Engin Bolat

Looks extremely familiar to me. :) I love reading ,talking about books even writing book reviews but I am afraid of one thing that is the most essential :)

I know that picture quality is really bad but does anyone have any guesses?

Some books have their own history (of mobilization) by existence.

“Times of Challenges to Regional and Global Security:
Russia’s War on Ukraine”

🗓️26 February 2026, Thursday
🕑14.00 – 17.15
📍TEPAV

For registration ⤵️
🔗https://form.jotform.com/260420996054963

The Afterlife of Ottoman Europe is now available in paperback. Plus take advantage of @stanfordpress.bsky.social Valentine’s Day Sale for a few more days.
www.sup.org/books/histor...
🗃️ #menasky #ottoman #bosniaandherzegovina #bosnia #muslims #austriahungary

Polylingual Hungarian Nationalism in History and Historiography Historians of nineteenth century Hungary typically trace the development of Hungarian nationalism from the noble natio hungarica through the transient Hungarus concept, both associated with the Lat...

In 2024, Alexander Maxwell and I organized a workshop on nationalist polylingualism in East-Central Europe and the Balkans. The first article from the special issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics developed from that workshop has now been published. #nationalisky

Are you writing a book on the Middle East or the Global South? If so, let me know! I just joined Lynne Rienner Publishers as a consulting editor and am eager to bring engaging, innovative, and impactful scholarship to readers around the world.

-Careful reading- this thread includes oversimplified assumptions that I'm well aware of. I just wanted to emphasize the lack of Bulgarian scholarship in the Ottoman studies through other "minority" examples.
The Russian side is even more ridiculous. Anyways... In short, I'm not a Bulgarian-Turk.

Both Armenians and Bulgarians were the longest-standing minorities (speaking anachronistically) in the Ottoman Empire, yet they didn't enjoy such power.
Armenian studies've been funded very well for almost two decades,however the Bulgarian studies are still too marginal. There's no such academic hub

Armenians? They certainly had an impact in the Turkish "press", literature, politics, and even labor but their impact mostly depended on being a Turkophone. Bulgarians' existence is even more "marginal" than the rest of them. They became either "esnafs" and peasants who were enslaved by landlords.

Rums (Greeks) were rich merchants, they dominated bureaucracy for centuries. They came up with huge literature circulating across the Empire. The Ottoman Church was "Greek" for centuries. Then, Circassians came and became an essential part of the military and bureaucracy.

I would also like to point out that (Circassian question reminded me that) Armenian-Bulgarian connection is one of the most interesting topics in the Ottoman Empire. I mean both are very late examples of "national awakening" in the Ottoman Empire with a very similar timeline.+

that you are an emigrant from Bulgaria. Well, I'm certainly not. And unfortunately they are absolutely right about their assumptions, since "Ottoman Bulgarians" has been an issue dominated by these scholars. If a personal history were necessary, I'd have studied Circassians.+

I have a (Turkish) friend who studied Serbians for his master's. I do know many Turks studying Greeks in the Ottoman context. People do not ask them questions like "are you a Serbian migrant or "did you come to Turkey via mubadele?". On the other hand, if you study Bulgarians,people always assume++

"A scene from the harem" (Female musicians and dancers) Franz Hermann, Hans Gemminger, Valentin Mueller (1654), Pera Museum https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Franz_Hermann,_Hans_Gemminger,_Valentin_Mueller_-_A_Scene_from_the_Turkish_Harem_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

There is music in the air! 🎶

Our summer lecture series "Music in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, the Caucasus & Central Asia" brings together an international group of scholars exploring musical cultures, sound, and exchange across regions.

Details coming soon — stay tuned!

It's frustrating to see Kemalizm still being characterized as an ideology that destroyed ethnic diversity.
Ethnic homogenization or segmentation didn't suddenly appear with the Republic or Kemalizm. Also, it's quite fun to see AKP as part of the "negotiation" :)

PS: I'm referring to the 19th century and specifically the Levant region. The imperial capital (ie Istanbul) and the presence of Finns(?) also works. (If exists)

The names are quite tricky in both Ottoman accounts, archival documents, and Russian gazettes. I'm struggling to identify the correct versions of the names. One of the names I searched for turned out to be of Finnish origin(?)

Has anyone ever encountered Finnish merchants with Russian passports (for obvious reasons) who traded in the Ottoman Empire?

Scholars used to call the Ottoman Empire “a near-perfect military society,” but really it all depended on 1,000 scribes in Istanbul who did spreadsheets by day and wrote Persian poetry by night

I believe that it's impossible to delve into the "ordinary people" and their story won't be a solid contribution even if you find some "data".
What's left? Dairies and memoirs of "visible" individuals who had life in different "spaces". Which type of individuals? Where, and why?

The problem is I'm not really a "big actor" researcher, I find it meaningless to search for famous diplomats' accounts. I also have problems with "press". What would be an original contribution if you just make a "discourse analyses" of what is already on the table? Here's another fact+

I fell for the notion of mobility and migration which became a "cheap market" (for historians seeking for a global history of identity formation) recently. I want to combine intellectual history with both diplomatic and social history. Though I keep struggling to find out the initial step.

The area of intellectual history has a great potential in terms of original contribution but it's also risky either you may come up with 'proofless' arguments for the sake of "originality" or you literally repeat the already existing literature.
When it comes to my areas of interest+

Historians are expected to do "empirical research"before conducting a theoretical / conceptual framework. Is it really the only "valid" way? Especially considering that "empirical-first" scholars even fall into misconceptions, unable to build logical connections between the data and the theory.

For instance, I encountered 5 different versions of the very common name "Hüseyin" in Russian gazettes. It's not just about the language reforms but rather a bureaucratic inconsistency, though. Similar to the Ottomans' struggle with foreign/gayrimüslim names.

Sometimes we tend to overestimate our proficiency in languages. I mean, pre-Reform Russian Orthography turned out to be a real challenge that I initially ignored. Tracing "Ottoman names" through Russian gazettes is especially a difficult job.

It seems that throughout history, highly educated people from modest origins have almost always faced the same challenge: finding financial stability—be it in ancient China, the Ottoman Empire of the sixteenth century, or our own time.

(In Turkish)
A rare post on bluesky outside my usual content of history, law, and politics.
From my 20 years of engagement in music and 10 years of blogging, I've delved into the current struggles of Turkish pop through the example of a pop star: Hande Yener.

happy bday Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, b1799

“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”

"My backwoods days dragged slow & quiet
Dull fence around, dark vault above
Devoid of God & uninspired,
Devoid of tears, of fire, of love."