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Trusting in the Benevolence of the Caliph: Petitions to Abdülhamid II from British Female Converts to Islam
Abstract
The Abdullah Quilliam Society of Liverpool recently posted pictures and a video of the Victorian-era stove of the former Liverpool Muslim Institute (LMI; established in 1887). The caption and commentary implied that Abdullah Quilliam (1856-1932), an Anglo-convert to Islam, had single-handedly fed the poor in the late nineteenth century. There was no mention of other LMI members. It was another example of activists and historians ignoring the contribution of other Liverpool Muslims, especially female Muslims who played a critical role in the Institute’s activities. The female Liverpool Muslims were vibrant members in the LMI. They wrote articles and poems in the LMI’s publications, led charitable works, and participated in weekly meetings – contributions that are often missing in current historiography. There is an erasure of female British converts, which includes their interaction with British society, their attempts to integrate into the broader “Muslim world,” and their engagement with the Ottoman state. My paper describes Ottoman officials’ observations about the Liverpool Muslims, focusing on what the officials wrote about the female converts. I use the Ottoman Archives to narrate the female converts’ appeals and petitions to Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1909) when they faced hardships. They wrote to Abdülhamid II with confidence that their “Caliph” would acknowledge their concerns and act on their behalf, despite not being Ottoman subjects. I argue that the women petitioned Abdülhamid based off of the late nineteenth century pan-Islamic discourse about the sultan-caliph’s interest in protecting Muslims outside his well-protected domains. I explain how the female converts engaged with Ottoman officials and Abdülhamid II as trans-imperial subjects, believing themselves to be part of the idea of “the Muslim world,” governed by Abdülhamid’s religious authority and benevolence. Some female converts gauged their faithfulness to Islamic practices based on their perceptions of Islam as practiced in the Middle East and other majority Muslim lands. For this reason, they requested that Abdülhamid pay for them to relocate and live amongst “true believers.” The Ottoman Archives enhance our understanding of how Ottoman officials viewed British Muslim converts (both men and women). I foreground the perspectives of British female converts through Ottoman documents to explore the relationship between the Ottomans and Liverpool Muslims in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Europe
Islamic World
North America
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries