This paper problematizes some of the blind spots that exist between feminist and postcolonial critiques of the Habermasian public formation framework through an account of women's claims to urban public space in Ottoman Istanbul. I argue that the eighteenth and nineteenth-century evolution of urban public transportation from horse carriages to trams and steamer boats in Istanbul became a significant site for women to fashion increasingly visible counterpublics, progressively subvert the urban spatial order, and broaden access to the larger public. To make this point, I present archival evidence from 1716-1924 focused on women's historical transgressive practices in modes of urban transportation in Istanbul. These materials consist of letters, diaries, and travelogues on Ottoman Istanbul, authored exclusively by women. What emerges from these materials suggests an opportunity to simultaneously establish the role of women's publics as part of a mechanism of laying claim to urban space and the role of alternative non-Western public formations that venture beyond the foundational value attached to European reading publics.

Istanbul under occupation (1918-1922) has a reputation of being a hotbed of decadent and scandalous nightlife, where occupiers and occupied lived through a sensational half-a-decade. American jazz musicians, a dizzying array of British, French, Italian, Scottish, Indian, and Madagascan soldiers along with oh-so-unforgettable Russian refugee women with their short hair filled old and new places of entertainment, whether a luxurious club, a public park or a makeshift gambling tent. What is not generally mentioned in this narrative is what came immediately before. People think that World War I was devoid of this kind or any entertainment. My paper focuses on entertainment during World War I (1914-1918) in the Ottoman capital. It will discuss the impact of the war on entertainment, how the relationship between non-Muslim and Muslim Ottomans played out in the streets and various recreation venues of Istanbul in times of extreme tension and hardship. I will assess the visibility practices of non-Muslim Ottomans and their engagement with the Muslim Ottomans as well as Germans who were allies of the Ottomans in the war. I will also assess the introduction and proliferation of Germans and other allies in Istanbul’s entertainment scene. Using documents ranging from museum correspondences to military orders from the Ottoman, Republican and Military Archives in Turkey, Central State Archives in Italy, the National and Military Archives in France, the National Archives and the British Library in the UK, and the American National Archives in Washington DC, along with newspapers, I argue that the war created unique circumstances and opportunities to engage in various types of leisurely activities. Some of these activities had the somber veil of the war, which necessitated active performance of patriotism, while others were as decadent and happy-go-lucky as their post-war counterparts. This paper makes the point that war brought not only human suffering – such as the expulsion of enemy nationals from the Ottoman Empire who played important roles in the capital’s entertainment scene – but also important changes in which the very boundaries of what is entertainment was redrawn. Accordingly, this paper questions the impact of war on an already rapidly changing social and cultural relations and practices of the capital city’s new and old inhabitants played out in the urban space.

Administration of property is critical due to its role in the creation of modern subjects/citizens whom the state primarily characterizes by the virtue of their ownership of property as well as in the sustenance of modern empires financially. While there is a substantial secondary literature on the text and the implementation of the 1858 Ottoman Land Code, which was a groundbreaking legislation defining the property regime in the Ottoman Empire, the Hamidian acquisition and administration of large landed estates under the purview of the Privy Purse (Hazine-i Hassa) in the late nineteenth century has received less scholarly attention. Therefore, this paper seeks to revisit the definition and administration of property during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876 - 1909) by focusing on the writings and the career of one important bureaucrat: Sak?zl? Ohannes Pasha (d. 1912). Sak?zl? Ohannes Pasha taught at the Imperial School of Administration as the Professor of Economics and the Professor of Public Administration between 1877 and 1897, and served as the Minister of the Privy Purse from 1897 to 1908. The secondary literature hails him as the pioneer in his systematic support of laissez-faire policies and as the author of the first comprehensive work on political economy published in the Ottoman Empire, The Principles of Wealth of the Nations (Mebadi-i ‘?lm-i Servet-i Milel) (Sayar 1986; K?l?nço?lu 2015). The Principles of Wealth of the Nations, published in 1881, was also the primary textbook through which Ohannes Pasha taught political economy to the future generation of Ottoman bureaucrats. First, this paper will discuss Ohannes Pasha’s vision of political economy for the Ottoman Empire, with a particular attention to his definition of ownership of property in relation to landed property in this important work. Second, this paper will highlight the tensions between Sak?zl? Ohannes Pasha’s writings and his bureaucratic role as the Minister of the Privy Purse by relying on Ottoman archival sources. This juxtaposition, I argue, shows that his liberal vision for generating wealth did not parallel his policies as a top bureaucrat in the Hamidian administration.

This study primarily investigates the social and spatial history of Sufism in Istanbul during the late 19th century. Drawing on a unique population registry, which records exclusively Sufis and Sufi lodges in Istanbul, this study will reconstruct the locations of Sufi lodges and the social profiles of Sufis in order to question how visible and present Sufism was in the Ottoman capital, and what this visibility demonstrates the historical realities of Sufism in the late-19th century. Through utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and methodologies, it examines the space and place of Sufism in the Ottoman society and its impact on the social and religious aspects of the everyday life in the context of nineteenth-century Istanbul. There is a little effort to investigate the social aspect of Sufism as well as the agency of the ordinary Sufi dervishes in historical studies. Additionally, there is a preponderance of research that scrutinizes the architectural features of individual lodges, while ignoring the importance of the lodges in the urban space. While reconstructing the social profiles within the tekkes, thus revealing the agency of “less” significant Sufis, this study contributes to the scholarship by revealing the spatial aspect of Sufi lodges through a set of maps that visualize their distribution and their spatial networks within urban space by way of highlighting a number of select variables. Drawing on the maps and the visualized data, this study claims that Sufism was one of the most significant aspects of urban life in the Ottoman capital. However, there were certain areas in Istanbul where Sufis were not extensively present: Unkapan?-Bayezid and Galata-Pera. While this spatial orientation, to a certain extent, was a reflection of two Sufi teachings, “abandoning the world (terk-i dünya)” and “solitude in the crowd (halvet der encuman), the Western domination over the urban space in Galata-Pera led to an absence of Sufi in that area.

The arrival of cinema in the Ottoman Empire was connected to a number of Western European and North American entrepreneurs’ keenness in making profit from exhibiting and renting films, and selling their devices in the late 1896. The organisers of film exhibitions in imperial Istanbul during this time were artists, business people and foreign itinerant exhibitors who were in tune with the latest technology. Author Sami Pa?azade Sezai described the carnival-like atmosphere on a Ramadan night in 1898 in the capital, with advertisements for shadow theatre (karagöz), commedia dell’arte, and cinema found side-by-side. Sezai evaluated this situation in terms of the contrast between East and West, with cinema as ‘the great innovation,’ bringing the ‘new world’ to ‘ancient Asia’. Other testimonies from the audiences show that they were curious to see the latest novelty of the West, therefore itinerant exhibitions became gradually popular, and screenings took place in coffeehouses, pubs, schools and mansions. Cinema and entertainment in imperial Istanbul has two research objectives: firstly, to explore the cinematic experience of audiences within the background of already settled entertainment culture and secondly, to examine the infrastructural challenges that legislators and operators faced. Specifically, it will ask what was the role of cinema’s technology in modern subjectivity of audiences. In other words, what did this new technology mean for audience? What was the specific requirements of film screening practices in terms of its modern devices and the use of power sources? This paper makes use of archival sources, press review, memories and literary works of the late nineteenth century.