Ayse Basaran | Marmara University (original) (raw)

PHD THESIS by Ayse Basaran

This dissertation focuses on the consolidation of the Ottoman printing enterprise between the est... more This dissertation focuses on the consolidation of the Ottoman printing enterprise between the establishment of the Directorate of Takvîm-i Vekâyi‘hâne-i Âmire in 1831 and its annexation to the Ministry of Public Education in 1863. It argues that the main agents of the printed medium emerged in this period. These agents and the Ottoman state entered a process of intensive experimentation, competition, and bargaining that paved the way for the formation of a legal framework. Moreover, their interaction with the changing socio-economic context introduced the printed book as a commercialized item in the Ottoman market. In the meantime, what was in origin a foreign technology was internalized, made Ottoman, and rendered meaningful.
This study further treats the printed books under two groups: as textbooks prioritized by the Ottoman state for their utility-value and as books introduced by non-state actors with an eye to tastes in the wider book market. In both cases, traditional and religious titles substantially outnumber new titles. This shows that a new technology was in fact utilized for the dissemination of the Ottoman traditional culture, a finding that challenges the narratives of nineteenth-century Ottoman modernization and secularization. Rather than a technological device, the printing press becomes a socio-intellectual tool for various agents bending even the traditional discourse in a new direction; by the 1860s, the press would become such a familiar part of Ottoman society that even those texts considered most sacred would be printed underground, in violation of both political and religious sensitivities.

Conference Presentations by Ayse Basaran

19. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Dünyasında Matbu Kitap: Neşir, Piyasa ve Denetim, 2023

Üniversitesi'nde görev yaptı. Eylül 2020'den bu yana İstinye Üniversitesi Güzel Sanatlar, Tasarım... more Üniversitesi'nde görev yaptı. Eylül 2020'den bu yana İstinye Üniversitesi Güzel Sanatlar, Tasarım ve Mimarlık Fakültesi'nde çalışmaktadır. Akademik araştırmaları, genel olarak mimarlıkta modernlik olgusu ve Türkiye modernliğinin Osmanlı 16. yüzyılından başlayan bir kapsamda mekansal-toplumsal çevre bağlamında irdelenmesi üzerinde yoğunlaşır. Temel yaklaşımı mimarlığı toplumsal tarihin bir bileşeni olarak ele almak olarak özetlenebilir. Kitapları arasında Anadolu Türk Kentinde Fiziksel Yapının

The Right to Print One's Own Book: The Emergence of the Author as an Agent in the Ottoman Printing Enterprise

The Fourth European Convention on Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, 21-23 September 2023.

European Book Pitches to the Ottoman Sultans: 1830s to 1860s

Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing: Power of the Written Word, 2022

“The commercialization of the Ottoman printing enterprise, 1831-1863"

Paper presented at the annual conference of MESA, New Orleans, 2019

“Ottoman Control of Illicit Books: A Case Study on Bulgarian Booksellers in the Tanzimat Era"

Paper presented at the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies Graduate Conference at SOAS, University of London,, 2016

“Networks of Illicit Printing: Individual Verses of the Qur’an Circulating in Istanbul in the Tanzimat Era”

Paper presented at American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Harvard University, 2016

Book Review by Ayse Basaran

Review of Berat Açıl's Osmanlı Kitap Kültürü: Cârullah Efendi Kütüphanesi ve Derkenar Notları

İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, 34, 175-182., 2015

MA THESIS by Ayse Basaran

Boğaziçi University, 2005

This study demonstrates the dissemination of modern science in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteen... more This study demonstrates the dissemination of modern science in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century through an analysis of the location of modern astronomy within the body of a popular encyclopedia, the Ma’rifetnâme. While the textual analysis remains a central concern, the life of its producer, Erzurumlu İbrahim Hakkı is scrutunized in detail so far as the factors that shaped the formation of his intellectual outlook are concerned. The objective is to understand how İbrahim Hakkı integrated modern science into his intellectual framework. In the meantime, the outer shell concerns the making of modern science in Western Europe to specify the conditions that facilitated the process both similar and in contrast to those in the Ottoman Empire.
The final picture suggests that İbrahim Hakkı developed an intellectual framework that was receptive to both faith and reason. On the one hand, he resorted to an Islamic universe that relied on a religious terminology, but failed to be explained through reason, as he conceded. On the other hand, there was the world of observation and mathematics both of which appealed to reason. It was in this category that İbrahim Hakkı treated the Ptolemaic and the Copernican universes as separate from the givens of religion. The creation and the glory of God was to be accepted, but apart from that, İbrahim Hakkı had no problem with the scientific articulations of the universe. All systems, in the end, testified to the unity and the glory of the Creator, and thus, there was no real differentiation between reason and religion. Through this flexible integration of his purely descriptive knowledge of modern astronomy into the same intellectual framework as the traditional Ptolemaic one, İbrahim Hakkı partook in the popular dissemination of modern science within the Ottoman Empire.

Articles by Ayse Basaran

Toplumsal Tarih Akademi, 2024

Quaerendo 54, 2024

This article explores the new functions and meanings books gained amid the novel technologies, sh... more This article explores the new functions and meanings books gained amid the novel technologies, shifting political dynamics, and growing commercialization of the midnineteenth century, with a particular focus on the various ways authors, state figures, and various intermediaries used books to advance themselves and their diverse agendas. Through an examination of some 150 petitions written by European authors to the Ottoman Empire between the 1840s and the 1860s, it argues that for European authors, the book served as an opportunity to codify and commodify their expertise and as a means of securing prestige, position, and pecuniary gain from the courts of Europe and further afield, including the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, for the Ottoman sultans and their advisers, these same books served as tools both for advancing the empire through science and for strengthening ties with particular European powers and institutions. Taken as a whole, these petitions reveal a complex, international web of personal and professional relationships, state interests, and diplomatic manoeuvring surrounding the book in the mid-nineteenth century, a web that extended far beyond the borders of Europe and the Ottoman domain.

Divan Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi, 2023

Scholarship on the Ottoman printing enterprise has long neglected the part played by the traditio... more Scholarship on the Ottoman printing enterprise has long neglected the part played by the traditional actors of the written word, including the ulema and calligraphers, in the rise of the press. Though traditionally viewed as opponents of the new print technology, these actors continued to fulfill vital roles in everything from editorial work to the technomaterial aspects of printing, generating new opportunities for themselves in a rapidly changing cultural environment. This paper focuses on their role in the Imperial Press to reveal how the know-how of these actors was critical for the transition to the new Ottoman cultural medium of print. It further suggests that as these actors adapted and carried their skills to that medium, they themselves were influenced by the new technology of the press, and the novel ways of relating to the written word that came with it, in a profound way, with significant implications for the nature of scholarship and the shape of the scholarly career track during the period.

Book Chapters by Ayse Basaran

Osmanlı'da İlm-i Tarih, 2023

This paper traces the printing of Ottoman chronicles at the Imperial Press from 1727 to 1865. It ... more This paper traces the printing of Ottoman chronicles at the Imperial Press from 1727 to 1865. It argues that printing provided a new layer for the legitimization of the Ottoman dynasty by depicting its history from its beginnings until the mid-19th century in an uninterrupted and continuous fashion. It further reveals the intervention of editorial actors and the agency of institutions in producing the printed copies of specific chronicles.