Fatma Öncel
Fatma Öncel works on Ottoman social and economic history. She is a faculty member at Bahçeşehir University and an affiliated researcher at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) at Stanford University. She currently teaches in the Ottoman History Master's Program at Bahçeşehir University. She is also a trustee of the Tarih Vakfı (History Foundation) and a member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed academic journal Toplumsal Tarih Akademi.
Dr. Öncel conducts research in rural history, land question, the Balkans, and digital humanities. She examines the effects of tax, labor, and property institutions on Ottoman political and economic regimes. Furthermore, she approaches Ottoman archive sources in the context of digital data epistemology and data ethics.
In 2018, she received her Ph.D. in History from Boğaziçi University with her dissertation titled "Agrarian Relations and Estate Agriculture in Ottoman Thessaly (c. 1780 - 1880)". She received the Brill Publishing’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Early-Career Paper Prize with her article "Land, Tax and Power in the Ottoman Provinces: The Malikane-Mukataa of Esma Sultan in Alasonya (c.1780-1825)." She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and Sabancı University.
Her research articles have been published in journals such as the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, International Review of Social History, Turkish Historical Review, and Middle Eastern Studies. She has taught courses on history, Ottoman Turkish, and digital humanities at Boğaziçi University, Bilgi University and Sabancı University.
Dr. Öncel conducts research in rural history, land question, the Balkans, and digital humanities. She examines the effects of tax, labor, and property institutions on Ottoman political and economic regimes. Furthermore, she approaches Ottoman archive sources in the context of digital data epistemology and data ethics.
In 2018, she received her Ph.D. in History from Boğaziçi University with her dissertation titled "Agrarian Relations and Estate Agriculture in Ottoman Thessaly (c. 1780 - 1880)". She received the Brill Publishing’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Early-Career Paper Prize with her article "Land, Tax and Power in the Ottoman Provinces: The Malikane-Mukataa of Esma Sultan in Alasonya (c.1780-1825)." She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and Sabancı University.
Her research articles have been published in journals such as the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, International Review of Social History, Turkish Historical Review, and Middle Eastern Studies. She has taught courses on history, Ottoman Turkish, and digital humanities at Boğaziçi University, Bilgi University and Sabancı University.
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Publications by Fatma Öncel
an original contribution to the literature by discussing the transformation of Ottoman
endowment management throughout the nineteenth century. The account books
of landed estates (çiftliks), other endowment documents, and the Ottoman imperial
archives constitute the basis of explaining different phases of estate management
practices for endowments in the Thessaly region of northern Greece. The main argument
is that, in contrastto the administration of earlier endowments in the region, the
central administration of Pertevniyal Valide Sultan’s endowments expanded its control
over its provincial revenue sources. This transformation became possible with the
help of negotiations and alliances with several imperial and provincial institutions.
This article also contributes to understanding social and economic life in Ottoman
çiftliks by analysing land, production, and taxation relations in Thessaly.
Greece within the context of the political, legal, social, and economic transformation
of the region that occurred throughout the nineteenth century. Based on a wide
range of primary sources, this research conducts a chronological survey of the local
actors, events, and institutions with reference to a broader political and economic context.
It emphasizes that, in the first half of the century, a provincial-elite regime and
imperial policies did not create substantial change in transhumance. In the 1860s, however,
economic transformations at both imperial and global levels did accelerate change
in the region’s land and labour regimes. In response, regional landholders began to
institute sedentarization, adopting various legal and economic means based on strategies
including negotiation, persuasion, and compulsion.
among the estates of İstanbul Bahçekapusu Valide Sultan Vakfı, during c. 1780 to
1825. It aims to discuss the effects of the malikane system on the Ottoman provincial
political-economy. It also highlights the institutional organization of a malikane in the
province by focusing on actors and their relations in the case of controversies. It claims
that vakıf-malikanes of absentee landlords, together with the estates of the local notables, played an important role in the process of çiftlik formation in the Balkans.
ARTICLES by Fatma Öncel
Edited Volumes by Fatma Öncel
Epirus” research project conducted by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, aiming to use digital humanity tools to visualize and analyse data extracted by Ottoman and Greek sources. The paper is based on a liability inventory concerning the confiscated property of executed Tepedelenli Ali Pasha. After a brief discussion of the particularities of the document, the author expands on the methodology of analysis adopted and the impediments faced by the research. She also discusses the different
types of liabilities and liability holders, as they were categorized by the researchers. She offers examples how data were structured, transferred to database and elaborated with the help of visualization tools. The objective of both the paper and the project is to depict the significance of digital humanities tools in shedding light to multifaceted aspect of social and economic reality.
Invited Talks by Fatma Öncel
Charting the Ottoman Empire offers a methodical approach to analyzing Ottoman fiscal archives, beginning with the labor-intensive process of structuring spreadsheet data from the codex and advancing to relational database development. This journey—from manually coding unstructured information about actors, debts, and fiscal officers to designing complex SQL queries—allows historians to map intricate financial and political networks. This database-driven approach highlights new epistemic practices within Ottoman fiscal studies, with each query and relational insight serving as an analytical tool to unlock fresh interpretations of the Empire’s economic orientation, debt structures, and wealth-building dynamics.
Seminer 23 Mayıs 2023'de saat 19:00’da Tarih Vakfı Youtube kanalından çevrimiçi olarak gerçekleştirilecek.
Osmanlı tarih yazımında özellikle geçen yüzyılda yoğun bir biçimde tartışılan çiftlik meselesi, günümüzde mikro ölçekli taşra çalışmalarının ve kurumcu yaklaşımın önem kazanması ile yeniden gündeme geldi. Farklı kurum ve aktörlerin yüzyıllar boyunca toprak hakimiyeti mücadelesi verdiği ve bugün Yunanistan sınırları içinde olan Tesalya ve Epir kırsalı, çiftlik meselesini anlamak için iyi bir örnek teşkil eder. Fatma Öncel’in arşiv araştırmalarına dayanarak yaklaşık on yıldır devam ettiği bu çalışmalar bütünü, 1780’lerden 1880’lere kadar uzanan dönemde Tesalya ve Epir çiftliklerini, Osmanlı iktisadi tarihindeki kurumların süreklilik ve değişimleri analiz etme amacıyla da ele alıyor. Bu doğrultuda, çiftlikleri emek, mülkiyet, tarım, hayvancılık, vergi, yerel seçkinler, taşra ve merkezi bürokrasi, vakıflar gibi çeşitli boyutlar üzerinden inceliyor. Seminere Ayşe Ozil tartışmacı olarak katkı verecek.
Nurşen Gürboğa ve Gülay Yılmaz’ın koordinatörlüğünde hazırlanan Akl-ı Kıssa seminer serisinde iki haftada bir Salı günleri kadın tarihçiler konuşacak, biz dinleyeceğiz. Seminer dizisinde kadın tarihçilerin çalışmaları, yayınları, araştırma gündemleri ve tarih disiplinine katkıları görünür kılınacak ve muhafazakar, erkek egemen tarih disiplininde verdikleri varlık mücadelesine dikkat çekilecek.
Semineri 23 Mayıs Saat 19:00'da çevrimiçi olarak Tarih Vakfı Youtube kanalından izleyebilirsiniz!
YouTube Linki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONPVZpb-S9I
an original contribution to the literature by discussing the transformation of Ottoman
endowment management throughout the nineteenth century. The account books
of landed estates (çiftliks), other endowment documents, and the Ottoman imperial
archives constitute the basis of explaining different phases of estate management
practices for endowments in the Thessaly region of northern Greece. The main argument
is that, in contrastto the administration of earlier endowments in the region, the
central administration of Pertevniyal Valide Sultan’s endowments expanded its control
over its provincial revenue sources. This transformation became possible with the
help of negotiations and alliances with several imperial and provincial institutions.
This article also contributes to understanding social and economic life in Ottoman
çiftliks by analysing land, production, and taxation relations in Thessaly.
Greece within the context of the political, legal, social, and economic transformation
of the region that occurred throughout the nineteenth century. Based on a wide
range of primary sources, this research conducts a chronological survey of the local
actors, events, and institutions with reference to a broader political and economic context.
It emphasizes that, in the first half of the century, a provincial-elite regime and
imperial policies did not create substantial change in transhumance. In the 1860s, however,
economic transformations at both imperial and global levels did accelerate change
in the region’s land and labour regimes. In response, regional landholders began to
institute sedentarization, adopting various legal and economic means based on strategies
including negotiation, persuasion, and compulsion.
among the estates of İstanbul Bahçekapusu Valide Sultan Vakfı, during c. 1780 to
1825. It aims to discuss the effects of the malikane system on the Ottoman provincial
political-economy. It also highlights the institutional organization of a malikane in the
province by focusing on actors and their relations in the case of controversies. It claims
that vakıf-malikanes of absentee landlords, together with the estates of the local notables, played an important role in the process of çiftlik formation in the Balkans.
Epirus” research project conducted by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, aiming to use digital humanity tools to visualize and analyse data extracted by Ottoman and Greek sources. The paper is based on a liability inventory concerning the confiscated property of executed Tepedelenli Ali Pasha. After a brief discussion of the particularities of the document, the author expands on the methodology of analysis adopted and the impediments faced by the research. She also discusses the different
types of liabilities and liability holders, as they were categorized by the researchers. She offers examples how data were structured, transferred to database and elaborated with the help of visualization tools. The objective of both the paper and the project is to depict the significance of digital humanities tools in shedding light to multifaceted aspect of social and economic reality.
Charting the Ottoman Empire offers a methodical approach to analyzing Ottoman fiscal archives, beginning with the labor-intensive process of structuring spreadsheet data from the codex and advancing to relational database development. This journey—from manually coding unstructured information about actors, debts, and fiscal officers to designing complex SQL queries—allows historians to map intricate financial and political networks. This database-driven approach highlights new epistemic practices within Ottoman fiscal studies, with each query and relational insight serving as an analytical tool to unlock fresh interpretations of the Empire’s economic orientation, debt structures, and wealth-building dynamics.
Seminer 23 Mayıs 2023'de saat 19:00’da Tarih Vakfı Youtube kanalından çevrimiçi olarak gerçekleştirilecek.
Osmanlı tarih yazımında özellikle geçen yüzyılda yoğun bir biçimde tartışılan çiftlik meselesi, günümüzde mikro ölçekli taşra çalışmalarının ve kurumcu yaklaşımın önem kazanması ile yeniden gündeme geldi. Farklı kurum ve aktörlerin yüzyıllar boyunca toprak hakimiyeti mücadelesi verdiği ve bugün Yunanistan sınırları içinde olan Tesalya ve Epir kırsalı, çiftlik meselesini anlamak için iyi bir örnek teşkil eder. Fatma Öncel’in arşiv araştırmalarına dayanarak yaklaşık on yıldır devam ettiği bu çalışmalar bütünü, 1780’lerden 1880’lere kadar uzanan dönemde Tesalya ve Epir çiftliklerini, Osmanlı iktisadi tarihindeki kurumların süreklilik ve değişimleri analiz etme amacıyla da ele alıyor. Bu doğrultuda, çiftlikleri emek, mülkiyet, tarım, hayvancılık, vergi, yerel seçkinler, taşra ve merkezi bürokrasi, vakıflar gibi çeşitli boyutlar üzerinden inceliyor. Seminere Ayşe Ozil tartışmacı olarak katkı verecek.
Nurşen Gürboğa ve Gülay Yılmaz’ın koordinatörlüğünde hazırlanan Akl-ı Kıssa seminer serisinde iki haftada bir Salı günleri kadın tarihçiler konuşacak, biz dinleyeceğiz. Seminer dizisinde kadın tarihçilerin çalışmaları, yayınları, araştırma gündemleri ve tarih disiplinine katkıları görünür kılınacak ve muhafazakar, erkek egemen tarih disiplininde verdikleri varlık mücadelesine dikkat çekilecek.
Semineri 23 Mayıs Saat 19:00'da çevrimiçi olarak Tarih Vakfı Youtube kanalından izleyebilirsiniz!
YouTube Linki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONPVZpb-S9I
different regions and people under the authority of an Ottoman
magnate? The project examines the composition of Tepedelenli Ali
Pasha’s sphere of influence in Epirus (Western Greece) using textmining and GIS methods to process large amounts of data.
frontier with the Ottoman Empire. The fertile land in the northern regions of Thessaly, Macedonia,
Epirus, and Thrace was kept at the Ottomans for almost another century. Thessaly was ceded to Greece
in 1881 by the Treaty of Berlin that followed the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. The participants of the
Congress of Berlin followed the incidences in northern Greece closely before signing the treaty. Their
representatives prepared detailed reports on the Thessalian rural economy and had diplomatic contacts
with Ottoman authorities regarding different rural communities of the region.
This research examines the relations between frontier changes and rural life in northern Greece through
Ottoman imperial archives and European consular reports in the 1870s and early 1880s. It mainly argues
that the question of frontiers necessitates an analysis beyond high politics and diplomacy. The new
frontiers divided the rural areas of southeastern Europe. Hence, they disrupted traditional routes of
moveable groups of the countryside, such as the animal grazing shepherds and their flocks, migrant
workers, and agrarian merchants. Focusing on the struggle between the local people and the decision-
makers brings new questions regarding the economic, political, ecological, and cultural aspects of
frontier changes in southeastern Europe.
The lecture series brought together researchers in Ottoman studies and specialists in digital humanities to discuss about potentials and challenges of digital Ottoman research. In recent years there was an increasing number of initiatives and projects which use digital methods and techniques. Yet, given the area and period of time covered by the Ottoman Empire, the usage of digital methods faces particular challenges (multitude of scripts, languages, cultural identities, diverse historical periods) that the lecture series intends to address.
This lecture series will be enhances by an onsite workshop, within the innitiative "Mixed Methods in Humanities", financed by the Volkswagen foundation and organized at the University of Vienna 7-9 July 2022.
The Organisers of this lecture Series were Prof. Dr. Yavuz Köse (University of Vienna) and Dr. Cristina Vertan (University of Hamburg).
Dersin ikinci amacı ise, dijital çağda Osmanlıcayı yeniden düşünmeyi teşvik etmektir. Bu doğrultuda dönemin ilk yarısında yapay zekâ destekli çeviri araçları uygulamalı olarak tanıtılacaktır. Bu araçlar hakkındaki akademik ve güncel değerlendirmeler incelenecektir. Böylece, öğrencilerin potansiyel kullanıcı ve geliştirici oldukları bu teknolojinin altyapısını ve geleceğini eleştirel bir bakışla anlamaları sağlanacaktır. Dönemin ikinci yarısında ise, bilgisayar destekli bir metin analizi aracı olan CATMA'nın (Computer Assisted Text Markup and Analysis) kullanımı öğrencilere öğretilecektir. CATMA ile öğrenciler yeni bir dijital beceri edinmenin yanında, arşiv belgelerinin geleneksel hermenötik yöntemler ile dijital yöntemlerle analizini karşılaştırabilecektir.
This research also offers an in-depth examination of Thessalian çiftlik economy. The different types and the amount of crops are analysed in a comparative approach regarding both regional variations and the change over this period. Labour agreements between landlords and different classes of peasantry are analysed. This dissertation makes a chronological analysis of the continuities and changes in agrarian relations and çiftlik agriculture in Thessaly. It is mainly argued that the continuity of the absentee mode of landownership was the hallmark of the region from c. 1780 to c. 1880. Yet, the changing characteristics of absenteeism created new property relations in rural Thessaly.