Conference “Agricultural and administrative reforms in Ottoman Syria”, Aga Khan Centre London — Online, 6 August 2024
Agricultural and administrative reforms in Ottoman Syria and their impact on the City of Salamiyya and its Ismaili Population
This lecture will be held in Arabic at 16.00 BST (18.00 SYR)
The lecture deals with the Ottoman second Tanzimat (reforms) that were announced and implemented in the second half of the nineteenth century and how these reforms had their impact on the city of Salamiyya and its Ismaili population. In particular, we will examine the agricultural reforms represented by the Land Code of 1858 (Arazi Kanunnamesi), the land registration law of 1861 known as the tapu, and others. We will explore how these laws played an important role in the expansion of the agricultural area in Salamiyya and its surroundings, land ownership and the types of crops that were grown there, in addition to other contributions that helped making Salamiyya a distinct town in Ottoman Syria in the last decade of Ottoman rule.
We will also examine the Ottoman administrative reforms represented in the Wilayat (Vilayet) Law of 1864, which participated in placing Salamiyya on the map of the administrative hierarchy in Ottoman Syria through the official recognition of Salamiyya as an administrative unit in the 1880s. Throughout the lecture, we will explore the role the Ottoman authorities and Salamiyya’s Isma‘ili inhabitants played in implementing these reforms and in advancing Salamiyya from a small village to a district with its own municipal council with a number of its residents as members of it.
Speakers
Ula Zeir has a PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Edinburgh. The title of her thesis is “The Resettlement of the Syrian Ismaʿilis in Salamiyya in the mid-Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Syria“. Ula’s work has been heavily enriched by the Ottoman archival materials, and the oral tradition of the Syrian Ismaili community. Currently, she works as a Content Specialist/Arabic Language and Gulf History at the British Library in London. Her research interests include the Social and Cultural History of Greater Syria, the Middle East and the Gulf region; Ottoman History; Archival Research; Folk Music; Oral History; Arabic Poetry; and Sufism.
Ula has presented academic papers at a number of academic institutions including the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh; the Institute of Ismaili Studies; UCL’s Institute of Archaeology; the Woolf Institute at the University of Cambridge; the Middle East Technical University (Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi), Ankara; the Institut français du Proche Orient (Ifpo), Beirut; and the Department of History and Islamic Civilization at the University of Sharjah. Ula also presented at the Ismaili Centre in Dubai; and the National Ismaili Council of Syria. In 2011 and 2013, she worked as an independent researcher at the Prime Ministry State Archives in Istanbul, Turkiye, which earned her the knowledge and expertise in Ottoman archival materials.
Nuha al-Sha‘ar
Senior Research Associate
Dr Nuha al-Sha‘ar has a PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Cambridge, MPhil in Educational Research from the University of Cambridge and an MA in African and Asian History the School of African and Asian Studies, SOAS. She has taught at various academic institutions in the UK, and the Arab world.
Dr Al-Sha’ar’s current research interests include the social and intellectual history of Muslim political thought, particularly in the 9th – 10th centuries CE. She is interested in how udaba’ or litterateurs used the Holy Qur’an to develop certain cultural concepts, which were later to dominate Arabic linguistic and literary-theoretical thinking.
À retrouver sur le site de l’Institute of Ismaili Studies
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Chargé de diffusion scientifique (29 juillet 2024). Conference “Agricultural and administrative reforms in Ottoman Syria”, Aga Khan Centre London — Online, 6 August 2024. IISMM. Consulté le 20 septembre 2024 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/123tg
