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Social History and Cultural Studies
One of the fastest growing fields of Ottoman history over the last generation has been urban history. Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet have offered a colorful contribution to this historiography with a social history of Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, covering the entire period from the Ottoman conquest of the city until the demise of the empire after World War I (1453-1923). The authors make a somewhat unusual choice in telling their history from the direct and mostly unmediated perspective of Ottoman and European literary sources: chronicles, travel accounts, memoirs, biographies, and poetry. This strategy of giving free rein to contemporary observers carries its own mixture of opportunities and risks that can make this study entertaining and rewarding and yet somewhat difficult to follow and interpret, particularly for readers who are unfamiliar with the byways of Ottoman history.
The book has a rather idiosyncratic structure insofar as there is no central thesis or argument. It consists mainly of an eclectic series of snapshots from Istanbul life in streets, markets, gardens, and neighborhoods. A condensed timeline of Ottoman political history (Chap. 1) leads into a long discussion of the relationship between the Ottoman court and the urban population (Chap. 2). The authors recount imperial ceremony and pageantry, the organization of official prayers and celebrations, and the pressure that the people of the capital could bring to bear on the state and its monarch. The book then shifts (Chap. 3) to a history of attitudes toward violence, death,...