xiThis volume was conceptualized in 2007 at a Middle East Studies Association
(MESA) book fair in Montreal. We had just met and introduced ourselves when
we began discussing our mutual research interests in Ottoman identity. Since
we are respectively an early modernist (Christine) and modernist (Kent) in our
scholarly periods of study, we were intrigued by the idea of discussing this impor-
tant issue across time and space in the Ottoman Empire. We both lamented how
rarely Ottomanists who study different time periods actually engage each other’s
work to compare the continuities and changes from premodern to modern times.
It was during this conversation that the germ of an idea arose that compelled us
to expand the scope of our intellectual inquiry and engage Ottoman studies more
broadly. We also lamented how few pedagogical resources existed for teaching
about the empire, particularly primary sources in translation and accessible sto-
ries of individuals, groups, and everyday life.
We decided to keep in touch and organize a panel on Ottoman identity at
the next MESA conference in 2008. This was a small four-person panel with one
scholar representing each of the four generally accepted historical periods of the
empire. It was a test, really, to see how the conversation and dialogue would go
and to see if this project could grow wings. We were both very pleasantly sur-
prised by the turnout, the presentations, and the audience participation. This
experience impelled us to dream big and devise a more ambitious plan. In fact,
we hatched the idea to bring even more scholars together to share their work and
engage each other in a conference setting.
In December 2011 at the annual MESA conference in Washington, DC, we
successfully pulled off something that to the best of our knowledge had never
been tried before at this venue. We created our own workshop within a confer-
ence by organizing four panels on the theme of Ottoman identity, one panel for
each period of the empire’s history. This series of panels brought nearly thirty
Ottomanists together to share their research and discuss the possibilities and
intricacies of the creation, development, augmentation, transformation, and ex-
pansion of what it meant to be Ottoman from the dynasty’s earliest beginnings as
a pastoral-nomadic polity until its demise as an imperial nation-state. Each ses-
sion was packed with participants, and the excitement, engagement, and support
of the broader Ottoman scholarly community was astounding. We realized that
we needed to produce a book to keep the conversation alive.