Rethinking the historiography of the nineteenth-century Ottoman architecture: Encounters with the "west"
Acar, Sibel
Department of Architecture, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Turkey.
Abstract:
The nineteenth century was the period of transition in the history of the Ottoman Empire which was marked by great economic, social, and institutional changes. Unavoidably, these changes transformed the social environment and required a new spatial understanding. Therefore, the century witnessed intense construction activities. New building types came into being, the existing building types were altered, and the architectural language deviated from tradition. However, until the past several decades, the nineteenth-century Ottoman architecture attracted less scholarly interest in comparison with the sixteenth-century Ottoman architecture, commonly appreciated as the apex of the Ottoman’s architectural achievement. This study aims at rethinking the historiography of the nineteenth-century Ottoman architecture by considering some paradigms as determining factors in how the nineteenth-century Ottoman architecture was perceived in terms of its encounters with the "west."
Keywords: Ottoman architecture; nineteenth century; historiography