Ottoman History Podcast

Episode 429with Yiğit Akınhosted by Chris Gratien and Susanna FergusonDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudWorld 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 transformed the Ottoman Empire. We discuss how the experience of the 1912-13 Balkan Wars reshaped Ottoman officials' understanding of modern warfare and informed decisions taken during the First World War. We also discuss the social history of the war for ordinary Ottoman citizens and consider how the particularities of the Ottoman case reveal new insights about WWI and its legacy. « Click for More »

Episode 427 with Yonca Köksal hosted by Matthew Ghazarian Download the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudHow 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 of the Ottoman Empire, Ankara and Edirne. Applying social network analysis to imperial correspondence and provincial petitions, Köksal shows how differing network structures could lead to different outcomes in government reforms, empowering local dynasties in some areas and giving rise to cross-confessional coalitions in others. « Click for More »

Episode 425with Alp Eren Topalhosted by Susanna Ferguson and Sam DolbeeDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudIn 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 Khaldun and the germ theory of nineteenth-century biomedicine, we explore some of the ways people thought about the state and its health or illness in the early-modern and modern Mediterranean world. How did these metaphors and images change over time, and how did they inform the policies of the Empire and its rulers? « Click for More »

Episode 423with Matthew Ellishosted by Zoe GriffithDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudWhen 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 desert spanning Egypt and Ottoman Libya, was not simply imposed by modern, centralized states. In this episode, we discuss the various groups and actors who complicated the question of borders and political identity in one of the least studied corners of Ottoman and Middle Eastern history. Conflict and negotiations between oasis dwellers, Ottoman bureaucrats, Egyptian royals, the Sanusi order, and colonial officials kept this territory unbounded until the border was ultimately drawn in 1925. How did modern states attempt to practice sovereignty and claim territory in this vast desert borderland? And how did local populations resi

Episode 421with Gülhan Balsoy and Tuba Demircihosted by Suzie FergusonDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudHow 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 new opportunities and difficulties for Ottoman mothers and midwives alike. Questions about childbirth also became enmeshed in late-imperial demographic and cultural anxieties about the relationship between the Empire and its non-Muslim populations. As pregnancy and childbirth drew the attention of medical men, state bureaucrats, and men and women writers in the emerging periodical press, new technologies, regulations, and forms of medical knowledge changed what it meant to give birth and raise a child. « Click for More »

Episode 420with Will Smileyhosted by Zoe GriffithDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudHow 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 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, showing how older practices of enslavement and ransom transformed into a new legal category of "prisoner of war" and shedding light on a path to modern international law that lies outside of Europe. « Click for More »

Episode 416with Sooyong Kimhosted by Nir Shafir and Elisabetta BenigniDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudWhat 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 Ottoman poets, focusing in particular on Zati, a poet plying his trade in the imperial court in the first half of the sixteenth century. We speak about how poets succeeded and failed and why Zati's successors erased him from the canon of good poetry.« Click for More »

Episode 412with Ian Nagoskihosted by Chris GratienDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudDuring 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 and Boston. During the early 20th century, with the emergence of a commercial recording industry in the United States, these artists appeared on 78 rpm records that circulated within the diaspora communities of the former Ottoman Empire in the United States and beyond, singing in languages such as Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Assyrian, Kurdish, and Ladino. Their music included folks songs from their homelands and new compositions about life and love in the diaspora. In this episode, Ian Nagoski of Canary Records joins the podcast to showcase some of these old recordings, which he has located and digitized over the years, and

Episode 411Produced and Narrated by Chris GratienEpisode Consultant: Devin NaarSeries Consultant: Emily Pope-ObedaScript Editor: Sam Dolbeewith additional contributions by Devi Mays, Claudrena Harold, Victoria Saker Woeste, Sam Negri, and Louis NegriDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudLeo lived in New York City with his family. Born and educated in the cosmopolitan Ottoman capital of Istanbul, he was now part of the vibrant and richly-textured social fabric of America's largest metropolis as one one of the tens of thousands of Sephardic Jews who migrated to the US. Though he spoke four languages, Leo held jobs such as garbage collector and shoeshine during the Great Depression. Sometimes he couldn't find any work at all. But his woes were compounded when immigration authorities discovered he had entered the US using fraudulent documents. Yet Leo was not alone; his story was the story of many Jewish migrants throughout the world during the interwar era who saw the gates closing b

Episode 407with Heghnar Watenpaughhosted by Emily NeumeierDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudThe 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 manuscript considered to be a masterpiece of medieval Armenian art. Protected for centuries in a remote church in eastern Anatolia, the sacred book traveled with the waves of people displaced by the Armenian genocide. Passed from hand to hand, caught in the chaos of the First World War, it was divided in two. Decades later, the manuscript found its way to the Republic of Armenia, while its missing eight pages came to the Getty Museum in LA. In this interview, we discuss how the Zeytun Gospels could be understood as a "survivor object," contributing to current discussions about the destruction of cultural heritage. We a

Episode 400with Nir Shafirhosted by Suzie FergusonDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudIn 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 we want "Islamic science" to be than what it actually was. That, Nir tells us, is a lost opportunity. « Click for More »

Episode 399with Zeynep Çelikhosted by Zeinab Azarbadegan and Matthew GhazarianDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudHow did the Ottomans react to European attitudes and depictions of their own lands? Pondering on the groundbreaking book 'Orientalism' by Edward Said forty years after its publication, our guest Zeynep Çelik discusses the ways in which urban, art, and architectural historians have grappled with representations of the Ottomans by Europeans and representations of Ottomans by Ottomans themselves. Telling us about a number of paintings, monuments, scholarly writings and stories, she argues that Orientalism is still relevant and with us wherever we go. « Click for More »

Episode 398with Şevket Pamukhosted by Matthew GhazarianDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudWhat forces have governed Turkey's economic growth over the past two centuries? In this episode we speak with Şevket Pamuk about development in Turkey since 1820. In the late Ottoman period, low barriers to trade, agrarian exports, and European financial control defined the limits of economic expansion, while the transition from Empire to Republic brought more inward-looking policies aimed at protecting domestic industries. From the 1980s until the present, the Turkish government came to embrace the set of policy recommendations now called the Washington Consensus, defined by trade liberalization, privatization, and de-regulation. We discuss key moments during each of these periods, comparing Turkey to other countries around the world. We also discuss broader historical debates about Islam in economic history as well as approaches to the economic as an object of study. « Click for More »

Episode 395with Metin Atmacahosted by Matthew GhazarianDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudZones of autonomy and resistance make up the region historically called Kurdistan - areas that can include parts of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Armenia - depending on whom you ask. This region, whose territory spans the boundaries of nation-states created after the First World War, continues to host conflict between powerful states and their opponents. Who ruled these areas in the past, and how did they become the rebel lands they are today? In this episode, we speak with Metin Atmaca about the rise and fall of Kurdish emirs who ruled in the Ottoman-Iranian borderlands, from their rise in the 1500s to their fall in the 1850s. We also discuss the afterlife of the Kurdish dynastic families who, in exile, re-invented themselves as political leaders, bureaucrats, and rebels in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman world. « Click for More »

Episode 391with Stefano Tagliahosted by Taylan Güngör Download the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudThe use of stimulants, what we now refer to as recreational drugs (marijuana and hashish – esrar and haşiş), in the late Ottoman world constitutes a lens through which one can observe multiple aspects of both the history of the Ottoman Empire and its historiography in its broader sense. The life and social dynamics of those involved in drug consumption contributes to sketching a picture of the social life of the Ottoman Empire and its capital and, in this sense, helps expand a field that is somewhat limited.« Click for More »

Episode 386with Suzy Hansenhosted by Chris GratienDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudTurkey is a country that most Americans know little about, and yet the United States has played an extraordinary role in the making of modern Turkey. In this podcast, we explore this disparity of awareness and the role of the US in the history of the Middle East through the lens of an American journalist's slow realization of her own subjectivity and the myriad ways in which the US and Turkey have been intertwined. In this conversation with Suzy Hansen about her award-winning book "Notes on a Foreign Country," we critically examine the formation of journalistic and scholarly expertise, and we discuss reactions of readers and reviewers to Hansen's work. « Click for More »

Episode 382with Ohannes Kılıçdağıhosted by Sam DolbeeDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudThe history of Ottoman Armenians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Ottoman Empire is inevitably in the shadow of 1915. In today’s episode, we explore new approaches to this history with Dr. Ohannes Kılıçdağı. We speak in particular about the hopes that the empire’s Armenian citizens attached to the 1908 Constitutional Revolution, which were high indeed. On the basis of research utilizing Armenian-language periodicals from across the empire, Kılıçdağı explains how the Armenian community enthusiastically embraced military conscription, and how this phenomenon connects to the theme of citizenship in the late Ottoman Empire more generally. We conclude by considering what use there is for history in the politics of the present. « Click for More »

Episode 379with Ahmet Ersoy & Deniz Türkerhosted by Matthew Ghazarian and Zeinab AzarbadeganDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudHow did the Ottomans come to visually represent their mythical origins? And to what ends? In this episode we speak with Ahmet Ersoy and Deniz Türker about the formation, development, and visualization of Ertuğrul sancak, the mythical birthplace of the Ottoman dynasty. In 1886, Sultan Abdülhamid II commissioned an expedition of military photographers, painters, and cartographers to record the region, its architecture, and its nomadic tribes. Ersoy and Türker talk to us this mission and its economic and diplomatic ramifications, drawing on their recent exhibition, Ottoman Arcadia, at the Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul. Our discussion touches on the proliferation and dissemination of visual materials during the reign of Abdülhamid II (1876-1909), as well as his massive collection of visual materials held today as part of the

Episode 378with Özlem Gülin Dağoğluhosted by Sam Dolbee and Shireen Hamza Download the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudMany myths have accompanied the life of Mihri Rasim, but few are as interesting as her life itself. Born to a wealthy family in Istanbul in the late Ottoman period, Mihri Rasim became a politically connected painter, living in Italy for several years on her own and then Paris, where she played a key role in the salons of Ottoman dissidents known as the Young Turks. In the wake of the 1908 Constitutional Revolution, she returned to Istanbul, and opened the Fine Arts School for Women in Istanbul, where she went on to teach. After the war, she went to Italy, and then the United States, where she continued her work painting and teaching. In addition to many self-portraits, she also painted various powerful figures, among them Mustafa Kemal, Mussolini, and Thomas Edison. Listen for a discussion of art, gender, and migration in a period of momentous political change. « Click for More

Episode 369with Jane Hathawayhosted by Sanja Kadrić and Emily NeumeierDownload the podcastFeed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloudFor more than three centuries, a cadre of African eunuchs were responsible for guarding the Ottoman harem at the imperial palace in Istanbul. The head of this group, the Chief Harem Eunuch, emerged as an extremely influential individual at the court. This was especially true during the crisis years of the long seventeenth century, when the palace became divided along ever-shifting lines of political factions. In this episode, we trace the long trajectory of the office of Chief Harem Eunuch, from its establishment—coinciding with the sultan’s decision to begin residing full-time in the harem—until the ultimate demise of the empire. In particular, we highlight the high degree of mobility for these eunuchs, beginning with their initial journey from Ethiopia to the shores of the Bosphorus, and later on using their position to maintain strong ties to Cairo as well as the Holy Cities of M