Biography of an Ottoman Provincial Town
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19th-century history
20th-century history
A01=Ali Sipahi
American missionaries
anthropology
Armenian history
Author_Ali Sipahi
Category=NHG
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eq_history
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ethnography
forthcoming
historical ethnography
Ottoman East
Ottoman Empire
Ottoman history
urban history
Product details
- ISBN 9781399555296
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Oct 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book presents a 150-year biography of a provincial town. It details the emergence of Mezre as a frontier garrison town next to ancient Harput in the Ottoman East; Mezre-Harput’s subsequent dual-city life until the end of the nineteenth century; and the eventual transformation of Mezre and Harput into the unified Elazığ in Republican Turkey. From the rise and fall of Mezre during the Tanzimat period to the nation-state-making of the early twentieth century, the book investigates periods of negligence as well as those of state intervention. In doing so, it scrutinises the concept of a 'provincial town' as a distinct zone where the imperial and the rural intersect, clash and coalesce.
Through in-depth research on both Ottoman and Republican-period primary sources, this book provides a comprehensive account of urban transformation, town politics and spatial nationalisation. Moreover, it invites the Ottoman historiography to consider 'place-making' as an alternative analytical lens to state-centred accounts.
Ali Sipahi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Özyeğin University, Istanbul. He co-edited The Ottoman East in the Nineteenth Century (I.B. Tauris, 2016) and published articles in academic journals such as Comparative Studies in Society and History, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, Journal of American Academy of Religion, History and Anthropology, and Middle Eastern Studies. In 2022, he received Young Scientist Award of the Science Academy in Turkey. He is currently working on a project about American anthropology of Turkey in the 1960s, funded by TÜBİTAK, the Gerda Henkel and the Alexander von Humboldt foundations.
