Ottoman History Podcast

E212 | Much of the scholarship on the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, which had its roots in the sociopolitical context of the 8th century Iraq, focuses on the early centuries of that school's development. Meanwhile, recent scholarship on the later periods emphasizes the transformations within the Hanafi jurisprudence in the early modern and modern periods, particularly as a result of the...

E211 | When employing textual sources for history, it is easy to lose track of the fact that experiences of the past were immersed in rich sensory environments in which "the word" was only a small component of daily life. How can we restore the sights, sounds, and sensations of the Ottoman past? In this episode, Nina Ergin presents some of her research involving the sonic history of the Ottoman Em...

E210 | The subject of health in the modern period is often discussed as a transition from traditional to scientific medicine and what Foucault has called "the birth of the clinic." Such perspectives view medicine and healing through the lens of changing methods, forms of knowledge, and authority. In this podcast, our guest Sylvia Wing Önder offers a slightly different approach to the subject in a...

E209 | Moroccan folk literature has drawn the attention of researchers for over a century, beginning with the earliest French colonial ethnographers' exhaustive studies of Moroccan dialects through recordings of poems, folktales, and proverbs. The influence of these stories can also be found in the work of some of Morocco's most internationally acclaimed authors such as Mohammed Mrabet. On this po...

E208 | Osmanlı tarihinde, tıpkı dünya tarihinde olduğu gibi, büyük toplumsal dönüşümlere, devrimlere, savaşlara ve barışlara dair anlatılara erkeklerin eylemleri, sesleri ve kalemleri egemen olurken, kadınlar ve çocuklar sıklıkla bu anlatıların ya dışında bırakıldı yada yardımcı öğesi olageldi. Sosyal ve feminist tarih yazımının en önemli katkısı kadın anlatılarını merkez alarak ve görünür kılarak...

E207 | The 1925 Syrian Revolt was catalyzed by contestation over authority between local notables and the French mandate government, but it soon spread throughout the mandate as a form of anti-French protest. In this episode, Reem Bailony explores the ways in which the Great Syrian Revolt was also a transnational affair, sharing her research on the activities of the Greater Syrian diaspora in the...

E206 | In this episode, Sherene Seikaly discusses the intersection of politics and economics under the British Mandate in Palestine through the lens of Palestinian capitalists, who are the subject of her new book entitled Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press). More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/10/capitalism-palestine.html Sherene Sei...

E205 | In the 1920s and 1930s, politicians, intellectuals, and members of the public joined a lively debate about the issue of female suicide in Turkey. While we cannot know whether the rates of female suicide were actually skyrocketing during this period, the fact that so many public figures began to treat this issue as a central concern tells us a lot about the relationship between the modernizi...

E204 | In the decades following the Armenian genocide, communities of the diaspora began to document the life of Ottoman Armenians in the towns and villages of Anatolia and publish their material in memory books aimed at preserving and transmitting Armenian histories for posterity. Largely composed in Armenian and languages of the diaspora, these books have circulated in small circles for decades...

E203 | The history of the modern world is one of overlapping displacements that have severed ties not only between people and their ancestral homes but also their histories. The writing of village history among displaced communities such as Ashkenazi Jews and Ottoman Armenians has emerged as a means of preserving that history for future generations in the diaspora. In this episode, Rochelle Davis...

E202 | Bath houses or hamams were mainstays of the Ottoman city. But as semi-public spaces where people could mix and implicitly transgressed certain boundaries regarding nudity, they were also spaces that produced anxiety and calls for regulation. In this episode, Elyse Semerdjian discusses how in a certain time and place of eighteenth century Aleppo, the issue of Muslim and Christian women bathi...

E201 | The production of motion pictures began in the 1890s, and before long, films were being screened throughout the world, including in Ottoman cities. How did Ottoman audiences receive the advent of film? What was the role of the state in promoting or limiting the spread of motion pictures? What were the contents of the earliest films shown and produced in the Ottoman Empire? In this episode,...

E200 | "Sectarianism" is a a slippery term, now used to describe everything from Saudi Arabian foreign policy to the daily functioning of Lebanese politics to the rhetoric of the Islamic State. In this episode, historian Ussama Makdisi takes on the history of both the term "sectarian" and the kinds of communal political divides it is often used to describe in the late Ottoman Empire and the 20th c...

E199 | Within the historiography, major shifts and developments in schools of thought and legal interpretation have dominated the narrative of how Islamic law has spread and transformed across time. However, as our guest Guy Burak argues in his new monograph, The Second Formation of Islamic Law, structural changes in the relationship between state, society, and law are also an important part of th...

E198 | The Treaty of Berlin in 1878 brought an Austro-Hungarian occupation to many parts of the Balkans such as Bosnia that had lived under Ottoman rule for centuries. While this was certainly a historical rupture, as Leyla Amzi-Erdoğdular emphasizes, this period also witnessed some important continuities with the Ottoman past. In this episode, we discuss Dr. Amzi-Erdoğdular's ongoing book project...

E197 | This podcast explores murky boundaries in two senses. The first has to do with Anglo-Ottoman commerce and diplomacy in the early modern period. Like the more well-known case of the the British East India Company in South Asia, British diplomatic representation in Constantinople was also controlled by a corporate entity. Known as the Levant Company, the institution ensured that from the late...

E196 | During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, scientists and physicians the world over began to think of sex as something that could be studied and understood through rational methods. In places like Germany, these sexologists were associated with progressive political movements that combated stigmatization of homosexuality and contraception and broke taboos regarding issues such...

E195 | Visit http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/08/ottoman-empire-photography-edhem-eldem.html for images associated with the podcast. Photography came to the Ottoman Empire almost immediately after its invention in 1839. Some of the major figures and studios involved in Ottoman photography have been identified, and certain stylistic aspects of images produced in and of the Ottoman Empire s...

E194 | At the turn of the twentieth century, Turkish-speaking Greek intellectuals of Cappadocian origin found themselves between mutually opposed Turkish and Greek nationalist ideologies. Their unique cultural background and their belief in the promises of the Young Turk Revolution allowed them to develop an alternative brand of Greek identity, one that combined cultural Hellenism with political l...

E193 | From Baghdad to Cairo to Edirne, hospitals were major and integral components of medieval and early modern Islamic cities. But what role did they play in these cities and their societies? Were they sites for the development of medical knowledge? In this podcast, Professor Ahmed Ragab examines the history and significance of hospitals in Mamluk Egypt and Syria. He argues that we must view th...

E192 | Bathhouses or hamams are a well-known feature of the Ottoman city typically associated with leisure. However, as our guest Nina Ergin explains, the history of hamams also provides a window onto many socioeconomic and political issues in the Ottoman Empire. In this episode, we discuss her research regarding the hamams of Istanbul during the mid-eighteenth century, what they tell us about the...

E191 | Within nationalist understandings of Turkish identity, connections between Central Asia and the people of modern Turkey are often conceived of in terms of ancient genealogy of Turkic peoples. But as our guest in this episode of Ottoman History Podcast Lale Can illustrates, much more recent bonds forged not by ethnic but rather spiritual affinity during the Ottoman period point to enduring c...

E190 | For more than a century, waves of Armenian migrants have come to the United States variously seeking economic opportunity or fleeing political violence and persecution. In this episode, Susanna Ferguson sits down with David Gutman to discuss his research on the origins of Armenian migration to the United States and elsewhere during the late Ottoman period, and they explore how shifts in mig...

E189 | Countries, much like companies, must seek to present a certain image to the outside world in order to achieve certain political and economic goals. As our guest in this episode, Aslı Iğsız, demonstrates, this self-presentation can take the form of full-fledged marketing campaigns. In this episode, we explore the marketing policies and strategies adopted in Turkey and the broader Middle East...

E188 | The association of Algeria with sex figured prominently in the artwork and literature that was critiqued so famously by Edward Said in Orientalism. In this episode, Dr. Aurelie Perrier discusses the practical backdrop of this argument beyond the level of discourse by exploring illicit sex in 19th century Algeria under both Ottoman and French rule. Beginning with the fluid boundaries of Otto...