Debt,diplomacy and dreadnoughts: the National Bank of Turkey, 1909–1919

The National Bank of Turkey (NBT) (1909) was an attempt by the new Young Turk regime to assert economic sovereignty: creating a multinational bank able to provide financing free of the diplomatic conditions previously attached to loans by French banks. NBT's role financing naval rearmament and oil development has attracted a good deal of attention from historians. Using the archives of the bank's founders and Ottoman ministers alongside familiar diplomatic sources, this article is the first to combine Ottoman and European perspectives on NBT, challenging the traditional narrative which presents the Ottoman Empire as the helpless ‘victim’ of the fiscal imperialism of France, Britain and Germany in the years before 1914.     

Negotiating power and authority in the desert: the Arab Bedouin and the limits of the Ottoman state in Hijaz, 1840–1908

This article explores the techniques and strategies used by Ottoman authorities to control the Bedouin with a specific focus on the province of Hijaz between 1840 and 1908. Using primary sources from the Ottoman and British archives, it argues that the Ottoman Empire developed a ‘politics of negotiation’ towards the tribes in its attempt to secure cities and major pilgrimage and trade routes against tribal attack. The principal agents of the empire who made this negotiated governance possible were the amir of Mecca and the governor of Hijaz. As a result of this policy, imperial authorities had to give significant concessions to the tribes, and they thus incorporated them into the province's imperial order. When the Ottoman economy went through a crisis, as in the 1900s, negotiated governance and order faced great problems.     

On the front and at home: women in the modern Ottoman epic

Changes in gender roles are related to larger developments in the spheres of social modernization and discipline. As Ottoman society evolved into a nation through the nineteenth century, women's roles in contemporary epic literature were reassigned to domestic life, showing them protecting the hinterland and nurturing younger generations in order to satisfy the state's growing need for manpower. Gradually, Ottoman women lost whatever autonomy they may have had over their bodies, and their status vis-à-vis the state was redefined. This article examines the female characters in modern Ottoman epic literature so as to explore the reflections in this literature of the social and political transformations that occurred during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It aims to reveal the ways in which heroic female figures created before or at the beginning of the autocratic reign of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) changed into domestic characters as the social skeleton of the regime became apparent.     

Süleyman Nazif's ‘Open Letter to Jesus’: An Anti-Christian Polemic in the Early Turkish Republic

The recent ‘cartoon crisis’ caused by European newspapers that published disrespectful caricatures of the prophet Muhammad and offended Muslims all over the world, intensified the discussions on ‘the clash of civilizations’. The present religious quarrels, as distressing as they are, remind us of the uproar Süleyman Nazif (1870–1927), a Muslim Turkish nationalist caused in Turkey in 1924. At that time the bone of contention was not a cartoon but the ‘Open Letter to Jesus’ Nazif published followed by his ‘The Reply of Jesus’ and in both of which he condemned the ‘crusader mentality’ of the Christian world. Being political satires, these letters reflect the views of Süleyman Nazif on the imperialist European powers, show his attempt to defend the newly founded Turkish Republic and illustrate how relations between Turkey and Europe had been deepening the prejudices of Muslims and Christians toward each other. This contribution presents translations of Nazif's two letters, preceded by an overview of Muslim–Christian polemics in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic.     

Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Neighbourhoods Visited by Courage,Sleeplessness and Dead Bodies

The ‘Ottoman Neighbourhood’ is the basic social unit for the study of the Ottomans and the social lives they led, and many of these studies have been based on such classic resources as religious archives (?er’i siciller). This work investigates the social life of the Ottomans from a perspective that is ignored in the classic resources, as it uncovers the Ottoman individual's courage, willingness to forgo sleep, and approach to unsolved murders. The individuals who lived within the communal organizations as prescribed by Ottoman law behaved in ways that would seem quite strange today. This paper analyses the response of both public authorities and neighbourhood residents to the kinds of crimes that required meticulous investigation in order to solve them, and the meting out of punishments for these crimes.     

Between Conformism and Separatism: A Kurdish Students’ Association in Istanbul, 1912 to 1914

This article is an examination of the ‘Kurdish Students’ Hope Society’ – a youth-led Kurdish organization founded in the Ottoman imperial capital, Istanbul, in 1912. The article contends that the foundation of this organization should not be seen simply as a reaction to the gradual ethnic polarization and ‘Turkification’ of Ottoman politics that occurred in the aftermath of the 1908 ‘Young Turk Revolution’. It also needs to be understood in the context of dynamics emanating from within Kurdish society. Specifically, to the backdrop of an increasingly fragmented Kurdish elite, the Kurdish youth were setting out their own path towards national salvation which was neither conformist nor separatist. In short, they were outlining a ‘third way’ between these two extremes.     

The De Rossetti Affair: Legal Pluralism and Levantine Identity at the Crossroads of Empires

In the nineteenth century, changes to Ottoman legal and financial structures upset the familial interests of the large Levantine clans that were an integral part of the Ottoman Empire from its centre in Constantinople to its peripheries. Many legal and political disputes involved influential individuals who were not strictly ‘European’ or ‘foreign’; rather they were long-term residents of the empire with strong ties to the Mediterranean basin. A forgotten part of Egyptian history, the De Rossetti family presented here exemplifies those families and individuals who transcended the ‘imperialist’ tag as part of a wider Levantine network. This article argues that extraterritorial legal claims had the direct, and generally unintended, effect of an imposed legal order that ensnared both Ottomans and non-Ottomans in disputes over juridical pre-eminence, a creeping institutional imperialism which case by case sought to undermine the Egyptian regime’s capacity to govern.     

Policing the ‘suspects’: Ottoman Greeks and Armenians in Istanbul, 1914–18

During the First World War, a primary domestic political aim for all belligerent countries was to preserve the socio-economic status quo in order to provide appropriate conditions for the survival of the state. Therefore, war governments paid particular attention to the maintenance of internal order. While doing this, the central authority of governments became paramount and this situation had remarkable repercussions on state–society relations. This article examines the wartime public order policies of the Ottoman government specifically concerning the Ottoman Greeks (Rum) and Armenians living in Istanbul. During the Great War, these non-Muslim elements were officially regarded as ‘suspects’, in other words, as ‘potential political criminals’ threatening the internal order of the capital. To control the Ottoman Greeks and Armenians, the war government implemented a number of policing strategies that consisted of deportation of individuals and groups, strict control on travel, and close surveillance of ‘suspects’.     

‘A lucid stream of everywhereness’ in Ben Okri's Wild (2012): A postmodern perspective

Abstract

The argument begins by claiming that the phrase, ‘a clear lucid stream of everywhereness,’ taken from Ben Okri's The landscapes within, at once encapsulates the postmodern theories of complexity and relativity and evokes a cosmic dimension and a striving for Dasein [authentic human existence] that inform his poetic vision in his latest collection of poetry, Wild (2012). It proceeds to argue for the complexity inherent in the notion ‘postmodernism’; then discusses selected poems in terms of modernity's curious dilemma of ‘just now’ negating the preceding ‘just now’, that the French philosopher Jean-François Leotard talks of, treating recurring motifs of change, transformation and continuing presence. This includes a discussion of the two poems, dedicated to the memory of Okri's late mother and father respectively, that bookend the anthology, contextualising them within postmodernity. The article concludes by re-invoking its own abstract title in ‘Towards the Sublime’ in terms of Leotard's definition, before briefly assessing the import of Okri's latest collection of poems.     

Some studies in Russian on the Ottoman empire

Turcologica 1986, a Festschrift presented to A.N. Kononov on his eightieth birthday (Leningrad: Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1986; 303 pp.).

I. Ye, and Yu A. Pyetrosyan, on the periodization of the ‘era of reforms’ in the Ottoman Empire (pp.219–24).

Yuri A. Pyetrosyan, Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet (now Russian) Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, also contributes a brief, but useful paper on the Turkish emigrant press in the early twentieth century (pp.225–9).

Kh. M. Ibragimbyeyli and N.S. Rashba, entitled Osmanskaya Impyeriya v pyervoy chyetvyerti XVII vyeka: sbornik dokumyentov i matyerialov, The Ottoman Empire in the First Quarter of the 17th Century: A Collection of Documents and Materials (Moscow: Nauka Press, 1984; 214 pp.).

A.A. Vitol's Osmanskaya Impyeriya (nachalo XVIII v.), The Ottoman Empire at the Beginning of the 18th Century (Moscow: Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1987; 136 pp.).

V.P. Grachyev's Balkanskiye vladyenya Osmanskoy Impyerii na rubyedzhye XVIII‐XIX vv. (vnutryennyeye polodzhyeniye, pryedposilki natsional'no‐osvobodityel'‐nikh dvidzhyeniy), The Balkan Domains of the Ottoman Empire at the Meeting Point of the 18th and 19th Centuries: Internal Situation, the Preconditions of National Liberation Movements (Moscow: Nauka Press for the Institute of Slavonic and Balkan Studies in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1990; 200 pp.).

M.T. Boddzholyan has written on Ryeformi 20–30‐kh gg. XIX vyeka v Osmanskoy Impyerii, The Reforms of the 1820s and 1830s in the Ottoman Empire (Erevan: Academy of Sciences of Soviet Armenia Press, 1984; 156 pp.).

Osmanskaya Impyeriya: systyema gosudarstvyennogo, upravlyeniya, sotsial'niye i etnoryeligiozniye problyemi. Sbornik statyey, The Ottoman Empire: System of Government, Administration, Social and Ethno‐Religious Problems. A Collection of Articles (Moscow: Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1986; 253 pp.).

Osmanskaya Impyeriya: gosudarstvyennaya vlast’ i sotsial'no‐politichyeskaya struktura, The Ottoman Empire: State Power and Socio‐Political Structure (Moscow: Nauka Press for the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, 1990; 338 pp.).     

The Rise and Fall of Turcophilism in Nineteenth-Century British Discourses: Visions of the Turk, ‘Young’ and ‘Old’

This article examines the evolving British perceptions of the Ottoman Empire from the onset of the Tanzimat to Abdülhamid II. The article aims to attest the emergence of a positive image of the ‘reforming Turk’ and the erosion of this positive assessment following the disillusionment with the achievements of Tanzimat. The article discusses the Christian dimensions of the positive and negative attitudes towards the Ottomans and ‘moral racism’ inherent in both the positive and negative assessments. The article ends with concluding that this reference framework from which the British discourses on the Ottomans derived had eclipsed with the demise of the British nineteenth-century political elite and culture in tandem with the waning of the Ottoman political culture and elite.     

Was there a rule of law in the late Ottoman Empire?

The rule of law is a widely used term in scholarship on Ottoman legal reforms. Nevertheless, the actual meaning of this notion is rarely clarified in the writing on the late Ottoman Empire although theorists of law have discussed the ambiguity of this term. This article aims at examining the value of the rule of law as an analytical category when discussing socio-legal change in the late Ottoman Empire. The article demonstrates that the rule of law can be a meaningful category for historical analysis when conceived through a ‘cultural perspective’ to the law.     

Between haiderisation and modernisation: The German free democrats since party unification

This article examines the development of the German Free Democrats (FDP) since party unification in 1990. Two‐fifths of the FDP's membership now come from the new Lander which adds considerably to the party's internal volatility while it is faced with a dual policy and functional crisis. The current internal debate indicates the extent of the resulting disorientation and illustrates the post‐unification search for a new identity. There now appear to be three principal options for the FDP's future development: firstly, the ‘West German option’, that is the retention of the internal status quo ante; secondly, a radical Haider‐style transformation or the ‘Austrian option'; and thirdly, the ‘modernisation option’, which sees party unification as an opportunity for positive change which could make the Liberals the first truly all‐German party.     

An island unmixed: European military intervention and the displacement of Crete's Muslims, 1896–1908

This article examines the displacement of the majority of Crete's Muslim population after an upheaval led to the establishment of an autonomous regime on the island in 1898, following the military intervention by a coalition of European powers (Britain, France, Italy and Russia). By drawing a connection between Cretan topography and the type of intervention, I argue that the coalition's policies played a central role in Muslim emigration from the greatest Ottoman island. The article highlights the sectarian lens through which the European decision-makers regarded relations between the island's Christian and Muslim populations. In so doing, it makes a contribution to the history of European intervention in the Ottoman Empire. The final section offers a glimpse into the diminished Muslim minority under the autonomous regime, which was established after Abdülhamid II withdrew his soldiers from Crete, signifying de facto termination of Ottoman sovereignty on the island.     

RETHINKING AFRICAN SEXUALITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF HIV AND AIDS: THE LIFE AND DEATH DISCOURSE OF ‘MODERNISED POLYGAMY’ IN SUE NYATHI'S THE POLYGAMIST

ABSTRACT

This article is a study of Sue Nyathi's novel The Polygamist as a cultural production dealing with African modern polygamy1 in the context of HIV and AIDS. What is termed ‘modern polygamy’ in this article is a practice where men have several ‘wives’ but not in the African traditional sense, especially within the Shona culture, but in the sense of what is popularised as a ‘small house’ phenomenon. Nyathi's novel is discussed within the following frameworks corresponding to the three distinct parts of the article. In the first part of the discussion, the dichotomy between economic/ social status and ‘modern polygamy’ is explored. The second part of the discussion is a gendered perspective of ‘modern’ polygamy and particularly highlights gender constructions in Nyathi's representation of ‘modern’ polygamy. In the last section, multiple sexual relations and HIV and AIDS are discussed. Significantly, the article demonstrates that imaginative literature is a cultural site that can help us understand human behaviour and HIV and AIDS; particularly in what in religious terms would be referred to as ‘old testament’ polygamy that poses a danger to health and the social fabric in its new form in modern Zimbabwean society.     

Phenomenological ecology in two occasional poems by Ben Okri

Abstract

This article begins with a brief discussion of the three terms: the poet, ontopoiesis and eco-phenomenology or phenomenological ecology. An explication of its thrust, viz. the significance of sowing/sewing ‘a quilt of harmony’ (Wild 2012: 20), in relation to the broad yet symbiotic theme of cosmic ecology follows. The discussion proceeds by presenting a close critical analysis of Ben Okri's ‘Lines in Potentis’, a poem commissioned by the then Lord Mayor of London in 2002 in commemoration of the bombing of the City of London and which is featured in Okri's most recent anthology of poetry, Wild (2012: 26-27). Both my thrust and my argument are predicated on another occasional poem from Wild, ‘A Wedding Prayer’ (2012: 20-22), which is not analysed in any detail. Axiomatic to the interpretation is the poet's own conception of ‘wild’, cited on the dust cover of the anthology, as ‘an alternative to the familiar, where energy meets freedom, where art meets the elemental, where chaos can be honed’. More precisely, for this London loving Nigerian poet, ‘the wild is our link with the stars…’. This is not aesthetic posturing. As I attempt to show in my reading of the focal poem, it has to do with mystical unrest viewed from an eco-phenomenological ‘enjoyment of literature, of beauty, of the sublime, the elevated, as well as our compassion for the miseries of humankind, [and] generosity towards others.. inspired by the subliminal passions of the human soul’ (Tymieniecka 1996). As the conclusion attempts to show, this projects some of the epistemology of Africans in Africa and the Diaspora. It does this by invoking the contentions of fellow African phenomenologist, Achile Mbembe, in comparison with Tymieniecka's argument that the soul is the ‘soil’ of life's forces and that it is thus the transmitter of life's constructive progress. Such progress is from the primeval logos of life to its annihilation in the anti-logos of man's ‘transnatural telos’ (Tymieniecka 1988: 3).     

‘The Children of the State’? How Palestinians from the Seven Villages Negotiate Sect,Party and State in Lebanon

In Lebanon, the fear of taw?īn makes nationalization of Palestinian refugees an anathema. Yet several groups of Palestinians have received Lebanese citizenship since 1948, most (in)famously those from the ‘seven villages’, a chain of Shi‘i villages on Lebanon's southern border that was incorporated into Palestine in 1923. The trajectory of their nationalization is usually presented as a straightforward consequence of top-down Lebanese electoral politics. This article augments this dominant perspective through a case study of the community from the village of Salha, now in Israel, that currently lives in Shabriha, a small town near the city of Tyre in South Lebanon. Adopting the ‘negotiated statehood’ framework, the article offers an agency-oriented, bottom-up perspective on the community's gaining of citizenship and shows how the people from Salha have acquired citizenship not merely to gain access to, but also to ensure a degree of independence from, the Lebanese state and political parties.     

The Fatwas and the Nusayri/Alawis of Syria

From the time that the Nusayris/Alawis first appeared, several fatwas were issued with regard to them.

There were five fatwas prior to the twentieth century which were issued by Sunni scholars. Some of these fatwas were specifically against the Nusayris/Alawis while others were against all the extreme Shi'ite creeds including the Nusayris. The first three fatwas were issued during the fourteenth century, during the period of Mamluk rule. They were issued by Shaykh al-Islam Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya, and were specifically directed against the Nusayris. The fourth fatwa was issued during the first years of the Ottoman rule over the region of Syria and was against all the extreme Shi'ite creeds. The fifth and last fatwa was issued by a local Shaykh of Latakia specifically against the Nusayris. Those fatwas viewed the Nusayris as heretics outside Islam. During the twentieth century, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the region witnessed the ascendance of ‘Pan Arabism’, and it was during this period that the Nusayris, known now as Alawis, received a fatwa from the prominent Sunni mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni recognizing them as part of the Muslim community, which helped them integrate into the Arab world and in Syria. In 1970, the Alawis, under the leadership of the Alawi Hafiz al-Asad, became the rulers of Syria. During the 1970s the Alawis were granted two additional fatwas, this time from prominent Shi'ite scholars recognizing them as part of the Shi'ite creed. All these fatwas had an enormous effect on shaping the history of the Nusayris.     

A Turk of the West: Sir Edgar Vincent's Career in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire

This article examines the concept of the ‘gentleman capitalist’, as embodied by the career of Sir Edgar Vincent (1857–1941), arguing that a career as a financier was not incompatible with the status of a gentleman in Victorian Britain. From the 1830s, both the City of London and the British government agreed on free trade as the bedrock of British commercial policy, and the use of financial power as a means of extending both formal and informal empire. The life of Sir Edgar Vincent is discussed in detail, particularly his period in Egypt as Financial Adviser to the Khedive and in Constantinople as Director-General of the Imperial Ottoman Bank. The article concludes that Sir Edgar believed absolutely in Britain's civilizing mission in the Middle East, promoting her interests whenever possible, but equally that he had no qualms about using his official position for financial gain.     

Three Tales for a Sultan? Three Tales on Mehmed the Conqueror and Patriarch Gennadius

The article presents for the first time in written form three tales involving the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror and the Orthodox Christian Patriarch Gennadius. These tales purport to illustrate the relationship between the two men according to the view of the Orthodox Christian millet as represented by its religious hierarchy. The article places these otherwise unconsidered tales in the context of the general accounts of this millet which express the view of this relationship. This is a view which presents the events of around 1453 as this millet would have liked to see them as having occurred rather than as in fact they did occur. The tales present ‘snap-shot’, ‘anecdotal’ presentations of this relationship and they are shown to be in full agreement with the assumptions inherent in the base texts. By way of conclusion the texts are judged as testimony to the cultural reality of the later sixteenth-century Ottoman world.