Center for Ottoman History Research

Ottoman historiography has long been plagued with a state-centric focus and dealt very little with individuals, even those who run the empire. This is mostly due to the source base – government documents issued by the central government and chronicles penned by self-censoring palace creatures and the scarcity of ego documents. Recently, however, historians have started to use other types of documents from European archives in order to find information on individuals in the Ottoman Empire. The following presentations try to shed light on different aspects of a renegade Ottoman pasha’s career and personality by relying on documentation from European archives.
Born in Sicily to a Genoese father and an Ottoman mother, Cigalazade Yusuf Sinan Pasha, né Scipione Cicala, was one of the most influential pashas in the Ottoman capital for two decades; he had a brief tenure as Grand Vizier, led the Ottoman armies in the East on several occasions and sailed with the Ottoman fleet deep into the Western Mediterranean, the very lands he was born in, as the Ottoman Grand Admiral.
Eric Dursteler will delineate a letter sent by Cigalazade from the Persian front to a fellow official in Istanbul in order to shed light on the nature of warfare on the eastern front and the realities of factional politics in seventeenth-century Istanbul. Emrah Safa Gürkan will focus on Cigalazade’s relationship with his family, left behind in Sicily, analyzing a convert’s dilemma between his past and present and the nature of Mediterraneanwide kinship networks. Finally, Levent Kaya Ocakaçan will study Cigalazade’s reaction to the 1601 rebellion within the realities of factional rivalries and household politics. He will accentuate Cigalaza’s prowess in benefitting from the rebellion for his own political ends. All three presentations engage in larger historiographical issues such as household politics, conversion, rebellion, decision-making, warfare, etc. by studying this convert Ottoman pasha’s personality and analyzing the different episodes in his career, in different places and in different capacities: a Grand Admiral off the Sicilian coasts, a commander on the eastern front and a vizier immersed in factional politics in Istanbul.

The Ottoman Empire was a dynastic state, as were its counterparts in Europe and Asia in the early modern period. In order to explain the characteristics of this dynastic governance model, it is essential to focus on how the Ottoman ‘state’ mechanism functioned. One of the prominent aspects of the dynastic state was the integration of politics in household units. Direct or indirect connection of people to these households was the main condition of legitimacy. Thus, the redistribution and succession strategies had a centralized importance in dynastic states. Since being a member of the dynasty was a given category, the state could be reduced to the house of the dynasty at the micro levels. This house transcended those living in it, and in order to sustain the continuity of the house,
there was a need to create a ritual showing ‘the loyalty to the dynastic household’. This loyalty was the dominant factor in ensuring the continuity of the house, in other words, the ‘state’, and therefore, the succession strategies in dynastic states had a key importance

Erken Osmanlı  döneminin mimari özelliklerinden Klasik Osmanlı dönemi mimarisine olan süreç ve bu süreçte Mimar Sinan'ın geliştirdiği mimari üslübun etkileri araştırılmıştır. Bu araştırmada Süleymaniye Camii örnek yapı olarak incelenmiştir.

Bu çalışmanın amacı, Osmanlı ve İngiltere’de XVI. yüzyılın sonundan başlayıp XVII. yüzyıl ortalarına kadar süren krizler, isyanlar ve dönüşümleri karşılaştırmalı bir tarih yaklaşımı ile analiz etmektir. Uzun bir süre Osmanlı tarihi üzerine yazılmış birçok akademik çalışmanın bir “ön kabul” olarak geliştirdiği “gerileme” tezinin, İngiltere gibi bir devletin tarihini yazarken niçin “muhteşem devrim” mahiyetinde olduğunu sorgulamak, neredeyse aynı tarihsel süreç içerisinde her iki devletinde benzer ya da farklı dönüşümler geçirip geçirmediğini belirtmek, incelemek ve bunları karşılaştırarak çıkarımlarda bulunmak ana esastır. Bunun yanında iktidarın paylaşımı ve bu paylaşımın hangi zümrelerden oluştuğu, Yeniçağ devletinin gelirlerinin nasıl dağıldığı ve bu dağılımda yöneten ile yönetilen ilişkisinin nasıl olduğuna dair gibi sorulara da cevap aranacaktır.