Shifting narratives of universal histories in the Ottoman Empire :|from the “Divine” to the “Scientific”

Abstract

This thesis attempts to pursue the changes in the Ottoman world histories by focusing on the divine narratives from the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. In Chapter 2, the functions of the divine narratives of the Creation and the stories of the prophets in the world history books are discussed. The concept of the chronological universality is utilized to explicate the early modern methods of calculating the age of the world. Chapter 3 introduces the new Ottoman universal histories of the nineteenth century by focusing on the effects of Enlightenment thought and the conditions created by Tanzimat reforms. Lastly, Chapter 4 presents a comparative discussion on the change in themes and debates in the divine parts of the world histories from the early modern period to the late 19th century. Accordingly, the reception and impact of the three sciences; geography archaeology and geology is examined in the Chapter 4. This thesis asserts that the shifting narratives of the universal history books of the Ottoman historians from the divine to the scientific offer valuable source to the discussions of the disenchantment process of Ottoman historiography.