This article applies a critical approach to rethinking the relationship between nationalism and Ottoman architectural historiography by examining the intellectual medium during the late Ottoman period. More precisely, it examines how the history and theory of Ottoman architecture were initially established by Tanzimat (Reform) intelligentsia with the publication of Usûl-i Mimâri-i Osmani (Fundamentals of Ottoman Architecture) (1873). It addresses how the text was later comprehended and criticized by their successors, who utilized it to constitute their own vision of Turkish national architecture. By detailing the rise of the Turkish nationalist movement and the transition from Ottomanism to Turkism as the dominant identity, this article highlights the demand for the materialization of a national architecture as a component of the cultural construction of a national architectural style and the role of new public buildings as the site of nationalizing endeavors at the beginning of the twentieth century. Finally, this article problematizes the extent to which these new constructions can be deemed “national” by investigating the works of a pioneer figure of architecture, Kemaleddin Bey’s writings and the design and construction of his dormitory building, the Fifth Vakıf Han, in Istanbul.

This article examines modernist-nationalist thought on Sufi lodges during the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic via the controversial novel Nur Baba (1922) by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu. Widely translated and the basis of the first-ever Turkish motion picture, Nur Baba depicts a debauched Sufi lodge in turn-of-the-century Istanbul where drug use, alcoholism, and illicit amorous liaisons run amok. The novel played an important role in shaping public perceptions of Sufi lodges in the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire. This piece explores the novel's place among early 20th-century critiques of Sufism, its approach to national history, its historical setting (during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II), and its close relationship to the intellectual concerns of the Second Constitutional Period (1908–18). It argues for a revised understanding of the novel's historical setting and contends that the novel employs a combination of moralistic critique and romantic nostalgia that is central to modernist-nationalist treatments of Sufism that instrumentalize Sufi culture for nation-building purposes.