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Wishnitzer Avner . Reading Clocks, Alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire . Chicago : The University of Chicago Press , 2015, xii + 312 pages.
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From sociology via anthropology to social and cultural history, time as an aspect of social relationships has recently become an object of empirical scholarly inquiry. Reading Clocks, Alla Turca is the first extensive study that brings the insights from these fields to bear on Ottoman history. It is a study of the changing temporal regimes, daily rhythms, and the meaning of time among the Ottoman state elite from the eighteenth century to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. At the center of the discussion lie two parallel stories: one of how a legal-rational temporal system of time organization gradually took the place of a patrimonial tradition of time, and one of how the particular Ottoman way of using clocks that emerged in the eighteenth century was displaced by European methods of time-keeping.
As mechanical clocks became widespread in the eighteenth century, elite Ottomans began to rely on the equal hours of their timepieces in preference to the old seasonal hours. By this method, clocks would be reset at sunset every day, and used as mere indicators of "real time," which was determined by the movement of the sun. This method of time reckoning was called alaturka saat--"Turkish time," or the "Turkish clock." In the middle of the nineteenth century, the European mean time system began to spread, first in commercial circles and later among the state elite. This became known as "European time," or alafranga saat, where hours were counted in two rounds of twelve from noon until noon the following day. The alaturka saat divided both daytime and nighttime into twelve hours each. Since the period of sunlight varies with the time of year, the day hours and the night hours were not only of unequal length, but also varied with the season. Alafranga hours, on the other hand, were of equal length day and night throughout the year.
Although the alaturka saat was...