Byzantium as a moral lesson: an analysis of Celal Nuri’s Rum ve Bizans

This article examines Celal Nuri [İleri]’s book Rum ve Bizans from the perspective of the author’s understanding of morality and examines the perception of Byzantine history in late Ottoman historiography. Celal Nuri, one of the most productive and widely read authors of the Second Constitutional and Early Republican periods, was influential with his ideas during his life. This article aims to contribute to understanding the roots of the negative perception of Byzantine heritage by examining Celal Nuri’s Rum ve Bizans . The study positions itself between the depiction of Byzantine history as ‘immoral’ and the debates on moral decay in the Ottoman Empire between 1908 and 1918, suggesting that the two are mutually constitutive in shaping Celal Nuri’s historical narrative.