The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif by Ethan Menchinger

Abstract

Reviewed by: The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif by Ethan Menchinger Dženita Karić Ethan Menchinger, The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017). Pp. 356. $103.99 cloth. Ethan Menchinger's monograph The First of the Modern Ottomans: The Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif is an impressive and ambitious biography of one of the key, yet neglected figures of the eighteenth-century Ottoman administrative and intellectual scene: Ahmed Vâsıf (d. 1806), chancery officer and court historian. The book not only follows Vâsif's personal and professional trajectory in detail but also provides insightful analysis of the intellectual discussions and wider political and social context of a turbulent period. Thus, through the biography of Ahmed Vâsıf and Menchinger's powerful narration, we are drawn into the complex Ottoman world of the eighteenth century and its military, bureaucratic, and intellectual dealings. The book moves progressively from the beginnings of Vâsıf's life through eight chapters: "Out of the East: Early Life (ca. 1735–1768)"; "At War (1768–1774)"; "Years of Faction and Reform (1774–1787)"; "Honorable Exile: In Spain (1787–1788)"; "At War (1788–1792)"; "Vâsıf and the New Order (1792–1800)"; "The Height of Fame (1800–1806)"; and "Epilogue: Vâsıf as Ancient and Modern." The book also contains a Dramatis Personae, a chronology, a glossary, and an appendix that discusses Vâsıf's potential authorship of the "Final Word to Refute the Rabble" (Hulâsatü'l-Kelâm fî Reddi'l-'Avamm), a treatise that aimed to dispel misconceptions of the reforms of Sultan Selim III. As the chapter titles suggest, much of Vâsıf's life and career was marked by the frequent wars in which the Ottomans engaged and by his rise to service as a high-ranked Ottoman official. In many ways, Ahmed Vâsıf's life presents the "Ottoman dream" story: hailing from Baghdad, which by Vâsıf's time had been reduced to a provincial city, Vâsıf climbed the scholarly and administrative ranks partly supported by his family background (his father was a minor scholar), but much more by the relentlessly ambitious nature that led him to a continuous pursuit of posts and social status. Ahmed Vâsıf's career was thus marked by mobility, both social and physical, as he served the Ottoman Empire from the battlefronts on the Danube, to imprisonment in St. Petersburg, to posts and exile in Spain and Belgrade. Ahmed Vâsıf's administrative rank steadily rose: he began as a treasury scribe and rose through the positions of private secretary to Abaza Mehmed Paşa, clerk in the correspondence office, military secretary, fortifications officer, director of the outer documentation office, court historian (several times), galley scribe, temporary head of the suspended payments office, ambassador to Spain, head of the Anatolian accounts office (several times), head of the general accounts office, chief of the daily ledger, and chancellor (several times)—to his highest position, chief scribe. As Menchinger's painstaking attention to detail in numerous sources makes clear, Ahmed Vâsıf also engaged in a range of other pursuits. He was a poet and lexicographer and an "inordinately vain" editor of court histories (173); he was also active in many aspects of the printing process. Wide-ranging as were his travels, the most significant locale of Vâsıf's aspirations was certainly Istanbul, where he steadily sought both to influence Ottoman foreign politics and to amass wealth. Menchinger positions Ahmed Vâsıf against the background of a larger canvas of the eighteenth century, which saw increased Ottoman struggles with other [End Page 411] European powers and numerous territorial losses that forced the Ottoman Empire into rounds of negotiations and prolonged reassessments of its own internal affairs. Moreover, according to Menchinger's research, these self-assessments extended to reexamination of the ideological foundations of the Empire itself. In this regard, the major questions posed by intellectuals regarded realities of war and peace in the face of predestined eternity of the Ottoman Empire: how were...