Adab Colloquium with Presenter Murat Umut Inan, Social Sciences University, Ankara and Discussant Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, University of Pennsylvania

Süruri’s Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif: Conceptions and Discussions of Poetry in the Early Modern Ottoman World

In this talk, Murat Umut Inan will discuss his forthcoming article entitled “Poetry, Muhammad, and the Ottomans: Süruri’s Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif and Conceptions of Poetry in the Early Modern Ottoman World”. Focusing on Muslihüddin Süruri’s (d. 1562) celebrated book on the art of poetry, he will explore the question of how poetry was viewed and understood in sixteenth-century Ottoman literary and scholarly circles, both as a form of artistic expression and as a branch of knowledge or scholarly discipline. Despite traditionally being seen simply as a poetry manual, the Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif presents us with a more complex case, in which the poet-scholar Süruri weaves into his work an Islamic defense of poetry and poethood grounded largely in Muhammad’s example.

Learn more about the Adab Colloquium at MEI here.

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