Research Cooperation with the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
On May 4, 2022, Dr. Táňa Dluhošová, the Director of the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Orientální ústav AV ČR), and the Acting Director of the Max Weber Foundation’s Oriental Institute Istanbul, Dr. Richard Wittmann, signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding to establish a comprehensive research collaboration between their Prague and Istanbul-based research institutions. The Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences celebrates its centenary this year. Part of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) since 1993, the Institute currently employs a large number of outstanding Czech and international researchers with regional expertise on the Middle East from antiquity to the present, the Arab world, China, India, Israel, Iran, Japan, Southeast Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Republic of Turkey. For the scholars of the Orient-Institut as well as our partners in Turkey, this cooperation opens up excellent new opportunities for academic exchange in relation to existing research topics at the Institute as well as for comparative research on other regions, which the broad spectrum of regional expertise of the Prague partner institution makes possible.
2022/2023
Dr. Stefano Taglia, Oriental Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague
Cannabis, Cannabis Addicts and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire.
Image from Muallim Şövalye Hasan Bahri, Esrarkeşler, Istanbul: Şems Matbaası, 1912.
Stefano Taglia’s research lies at the intersection of bureaucratic and social history and is situated between the Hamidian and Unionist periods, in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. It interrogates the relationship between the state, cannabis, and cannabis users. Taglia analyses documents from the Ottoman archives, medical treatises, popular literature, and period journals, to understand how the Ottoman state positioned itself vis-à-vis the cultivation, distribution, and consumption of cannabis. He is interested in its take on members of society who had fallen into substance abuse – this becoming crucial when factoring in the possibility of the state becoming increasingly invested in recuperating those who had fallen into deep addiction and, thus, taking up a role similar to that of health provider. Additionally he analyses the nature and scope of botanical and medical treaties published in the period to assess the inspiration of such works in order to trace the flow of ideas across borders. These studies simultaneously offer an interesting and novel perspective in their assessment of prolonged consumption in comparison to the popular literature of the time treating the same subject, as the former highlights a growing emphasis on medical rather than moral aspects connected with cannabis use. Furthermore, Taglia aims to shed light on the differences, if any, between the Hamidian and Unionist regimes in their respective relationship with farming and selling cannabis and their treatment of users. He questions whether the supposedly freer system set up by the CUP was reflected in their treatment of such people at the margins.
Since 2014 Dr. Stefano Taglia is working as a researcher at the Oriental Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague. His research area is the history of the late Ottoman Empire, nationalism and minorities in the Middle East. Within the framework of the cooperation with the Oriental Institute Prague, which also provides for an exchange of researchers, Dr. Stefano Taglia is a visiting researcher at the Oriental Institute Istanbul. He holds a B.A. (International Affairs, John Cabot University, Rome) and a M.A. (Middle East Area Study SOAS London) in History, and a Ph.D. in Ottoman History (SOAS, The intellectual’s dilemma: Ahmet Rıza and Mehmet Sabahettin on reform and the future of the Ottoman Empire).