In the early days of the Almohad movement, Ibn Tumart used to line up his followers and give them each a syllable of a Quranic verse to memorise and together they were able to say whole phrases in Arabic, a language they did not speak.

I really enjoy spending time with the community of scholars at the Feminist Theory Workshop!

I accidentally referred to Muhteşem Yüzyıl as a documentary in class this week..

my Ottoman cultural history seminar has filled up! I can't quite believe it!

just learned about Ghoulyabani, an evil creature as tall as a minaret, and might have to make late-Ottoman ghost stories my next research project

The dean of detainees, the oldest detainee in Syria, "Raghid Al-Tartari", who refused Hafez Al-Assad's orders to bomb #Hama in the eighties After 43 years of detention, he is free now #Syria

Unimaginable. The liberation of the women/children section of Sednaya prison. Cut off from the world, they’ve no idea what’s happened. A man shouts: “You are all free now. Don’t be scared. Go home.” “What happened?” a woman asks “The Regime fell. You are free.” #Syria 🇸🇾 (🎥Credit: Galyarahal)

it is beautiful watching Syrians free themselves and each other. I remember talking with a soldier of the Free Syria Army in 2011 about his hopes for a post-Assad future and it is finally here

Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Ottomanist: is the cup a fincan or a bardak?

as an Ottomanist I think the one i return to over and over is Fatma Müge Göçek's "Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire". it's just bristling with ideas and sets out all the major themes in such a generative way

ooh this is tricky!! on the affect side of things, i think it's probably "Desire/Love" by Lauren Berlant chosen over the others just because it's an excellent intro to desire and how it is taken into other affective structures, including love

I was teaching the Sykes-Picot agreement today and had a student interrupt mid-lecture to say "but that's not what the Middle East actually looks like" and then I put up the next slide which was just a big picture of Mustafa Kemal smiling

can't wait to read this!

I just taught the outbreak of the First World War and got to show my students this wild postcard documenting German orientalist brainworms

just a little self promo: My dissertation "Feeling Like a State: Anxiety and Optimism in the late-Ottoman Empire" won the Malcolm H Kerr dissertation prize at MESA 2023. I'm always anxious to talk about feelings, the state, modernity, and Lauren Berlant