The Notebook of Kamāl al-Dīn the Weaver

Aleppine notes from the end of the 16th century

Boris Liebrenz, Kristina L. Richardson

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9783110688870
• eBook ISBN: 9783110688924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Literary
• Index: Literature

At the end of the 10 th / 16 th century in Aleppo, a weaver, cloth merchant, and poet named Kam?l al-D?n would regularly take his time to fill blank pages with his varied observations. But it was not a linear narrative he produced, nor was it a diary. Rather, he scribbled down accounts on the political and social life of his city and the region; the climate; economic developments; his craft; poetry, much of it his own; anecdotes; reading excerpts; obituaries of dignitaries and friends; history. In doing so, Kam?l al-D?n upends assumptions about literary agency, faith, and class in the Ottoman Arab provinces and thus gives us insights rarely seen in other contemporary works.

Only a fragment of what once must have been a sizeable work survives, now preserved in the Forschungsbibliothek Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha under the shelfmark MS orient. A 114. It represents the earliest known Arabic notebook of an artisan or merchant.

Table of contents

• Chapter 1
• Index of personal names
• Index of places
• Illustrations
• Literature and sources
• The place of Kamāl al-Dīn’s work in the tradition of diaristic and historical writings in Arabic and the region
• A weaver’s notebook: Context, content, and history
• Preface
• Table of Contents