Beneath biography: Attitudes toward self, society, and empire among the scholars of eighteenth-century Ottoman Damascus
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
Basil Salem
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
Shissler, Holly; Woods, John
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
The University of Chicago
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2016
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
229
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
Committee members: Bashkin, Orit
NOTES PERTAINING TO PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC.
Text of Note
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-43848-2
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Discipline of degree
History
Body granting the degree
The University of Chicago
Text preceding or following the note
2016
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
This dissertation explores the lives and worlds of scholars in eighteenth-century Ottoman Damascus. The dissertation investigates the figure of the scholar not in terms of his function and vocation, but in terms of his understanding of himself and the world around him. In doing so, the dissertation challenges the unidimensional and largely functional view that the historiography has relied on when treating Muslim scholars in general, and Arabic-speaking scholars of the early modern period in particular. The dissertation, therefore, aims to offer an historically contingent view of scholars both as a social group and as individuals in eighteenth-century Ottoman-Damascus. The pursuit of these historical inquiries relies on a new reading of a familiar type of source, namely, biographical literature. In the dissertation I show how Arabic biographical sources, particularly the centenary biographical dictionary of Muḥammad Khalīl al-Murādī (d.1791/1206), can be employed in the service of a cultural history of scholars - for a history of mentalités and of self-perception. I also show how reading the biographical dictionary as a complete and integrated work, and not as a reference for specific historical inquiries, allows the perspective of its compiler, a scholar, and by extension the scholarly establishment to which he belonged, to emerge.
TOPICAL NAME USED AS SUBJECT
Biographies; Middle Eastern history
UNCONTROLLED SUBJECT TERMS
Subject Term
Social sciences;Biographical dictionary;Damascus;Ottoman Empire;Syria