"The Ottoman World of Sports: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Shared Sports Culture"

How do we write a history of urban centers in the late Ottoman Empire in which we study Muslims, Jews, and Christians through a single frame? Focusing on his new book The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul (University of Texas Press, 2026), historian Murat C. Yıldız explores the creation of a shared sports culture among Turks, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews at the end of empire in the political center of the Ottoman Empire. The talk reconsiders the history of late Ottoman Istanbul and its lived urban space through a focus on the activities, spaces, and discourses of “the Ottoman world of sports.” Yıldız examines how gymnasts, footballers, weightlifters, runners, coaches, teachers, journalists, and fans reconfigured communal boundaries and pursued a civic project that blended fitness, aesthetics, morality, and community.
Bio: Murat C. Yıldız is Associate Professor of History at Skidmore College. His book The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul (University of Texas Press, 2026) tells the story of the role played by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish sports aficionados in the making of a shared sports culture in Istanbul during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. He's an assistant editor of the Arab Studies Journal and an editorial board member of the International Journal of the History of Sport.
A joint program of the Department of Jewish Studies and the Institute of Islamic Studies.
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