Semra Horuz

19th century technological advancements re-casted traveling and travel writing as more than a privileged activity in Ottoman society. In the second half of the century there was a salient shift from long-established tradition of official visits into personally charged solo tours. Between 1850 - 1910 twenty-odd unofficial accounts were published with the objective of investigating what is Europe and European. Among many objectives of travelers’ is to designate what to adopt from Europe in the formation of cultural heritage and preservation of authenticity in the trajectory of modernization. This paper probes two of these accounts, Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan (1889) and Avrupa’da Ne Gördüm (1891), both of which copiously reflect travelers’ experiences around multiple Western European capitals. My main argument is that despite overtly acknowledging European superiority in technology, architecture and urbanism, an implicit pride and nostalgic repercussions regarding Ottoman traditional culture shaped travelers’ experience. I build my argument in three sections: Firstly, I reveal travelers’ melancholic look back at homeland indicating their sensitivity about Istanbul. I then concentrate on travelers’ appropriation of national and folkloric museums as means to institutionalize history and make the past tangible. In the last part, I examine travelers’ communitarian quests through glorification of Eastern morality and domestic culture.

Architectural historians have often questioned personal travel accounts based on their documentary value. Unlike the official and technical documents like drawings, contracts or registers, subjective observations of architectural and urban culture are not regarded as scientific knowledge. Thus, travel accounts mostly have a supplementary role for the researchers and architects seeking the concrete historical data about a specific architectural or urban phenomenon. In this article I intend to highlight travel accounts' values as expressions of individuals' understanding of the built environment –which is to a large degree ignored in architectural, cultural and intellectual history. I intend to address this issue in reference to my dissertation project that examines late Ottoman travelogues on Europe. The scope of my study is the inofficial Ottoman travel accounts which, I argue, reveal 19 th century Ottoman intellectuals' perception of European urban and architectural culture and their oblique view of homeland. These copious texts reflect the aesthetic and cultural frames that shaped descriptions of cities and buildings, a shared language to describe particular structures, and the range of meanings attributed to certain building typologies and monuments. This article introduces and discusses the methodology of my dissertation to emphasize the potential of personal narratives as historical data in architecture. The main argument is that 19 th century Ottoman travelogues offer refreshing elucidations on the non-professional perception, appropriation and consumption of built environment; and also shed light on the Ottoman mentality at the time. In that respect, I have a critical approach regarding the idea of 'using the history', which, for most of the architects, aims at designing. Instead, I offer a way to use personal histories to understand the architectural cultures since attaining an instrumental value to history could be efficient only if both official and personal narratives are scrutinized sufficiently.

Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, advancements in transportation and publishing re-casted travelling and travel writing as more than a privileged activity in Ottoman society. The growing consciousness and curiosity about European superiority was also affective in the travel trend that grew apace after 1880s. Being supporters of modernization, Ottoman intelligentsia aimed to understand the European cities as the ultimate site of the new global system. Traveling was cherished as a necessary form of knowledge production thus more than twenty unofficial accounts were published between 1850-1910.
Albeit this climate of transformation and mobility, Ottoman women travelers were scarce in number. There were actually only two accounts written by a woman: Haremden Mahrem Hatıralar Melek Hanım (1875) (Intimate Memories from Harem Melek Hanım) and A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions (1906). Haremden Mahrem Hatıralar was written by a French rooted lady who was married to an Ottoman bureaucrat. The memoir was penned by a ghostwriter covering harem life and half a decade long round trips to Europe between 1866-1872. A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions is a compilation of Zeynep Hanım’s letters to a friend that were dominantly shaped by the longing for her country. Both accounts were first published in Europe and written during the exile months.
This article is a close inspection of these accounts as early instances of female authorship in travel literature. Based on an ongoing study with a broader frame of late Ottoman travelogues, my aim is to reveal the parallels and differences between male and female travellers’ experiences before their travel, en route and during sojourns. The cultural constraints of Ottoman women in public realm, their position as an individual in the society and elite circles shed light on the issue of their im(mobility), power and resistance to prejudices of both ‘others’ and their own culture.

From 1850s onwards, Ottomans paid full attention to the modernization and industrialization spearheaded by Western cities. These cities were influential sources of observation and inspiration to co-opt with the modernizing reforms. This motivated increasing number of Ottomans to travel to Europe and write about it. Increasingly outspoken press of the era conveyed travelers’ ideas via periodicals or books. Travelogues held an appeal for many (including rulers, Ottoman elite, and commoners) as being instrumental for retaining imperial identity, historicizing and modernization with genuine locality.

In view of that, this ongoing study evaluates Ottoman travelogues written mostly after 1850 focusing on urban and architectural content of them. It is formed as a reading of selected travelogues to expose the mental attitudes of Ottoman literate, their perception of urban and built environment and the role that they attribute to architecture in modernization.

This article is a close inspection of six travel accounts; an early example of an Ottoman travelogue with plans and drawings; a monogram on a European building with a trip plan; travel accounts of prominent journalists, the very first of Ottoman travel guide; as well as an early instance of female authorship: Resimli İngiltere ve Fransa Sefaretname-Seyahatnamesi by Beylikçi Nuri Efendi (1834), Efel Kulesi by Huseyin Galib (1861), Paris’den Londra’ya ve Otel Metropol by Ebuzziya Tevfik (1880), Avrupa'da Ne Gördüm by Ahmet Ihsan Tokgöz (1891), Avrupa Seyahatnamesi by Hayrullah Efendi (1892) and A Turkish Woman's European Impressions by Zeynep Hanım (1906). It draws particular attention to the travel guides’ impact on travelers’ experience; use of maps, drawings and visuals during the excursions and for the publications; narrations on embarkment and comparisons with the homeland.

This paper examines the destruction of Haydarpaşa-Pendik railway line in 2013 by examining the role of photography as historical evidence over the course of 140 years of functioning, its sudden destruction and the tension in-between. It attaches particular attention to the researcher as a recorder, curator and storyteller of architectural histories of these processes.
Constructed between 1871 and 1873, the importance of Haydarpaşa-Pendik line is grounded on two reasons: being a catalyst of urbanization in Anatolian Continent of Istanbul, which was formerly a natural and agricultural landscape; and being an outcome of industrialization – particularly of central European efforts headed by Germany for expansion and colonization. Its potential as a network for transaction motivated both countries and became the seed of long-term collaborations.
The railway was the first major Bautätigkeit and transportation axis in Asia. It created new urban centers in the region and prolonged the Orient Express that links Istanbul with Europe. Although it was built in the proliferation of nation-building period and travelling, intended archival practices emerge neither in the hands of the Ottoman officials nor European travellers/photographers. The rare old photographs mainly appear as family memorabilia. Thus, the sudden destruction is dominantly reacted as a threat to the collective memory left with merely the unattended traces of passenger stations and quarters. Within this context, the aim is to look for the unsought relations between photography and demolition. Currently, the sizeable gap on the site and temporary loss of materiality has been attractive for many. This period of new “ways of seeing” creates many private collections that would probably be curated, classified and contextualized in various manners. An alternative paradigm, we believe, emerges that encompasses digital image reservoirs in the internet, personal shootings, mixed media, hybrid and remediated imagery by diverse technologies.

This paper explores two travel accounts written by Ottoman intellectuals, Ahmet İhsan Tokgöz and Ahmet Mithad Efendi, arguably prominent figures in the 19th century Istanbul. They toured Europe through the last decades of 1800 and published their subjective records subsequently; Avrupa'da Bir Cevelan (Mithad, 1890) and Avrupa'da Ne Gördüm? (Tokgöz, 1891). The travelogues capture their daily and architectural experiences in the public realm, spatial and urban depictions and comparisons of European cities with their 'homeland' Istanbul. Rather than focusing on merely the scope of the accounts this study examines the broader context of the turn of the century by a close reading of the texts that are conceived as the manifestation of civic interest in European architecture and culture. After all, the writers were non-imperial figures who set off without state-govern motivations. The study is organized in three sections. First, I describe the departure of the travelers from Istanbul. Their relatively long narrations of embarkation, melancholic look back to the 'homeland' and excitement and anxiety due to possible discrepancies, I argue, reflect the nostalgic perspective of 19 th century Ottoman intelligentsia. Yet, the travelers observed European cities to convey to their readers an understanding of how modernism was embraced. Secondly, I examine the travel guides that travelers read during their trip. Baedeker was the main source to select the historical landmarks to see. The way Baedeker depicted the landmarks, historicized specific areas and constructed sceneries of the past were comprehended distinctively by Mithad and Tokgöz. When related parts of the guides superposed on travelogue texts, they reflect how historic reconstructions were perceived by Ottoman travelers. In the final section, I highlight the comparisons of certain places with Istanbul. The way Tokgöz and Mithad remembers Istanbul, for me, provides a better understanding of the success and backdrops of urban and architectural transformations since Tanzimat Era.

19. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında Osmanlı entelektüelleri arasında, modernleşme girişimleri açısından sırf bürokratik ve askerî dönüşümlerin yeterli olmadığı; toplumsal hayat ile kentsel ve kültürel üretimlerin ilk elden Avrupa’da tetkik edilmesi gerektiği fikri yaygınlaştı. Bu dönemde Osmanlı topraklarından Avrupa’ya yalnızca resmî ziyaretçiler veya elçiler değil, deneyimlerini dergilerde tefrika hâlinde veya kitap olarak yayımlayan gazeteci, doktor ve ressam gibi siviller de seyahat etmeye başladı. Değişim ve hareketlilik ikliminde başkentler, dünya fuarı meşherleri, müze koleksiyonları ve mağaza vitrinleri seyyahları cezbeden en önemli unsurlardandı. “Avrupai” ve “modern” olan ile “zamane teknolojisine uygun”u arayan seyyahlar, uluslararası sergilerde Mısır, Yunanistan, Romanya pavyonlarıyla karşılaştı; Osmanlı pavyonunda imparatorluğun yerel, kültürel ve sınai değerlerinin nasıl teşhir edildiğini gözlemledi.
Bu konuşma, bu tarihsel çerçeve temelinde, 1851’de Londra’daki Büyük Sergi’den itibaren dev temaşa alanlarında gördükleri ve gör(e)medikleri, ilgilendikleri ve ilgilenmedikleri konular aracılığıyla Osmanlı seyyahlarının eleştirel tutumlarını ele alıyor. Genellikle ekonomik, politik ve resmî tarih anlatısı üzerinden okunan dünya fuarlarına, entelektüellerin edebî üretimleri aracılığıyla bakmanın getirdiklerini ayrıntılandırıyor.

Imaginable Guidelines Istanbul is a platform to animate citizens in the design of their cities and create shared neighborhood culture through awareness, design tools and engagement.
Imaginable Guidelines is a collective meeting point and resource aiming to access Istanbul’s designers, engineers, scholars, artists and innovative minds through their artistic and editorial contributions. Their contributions in their parts and as a whole offer decisive knowledge and curious insights of Istanbul as a reference for urban design initiatives. Imaginable Guidelines is envisioned as a tool for citizens, designers, bureaucrats and urban innovators in the co-creation of an interconnected public realm for Istanbul as well as other global cities requiring a dynamic ‘play’ approach to urban design standards.
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The open-air neighborhood markets, pazars, penetrate to the numerous districts every week for centuries in Istanbul. Neither their character of ephemeral market place nor the man-made generative structures that defines its practice has changed with any significance. The fundamental practice of place-making in pazars, in its absolute agility, simplicity and responses to terrain and climate, has been nearly perfected along with the choreography of set-up and take-down. The structures are products of distinctive co-creation; using the forces of kinetics and redundancy to create compact or expansive market places collaboratively. What is unique about pazars is the use of passive open spaces like streets, watersheds or residual lands; yet never active public spaces as parks, highways or public squares. On this ground, this research documents the information about pazars as a valuable intangible heritage encompassing their locations in the city, specific urban and spatial characters and means of constructing. It aims to offer an insight into novel agile approaches in regard to the spatial design for contemporary open-air exchanges as well as new directions in man-made generative structures for ephemeral place-making in the cities.