About the Journal

The Journal of Ottoman Studies has been published continuously since 1980 and has carried the pluralist heritage of the Ottomans to contemporary academe by bringing together Ottomanists from different countries as well as from different disciplines and schools of thought. As the founder of the journal, the late Nejat Göyünç (1925-2001), stated in the preface he wrote for the first volume of the journal, the aim of the journal “is to become a means for the increasingly growing number of students of Ottoman Studies to get together in this journal, to encourage young members of the scholarly profession by publishing their interesting research …, to help them to become known, and to facilitate the presentation of their research to the scholarly world.”

The late Nejat Göyünç, who represented the aim of the journal in his personality as he always helped and encouraged young Ottomanists, desired earnestly that “just as the Ottoman Empire became the common property of many nations living in the Middle East and the Balkans, The Journal of Ottoman Studies, too, would become an entity that will live with the contributions of all Ottomanists and will bring them closer to each other.” The Journal of Ottoman Studies, the first 34 volumes (1980-2009) of which were published by the proprietor of Enderun Kitabevi, İsmail Özdoğan, the Ottomanists’ indispensable dealer of books, has appeared twice a year since 2004. In 2010 the journal moved to İSAM (the Centre for Islamic Studies), an institution which brings students of Ottoman Studies who come to Istanbul from all around the world closer to each other with the richness of its library and the unconditional openness of its doors to all researchers.

The Journal of Ottoman Studies was founded in 1980 under the academic leadership of Nejat Göyünç, Halil İnalcık, and Heath Lowry. In addition to İnalcık and Lowry, the editorial board today includes İsmail Erünsal (since vol. 10 [1990]), Feridun Emecen (since vol. 22 [2003]), Bilgin Aydın (since vol. 30 [2007]), Rhoads Murphey, and Baki Tezcan (since vol. 35 [2010]).