ASIRET MEKTEBI : SULTAN ABDULHAMID II’S SCHOOL FOR TRIBES (1892-1907) In 1996, Eugene Rogan published an article about “an experiment in social engineering which sought to foster an allegiance to the Ottoman state within one of the most alienated segments of its society: the empire’s tribes”. No other academic work has been published on this unique school, The Asiret Mekteb-i Humayun, which was founded to train the sons of the Arab tribal leaders in Istanbul in 1892. One of the graduates, Abdul-Muhsin Al-Saadoun, became a four-time Prime Minister in Iraq, another, Sadullah Kologlu, was the first Prime Minister of Libya under King Idris during the transition period. Hundreds of these students pursued careers within the military and administrative apparatus in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs and Turks have been sometimes described as “Ambivalent Siblings”. Indeed, their thousand year coexistence has witnessed and is still undergoing complex interactions. For Abdulhamid II, loss of much of the European provinces in 1878 made the Arab provinces all the more significant. In addition to strengthening the bonds with the Arab urban elites, the Sultan decided to reach out the the frontiers and recruit the sons of tribal sheikhs, aged between 12 and 16, to the capital. After a five year strenuous education program, most of the graduates were further trained for one year at either the military or the civil academy. In the last decade significant investments have brought to light millions of new documents in the Ottoman archives. In addition, several contemporary newspapers are now available in digital format. My research so far has revealed the names of 156 students of the Asiret Mektebi, many of whom attained significant positions in the Empire. The evidence shows that until the end of the First World War, most of these Arab graduates supported the continued existence of a multi-ethnic, polyglot Ottoman Empire. Therefore, it can be concluded that the school was able to fulfill its mission to instill loyalty to the state and the Caliph in these representatives of the frontiers. The Asiret Mektebi embodies all the characteristics and contradictions of the late Ottoman modernization process and acts as a unique prism through which we can observe the Arab-Turkish relationship.

In 1902 the Ottoman government in Damascus undertook a project of bringing fresh water from the Fijah Spring in Damascus’ suburb to the city. Until then, Damascus relied on the historical river Barada for the city’s water consumption and the irrigation of its gardens. This project was in line with the recommendations of the germ theory and was meant to supply Damascus with fresh uncontaminated water to combat water-borne diseases. However, this measure did not bring the results that the government aspired for. Cholera continued to cause death in the city as late as 1917 of the Ottoman rule. Despite the government’s instructions of abandoning Barada, bringing Fijah water to Damascus did not automatically cancel other routine usages of Barada such as washing fruits, vegetables and bodies. Use of Barada continued. That water can cause health problems was not a new piece of knowledge for Damascenes. Already before the germ theory, Damascenes associated water abundance with certain fevers with which they had long learned to live. However, since the emergence of the germ theory, they had to accept that their river was not only a source of life but also a source of death, and despite its accessibility and availability they were instructed to abandon using it. This new reality together with the limited availability of Fijah water in the early stages of the project made people ignore and sometime resist the Ottoman government’s instructions and measures. In the face of disease persistence, a new discourse of Islamic hygiene started circulating in medical journals, newspapers, and in mosques. Both government officials and doctors mobilized Islam as possibly the most efficient way to ensure permeability of state’s instructions in all classes in and outside the city. Islam and hygiene were paired as compatible systems of controlling the body’s cleanliness and health. This paper explores public health and urban space in the late Ottoman Empire Syria and investigates how public health interventions intersected with ideas of class and religion to impose on them material and normative meaning. Ottoman efforts to protect the society from various diseases unleashed the rapid change urban spaces and the rise of modern Damascus.

The educational missions from Egypt to France in 1830s-1840s have been the focus of a number of well known studies ( cf. the research published by James Heyworth-Dunne, Shaden Tageldin, Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot, Ian Coller, and many others). The consensus among scholars is that these missions played a vital role in triggering the nahda (Arab renaissance) by ushering in the Middle East to the modern age. For this reason, the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha (r. 1805-1848), the Ottoman Viceroy in Egypt, commensurate with Arab revival and rebirth, whereas the reign of Abbas I Pasha (r. 1849-1854), his grandson and successor, invokes images of relapse in which the jubilant march towards modernity was disrupted. One of the reasons that cast a long shadow over Abbas' brief rule was that he put an end to the educational missions to France. But as Ehud Toledano points out, the pasha did not completely halt those missions; rather, he sponsored smaller missions to Austria and Germany, that is to say, to countries other than France. Al-Shami's account survives as a hand-written manuscript. Although the manuscript is unfinished (it ends abruptly), the notes provide us with a rare view of the way the students were selected to be sent to Europe in 1850, the reaction of their families, their long sea voyage from Alexandria to Trieste (now in Italy), and their journey by land to Vienna to commence their studies. Another interesting quality of al-Shami's account is that it does not appear to have been edited or revised. It retains the author's crude style, unlike the celebrated travel account written by Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi, published in 1835. Subsequently, al-Shami's account depicts a more accourate picture of what the students actually learned and their honest impressions about Europe. My analysis of al-Shami's account will shed a different light on Abbas Pasha and role the educational missions played in triggering the nahda in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The conclusion of the First World War in Ottoman Arab lands is often relegated to epilogues or prologues of late Ottoman Empire or Arab state narratives, precluding examination of lived experience through this traditional divide of historical periodization. Michael Provence, Mesut Uyar, and James Gelvin recount broader phenomena of this era, yet contemporary individual accounts are limited. Laila Parsons addresses this period, but with sources published later. Benjamin Fortna examines this period, but focused on Anatolia after the war, while Salim Tamari, Glenda Abramson, and the Lone Pine (Bloody Ridge) Diary concentrate on the war. With its early sections long overlooked or mischaracterized, Ottoman army officer Taha al-H?shim?’s Arabic-language, journal-like memoirs, the Mudhakkirat Taha al-H?shim?, written at the time of the events recorded, provide a first-hand account of this post-war period. My research, combining social, military, and intellectual history, centers on the 1919-1920s sections of this work, which recounts his navigation of post-war Yemen, Damascus, Istanbul, and Baghdad. Through al-H?shim?’s periodic, sometimes daily entries, it is possible to glimpse a contemporary perspective of a larger group of Ottoman officers from Arab lands who remained in service immediately following the war. His entries demonstrate pervasive fears of British and French colonialism and imperialism, evident in comparisons of anticipated post-war Ottoman territories to contemporary colonies across North Africa, East Africa, and South Asia. His entries also demonstrate manifestations of both Ottoman and Arab identification, reflecting the power of continuity, his long military training, and the multiplicity of identification that defies later historical projections. Finally, al-H?shim?’s observations reveal a multitude of nationalist activist organizations in Damascus during Faysal’s brief reign and on the eve of French occupation. These arguments and analyses engage with several key works in particular, especially Michael Provence’s The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East, James Gelvin’s Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire, and Benjamin Fortna’s Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire. This analysis reveals a contemporary account and glimpses of the lived experience from a perspective long marginalized by later Turkish or Arab Revolt nationalist narratives. It offers examples of anticolonial Ottoman Arab officer subjectivities, continuity, and manifestations of multilayered identification, as well as an individual’s attempt to re-legitimate the self after the experiences of war and imperial occupation and fragmentation.