Ottoman History Podcast

Episode 471 with Sato Moughalian hosted by Sam Dolbee David Ohannessian is one of the foremost pioneers of the ceramic styles associated today with the city of Jerusalem, but the remarkable story of how he ended up there has never been properly told. Born in 1884 outside of Eskişehir (modern-day Turkey), David Ohannessian became a master in the iconic Kütahya style of Ottoman ceramics. He worked on important architectural projects of the Ottoman government, only to be deported during the Armenian Genocide. He managed to survive, however, and continued his craft afterward in Jerusalem, where he became involved with restoration of the Dome of the Rock and opened his own ceramics studio in the Old City. Yet the past stayed with him, especially the weight of his experience during the genocide. In this episode, Sato Moughalian discusses Feast of Ashes, her recent biography of Ohannessian. She also talks about his story's personal resonance for her as Ohannessian's granddaughter. His artistic persistence provided a model of resilience to emulate in her own art, but the violence and displacement experienced by Ohannessian and his family also left a legacy of secrets and complicated grief in Moughalian's life that was long felt but seldom addressed.  « Click for More »

Episode 468 with Gregory Maxwell Bruce hosted by Zoe Griffith In 1892, the renowned Islamic scholar and educator Shibli Nomani traveled to the Ottoman Empire, where he visited cities in modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. His travelogue, entitled Safarnāmah-i Rūm o Miṣr o Shām, was published in the Urdu language within his own lifetime. In this episode, we talk to Gregory Maxwell Bruce, the author of an annotated translation of Shibli's travelogue, which has been recently published by Syracuse University Press. In our conversation, we delve into the process of translating the travelogue and explore the South-South connections between South Asia and the Middle East revealed by Shibli Nomani's relationships and contacts during his travels in the Ottoman Empire. « Click for More »

Episode 466 with Alden Young hosted by Chris Gratien As a site of recent civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, Sudan's history is often framed by violence. In this podcast, our guest Alden Young offers an alternative framing of Sudan's modern history, as we discuss Sudan's economy and its relationship to the broader Middle East from the 19th century onward. We discuss Sudan's unique experience of colonialism under Ottoman/Egyptian rule and how the issue of slavery intensified as Sudan's ties to Egypt and the broader Ottoman world intensified during the 19th century. We also discuss how colonial planners slowly reoriented Sudan's economy towards agricultural export and away from pastoralism. We explore the Gezira scheme, a long foretold irrigation project that would become the centerpiece of Sudanese economic development after independence during the 1950s. And we consider the fate of the class of Sudanese economists and technocrats who straddled the late colonial and postcolonial periods. At the bottom of this post, we also offer an activity module for university classrooms based on this podcast, a documentary about the Gezira scheme from the 1950s, and the novel Season of Migration to the North by Sudanese author Tayeb Salih. « Click for More »

Episode 465 with Robyn Dora Radway hosted by Emily Neumeier What was it like to be a foreigner living in Ottoman Istanbul? In this episode, our guest Robyn Dora Radway answers this question by providing an in-depth look at an unusual type of document: alba amicorum, or friendship albums, which were essentially the social media of the sixteenth century. Produced in the Habsburg embassy (aka the “German House"), these albums functioned like yearbooks in that the owners residing in the embassy would strive to collect all manner of mementos from their time abroad, including signatures, poems, short anecdotes, and even drawings and paintings. At the German House, men from all walks of life would end up assembling their own album amicorum, from the Habsburg ambassador to the cook (who was quite popular and had the largest album by far). We discuss how these albums can thus serve as a valuable resource for historians, as they offer a full picture of the social makeup of these kinds of diplomatic spaces—information that does not often turn up in more traditional archives. « Click for More »

Episode 464 with Cemal Kafadar hosted by Maryam Patton, Chris Gratien, and Sam Dolbee In part one of our interview with Cemal Kafadar, we discuss his intellectual influences in the broadest sense, ranging from the Balkan accents of the Istanbul neighborhood in which he grew up to his early interest in theater and film. Kafadar talks about key events that shaped his worldview, including the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution. He also touches on the works of history and literature that inspired him, as well as his first archival forays in the shadow of the 1980 military coup. And in closing, he brings up a question that nagged him from the beginning: "do we do what we do to understand, or do what we do to change the world?" We'll speak more about that question in part two of this interview, coming soon. « Click for More »

Episode 463 with Panayotis League hosted by Chris Gratien What is Greek music? For our guest Panayotis League, it's no one thing. Rather, it is diversity that defines the many regional musical traditions of Greece and the broader Greek diaspora. In this episode, we discuss League's ethnomusicological research on Greek music in diaspora, and we explore the history and transformation of Ottoman Greek music before and after the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece. As League explains, Greek music in the Ottoman Empire was inextricably linked to the musical traditions of neighboring Turkish, Armenian, and Sephardic communities. However, the First World War, the Second Greco-Turkish War, and the exchange of populations that sent the entire Greek Orthodox population of Anatolia to Greece eliminated spaces of intercommunality where Ottoman music thrived. In our conversation, we discuss how the intercommunal music of the Ottoman Empire survived in Greece among exchanged people who pioneered the new rebetiko style that would reshape Greek popular music. We also discuss how the music of Ottoman Greeks fit into a larger diasporic communal dynamic in places like the United States. « Click for More »

Episode 462 with Oludamini Ogunnaike hosted by Shireen Hamza Reading and writing poems in praise of the prophet Mohammad is no simple matter in West Africa. Their composition was a vehicle for intellectual debate, just as their recitation was a means of spiritual transformation for the listener. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike, the author of a recent book about praise or "madih" poetry in West Africa, and we listen to recordings of several recitations. Madih poetry is widely recited by Muslims in West Africa; we learn of several major authors from the 18th century to now, including Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse and Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Professor Ogunnaike explains the complex Sufi cosmologies and epistemologies intrinsic to the memorization and recitation of madih poetry, which make this such a powerful and widespread practice in Muslim communities. Finally, we discuss why these poems -- manuscripts of which can be found in every collection in West Africa -- remain so little studied. While part of this can be explained by the colonial legacy of considering Islam to be essentially Arab, and thus a foreign importation to Africa, there are other epistemological issues at stake. Professor Ogunnaike's work thus broadens our understanding of a form of embodied knowledge in Islam. « Click for More »

Harun Küçük, author of "Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660-1732," discusses the impact of the Ottoman economy on scholars' work, the practical applications of science in Istanbul, and the parallels between educational institutions then and now.

Episode 455 featuring Nükhet Varlık, Yaron Ayalon, Orhan Pamuk, Lori Jones, Valentina Pugliano, and Edna Bonhomme narrated by Chris Gratien and Maryam Patton with contributions by Nir Shafir, Sam Dolbee, Tunç Şen, and Andreas Guidi The plague is caused by a bacteria called Yersinia pestis, which lives in fleas that in turn live on rodents. Coronavirus is not the plague. Nonetheless, we can find many parallels between the current pandemic and the experience of plague for people who lived centuries ago. This special episode of Ottoman History Podcast brings together lessons from our past episodes on plague and disease in the early modern Mediterranean. Our guests offer state of the art perspectives on the history of plague in the Ottoman Empire, and many of their observations may also be useful for thinking about epidemics in the present day.   « Click for More »

Episode 453 with Nancy Um hosted by Zoe Griffith The Red Sea port of Mocha enjoyed ties with London, Amsterdam, Surat, and Jakarta in the eighteenth century. But not all of the ivory, porcelain, and coffee that passed through Mocha was sold for a profit. In this episode, Nancy Um brings the eye of an art historian to the history of exchange and diplomacy in the early modern Indian Ocean, focusing on the ceremonies and gift exchanges that legitimated and lubricated English and Dutch trade with Yemen’s Qasimi rulers. Gift-giving was far more than an annoyance to the major overseas merchants in Mocha. We explore how “promiscuous” objects became valuable beyond their price tag, allowing merchants to communicate across linguistic, religious, and cultural lines. « Click for More »