Edinburgh University Press
The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands
About this book
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. Using a wide variety of documentary, narrative and normative sources, Konrad Hirschler explores the growth of reading audiences in a pre-print culture.
The uses of the written word grew significantly in Egypt and Syria between the 11th and the 15th centuries, and more groups within society started to participate in individual and communal reading acts. New audiences in reading sessions, school curricula, increasing numbers of endowed libraries and the appearance of popular written literature all bear witness to the profound transformation of cultural practices and their social contexts.
A detailed and wide-ranging analysis of reading in the periodExplores the key themes of literacy, orality and auralityExamines the accessibility and profile of librariesLooks at popular reading practices, often associated with the notion of the illicit
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
iii -
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Illustrations
iv -
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Tables
v -
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Acknowledgements
vi -
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Introduction
1 -
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1 Reading and Writerly Culture
11 -
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2 A City is Reading: Popular and Scholarly Reading Sessions
32 -
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3 Learning to Read: Popularisation and the Written Word in Children’s Schools
82 -
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4 Local Endowed Libraries and their Readers
124 -
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5 Popular Reading Practices
164 -
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Conclusion
197 -
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Bibliography
202 -
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Index
228
