Search results for ""Author Konrad Hirschler""

Explores the history of reading in the high and late medieval period in the Middle East. The Middle East was home to one of the most literate civilizations during the high and late medieval period, boasting bustling book markets, voluminous libraries and sophisticated book production. After the 'paper revolution' of the 9th and 10th centuries the number of books increased dramatically. The written word played an increasingly prominent role and reading was taken up by wider sections of the population. This much-needed overview of the history of reading places the emphasis on the combination of cultural and social history and provides a depth of historical insight to the gradual development of reading practices over the centuries. On the basis of documentary sources and medieval illustrations the book shows the ways in which new groups in the Arabic speaking lands, especially craftsmen and traders, started to read and to participate in the written culture between the 12th and the 15th centuries. As a result the late and high medieval periods of Middle Eastern history are finally brought into the burgeoning field of the history of reading. Key Features: *Offers a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of reading in the period *Explores the key themes of literacy, orality and aurality *Considers the teaching of reading skills in schools *Examines the accessibility and profile of libraries *Looks at popular reading practices, often associated with the notion of the illicit.

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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. It is a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of reading in the period. It explores the key themes of literacy, orality and aurality. It examines the accessibility and profile of libraries. It looks at popular reading practices, often associated with the notion of the illicit.

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In the late medieval period, manuscripts galore circulated in Middle Eastern libraries. Yet very few book collections have come down to us as such or have left a documentary trail. This book discusses the largest private book collection of the pre-Ottoman Arabic Middle East for which we have both a paper trail and a surviving corpus of the manuscripts that once sat on its shelves: the Ibn ?Abd al-H?d? Library of Damascus. The book suggests that this library was part of the owner's symbolic strategy to monumentalise a vanishing world of scholarship bound to his life, family, quarter and home city

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This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus and edits its catalogue.

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