TALK: Noam Sienna
鈥淧rinted in Ishmael鈥檚 Realm: Technology and Theology in an Ottoman Jewish Press鈥�
Please join us for a lecture given by Dr. Noam Sienna (University of Toronto). The event will take place in the Department of Classics Library, rm. 1184, Marian McCain Arts and Social Sciences Building.
Poster text:
Within two years of the Expulsion from Spain, a family of Sephardi exiles in Ottoman Constantinople had established a printing press, which produced the first book known to have been printed with moveable type in the Islamic world: the Arba鈥檃 Turim (Istanbul, 1493). The Ibn Nahmias family and their collaborators continued to print books for the following four decades, creating an invaluable window into the experience of Sephardi Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the sixteenth century.
In this presentation, Dr. Sienna explores the work of the Ibn Nahmias press in Constantinople, surveying not only the content of the books they produced, but also the significance of their physical and visual forms, as windows into the connections and transformations of Mediterranean Sephardi communities between the Iberian peninsula, Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Focusing on the role of printing in the religious and social transformations of the early modern world, this presentation will offer a glimpse into the unique atmosphere of an early modern Jewish print house in the Islamic world.
Categories
Faculty and Staff, Lectures, Seminars, Current Students, Community Interest
Time