Written during the final decades of the first century BCE, Virgil's Aeneid is often celebrated as the masterpiece of Latin epic poetry. For centuries, it served as one of the principal narratives through which Romans understood their origins, justified their political institutions, and imagined their collective destiny. The Aeneid did not merely recount the journey of the Trojan hero Aeneas from the ruins of Troy to Italy. It offered Rome a coherent narrative that linked the

Best known as the birthplace of Herodotus, Halicarnassus also produced, nearly five centuries later, another historian whose contribution to classical scholarship has long remained overshadowed by that of his illustrious predecessor. Yet if Herodotus sought to explain the emergence and conduct of imperial power, Dionysius of Halicarnassus sought to answer a different question: why had Rome become the rightful ruler of the Mediterranean? This distinction is fundamental. Dionys

Introduction Lagina was one of the most important religious centers of ancient Caria. Known throughout the ancient world as the principal sanctuary of the cult of Hecate, it stands as a significant historical sacred site demonstrating how the indigenous religious traditions of Anatolia became integrated into the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. The origins of the cult of Hecate remain uncertain. Nevertheless, many scholars argue that its roots predate the Archaic Period (c. 800–

Introduction With a settlement history spanning more than 2,500 years, Stratonikeia is one of the rare places where the Carian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Beylik, Ottoman, and Republican periods can all be traced within the same geographical setting. The significance of Stratonikeia lies not merely in the succession of civilizations that once inhabited the site, but in the remarkable way the traces they left behind continue to coexist and interact within the same landscap

This article develops a comparative framework grounded in five structural dimensions of civilizations: generative capacity, cumulative continuity, institutionalization, transmission, and adaptability. These dimensions do not constitute a normative hierarchy. Instead, they function as analytical instruments for examining how different configurations organize the production, preservation, and diffusion of knowledge and culture. The analysis suggests four analytically distinct c

Long conversations abroad with people from different cultures, educational backgrounds, and income groups reveal a difficult truth about human relationships. Before people get to know one another as individuals, they tend to see each other as representatives of the worlds to which they belong. When you meet someone for the first time, they do not initially see you as “you.” They first see your country. They see the image your society carries in the world. Before you even begi

Introduction Few cities in world history have been claimed with such persistence, intensity, and moral conviction as Constantinople. Across centuries, the city has stood at the intersection of empire, religion, and civilizational identity. It has been imagined not merely as a strategic location, but as a symbolic center whose possession confers historical legitimacy. These symbolic meanings did not remain abstract. They were repeatedly translated into political claims. In the

Introduction China represents the only major civilization whose cultural foundations extend roughly five millennia into the past, whose written historical record spans more than three millennia, and whose state institutions have exhibited recognizable continuity since the imperial unification of 221 BCE. While the political form of the Chinese state has repeatedly disintegrated and reconstituted itself across more than two millennia, the underlying civilizational framework—it

I went to Bodrum Castle . I wanted to find out how long a stone on which I had written an article would remain on display. Inside the castle, there was a poster stating that the exhibition titled “ Inflation and Purchasing Power in Antiquity ” would end on December 21, 2026. Therefore, my question was simple but important: Was this stone part of the exhibition, and would it be removed along with it? The search for an answer revealed a situation far more striking than the que

Introduction The history of Halicarnassus is often approached through its later prominence as a dynastic capital under the Hecatomnids and as a key site in Alexander the Great’s campaign. Such a perspective, however, risks projecting the characteristics of a fourth-century BCE urban center backward onto a much earlier and structurally different landscape. Before the rise of Halicarnassus as a political capital, the peninsula belonged to a decentralized regional system shape

Introduction The history of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) cannot be understood merely as the history of a Greek coastal city in western Anatolia. From the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE, the city existed within overlapping political, cultural, and economic systems that linked the Aegean world, the Anatolian interior, and the imperial structures of the Achaemenid Persian Empire . Rather than functioning as a peripheral settlement at the margins of larger political formation

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I used to travel to Sudan from time to time for certain business projects. It never occurred to me how eye-opening what I would see and experience in an underdeveloped country like Sudan could be. When I first landed in Sudan, the airport was covered everywhere with advertising posters of world-famous hotels. Familiar logos, familiar names. Yet the airport itself was terrible, with cats roaming all over the place. The cats were of a kind I h

For over four centuries, the Ottoman Empire governed population movement as a routine component of administrative order. Warfare, fiscal extraction, frontier security, environmental pressures, and centralized planning continuously displaced and recombined populations across Anatolia, the Balkans, the Black Sea steppe, and the Caucasus. In this context, mobility functioned not as an exceptional disruption but as a regular instrument of imperial governance . Through sustained

Abstract This article examines the major population movements that reshaped Anatolia and Rumelia between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Building on the political and institutional context outlined in Ottomans and Karamanids , it analyzes the long-term repercussions of Ottoman expansion, the application and evolution of forced relocation (sürgün), the demographic effects of the Celâlî rebellions, migrations driven by Ottoman–Safavid frontier dynamics, and the large-

This article examines the political, cultural, and linguistic contrasts between the Ottoman Empire and the Karamanid principality, two major Anatolian powers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By evaluating their respective administrative structures, social compositions, and identity formations, it identifies the distinct trajectories of these two polities. The article also surveys the ethnic and religious groups living under both systems and analyzes the sürgün (forc

Turkey lost Erdal İnönü in the fall of 2007. Erdal İnönü had a quality that was far superior to his other qualities, such as being the...

The waves of dried mud have darkened her tiny hands. Her fingernails are full of dirt. They are pitch black. She is holding on to the...

According to studies by the World Bank, Lebanon's current economic crisis is one of three deep crises in world history in terms of its...

Although the official beginning of the Republic of Turkey is October 29, 1923, its ideological beginnings date back much further. The...

The notes that Vivaldi uses to describe spring in The Four Seasons are amazing. Even if you listen to the music in the middle of winter,...