The barber of Damascus : nouveau literacy in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Levant / Dana Sajdi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sajdi, Dana.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Budayrī, Aḥmad, active 18th century.

Budayrī, Aḥmad.

Barbers--Syria--Damascus--Biography.

Barbers.

Arabic prose literature--18th century--History and criticism.

Arabic prose literature.

Literature and society--Middle East--History--18th century.

Literature and society.

Middle East--Intellectual life--18th century.

Middle East.

Middle East--History--18th century--Historiography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Budayr shaved and coiffed, and probably circumcised and healed, in Damascus in the eighteenth century. The barber wrote a history book, a chronicle of the events that took place in his city during his lifetime. Examining the 'life and work' of Ibn Budayr, the book uncovers the emergence of a larger trend of history writing by unusual authors - people outside the learned establishment - and identifies a new phenomenon: nouveau literacy. The book also discusses the social and literary aspects of nouveau literacy within the context of a changing social, political, and urban topography in the eighteenth-century Levant.

Contents:

The disorders of a new order : the Levant in the long 18th-century

A barber at the gate : a social and intellectual biography

"Cheap" monumentality : the nouveau literates and their texts

Authority and history : the genealogy of the Levantine 18th-century contemporary chronicle

A room of his own : the "history" of the barber of Damascus

Cutting the barber's tale : the afterlives of a history

Conclusion : from nouveau literacy to print journalism.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804788281

0804788286

OCLC:

857800681