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Informationen zum Autor Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures) and previously held professorships of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (University of London) and Freie Universität Berlin. He is amongst others author of award-winning books such as A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture - The Library of Ibn ?Abd al-Hadi (EUP, 2020), Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (EUP, 2016), The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (EUP, 2012) and Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (Routledge, 2006). Klappentext WINNER OF THE BRISMES BOOK PRIZE 2012 Discusses 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. Yet the chronological development of how and when different sections of the population started to use the written word remains understudied. This book argues that the uses of the written word significantly expanded in Egypt and Syria between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries CE. This process of textualisation went hand in hand with a closely linked second process, popularisation, as wider groups within society started to participate in individual and communal reading acts. New audiences in reading sessions, changed curricula in children's schools, increasing numbers of endowed libraries and the appearance of popular literature in written form all bear witness to the profound transformation of cultural practices and their social contexts. Using a wide variety of documentary, narrative and normative sources, the book explores the growth of reading audiences in a pre-print culture. Konrad Hirschler is Reader in the History of the Near and Middle East at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of /Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors/ (2006) and co-editor of /Manuscript Notes as Documentary Sources/ (2011). "This is an impressive book ... clearly written and argued ... and of particular interest to scholars of textual practices elsewhere in the medieval world, both Arab and beyond."--Jamie Wood, University of Lincoln, Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean"[Konrad Hirschler's] book is a model of meticulous scholarship and should be in the library of all readers interested in the premodern cultural history of the Arabo-Islamic world."--Roger Allen, Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, American Historical Review"This is a clever book looking at the writing practices amongst Arab intellectual classes during the Middle Ages ... The research is meticulous, the arguments and evidence are beautifully presented, and comparative references to Europe as well as further east are interesting and mean that this book should have an audience far beyond Islamic Studies."--BRISMES Book Prize 2012 Zusammenfassung Using a variety of documentary! narrative and normative sources! this title explores the growth of reading audiences in a pre-print culture. It examines the accessibility and profile of libraries. It looks at popular reading practices! often associated with the notion of the illicit. ...
