With Chibouk and Hookah: Coveted Escapes in Orient’s Fragrant Space

Author(s):  
Valentin Kitanov

The penetration of tobacco into the Ottoman Empire was followed by a ban on its production and use in the seventeenth century. The lifting of the ban in 1688 led to the rapid spread of production and trade with tobacco products and made smoking widely popular in the Ottoman society. Although smoking was prevalent mainly among Muslims, the chibouk and the hookah became distinctive attributes and, for generations, an integral part of the cultural characteristics of sultan’s subjects, regardless of their religious or national affiliation. Whether it was consumed free or secretly due to penal laws, smoking became emblematic of the social and cultural representation of the Ottoman realm and, in a way, it was affiliated with a particular zone of comfort and tranquillity, an escape from all worries and problems of everyday life.

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-244
Author(s):  
Martina Hjertman ◽  
Sari Nauman ◽  
Maria Vretemark ◽  
Gwilym Williams ◽  
Anders Kjellin

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (4 (244)) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Anna Kalinowska

An Englishman in-between Two Worlds: Robert Bargrave’s Travel through East-Central Europe, 1652-1653 The article discusses a journey of a young Englishman Robert Bargrave (1628-1661), who in the early 1650s travelled from Constantinople to England. The travel diary recording this journey reflects Bargrave’s keen interest in the customs, everyday life and languages as well as natural conditions and economy of the places he visited and shows that he tried to place it in a wider context. As a result, closer analysis of this text gives us an excellent opportunity to examine the picture of East -Central Europe as seen by a mid-seventeenth century Englishman and the way he perceived it in relation to both the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe.


2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-391
Author(s):  
Charles L. Wilkins

Abstract Focusing on a seventeenth-century Syrian city, this study examines the practice of slavery as a strategy for building elite households in the Ottoman Empire. After an overview of the slave trade and the social and political conditions which sustained it, it constructs a demographic profile of the slaves and slaveholders and concludes with case studies of how slaves were integrated into selected military-administrative, merchant and ulama families. Valued as servants, soldiers, companions, and business agents, slaves were integrated to a wide range of elite households, in some cases providing critical human resources for the households’ continuity.


Author(s):  
Miguel Alarcão

Textualizing the memory(ies) of physical and cultural encounter(s) between Self and Other, travel literature/writing often combines subjectivity with documental information which may prove relevant to better assess mentalities, everyday life and the social history of any given ‘timeplace’. That is the case with Growing up English. Memories of Portugal 1907-1930, by D. J. Baylis (née Bucknall), prefaced by Peter Mollet as “(…) a remarkably vivid and well written observation of the times expressed with humour and not little ‘carinho’. In all they make excellent reading especially for those of us interested in the recent past.” (Baylis: 2)


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2301-2308
Author(s):  
Fatime Liman ◽  
Mahmut Celik ◽  
Imer Yusufi

It is almost impossible to get some relevant results from researches on the topic- works of the Turkish female writers and Turkish female poets in Republic of Macedonia yet not considering the social and political circumstances that ocured in SFRJ, The Balcan Peninsula and all the countries under the Ottoman Empire reign. Before getting to topic, what is ,the works of the Turkish female writers and the Turkish female poets in Macedonia we would like to impose a retrospective of the social and political circumstances in the Balcan Peninsula and circumstances and events in Macedonia.We shall give a retrospective of some different time periods such as: before the Ottomans reign,during their reign and the period after their reign.The educational process and the Turkish sign will undouptly influence the Literature.Epmhases will be put on the literature of the Turks from Macedonia,and the circumstances on which that literature was able to survive in various conditions and quality.Therefore some Turkish female writers and poets will be presented from which in more detail-Melahat Engullu,Tulay Ibrahim,Leyla Husein,Meral Kayin and Rabiya Rusid.Some main themes from their works will also be presented.


Author(s):  
Erin Webster

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.


2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELLEN GUNNARSDÓTTIR

This article focuses on the changes that occurred within Querétaro's elite from the late Habsburg to the high Bourbon period in colonial Mexico from the perspective of its relationship to the convent of Santa Clara. It explores how creole elite families of landed background with firm roots in the early seventeenth century, tied together through marriage, entrepreneurship and membership in Santa Clara were slowly pushed out of the city's economic and administrative circles by a new Bourbon elite which broke with the social strategies of the past by not sheltering its daughters in the city's most opulent convent.


Costume ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Robinson

A pair of embroidered seventeenth-century gauntlet gloves, reputedly presented by King Charles I to his courtier Sir Henry Wardlaw, was donated to the University of St Andrews in 2001. This article sets out to uncover the truth behind this nearly four-hundred-year-old family legend by investigating Sir Henry’s royal connections and the social significance of the gauntlet gloves as a high-status, luxury clothing accessory. Based on the study of historic gloves in museum and private collections, it endeavours to date the gloves by discussing their design and manufacture within the context of seventeenth-century clothing fashion. This article also explores the symbolism behind the gauntlet gloves’ decorative scheme by unravelling some of the hidden messages that are conveyed about cultural, religious, political and technological developments and perspectives through seventeenth-century embroidery.


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