In Other Worlds? Mapping Out The Spatial Imaginaries Of 18th-Century Chroniclers From The Ottoman Levant (Bilad al-Sham)

Abstract

Still, geography mattered. Even in the absence of spatial visualization techniques to orient the imagination, and a modern state apparatus to condition the citizens into a collective identity that is territorially bound, pre-moderns did identify with spaces outside their immediate environment. They too employed their imagination in constructing spatial identities. However, what is intriguing is not the fact of the existence of a pre-modern spatial imaginary as such, but rather how variegated these imaginaries were.