Between the sacred and the mundane: A historical inquiry into travel and travelling practices on the Ottoman pilgrimage road from Üsküdar, c. 1517-1800.

The hajj caravan was likely the largest and most regular flow of peoples and commodities through the arteries of the Ottoman empire.

Yet surprisingly little is known about the experiences of Ottoman pilgrims who took the overland route to Mecca and Medina each year.

OTTOHAJJ will investigate early modern (c. 1517-1800) Ottoman travel through an in-depth study of the material and human aspects of the caravan from skdar to Mecca.

The project has four main objectives: Undertaking research in manuscript libraries in order to build a corpus of Ottoman hajj guidebooks authored by pilgrims; Classification and analysis of these sources, exploring intertextuality, authorship, and milieu of authors; Investigating the infrastructure of pilgrimage in order to produce a typology of locations, including sacred sites, facilities, and places of leisure, rest and relaxation; Constructing a typology of social profiles and associated traveling patterns of pilgrims.

The use of guidebooks will be supplemented by other Ottoman Turkish and Arabic sources, including travelogues, chronicles, documents, objects, and images.

The project will provide data on the diverse territories of the former Ottoman empire and traveling practices within them, a crucial undertaking since climate change and rapid urban transformations continue to irreversibly alter the landscape and diminish ecological diversity.

This data will allow us to better understand the social, religious, cultural, ecological, and scientific history of the early modern empire.

The project will also make important contributions to the study of manuscript cultures and the application of digital humanities in Ottoman studies.

Project outputs include a monograph on traveling practices and mobility, a critical edition of a late-sixteenth-century manuscript guidebook, digital maps of locations and network maps of guidebook authors, a project website promoting open science and open access, and participation in conferences and symposiums.