You are cordially invited to attend

Centre’s Inauguration 27 June 2014 | Khalili Lecture Theatre | SOAS, University of London Thornhaugh Street | Russell Square | London, WC1H 0XG, UK 16.00 – 16.20 Welcome Address by Centre’s Co-Chairs 16.20 – 16.35 Dr Emre Aracı, ‘Inno Turco’: London Welcomes

Ottomans, audio-visual presentation 16.35 – 18.00 Professor Edhem Eldem (Boğaziçi University),

Rescuing Ottoman History from the Turks, keynote lecture

18.00 – 19.30 Reception and Ottoman Ensemble Music (garden of the London Middle East Institute)

RSVP: vh1@soas.ac.uk | sc83@soas.ac.uk

Centre for Ottoman Studies

Keynote Lecture

Professor Edhem Eldem, Department of History, Boğaziçi University, Rescuing Ottoman History from the Turks

For decades now, Turkey has been exerting a de facto monopoly over Ottoman history. This situation has been further strengthened by the fact that the Ottoman past has been ignored and even repudiated by a number of other potential heirs. To make matters worse, the Turkish state and other local political actors have constantly monitored and manipulated history to fulfil a number of political and ideological goals, from nation-building to outright indoctrination. As a result, history as a scholarly discipline has been generally marginalised and its very existence threatened, unless it complied with the official canon. This situation has changed to a large extent in the past two decades, as political challenges to Kemalist doctrine have brought a certain degree of liberalisation to the discipline. However, the rapid growth of what used to be called the ‘Turco-Islamic synthesis’ has brought back the Ottoman past into the mainstream national narrative, replacing the former Kemalist argument of rupture with one of continuity. Combined with the powerful onslaught of neo-Ottomanist popular narratives relayed by the media and the political establishment, this pendulum swing has put enormous pressure on Ottoman history, transformed into a kind of foundational myth, and reinforced by popular images and consumption patterns verging on kitsch. This pending ‘second serfdom’ of Ottoman history is serious enough a threat to the discipline to warrant the tongue-in-cheek title of this lecture.

Centre for Ottoman Studies

Professor Edhem Eldem is a professor at the Department of History of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, and has taught as visiting professor at Berkeley, Harvard, at the EHESS, EPHE, and ENS in Paris, and has been a fellow at the Wissen-schaftskolleg zu Berlin. He has worked on the Levant trade, Ottoman funerary epigraphy, the socio-economic development of Istanbul, the Ottoman Bank, archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, and late Ottoman first-person narratives and biographies. Among his publications are French Trade in Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (1999); The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul (with D Goffman & B Masters, 1999); A History of the Ottoman Bank (1999); Pride and Privilege: A History of Ottoman Orders, Medals and Decorations (2004); Death in Istanbul: Death and its Rituals in Ottoman-Islamic Culture (2005); Consuming the Orient (2007); Un Ottoman en Orient: Osman Hamdi Bey en Irak, 1869-1871 (2010); Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914 (with Z Bahrani & Z Çelik, 2011).

A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Dr Emre Aracı has made original contributions to the scholarship of Turkish music through his pioneering research focusing on the European musical practice in the Ottoman court in the 19th century. His CDs include European Music at the Ottoman Court, War and Peace: Crimea 1853-56, Bosphorus by Moonlight and Istanbul to London, also released as compilations under the titles of Invitation to the Seraglio (Warner Classics) and Euro-Ottomania (Brilliant Classics), which The Gramophone praised as ‘an unexpectedly attractive collection, and the musical presentation is expert idiomatic and alive’. He is the author of six books, all published in Turkey: Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1999); Donizetti Pasha, Master of the Sultan’s Music (2006); Naum Theatre (2010); Kayıp Seslerin İzinde [In Search of Lost Sounds] (2011); Yusuf Agâh Efendi: The First Turkish Ambassador in London (2013); and Elgar in Turkey (2014). In 2012, Ankara State Ballet premiered Murad V based on Aracı’s libretto and research on the life and original compositions of one of the most productive composer sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Based in the United Kingdom, Emre Aracı continues his research under the patronage of the Çarmıklı family.