Book | Ottoman Mobilities in the Global Nineteenth Century

Mavi Boncuk |

Istanbul 1874

Ottoman Mobilities in the Global Nineteenth Century
(Transnational Approaches to Culture, 4[*]) Hardcover – April 13, 2026

by Belgin Turan Özkaya[1] (Editor), Sibel Zandi-Sayek [2] (Editor)

Belgin Turan Özkaya, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey; Sibel Zandi-Sayek, William & Mary, Williamsburg, USA.

• Publisher‏: ‎ De Gruyter
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 13, 2026
• Edition‏: ‎ 1st
• Language‏: ‎ English
  Print length‏: ‎ 300 pages 
• Colored Illustrations:18
• ISBN-10‏: ‎ 3111548309
• ISBN-13‏: ‎ 978-3111548302

How did Ottoman individuals and objects interact within the wider nineteenth-century world? The eleven essays from scholars in the field of art history, history, and archaeology delve into the Tour d’Europe of junior bureaucrats; the transnational endeavors of learned societies; the artistic output of mobile agents; the Ottoman commodities sent to the World’s Fairs; and the itinerant artifacts amassed in fledgling public museums and private collections. 

These chapters provide insights into the foundational stages of modern disciplines and areas of expertise, including archaeology, Islamic art, and engineering. Collectively, they emphasize the significance of actors often marginalized in existing historiographies or written out by the logic of national archives. 

Employing a detailed approach and interdisciplinary perspective, the contributors merge the insights of art, architectural, cultural, and intellectual historians whose work is grounded in archival research. 

Tailored for both students and scholars focusing on late Ottoman culture and Middle East studies, as well as historians of Islamic art, architecture and material culture, Ottoman Mobilities will also engage a wider audience interested in the interdisciplinary field of nineteenth-century mobility studies.

[*] 

Series 1: Configurations of Migration | Knowledges – Imaginaries – Media

Series 2: The European Union as a Global Cultural Power

Gülru Çakmak (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA)
Jennifer Fay (Vanderbilt University, USA)
Emine Fişek (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria)
Eveline Kilian (Humboldt University Berlin, Germany)
Hiroshi Kitamura (The College of William & Mary, USA)
B. Venkat Mani (University of Wisconsin Madison, USA)
Kate Rigby (Bath Spa University, UK)

The transnational has become one of the most popular paradigms in cultural studies. On the one hand, it bears the promise of transformation: of the opportunity to move across and beyond geographic and disciplinary boundaries, tracing the mobility of peoples, cultures, languages, institutions, ideas, and ideologies around the globe. Yet, on the other hand, it also exposes the continued power of these boundaries, revealing structures of exclusion. This series showcases innovative scholarly work that not only maps these transnational entanglements but develops new methodological and theoretical approaches to interrogate them. Topics thus span cultural and historical reflections of migration, diaspora, and exile; globalization, cosmopolitanism and citizenship; and acts of border crossing, whether across geographies, cultures, or languages. The works in the series not only engage with the transnational as practice but also develop and contribute in novel ways to transnational theory and methodology. In so doing, they critically re-appraise seemingly ‘national’ canons and contexts in the light of transnational approaches.

 

[1] Belgin Turan Özkaya  Professor of Architectural History  Graduate Program in Architectural History Department of Architecture  Middle East Technical University Address: P.K. 195, 06692, Güvenevler, Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey  Phone : +90 (533) 814 2440, E-mail : belt@metu.edu.tr 

EDUCATION Ph.D.  in History of Architecture and Urbanism, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (1995) Dissertation: Production of a Discourse: Italian “Neo-Rationalism” as Case Study M.Sc. in Restoration, Middle East Technical University, Ankara (1988) 

Thesis: Evaluation of Interventions for the Conservation of an Archaeological Site—Ostia Antica 

[2] Sibel Zandi-Sayek, Associate Professor of Art History

Office: Andrews Hall 207A Phone: (757) 221-2527
Email: ssayek@wm.edu

Areas of Specialization: Modern architecture and urbanism; geography, cultural landscape studies, and planning history; the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East.

Trained as an architect, urban planner, and architectural historian, Sibel Zandi-Sayek joined the department of Art and Art History at William and Mary in 2002. She holds professional degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

See also: Ottoman Izmir: The Rise of a Cosmopolitan Port, 1840-1880

Between 1840 and 1880, the Eastern Mediterranean port of Izmir (Smyrna) underwent unprecedented change. A modern harbor that welcomed international steamships and new railway lines that transported a cornucopia of products transformed the physical city. Migrants, seasonal workers, and transient sailors thronged into an already diverse metropolis, helping to double the population to 200,000. Simultaneously, Ottoman officials and enterprising citizens vied to control and reform the city’s administrative and legal institutions. 

Ottoman Izmir examines how urban space, institutional structures, and everyday practices shaped one another in the thriving seaport of Izmir during a volatile period of growth. Sibel Zandi-Sayek investigates a variety of urban actors—Muslims and non-Muslims, Ottomans and Europeans, newcomers and native residents, merchants, investors, civil servants, and press reporters—who were actively engaged in restructuring the city. Concentrating on the workings of urban committees and on laws and policies that were written, rewritten, but never fully implemented, Zandi-Sayek exposes how modern interventions sought to impose clear-cut concepts of public and private, safety and danger, and hygiene on a city that previously had a wide range of customary regulations. 

Ottoman Izmir shows how Izmir’s various stakeholders contested its built environment. In so doing, it offers a new view of the dynamics of urban modernization.

RGDST conference "School Time": 

Sibel Zandi Sayek, "The International College of Smyrna"

Lecture given by Sibel Zandi-Sayek, of the College of William and Mary for the School Time Conference held at McGill University on May 17th 2016. The International College of Smyrna—established in 1879 as a small boys’ school in rented, inner-city premises—grew to become a prestigious collegiate institute, boasting by 1913 its own, purpose-built suburban campus. Surviving the turbulent transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, the College operated under the new regime until 1934, when increased government restrictions and local protests against its being a foreign institution, eventually forced it to relocate to Beirut. While the College’s educational mission as an American Board institution has garnered attention, its rich and manifold associations with the local community and its physical settings remain understudied. Necessarily dependent on the presence of local social and material infrastructure to function as an educational enterprise, the College also initiated a number of urban improvements throughout its fitful history and acted as a safe haven during periods of turmoil. This paper investigates this synergetic, albeit at times strained, relationship between the College and the physical, social and political geography within which it operated during its half-century existence in Smyrna. The Research Group on Democracy, Space, and Technology is a unit of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds.