“Coming to our Senses: Historicizing Sound and Noise in the Middle East”

Abstract

This speculative essay is a call for further research and the beginning of a long overdue conversation among historians of the Middle East about the importance of sounds and soundscapes in studying history. In the process, I will suggest some research strategies for uncovering the sounds and noises of the past – especially before the introduction of recording technologies. All the while, I hope to encourage more multidisciplinary conversations by Middle East historians with other scholarly disciplines that examine sound and listening.

Sawt, Bodies, Species.

“…More generally, the perceived experience of social, spatial, and temporal change arguably led to the emergence of early forms of modern subjectivity in Morocco, albeit very unevenly, and despite the resistance to modernization on the part of the country's successive rulers before French occupation. Fahmy (2013) proposes possible directions for a sonic approach to early modern history in the Middle East, suggesting that information about sound, noise, and aurality could be retrieved from sharia cases, civil courts, and police records of the nineteenth century. Additional elements for the reconstruction of past soundscapes may be found in the material-architectural study of mosques and churches, as well as in written accounts of the trans formations of urban space.…”