Dr Aslı Niyazioğlu
I am an Ottoman historian specializing in urban life, dream narratives, and Sufism from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. Currently I am working on a book project on the role of imagination in the making of urban communities in Ottoman Istanbul. Like their contemporaries in other cities of the early modern world, Ottoman writers produced a rich literature to orient their readers to imagine particular ways of walking, viewing, and inhabiting the city from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. I aim to show how these narratives promoted new sites of sociability that enjoyed increasing autonomy from the imperial seat of power. In addition to my work on this book, I am also participating in an ERC-funded project on the geographies and histories of the Ottoman supernatural in which I explore why early modern Ottomans viewed ancient statues, columns, and obelisks of Istanbul as talismans. My ultimate goal in these projects is to find new material, and a new perspective, to write the history of Ottoman Istanbul not only on its own terms but also in dialogue with early modern urban scholarship.
