Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History

Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East

by Didem Havlioğlu

The early modern Ottoman poet Mihrî Hatun (1460-1515) succeeded in drawing an admiring audience and considerable renown during a time when few women were accepted into the male-dominated intellectual circles. Her poetry collection is among the earliest bodies of women's writing in the Middle East and Islamicate literature, providing an exceptional vantage point on intellectual history. With this volume, Havlioglu not only gives readers access to this rare text but also investigates the factors that allowed Mihri to survive and thrive despite her clear departure from the cultural norms of the time. Placing the poet in the context of her era and environment, Havlioglu finds that the poet's dramatic, masterful performance and subversiveness are the very reasons for her endurance and acclaim in intellectual history. Mihri Hatun performed in a way that embraced her marginal position as a woman and leveraged it to her advantage. Havlioglu's astute and nuanced portrait gives readers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a woman poet in a highly gendered society and suggests that women have been part of intellectual history long before the modern period.

Genres: History, Poetry

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 29, 2017

Reviews

[Levent Mollamustafaoglu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an eye-opening book which teaches one a lot of interesting facts about the Early Modern Ottoman literary/poetic traditions and how one woman literally invented new styles and techniques to survive as a poet in a male-dominated environment. The text first explains the concept of "platonic" love found in most poems of this era and demonstrates the fact that this abstract concept of love/lover/beloved is actually imagined taking place in a homosocial environment. In most cases the love described in the poem is a platonic one - an idea - and the abstract "beloved" used in the poems are actually male, since the Ottoman concept at that time was to portray positive attributes to males only.

Mihri Hatun, a well-educated woman from a prominent family in Amasya (where Ottoman princes are trained and get ready for their future rule) bends the rules of contemporary poetry to portray a male beloved whilst not hiding the fact that the poet is a woman.

A well-constructed and structural commentary, using intertextual comparisons and putting together the scant information surviving from that era to come up with a compelling case about the existence and contribution of woman pets in Early Modern Ottoman Literature. A must read for History and Literature fans....