Mittwoch, 19. November 2025, 17:00 - 18:30 iCal
Ringvorlesung Turkologie Wintersemester 2025/2026
Materiality, Content, and Function of Kıra'ât Notes on Late Ottoman Popular Storybooks by Elif Sezer
Hörsaal (1F-01-38), Institut für Orientalistik
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 4, 1090 Wien
Antrittsvorlesung, Public Lecture, Vortrag
Abstract:
In late 18th- and 19th-century Istanbul, a rich reading and writing culture developed around traditional Islamic heroic stories. Manuscripts of popular genres such as Hamzanâme and Ebü Müslimnâme became repositories not only of narrative content but also of extensive readerly engagement. Among these are thousands of marginal annotations—termed kıra‘ât notes— which document the collective reading practices of the period. These notes record detailed information such as the name, occupation, and hometown of the reciter, the date and location of the reading session, and the reactions of the audience. This study focuses primarily on the function and materiality of these notes rather than their narrative content. The term kıra‘ât (public/recited reading) appears consistently in the annotations, suggesting a shared understanding of the practice. To explore their function, the study asks: who wrote these notes, where, and why? What motivated readers, reciters, and listeners to document their experiences so prolifically? In terms of materiality, the study analyzes the visual and physical features of the notes: variations in ink color, dialect, spelling, handwriting, script type, writing instrument (pen or pencil), and the spatial placement of notes within the manuscripts. These material traces are situated within their social and historical contexts. For instance, the word kıra‘âtappears in numerous orthographic variants, reflecting the linguistic backgrounds of note-writers, many of whom were migrants from Anatolian provinces. Similarly, interns from the Imperial Cannon Foundry (Tophane-i Âmire), who read these stories as part of their vocational training, consistently used pencils and the riqʿa script. By situating kıra‘ât notes within the broader framework of late Ottoman reading and manuscript culture, this study contributes to current scholarship on the materiality of texts and the social history of reading.
Bio:
Dr. Elif Sezer-Aydınlı is a cultural historian specializing in the history of books and reading in the Ottoman Empire. She received her PhD from Freie Universität Berlin in 2022 with a dissertation titled A Manuscript Community in Ottoman Istanbul (18th–19th Centuries): Heroic Stories, Social Profiles, and Reading Space, which was awarded by the Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at the University of Hamburg. Her doctoral research was supported by the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) as a visiting scholar at Boston College (2019–2020) and by the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) in 2023–2024. Dr. Sezer-Aydınlı is currently a lecturer in the Foundations Development Program at Sabancı University and serves as the book review editor for Yazmabilim: Journal of Manuscript Studies and Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies. Her publications include the monograph The Oral and the Written in Ottoman Literature: The Reader Notes on the Story of Firuzşah (2015); the peer-reviewed article “‘Unusual’ Readers in Early Modern Istanbul: Manuscript Notes of Janissaries and Other Riffraff on Popular Heroic Narratives” (Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, 2018); “Collective Authorship in Ottoman Story Books” (Nesir, 2022); the co-authored article “Books Transformed into Sound in Ottoman Istanbul” (Zemin: Literature, Language, and Cultural Studies, 2023); and a forthcoming chapter in The Routledge History of the Ottoman Empire (2026).
Zur Webseite der Veranstaltung
Veranstalter
Kontakt
Ayse Dilsiz Hartmuth
Institut für Orientalistik
+43-1-4277-43405
ayse.dilsiz.hartmuth@univie.ac.at
Erstellt am Dienstag, 07. Oktober 2025, 09:32
Letzte Änderung am Dienstag, 21. Oktober 2025, 11:45