Reading and Analyzing Ottoman Manuscripts: 3–8 September 2018, Ankara

Abstract

Reading and Analyzing Ottoman Manuscripts 3–8 September 2018, Ankara Matthew Ghazarian Archives are powerful but seductive; they inform and misinform. These were ideas broached at the “Reading and Analyzing Ottoman Manuscripts,” workshop hosted in Ankara in September 2018. The program aimed to show participants the pleasures and pitfalls of Ottoman archives. It follows two similar programs in Amman (2016) and Beirut (2017). At the 2018 edition, participants compared experiences, learned about dozens of manuscript collections, and critically contemplated their contents. The bulk of the program was comprised of talks, reading groups, and tours of archives and libraries. The program opened with panels and talks, which were also peppered throughout the following days. Speakers addressed two major questions—“Where do I start?” and “How can we trust archives, anyway?” Yonca Köksal talked about the contents of the Presidential State Archives (Cumhurbaşkanlık Devlet Arşivleri, formerly the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi), especially collections pertaining to nineteenth-century Ottoman reforms and their ramifications in the provinces. Mark Aymes, Norig Neveu, and Metin Atmaca, meanwhile, formed a panel to discuss the collections available to researchers in Greece and Cyprus, Jordan, and Iraq, respectively. Other speakers also offered their takes on how to use specific collections. Mustafa Alkan described sources available in the archives of the General Directorate of Pious Foundations (Vakıflar Müdürlüğü), and Evgeni Rad-shev presented on tahrir and other sources from the early modern Ottoman Balkans and Bulgaria. Others focused on method. Özer Ergenç presented on approaches for using Ottoman primary sources, and Oktay Özel gave a broad overview of the kinds of archives available in Turkey and how to utilize them. He discussed at length the trap of collections that appear open but are in fact redacted. All of the speakers offered anecdotes, tips, and basic information about researching in, traveling to, and accessing collections relevant to Ottoman and Middle Eastern history. [End Page 245] Although they also questioned the archive’s constitution and authority, earlier talks were geared more toward describing where and how to conduct research. Later talks dwelled more on questions than answers. Füat Dündar, Christine Jungen, and Abdul-Hameed Al-Kayyali, for example, raised issues of power, memory, and identity when dealing with state collections. What makes Arab archives Arab, and what kinds of Ottoman pasts can we find within them? What Armenian or Palestinian histories can emerge from archives constructed and policed by Turkish or Israeli officials? How does the presence of such archives continue to shape the possibility of writing histories of Turkey, Israel, and the Middle East? They also raised questions about the kinds of knowledge production—oral, for instance—that are rarely captured and preserved in the archive. The reading groups formed the bread and butter of the program, meeting for six separate hour-long sessions spread across three days. Split into ten-person sections with a few instructors, they provided a space for participants to compare experiences reading, translating, and analyzing Ottoman documents. Discussions touched on everything from paleography to poetics. These reading groups offered a chance for participants to glance at and discuss, even briefly, a broad sampling of documents from former Ottoman realms. Participants looked at fifteenth-century letters, sixteenth-century poetry, and seventeenth-century pious foundation registers (vakıf defterleri), in addition to eighteenth and nineteenth-century state papers. Unfortunately, these were brief encounters, not committed engagements: the summer school was five days, not five weeks. Holding the program in Ankara offered the chief advantage of the city’s many archival collections, which include a digital copy of Ottoman collections held in Istanbul’s Presidential State Archives. With over forty million sorted documents, and over forty-five million unsorted documents, it is by far the largest collection of Ottoman materials in this country and likely anywhere in the world. Still, the summer school made a convincing case for all researchers—not just those of the Turkish Republic—to take a trip to Ankara for the collections held only there. Some of these were run by state-funded institutions including: • State Archive General Directorate (Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü) • General Directorate of Pious Foundations (Vakıflar Genel...