With almost three millennia of history, the Jewish people have been an influential community of long standing within Iranian society. Synagogues in Iran have a history as old as the life of Jews in Iran as well. About hundred synagogues in Iranian cities like Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Yazd still survive. The construction of synagogues was usually under the influence of local or stylistic movements in Persian architecture. The humble exteriors and simple facades of synagogues did not differ in design from other buildings in Iranian cities, whereas interiors were complex overlays of local and regional elements, forms, and ornaments, and religious symbols. The city of Isfahan was one of the earliest Jewish settlements, likely established at the time of Jews’ deportations by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian kingdoms in the first millennium BCE. Isfahan, located in the center of Iran, gained its world renown as the capital of the Seljuk (11th century) and Safavid (16th century) empires. The Jewish quarter in Isfahan, which was in proximity to Friday Mosque, housed the majority of Jews as well as their synagogues. The Jewish community, their history, traditions, art and other aspects of social life have been the subject of contemporary research, yet their houses and places of worship have not been seriously studied as part of the history of the city. This paper aims to explore the development of synagogues in the Jewish neighborhood of Isfahan, Jubareh, by examining the physical and non-physical links between the city/urban quarter and synagogues. Studying spatial qualities of synagogue architecture in relation to the urban setting, I will explain the patterns behind the construction and distribution of synagogues in the Jewish neighborhood of Jubareh. In the absence of chronicles and historical accounts on the construction and development of the individual synagogues, this research is based on fieldwork in Isfahan.

In 1885, the widow of Etienne Pisani, a deceased dragoman (translator/interpreter) previously employed by the British Embassy in Istanbul, sent a petition to the Ottoman Sublime Porte requesting that plans move forward in opening a bank by her family. Etienne died in 1882, but before his death, he was granted an imperial ferman by the sultan to establish a bank in Istanbul. After his death, the investors that Pisani put together had grown anxious, and wanted to move forward with the plan. Mrs. Pisani sent more petitions, prompting debates about the legitimacy of the bank between the Ottoman State Reform Council, the Special Chamber, and the Şeyhülislâm. The ferman, however, was eventually annulled, and the bank did not open. This incident raises questions about how non-Muslim dragomans positioned themselves in Istanbul in the nineteenth century. Outside of their duties as translators and interpreters for the foreign embassies that employed them, many dragomans, such as Etienne Pisani, constructed lucrative plans to increase their own social and economic position in Istanbul. How were they able to do that? This paper introduces a new, critical and conceptual framework of what I call intra-imperial space to analyze the space that some non-Muslims, and dragomans in particular occupied in the Ottoman imperial capital. Intra-imperial space refers to the zone in between the imperial power that the dragomans served, and the Ottoman one that they were born into. Combining empirical evidence from The British National Archives (Kew, London), the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, and the archives of the Santa Maria Draperis Catholic Church (Istanbul, Turkey), with theoretical literature on empire, I argue that this intra-imperial space provided a political, economic and legal position that benefitted non-Muslim dragomans in Istanbul. Using the Pisani family of Latin-Catholic dragomans as an example, this paper examines how dragomans negotiated their status between two empires, integrated into the Ottoman imperial structure, and the techniques they used to move beyond a seemingly liminal status in an Islamic empire. In doing so, it contributes to the emerging literature by new generations of scholars uncovering agency among non-Muslim social actors in Ottoman history. This paper also challenges two long-standing assumptions about dragomans and non-Muslims in Ottoman historiography. The first is that dragomans were marginal-men, charged with simply translating and interpreting exchanges between the Europeans and the Ottomans. The second is that non-Muslims did not have the ability to participate in the Ottoman imperial structure.

The proposed essay is meant to portray the late history of the Ottoman Empire through the eyes of Cassandra Karatheodore. Raised by powerful Christian bureaucrats in the Muslim dynasty’s service, and married to a similar such bureaucrat, Alexandros Karatheodore, Cassandra became a behind—the—scenes witness to the turbulence of nineteenth century Ottoman diplomacy. Feeling always an observer, but never herself a protagonist, she accepted with growing resentment her role in the empire’s hierarchy. This essay will follow her transformation from Cassandra Mousourou to Cassandra Karatheodore through an examination of her personal correspondence with her lover and future husband; and by reference to the stormy history of the empire from mid-century reforms to the revolution of 1908. While Alexandros Pasha represented the Ottomans everywhere from Paris to Berlin and from Samos to Crete, his wife remained unwilling guardian of their household back in Istanbul. His worries and anxieties mirrored diplomatic tumults and challenges against the state. Her gloominess and irritation were profoundly personal reflections of an ambitious nature left behind. In this respect, the personal correspondence of the Karatheodore couple constitutes an intimate glance at the empire’s non-Muslim elite, echoing a world of fin-de-siècle privilege brought down by its own contradictions.

This paper examines a group of non- Muslim provincial elites titled 'chorbadjis' in the Ottoman Empire as local power holders. Chorbadjis became one of the key actors of social, economic and political functioning of the Ottomans, especially in the Balkan provinces of the Empire beginning with the eighteenth century. In this paper, I take as cases Chorbadji Nayden Efendi of Nish and Chorbadji Dino of Samakov. Through a close analysis of the activities of these two chorbadjis utilizing previously unexamined archival materials from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, Turkey, and the Lokalna Archiva Koletsia (Local Archive Collection) that are housed in Orientalski Otdel (Oriental Section) of the National Library of Bulgaria in Sofia, I delineate the networks between non-Muslim provincial elites, state officials, local population and also other provincial notables during the 19th century in the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire in terms of the state’s relations with powerful provincial actors during that period. Apart from the scholarship on Muslim provincial elites in the Ottoman Empire, there is a very little literature on non- Muslim power holders in general and on chorbadjis in particular. Scholars of the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire saw Chorbadjis either as exploiters of peasants or as causes of tax rebellions. Even studies on the Balkan and Arab provinces during this period, whether they adopted a top-down or bottom-up approach, omitted the chorbadjis from their examination of powerful provincial elites. Thus, through a detailed analysis of the cases in which chorbadji families were involved, I aim to offer a case study on provincial elites and their relations with state and other local actors during the early nineteenth century from a different angle. The significance of this paper lies in its ability to challenge the established narratives about the nineteenth century regarding issues such as the supposedly sharp distinctions and dichotomies between the Ottoman “center” and “periphery”, the role of provincial notables in times of transformation, and the role of imperial reforms issued from Istanbul. By close examination of activities of two specific chorbadjis through the archival documents in understudied provinces of the Ottoman Empire, this paper attempts to go beyond Balkan and Turkish nationalist historiography to offer an example of an integrated approach to the history of Middle East as well as the Ottoman Empire that synthesizes regional, national, imperial, and inter- imperial histories.