Beşir Fuad (1852-1887), The First Ottoman Philosophical Materialist: His Life, Works and Ideas ABSTRACT: On 5 February 1887, around nine o'clock at night, Beşir Fuad, a former officer in the Ottoman army and an important Turkish intellectual who had contributed significantly to the debates about science and literature in the late Ottoman period, committed suicide in the private study of his house in Istanbul. Before committing suicide, he wrote letters to his friends, explaining the reasons for his action, as well as a brief note to the police, informing them that his death was a well-planned suicide and that they should not further bother his wife with a criminal investigation. Moreover, he decided to turn his suicide into a scientific experiment, and after injecting cocaine into his left arm and carefully cutting his veins in four different places with a razor, he calmly wrote on a sheet of paper about the effects of bleeding on the body and the feeling and sensation of death that it induced. Diverging significantly from the first generation of Tanzimat-era Ottoman intellectuals who also advocated the study of western science but justified their positions by explicitly or implicitly referring to the Islamic tradition, Beşir Fuad never used any religious arguments whatsoever to justify his position on science. In Beşir Fuad, we also see, for the first time, an Ottoman intellectual who consciously referred to the writings of German vulgar materialists, especially Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899), in order to elevate science to an almost metaphysical level, believing that science was the ultimate arbiter of “truth” in human life. For this reason alone, his works are worth studying. In fact, I argue that Beşir Fuad was the true founder of Ottoman materialism, which would subsequently become the preferred philosophy of a significant number of influential Ottoman intellectuals and statesmen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not to mention the founders of the future Turkish Republic. Therefore, his works and ideas are crucial to understand not only the intellectual currents of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods but also the early Republicans' rather uncompromising political attitude against religion. This paper discusses Fuad’s life and major works. Relying on primary sources, I explain Beşir Fuad's philosophical materialism and put them in the context of nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectual life. Finally, I expand on Beşir Fuad's literary ideas and his hard-headed defense of literary realism.

Ali Suavi was a journalist and a member of the Young Ottoman opposition group that was active in the late 1860s. He is best known for his failed attempt to rescue the deposed Sultan Murat V from captivity in 1878, presumably with the intention of restoring him to the throne. Most of Suavi’s career as a writer was spent not in Istanbul but in London and Paris. While the Turkish newspaper work that Suavi produced both in Istanbul and in Europe has received considerable scholarly attention, the books and pamphlets he published in Europe between 1871 and 1876 - many of which are in French or English - have been either understudied or completely neglected. The Turkish historians who have studied Ali Suavi in the last century have with very few exceptions argued either that he was a trailblazing Turkish nationalist, or that he was an erratic, incompetent zealot. However, a study of Suavi’s previously neglected European publications reveals that he was a patriotic Ottomanist who advocated pan-Islamic solidarity in the face of Russian expansionism and European interference. His most significant publications from this period are concerned with the threat from Russia and with responding to anti-Ottoman Eastern Question propaganda. A recurring theme is the double standards that were applied to the Ottoman Empire on issues such as the treatment of religious minorities. Suavi argues that the Ottoman Empire should stand up to Russia, stop bowing to foreign pressure and stop imitating Europe. He accurately perceives the Ottoman foreign debt as a threat to the independence of the Ottoman Empire. Suavi argues that there is an Ottoman nationality, independent of race or religion, though the centrality of Islam for this Ottoman nation is never in doubt. In these works Suavi sounds very much like a nationalist, but not of the Turkish variety. The neglect of these works can be explained by the fact that they contain almost nothing that could be used to portray Suavi as a Turkish nationalist, and much that would serve to contradict such views. The fact that Turkish nationalist historians were not interested in Ottomanism or pan-Islam has not only left us with a distorted and often incomprehensible image of Ali Suavi and the Young Ottoman movement, but has led to the general neglect of Ottomanist works and of the important role that Ottomanism played in the events of the 1860s and 1870s.

Several twentieth century Arab intellectuals and philosophers have attempted to produce novel readings of tradition while referring to Western thinkers. Among those, we can note Al-Jabri’s historical account influenced by Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical work. This can be most clearly noted in Naqd al-‘Aql al-Arabi, Nahnu wal Turath, and Madkhal Ila al-Qur’an al-Kareem. Yet Al-Jabri does not fully commit to the theoretical tools provided by the Western philosopher. The purpose of this paper will be to analyze the work of Al-Jabri in relation to Foucault while emphasizing the extent to which he has managed to free himself from a traditional conception of tradition. This relates to the more general and central question of what qualifies as a positive historical reading of Islam, and on what grounds can it make room for multiplicity and plurality. In order to fulfill this purpose, I will be putting forward an interpretation of the account of history that Foucault develops in his middle genealogical period. This will draw mostly on his work in Discipline and Punish, Nietzsche, Genealogy and History, and The History of Sexuality Volume I. Genealogy, as Foucault understands it, is opposed to the search for origins and pure essences. This appears to be the central divergence between the two, for while Foucault introduces genealogy for the purpose of critique, Al-Jabri uses history for the Kantian purpose of attempting to purify the consciousness of history from irrationality. This, for Al-Jabri, culminates in reviving Averroes’s rational critique. A more significant divergence appears here. Al-Jabri calls for effecting a divide between faith and reason through referring to Averroes’s The Decisive Treatise and showing how the medieval philosopher’s critique was interrupted by political events. Al-Jabri’s commitment to a rational discourse thus appears to be essential for his historical exegesis. Foucault’s genealogy, on the other hand, seeks to delegitimize rational discourse that has proven to be an outcome of exclusionary power relations. Al-Jabri, thus, manages to incorporate the historical approach of genealogy, while simultaneously transforming it into a historical critique of tradition that allows for tradition to be contemporaneous. For him, this rational historicity ought to allow for a transformation towards the modern. I argue that it is here that it is in this divergence that Al-Jabri’s main contribution to Arab thought should be recognized.

Ibn Kemāl Pashazade (d. 1534) was a poet, historian and Islamic jurist. From year 1525 until his death, he held the highest position of the Islamic religious learning: the position of Shaykh al-Islām. In his famous treatise, Risāla al-munīra, he addresses imams of the mosques in various provinces of the burgeoning Ottoman Empire. In this epistle, he calls on these scholars to teach and guide the Muslim community in the face of confusion and disarray within the society of his time. This call to the ‘ulemā’ to teach proper ways of Islam is ultimately linked to an important theme within his writings, in particular to the issue of certainty and doubt. In this paper presentation, I speak about Ibn Kemāl’s works through a lens that looks at his approach to the question of knowledge. I explore places within his arguments that call into question the singularity of only one understanding of the Revelation. In addition to this, the paper further explores how by advocating the importance of the Sharī‘ā, Ibn Kemāl espouses Ibn Taymiyya’s insistence of the Islamic law and a way of life that was inherited from the Prophet. Conversely, Ibn Kemāl’s reiteration that true knowledge is only esoteric knowledge, which is, in particular, reminiscent of Ibn ‘Arabā’s teachings, places him in the camp of thinker who consider that knowledge of the divine and the right path does not simply come from the established sources. By focusing on the latter issue, Ibn Kemāl continues the legacy of earlier Islamic scholars who questioned the foundations of and approaches in establishing knowledge. By engaging in the debate of whether revelation or other sources of knowing, in his case esoteric mystical experience, results in true knowledge, Ibn Kemāl throws doubt over the epistemological foundation of Islamic religious learning. Yet, his insistence on certainty and orthodoxy of the Sunna, he seems to have deep trust that such confusion is not permanent and that one can escape from it with the right guidance to a place of certainty and social stability. In other words, Ibn Kemāl did not seek to create ambiguities, but rather pointed to the problematic spiritual and religious issues that were discussed in his days. Thus, throughout his risāla, it is clear that Ibn Kemāl hopes to come up with the solution in order to end confusion and instill certainty.