Abstract

Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq’s Taʿlīq (d. 1510) is one of only a few extant examples that survived from an indigenous Arabic diary tradition which lasted about a thousand years.

Torsten Wollina discusses it as an ego-document shedding new light on the interdependence of text form and the Arabic diary which could be both a primary source for historians and a pragmatic text for an author’s everyday use.

These findings are elaborated on with regard to how Ibn Ṭawq wrote about his household and what it tells us about his attitudes towards and interests in the wider world (his „Lebenswelt“). Finally, the text is questioned for what it betrays of Ibn Ṭawq’s (intended) self-image, self-consciousness, and personality, demonstrating the complex relations between an author, his text and the world he lived in.

Bio

Dr. Torsten Wollina is a research associate at the Orient Institute Beirut since March 2014. After graduating from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, he wrote his Ph.D. at Free University Berlin. From 2012-2013 was a fellow at the „Anne Marie Schimmel Kolleg. History and Society during the Mamluk Era (1250-1517)“ at the University of Bonn. His new research project is concerned with the perception of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and Bilad al-Sham by their new subjects.

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