Crime And Punishment In Istanbul

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.

In Politics of Honor Başak Tuğ examines moral and gender order of mid-eighteenth-century Anatolia through petitions and court records to reveal the new and existing mechanisms of social surveillance to overcome imperial anxieties about provincial “disorder”.

This book traces the history of conflict and contact between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Ottoman Middle East prior to 1914.

In Ottoman Passports, Ilkay Yilmaz reconsiders the history of two political issues, the Armenian and Macedonian questions, approaching both through the lens of mobility restrictions during the late Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1908. Yilmaz investigates how Ottoman security perceptions and travel regulations were directly linked to transnational security regimes battling against anarchism. The Hamidian government targeted "internal threats" to the regime with security policies that created new categories of suspects benefiting from the concepts of vagrant, conspirator, and anarchist. Yilmaz explores how mobility restrictions and the use of passports became critical to targeting groups including Armenians, Bulgarians, seasonal and foreign workers, and revolutionaries. Taking up these new policies on surveillance, mobility, and control, Ottoman Passports offers a timely look at the origins of contemporary immigration debates and the historical development of discrimination, terrorism, and counterterrorism.

This book is dedicated to Claudia Römer and brings together 33 contributions spanning a period from the 15th to the 20th century and covering the wide range of topics with which the honouree is engaged. The volume is divided into six parts that present current research on language, literature, and style as well as newer approaches and perspectives in dealing with sources and terminologies. Aspects such as conquest, administration, and financing of provinces are found as well as problems of endowments and the circulation of goods in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Another main topic is dedicated to minorities and their role and situation in various provinces and cities of the Ottoman Empire, as represented by various sources. But also topics like conversion, morality and control are illuminated. Finally, the volume provides an insight into the late Ottoman and early republican period, in which some previously unpublished sources (such as travel letters, memoirs) are presented and (re)discussed. The book is not only aimed at scholars and students of the Ottoman Empire; the thematic range is also of interest to linguists, historians, and cultural historians.

Focuses on moments in world history when cosmopolitan ideas and actions pervaded specific Muslim societies and cultures, exploring the tensions between regional cultures, isolated enclaves and modern nation-states.

To what extent did a perceived morality crisis play a role in the dramatic events of the last years of the Ottoman Empire? Beginning in the late nineteenth century when some of the Ottoman elites began to question the moral climate as evidence for the losses facing the empire, this book shows that during the course of World War I many social, economic, and political problems were translated into a discourse of moral decline, ultimately making morality a contested space between rival ideologies, identities, and intellectual currents. Examining the primary journals and printed sources that represented the various constituencies of the period, it fills important gaps in the scholarship of the Ottoman experience of World War I and the origins of Islamism and secularism in Turkey, and is essential reading for social and intellectual historians of the late Ottoman Empire.