Frontiers of the Ottoman Imagination: Studies in Honour of Rhoads Murphey

331 Pages·2014·10.261 MB·English

by  Marios Hadjianastasis

Frontiers of the Ottoman Imagination
Rhoads Murphey with Gaye Bye and Sylvia Campbell, staff at the Institute of
Archaeology and Antiquity and Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek
Studies who offered great support to Rhoads in his time at Birmingham
Frontiers of the Ottoman
Imagination
Studies in Honour of Rhoads Murphey
Edited by
Marios Hadjianastasis
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: A view of the city of Edirne. Painting by Tayyip Yılmaz, 2007.
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Contents
Introduction  1
Marios Hadjianastasis
1 Tekfur, fasiliyus and kayser: Disdain, Negligence and Appropriation
of Byzantine Imperial Titulature in the Ottoman World  5
Hasan Çolak
2 Slave Labour in the Early Ottoman Rural Economy:
Regional Variations in the Balkans during the 15th Century  29
Konstantinos Moustakas
3 The Topographic Reconstruction of Ottoman Dimetoka: Issues of
Periodization and Morphological Development  44
Ourania Bessi
4 Being Tiryaki Hasan Pasha: The Textual Appropriations of an
Ottoman Hero  86
Claire Norton
5 Ottoman Hilʾat: Between Commodity and Charisma  111
Amanda Phillips
6 Between the Porte and the Lion: Identity, Politics and Opportunism
in Seventeenth Century Cyprus  139
Marios Hadjianastasis
7 The Carta Incognita of Ottoman Athens  168
Katerina Stathi
8 Lingering Questions Regarding the Lineage, Life & Death of Barbaros
Hayreddin Paşa  185
Heath W. Lowry
9 Entre les insurgés reaya et les indisciplinés ayan : la révolution grecque
et la réaction de l’Etat ottoman  213
Sophia Laiou
vi Contents
10 Regional Reform as an Ambition: Charles Blunt Sen., His Majesty’s
Consul in Salonica, during His Early Years in the Ottoman Empire
(1835–39)  229
Michael Ursinus
11 Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Americana  259
Johann Strauss
12 The End of Bismarck’s “Pretended Disinterestedness” and a New Era
for German-Ottoman Relations: The Ottoman Special Mission to
Berlin and Reşid Bey’s Report in 1881  282
Naci Yorulmaz
Bibliography of the Publications of Rhoads Murphey  313
Compiled by Ourania Bessi
Index  318
Introduction
Marios Hadjianastasis
On a wet and windy morning in the West Midlands in September 1998, a young
and hopeful scholar of Ottoman history made his way into the University of
Birmingham’s Arts Building for the first time. Entering the lift, he pressed “4”
and the lift shakily reached the top floor. He heard the sound of the doors open
but could not understand: the doors facing him were still closed. He stood
in the lift staring at the closed doors for a fair few seconds, before he finally
realised that the lift doors on the fourth floor opened on the other side, behind
him. He made his way to reception, which was (and still is) behind a window
with a sliding glass, and asked Gaye Bye if he could see Rhoads Murphey. “Sure,
he’s in room 426, just along the corridor—he’s expecting you” she replied.
Approaching the room, he noticed Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d
Astronomer” pinned to the notice board. He knocked, and at the sound of
“hello” entered and met for the first time a man who would have a profound
impact on his development as a scholar and a teacher in the next six years and
beyond. Buried in piles of papers, books, maps, journals and student assign-
ments, Rhoads Murphey, all snow-white head and blue eyes smiled and wel-
comed him to the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies
at Birmingham, and into the wide and wonderful world of Ottoman studies.
To this day, I still don’t know how Rhoads finds anything in his office, and
some of his hand-written comments still require advanced palaeography skills
to decipher. Sixteen years later, I still find myself in these corridors, meeting
with Rhoads regularly to discuss things, his teaching, my research, and to seek
his help with what to me looks like an indecipherable manuscript (and to him
is a doddle). And yes, the same Walt Whitman poem is pinned to the board.
Rhoads Murphey has been an anchor to me and to his other students. He is not
only a point of reference but also a source of knowledge that in itself serves as
a work of reference. “Rhoads would know” I often find myself thinking, before
I pick up the phone, or take the three-minute walk to his office, whose door
is always ajar. Rhoads has always been welcoming and most supportive of his
students, and there were many times when I just knocked on his door to say
hello, only to be there after 45 minutes, discussing rebellion, military devel-
opments in the sixteenth century, or nationalist historiography. After a career
which brought him into contact with some of the greatest greats of Ottoman
history such as Halil İnalcık, Victor Menage and Tibor Halasi-Kun, and took
him from Chicago to New York and London via the Middle East and Turkey,
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2 hadjianastasis
Rhoads arrived to Birmingham in 1992 to work at the Centre for Byzantine,
Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies. He taught subjects on Ottoman, Turkish
and Mediterranean history, and supervised postgraduate students who
researched a wide variety of topics, some of which are reflected in this v olume.
At Birmingham Rhoads joined a group of scholars within what was—and still
is—a unique platform for discussion, exchange and scholarship. The pres-
ence of Byzantinists, Ottomanists and Modern-ists who all studied the same
geographical, economic and social space and often shared research interests,
helped create a vibrant and fruitful ground for research. Rhoads found in
Anthony Bryer, John Haldon and Ruth Macrides, among others, colleagues and
friends in a fertile environment of mutual support.1 It was here where Rhoads’
seminal work on Ottoman Warfare (1999) was created, a piece of work which
is rightly considered a reference point for Ottoman history scholars. Rhoads
has published numerous articles, demonstrating deep scholarship and offer-
ing keystone-like rigour and analytical quality upon which others could rely.
He studied Ottoman court culture and Ottoman historiography extensively.
His monograph on Ottoman sovereignty (2008) offers a deep insight into court
traditions and culture, as well as their evolution through the Ottoman times.
His monograph on Ottoman Historians and Historiography (2009) demon-
strates deep understanding of the Ottoman historian’s craft, the context in
which he operated and the traditions which informed their work. Rhoads’ own
work becomes once again a solid foundation upon which others build. In 2013
Rhoads was honoured by the Turkish Historical Society (Türk Tarih Kurumu)
with an honorary membership as recognition of his contribution to the field.
Rhoads settled in Birmingham with his wife Margo, who is herself a highly
accomplished medical doctor and a constant source of stability and support
for Rhoads in his career. Their two children, Oliver and William, are a credit to
their parents and are currently on their own career and life paths as emerging
scholars and historians.
Rhoads’ trajectory from 1992 to his retirement in 2014 means that he has
lived through radical change in uk higher education, change which has greatly
affected the work of academics. The increasing corporatisation of universities,
the introduction and increase in tuition fees, and the creation of administra-
tive and management structures which have mimicked the corporate world are
often at odds with the tradition Rhoads and his peers came from. Theirs was a
world where thinking time, depth and quality of research, and the teaching of
1  Two people who offered Rhoads great support and friendship over the years, Gaye Bye and
Sylvia Campbell, are included in the frontispiece image at Rhoads’ request as a gesture of
gratitude.
Introduction 3
students based on these values were the order of the day. The new world is one
where depth and quality are compromised by quantity and measurability. The
drive to monitor, measure and prove the impact of research and teaching and
justify spending goes beyond the instincts which turn good students to bril-
liant researchers, teachers and academics. We find ourselves in an increasingly
market-driven environment, where “quality control” and “cost effectiveness”
have become euphemistic terms for much-hated interventions and job cuts.
In the last ten years or so we have seen Greek and Turkish language teaching
scrapped, the unique Eastern Mediterranean History degree programme abol-
ished, and the constant threat of further closures and redundancies. Despite
all this, Rhoads and his colleagues are still able to produce great research and
support the next generation of scholars. His influence on the field and on his
surroundings will remain.
But we are not here to lament the demise of academia. We are here to cel-
ebrate Rhoads’ achievement as a scholar of Ottoman history. And what better
way is there to do that than showcase the work of his students and colleagues?
Besides, beyond his publications, this is another result of Rhoads’ work: his
impact on his students’ progress and achievement cannot be underestimated.
Editing a volume to honour Rhoads Murphey is not an easy task. To begin
with, his own academic interests are so diverse and wide that to identify a
theme which mirrored those would be a futile task. To make matters worse,
Rhoads’ students were (almost) as diverse in their own interests. Therefore,
it was decided early on that the volume would look more like the rich mosaic
that is Rhoads Murphey and his contribution to the field of Ottoman studies.
The volume is organised chronologically, and represents a journey through
the time and space of the Ottoman Empire, what went before and what
came after. Starting from the imperial centre, we touch upon the Balkans,
the Mediterranean, and even take America in our stride. The volume offers
a unique and dynamic contribution to the field of Ottoman studies, combin-
ing the work of emerging scholars with that of more seasoned campaigners.
The contributors to the volume are either Rhoads’ students or colleagues who
appreciate him as a man and a scholar.
Starting from the period when Byzantium gave way to the Ottoman Empire,
Hasan Çolak discusses terminological borrowings between Byzantium and the
Ottomans. He brings to our attention the use of terms such as fasilyus, tek-
fur and kayser and reveals their contextual meaning. Kostas Moustakas goes
on to provide some excellent observations on slave labour in the fifteenth-
century Balkans. Ourania Bessi makes an important contribution to Ottoman
and Balkan urban history with her topographic reconstruction of Ottoman
Dimetoka. Then we move from the physical to the textual, in Claire Norton’s