The late Ottoman city in pieces: technologies, rhythms, frictions

This article examines three distinct late Ottoman encounters—timber construction following the 1894 earthquake, the imagined form of electricity in Ahmed Fâik’s Monsieur Elektrik, before it had fully entered everyday life, and the experience of the bicycle in Ahmet Tevfik’s Velosipet ile Bir Cevelan—through the lens of temporal frictions that shaped technological experience in the empire. It foregrounds how technologies entered Ottoman society through asynchronous rhythms, unsettling both linear narratives of progress and assumptions of traditional continuity. In this respect, the article examines socio-technical change in late nineteenth-century Istanbul without reproducing the assumptions of Eurocentric narratives of development or the static imaginary of the Islamic city. These case studies illustrate how materials once deemed ‘obsolete’ regained functional value, how technological imaginaries circulated ahead of infrastructure, and how devices were reinterpreted through bodily engagement and everyday negotiation. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS), the article adopts a socio-technical perspective to argue that technologies were neither simply imported nor externally imposed, but rather redefined through local encounters. In doing so, it challenges both essentialist readings of the “Islamic city” and universalist claims of Western modernity, offering an alternative historiography of urban transformation grounded in improvisation, affectivity, and the spatial-temporal rhythms of everyday life.