World-renowned historian Mehmet Genç dies at age 87

ISTANBUL

World-renowned Ottoman historian Mehmet Genç has passed away at the age of 87.

Genç, a retired professor of Marmara University, was receiving treatment for lung cancer.

Genç graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences in 1958.

He worked with Ömer Lütfi Barkan as an economics history assistant at the Institute of Turkish Economic History at the Faculty of Economics of Istanbul University, which he entered in 1960. In 1983, he started working as a lecturer at Marmara University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of History.

Genç educated many students in the History Department of Marmara University until his retirement. He gave undergraduate and graduate lectures on Ottoman Economic History. After his retirement in 1999, he gave undergraduate and graduate lectures at Istanbul Technical University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Istanbul Bilgi University History Department, Istanbul University Faculty of Letters Department of Sociology and Istanbul Şehir University Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Department of History.

Many of Genç’s articles on the Ottoman economy were translated and republished in many languages such as English, French, Arabic and Greek.

An important part of these papers and articles was published as a book on the Ottoman Empire under the name of State and Economy in 2000 by Ötüken Publishing House with some additions. The work, which he prepared for publication with Erol Özvar in 2006, was published under the name of Ottoman Finance Institutions and Budgets.

Having received numerous awards, Genç was deemed worthy of the Presidential Culture and Art Grand Awards in the history category in 2015.

Genç, who never took a break from his academic life, had last been giving postgraduate courses at Marmara University.