Hormuz: Trade and Adab in the Early Modern Gulf

Hormuz—the island and the strait at the entrance to the Gulf—has been not only a crossroads of trade, but also of literary and ethical codes of Adab. Indeed, the maritime space has not only been a site of exchange of these codes, but has held back through them the centrifugal forces of conflict and political volatility. The mercantile and the poetic were co-constitutive: one Italian diplomat, at once merchant and poet writing from Hormuz in 1587, invokes Dante to describe Persian poetry as a hedge against the instability of trade and power. Professor Yousefzadeh (https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/mahnaz-yousefzadeh.html?challenge=d06e90d7-4d8f-4b88-9d8c-10b73beb60f1) will present this argument through a series of early modern case studies.Hosted by Liberal Studies Global Cultures and Prof. Abhishek Bhattacharyya (https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/abhishek-bhattacharyya.html) as part of the Global Cultures (https://liberalstudies.nyu.edu/academics/gls-curriculum/global-cultures.html?challenge=d06e90d7-4d8f-4b88-9d8c-10b73beb60f1) Lunchtime Lecture Series. Refreshments will be served.