Acknowledgments
This book is based on my Habilitation thesis with the same title, which was submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bonn in summer 2020 and accepted in summer 2021. I would like to thank Stefan Conermann, Suraiya Faroqhi, Claudia Römer, Christine Schirrmacher, and Bethany J. Walker for their positive feedback. I have revised the manuscript for publication; however, I was not able to consult all relevant new studies published after summer 2020.
Without the generous support of the following institutions this book would have never been completed. I am indebted to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for the project grant that enabled me to start the first stage of the project, and to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for its funding of my position as principal investigator of the project under whose auspices I wrote most of the book. Finally, a grant from the University of Bonn supported me in the final stages of research and writing. For this crucial opportunity, I am grateful to Ursula Mättig, Sandra Hanke, and Martina Pottek, who had confidence in my ability to finalize the book quickly.
I started my studies at the University of Bonn in 2002, received my PhD in 2012, and finally completed the long Habilitation process in 2020. I have been fortunate to pass through all of these qualificatory stations at the University of Bonn, where I have found fruitful sources of inspiration and a dynamic international academic environment. I am most indebted to Stephan Conermann, my teacher since 2004, who has mentored me throughout my academic career. At the very beginning of my postdoctoral career, he inspired me to pursue a study on historiography and narratology as my second book project. I have benefited from his consistent support in the long final years of this project.
Claudia Römer and Selim Karahasanoğlu spent many hours reading various parts of the manuscript and discussing them with me at an earlier stage of the project in Vienna and Berlin, respectively. Their valuable feedback gave me the confidence to carry my project on to the final stage. Furthermore, both read and commented on the full book manuscript within a short time before publication, for which I am deeply thankful. Over the course of this project, I have been motivated and sustained by Suraiya Faroqhi, Linda T. Darling (who was also my office mate during her one-year stay in Bonn), Dorothée Kreuzer, Roman Siebertz, Hakan T. Karateke, Hedda Reindl-Kiel, Henning Sievert, Sevgi Ağcagül, and Edith Gülçin Ambros. All read and commented on parts of the manuscript, and I am grateful to them for their encouragement and help. I also wish to thank Marion Gymnich, Hakan T. Karateke, Henning Sievert, and Sevgi Ağcagül for pointing out the last mistakes in the final manuscript. Thanks are also due to Zübeyde Güneş Yağcı for speedily providing me with the literature I needed in the tight time frame at the end of the project. Further sources of assistance are acknowledged in the footnotes; I apologize for any inadvertent omissions.
I am grateful to the librarians of the University of Bonn, who provided me with assistance in my research and fostered a congenial and productive working atmosphere in the library. Likewise, my thanks go to the librarians and staff of the American Center for Research in Amman, where I spent some weeks writing. I wish to thank my graduate assistant Laura Hartman, who was a reliable helping hand at various stages of this study, as well as Astrid Lehmberg, who assisted me with technical and logistical issues. Hanna Siurua was my copy editor; I am grateful for her meticulous work and valuable comments. I thank the editors of Brill’s series “The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage,” Suraiya Faroqhi, Hakan T. Karateke, and Derin Terzioğlu, as well as Franca de Kort, and Pieter te Velde for maneuvering an effective and communicative publication process.
I received moral and athletic support from my longtime fellow runners on the Rhine promenade in Bonn: Günther Distelrath, Jürgen Grabow, and Matthias Weigt. Thanks especially to Günther Distelrath and Rudolf Grupp, who never ceased to encourage me to bring this project to completion. My family has always been my greatest supporter, and I thank my daughter for her understanding of my somehow “never-ending” academic work. I dedicate this book to my family.
Gül Şen
Heidelberg, July 2022