Did the Ottomans silence the media? MEMO in Conversation with Nir Shafir

Middle East Monitor Conversations

Pamphlets were the social media of their time, they helped spread dissent and were pivotal to the polarisation of politics during the Ottoman Empire, Nir Shafir guides us through the communications revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Ottoman Empire banned the printing press and stifled intellectual and economic development in the Middle East due to religious objections. At least this has been the popular narrative about the Ottomans for decades, despite the fact there is no evidence of a ban and throughout the empire's history, different printing presses emerged. However, the print press would not take off in a major way until the 18th century, but that does not mean a communication revolution did not occur in the Islamic world. Indeed the pamphlet took off across the empire in the 16th and 17th centuries, leading a radical transformation in ideas, identities, politics and to the creation of a public square. Pamphlets were the social media of their day and, much like today, they were pivotal to the polarisation of politics in the Empire. The Kadizadeli, a new religious movement, emerged through the pamphlet, fermenting dissent and discord. A new book 'The Order and Disorder of Communication: Pamphlets and Polemics in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire' takes us into the world of Ottoman polarisation. To discuss the book and the communication revolution during the Ottoman Empire MEMO in Conversation is joined by author Nir Shafir.
Shafir is an associate professor of history at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) whose work focuses on the Ottoman Empire/Middle East from 1200 to 1800. At UCSD, he teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on the history of the early modern and medieval Middle East, the history of science, global history and historical approaches to disinformation, misinformation and propaganda. He is an occasional contributor and editorial board member of the Ottoman History Podcast and served as its editor in 2018. Future projects include a social history of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire and an investigation into the cultural role of antiquity and antiquarianism in the early modern Middle East.