Chapter 5. From intersection to interculture

Abstract

The present chapter explores some of the pre-Ottoman cultural dynamics in the Middle East that led to the meeting of Turkish, Arabic and Persian as densely intercrossing languages in the formation of the classical Ottoman cultural sphere. It aims to chart the movement of people, knowledge, customs, practices and centers of power across the Middle East in a historical survey that will offer a networked flow of such movements and highlight the place of translation in the process. It roughly covers the period from the 5th century to the 14th century, which is about a hundred years into the start of the Ottoman empire in the region. The central premise is that the historical flows between the three cultures associated with Arabic, Persian and Turkish led to the classical Ottoman setting of interculture (Paker 2002), whereby Ottoman translators engaged with Persian and Arabic as both source languages and language components of an Ottoman epistemic discourse. It highlights the degree to which cultural input can be influenced by intercultural transfers in several domains such as science, literature, bureaucracy, education and religion.