Introduction

Summary

In a world that is constantly awake, illuminated, and exposed there is much to gain from looking into the darkness of times past. Paradoxically, the most significant thing that studying Ottoman nights allows us to see, is the benefits and costs of invisibility. This book shows that the night in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire created unique conditions for economic, criminal, political, devotional, and leisurely pursuits that were hardly possible during the day. It offered livelihood and brotherhood, pleasure and refuge; it allowed confiding, hiding, and conspiring. It was the ability to keep out of sight that created all these opportunities. To be “in the dark” surely involved the insecurity of not knowing, but also the promise of not being known, and the benefits of pretending not to know. This hide-ability, as I argue in this book, had far-reaching consequences on Ottoman state and society in the Early Modern period.