by Arabophone and Turcophone actors.

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In 1517, the Ottomans captured Cairo and with it, the Arabophone lands of the Mamluk Sultanate. Suddenly, scores of learned scholars who had been preparing and vying for positions of esteem in either the academy or the bureaucracy found themselves under new authority. How did these scholars navigate the new political and linguistic environments? As Helen Pfeifer argues in a new book, Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands, the answer lies in gentlemanly salons, where elite men displayed their knowledge and status. These social laboratories played a key role in negotiating Syria and Egypt’s integration into the empire. Through Pfeifer's study of the life and network of the star scholar Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi, we learn how urban elite of former Mamluk Syria and Egypt continued to exert social and political influence, rivaling powerful officials from Istanbul. The gentlemanly salons also illustrate how Ottoman culture was forged collaboratively by Arabophone and Turcophone actors.

Click here for a transcript of the episode

Contributor Bios

	Helen Pfeifer is University Associate Professor of Early Ottoman History at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Christ's College. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire.
	Maryam Patton is a PhD candidate at Harvard University in the joint History and Middle Eastern Studies program. She is interested in early modern cultural exchanges, and her dissertation studies cultures of time and temporal consciousness in the Eastern Mediterranean during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Credits

Episode No. 524
Release Date: 27 March 2022
Recording Location: Oxford, UK / Berlin
Sound production by Maryam Patton
Music: Pictures of the Floating World - Bumbling
Transcript by Marianne Dhenin
Bibliography and images courtesy of Helen Pfeifer

Further Listening

	Nina Ergin	192 7/5/15	The Sociopolitical World of Ottoman Hamams
	Carlos Grenier	520 2/4/22	The Spiritual Vernacular of the Early Ottoman Frontier
	Stefan Winter	303 3/5/17	Syrian Alawis under Ottoman Rule
	Konrad Hirschler	380 9/25/18	The Many Lives of a Medieval Library
	Elias Muhanna	282 11/16/16	Compiling Knowledge in the Medieval Islamic World
	Molly Greene	217 12/18/15	Greeks in the Ottoman Empire

Images

The poet Baki, who sits on the right, converses with two Ottoman gentlemen in a reception area accessible by steps. From ʿAşık Çelebi, Meşaʿirü’s-şuʿaraʾ (c. 1600). (Reproduced by permission from the Directorate of the Turkish Institution for Manuscripts, Millet Library Istanbul, MS Ali Emiri Tarih 772, 80.)


Domed reception hall (qaʿa) in the ʿAzm palace in Damascus (constructed 1749/50). In the foreground lies the entrance area (ʿataba) with a fountain; in the background, the raised platform for receiving guests (tazar) is visible under an arch. (Michel Écochard Archive, photograph Maison Bonfils, 1867. Courtesy of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries.)

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