Turkey, Egypt, and Syria: A Travelogue

Turkey, Egypt, and Syria: A Travelogue by Shibli Nu'mani is a 1894 travelogue that provides a unique portrait of imperial culture in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. It includes sketches, anecdotes, and insights into intellectual networks, religious festivals, and everyday life. The travelogue has become a classic of Urdu travel writing and has had a significant impact on South Asian intellectual and political history. This English translation includes contemporary reviews, letters, and newspaper reports, with extensive glosses and annotations.

Format: Hardback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 30 December 2019
Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Turkey, Egypt, and Syria: A Travelogue vividly captures the experiences of prominent Indian intellectual and scholar Shibli Nu'mani (1857–1914) as he journeyed across the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in 1892. A professor of Arabic and Persian at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh, Nu'mani took a six-month leave from teaching to travel to the Ottoman Empire in search of rare printed works and manuscripts to use as sources for a series of biographies on major figures in Islamic history. Along the way, he collected information on schools, curricula, publishers, and newspapers, presenting a unique portrait of imperial culture at a transformative moment in the history of the Middle East. Nu'mani records sketches and anecdotes that offer rare glimpses of intellectual networks, religious festivals, visual and literary culture, and everyday life in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. First published in 1894, the travelogue has since become a classic of Urdu travel writing and has been immensely influential in the intellectual and political history of South Asia. This translation, the first into English, includes contemporary reviews of the travelogue, letters written by the author during his travels, and serialized newspaper reports about the journey, and is deeply enriched for readers and students by the translator's copious multilingual glosses and annotations. Nu'mani's chronicle offers unique insight into broader processes of historical change in this part of the world while also providing a rare glimpse of intellectual engagement and exchange across the porous borders of empire.

Turkey, Egypt, and Syria: A Travelogue vividly captures the experiences of prominent Indian intellectual and scholar Shibli Nu'mani (1857–1914) as he journeyed across the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in 1892. A professor of Arabic and Persian at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh, Nu'mani took a six-month leave from teaching to travel to the Ottoman Empire in search of rare printed works and manuscripts to use as sources for a series of biographies on major figures in Islamic history. Along the way, he collected information on schools, curricula, publishers, and newspapers, presenting a unique portrait of imperial culture at a transformative moment in the history of the Middle East. Nu'mani records sketches and anecdotes that offer rare glimpses of intellectual networks, religious festivals, visual and literary culture, and everyday life in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. First published in 1894, the travelogue has since become a classic of Urdu travel writing and has been immensely influential in the intellectual and political history of South Asia. This translation, the first into English, includes contemporary reviews of the travelogue, letters written by the author during his travels, and serialized newspaper reports about the journey, and is deeply enriched for readers and students by the translator's copious multilingual glosses and annotations. Nu'mani's chronicle offers unique insight into broader processes of historical change in this part of the world while also providing a rare glimpse of intellectual engagement and exchange across the porous borders of empire.

Weight: 714g
Dimension: 160 x 236 x 31 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780815636564