The Middle Eastern Press as a Forum for Literature

Research on Middle Eastern press is of great importance for comparative historical studies. Many editors of newspapers and magazines were not only journalists, but also writers, poets, thinkers and politicians. These intellectual leaders used non-official journals as a means of accelerating public discourse on reforms in the Ottoman Empire and later on in its successor states. Introducing new genres of literature to the Middle East they serialized novels, short stories and travelogues, experimented with new kinds of poetry and let satire blossom. The 15 contributors approach this thematics from different perspectives: Some concentrate on certain newspapers, literary journals or satirical magazines, others centre on the biographies of editors or writers. Although the main focus of this book is on the Ottoman and Persian press until 1914, some articles extend this scope to include Post-Ottoman Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus.

Autorentext

The Editor: Horst Unbehaun is a professor at the Georg-Simon-Ohm-University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg. He received a doctorate degree in 1995 at Bamberg University. Between 1996 and 2001 he lectured as an assistant at the Department of Modern Middle East Studies at Erlangen-Nürnberg University. His main interests of research are modern Turkish studies, the history of the Anatolian press, and Muslim migration to Europe.

Inhalt

Contents: Uygur Kocabasoglu: Literary Serials at the Dawn of Turkish Journalism - Orhan Kologlu: Ahmed Midhat's Contribution to the Assimilation of Tanzimat through his Novels Serialized in Newspapers - Christiane Czygan: The Self-portrait of the Yeñi cOsmanlilar Cemciyeti in the Journal urriyet - Nâzim Hikmet Polat: The Magazine Rübap - Mirror of Second Constitution Turkish Culture, Literature and Press Life - Horst Unbehaun: The Newspaper Kizilirmak (Sivas) in the Years 1910-1914 - Cultural and Literary Forum in Anatolian Province - Tim Epkenhans: Plain and Simple? - Reflections on a «Modern» Persian Literature in the Magazine Kave - Manfred Sing: Between Lights and Hurricanes: Sami al-Kayyali's Review Al- adi as a Forum of Modern Arabic Literature and Liberal Islam - Silvia Naef: Literature and Social Criticism in the Iraqi Press of the First Half of the 20th Century - Jacfar al-Khalili and the Periodical Al-Hatif - Susanne Bräckelmann: Novelist, Biographer, Essayist: Zaynab Fawwaz (1860-1914) - Pioneer of Female Emancipation in the Egyptian Press - Michael Ursinus: The Ruins of Dura-Europos in the Columns of Zevra: A med Sakir Beg's Travels Along the Euphrates, Published and Annotated by the Ottoman Provincial Gazette of Baghdad - Anja Pistor-Hatam: Periodicals and the Diffusion of the Orientalist Discourse: H. M. Stanley's «In Darkest Africa» Presented to the Persian Public - Tobias Heinzelmann: The Hedgehog as Historian - Linguistic Archaism as a Means of Satire in the Early Work of Refik Halid Karay - Gisela Procházka-Eisl: Literature and the Satirical Press in Early Republican Turkey: The Case of the Frog - Evan Siegel: The Use of Classical Iranian Literature in Azerbaijani Satire: The Case of Molla Näsr od-Din - Martin Strohmeier: The Ottoman Press and the Turkish Community in Cyprus (1891-1931).