Power and Place: Studies on Monument Building in the Middle East and North Africa, 1850-1950
Panel 247, 2018 Annual Meeting
On Sunday, November 18 at 1:30 pm
Panel Description
The alteration in the urban fabric in North Africa and the Middle East during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included the erection of equestrian statues of famous generals, triumphal arches and monuments to war at public spaces and vistas throughout the city. Urban environments in colonial North Africa and the Middle East were redesigned with symbols that announced European hegemony or harkened to an ancient past. Shortly after Algerian colonialism began, French urban planners erected statues at prominent locations within city-centers across the new colony. This was effectively a physical manifestation in the built environment of French hegemony. In Ottoman Anatolia and across the empire, new monuments were erected as metaphors of modernity, and in some cases with neo-Islamic symbolism. The establishment of the Turkish Republic led to new civic monuments depicting Ataturk and Republican iconography. Monuments rose-up in both new and old public spaces that held political or commercial importance. These memorials were fashioned with imagery of the ruler or conquerors depicting military leaders and battle scenes.
The memorial was a means of etching historical memory upon colonized populace, which linked past glories with the present imperial government. As Spiro Kostof argued, it was part of “The staging of power” in which empire was made tangible and part of the urban topography. Mussolini’s nostalgia for the Roman as a precedent to his regime resulted in placing the statue of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in the first colonial public space in Tripoli, thus performing fascisms power upon the colonial urban stage.
This panel will explore the various acts of memorial building across North Africa, Anatolia and Iran. These papers seek to interrogate the monuments, statues and commemorative elements by examining the various forms, designs, motifs, imagery and context within the urban ensemble. Each paper will be a significant addition to the history of the built environments across the larger Middle East. Gazing across a wide geographic range will increase our understanding of the shared memorial design styles, symbols and metaphors, which moved from the scale of the colonial to empire. Thus, monuments were an important part of establishing colonial power and imperial hegemony on the conquered landscapes. Yet, statues, memorials and monuments remain an understudied component of the built environment. The variety of methodologies and source material make the panel of interest for scholars looking to find new investigative tools.
The Suez Canal was an important zone of military conflict during World War I. Allied forces held the canal against advancing Ottoman forces keeping them out of the Egyptian Delta and Cairo. The defense of the canal became a pivotal battle in the Middle Eastern front against the Ottomans and their allies, Germany. To commemorate this battle, the Suez Canal Company (SCC) erected a monumental memorial overlooking the Suez Canal and adjacent to Ismailia at the base of Jebel Meriam, entitled Monument a la Defense du Canal de Suez. Using architectural precedence from ancient Egypt and Greece, two large monoliths combined with winged figures, represented Allied victory in defense of the canal. It was a monumental testament to the importance of the military front in Egypt, which every passing ship would view on passage through the canal.
Since the opening of the canal in 1869, monuments, statues, busts and memorials dotted the canal and her cities of Port Sa’id, Isma’ilia and Suez. From the temporary obelisks, which sat at the Mediterranean entrance of the canal in 1869, to the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps at Port Sa’id these monuments etched onto the urban landscape ideas of French company hegemony. The Monument a la Defense was a monumental addition to the statues and memorials that lined the canal. As such, this paper will have several agendas. First, the study aims to place the war monument within the history of SCC memorial and statue-building by showing the similar design ideology, which were shared with earlier monuments and architecture in the cities and along the canal. Design motifs were repeated and the initial conceptual drawings tell a story between the artists ideal and reality. The second agenda is to examine the site of the memorial in the landscape at Jebel Meriam and the building processes that were meticulously documented by the SCC. Photographs also depict the laborers and demonstrate the hierarchy of work. The laborer who is usually elided comes into focus through the visual catalog and you see the Egyptian at work on the monument. As such, the sources from the SCC archive narrate a multi-layered history of the monument. The war memorial thus becomes an urban artifact, ready to be interrogated by the historian.
Martyrs Square, located in the center of Tripoli, Libya, underwent dramatic transformations during the colonial and post-colonial periods. The square was originally established by the Italians in the 1920s, and named Piazza Castello after a historic castle adjacent to it. Piazza Castello was the central colonial public square in Libia Italiana despite the preexistence of another nearby eminent square, Piazza Italia. Piazza Castello was the perfect example of the showcase of power through the use of space since it was the center of the political activities of the colonizer. During the Fascist rule, the piazza witnessed political demonstrations and ceremonial welcoming of the Italian Kings and the Fascist leaders. The piazza also mirrored the colonizer’s hegemony through the placement of colonial monuments, such as the Roman she-wolf, Emperor Septimius Severus’s and Il Duce Benito Mussolini’s statues. After the independence of Libya in 1951, Piazza Castello was renamed Sahat al-Qalaa – Arabic translation of the Italian name, maintained its central position among the city’s citizens. The then Libyan government took certain actions to make the square a symbol of national identity. Some of the sculptures, which had been placed by the colonizer, were replaced by other ones that reflected Libyan values. Whereas some others was left in the square such the Emperor’s statue.
The creation of colonial public space in Tripoli during the Italian colonization has been studied by Kristin von Henneberg, Brain McLaren and Mia Fuller to name a few. The focus of these scholars ranged from the hybridity in the conception and use of colonial public space to colonial ideologies and intentions behind their creation. However, the process of the intentional shift from civic to monumental colonial public space during the building of the colony has been inadequately addressed. This paper first demonstrates the role that the artifacts, which were displayed in Piazza Castello, played in expressing the hegemonic nature of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Then, it determines how the latter applied certain representational practices to re-appropriate the use of these sculptures in a post-colonial context as a way for addressing an identity of the newly independent country.
Early public monuments in the 1930s, depicting the victory of the War of Independence (1919-1922), which first and foremost legitimized the new regime, visualize how Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, his colleagues, and his followers instituted a new official history. These monuments were easy to reproduce, and the state disseminated the official history to its illiterate citizens in various parts of the Republic. Atatürk’s statues and monuments dominated and designated the public spaces throughout the country. In Istanbul, the arrangement of Taksim Square, which was designed as a showcase of Republican ideology, started with the placement of the Monument of the Republic in 1928. One side of the monument depicts the War of Independence while the other portrays the secular state. The side of the monument that represents the emergence of the Republic portrays Ismet Inönü on Atatürk's right-hand side since he was one of the “heroes” of the National Struggle.
From the 1930s on, political tension emerged at the top especially between Atatürk and Inönü, who was then the prime minister (1925-1937). Although Atatürk retreated from everyday politics, he was the unquestionable authority. Inönü had acted as Atatürk’s “number two," but even he had to resign in 1937 after the increasing incoordination between Atatürk’s and the cabinet’s decisions. Following Atatürk’s death in 1938, the assembly elected Inönü president. He then became the permanent chairman of the Republican People’s Party as the party and the state were immensely integrated, and given the title "National Chief."
The most significant transformation of Taksim was implemented during ?nönü’s time in the office. Inönü Gezisi (Inönü Promenade, now Gezi Park), which was opened in 1942, transformed the space and eliminated the centrality of the Monument of the Republic. A monument dedicated to Inönü was commissioned to German sculptor Rudolf Belling in the same year. Although the pedestal was fully constructed at the entrance of the Inönü Gezisi, which is next to Taksim Square, the statue could not be placed in its designated site.
Inönü succeeded Atatürk as the national leader and attempted to continue to control power single-handedly. This paper traces the “National Chief”s struggle for legitimizing his authority through one of the most contested urban spaces in Turkey, Taksim Square.
