ENCOUNTER AFTER THE CONQUEST: SCHOLARLY GATHERINGS IN 16TH-CENTURY OTTOMAN DAMASCUS

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the extensive intellectual and social exchange that resulted from the Ottoman imperial incorporation of Arab lands in the 16th century. In the years immediately after the 1516–17 conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate that brought Egypt, Greater Syria, and the Hijaz under Ottoman rule, Turkish-speaking Ottomans from the central lands (Rumis) found that their political power was not matched by religious and cultural prestige. As the case of Damascus shows, scholarly gatherings calledmajālis(sing.majlis) were key spaces where this initial asymmetry was both acutely felt and gradually overcome. As arenas for discussion among scholars on the move, literary salons facilitated the circulation of books and ideas and the establishment of a shared intellectual tradition. As occasions where stories were told and history was made, they supported the formation of a common past. In informal gatherings and in the biographical dictionaries that described them, Rumis and Arabs came together to forge an empire-wide learned culture as binding as any political or administrative ingredient of the Ottoman imperial glue.