The Conference The Project Project Coordinators Project Members ...

The Conference
Most scholars of Ottoman history would consider
the domains of the sultan a transcultural sphere par
excellence. Indeed the very deep-rootedness of this
understanding often means that phenomena related
to transculturality are deemed to be so ordinary that
they tend to be understudied as phenomena in their
own right.
This conference, which will take place at Heidelberg
University’s Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced
Transcultural Studies, seeks to link aspects of the
interconnectedness of the Ottoman Empire with
“the world around it” and questions of transcultural
entanglements within the Ottoman domains.
The submitted papers include multi-perspective
approaches to transcultural encounters in the Ottoman
Empire and case studies exploring the nature of
the linkages existing between the Ottoman Empire
and other regions in Europe and Asia.
The title “Well-Connected Domains” was coined in
a discussion between Aykut Mustak (Sabancı University)
and Tobias Graf as a play on words hinting
at the Ottoman habit of referring to their Empire as
the “Well-Protected Domains”.
Picture: “Compagnie internationale du chemin de fer du Bosphore – Le pont Abdoul
Hamid.” Sketch drawing, Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (YA.HUS, 411/174).
Programme
Thursday, 10 November 2011
09:30- PANEL 1: PERCEPTIONS
10:40 Chair: WILLIAM O’REILLY
GÁBOR KÁRMÁN: Turks reconsidered: Jakab Nagy
de Harsány’s changing image of the Ottoman
HENNING SIEVERT: Post-Safavid Iran and Habsburg
Austria as seen by Ottoman diplomats
11:00- PANEL 2: LEGAL IDENTITIES
12:45 Chair: EYAL GINIO
NUR SOBERS KHAN: Identity formation and legal
categories of ethnicity (cins) in early modern Ottoman
Istanbul
CHRISTIAN ROTH: Aspects of juridical integration of
non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire: Observations in
the 18
i i
o
th century urban and rural Aegean
AYLIN BESIRYAN: The transcultural dimension of the
Ottoman constitution
13:45- PANEL 3: MODERNISATION
15:30 Chair: FELIX KONRAD
GÜLAY TULASOGLU: A British consul and local reforms
in pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Salonica
SOTIRIOS DIMITRIADIS: Transforming a late Ottoman
port-city: Salonica, 1876–1912
ŞEYDA BAŞLI: The birth of the Ottoman novel beyond
cultural and literary borders
16:15- KEYNOTE LECTURE
17:45 SURAIYA FAROQHI: Trading between East and West:
The Ottoman Empire of the early modern period
Friday, 11 November 2011
09:30-
10:40
11:00-
12:45
PANEL 4: HERITAGE
Chair: MICHAEL URSINUS
KALLIOPE PAVLI: Constructing myths: Ottomans vs.
Greek ancient monuments
PATRIZIA KERN: Neo-Ottomanism and museum
space: Two case studies from Istanbul
PANEL 5: MARITIME TRADES
Chair: SURAIYA FAROQHI
VIOREL PANAITE: French capitulations and consular
jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean (late-sixteenth
and early-seventeenth centuries)
JOSHUA WHITE: An international incident: Piracy
and diplomacy in a seventeenth-century Ottoman
Mediterranean port
MICHAEL TALBOT: Defining maritime territoriality:
British privateers and Ottoman privateer lines, c. 1690–
c. 1790
The Project
Until very recently historians have tended to overemphasize
a bloc distinction between a Christian and
European West on the one hand and an Asian and
‘Islamic’ Ottoman Empire on the other. Our project
seeks to overcome the bloc paradigm through the
emphasis on multiperspectivity in four case studies
analyzing crucial moments of the early modern and
modern Ottoman Empire. The intersectional area
between Asia, Africa, and Europe is marked by longstanding
intensive exchanges among individuals and
groups of different ethnic, religious, and social origins,
where concepts of order, of identity and of boundary
were reshaped through various encounters. The project
seeks to contribute to the scholarship on cultural
flows between the Ottoman Empire and Western
Europe. Our project is supervised by Prof. Thomas
Maissen (History) and Prof. Michael Ursinus (Ottoman
Studies).
Project Coordinators
Thomas Maissen is Professor of Early Modern
History at Heidelberg University. His primary
interest is in the history of political ideas,
constitutions, and mentalities as well as Swiss
history.
Michael Ursinus holds the Chair of Islamic
Studies (Ottoman Studies) at Heidelberg University.
His research focuses on the history of
the Ottoman provinces and non-Muslims in
Ottoman society.
Project Members
Pascal Firges is writing his doctoral
thesis on “Istanbul during the French
Revolution. Regime Change in a Transcultural
Context”. He holds an MA
degree in History and Philosophy.
Tobias Graf is interested in the phenomenon
of so-called renegades in
the Ottoman Empire in the period
c. 1580–1610. He received his BA
(Hons.) and Master of Philosophy in History at
the University of Cambridge.
Christian Roth is a PhD candidate
in Islamic Studies working on “Non-
Muslims dealing with the Ottoman kadi
in the eighteenth century rural and
urban Aegean”. He holds an MA in Islamic Studies,
Public Law and Computational Linguistics.
Gülay Tulasoglu ğ is currently working
on her PhD thesis “Consuls as agents
of cultural flows in the nineteenth
century and their role in local reform
in the Ottoman Empire”. She holds an MA in
Islamic Studies and Political Science.

Programme
13:45-
15:30
16:00-
17:10
17:30-
18:40
PANEL 6: FRONTIERS
Chair: LINDA DARLING
MAXIMILIAN HARTMUTH: Toward a
cultural topography of violence on the Ottoman-
Habsburg frontier
ANTONIS HADJIKYRIACOU & DAPHNE
LAPPA: Exploring the conceptual boundaries
of the concept of fl uidity: Early modern ‘contact
zones’ in the Adriatic and the Eastern Mediterranean
MORITZ DEUTSCHMANN: Christianity
and the Russo-Iranian-Ottoman encounter in
the Iranian province of Azerbajdzhan in the
nineteenth century
PANEL 7: NETWORKS
Chair: HÜLYA CANBAKAL
TOBIAS GRAF: Renegades in the Ottoman
Empire and their networks, c. 1580–1610:
Some refl ections
DOROTHE SOMMER: Freemasonry, interconfessional
sociability, and the promotion of a
new Syrian self-perception, c. 1860–1908
PANEL 8: STATECRAFT
Chair: TBA
KAY JANKRIFT: The Ottoman hub: Jewish advisors
and Western diplomats at the sultan’s
court in the 16th century
LINDA DARLING: Advice literature as a transcultural
phenomenon
Saturday, 12 November 2011
09:30- PANEL 9: REBELLIONS
10:40 Chair: MARKUS KOLLER
HÜLYA CANBAKAL: The Age of Revolution in
the Ottoman Empire: A provincial perspective
FELIX KONRAD: “Erâzil” and “canaille”: Ottoman
and European perceptions of social unrest
in the Patrona Halil rebellion of 1730
11:00- PANEL 10: FRENCH REVOLUTION
12:10 Chair: THOMAS MAISSEN
PASCAL FIRGES: The French Revolution in
Istanbul, 1793–1795
HIMMET i TAŞKÖMÜR: From great sedition
to great revolution: Ottoman responses to the
French Revolution
12:10- CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
13:00 Chair: THOMAS MAISSEN
The Cluster “Asia and Europe”
The Cluster of Excellence “Asia and
Europe in a Global Context” is an
interdisciplinary network of researchers
at Heidelberg University. The
Cluster was established in October
2007 as part of the Excellence Initiative, which was launched
by the German states and the federal government. It is
supervised by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and
the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat).
Today, the Cluster has about 200 researchers, who examine
the processes of cultural exchange between Asia and
Europe. In particular, they analyse the shifting asymmetries in
cultural, social and political fl ows. Their work probes issues
relevant to contemporary concerns about globalization by
investigating into the cultural transfer of ideas, knowledge
and commodities.
How to fi nd us
The Cluster is located at the Karl Jaspers Centre for
Advanced Transcultural Studies, Voßstraße 2, Heidelberg,
Germany.
To reach us from Heidelberg Main Station, take buses no. 32
(direction “Universitätsplatz”), 33 (direction “Ziegelhausen”),
34 (direction “Wilhelmsfeld”) or 735 (direction “Eiterbach”),
or trams no. 5 (direction “Schriesheim”) or 21 (direction
“Handschuhsheim”). Get off at the stations “Thibautstraße”
or “Bismarckplatz”. From there, it is just a few minutes’ walk
to the Karl Jaspers Centre.
Contact
Project A7
Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe”
Karl Jaspers Centre
Voßstr. 2
69115 Heidelberg, Germany
Phone: +49 (0)6221 54-4309
E-mail: well-connected@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de
www.well-connected.uni-hd.de