Urban Governance Under the Ottomans

Between Cosmopolitanism and Conflict

Ulrike Freitag, Nora Lafi, Ulrike Freitag, Nora Lafi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138299382
• eBook ISBN: 9781317931782
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Urban Governance Under the Ottomans focuses on one of the most pressing topics in this field, namely the question why cities formerly known for their multiethnic and multi- religious composition became increasingly marked by conflict in the 19th century.

This collection of essays represents the result of an intense process of discussion among many of the authors, who have been invited to combine theoretical considerations on the question sketched above, with concrete case studies based upon original archival research. From Istanbul to Aleppo, and from the Balkans to Jerusalem, what emerges from the book is a renewed image of the imperial and local mechanisms of coexistence, and of their limits and occasional dissolution in times of change and crisis.

Raising questions of governance and changes therein, as well as epistemological questions regarding what has often been termed 'cosmopolitanism', this book calls for a closer investigation of incidents of both peaceful coexistence, as well as episodes of violence and conflict. A useful addition to existing literature, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of Urban Studies, History and Middle Eastern Studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: cosmopolitanism and conflicts: changes and challenges in Ottoman urban governance
• 1 Did cosmopolitanism exist in eighteenth-century Istanbul? Stories of Christian and Jewish artisans
• 2 A city under fire: urban violence in Istanbul during the Alemdar incident (1808)
• 3 From a challenge to the Empire to a challenge to urban cosmopolitanism? The 1819 Aleppo riots and the limits of the imperial urban domestication of factional violence
• PART II The governance of difference
• 4 Social stratification and change in Herzegovinian urban life in the Tanzimat era
• 5 Ottoman reform and urban government in the District of Jerusalem, 1867–1917
• PART III Social and demographic mobility
• 6 The role of labour migration in the urban economy and governance of nineteenth-century Istanbul
• 7 (A quest for) the bourgeoisie of Istanbul: identities, roles and conflicts
• 8 North to south migration in the imperial era: workers and vagabonds between Vienna and Constantinople
• Bibliography
• Index