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Abstract
The genre of wonders (acaib) in Middle Eastern literatures has long been popular among both scholars and general readers: for the former, it is a fruitful venue for exploring literary production, concepts of natural and supernatural, and storytelling traditions; for the latter, it kindles images of the exotic and marvelous East, best exemplified in collections like the Arabian Nights. This paper aims to look at the acaib genre in a comparative perspective within the Islamicate and European literary traditions by close-reading of a set of acaib entries in a miscellanea. In addition to including a copy of the free translation Qazwini's Acibül-mahluqat by Ahmed Bican dating to the fifteenth century, the manuscript has ninety-one entries titled interchangeably garibe, acibe and nevadir (between folios 278b-294a), which deal with reports of natural events, fabulous animals, unexpected births, etc. Almost half of these entries are about water, its wonders, and benefits. Through the close-reading of the wondrous properties allocated to water, this paper aims to trace early modern mentalities towards natural and wondrous, by thinking about narrators and audiences reproducing and consuming the acaib genre. In addition to that, by placing these reports within the larger framework of mirabilia about water in Islamicate and European literary cultures, this paper questions the "locality" and "universality" of the genre and how it transgressed the boundaries of time, language, and literary traditions. It will question the historiography on wonders by discussing the impact of approaches that isolate the genre to the "Middle East" and thus contribute to the exoticization of not only the genre but of Middle Eastern literatures.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
13th-18th Centuries