Do I know anyone in Istanbul who can do me a huge favour in the next few days? It relates to my mother.

Live streaming:

Ο Διευθυντής του Ινστιτούτου Μεσογειακών Σπουδών, Μαρίνος Σαριγιάννης, υποδέχτηκε χθες στις εγκαταστάσεις του Ινστιτούτου το Σχολείο δεύτερης ευκαιρίας Ρεθύμνου. Πραγματοποιήθηκε ξενάγηαη στους χώρους και ενημέρωση για τους τομείς και τα ερευνητικά προγράμματα του Ινστιτούτου.

Texts as Living Objects: Dhayls and Knowledge Transmission in the Islamic World

Το Institute for Mediterranean Studies - FORTH ανακοινώνει την πρόσφατη δημοσίευση του 8ου τόμου των Working Papers του προγράμματος "Ιστορία Μαύρης Θάλασσας" του Center of Maritime History: Ο τόμος είναι ανοιχτής πρόσβασης στους συνδέσμους www.ims.forth.gr/el/publicati... και books.blacksea.gr

Join OTSA and 2025 OTSA Book Award Winner Zozan Pehlivan, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, for “The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century" on Friday, April 10, 2026 at 12pm CST via Zoom. Register here: northwestern.zoom.us/.../njl-VY-j...

Join OTSA and 2025 OTSA Book Award Winner Nir Shafiir @nirshafir.bsky.social, University of California, San Diego, for “The Order and Disorder of Communication in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire" on Friday, March 20, 2026 at 12pm CST via Zoom. Register: northwestern.zoom.us/.../gfgCJM_L...

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

🎙 The Shipping News. Exploring the Making of a Global Maritime World Through Digital Humanities. ΔΙΑΛΕΞΗ 🗣️ Jordi Ibarz University of Barcelona 🗣️ Romina Caldera Nacional University of San Martin 📌 Αίθουσα Διαλέξεων Institute for Mediterranean Studies-Νικ. Φωκά 130 Ρέθυμνο 📅 Πέμπτη 5 Μαρτίου 🕢 19.30

My new Strange Horizons essay is up! With a deliberately provocative title! WHY ALL SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WRITERS ARE HISTORIANS Yes, *all* And, no, it isn't just for the reason you think... I've been working toward this one for a while, very excited to share it!

Livestream here www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZRd...

Constructing Expertise in the Ottoman Empire: An Interview with A. Tunç Şen

I am scanning through New York Times archive and coming across interesting and weird news and comments. One of these about the opening of Turkish Grand Assembly in Ankara. Journalists anxiously labelled it as a Soviet and the whole affair as a revolt

🎙 Indians and Peoples: Contemporary Challenges, Historical Experiences. A case study: Mexico ΔΙΑΛΕΞΗ 🗣️ Mirian Galante - Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 📌 Αίθουσα Διαλέξεων Institute for Mediterranean Studies - FORTH Νικ. Φωκά 130 (παλιά πόλη Ρεθύμνου) 📅 Τετάρτη 25 Φεβρουαρίου 2026 🕢 19.30

Έφυγε από τη ζωή ο Πάρης Κονόρτας, από τους πρωτοπόρους της οθωμανολογίας στην Ελλάδα. Τελευταίο του έργο η μνημειώδης έκδοση μιας σειράς οθωμανικών τεκμηρίων για την Ελληνική Επανάσταση, μεγαλύτερό του ίσως επίτευγμα η ένταξη της ιστορίας του Οικουμενικού 1/2

GUYS GUYS GUYS my incredible colleague, Antoine Borrut, just texted me this pic, the BOOK IS IN HAND, which means you too can have it soon! Astrology and History in Early Islam, coming out with Edinburgh!

👏Warm congratulations to Dr.Marinos Sariyannis @sariyannis.bsky.social, Research Director at the Dept.of Ottoman History of @imsforth.bsky.social, on his election as Director of the Institute! Wishing him every success in this important new role & a highly productive term ahead! 🎉 👉 bit.ly/4rqvijX

Actually not Hammer's: it's Hammer's translation of (pseudo)Ibn Wahshiyya, Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham, a work dealing not only with Egyptian hieroglyphics but with various ancient, imagined and magic alphabets.

Greece shattered by the discovery of these photos in e-bay, taken by a Wehrmacht officer. Singing, 200 communists march toward their execution, with pride and dignity, in 1st May 1944.

Sex in the City: Istanbul 1923

Am I turning into the infamous Reviewer 2, despite my benevolent efforts? 😟

Συνέντευξή μου στα "Ρεθυμνιώτικα Νέα" και τον Γιάννη Κωστάκογλου Προκλήσεις από την υποχρηματοδότηση και την υποβάθμιση της επιστημονικής έρευνας

Reposting this fantastic interview with Kevin van Bladel on his vision of the "Classical Near East", talking a lot about languages like Greek, (Christian) Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, Mandaic, and Middle Persian. Also very interesting in terms of career paths and how our fields are structured.

Link valid for three days: we.tl/t-8JoPN8MAz5

In his book, Joshua M. White offers the first comprehensive examination of piracy in the eastern Mediterranean from the perspectives of Ottoman legal theory and practice, as well as international law. Introduction can be read 👉: www.sup.org/books/middle... #maritimehistory

Andras Riedlmayer, art historian at Harvard's Aga Khan program, has passed away. A great loss for Ottoman Balkan history. 🖤 Among many feats, Andras testified about the deliberate destruction of religious and cultural sites in the 1990s wars in Bosnia and Kosovo humanrights.uconn.edu/icty-digital...

Link valid for three days: we.tl/t-8JoPN8MAz5

My latest paper. www.academia.edu/164559197/An...

E. J. W. Gibb's History of Ottoman Poetry has been reissued. It's amazing how useful it is, more than 120 years after its original publication. I still remember finding it at the IFEA library, reading it back to back and taking notes.

Is Franz Rosenthal, Jacques Le Goff of Islamic studies?

Launching the ottoman-archive GitHub organisation for all historians and linguists interested in learning about a world culture where only 10,000 people can now read its written records github.com/ottoman-arch... @ottomanhistory.bsky.social

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

30% discount code for my book, "Ottomans and the Supernatural". Please share it with your librarians!

30% discount code for my book, "Ottomans and the Supernatural". Please share it with your librarians!

first article of 2026! and this one comes with a sound file to imagine the chatter & noises that filled the air of a Sasanian city.

Bahcesehir Journal for the History of Science and Intellectual History started taking submissions, here is the link for our website: bauintellectualscience.org Please share this widely.

Χάσαμε την Κυριακή τον Γιάννη Χ. Αλεξανδρόπουλο (John C. Alexander), έναν πρωτοπόρο μελετητή των οθωμανικών κανουναμέδων και καταστίχων, της φορολογίας και της γαιοκτησίας, των μοναστηριών υπό οθωμανική κυριαρχία, του Μοριά του 18ου αιώνα - και έναν χαρισματικό δάσκαλο, που σχεδόν μόνος του 1/3

John C. Alexander (Alexandropoulos), my teacher and mentor, passed away on Sunday. A pioneering scholar of Ottoman kanunnames, taxation and landholding, of monasteries under Ottoman rule, of 18th-c. Peloponnese; and a charismatic teacher who singlehandedly produced 1/3

tfw when the imperialism is boomeranging

It's called imperial boomerang

Read more about the 2025 OTSA award winners on our website! Congratulations to the winners! www.ottomanturkishstudiesassociation.org/awards-prize...

Many of Istanbul's visitors are unaware that the city is home to half-a-millennium-old stone-carved bird houses that reflect the Ottomans' reverence for the animals 🐦‍⬛🪺 bbc.com/travel/artic...

⚠️ La tentative de censure d’État a échoué. Les autorités israéliennes viennent d’annuler l’interdiction d’entrée sur le territoire qui me visait. Je pars demain matin (mardi) pour assurer une partie des 20 rencontres prévues en Palestine & Israël. Quelques constats, à chaud :

A very interesting paper on Ottoman "science of flowers" 🌷(Aleksandar Shopov - Himmet Taşkömür)

⚠️ Ce soir je devrais être dans l'avion vers Jérusalem ✈️, pour une semaine de séminaires et rencontres avec des Palestiniens et des Israéliens 🇵🇸🇮🇱, collègues, lycéens, étudiants. Le gouvernement israélien a décidé de me boycotter et de m'interdire d'embarquer. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

The German Research Foundation, possibly the most important funding body for academic research in Germany, is now not only allowing the use of AI to write applications, they‘ll also allow it to evaluate said applications. Only prerequisite is that one makes this transparent. It‘s a farce.

Excited that this volume is out soon! I contribute a paper on Hayatizade Mustafa Feyzi Efendi's (d. 1692) Quintet (Hamse), examining the production of disease knowledge in early modern Ottoman Istanbul. Looking forward to the final copy and discussions with colleagues!

In this review I stated erroneously that the chapter by Can Nacar and Yonca Köksal on "Humans, Animals, Plants" did not mention the volume edited by Faroqhi (2010). My apologies for this mistake, both embarrassing for me and unfair to the authors!

Just arrived - and a moving dedication. Congratulations to Nilab Saeedi!

Texas A&M won’t let faculty teach Plato. Incredible.