In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.
This article investigates how Arabic texts reached multilingual audiences in North India in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a remarkable treatise on translating the Qur’an into Persian by the Delhi intellectual Shāh Walī-Allāh (d. 1176/1762), it argues that so-called “interlinear” translations functioned to preserve the sound of Arabic utterances as well as their meaning. By anchoring another language to Arabic utterances, these translations also reified symbolic hierarchies between Arabic and languages used to translate it. Walī-Allāh’s understanding of translatability was closely tied up with notions of Qur’anic structure (naẓm) and the sonic qualities of the Arabic language, but also informed by a sensitivity to linguistic difference in the multilingual society he lived in.
*The deadline for abstracts has been extended until 15th April 2016*
This CFP is for a graduate ... more *The deadline for abstracts has been extended until 15th April 2016*
This CFP is for a graduate conference to be held at SOAS, London on 13th June 2016. Please take a look!
The premodern Islamic world was multilingual and multicultural, and by necessity was continually ... more The premodern Islamic world was multilingual and multicultural, and by necessity was continually engaged in comparative critical practices. Mapping the interconnected trajectories of these practices, everywhere they arose between Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and other language traditions of Asia and Africa, is the aim of this conference. We invite scholars to employ methodologies based on direct engagement with primary sources that negotiate the multilingual Islamic world(s) in ways that are overlooked or misunderstood by Comparative Literature.
In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.
This article investigates how Arabic texts reached multilingual audiences in North India in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a remarkable treatise on translating the Qur’an into Persian by the Delhi intellectual Shāh Walī-Allāh (d. 1176/1762), it argues that so-called “interlinear” translations functioned to preserve the sound of Arabic utterances as well as their meaning. By anchoring another language to Arabic utterances, these translations also reified symbolic hierarchies between Arabic and languages used to translate it. Walī-Allāh’s understanding of translatability was closely tied up with notions of Qur’anic structure (naẓm) and the sonic qualities of the Arabic language, but also informed by a sensitivity to linguistic difference in the multilingual society he lived in.
*The deadline for abstracts has been extended until 15th April 2016*
This CFP is for a graduate ... more *The deadline for abstracts has been extended until 15th April 2016*
This CFP is for a graduate conference to be held at SOAS, London on 13th June 2016. Please take a look!
The premodern Islamic world was multilingual and multicultural, and by necessity was continually ... more The premodern Islamic world was multilingual and multicultural, and by necessity was continually engaged in comparative critical practices. Mapping the interconnected trajectories of these practices, everywhere they arose between Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and other language traditions of Asia and Africa, is the aim of this conference. We invite scholars to employ methodologies based on direct engagement with primary sources that negotiate the multilingual Islamic world(s) in ways that are overlooked or misunderstood by Comparative Literature.
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In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.
This article investigates how Arabic texts reached multilingual audiences in North India in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a remarkable treatise on translating the Qur’an into Persian by the Delhi intellectual Shāh Walī-Allāh (d. 1176/1762), it argues that so-called “interlinear” translations functioned to preserve the sound of Arabic utterances as well as their meaning. By anchoring another language to Arabic utterances, these translations also reified symbolic hierarchies between Arabic and languages used to translate it. Walī-Allāh’s understanding of translatability was closely tied up with notions of Qur’anic structure (naẓm) and the sonic qualities of the Arabic language, but also informed by a sensitivity to linguistic difference in the multilingual society he lived in.
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This CFP is for a graduate conference to be held at SOAS, London on 13th June 2016. Please take a look!
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In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.
This article investigates how Arabic texts reached multilingual audiences in North India in the eighteenth century. Drawing on a remarkable treatise on translating the Qur’an into Persian by the Delhi intellectual Shāh Walī-Allāh (d. 1176/1762), it argues that so-called “interlinear” translations functioned to preserve the sound of Arabic utterances as well as their meaning. By anchoring another language to Arabic utterances, these translations also reified symbolic hierarchies between Arabic and languages used to translate it. Walī-Allāh’s understanding of translatability was closely tied up with notions of Qur’anic structure (naẓm) and the sonic qualities of the Arabic language, but also informed by a sensitivity to linguistic difference in the multilingual society he lived in.
This CFP is for a graduate conference to be held at SOAS, London on 13th June 2016. Please take a look!