THE PARADIGMS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY OTTOMAN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIOGRAPHY (original) (raw)
2016, EAHN 2015 Belgrade Entangled Histories, Multiple Geographies Proceeding Book
Narratives of Ottoman architectural historiography have been constructed on a well-established scholarly tradition of a great canon. Such narratives have generally been based on the periodization of the empire’s historical progression – namely the periods of rise, growth, stagnation and decline – or the stylistic evaluation of ‘great masters’ and their ‘masterpieces’. The periodization of historical events brings with it another paradigm in architectural historiography; the issue of ‘style’. Particularly for 19th century Ottoman architecture, the great canon’s reliance on paradigms of ‘style’, ‘westernization’ and ‘decline’ has become a dominant tendency, used to identifying the changes in architectural practice. Both change and ‘decline’ have, in Western historiographical traditions, been discussed with respect to notions of modernization and westernization. Another pattern has been added to the discussion, namely the nationalist approaches in the construction of Ottoman historiography by Turkish authors. How the Ottoman past was treated by Turkish historians is a significant subject for the evaluation of the 19th century Ottoman historiography. The aim of this paper is to discuss architectural historiography on 19th century Ottoman architecture questioning the existing paradigms of decline, style and westernization.
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