TRAVELLERS in OTTOMAN LANDS (TIOL3)
Places forgotten, Places remembered
Three days of presentations in the historical neighbourhoods of Karaköy and Beyoğlu plus excursions on Friday and Saturday.
Seminar locations:
Sabancı University – Minerva Han: Bereketzade, Bankalar Cd., Beyoğlu.
Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT) – ANAMED Auditorium, Merkez Han, İstiklal Caddesi 181, Beyoğlu.
Excursions:
The Tulip Gardens – Emirgan Korusu
The Feriköy Protestant Cemetery – Cumhuriyet, Abide-i Hürriyet Cd No:5, 34380 Şişli
Download the complete seminar booklet:
TIOL3 Booklet
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr Ahmet Ersoy
Associate Professor, History Department of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.
Specialist in the cultural history of the Late Ottoman Empire, with particular interests in architecture, visual culture and image reproduction. He is the author of Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire (2015), and a co-editor of Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeastern Europe (1775-1945), vol. III (2010).
Professor Reina Lewis
Professor of Cultural Studies at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London. Art historian, author and curator who specialises in gender, religion and fashion. Among her research interests are western women orientalist artists and writers, and her publications include: Gendering Orientalism: Race, Representation, Femininity (1996), Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem (2004), and Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures (2015).
Presented by Travellers in Ottoman Lands (TIOL), in association with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Sabancı University, the Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT) and the Koç University Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE), the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, and Cornucopia.
TIOL3 REPORT
The TIOL3 Seminar was held in Istanbul from 9 to 12 April 2025, with support from Sabancı University, the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE), the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), American Research in Turkey (ARIT), Netherlands Institute in Turkey (NIT), the Swedish Institute in Istanbul (SRII) and Cornucopia magazine.
The seminar explored the vibrant cultural, political and social exchanges between the Ottoman Empire and those who visited Ottoman lands over the past 600 years. It attracted nearly 100 participants in total from as far away as Australia and the US, in addition to colleagues from colleagues from Türkiye, the UK and other parts of Europe.
The event began with a keynote address by Ahmet Ersoy from Boğaziçi University, who spoke on The Camera and the Notebook: Photographic Excursions in Late Ottoman Illustrated Images, chaired by ARIT Istanbul Director Dr Zeynep Simavi. Dr Ersoy’s paper used travel writing, stories and photography to explore the combined impact of nineteenth-century technologies of mobility (the train, the steamship, and the bicycle) and visuality (photography and photomechanical reproduction) on late Ottoman visions of imperial space and its historical past. Dr Ersoy drew on the illustrated travel diary and notebook as a new form of literature that emerged with travel and discussed how this shaped collective memory and understandings of Ottoman imperial identities.
This approach led the way for a rich day of presentations that spanned disciplines such as fashion history, art, architecture, archaeology, literature and food studies, from a dazzling array of contexts, including texts and sources written in English, Ottoman Turkish, French, Dutch, Italian, German, Persian and Arabic.
The second day opened with a keynote address from Professor Reina Lewis of University of the Arts London, chaired by BIAA Assistant Director Dr Peter Cherry. Professor Lewis’s paper explored the importance of Western and Ottoman women’s travel writing and harem literature for understanding Ottoman dress and society. Particularly innovative was her use of contemporary fashion theories and ‘aesthetic labour’ (the recruitment, management and direction of employees based on their physical appearance) to engage with how ideas of fashion were transmitted across Ottoman society and adapted for different social contexts. Professor Lewis’s talk introduced a day of talks which focused on gender, cultural heritage and memory, religion and spirituality, and diplomatic and war histories.
The day closed with a special guest presentation from Dr Nancy Micklewright, previously Head of Public and Scholarly Engagement at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art and now a Fulbright Senior Research Grant holder at the Istanbul branch of American Research in Turkey. Dr Micklewright spoke on British and American records of enslavement in Ottoman harems.
The third day began with two final panels focusing on Christian-Muslim encounters, economic and trade history and the history of academic research and writing on Ottoman regions. This was followed by three talks and a guided tour of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery. The BIAA Assistant Director, Dr Peter Cherry, chaired introductory papers on the history of the cemetery, the foundation of the Feriköy Protestant Cemetery Initiative and two papers exploring notable figures buried in the cemetery. Dr Richard Wittman, Deputy Director at the Orient Institut Istanbul, and Dr Brian Johnson, Librarian at ARIT Istanbul, then led colleagues on a tour of the cemetery pointing out figures of interest, which included pioneers in the history of beer brewing in the Ottoman Empire, former ambassadors, translators and a drug smuggler!
For the most conscientious participants, the seminar concluded on Saturday with a guided tour of the Emirgan Tulip Gardens, where Sabancı University PhD student Mert Pekdoğdu spoke about the significance of the tulip in Ottoman history, covering its political, botanical and economic aspects. The visit provided a fitting end to highly successful event.
Paul Starkey, July 2025
Travellers in Ottoman Lands
The Balkans, Anatolia and Beyond (TIOL2)
We are delighted to publish a brief account of the highly successful Seminar on Travellers in Ottoman Lands: The Balkans, Anatolia and Beyond, which was organised by ASTENE in Sarajevo in conjunction with the Faculty of Islamic Sciences (FIN) of the University of Sarajevo on 24–26 August 2022.
Click the PDF icon below to view and download the Seminar Booklet with the full programme and abstracts of the presentations.
Presented by Travellers in Ottoman Lands (TIOL), in association with the Faculty of Islamic Studies, University of Sarajevo, the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE), and Cornucopia.
TIOL2 REPORT
The Seminar brought together around fifty scholars from over a dozen countries, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Austria, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Turkey, Iraq, and the United States of America.
The keynote speakers were the historian and novelist Jason Goodwin, who described how his life changed after he walked from Gdansk to Istanbul thirty-two years ago, and Dr Dženita Karić, postdoctoral fellow at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a specialist on Bosnian Hajj literature, who spoke on ‘Sensory Experiences of the Longest Journey: Ottoman Bosnians on the Hajj’.
In his opening address, local organiser Professor Aid Smajić drew attention to the significance of the journey in Islamic spirituality and in the lives of Muslims in Bosnia and the area more generally, and expressed his delight at cooperating with ASTENE in the context of the present Seminar.
Two Turkish films, ‘Araf’ and ‘Disturbed Earth’ by the artist Didem Pekün, were also shown as part of the Seminar, generously sponsored by Cornucopia magazine. Several delegates also enjoyed an optional excursion to the city of Mostar, with its famous bridge, on Saturday 27 August.
A selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the Seminar will be published in the near future. In the meantime, thanks to all who contributed to the delightful atmosphere, and especially to Aid and his team in Sarajevo for their hospitality and impeccable organisation.
Paul Starkey, September 2022
Travellers in Ottoman Lands:
The Botanical Legacy (TIOL1)
The seminar was hosted by the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh in conjunction and with support, financial and other, from the Turkish Consulate General in Edinburgh,the magazine Cornucopia and ASTENE.
Click the PDF icon below to view and download the Seminar Booklet with the full programme and abstracts of the presentations.
Presented by Travellers in Ottoman Lands (TIOL), in association with the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh and its Centre for Middle Eastern Plants, the Consulate-General of Türkiye in Edinburgh, Nomads Tent and its Ottoman Horizon Programme, the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE), and Cornucopia.
TIOL1 REPORT
Following welcomes from Dr Sabina Knees on behalf of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, from Semih Lütfü Turgut, Turkish Consul General in Edinburgh, and from ASTENE’s Professor Paul Starkey, Chairman of the seminar organising committee, we were given an overview of the history of the Ottoman Empire by Dr Ines Aščerić-Todd, from its foundation in the fourteenth century, through its ever-fluctuating territorial expansion to its fall at the start of the twentieth century.
With thirty-five papers presented and more than eighty-four participants, it proved a busy two days and if anyone thought the title of the conference might restrict the tenor of the topics examined, they would have been wrong. The papers were as diverse as the interests and expertise of the speakers. These ranged from botanists to historians of gardens, of textiles, of art, to archaeologists and conservationists.
Participants came from many different parts of the world , including several from Turkey but also from Qatar, Israel, Algeria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Great Britain, Australia and America.
The travellers theme covered botanists travelling to the Ottoman area and plants travelling back to gardens and herbarium collections, Ottoman influences in art, garden design, food/drink and dress/textiles travelling throughout Europe and recently an Ottoman influenced garden in the United States of America.
Several exhibitions had been mounted: a ‘scentscape’ of Anatolian fragrances, Iznik inspired artworks, Turkish embroidered textiles, a display of posters selected from the pages of the Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanic Gardens book Gardens and Flowers of Istanbul and a poster of the personal diary and photographs of Helen Tomlinson.
Saturday night saw a reception hosted by the Turkish Consul General with a delicious array of Turkish dishes. It was obvious from the animated hum of conversation at the reception and between sessions that the seminar was a success and interest was by no means sated, with suggestions of a repeat occasion.
Paul Starkey, June 2017