Summer School – Reading and Analysing Ottoman Manuscript Sources

After a break caused by the restrictions of the pandemic, we invite students to participate in an international summer school devoted to reading and analysing Ottoman manuscript sources, with a particular focus on archival documents. This is the fourth edition of this format, following the summer schools of 2016 in Amman (Jordan), 2017 in Beirut (Lebanon), 2018 in Aix-en-Provence (France) and Ankara (Turkey).
The 2022 summer school is organized by the Islamic Studies Department of the University of Halle-Wittenberg together with the French Institute of the Near East (Ifpo), the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies (CETOBaC), the Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds (IREMAM), the Department for Oriental and Islamic Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the Seminar für Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orients, Abteilung Islamwissenschaft at Universität Heidelberg, the Social Sciences University of Ankara (ASBÜ) and the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB).
The summer school aims to overcome the initial difficulties researchers often face when working with archival documents from the Ottoman period, one of which has to do with technical terminologies no longer in use today. Today, early-career scholars often feel helpless when faced with Ottoman archival material in Ottoman Turkish or other languages used in the Empire, and they need to develop their skills in palaeography and philology. Besides, dialogue and exchange remain limited between the different schools of Ottoman history, particularly between scholars focusing on the analysis of imperial dynamics (who are generally specialists in the Ottoman language) and those who concentrate on the provinces of the Empire and who therefore work on sources produced in local languages.
 
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Credit : Library of Congress, African and Middle East Division, Near East Section Persian Manuscript Collection