In the early 1630s Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623-40) initiated a series of prohibitions against the consumption of coffee, tobacco, wine, and boz that he personally enforced on incognito tours of the Ottoman capital. At the height of his curfews, lantern regulations, and sumptuary regimes, fear of his sword and his wrath incited the Istanbullular to watch their step as they traversed their urban environment. Like a vengeful creature of the night, tales of his brutal dealings with those unlucky enough to chance upon him became a part of the urban lore of Istanbul. Having ruled with the aid of his regent Kösem Mahpeyker Sultan (1589-1651) during his early years as emperor, Murad IV’s prohibitions would become emblematic of his period of maturity (c. 1632-40), an era when a plethora of challenges both internal and external to the empire created a political environment that later authors viewed as requiring the intervention of a strong, active ruler who could save the polity by taking the empire into his own hands. Although a number of works have mentioned these tours in light of other issues, no single study has specifically honed in on this aspect of imperial mobility as a consistent thread in Ottoman urban history. This paper thus examines the ways in which Ottoman authors wrote of emperorship by way of reference to urban life and vice versa through their recollections of Murad IV’s incognito tours in the 1630s. Drawing on sections from Katib Çelebi’s (1609-57) Fezleke-i Tevarih (“Sum of Histories”), Evliya Çelebi’s (c. 1611-83) Seyahatname (“Book of Travels”), and Mustafa Naima Efendi’s (1655-1715) Ravzat ul-Huseyn fi Hulasat-i Ahbar el-Hafikeyn (“The Garden of Huseyin in the Summary of the Chronicles of East and West”), I argue that the available accounts of the prohibitions as well as their justifications and enforcement speak to a conception of sultanic responsibility that extended to his “campaigning” in the city streets and personally interacting with his subjects. In each case, the battle for the public good unfolded in the streets of the metropole, and it was up to the emperor to dispense justice himself by blending into the crowd as another pedestrian in transit. While court chronicles and other comparable sources must always be read with a critical eye by virtue of their proximity to power structures, I suggest that they may yet yield insight into historical views of the subject-sultan relationship as it unfolded in urban space.

What did the Ottomans know about Islamic History? What did they read and write? The Ottoman historians did not compose separate Islamic histories, works that are comparable to the medieval Islamic histories such as the ones by Ibn Kathir or Ibn Athir. Instead, they situated the Ottoman history within universal histories. These histories begin with the creation of the world and give a comprehensive picture of the peoples of the world. A history of Islamic dynasties culminates in the history of the House of Osman. Pre-Ottoman sections of these histories are often deemed unimportant and redundant. However, a close reading of these histories proves that the Ottoman intellectuals did not only read and write about Islamic history extensively but also utilized these histories for a variety of purposes sometimes to legitimize certain aspects of Ottoman history and sometimes to make statements and arguments about the contemporary events. In this paper, I will look closely at select Ottoman universal histories from the period before 1700 such as the ones written by Sukrullah, Cenabi, Diyarbekri, Mustafa Ali, and Katip Celebi among others, as a way to decipher the ways that the Ottoman historians dealt with Islamic history. I will pay particular attention to the early Islamic history as a way to understand how the Ottoman historians thought about the succession struggle in early Islam and Abbasid Revolution and what one can learn from these histories about Ottoman religiosity. I will also provide a comprehensive look at the various sources used by the Ottoman historians and what one can learn about reading and writing Islamic history in the Ottoman Empire before 1700.

The Ottoman historian Mustafa Naima (1655-1716) is distinguished among his peers for the popularity his writing enjoyed not only in his own lifetime but also throughout the later Ottoman era. His imperial chronicle, which covers the period from 1590 until 1660, has attracted scholarly attention for its historiographical sophistication, synthesis of a wide range of sources, and promotion of an agenda of state reform. Not surprisingly, scholarly studies of the Mustafa Naima have tended to concentrate on his career in Istanbul as a scribal official and official state historian (veka’i-nuvis). They place his education and cultural formation in the Ottoman capital and narrate his success in securing the patronage of high-ranking ministers. Relatively little attention has been paid to Naima’s social background, specifically his childhood and youth in the provincial city of Aleppo, and how that experience may have shaped his writing. This paper explores that world and draws attention to Naima’s deep connections to the military establishment of that city, especially the Janissary units settled there. This analysis relies not only on autobiographical narratives in Naima’s chronicle but also on new information on Naima’s family and social milieu found in the law court registers of Aleppo and in fiscal documents found in the Prime Ministry Archives. Naima begins his family history with his grandfather, a Janissary officer named Kuchuk ‘Ali Agha who settled in Aleppo in the early seventeenth century and established a prominent household. Woven into the grand narrative of Naima’s chronicle are multiple episodes that relate in telling detail the crucial intermediary functions of the Kuchuk ‘Ali Agha family and other localized Janissary officers in provincial political affairs, most notably in administering the powerful nomadic tribal confederations of the region. Tax survey documents and local court records reveal, among other things, an affluent family that produced the city’s Janissary commander (serdar), possessed several properties in prestigious quarters of both Aleppo and Istanbul, and owned slaves. While living most of his adult life as a scribe in Istanbul, Naima clearly had access to a rich store of family oral history and connections that informed his analyses of provincial affairs and made them relatively nuanced and balanced. His wide-ranging history was enabled by his social and cultural upbringing within a family that, in its intermediary functions between capital and countryside, transcended geographical and political boundaries.

One of the most important cultural and artistic developments in the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire was the establishment of post of ?ehn?meci (Writers of Book of Kings). This was adapted from the Persian Sh?hn?meh of Firdawsi in order to narrate the heroism of their sultans and pashas in the frontier battles. Prior to the establishment of this post, Ottoman historians and literary elites utilized the genres: t?ri? (chronicle) and ?az?n?me (war account). However, when Ottoman expansion ended in the early seventeenth century, the ?ehn?me genre as well as the ?ehn?meci position were abandoned. The seventeenth century Ottoman poet/court historian ?an?z?de N?dir? was one of the last to hold the ?ehn?meci position, and the manuscript of his work indicates the transition away from the ?ehn?me genre. N?dir? provides the title ?ehn?me-i N?dir? on the first page, but then calls it ?afern?me-i N?dir? on the second. This perceived inconsistency that N?dir?'s manuscript displays can be attributed to its formal and thematic features. Borrowing technical aspects, such as motifs and rhyming patterns, from the Persian Sh?hn?meh genre, N?dir? treats the military victory of the army, which is characteristic of the ?afern?me genre. The question of why N?dir? mixed these genres is the motivation for this paper. ?ehn?me-i N?dir? will be discussed in relation to classic ?afern?me, ?az?n?me, and chronicles. The inconsistency of N?dir? will be examined in both the context of the political turmoil during the reign of Osman II (1618-22) as well as in the context of the genre-hybridization of literature and historiography. While doing so, this paper will examine the ?ehn?me-i N?dir? in terms of its unique historical information for the eastern and northern frontier of the Ottoman Empire, especially Iran and the northern Black Sea region during the 1600s. I also will discuss the reliability of this manuscript as an historical source in the light of other relevant primary sources on the early 17th-century Ottoman Empire.

Much attention has been given to the rise of al-Azhar Mosque as the main institution of learning in Egypt during the period of Ottoman rule (1517-1867). A central part of Ottoman policy in Egypt was to funnel a large quantity of religious endowments to al-Azhar Mosque as a means of centralizing religious education in Egypt. However, almost no attention has been given to the history of the other educational institutions in Cairo during the Ottoman Period. Several of these madrasas in fact dwarfed al-Azhar in the late Mamluk period in terms of size, available resources, and prestige. In my paper, I will attempt to fill in this gap in the field by analyzing descriptions of the major madrasas in Cairo that can be found in several chronicles and biographical sources from the 16th and 17th centuries in both Arabic and Ottoman Turkish. By placing these descriptions within the context of both historical events and Ottoman administrative policies in Egypt, I will survey the various factors that led to the flourishing of some educational institutions and to the decline of others.