Salt Research and the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (IFEA) have jointly made 41 rare publications and seven historical maps related to the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey available online.
The materials, drawn from IFEA’s collection, were digitized and catalogued by researcher Murat Tülek and academic Jean-François Pérouse, a former director of IFEA. The effort is part of the Bibliothèques d’Orient (Libraries of the Orient) project led by the National Library of France (BnF), which both Salt and IFEA have been involved in since 2016.
The resources include annual reports from the Ottoman Public Debt Administration dated 1902–1903, as well as city and museum guides, travelogues, books, and maps published between 1883 and 1954.
The materials, printed in Ottoman Turkish, French, German, English, Arabic, and Turkish, have been added to the Salt Research “City, Society, and Economy Archive” and other collections.
IFEA, a research center supporting interdisciplinary work in archaeology, history, sociology, political science, and urban studies in Turkey, collaborates with Salt to promote open access and foster interaction among researchers from various disciplines.
The project is designed to preserve historical and cultural documents from the Eastern Mediterranean and make them accessible through digital platforms.
Salt Research, the research and archive branch of Salt, a cultural institution based in İstanbul, holds a digital archive of more than 2 million documents spanning art, architecture, design, urban studies, society, and economics.
The “City, Society, and Economy Archive” brings together records related to education, social life, and the built environment in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey since the 19th century. It offers researchers insight into the region’s multicultural composition and social transformations.
The IFEA Archive also features photographs taken during fieldwork conducted by IFEA researchers between 1950 and 2000. (TY/VK)
