... the Nahḍah. As in Eden, the garden is always threatened with a fall, and both Salīm al-Bustānī’s novel Al-Huyām fī jinān al-Shām (Love in the Gardens of Damascus) and Yūsuf al-Shalfūn’s novel Al-Shābb al- maghrūr (The Conceited Youth; serialized simultaneously over...

... and brokers became stock protagonists of novels by Salīm al-Bustānī and Yūsuf al- Shalfūn. Enabled by the telegraph, a new kind of speed emerged: merchants and traders relied on the press for the latest shipping news and commodity prices; a single year’s silk harvests could make or break fortunes...