New Trajectories in the Study of Early Modern Ottoman Historiography

Year 2022, Volume: 20 Issue: 40, 281 - 296, 03.02.2023

Şaban Ağalar

https://doi.org/10.55842/talid.1161366

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, literature on early modern Ottoman historiography witnessed a significant expansion in tandem with the rising interest in narrative sources and archival documents. The research, especially during the last two decades, is characterized by the use of new sources and methodology, which in turn, enabled the examination of previously overlooked features and dynamics of early modern history writing. This review argues that the imprint of the new trajectories in the study of early modern Ottoman historiography is particularly manifest in two themes of research. First, the field has undergone a shift from an emphasis on the narrowly defined political function of history writing to the acknowledgment of the multiplicity of purposes, agents, and messages. Studies in the field of art history have particularly contributed to this transformation by expanding the repertoire of historiographical sources beyond textual materials and raising productive questions regarding the authorship and audience of official histories. Second, thought-provoking studies on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century historiography challenged the conventional categories of historian and historiographical work. Historiographers who were neither bureaucrats nor scholars integrated otherwise marginalized voices into the study of Ottoman historiography. Despite the promising developments in the field, there is still a lack of research on the theoretical dimensions and cross-cultural connections ofearly modern Ottoman history writing.

Keywords

historiography, history writing, early modern Ottoman Empire, Ottoman intellectual history, tarihyazımı, erken modern Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Osmanlı entelektüel tarihi, erken modern Osmanlı İmparatorluğu

Erken Modern Osmanlı Tarihyazımı Çalışmalarında Yeni Yönelimler

Abstract

Erken modern Osmanlı tarihyazımı literatürü, 1980’lerin başından itibaren arşiv belgelerinin yanı sıra, anlatı kaynaklarına yönelik artan ilginin sonucu dikkate değer bir genişlemeye tanık olmuştur. Özellikle son yirmi yılda, yeni kaynakların ve metodolojilerin kullanılmaya başlanmasıyla erken modern tarih yazımının daha önce gözden kaçan özelliklerinin ve dinamiklerinin incelenmesi mümkün hale gelmiştir. Bu değerlendirme yazısı, erken modern Osmanlı tarihyazımı araştırmalarındaki yeni yönelimlerin izlerinin özellikle iki araştırma temasında kendini gösterdiğini iddia etmektedir. İlk olarak; literatür, tarih yazımının dar bir biçimde tanımlanmış siyasi işlevine yapılan vurgudan, amaçların, faillerin ve mesajların çokluğunun kabulüne doğru bir kayma geçirdi. Sanat tarihi alanındaki çalışmalar, tarihyazımı kaynakları repertuarını metinsel materyallerin ötesinde genişleterek ve eserlerin yazarları ve okuyucuları hakkında yeni sorular üreterek bu dönüşüme katkıda bulunmuştur. İkincisi, on yedinci ve on sekizinci yüzyıllarda yazılmış tarih metinlerini ele alan son çalışmalar, geleneksel tarihçi ve tarih eseri kategorilerini yeniden düşünmemizi sağlamıştır. Ne bürokratik ne de ilmî hiyerarşinin bir parçası olan tarihçiler üzerine yapılan çalışmalarla, marjinalleştirilmiş sesler Osmanlı tarihyazımı incelemesine entegre edilmiştir. Alandaki umut verici gelişmelere rağmen erken modern Osmanlı tarih yazımının teorik boyutları ve kültürler arası bağlantıları hakkında daha fazla araştırmaya ihtiyaç vardır.

Keywords

tarihyazımı, Osmanlı entelektüel tarihi, erken modern Osmanlı İmparatorluğu

References

• Bağcı, Serpil. “From Translated Word to Translated Image: The Illustrated Şehnâme-İ Türkî Copies.” Muqarnas 17 (2000): 162–76.
• ———. “Visualizing Power: Portrayals of the Sultans in Illustrated Histories of the Ottoman Dynasty.” Islamic Art 6, no. 1 (2009): 1327.
• Barkey, Karen. Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.
• Çıpa, H. Erdem. The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2017.
• El-Rouayheb, Khaled. Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Fetvacı, Emine. Picturing History at the Ottoman Court. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013.
• ———. The Album of the World Emperor: Cross-Cultural Collecting and the Art of Album-Making in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul. Princeton University Press, 2020.
• ———. “The Office of Ottoman Court Historian.” In Studies on Istanbul and Beyond: The Freely Papers, edited by Robert G. Ousterhout, 1:7–21. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2007.
• Fleischer, Cornell. “Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and" Ibn Khaldûnism" in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Letters.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 18, no. 3–4 (1983): 198–220.
• ———. “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Siileyman.” In Soliman Le Magnifique et Son Temps: Actes Du Colloque de Paris, edited by Gilles Veinstein, 159–77. Paris: Ecole du Louvre, 1992.
• Fleischer, Cornell H. Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600). Princeton University Press, 2014.
• Hagen, Gottfried. Ein Osmanischer Geograph bei der Arbeit: Entstehung und Gedankenwelt von Kātib Čelebis Ğihānnümā. Berlin: Schwarz, 2003.
• Hagen, Gottfried, and Ethan L. Menchinger. “Ottoman Historical Thought.” In A Companion to Global Historical Thought, edited by Prasenjit Duara, Viren Murthy, and Andrew Sartori, 92–106. Wiley Blackwell Companions to History. Chichester: Wiley, 2014.
• Hathaway, Jane. The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule: 1516-1800. New York; Oxford: Routledge, 2008.
• Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1996.
• Menchinger, Ethan. “A Reformist Philosophy of History: The Case of Ahmed Vâsıf Efendi.” Osmanlı Araştırmaları 44, no. 44 (2014): 141–168.
• Necipoğlu, Gülru. “The Serial Portraits of Ottoman Sultans in Comparative Perspective.” In The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman, 22–61. Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2000.
• Piterberg, Gabriel. An Ottoman Tragedy: History and Historiography at Play. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. Robinson, Chase F. Islamic Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Şahin, Kaya. Empire and Power in the Reign of Süleyman: Narrating the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman World. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Sajdi, Dana. The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.
• Tezcan, Baki. “The 1622 Military Rebellion in Istanbul: A Historiographical Journey.” International Journal of Turkish Studies 8, no. 1–2 (2002): 25–43.
• ———. “The Politics of Early Modern Ottoman Historiography.” In The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire, edited by Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Goffman, 167–98. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Woodhead, Christine. “An Experiment in Official Historiography: The Post of Şehnāmeci in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1555-1605.” Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes 75 (1983): 157–82.
• ———. “Reading Ottoman ‘Şehnâmes’: Official Historiography in the Late Sixteenth Century.” Studia Islamica, no. 104/105 (2007): 67–80.