Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
The symposium, part of the Ottoman Mobilities and Interactions project and organised by the British International Research Institutes (BIRI) in partnership with Sabancı University, brings together one keynote lecture and twenty-four papers that explore the Ottoman Empire as a dynamic web of circulation, in which the movement of people, objects, and ideas continuously shaped and reshaped the imperial fabric. Supported by the British Academy, the contributions gathered here approach mobility not as a secondary effect of imperial expansion, but as a constitutive force that actively produced the social, political, economic, and cultural realities of the Ottoman world.
Across the Ottoman domains, connectivity was not simply a background condition but a generative process. Networks of exchange, migration, and communication transformed landscapes, reconfigured relationships between centre and periphery, and mediated the circulation of knowledge, commodities, and cultural practices. These flows intersected with imperial infrastructures and institutions, shaping modes of governance, generating new social hierarchies, and giving rise to complex transimperial entanglements.
Drawing on history, art history, anthropology, archaeology, and related fields, the symposium traces these dynamics from early modern patterns of circulation to the profound transformations in transport, administration, and border regimes during the long nineteenth century. The studies presented here illuminate how mobility informed lived experiences across regions as diverse as the Balkans, Anatolia, the Mediterranean, Southwest Asia, and North and East Africa, underscoring the multiplicity of ‘Ottoman’ contexts.