From Istanbul to Baghdad (via Vienna): An Exiled Ottoman Family in the National Era

In this talk, historian Benjamin C. Fortna explores the fate of a late-Ottoman family forced into exile from Istanbul in 1922 with the rise of the Turkish Republic. Drawing on a previously unexamined family archive of Bağdatlı Mehmed Hâdî Pasha, a senior Ottoman officer and statesman, the presentation traces the family’s movements through Albania, Vienna, Paris, and ultimately Baghdad, focusing in particular on the life of Hâdî Pasha’s son Suad. Through a rich micro-historical approach, Fortna examines how imperial networks were disrupted yet persisted in an emerging world of nation-states, illuminating broader breaks and continuities in the Middle East and Balkans after the end of the Ottoman Empire.