Bathing Culture of Anatolian Civilizations: Architecture, History, and Imagination (Anadolu Medeniyetlerinde Hamam Kültürü: Mimari, Tarih ve İmgelem)

• Yayınevi: KU Press
• Yazar(lar): Nina Ergin

Because of their architectural value and function as places of hygiene, relaxation and interaction, bathhouses have always played a prominent role for civilizations in Anatolia and its neighboring regions. As architectural spaces and important cultural institutions, baths have been continously shaped by social and historical change on many levels and thus constitute a rewarding subject of study for archaeologists and historians in many different sub-fields of the discipline. The outcome of a symposium organized by Koc University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul, the essays in this volume examine the evolution of the building type and its cultural context, Seljuk hamams, Ottoman hamams in the capital as well as the provinces of the empire, Safavid and Mughal baths from a comparative perspective, the Turkish bath in the West, and hamams in the painter’s imagination.

Yavuz’un Kavgası : I. Selim’in Saltanat Mücadelesi

• Yayınevi: Yapı Kredi Yayınları
• Yazar(lar): Hakkı Erdem Çıpa

H. Erdem Çıpa’nın elinizdeki çalışması tarihçiliğimizde “Yavuz” lakabıyla anılagelmiş olan I. Selim’in padişahlığıyla sonuçlanan tartışmalı saltanat mücadelesini incelerken, bu âsi şehzadeye taht kavgasını kazandıran birincil askeri ve siyasi gücün “merkezdeki” (İstanbul) yeniçerilerden ziyade “taşradaki” (Rumeli) beyler ve idari amirlerden müteşekkil olduğunu vurguluyor.

Gerek siyasi bir aktör olarak Selim’in sosyal, siyasi ve askeri şahıs ve toplulukları harekete geçirmek için uyguladığı stratejiler, gerekse Selim’e destek olanların toplumsal bileşiminin irdelendiği bu çalışmada 15. ve 16. yüzyılda İslamî ilke ve söylemlere dayalı bir siyasi oluşum olan Osmanlı devletinde bir hükümdarın saltanatının nasıl teşekkül ettiği ile ilgili önemli ipuçları sunuluyor.

Theory and Practice in Archaeology (Arkeolojide Kuram ve Uygulama)

• Yayınevi: Routledge
• Yazar(lar): Ian Hodder

In this latest collection of his articles, of which seven are written especially for this volume, Ian Hodder captures and continues the lively controversy of the 1980s over symbolic and structural approaches to archaeology. The book acts as an overview of the developments in the discipline over the last decade; yet Hodder’s brief is far wider. His aim is to break down the division between the intellectual and the “dirt” archaeologist to demonstrate that in this discipline more than any other, theory must be related to practice to save effectively our rapidly diminishing heritage.

Exploring Iran: The Photography of Eric F. Schimidt, 1930-1940 (İran’ı Keşfetmek: Eric F. Schimidt Fotoğrafçılığı, 1930-1940)

• Yayınevi: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Yazar(lar): Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann

The Penn Museum’s first archaeological expedition to Iran took place in 1931, when Erich F. Schmidt excavated the Bronze Age site of Tepe Hissar near the town of Damghan and the monumental buildings of the pre-Islamic Sasanian Palace.

In this part of his adventurous and courageous life Schmidt, then a young German WWI veteran who had received his Ph.D. degree under Franz Boas at Columbia University, documented the project with nearly 2,600 culturally significant photos—many under far from ideal conditions—of desert and mountain tribes, the sites, government administrators, and a full panoply of the people he encountered from Fara (Iraq), Damghan, Tepe Hissar, Persepolis, including aerial reconnaissance.

The Crimean Khanate between East and West (15th-18th Century) – Doğu ve Batı Arasında Kırım Hanlığı (15-18. Yüzyıl)

• Yayınevi: Harrassowitz-Verlag
• Yazar(lar): Denise Klein

The Crimean Khanate between East and West, edited by Denise Klein, presents a collection of studies exploring the politics, society, and culture of the Crimean Khanate, as well as the khanate’s place within early modern Europe. Twelve articles in English and German, written by scholars of different backgrounds and perspectives, introduce one of the least studied regions in Eastern Europe, from the emergence of the khanate as a successor of the Golden Horde in the fifteenth century until the end of Tatar rule with the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian Empire in 1783. The volume offers new research on the steppe traditions and the socio-political order of the Crimean heir to the empire of Genghis Khan as well as on the geopolitical role of a state that stood at the intersection between the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox East, and the Latin West. It reveals the considerable freedom the khans enjoyed while being under Ottoman suzerainty and the various contacts the Islamic khanate maintained with its Christian neighbors. The volume also provides insight into a society of exceptional cultural diversity and into Tatar elite and popular culture. Finally, it traces how Christians’ perceptions of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars impacted the formation of the European ‘self’ and European politics, until long after the end of Tatar rule.

John Garstang’s Footsteps Across Anatolia (Anadolu’da John Garstang’ın Ayak İzleri)

• Yayınevi: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları
• Yazar(lar): Alan M. Greaves, Françoise Rutland, Phil Freeman, Bob Miller, Bülent Genç, Nilgün Öz, J.R. Peterson, Katie Waring

John Garstang’s Footsteps Across Anatolia aims to highlight the international contributions of John Garstang towards the study of archaeology in Türkiye and the Near East. He was one of the first advocates of using photography as a means of documenting procedures and findings of archaeological excavations. In Türkiye, Garstang was accompanied on his Anatolia Survey (1907) and Sakçagözü excavations (1908-1911) by his German assistant, Horst Schliephack. The result of over five years of research by The University of Liverpool, this book presents a series of short discursive articles about Garstang’s work in Türkiye and the Near East and a catalogue of newly digitised glass plate negatives from his 1907 journey across Anatolia. Garstang’s photographs are an irreplaceable record of the archaeological sites, landscapes and peoples of Türkiye and north Syria in the period of the late Ottoman Empire.

Late Byzantine Sculpture (Geç Bizans Heykelciliği)

• Yayınevi: Brepols Publishing
• Yazar(lar): Nicholas Melvani

This book provides a detailed description and interpretation of multiple aspects of sculpture from late Byzantine monuments. Although individual monuments of the late Byzantine period have been exhaustively published and analyzed, the role of their sculptural decoration is usually overlooked. Whereas architectural features and, especially, wall paintings are treated in full detail, sculpture is approached as a mere decorative art which complements the overall appearance of a building. However, careful examination of late Byzantine sculptures found in situ or through excavation, as well as research into museum collections, reveals that late Byzantine sculptors had reached a very high degree of artistic accomplishment and that their creations should be treated as works of art of the highest quality. Moreover, by interpreting each work, even those of a purely decorative nature, according to the space it occupied, by deciphering what is depicted (including religious themes and political symbols), as well as by taking into account the wider context within which sculpture was produced during the period under investigation, one can extract invaluable information concerning the artistic climate and the social circumstances which led to the development of late Byzantine sculpture.

Ottoman Architecture in Albania (1385-1912) – Arnavutluk’taki Osmanlı Mimarisi (1385-1912)

• Yayınevi: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture
• Yazar(lar): Machiel Kiel

The analysis is placed in the context of state administration, cultural and social life, and institutional system during the period of Ottoman rule. As such, the book is much more than an architectural study; it also reflects the Ottoman administrative system applied in the provinces, the social functions of the state, and the institutional structure of society.

Osmanlılar ve Avrupa: Seyahat, Karşılaşma ve Etkileşim

• Yayınevi: İSAM Yayınları
• Yazar(lar): Seyfi Kenan

Başka kültürlerle herhangi bir şekilde karşılaşmadan, tanışmadan, alışveriş yapmadan ya da yüzleşmeden, yaşamını sürdüren bir kültür ve medeniyete rastlamak mümkün değildir dersek, abartmış olmayız. Her kültürün başka bir kültürle karşılaşma, değiş-tokuş yapma veya yüzleşme anlar, deyimleri bir şekilde teşekkül etmiştir ya da üretilmiştir. Sözgelimi asırlarca varlığın muhafaza eden İpekyolu, Doğu-Batı arasında çok erken dönemlerden itibaren hem emtia alışverişi hem de kültürel irtibatın derinlik kazanmasını sağlayan bir iletişim ve etkilişim ağı oluşturmuştur. Benzer şekilde, tarihte İslam dünyası ile Avrupa arasında da bu anlamda bir iletişim etkileşim ağının varlığı dikkat çekmektedir. Bu etkileşim ağının genellikle iki güzergah üzerinde gerçekleştiği söylenebilir. Birincisi 8. yüzyılda İberik yarımadası ile hemen sonrasında Sicilya, ikincisi ise 19. yüzyıldan itibaren Balkanlar’dır.

Farklı kültür ve uzmanlık alanlarından gelen yazarların katkılarıyla kurulan bu kitap, özellikle ikinci karşılaşmayı, Osmanlılar ile Avrupa arasında yaşanan ilişkileri çeşitli yönleriyle ele almaktadır. Bu çerçevede, yüzleşme ve savaşlardan daha çok bu iki dünyanın birbirini keşfetmeye, tanımaya çalıştıkları; birbiriyle alışverişte bulundukları alanlar ve birbirini tasavvur biçimleri ve kaynakları disiplinlerarası bir anlayışla incelemektedir. Buna göre elinizdeki çalışma, Osmanlı öncesi dönemden başlayıp “eski düzen”den “yeni düzen”e geçiş araşyışlarının yaşandığı, bir başka ifadeyle erken modern dönemin sonuna denk düştüğü 3. Selim devrinin (1789-1807) ortalarına kadar gelmektedir.

Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory (Tarih Öncesi Akdeniz’de Mekan ve Zaman)

• Yayınevi: Routledge
• Yazar(lar): Stella Souvatzi, Athena Hadji

Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory addresses these two concepts as interrelated, rather than as separate categories, and as a means for understanding past social relations at different scales. The need for this volume was realised through four main observations: the ever growing interest in space and spatiality across the social sciences; the comparative theoretical and methodological neglect of time and temporality; the lack in the existing literature of an explicit and balanced focus on both space and time; and the large amount of new information coming from prehistoric Mediterranean. It focuses on the active and interactive role of space and time in the production of any social environment, drawing equally on contemporary theory and on case-studies from Mediterranean prehistory.

Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory seeks to break down the space-time continuum, often assumed rather than inferred, into space-time units and to uncover the varying and variable interrelations of space and time in prehistoric societies across the Mediterranean. The volume is a response to the dissatisfaction with traditional views of space and time in prehistory and revisits these concepts to develop a timely integrative conceptual and analytical framework for the study of space and time in archaeology.

Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic (Geç Osmanlı ve Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemlerinde Okumayı Öğrenmek)

• Yayınevi: Palgrave Macmillan
• Yazar(lar): Benjamin C. Fortna

An exploration of the ways in which children learned and were taught to read, against the background of the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic. This study gives us a fresh perspective on the transition from empire to republic by showing us the ways that reading was central to the construction of modernity.

Iranian Elites and Turkish Rulers: A History of Isfahan in the Saljuq Period (İran Seçkinleri ve Türk Hükümdarları: Selçuklu Döneminde İsfahan Tarihi)

• Yayınevi: Rotledge
• Yazar(lar): David Durand-Guedy

The Saljuq period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the arrival in Iran of Türkmen nomads from Central Asia and the beginning of Turkish rule. Through the example of the city of Isfahan, the book analyses the internal evolution of Iranian society in this period and the interaction of the Iranian elites and Turkish rulers.

Drawing on an analysis of a wide range of sources, including poetic and epistolary material, this study fills an historiographical gap and casts new light on the two centuries prior to the Mongol invasion. This comprehensive analytical study provides a new contribution to the understanding of many crucial issues: the cultural divide between Western and Eastern Iran; the military potential of city-dwellers; the attitude of the Turkish rulers toward cities and city life; the action of the famous vizier Nizam al-Mulk; the meaning of the Ismaili uprising; and above all the structure of the local elite, organized into rival networks and largely autonomous vis-à-vis state powers.

The study is enhanced by a variety of additional features, including extensive genealogical tables, Arabic script and maps. Providing a new understanding of the cultural identity of Iran, this book is an important contribution to the study of the history of Iran and the Medieval period.

Fragment of Lost Homeland: Remembering Armenia (Kayıp Vatan’dan Parçalar: Ermenistan’ı Hatırlamak)

• Yayınevi: I. B. Tauris
• Yazar(lar): Armen T. Marsoobian

The Armenian world was shattered by the 1915 genocide. Not only were thousands of lives lost but families were displaced and the narrative threads that connected them to their own past and homelands were forever severed. Many have been left with only fragments of their family histories: a story of survival passed on by a grandparent who made it through the cataclysm or, if lucky, an old photograph of a distant, silent, ancestor. By contrast the Dildilian family chose to speak. Two generations gave voice to their experience in lengthy written memoirs, in diaries and letters, and most unusually in photographs and drawings. Their descendant Armen T. Marsoobian uses all these resources to tell their story and, in doing so, brings to life the pivotal and often violent moments in Armenian and Ottoman history from the massacres of the late nineteenth century to the final expulsions in the 1920s during the Turkish War of Independence. Unlike most Armenians, the Dildilians were allowed to convert to Islam and stayed behind while their friends, colleagues and other family members perished in the death marches of 1915-1916. Their remarkable story is one of survival against the overwhelming odds and survival in the face of peril.

Crime & Punishment in Istanbul: 1700-1800 (İstanbul’da Suç ve Ceza: 1700-1800)

• Yayınevi: University of California Press
• Yazar(lar): Fariba Zarinebaf

This vividly detailed revisionist history exposes the underworld of the largest metropolis of the early modern Mediterranean and through it the entire fabric of a complex, multicultural society. Fariba Zarinebaf maps the history of crime and punishment in Istanbul over more than one hundred years, considering transgressions such as riots, prostitution, theft, and murder and at the same time tracing how the state controlled and punished its unruly population. Taking us through the city’s streets, workshops, and houses, she gives voice to ordinary people—the man accused of stealing, the woman accused of prostitution, and the vagabond expelled from the city. She finds that Istanbul in this period remains mischaracterized—in part by the sensational and exotic accounts of European travelers who portrayed it as the embodiment of Ottoman decline, rife with decadence, sin, and disease. Linking the history of crime and punishment to the dramatic political, economic, and social transformations that occurred in the eighteenth century, Zarinebaf finds in fact that Istanbul had much more in common with other emerging modern cities in Europe, and even in America.

The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Şehr-i Sefa: 18. Yüzyılda İstanbul)

• Yayınevi: Washington University Press
• Yazar(lar): Shirine Hamadeh

The City’s Pleasures is the first historical investigation of the tremendous changes that affected the fabric and architecture of Istanbul in the century that followed the decisive return of the Ottoman court to the capital in 1703. These were spectacular times that witnessed the most extraordinary urban expansion and building explosion in the history of the city. Showing how architecture and urban form became involved in the representation and construction of a changing social order, Shirine Hamadeh reassesses the dominance of the paradigm of Westernization in interpretations of this period and challenges the suggestion that change in the eighteenth century could only occur by turning toward a now superior West. Drawing on a genre of Ottoman poetry written in celebration of the built environment and on a vast array of related textual and visual sources, Hamadeh demonstrates that architectural change was the result of a dynamic synthesis between internal and external factors, and closely mirrored the process of décloisonnement of the city’s social landscape.

Examining novel forms, spaces, and decorative vocabularies; changing patterns of patronage; and new patterns of architectural perception; The City’s Pleasures shows how these exposed and reinforced the internal dynamics that were played out between a society in flux and a state anxious to recreate an ideal system of social hierarchies. Profoundly hybrid in nature, the new architectural idiom reflected a growing permeability between elite and middle-class sensibilities, an unprecedented degree of receptivity to Western and Eastern foreign traditions, and a clear departure from the parameters of the classical canon. Innovation became the new operative doctrine. As the built environment was experienced, perceived, and appreciated by contemporary observers, it increasingly revealed itself as a perpetual source of sensory pleasures.

17. Yüzyılda Ayntâb: Osmanlı Kentinde Toplum ve Siyaset

• Yayınevi: İletişim
• Yazar(lar): Hülya Canbakal, Sabancı Üniversitesi

Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda payitaht ile taşra arasında, tarihyazımını da etkileyen bir mesafe her zaman söz konusu olmuştur. Osmanlı tarihçileri payitahta, oradaki siyasi, iktisadi ve kültürel hayata odaklanırken, uzun süre Osmanlı taşrası ihmal edildi. Ayntâb (Antep), 17. yüzyılda bir Osmanlı taşra kentiydi. Etrafındaki büyük eyaletlerle ciddi ticari bağlantısı vardı. Kentin siyasi ve toplumsal hayatı dinamik, kültürel dünyası ise zengindi. Hülya Canbakal, şeriye sicilleri vasıtasıyla bu Osmanlı kentinin insanlarını, gündelik hayatını, hukuki süreçlerde ortaya çıkan çatışma ve çekişmeleri, iktisadi zenginliğin dayandığı temelleri, devletin merkez ve taşra örgütleri arasındaki ilişkileri, toplumsal statü, unvan ve cinsiyet yapılarının toplumsal hayata etkisini ayrıntılı bir şekilde ele alıyor.

17. yüzyılda Antep nasıl bir kentti, kimler yaşardı, geçim nasıl sağlanırdı, toplumsal hayatta neler olurdu, zengin aileler kimlerdi, zenginliklerinin kaynağı neydi, peygamber soyuna dayanan unvanlar nasıl alınırdı, insanlar mahkemelerde haklarını nasıl ararlar, anlaşmazlıklar nasıl çözülürdü gibi soruların cevaplarını bulmaya çalışarak kentin tarihini inceliyor. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun tarihini, payitahttaki devletlûların yapıp ettiklerinden değil, taşradaki sıradan insanın gündelik hayatından örneklerle yazmaya girişiyor. 17. Yüzyılda Ayntâb, Osmanlı toplumunu ve imparatorluğun tarihini anlamak için zengin bir kaynak niteliğinde.

Modern Devleti Yeniden Düşünmek: Osmanlı Ancien Régime’i

• Yayınevi: İletişim yayınları
• Yazar(lar): Ariel Salzmann¸ Queen’s University

Sultan Ahmed Camii’nden yükselen ezan Divan Yolu’nda yankılanırken, bu sesle dikkati dağılmış kapı görevlisi, ancien régime tarihçisi ve modern devlet uzmanı Alexis de Tocqueville’in sessizce yanından geçip Başbakanlık Arşivi’ne girdiğini fark etmedi. Tocqueville koridor boyunca hızlı ve uzun adımlarla yürüdü ve merdivenlerden bir kat yukarı çıkıp sola, okuma salonuna doğru ilerledi. Gidip odanın arka tarafındaki masaların en son sırasına oturdu. Bir önceki araştırmacı, masanın üzerinde bir yığın kırmızı ciltli defter bırakmıştı. Tocqueville merakla en üstte duran evrakı açtı…

Alexis de Tocqueville İstanbul’u da arşivleri de elbette ziyaret etmedi. Salzmann, bu oyunbaz ve garip görünen varsayımdan yola çıkarak, onun ünlü klasik eseri L’ancien régime et la Révolution’daki düşüncelerini Osmanlı devlet yapısını inceleyerek irdeliyor.

Fransız İnkılâbı gibi modern devletin de sadece Batı Avrupa olgusu olabileceği tespitini yapan Tocqueville yanılıyor olabilir mi? Modern devlet, Batı Avrupa dışındaki yabancı topraklarda sadece akültürasyon/kültürlenme, kapitalizm veya Batı’ya has sömürgecilik vasıtalarıyla mı yerleştirilebilir? Tocqueville, Osmanlı arşivlerine girseydi, devletin nasıl işlediğine dair elinde veriler olsaydı, farklı düşünebilir miydi? Modern devlet kuramına dair ezberlerimiz doğru mu? Merkezî devlet zayıfladıkça taşra güçlenir mi? Yoksa taşrayı merkeze karşı güçlendirdiği söylenen “Malikâne” sistemi ancien régime altında dolaylı merkezileşme stratejisinin somut bir ifadesi miydi?

Son derece zekice yazılmış, mukayese eden, mukayesesinin hakkını veren heyecan verici bir tarih çalışması var karşımızda. Yeni ve merak uyandırıcı…

Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600

• Yayınevi: Cambridge University Press
• Yazar(lar): Nükhet Varlık, Rutgers University.

This is the first systematic scholarly study of the Ottoman experience of plague during the Black Death pandemic and the centuries that followed. Using a wealth of archival and narrative sources, including medical treatises, hagiographies, and travelers’ accounts, as well as recent scientific research, Nükhet Varlik demonstrates how plague interacted with the environmental, social, and political structures of the Ottoman Empire from the late medieval through the early modern era. The book argues that the empire’s growth transformed the epidemiological patterns of plague by bringing diverse ecological zones into interaction and by intensifying the mobilities of exchange among both human and non-human agents. Varlik maintains that persistent plagues elicited new forms of cultural imagination and expression, as well as a new body of knowledge about the disease. In turn, this new consciousness sharpened the Ottoman administrative response to the plague, while contributing to the makings of an early modern state.

Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean (Ege’nin İki Yakasında Ekonomi ve Toplum)

• Yayınevi: AlphaPolitismos
• Yazar(lar): Vangelis Kechriotis, Boğaziçi University & Lorans Tanatar Baruh, SALT Research (eds.)

This book is the product of a collective effort among the Alpha Bank Historical Archives, the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, an institution which belongs to the Garanti Bank, and the Department of History of the Bogazici University. This effort was initiated in 2004 by organising a monthly Greek-Turkish seminar entitled “Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean”, which lasted for three consecutive academic years. The subject of the seminar was the Greek Orthodox populations during the late Ottoman period. Several aspects of their social and economic conditions were examined, such as intercommunal relations, national and social identities, commercial activities, social networks, the exchange of populations and the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Dolaşık: İnsanlar ve Şeyler Arasındaki İlişkilerin Arkeolojisi)

• Yayınevi: Wiley
• Yazar(lar): Ian Hodder, Stanford University

A powerful and innovative argument that explores the complexity of the human relationship with material things, demonstrating how humans and societies are entrapped into the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds

• Argues that the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture
• Offers a nuanced argument that values the physical processes of things without succumbing to materialism
• Discusses historical and modern examples, using evolutionary theory to show how long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time
• Integrates aspects of a diverse array of contemporary theories in archaeology and related natural and biological sciences
• Provides a critical review of many of the key contemporary perspectives from materiality, material culture studies and phenomenology to evolutionary theory, behavioral archaeology, cognitive archaeology, human behavioral ecology, Actor Network Theory and complexity theory