Transottoman Biographies, 16th–20th c.

This book studies the impact of mobility on the lives of people who moved between the Ottoman Empire, Eastern Europe, and Iran from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century, through the lens of their biographies. Depending on who moved where and their circumstances, mobility could mean brutal uprooting or homecoming; a loss of freedom or the opening of new opportunities; marginalization or a path to wealth and power. Beyond the individual level, Transottoman biographies inform us about the local societies that both shaped and were shaped by mobile people. Mobile biographies show the entanglements between different regions and empires and make comprehensible what this specifically meant for the people on the ground.