Good Poets & Bad Poetry at the Ottoman Court

Episode 416

with Sooyong Kim

hosted by Nir Shafir and Elisabetta Benigni

What made for a good poet in the Ottoman Empire? It is a question that far too few historians tackle because Ottoman poetry, especially that of the court, is often regarded as inaccessible. In this podcast, Sooyong Kim brings to life the social world of Ottoman poets, focusing in particular on Zati, a poet plying his trade in the imperial court in the first half of the sixteenth century. We speak about how poets succeeded and failed and why Zati's successors erased him from the canon of good poetry.