Exploring the political, social and familial ties in early modern Ottoman society, this book is a timely contribution to both the history of emotions and the study of the Ottoman Empire. Spanning love and compassion in political discourse, gratitude in communal relations to affection in the home, Emotions in the Ottoman Empire considers the role of emotions in both micro and macro settings.
Drawing on Ottoman primary sources such as advice manuals, judicial court records and imperial decrees, this book claims that the contested concept of 'protection', related to how and who to protect, was culturally specific and historically contingent and stands at the center of all debates about how the Ottoman empire and society itself employed the politics of difference. It explores what it felt like to protect and be protected in the early modern era and how Ottoman subjects conceptualized the unequal power relations. The central argument of the book is that it was emotions in the early modern era which provided the meaning of the concept of “protection”. It also traces change in meaning of protection in the nineteenth century and explores how emotions transformed or got lost in social, political and familial relations during the period of modernization.
Highlighting a culture that has so far been neglected in the history of emotions, this book looks to globalise the field and think more deeply about Ottoman society in the early modern period.
Author(s): Nil Tekgül
Series: History of Emotions
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 181
City: London
Cover
Contents
A Note on Transliteration and Translation
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Emotions and the Concept of Protection
Ottoman Politics of Difference
Emotions in Historical Studies
Emotions in Ottoman Studies
Methods and Sources
1 Emotion Knowledge
Kınalızade’s Ahlak-ı Ala’i
Faculties of Vegetative, Animal, and Human Soul
Emotions in Ahlak-i Ala’i
Emotions and the Domain of Medical Knowledge
Absence of Emotions in Ottoman Self-Narratives
Concluding Remarks
2 Ottoman Politics of Emotion
Protection with Compassion
Uniting with the Hearts of the Subjects (telif-i kulüb and istimalet)
The Path of Love (mahabbet)
Concluding Remarks
3 Emotions in Intracommunal Relations: Rıza and Şükran
Sub-communities in Ottoman Society
Neighborhoods and Guilds as “Domains of Gratitude”
Sensations and Drawing the Boundaries of Communities: Kendü halinde olmak
Expulsions from Domains of Gratitude
Emotions as Practices
Concluding Remarks
4 Regulating Communities by an Emotion: Shame
Shame in Different Cultures
Shame in Ottoman Sources
Gendered Emotion of Shame: Ar
Shaming Others in Ottoman Society
Concluding Remarks
5 Emotions in the Ottoman Family
Emotionology of the Ottoman Family: House of Companionship and Love (Hane-i Ülfet ve Mahabbet)
Expressions of Emotions in Engagement
Expressions of Emotions in Divorce
Concluding Remarks
6 Changing Meanings of Protection and Transformation of Emotions
Modernization Efforts in the 19th Century
From Mahabbet to Love of Fatherland
Change in the Domain of Medical Knowledge
Transformation of Emotions in Societal and Familial Relations
Concluding Remarks
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
