Beginning with the Tanzimat and extending to the Young Turk Revolution, this course enables the students to learn and engage with the fundamental concepts and ideas of Ottoman intellectuals in the long nineteenth century. The transformations in the principle of political legitimacy, the relation between liberty and security, constitutionalism, parliamentarism, positivism, radicalism, conservatism, the concept of modern empire, and the demand for gender and legal equality: all these and more will form the content of this course. By focusing on prominent as well as female and “neglected” voices and primary texts in Ottoman intellectual history, this course aims to democratise and broaden the field of Ottoman political thought in particular and global intellectual history in general.
