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This workshop on rethinking Ottoman cities aims at assessing contributions and problems of urban history in general and urban history of the Ottoman Empire in particular. The papers are invited to scrutinize the ways in which urban studies shape our understanding of the Ottoman city around at least two frameworks, multi-confessional, multi-lingual and multi-ethnic structure of urban space on one hand, and transformation and ‘modernization’ of urban space on the other. This entails a rethinking of such issues through the larger social and political formation of the Ottoman Empire, as the underlying theme in this workshop is to be able to go beyond city and provincial histories. The larger context is also intended to allow participants to analyse city-state and city-people relations both in terms of forms of governance and political/cultural/social formation. A rethinking of these relations can shed critical light on the place of the ‘state’ in looking at the city both historically and historiographically. The seminar is part of the project “New Approaches to the Study of Merchant Cities in the Ottoman Empire”. It will consist of 7 presentations of ca. 15 Minutes and a round-table discussion.

Schedule: 

2.00 pm – 3.30
First Panel 
Meltem Toksöz, Introduction / Ottoman Historiography: The Quest for New Paradigms of Modernization
Johann Buessow, The Public Sphere as an Analytical Category for the Research on Late Ottoman Towns
Biray Kirli, Historical Alternatives to Empire through the Lens of Cities
Emre Yalcin, Under the Shadow of the State: In Search of an Urban History for Modern Istanbul

4.00 pm – 5.30 pm 
Second Panel
Canay Sahin, Changes in the Dynamics of the 19th Century Black Sea World as reflected in Trabzon and Samsun
Florian Riedler, ‘Bekar odalari” in 19th Century Istanbul and ‘Atomized City Research'
Cengiz Kirli, City, Space, Surveillance: Considerations on 19th Century Ottoman Historiography

5.30 pm - 6.30 pm 
Final Discussion

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