The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands

Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures) and previously held professorships of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (University of London) and Freie Universität Berlin. He is amongst others author of award-winning books such as A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture - The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (EUP, 2020), Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (EUP, 2016), The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (EUP, 2012) and Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (Routledge, 2006).

WINNER OF THE BRISMES BOOK PRIZE 2012 Discusses how the written text became accessible to wider audiences in medieval Egypt and Syria Medieval Islamic societies belonged to the most bookish cultures of their period. Yet the chronological development of how and when different sections of the population started to use the written word remains understudied. This book argues that the uses of the written word significantly expanded in Egypt and Syria between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries CE. This process of textualisation went hand in hand with a closely linked second process, popularisation, as wider groups within society started to participate in individual and communal reading acts. New audiences in reading sessions, changed curricula in children's schools, increasing numbers of endowed libraries and the appearance of popular literature in written form all bear witness to the profound transformation of cultural practices and their social contexts. Using a wide variety of documentary, narrative and normative sources, the book explores the growth of reading audiences in a pre-print culture. Konrad Hirschler is Reader in the History of the Near and Middle East at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of /Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors/ (2006) and co-editor of /Manuscript Notes as Documentary Sources/ (2011).

1. Reading and writerly culture; Literacy, orality and aurality; The written word in the Middle Period; 'Popular' practices of reading; 2. A city is reading: Popular and learned reading sessions; Methodological considerations; Reading Communities between scholarly sessions and popular sessions; The order of seating: Social and cultural differences; Motivations to participate in popular readings; Changes over time: Reading certificates and 'popular' culture; 3. Learning to read: Popularisation and the written word in children's schools; Textualisation and curricular changes; Methods to teach reading and writing; The spread of the endowed school and social changes; 4. Local endowed libraries and their readers; The central ruler library and the 'decline' of post-classical libraries; The development of the local endowed library; Profiles of holdings in private and local endowed libraries; 5. Popular reading practices; The popular epic; Popular epics and the written word; Textualisation and challenges to scholarly authority; Writing for a popular readership; 6. Conclusion.