The complete Season 5 of Ottoman History Podcast streaming on Soundcloud.

Ottoman History Podcast | Season 5

otto

tajine

For more visit http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/p/editors-picks-for-2017.html

Best of 2016

Ottoman empire, more specifically North Africa

islam and politics

Notions of racial difference played an important role in the Atlantic slave trade and have left a long legacy well after the slave trade was abolished during the nineteenth century. Yet centuries earlier, an Islamic scholar from Timbuktu had formulated an argument against the enslavement of individuals based on race or skin color. In this episode, Chris Gratien discusses the life and writings of Ahmad Baba in Timbuktu and Marrakesh as a captive scholar of Sultan Ahmad al-Mansour. 

Image source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mali/mali-exhibit.html

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gratien, Chris. "Race, Slavery, and Islamic Law in the Early Modern Atlantic." The Journal of North African Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (May 2013).

Baba, Ahmad ibn Ahmad, John O. Hunwick, and Fatima Harrak. Mi`raj al-Su`ud : Ajwibat Ahmad Baba Hawla Al-Istirqaq. [al-Rabat]: al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyah, Jami`at Muhammad al-Khamis, Ma`had al-Dirasat al-Afriqiyah bi-al-Rabat, 2000.

Hunwick, John O. "A New Source for the Biography of Ahmad Baba Al-Tinbukti (1556-1627)." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27, no. 3 (1964).

Lovejoy, Paul. "The Context of Enslavement in West Africa." In Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives : Blacks in Colonial Latin America, edited by Jane Landers and Barry Robinson, 9-38. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

Mouline, Nabil. Le Califat Imaginaire D'ahmad Al-Mansur: Pouvoir Et Diplomatie Au Maroc Au Xvie Siècle. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2009.

Zouber, Mahmoud A. Ahmad Baba De Tombouctou (1556-1627) : Sa Vie Et Son Oeuvre. Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1977.

Race, Slavery, and Islamic Law in the Early Modern Atlantic World

tajine Episode 4: "With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But, not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up - Paris to Marseilles... across the Mediterranean to Oran... then by train, or auto, or foot across the rim of Africa, to Casablanca in French Morocco. Here, the fortunate ones through money, or influence, or luck, might obtain exit visas and scurry to Lisbon; and from Lisbon, to the New World. But the others wait in Casablanca... and wait... and wait... and wait."

So Casablanca opens. Seventy years ago today, on March 2, 1944, Casablanca took home the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was a big year for the Maghreb on the silver screen, as Desert Victory, a documentary produced by the British Ministry of Information about the Allied campaign in North Africa, also grabbed the Oscar for Best Documentary. In fact, all five documentary nominees were produced by government agencies and four of them (Desert Victory, The Battle for Russia, Baptism of Fire, and the literally named War Department Report) dealt with the war.

To commemorate, Alma Rachel Heckman offers an in-depth look at Vichy North Africa in episode 4 of tajine podcast. She explores the experience of the Holocaust outside the confines of Europe. The episode then traces a railway track deep into the desert along the Moroccan-Algerian border, as Alma takes us through a series of labor camps where more than 7,000 Jews, Communists, Spanish Republicans, Gaullists, and anti-Nazi Germans were sent during the war.

Beyond Casablanca | Alma Heckman

E143 | The Ottoman Empire occupies an unusual place among the competing imperial powers of the nineteenth century. On one hand, a weak military position often forced the Ottomans to accept unfavorable economic and political arrangements while playing other empires off each other to maintain autonomy. On the other, we find expansion of state institutions throughout the Ottoman domains and an increased Ottoman presence in many parts of Asia and the Indian Ocean. Many even point to a form of Ottoman colonialism practiced in the frontiers of the empire. In this episode, Mostafa Minawi offers a glimpse at Ottoman practices in the realm of strategic imperial diplomacy within the context of the Scramble for Africa and European competition over influence in Sub-Saharan Africa.  - See more at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/02/ottoman-empire-colonialism-africa.html#sthash.J6JNCpv1.dpuf

The Ottoman Scramble for Africa | Mostafa Minawi

E03: Throughout most of the Muslim world, many of the affairs of religious minorities were historically governed by separate legal principles and courts, resulting in a state of legal pluralism. In practice, this created multiple forums for legal opinion that individuals irrespective of their religion could use for recording and resolving matters of business, family and property. In this episode, Jessica Marglin discusses her research on the relationship between Muslim and Jewish courts in Morocco during the nineteenth century.

Legal Pluralism in Morocco | Jessica Marglin

E05 | There are many varieties of Arabic and Berber languages spoken in Morocco. In this episode, Mike Turner examines these language varieties in contact, discusses current education and language reform programs in Morocco, and provides some insights into what the study of dialects in contact can offer historians. More at: http://tajine.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/03/berber-arabic-language-linguistics.html

Berber and Arabic in Morocco | Mike Turner

E182 | In this episode, Beth Baron discusses the historical context of the Muslim Brotherhood's rise during the interwar period and how the organization's activities and goals were shaped by the actions of European missionaries in Egypt.

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/01/history-muslim-brotherhood-egypt.html

Beth Baron is Professor of History at City University of New York (CUNY), the Graduate Center and direct of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC). She has written extensively on the gender, the press, nationalism, and politics in modern Egypt.

Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East.

Susanna Ferguson is a PhD student in Middle Eastern History at Columbia University, where she focuses on the history of women and gender in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Select Publications of Beth Baron:

The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Stanford University Press, 2014.

Egypt As a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. 

Missionaries and the Making of the Muslim Brotherhood | Beth Baron

E192 | Bathhouses or hamams are a well-known feature of the Ottoman city typically associated with leisure. However, as our guest Nina Ergin explains, the history of hamams also provides a window onto many socioeconomic and political issues in the Ottoman Empire. In this episode, we discuss her research regarding the hamams of Istanbul during the mid-eighteenth century, what they tell us about the political economy and demographic makeup of the Ottoman capital, and how mapping hamams onto the landscape of Ottoman Istanbul can raise new questions about the social history of the city.

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/p/urban-space-in-ottoman-world.html

Nina Ergin is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at Koç University, specializing in the history of Ottoman architecture. Her work particularly revolves around monuments that have a strong social dimension, such as hamams, soup kitchens and hospitals, as well as around the sensory dimensions of the Ottoman built environment.

Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University studying the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. His doctoral research examines the ecological transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey from the mid-19th century onward.

    Episode No. 192
    Release date: 5 July 2015
    Location: Feriköy, Istanbul
    Editing and Production by Chris Gratien
Images courtesy of Nina Ergin 
    Musical excerpt from Debo Band - Ambassel at freemusicarchive.org

Bibliography:

Nina Ergin with contributions by Yasemin Özarslan, “Mapping Istanbul’s Hamams of 1752 and Their Employees,” Bread from the Lion’s Mouth: Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2015), 108-135.


Nina Ergin, “The Albanian Tellâk Connection: Labor Migration to the Hamams of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul, Based on the 1752 İstanbul Hamâmları Defteri,” Turcica 43 (2011 [2012]): 229-254.

Nina Ergin, “Bathing Business in Istanbul: A Case Study of the Çemberlitaş Hamamı in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Bathing Culture of Anatolian Civilizations: Architecture, History and Imagination (Louvain: Peeters, 2011), 142-167.


Nina Ergin, “Continuity and Change in Turkish Bathing Culture in Istanbul: The Life Story of the Çemberlitaş Hamam,” Turkish Studies 6 (2005): 93-112.

The Sociopolitical World of Ottoman Hamams | Nina Ergin

E193 | From Baghdad to Cairo to Edirne, hospitals were major and integral components of medieval and early modern Islamic cities. But what role did they play in these cities and their societies? Were they sites for the development of medical knowledge? In this podcast, Professor Ahmed Ragab examines the history and significance of hospitals in Mamluk Egypt and Syria. He argues that we must view these medieval hospitals as charitable institutions that provided needed services and drugs to the urban poor, rather than the early progenitors of our modern medical institutions. Over the course of the interview we explore how these hospitals functioned as charitable institutions, what type of medical theories and treatments they employed, why medieval rulers regarded them as so important, and why their importance decreased after the sixteenth century.

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/07/islamic-hospitals-in-medieval-egypt-and.html

Ahmed Ragab is Richard T. Watson Assistant Professor of Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity School. His book, The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, and Charity is available from Cambridge University Press as of September 2015.

        Release date: 26 July 2015
    Location: Harvard University
    Editing and Production by Chris Gratien
    Bibliography courtesy of Ahmed Ragab 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ragab, Ahmed. The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion and Charity. Newark: Cambridge University Press, 2015. http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/religion/islam/medieval-islamic-hospital-medicine-religion-and-charity?format=HB

Dols, Michael W. "The Origins of the Islamic Hospital: Myth and Reality." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 61, (1987): 367-390

Horden, Peregrine. "The Earliest Hospitals in Byzantium, Western Europe and Islam." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35, no. 3 (2005): 361-89.

Pormann, Peter E. "Islamic Hospitals in the Time of Al-Muqtadir." In Abbasid Studies Ii: Occasional Papers of the School of Abbasid Studies, Leuven, 28 June-1 July 2004, edited by John A. Nawas, 337-81. Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oosterse Studies, 2010.

Pormann, Peter E. "Medical Methodology and Hospital Practice: The Case of Fourth-/Tenth-Century Baghdad." In In the Age of Al-Farabi: Arabic Philosophy in the Fourth-Tenth Century, edited by Peter Adamson, 95-118. London: Warburg Institute, 2008.

Shefer-Mossensohn, Miri. Ottoman Medicine: Healing and Medical Institutions, 1500-1700. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009.

Islamic Hospitals in Medieval Egypt and the Levant | Ahmed Ragab

E194 | At the turn of the twentieth century, Turkish-speaking Greek intellectuals of Cappadocian origin found themselves between mutually opposed Turkish and Greek nationalist ideologies. Their unique cultural background and their belief in the promises of the Young Turk Revolution allowed them to develop an alternative brand of Greek identity, one that combined cultural Hellenism with political loyalty to the Ottoman State. But their hopes never came true, and as such, they have been written out of history and forgotten. In this episode, we talk to Vangelis Kechriotis about his latest research on Cappadocian Christians and other issues relating to late Ottoman Greek identity, exploring the fascinating careers and difficult political choices of those caught between competing nationalist discourses.

Vangelis Kechriotis is an Assistant Professor of History at Boğaziçi University. He specializes in history of non-Muslims in the late Ottoman Empire, particularly the Greek Orthodox. His PhD dissertation completed at the University of Leiden examined the history of the Greek community of Izmir. His latest work focuses on the history of complex cultural and political identities of Cappadocian Greeks.

  http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/07/ottomanism-with-greek-face-vangelis.html

    Editing and Production by Chris Gratien
    Bibliography courtesy of Polina Ivanova
    Musical excerpts from archive.org: Istanbul'dan Ayva Gelir Nar Gelir - Azize Tozem & Sari Recep / Nazmiye by Rizeli Sadik 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Balta, Evangelia. Beyond the Language Frontier: Studies on the Karamanlis and the Karamanlidika Printing. Istanbul: Isis Press, 2010.


Benlisoy, Foti and Stefo Benlisoy. “Reading the Identity of  “Karamanli” Through the Pages of Anatoli.” In Cries and Whispers in Karamanlidika Books: proceedings of the first International Conference on Karamanlidika Studies (Nicosia, 11th-13th September 2008), edited by Evangelia Balta and Matthias Kappler, 93-108. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010.

Braude, Benjamin and Bernard Lewis, eds. Christians and Jews in in the Ottoman Empire: the Functioning of a Plural Society. New York: Holmes and Meier: 1982.

Kechriotis, Vangelis. “Ottomanism with a Greek Face: Karamanlı  Greek Orthodox Diaspora at the End of the Ottoman Empire.” In Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long 19th Century, edited by Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, 189-204. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

Kechriotis, Vangelis. “Atina’da Kapadokyalı, İzmir’de Atinalı, İstanbul’da Mebus: Pavlos Karolidis’in Farklı Kişilik ve Aidiyetleri,” Toplumsal Tarih, no. 257 (May 2015), 28-35.


Kechriotis, Vangelis. “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun son döneminde Karamanlı Rum Ortodoks diasporası İzmir mebusu Emmanouil Emmanouilidis,” Toplumsal Tarih, no. 251 (November 2014), 38-43.

Kechriotis, Vangelis. “On the margins of national historiography: The Greek Ittihatçı Emmanouil Emmanouilidis – opportunist or Ottoman patriot?” In Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Amy Singer, Christoph K. Neumann, and S. Aksin Somel, 124-142. London: Routledge, 2011.


Kechriotis, Vangelis. “Educating the Nation: Migration and Acculturation on the Two Shores of the Aegean at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” In Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day, edited by Meltem Toksöz and Biray Kulluoğlu. 139-156. London: I.B. Tauris (2010).

Ottomanism with a Greek Face | Vangelis Kechriotis

E195 | Visit  http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/08/ottoman-empire-photography-edhem-eldem.html for images associated with the podcast. 

Photography came to the Ottoman Empire almost immediately after its invention in 1839. Some of the major figures and studios involved in Ottoman photography have been identified, and certain stylistic aspects of images produced in and of the Ottoman Empire such as orientalism are well established. Yet there is comparatively little extant work regarding the reception, impact, and circulation of images during the late Ottoman period. In this episode, Emily Neumeier and Nir Shafir sit down with Edhem Eldem to discuss the ways in which restoring contexts of viewing, circulation, and publication of images offers a different story of late Ottoman photography using examples from the Camera Ottomana photography exhibition at Koç RCAC in Istanbul, curated by Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, and Bahattin Öztuncay.

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/08/ottoman-empire-photography-edhem-eldem.html

Edhem Eldem is a professor in the Department of History at Boğaziçi University.

Emily Neumeier is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania researching art and architecture in the Ottoman world.

Nir Shafir is a doctoral candidate at UCLA focusing on the history of knowledge and science in the early modern Middle East. He also runs the website HAZİNE, which profiles different archives, libraries, and museums that house sources on the Islamic world.

Episode No. 195
Release Date: 11 August 2015
Location: Boğaziçi University
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Bibliography and images courtesy of Edhem Eldem and Emily Neumeier
Musical excerpts from archive.org: Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi / Kemany Minas - Eghin Havasi (1925) / Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla

The Camera Ottomana exhibit, curated by Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, and Bahattin Öztuncay, is on display at Koç RCAC / ANAMED in Beyoğlu, Istanbul until 19 August 2015.

FURTHER READING

Camera Ottomana exhibit website
Camera Ottomana exhibit catalog, by Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, Bahattin Öztuncay, Frances Terpak & Peter Louis Bonfitto (Koç University Press, 2015)

Eldem, Edhem. "Powerful Images: The Dissemination and Impact of Photography in the Ottoman Empire, 1870-1914" in Camera Ottomana, ed. Zeynep Çelik and Edhem Eldem. Koç University Press, 2015.

Baleva, Martina. “Revolution in the Darkroom: Nineteenth-Century Portrait Photography as a Visual Discourse of Authenticity.” Hungarian Historical Review 3, no. 2 (2014): 363­–390.

Gavin, Carney E. S., ed. “Imperial Self-Portrait: The Ottoman Empire as Revealed in the Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s Photographic Albums Presented as Gifts to the Library of Congress (1893) and the British Museum (1894).” Special issue. Journal of Turkish Studies; Türklük Bilgisi Araştırmaları 12 (1988).

Marsoobian, Armen T. Fragments of a Lost Homeland: Remembering Armenia. London: I. B. Tauris, 2015.

Özendes, Engin. From Sébah & Joaillier to Foto Sabah: Orientalism in Photography. Istanbul: YKY, 2004.

Öztuncay, Bahattin, The Photographers of Constantinople: Pioneers, Studios, and Artists from 19th Century Istanbul. Istanbul: Aygaz, 2003.

Following Ottoman Photographs | Edhem Eldem

E196 | During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, scientists and physicians the world over began to think of sex as something that could be studied and understood through rational methods. In places like Germany, these sexologists were associated with progressive political movements that combated stigmatization of homosexuality and contraception and broke taboos regarding issues such as impotence and masturbation. In this episode, Liat Kozma examines how sexology traveled and transformed in Middle Eastern contexts through the writings of Egyptian doctors and Jewish exiles.

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/p/women-gender-and-sex-in-history.html

Liat Kozma is a senior lecturer at the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies, the Hebrew University. She is currently working on a book manuscript on regulated prostitution in the interwar Middle East and North Africa.

Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. 

Susanna Ferguson is a doctoral candidate in Middle Eastern History at Columbia University, where she focuses on the history of women and gender in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Release date: 19 August 2015
Location: Okmeydanı, Istanbul
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Bibliography and images courtesy of Liat Kozma
Additional thanks to Seçil Yılmaz

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
courtesy of Liat Kozma

Liat Kozma, " 'We, the Sexologists . . .': Arabic Medical Writing on Sexuality, 1879–1943," Journal of the History of Sexuality 22:3 (2013), 426-445.

Liat Kozma, "sexology in the Yishuv: The rise and decline of sexual consultation in Tel Aviv, 1930–39", International Journal of Middle East Studies 42 (May 2010), 231-249.

Liat Kozma, "Translating Sexology, Writing the Nation: Sexual Discourse and Practice in Hebrew and in Arabic in the 1930s," In Heike Bauer, Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World. London: Temple University Press, 2015.

Further Reading

On Ottoman sexual discourses, see Dror Ze'evi, Producing Desire:‎  Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006 (especially chapter 1).

On sexual discourses in the 20th century Egypt, see Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011 (especially chapter 6).

On scientification of the human body in early twentieth century Egypt, consult also
Hanan Kholoussy, "Monitoring and Medicalising Male Sexuality in Semi-Colonial Egypt," Gender & History 22 (2010), 677-691; Hibba Abugideiri, Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt. London: Ashgate, 2010, chapter 7 (titled "Egyptian doctors and domestic medicine"); and Oumnia El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

On sexuality in early Zionist ideology, see Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997; John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-De-Siècle Europe. New Haven, Con.: Yale University Press, 1994.

On concept of "sexual reform" disseminated in different European contexts (including the UK, the Netherlands and Spain) in the interwar period through the German-inspired World League for Sexual Reform, see a theme issue of the Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 12, issue 1 (January 2003).
 
Heike Bauer's forthcoming Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World. London: Temple University Press, 2015 – will cover more such contexts of influence, including China, Japan, Russia and Peru.

Sexology in Hebrew and Arabic | Liat Kozma

E200 | "Sectarianism" is a a slippery term, now used to describe everything from Saudi Arabian foreign policy to the daily functioning of Lebanese politics to the rhetoric of the Islamic State. In this episode, historian Ussama Makdisi takes on the history of both the term "sectarian" and the kinds of communal political divides it is often used to describe in the late Ottoman Empire and the 20th century Middle East, reflecting on his former work and offering a preview of his forthcoming scholarship. 

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/09/rethinking-sectarianism-in-middle-east.html

Ussama Makdisi is Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. He is the author of Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001 (Public Affairs, 2010), Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell University Press, 2008), and the Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (University of California Press, 2000). (see faculty page)

Episode No. 200
Release Date: 13 September 2015
Location: Yeniköy, Istanbul
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Musical excerpts from archive.org: Turnalar Turnalar - Darulelhan Heyeti; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi 
Image via US Library of Congress
Bibliography courtesy of Susanna Ferguson

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asad, Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Campos, Michelle.  Ottoman Brothers: Muslim, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.

Der Matossian, Bedross. Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire. 2014.

Greene, Molly. A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Makdisi, Ussama. Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. 

_____. The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and Violence in Ottoman Lebanon. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.

Masters, Bruce Alan. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

White, Benjamin T. The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

Rethinking Sectarianism in the Middle East | Ussama Makdisi

E220 | Hundreds of cartographic images of the world and its regions exist scattered throughout collections of medieval and early modern Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts. The sheer number of these extant maps tells us that from the thirteenth century onward, when these map-manuscripts began to proliferate, visually depicting the world became a major preoccupation of medieval Muslim scholars. However, these cartographers did not strive for mimesis, that is, representation or imitation of the real world. These schematic, geometric, and often symmetrical images of the world are iconographic representations—‘carto-ideographs’—of how medieval Muslim cartographic artists and their patrons perceived their world and chose to represent and disseminate this perception. In this podcast, we sit down with Karen Pinto to discuss the maps found in the cartographically illustrated Kitāb al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik (Book of Routes and Realms) tradition, which is the first known geographic atlas of maps, its influence on Ottoman cartography, and how basic versions of these carto-ideographs were transported back to villages and far-flung areas of the Islamic empire.

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/01/islamic-cartography.html

Karen Pinto is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Boise State University. She specializes in the history of Islamic cartography and its intersections between Ottoman, European, and other world cartographic traditions

CREDITS

Episode No. 220
Release Date: 12 January 2016
Recording Location: Brown University
Editing by Onur Engin (funded by a paid assistantship at Koç University under the supervision of Nina Ergin)
Music and sound samples: Bekir Sıdkı - Lerzan ediyor ruhumu cesmindeki efsun; BBC Sound Effects Vol.46 - Istanbul; Selma Sağbaş - Cok surmedi gecti tarab-i sevk-i baharim
Images courtesy of Leiden University Library

SELECT PUBLICATIONS OF KAREN PINTO

Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration (in press, The University of Chicago Press, 2016)

“Passion and conflict: Medieval Islamic views of the West" in Mapping Medieval Geographies, ed. Keith Lilley, (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 201-224.

“Searchin’ his eyes, lookin’ for traces: Piri Reis’ World Map of 1513 & Its Islamic Iconographic Connections (A Reading Through Bağdat 334 and Proust),” Journal of Ottoman Studies, 39:1, 2012, 63-94.

"The Maps Are The Message: Mehmet II’s Patronage of an ‘Ottoman Cluster,’" Imago Mundi, 63:2, 2011, 155-179.

Mapping the Medieval World in Islamic Cartography | Karen Pinto

E224 | Ondokuzuncu yüzyılda Osmanlı merkezi yönetimi vergi gelirlerini nasıl ve hangi koşullarda arttırabilmişti? Bu vergi artışının toplumsal ve siyasal bedeli ne olmuştu? Bu podcastimizde, Prof. Dr. Nadir Özbek ile son dönem Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda vergi siyaseti ve toplumsal adaleti konuşuyoruz.

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/02/osmanlda-vergi.html

Prof. Dr. Nadir Özbek, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Atatürk Enstitüsü'nde öğretim üyesidir.

University of Cincinnati Tarih bölümünden doktorasını alan Ufuk Adak, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun son dönemindeki ceza politikaları ve hapishaneler üzerine uzmanlaşmıştır.

Zoe Griffith, Brown Üniversitesi'nde erken modern Akdeniz tarihi üzerine doktorasını yapmaktadır. 

YAPIM VE YAYIN

Bölüm No. 224
Yayın Tarihi: 10 Şubat 2016
Kayıt Yeri: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi
Ses Editörü: Onur Engin (Koç Üniversitesi ve Dr. Nina Ergin'in danışmanlığı'nda asistanlık desteği ile hazırlanmıştır.)
Müzik (archive.org): Müzeyyen Senar - Fikrimin İnce Gülü
Bibiliyografya Nadir Özbek müsadesiyle
Resim kaynağı: Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi

Osmanlı'da Vergi Siyaseti (1839-1908) | Nadir Özbek

E229 | Scholars have long neglected the Middle East’s Christian communities in general and Christian women in particular. In this episode, Akram Khater draws attention to the biography of Hindiyya al-'Ujaimi (1720-1798) to explore the religious and political upheavals of 18th-century Aleppo and Mount Lebanon. Hindiyya’s story speaks to the dynamic history of the Maronite Church, the  fraught encounter between Arab and European Christianities, and the role of faith as a historical force. For half a century, she held as much sway over the Maronite Church as any other cleric. The extent of her influence won her powerful enemies in Lebanon and the Vatican. Hindiyya weathered one inquisition but was eventually convicted of heresy and confined to a solitary cell for the final decade of her life. The story of her ascent and demise illuminates gendered aspects of piety and politics in the Christian Middle East.

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/03/hindiyya.html

Akram Fouad Khater is University Faculty Scholar, Professor of History, and holds the Khayrallah Chair in Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, where he also serves as the Director of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies. He is the author of many publications, including two monographs, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921 (2001) and Embracing the Divine: Passion and Politics in the Christian Middle East (2014). Akram Khater is the current editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Graham Auman Pitts is a PhD Candidate in Georgetown University's History department, where he studies the environmental history of the modern Middle East. He is currently finishing a dissertation entitled "Fallow Fields: Famine and the Making of Lebanon (1914-1952)," which probes the intersections of ecology, capital, and colonialism.

CREDITS

Episode No. 229
Release Date: 8 March 2016
Recording Location: North Carolina State University
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts from archive.org uploaded by fidika: Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Ben Yemenimi Al Isterim - Hafiz Burhan; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Nazmiye - Rizeli Sadik; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla
Image courtesy of Akram Fouad Khater

Gender, Politics, and Passion in the Christian Middle East | Akram Khater

E231 | During the late Ottoman period, the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut became a leading center of higher education in the Eastern Mediterranean and for the Arab world in particular. With the establishment of British and French Mandates in the Middle East following the First World War, the Syrian Protestant College--now known as the American University of Beirut--became an educational hub not only for the Arab elite and middle class but also for local teachers and bureaucrats that would serve in the colonial mandate governments. In this episode, Hilary Falb Kalisman shares her research on the history of scholarship students from the British Mandates and their life at AUB during the interwar period, highlighting dimensions of class, nation, and transnationalism that emerged out of the educational experience and tracing the impacts of their education as they returned to serve in mandate and post-mandate independent governments of Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan.

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/03/AUB-british-mandate.html

Hilary Falb Kalisman is currently a visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. She completed her PhD at the University of California-Berkeley in May 2015. Her research focuses on education in the Middle East during the Mandate period.

Huma Gupta is a Ph.D. student at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at MIT. Her dissertation research focuses on the structural relationships between urban planning, architecture, state formation and migration in modern Iraq. She is also interested in the sonic and visual past and continues to think of ways to integrate sensory histories into her research. 

Chris Gratien holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University's Department of History. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s.

Nir Shafir is a historian of the Middle East whose research examines the intersections of knowledge production, religious practice, and material culture in the early modern world (1400-1800). He curates Ottoman History Podcast’s series on history of science in addition to being one of the co-founders of hazine.info, a website that explores the archives and libraries of the Islamic world. He is currently an advanced doctoral candidate in the History Department at UCLA.

CREDITS

Episode No. 231
Release Date: 15 March 2016
Recording Location: Cambridge, MA
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Special thanks to Kara Güneş for allowing us to use the composition "Istanbul" in the intro and outro music
Sound excerpts for archive.org: Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Images via Library of Congress and Before Their Diaspora
Bibliography courtesy of Hilary Falb Kalisman

The American University of Beirut and the British Mandates | Hilary Falb Kalisman

E233 | At the heart of medieval political economies were a variety of practices, structures, and activities that revolved around the production and distribution of food. In this episode, Nicolas Trépanier discusses his research for Foodways and Daily Life in Medieval Anatolia, which examines life in the early Ottoman Empire through the lens of food and drink. We discuss diverse subjects from agrarian labor and temporality to religion and commerce in order to understand how people lived through what and how they ate.

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/03/food-medieval-anatolia.html

PARTICIPANTS

Nicolas Trépanier is Associate Professor of History at the University of Mississippi and the author of Foodways and Daily Life in Medieval Anatolia: A New Social History (University of Texas Press, 2014). His current research focuses on landscape and perceptions of place in the late medieval Anatolian countryside.

Nir Shafir is a historian of the Middle East whose research examines the intersections of knowledge production, religious practice, and material culture in the early modern world (1400-1800). He curates Ottoman History Podcast’s series on history of science in addition to being one of the co-founders of hazine.info, a website that explores the archives and libraries of the Islamic world. He is currently an advanced doctoral candidate in the History Department at UCLA.

Polina Ivanova is a Ph.D. Candidate at Harvard University and a 2016-18 Tyler Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Her interests include history of the medieval Mediterranean, Anatolia and Iran, as well as archaeology and material culture studies.

CREDITS

Episode No. 233
Release Date: 22 March 2016
Recording Location: Cambridge, MA
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts: Istanbul'dan Ayva Gelir Nar Gelir - Azize Tozem and Sari Recep; Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Image and bibliography courtesy of Nicolas Trépanier

Bibliography at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/03/food-medieval-anatolia.html

Foodways in Medieval Anatolia | Nicolas Trépanier

E237 | *Bonus Episode* 
In comparison with the historiography of other world regions, class has often been an ignored aspect of the history of the late Ottoman Empire and modern Middle East. This has been especially true with regard to the middle class. But as our guest Keith Watenpaugh has argued in Being Modern in the Middle East, the middle class emerged as a discrete segment of late Ottoman society represented by businessmen, professionals, educators, and writers who engaged robustly with ideas concerning modernity and nationalism and contributed greatly to the making of post-Ottoman societies. In this interview, Prof. Watenpaugh reflects on his research regarding Ottoman and post-Ottoman Aleppo and the historiography of modernity and class in the Middle East roughly a decade after Being Modern's publication, and we explore possible directions for further inquiry.

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2015/04/middle-class-middle-east.html

Keith David Watenpaugh is Professor and Director of the University of California, Davis Human Rights Studies Program.  A UCLA-trained historian, he is author of Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (California, 2015) and Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton, 2006) and articles in the American Historical Review, Social History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Human Rights, Humanity, Chronicle of Higher Education, Ayrıntı Dergi, Jadaliyya & Huffington Post.

Chris Gratien holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University's Department of History. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s.

CREDITS

Episode No. 237
Release Date: 8 April 2016
Recording Location: Aynalıçeşme, Istanbul
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Special thanks to Kara Güneş for allowing us to use the composition "Istanbul" in the intro music
Sound excerpts: Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Image via Library of Congress

The Middle Class in the Modern Middle East | Keith Watenpaugh

E239 | Were Ottoman courts just? Boğaç Ergene discusses this basic question in this podcast by forging a new path beyond the earlier views of the justice system as inherently fickle and capricious—immortalized in Weber’s concept of kadijustiz—and the idealistic views of Ottoman courts as a site of equal and fair treatment for all. Drawing on the results of research for his forthcoming publication with Metin Coşgel entitled The Economics of Ottoman Justice, Ergene argues for employing the quantitative methods of “law and economics” scholars, demonstrating that entrenched power holders in early modern Ottoman society were always able to use the Ottoman court system to produce outcomes favorable to themselves. 

http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/04/economics-and-justice-in-ottoman-courts.html

Boğaç A. Ergene (PhD in History, 2001, Ohio State University) has undergraduate and graduate degrees in Economics, Economic History, and History and is currently Associate Professor of History at University of Vermont. He is the author of Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire (Brill, 2003) and editor of Judicial Practice: Institutions and Agents in the Islamic World (Brill, 2009). His most recent monograph, The Economics of Ottoman Justice, coauthored with Metin Coşgel, is forthcoming from the Cambridge University Press. 

Nir Shafir is a historian of the Middle East whose research examines the intersections of knowledge production, religious practice, and material culture in the early modern world (1400-1800). He curates Ottoman History Podcast’s series on history of science in addition to being one of the co-founders of hazine.info, a website that explores the archives and libraries of the Islamic world. He is currently an advanced doctoral candidate in the History Department at UCLA.

CREDITS

Episode No. 239
Release Date: 11 April 2016
Recording Location: Cambridge, MA
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Special thanks to Kara Güneş for allowing us to use the composition "Istanbul" in the intro and outro music
Sound excerpts: Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Muzaffer Akgun - Ha Bu Diyar; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Rizeli Sadik - Erkek Kadin Oyun Havasi
Podcast image by Daphne Christoforou, copyright Boğaç Ergene
Bibliography courtesy of Boğaç Ergene

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/04/economics-and-justice-in-ottoman-courts.html

Economics and Justice in the Ottoman Courts | Boğaç Ergene

E240 | 
What is a caliphate? Who can be caliph? What is the history of the idea? How can we interpret and use it today? In this podcast we discuss with Prof Hugh Kennedy his forthcoming book The Caliphate (Pelican Books) and the long-term historical context to the idea of caliphate. Tracing the history from the choosing of the first caliph Abu Bakr in the immediate aftermath of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632, the Orthodox (Rashidun) caliphs (632-661), the Umayyads (661-750), the Abbasids (750-1258) and the use of the idea of caliphate by the Ottomans down to the emergence of another Abu Bakr as “caliph” of the IS in 2014.

Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic at SOAS, London. He has been studying the history of the caliphate for almost fifty years and has written numerous books including “The Courts of the Caliphs” (2004) and “The Great Arab Conquests” (2007).

Taylan Güngör is a doctoral candidate at SOAS in London. His interests are in Medieval and Pre-Modern Eastern Mediterranean trading circles and his research is on trade in Istanbul after 1453.

CREDITS

Episode No. 240
Release Date: 15 April 2016
Recording Location: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
Audio Editing by Taylan Güngör
Recorded at SOAS Radio studios. SOAS Radio is an outlet for creative media and talent housed by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Run by alumni, current students and staff at the School, including volunteers from like-minded communities, SOAS Radio is dedicated to varied and original programming on world music, culture and current affairs.
Special thanks to Lâmekân Ensemble for intro and outro music

For an extensive bibliography: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/04/caliphate.html

Caliphate: an idea throughout history | Hugh Kennedy

E242 | “Hrig,” the Moroccan Arabic term for “illegal” immigration, translates to “burning.” In the latest episode of Tajine, Isabella Alexander discusses the dramatic rise in sub-Saharan migrants attempting to enter the E.U. from Morocco - now the primary entry point for all African migrations north. As Spanish officials start exploring their border controls further south in response,  hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharans now find themselves trapped in Morocco. Their act of “burning” signifies the literal burning of their identification papers to avoid repatriation when arrested by European authorities, but also the symbolic burning of their pasts in hopes of a better future abroad. They wait in sprawling slums outside of Moroccan cities, scraping together enough money to attempt the journey into Spain by boat or by land once again. But, what happens when their position in this liminal space—Morocco—becomes a permanent one?

Anthropological studies of migration have long been situated in migrants’ sending or receiving communities, but saturated labor markets in traditional immigrant-receiving countries like those across the E.U. have led to less permeable borders and migration routes are changing. In this podcast, Dr. Alexander urges us to question what “the burning” means for the rapidly expanding population of sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco. We discuss Morocco’s response to the crisis, its current relations with the E.U., and what daily life looks like for these men, women, and children trapped in between two worlds. Finally, we draw some parallels between Morocco and the unfolding migration and refugee crises throughout the Mediterranean.

Isabella Alexander is an anthropologist and filmmaker. She earned her Ph.D. from Emory University in 2016 with a dissertation entitled “Burning at the E.U. Border: Liminality, Belonging, and Morocco’s New Migrant Class.” She also holds a B.A. from New York University, a M.F.A. from Speos Institut de la Photographie, and a M.A. from the University of Chicago. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at Emory and is currently working on a documentary film entitled “The Burning: An Untold Story from the Other Side of the Migrant Crisis.” (http://www.theburning.org/).

Graham H. Cornwell is a PhD Candidate in History at Georgetown University. His dissertation is entitled "Sweetening the Pot: A History of Tea and Taste in Morocco, 1856-1960."

CREDITS

Episode No. 242 (tajine No. 11)
Release Date: 27 April 2016
Recording Location: Princeton University
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts: Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Turnalar Turnalar - Darulelhan Heyeti
Special thanks to Kara Güneş for allowing us to use the composition "Istanbul" in the outro music
Images and bibliography courtesy of Isabella Alexander

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/04/migrants-refugees-morocco.html

Morocco’s New Migrant Class | Isabella Alexander

E285 | Famous images such as Amin al-Husayni's meeting with Hitler have come to dominate the public imagination of Arab-Nazi relations in Western societies. But to what extent does this imagery reflect actual trajectories of reception and reflection of fascist ideology in the Middle East or the experience that Arabs and Muslims of other origins had under Nazi rule? In this episode, we discuss the ideological options of interwar nationalists from the Arab world with Peter Wien, author of Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian, and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East (forthcoming). We examine the possible models adopted by political movements of the Arab world in their nation-state projects and struggles with British and French colonialism, and we explore the fates and resonance of ideologies such as fascism and communism in the Arab world. In doing so, we unearth the experiences of Arab nationalists in Nazi Germany, and we consider the relationship between European anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism in the modern Middle East. 

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/12/peter-wien.html

Peter Wien is Associate Professor for Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Maryland in College Park. He is the author of Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 (2006) and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of History and Culture in the Modern Middle East (2017).

Graham H. Cornwell is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Georgetown University. His work examines the history of tea and sugar consumption in Northwest Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is also the editor of tajine, a podcast and blog about North African Studies.

Alissa Walter is a Ph.D. candidate in Georgetown University's History Department. The title of her dissertation is "The Ba‘th Party in Baghdad: State-Society Relations through Wars, Sanctions, and Authoritarianism."

CREDITS

Episode No. 285
Release Date: 2 December 2016
Recording Location: Washington, DC
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts: from archive.org - Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla; Turnalar Turnalar - Darulelhan Heyeti
Special thanks to Monsieur Doumani for allowing us to use "The System/Το σύστημαν"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Peter Wien available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/12/peter-wien.html

Nationalism, Communism, and Fascism in the Modern Middle East | Peter Wien

E313 | In political discourses today, the “Muslim world” is evoked in a variety of contexts, ranging from pan-Islamic visions of political unity to a set of racist generalizations that present roughly a fifth of the world’s population as a monolithic whole. But as our guest in this episode, Cemil Aydın explains in his new book The Idea of the Muslim World, the very notion of a Muslim world is recent and requires historicization. In this episode, we explore the imagining of the Muslim World as a concept, tracing its early origins in the history of colonialism and the late Ottoman Empire and considering its transformation over the past century. We also discuss alternate geopolitical imaginaries and reflect on the implications of the racialization of Muslims.

More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/05/muslim-world.html

Cemil Aydın is teaching Ottoman history and global history  at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Cemil Aydin’s recent publications include his book on the Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia (Columbia University Press, 2007) and “Regionen und Reiche in der Politischen Geschichte des Langen 19 Jahrhunderts, 1750-1924 (Region and Empire in the Political History of the Long 19th Century” in Geschichte Der Welt, 1750-1870: Wege Zur Modernen Welt (A History of the World, 1750-1870)“ (Beck Publishers, July 2016) pp: 35-253.

Chris Gratien holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University's Department of History and is currently an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s.

Abdul Latif is an MTS student at Harvard Divinity School focusing on Islamic Studies.

CREDITS

Episode No. 313
Release Date: 16 May 2017
Recording Location: Harvard University
Audio editing by Chris Gratien
Music: Muzaffer Akgun - Ha Bu Diyar; Lili Labassi - Mazal Haye Mazal; Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla
Additional segments: "A Short History of the Ertuğrul" by Michael Talbot 
Images and bibliography courtesy of Cemil Aydın available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/05/muslim-world.html