Ottoman History Podcast

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...

E451 | What did it mean to individuals from different ethnic and religious backgrounds to participate in World War I under the same banner? What do personal narratives tell us about the World War I? Accounts of soldiers, officers, and women as well as non-textual sources such as medals and postcards provide novel perspectives into thinking about the experience of the Great War. This episode brings...

E450 | II. Abdülhamid Dönemi yönetim anlayışı, Osmanlı Devleti’nin 16. yüzyıldan itibaren izlediği Alevi/Kızılbaş siyasetini nasıl dönüştürdü? II. Abdülhamid dönemi Alevi/Kızılbaş siyasetinin temel araçları nelerdi? Bu bölümde, Munzur Üniversitesi Tarih Bölümü’nden Yalçın Çakmak ile “Sultan’ın Kızılbaşları: II. Abdülhamid Dönemi Alevi Algısı ve Siyaseti” başlıklı kitabı üzerine sohbet ediyoruz. II...

E449 | Popular revolts across the Middle East during the 19th and early 20th century have often been described as nationalist or anti-colonial. But on what basis did people mobilize and what rights were they attempting to assert? In this conversation, Pascale Ghazaleh examines the language of protest, focusing on the actions of peasants and the working class, their understandings of property right...

E448 | "One Thousand Kisses," "Plate of Cream," "Story of a Lily:" these are some of the provocative titles that graced the covers of Ottoman erotic novels in the early decades of the twentieth century. While erotic fiction and poetry had a long history in Ottoman and Arabic manuscript culture, the erotic novels of the second constitutional period (1908-1914), some creatively adapted from French o...

E447 | Bu bölümde K. Mehmet Kentel ve Akif Ercihan Yerlioğlu ile İstanbul Araştırmaları Enstitüsü’nün Hafıza-i Beşer: Osmanlı Yazmalarından Hikâyeler sergisi üzerine sohbet ediyoruz. Elyazmaları üzerinden Osmanlı toplumunda çok dillilik, gündelik hayat, tıp, evren ve zamanın bilgisi, toplumsal cinsiyet ve cinselliğin izlerini süren sergi odağında yazmalarla Osmanlı tarihyazımındaki yeni yaklaşımla...

Our full interview with Daniel Hershenzon. For more, see https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2020/01/pirates.html

E446 | Piracy is often depicted as a facet of the wild, lawless expanses of the high seas. But in this episode, we explore the order that governed piracy, captivity, and ransom in the early modern Mediterranean and in turn, how these practices shaped early modern politics, Mediterranean connections, and the emergent notions of international law. Emrah Safa Gürkan talks about Ottoman corsairs and t...

E445 | The line between Orientalist and Ottoman painting might at first seem clear. But in this episode, historian Mary Roberts argues that such distinctions are in fact complicated, drawing on her recent book Istanbul Exchanges: Ottomans, Orientalists and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. She explains how Istanbul became a global center of production, circulation, and exhibition of visual cultur...