Avner Wishnitzer

Wishnitzer received his PhD in 2009 from Tel Aviv University,^[7] where he is a professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History.^[8] His research focuses on the social and cultural history of the late Ottoman period.

His 2015 book Reading Clocks alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire analyzes the evolving temporal systems, daily rhythms, and the meaning of time among the Ottoman elite during the long nineteenth century. The book centers on two parallel stories: the transition from a patrimonial tradition of time to a legal-rational system, and the gradual replacement of Ottoman clock-keeping methods by European timekeeping practices. He draws on a diverse range of sources, including poetry, military schedules, ferry timetables, and political cartoons to describe late Ottoman temporality. He explores how time reflected the empire's societal structures and underscores the role of state-driven reforms in the emergence of modern temporality, marking the Ottoman Empire as an unusual case where this shift was more state-imposed than driven by industrial capitalism.^[9][10]

In his 2021 book As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark, he explores the Ottoman night in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, showing how darkness shaped everyday life, spirituality, and politics. He reveals the night as both threatening and liberating, while a time of fear and retreat for many, also a time of illicit trade, entertainment, and rebellion. His work highlights how the state alternately tolerated and profited from illegal night-time activities while using grand illuminations to project power and piety. Reviewers of As Night Falls note that by situating these practices alongside but distinct from European traditions, Wishnitzer offers one of the first sustained accounts of how night was lived and controlled in the Ottoman world.^[11][12]

• Wishnitzer, Avner (2015). Reading Clocks alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-25786-0.^[9][10][13]
• Wishnitzer, Avner (2021). As Night Falls: Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-83214-4.^{[11][12][14][15][16]}