Location BIAA, Atatürk Bulvarı 154/1 and online
Date and time
Tuesday 16 December 2025
14:30 - 14:30 (London GMT)
17:30 - 17:30 (Ankara UTC+3)
Speakers
Dr Selim S. Kuru
University of Washington
This talk examines two little-known copies of Enderunlu Fâzıl’s Zenânnâme (British Library, Or. 7094) and Hubânnâme (the Edwin Binney, 3rd Collection at LACMA, M.91.93).
Produced as derivative copies of the presentation manuscript in Istanbul University (T 5502), these books, now physically parted, mirror Fâzıl’s own textual separation of the world’s beautiful young men from its women. Reading the two works as a satirical diptych, I argue that Fâzıl constructs a taxonomy of human difference that unsettles gender binaries, refracts desire across age and sex, and positions the poet, an “Ottomanized” Arab palace insider, above the world he describes.
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Selim Sırrı Kuru is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he directs the Turkish & Ottoman Studies Program. His research focuses on early modern Ottoman literary cultures, sexuality, and courtly poetics, with emphasis on manuscript history and cross-regional literary transmission. He competed a scholarly annotated edition and translation of the Hubânnâme, Zenânnâme, Çengînâme, and Şevkengîz for the David Collection (Copenhagen). He teaches courses on Ottoman literature, world literature, and graphic narratives on the Middle East.