Review of Ahmet Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire: Late Ottoman Empire’s concerted effort to forge a modern ...imperial identity to better position itself within the emerging world system was accompanied by a proto-nationalist desire for an authentic cultural past. In the field of art and architecture, the result was a new interest and patriotic pride in the Islamic artistic and architectural heritage of the Empire, along with an intense period of creative engagement with European artistic and scholarly discourses. The book offers a meticulously historicized account of what emerged as a major intellectual effort to construct a genealogy for Ottoman architecture, to make it intelligible in terms of Western architectural theory and above all, to recast it as a historically evolving style capable of revival in the modern world. In doing so, it critically engages with recent scholarly debates on modernity, historicism, romanticism, orientalism, nationalism, revivalism, cosmopolitanism, authenticity, eclecticism and hybridity among other topics. Taking issue with both the received “westernization paradigm” and its companion, the notorious “decline thesis” in terms of which the architecture of Ottoman Tanzimat has long been written, it gives us a more complex, more nuanced, more cosmopolitan and more ambivalent picture. As such, it makes a major contribution to Ottoman/ Turkish studies, to the historiography of Islamic architecture and to cross-cultural studies in general.
The Macedonian Islamic Religious Community IVZ does not plan to appeal to young ethnic Albanians not to go to the Syrian battlefields. Unlike its Kosovar counterpart, our community believes that this ...phenomenon is not as widely spread as the media report. Meanwhile, the family of Skopje-born Osmani is preparing for the funeral of 22-year-old Alim, who was killed in clashes between the rebel forces and President Bashar Al Assad's army. According to the information from Syria, Alim Osmani from Skopje is the fourth ethnic Albanian from Macedonia to be killed in combat there. Osmani left last summer. The media report that shortly before New Year he wrote to his mother via Facebook, saying "do not cry for me because I am not coming back; pray for me instead." Last summer, Imer Nimetula aged 38, originally from Skopje's Grcec village, was killed near Damascus. He was fighting on the side of the rebels and was killed in an ambush set by Al Assad's forces. Previously, Skopje-born Sami Abdulahu was killed, and before him, in late May, Rasim Zeqiri from Gostivar's Beloishta village.
Alim Osmani is the fourth Albanian from Macedonia to have been killed in Syria. In May 2013 28-year-old Rasim Zeqiri from the Gostivar village of Belovista, who had been living in Austria for a ...while, was killed. He had gone to Syria eight months earlier and he had fought with the Jabhat al-Nusra forces. Skopje imam Sami Abdulahu was killed afterward, while Imer Nimetula, alias Abu Zijat, from the Skopje village of Grcec was killed in mid-August.
Announcer Candidate for the mayor of northern Mitrovica from the Srpska citizens' initiative said that he cannot accept the results from the re-run, raising suspicion over manipulation of ballot ...while it was transported to the results counting centre in Fushe Kosove Kosovo Polje in Serbian. OSCE mission in Kosovo have denied claims of unilaterally acting outside their mandate when transporting the ballot material to Fushe Kosove. Head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo, Ambassador Jean-Claude Schlumberger has in the meantime denied claims of alleged inappropriate action and interference with the will of the voters in northern Mitrovica on 17 November. While reminding about the facilitator role of the OSCE in this election, Ambassador Schlumberger rejected the claims made in Serbian media, calling them incorrect and disorientating. He said in a press release that it is not true that the OSCE has acted unanimously and outside its mandate when it transported the ballot material to Fushe Kosove. Schlumberger explained that OSCE made a recommendation and the KQZ has accepted it.
Menduh Thaci leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA - PDSh in Albanian has offered Rufi Osmani leader of the National Democratic Party, NDP - RDK in Albanian a merger of the two parties, ...Dnevnik has learned from a senior DPA official. Members of Thaci's party say that commissions of the two parties have already been in touch over the proposed initiative, but they have refused to reveal further details.
While the DUI - as expected - stood in defence of the government's positions and assessed that the decision of the Branko Crvenkovski leader of the Social Democratic Alliance of Macedonia,SDSM-led ...opposition in favour of a boycott of the March local elections was not the real way to enact their policies, Rufi Osmani's opposition NDP was in favour of the Assembly boycott, but against an election boycott. The stand of Thaci's opposition DPA came as a surprise, though, because it neither upheld the Assembly boycott nor the announcement of the local election boycott. Thus, Thaci has definitively shown that he is through with Crvenkovski and the Macedonian opposition bloc, although for almost a year they had been discussing mutual cooperation in the local elections. Thaci explained this with the argument that he had been informed that such scenarios would emerge and that international representatives had advised him not to be part of them. After his meeting with the UK ambassador, the DPA leader made the final decision and said he did not intend to boycott the local elections, but that he was against an early general election.
Likewise, an uncertain face-off is anticipated in the town of Struga. It was precisely this municipality that was the main reason for the DPA to break the cooperation deal with the SDSM. Previous ...elections showed that the municipality of Struga is not lost for the ethnic Macedonians regardless of the Albanians' dominance that came as a result of the municipal territorial rearrangement in 2004. Zijadin Sela, one of DPA's most vociferous Assembly deputies is the only nominated candidate for Struga. The SDSM has not yet officially presented its best candidate there and the DUI is not disclosing if it will field current Struga Mayor Ramiz Merko for a third term. Centar Municipality is anticipated to be the main area of a showdown between the VMRO-DPMNE and SDSM in the capital. The Social Democrats have not had a Centar mayor since 2000. However, this left-wing party has a stable voter base in this municipality and that proved to be the case in the two previous election cycles (in 2009 and 2011). The fact that the "Skopje 2014" project, which the opposition has promised to repeal, is yet another argument in the predictions that this election competition in Centar Municipality will be quite interesting. Many renowned personalities of the governing VMRO-DPMNE are on the list of potential candidates for mayor of Centar. But, it is still uncertain as to who will compete against LDP Liberal Democratic Party leader Andrej Zernovski, a candidate of the opposition alliance. However, it is well known that Mihael Mladenovski, former SDSM Youth activist who is to run as an independent candidate, will mess up Zernovski's plans. Resen, a small municipality in the country's southeast, has come into focus out of the blue recently. First, because of the opposition's claims of fictitious voters there and lately because the former SDSM Mayor Dimitar Buzlevski's announced an independent candidacy. These events might ruin the opposition's plans for the SDSM's quick return to power in this municipality through the candidacy of Jordan Proevski.
Fondée au dix-neuvième siècle par un groupe de financiers de Londres, à l'initiative du gouvernement de Constantinople, afin d'être la banque d'émission de l'Empire ottoman, la Banque ottomane fut le ...produit à la fois de la volonté réformatrice de dirigeants turcs de l'époque et de l'expansion du capitalisme occidental à la recherche de nouveaux territoires à mettre en valeur. Dans l'esprit de ses fondateurs, le nouvel établissement ne bornerait pas ses activités à l'émission monétaire et au financement de l'Etat, il serait aussi une banque commerciale et une banque d'affaires promoteur d'entreprises de toute nature sur le territoire de l'empire. La prospérité de ce dernier conditionnait, en effet, celle de la banque elle-même. Ce triple rôle, la Banque impériale ottomane s'efforça de le remplir tout au long de la vie de l'Empire ottoman. Elle joua un rôle de tout premier plan dans le placement des emprunts turcs sur les marchés occidentaux, celui de Paris avant tout. Son réseau de succursales s'en vint peu à peu à couvrir tout le territoire de l'empire, en Europe, en Asie, en Afrique. Enfin, elle participa activement à la création de diverses sociétés de services publics et de chemin de fer. La banque devait nécessairement subir les contrecoups des crises qui affectèrent l'économie mondiale et des graves événements qui marquèrent les dernières décennies de l'Empire ottoman : guerre russo-turque, révolution jeune-turque, agitation des minorités, guerres balkaniques. La guerre 1914-1918 et ses séquelles en Orient entraînèrent la disparition de l'empire et le bouleversement de la carte politique. Ce fut la fin de la période « impériale » de la Banque ottomane.
