On the urban geography of seventeenth century Ottoman Istanbul: boundaries and politics of coexistence in Eremya Chelebi Komurcuyan (1637-1694) This paper is part of a larger project trying to explore the social and intellectual life of seventeenth century Istanbul, and the construction and subversion of communal boundaries through the life, literary production and autobiographical writings of Eremya Chelebi Komurcuyan of Istanbul (1637-1694). His works vary over a large span of genres from poetry to history, from religious pamphlets to his long diary and to polemical works against Jewish Messianism of the period. In this paper, I will focus on the use of urban geography of Istanbul as a means of negotiating social boundaries, identities and difference in the framework of politics of coexistence. In recent scholarship on the nature of the early modern Ottoman society, there has been a tendency to rethink on the social and political turbulences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was lately marked by the publication of Baki Tezcan’s ambitious and comprehensive book. Although his discussion of a notion of ‘limited government’ is productive for our purposes, Marc Baer’s and Tijana Krstic’s works have been especially inspirational and intellectually engaging due to their focus on questions of conversion, communal boundaries and moments of social confrontation including discussions of non-Muslim communities. The corpus of works produced by Eremya Chelebi Komurcuyan of Istanbul provides us with a picture of the urban geography of Istanbul useful for a better understanding of the larger processes of transformation. I aim at giving a perspective of the creative social tension that was caused by local urban conflicts, confrontations and negotiations specifically taking place in the second half of the seventeenth century. Using his diary, history of Istanbul, history of the fires of Istanbul, his map of Istanbul and Evliya Chelebi’s work on Istanbul (the first volume of his Seyahatname), I will demonstrate how some unsettling social and political events of this period were met by a member of the Armenian community. I intend to show how he uses urban geography as a canvas on which he (re)draws social boundaries. It is reflected in his works as a manifestation of the anxieties triggered by confessional competition, conversion of souls and spaces, and messianic movement of Sabbatai Sevi.