As part of his current research project on Hebrew printing in early 16th-century Constantinople (Istanbul), Aresty Visiting Scholar, Noam Sienna, has come across a singular text, printed in 1520s Constantinople, which uses the form of paraliturgical poetry (baqqasha) to celebrate the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes in 1522.
What might have motivated this composition among the Sephardi communities of the Ottoman Balkans, and what would it have meant to bring this text into print at the time?
Using the interdisciplinary methodologies of book history, this talk will attempt to situate this baqqasha in its literary, political, social, and material contexts.