AN OTTOMAN ARAB MAN OF LETTERS AND THE MEANINGS OF EMPIRE, c. 1860

Andrew Arsan

doi:10.1017/s0080440121000050

Abstract

AbstractThis paper returns to one of the germinal texts of nineteenth-century Arab political thought, Butrus al-Bustani's Nafir Suriyya (‘The Clarion of Syria’). A series of broadsides published between September 1860 and April 1861, these reflected on the confessional violence that had rent apart Mount Lebanon and Damascus in mid-1860. As scholars have suggested, Bustani – now regarded as one of the pre-eminent thinkers of the nineteenth-century Arab nahda, or ‘awakening’ – here offered a new vision of Syrian patriotism, which formed part of a longer reflection on political subjectivity, faith, and civilisation. But, this paper argues, these texts can also be read as reflections on the changing workings of empire: on the imperial ruler's duties and attributes and his subjects’ obligations and rights; on the relationship between state and population and capital and province; on imperial administrative reform; and on the dangers foreign intervention posed to Ottoman sovereignty. Drawing on the languages of Ottoman reform and ethical statecraft, as well as on imperial comparisons, Bustani argued against the autonomy some counselled for Mount Lebanon and for wholesale integration with the Ottoman state. These texts offer grounds for methodological reflection and for writing Ottoman Arab thought into broader histories of imperial political thought.

Highlights

In late September, the Ottoman port of Beirut was still a city reeling from war
Bustani – regarded as one of the pre-eminent thinkers of the nineteenth-century Arab nahda, or ‘awakening’ – here offered a new vision of Syrian patriotism, which formed part of a longer reflection on political subjectivity, faith, and civilisation. This paper argues, these texts can be read as reflections on the changing workings of empire: on the imperial ruler’s duties and attributes and his subjects’ obligations and rights; on the relationship between state and population and capital and province; on imperial administrative reform; and on the dangers foreign intervention posed to Ottoman sovereignty
Drawing on the languages of Ottoman reform and ethical statecraft, as well as on imperial comparisons, Bustani argued against the autonomy some counselled for Mount Lebanon and for wholesale integration with the Ottoman state

Summary

Introduction

In late September , the Ottoman port of Beirut was still a city reeling from war. In the last days of May, brutal fighting had broken out between the Christian and Druze inhabitants of Mount Lebanon, whose ranges overhung the Mediterranean littoral. They form part of a longer reflection on citizenship, faith and community, on sin, duty and judgement, and on language, culture, civilisation and ethics, which left its inflection on earlier writings such as his translations of Pilgrim’s Progress and the Bible, or his ‘lecture on the morals and mores of the Arabs’ It is perhaps unsurprising, that they have lent themselves to the view that they were, at heart, meditations on the meaning of patria – and, in particular, articulations of a Syrian patriotism which Bustani hoped could supplant the fanaticism that had rent asunder local society. Arabic Thought, ; Abu-Manneh, ‘The Christians’, – ; Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine, ‘Butrus al-Bustani: From Protestant Convert to Ottoman Patriot and Arab Reformer’, in Bustani, The Clarion of Syria, – ; Hill, Utopia and Civilisation,. Bustani was not concerned here with limning a new vision for the ‘integration of Syrian society’ within the ‘framework’ of Ottomanism, and with establishing a new relationship between local society and imperial state

Bustani as a thinker of empire

Writing the Tanzimat: imperial patriotism and civic responsibility

Against autonomy

Looking backwards: imperial ethics and just administration

Looking outwards: global comparison and imperial sovereignty

Conclusion