Materiality of Sanitation in the late Ottoman Empire: Urla (Klazomenai) Quarantine in Izmir

Abstract

The port cities of the Eastern Mediterranean such as Izmir (Smyrna), Salonica, and Beirut, where the first municipalities in the Ottoman Empire were founded, were also its major trade hubs. As one of the most important among them, Izmir saw immense and fluctuating flows of people and goods in the nineteenth century. By drawing on Ottoman archival sources, this paper examines the materiality of sanitation in Urla (Klazomenai) Quarantine in the late period of the empire. In particular, it focuses on the establishment and evolution of the quarantine facilities and on the usage of sanitation technology, particularly of sterilization machines (etüv) to reduce the spread of epidemic diseases such as cholera and plague. Attention is also paid to the role of the quarantine as an impulse for the building of urban infrastructures aimed at improving the city’s public health.