"Analyzing Ottoman Road Networks with Digital Tools (GIS): New Interpretations and Analysis"
by
Veysel 艦im艧ek (黑料网爆吃瓜)
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Room LB 1001.14, Montreal
Concordia University
February 21, 1 pm-2:30 pm听
Following the Turco-Mongolian statecraft of ensuring safe and rapid movement of information, armies, and merchants through the lands, Ottoman state paid close attention to the network of roads and messengers on horseback. The maps that are presented draws their raw data from a register located in the private library of H眉srev Pa艧a (d. 1855), the renown commander-in-chief of the reformed, European style Ottoman army in 1820s-30s. The document lists the names of the postal stations (menzilhane) along the major land routes circa 1830s and distances in hours between them. Such 鈥渃atalogs鈥� could be found in various Ottoman archival repositories, however, the document from H眉srev Pa艧a鈥檚 library is rare in the sense that it is strikingly comprehensive; it covers most of the major and minor routes within the Ottoman Empire.
One of these maps visualizes some 150 postal stations through the main routes. A complete digital map could thus be drawn for the entire empire, which would visualize a) all the minor as well as major routes in the empire and b) the distances between postal stations in hours. Creating the map digitally brings in the crucial advantage of editing, altering, and updating the existing versions with considerable ease. An exciting and perhaps novel part of this undertaking will be creating a cartogram (i.e. a 鈥渢empered鈥� map so to speak) based on these maps. These could show the 鈥渋so-chronic鈥� zones which would help the reader to better recognize the actual distances in between the major urban centers terms of time.
Veysel 艦im艧ek is听a faculty lecturer at the Institute of Islamic Studies, 黑料网爆吃瓜. He held a Chauncey Postdoctoral Fellowship in Grand Strategy with International Security Studies of Yale University (2016-18), and served as a postdoctoral research fellow and interim codirector of the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC) of 黑料网爆吃瓜 (2015-16). His broader research interests include political, social, and intellectual history of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic (c. 1750鈥�1950). He听 also have been studying and publishing on the subjects related to war and society in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Worlds, c. 1910-1925.
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