What is the aural possibility of Islamic life in European cities today? This special episode begins with a ten-minute segment from an audio composition crafted by our guest, musicologist Peter McMurray, from recent field recordings and ethnographies he conducted among various Turkish communities in Berlin. As the discussion progresses we weave in and out of two discussions. First, we look at the means by which Turkish migrants from the Alevi, Shi’i, and Sufi communities use the different private and public spaces of the city as a stage for their religiosity. We add to this a second discussion of how ethnography, aesthetics, and the aural intersect in scholarship today.
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The Sounds of Islamic Berlin
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Shared Histories of the Ottoman East
Episode 322
hosted by Matthew Ghazarian
This episode examines historical approaches to Armenians, Kurds, and Turks in the eastern provinces of Ottoman Anatolia. "Shared history" has been offered up as a corrective to the existing historiography's nationalist and often exclusionary approaches, but what does writing a "shared history" actually look like? Yaşar Tolga Cora and Dzovinar Derderian talk about their approaches in their recent 2016 edited volume, The Ottoman East in the Nineteenth Century: Societies, Identities and Politics. The volume discusses Trans-regional Connectivity; the fluidity of identities and loyalties, state and local politics; and the social history of space. They draw on the work to unpack the political and scholarly challenges of writing a "shared history" for an area that has been and still is marked by deep conflicts.
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Kemalism and the Making of Modern Turkey
Episode 323
hosted by Andreas Guidi and Elif Becan
In this collaboration with The Southeast Passage, we discuss the emergence of the Turkish nationalist movement under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the establishment of a sovereign Republic of Turkey in 1923. As our guest Prof. Erik-Jan Zürcher notes, Kemalism can be studied both as a political transformation from armed struggle to a one-party state administration system and as a repertoire of discursive symbols based on the imaginary of nation, civilization, and modernity. This installment is structured along a series of lectures that Prof. Zürcher has given at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, in which he has framed Kemalism’s activism and worldview within its contemporary international context as well as along a broader chronological axis continuing into the 1950s.
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Genetics and Nation-Building in the Middle East
Episode 324
Genetics have emerged as a new scientific tool for studying human ancestry and historical migration. And as research into the history of genetics demonstrates, genetics and other bioscientific approaches to studying ancestry were also integral to the transformation of the very national and racial categories through which ancestry has come to be described over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this podcast, we speak to Elise Burton about her research on the development of human genetics in the Middle East. Burton has studied the history of genetics within a comparative framework, examining the interrelated cases of human genetics research in Turkey, Israel, Iran, and elsewhere. In this episode, we focus in particular on the history of genetics in Turkey and its relationship to changing understandings of nation and race within the early Republic. In a bonus segment (see below), we also look under the hood of commercial genetic ancestry tests to understand present-day science within the context of these historical developments.
Stream via SoundCloud
Contributor Bios
 | Elise Burton just earned her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard in May 2017 and her BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley in May 2010. Come October, she will begin a Junior Research Fellowship at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. |
 | Shireen Hamza is a doctoral student in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses broadly on the history of science and medicine in the Islamicate Middle Ages, and more specifically on the history of women's health. |
 | Chris Gratien holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University's Department of History and is currently an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s. |
 | Maryam Patton is a PhD student at Harvard University in the History and Middle Eastern Studies program. She studies the history of ideas and books in the Early Modern Mediterranean. |
Images
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| Muzaffer Aksoy in his laboratory at Mersin State Hospital, with equipment purchased from a U.S. Blood Research Foundation grant, 1956." Image from Nursel Duruel, Çiğdem Altay, and Orhan N. Ulutin, eds. Bilime adanmış bir ömür: Muzaffer Aksoy (Ankara: Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi, 2005), p. 37. |
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| The Turkish Anthropometry Survey in 1937, taken from Afet İnan, L’Anatolie, le pays de la “race” turque: recherches sur les caractères anthropologiques des populations de la Turquie (enquête sur 64,000 individus) (Genève: Imprimerie Albert Kundig, 1939), p.57. |
Bonus Segment
In this bonus conversation, Chris Gratien and Elise Burton reflect on the science behind commercial genetic ancestry tests and the National Geographic Genographic Project within their historical context.
For Genographic Project Reference Populations, see https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/reference-populations-next-gen/
For Genographic Project Biogeographical Regions, see https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/regions-next-gen/
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| An example of distribution of "Regional Ancestry" as visualized within the National Geographic Genographic 2.0 Project (screenshot taken 15 July 2017) |
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| An example of "Regional Ancestry" breakdown and comparison with "Reference Populations" within National Geographic Genographic 2.0 Project (screenshot taken 15 July 2017) |
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| An example of a "Reference Population" breakdown within the National Geographic Genographic 2.0 Project. Percentages indicate portions of "Biographical Regions" represented within the typical regional ancestry of a particular reference population. In this case, the fact that modern-day Iran is subsumed within the "Arabia" biogeographical region has led to some confusion. While this representation does indeed suggest significant historical overlap in the populations of Iran and the Arabian peninsula, the fact that this shared biogeographical region is labeled as Arabia can lead to the mistaken conclusion that the data indicates that modern Iranians are "over 50% Arab." See https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/reference-populations-next-gen/ and https://realiran.org/national-geographic-iranian-natives-genetic-makeup-is-56-percent-arabian/ |
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 | Nazan Maksudyan | #205 10/25/15 | Women and Suicide in Early Republican Turkey | |
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 | Yasemin Gencer | #102 4/19/13 |
Credits
Episode No. 324
Release Date: 15 July 2017
Recording Location: Cambridge, MA
Audio editing by Chris Gratien
Music: from Excavated Shellac - Lili Labassi - Mazal Haye Mazal; from archive.org - Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla
Special thanks to Kara Günes for permission to use the composition "Istanbul"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Elise Burton
Release Date: 15 July 2017
Recording Location: Cambridge, MA
Audio editing by Chris Gratien
Music: from Excavated Shellac - Lili Labassi - Mazal Haye Mazal; from archive.org - Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla
Special thanks to Kara Günes for permission to use the composition "Istanbul"
Images and bibliography courtesy of Elise Burton
Select Bibliography
Human Genetics and Nation-Building
Primary Sources:
Aksoy, Muzaffer. “Abnormal Haemoglobins in Turkey.” In Abnormal Haemoglobins: A Symposium Organized by the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, Established under the Joint Auspices of UNESCO and WHO, edited by J. H. P. Jonxis and J. F. Delafresnaye, 216–35. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1959.
———. “Brief Note: Hemoglobin S in Eti-Turks and the Allewits in Lebanon.” Blood 17, no. 5 (1961): 657–59.
———. “Sickle-Cell Trait in South Turkey.” The Lancet 265, no. 6864 (1955): 589–90.
Aksoy, Muzaffer, Elizabeth W. Ikin, Arthur E. Mourant, and Hermann Lehmann. “Blood Groups, Haemoglobins, and Thalassemia in Turks in Southern Turkey and Eti-Turks.” British Medical Journal, 1958, 937–39.
Aksoy, Muzaffer, and Hermann Lehmann. “The First Observation of Sickle-Cell Haemoglobin E Disease.” Nature 179, no. 4572 (1957): 1248–49.
Beckett, P. H. T. “ABO Blood Groups in Kerman, South Persia.” Man 56 (1956): 141.
Bonné, Batsheva. “Are There Hebrews Left?” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 24, no. 2 (1966): 135–45.
Bowman, James E., and Deryck G. Walker. “The Origin of Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency in Iran: Theoretical Considerations.” In Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Human Genetics (Rome, September 6-12, 1961), edited by Luigi Gedda, 1:583–86. Rome: Instituto G. Mendel, 1963.
Ikin, Elizabeth W. “Blood Group Distribution in the Near East.” In Proceedings of the Seventh Congress of the International Society of Blood Transfusion, Rome, September 3-6, 1958, edited by L. Holländer, 262–65. Basel: S. Karger, 1959.
İnan, Afet. L’Anatolie, le pays de la “race” turque: recherches sur les caractères anthropologiques des populations de la Turquie (enquête sur 64,000 individus). Genève: Imprimerie Albert Kundig, 1939.
İnan, Afet. Türkiye halkının antropolojik karakterleri ve Türkiye tarihi: Türk ırkının vatanı Anadolu (64.000 kisi üzerinde anket). Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1947.
Irmak, Sadi. “Türk ırkının biyolojisine dair araştırmalar (kan gruplar ve parmak izleri).” In İkinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, İstanbul 20-25 Eylül 1937, 841–45. İstanbul: Kenan Matbaası, 1943.
Krischner, Harald, and M. Krischner. “The Anthropology of Mesopotamia and Persia C. The Anthropology of Persia.” Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Amsterdam 35 (1932): 399–410.
Onur, Nureddin. “Kan grupları bakımından Türk ırkının menşei hakkında bir etüd.” In İkinci Türk Tarih Kongresi, İstanbul 20-25 Eylül 1937, 845–51. İstanbul: Kenan Matbaası, 1943.
Secondary Sources:
Abu El-Haj, Nadia. The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of
Epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Duruel, Nursel, Çiğdem Altay, and Orhan N. Ulutin, eds. Bilime adanmış bir ömür: Muzaffer Aksoy. Ankara: Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi, 2005.
Efron, John M. Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siecle Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
Ergin, Murat. Is the Turk a White Man?: Race and Modernity in the Making of Turkish Identity. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
Kirsh, Nurit. “Population Genetics in Israel in the 1950s: The Unconscious Internalization of Ideology.” Isis 94, no. 4 (2003): 631–55.
Maksudyan, Nazan. Türklüğü ölçmek: bilimkurgusal antropoloji ve Türk milliyetçiliğinin ırkçı çehresi, 1925-1939. Beyoğlu, İstanbul: Metis, 2005.
Ringer, Monica. Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011.
Salgırlı, Sanem Güvenç. “Eugenics for the Doctors: Medicine and Social Control in 1930s Turkey.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 66, no. 3 (2010): 281–312.
Schayegh, Cyrus. “Hygiene, Eugenics, Genetics, and the Perception of Demographic Crisis in Iran, 1910s–1940s.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 13, no. 3 (2004): 335–61. doi:10.1080/1066992042000300684.
Zia-Ebrahimi, Reza. The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.
Interpreting Genetic Ancestry Tests
Technology used by the Genographic Project:
Elhaik, Eran, Elliott Greenspan, Sean Staats, Thomas Krahn, Chris Tyler-Smith, Yali Xue, Sergio Tofanelli, et al. “The GenoChip: A New Tool for Genetic Anthropology.” Genome Biology and Evolution 5, no. 5 (May 2013): 1021–31. doi:10.1093/gbe/evt066.
Critical Analyses of Genetic Ancestry Testing:
Bolnick, D. A., D. Fullwiley, T. Duster, R. S. Cooper, J. H. Fujimura, J. Kahn, J. S. Kaufman, et al. “The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry Testing.” Science 318, no. 5849 (October 19, 2007): 399–400. doi:10.1126/science.1150098.
Duster, Troy. “A Post-Genomic Surprise: The Molecular Reinscription of Race in Science, Law and Medicine.” The British Journal of Sociology 66, no. 1 (March 2015): 1–27. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12118.
Duster, Troy. “Response to Comments on ‘A Post-Genomic Surprise.’” British Journal of Sociology 66, no. 1 (2015): 83–92.
Sommer, Marianne. History within: The Science, Culture, and Politics of Bones, Organisms, and Molecules. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Wailoo, Keith, Alondra Nelson, and Catherine Lee, eds. Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. See especially Chapter 7, 9, and 12.
“Debunking Genetic Astrology,” webpage produced by the Molecular and Cultural Evolution Lab at University College London: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mace-lab/debunking
Radio Broadcast: “The Business of Genetic Ancestry,” produced by Adam Rutherford. BBC Radio 4. May 26, 2015. Available to stream at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vy4kb, or to download at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mace-lab/media/TV-radio/recordings/The_Business_of_Genetic_Ancestry.mp3
Blog posts discussed:
Leyal Khalife, “DNA analysis proves Arabs aren't entirely Arab.” January 12, 2017. Available at
http://stepfeed.com/dna-analysis-proves-arabs-aren-t-entirely-arab
“National Geographic: Iranian natives’ genetic makeup is 56 percent Arabian!” January 15, 2017. Available at https://realiran.org/national-geographic-iranian-natives-genetic-makeup-is-56-percent-arabian/
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Ports and Printers Across the Armenian Diaspora
Episode 325
hosted by Nir Shafir
A perennial question in Ottoman history is why printing was not fully adopted in the Middle East for the production of books until the late nineteenth century. Armenians, however, did start to print their books as early as the sixteenth century. In this episode, Sebouh Aslanian explains this rather sudden shift by telling the story of how the twin traumas of the Celali Rebellions and Shah Abbas’s scorched-earth campaigns against the Ottoman Empire spurred the mass migration of Armenians away from their traditional centers in the Eastern fringes of Anatolia, the Armenian Plateau and the Caucasus and toward major cities of Western Anatolia and Iran. As the traditional centers of Armenian manuscript production were disrupted by war and banditry, Armenians turned to printing presses in the European diaspora to satisfy their needs for books.
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Coffee & Marijuana
Episode 326
with Casey Lurtz& Lina Britto
Commodities, their circulation, and their consumption have long been favorite topics of cultural and economic historians alike. In this episode, we build on the historiography of commodities by studying further the social and political context of two particular commodities: coffee and marijuana. Our guests, Casey Lurtz and Lina Britto, have each studied these commodities in their Latin American contexts, and following a global discussion of coffee and marijuana with some focus on the Middle East, we talk to each of these scholars about their respective research projects. We examine how the arrival of coffee impacted local political economies in Mexico, and we explore how the history of marijuana as a "drug" has had political consequences for modern Latin American countries. We conclude with a roundtable discussion on the history of commodities like coffee and marijuana and what they tell us about the changing cultural context surrounding both these items today.
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Visual Sources in Late Ottoman History
Episode 327
with contributions by Zeynep Çelik, Leyla Amzi-Erdoğdular, Özde Çeliktemel-Thomen, Mehmet Kentel, Michael Talbot, Murat Yıldız, Burçak Özlüdil Altın, Seçil Yılmaz, Burçin Çakır, Zeinab Azerbadegan, Dotan Halevy, Chris Gratien, and Michael Ferguson
Visual sources such as photographs, maps, and miniatures often serve as accompaniment or adornment within works of Ottoman history. In this episode, we feature new work that interrogates methods of analyzing and employing visual sources for Ottoman history that go beyond the practice of "image as decoration." Following a conversation with the organizers of the "Visual Sources in Late Ottoman History" conference held at Columbia University in April 2017, we speak to conference participants about the visual sources they employ in their work and how these visual sources allow us to understand the history of the Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman world in a new light.
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Intellectual Currents in Early Modern Islam
Episode 328
hosted by Shireen Hamza and Abdul Latif
The seventeenth century, contrary to popular belief, was a time of great originality and change for scholars in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb. In this interview, Khaled El-Rouayheb debunks the many myths of intellectual decline by showing how the intellectual production changed in tandem with major migrations across the Islamic world. We start with the influx of Kurdish and Azeri logicians into the Ottoman Empire, and the new disciplines that they brought with them. We then discuss the movement of scholars from North Africa to Egypt and the Hejaz, and how they insisted on methods of taḥqīq, or verification, rather than taqlīd, or the acceptance of knowledge based on authority alone. Finally, we touch on how the spread of Sufi orders from India and Central Asia into Arabic-speaking regions impacted the development and disputation of the concept of waḥdat al-wujūd, or the unity of being. How does this detailed research on intellectual trends change our understanding of "modernity" and the period we call the "early modern"?
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Islam in West African History
Episode 329
hosted by Shireen Hamza and Abdul Latif
In this interview, we explore the early history of Islam in West Africa with Professor Ousmane Kane, who has mapped out the networks of Islamic learning in the region. We discuss intellectual history, the curricula of madrasas and a day in the life of a 16th-century student in Sankore. We then turn to the role of language in West African Muslim intellectual production, and the effects of colonialism on education, broadly. West African Islam is neglected by both Islamic Studies and African studies, despite its rich history, from the first centuries of Islam to the present. We end with a discussion of how these disciplines draw boundaries that have thus far discouraged many from looking beyond material exchange in Timbuktu to the broader study of Islamic intellectual history in West Africa.
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Muslim Origins in South Asia
Episode 330
hosted by Shireen Hamza
When did Muslims first come to the South Asian subcontinent? The answer to this question has formed a crucial part of nationalism in both India and Pakistan, where the story begins with the conquest of Sind by Muhammad ibn Qasim in 712 AD. In this episode, we speak with Manan Ahmed Asif about his book, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia, which reexamines a key text in this narrative about Islam in South Asia: The Chachnama. Written in Sind in the 13th century, this text draws on multiple Indic and Islamic literary traditions to respond to its contemporary political context. We discuss the ways in which the text puts forth political theories, based on the lives of Brahmin rulers of Sind -- including the eponymous Chach -- as well as Muhammad ibn Qasim. Rather than a straightforward story of Muslim conquest, the text advocates a mode of rule which acknowledges and engages with the cultural and religious diversity of Sind. Finally, we touch on the ways this history is alive today among residents of Uch, the city most discussed in the Chachnama.
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Migrants in the Late Ottoman Empire
Episode 331
hosted by Chris Gratien and Seçil Yılmaz
Though it is often ignored among the many histories of the great migrations of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire experienced the arrival of millions of migrants of the course of its last decades. The migrant or muhacir was therefore not just a critical demographic component of both Ottoman cities and the countryside but also part of and subject two different political projects associated with the empire's transformation. In this conversation with Ella Fratantuono, we offer an introduction to the history of migration in the late Ottoman Empire and seek to understand the muhacir as a legal, administrative, and conceptual figure in Ottoman society.
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History, Diaspora, and Politics
Episode 332
hosted by Shireen Hamza and Chris Gratien
Migration has long been a driving force in the history of global and transnational connections. In this episode, we explore the politics of diaspora surrounding different migrant communities in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond with three student guests. First, we discuss the little-known history of Vietnamese migrants in the state of Israel. Then, through film, we revisit the history and memory of Jewish urban life in North Africa between Tunisia and France. Finally, we consider the political implications of the relationship between Canada and the Ismaili diaspora.
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Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean
Episode 333
Pirates are usually imagined as outlaws. But as the history of the early modern Mediterranean demonstrates, the line between illegal raiding and legitimate maritime violence was blurry, easily crossed, and often a moving target. In this episode, we talk to Joshua White about his book Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean. We consider how piracy shaped legal institutions and thought in the Ottoman world, and we get a glimpse of the fascinating and liminal world of pirates, jurists, and officials in the Ottoman Mediterranean.
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Spies of the Sultan
Episode 334
Along with new maritime networks, information stiched together the empires of the early modern period. One component of the growing networks of information in the increasingly connected space of the Mediterranean world was espionage. As we learn in our latest conversation with Emrah Safa Gürkan about his new book Sultanın Casusları (Spies of the Sultan), the Ottoman Empire was both party and subject to the fascinating exploits of early modern spies. In this episode, we learn about the lives of Ottoman spies profiled in Gürkan's book, and we consider how the transformation of espionage in the Mediterranean relates to the development of early modern empires.
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Arab Feminism in Periods of Transition
Episode 335
hosted by Susanna Ferguson and Seçil Yilmaz
In this episode, we uncover histories of feminist writing and activism in the Modern Middle East, asking how women's textual production and activism changed over the twentieth century and looking at new directions in research on the history of women and feminism in the region. In the first half of the episode, Marilyn Booth introduces us to feminist writer and biographer Zeinab Fawwaz, who transformed women's writing in 1890s Egypt. We show how central questions of gender, marriage, and girls' education were to discussions about society and nation after the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and through the first decades of the twentieth century. In the second half of the episode, Nova Robinson discusses her research on Nour Hammada, a women's activist from interwar Lebanon who argued for an "Eastern" or "Arab" women's rights framework. At the end, we come together to think about the new avenues of inquiry shaping Middle East history and the history of women and gender in the region.
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Medicine Along the Musk Route
Episode 336
hosted by Taylor Moore and Shireen Hamza
How did people in Tibet view the Islamic World, and vice versa? How did a figure like Galen travel from Ancient Greece, through the Islamic World, and end up as a founding father in Tibetan medical history? In this episode, we speak to Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim about the exchange of knowledge, and especially medicine, between these regions. We discuss objects like musk, which originated in Tibet but played a huge role in the Muslim world, and scholars like Rashid al-Din al-Tabib, who wrote about Buddhism and Chinese medicine from Il-Khanid Iran. The silk road is often thought of as a trade route connecting China and Greece, but Ronit uses a new framework, the "Musk Route," for looking at the transmission of knowledge between Tibet and the Islamic world. She also describes the role of some important archives in shaping our understandings of these connections, like Dunhuang and the Cairo Geniza.
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Izmir & Thessaloniki: from Empire to Nation-State
Episode 337
During the late Ottoman period, the diverse and vibrant Aegean ports of Izmir (Smyrna) and Thessaloniki (Salonica) experienced rapid growth and transformation through the increased interconnection of the Mediterranean world and the rise of maritime trade. But in the tumultuous final decade of the Ottoman period, both cities witnessed political and demographic upheaval as well as outright destruction by fire. With Thessaloniki permanently incorporated into Greece and Izmir into the new Republic of Turkey in 1923, the two cities seemed destined to follow different paths. Yet as our guest Kalliopi Amygdalou explains, interesting comparisons and parallels between the development of Izmir and Thessaloniki endured even after they ceased to be part of a unified Ottoman polity. In this episode, we follow the story of urban and architectural transformation in Izmir and Thessaloniki after the decade of war between the Balkan Wars (1912-13) and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey and the period that followed in the two cities under a transition from empire to nation-state.
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The Lyrical Archive of al-Andalus
Episode 338
hosted by Shireen Hamza
The history of al-Andalus has a special place in Arabic poetry -- as well as in American hiphop. al-Andalus, a name for the Iberian peninsula when under the political rule of Muslim dynasties, has remained a symbol of loss, exile and memory, centuries after the last Muslim king lost power. In this episode, Anna Cruz explores this phenomenon through Arabic poetry by Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati and Mahmoud Darwish, speeches by Malcolm X and the music of Ras Kass. We discuss the way this history of al-Andalus is shaped through retelling by these twentieth century writers and artists. Anna also considers what it would mean to create an archive of al-Andalus that included these multiple ways of understanding its history.
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The Tanzimat in Ottoman Cappadocia
Episode 339
In this episode, we consider the story of the Tanzimat reforms from the perspective of rural Cappadocia, a region in central Anatolia now famous as a tourist destination. In the nineteenth century, Cappadocia was home not only to the Muslim subjects who made up the majority of Anatolia's population but to a large population of Orthodox Christians as well. How did these communities experience the Tanzimat period and how did their relationships to each other and to the state change between 1839 and the demise of the Ottoman Empire?
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Hürrem Sultan or Roxelana, Empress of the East
Episode 340
hosted by Suzie Ferguson and Seçil Yilmaz
In this episode, we explore the life and times of Roxelana, also known as Hürrem Sultan, a slave girl who became chief consort and then legal wife of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I (r. 1520-1566). We trace Roxelana's probable beginnings and the possible paths that took her to Istanbul, asking how she rose above her peers in the Old Palace to become a favored concubine and then the wife of the Sultan. We explore her relationship to other women at the Ottoman court, the politics of her motherhood and philanthropy, and her role in Ottoman diplomacy. In the end, Roxelana's work, her relationship with Suleiman, and the unusual nuclear family they created despite the otherwise polygynous patterns of reproduction at the Ottoman court would transform the rules of Ottoman succession, the role of Ottoman royal women, and the future of the Empire as a whole. The life story of this one remarkable woman sheds light on many facets of the history of the Ottoman Empire, showing how a single individual's story can serve as a lynchpin for grasping the complexities of an age.
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