Back to Ottoman Time
Avner Wishnitzer

Throughout the early-modern period, the Ottomans considered time as inseparable from a divinely-created universe. It was a dense fabric of practice and meaning that bound together heaven and earth, society and nature, and the fate of humans with the course of planets. By claiming correlation with heavenly rhythms, Ottoman time served to legitimize and reaffirm the very mundane socio-political order. In contrast to extant assumptions, mechanical clocks did not conflict with this system in any way but were rather absorbed within it and made to serve it. This ensemble, however, began to unravel in the late eighteenth century. Seeking solutions to very practical problems of governance and military efficiency Ottoman officials began experimenting with new techniques of time organization, which gradually lead to a more comprehensive change in the way time was conceived and used.

Avner Wishnitzer is a faculty member at the Department of Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and his main field of research is the social and cultural history of the late Ottoman period. His book Reading Clocks Alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. He is currently completing a new book on nighttime and nightlife in the late Ottoman period.

Free of admissions, drop in. This event will take place in the auditorium. Space is limited, no reservations. The talk will be in English with simultaneous Turkish translation.