1st Edition

Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul A Seventeenth-Century Biographer's Perspective

By Asli Niyazioglu Copyright 2017
    160 Pages
    by Routledge

    160 Pages
    by Routledge

    Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul explores biography writing and dream narratives in seventeenth-century Istanbul. It focuses on the prominent biographer ‘Aṭā’ī (d. 1637) and with his help shows how learned circles narrated dreams to assess their position in the Ottoman enterprise. This book demonstrates that dreams provided biographers not only with a means to form learned communities in a politically fragile landscape but also with a medium to debate the correct career paths and social networks in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Istanbul.





    By adopting a comparative approach, this book engages with current scholarly dialogues about life-writing, dreams, and practices of remembrance in Habsburg Spain, Safavid Iran, Mughal India and Ming China. Recent studies have shown the shared rhythms between these contemporaneous dynasties and the Ottomans, and there is now a strong interest in comparative approaches to examining cultural life. This first English-language monograph on Ottoman dreamscapes addresses this interest and introduces a world where dreams changed lives, the dead appeared in broad daylight, and biographers invited their readers to the gardens of remembrance.





     

    Acknowledgements



    Note on Transliteration and Manuscripts



     



    Introduction





    Chapter One: The Biographer Between This World and the Hereafter





    Patrons and Adversaries



    Sufi Sheikhs and the Very Special Dead



    Father and Son





     



    Chapter Two: Collection of Lives as a Well-Ordered Garden





    Ottoman Biographers and Sufi Lives: An Overview



    A Well-Ordered Garden: Empire, Decorum and Exclusivity



    Gardener at Work: ‘Aṭā’ī and His Sources





     



    Chapter Three: From This World to the Realm of Dreams





    Dreams, Careers and Biographers



    Nightmares on the Sufi Path



    Hereafter in the Mirror of Dreams





     



    Chapter Four: The Dead and Visits from the Hereafter





    The Living and the Dead in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul



    Apparitions and Embraces



    Dreams and Tokens of Remembrance





     



    Epilogue





     



    Appendix: Sample Biographical Notice





     



    Bibliography



    Index

    Biography

    Aslı Niyazioğlu is Assistant Professor of History at Koç University, Istanbul. After receiving her PhD from Harvard University in 2003, she taught at the University of Oxford and was a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg Institute of Advanced Study at Berlin. She works on early modern Ottoman history with a special interest in the lives of poets, scholars, and Sufis of Istanbul.