Author's note: I thank Ahmet Ersoy and Wendy Kural Shaw for their helpful criticisms on earlier drafts of this paper.

¹ The sundial is located on the southeast (kible) wall of the Hacı Hasan Mosque in Konya. See Çam, Nusret, Osmanlı Güneş Saatleri (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1990), 9Google Scholar.

² Prayers are performed at dawn, at noon (when the sun is at its zenith), in the afternoon when the shadow cast by an object equals its zenith shadow plus its own length, at sunset, and finally in the evening, when all the sun's reddish hue has disappeared from the western sky. For a thorough explanation of how prayer times are calculated, see Wolfgang Meyer, “Namaz Zamanlarının Belirlenmesinde Kullanılan Aletler,” in 1. Uluslararası Türk-İslam Bilim ve Teknoloji Tarihi Kongresi 14–18 Eylül 1981 (Istanbul: n.p., 1981), 5:127–44.

³ See Aydüz, Salim, “İstanbul'da Zamanın Nabzını Tutan Mekanlar: Muvakkithaneler,” Istanbul 51 (2004): 92–97Google Scholar. See also Ergin, Osman, Türk Şehirlerinde İmaret Sistemi (Istanbul: Cumhuriyet Matbaası, 1939), 25–26Google Scholar; Sayılı, Aydın, The Observatory in Islam and its Place in the General History of the Observatory (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1960), 24–25, 127Google Scholar.

⁴ See Scattergood, John, “Writing the Clock: The Reconstruction of Time in the Middle Ages,” European Review 11 (2003): 460CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ See Göçek, Fatma Müge, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 106CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although members of the general public in the Ottoman Empire were forbidden from carrying firearms, Göçek's sample includes a number of top-ranking administrators and members of the military (fifty-three of the 124 inheritance registers belonged to administrators, and thirty-seven belonged to military personnel). One would therefore expect there to have been a larger number of firearms.

⁶ Gündüz, Doğan, “Alaturka Saatten Alafraga Saate Geçiş: Osmanlı’nın Mekanik Saatle Buluşması,” Istanbul 51 (2004): 122Google Scholar.

⁷ For a thorough account of the adoption of standard time, see Zerubavel, Eviatar, “The Standardization of Time: A Sociohistorical Perspective,” American Journal of Sociology 88 (1987): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Also known as gurubi (“of or relating to the sunset”) time, alaturka (a Turkishized version of “a la Turca”) time, or Ottoman time.

⁹ Tanyeli, Uğur, “The Emergence of Modern Time-Consciousness in the Islamic World and the Problematics of Spatial Perception,” in Anytime, ed. Davidson, Cynthia C. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 162Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The later part of this process (in the early republican era) is very wittingly documented (not to mention mocked) in Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü, a novel by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. Here, Tanpınar launches a humorous critique of the process through which Turkish society came to adopt various entrapments of Western life, including standard time. Tanpınar, Hamdi, Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü, 10th ed. (Istanbul: Dergah, 2005), 31Google Scholar.

¹¹ Giddens, Anthony, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 16Google Scholar.

¹² Gündüz, “Alaturka Saatten Alafraga Saate Geçiş,” 122.

¹³ For a thorough account of the development of telegraphic communication in the Ottoman Empire, see Bektaş, Yakup, “The Sultan's Messenger: Cultural Constructions of Ottoman Telegraphy, 1847–1880,” Technology and Culture 41 (2000): 669–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the introduction of new modes of travel in 19th-century Istanbul, see Çelik, Zeynep, The Remaking of Istanbul (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1986), 82–103Google Scholar. For an account of railroad service in the Ottoman Empire in general, see Trumpener, Ulrich, “Germany and the End of the Ottoman Empire,” in Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Kent, Marian (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1996), 107–36Google Scholar.

¹⁴ For an account of how Western time was adopted in the military and government offices, see Gündüz, “Alaturka Saatten Alafranga Saate Geçiş,” 124.

¹⁵ Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 2Google Scholar.

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¹⁹ See Hamadeh, “Ottoman Expressions of Early Modernity.” Although Hamadeh makes these observations mainly for the 18th-century Ottoman Empire, they can be applied with equal confidence to the 19th and even early 20th centuries.

²⁰ Regarding the changes undergone by the Ottoman tax system in the 19th century, see Shaw, Stanford J., “The Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Tax Reforms and Revenue System,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 6 (1975): 421–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Habermas, Jürgen, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 71Google Scholar. Habermas defines “legitimation crisis” as “the structural dissimilarity between areas of administrative action and areas of cultural tradition, [which] constitutes then a systematic limit to attempts to compensate for legitimation deficits through conscious manipulation.”

²² Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), 11Google Scholar.

²³ See Şapolyo, Enver Behnan, “Saat Kulelerimiz,” Önasya 44 (1969): 11Google Scholar.

²⁴ Gluck, Carol, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 41Google Scholar.

²⁵ Other means through which hegemony was expressed were the adoption of modern protocol in the court, increasing pomp and grandeur of state ceremonies, certain emblematic manifestations of state power, and encapsulating phrases and clichés in Ottoman chancery language. See Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, 16–43.

²⁶ Deringil, “They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery,” 311–12.

²⁷ Ibid., 320. Original memorandum located in the Archives of the Prime Ministry/Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereafter BOA), Yildiz Esas Evraki, 1/156–35/156/3.

²⁸ Ibid., n. 38, 320.

²⁹ That clock towers were symbols of worldly power and agents of secularization is also verified by Scattergood in the distant context of medieval Europe. In 1370, Charles V of France attempted to organize time in Paris according to his own standard: he decreed that all of the capital city's clocks be set to the one he was installing in his palace. Henceforth, churches were to chime their bells when his clock struck the hour. The control of time had passed from religious to secular hands. See Scattergood, “Writing the Clock,” 465.

³⁰ Özdemir, Kemal, “Osmanlı Saat Kuleleri/Ottoman Clock Towers,” Skylife 204 (2000): 126Google Scholar.

³¹ Acun, Hakkı, Anadolu Saat Kuleleri (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayınları, 1995), 7Google Scholar.

³² Yaman, Yücel, ed., “Adana,” in Yurt Ansiklopedisi: Türkiye Il Il, Dünü Bugünü Yarını (Istanbul: Anadolu Yayıncılık A.Ş., 1981), 1:56Google Scholar.

³³ See Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, 21; see also idem, “They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery,” 320.

³⁴ Ahmet Haşim, a renowned Ottoman poet and writer of the early 20th century, regarded Western time as essentially foreign and noted his distaste of it with the following words: “The beginning of the Muslim's day was marked by the first lights of dawn, and it ended as the sun shone its last rays in the evening. . . . Time was an endless garden and the hours were the sun-colored flowers that blossomed in it. . . . Before foreign time came to this country, we knew not of the twenty-four-hour ‘day,’ like a monster with its head and tail painted pitch-black, and its back painted by the fires of different hours in long bands of red, yellow and blue. Our day began with light and ended with light; it was a short, twelve-hour, simple and easy-to-live day.” Ahmet Haşim, “Müslüman Saati,” in Bütün Eserleri III: Gurebahane-i Laklakan/Diğer Yazıları, compiled by İnci Enginun and Zeynep Kerman (Istanbul: Dergah Publications, 1991), 15–17. Originally published in Dergah 1, no. 3 (1923): pages not specified.

³⁵ Dumont, Paul and Georgeon, Francois, eds., Modernleşme Sürecinde Osmanlı Kentleri, trans. Berktay, Ali (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, 1996), xiGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, 29–30.

³⁷ Tanyeli, “The Emergence of Modern Time-Consciousness in the Islamic World,” 164.

³⁸ Özdemir, “Osmanlı Saat Kuleleri,” 126.

³⁹ Poulton, Hugh, Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 62Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Özdemir, “Osmanlı Saat Kuleleri,” 124.

⁴¹ Among restrictions placed on non-Muslims were the need to pay higher taxes, restrictions pertinent to attire, the means they could use to summon their faithful to prayer, restrictions on the types and heights of buildings they could erect, and limitations on the neighborhoods in which they could live. Although some of these restrictions were born of practical considerations (e.g., limitations on where the “infidels” could reside served the purpose of keeping non-Muslims out of Muslim neighborhoods and thus preventing the contraction of mosques’ congregations), most were simply to let non-Muslims know their proper place in society as subordinate subjects. For detailed information regarding these restrictions, see Khadduri, Majid and Liebesny, Herbert J., eds., Law in the Middle East, Vol. 1: Origin and Development of Islamic Law (Washington D.C.: The Middle East Institute, 1955), 362–64Google Scholar. For specific cases, see, for example, Ahmet Kal'a et al., Istanbul Ahkam Defterleri: Istanbul'da Sosyal Hayat 2 (Istanbul: Istanbul Araştırmaları Merkezi, 1998), 26 (regarding the taxes paid by non-Muslims), 78 (regarding the means they could use to summon their faithful to prayer, and 217 (regarding non-Muslim attire). For a discussion of restrictions related to the built environment, see Mehmet Bengü Uluengin, Preservation under the Crescent and Star: Using New Sources for Examining the Historic Development of the Balat District in Istanbul and its Meanings for Historic Preservation (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2004), 35–44.

⁴² Acun, Anadolu Saat Kuleleri, 36.

⁴³ Ibid., 9–10.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 16.

⁴⁵ The evening meal for breaking the daily fast during the month of Ramadan.

⁴⁶ Acun, Anadolu Saat Kuleleri, 31.

⁴⁷ Tülay Artan, Architecture as a Theatre of Life: Profile of the Eighteenth Century Bosphorus (Ph.D. diss., MIT, 1989), 227.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 42.

⁴⁹ BOA, Dahiliye Mektubi Kalemi, 1425/12, 1304.N.17 (9 June 1887).

⁵⁰ Although cognizant of the fact that Jerusalem is not located in Anatolia, I include it here as an example due to its poignancy, and also because the city, being part of the peripheral lands administered by the Ottoman state, was not too different in the eyes of the central government from nearby Anatolian cities such as Adana or Diyarbakır.

⁵¹ BOA, Dahiliye Muhaberat-ı Umumiye İdaresi, 1/-3/52, 1327.N.26 (11 October 1909).

⁵² BOA, Dahiliye İdare, 123/1, 1328.Ca.7 (17 May 1910).

⁵³ Kisakürek, Necip Fazil, Çile (Istanbul: Bedir Yayınlari, 1962), 68Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ See “Saat kulesi 131 yıl sonra rahatsız etti,” http://www.ensonhaber.com/Ic-Haber/134698/Saat-kulesi-131-yil-sonra-rahatsiz-etti.html (accessed 14 July 2008).

⁵⁵ See Deren, Seçil, “From Pan-Islamism to Turkish Nationalism: Modernization and German Influence in the Late Ottoman Period,” in Disrupting and Reshaping: Early Stages of Nation-Building in the Balkans, ed. Dogo, Marco and Franzinetti, Guido (Ravenna, Italy: Longo Editore, 2002), 117–39Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ BOA, Dahiliye Umur-ı Mahalliye ve Vilayat Müdürlüğü, 124/164, 1336.Za/29 (6 September 1918).

⁵⁷ Cengizkan, Ali, “Saat Kuleleri ve Kamusal Mekan,” in Modernin Saati: 20. Yüzyılda Modernleşme ve Demokratikleşme Pratiğinde Mimarlar, Kamusal Mekan ve Konut Mimarlığı, ed. Cengizkan, Ali (Istanbul: Mimarlar Derneği, 2002), 17Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Kasaba, Reşat, “Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Bozdoğan, Sibel and Kasaba, Reşat (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), 15Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Many of the revolutionary ideas commonly attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were in fact pioneered by the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) between 1908 and 1918. See Zürcher, Erik J., Turkey: A Modern History (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 148Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Çağlar Keyder, “The Setting,” in Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local, ed. Çağlar Keyder (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999), 10.

⁶¹ Ibid., 9–12.

⁶² See Gökalp, Ziya, The Principles of Turkism, trans. Devereux, Robert (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968)Google Scholar.

⁶³ Andrew Mango, Ataturk (London: John Murray, 1999), 437. As early as 1925, preparations for adopting twenty-four-hour time were being made. BCA, Bakanlar Kurulu Kararları (1920–28), 2695 (4 November 1925).

⁶⁴ Bozdoğan, Sibel, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 59Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, trans. Nicholson-Smith, Donald (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 230Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 283–86.

⁶⁷ See, for example, the Katz Drugstore in Kansas City, Missouri (designed by Clarence Kivett in the early 1930s) or the Shell Mex House in London (designed by Ernest Joseph in 1930).

⁶⁸ Cengizkan, Ali, “Saat Kuleleri ve Kamusal Mekan,” in Modernin Saati: 20. Yüzyılda Modernleşme ve Demokratikleşme Pratiğinde Mimarlar, Kamusal Mekan ve Konut Mimarlığı, ed. Cengizkan, Ali (Istanbul: Mimarlar Derneği, 2002), 17Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ The document decreed that providing for the sanitary requirements of cities should be given precedence over such “second-degree services” as building clock towers.

⁷⁰ See Ari, Kemal, Büyük Mübadele: Türkiye'ye Zorunlu Göç (1923–1925) (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı, 1995), esp. 115–19Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Olcay Çelepçıkay, “Aziz Nesin'lik Hikaye,” in Aydınlık (Istanbul), 5 February 2006, 52.

⁷² See Acun, Anadolu Saat Kuleleri, 40–45.

⁷³ The original tower was built circa 1830. It fell in an earthquake in 1914, and the new tower was erected in 1937. See Şapolyo “Saat Kulelerimiz,” 11.

⁷⁴ Acun, Anadolu Saat Kuleleri, 12.

⁷⁵ As Emre Madran notes, the 1935 “Categorization of Congregational and Non-Congregational Mosques and the Severance to be Paid to Staff of Delisted Congregational and Non-Congregational Mosques Act” (Act Number 2845) elaborated on the criteria according to which mosques were categorized. See Emre Madran, “Cumhuriyet'in İlk Otuz Yılında (1920–1950) Koruma Alanının Örgütlenmesi-I,” in ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi 16 (1996): 59–97. To avoid being “delisted” (i.e., closed down), a mosque had to meet the following criteria: have a congregation, be open for prayer five times a day, be at least 500 meters (1640 feet) from the nearest mosque, not need repairs, not be a hindrance to development plans, and possess historic or architectural value.

⁷⁶ Acun, Anadolu Saat Kuleleri, 6.

⁷⁷ BOA, Diyanet İşleri Reisliği Belgeleri, 5/45/18 (3 February 1928).

⁷⁸ This period is what Keyder regards as the “high Republican period” (1923–50) with my addition of the three years from 1920 to 1923. See Keyder, “The Setting,” 10.

⁷⁹ Scattergood, “Writing the Clock,” 469.

⁸⁰ BOA, Diyanet İşleri Reisliği Belgeleri, 8/67/18 (30 October 1926).

⁸¹ For examples of popular sources, see “Izmir: A Special Glossary for a Special City,” http://www.armory.com/~turkiye/turkey/ege/izmir/izmir.html (accessed 17 May 2006). Also see “Izmir,” http://www.enjoyturkey.com/info/sights/izmir.htm (accessed 17 May 2006). With regard to official sources, perhaps the most poignant example is the 500-lira banknote, which was in circulation in Turkey from 1983 to 1990 and boasted a picture of the Izmir Clock Tower on the verso. Image available at http://www.tcmb.gov.tr/yeni/banknote/E7/262.html (accessed 27 May 2006).

⁸² The full name of the French law in question is Loi n° 2004–228 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics. The law bans students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in French public primary and secondary schools.