Istanbul Households is a social history of marriage, the family and population in Istanbul during the turbulent period of transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Istanbul was the first Muslim city to experience a systematic decline in fertility and major changes in family life, and, as such, set the tone for many social and cultural changes in Turkey and the Muslim world. Istanbul was the major focal point for the forces of westernization of Turkish society, processes which not only transformed political and economic...

Combining the vivid and colorful detail of a micro-history with a wider historical perspective, this groundbreaking study looks at the urban and social history of a small neighborhood community (a mahalle) of Ottoman Istanbul, the Kasap Iulyas. Drawing on exceptionally rich historical documentation starting in the early sixteenth century, Cem Behar focuses on how the Kasap Iulyas mahalle came to mirror some of the overarching issues of the capital city of the Ottoman Empire. Also considered are other issues central to the historiography of cities, such as rural migration and urban integration...