Losing Istanbul offers an intimate history of empire, following the
rise and fall of a generation of Arab-Ottoman imperialists living in
Istanbul. Mostafa Minawi shows how these men and women negotiated their
loyalties and guarded their privileges through a microhistorical study
of the changing social, political, and cultural currents between 1878
and the First World War. He narrates lives lived in these turbulent
times-the joys and fears, triumphs and losses, pride and
prejudices-while focusing on the complex dynamics of ethnicity and race
in an increasingly Turco-centric imperial capital.
Drawing on archival records, newspaper articles, travelogues, personal
letters, diaries, photos, and interviews, Minawi shows how the loyalties
of these imperialists were questioned and their ethnic identification
weaponized. As the once diverse empire comes to an end, they are forced
to give up their home in the imperial capital. An alternative history of
the last four decades of the Ottoman Empire, Losing Istanbul frames
global pivotal events through the experiences of Arab-Ottoman imperial
loyalists who called Istanbul home, on the eve of a vanishing imperial
world order.