Ottoman History Podcast

with Monica Ringer hosted by Matthew Ghazarian | What is Islamic modernism, and how did authors of this movement position themselves vis-á-vis other 19th century intellectual movements? In this episode, we examine how Islamic modernism was more than a product of 19th century social and political reforms or even an attempt at using Islamic language to justify such reforms. Rather, Islamic modernism was a substantive theological reform movement, fueled by the belief that God's intent could be recovered through correct and contextual readings of the past. As a result, Islamic modernists helped give rise not only to new understandings of Islam but also to new understandings of history. In our discussion, we draw on Dr. Ringer's book Islamic Modernism and the Re-enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History out from Edinburgh University Press in 2020. In it, she takes up the work of four authors from across Eurasia: Namık Kemal from the Ottoman Empire, Ataullah Bayezidof from the Russian Empire, Syed Amir Ali from British India, and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who spent his formative years in Iran. Although they shared a religion, it was much more Islam that tied their ideas together. « Click for More »

with Nevila Pahumi hosted by Susanna Ferguson | In 1919, Paraskevi Kyrias went to Paris to advocate for Albanian independence. As a woman in the overwhelmingly masculine space of international diplomacy, she faced sexism and unwanted romantic overtures. Nevertheless, she called on her connections within a global Protestant community, her life in diaspora in the United States, and her experiences at the elite Constantinople Girls' School to play a unique role in the Albanian campaign for independence after World War I. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Nevila Pahumi about Kyrias' story, her leadership of the early Albanian women's movement, and the diary of her experiences in Paris she left behind. We also trace the history of this remarkable woman after 1919, as she and her family were repudiated by a secularizing Albanian state determined to exise Protestant activism from their national history -- until she was once again remade as a feminist icon in the last years of her life. « Click for More »

Randa Tawil discusses the impact of gender and race on migrant trajectories through the incredible journey of Zeinab Ameen, a Syrian migrant. The podcast explores the challenges faced by Syrian migrants in different global ports, including health inspections, language barriers, and social prejudice. It also highlights the experiences of Syrian women facing exploitation and abuse. The episode emphasizes the importance of recognizing migrant lives for future justice.

Episode 473 with Elisabeth Fraser hosted by Emily Neumeier For centuries, people have been documenting their travels with images, which purportedly function as visual evidence for someone’s experience far from home. This was no less the case for Europeans touring through Ottoman lands, who created a whole industry selling pictures from their time abroad. In this episode, Elisabeth Fraser explains how Western European artists at the turn of the eighteenth century began to create a new type of popular media, the illustrated travel volume. But these were not small guide books to tuck away in your pocket, they were large-scale luxury publications for the discerning armchair traveler. The enormous size and high production quality of these books and the accompanying images means that they were not the work of a single person but rather a large team of artists. Reflecting on these questions of authenticity, Dr. Fraser discusses how her research aims to take up a more nuanced view of the complexities of cross-cultural encounter. « Click for More »

Episode 472 with Alan Mikhail hosted by Sam Dolbee Sultan Selim I is well known for the conquests he pursued that brought places like Cairo, Damascus, and Mecca into the Ottoman Empire. But in this episode, we're exploring the life and times of Selim I in an entirely new light by placing the Islamic world at the center of the momentous events of the turn of the 16th century. We talk with historian Alan Mikhail about his new book God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World. We discuss the events and developments that led to Selim's rise as well as the ignored centrality of Islam in the imagination of the early European explorers of the Americas and thinkings of the Protestant Reformation.   « Click for More »

Episode 471 with Sato Moughalian hosted by Sam Dolbee David Ohannessian is one of the foremost pioneers of the ceramic styles associated today with the city of Jerusalem, but the remarkable story of how he ended up there has never been properly told. Born in 1884 outside of Eskişehir (modern-day Turkey), David Ohannessian became a master in the iconic Kütahya style of Ottoman ceramics. He worked on important architectural projects of the Ottoman government, only to be deported during the Armenian Genocide. He managed to survive, however, and continued his craft afterward in Jerusalem, where he became involved with restoration of the Dome of the Rock and opened his own ceramics studio in the Old City. Yet the past stayed with him, especially the weight of his experience during the genocide. In this episode, Sato Moughalian discusses Feast of Ashes, her recent biography of Ohannessian. She also talks about his story's personal resonance for her as Ohannessian's granddaughter. His artistic persistence provided a model of resilience to emulate in her own art, but the violence and displacement experienced by Ohannessian and his family also left a legacy of secrets and complicated grief in Moughalian's life that was long felt but seldom addressed.  « Click for More »

Episode 468 with Gregory Maxwell Bruce hosted by Zoe Griffith In 1892, the renowned Islamic scholar and educator Shibli Nomani traveled to the Ottoman Empire, where he visited cities in modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. His travelogue, entitled Safarnāmah-i Rūm o Miṣr o Shām, was published in the Urdu language within his own lifetime. In this episode, we talk to Gregory Maxwell Bruce, the author of an annotated translation of Shibli's travelogue, which has been recently published by Syracuse University Press. In our conversation, we delve into the process of translating the travelogue and explore the South-South connections between South Asia and the Middle East revealed by Shibli Nomani's relationships and contacts during his travels in the Ottoman Empire. « Click for More »

Episode 466 with Alden Young hosted by Chris Gratien As a site of recent civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, Sudan's history is often framed by violence. In this podcast, our guest Alden Young offers an alternative framing of Sudan's modern history, as we discuss Sudan's economy and its relationship to the broader Middle East from the 19th century onward. We discuss Sudan's unique experience of colonialism under Ottoman/Egyptian rule and how the issue of slavery intensified as Sudan's ties to Egypt and the broader Ottoman world intensified during the 19th century. We also discuss how colonial planners slowly reoriented Sudan's economy towards agricultural export and away from pastoralism. We explore the Gezira scheme, a long foretold irrigation project that would become the centerpiece of Sudanese economic development after independence during the 1950s. And we consider the fate of the class of Sudanese economists and technocrats who straddled the late colonial and postcolonial periods. At the bottom of this post, we also offer an activity module for university classrooms based on this podcast, a documentary about the Gezira scheme from the 1950s, and the novel Season of Migration to the North by Sudanese author Tayeb Salih. « Click for More »

Episode 465 with Robyn Dora Radway hosted by Emily Neumeier What was it like to be a foreigner living in Ottoman Istanbul? In this episode, our guest Robyn Dora Radway answers this question by providing an in-depth look at an unusual type of document: alba amicorum, or friendship albums, which were essentially the social media of the sixteenth century. Produced in the Habsburg embassy (aka the “German House"), these albums functioned like yearbooks in that the owners residing in the embassy would strive to collect all manner of mementos from their time abroad, including signatures, poems, short anecdotes, and even drawings and paintings. At the German House, men from all walks of life would end up assembling their own album amicorum, from the Habsburg ambassador to the cook (who was quite popular and had the largest album by far). We discuss how these albums can thus serve as a valuable resource for historians, as they offer a full picture of the social makeup of these kinds of diplomatic spaces—information that does not often turn up in more traditional archives. « Click for More »

Episode 464 with Cemal Kafadar hosted by Maryam Patton, Chris Gratien, and Sam Dolbee In part one of our interview with Cemal Kafadar, we discuss his intellectual influences in the broadest sense, ranging from the Balkan accents of the Istanbul neighborhood in which he grew up to his early interest in theater and film. Kafadar talks about key events that shaped his worldview, including the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution. He also touches on the works of history and literature that inspired him, as well as his first archival forays in the shadow of the 1980 military coup. And in closing, he brings up a question that nagged him from the beginning: "do we do what we do to understand, or do what we do to change the world?" We'll speak more about that question in part two of this interview, coming soon. « Click for More »