The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant
Dana Sajdi
Abstract
This book is about a barber, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Budayr (fl. 1761), who shaved and coiffed, and probably circumcised and healed, in Damascus in the eighteenth century. The barber wrote a history book, a chronicle of the events that took place in his city during his lifetime. Examining the “life and work” of Ibn Budayr, the book uncovers the emergence of a larger trend of history writing by unusual authors—people outside the learned establishment—and identifies a new phenomenon: nouveau literacy. In addition to offering a microhistory of the barber and his work, this book discusses the soci ... More
This book is about a barber, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Budayr (fl. 1761), who shaved and coiffed, and probably circumcised and healed, in Damascus in the eighteenth century. The barber wrote a history book, a chronicle of the events that took place in his city during his lifetime. Examining the “life and work” of Ibn Budayr, the book uncovers the emergence of a larger trend of history writing by unusual authors—people outside the learned establishment—and identifies a new phenomenon: nouveau literacy. In addition to offering a microhistory of the barber and his work, this book discusses the social and literary aspects of nouveau literacy within the context of a changing social, political, and urban topography in the eighteenth-century Levant. Nouveau literacy is about the emergence of authority among various social groups as a result of new material and cultural wealth. Like the barber, the other nouveau literates use their chronicles to display their improved positions and to navigate a new social order. Finally, the book examines a later edition of the barber's history by the nineteenth-century scholar, Muḥammad Sa`īd al-Qāsimī (d. 1900), to show how the editorial interventions by a figure of al-Nahḍa (Arab Renaissance) served to silence the barber's voice.
Keywords:
Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Budayr,
Barber,
Damascus,
contemporary chronicle,
nouveau literacy,
microhistory,
Muḥamad Sa`īd al-Qāsimī,
al-Nahḍa (Arab Renaissance)
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780804785327 |
| Published to Stanford Scholarship Online: January 2014 |
DOI:10.11126/stanford/9780804785327.001.0001 |
