Biographical dictionaries of early modern Syria, particularly those of Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi (d. 1699) and Muhammad Khalil al-Muradi (d. 1791) have often been viewed, and as such used, as historical references useful only for locating the social and intellectual coordinates of a particular individual. This paper argues that the primary purpose of these dictionaries was not the creation of a biographical repository, nor was it simply an act of memorialization. Rather, these dictionaries, I argue, served as explorations into the emotional worlds (sensibilities) of the Arabic-speaking learned community, and particularly the emotional world of the Damascene literary and scholarly elite. The paper demonstrates this by a) providing a brief survey of the changes in the nature of Arabic biographical writing from the medieval to the early modern era, focusing particularly on the rise of the use of poetry in biographical dictionaries in Damascus in the long eighteenth century, and b) illustrating how this poetry came to be used, not only for its aesthetic and literary value, but as an evidentiary tool by the biographer. That is, the poetry came to be used as evidence of a biographee's personality and emotional sensibilities. While the paper will focus on the biographical dictionaries of Muhibbi and Muradi, it will also draw on the uses of poetry as a historical and evidentiary tool for the study of personality in other eighteenth-century texts, including travel literature (rihlat/ sing. rihla) and curriculum vitae (athbat/ sing. thabat). In doing so, the paper will also show that throughout the long eighteenth century, during what was an extremely competitive literary and scholarly environment, the Damascene elite were in the process of cultivating and demonstrating a particular emotional sensibility intended to distinguish them from the Ottoman center in Istanbul as well as from other Arabic-speaking cities. Finally, the paper also aims to contribute to the growing scholarship on the cultural history of eighteenth-century Damascus and to serve as grounds for comparison with the historical methodologies developed by Arab historians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Ottoman perceptions of the outside world have become the subject of increasing scholarly attention in recent years, yet comparatively little work has so far focused on Ottoman perceptions of the Russian Empire. This paper contributes to this understudied field by analyzing the depiction of the Russian Empire in the novel "Acâyib-i Âlem" (1882) by the Ottoman Turkish intellectual Ahmed Midhat Efendi, which is set almost entirely in Russia. This paper argues that the depiction of Russia in Ahmed Midhat's novel needs to be understood in the context of the author’s worldview, which was characterized by a perceived dichotomy between Orient and Occident. Within this broader context, Ahmed Midhat depicted Russia as a fellow Oriental country which, like the Ottoman Empire, had embarked on a project of reform based on the emulation of Western models. Three themes dominated the author’s depiction of Russia. First, he depicted Russia as a model which demonstrated the benefits of adopting European learning, technology and culture as a path towards the superior civilizational level represented by Europe. Second, he presented Russian aristocratic society as a warning against the threat which a heedless emulation of the West posed to the traditional culture and morality of Eastern societies. And finally, Russia served the author as a foil against which he could demonstrate the Ottomans’ superior capacity to become civilized.

In 1538 after defeat at the battle of Preveza, the Habsburg admiral Andrea Doria led his fleet in a successful attack on the Ottoman fortress at Herceg Novi on the Adriatic coast 600 kilometers to the northwest. According to the Ottoman naval historian Katib Celebi, the castle warden, or dizdar, did not defend the castle vigorously but after a few days surrendered. Even more puzzling is that the dizdar’s daughter married a captain in Doria’s fleet, a nobleman named Cigala. The thesis of this paper is that relying solely on narrative histories, the actions of the dizdar and Cigala seem inexplicable, but after viewing in person the fortifications at Herceg Novi their motivations become understandable. Comparing the fortifications of the castle that was surrendered in 1538, with the fortifications of the new fortress that the Ottomans built in 1539 after they retook the location provides valuable insights. Herceg Novi’s fortifications were outdated in 1538: built in the fifteenth century they were adequate for protecting against brigands, but useless against a fleet with state-of-the-art artillery. When Doria arrived with his well-armed fleet, there was no defense that the dizdar could make with a small garrison in this fortress whose thin walls were not built to withstand artillery fire. Therefore, he chose to negotiate and get the best terms he could for himself and his daughter. When the Ottomans retook the strategic port in 1539, they built state-of-the-art fortifications to withstand artillery fire, including platforms for their own artillery. Comparing the walls of the two fortresses at Herceg Novi with the historical record, we can make sense of the decisions made in the past by the participants in the siege. In addition to Katib Celebi’s naval history, later documents, such as found in the Calendar of State Papers, record information about this event, because the son of Cigala and the dizdar’s daughter, later became the Ottoman admiral Cigalazade. For comparison, the walls of Jerusalem, constructed by Suleyman 1537-41 are useful for they were not built to withstand artillery but were of greater symbolic than military value. Analyzing photographs of fortresses and walls, while analyzing documents and histories, I evaluate the fortresses’ military effectiveness, which constrained decisions made in 1538.

Despite the rich corpus on the provincial notables of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, which came to be renowned as “the age of the ayans”, the notables almost disappear in the Ottoman historiography following the promulgation of the Tanzimat edict in 1839. Recent revisionist studies have reinterpreted the significance of the provincial notables by locating the power struggle between the provinces and the central government beyond the scope of a zero-sum game. While focusing on the participation of the notables in local politics and/or administration, the revisionist trend neglects, to a certain extent, the fate of the hereditary notables of the earlier centuries. Departing from the cases of the Hoxholly dynasty in Dibra and the Zirki emirs in Diyarbekir, this paper, reinserts the provincial notables of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century into the Tanzimat proper in a comparative context. Contrary to the binary oppositions the nineteenth-century Ottoman historiography has brought about, this study claims that the simultaneous and contingent coexistence of flexible imperial policies along with the centralisation reforms weaved the provincial politics of the empire. For that matter, it focuses, first of all, on the tension between retaining provincial notables and appointing central officials in provincial administration. Rather than the appointed officials prevailing over the local intermediaries, the tension was ambivalent and contingent prompting the parties to take several considerations into account. Second, by following the political careers of the exiled members of the Hoxholli dynasty and the Zirki emirs, this paper demonstrates how the provincial notables banished to the distant provinces of the empire conjured up another form of “provincial” politics thanks to their transregional networks. Elaborating that the provincial notables, either in their provinces or the distant ones, continued to be prominent actors in provincial politics, this paper argues that the “central” features of the nineteenth-century Ottoman local administration was “provincial.” Such a perspective has the potential to prompt questions to reconsider both comparatively reconsider the agency of provincial notables in a post-imperial setting and the commensurability of Ottoman state formation with other empires.