Reflections of the Memory of the Poem onto the Memory of the City: Ankara in the 19th Century Poetry

The aim of this article is to project the appearance of Ankara in the 19th century by considering the image created by examples of classical poetry of the period , and then interpret them onto the axis of city-space-memory.Poetry has certain properties which make it an extremely important source for use in interdisciplinary cultural history studies.The aim of this study was to shed light on the contribution of the literary world of the age to the detailed historiography of Ankara in the late Ottoman period.As part of the research, one hundred and fifteen divans were scanned, with the material in twelve divans being taken as a basis.Every poem about Ankara located during this process has been included in the object of the research, and with the new maps of meaning that emerged, a universe of texts open to plural reading was established.The images depicting the landscape of Ankara during the 19th century through the poetry of the period are as follows: construction and reconstruction (repair, expansion, renewal) activities in various types of architecture; governor appointments to the province of Ankara; some townships and districts of Ankara; public works, order and security of the city; janissary tracking and investigation; rain after a long drought and famine; solving the water problem by improving the city's waterways; the construction of the Ankara railway and the arrival of the first train; settlement of Bosnian immigrants in the city; divan publication and mesnevi commentary; name etymology, geographical and cultural symbol representations of the city.