FONTES OTTOMANICI - 1

In this book, Yusuf Ziya Karabıçak examines the remarkable life of Nikolas Kefalas (1763-1847), an Ottoman Greek sailor, cartographer, merchant, pirate, writer, and reformer who transcended the borders of empires in the turbulent Mediterranean in the Age of Revolutions. By tracing documents scattered across various archives, the work pieces together Kefalas's story, offering a window into the vast Mediterranean world during the Age of Revolutions, where loyalties were fragile and sovereignty was constantly redefined. The book includes a lengthy introductory essay in English that examines Kefalas's life and activities within their historical context, as well as a transliteration and the English translation of a treatise Kefalas wrote shortly after the Greek Revolution and presented to Sultan Mahmud II in 1830. This treatise opens up discussions on many issues that would later shape the Tanzimat period. Kefalas's thoughts on issues such as the nationality of non-Muslims, social privileges, justice, governance, and the protection of foreign states offer clues to the fundamental tensions that would shape the reforms implemented in the Ottoman Empire in later years.

Yusuf Ziya Karabıçak is a JSPS International Research Fellow at Osaka Metropolitan University. He received his PhD from McGill University and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and has held research fellowships in Germany, Greece and Japan. His work focuses on Orthodox Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, Ottoman diplomacy and political concepts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.