SOME QUANTITATIVE INDICATORS FOR EXPLAINING AND EVALUATING NATIONAL POLITICAL PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Based on the information found in probate estate inventories, this article examines patterns of spousal preference and marital mobility in eighteenth-century Ottoman Kastamonu, located in northern Anatolia. For this purpose, we introduce quantitative techniques and categories of analysis specifically designed for Ottoman sources, primarily postmortem estate inventories (terekes), allowing us to measure how various socioeconomic groups established marital associations and to what extent they married other groups. The article also compares marital and intergenerational mobility patterns in eighteenth-century Kastamonu.     

The Lost Intermediaries: The Impact of 1870 on the European System

Abstract

Among the colourful characters that populate eighteenth-century military history, the French-born comte de Bonneval (1675–1747) has been kept alive in historical memory longer than most. His surprising conversion to Islam and contribution to Ottoman military reform long made him a popular subject for biography in his own right. Nowadays, he mainly features in biographies of Prince Eugene of Savoy. Both were commanders in the Habsburg army, and for nineteen years they were close companions in war and peace.¹ The circumstances that turned Bonneval's friendship with Eugene to enmity also led him in 1729 to offer his services to the Ottoman Empire. For most scholars, this is the moment when his actions became of lasting historical significance. The Ottomans, who suffered in the eighteenth century a series of military defeats, employed foreigners to help them reform their army. After converting to Islam and renaming himself Ahmed Pasha, Bonneval became the first of these when the grand vizier, Topal Osman, invited him in 1731 to reform the Ottoman artillery corps. He moved to Constantinople, added the sobriquet ‘Humbaracl’ (bombardier), and became a noted figure at the court of Sultan Mahmud I. Until Bonneval's death in 1747, Europeans having dealings with the Ottoman regime looked to him for assistance in navigating its internal politics.²     

Ottoman Merchants in Constantinople During the First Half of the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

Despite growing interest among both Byzantinists and Ottoman scholars in the respective long-distance commercial ventures of Byzantine Greek and Ottoman Muslim merchants, studies focusing on the trade relations between these two groups have not yet been undertaken. This article, which examines some sources that document the presence and economic activities of Ottoman Turks in Constantinople during the first half of the fifteenth century, is intended to serve as a contribution to this neglected field of study. Moreover, by means of an examination of commercial relations, the article aims to shed further light on the daily, informal contacts between the Byzantines and the Ottomans which remains a relatively unexplored aspect of Byzantine-Ottoman relations.     

Istanbul’s intangible cultural heritage as embodied by street animals

ABSTRACT

Green, marginal, and sacred spaces in Istanbul host dogs, cats, and wild birds. In this essay, I argue that citizens enact embodied memories from the Ottoman era by caring for these animals. While birds are iconic representatives of the modern city, and street cats have become media denizens, the lives of street dogs are sadder. Animal rights activists are mobilized by the history of Ottoman administration efforts at eradicating them. Unlike actions inspired by this history, enactments of embodied memory are less conscious, such as residents cooking and distributing food to street cats. However, I argue that these are enacted social memories of compassion and charity and are an embodied form of intangible cultural heritage. Ottoman-era social practices of caring for street animals create an historical and legal foundation for justifying the right of street animals to live in the city.     

Between historical myth and ‘Inythohistory’: the limits of Ottoman history

Abstract

‘“Myth and reality“’ as Professor Gombrich has reminded us in an historical context apparently far removed from that of Ottoman studies, are, as he has defined the phrase, perhaps only ‘a more genteel formulation for the blunter title of “lies and truth”’.     

The Ohio Data Archives

The Ottoman government obtained current information on the empire's sources of revenue through periodic registers called tahrir defterleri. These documents include detailed information on taxpaying subjects and taxable resources, making it possible to study the economic and social history of the Middle East and eastern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although the use of these documents has been typically limited to the construction of local histories, adopting a more optimistic attitude toward their potential and using appropriate sampling procedures can greatly increase their contribution to historical scholarship. They can be used in comprehensive quantitative studies and in addressing questions of broader historical significance or larger social scientific relevance.     

From Süleyman Pasha to Mehmet Fuat Köprülü: Roman and Byzantine history in late Ottoman historiography

Abstract

The following is a continuation of the task set out in my Note in BMGS 10 (1986) 211–22. Working towards a Bibliography, I have tried to bring together, in a corpus, Ottoman Turkish works of some importance dealing with Roman and Byzantine history (including historical topography) which appeared as books, or part of books, between c.1870 and 1920. A particular aim has been to illustrate the development of this corpus in relationship with ‘westernising’ trends in the historiography of the Ottoman empire over the same period.     

WHY IS THE MINARET SO SHORT? EVIDENCE FOR EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE ON MT ZION

Abstract

On top of King David's Sepulchre at Mt Zion there is an Ottoman minaret known as al-Nabi Da'ud. Compared with other minarets in Jerusalem, al-Nabi Da'ud seems to be somewhat shorter, and has a squat-like appearance. To track why it is shorter than other minarets, we inspected written historical sources, a sequence of old drawings dated between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries and analysed the minaret's metric proportions. In drawings dated to and before 1833, the minaret is portrayed much higher than in drawings and photographs dated to and after 1838. Furthermore, comparative height-diameter ratio of various parts of the minaret does not fit those of its counterpart, the al-Qal'a minaret. Thus, we suggest that the minaret was originally built higher but damaged during the 1834 earthquake, and reconstructed to a lower height sometimes afterwards.     

Byzantine History in late Ottoman Turkish Historiography

Abstract

The present Short Note is intended as a brief introduction to a subject which is part of a wider research project on Greek (ancient, Byzantine, and modern) as well as Roman history and culture as described and discussed in Ottoman literature, particularly in late Ottoman historiography. As an attempt to familiarise the reader with, at this stage, no more than a few aspects of the subject in question, the following sketch does not pretend to be exhaustive. It is hoped, however, that it will provide a general idea of the context, as well as of the relevant sources, some of which will be described in more detail. Our note is, in addition, intended to arouse interest, particularly from the point of view of Byzantine and modern Greek studies, and to invite comments.     

From three Ottoman gates to three Serbian sites of memory: The performative rewriting of Belgrade from 1878 until today

ABSTRACT

This essay analyses how three entrances to Ottoman-era Belgrade have been reconstructed since 1878. It demonstrates how the rewriting of these places entailed silencing the Ottoman past and constructing sites of Serbian national memory. By examining city space as a palimpsest, it shows how a new national narrative has been written in relation to earlier Ottoman space, thus making the national narrative a mediator of the memory of the seemingly erased Ottoman past.     

Mediating legacies of empire in the post-imperial museum

ABSTRACT

Throughout the Balkans, the history museum remains a crucial site where memories of an imperial past are molded, rationalized, and integrated into the wider arc of nationalist narratives about a country and its people. The legacy of the Ottoman Empire is particularly fraught in Greece, where this period is almost always classified as ‘post-Byzantine’ within the context of government institutions. In this paper, I set out to trace the legacy of the Ottoman Empire as it has been mediated in multiple museum sites throughout the country. I will primarily focus on two case studies: The National Historical Museum in Athens and the Museum of Ali Pasha and the Period of Revolution in Ioannina. Comparing these two sites and their practices of display bring into sharper focus the dynamics of how historical memory plays out in a central versus regional sphere of belonging and identity.     

A New Approach to Analyzing Historical Urban Growth of Ottoman Cities: Manisa Case Study

Abstract

The physical growth of cities is usually used to define the main direction of a city's development. This definition is key to understanding the city's current state and to plan for the future. Many urban planners agree that master plans should include historical urban growth and aim to specify the effective factors driving urban growth. However, defining urban boundaries and historical urban areas is a difficult task. The lack of satellite images, air photos, and real maps to use as base maps for historical urban studies is a problem that a researcher may face when determining patterns of urban development or conducting other analyses. In this article, the authors examine historical changes of the urban boundaries of the Ottoman city of Manisa. They analyze the physical growth of this large city by using the historical buildings (mosques, masjids, madrasas, baths, caravansary, and others) as markers.     

Two Probate Inventories from Industrial Shropshire

Abstract

Probate inventories can be a useful source of information for the understanding of industrial activity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This paper presents two such inventories from Shropshire.     

The myth of the Byzantine origins of the Osmanlis: an essay in interpretation

Abstract

The story that gave the Osmanlis a distant Comnenian origin emerges in sixteenth-century Italian and Greek histories, inspired by the twelfth-century accounts of the renegade prince John Komnenos, as related by Niketas Choniates Its invention and propagation might have served the legitimacy of Ottoman rule, in which case, it was addressed to gulams and converts rather than to the Christian subjects of the sultans. It can also be interpreted as fitting the ideals and the imaginations of highly positioned converts in the Ottoman service, who previously belonged to the Byzantine and Balkan aristocracies.     

Marshall islands navigational charts

Abstract

The discovery of an unpublished document is here used to propose a new interpretation of the production in Venice of world maps for Ottoman clients. It is suggested that three Ottoman princes had been interested in acquiring maps in Venice in the early 1550s as part of their struggle for succession to Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, and that these maps were different from the famous Hajji Ahmed map, prepared by Giacomo Gastaldi. It is also suggested that the persons involved in creating these maps did not (as previously asserted) include the Venetian publisher Giustinian, whose later attempt to publish Gastaldi's map was blocked for political, and not only religious, considerations.     

Laonikos Chalkokondyles and the rise of the Ottoman Turks

Abstract

While most Christian writers who described the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 regarded the disaster as divine retribution for the sins of its inhabitants, carried out through the agency of the barbaric and infidel Turks, the historical work of Laonikos Chalkokondyles takes a very different approach to the problem. It argues that nations rose or fell partly through luck, but also according the virtue they possessed, so that the Turks, rather than being mere agents, could in fact take the credit for their success. In this approach, Chalkokondyles reflects not classical Greek literature, but a western tradition to be found in Livy and Cicero, a strand of thought that he may have adopted as a result of contacts with Renaissance Italy.     

Settlement Pattern Change in the Morea (Peloponnisos), c.A.D. 1700–1830

Abstract

The historiography of the Ottoman period (Tourkokratia) in what is now the state of Greece contains many untested propositions about both the nature and the consequences of Turkish rule (Hatzidimitriou 1982). Amongst these is the notion that during the Ottoman occupation the Christian population – or at least a sizeable proportion of it – was driven into the mountains. Our paper sets out to test the hypothesis – for such it is – using readily available published information on the settlements of the Morea (Peloponnisos) dating from c.1700 and c.1830. First, though, we specify the hypothesis and indicate the types of evidence which appear to give it support.     

The Policy of Serbian Expansionism,with Specific Reference to Albanians in the Decade Preceding the Balkan Wars

The Balkans at the end of the nineteenth century was in flux. The Eastern Crisis, the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin had established a new political geography in the region that was fated not to hold for long. Here were intertwined the interests of the Great Powers and the newly established Balkan states. The Ottoman Empire which had controlled the region for centuries was in terminal decline. The newly established states supported by the Great Powers very quickly established expansionist policies cloaked in the guise of ‘liberation’ for the remaining Balkan lands from the Ottoman Empire. The question of the Albanian population of the region was largely ignored in European diplomacy. Serbia became fixated on expansion towards the Adriatic and the occupation of Albanian lands. After tracing the historical context of Serbian expansionism and its codification in Na?ertanije, this article makes full use of (chiefly Serbian) diplomatic sources in order to survey the practical implementation of this policy especially with regard to the Albanian population of the Ottoman territories in Europe in the decade before 1912.