Mukaddime (May 2019)
The Human Body as a Mirror in Ottoman Literature
Abstract
Recently, scholars of Islamic studies have become increasingly interested in the human body. Yet, the literary appearance of the body in different genres has not been studied in detail yet. The present article aims to demonstrate that the Islamic tradition has employed the human body as a mirror that reflects visually and physically various concepts and aspects of human characteristics. This article scrutinizes various genres and written formats with a specific focus on the body as it appears in legal and literary texts that became best sellers in the Ottoman Empire, including hagiographical works, heroic narratives, physiognomy books, and romances. This includes not only the texts originally produced in Turkish, but also the widely known and read texts translated from Arabic and Persian into Turkish. These texts demonstrate the various ways that the body was used as a platform on which, and through which, certain values could be displayed. As we have seen, while legal texts understand the body as a mirror that reflects one’s piety and/or sinfulness in both this world and hereafter, for literary genres the human body is a mirror through which one’s good or bad personal traits, faith, sanctity, and heroism, as well as depth of love and capacity for sexuality, could also be physically witnessed.
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