The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerab... more The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerable population, including the court, the military, and the religious institutions, was maintained through the same location on an extramural landing square along the wharfs of the Golden Horn from the mid-fifteenth century up until the mid-nineteenth century: the Unkapanı. This article addresses the urban architecture of Istanbul Unkapanı as an illustration of the Ottoman official distribution centers referred to after public weighing scales as kapan. Here, the buildings constituting the Unkapanı—the great magazine as the hall of the public weighing scale for grain, the mosque, and the tradesmen council house ( dîvânhâne or çardak)—are identified and represented on the evidence of the original textual and visual sources, while the urban patterns through the landing square from the wharfs to the city gate are mapped.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Mar 1, 2020
Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instrumen... more Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instruments of food security regimes, representing a government's promise of abundance for its people. In the early modern period such granaries became widespread across Asia, Europe, and European colonies, ranging from territorial storehouse networks to monumental civic buildings near city centers. In Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul, Namık Erkal discusses Ottoman Istanbul's state granaries, using primary textual and visual sources to trace the type's evolution from modified, repurposed buildings (e.g., shipsheds and bathhouses) to purpose-built storehouses. He also evaluates the forms and importance of storage systems such as encased single-layer and double-stacked wooden grain bins. Erkal defines the capacities, dimensions, and variations of Istanbul's granaries, maps their locations in relation to major urban functions and locales, and compares them with similar buildings within and outside Ottoman domains.
This paper discusses the early modern houses on Phanar’s extramural waterfront, one of Ottoman Is... more This paper discusses the early modern houses on Phanar’s extramural waterfront, one of Ottoman Istanbul’s main Greek Orthodox neighborhoods, located on the northwest of the walled city on the Golden Horn. Focusing on their emergence and transformation within their own context, this study aims to achieve an in-depth reading of these residences. The transformation of the waterfront settlement around Phanar, from fisher houses in the sixteenth century to the mansions of the rising mercantile elite of the Orthodox Christian community and then of boyars and hospodars of Wallachia and Moldavia (referred to as Phanariots after the neighborhood) in the “long” eighteenth century, constitutes the backbone of the study. The centripetal role of the relocation of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate to Phanar in the seventeenth century in the larger story of the emergence and transformation of the neighborhood in general and of the waterfront in particular is key. Special emphasis is given to the formal aspects of the Phanariot houses, which have been reconstructed through a close analysis of sources. It is argued that, while the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses in Phanar displayed a unique bipartite construction which combined masonry and timber, when the houses were later “canonized” in the early twentieth century, they had an incomplete presentation, distinguishing the masonry parts and dismissing the timber half. This bipartite scheme in the early modern period suggests connections to not only their materiality but also their functionality, plot pattern, and relation to the immediate urban context including the Golden Horn. In addition to their formal and urban aspects, these houses were peculiar in that they were frequently conceptualized as the inconspicuous, even “invisible,” houses of the Phanariots, a phenomenon which can be traced in the eyewitness accounts. Thus, we attempt to reconstruct the material form of the houses of Phanar as a way to understand the social and political form that they forged for themselves in the Ottoman Empire. The “demise” of Phanar and its transformation into a nostalgic neighborhood of a distant Greek past, both in Istanbul and in Greece, also constitutes a significant endnote.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2020
Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instrumen... more Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instruments of food security regimes, representing a government's promise of abundance for its people. In the early modern period such granaries became widespread across Asia, Europe, and European colonies, ranging from territorial storehouse networks to monumental civic buildings near city centers. In Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul, Namık Erkal discusses Ottoman Istanbul's state granaries, using primary textual and visual sources to trace the type's evolution from modified, repurposed buildings (e.g., shipsheds and bathhouses) to purpose-built storehouses. He also evaluates the forms and importance of storage systems such as encased single-layer and double-stacked wooden grain bins. Erkal defines the capacities, dimensions, and variations of Istanbul's granaries, maps their locations in relation to major urban functions and locales, and compares them...
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2020
Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instrumen... more Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instruments of food security regimes, representing a government's promise of abundance for its people. In the early modern period such granaries became widespread across Asia, Europe, and European colonies, ranging from territorial storehouse networks to monumental civic buildings near city centers. In Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul, Namık Erkal discusses Ottoman Istanbul's state granaries, using primary textual and visual sources to trace the type's evolution from modified, repurposed buildings (e.g., shipsheds and bathhouses) to purpose-built storehouses. He also evaluates the forms and importance of storage systems such as encased single-layer and double-stacked wooden grain bins. Erkal defines the capacities, dimensions, and variations of Istanbul's granaries, maps their locations in relation to major urban functions and locales, and compares them with similar buildings within and outside Ottoman domains.
The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerab... more The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerable population, including the court, the military, and the religious institutions, was maintained through the same location on an extramural landing square along the wharfs of the Golden Horn from the mid-fifteenth century up until the mid-nineteenth century: the Unkapanı. This article addresses the urban architecture of Istanbul Unkapanı as an illustration of the Ottoman official distribution centers referred to after public weighing scales as kapan. Here, the buildings constituting the Unkapanı—the great magazine as the hall of the public weighing scale for grain, the mosque, and the tradesmen council house ( dîvânhâne or çardak)—are identified and represented on the evidence of the original textual and visual sources, while the urban patterns through the landing square from the wharfs to the city gate are mapped.
The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerab... more The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerable population, including the court, the military, and the religious institutions, was maintained through the same location on an extramural landing square along the wharfs of the Golden Horn from the mid-fifteenth century up until the mid-nineteenth century: the Unkapanı. This article addresses the urban architecture of Istanbul Unkapanı as an illustration of the Ottoman official distribution centers referred to after public weighing scales as kapan. Here, the buildings constituting the Unkapanı-the great magazine as the hall of the public weighing scale for grain, the mosque, and the tradesmen council house (dîvânhâne or çardak)-are identified and represented on the evidence of the original textual and visual sources, while the urban patterns through the landing square from the wharfs to the city gate are mapped.
The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerab... more The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerable population, including the court, the military, and the religious institutions, was maintained through the same location on an extramural landing square along the wharfs of the Golden Horn from the mid-fifteenth century up until the mid-nineteenth century: the Unkapanı. This article addresses the urban architecture of Istanbul Unkapanı as an illustration of the Ottoman official distribution centers referred to after public weighing scales as kapan. Here, the buildings constituting the Unkapanı—the great magazine as the hall of the public weighing scale for grain, the mosque, and the tradesmen council house ( dîvânhâne or çardak)—are identified and represented on the evidence of the original textual and visual sources, while the urban patterns through the landing square from the wharfs to the city gate are mapped.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Mar 1, 2020
Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instrumen... more Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instruments of food security regimes, representing a government's promise of abundance for its people. In the early modern period such granaries became widespread across Asia, Europe, and European colonies, ranging from territorial storehouse networks to monumental civic buildings near city centers. In Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul, Namık Erkal discusses Ottoman Istanbul's state granaries, using primary textual and visual sources to trace the type's evolution from modified, repurposed buildings (e.g., shipsheds and bathhouses) to purpose-built storehouses. He also evaluates the forms and importance of storage systems such as encased single-layer and double-stacked wooden grain bins. Erkal defines the capacities, dimensions, and variations of Istanbul's granaries, maps their locations in relation to major urban functions and locales, and compares them with similar buildings within and outside Ottoman domains.
This paper discusses the early modern houses on Phanar’s extramural waterfront, one of Ottoman Is... more This paper discusses the early modern houses on Phanar’s extramural waterfront, one of Ottoman Istanbul’s main Greek Orthodox neighborhoods, located on the northwest of the walled city on the Golden Horn. Focusing on their emergence and transformation within their own context, this study aims to achieve an in-depth reading of these residences. The transformation of the waterfront settlement around Phanar, from fisher houses in the sixteenth century to the mansions of the rising mercantile elite of the Orthodox Christian community and then of boyars and hospodars of Wallachia and Moldavia (referred to as Phanariots after the neighborhood) in the “long” eighteenth century, constitutes the backbone of the study. The centripetal role of the relocation of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate to Phanar in the seventeenth century in the larger story of the emergence and transformation of the neighborhood in general and of the waterfront in particular is key. Special emphasis is given to the formal aspects of the Phanariot houses, which have been reconstructed through a close analysis of sources. It is argued that, while the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses in Phanar displayed a unique bipartite construction which combined masonry and timber, when the houses were later “canonized” in the early twentieth century, they had an incomplete presentation, distinguishing the masonry parts and dismissing the timber half. This bipartite scheme in the early modern period suggests connections to not only their materiality but also their functionality, plot pattern, and relation to the immediate urban context including the Golden Horn. In addition to their formal and urban aspects, these houses were peculiar in that they were frequently conceptualized as the inconspicuous, even “invisible,” houses of the Phanariots, a phenomenon which can be traced in the eyewitness accounts. Thus, we attempt to reconstruct the material form of the houses of Phanar as a way to understand the social and political form that they forged for themselves in the Ottoman Empire. The “demise” of Phanar and its transformation into a nostalgic neighborhood of a distant Greek past, both in Istanbul and in Greece, also constitutes a significant endnote.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2020
Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instrumen... more Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instruments of food security regimes, representing a government's promise of abundance for its people. In the early modern period such granaries became widespread across Asia, Europe, and European colonies, ranging from territorial storehouse networks to monumental civic buildings near city centers. In Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul, Namık Erkal discusses Ottoman Istanbul's state granaries, using primary textual and visual sources to trace the type's evolution from modified, repurposed buildings (e.g., shipsheds and bathhouses) to purpose-built storehouses. He also evaluates the forms and importance of storage systems such as encased single-layer and double-stacked wooden grain bins. Erkal defines the capacities, dimensions, and variations of Istanbul's granaries, maps their locations in relation to major urban functions and locales, and compares them...
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2020
Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instrumen... more Preindustrial public and state granaries were utilitarian buildings, but they were also instruments of food security regimes, representing a government's promise of abundance for its people. In the early modern period such granaries became widespread across Asia, Europe, and European colonies, ranging from territorial storehouse networks to monumental civic buildings near city centers. In Reserved Abundance: State Granaries of Early Modern Istanbul, Namık Erkal discusses Ottoman Istanbul's state granaries, using primary textual and visual sources to trace the type's evolution from modified, repurposed buildings (e.g., shipsheds and bathhouses) to purpose-built storehouses. He also evaluates the forms and importance of storage systems such as encased single-layer and double-stacked wooden grain bins. Erkal defines the capacities, dimensions, and variations of Istanbul's granaries, maps their locations in relation to major urban functions and locales, and compares them with similar buildings within and outside Ottoman domains.
The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerab... more The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerable population, including the court, the military, and the religious institutions, was maintained through the same location on an extramural landing square along the wharfs of the Golden Horn from the mid-fifteenth century up until the mid-nineteenth century: the Unkapanı. This article addresses the urban architecture of Istanbul Unkapanı as an illustration of the Ottoman official distribution centers referred to after public weighing scales as kapan. Here, the buildings constituting the Unkapanı—the great magazine as the hall of the public weighing scale for grain, the mosque, and the tradesmen council house ( dîvânhâne or çardak)—are identified and represented on the evidence of the original textual and visual sources, while the urban patterns through the landing square from the wharfs to the city gate are mapped.
The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerab... more The grain provisioning of the Ottoman capital city Istanbul for the subsistence of its considerable population, including the court, the military, and the religious institutions, was maintained through the same location on an extramural landing square along the wharfs of the Golden Horn from the mid-fifteenth century up until the mid-nineteenth century: the Unkapanı. This article addresses the urban architecture of Istanbul Unkapanı as an illustration of the Ottoman official distribution centers referred to after public weighing scales as kapan. Here, the buildings constituting the Unkapanı-the great magazine as the hall of the public weighing scale for grain, the mosque, and the tradesmen council house (dîvânhâne or çardak)-are identified and represented on the evidence of the original textual and visual sources, while the urban patterns through the landing square from the wharfs to the city gate are mapped.
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