Director of the Center for Urban Studies and the faculty member of Istanbul Şehir University Department of History, Dr. Yunus Uğur directs the project, which is in the scope of TÜBİTAK 1002, named as “Spatialization of 19th Century Istanbul Tekkes: Settlement and Network Maps”. It aims to analyze the role of the tekkes from the socio-spatial point of view. With this pilot study to be conducted in Istanbul in a short period of 30 years (1850-1880), a test of resources (GTS program ArcGIS and social network analysis and visualization software Gephi) and the social-spatial perspective will be conducted in order to study past periods and other cities.
The project, which purposes to examine the historical and mystical dimensions and the spatial role of tekkes, has been designed as a pilot application of a more comprehensive study with time and space dimensions. In the 19th century, in a short period of 30 years (1850-1880) aimed at identifying and evaluating the tekkes of Istanbul and locating the settlement and network maps. The intention of the study is to prepare the ground for larger scale and comparative researches, including other cities.
Nearly 300 tekkes in Suriçi will be examined from the perspective of urban historiography!
Evaluating the project, Dr. Yunus Uğur, focused the certain social function of tekkes in social environments by starting from the period of the emergence of tekkes , which undertakes a certain social functions of these institutions, such as in the previous Islamic states in the vast geography of the Ottoman Empire where various tekkes were built as well as many tekkes belonging to various sects in Istanbul. The tekkes have played significant roles in cities in line with the needs of the social structure, such as housing, labor, socialization and urban service, but when we look at the current literature, there is little information about where the tekkes are located in the urban backbone and how they relate to other urban parts. This study will focus on understanding the relationship and distance of tekkes with the social, economic, political and cultural places in the city and among themselves in the city.
Dr. Yunus Uğur stated that this project aims at presenting the role of tekkes, which are a very important city institution, on spatial scale with new questions and methods and to determine the contributions of these institutions to the inner-city and inter-city networks of Ottoman cities. It was stated that they wanted to accomplish this pilot study, together with the students of the Center for Urban Studies, will be comprehensively examined the years between 1850 and 1880, in which Assembly of Meşâyih (Meclis-i Meşâyih) was founded, the 300 tekkes and Istanbul of that period. Yunus Ugur added that the project offers a new perspective and methodology to mysticism and urban history researches.
