Sultan Mahmud II is known for one of the most ferocious anti-military acts in all of Turkish history. On June 15, 1826, he abolished the Janissaries, the Ottoman Empire’s omnipotent military forces with a long record of revolts against sultans they did not like. In one bold move, some 6,000 Janissaries were killed by new troops loyal to Mahmud, and the rest were exiled. When Mahmud exiled the dogs in Istanbul to one of the Prince Islands, however, the residents of the Ottoman capital rose up in a rare act of civil disobedience, forcing the sultan to bring the dogs back home.

Today, Istanbul is known as a cat city. This image was reinforced earlier this year with the installment of a statue memorializing Tombili, the town cat and feline symbol of the city, in his customary state of repose, as did the documentary “Kedi” (Turkish for “cat”). This summer, however, the dogs struck back with “The Four-Legged Municipality,” an exhibition at the Istanbul Research Institute.

“Images and writings from the 19th century show us that dogs were a very strong presence in the daily life of Istanbul,” Gulru Tanman, project manager for the exhibition, told Al-Monitor. “We have been preparing for this exhibition for one whole year, for which we supplemented the considerable documents and images in the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation with Pierre de Gigord’s archives.” De Gigord, a French businessman, assembled an impressive collection of photographs taken during the Ottoman era.

The 136-piece exhibition features photographs, travel journals, postcards, magazines, engravings and other media from the 19th and early 20th centuries that shed light on street dogs in Istanbul. Their presence in the daily lives of Istanbul residents was such that Cornucopia magazine headlined news of the exhibition “Citizen Canine.”