The City in the Ottoman Empire

The nexus of urban governance and human migration was a crucial feature in the modernisation of cities in the Ottoman Empire of the nineteenth century. This book connects these two concepts to examine the Ottoman city as a destination of human migration, throwing new light on the question of conviviality and cosmopolitanism from the perspective of the legal, administrative and political frameworks within which these occur.

Focusing on groups of migrants with various ethnic, regional and professional backgrounds, the book juxtaposes the trajectories of these people with attempts by local administrations and the government to control their movements and settlements. By combining a perspective from below with one that focuses on government action, the authors offer broad insights into the phenomenon of migration and city life as a whole. Chapters explore how increased migration driven by new means of transport, military expulsion and economic factors were countered by the state’s attempts to control population movements, as well as the strong internal reforms in the Ottoman world.

Providing a rare comparative perspective on an area often fragmented by area studies boundaries, this book will be of great interest to students of History, Middle Eastern Studies, Balkan Studies, Urban Studies and Migration Studies.

Author Biography

Ulrike Freitag is a historian of the modern Middle East and director of the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin, in conjunction with a professorship of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She has worked on modern Middle Eastern historiography, on Arab networks in the Indian Ocean realm and currently conducts research on the urban history of Jeddah.

Malte Fuhrmann is a historian at the Orient Institute Istanbul. He has published extensively on German colonialism and on Mediterranean port cities.

Nora Lafi is a historian of the Ottoman Empire at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. She is currently working on a research project on urban rules and norms in Cairo, Aleppo and Tunis.

Florian Riedler is a historian with a specialisation for the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Among his research interests are migration and urban history.