In an endeavour to understand the ties among Christians within the administrative, social and economic structures of the imperial and Orthodox Christian worlds, Ayşe Ozil engages in a rarely undertaken comparative analysis of Ottoman, Greek and European archival sources. Using the hitherto under-explored region of Hüdavendigar in the heartland of the empire as a case study, she questions commonplace assumptions about the meaning of ethno-religious community within a Middle Eastern imperial framework.
Offering a more nuanced investigation of Ottoman Christians by connecting Ottoman and Greek history, which are often treated in isolation from one another, this work sheds new light on communal existence.
Ayşe Ozil is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University. Her research interests include Greek Orthodox and other ethno-religious communities in the Ottoman Empire, the history of Istanbul, travel-writing in the Balkans and the Middle East.