Death in Istanbul : Death and Its Rituals in Ottoman Islamic Culture

"The idea of an exhibition/catalogue on death may not sound very pleasant. After all, it is only natural to experience some discomfort, displeasure, anxiety, even disgust in the face of a phenomenon that may summon painful memories and provoke fears about the future. Yet, there is no denying that death, once tamed as an abstract notion or concept, can become a powerful tool for social analysis. It can thus become a fascinating area of study, likely to reveal much about the culture, mentalities and social structure of a given society. This is what this exhibition and its catalogue hope to attain. Their objective is to try to pinpoint, through hopefully representative examples, the ways in which death has been perceived by the Muslim population of Ottoman Istanbul throughout five centuries of existence, and to understand the role it may have played in the life of the Imperial capital."

To maintain a certain consistency, this publication has been limited to the period from 1453 to 1922 and deals uniquely with the culture and mentalities of the Muslim population within the boundaries of the Ottoman capital, Istanbul. Underlying the work is the notion of change in Ottoman death culture over this five-century period with a particular emphasis on the significant transformations which occurred in the 19th century. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to balance the varying viewpoints on death contributed by ethnography, urban history, anthropology, political history and philology, this work is designed as a collection of case studies regrouped under a number of general headings, including amongst others, Death and the City, Empire and Death, the Birth of the Ottoman Tombstone, Suicide, Dealing with Death, Women, Aspects of Modernity, and State, Nation and Death.