The history of the late Ottoman state and the early Turkish Republic has often been presented in a teleological manner in which the “emergence of modern Turkey” is viewed as the inevitable culmination of trends dating back to the early nineteenth century. Elements which do not fit this narrative are downplayed, misinterpreted, or ignored. On the theoretical plane, Hans Kohn predicted in the 1920s that nationalism would take the place of religion in the East. Benedict Anderson’s later discussion of “imagined communities,” while incorporating insightful discussion of developments associated with these communities, is in the end merely an elaboration of Kohn’s ideas. The nation is defined as being antithetical to communities based on religion or imperial rule. This definition, then, deems Muslim and Ottoman identity to be outdated and inferior to ethnolinguistic nationalism. However, there is another story to be told, that of an Ottoman or Ottoman Muslim nationalism that was clearly articulated by the 1870s and died with the partitioning of the Ottoman state and the Kemalist reforms. Ali Suavi, who has often been claimed by Turkish nationalists as one of their own, was in fact an Ottoman nationalist who explicitly argued that the Ottomans formed a nation. The works in which he makes such arguments, many of which were published in France, have been for the most part ignored. The Rhodope Rebellion following the Russo-Turkish war is an early example of the type of resistance that followed WWI, but since it was carried out by Ottoman Muslims in what is now Bulgaria it does not fit anyone’s national history today. The post-WWI resistance in Anatolia was carried out in the name of Ottoman Muslims, and Erik Zürcher’s description of this as “Ottoman Muslim nationalism” is one of the rare uses of such terminology. The post-WWI resistance in Syria does not fit the story of either Turkish or Arab nationalism, as it was motivated by the same Ottoman Muslim nationalism as the Anatolian resistance. Finally, the outlook of the Ottoman Muslim nationalist in a post-Ottoman world is poignantly conveyed in William Cleveland’s portrayal of Shakib Arslan’s reactions to Kemalism. Turkish and Arab nationalism then were promoted at the cost of misrepresenting or ignoring a significant aspect of late Ottoman history.

The Italo-Turkish War (1911-1912), now remembered primarily as Italy’s war for what is now Libya, swelled from a localized colonial invasion into a significant Mediterranean conflict and a global cause célèbre that attracted aid for the embattled Ottoman regime from diverse locations. This paper investigates the vital contribution of Pan-Islamism (or ?ttihad-? ?slâm in Ottoman Turkish) to the Ottoman efforts to defend its last foothold in Africa from Italian aggression. While many studies tend to brush aside the importance of early twentieth-century Pan-Islamism as either a pipe dream of Wilhelmine champions of German imperialism and their Ottoman collaborators or a mere rhetorical movement devoid of substantial consequence, my research reveals how global appeals to Islamic unity to combat European expansionism translated into material benefits for Ottomans on the battlefield and bolstered Pan-Islamic politics in Istanbul. Through an examination of documents from the Turkish Red Crescent and the Turkish General Staff archives, I highlight the crucial assistance of global Islamic humanitarian aid to the Ottoman war effort in the form of sizeable financial contributions to the Ottoman Red Crescent and the British Red Crescent from Muslims over the duration of the conflict. The Red Crescent organization provided a means to funnel aid to the battlefield collected in mosques and Islamic associations within and without the Ottoman Empire. Ultimately, this charitable aid facilitated the deployment to North Africa of one British Red Crescent and three Ottoman Red Crescent teams which assumed in most cases sole responsibility for the medical care of both soldiers and civilians of the Ottoman province. Simultaneously, the Ottoman ranks ballooned as calls for coreligionist volunteers to take up arms in Libya were heeded throughout Africa and Asia. Ultimately, Muslims around the world shouldered a great deal of the cost of the conflict. While Italy’s coffers nearly ran dry fighting their war for colonial expansion, the defense of Libya cost the Ottoman treasury very little. This Islamic material support strengthened the position of Pan-Islamists in Istanbul and within the CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) contributing to an Islamic turn in imperial politics and a move away from the secular and inclusive Ottomanist discourse of the early years of the Second Constitutional Period. It further set a precedent for effective resistance to European imperialism that politicians and soldiers of the Ottoman lands later employed in the decade of war that followed.

This paper explores Ottoman settlement and nomad sedentarization projects in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the internal desert frontier of the empire through the perspective of one tenacious group of Chechen settlers established as an agricultural colony on the modern-day Turkish and Syrian border. It sheds light on the dynamism and agency of a community of refugees that took control of their situation and became influential actors in an area at the regional boundaries of Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia. The Chechen settlers persisted in the face of three distinct periods of Ottoman attempts to expand settled agriculture at the expense of pastoralism: the late Tanzimat era of the 1860s and 1870s that coupled forced sedentarization with anchoring agricultural colonies to serve as models, the Hamidian era from 1876-1908 that focused less on coercive state measures and relied heavily on coopting tribal leaders into patronage relations with Abdülhamid II, and the Second Constitutional era from 1908-1918 that returned to aggressive settlement and sedentarization schemes. While the existing literature notes some of the experiences and actions of the Chechens of Resülayn in the Tanzimat era and the Second Constitutional Era, their actions during the Hamidian era are little known. In fact, the Chechen settlers played an important role in the rise of Viran?ehirli ?brahim Pa?a, chief of the Kurdish Milli tribe, who was the most powerful chief of a Hamidiye irregular cavalry regiment and possibly the most powerful man between Aleppo, Diyarbak?r, and Mosul in the early twentieth century. Using records from the Prime Minister’s Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, consular reports from the British National Archives, and a variety of travelogues, I argue that this small group eking out an existence at the margins of empire became active in negotiating the balance of power between agents of the Ottoman state and rival tribal confederations, ultimately helping to consolidate ?brahim Pa?a’s status as the most powerful Hamidiye chief. They therefore had central role in Abdülhamid’s schemes for governing the Kurdish districts of the empire. This analysis will show how marginal groups such as immigrants and refugees, whose agency is normally elided, often had a profound effect on the political developments of the regions they inhabited.

The Islamic religious establishment has always played a crucial role in preserving the legitimacy and the continuity of the Ottoman Empire throughout its centuries of rule. In Istanbul and all other provinces of the empire, the ‘ulema served as religious clerks, teachers, Judges, and Jurists. They were perceived as the foremost element among the constituents of the Ottoman community. They were organized through a firm hierarchy with strict rules that regulated promotion and power. However, patronage, favoritism, familial links, and levels of social status were elements that led to the stratification of the corps where certain families dominated the leadership of the religious institution. Yet, this was not the case in Egypt’s highest religious institution, Al-Azhar. Although a lot has been written about al-Azhar and its ‘ulema, little work has been written about the institution within its larger Ottoman context. Most researchers either revolved around the modernization of the institution’s educational process during Mehmed ‘Ali or focused on the lives and activities of prominent ‘ulema like Shaykh Rifa’a al-Tahtawi and Shaykh Muhammad ‘Abduh. In this paper, I attempt to situate the religious establishment of Egypt within the broader context of the Ottoman Empire with a special focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Arguing against the commonly accepted claim that al-Azhar declined under the Ottoman rule, I explain that it was under the Turks that al-Azhar became Egypt’s top religious institution with a semi-independent leadership, namely Shaykh al-Azhar. Moreover, the institution and its ‘ulema had an exclusive status and character that distinguished it from its counterparts in the empire, which includes the official religious establishment in Istanbul (Ilmiye) or other major mosques in the Arab provinces, like the Umayyad in Syria. Despite being an inherent part of the Ottoman Empire, al-Azhar and its ‘ulema functioned within a semi-independent orbit based on a bottom-up method of recruitment that differed from that of Istanbul and other provinces. This exclusive status and distinguishing characteristics were instrumental in paving the way for a distinct political, financial, and social power for al-Azhar and its ‘ulema, especially in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.