This paper is based on my current research on the lived experiences of some Arab-Ottoman imperialists who lived in Istanbul during the last 50 years of the empire. Using sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approach to analyzing a person’s habitus, it examines disposition and relationships between the social spaces of these Arab-Ottoman elites and the wider Ottoman imperial elite society during a time of rising ethno-racial differentiation in Istanbul. Focusing on a few individuals, it provides a micro-historical perspective into the lives of imperial loyalists, as they rose and fell in the Ottoman metropole—rising during the rule of Abdulhamid II and then struggling to maintain their position of privilege as they participated in and were subject to ethno-racialization, prejudice, and suspicion after the Young Turk revolution. Their journey from being core members of the Ottoman ruling class, to “intimate others” by the beginning of WWI, provides an example of the impact of late imperialism and early ethnonationalism on the lives of non-Turkish Ottomans living in Istanbul at the turn of the century. A culmination of decade-long research into the personal and professional lives of these men and women of the Ottoman metropole, this paper provides a surprising insight into where a Sunni Muslim, Arab-Ottoman, member of a global imperial class positioned themselves and how that evolved as the empire’s internal and external political and social dynamics changed. This paper is part of a larger project which calls on historians of the Ottoman Empire to embrace experiential history as a way to break our dependence on state archival narratives and to transcend the hard-to-shake traditional analytical paradigms and assumptions the field.