HIST 235 – OTTOMAN CULTURAL HISTORY
Edhem Eldem
Fall 2018
Wednesday 14:00-16:50 TB 310 (Anderson Hall)
Office hours: Tuesday 11:00 – 12:00, TB 445 and by appointment
Course Description:
HIST 235 is a one-semester course designed to give students an opportunity to visit some of
the major aspects of Ottoman culture and its history throughout the six centuries of
existence of the Ottoman state, from the fifteenth century to its demise following World
War I. Students will be exposed to a number of readings, selected from among recent
scholarship on several aspects of Ottoman culture. These readings are organized along a
series of themes and follow a more or less chronological order. Students will also be given
contemporary documents to study and comment on in the light of their readings. In addition
to the assigned readings, students are encouraged to refer to a number of ‘background’
readings, which have been selected to serve as general references to the period covered.
Course Requirements:
Midterm examination (50 percent)
Final examination (50 percent)
Syllabus:
Week 1, 26 September 2018: No class
Background readings:
 Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2002).
 Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 (Cambridge, 2000).
 Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London-New York: I. B. Tauris, 1994).
 Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London
and New York, 2005).
Week 2, 3 October 2018: History and culture, culture and identity
 Cemal Kafadar, “A Rome of One’s Own: Reflections on Cultural Geography and Identity in the
Lands of Rum,” Muqarnas 24 (2007): 7-21.
 Robert Ousterhout, “Ethnic Identity and Cultural Appropriation in Early Ottoman
Architecture,” Muqarnas, 12 (1995): 48-62.
 Metin Kunt, “Ethnic-Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman
Establishment,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 5 (1974): 233-239.
Week 3, 10 October 2018: A witness of his times; Evliya Çelebi
 Robert Dankoff, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman. Melek Ahmed Pasha (15881662) as Portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels (Seyahat-Name) (Albany: State
University of New York, 1991)
Week 4, 17 October 2018: The Ottoman individual
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Rifaat A. Abou-El-Haj, “The Narcissism of Mustafa II (1695-1703): A Psychohistorical Study,”
Studia Islamica, 40 (1974), pp. 115-131.
Cemal Kafadar, “Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul and
First-Person Narratives in ottoman Literature,” Studia Islamica, 69 (1989): 121-150.
Derin Terzioğlu, “Man in the Image of God in the Image of the Times: Sufi Self-Narratives and
the Diary of Niyāzī-i Mıṣrī (1618-94),” Studia Islamica, 94 (2002): 139-165.
Week 5, 24 October 2018: Gender, Love, and Sexuality
 Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, “Women and the Art of Love,” The Age of Beloveds:
Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2005): 163-216.
 Dror Zeevi, “Regulating Desire: Sharīʿa and Kanun,” Producing Desire: Changing Sexual
Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2006): 48-76.
 Dror Zeevi, “Boys in the Hood: Shadow Theater as a Sexual Counter-Script,” Producing Desire:
Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2006): 125-148.
Week 6, 31 October 2018: Tradition and Modernity
 Khaled El-Rouayheb, “The Myth of the ‘Triumph of Fanaticism’ in the Seventeenth-Century
Ottoman Empire,” Die Welt des Islams, 48 (2008): 196-221.
 Shirine Hamadeh, “Ottoman Expressions of Early Modernity and the ‘Inevitable’ Question of
Westernization,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 63/1 (March 2004): 3251.
 Edhem Eldem “Urban Voices from Beyond: Identity, Status and Social Strategies in Ottoman
Muslim Funerary Epitaphs of Istanbul (1700-1850),” Virginia Aksan and Daniel Goffman (eds.)
The Early Modern Ottomans. Remapping the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), pp. 233-255.
Week 7, 7 November 2018: Mid-term Examination
Week 8, 14 November 2018: Change and Continuity I
 Butrus Abu-Manneh, “The Islamic Roots of the Gülhane Rescript,” Die Welt des Islams, 34
(1994), pp. 173-203.
 Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1829,”
International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 29/3 (August 1997), pp. 403-425.
 Edhem Eldem, “Writing Less, Saying More: Calligraphy and Modernisation in the Last
Ottoman Century,” Mohammed Gharipour and İrvin Cemil Schick, eds., Calligraphy and
Architecture in the Muslim World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp. 465-483.
Week 9, 21 November 2018: Change and Continuity II
 Ehud R. Toledano, “Late Ottoman Concepts of Slavery (1830s-1880s),” Poetics Today, 14/3
(Autumn 1993): 477-506.
 Nazan Maksudyan, Foster-Daughter or Servant, Charity or Abuse: Beslemes in the Late
Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 21/4 (December 2008), pp. 488-512.
 Edhem Eldem, “Istanbul as a Cosmopolitan City. Myths and Realities,” Ato Quayson and
Girish Daswani, eds., A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (Chichester: Wiley
Blackwell, 2013), pp. 212-230.
Week 10, 28 November, 2018: A World of Millets
 Johann Strauss, “The Millets and the Ottoman Language: The Contribution of Ottoman
Greeks to Ottoman Letters (19th-20th Centuries),” Die Welt des Islams, 35/2 (November
1995), pp. 189-249.
 Haris Exertzoglou, “The Cultural Uses of Consumption: Negotiating Class, Gender, and Nation
in the Ottoman Urban Centers during the Nineteenth Century,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies, 35/1 (February 2003): 77-101.
 Edhem Eldem, “Signatures of Greek Clients of the Imperial Ottoman Bank: A Clue to Cultural
Choices and Behaviour?” Anna Frangoudaki and Çağlar Keyder (eds.), Ways to Modernity in
Greece and Turkey. Encounters with Europe, 1850-1950 (London-New York: I. B. Tauris,
2007), pp. 60-90.
Week 11, 5 December 2018: Transformative Modernity
 Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808
to 1908,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35/1 (January 1993): 3-29.
 Klaus Kreiser, “Public Monuments in Turkey and Egypt, 1840-1916,” Muqarnas, 14 (1997):
103-117.
 Edhem Eldem, “Powerful Images: The Dissemination and Impact of Photography in the
Ottoman Empire, 1870-1914,” Zeynep Çelik and Edhem Eldem, eds., Camera Ottomana.
Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1914 (Istanbul: Koç University
Press, 2015), pp. 106-153.
Week 12: 12 December 2018: Revisiting Orientalism
 Carter V. Findley, “An Ottoman Occidentalist in Europe: Ahmed Midhat Meets Madame
Gülnar, 1889,” The American Historical Review, 103/1 (February 1998), pp. 15-49.
 Selim Deringil, “’They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: The Late Ottoman Empire
and the Post-Colonial Debate,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, v. 45, 3 (April,
2003): 311-342.
 Hakan Karateke, “How Distant is Gurbet? Refik Halid’s Representation of Arabs in Gurbet
Hikâyeleri – with a Note on Ottoman and Turkish Orientalisms,” Turkish Historical Review, 4
(2013), pp. 153-173.
Week 13: 19 December 2018: Dark Modernity
 Margaret Lavinia Anderson, “A responsibility to protest? The public, the Powers and the
Armenians in the era of Abdülhamit II,” Journal of Genocide Research, 17:3 (2015): 259-283.
 Matthias Bjørnlund, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a Case of Violent
Turkification,” Journal of Genocide Research, 10/1 (March 2008), pp. 41-57.
 Mustafa Aksakal, “‘Holy War Made in Germany’? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad,” War in
History, 18/2 (2011), pp.184-199.