It is no wonder that plague is almost always present in historical sources such as travelogues and memoirs
that deal with late Byzantine and Ottoman Istanbul to differing extents; ever since the Black Death broke
out in the fourteenth century, the city had to live with it. During the early nineteenth century, plague was
a “faraway,” dangerous, wearisome, and unignorable affliction for the Europeans who would visit Istanbul,
where epidemics had been appearing in waves. The perceived severity of this “affliction” was increased
in view of the fact that plague had subsided in Western Europe nearly a century earlier. In the early
nineteenth-century European accounts examined in this study, it is chiefly in Galata-Pera that the landscape
of disease, consisting of the patients, “healers,” “consolers,” hospitals, the fearful, the careless, and
the remedy-seekers, can be viewed. This study looks at how these elements were perceived in the context
of urban life right before the “European” district of Ottoman Istanbul rose to prominence.
This article is produced from my master’s thesis: Fezanur Karaağaçlıoğlu, “Epidemics, Urban Life, and Sanitation: Pera and the End of the Plague” (master’s thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2019). I am grateful to K. Mehmet Kentel for sharing his PhD dissertation and all the help he offered throughout the publication process. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to two anonymous referees and the journal’s copyeditor for their suggestions. I would like to thank once again Paolo Girardelli, Murat Güvenç, Ahmet Ersoy, and Shirine Hamadeh for sharing their thoughts with me.
On dördüncü yüzyılda Kara Ölüm’ün ortaya çıkması ile şehirde yüzyıllarca etkili olan veba geç Bizans ve Osmanlı
İstanbul’unu detaylı ya da dolaylı olarak konu edinen seyahatname ve anı türü kaynaklarda neredeyse
her zaman kendine az ya da çok yer edinmiştir. On dokuzuncu yüzyılın ilk yarısına kadar İstanbul’da salgınlar
halinde varlığını sürdüren veba, şehre gelen pek çok Avrupalı için artık neredeyse yüz yıldır başka bir zamana
ve “başka iklime” ait, tehlikeli, rahatsızlık verici ve görmezden gelinemeyen bir belaydı. Bu çalışmada incelenen
on dokuzuncu yüzyılın ilk yarısında yazılmış olan Avrupalı kaynaklarda, başlıca hastalar, “iyileştiriciler,” “teselli
ediciler,” hastaneler, korkanlar, umursamazlar ve çare arayanlardan oluşan veba manzaraları önemli ölçüde
Galata-Pera’ya aittir. Bu çalışma, bu unsurların, Osmanlı İstanbul’unun “Avrupalı” bölgesinin yükselişinden
hemen önce şehir hayatı bağlamında nasıl algılandığını incelemektedir.
Primary Language | English |
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Journal Section | Research Articles |
Authors | |
Publication Date | December 22, 2020 |
Submission Date | March 12, 2020 |
Published in Issue | Year 2020 |