BOOK SERIES Life Narratives of the Ottoman Realm

BOOK SERIES
Life Narratives of the Ottoman Realm: Individual and Empire in the Near East
About the Series
As a consequence of the political developments following World War I, the Ottoman Empire has been treated by a great number of historians above all as an intrinsic part of Turkish national history. Although the academic community has recognized that the Ottoman Empire was, in fact, multiethnic and multicultural, this recognition has too rarely been translated into scholarly practice. This is due in large part to the fragmentation of Ottoman studies into various academic disciplines that only infrequently communicate with one another: as examples, Turkish-language literature predominantly produced by Muslims is treated by Turkish Literature experts and Turkologists in the West; Ottoman Ladino literature falls within the purview of Romance studies; the empire’s Greeks are studied within the field of Byzantine and Hellenic studies; and so on.

This publication series aims to bring all of these perspectives together in a historically specific and responsible way by providing a key publication platform for scholars aiming to study the narrative sources of a vast geographic region, stretching, at times, from Bosnia to the Yemen, in its full complexity as a multilingual and multiethnic Empire.

For further information about the series please contact Michael Greenwood at Michael.Greenwood@informa.com


Mavi Boncuk |

Istanbul - Kushta - Constantinople
Narratives of Identity in the Ottoman Capital, 1830-1930
By Christoph Herzog, Richard Wittmann
First Published 2019

ISBN 9781138631311
Published September 21, 2018 by Routledge
312 Pages

Book Description
Istanbul – Kushta – Constantinople presents twelve studies that draw on contemporary life narratives that shed light on little explored aspects of nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul. As a broad category of personal writing that goes beyond the traditional confines of the autobiography, life narratives range from memoirs, letters, reports, travelogues and descriptions of daily life in the city and its different neighborhoods. By focusing on individual experiences and perspectives, life narratives allow the historian to transcend rigid political narratives and to recover lost voices, especially of those underrepresented groups, including women and members of non-Muslim communities.

The studies of this volume focus on a variety of narratives produced by Muslim and Christian women, by non-Muslims and Muslims, as well as by natives and outsiders alike. They dispel European Orientalist stereotypes and cross class divides and ethnic identities. Travel accounts of outsiders provide us with valuable observations of daily life in the city that residents often overlooked.

Table of Contents

Contents

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Christoph Herzog and Richard Wittmann

Part I: European and Ottoman Women in the Empire

The Memories of German-speaking Women of Constantinople
Gudrun Wedel

Wanderlust, Follies, and Self-Inflicted Misfortunes: The Memoirs of Anna Forneris and her Thirty Years in Constantinople and the Levant
Malte Fuhrmann

The Imperial Harem Network in Istanbul, 1850s to 1922
Börte Sagaster

Part II: Outside Observers of Istanbul
Amalgamated Observations: Assessing American Impressions of Nineteenth-Century Constantinople and its Peoples
Kent Schull
Istanbul and the Formation of an Arab Teenager’s Identity. Recollections of a Cadet in the Ottoman Army in 1914 and 1916–17
Malek Sharif
Hispanic Observers of Istanbul
Pablo Martín Asuero

Part III: Jewish Communities
The Autobiographical Writings of the Constantinople Judezmo Journalist David Fresco as a Clue toward His Attitude to Language
David M. Bunis
Istanbul’s Jewish Community through the Eyes of a European Jew. Ludwig A. Frankl in his Nach Jerusalem
Yaron Ben-Naeh

Part IV: Armenian and Bulgarian Christian Communities
A Stroll through the Quarters of Constantinople: Sketches of the City as Seen through the Eyes of the Great Satirist Hagop Baronian
Rachel Goshgarian
From Short Stories to Social Topography: Misak Koçunyan’s Life Landscapes
Aylin Koçunyan
"Bulgar Milleti Nedir?" Syncretic Forms of Belonging in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Istanbul.
Darin Stephanov
Twenty Years in the Ottoman Capital: The Memoirs of Doctor Hristo Tanev Stambolski of Kazanlik (1843-1932) from an Ottoman Point of View
Johann Strauss

Index

Editor(s)
Biography
Christoph Herzog is Professor of Turcology at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He studied Middle Eastern and modern European history at Freiburg, Germany and in Istanbul. His research interests focus on late Ottoman history, especially on the history of the Arab provinces, intellectual history and biographical studies.

Richard Wittmann is the Associate Director of the German Orient-Institut Istanbul. He studied law, Islamic Studies and Turcology in Munich, Berlin, and Cambridge, Mass., where he earned his PhD in Middle Eastern Studies and History from Harvard University. He specializes in the Islamic legal and social history of the Ottoman Empire, as well as narrative sources for the study of the Middle East.

Depicting the Late Ottoman Empire in Turkish Autobiographies
Images of a Past World
By Philipp Wirtz
First Published 2017
ISBN 9781472479327
Published March 16, 2017 by Routledge
176 Pages - 1 B/W Illustrations
Hardback
   
Book Description

The period between the 1880s and the 1920s was a time of momentous changes in the Ottoman Empire. It was also an age of literary experiments, of which autobiography forms a part. This book analyses Turkish autobiographical narratives describing the part of their authors’ lives that was spent while the Ottoman Empire still existed. The texts studied in this book were written in the cultural context of the Turkish Republic, which went to great lengths to disassociate itself from the empire and its legacy. This process has only been criticised and partially reversed in very recent times, the resurging interest in autobiographical texts dealing with the "old days" by the Turkish reading public being part of a wider, renewed regard for Ottoman legacies.

Among the analysed texts are autobiographies by writers, journalists, soldiers and politicians, including classics like Halide Edip Adıvar and Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, but also texts by authors virtually unknown to Western readers, such as Ahmed Emin Yalman.

While the official Turkish republican discourse went towards a dismissal of the imperial past, autobiographical narratives offer a more balanced picture. From the earliest memories and personal origins of the authors, to the conflict and violence that overshadowed private lives in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, this book aims at showing examples of how the authors painted what one of them called "images of a past world."

Table of Contents

Note on transliteration, dates and names

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I Why write Autobiography?

II Origins, Backgrounds and Beginnings

III Presenting Ottoman Childhoods

IV Education: Reminiscences of School

V End of Empire: Revolution, Unrest and War

VI Post-Ottoman Autobiography for Western Audiences

Conclusion: Remembering lost Ottoman Worlds

Appendix: Glossary of Key Authors

Bibliography

Index

Author

Biography
Philipp Wirtz studied the history, languages and cultures of the Middle East in Frankfurt am Main, Bamberg and London. He holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and teaches Middle East history at SOAS and the University of Warwick.