Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Etkinlik Kategorisi: Bilimsel Kongre / Sempozyum Organizasyonu
Etkinlik Türü: Sempozyum
Etkinlik Organizasyonu Yılı: 2024
Katılımcı Sayısı: 30
Özet:
The Research Center of Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), in collaboration with Meşher
and Sismanoglio Megaro, welcomes submissions from scholars at any stage in their
careers to an international symposium on Phanariot material culture to be held in
Istanbul on 29–30 June 2024.
As part of an overarching three-year research program entitled “Phanariot Materialities,”
scientifically led by Namık Günay Erkal, Firuzan Melike Sümertaş, and Haris Theodorelis-
Rigas, the symposium will focus on the material and social history of the Phanariots, the
Greek-Orthodox Christian notables of Ottoman Istanbul. The symposium is a follow-up
event from an online international workshop series that took place in spring 2023 and will
pave the way for a collaborative exhibition planned for fall 2025 in Istanbul and other
cities. Papers admitted to the symposium will be reviewed for inclusion in a publication
planned for late 2025.
Sources, Methods, and Problematic
Recent scholarship has effectively challenged the conventional definition of the
Phanariots as an exclusively elite group by underlying its extensive, highly stratified, and
polysemous character. As an Ottoman “network of power,” the Phanariots may be
studied through the lens of a specifically spatial framework: one that starts from their
residences on the Phanar waterfront in the northwestern part of the walled city and
extends throughout the Mediterranean, the Danubian principalities, and other major
urban centers. The wide geographical reach of this vast political, religious, intellectual,
and economic network, together with the remarkable social and physical mobility of the
Phanariots, calls for an appropriate research focus that builds on collaborations across
a variety of disciplines and national historiographies. The symposium aims at facilitating
interdisciplinary discussion on Phanariot material culture, with a particular focus on
residential architecture, urbanism, family and households, communalities,
neighborhoods, domesticity, etiquette, and performativity. In this light, Phanar may be
approached not only as an urban neighborhood or ecclesiastical center but also as the
heart of a spatial network extending far beyond Istanbul and even beyond the former
Ottoman territories.
Time frame: The Long Eighteenth Century
The period from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century is
of particular interest for the symposium. The mid-seventeenth century marks a major
turning point for Ottoman and Moldo-Wallachian, as well as Istanbul, history. Half a
century after the transfer of the Patriarchate to the Petrion Castle on the Golden Horn,
Phanar had emerged as the educational and cultural center of the Greek Orthodox
population in the Ottoman Empire and a mercantile elite neighborhood when semi-
masonry houses appeared on the waterfront, some of which belonged to Moldo-
Wallachian notable families. Greek mercantile elites began to rise in the Ottoman state
apparatus as personal physicians of viziers and as dragomans. Former Byzantine,
Moldo-Wallachian, and newly emerging Greek Orthodox elites converged over political
alliances and intermarriage, culminating in the Danubian hospodariats. The 1850s, in
turn, marked the terminus of these developments. While the 1821 Greek War of
Independence led to the fall from grace of the Phanariots, the Crimean War and the Paris
Congress brought about the end of Ottoman suzerainty over Moldavia and Wallachia. As
the so-called Neo-Phanariots began to move away from Phanar, the neighborhood had
been irreversibly deprived of its former elite character and settlement patterns.
Wider topics to be pursued include but are not limited to:
o Urban context of Phanar and the Golden Horn
o Phanariot presence and visibility outside of Phanar: Bosphorus, Mt. Athos,
the Aegean Islands, and especially the Principalities of Moldavia and
Wallachia
o Networks of social and spatial mobility and trans-confessional
connections
o Cultural mediation, transmission of taste, and multilingualism
o Households, families, entourages, court culture, and ceremony
o Phanariot women as cultural and political agents
o Property, inheritance, dowries, and confiscation (müsadere)
o Phanariot residential architecture, interior design, furniture, textiles, and
private space
o Artisans, masters, and guilds in Phanariot circles
o Practices of leisure, distinction, and self-fashioning (poetry, music,
theater, gardens, and strolls)
o Expressions of piety and religious and educational patronage
o Book-collections, bibliophilia, and the dissemination of knowledge
o Phanariot epigraphy, paleography, and literary sources