This multi-panel session seeks to investigate the creation, projection, reception, negotiation, contestation, and transformation of Ottoman identity over the long history of the empire's existence. The Ottoman Empire offers the rare opportunity to trace the transformations of identity from the pre-modern to the early-modern and then to the modern era. Identity is a slippery concept that must be determined empirically on a case by case basis and is anything but static. As a polyglot and incredibly heterogeneous empire, the concept of being Ottoman experienced many changes and adaptations. The purpose of this multi-panel session is to trace the development, transformations, and expansion of Ottoman identity not only from a central imperial perspective and ideological projection, but also to see how this identity was adopted, adapted, rejected, and contested by subjects, rivals, allies, and foes alike in the Ottoman sphere of influence.
Panel IV deals with the changes in being Ottoman as the phenomenon known as modernity, including the concepts of nationalism, modern science, mass politics, modern state practices, nationalist secessionist movements, and European imperialism, was introduced to the empire and its population. Paper I investigates the changing nature of the Ottoman monarchy in relation to its subject populations, particularly non-Muslim, during the early nineteenth century and how the institutionalization of monarchic celebrations helped foster group consciousness among the empire’s non-Muslim communities. Paper II investigates the adoption of Ottoman identity by Sephardic Jews in the empire during the late nineteenth century, even though this may have stood in contradistinction to earlier notions of group and Ottoman identity. Paper III looks at the construction of Ottoman identity in relation to the importation of European Scientific practices and notions of progress & civilization among the empire’s educated elite. Based upon Ottoman travelogues to Europe, Paper IV discusses the construction of the ideal Ottoman in terms of economic productivity and industriousness in the nineteenth century. Finally, Paper V utilizes the biographies of many non-Muslims, namely Greek-Orthodox, Jewish, Armenian, and Suryani, to reconstruct their differing understandings of Ottomanism during the Second Constitutional Period as opportunities for greater political participation emerged and as crisis enveloped the empire.
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Mr. Darin N. Stephanov
The purpose of this paper is to sketch in broad strokes the formation of modern public space and group consciousness via the escalating annual celebrations of the sultan in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. The process began in 1836, under Mahmud II, as yet another type of centralization – of subject (esp. non-Muslim) loyalties. It created an unprecedented avenue for direct cyclical symbolic engagement between the ruler and the ruled, core and periphery of Ottoman society on the basis of innovative conceptions and practices of (inclusive) faith and (universal) kingship. In the short run, these celebrations forged vertical ties of loyalty to the monarch, which were quite successful. In the long run, however, they contributed substantially to the creation of new, modern/national types of horizontal ties and group consciousness, which then crystallized in national movements and, after the empire’s demise, national monarchies.
So far the scholarship on the late Ottoman relations between the Muslim ruler and his non-Muslim subjects has overwhelmingly treated them as a self-contained, mostly antagonistic set, taking non-Muslim types of group consciousness, based on theorized communal (millet) institutions, for granted. In contrast, this research reveals a foundational, but so far historiographically absent episode of the nineteenth-century history of this key concept. Rather than accommodate allegedly existing non-Muslim millet institutions, the sultanic celebrations in fact initiated the use of this term in official phraseology and communal life, and were thus instrumental in gradually forging its reality and metamorphoses. Therefore, this research demonstrates the limits of legitimate use of millet by Ottoman historians today, and the outright inadequacy of its continuing use in constructing primordial narratives. Finally, this line of analysis opens up not only new conceptual, but also new practical avenues for the study of ‘late empire’ and ‘early nation-state’ in the region and elsewhere.
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Dr. Julia Phillips Cohen
The late nineteenth century offered a number of opportunities to Ottoman non-Muslims interested in finding new paths of integration into Ottoman state and society. Among these was the prospect of adopting the self-description of “Ottoman,“ a term that was extended to all imperial subjects in the Ottoman constitution of 1876. Yet, this new option coexisted with other, competing definitions of Ottomanness that treated the categories of Ottoman, Muslim, and—in some cases—Turk, as synonymous. Thus, although various non-Muslim individuals sought to identify themselves as ‘Ottomans’ by the late nineteenth century, this did not prevent them from simultaneously identifying themselves as something other than “real” Ottomans in other instances, when they reserved the term exclusively for Muslims. This pattern has been identified in the case of different Ottoman Christian groups, but not yet explored as a pattern of Ottoman Jewish experience.
In this paper, I propose to analyze the emergence of this paradoxical situation among various Sephardi Jewish communities within the context of late Ottoman developments. In doing so I follow the lead of gender historian Joan Scott, who has suggested that the principal paradox of the modern French feminist movement was its “need to both accept and to refuse … difference.” Late Ottoman Jewish communities found themselves in a similar position. Myriad Jewish communal leaders attempted to communicate the ideal of Ottomanism and the value of an individual Ottoman identity to their coreligionists, while also speaking through communal infrastructures and in corporate terms. An analysis of the ways in which they negotiated these tensions, I suggest, reveals a mediated and paradoxical form of Ottomanism that is worthy of our attention as we explore the changing dynamics of Ottoman identity and allegiance in the modern period.
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Dr. Mehmet Alper Yalcinkaya
A neglected aspect of the importation of the institutions and ideologies of European science into the Ottoman Empire is its impact on the perceptions and reconstructions of
Ottoman identity in the 19th century.
19th century Ottoman authors wrote many texts on science which they considered the reason behind European progress. A major source of this notion was the books they read
on “European civilization” which, exhibiting the influence of orientalism on the historiography of science, acknowledged the contributions of Muslim scientists in Islam’s “Golden Era.” This narrative emphasizes that Muslims constitute the link between antiquity and the Renaissance, but regards Arabs as the representatives of Muslim glory, and Turkish ascendancy as the onset of Islamic decline.
We observe in the writings of Ottoman Turkish litterateurs an unease about this narrative particularly after the 1860s. From prominent authors like Nam?k Kemal and Ali Suavi to the anonymous writers of letters to editors, many Ottomans expressed their views on the justifiability of the Ottoman claim to the legacy of the “Muslim contributions to science.”
While most authors continued to refer to Arabs as the “Noble People” and espoused the discourse on “the Islamic origins of modern science,” they started to underline that Turks had also contributed to science. Debates about whether scientific texts written in Arabic or Persian could constitute a true legacy for Ottomans, and whether scholars like Ibn Sina and Farabi were Turks, Arabs, or simply “Muslims” – debates that would assume even more significance after the establishment of the Turkish Republic – started in the 1870s. The pinnacle of this period was the publication of Mehmed Tahir’s “Turkish
Contributions to Science” in 1898.
In this paper, I highlight the particularities and ironies
of these understudied debates and show how the encounter with 19th century historiography of science impacted Ottoman debates on identity.
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Dr. Deniz Kilincoglu
The nineteenth-century Ottoman travelogues about Europe provide us with very interesting and informative accounts on the evolution of the Ottoman identity in the Eurocentric modern age. The initial reaction of the Ottoman travelers to Europe was the realization of their country’s ‘backwardness’ vis-à-vis European countries. The Ottoman observers attributed European advancement to scientific and technological progress but more importantly to economic dynamism that provided the material base for progress. More specifically, they suggested that the driving force behind the European success was economic enterprise and hard work. Thus, from then on the question of modernization would be based on the dichotomy between industriousness and indolence.
This study aims to show how the Ottoman identity was defined in the nineteenth century in an economic context vis-à-vis modern Europe and how this perceived identity impacted the depiction of an ideal ‘modern Ottoman identity’ towards the end of the century. The answer to the first part of the question comes from some prominent Ottoman travelogues about Europe published in the latter half of the nineteenth century from the anonymous Seyahatname-i Londra (1853) to Ahmed Ihsan’s Avrupa’da Ne Gördüm (1892). In the latter part, the study traces the examples of ‘ideal modern Ottomans’ fictionalized and popularized by prominent intellectuals such as Ahmed Midhat Efendi (e.g. in his Felatun Bey ve Rak?m Efendi, 1876) and Mizanc? Murad Bey (e.g. Turfanda m?, Turfa m??, 1891). Finally, the study compares and contrasts the implicit and explicit definitions of the Ottoman identity in the Ottoman travelogues with the ideal ‘modern Ottoman identity’ in modernist literary works to shed light on the evolution of modern Ottoman identity in the nineteenth century.
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Dr. Vangelis Kechriotis
The contested character of Ottomanism as an ideology that preoccupied friends and foes has been one of the most debated aspects of the late Ottoman period. Especially, after 1908, with the restoration of the constitution, the re-emergence of the Ottomanist project, was greeted with enthusiasm domestically and abroad. Yet, it soon became clear that, for a large part of the Muslim bureaucratic an military elite, Ottomanism was envisaged as a dynamic process of creating a new nation, dominated by and large by the Turkish element, while for most of the other ethno-religious groups, it entailed a necessary compromise, a solidarity based on political unity which would definitely not affect the cultural and ethnic specificities of the diverse populations.
Whatever the case, during these volatile years, members of almost every ethno-religious community, journalists, scholars or professionals engaged whole-heartedly in the political struggle that seemed to be opening new avenues for cooperation among the elites at least of these communities and sincere adhered to safeguarding the integrity of the Empire. Interestingly enough, many of these individuals, who had already emerged as prominent figures within their particular communities, were going to play an important role in the post-Ottoman period in new contexts dominated by their respective national aspirations. The purpose of this paper will be to discuss and reflect on such individuals that derive from among the non-Muslim communities, Greek-Orthodox, Jewish, Armenian and Sûryani. My approach engages the use of biography, a way of narrating the past that has recently re-emerged and has agreeably contributed in highlighting not only the role of individuals in the making of history, as the traditional use of biography had it, but, by turning the table around, by introducing subjectivity and tracing the way that broader developments are experienced by still rather prominent individuals.
