Ottoman Turkish

You know, the movement of Islam generated a civilization that within a very, very short amount of time stretched from today's Morocco to China.

the way in which people were classified in the Balkans from the Ottoman times to today and it shifts and sometimes it shifts every five years and that's really fascinating compared to how people were self-identifying if they were identifying with a nation an ethnicity a religion or something else and that makes the term genocide uh not an awkward fit but It makes me wonder, is there a better term? We don't actually have a dedicated term for the targeting of a religious group.

The concept of refugee is actually something that shapes and structures how Rohingya are treated.

So it got me to thinking about what are the stories that we have in our lives and what makes a story consequential.

You know, this summer, I spent some time in Bosnia, and one of the things that I was talking with local academics about was the erasure of Islam and Muslims from the Balkans.

And this is not something that started in the 1990s.

It's actually something that goes back to post-Ottoman times, as soon as the Ottomans lost control of the Balkans.

And that got me thinking about the term genocide and the merits and demerits, the, you know, descriptive power, but also the limitations of that term as well.

You know, the movement of Islam generated a civilization that within a very, very short amount of time stretched from today's Morocco to China.

the way in which people were classified in the Balkans from the Ottoman times to today and it shifts and sometimes it shifts every five years and that's really fascinating compared to how people were self-identifying if they were identifying with a nation an ethnicity a religion or something else and that makes the term genocide uh not an awkward fit but It makes me wonder, is there a better term? We don't actually have a dedicated term for the targeting of a religious group.

The concept of refugee is actually something that shapes and structures how Rohingya are treated.

So it got me to thinking about what are the stories that we have in our lives and what makes a story consequential.

You know, this summer, I spent some time in Bosnia, and one of the things that I was talking with local academics about was the erasure of Islam and Muslims from the Balkans.

And this is not something that started in the 1990s.

It's actually something that goes back to post-Ottoman times, as soon as the Ottomans lost control of the Balkans.

And that got me thinking about the term genocide and the merits and demerits, the, you know, descriptive power, but also the limitations of that term as well.

In this episode, we speak to Nefise Kahraman.

She is the guiding force behind Translation Attached, a bespoke publishing house that focuses on bringing to light some lesser-known Ottoman and Turkish literary gems to an English reading audience.

So far, they've published seven titles.

In January, we spoke on the podcast with Burcu Karahan, translator of one of them called 1001 Kisses.

You know, these are small scale stories, you know, that some of them are not more than a few pages long.

You know, the characters, like you say, they are these almost insignificant figures, you know, minor clerks, villagers, anonymous people.

That's, that is very Chekhovian, and you do get s- the sense that he, he must have been massively influenced by Chekhov there, because it's almost Chekhov in early 20th century Turkey or, or late Ottoman Turkey.

And yeah, definitely th- this understated style as well is something that very much comes across, I think.

And if you look closely at the limestone walls of historical buildings and prison dungeons around Malta, you can still find physical graffiti carved directly into the stone by captives.

These inscriptions include Ottoman-style galley designs, tally marks counting years of captivity, Islamic crescent symbols, and personal names carved in Ottoman Turkish or Arabic script.

It's undeniable.

These are the etchings of people forced into confinement and clinging to the culture that was stripped from them.

Here is what the claim leaves out.

There is a note written in Ottoman Turkish directly on the map.

It describes the southern landmass.

It says the land is uninhabited, that everything is in ruin, and that large snakes are found there.

Neither originated in Germany.

Doner comes from the Ottoman Turkish culinary tradition, while modern baklava was developed in the Ottoman world.

Over the past decade, Germany has suffered at least 18 major violent political acts targeting the population by the Sons of the False Prophet, according to a 2026 study.

many of them at Christmas, by the way, targeting the markets there, the famous German Christmas markets.

The journey shows a chain of cultural transmission: Persian origin, Islamic scholarship, European aristocracy, and finally, our kitchen.

Carafe is another example that seems French at first glance, but actually has Arabic roots via the Ottoman trade network.

The word comes from Persian karaf, meaning a container or jug, which was adopted into Ottoman Turkish as karaff and then into Italian caraffa.

Italian merchants brought it to England in the sixteenth century under the name carafe, and by the early seventeenth century, it was standard in English cookbooks.

It illustrates how material culture, here a simple vessel, can carry language across borders.

Even mint from Persian manat shows how a simple herb can travel through languages and continents while retaining its culinary identity.

What's fascinating is that many of these terms never crossed directly from Persian into English.

Instead, they took detours through Arabic scholars in the Abbasid court, then onto Ottoman merchants, and later via Hindi-Urdu speakers in the Mughal bureaucracy before finally reaching British ears.

Some of that does spread into other parts of the Arab world.

But then you hear the Ottoman Turkish influence on rhythm that is also a part of the Arab world.

And it's like they have different origins.

You have these complex 13 and 17 beat rhythms.

These venues became centers of political debate, so much so that Sultan Mehmed III once banned them for fearing dissent.

In English, the word entered via Ottoman Turkish kahve, which was then adopted by merchants traveling between Constantinople and the Mediterranean.

It wasn't until the mid-1500s that coffee reached Italy, where it was called caffè.

Italian traders brought it to Venice, and soon a small café in Florence served the first cup of espresso-like brew for the elite.