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- Convenor:
-
Manan Ahmed
(Free University Berlin)
- Location:
- C401
- Start time:
- 27 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel will focus on the world of writing, including the arts and practices of epistolary sciences in South and West Asia.
Long Abstract:
This panel will focus on the world of writing, including the arts and practices of epistolary sciences in South and West Asia. The genre of epistolary art, the training and careers of secretaries, the productions of divans and compendiums which highlight the finest examples, provides a key insight into the knowledge systems which propagated the political, and the discursive, literary and cultural role played by "writing". Works on grammar, dictionaries, compendiums and collections of poets were integral parts of forming a literary as well as political canon within which advice manuals or conquest narratives could find equal footings. The panelists will trace the developments in South Asia from the early thirteenth century to Mughal period.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Adam Talib (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how certain Mamluk litterateurs were able to profit from their official roles as chancery secretaries by using the work they produced in an official capacity to enhance their literary careers. This was done through the ‘publication’ of their official and collegial correspondence.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines how certain Mamluk litterateurs were able to profit from their official roles as chancery secretaries by using the work they produced in an official capacity to enhance their literary careers. This was done, chiefly, through the 'publication' of their official and collegial correspondence. Writers like Ibn Nubātah, al-Ṣafadī, al-ʿUmarī, and others repurposed the official correspondence they wrote on the chancery's behalf for literary purposes and their individual artistic semi-copyright over these texts was clearly recognized and applauded by society. Other writers went so far as to compose manuals for scribes and secretaries who were either employed by or wished to be employed by the chancery. Scholars have remarked upon this copacetic and symbiotic arrangement by which certain literary lights of the Mamluk period were encouraged and supported through the grant of a chancery sinecure and that this professional patronage was often more formalized than that of previous dynasties. In this paper, I will focus rather on the fate of this official material once it has served its initial purpose in correspondence and how it is transfigured by the chancery secretaries themselves in order to fit a professional literary purpose. It is clear that for these litterateurs their official role as chancery secretary was not the one through which they chose to identify themselves and that it was seen, perhaps unanimously, as an adjacent and practical facet of their professional literary careers.
Prashant Keshavmurthy (McGill University ) Islam Dayeh (Free University Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
We aim to explore the nature of and motivations for Siraj al-din Ali Khan Arzu's (d.1756) appropriations in his treatise on the Persian language of Al-Suyuti's (d.1505) treatise on Arabic.
Paper long abstract:
In mid 18th century Mughal North India, Siraj al-din Ali Khan Arzu wrote a treatise he called 'Musmir' (The Fruition) on the structure and history of the Persian language, declaring he had modeled it on the similarly structured treatise on the Arabic language by the early 16th century scholar of Mamluk Egypt, Jalal al-din al-Suyuti entitled 'Al-Muzhir' (The Flowering). We aim to study and evaluate the nature of and motivations for Arzu's appropriation.