Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: the Ottoman Experience

Öz

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.  

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Plague
• Empire
• Early Modern

Nükhet Varlık, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600

Öz

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.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Nükhet Varlık
• Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World
• The Ottoman Experience

Kaynakça

1. 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.