Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:36:09.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Times Alla Turca E Franga

Conceptions of Time and the Materiality of the Late-Ottoman Clock Towers

from Part IV - History and Duration: Making Things Last, Enduring Politics and Organizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

By
Deniz Tunçalp
Edited by
François-Xavier de Vaujany ,
Robin Holt  and
Albane Grandazzi
François-Xavier de Vaujany
Affiliation:
Universite Paris Dauphine-PSL
Robin Holt
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Albane Grandazzi
Affiliation:
Grenoble Ecole de Management
Get access

Summary

The study explores the materiality of clock towers to understand how temporal order was constructed and changed in the late Ottoman Empire. It takes a microhistorical perspective with a critical realist lens. Specifically, it focuses on the 24 clock towers constructed between 1876 and 1909 outside Istanbul, remaining within the national borders of Turkey. In addition, the study has developed case studies of three “exceptional typical” clock towers at Kastamonu, Çorum, and Izmir. Results indicate that these clock towers were symbols of continuous and hybridized changes in the temporal construction of Ottoman societies. The study illustrates how alternative time conceptions can exist, combine, and transform autonomously, constituting a polychronous context. In addition to the Ottoman state, the local elite was central in negotiating and contesting the diffusion of modernity into their realms. The study contributes to understanding the politics of time from a non-industrialized and non-Western historical context.

Keywords

Materialityclock towerscritical realismtime measurement
Type
Chapter
Information
Organization as Time
Technology, Power and Politics
 , pp. 297 - 328
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acun, H. (1991). Az Tanınan Anadolu Saat Kuleleri. Kültür ve Sanat, 3(9), 9.Google Scholar
Acun, H. (1992). Az Bilinen Saat Kulelerimiz. İlgi, 68(1), 28–31.Google Scholar
Acun, H. (1994). Anadolu Saat Kuleleri. Ankara: Atatürk Kültür, Dil, ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayınları.Google Scholar
Acun, H. (2011). Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Saat Kuleleri. Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayınları.Google Scholar
Adam, B. (1990). Time and Social Theory. Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Adam, B. (2004). Time. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Adib, & Emiljanowicz, P. (2019). Colonial time in tension: Decolonizing temporal imaginaries. Time & Society, 28(3), 1221–38.Google Scholar
Alihodzic, R. (2019). Clock towers from the Ottoman period in the territory of today’s Montenegro. METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, 36(2), 1–28. DOI: 10.4305/METU.JFA.2019.2.6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altınışık, I. U. (2012). Osmanlı’da Zaman-Mekan Kavrayışının Değişimi ve Mimarlık, T.C. Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü Yayınlanmamış Doktora Tezi. İstanbul: Yıldız Technical University.Google Scholar
Archer, M. S. (1995). Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archer, M. S. & Morgan, J. (2020). Contributions to realist social theory: An interview with Margaret S. Archer. Journal of Critical Realism, 19(2), 179–200. DOI: 10.1080/14767430.2020.1732760Google Scholar
Atabaki, T. (2007). Time, Labour-Discipline and Modernization in Turkey and Iran: Some Comparative Remarks. In Atabaki, T. (ed.), The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey and Iran (pp. 1–17). New York: I. B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Aydüz, S. (1995). Osmanlı Devleti’nde Müneccimbaşılık. In Günergun, F. (ed.), Osmanlı Bilimi Araştırmaları (pp. 159–207). İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları.Google Scholar
Aydüz, S. (1999). Osmanlı Devleti’nde Küçük Gözlemevleri: Muvakkithaneler. In Eren, G. (ed.), Osmanlı Ansiklopedisi, Vol. VIII (pp. 664–75). Osmanlı, Ankara: Yeni Türkiye.Google Scholar
Aydüz, S. (2004a). Osmanlı astronomi müesseseleri. Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi, 2(4), 411–54.Google Scholar
Aydüz, S. (2004b). İstanbul’da zamanın nabzını tutan mekânlar muvakkithaneler. İstanbul, 51(4), 92–7.Google Scholar
Baykara, T. (1974). İzmir Şehri ve Tarihi. İzmir: Ege Üniversitesi Matbaası.Google Scholar
Beaudry, M. C. (1995). Introduction: Ethnography in Retrospect. In Ellin D’Agostino, M., Winer, M., Prine, E., & Casella, E. (eds), The Written and the Wrought: Complementary Sources in Historical Archaeology (pp. 1–15). Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 79. Department of Anthropology. Berkeley, CA: University of California.Google Scholar
Benjamin, W (1968). Theses on the philosophy of history. In:Illuminations, Walter Benjamin::Essays and Reflections, trans. H Zohn, ed. and intro. H Arendt. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Berkes, N. (1978). Türkiye’de Cagdaslasma [Modernization in Turkey]. Istanbul: Dogu-Batı Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (1979). The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of The Contemporary Human Sciences. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (1998). Philosophy and Scientific Realism. In Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T., & Norrie, A. (eds), Critical Realism: Essential Readings (pp. 16–47). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2008). A Realist Theory of Science (2nd ed.). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2013). The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2016). Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birol, N. (2005). Managing the time of the bureaucrat in the late nineteenth century Ottoman administration (MA thesis) (pp. 50–4). İstanbul: Bogaziçi University.Google Scholar
Bradbury, N. M. & Collette, C. P. (2009). Changing times: The mechanical clock in late medieval literature. The Chaucer Review, 43(4), 351–75.Google Scholar
Callizo-Romero, C., Tutnjević, S., Pandza, M., Ouellet, M., Kranjec, A., Ilić, S., Gu, Y., Göksun, T., Chahboun, S., Casasanto, D., & Santiago, J. (2020). Temporal focus and time spatialization across cultures. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 27, 1247–58. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01760-5Google Scholar
Cansever, M. (2009). Türkiye’nin Kültür Mirası 100 Saat Kulesi. İstanbul: NTV Yayınları.Google Scholar
Cengizkan, A. (1999). Saat Kuleleri ve Kamusal Mekan (pp. 96–103). İstanbul: Arredamento.Google Scholar
Cengizkan, A. (2002). Modernin Saati: 20.nci Yüzyılda Modernleşme ve Demokratikleşme Pratiğinde Mimarlar, Kamusal Mekan ve Konut Mimarlığı (p. 240). Boyut yayıncılık: Mimarlar Derneği.Google Scholar
Chin, C. (2011). Margins and monsters: How some micro cases lead to macro claims. History and Theory, 50(3), 341–57.Google Scholar
Collier, A. (1994). Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
DABOA (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi), DH.MKT. (Dahiliye Nezâreti Mektubî Kalemi) 340/41, Tarsus’un Frenklus karyesi hanedanından Feyzullah Ağa’nın saat kulesi inşa edip, içine Avrupa’dan saat getirmesinden dolayı Mecidi Nişan ile taltifi. 08.08.1312 (04.02.1895).Google Scholar
DABOA (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi), DH.MKT. (Dahiliye Nezâreti Mektubî Kalemi) 462/60, Bereketli Nahiyesi’nde müceddeden inşa edilen saat kulesinin açılışının yapıldığının Sadaret’e arzı. 21.12.1319 (13.03.1902).Google Scholar
DABOA (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi), DH.MKT. (Dahiliye Nezâreti Mektubî Kalemi) 1174/42, Kudüs’te ahali-i İslamiye’den toplanan iane ile ezani saate ayarlı bir saat kulesi inşa edilerek hizmete sokulduğu. 24–03–1325 (07.05.1907).Google Scholar
DABOA (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi), DH.MKT. (Dahiliye Nezâreti Mektubî Kalemi) 1207/93, Saat kulesi inşasına ücretsiz nezaretle hizmet ve sadakat gösteren teba-yı Devlet-i Aliye’den Pavkal Mina Efendi’nin dördüncü rütbeden Mecidi Nişanı‘yla taltifi talebi. 01.09.1325 (08.10.1907).Google Scholar
DABOA (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi), Y.EE.KP. (Yıldız Sadrazam Kamil Paşa Evrakı) 13/1210, Sultan II. Abdülhamid’in tahta çıkışının 25. Senesi münasabetiyle İzmir şehrinde yapılmakta olan şadırvanlı saat kulesi için gümüşten yapılmış süslü bir modelinin gönderildiğine dâir. 02.12.1318 (23.03.1901).Google Scholar
DABOA (Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi), Y.PRK.UM (Yıldız Perakende Evrakı- Umum Vilayetler Tahrirâtı) 80/69, Kudüs’de ezani saati bildirir bir saat kulesi yapıldığı. 21.9.1325 (27.10.1907).Google Scholar
Darnton, R. (2004). It happened one night. New York Review of Books 24(June), 60–4.Google Scholar
Dayioğlu, S. (2010). Osmanlı’da Zamanı Belirleme Mekânları İstanbul Muvakkithaneleri. İstanbul: Kültür A. Ş.Google Scholar
Delanty, G. (1995). The limits and possibilities of a European identity: A critique of cultural essentialism. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 21(4), 15–36.Google Scholar
Duymaz, A. Ş. (2003). II. Abdülhamid Dönemi İmar Faaliyetleri (Türkiye Örnekleri) (PhD dissertation). Isparta: Süleyman Demirel University.Google Scholar
Edwards, P. K., O’Mahoney, J., & Vincent, S. (eds) (2014). Studying Organizations Using Critical Realism: A Practical Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fuchs, R. & Gilbert, H. (2001). A Colonial Portrait of Jerusalem: British Architecture in Mandate Era Palestine. In Alsayyad, N. (ed.), Hybrid Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment (pp. 89–91). Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Gilley, B. (2017). The case for colonialism. Third World Quarterly, 38(10), 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gimpel, J. (1988). The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. London: Pimlico.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, C. & Poni, C. (1979). Il nome e il come: Scambio ineguale e mercato storiografico. Quaderni Storici, 40, 1–10.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, C. & Poni, C. (1991). The Name and the Game: Unequal Exchange and the Historiographic Marketplace. In Muir, E. & Ruggiero, G. (eds), Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe (pp. 1–10). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Glennie, P. D. & Thrift, N. J. (1996). Reworking E. P. Thompson’s “Time, work discipline and industrial capitalism”. Time and Society, 5(3), 275–300.Google Scholar
Glennie, P. D. & Thrift, N. J. (2005). Revolutions in the Times: Clocks and the Temporal Structures of Everyday Life. In Livingston, D. & Withers, C. W. J. (eds), Geography and Revolutions (pp. 160–98). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glennie, P. D. & Thrift, N. J. (2009). Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Güntan, Ç. (2007). II. Abdülhamit Döneminde İmparatorluk İmajının Kamu Yapıları Aracılığı İle Osmanlı Kentine Yansıtılması (Unpublished thesis). İstanbul: Yıldız Technical University.Google Scholar
Gürbüz, Ş. (2009). Saat Kulelerinin Varlığı ve Yokluğu Üzerine (pp. 133–49). Derleyen, İstanbul: YKY, Zamanın Görünen Yüzü Saatler.Google Scholar
Hamann, B. E. (2016). How to chronologize with a hammer, or, the myth of homogeneous, empty time. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6(1), 261–92.Google Scholar
Hargadon, A. B. & Wadhwani, R. D. (2022). Theorizing with microhistory. Academy of Management Review (in press). https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2019.0176Google Scholar
Hashkafa (1907, August 30). This Week (”השבוע” or “ha-Shavu’a”), 93, 2 (in Hebrew).Google Scholar
Holt, R. & Johnsen, R. (2019). Time and organization studies. Organization Studies, 40(10), 1557–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, S. (2003). Time Past, Time Present, Time Future: Contrasting Temporal Values in Two Southeast Asian Societies. In Contemporary Futures (pp. 136–49). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Joyner, C. W. (1999). Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Karač, Z. & Žunić, A. (2018). Islamic Architecture and Art in Croatia. Faculty of Architecture. Zagreb: University of Zagreb.Google Scholar
Köker, N. P. (2002). Time and Modernity in Turkish Context: Clock Towers, Squares and Public Sphere in the Case of Yozgat (Unpublished thesis). Department of Architecture. Ankara: Middle East Technical University.Google Scholar
Kreiser, K. (2006). Ottoman Clock Towers: A Preliminary Survey and Some General Remarks on Construction Dates, Sponsors, Locations and Functions. In Eren, H., Kaçar, M., & Durukal, Z. (eds), Essays in Honour of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Volume I, Societies, Cultures, Sciences: A Collection of Articles (pp. 543–56). İstanbul: IRCICA Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture.Google Scholar
Kumbasar, Z. (2008). Osmanlı Dönemi İstanbul Muvakkithaneleri (MA thesis). İstanbul: Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi.Google Scholar
Lepore, J. (2001). Historians who love too much: Reflections on microhistory and biography. The Journal of American History 88(1), 129–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, G. (1991). On Microhistory. In Burke, P. (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (pp. 93–113). Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Makdisi, U. (2002). Ottoman orientalism. The American Historical Review, 107(3), 768–96.Google Scholar
Mumford, L. (1934). Technics and Civilization (pp. 14–15). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Munn, N. D. (1992). The cultural anthropology of time: A critical essay. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21(1), 93–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogle, V. (2015). The Global Transformation of Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Şapolyo, E. B. (1969). Saat Kulelerimiz. Önasya, 4(44), 10–11.Google Scholar
Singer, S. R. (2013). Clock towers, blended modernity, and the emergence of Ottoman time (PhD dissertation). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University.Google Scholar
Sözen, M. (ed.) (1975). Türk Mimarisinin Gelişimi ve Mimar Sinan. İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, G. (1998). Critical realism and historical sociology. A review article. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 40(1), 170–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanyeli, U. (1998). İslam dünyasında modern zaman bilincinin doğuşu ve mekânsal kavrayış sorunsalı. In Davidson, C. C. (ed.), Anytime Konferansı Bildiriler Kitabı (pp. 166–76). Ankara: Mimarlar Derneği.Google Scholar
Tanyeli, U. (1999). The emergence of modern time consciousness in the Islamic world and the problematics of spatial perception. In Davidson, C. C. (ed.), Anytime (pp. 162–70). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1967). Time, work discipline and industrial capitalism: Past and Present, 38(1), 56–97.Google Scholar
Üçsu, K. (2011). Osmanlı İstanbul’unda Zamanı Belirlemek İçin Kullanılan Araçlar, Mekânlar ve İlgili Uzmanlar (Unpublished thesis). Institute of Social Sciences. İstanbul: Istanbul University.Google Scholar
Üçsu, K. (2017). Witnesses of the time: A survey of clock rooms, clock towers and façade clocks in Istanbul in the Ottoman era. Rubrica Contemporanea, 6(12), 43–60.Google Scholar
Uluçay, M. Ç. (1941). Manisa’daki Sarây-ı Âmire ve Şehzadeler Türbesi. İstanbul: CHP Manisa Halkevi Yayınları.Google Scholar
Uluengin, B. (2010). Secularizing Anatolia tick by tick: Clock towers in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42(1), 17–36.Google Scholar
Ünver, S. (1975). Osmanlı Türkleri İlim Tarihinde Muvakkithaneler. In Atatürk Konferansları 1971–1972 (pp. 217–59). Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu.Google Scholar
Ünver, S. (1980). İstanbul Muvakkithaneleri Vazifelerinin İlmî ve Kültürel Değerleri Üzerine. In Dizer, M. (ed.), International Symposium on the Observatories in Islam, 19–23 September 1977) (pp. 45–51). Istanbul: Millî Eğitim Basımevi.Google Scholar
Yetkin, S. (2001). Kentsel bir Sembolün Doğuşu: İzmir Saat Kulesi. İzmir, Turkey: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi.Google Scholar
Wishnitzer, A. (2009). The Transformation of Ottoman Temporal Culture during the “Long Nineteenth Century” (PhD dissertation). Tel Aviv-Yafo: Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Wishnitzer, A. (2010). A comment on Mehmet Bengü Uluengin, “Secularizing Anatolia tick by tick: Clock towers in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic” (IJMES 42 [2010]: 17–36). International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42(3), 537–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wishnitzer, A. (2015). Reading Clocks, Alla Turca. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×