Middle Eastern and North African Colloquium Series

From Istanbul to Baghdad (via Vienna): An Exiled Ottoman Family in the National Era

Bio: Benjamin C. Fortna is Professor and Director of the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona and formerly Professor of the History of the Middle East, SOAS, University of London. He holds degrees from Yale, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the history of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic. His publications include The Shortest History of Turkey (Black, Inc, 2025/Old Street, 2026), The Circassian: A Life of Eşref Bey, Late Ottoman Insurgent and Special Agent (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2016), Childhood in the Late Ottoman Empire and After, ed. (Brill, 2016), Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and Imperial Classroom: Islam, Education and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Abstract: This talk traces the movements of a late-Ottoman family sent into exile from Istanbul in 1922 by the advent of the Turkish Republic. Drawing on the previously unexamined archive of the descendants of the late-Ottoman military officer and statesman Bağdatlı Mehmed Hâdî Pasha (1861-1932), it explores the strategies pursued by his family as they navigated the new national scene in Albania, Iraq, and cities like Paris and Vienna. After a brief overview of the family and its archive, the presentation focuses on the life trajectory of Hâdî Pasha’s son Suad after he left Istanbul at the age of fifteen with his parents and sister. First to Albania and then to Vienna, Paris, and finally to Baghdad, Suad’s movements reflect both the disruption of the old imperial circuits and their continuing endurance in a world now dominated by nation states, each with its particular complexion and dynamics. Pursuing a micro-historical approach informed by the rich sources on Suad and his family, the presentation aims to shed light on the breaks and continuities created by the end of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and the Balkans.