In this proposed paper a sampled selection of demographic and economic data extracted mainly from four sets of sources (mid-nineteenth century Ottoman population and temettuat registers, the first population and agricultural censuses of the Turkish Republic, 1927) will be mapped on geo-referenced administrative borders of 20 kazas (sub-districts) in Ankara and Bursa districts. To the best of our knowledge, the Huber map from 1899 “Empire Ottoman: Division Administrative,” provides the earliest administrative borders for sub-districts. In order to be able to map data for our purposes, first the administrative borders of the all of the sub-districts belonging to Ankara and Bursa districts will be geo-referenced for 1899. Then these borders will be re-drawn according to the administrative borders of 1845 and 1927. We have collected representative data on sub-district level for population, occupational structure, agricultural production and animal husbandry for the districts of Ankara and Bursa for the 1840s. For 1927 we have again on sub-district level detailed information, extracted from the censuses on population, occupations and agricultural production. On the district level, total number of animals are also recorded for 1927. Based upon spatially disaggregated data and geo-spatially mapped administrative borders, we will first compare the population and economic geography of sub-districts with the cities of Ankara and Bursa in two observation years, and then compare the changes in the demographic and occupational structures, and the organization of agricultural production and animal husbandry in time, by taking into consideration of the features of physical geography thanks to the GIS capabilities. In doing so our primary aim is to compare urbanization dynamics between two important regions of Anatolia between the 1840s and at the end of the empire. Three conventional markers for the rural-urban divide (population density, occupational structure, and spatial concentration of agricultural production and animal husbandry) will be tested in our exercise. Secondly, we will assess and geographically differentiate the effects of socio-economic shocks such as the extermination of Armenians and the loss of the Orthodox Christians with the population exchange of 1923 on to the socio-economic fabric of the districts of Ankara and Bursa.

The first detailed fiscal survey of Cyprus was recorded in the 1572 mufassal defteri, a year after the conquest of the island. Like any register of its kind, it provides important information in the economic structure of the Cypriot countryside, to the extent that this is reflected in fiscal data. The register includes 1,137 villages and settlements, recording the volume and value of taxable agricultural products, monetary taxes and dues for other sectors of the economy (manufacturing, salt pans, water management, etc.), and fines. While the data are more representative of the preceding Venetian rather than the Ottoman period, as well as concern a rather exceptional moment in that they record conditions on the island after a two year-long war, the register remains an important source for the study of the economy of the island. The paper presents the research outcomes of the “Mediterranean Insularities: MedIns”, project hosted at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, in Greece. The project employed Historical GIS methods and tools for the purposes of geo-spatial and statistical analysis, and cartographic representation of the data recorded in the fiscal survey. It will discuss the limitations, challenges, and problems of using such methods, as well as the possibilities and prospects for future research.

There is no geo-referenced, queryable transport network for the Ottoman Empire. Taking ORBIS (The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, http://orbis.stanford.edu/) as an inspiration, we will design a pilot network. Our sources consist of historical nautical charts, and maps with land routes. Our geographical coverage will be today’s Turkey and our temporal focus the nineteenth century. For the coastal network, we will design a corridor for navigation based upon maximum and minimum distances from the coast. It is conventional that coastal routes remain within outer borders of visibility range. The minimum distance to the coast for the routes is determined by the minimum depth of the sea. For the coastal network, we will first determine the outer limits of the navigation corridor using data on coastal visibility by making use of historical and current nautical charts. Secondly, we will use online available geo-referenced bathymetry data for the Mediterranean basin, and set a minimum depth to draw inner border of the corridor. Thirdly we will locate a selection of important harbors from the nineteenth-century and calculate variations of minimum distance routes among these harbors within the range of our designed corridor. Lastly, we will superimpose historical routes based upon log books among the same harbors and test the accuracy of our designed coastal transport network. For the land transport network, again limiting our analysis to today’s Turkey we will geo-reference main land routes by rectifying historical maps from the nineteenth century as a first layer for our GIS analysis. As the second layer, we will integrate physical geography by using online available elevation data. In doing so GIS can calculate walking distance times in exact hours and minutes between points in routes. Lastly, we will map a selection of historical itineraries by making use of travel-time data in hours on foot, which are available in the statistical yearbooks from the nineteenth century. In doing so, for several routes, we can compare the travel times given in the historical sources with the calculated travel time by our GIS model between nodes of the land route network. This comparison will enable us to revise and refine our land route network. Finally, for a case study we will integrate designed coastal and land transport networks for the district of Bursa and map the possible routes from the city of Bursa to Istanbul via harbors of Gemlik and Mudanya for the nineteenth century.

Urban geographers have developed sophisticated methods to analyse segregation in modern-day mixed cities. This paper applies their techniques to turn-of-the-century Alexandria. This mixed city has various measures of its diversity. Census records provide the baseline dataset for this study. The decennial censuses of 1897, 1907, and 1907 parse the city into 100 street clusters, and offer detailed demographics of each of these clusters. This paper shows how these vaguely defined clusters can be mapped in space. It considers the nationality and religion labels attached to these populations and seeks to determine how Alexandria's population distribution looks in comparison to modern-day measures of segregation. For instance, the granularity of segregation is a current measure of interest. Can existing data reveal whether the supposedly mixed city of Alexandria was in fact a site of segregation? The well-known model of traditional Ottoman-Islamic cities suggests that self-contained, socially homogenous neighborhoods were a common means of spatial organization. Does a rapidly expanding city like Alexandria maintain or overrun this model? Does segregation at the turn of the twentieth century map differently from segregation in the early modern city? Beyond this comprehensive view of Alexandria's segregation, the paper examines more punctual evidence of diversity in space in particular sites. This evidence comes from a student-driven digitization of the Egyptian Gazette, a daily newspaper in Alexandria, for the years 1905-1907. The contents of this newspaper have been marked for person and place identifiers, and will be minded for comparison with the baseline maps of diversity and segregation. The paper will also draw on a database of prominent individuals generated from the Indicateur Egyptien of 1897 and the Goad fire insurance maps of 1905. These two supplemental data sources do not describe the city's peripheral regions, but they offer a great deal of microhistorical data concerning its central districts. Finally, the paper examines the problem of workable GIS for Middle Eastern cities. The author is not a GIS specialists. Instead, I seek a simple means of leveraging geo-spatial historical data, especially for classroom use. I will describe how I produced "pretty good" mapping by linking former street and place names to modern-day, user-friendly indices.