2024 - Beyond the Rūm: Ottomans, Antiquity, and Imagining Distant Worlds

Dr. Günseli Gürel’s postdoctoral project, supported by The Barakat Trust, revises and expands her doctoral research into a forthcoming monograph exploring Ottoman depictions of ancient and distant lands. Focusing on illustrated prose works produced for the Ottoman court in the late 16th century, her project examines how Ottomans imagined non-Ottoman spaces and peoples, often blending scientific, religious, and fantastical elements.

Through a close reading of under-studied illustrated manuscripts, Dr. Gürel shows how Ottoman court culture constructed its identity in relation to both Islamic and pre-Islamic pasts, engaging with millenarian thought, the occult sciences, and cross-cultural knowledge. The project also contributes to global discussions on early modern cultural history by decentering European perspectives and positioning Ottoman visual culture as central to the early modern world.

Dr. Gürel is a scholar of Ottoman art and intellectual history, and her book will provide new insights into how Islamic courts used art and literature to shape understandings of self and other.

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