Ordering Imperial Worlds: From Late Medieval Spain to the Modern Middle East

by Susan Slyomovics (Editor)

Overview

A volume of original essays by 10 preeminent scholars invited to think through a rich corpus on cities, empires, images, and archaeological sites produced by the distinguished architectural historian Zeynep Çelik. Awarded the prestigious 2019 Giorgio Della Vida medal for excellence in Islamic studies by the University of California, the occasion allowed researchers from various universities, countries and disciplines to reflect on her rich body of work. Inspired by Çelik’s works, chapters travel between Muslim and Christian Spain, the Ottoman Empire and France, Europe and its overseas empire in North Africa, and more. Combining social, cultural and urban history as well as visual studies and collective political memory, scholars from Turkey, France, Algeria and the US chart detailed studies of Muslim-Christian art, Ottoman music, art and literature, and cross-Mediterranean sites of containment such as the prison, the asylum, the nuclear site.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399517874
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2025
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Susan Slyomovics is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at the University of California Los Angeles. Her works include The Merchant of Art: An Egyptian Hilali Epic Poet in Performance (1988); The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (1998); Women and Power in the Middle East (co-editor, 2001); The Walled Arab City in Literature, Architecture and History: The Living Medina in the Maghrib (editor, 2001); The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (2005); How to Accept German Reparations (2014); and Race, Trace, Place: Essays in Honour of Patrick Wolfe (co-editor, 2022).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Engaging the Work of Zeynep Çelik
Part 1: Unbounded Methodologies
Susan Slyomovics, Unbounded Methodologies

• Zeynep Çelik, Whose Modernity? Whose Imperial Order? Jerusalem between the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early British Mandate
• Jerrilynn Dodds, Architecture, Conversion and Projection in Colonial Castile
• Julia Clancy-Smith, Navigations: Re-Imagining North Africa in the Mediterranean, c. 1750 – 1900
• Heghnar Watenpaugh, Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City: Urban Histories of Aleppo During the French Mandate

Part 2: Variations on Late Ottoman Culture
Susan Slyomovics, Variations on Late Ottoman Culture

• Selim Kuru, An Atlas of Desire: Enderunlu Fazıl’s View of the World from the late 18th Century
• Nicolas Dufetel, European Musicians at the Sultan Court (1599-1846): Diplomacy and Fantasy from an English Organ to the Forty French Singers’ Ottoman Odyssey
• Edhem Eldem, Les costumes populaires de la Turquie, Once Again

Part 3: Chronologies and Spaces of Containment
Susan Slyomovics, Chronologies and Spaces of Containment

• Burçak Özlüdil Altin, Crossing Paths: Medical Journeys, Imperial Surveys
• Marc André, Segregating Space, Integrating Time: Architecture and Memory in a French Political Prison
• Samia Henni, Toxifying the Sahara: France’s Atomic Built Environments