This paper explores how the Ottomans considered and engaged practices that we label today as “corruption” among state functionaries between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though the term has no direct equivalent in Ottoman language, practices that we commonly associate with it (including bribery, nepotism, extortion, and embezzlement) receive frequent references in historical sources of legal, administrative, and literary nature. By utilizing information in Ottoman kanunnames (law codes), court records, imperial and provincial bureaucratic documentation, and literary works, the paper discusses how the Ottomans characterized these practices and judged their moral, legal, and societal repercussions; what attempts they made to thwart their pervasiveness; and how relevant regulations and practices contributed to defining the relationship between subjects and ruling groups. A key aspect of the paper is its depiction of practices associated with corruption in their own (Ottoman) context(s) since the authors assume that religious, cultural, and political factors play significant roles in shaping perceptions regarding legitimate and illegitimate judiciary-administrative conduct. We consider these perceptions essential to define acceptable/necessary interventions by ruling groups and constitutive of imperial or provincial authority. To this end we wonder, for example, if and to what extent modern definitions of bribery correspond to Ottoman definitions. A contextually-based attempt to characterizing corruption also raises other fascinating but hitherto unexplored questions: What might have been the boundaries that separated bribery from customary gift-giving in the Ottoman setting and how were these boundaries negotiated by various social actors? How exactly did Ottomans differentiate family, kin, or ethnic solidarity from nepotism? To what extent did Ottoman administrative practices and traditions, given their various limitations, tolerate (or even promote) “embezzlement” on the part of state functionaries? Were such practices acceptable for certain groups and not others? And how did characterizations of various forms of corruption and policies to prevent such practices (including punishments) change between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries? In the latter regard, nineteenth-century modernization and the consequent redefinition of the boundaries that separated legitimate and illegitimate judicial-administrative conduct will receive special attention. More specifically, the paper will explore the debates around bribery in nineteenth century, its criminalization, and the associated procedures of punishment vis-à-vis other forms of misappropriation, and consider what they might reveal about the so called “modernization” or “secularization” of the Ottoman law. This is a joint presentation that we regard as “two papers in one” for the purposes of this panel.

This paper explores how the Ottomans considered and engaged practices that we label today as “corruption” among state functionaries between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though the term has no direct equivalent in Ottoman language, practices that we commonly associate with it (including bribery, nepotism, extortion, and embezzlement) receive frequent references in historical sources of legal, administrative, and literary nature. By utilizing information in Ottoman kanunnames (law codes), court records, imperial and provincial bureaucratic documentation, and literary works, the paper discusses how the Ottomans characterized these practices and judged their moral, legal, and societal repercussions; what attempts they made to thwart their pervasiveness; and how relevant regulations and practices contributed to defining the relationship between subjects and ruling groups. A key aspect of the paper is its depiction of practices associated with corruption in their own (Ottoman) context(s) since the authors assume that religious, cultural, and political factors play significant roles in shaping perceptions regarding legitimate and illegitimate judiciary-administrative conduct. We consider these perceptions essential to define acceptable/necessary interventions by ruling groups and constitutive of imperial or provincial authority. To this end we wonder, for example, if and to what extent modern definitions of bribery correspond to Ottoman definitions. A contextually-based attempt to characterizing corruption also raises other fascinating but hitherto unexplored questions: What might have been the boundaries that separated bribery from customary gift-giving in the Ottoman setting and how were these boundaries negotiated by various social actors? How exactly did Ottomans differentiate family, kin, or ethnic solidarity from nepotism? To what extent did Ottoman administrative practices and traditions, given their various limitations, tolerate (or even promote) “embezzlement” on the part of state functionaries? Were such practices acceptable for certain groups and not others? And how did characterizations of various forms of corruption and policies to prevent such practices (including punishments) change between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries? In the latter regard, nineteenth-century modernization and the consequent redefinition of the boundaries that separated legitimate and illegitimate judicial-administrative conduct will receive special attention. More specifically, the paper will explore the debates around bribery in nineteenth century, its criminalization, and the associated procedures of punishment vis-à-vis other forms of misappropriation, and consider what they might reveal about the so called “modernization” or “secularization” of the Ottoman law. This is a joint presentation that we regard as “two papers in one” for the purposes of this panel.

The beginning of the twentieth century represents an era of institutionalization of history writing in the Ottoman realm. In this period, new modes of conceptualizing and reclaiming the past began to be discussed among a new generation of Ottoman historical writers. These historians imagined the Ottoman past and present within a modern historical consciousness, which meant the incorporation of comparative approaches, altered periodizations, and nationalist discourses. Furthermore, breaking away from early modern historical writing, which was embedded in Islamic tradition, these historians used new sources and methods that relied upon positivistic interpretations of the field of history. Following the foundation of academic institutions such as the Tarih-i Osmani Encümeni (Ottoman Historical Society, 1909), the Türk Bilgi Derneği (Turkish Association of Knowledge, 1911), the Türk Yurdu Derneği (Turkish Homeland Society, 1911), and the Âsâr-ı İslamiye ve Milliye Tedkik Encümeni (Islamic and National Studies Association, 1915), these debates on history writing began to appear in the pages of the journals published by these institutions. Tarih-i Osmani Encümeni Mecmuası (The Journal of Ottoman Historical Society), Türk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland, the journal of the Turkish Homeland Society), Bilgi Mecmuası (The Journal of Knowledge, the journal of the Turkish Association of Knowledge), and Milli Tetebbular Mecmuası (The Journal of National Studies, the journal of the Islamic and National Studies Association), were the main publications in which the modern historiographical debates were shaped. Leading historians of the period, who were also the main contributors to these journals, including Fuad Köprülü, Ahmed Refik (Altınay), Yusuf Akçura, Abdurrahman Şeref, Necib Asım (Yazıksız), and Halil Edhem (Eldem) wrote articles about the historian’s craft that contributed to the formation of a modern historical consciousness, either national or imperial. This paper explores the ways in which modern historical methodology and the duties of the historian were discussed in these academic journals. It will also trace how these historians discussed the relationship between history and other social sciences, along with the issues of training the “modern” historian and the use of archival documents in historical studies. Ultimately, this paper argues that these historiographical debates shed light on the ways in which the historians of this period imagined the Ottoman Empire’s and, eventually, the Turkish nation’s future.

Although Mehmed Ali Pasha’s rule in Egypt (1805-1848) is sometimes regarded as the beginning of the post-Ottoman period in that country, the “khedival” government actually intensified Egypt’s contacts with the rest of the Ottoman Empire and generated a veritable flood of Turcophone immigrants from provincial cities in the Ottoman Balkans and Anatolia, who began working in the pasha’s new institutions. Strangely, the origins and political identity of this new and influential group have rarely been examined by historians, who have tended to focus on the European presence in Egypt or the roots of Egyptian nationalism. One reason for this may be a lack of Turkish-language narrative sources produced by this cadre. However, one major (albeit long-forgotten) Turkish-language work did emerge from this group: Arif Mehmed Efendi’s Models of Humanity in the Thirteenth [Hijri] Century. Born in the Macedonian city of Drama, Arif Mehmed Efendi moved to Cairo around 1825 to join Mehmed Ali’s Consultative Council (meclis-i şura). Written in 1870, his manuscript was inspired by the publication of the first volume of Lutfi Efendi’s imperial history, and the author combines biographies of members of the Mehmed Ali-era Turcophone Egyptian officials with Egypt-oriented addenda to Lutfi Efendi’s work. Drawing on this manuscript as well as other published and unpublished archival sources, my paper will examine the origins and identity of the nineteenth-century “Turco-Egyptians” and will argue that these officials were far more concerned about following Ottoman norms of behavior than with European ideas. As Mehmed Arif Efendi’s writings indicate, Turcophone residents of nineteenth-century Egypt were anxious to assert their place in a broader Ottoman world. They struggled against the widespread impression among intellectuals in the Ottoman centrals that Egypt was a rebellious upstart province and its Turkish-speaking officials parvenus. This new generation of Turcophone Egyptians gained prestige through connections to Mehmed Ali Pasha and to Istanbulite elites, and their stories provide a counter-narrative to the one best remembered today, that of nineteenth-century Egypt embarking on a “separate path.” These elite officials were firmly in control of Egypt’s administration until well beyond mid-century, and so nineteenth-century Egypt cannot be fully understood without an idea of their origins, worldviews, and collective habitus.