Disambiguation and Local Politics in the Late Ottoman Levant

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Henning Sievert
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446339882

The project investigates the disambiguation of group classifications in the context of negotiating processes of local actors with imperial and external actors in the Ottoman Empire between 1860 and 1914, in a doctoral project with a larger case study on the Adana region (Çukurova), combined with a smaller case study on Lebanon (project leader’s sabbatical). The combined analysis of Ottoman complaint petitions and inspection reports in the Turkish State Archives, of business correspondence from foreign company archives and selected local press texts is intended to develop the communicative dynamics of disambiguation as well as of local actors‘ agency in order to grasp how a plural society changed against the background of local politics, imperial state-building and European economic interests. The regions of Adana and Lebanon are particularly suitable for this; besides, they both belonged to neighbouring regions in the same imperial space, were characterised by a plurality of religions and languages, were first exposed to Ottoman and then French pressure for disambiguation (not just being passive victims, though), so that the project can contribute to laying the foundations for comparative studies within the late Ottoman context. With this goal in mind, the project also aims to productively connect previously largely separate areas of research through several workshops.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants