Chapter 5
From intersection to interculture
How the classical Ottoman intercultural scene came to be
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.
Article outline
- Introduction
- The Ottoman interculture
- Translation history and transfer maps
- Connecting dots, charting flows
- From pre-Islamic encounters to the Baghdad School
- Pre-Islamic encounters
- From Alexandria to Jundishapur
- From Jundishapur to Baghdad
- The Abbasid context
- Arabs and Persians
- Arabs and Turks
- Turks and Persians
- Conclusion
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Notes
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References