Research Information System
Scientiae 2025, İstanbul, Turkey, 16 - 19 September 2025, (Summary Text)
Kaan Üçsu will investigate the translation activities that arose from the Ottomans’intensifying engagement with European science in the seventeenth century. Focusing on three pioneering intellectuals—Kâtip Çelebi, Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi, and Ebu Bekir bin Behram ed-Dimaşkî—he will examine how translation functioned as a medium for transmitting, adapting, and reinterpreting scientific knowledge. By analyzing, in particular, Ebu Bekir Efendi’s Ottoman rendering of Joan Blaeu’s lavish Atlas Maior, he will explore the connections among these intellectuals, the motivations behind their work, their translation practices, and the role these efforts played in shaping Ottoman understandings of geography and science.