Collective Authorship in Ottoman Story Books

Abstract

Authorship in the Ottoman manuscript culture displays a much more diverse and layered picture than the current perception on authorship that is attributed to a specific person, or people. This article, based on the 18th and 19th century versions of popular heroic stories, ponders on a collective and cumulative form of authorship in which various agents such as bookdealers, authors/scribes and readers were involved. As a result of collective authorship, this study observes on various records such as ownership statements and colophons alongside textual features on these story manuscripts that were mostly read aloud in the collective reading sessions. Because of the scantiness of ownership statements and colophons, it argues that not specific persons but a whole community were active both in the terms of ownership and production of these books. To support this argument, the article examines distinct scripts other than the scribe’s, besides the textual repairments and additions made after the original copying. By discussing the non-ulema textual production through visuals, this study aims to contribute to the fields of “Ottoman book culture,” and “the history of reading and writing.”