Ottoman History Podcast

E475 | Nationalism is often seen as a natural political desire or as a modal form spread around the world by modern technologies and conditions, such as literacy or print media. In this episode, Aaron Jakes reframes the history of the nation-state by looking at the British occupation of Egypt which began in 1882. He shows how the specific conditions of colonial rule, as well as the ups and downs o...

E474 | In part two of our interview with Cemal Kafadar, we discuss how history writing might play an emancipatory role in the present. Turkey as a whole and Istanbul in particular seen grand urban development projects in the past decade, and we discuss how they have become flashpoints of protest for a number of reasons, including historical preservation. Kafadar links this issue to the broader que...

Episode 2 of our series "The Making of the Islamic World" deals with the history of the first two imperial dynasties: the Umayyads and the Abbasids.

E473 | For centuries, people have been documenting their travels with images, which purportedly function as visual evidence for someone’s experience far from home. This was no less the case for Europeans touring through Ottoman lands, who created a whole industry selling pictures from their time abroad. In this episode, Elisabeth Fraser explains how Western European artists at the turn of the eigh...

E472 | Sultan Selim I is well known for the conquests he pursued that brought places like Cairo, Damascus, and Mecca into the Ottoman Empire. But in this episode, we're exploring the life and times of Selim I in an entirely new light by placing the Islamic world at the center of the momentous events of the turn of the 16th century. We talk with historian Alan Mikhail about his new book God's Shado...

E471 | David Ohannessian is one of the foremost pioneers of the ceramic styles associated today with the city of Jerusalem, but the remarkable story of how he ended up there has never been properly told. Born in 1884 outside of Eskişehir (modern-day Turkey), David Ohannessian became a master in the iconic Kütahya style of Ottoman ceramics. He worked on important architectural projects of the Ottom...

E470 | Son elli yılda Türkiye’de tarih yazımında neler değişti? Osmanlı tarihi çalışmalarında hangi kaynaklar, hangi yöntemlerle kullanılıyor? Bu bölümde Edhem Eldem ile son kitabı Mitler, Gerçekler ve Yöntem: Osmanlı Tarihinde Aklıma Takılanlar üzerinden tarihçiliği ve Türkiye’de tarih yazımı üzerine konuşuyoruz. https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/07/edhem-eldem.html Edhem Eldem Boğaziçi...

E469 | Resettling refugee families sounds like a straightforwardly noble goal. But what happens when a particular definition of the family is used to restrict opportunities for resettlement? In this episode, we speak to anthropologist Sophia Balakian about how the concerns of governments and refugee organizations with "family composition fraud" have impacted refugee families that do not fit a norm...

E468 | In 1892, the renowned Islamic scholar and educator Shibli Nomani traveled to the Ottoman Empire, where he visited cities in modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. His travelogue, entitled Safarnāmah-i Rūm o Miṣr o Shām, was published in the Urdu language within his own lifetime. In this episode, we talk to Gregory Maxwell Bruce, the author of an annotated translation of Shibli's travelogue, w...

E467 | Modern Mediterranean history and Middle Eastern history rarely dialogue with each other. Whereas European ideas and practices of and in the Mediterranean have been studied thoroughly, only recently did researchers start to examine ideas and experiences through which actors on the Southern shore contributed to the making of the Mediterranean. In this episode, recorded in partnership with the...

E466 | As a site of recent civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, Sudan's history is often framed by violence. In this podcast, our guest Alden Young offers an alternative framing of Sudan's modern history, as we discuss Sudan's economy and its relationship to the broader Middle East from the 19th century onward. We discuss Sudan's unique experience of colonialism under Ottoman/Egyptian rule...

E465 | What was it like to be a foreigner living in Ottoman Istanbul? In this episode, our guest Robyn Dora Radway answers this question by providing an in-depth look at an unusual type of document: alba amicorum, or friendship albums, which were essentially the social media of the sixteenth century. Produced in the Habsburg embassy (aka the “German House"), these albums functioned like yearbooks...

E464 | In part one of our interview with Cemal Kafadar, we discuss his intellectual influences in the broadest sense, ranging from the Balkan accents of the Istanbul neighborhood in which he grew up to his early interest in theater and film. Kafadar talks about key events that shaped his worldview, including the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution. He also touches on the works of history and li...

E463 | What is Greek music? For our guest Panayotis League, it's no one thing. Rather, it is diversity that defines the many regional musical traditions of Greece and the broader Greek diaspora. In this episode, we discuss League's ethnomusicological research on Greek music in diaspora, and we explore the history and transformation of Ottoman Greek music before and after the exchange of population...

E462 | Reading and writing poems in praise of the prophet Mohammad is no simple matter in West Africa. Their composition was a vehicle for intellectual debate, just as their recitation was a means of spiritual transformation for the listener. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike, the author of a recent book about praise or "madih" poetry in West Africa, and we listen to recordings...

E461 | Music, at its best, can give us a reason to live. In this episode, Sylvia Alajaji discusses how in the wake of the Armenian Genocide, music not only served this function for Armenians, but also opened up broader questions about how to define what it meant to be Armenian. Drawing from her book Music and the Armenian Diaspora, she traces the Armenian musical cultures that emerged over a centu...

E460 | Erken modern dönemde Avrupa’nın oyun dünyası nasıldı? Avrupa’nın çeşitli ülkelerinde üretilen bu oyunlarda Türkler nasıl temsil ediliyordu? Bu bölümde, Dr. Fatih Parlak ile bu sorular etrafında sohbet ediyoruz. Parlak’ın doktora tezi batılı kaynaklarda yer alan Türk imgesini durağan kabul eden ana akım yaklaşımları yeniden değerlendiriyor ve bu imgenin çok katmanlı ve çok yönlü olarak değer...

E459 | In this episode, anthropologist and lawyer Darryl Li discusses his new book The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity. Based on ethnographic and archival research, the work explores the Bosnian jihad, in which several thousand Muslim volunteers ventured to the area to fight in response to the mass atrocities against Muslims in the midst of the Bosnian War of 1992 t...

E458 | In the seventeenth century, the city of Isfahan flourished as the capital of the Safavid Empire. How did this vibrant and growing city shape the very nature of its inhabitants? In this episode, we speak to Kathryn Babayan about how the city’s residents learned to read its new architecture and social life and how this budding urbanity in turn developed new ways of being and belonging among i...

E457 | Bu bölümde Selim Deringil ile, Birinci Dünya Savaşı sırasında Suriye vilayetlerinde bulunmuş dört Osmanlı-Türk yöneticisi ve entelektüeli, Ali Fuad Erden, Münevver Ayaşlı, Hüseyin Kazım Kadri ve Falih Rıfkı Atay’ın yazdıkları tanıklıklardan bölümler okuyarak Arap topraklarında Cihan Harbi’nin getirdiği muazzam siyasal ve toplumsal sarsıntıyı ve Osmanlı yönetici elitinin bu toprakları savaş...

E456 | What did science look like in early modern Istanbul? In this episode, Harun Küçük discusses his new book, Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732 (University of Pittsburgh Press), which tackles this question in a bold fashion. Tracing the impact of late seventeenth and early eighteenth transformations of the Ottoman economy, Küçük argues that the material condit...

E455 | The plague is caused by a bacteria called Yersinia pestis, which lives in fleas that in turn live on rodents. Coronavirus is not the plague. Nonetheless, we can find many parallels between the current pandemic and the experience of plague for people who lived centuries ago. This special episode of Ottoman History Podcast brings together lessons from our past episodes on plague and disease i...

E454 | Hindistan'da endemik bir hastalık olan kolera, 19. yüzyılda nasıl bir pandemiye dönüştü? Osmanlı Devleti kolerayla nasıl tanıştı ve hangi yöntemleri kullanarak mücadele etti? Bu bölümde Düzce Üniversitesi Tarih Bölümü'nden Doç. Dr. İsmail Yaşayanlar ile Osmanlı Devleti'nde salgın hastalıkları konuşuyoruz. Tıp ve bakteriyolojide kaydedilen ilerlemelerin ve modern devlet pratiklerinin kamu sa...

E453 | The Red Sea port of Mocha enjoyed ties with London, Amsterdam, Surat, and Jakarta in the eighteenth century. But not all of the ivory, porcelain, and coffee that passed through Mocha was sold for a profit. In this episode, Nancy Um brings the eye of an art historian to the history of exchange and diplomacy in the early modern Indian Ocean, focusing on the ceremonies and gift exchanges that...

E452 | During the 9th century, Arab armies from North Africa conquered Sicily, leading to four centuries of Muslim history on the island, which is now part of Italy. Sicily during that period has often been portrayed as an interfaith utopia where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived side by side, giving rise to a cultural synthesis, but as our guest William Granara explains, the reality was more co...