Ancestral Seed Library or a Library of Living Memory
In the heart of Galata, there is a library where you will find no books.…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 18/08/2026
In the heart of Galata, there is a library where you will find no books.…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 18/08/2026
“My lady, I am a slave, a servant bound to you; strike me or kill…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 17/08/2026
To step into the clock room of the Topkapı Palace is to witness a quiet,…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 17/08/2026
Today, a spoon is one of the most anonymous objects in a household: inexpensive, interchangeable,…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 17/08/2026
For centuries, European diplomats visiting Topkapı Palace returned to their home capitals with reports of…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 16/08/2026
Cats are not impure; they are among those who go around among you.’ attributed to…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 16/08/2026
“I, Nebuchadnezzar, laid the foundation of the gates down to the groundwater level, and had…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 09/08/2026
A dead youth lies here, a nineteen-year-old lad, under the sun by day, under the…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 01/08/2026
We can emulate Orpheus and sing on in the face of horror, and not stop…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 31/07/2026
For much of Ottoman history—from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries—the Ottoman court embraced a…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 30/07/2026
When we imagine the women of the Ottoman imperial harem, we rarely imagine the women…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 29/07/2026
Dedicated to my maternal grandfather Suat Vina Displaced Muslim Turks from the Balkans in Istanbul…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 28/07/2026
The word nostalgia carries a quiet, aching history. Coined from two Greek roots—nostos, meaning “return…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 28/07/2026
“in order to establish a good peace and a good fraternity forever among them. Thus…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 19/07/2026
Few would have imagined that a story beginning on the shores of the Bosphorus would…
by Mahan Dogrusoz 15/07/2026