Migration and mobility in a Transottoman context

Sa？etak Recent research in historical migration studies has the potential to revise our understanding of Early Modern societies and states. The research program Transottomanica focuses on the historical entanglement between the Middle East and Eastern Europe by examining migration processes from a transregional and transimperial perspective. In the Early Modern period, various types of migration, especially from and across inter-imperial buffer zones such as the northern Black Sea region, the Caucasus, and the Balkans, connected the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Merchants, refugees and slaves not only created an overarching migration society, especially in the cosmopolitan cities, for transregional migration was also visible in the self-description and identities of imperial elites. The effects of inter-imperial migration, which was ingrained in societal and identitarian structures, can be followed until the early 20th centur