Historic Heritage and the Image of the Empire: the Official Perspective

Zeynep Çelik, New Jersey Institute of Technology

This paper will examine the late nineteenth-early twentieth century Ottoman attitudes toward historic heritage as reflected in salnames (yearbooks for provinces) and the photography albums of Abdülhamid II. Salnames systematically recorded lists of asar-i atika (old works), situating them in their social and cultural contexts, giving information on constructional and technical issues, and describing their actual state, often with references to the work carried out by archaeologists. Past civilizations and their remains were flaunted with great pride, often in a passionate vocabulary. At the same time, Abdülhamid’s photographers documented the historic sites extensively. The resulting albums, now in the Istanbul University Central Library, form a visual complement to the textual discourse of the salnames. The multi-layered history of the land was capitalized upon to draw a modern imperial image with powerful foundations. The development of an historic consciousness also found an expression in the architecture of the period, as observed in government buildings in different provinces that established aesthetic links to past local forms.