Ottoman Calendars as a Public Space: Readings of Daily Life and Memory Through Kuyūdat

This article focuses on the question of what the public nature of the paratext of Ottoman annual calendars (yıllık takvimler), a type with a highly technical and practical use in Ottoman knowledge production and writing traditions, can offer to studies of writing and reading culture as a manuscript. It does so by focusingon the unknown records (kuyūdat) found on the blank pages, in the margins, between the lines, and outside the frames of the calendars. Centering on the calendar collection (Nr. 165) in the Kandilli Rasathanesi Manuscripts Collection, the annual calendar in the Topkapı Sarayı Revan KöşküCollection (R.1711), and examples of kuyūdat in BnF Supplément turc 183, this study emphasizes that calendar pages, by ceasing to be merelytechnical palace products and becoming dynamic parts of social life and individual memory, have become publicized; furthermore, it highlights that calendars are not only carriers of memory but also dynamic spaces of communication.