Arab-Ottoman Imperialists of Istanbul at the Turn of the 20th Century

This lecture is based on Mostafa's latest book, "Losing Istanbul: Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and the End of Empire." It is a micro-history of major events that a small Arab-Ottoman community of Is­tanbul lived through. Following an extended family of Ottoman imperial loyalists, Mostafa will explore how these men and women experienced and adapted to new realities of increasingly racialized and Turco-centric identitarian categories in Istanbul, in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

Mostafa Minawi is Associate Professor of History and Director of Critical Ot­toman and Post-Ottoman Studies initiative at Cornell University. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering and Management from McMaster University in Cana­da, an MA in History from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in History and Middle East and Islamic Studies from NYU. His first book, The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz, came out with Stanford University Press in 2016 and has been translated into Arabic and Turkish. His second book, Losing Istanbul: Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and the End of Empire, came out with SUP in late 2022 and won an Albert Hourani Book Award in 2023. It has been translated into Turkish and published in No­vember 2023.