Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy (Soas Routledgecurzon Studies on the Middle East)

373 Pages·2005·6.02 MB·English

by  Elisabe A–zdalga

Late Ottoman Society
This volume brings together a fascinating set of essays dealing with intellectual
developments in late Ottoman society. Under the impact of European
expansionism and modernization the Ottoman Empire underwent profound
transformations. Important features were the development of a market economy
and modern political and administrative structures; the splitting up of the empire
into separate nation-states; and the coming into being of a professional middle
class and various groups of modern intellectuals.
Addressing a rapidly modernizing period in late Ottoman history, which so far
has been under-explored, this book considers the relative diversity of intellectual
streams of thought of the decades preceding the 1908 Young Turk revolution.
Through the chapters the reader will make the acquaintance of the following:
• outstanding personalities such as the Ottoman historian, Ahmed Cevdet, the
radical atheist, Abdullah Cevdet, and the nationalist/ socialist, Ziya Gökalp;
• intellectual movements like the Westerners (Garpçılar) part of the larger
Young Turk opposition;
• ideologies like pan-Islamism, constitutionalism and liberalism;
• religious institutions like the state mufti;
• educational institutions like the Mülkiye (School of Public Administration) and
the Christian community schools;
• printing and publishing activities, including the women’s magazine Hanımlara
mahsûs gazete (the Ladies’ Own Gazette).
The discussion of the cultural and intellectual legacy of late Ottoman society is not
limited to modern Turkey but includes former Ottoman provinces such as Albania
and Syria.

Elisabeth Özdalga is Professor of Sociology at the Middle East Technical
University in Ankara. Özdalga, who is also affiliated to Göteborg University in
Sweden on a part-time basis has also been the director of the Swedish Research
Institute in Istanbul. She is the editor of The Naqshbandis in Western and Central
Asia: Change and Continuity (1999) and the author of The Veiling Issue (1998).
SOAS/RoutledgeCurzon Studies on the Middle East
Series Editors
Benjamin C.Fortna,
SOAS, University of London
Ulrike Freitag,
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

This series features the latest disciplinary approaches to Middle Eastern Studies. It
covers the Social Sciences and the Humanities in both the premodern and modern
periods of the region. While primarily interested in publishing single-authored
studies, the series is also open to edited volumes on innovative topics, as well as
textbooks and reference works.
1. Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia
The Umma below the Winds
Michael Francis Laffan
2. Russian-Muslim Confrontation in the Caucasus
Alternative Visions of the Conflict between Imam Shamil and the Russians,
1830–1859
Thomas Sanders, Ernest Tucker and G.M.Hamburg
3. Late Ottoman Society
The Intellectual Legacy
Edited by Elisabeth Özdalga
Late Ottoman Society
The Intellectual Legacy
Edited by Elisabeth Özdalga
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2005
by RoutledgeCurzon
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection
of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2005 Editorial matter and selection, Elisabeth Özdalga; individual
chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN 0-203-48138-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-68116-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-34164-7 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Contributors x
Preface xii
Acknowledgements xv
Abbreviations xvi
Introduction 1
ELISABETH ÖZDALGA
1 Ottoman sources of Kemalist thought 13
ERIK-JAN ZÜRCHER
2 Blueprints for a future society: late Ottoman materialists on 27
science, religion, and art
ŞÜKRÜ HANIOĞLU
3 Whom did Ahmed Cevdet represent? 117
CHRISTOPH K.NEUMANN
4 Women in late Ottoman intellectual history 135
ELIZABETH B.FRIERSON
5 Turban and fez: ulema as opposition 163
İSMAIL KARA
6 Pan-Islamism in practice: the rhetoric of Muslim unity and its 203
uses
ADEEB KHALID
7 ‘Kütüp ve Resail-i Mevkute’: printing and publishing in a 227
multi-ethnic society
JOHANN STRAUSS
8 Christian community schools during the Ottoman reform 257
period
AKŞIN SOMEL
vi
9 Levantine state muftis: an Ottoman legacy? 277
JAKOB SKOVGAARD-PETERSEN
10 Albanian students of the Mekteb-i Mülkiye: social networks 291
and trends of thought
NATHALIE CLAYER
Appendix: Biographies of Albanian students of the Mekteb-i 313
Mülkiye
NATHALIE CLAYER
Index 345
Illustrations
Cover: A postcard from the year of the Young Turk Revolution. The person in the
middle is Sultan Abdülhamid II. Source : The Archive of the Turkish Historical
Society, Ankara.
1.1 Yusuf Akçura (1876–1935; second from left) during the War of
Independence. Source : The Archive of the Turkish Historical Society,
Ankara.
4.1 Schoolgirl prizewinners. This image from Resimli Gazete 16 (31 January
1895) shows five schoolgirls who had won awards from the magazine
whose name is inscribed on the placards in their hands, with the caption
‘Five little students from among the girls who, in a bounty of learning and
acquiring skill and knowledge in the Boarding and Daytime Girls’ Crafts
Schools under the protection of His Highness the Padishah, investor in
knowledge, are signs of Islamic sharpness of intelligence’. Source: Private
collection of author.
4.2 Advertisements in Greek and faux Japanese styles. These two
advertisements from Hanımlara mahsûs gazete show the sorts of ordinary
goods advertised in family magazines, olive oils and ‘exotic’ but
inexpensive Japanese imports. The Greek lettering in the one and the faux
Japanese in the other show the cosmopolitanism aspired to by Istanbul’s
editors and readers, even as the Greek advertiser is at pains to point out his
Ottoman trademark, signalling that his is a local Ottoman product.
(Pappadapoglou olive oil, 2 June 1904, p. 6; Nakamura dry goods, 25 June
1903, p. 356). Source: Istanbul University Library.
4.3 Woman at a writing desk. This illustration from the November 1896 issue
of Hanımlara mahsûs gazete bears the caption: ‘This woman (kadın) is very
advanced in the art of writing: thinking very hard about what she will write,
she puts it down on paper. She writes, thinking and thinking. Imagine what
beautiful works she is creating!’ Hanımlara mahsûs gazete 87
(19 November 1896), p. 4. Source : Istanbul University Library.
4.4 Effects of corsetry. Two sets of images here convey ambivalence towards
Western fashions and practices, the three illustrations on the top and right
show a corseted women and the dreadful effects of the corset on her ribs
and internal organs, meant to illustrate an article from June 1904 on the
dangers of corsets; the image of a woman clothed at the bottom left is a
standard type of illustration for a son moda libaslar (clothes in the latest
fashion) section, appearing in April 1904. Hanımlara mahsûs gazete 16
viii
(30 June 1904), pp. 245, 7 (28 April 1904), p. 105. Source: Istanbul
University Library.
4.5 Women boating. Front cover of the 1 April 1919 issue of İnci (Pearl)
magazine. Note that while one woman is being helped into the boat in her
high heels, the other woman has taken the oars to row. Rowing as a sport
practised in American and British girls’ schools and women’s colleges was
a frequent topic of discussion in the family press from the 1890s onward, as
an argument for women’s physical fitness—within the bounds of femininity
and propriety, of course. Source : Private collection of author.
5.1 Turban and fez. Photographs of four ulema, members of the second 1908
Parliament: 1. Ahmet Mahir Efendi from Katamonu (sheikh of a Sufi
order); 2. Abdulaziz Mecdi Efendi from Balıkesir (member of a Sufi order);
3. Nasuhizade Asım Efendı (member of a large Sufi family); 4. Hayri Bey
from Niğde, who, in spite of the fact that he belonged to the ulema was
dressed in fez and necktie, a practice for which he was criticized. He
became şeyhülislam in 1914.
5.2 The cover of the pamphlet İkinci Hutbe, written by Tunali Hilmi.
6.1 Title page of Islam Dünyası, a journal published in Istanbul by Abdürreşid
İbrahim
6.2 Abdurauf Fitrat in Bukhara, c. 1920. Photo courtesy of Tsentral’nyi
gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kinofonofotodokumentov Respubliki Uzbekistan,
Tashkent.
10.1 1888’s Mülkiyeli graduates. Source: Ali Çankaya, Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve
Mülkiyeliler, vol. III, Ankara, 1968–69, p. 286.
10.2 1893’s Mülkiyeli graduates in the physics class in 1891. Source: Ali
Çankaya, Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler, vol. III, Ankara, 1968–69,
p. 500.
10.3 Shahin Kolonja’s newspaper Drita (The Light). The caricature depicts
Sheikh Yahya of Yemen flooring Sultan Abdulhamid II.
10.4 Excerpt from a biography of Rauf Fico in a Foreign Office Document
maintained by Bardhyl Fico.
11.1 Shahin Kolonja. Source: Leskovikli Mehmed Rauf, İttihat ve terraki ne idi,
Istanbul, 1911; 1991, 2nd edn, p. 18.
11.2 Nexhip Draga. Source: Ali Çankaya, Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler,
vol. III, Ankara, 1968–69, p. 513.
11.3 Iljaz Vrioni. Source: Kaliopi Naska, Këshilli kombëtar 1920, Tirana, 2000,
p. 113.
11.4 Bahri Omari. Source: Sejfi Vllamasi, Ballafaqime politike në Shqipëri,
1897–1942 (Kujtime dhe vlerësime historike), Tirana, Marin Barleti, 1995,
p. 505.
11.5 Mehdi Frashëri. Source: Një rrugë ende pa krye, Tirana, 2000, cover.
11.6 Ali Asllani. Source: Bardosh Gaçe, Ali Asllani në kujtimet dhe studimet
letrare, Tirana, 1997, p. 39.
ix
11.7 Mustafa Kruja. Source: Mustafa Kruja, Anthologji historike, Tirana, Sejko,
Elbasan, 2001, cover.
11.8 Sulejman Delvina. Source: Kaliopi Naska, Këshilli kombëtar 1920, Tirana,
2000, p. 53.
11.9 Abdurrahman Dibra. Source: Sejfi Vllamasi, Ballafaqime politike në
Shqipëri, 1897–194), Tirana, 2000, 2nd edn, p. 517.
11.10 Nezir Remzi Leskoviku. Source: Ali Çankaya, Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve
Mülkiyeliler, vol. III, Ankara, 1968–69, p. 627.