Through a microanalysis of a diary written by Ihsan Tourjman during World War I, this article explores how the Arab–Ottoman elite in Jerusalem experienced and viewed the war and perceived their own position within the Ottoman Empire. It focuses on the ways multilayered levels of identity were negotiated and debated following internal and external changes taking place at the time. The diary serves as a unique and valuable testimony that sheds light on life in Jerusalem at a critical period in the city's (and region's) history. Through close reading of this diary and other sources, this essay investigates how economic and social crises affected city residents and scrutinizes how political changes, as well as Ottoman policies and treatment of the local population, affected how individuals placed themselves within the context of the empire.

This piece raises the historical and contemporary importance of a little-known campaign of resistance to the ascendancy of the Turkish National Movement (a movement that would later spawn the Republic of Turkey) during the Turkish War of Independence. Unlike other acts of resistance carried out by Ottoman Christians and Kurds, the rebellion profiled here was largely led and populated by members of the north Caucasian or Circassian diaspora of northwestern Anatolia. As a population that became economically and socially disjointed through settlement along the southern littoral of the Marmara Sea, a significant component of this exile community repeatedly rejected forces led by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). This article approaches the Circassian rebels' provincial origins and motivations and offers new insights into localist, as opposed to nationalist, forces that have both shaped and resisted the formation of the Republic of Turkey.

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This article measures wealth levels and inequalities among the Muslim population of 18th-century Ottoman Kastamonu by utilizing information found in estate inventories (terekes). Also developed is a quantitative methodology that can predict the economic worth of specific noneconomic markers of social, religious, and gender identity, including honorific titles, religious epithets, and occupational markers. Our calculations indicate that inequality among different segments of the Muslim community was pronounced. Men from higher echelons of the military and religious establishments, as well as individuals who carried the epithet “pilgrim” (elhac), were significantly wealthier than the rest of the society. At the same time, economic disparities cut across career lines and title/epithet-based distinctions among legators. Finally, the regression analysis introduced in this article reveals that wealth transfers across generations may have contributed greatly to overall wealth levels.

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This article lays the groundwork for a more systematic history of the Ottoman gendarmerie (jandarma), with special emphasis on the men in the corps and their working conditions. Through this paramilitary police institution, 19th-century Ottoman bureaucrats aimed to extend their authority into the provinces, which at that time could be described as only marginally under Ottoman sovereignty according to contemporary definitions of the term. From the late 18th century on, extending state sovereignty to recognized territorial boundaries emerged as a vital need for most European states as well as the Ottoman Empire. Along with other modern military and civil institutions and modern administrative practices, introducing various types of paramilitary provincial police forces enabled governments in Europe to enhance and extend their authority over territories where it had been limited. The gendarmerie thus emerged in both Europe and the Ottoman Empire as integral to modern state formation and its technologies of government. While acknowledging the Pan-European context of the gendarmerie's emergence and its theoretical ramifications, the present article is concerned more with the Ottoman context within which this police corps was established, evolved, and took on a uniquely Ottoman form.