Channels of Transmission of Astronomical Knowledge in the Ottoman World (14th-18th Centuries), Istanbul, November 21–24, 2023

This international colloquium aims to investigate the history of the development and choice of methods and the production of astronomical techniques in the Ottoman world from the 14th to the 18th century, including the Mediterranean and all the territories that were part of the Ottoman Empire.

Aiming for a broader audience, the colloquium will welcome scholars and colleagues in Hellenic, Byzantine, Iranian, Arabic, Ottoman, and Turkish studies, as well as specialists in the history of astronomical techniques in Europe.

We wish to retrace the path of the transmission of astronomical techniques and methods through time and space and to highlight the key moments of contact between the holders of knowledge and the patrons who will ensure the historical continuity of this knowledge through an antique and medieval network going from China to Europe, assimilated then developed synthetically and extensively during the Ottoman period.

Furthermore, this conference will make accessible a series of sources in various languages, the plurality of which (Turkish [Chagatay and Ottoman], Arabic, Persian, Greek, Chinese, Syriac, Armenian, Sanskrit, Middle Persian) is yet to be adequately acknowledged and systematically analysed.

Ultimately, we wish to try to reconstruct part of the complex puzzle of the development of astronomical techniques and methods in different cultural and historical areas that contributed to the development of astronomical sciences.

The colloquium is organized by the The Department of the History of Science at Istanbul University and Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes.