Günseli Gürel
Current Projects
I am working on my first monograph, tentatively titled Picturing Marvels, Magic, Monsters and Miracles at the Ottoman Court, 1574–1603, which explores the interest–unprecedented in the Ottoman realm–in illustrating wonders of the ancient world and distant lands at the late sixteenth-century court. Drawing on the growing scholarship on European, Persian, and South-Asian depictions of wonders, the book has two main goals. Firstly, it will demonstrate how antiquity was constructed as an alternate world that was considered compatible with Islam and the Ottoman present, and how the Ottoman ruling elite engaged with the religious and occult practices of non-Islamic cultures. Secondly, it will document for the first time the significance of the peoples and places of the Indian Ocean and the Americas depicted in Ottoman manuscripts and discuss the ways in which such images were a source of wonder for Ottoman readers. More broadly, the book will contribute to the ongoing effort to challenge the Eurocentric bias in early modern cultural history. Most academic literature that contextualises depictions of the ancient past and the outside world during this period focuses on Renaissance Europe. I will argue that the interests and sensibilities often associated with Renaissance Europe were not only evident in what is seen as a non-European culture, but also acquired particular meanings shaped by the political and intellectual context of the Ottoman court.
Research Interests
My research interests include visual, urban and material culture of the early modern Ottoman world; arts of the book; Ottoman interests in occult, ancient history and outside world; Ottoman reception of the Greaco-Roman material culture in Anatolia; historiography; photography in the late Ottoman Empire; history of archaeology.
Biography
After receiving an MSt in Islamic Art and Archaeology at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford, I completed a DPhil in the same institution with a thesis on sixteenth-century Ottoman engagement with the occult knowledge, ancient history, and marvellous geographies. Before returning to Oxford to teach Islamic art and architecture, I held a postdoctoral fellowship at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) for the academic year 2023-2024. Currently, I am working on my first monograph, tentatively entitled Picturing Marvels, Magic, Monsters and Miracles at the Ottoman Court, 1574–1603, based on my recent DPhil thesis. My research and publications focus on various topics, including Ottoman interests in the Americas and Indian Ocean region, the occult, natural philosophy and pre-Islamic past and its material remains.
Educational background
- D.Phil. Islamic Art and Archaeology, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, 2016-2024 (Thesis: “Picturing Marvels, Magic and Monsters at the Late Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Court: Ms. British Harleian 5500”), 2024.
- M.St. Islamic Art and Archaeology, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford,
- 2016 (Dissertation: The Afterlife of Roman Things: Ottoman Approaches to the Greaco-Roman Heritage in the “Lands of Rum”)
- M.A. History (History of Art, Architecture and Visual Culture Program), Department of History, Boğaziçi University, 2015 (Thesis: “Into the Wild: Ottoman
- Photographic Excursions to Libya at the Turn of the Twentieth Century”)
- B.A. Sociology, Department of Sociology, Boğaziçi University, 2010
Forthcoming publications
- “Making the Invisible Visible: Depictions of Natural Things in Late 16th Century Ottoman Court,” in Anatolian Cornucopia: Drugs, Elixirs, and Spices between Leisure, Medicine, and Morality, Kerem Tınaz and Alexis Wick eds. (Istanbul: ANAMED, forthcoming 2025).
- “Architecture at the Intersection of the Halvetiyye Sufi Order with Bayezid II’s (r. 1481-1512) Court: Context of the Koca Mustafa Pasha Complex in Istanbul,” accepted for publication in Muqarnas (expected in 2027 issue).
- “Şerifi’nin Mesālikü ve’l-Memāliḳ Çevirisi Üzerine Bazı Düşünceler (Bolonya Üniversitesi Ms. 3611),” Osmanlı Kitap Sanatları ve Musavver El Yazmaları: Yeni Örnekler/ New Approaches to Ottoman Arts of the Book and Illustrated Manuscripts Symposium Proceedings, Serpil Bağcı ed. ARIŞ Dergisi Özel Sayı (Ankara: 2026, forthcoming, 2026).
- “Sinan Bey” ; “Şiblizade Ahmed” ; “Nakkaş Hasan” Türk Sanatında Sanatçılar Ansiklopedisi / Encyclopaedia of Turkish Artists, ed. Serpil Bağcı, Serhan Tuncer (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Başkanlığı, forthcoming 2026).
Publications
- “Fifteenth–and Sixteenth–Century Ottoman Narratives on the Hagia Sophia Reconsidered,” in YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies 6 (2024): 9–29: https://doi.org/10.53979/yillik.2024.2
- “Picturing the New World Marvels: Ottoman Paintings of Flora and Fauna and Political Discourse in the Tarīḫ-i Hind-i Ġarbī (1583/4),” in Acaʾib: Occasional Papers on the Ottoman Perceptions of the Supernatural 4 (July, 2024): https://ghost.ims.forth.gr/wp-content/uploads/C4-RESEARCH_ACAIB-4-1.pdf
- “16. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Sarayında ʿAcâib’leri Resmetmek,” in Toplumsal Tarih 356 (Ağustos 2023): 29-33.
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