At the very start of doing this blog, I provided two posts on certain thematic clusters within Ibn Tulun’s oeuvre: one on plants and one on animals. There, I mentioned a first cluster in which he heavily relies on Prophetic traditions, food and food consumption. It is time to take a look at this cluster.
How the Ottomans won over Damascus: A graphic short story
A while back, a book chapter of mine was published in the volume The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition. Continuity and Change in Egypt and Bilād al-Shām in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Stephan Conermann and Gül Şen. In this I investigated architectural policies of the Ottoman sultan Selim immediately following his occupation of Damascus.
I still stand by most of the points I made in this publication. But I was unhappy that the illustrations into which I had put so much work were printed rather small. Thus, this post brings them back and, on their basis, retells the story of how the Ottomans not only conquered but won over Damascus.
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