Leisure Gardens, Secular Habits: The Culture Of Recreation In Ottoman Damascus

Download
67-80.pdf
2010
Akkach , Samer
Show full item record
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
300
views
149
downloads
Leisure gardens and the culture of recreation associated with them have long been an integral part of urban life in Middle Eastern cities. Yet only little has been uncovered on urban landscape history and associated spatial practices in provincial Ottoman centres. Our knowledge of this aspect of socio-urban life has thus remained limited. This is mainly due to the paucity of information on urban landscape in conventional historical sources, and the disappearance of most gardens from the cities’ fabric during the rapid expansion of modern urbanisation in the nineteenth and twentieth century. This study attempts to shed fresh light on leisure gardens and the culture of recreation in Ottoman Damascus in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. It explore the topic through an unconventional source: an anthology of poems by a leading mystic, ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī. Titled the Wine of Babel, this hitherto unexamined source documents the recreational activities of a unique religious personality, whose poetry and other notations offer valuable insights into this vivaciously expressive aspect of urban life. While his notes give us the names of many gardens and places of recreation, which no longer exist, his poetry enable us to gain insights into the aesthetic sensibility of the period. This paper focuses on the aesthetic sensibility revealed in his poetry by tracing, on one hand, the ways in which poetic imageries and figurative expressions were used to map emotive experiences over specific visual fields, and, on another, the role gender played in determining the general aesthetic attitude towards nature and landscape among the educated elite in the Damascene society.
Al-Nābulusī, Damascus, Garden, Recreation, Poetry, Ottoman, Early modern
http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/2010/cilt27/sayi_1/67-80.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/50826
Department of Architecture, Article

Suggestions

A Policy framework for sustainable tourism management in historic cities: the case of Amasya
Sağıroğlu, Müzeyyen; Akkar Ercan, Zübeyde Müge; Department of City and Regional Planning (2016)
The cultural heritage values in cities represent great opportunities for the tourism development. The conservation of the authentic character and identity of cultural heritage values and use of them without any degradation are important when considering the needs of present generation and the rights of future generations. From the global point of view, the tourism industry is seen as a fundamental component of economic development and continuously presents positive impact on the economy, environment and soc...
Heritage conservation via social sustainability in historic urban landscapes: principles, strategies and proposals for sakarya quarter in Ankara/Turkey /
Güner, Beril; Bilgin Altınöz, Ayşe Güliz; Restoration in Department of Architecture (2015)
Historic urban landscapes comprehend the natural and built environment as well as the social and cultural practices, values, meanings and identification of the communities that interact with them. In this sense, historic urban landscapes, with their entire tangible and intangible characteristic, have been shaping and evolving continuously by the communities and have been transferred to present generations. Thus, providing the sustainability of the communities is necessary to provide the continuance of histo...
Living apartment buildings in Ankara and their relation with the city
Gedikli, Bahar (null; 2019-07-09)
Innovative buildings, with their design aspects, functions and environmental relations, can enrich urban areas spatially and functionally. This study explores inner-city apartment buildings in Ankara that adapted a similar approach to Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation (dwelling unit), and analyzes how they have contributed to their surrounding area. Le Corbusier's approach to city planning involved geometric forms. In his works on city planning, dwelling is the fundamental element. One of his well-known con...
ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF INTERVENTIONS IN URBAN HERITAGE PLACES: SİVAS CITADEL PROJECT
Akça, İlknur; Özçakır, Özgün; Bilgin Altınöz, Ayşe Güliz; Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Department of Architecture (2022-12-16)
The societies sustain their identities through heritage places, and heritage places have diverse values. When the values are protected, the heritage place is preserved. In that regard, the things that need to be conserved in heritage places are values. Therefore, conserving cultural heritage is a value-based process. However, most of the historical heritage places in the city centers have become significant in recent years exclusively because of their central location and high land value. Especially municip...
Evolving roles of public spaces in post industrial cities
Akkar Ercan, Zübeyde Müge (2010-07-11)
From agora of the polis, and open market places of medieval cities to today’s shopping malls, corporate plazas, atria and festival places, public spaces have been one of the crucial components of cities for centuries. Despite their evident importance in cities, public spaces have become subject to broad concern over the last three decades, particularly under the influence of globalisation and privatisation policies, city-marketing and imaging programmes and urban regeneration projects that have led to a sig...
Citation Formats
S. Akkach, “Leisure Gardens, Secular Habits: The Culture Of Recreation In Ottoman Damascus,” ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 67–80, 2010, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/2010/cilt27/sayi_1/67-80.pdf.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr