Abstract
Most visitors will be struck by the multitude of cats that seem to dominate the cityscape of modern Istanbul. Despite whatever municipal attempts to control the feline population have been carried out in the past and present, one senses that Istanbulites regard cats not as nuisances but rather as benign and welcome components of the urban fabric. The ubiquity of street cats is often anecdotally-linked to the observation that in comparison with comparable world cities such as New York, Istanbul is relatively rodent-free. This mundane aspect of life in Istanbul today attains new meaning alongside a reading of Nükhet Varlık’s groundbreaking Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World. In her discussion of disease in the early Ottoman Empire, Varlık documents the city’s long and intricate relationship with plague and the rats that facilitated its spread, leading this reviewer to ask whether Istanbul’s love affair with cats is just as much a question of epidemiology as it is of emotion.
Keywords
References
- Nükhet Varlık, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: the Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 336 pp., ISBN 978-110-7013-38-4.
Nükhet Varlık, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600
Abstract
Most visitors will be struck by the multitude of cats that seem to dominate the cityscape of modern Istanbul. Despite whatever municipal attempts to control the feline population have been carried out in the past and present, one senses that Istanbulites regard cats not as nuisances but rather as benign and welcome components of the urban fabric. The ubiquity of street cats is often anecdotally-linked to the observation that in comparison with comparable world cities such as New York, Istanbul is relatively rodent-free. This mundane aspect of life in Istanbul today attains new meaning alongside a reading of Nükhet Varlık’s groundbreaking Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World. In her discussion of disease in the early Ottoman Empire, Varlık documents the city’s long and intricate relationship with plague and the rats that facilitated its spread, leading this reviewer to ask whether Istanbul’s love affair with cats is just as much a question of epidemiology as it is of emotion.
Keywords
Nükhet Varlık Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World The Ottoman Experience
References
- Nükhet Varlık, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: the Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 336 pp., ISBN 978-110-7013-38-4.
Details
| Primary Language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal Section | Articles |
| Authors | |
| Publication Date | July 27, 2016 |
| Published in Issue | Year 2016 |