The book introduces the reader to the wealth of narrative sources on late Ottoman Istanbul's diverse population by drawing on the voices of its permanent residents and foreign visitors.

Istanbul - Kushta - Constantinople presents twelve studies that draw on contemporary life narratives that shed light on little explored aspects of nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul. As a broad category of personal writing that goes beyond the traditional confines of the autobiography, life narratives range from memoirs, letters, reports, travelogues and descriptions of daily life in the city and its different neighborhoods. By focusing on individual experiences and perspectives, life narratives allow the historian to transcend rigid political narratives and to recover lost voices, especially of those underrepresented groups, including women and members of non-Muslim communities. The studies of this volume focus on a variety of narratives produced by Muslim and Christian women, by non-Muslims and Muslims, as well as by natives and outsiders alike. They dispel European Orientalist stereotypes and cross class divides and ethnic identities. Travel accounts of outsiders provide us with valuable observations of daily life in the city that residents often overlooked.

Research on Middle Eastern press is of great importance for comparative historical studies. Many editors of newspapers and magazines were not only journalists, but also writers, poets, thinkers and politicians. These intellectual leaders used non-official journals as a means of accelerating public discourse on reforms in the Ottoman Empire are later on in its successor states. Introducing new genres of literature to the Middle East they serialized novels, short stories and travelogues, experimented with new kinds of poetry and let satire blossom. The 15 contributors approach this thematics from different perspectives: Some concentrate on certain newspapers, literary journals or satirical magazines, others centre on the biographies of editors or writers. Although the main focus of this book is on the Ottoman and Persian press until 1914, some articles extend this scope to include Post-Ottoman Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus.