Ottoman Studies

While the high culture of the Ottoman Empire has been extensively documented, very little research or writing has taken place on the everyday life of the ordinary people during the centuries of Ottoman rule. Suraiya Faroqhi now fills the gap. This book explores the rich city life of Ottoman times form the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. Buildings and their social significance, the interaction of peoples and the classes from the varying religions and ethnicities, the arts and crafts and even the banalities associated with everyday life: bathing, the market, loving and grieving, are all explored for the first time with scholarly rigor and a general sense of fascination with a disappeared world.

This book is a study of the first Ottoman/Muslim printer Ibrahim Müteferrika and his printing activity in the first half of the eighteenth century. By reviewing the existing views in narratives dating from the fifteenth through the nineteenth century and modern scholarly works, most of them quite critically discussing the relatively late introduction of Ottoman Turkish/Muslim printing, the book argues that the delay was mainly due to the lack of an appropriate printer who would be capable and eager enough to set a printing house and whom the Ottoman authority could trust. By focusing on Müteferrika's western-formed mindset the book detects the influence of his printing enterprise upon the transition from scribal tradition to print culture.

“Tarihçilerin Kutbu” Halil İnalcık’ın o dönemlere ait özgün ve güvenilir kaynaklardan derlediği çalışması, sosyal tarihimizin az bilinen bir yönünü gündeme taşıyor. Abbasi ve Emevi geleneğinde de “saltanatın gereği” sayılan sazlı sözlü, içkili sakîli işret geleneğinin tarihini ve bu âdetin Osmanlı sarayındaki uygulamalarını anlatıyor. Bu âdete karşı gösterilen tepkileri de aktarıyor.

Hâs-Bağçe’de ‘Ayş u Tarab: Nedimler, Şâirler, Mutribler Osmanlı sarayında padişahların has-bağçede geçirdiği hoş vakitleri ve bu âdetin İslam öncesi İran imparatorluğundan Emevî, Abbasî ve Timurî saraylarına uzanan köklü geleneğini, o dönemlerde yazılmış değerli kaynaklardan derleyerek sunan bir çalışma. Padişah işret meclisi adıyla anılan bu eğlencelere yakın adamları olan nedimlerle birlikte katılır; şiir, musikî, ve raks sanatlarının en seçkin örnekleri eşliğinde eğlenirdi. Bu meclisler, hükümdarın ve imparatorluktaki seçkin sınıfların zevklerini ve yaşam tarzlarını hem yansıtır, hem yeniden biçimlendirirdi.
Çiçek bahçeleri, havuzlar, fıskiyeler, su kanalları, nahiller, buhurdanlar arasında, genç sâkîlerin içki sunduğu bir mecliste şiir okuyan, saz çalan, şarkı söyleyen usta sanatkârlar eşliğinde sürülen zevk u safa, tüm Ortadoğu saraylarında vazgeçilmez bir gelenekti. Emevî ve Abbasî dönemlerinden beri bu meclisler levâzim-i saltanat yani hükümdarlığın vazgeçilmez bir âdeti olarak kabul edilirdi. Avrupa saraylarında da bu geleneğin karşılığı olan regalia, yani olağanüstü ziyafetler ve eğlenceler, hükümdarlığın gerekleri arasında sayılmıştır. Doğu’da olsun, Batı’da olsun saray kültürü halk kültüründen her zaman farklı olmuş ve bu farklılık işret meclisi geleneğine ve gösterilen tepkilere de yansımıştır.
Bir yandan lalalar üzerinden şehzadelere, diğer yandan sâkînâmeler ve kabusnâmeler yoluyla üst sınıf mensuplarına en ince ayrıntısıyla aktarılan bu geleneğin muhalifleri de fütüvvetnâmeler ile kendini ifade ederdi. Halk için yazılmış ahlâk kitapları olan fütüvvetnâmelerde dinin emirlerine karşı hareketler daima kötülenmiş, şarap başlıca günah sayılmıştır. Ne var ki, sâkînâmeler ve kabusnâmeler dini kurallara aykırı sayılan unsurları İslamiyet ile bağdaştırmayı bir ödev saymıştır: bu eserlerde işret meclislerinin daima Tanrı ve Peygamber’e duâ ile başladığı ve tövbe ile son bulduğu hep vurgulanır. Zira insan zayıftır, günah işler, sonunda Gaffâru’l-zünûb -günahları affedici olan- rabbine sığınır. Osmanlı sosyal-kültürel tarihine bir katkı olarak hazırlanan bu eser, sarayın ve ona bağlı zarîfler denilen yüksek sınıfın kendine has geleneksel kültürü ile yaşamının az bilinen bir yanına ışık tutmaya çalışıyor.

-A comprehensive introduction to the art and culture of the Ottoman Empire -Volume 2 in the Connecting Art Histories in the Museum series, published in co-operation with the Berlin State Museums From patterned silks and porcelains to printed cottons and earthenwares, art and commodities flowed through Ottoman Constantinople, eddying around artisans, shop-keepers, residents and visitors. Guilds of spoon-makers and workers in mother-of-pearl, textile merchants from India and Italy, sellers of coffee and ceramics together thronged neighborhoods up and down the Bosphorus and along the Golden Horn. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to the art and material culture of the Ottoman Empire, taking as its premise the key role of every day activities. It also argues for new modes of studying all kinds of mass-produced goods destined for popular consumption. Also available in the series: Mshatta in Berlin: Keystone in Islamic Art, Connecting Histories in the Museum Vol. 1 ISBN 9783862063970 Praying for Myriad Virtues: On Ding Guanpeng's 'The Buddha Peaching' in the Berlin Collection, Connecting Art Histories in the Museum Vol. 3 ISBN 9783862064786

In Istanbul Exchanges, Mary Roberts offers an innovative way of understanding Orientalism by shifting the focus from Europe to Istanbul and examining the cross-cultural artistic networks that emerged in that cosmopolitan capital in the nineteenth century. European Orientalist artists began traveling to Istanbul in greater numbers in this period, just as the Ottoman elite was becoming more engaged with European art. By the 1870s, a generation of Paris-trained Ottoman artists had returned to Istanbul with ambitions to reshape the visual arts. Drawing on materials from an array of international archives, Roberts reveals that the diverse cultures and motivations that coalesced in this vibrant milieu resulted in a complex web of alliances and exchanges. With many artistic initiatives receiving patronage both from foreign diplomatic communities and from the Ottoman court, visual culture became a significant resource for articulating modern Ottoman identity. Roberts recasts the terms in which the nexus of Orientalist art and the culture of the late Ottoman Empire are understood by charting the nodes and vectors of these international artistic networks. Istanbul Exchanges is a major contribution to the transnational study of modern visual culture and global histories of art.

Tulips and coffee are defining cultural products of the Ottoman eighteenth century, along with their related institutions of palace and coffeehouse. These cultural products hold multiple meanings in the history and historiography of the period. They are associated with the daily life of common people and their sociabilities, on the one hand, and with the Ottoman court and imperial legitimacy, on the other. Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee offers a critical exploration of definitive cultural phenomena of the Ottoman eighteenth century, such as, the coffee house, the printing press, imperial architecture and royal pageantry and festivals. Chapters explore subjects ranging from the changing forms of imperial ritual in Ottoman circumcision celebrations, to the history of the construction of the famed palace of Saadabad, to the reputedly failed project of the first Ottoman printing press.

Balkanlar’da gündelik yaşam Osmanlı döneminde ciddi bir değişim ve gelişme göstermiş, Osmanlı Devleti sahip olduğu üstün kültürün etkisine girmişlerdir. Osmanlı Devleti’nin bölgede kurduğu vakıflar, imarethaneler, camiler, evler, kahvehaneler gündelik yaşamın şekillendiği mekânlardan bazıları olurken; dini törenler, şenlikler, yemekler gündelik yaşamın en güzel örneklerini oluştururlar.

From its birth in 1839, photography has participated in modernity as much as it has symbolized it. Its capacity to record and display and its claim to accuracy and truth intricately linked the new technology to the dynamism of the modern world. The Ottoman Empire embraced photography with great enthusiasm. In fact, the impact and meaning of photography were compounded by the thrust of modernization and westernization of the Tanzimat movement. By the turn of the century, photography in the Ottoman lands had become a standard feature of everyday life, of public media, and of the state apparatus.This volume explores some of the most striking aspects of the close connection between photography and modernity in the specificity of the Ottoman Empire. Much of the material concerns the display of modernity through photography, as was so often the case in the photographs and albums commissioned by the Sultan to showcase his empire for Western audiences. Nevertheless, modernity was often embedded in the photographic act, transforming it into a common and mundane practice. Be it in the form of images disseminated through the illustrated press, postcards sent out to family members or anonymous collectors, portraits presented to friends and acquaintances, or pictures taken of employees and convicts, photography had started to invade practically every sphere of public and private life.The visual world we live in today was born some 150 years ago. Camera Ottomana is both a homage to, and a critical assessment of, the local dimension of one of the most potent and transformative technological inventions of the recent past.

Osmanlı döneminde günlük yaşamı belirleyen fetvaları, birçok farklı açıdan değerlendirip masa üstüne yatıran bir inceleme:
Osmanlı’da Fetvalar ve Günlük Yaşam
Kitapta; kadına verilen değer, farklı etnik kökenlere sahip kişiler arasındaki hukuki denge, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet Türkiyesi’ne uzanan süreç içinde karşılaştırılarak toplumsal çözümlemelere varılıyor.
Bürokrat kimliğiyle tanıdığımız usta yazar Cahit Kayra’nın kaleme aldığı çalışma hiç kuşkusuz çok bilinmeyenli bir döneme ışık tutacak.

Osmanlı âdâb-ı muâşeret kitapları belirli bir muhatap kitle için görgü ve davranış kurallarını belirleyen rehberlerdir. Alafranga Halleri’nde Fatma Tunç Yaşar, geç dönem Osmanlı âdâb-ı muâşeret kitaplarının bağlamını, içeriğini ve gündemini, dönemin sosyo-politik ve kültürel atmosferi çerçevesinde inceliyor ve bunu yaparken modernleşme paradigmasının dar çerçevesine hapsolmaktan bilhassa kaçınıyor. Bu literatürün ortaya çıkışını Batılılaşma, modernleşme ve medenileşme gibi süreçlerin bir parçası ya da sonucu olarak değil; idealleri, özlemleri ve beklentileriyle Osmanlı âdâb-ı muâşeret yazarlarının bu süreçler ile farklı yüzleşme ve tavır alma çabaları olarak okuyor.

Sinemanın memleketteki ilk günleri, karmaşası, temaşası, şayia ve iştahı… Kalabalığı ve seyrekliği, ara durakları… Mekânlar, işletmeler, ilk gösterimler, isimler ve teferruatlar…Nezih Erdoğan, sinemanın İstanbul’daki ilk günlerini anlatıyor, arkeolojik bir kazıyı andıran titizlikle, sabır ve emek isteyen bir tutkuyla kayıp bir geçmişin izinden gidiyor.
Sinemanın İstanbul’daki İlk Yılları, modernleşme tarihimizin seyir ve sinemayla gelen büyük dönüşümünü resmediyor. Bir başvuru kitabından fazlası.

18. yüzyılda Osmanlı sarayında ilm-i nücûmun, yani astrolojinin, kurumsal düzeyde icra edilişi ve bir “devlet memuru” olarak müneccimbaşının varlığı bugün birçok kişiyi şaşırtabilir.30 yılı aşkın süredir ülkemizde astroloji alanındaki çalışmalarıyla tanınan R. Hakan Kırkoğlu yaptığı değerli araştırmayla, şimdiye kadar pek incelenmemiş bir alana girerek, bize Osmanlı sarayında astrolojinin ne için ve nasıl kullanıldığını, müneccimbaşının hangi sınırlar içinde hareket ettiğini gösteriyor.Kırkoğlu, üç padişah eskiterek 26 yıl boyunca müneccimbaşılık görevinde kalabilen Fethiyeli Halil Efendi (1699-1773) üzerinden Osmanlı ulemasının ilm-i nücûma bakışı ve Osmanlı sarayında siyaset ile kehanet arasındaki ilişkiyi maharetle ortaya koyuyor.

In A Social History of the Late Ottoman Women: New Perspectives, Duygu K ksal and Anastasia Falierou bring together new research on women of different geographies and communities of the late Ottoman Empire. Making use of archives, literary works, diaries, newspapers, almanacs, art works or cartoons, the contributors focus particularly on the ways in which women gained power and exercised agency in late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey. The articles convincingly show that women's agency cannot be unearthed without narrating how women were involved in shaping their own and others' lives even in the most unexpected areas of their existence. The women's activities described here do not simply reflect modernizing trends or westernizing attitudes--or their defensive denial. They provide an array of local responses where 'the local' can never be found (and should never be conceptualized) in its initial, unchanged, or authentic state.

Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul explores biography writing and dream narratives in seventeenth-century Istanbul. It focuses on the prominent biographer 'Aṭā'ī (d. 1637) and with his help shows how learned circles narrated dreams to assess their position in the Ottoman enterprise. This book demonstrates that dreams provided biographers not only with a means to form learned communities in a politically fragile landscape but also with a medium to debate the correct career paths and social networks in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Istanbul. By adopting a comparative approach, this book engages with current scholarly dialogues about life-writing, dreams, and practices of remembrance in Habsburg Spain, Safavid Iran, Mughal India and Ming China. Recent studies have shown the shared rhythms between these contemporaneous dynasties and the Ottomans, and there is now a strong interest in comparative approaches to examining cultural life. This first English-language monograph on Ottoman dreamscapes addresses this interest and introduces a world where dreams changed lives, the dead appeared in broad daylight, and biographers invited their readers to the gardens of remembrance. 　

Most of the articles contained in the present volume are of fairly recent vintage, having been published after 1990 and in quite a few instances, after 1995, They thus reflect the zeitgeist of the 1990s, which has been characterized by a return of interest in the individual, and also in small groups such as households, guilds or neighborhoods.

Türkiye’de yaşanan Batılılaşma projesinin bazı boyutlarının 19. yüzyılın ortalarından itibaren gerçekleşmeye başladığı hatta Tanzimat öncesine dayandığı söylenebilir. Ama bunun radikal bir Avrupalılaşma projesi olarak uygulanması ve önceden temelleri atılan veya düşünülen birçok yenilik hareketinin isminin konup geliştirilmesi, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin kurulmasıyla gerçekleşmiştir. Osmanlı-Cumhuriyet bağları açısından baktığımızda "Toplumsal yaşam, gündelik hayat, şehir yaşamı, aile, kadın, moda, eğlence, yeni sosyal mekanlar ve oluşan düşüncelerde ne tür bir benzerlik, süreklilik ve değişim yaşanıyor?" veya "Bu sürekliliğin tarihi süreç içerisinde ölçüsü ne kadar ve ne ölçüde değişimlere uğramıştır?" soruları çalışmamızın temelini oluşturmuştur. Yrd. Doç. Dr. İlbeyi Özer’in arşiv taramaları ışığında meydana getirdiği bu kitap, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e sosyal ve gündelik hayattaki değişim ile eğlence ve moda anlayışını İstanbul merkezli olarak ele alan geniş kapsamlı bir çalışmadır.

The Age of Beloveds offers a rich introduction to early modern Ottoman culture through a study of its beautiful lyric love poetry. At the same time, it suggests provocative cross-cultural parallels in the sociology and spirituality of love in Europe--from Istanbul to London--during the long sixteenth century. Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakli provide a generous sampling of translations of Ottoman poems, many of which have never appeared in English, along with informative and inspired close readings. The authors explain that the flourishing of Ottoman power and culture during the "Turkish Renaissance" manifested itself, to some degree, as an "age of beloveds," in which young men became the focal points for the desire and attention of powerful officeholders and artists as well as the inspiration for a rich literature of love. The authors show that the "age of beloveds" was not just an Ottoman, eastern European, or Islamic phenomenon. It extended into western Europe as well, pervading the cultures of Venice, Florence, Rome, and London during the same period. Andrews and Kalpakli contend that in an age dominated by absolute rulers and troubled by war, cultural change, and religious upheaval, the attachments of dependent courtiers and the longings of anxious commoners aroused an intense interest in love and the beloved. The Age of Beloveds reveals new commonalities in the cultural history of two worlds long seen as radically different.

The subject of this two-volume publication is an inventory of manuscripts in the book treasury of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II from his royal librarian ʿAtufi in the year 908 (1502-3) and transcribed in a clean copy in 909 (1503-4). This unicum inventory preserved in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudom nyos Akad mia K nyvt ra Keleti Gyűjtem ny, MS T r k F. 59) records over 5,000 volumes, and more than 7,000 titles, on virtually every branch of human erudition at the time. The Ottoman palace library housed an unmatched encyclopedic collection of learning and literature; hence, the publication of this unique inventory opens a larger conversation about Ottoman and Islamic intellectual/cultural history. The very creation of such a systematically ordered inventory of books raises broad questions about knowledge production and practices of collecting, readership, librarianship, and the arts of the book at the dawn of the sixteenth century. The first volume contains twenty-eight interpretative essays on this fascinating document, authored by a team of scholars from diverse disciplines, including Islamic and Ottoman history, history of science, arts of the book and codicology, agriculture, medicine, astrology, astronomy, occultism, mathematics, philosophy, theology, law, mysticism, political thought, ethics, literature (Arabic, Persian, Turkish/Turkic), philology, and epistolary. Following the first three essays by the editors on implications of the library inventory as a whole, the other essays focus on particular fields of knowledge under which books are catalogued in MS T r k F. 59, each accompanied by annotated lists of entries. The second volume presents a transliteration of the Arabic manuscript, which also features an Ottoman Turkish preface on method, together with a reduced-scale facsimile.

Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in its Illustrated Manuscripts focuses on a period of great artistic vitality in the region of Baghdad, a frontier area that was caught between the rival Ottoman and the Safavid empires. In the period following the peace treaty of 1590, a corpus of more than thirty illustrated manuscripts and several single page paintings were produced. In this book Melis Taner presents a contextual study of the vibrant late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century Baghdad art market, opening up further avenues of research on art production in provinces and border regions.

Bir ibadetin de ötesinde oruç “imanın, İslam topraklarında gözlemleyebileceğimiz en önemli kolektif tezahürüdür.” Ünlü Osmanlı tarihçisi François Georgeon bu kitabında 19. ve 20. yüzyıl İstanbul’undaki siyasal reformlar ve kentsel dönüşümler çerçevesinde Ramazan yaşantısındaki değişimi ele alıyor.İstanbul sanılanın aksine 1900’lere kadar Müslümanların çoğunluğu oluşturmadığı çok dinli bir topluma ev sahipliği yaptı. Ramazan pratiklerinde o dönemden bu yana nasıl bir değişim gerçekleşti? Georgeon sosyalleşme biçimleri, toplumsal eğlence ve alışkanlıklar, gösteriler, gece hayatı, siyasal merasimler, gayrimüslimlerin ve kadınların ay boyunca kamusal alandaki konumları gibi çok çeşitli konular çerçevesinde Ramazanın İstanbul’daki evrimini anlatıyor.Jean-François Pérouse ise yazdığı kapanış yazısıyla Georgeon’un Cumhuriyet’in başlangıcına kadar getirdiği bu tarihi günümüz İstanbul’u ile bağlantılandırıyor.François Georgeon Fransız tarihçi, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti tarihi konularında CNRS’te uzman araştırmacı ve öğretim görevlisidir. Bir İmparatorluğun Ölümü, Osmanlı-Türk Modernleşmesi, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Yaşamak, Sultan Abdülhamid, Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Kökenleri isimli kitapları Türkçeye çevrilmiştir.

Living in the Ottoman Realm brings the Ottoman Empire to life in all of its ethnic, religious, linguistic, and geographic diversity. The contributors explore the development and transformation of identity over the long span of the empire's existence. They offer engaging accounts of individuals, groups, and communities by drawing on a rich array of primary sources, some available in English translation for the first time. These materials are examined with new methodological approaches to gain a deeper understanding of what it meant to be Ottoman. Designed for use as a course text, each chapter includes study questions and suggestions for further reading.

Far from simply being a centre of military and economic activity, the Ottoman Empire represented a vivid and flourishing cultural realm. The artefacts and objects that remain from all corners of this vast empire illustrate the real and everyday concerns of its subjects and elites and, with this in mind, Suraiya Faroqhi, one of the most distinguished Ottomanists of her generation, has selected 40 of the most revealing, surprising and striking.Each image - reproduced in full colour - is deftly linked to the latest historiography, and the social, political and economic implications of her selections are never forgotten. In Faroqhi's hands, the objects become ways to learn more about trade, gender and socio-political status and open an enticing window onto the variety and colour of everyday life, from the Sultan's court, to the peasantry and slavery. Amongst its faiences and etchings and its sofras and carpets, A Cultural History of the Ottomans is essential reading for all those interested in the Ottoman Empire and its material culture. Faroqhi here provides the definitive insight into the luxuriant and varied artefacts of Ottoman world.

Using a wealth of contemporary Ottoman sources, this book recreates the social history of Istanbul, a huge, cosmopolitan metropolis and imperial capital of the Ottoman Empire. Seat of the Sultan and an opulent international emporium, Istanbul was also a city of violence shaken regularly by natural disasters and by the turmoil of sultanic politics and violent revolt. Its inhabitants, entertained by imperial festivities and cared for by the great pious foundations which touched every aspect of their lives, also amused themselves in the numerous pleasure gardens and the many public baths of the city. While the book is focused on Istanbul, it presents a broad picture of Ottoman society, how it was structured and how it developed and transformed across four centuries. As such, the book offers an exciting alternative to the more traditional histories of the Ottoman Empire.