The annual “Identities in the Middle East Workshop,” organized and hosted by the Institute
of Near Eastern and African Studies at Charles University, will be inaugurated with a twoday
deliberation on late-Ottoman identities. The aim of the workshop is for participants to
gain a profound awareness of the conceptualizations and manifestations of individual,
communal, national, and transnational identities in the last century of the Ottoman Empire.
Participants are expected to actively engage in discussions generated by a set of common
readings.
Dates & Venue: 12–13 October 2018, Prague, Czech Republic
Content of the Workshop:
The first day of the workshop, chaired by Hasan Kayalı, will open with theoretical
considerations of identity and belonging and case studies that reveal particular complexities
of identity among peoples of the late Empire. The second day’s sessions will consider
alternative perspectives and will be divided between a session on transnational identities,
chaired by Ebru Akcasu, and marginal identities, chaired by Stefano Taglia. The transnational
session will evaluate notions of belonging to the Ottoman state from the perspective of
foreigners, both Ottomans abroad and non-Ottomans within the dominions. The session on
marginals will analyze the relationship between the state and groups engaged in nonconformal
behaviors, such as drug addicts, prostitutes, and alcohol drinkers, to reflect on
the state’s role as service provider and its expectations of individuals as modern citizens.
The workshop will conclude by carrying the conversation about identity into the post-
Ottoman era and will assess the balance sheet of the (active) dissolution of multi-faceted
Ottoman identities in the states that emerged from Ottoman territories. The closing session
will be chaired by Hasan Kayalı.
Eligibility and Application:
This workshop is designed for doctoral students and early-career academics (i.e., those who
have received their degrees within the last 5 years). To apply, please email your curriculum
vitae and a 500-word statement of how this workshop is relevant and useful to your current
research to: katarina.palcova@ff.cuni.cz
The subject line of the email should clearly indicate that it is an application for the “Late-
Ottoman Identities Workshop.”
The deadline for applications is 7 July 2018. Successful candidates will be notified by 20 July
2018.
Funding may be provided for applicants whose home institutions do not cover travel and/or
accommodation expenses. Please indicate in the application whether this applies to you.
Requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Workshop Schedule:
Friday, 12th October, 2018 (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)
Chair: Hasan Kayalı
10:00 – 13:00 Identity and belonging in the late Ottoman Empire
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch break
14:30 – 17:30 Case studies
Saturday, 13th October, 2018 (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)
Chair: Ebru Akcasu (morning session) & Stefano Taglia (afternoon session)
10:00 – 13:00 Transnational identities in the late Ottoman Empire
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch break
14:30 – 17:30 Marginals as citizens in the late Ottoman Empire
18:00 – 18:30 Closing Remarks chaired by Hasan Kayalı
‘Sultans as Saviors: Early Modern Mediterranean Jewish Accounts of the Ottoman Rulers’
Professor Marc David Baer, London School of Economics and Political Science
Messianic impulses lie at the core of early modern Mediterranean Jewish accounts of the Ottoman sultans. Jews’ affective disposition compelled them to be grateful to the rulers of the kingdom that allowed them to live as Jews, shaping a utopian image of the Islamic rulers. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Jews focus on the Ottoman sultan, who personifies the empire, depicting him in messianic terms as the one who fulfils God’s plan in the world by punishing the Jews’ Christian oppressors (Byzantine and Catholic). They also credit him for ingathering the Jewish exiles from newly Christian Spain, conquering Jerusalem, and allowing Jews to settle in the Holy Land. In their view, all serve as portents of the dawning of the messianic age. In seventeenth century accounts, the Ottoman savior is replaced by a Jewish one, the messianic claimant Shabbatai Tzevi. However, modern historiography has retained the main claims of these early modern accounts.
Katedra Blízkého východu zve na projekci filmu West Beirut (1998) s následnou diskuzí!
This French-Lebanese-Belgian co-production is an autobiographical drama. In 1975 after Tarek and Omar witness the start of civil war, they are picked up by Tarek’s mother Hala. Hala wants to flee, but her husband won’t allow it. Tarek and Omar wander about, but the realities of war soon intrude.
Datum a čas: 25. 10. 2018 v 17:45
Místo: C238, Celetná 20, Praha 1
Moderátoři: Stefano Taglia (OÚ AV ČR) a Karolína Lahučká (KBV FF UK)
For they cannot speak: Two Early examples of animal protection laws in the Islamic world
The legal protection of animals in the pre-modern Islamic world is a largely understudied topic among students of the Middle East. Idealized depictions of the interaction of humans with animals in the prescriptive religious texts of Orthodox Islam as well as in the writings of Islamic mystics do not allow for an adequate assessment of how animals were treated by people in different realms and periods of Islamic history.
This talk will offer a glimpse at the legal protection afforded to beasts of burden on the local level in two Ottoman cities on the basis of regional law codes (kanunnames). Two easily overlooked passages in Ottoman law codes from Anatolia at the beginning of the 16th century contain legal stipulations with regard to beasts of burden, which, as will be argued in this paper, present the earliest known codification of animal rights in the Ottoman context. More importantly, while regulating the protection of the rights of animals only for a very specific context, a close look at the legal stipulations reveals a surprisingly modern and “progressive“ sounding justification of the need of animals to receive protection from the abuse by humans. Is it possible that views held by animal rights activists of the 20th century and by a handful of Western philosophers since the 17th century in favor of a pathocentric approach to animal rights were already anticipated in an Ottoman legal code of the 16th century?
By contrasting the stipulations of the kanunnames to the views on animal rights expressed in Islamic doctrine, Sufi treatises, hisba texts and travelogues from the Ottoman period, this paper will call into question for Ottoman Anatolia of the early 16th century the predominant view on animal protection held for the pre-modern Islamic world (and beyond) from a merely anthropocentric perspective.
Bio
Richard Wittmann (Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University 2008) is the Associate Director of the Orient-Institut Istanbul, a German humanities research institute abroad. The Istanbul based member institute of the Max Weber Foundation is dedicated to the promotion of academic research on Turkey and its neighboring countries of the Balkans and the Near East. After studying Law, Islamic Studies, and Turcology at the University of Munich and at Freie Universität Berlin he was awarded a scholarship from Harvard University where he continued his studies at the Department of History and at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
His research interests focus on Islamic legal history and the social history of the Ottoman Empire. Special attention is given in his work to the consideration of self-narratives as historic sources for the study of the Near East. Richard Wittmann coordinates an international collaborative research project aiming at the study and publication of Ottoman self-narratives (www.istanbulmemories.org). He is the editor of the publication series Memoria. Fontes Minores ad Historiam Imperii Ottomanici Pertinentes (www.perspectivia.net/publikationen/memoria) and coeditor of the monograph series Life Narratives of the Ottoman Realm: Individual and Empire in the Near East (https://www.routledge.com/Life-Narratives-of-the-Ottoman-Realm-Individual-and-Empire-in-the-Near-East/book-series/LNOR).
His latest coedited volume Istanbul – Kushta – Constantinople. Narratives of Identity in the Ottoman Capital, 1830-1930 (Routledge) was released in September 2018.