Born during the last years of Ottoman rule, Amal al-Atrash, the daughter of a notable Druze family from southern Syria, improbably rose to fame as one of the most popular and controversial signer-celebrities of interwar Cairo. As a performer, she dazzled

The level and type of information that states can collect radically impacts their potential for centralization and activity both domestically and in the international arena, and thus, the development of information gathering systems both formal and covert

Composed by a physician from fifteenth-century Anatolia named Şerefeddin Sabuncuoğlu, Cirahiyyetü'l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery) is a unique illustrated surgery manual the sheds light onto medical practice and experimentation in the early Ottoman Empire.

Resettlement and transfer of populations deemed problematic has long been a strategy employed by states throughout the world from tribal settlement campaigns in the Ottoman Empire and Indian Reservations in the United States to penal colonies in Australia

Folk songs (türküs) have played a prominent role in the making of a Turkish national consciousness. As a cultural link with the past, türküs have bridged the gap between a the differentiated and multicultural region of Anatolia and a nationalist proje

Although it is not uncommon when reading about the Ottoman Empire to see it portrayed as a monolithic, rational state apparatus serving a purported state interest, factions with their own interests and agendas played a major role in Ottoman decision-makin

Migration has been a major vehicle of change in human history, and the modern world has in many ways been shaped by the activities and experiences of migrants. In this episode, Andrew Arsan discusses the historical experience of Arab migrants who left reg

One of the central questions in the history of modern Turkey continues be the late-Ottoman legacy and in particular, the experience of World War I and the War of Independence (1914-1923). While some authors choose this period as a start or end point for t

The notion of putting one's feet up may be as old as the act of sitting itself, but the aesthetic of repose has varied across time and space. During the eighteenth century, European households sought to incorporate items that reflected the "Turkish mode o

The 1908 Young Turk revolution, which restored the Ottoman constitution and brought to power the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a modernist and Turkish nationalist party, ushered in a new and paradoxical era of politics on the eve of World War I i