Ottoman History Podcast

Episode 465 with Robyn Dora Radway hosted by Emily Neumeier 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 “Ge...

Episode 464 with Cemal Kafadar hosted by Maryam Patton , Chris Gratien , and Sam Dolbee 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 Vietn...

Episode 463 with Panayotis League hosted by Chris Gratien 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 Otto...

Episode 462 with Oludamini Ogunnaike hosted by Shireen Hamza 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 &quot...

Episode 456 with Harun Küçük hosted by Sam Dolbee and Zoe Griffith 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 o...

Episode 455 featuring Nükhet Varlık, Yaron Ayalon, Orhan Pamuk, Lori Jones, Valentina Pugliano, and Edna Bonhomme narrated by Chris Gratien and Maryam Patton with contributions by Nir Shafir, Sam Dolbee, Tunç Şen, and Andreas Guidi 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 m...

Episode 453 with Nancy Um hosted by Zoe Griffith 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...

Episode 448 with Burcu Karahan hosted by Suzie Ferguson Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud "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...

Episode 446 featuring Emrah Safa Gürkan, Joshua White , and Daniel Hershenzon narrated by Chris Gratien with contributions by Nir Shafir, Taylor Moore, Susanna Ferguson , and Zoe Griffith Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud 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 pirac...

Episode 444 with Hüseyin Yılmaz hosted by Nir Shafir and Alp Eren Topal Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud In medieval Anatolia, political authority could be found in surprising places. In this podcast, we speak to Hüseyin Yılmaz about the political role of Sufi leaders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. We explore how these shaykhs could become powerful po...

Episode 443 with Faiz Ahmed hosted by Shireen Hamza and Huma Gupta Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud In this episode, Professor Faiz Ahmed recounts the fascinating history of Afghanistan’s first modern constitution, contextualizing it within a broader legal and political history. The constitution was developed by Afghan, Ottoman and Indian and other scholars, at th...

Episode 441 with Heather Ferguson hosted by Zoe Griffith Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud In this episode, historian Heather Ferguson takes us behind the scenes of early modern Ottoman state-making with a discussion of her recent book The Proper Order of Things . We discuss how the architecture of Topkapı palace, the emergence of new bureaucratic practices, and th...

Episode 440 with Nazan Maksudyan hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud Children are often imagined as victims of war or passive bystanders. But in this episode, Nazan Maksudyan is back on the program to talk about how the First World War looked through the eyes of Ottoman children and their lives as historical actors during and after the conflic...

Episode 434 with Sarah Abrevaya Stein hosted by Sam Dolbee Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud In this episode, historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein speaks to us about the journey of one Jewish family from Ottoman Salonica in the late nineteenth century to Manchester, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and beyond during the twentieth century. In her new book Family Papers, she reveals...

Episode 429 with Yiğit Akın hosted by Chris Gratien and Susanna Ferguson Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud World War I brought unprecedented destruction to the Ottoman Empire and resulted in its fall of as a political entity, but war also produced new politics. In this podcast, Yiğit Akın is back to talk about his book When the War Came Home and how years of war tr...

Episode 427 with Yonca Köksal hosted by Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud How do social networks determine the results of government reform? In this episode we examine this quesiton during the Tanzimat reform era (1839-76) with historical sociologist Yonca Köksal. Her research focuses on the differing outcomes of the Tanzimat in two core provinces...

Episode 425 with Alp Eren Topal hosted by Susanna Ferguson and Sam Dolbee Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud In this episode, Alp Eren Topal traces the history of medical metaphors for describing and diagnosing state and society in Ottoman political thought. From the balancing of humors prescribed by Galenic medicine to the lifespan of the state described by Ibn Kha...

Episode 423 with Matthew Ellis hosted by Zoe Griffith Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud When the Ottoman state granted the province of Egypt to the family of Mehmed Ali Pasha in the 19th century, neither party much cared where Egypt's western border lay. As Matthew Ellis argues in his book, Desert Borderland, sovereignty in the eastern Sahara, the expanse of de...

Episode 421 with Gülhan Balsoy and Tuba Demirci hosted by Suzie Ferguson Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud How did the experience of pregnancy and childbirth change in the Ottoman Empire in the context of nineteenth-century reforms? In this episode, we discuss how the question of managing a "population" become a key concern for the Ottoman state, bringing...

Episode 420 with Will Smiley hosted by Zoe Griffith Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud How did an Irish-born Russian nobleman serving in the Russian army end up an Ottoman slave and valet to an Ottoman-Albanian officer? And what possibilities existed for his eventual release? In this episode, Will Smiley traces the history of Ottoman laws of captivity and ransom in...

Episode 416 with Sooyong Kim hosted by Nir Shafir and Elisabetta Benigni Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud What made for a good poet in the Ottoman Empire? It is a question that far too few historians tackle because Ottoman poetry, especially that of the court, is often regarded as inaccessible. In this podcast, Sooyong Kim brings to life the social world of Ottoma...

Episode 412 with Ian Nagoski hosted by Chris Gratien Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds of thousands of people from the Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman states emigrated to the U.S. Among them were musicians, singers, and artists who catered to the new diaspora communities that emerged in cities like New York an...

Episode 411 Produced and Narrated by Chris Gratien Episode Consultant: Devin Naar Series Consultant: Emily Pope-Obeda Script Editor: Sam Dolbee with additional contributions by Devi Mays , Claudrena Harold , Victoria Saker Woeste , Sam Negri , and Louis Negri Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud Leo lived in New York City with his family. Born and educated in the cosm...

Episode 407 with Heghnar Watenpaugh hosted by Emily Neumeier Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud The genre of biography usually applies to people, but could a similar approach be applied to an object? Can a thing have a life of its own? In this episode, Heghnar Watenpaugh explores this question by tracing the long journey of the Zeytun Gospels, a famous illuminated m...

Episode 400 with Nir Shafir hosted by Suzie Ferguson Download the podcast Feed  |  iTunes  |  GooglePlay  |  SoundCloud In this episode, Nir Shafir talks about the problem of "fake minatures" of Islamic science: small paintings that look old, but are actually contemporary productions. As these images circulate in museums, on book covers, and on the internet, they tell us more about what...