Amy Singer

Serving Up Charity: The Ottoman Public Kitchen

Beneficent giving is one of Islams basic obligations and principles. Food distributions in the Ottoman public kitchens (imarets) offer one material example of how Muslims put these principles into practice. The imaret distributions also demonstrate the extent to which particular historical perceptions of need and deservingness informed more universally familiar decisions about charitable giving.

The Persistence of Philanthropy

One of the most profound Ottoman legacies to contemporary Turkey is the central role of private philanthropy as a vehicle for shaping culture and society. Two principal legacies of Ottoman philanthropy exist in Turkey today. The first is cultural, apparent in the thriving practice of elite philanthropy; the second is physical, readily discovered in the urban fabric of most Turkish cities, notably Istanbul. This article examines these legacies in order to analyze the nature of state building and society formation in modern Turkey from a new perspective. Both continuities and changes are apparent from imperial to republican times: in the identity of the donors, the sources and locus of wealth, the importance of foundations, the motivations for giving, the choice of projects, the physical impact of donations, and the identity of the beneficiaries. The dynamic contemporary culture of private charitable giving in Turkey results from a unique interaction of inherited Ottoman ideology and practices, themselves the result of combined Muslim, Turco-Mongol, Byzantine, and Arab influences; the observed example of modern Western philanthropy, notably that of the United States; and the specific experiences of the republican Turkish state and society since 1923. The economic elite have replaced the sultans and pashas as premier benefactors, with personal or corporate donations even rivaling government sources of assistance. The motivations for contemporary philanthropy echo the Muslim consciousness of Ottoman donors, while philanthropy functions more to legitimize wealth than to ensure political legitimacy. Nonetheless, philanthropy remains the means to contribute to a wider community, whether it is the community of Turkish citizens; of Muslims or another confessional group; or of a town, a neighborhood, or a profession. As in Ottoman times, the beneficiaries are not limited to the materially poor and needy. Rather, private elite philanthropy contributes to many segments of society and in this reflects the manifold motivations for giving.

The Edinburgh history of the Greeks, 1453 to 1768: the Ottoman Empire, by Molly Greene

indication they did), they acted as if this were nothing more than business as usual – the same ‘mercenary logic’ that over the last three decades led the Evangelical neo-conservative Republicans in the United States into a mutual political and military embrace first with the Taliban, and then with the Wahhabi regime of Saudi Arabia, apparently without causing any of those concerned to worry too much about how this might seem to contradict their respective ideologies. Business is business.

Halil İnalcık (1916–2016): a preliminary anatomy of a legacy

Halil Inalcik (1916–2016) was the pre-eminent historian of the Ottoman Empire in the world from his establishment as a published scholar in the 1950s until the time of death. This article is an initial examination of his legacy to the study of Ottoman history broadly. His goal was to create an empirically-based narrative of Ottoman history from beginning to end, based on exploitation of the vast resources of the Ottoman archives as well as the extensive library of Ottoman narrative chronicles, together with non-Ottoman sources. In addition, he invested extensive energies in training several generations of Ottoman historians. Overall, his impact on scholarly and public perceptions of the Ottoman Empire has been unmatched to the present day.

Ottoman Cyprus: a collection of studies on history and culture

Michalis N. Michael, Matthias Kappler, and Eftihios Gavriel (Near and Middle East Monographs, 4), Wiesbaden, Harassowitz Verlag, 2009, 366 pp., 46 figs, €68.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-3-447-95899-5 Th...

M IRIAM H OEXTER , Endowments, Rulers and Community: Waqf al-Haramayn in Ottoman Algiers , Studies in Islamic Law and Society (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998). Pp. 204.

Endowments (sing. waqf) are one of the more pervasive and diverse institutions found in Muslim societies through time and space. Praised for their contributions to religious practice, culture, and welfare, endowments have also been criticized and condemned in historical and contemporary writings for their detrimental effects on individuals, society, property, and the greater economy, as agents of sloth, corruption, and underdevelopment. This negative image stems from repeated, though not well-substantiated, accusations, as well as a paucity of research on the actual functioning of individual endowments. Generally, endowments have been written about from the perspective of their founding documents, or of snapshot images taken at later and seemingly diminished or deteriorated stages of their existence. Until now, only Robert McChesney ( Waqf in Central Asia, Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480–1889 [Princeton, 1991]) has undertaken a monograph study of one endowment in order to demonstrate how a particular foundation survived and evolved over several hundred years.