Late Ottoman Times Research Articles

A pioneer Turkish urologist-medical historian (Saim Erkun 1901-1949) and his one-century-old review about prostate.

Saim Erkun (1901-1949) was born in Manisa at Aegean region of Anatolia as an Ottoman citizen. While his early life was spent in late Ottoman times at military actions including military prison camp in British colony; India, his active professional productive period was in early Turkish republic period (Est. 1923, centenary). He had a good education period for medicine with the help of his good level of all main World scientific languages such as French, German, and English. Besides his main profession, he was also interested in Ottoman urological medicine around the conquer of Istanbul and allocated them a space in his books in 1930s. He was one of the earliest urology resident (1929-1933, Istanbul) of modern medicine in Turkey. He performed many urological procedures and published the outcomes following modern scientific algorithms, furthermore, there have been urological books including "history" partly referring to antique Ottoman literature among his publications. In this manuscript we focused on the magic word of Urology forever; "Prostate," among his essays. Turkish medicine, particularly urology, renewed itself by some intelligent hard working young clinicians such as Saim Erkun, immediately after the short struggling by means of establishment process of modern Turkiye after World War I by the collapsing of old Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, we think that the stunning special word of urology, "prostate," should especially be mentioned to emphasize the importance of this beginning.

Salim Barakat’s First Novel: Sages of Darkness

Aviva Butt has just finished translating in collaboration with the author, Salim Barakat’s first novel Fuqahā’ al-Ẓalām (Sages of Darkness) written in 1985. The translation was done from a later original Arabic manuscript roughly the same as the 1994 Baghdadi edition. Sages of Darkness is a Kurdish Sufi novel depicting Kurdish life in late Ottoman times. It is, in fact, a philosophical novel with a strong dose of psychological realism, written in a style derived from Classical Modernism. And so, it is mainstream literature, an achievement in view of the late start in novel-writing by the Kurdish far-flung writers’ community. The action line, full of suspense, violence, and murder, is greatly about the tribal notable “Avdei Sarei,” who does everything he can to ensure the survival of his business and the economic health of his endeavors. In this article, the translator of Sages of Darkness analyzes Barakat’s novelistic techniques for the purpose of prompting a better understanding of the novel, and by-the-by, if possible, to solve the enigma of the meaning of the title.

An Emblematic Case in the Kingdom of Iraq: the Jewish Commander in Charge of the Baghdad Arsenal, Yamen Yousef, from Integration in Nation-Building to Exclusion

Abstract This article illustrates aspects of modern Iraqi history, being concerned with the life and career of Yamen Yousef (Yāmēn Yūsif, Hebrew name: Yāmīn Ṣiyyōn [ben] Yōsēf [ben] Nissīm), an officer in the army of the Kingdom of Iraq, who was the commander in charge of the Baghdad Royal Arsenal in the 1930s, and earlier on had been one of the three young officers made to proclaim Iraq’s first king during the coronation ceremony. That up to the late 1930s he was commander in charge of the Baghdad Royal Arsenal is in retrospect surprising (and that late in that decade a false charge was made against him by the far right is unsurprising), in consideration of rising animosity towards his ethno-religious identity. This came to a breaking point when he resigned, thus reverting from the acquired status of a career in the service of the state, to private bourgeoisie: this was happening in the first decade of full independence, when Jewish civil servants were being dismissed in their droves, after having been co-opted into the process of nation-building, owing to their educational qualifications giving them for a while an advantage. This study contributes novel data and facets that enable a fairly novel, and certainly more nuanced view of intercommunal relations in Iraq from late Ottoman times throughout the Hashemite monarchy (and beyond).

Settlement Law of 1934: Turkish Nationalism in the Age of Revisionism

There is a strong tendency in Turkish historiography to approach Kemalist policies as purely domestic affairs that emanate from the centre in a top-down manner, reflecting the clear ideological positions of Ankara. The existing scholarship on the Settlement Law (1934), too, has read the development of Kemalist demographic policies in ideological terms, framing them in top-down modernist trajectories that were long in the making since the late Ottoman times. These perspectives often remained analytically singular and nation-centred, failing to engage with the broader transnational developments that were in fact crucial to the making and timing of a range of Kemalist policies. As such, the processes of demographic engineering are framed as devoid of historical conjuncture and immune from unintended consequences or the constraints presented by state capacity. In this article, I seek to overcome such limitations by situating the Settlement Law within its due transnational context of heightened interstate rivalries since the 1930s. Unfolding in myriad ways across the borderlands of Eastern Europe, the complex dynamics of interstate competition created the necessary push and pull factors that started dislodging the Balkan Muslims from those areas coveted by various territorially revisionist states in the region. The demographic engineering their arrival triggered in Turkey, I argue, was therefore as much national as international.

The role of Kurdish media in the resistance against Turkification: a case study of an online Kurdish news platform

ABSTRACT Kurds are the largest minority group in Turkey and their position is one of conflict with the ‘Turkishness Contract,’ a concept that describes the unspoken convention ensuring the ethnic privilege of Sunni-Turks and the exclusion or assimilation of those who resist Turkification. Kurds have thus experienced oppression since late Ottoman times and throughout the Republican years, up to the present day. This article suggests that the Kurdish media in Turkey have always had to negotiate state oppression by articulating a strategy of resistance to the hegemonic knowledge imposed by the state and reproduced by the mainstream media. They thus reject the Turkification that would be required to abide by the Turkishness Contract. This article's investigation of the Kurdish media takes place through an exploration of an online news platform, a self-proclaimed ‘voice of the weak.’ The data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with journalists and editors of the platform.

Missionary Politics in Late Ottoman Palestine

Abstract The aim of the paper is to elaborate on the Jerusalem Orthodox Patriarchate’s missionary work in late Ottoman times, paying special attention on its incapacity to counteract the activities of its rivals within the religious market of Palestine. In particular, the article addresses the following research questions: What was the extent of the Patriarchate’s missionary activity, and its stance vis-à-vis the work of the other Church missions, i.e. the Roman-Catholic, and Protestant? Was its policy effective; and if not, why? Overall, the article argues that neither the missionary enterprise nor the blocking of the western missions’ conversion activities were at the top of the patriarchal agenda. It is suggested that the causes of this stance were mainly: a) the financial and political disadvantageous position of the institution; b) the centrality of the custodianship of the Holy Places as the primary aim of its function; and c) the development of Greek nationalism as the nodal point of the discourse.

Settlement history of Iraqi Kurdistan: an assessment halfway into the project

The objectives of the “Settlement history of Iraqi Kurdistan” project include the identification and recording of archaeological sites and other heritage monuments across an area of more than 3000 km2 located on both banks of the Greater Zab river, north of Erbil. A full survey of the western bank was carried out over three field seasons, in 2013, 2014 and 2015 (leaving the Erbil/Haūler province to be studied in the next two seasons). To date, at least 147 archaeological sites dating from the early Neolithic Hassuna culture to late Ottoman times have been registered. Moreover, the project documented 39 architectural monuments, as well as the oldest rock reliefs in Mesopotamia dating from the mid 3rd millennium BC, located in the village of Gūnduk. Altogether 91 caves and rock shelters were visited in search of Paleolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic remains. The paper is an interim assessment of the results halfway into the project, showing the trends and illuminating gaps in the current knowledge.

Imperial Perceptions of Palestine: British Influence and Power in Late Ottoman Times, by Lorenzo Kamel

Imperial Perceptions of Palestine: British Influence and Power in Late Ottoman Times, by Lorenzo Kamel

Lorenzo Kamel, “Imperial Perceptions of Palestine. British influence and power in late Ottoman times”

Lorenzo Kamel, “Imperial Perceptions of Palestine. British influence and power in late Ottoman times”

A Sultan's Children: Bosnian Jews in Two Major Newspapers of the Bosnian Vilayet: Bosna and Sarajevski Cvjetnik

This paper deals with the references to the Jewish community, its members and interests in Bosnia in official vilayet newspapers during the late Ottoman times until the Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878. Two kinds of references can be discerned: ones related to the Jewish community in Bosnia, and the other referring to the community in Serbia. In this context, numerous questions of integration, language, education and state patronization are treated.

The territorial aspect of sectarianism in Iraq

This article examines the territorial aspect of sectarian relations in Iraq. The main argument is that such a territorial component is largely missing in Iraq and that historically, there have been very few attempts to connect sectarian identity in Iraq to specific, more restricted territories of the country. The article reviews the limited attempts in such a direction, both historically and in the post-2003 atmosphere. Today, federal options exist for governorates to merge into sectarian regions if they prefer to do so. So far, however, neither Sunnis or Shi'ites have demonstrated any great interest in the creation of such sectarian regions, which can be explained with the historical durability of the Iraq concept as a proto-region in late Ottoman times and the concomitant need to revise the near-omnipresent cliché of Iraq as a completely 'artificial' product lumped together solely thanks to the actions of industrious British imperialists.

Medieval coastal Syrian vegetation patterns in the principality of Antioch

The coastal area of Jableh, in the vicinity of the Saladin and Al-Marquab castles, is a fertile alluvial plain located on the northwestern part of Syria, in what was once the crusader Principality of Antioch. In order to detail the coastal environment during the crusader period in the Middle East, palynological analyses have been conducted on the underlying coastal-alluvial deposits. The recovered sediments represent a continuous record of the environmental history of the area spanning a c. AD 850—1850 cal. yr period, from the Muslim Era up to and including the late Ottoman times. During the local crusader period (AD 1100—1270), the area was dominated by an arborescent mattoral mixed with a xerophytic shrub-steppe. The alluvial plain was slightly waterlogged and colonized by a wetland meadow with an open vegetation of steppe-like character on bare surfaces and fresh arable soils. The riparian and open deciduous riverine forests were weakly developed. Signs of agricultural activities are mainly recorded for the High Medieval period (AD 1000—1300), with an increase of vineyards in the coastal area. Since c. AD 1250 cal. yr until the end of the crusader period, agricultural activities never reached the same intensity as during the Mameluke Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire.

Contesting for Turkey's Political ‘Centre’: Domestic Politics, Identity Conflicts and the Controversy over EU Membership

‘Westernization’ has been a major goal for Turkish political elites in the contemporary era. The roots of this interest can be traced to the late Ottoman times. Westernization in this context is synonymous with modernization, progress and reaching the highest civilizational standards; in other words, obtaining a first division status in terms of economic performance, democratic credentials and other performance criteria that one could identify. Becoming a member of the European ‘club’ was a natural objective in this direction. Although frequent references have been made regarding the value of Turkish membership in terms of its contribution to fostering inter-civilization dialogue, possible economic benefits and enhancement of European security, there is no doubt that the primary emphasis has been on the role that EU membership could play in Turkey's own national transformation. Indeed, in the recent era, the dramatic impact of the Europeanization process in Turkey can be observed, motivated by the signal for full-membership in the three inter-related areas of the economy, democratization process and foreign policy behaviour. In spite of a decline of momentum in recent years, it is very much a real and on-going process which would be very hard to reverse.

Proto-political conceptions of Iraq in late Ottoman times

This article criticizes the so-called artificiality paradigm concerning the emergence of the modern state on Iraq, according to which the kingdom of Iraq that came into being in 1921 was nothing but a random collection of Ottoman provinces that had little in common. On the basis of documents from the late Ottoman period, the article shows that the opposite appears to be the case: In many ways, the modern state of Iraq had regional antecedents that predated the British invasion in 1914. The article shows that for long periods before 1914 there existed a pattern of administrative centralization of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul under Baghdad as a paramount regional capital, that this regional entity was often described as Iraq in administrative and diplomatic correspondence, and that the local inhabitants often referred to Iraq in a patriotic sense.

Proto-political conceptions of Iraq in late Ottoman times

Proto-political conceptions of Iraq in late Ottoman times

Cultural Camouflage in Late Ottoman TimesPossessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire. By WendyM.K. Shaw. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2003.

Cultural Camouflage in Late Ottoman Times<i>Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire</i>. By WendyM.K. Shaw. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2003.

Knowledge of Diversity: Towards a More Differentiated Set of ‘Greek’ Perceptions of ‘Turks’

Oral accounts reveal the close interaction of Christians and Muslims in late Ottoman times, reflecting a past more complex than that presented in nationalist historiographies. This article examines the memories of refugees from Asia Minor, whose everyday contact with their Muslim and other neighbours imbued them with a developed sense of diversity, and provides evidence of widespread mutual accommodation in the last phase of the Ottoman Empire. This is attested by independent corroborative evidence and is not simply attributable to sheer nostalgia. In the victims' accounts, memories of peaceful coexistence are juxtaposed with painful recollections from the war. The Asia Minor experience suggests that contact and collaborative activity provide a better basis for understanding than separation and segregation.

The Effect of Socioeconomic Change on Arab Societal Collapse in Mandate Palestine

Between December 1947 and the first four months of 1948, the fabric of a centuries-old Palestinian Arab society unraveled with astounding rapidity, producing 750,000 refugees. The collapse occurred within the context of widespread socioeconomic disruption and dislocation among peasants and migrant and urban workers. The eroding socioeconomic foundation severely weakened this lower stratum's defense against Zionist settlement, colonial state policies, and military pressures. Beginning in late Ottoman times and throughout the British Mandate period (1918–48), the agrarian social economy had been slowly undermined by the urban landowning class and oppressive tax and land-tenure systems. Peasant dispossession, begun in the 19th century and aggravated by Zionist land-buying in the 20th, created a significant landless rural population that was increasingly dependent on wage labor in scattered rural locations and in the cities. During the British Mandate, as Palestine was rapidly incorporated into the world market, communal harmony and social integration were further strained by urban–rural and peasant–landowner tensions, disjointed urban–working–class development, unemployment, and overcrowding. As a result, by the late 1940s Palestinian Arab society was on the brink of disintegration.

La communauté juive de Bagdad à la fin de l'époque ottomane : l'émergence de classes sociales et de la sécularisation.

A la fin de l'époque ottomane et jusqu'à la fin du mandat britannique en 1932, la communauté de Bagdad était une des gloires de la société juive moderne. Parmi les communautés juives moyen-orientales et méridionales de l'époque, celle de Bagdad n'avait de rivale, quant à sa taille et à ses institutions, qu'à Salonique. Cependant, malgré son importance et celle de ses descendants qui se trouvent à présent en Israël, la communauté bagdadienne est très peu étudiée. Notre connaissance des sociétés juives du Yémen ou de Tripolitaine est meilleure que celle de Bagdad. Le but de ce travail est de combler cette lacune.

Baghdad Jewry in Late Ottoman Times: The Emergence of Social Classes and of Secularization

In late Ottoman times and until the end of the British Mandate in 1932, the community in Baghdad was one of the glories of modern Jewry. In the contemporary Middle East and Mediterranean world, Baghdad Jewry was rivaled in size and institutions only by the Jewish community of Salonika. But despite its prominence, and that of its descendants in Israel today, Baghdad Jewry has been studied very little. Our understanding of Jewish societies in obscure regions such as Yemen and Tripolitania is more advanced. This paper offers the outlines of a sociological portrait to fill the gap.