Visiting Researchers
Gülay Yılmaz, Associate Professor (Akdeniz Üniversity, Department of History)
The Devshirme System of the Ottoman Empire, 1450-1650
The goal of this project is to produce an authoritative scholarly monograph on the devshirme, a system of slavery that was crucial to the formation of the Ottoman Empire, yet remains insufficiently understood. For centuries, the Ottomans levied children from the Christian population of the Empire. These children were converted to Islam, educated and taught Turkish, and eventually placed in administrative and military posts. Accounts of the devshirme institution by Ottoman historians have focused predominantly on Ottoman statesmen of devshirme origin, or the most famous “end product” of the slavery regime, the janissary army. Instead, the current project will shift the attention to imperial politics of recruitment, its connection with the ruling methods in the Balkans, and to the children and youth caught up in these politics. It will examine the agency of these overlooked historical actors, analyze the embodied experiences of this institution of slavery as both an Ottoman phenomenon and as part of contemporary global forced labor regimes. This project will employ underutilized archival records, such as the unique levy register of 1603-4, salary registers, narrative sources, as well as miniatures to provide a critical account of the devshirme system from the mid-fifteenth century up to its demise in the mid-seventeenth century.
Doctoral Scholarship
Su Hyeon Cho (Oxford University)
Saints and States in a Plastic Bowl: Ritual and Liminality in Post-earthquake Hatay, Turkey
My doctoral project is an anthropological survey of what rituals mean in times of crisis. By enquiring into a bowl of sacred porridge called harisa and other forms of rituals in the southern province of Hatay, this ethnographic research will explore how a series of old and new ruptures are boiled down into symbolic performances with special attention to the post-earthquake context. While Hatay’s abundant examples of ritual conducts have been celebrated as part of the region’s rich ethno-religious tapestry, scholarly attention largely overlooked an important component of these rituals–the concept of “liminality”. I am turning my attention toward the missing piece to lay the groundwork to understand why we still hold on to rituals in today’s world.
Traditionally, cooking harisa has long been associated with passing thresholds, prominently, of life and death, both literally and symbolically. This porridge made of wheat and pounded meat is the staple for ashura, the day of mourning for the death of Imam Husayn in the Battle of Karbala, the celebration of the Assumption of Virgin Mary (Surp Asdvadzadzin), the commemoration day after the forty days of one’s death, and other similar symbolic occasions mediating life and death. Consequently, this ritualised porridge embodies the themes of rebirth, resurrection, and continuity (of an individual or one’s community).
Therefore, it is not unexpected for harisa-eaters of Hatay that the porridge emerged as a source of bodily and spiritual nourishment, symbolising regeneration after the devastating earthquake in February 2023. During my time at the Orient Institut Istanbul (OIIST), I will explore further how cooking harisa and other rituals in Hatay engage with both a wide range of ruptures, such as diaspora, political violence, neoliberalism, and natural disaster, and ongoing liminality in the region.
Furkan Işın (Mcgill University)
“The Ottoman Avicenna”: Kemālpaşazāde and Intellectual Currents in the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire
53a.
The early sixteenth century was a pivotal period in Ottoman intellectual history, characterized by the synthesis of diverse scholarly traditions and the integration of new genres into the Ottoman context. This project seeks to explore this period through the lens of one of its most prominent scholars, Kemālpaşazāde (d. 1534). Renowned as a historian, chief mufti, theologian, philosopher, and legal scholar, Kemālpaşazāde’s works represent a confluence of various intellectual traditions within an Ottoman context.
Referred as “the Avicenna of the scholars of Rūm” (ʿulemā-yı Rūmuñ İbn-i Sīnāsı), Kemālpaşazāde was instrumental in adapting Avicenna’s (d. 1037) philosophy to the Ottoman intellectual landscape. This is due to his engagement with scholars from the greater Iranian Plateau and the Arabophone Mamluk lands, who introduced him to new intellectual genres. Furthermore, this interaction was crucial in shaping his historiographical masterpiece, the Tevārīḫ-i Āl-i ʿOsmān (Histories of the Ottoman House), where he synthesized Turco-Mongol, Islamic, and Persianate models of kingship to articulate a vision of Ottoman sovereignty in Turkish. Using a multi-disciplinary and holistic approach that includes textual analysis, archival research, and the study of biographical dictionaries, the project analyzes Kemālpaşazāde’s writings in different fields and the permeability between them. Thus, this research aims to fill a gap in our understanding of Ottoman intellectual developments, contributing to broader Islamic and Persianate studies by exploring the trans-regional exchanges that shaped Ottoman scholarship during this period.
Referred as “the Avicenna of the scholars of Rūm” (ʿulemā-yı Rūmuñ İbn-i Sīnāsı), Kemālpaşazāde was instrumental in adapting Avicenna’s (d. 1037) philosophy to the Ottoman intellectual landscape. This is due to his engagement with scholars from the greater Iranian Plateau and the Arabophone Mamluk lands, who introduced him to new intellectual genres. Furthermore, this interaction was crucial in shaping his historiographical masterpiece, the Tevārīḫ-i Āl-i ʿOsmān (Histories of the Ottoman House), where he synthesized Turco-Mongol, Islamic, and Persianate models of kingship to articulate a vision of Ottoman sovereignty in Turkish. Using a multi-disciplinary and holistic approach that includes textual analysis, archival research, and the study of biographical dictionaries, the project analyzes Kemālpaşazāde’s writings in different fields and the permeability between them. Thus, this research aims to fill a gap in our understanding of Ottoman intellectual developments, contributing to broader Islamic and Persianate studies by exploring the trans-regional exchanges that shaped Ottoman scholarship during this period.
Sophia Zervas (Harvard University)
Music and State Cultural Policy in 21st-Century Türkiye
My research project analyzes Turkish state cultural policy and musical life under the incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). The Turkish state’s interventions into cultural life throughout the 20th-century have generally been well-documented in both Turkish and English-language literature. My research, however, seeks to address a gap in this scholarship concerning Turkey’s most recent political era. Although President Erdoğan has repeatedly lamented his party’s perceived lack of cultural hegemony, movements in the cultural arena suggest that the AK Party has made significant advancements in promoting its values in the field of culture.
I seek to demonstrate how Turkish musical life reflects the AK Party’s shifting goals and approaches to governance. I contend that complexities and indeterminacies of state cultural policy, combined with subtleties of discourse and practice among Turkish musicians, call for a nuanced understanding of political categorizations and affiliations. Based on ethnographic and archival research, my project examines developments in state cultural policy over the past 20 years as implemented by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, TRT (Turkish Radio and Television), and RTÜK (Radio and Television Supreme Council). Several questions guide the project. First, what is the AK Party’s approach to overseeing musical dissemination and consumption, and how has cultural policy regarding music transformed during the AK Party’s 20 year long rule? Next, do stated policies differ from their implementations? Finally, might cultural policy lend insight into understanding how the AK Party has established and retained power? More broadly, and in view of the current global populist wave, I aim to offer a basis for comparative work on how populist politicians use cultural capital to illustrate populism’s signature people-versus-establishment imaginary.