Ottoman History Podcast - Sex, Love, and Worship in Classical Ottoman Texts

Episode Date: August 1, 2012

with Selim Kuru  hosted by Chris Gratien and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano  This episode is part of a series on Women, Gender, and Sex in Ottoman history Download the seriesPodcast Feed | iTunes | Soundcloud Historians have used classical Ottoman texts to explore social issues such as sexuality, with compiled manuscripts from various literary genres often forming a data-mine for historical information. However, this type of selective reading has often distorted or obscured the original meaning and context of literary works. Sometimes, texts that appear erotic or sexual in nature such as gazel could have been intended for an entirely different purpose. In this episode, Dr. Selim Kuru examines the concepts of mahbub peresti (worship of the beloved) and gulâm pâregi (pederasty) and various motifs concerning male beauty in the shehrengiz (Gibb's "city-thrillers") genre in search of a more contextualized approach these would-be erotic texts. « Click for More »

Thank you. streaming or download through iTunes, Hipcast, and SoundCloud. Thanks for listening. Hello and welcome to another installment of the Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Chris Grayton. I am Oskar Aguirre-Mandujano. Today our guest is Dr. Selim Kuru, a professor of Ottoman and Turkish studies at University of Washington in Seattle. And our topic is both the terms Mahbub Peresti and Gulam Paregi, which could be translated as boy love or boy worship. And I want to thank you, Dr. Kuru, for coming on the podcast and ask you to explain what you mean by those terms. on the podcast and ask you to explain what you mean by those terms. Mahbub Peresti and Gulen Paregi are generally evaluated as synonymous in modern scholarship, referring to some erotic or sexual interest in young boys that manifested itself in gazelle, first of all, the basic form of Ottoman poetry. I think these terms were more autonomous in a sense,

since one implies sexual relationships with boys, that is gulamparegi, and the other implies more of a platonic ideal of love that has been attested throughout the history of Islamic civilizations or Islamic cultures from early on. It runs parallel with the development of Sufism, and there are even traditions of the Prophet where he says, I saw God in the form of a beautiful boy. This is a starting point for many scholars, especially Iranian scholars, Hamedani and Karmani, etc., from different centuries. Following the idea of boy loves and boy worship,

the presence of male beloved has been, in literature, usually avoided or even translated as feminine, where in the original it's obviously a male being described. Regarding your research on the gender of Shechrengis, which is describing male beloveds and cannot be, like, ignored, I would like you to a little bit developed idea of how um this presence of male beautiful figures play in literature what what is their place and how can be studied in the case of shaker and greece in particular male beauty and feminine descriptions of its kind of

is one of the most confusing aspects of this boy worship, especially because it is correct that whenever we read a gazelle, we can think of a woman, especially in Persian and Turkish, which lack gender. But with Arabic poetry and certain employment of Arabic verbal nouns, With Arabic poetry and certain employment of Arabic verbal nouns like makhboob, makhboobe, like these distinctions, the way these distinctions, gender is kept separate in the loan words both in Persian and Turkish poetry, tells us that the gender of the beloved is really male when someone sings a gazelle. There can be exceptions, but when you scan through like tens of thousands of gazelles,

we see all these clues that point to a male, young male, beloved. My argument is that the male form was the ideal form because God was huve. A male gender was assigned to God. And then why a young male? There are many reasons for it. Youth, first of all, should be considered as a concept, how it developed in the Islamic cultures with reference to Quran

and, of course, many other influences on the development of this culture. But my argument is that a male, young male beloved is unsullied by sexual desire, social relationships, and the creation like God created us in his own reflection. But this world is a corrupting world with corrupting time. So until reaching puberty, a boy is the ideal form, not a girl necessarily, but a girl even looks like a boy until reaching puberty. So we can think about this without finding really good data that describe it as such. But this is my thinking, my way of thinking. That's actually a really interesting and important theme to deal with.

Since you brought up the issue of Arabic, of course, a gendered language, pop songs today in Arabic use the male form often. They address a male, habibi. It's clearly not a male in the modern context. In the modern context, we translate it as a female because of the cultural context, but it'll be interesting to look at how this transformation has taken place. And I think we'll get to that a bit later. So I want to ask you about this genre you've worked with, the Shahrangiz genre.

A genre, I guess, of literature about talking about different cities and places as reflected in their boys. Why don't you tell us a little about this genre and how its role in Ottoman literature and then how you conceptualize it. In earlier Arabic poetry, like in the history of Arabic poetry, we have these descriptions of especially apprentices of craftsmen

in the form of qutas, like four lines, brief descriptions of those boys referring to their beauty with wordplay about their profession, etc. And then in Persian literature, we have certain references in Sa'dis and Hafez's poetry to such craftsmen, with the mention of the cities they have been working. So it was more like about a different genre of poetry

or a topic in poetry where boys are described in relation to their crafts and where they worked their craft. So this was a competitive spirit about which city is more beautiful, has the more beautiful boys. So it was a reference to the marketplace and the livelihood of the marketplace. But these were happening in many different genres in Arabic and Persian poetry. What happened in Ottoman literature in early 16th century, like let's say 60 years after the conquest of Istanbul, we see one text upon the visit of Bayezid II to Edirne,

one poet called, interestingly, Mesihi of Christ, etc. Most probably Devshirme, origin palace boy, turned brokrat because we know that he was working in the chancellery. So he writes this lengthy Mesnevi style, each couplet rhyming in itself, longish like some hundred, more than hundred couplets poem. And he ends his poem, interestingly, with a challenge for other poets. He says, Mesnevi was able to do this much. If you're come on tell it yourself and as a 19th century english scholar gibb explained or analyzed this it is really made up of three parts this poem one introduction part

and then a catalog part and the conclusion and in the introduction part generally is not studied well but people focused on the catalog part where 41 boys if i'm not mistaken are described in two couplets brief descriptions of either the with reference to the name of the beautiful boy or the craft of him but they reflect more wordplay than the physical description of the boy but we have the names of the boys listed my interest was more on the introductory part because it starts with some sort of a what we call munajat a pleading to god for something and like for the forgiveness of sins this is a common feature of mesnevi style texts from romances to other topics.

But Mesih makes it the real introduction part, skipping Tevhid and Naat, so there is no testimony to the oneness of God and the prophethood of Muhammad. But he enters to the poem with an acceptance of his sins. He says, like, I don't anymore look into the mihrab, but I am looking at the eyebrow of the beloved. This is my mihrab, O God, like I am so low, so base, etc.

And I think this introductory part should be evaluated in two separate sections. After this munajat comes a part where he makes three, like he works on three intriguing images one is joseph comes out from the pit and this is a section about night and day and the transformation like revolutions of night and day and joseph of course yusuf symbolizes the sun, and his being saved from the pit announces the rise of the sun, and the pit is the darkness where the poet is struggling with this worldly love, or even if it is platonic, he is stuck on that stage of representation and the real thing, which is, you know, the beautiful boy is a representation of the divine beauty, the most beautiful thing, which is, you know, the beautiful boy is a representation of the divine beauty, the most beautiful thing, because human beings are ahsenut takvim, they are the most beautiful

of the creation, and as I explained before, the boy is the sign. And the second image, which I couldn't kind of resolve yet, but it is repeated in all the texts named shahrengis most of them but it is boys swimming in a in the edirnez river in black uh loinclothes and their white bodies represent the day and their loinclothes represent and he uses the word hijab there, the night. So night becomes this cover on things, I don't know, shameful or something, and when the sun breaks, all those are clarified or cleared. This is my vague reading for the time being. I need to work on this more. I actually wanted to use the division you are mentioning of the text,

this structure that is divided between introduction that seems to relate to a more religious part, the description of Jesus' story from the Quran and the Bible, and this catalogue, which seems like a more, seems to be talking more about actualities. So I would like you to, in order to relate it to, like, larger literary tradition of the Ottoman Empire, how this structure speaks to these two major themes

in Ottoman Turkish literature, which is erotic gaze and religious journeying. Yeah, there is this line which comes just before the, before this series of images starts described, so the poet explains how low and base he is, how he can't follow the real path of religion. And he says, These drops that run from my wet or fresh eyes are semen from the pleasure of sight.

So what we see here is tears symbolizing semen. And instead of copulation, there is this pleasure drawn from just looking. And we need to realize here nazar is not a simple thing in this culture. It is the origin of creation. So the wetness, like the fresh tears, as semen, which is a product of Jews, say bodily Jews. So this replacement also kind of,

it is a very striking couplet. I really want me to see he had composed it and it is really in the place in a very telling place in the text but I am curious if it is censored in many copies or if it is added by another author but even then it is really a telling beautiful kind of unsettling uh line so i came to this point uh with respect to your question about uh the structuring of the text i guess and the gaze story and when it comes to gaze we are really we don't have a really good analysis of it in pre-modern cultures in general. There are works for Christian cultures and all the mystical symbolisms, etc. are there. But with the Islamic spheres, we have really dispersed studies of it. And I think this is one point since it is related with creation,

loving, and it is a central thing like the eyes in this literature, like Ottoman literature and Persian and Arabic. It needs more investigation. That actually leads to my next question I wanted to ask. Clearly these texts have multiple purposes at the same time. Do we read these as primarily sexual passages, or what are the different layers here, and how should we treat these texts? This is a very good question, because initially I was very excited as a student to learn about Sheheringis as sexually explicit texts, because they are kind of introduced as erotic texts

in catalogues of manuscripts prepared in the Western cult, like in English, French, etc. And then in Turkish, kind of this aspect of them are not mentioned much, even though there is a lot of work on these texts because they were introduced first in Turkish scholarship as local products of Ottoman culture. So they were almost like this Turkishness of this Islamic literature, a proof of that in the early Republican era. But then when I read those catalogue parts or the introduction part, there was nothing related to sexuality.

They were, in fact, the catalogue parts is mere wordplay, like about showing the prowess of the poet. So they are not sexually explicit texts. allusions to some sexual desire there. Even Joseph's story can be like the pet Joseph, rise, etc. All these vocabulary may conjure up some sexual feeling for someone really desperate. But I mean, it was a disappointment for me initially. then uh some scholars in persian literature uh kind of bring these texts along with sheh rashub and treat them as a you know a historical discourse on cities and billboards and their sexual the sense of they describe sexual desires i think reading into the text rather than trying to understand what the text tells you because you mentioned the function function of this text first of all there is really there are clues that these texts the boys mentioned

in the texts were at least told the couplets that were told about them by the poet, and their reactions. We have instances in biographical dictionaries about some incidents upon the writing, and we don't know how they were circulated, in what form, because they're not huge texts. They're generally parts of a poet's poetry collection or we come across them in Mecmua's miscellaneous a lot of times so the place like why they

were composed first of all most probably may see his one and the second one Zatis on Edirne again were presented to Sultan Bayezid II because he is mentioned there, even though he wasn't eulogized at length. And it was on the occasion of his visiting Edirne, Mesih claims he writes this text and he says, like by the coming of the Sultan, just like Joseph's getting out of the pit, the sun rises over Edirne and shines these beauties so we can now see them. And this text, he says, is a shehring, is not the beauties.

So this text will put the city into turmoil because shehringiz means, engiz is almost like fitna, rising, you know. Gip translates them as city thrillers. Engis is almost like fitna rising, you know. Gibb translates them as city thrillers. So it may be a good translation to follow, just out of respect. But I mean, this text will create fitna kind of a thing, he says, clearly. Not the beauties, but his description of them, because they are his divine desire that these boys lead,

but not leave him free after that stage. He's stuck there. He can't reach God. If he reaches God, then he won't sing poetry, of course. This is the dilemma of the poet. Gazelle, I understand Gazelle even that dilemma you love these beauties because they are reflections of God

but they don't let you go to God anymore because you are stuck in that valley of love kind of a thing actually one of the things you're saying here points to some of the larger issues of the way that past scholars, maybe we can call them orientalists, have read these texts,

which is searching for what they're looking for rather than seeking to fully understand the function of the text and its place in the context within which it was produced. Which is actually a very interesting remark because this text seems to go beyond the symbolic love, which is the norm of the literary production of the Ottoman Empire, and start to actually address in actual voice that exists in the city. And I kind of want to ask you a little bit about this,

the role of this genre, like the function of this genre, the social function it has among contemporaries that we're answering and we're being described, and also how this triggers another literary answer, like this other couplets to mock the author. I don't know if you could develop on that. The thing is, some scholars evaluated this as a part of hijab literature, like a more comic genre, a comic genre.

And I think the comedy arises by this stuck-up position of the poet, so that all these witticisms, they may not be funny when you look into them because these are the wailings of the poet as well. But relating or naming the real people in the city has been by late 15th century. This is according to my Persian scholars, like my friends were Persian literature scholars. There appears in late 15th century a kind of gazelle that uses a boy's name as its repeating rhyming element. So each couplet ends with the boy's name. And this doesn't happen before the conquest of Istanbul, but after that.

Using boy's name in a gazelle is very common, but this repetitive interest. And so we have, for example, until 1550s, 1580s, all these collections of poetry with these names used as rhyming elements. And most probably they were replies to the previous poems. But this shows an interest in using those names and some of them are uh attested like uh some biographical dictionary writers tells us who those boys like he said for example mentioning a poet he says like oh he wrote a gazelle for memi and we have that gazelle memi is a abbreviated form of muhammad and used for a younger boy. I think there is a local development at that point in the late 15th century. There is an innovation in a literary genre, in a gazelle,

and it must have had some social relevance. Like memi was there outside, this poet was befriending him, was there outside, this poet was befriending him, so there were looser rules on the ulema and the bureaucrats and their relationship to the marketplace, because we know that those get more stricter, as Gülrün İtpolu, etc., Cornel Flesher, described how the palace growingly closes into itself and ulema became more susceptible for criticism, etc.

But they disappear gradually, such gazelles, and Sheherengiz becomes more looser, more generic at form than Mesih has formulated growingly. So my research is now to identify how Shehering is started, how the replies were mediated by poets to Messi, his poem, and then how it spread around, and then how it collapsed kind of a genre and why. One of the things you've done with this work,

approaching from a literary perspective, is go deeper into, as we've been saying, the function of the things you've done with this work, approaching from a literary perspective, is go deeper into, as we've been saying, the function of the text and trying to figure out what purpose these really served and what the meaning was in the historical context. This is interesting because this is something that historians don't always do when they use literature as a historical source. historical source. So my larger question in thinking about certain transformations that you are mentioning are taking place, my larger question is how does this fit in with our broader narrative and the understanding of maybe transformation of idealization of male or female beauty, of course the issues of sexuality and the fairly recent term of homosexuality that arises from this discussion. How does studies of texts like these fit into the larger scholarship that we have?

Now, there is, since the beginning of the 21st century, there was a renewed interest in sexuality and gender in the Ottoman Empire and larger Islamic cultures along with the European sexualities. This is an impact of Foucault's history of sexuality to some degree and testing the arguments which are in that work. And as a result of this and the second wave feminism, on the other hand, we see many works appear on gender and sexuality in the Ottoman Empire. And those works employed different kinds of texts. For example, when you look at Leslie Pierce's very important work on gender and women's position in society in the Ottoman Empire.

She employs mostly archival material, mostly sigils, the judge's documents, as well as kanunnames, which are even more different than kadı sigils. and she expands her data as she goes, which is one scholar I always follow. What she does is important to me. But she looks at a woman's position, and from a kind of a feminist perspective, I will call, I'm not saying her work is part of feminist work. But then the other one, mostly by male scholars for some reason,

is focusing on Ottoman Empire and male-to-male sexuality. In fact, Roger V's book goes beyond that, and he discovers more categorically his studies in producing desire, different genres of texts he discusses. But in each chapter he brings together, again, very different kinds of texts, but he looks at more social groups than not. And it's not, I think, well-mediated, but as a work, it's a groundbreaking study for me as well, a very inspiring study.

I think, for example, Şehrengiz is, in my imagination, of early 16th century Ottoman literature. I am a bit working, I think, against the idea that these texts never changed. Even Kadıcıc's, I believe, changed through history. And it's impossible that they wouldn't change because they are produced. We need a linguistic study of those texts, historical linguistics I'm talking about. But when it comes to literature, it has to change. It has to be attractive.

It has to attract attention, renew attention. Otherwise, it has to change. It has to be attractive. It has to attract attention, renew attention. Otherwise, it would be dull. You know, so I think we need to, first of all, think in decades when we study Ottoman literature or history. In decades instead of centuries. And that is very important. And decade, even, is a priori category when you think about it. And then look at how texts are related to each other,

because it's just like our times, like one text comes out in scholarship and the reply to it comes after that, etc. And Ottomans produced literature like that as well. So Gazelle changed tremendously as it was changing in Iran when there were international literary interests. So they were reading Persian Gazelles. Persians were not reading Ottoman Gazelles. But they were more complicated, impossible to capture kind of a system,

network of relationships going around literature as well as history writing and imagining themselves, etc. So I think the most important thing now is, after Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpatlu's study, Drozhevi's study, Edwai Hepp's study, and Pierce's studies, which are more focused on these three books, in fact, both geographically and historically, we need to get back to the texts for better analyses. But there are developments now in the University of Chicago, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and such places.

There is some interest in literature, and new dissertations are promising. But what I am thinking is the direction is going towards historicizing literature instead of bringing literature into the perspective and doing sound literary analyses so that historians may benefit. sound literary analyses so that historians may benefit. And historians are generally not that interested still in literary devices that Ottoman ulema and bureaucrats employed to make their texts. So when people read Ali, they use it as a mine of sources without thinking how Ali structured his writing,

what did a composition meant, what is a history exactly composed of. Like there are John Schmitt's work on Ali is, for example, very important, but I think largely neglected his book and analysis of Kunhul Akbar, for example. It's an amazing resource for a historian, but Ormenage's study of early Tevarich, they are all, in fact, literary analysis to some degree, or textual analysis, let's say. Following this question, I would like to ask,

precisely, the approach of a historian is always to look at, well, not always, but it's generally to look at the literary text as a mine of historical information. And in that sense, this kind of literature has been used to figure out sexuality. So I wanted to ask you, like, in your opinion, to what extent the very terms of homosexuality, sexuality of gender, produces a kind of harmful or hurtful bias to understand the internal logic

or the logic itself of this literary production by using it as just a mine of information about sexual attitudes in the Ottoman Empire? a mind of information about sexual attitudes in the Ottoman Empire? That's a very important and a basic question in a sense, not easy to reply directly, but it can be a drive to approach these texts. I could have been interested if I had my mind now, the mind I have now after all this learning process, I would have been more interested in, let's say, Tevhid sections and how they change.

It is about attesting the unity of God, but we don't read such texts anymore as scholars. But those poets in their times thought that they are very important. So each one of them composed several Tevhids or notes about the Prophet and the God. So who was taking what kind of pleasure from them i think like in that sense what i'm saying is the logic of these texts are not understood only through sexuality or another statement that may come out from my argument is that sexuality is just one topic in this literature and points to transformations of it.

But, for example, when we come to 19th century, if you allow me to, I am not an expert there, but I mean the development of Western novel, for example, it happens while certain poets were still writing about Mahbub love, while certain poets were still writing about Mahbub love, Mahbub Peresti. And Muallim Naci, a very important figure in 19th century Ottoman letters, has been blamed for being Mahbub Perest. I mentioned this in an article that came out in Turkish in Cogito last year, how these old pre-modern literary concepts of Mahparesti etc. were employed in the late 19th century and how novel genre totally neglected boy love except for a few instances where

it is generally a relief to realize that the beloved is not a boy. This is like Vatanya Utslistre and Dürdane Hanimov, Ahmet Mithat Efendi has these gender confusion issue. But those people who were writing those novels were aware of Mahbub Peresti because it was going on as Ibn-i Lamin Mahmud Kemal's biographical dictionaries reflect very aptly. What I'm trying to say is that sexuality is a very good topic to trace, to understand literary transformation, but literary text is not that good a resource to understand sexuality as it is experienced in society, because it is more about a traditional literary understanding, just like our understanding of novel. literary understanding, just like our understanding of novel, it constantly delimits us with its own devices. But we don't think like that. We think that novel is changing every day. But in fact, if we look at novels of 19th and 20th century, let's say 200 years later, we will see them as lumps. We already perceive 19th century novel as adulterous novel or such, for example, and this should be a clue how we are doing injustice to earlier literary texts and the pleasures drawn from them by people who are reading them.

They are not about their social life. We've mentioned these historical studies that have used literature as a data mine, basically, for information about sexuality. as a data mine, basically, for information about sexuality. And you're saying that, in fact, it's a distortion of maybe the purpose of the text and maybe not a good way of getting at the actual lived experience of sexuality. So I want to ask about the largest narrative we have in terms of the history of sexuality, at least in the Middle East, but probably in the world, which is, most simply put, that in the 19th century, with encounter with europe we could say or with the development of a new bourgeois class and and all these things tied to what is increasingly less

so-called modernization the simple narrative is that different attitudes towards male relationships emerged namely that previously the boundaries between the sexual and the homosocial were less clear, and they became more rigid during this period. Through your reading of these texts, how can we maybe interrogate this narrative or break it apart a little, or is this in fact a narrative that holds up? What do you think about that? Yes, this is a difficult, if not unfair question. Because we have still like Foucault's evaluation of Victorian sexuality, which is the most quoted Foucault passage,

like it is the first few pages of the first volume of a three-volume text unfortunately it keeps appearing in the middle eastern studies i don't know about the rest of the world but so there's not a really facing fuko moment but there's taking fuko behind and running for the fight kind of a thing to prove it instead of testing it. So I think there are three levels. First of all, there's experience, which is a very major problematic issue in any historical research. You know, I think Ottoman studies are a bit avoiding this question of what is experience and how what is experienced can be reconstructed really or are we talking about ourselves still second thing i think is which is related relations like oral

communications our discussions among each other as well as ottomans writing about their conversations and third is the literary artifact I put in the second archival documents and all these things which are more reliable in quote unquote, more reliable for historians. But in fact they are communications in writing. You know, a sigil,

a loco, the ferman, everything they speak to the other kind of to another person. But literary artifact is even intriguing in that sense because it speaks to the other. Seherengiz was written so that those boys would hear their descriptions by a poet and show favor to him,

or the poet will be more popular in the city, but the poet is a part of the palace. So there was already an inherent strain on such literature because they are really marginal. They are not intended for a patron necessarily. So we don't still know how to deal with such texts because we think patronage is the norm. Even in architecture, we can come up with a similar example, like urban vernacular architecture in the Ottoman Empire is not accounted for yet.

There are really brilliant studies in the form of articles, but we still look at patron edifices. This is similar in literature. So what I am trying to say, I guess, is we need to just make sure our limitations first. And this is not done yet. We don't have a primer even, a good, decent primer of what kind of genres are there when writing, which is our major resource, except for archaeology, etc. Writing comes into being what is the Qadr sigil how it was, what kind of

manifestations it had, like literary field is a bit more lucky in that because we sorted, sifted and continue sorting and sifting genres etc. But I think those genres are intrinsically related to the documentary sources

because most of the producers of those sources were in the realm of literature as well. These were two languages that feed each other, so we have many witticisms, etc., which are more local and tell us about the lifestyles than ideal romances and masterpieces which seem more obscure to our modern eye. Maybe they are also as telling,

but we don't know ways and technologies and methodologies to discover the texts in depth. So we go for Mahbub Peresti as soon as we see it. Oh, there's a boy love going on here. But we don't think why they use Perest, which means to worship. So you don't fuck a god. I think like Perest does not involve sexual copulation, right? But it is worshipping, so he's not doing something bad.

But Gulen Paregi, it is like paregi is an interesting term I'm thinking still it is like to open up kind of a thing a gulam, a slave kind of a thing and it is not that common in Iran

Persian literature for example but Ottoman treated them separately and we need to go back look at Seljuk times Anatolia because the sources are mostly coming from there I'm not saying like there's no influence from Iranian Plato or something like that

but there are all these discussions of Mahmoud Peresti in the time of Jalal al-Din Rumi Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi there are discussions of it before that in Ibn Arabi, Mawlana's rejection of Ibn Arabi, Awad al-Din Karmani's Menaqabs, which are recently taken up

in an article in Journal of Sufism, the new journal, ingeniously. It is a very good article. But these are coming up, but the links are missing like how messi he puts into work through literature in a marketplace both the device of high literary medium and a sufi tendency of a sufi practice of contemplation boys' beauties and then his position

as a bureaucrat in town and created a short text which is still being discussed

and discussed like mentioned throughout centuries it is not forgotten but the genre is not anymore

it was taking other shapes so I hope this answers your question but in short like I think we need to

think what is written uh in relation with what is told i made this simplistic category of documents are what is told and literary what is literary is what is written or composed so composition we need to think about what one does when he composes something. It is like applying a university, we compose a text. We have all the clues how to do it, to be successful. So we rewrite our history

according to some expectation. So we need to think about literature, not only Ottoman literature, but modern literature as well. Something like that. Some expectation is there in our minds, so we are doing it, otherwise we won't do it, kind of a thing. I think a lot of this discussion for our listeners who are students of history is really interesting, because hearing you talk about the way you talk about the text from a literary perspective just brings to mind so many questions about

why didn't I interrogate this aspect of a text that I'm using as a historical document? From Evliya Celebi to the most obscure sources that we have, or even, as you said, Qadi sigils, and even Tahir-i-Addaftar, why not? It raises questions, and I think it really enriches the way historians use their sources. Well, Dr. Koura, I want to thank you for coming on the podcast.

It was a pleasure to have you on. It's my pleasure. Thank you. And thank you, Oscar, for coming on and joining us as a co-host. Thanks to you. For those who are interested in finding out more about the topic, we're going to post a select bibliography on the website where you can get some more information about some of the different issues we've touched on today. website where you can get some more information about some of the different issues we've

touched on today. That's where you can also leave your comments and questions for either the podcast or for the guests. That's all for this installment of the Adam in History podcast. Until next time, take care. No cheers. That should be done.

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