Cultural heritage of 19th century Mediterranean civilizations in the light of Yıldız Palace Albums

The Yıldız Palace Albums, created with the personal curiosity of the Ottoman Sultan Sultan Abdülhamid II, is one of the most important visual archives of the 19th century. In the Yıldız Palace Albums, which contain 36,585 photographs in 918 albums in total, many buildings, monuments and sculptures from ancient times, many of which were photographed for the first time, are very valuable for the preservation and transfer of cultural heritage to future generations. These albums include photographs taken during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) in the late Ottoman Empire, which ruled for hundreds of years in the geographies where Mediterranean civilizations emerged, as well as photographs taken by travelers of the period. The Yıldız Palace Albums are also very important for the science of archaeology in the geography where Mediterranean civilizations developed and spread. The knowledge of the many monumental structures and archaeological findings unearthed in the historical and cultural geography of the Mediterranean, which is the source of a significant portion of today's scientific data and which contains extremely rich data in terms of archaeology, art history and epigraphy, has not been sufficiently shared with the peoples living in the same geography today. In addition to historical and cultural geographies such as Anatolia, Thrace, the Balkans and Mesopotamia, the albums reflect the traces of the Mediterranean cultural basin from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine to Egypt and North Africa (Tunisia, Libya, Algeria). In addition, Mediterranean countries such as Italy, France, Malta and Spain The albums also include photographs of the cultural heritage of Mediterranean countries such as the Mediterranean, mainland Greece and the Aegean islands. Among the important data in the Yıldız Palace Albums, which also include visual documents from the beginning and infancy of archaeology in Anatolia, are Osman Hamdi Bey's excavations of Nemrut and the story of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, as well as the Hittite and Assyrian excavations carried out by foreigners in Anatolia in the 19th century. This rich image, which has been around for 150 years, sheds light on the present day as if it were taken yesterday, and as prescient as if it speaks to the future. Many mounds and ruins in the Mediterranean cultural basin, which are documents of the thousands of years of history of a vast geography where state names and borders have changed, are known by different names today. Due to wars and terrorism, many artifacts in regions such as Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon have been destroyed or destroyed. The Yıldız Palace Albums, which contain thousands of photographs reflecting the rich cultural heritage of the Mediterranean civilizations, are a valuable source of 19th-century data and this rich visual data allows for social, economic, political and cultural readings as well as retrospective studies on the cultural heritage of Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Key Words: Yıldız Sarayı Albümleri, Sultan II. Abdülhamid, Fotoğraf, Kültürel Miras, Akdeniz Uygarlıkları, Eski Çağ, Oryantalizm.