The textual heritage of the late Ottoman world is notoriously difficult for researchers to access, not only due to the difficulties of its Arabic script. Ottoman Turkish printed documents are scattered across present-day borders, institutions, and collections across the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa, often hindered by restricted access, preservation, and limited digitization. These barriers frequently push researchers to rely on European sources, which are much more readily available, but carry with them well-known biases of Eurocentrism and Orientalism.

In our respective research on the social and political histories of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman world—ranging from urban environmental developments to biographies of political elites, or more broadly, the multilayered formation of the modern Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East—we have encountered these challenges firsthand.

Thanks to the COIn Grant, researchers and students at Leiden University studying the modern Middle East have gained unprecedented access to the vast collections of Ottoman Turkish periodicals and books offered by the Muteferriqa: Ottoman Turkish Discovery Portal. With AI-assisted tools, they will be able to conduct keyword searches in Turkish and English, across Arabic and Latin scripts, and uncover visual and semantic connections between different publications. This enhanced access will facilitate more nuanced and critical historical scholarship, highlighting the Ottman world’s cultural and linguistic richness.

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