Ottoman Balkans Research Articles

Before Stockholm: Emotions and Victimhood in Mediterranean Kidnapping Narratives, 1866–1921

AbstractFifty years ago, the infamous bank robbery and ensuing hostage crisis that took place in a Stockholm bank gave rise to the so-called ‘Stockholm syndrome’. Though never recognized as a valid medical diagnosis, the (allegedly) pathological relationship between kidnapper and hostage has become an omnipresent media phenomenon that inspires movies and television series to this day. However, this forced bond was not always seen as problematic. The years between 1860 and 1910 witnessed the rise of kidnappings in the Mediterranean world (Southern Italy, Greece, the Ottoman Balkan region, and Morocco) involving English, American, and European hostages. Today, we know about these incidents from autobiographical narratives by the former captives. They painted a surprisingly favourable picture of their captors – and found enthusiastic audiences for their stories. Looking at the interplay of feelings, coercion, and empowerment, the article opens up a new perspective on the history of emotions that brings both victims and perpetrators into the picture.

Shifting Imperial Policies towards Provincial Elites in the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Balkans and Asia Minor

Shifting Imperial Policies towards Provincial Elites in the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Balkans and Asia Minor

On the Early History of the Firms in the Ottoman Balkans: A Coasean Approach

Abstract This article puts the well-known Coasean concept of the firm into the concrete historical environment of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Balkans. The goal is to test whether it can explain the establishment of the first modern firms in conditions predominated by a self-sufficient semimarket economy. On the basis of Bulgarian-owned firms, the authors find that the Coasean concept is useful in explaining the establishment of and the benefits from the firms during the proto-industrial period. The authors contribute to the available literature by adding some clarifications to the main question of Coase concerning the existence of the firms. The firm provides the necessary financial and human capital in sectors such as silk, wool, and textile production and leather goods, where the proto-industrial organization of production is first and foremost applied. The organization of the Bulgarian firms clearly shows the success formula for the presence of a company with small (sometimes even decreasing) capital not only on the relatively huge Ottoman market but even outside it (Wallachia, Georgia) for a long period of time—from approximately the 1820s to the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

ʿAli al-Aʿlā and the Early History of Horufism

Abstract This article examines the life and activities of ʿAli al-Aʿlā (d. 1419/822), the principal successor of the founder of Horufism, Fazlollāh Astarābādi (d. 1394/796), and early Horufi history. Widely known as “Khalifatollāh (Vice-gerent of God)” in Horufi literature, the prolific ʿAli al-Aʿlā compiled five Persian books in the first two decades of the fifteenth century, namely the Korsi-nāma, Towhid-nāma, Qeyāmat-nāma, Ferāq-nāma, and Mahshar-nāma. By principally working on ʿAli al-Aʿlā’s corpus, I construct his biography, as well as explore Fazlollāh’s life and his Horufi doctrine. By critically engaging with the modern scholarship on Horufism, I discuss the crisis among Horufis following the execution of Fazlollāh, their political positioning among different political entities in western Asia, e.g., the Timurids and Qara Qoyunlus, and Horufi missionary activities in Syria, Anatolia, and the Ottoman Balkans in the first decades of the fifteenth century. By doing so, I attempt to add another dimension to the existing Horufi literature.

The effects of the gunpowder technology in the demise of the frontier lords in the Ottoman Balkans

The effects of the gunpowder technology in the demise of the frontier lords in the Ottoman Balkans

Aqua vitae – Notes on Geographies of Alcohol Production and Consumption in the Ottoman Balkans

The paper addresses the beginning of brandy distillation in the Ottoman Balkan, the transfer of technology, commerce and taxation, as well as patterns of consumption. Those patterns include rules of alcohol production, distribution and use according to religion, class and gender, i.e. restrictions and their transgressions. Linguistic, documentary and narrative sources are deployed in building a multifaceted picture. Production of various spirits, foremost plum brandy in the Ottoman Balkans, and the usage of alcohol drinks could be viewed as an area where private and public, official and clandestine, permitted and forbidden mixed and coexisted, and influenced Ottoman political and religious system.

Orthodox Christian Bulgarians Coping with Natural Disasters in the Pre-Modern Ottoman Balkans

Premodern Ottoman society consisted of four major religious communities—Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians, and Jews; the Muslim and Christian communities also included various ethnic groups, as did Muslim Arabs and Turks, Orthodox Christian Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs who identified, in the first place, with their religious community and considered ethnic identity of secondary importance. Having lived together, albeit segregated within the borders of the Ottoman Empire, for centuries, Bulgarians and Turks to a large extent shared the same world view and moral value system and tended to react in a like manner to various events. The Bulgarian attitudes to natural disasters, on which this contribution focuses, apparently did not differ essentially from that of their Turkish neighbors. Both proceeded from the basic idea of God’s providence lying behind these disasters. In spite of the (overwhelmingly Western) perception of Muslims being passive and fatalistic, the problem whether it was permitted to attempt to escape “God’s wrath” was coped with in a similar way as well. However, in addition to a comparable religious mental make-up, social circumstances and administrative measures determining equally the life conditions of both religious communities seem to provide a more plausible explanation for these similarities than cross-cultural influences.

Crypto-Christianity and Religious Hybridisation in the Ottoman Balkans: a Case Study (1599–1622)

In this paper I intend to address the issue of crypto-Catholicism in the early Ottoman Balkans, a complex phenomenon which has drawn historians’ attention over the decades. More specifically, I will attempt to define and clarify the difficult and unresolved issue, taking into account the characteristics of the Balkans where many religious and social groups co-existed. That produced interaction and enmeshment between the various religions and, as a result, identities developed specific distinctive traits and often overlapped.
 Within that unique Balkan environment – a real confessional melting pot – crypto-Christianity naturally arose. Crypto-Catholics or Orthodoxies, living under Ottoman rule, publicly decided to embrace the Islamic religion but secretly identified themselves as Christians. I have set out to investigate this phenomenon by considering letters and reports produced by Catholic missions involved in the Balkan peninsula.

The virtue of imperfection. Gjorgji Pulevski’s Macedonian–Albanian–Turkish dictionary (1875) as a window into historical multilingualism in the Ottoman Balkans

AbstractEven though the Balkans constitute one of the most prominent examples of linguistic areas, little is known about the actual processes and mechanisms contributing to the shaping of this area. Most of the assumptions are based on macro-level analyses and describe the linguistic changes observed in terms of generalising tendencies such as increase in analytism or simplification of structures. In order to approach the processes underlying contact-driven change and area formation, however, the focus needs to be shifted to the micro-level, i. e. the individuals and their communicative practices. Among the rare sources allowing to assume this actor-centred perspective is Gjorgji Pulevski’s trilingual dictionary of Macedonian, Albanian and Turkish from 1875, which on the orthographic and morphological level allows for insight into a multilingual speaker’s perceptions the languages s/he is exposed to and makes use of in her/his every day communicative practice. The present paper discusses the structural parallels between Macedonian and Turkish observed in the dictionary. It illustrates in how far these parallels may contribute to our understanding of the specific kind of individual multilingualism that provided the basis for the morphosyntactic developments observed for the Balkan linguistic area, and may also help to shed light on the more general nature of these developments. It is suggested that these processes evince an increase in morphological transparency, i. e. morphem-to-function mapping, as the most salient and probably most effective outcome of largely imperfect multilingualism.

Kadi Courts in the Ottoman Balkans and Christians in 18th Century (According to the Sofia Documents)

The article deals with the status of Christian population of Sofia under the Ottoman rule and legal pluralism. The aim of the investigation is to analyze the degree of integration of Christians to the Ottoman system of law and to understand the reasons of Christian’s access to the Shari‘a courts. The legal status of Christians in the Ottoman Empire was defined by the so-called Millet system. The Orthodoxies in Ottoman Empire had three ways of resolving their disputes: they could turn to the Episcopal court, the communal court or the Ottoman court, which made a decision according to Shari‘a and Kanun. As it could be argued, on the contrary to popular belief, Christian’s going to Shari‘a courts were not rare. They had the opportunity to choose what kind of court to prefer for resolving their personal and family disputes.

From Mare Clausum to Mare Liberum: Black Sea Diplomacy in the Era of Russo-Ottoman Duopoly

From Mare Clausum to Mare LiberumBlack Sea Diplomacy in the Era of Russo-Ottoman Duopoly Kahraman Şakul (bio) The central thesis of this article is that conventional historiography misrepresents the transformation of the Black Sea as an internationalization of a closed sea through great-power diplomacy (i.e., the "Eastern Question paradigm") and the incorporation of an isolated space through the conquest of European capitalism. The Black Sea has also not received due attention from global historians, who tend to reduce changes in the Black Sea region to the perennial question of the Straits as part of the Eastern Question and their inevitable incorporation into the world economy through Russian grain exports.1 Since the 1970s, historians have tended to avoid using the term "Eastern Question," considering it a Eurocentric reduction of the Ottoman Empire and its peoples to passive recipients of power politics conducted by the great powers. A glance at the list of potential catalysts of the Eastern Question—ranging from the Turks' penetration of the Balkan Peninsula to the French expedition to Egypt—reveals that the term has been stretched to its limits in an attempt to explain the entire history of the relations between Europe and the Turks. By the centenary of World War I, however, there is an increasing interest in the legacies of the Eastern Question paradigm.2 These legacies are [End Page 701] becoming ever more perceptible in recent Russian interventions in Georgia and Crimea, recurrent ethnic conflict, and occasional debates over the status of the Straits. Such legacies prompt historians to reevaluate the problem as one originating in the Russian-Ottoman borderlands.3 The emergence of Russia as a great power in the 1770s after it stripped the northern shores of the Black Sea from the Ottoman Empire and initiated the partitions of Poland-Lithuania accounted for much of the Eastern Question as understood over time. Writing in 1897, Max Choublier "found the root of the problem in the eighteenth-century 'decline' of the Ottoman Empire in the Black Sea," and explained other "questions" in the Ottoman Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt as spiraling outward from this core; he warned his readers to expect a potential Muslim reaction in the near future.4 This article attempts to understand Black Sea history in its own terms as a zone of human interaction and explains its place in the global rivalries of the age. The focus is on Russia's importance in the erosion of Ottoman domination of the Black Sea and Ottoman control of the so-called capitulations. The article thus challenges the view that the capitulatory regime of the Ottomans lasted without interruption until 1914 because of the introduction of the principle of irrevocability in the Franco-Ottoman 1740 capitulations. The Ottomans followed Byzantine precedence in the capitulation agreements regarding foreign navigation in the Black Sea, but the relevant clause remained effectively defunct for most of the early modern era. Gradual elimination of foreign navigation made the Black Sea an Ottoman preserve for centuries, although it is misleading to view it as a "Turkish lake." The idea of mare clausum (closed sea), however, denoted a policy (effective control of a space) rather than a physical reality (physical isolation of a space). Following Brătianu's Braudelian approach to the Black Sea, discussed below, one may claim that "the Russians play the role of the Mongols (a strong political entity established on the northern shore of the Black Sea and its hinterland); the Ottomans play the role of the Byzantines (a stable empire established on the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles); and the British, French, and Austrians play the role of the Italian city-states (European states engaged, [End Page 702] politically and economically, in the Black Sea region)," as succinctly observed by Robarts.5 The relations between Russia and the Ottoman Empire on the northern tier after 1774 resulted in the creation of "a 60-year Ottoman-Russian duopoly" shaped by as much cooperation as competition across the Black Sea.6 The Black Sea trade was a top priority for the riparian powers. By contrast, the capitulatory powers' quest for rights of navigation in the Black Sea aimed at...

From <em>Zaviye</em> to Mosque: Aspects of the Social Evolution in the Early Ottoman Balkans in Late Fourteenth-Century Gümülcine/Komotini

From <em>Zaviye</em> to Mosque: Aspects of the Social Evolution in the Early Ottoman Balkans in Late Fourteenth-Century Gümülcine/Komotini

The Nubian Frontier as a Refuge Area Warrior Society between c. 1200 and c. 1800 CE: A Comparison between Nubia and the Ottoman Balkans

The period from the Ayyubid invasion of Lower Nubia by Salah ad-Din’s brother in 1172–1173 to Mohammed Ali’s conquest of northern Sudan in 1820–1821 has been termed the Feudal Age by William Adams, the nestor of Nubian archaeology. The characterizing feature of the Feudal Age was the disappearance of centralized government, and in its place “a growing spirit of military feudalism […] manifested itself in the appearance of castles and military architecture, in the rise of increasingly independent local feudatories, and in dynastic quarrels within the ruling houses.” The rocky and isolated region of Batn el-Hajar has been considered as an area of refuge during these tumultuous times. For the people living in Nubia, this period was marked by the emergence of tribal societies. Some inaccessible tracts, like Batn el-Hajar, were also characterized by religious resilience where Christianity prevailed, although there was a religious shift from Christianity to Islam among their neighbors.

European Travelers on Music of the East: Religion, Musical Works, and the Otherness of the Ottomans

As historical documents,1 the fragmentary reports of local music witnessed by scores of Western Europeans traveling in the Ottoman Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa between the fifteenth century and the First World War are a motley collection. More often than not, musical observations within the very large and widely read literature of travel arise only in passing—a sentence or paragraph in a letter or diary by a merchant, cleric, embassy attaché, or consular spouse more focused on trade, or on the inconveniences of travel. For this reason, much of what the travelers have to say about music does not obviously intersect with the usual concerns of scholars about historical musical practice. Relatively few of the reports represent attempts at empiricism by persons educated in music.2 It is these writings—like those of Giovanni Battista Donado (1627–99), Charles-Henri de Blainville (1711–71), Franz-Josef Sulzer (1727–91), Charles Fonton (1725–93), Giambattista Toderini (1728–99), and Guillaume André Villoteau (1759–1839)—which tend to be the longest and most detailed of the musical accounts available and which have received the bulk of scholarly attention since the 1950s. What we can learn from a fuller range of travelers’ observations, the offhand no less than the systematic, is not limited to the use to which they have been put most often by ethnomusicologists—that is, to provide valuable corroboration for the details of organology, history, and musical practice in areas east of Vienna and south of the Mediterranean found in other sources.3 In historical musicology, when effort has been made to use these travel accounts to explore the links between European and Ottoman musical culture, such efforts have tended to focus on musical borrowings, on critiques of orientalist and imperialist ideologies, and on the Turkish craze of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In music studies, the alla turca phenomenon has been the centerpiece of most discussions of what European travelers saw and heard.4

Overcrowding the Mountains in the Ottoman Balkans. Social and Ecological Dimensions of the Demographic Crisis in the District (kaza) of Nevrokop during the 15th to the early 18th centuries

Overcrowding the Mountains in the Ottoman Balkans. Social and Ecological Dimensions of the Demographic Crisis in the District (kaza) of Nevrokop during the 15^th to the early 18^th centuries

The Impact of Nationalism on Albanian–Slav Relations in Late Ottoman Macedonia: A Historiographical Review

AbstractThe aim of this article is to inquire how recent and more consolidated historiographical trends consider the impact of nationalism in the late Ottoman Balkans. I focus on historical accounts of Albanian–Slav interaction in the late Ottoman Macedonian context, although the inquiry also includes texts that do not only engage with this epistemological field. I confront research efforts that have been published from the early 1960s to the present in order to understand the continuities and the discontinuities that characterize the work of historians. A preliminary investigation has allowed me to outline two main historiographical approaches: the national historiographies and the postnationalist approach. Such a distinction has become tangible especially after the end of the Cold War when a new generation of historians started to question the validity of the studies conducted by their colleagues in the past decades by pointing at the methodological and ideological issues that limited their work. In this article I evaluate to what extent the work of postnationalist historians is different from that of traditional historiographies and finally reflect on the possibility and benefits that might come from a dialogue between the two approaches.

Nedovršena prošlost u vrtlozima balkanizacije: Refleksije „Istočnog pitanja“ u historijskoj perspektivi

The past and present are inseparable, "holding hands". Breakthrough epochs always influence re-thinking of the perpetrator. Everything that happened has more perspective. The dramatic flows of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Balkans, even in Bosnia and Herzegovina, can not be universally perceived as separate from the wider European / global context, geopolitical order, influence and consequences of extreme interest logic, deosmanization and balkanization models. Long-term processes outperform different time periods and spatial boundaries. In them appearances, mental circles and ideologies are slowly changing. This also applies to the content of the relief sections of the "Eastern Question" and its sleeves, whose controversial paradigms, along with policy and instrumentalized science, transcend the boundaries of the centuries and continents. The view that Muslims are "aliens" in Europe is part of a mentality known and under his mask. What is known to the foreign public, especially in the "Western world", is known about the "Ottoman Balkans" and Muslims, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosniaks, which presents serious doctrine, but also what produces quasi-narratives and tendentious publications has never been insignificant. Each historiography is a product of one's own time, whose interests often determine not only questions that, especially influential scientists, set a complex past, but also answers, resisting its different perceptions. Prejudices and negative stereotypes, whose powerful social crisis generators and wars, immune to counter-arguments arising from opposing experiences and knowledge, articulate and uncritically articulate into historiographical interpretations. The truth to which it strives is a "whole" is not in one place and in the historiography of one nation, it requires a multiperspectival narrative.

Nationalism and Minorities in the Ottoman Balkans: Greek Discourses on the Eastern Crisis (1875–1878)

This article focuses on how the Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878 and the Slavic revolts were interpreted in Greece, given its national aspirations and its relationship with the Orthodox people of the Balkans. The analysis draws on the Athenian press and parliamentary minutes of the time, and rather than focusing on the diplomatic developments follows instead the social discourses on and dominant interpretations of the Slavs and Bulgarians after the Balkan uprisings as well as the dilemmas faced by Greece. It explores a moment in the discursive shift, which introduced an ethno-racial language within the Greek kingdom that began to replace the portrayal of Hellenism as an ecumenical ideology with one of a more exclusive and nationalistic character. It thus shows how the events sharpened the division between Hellenism and Slavism.

Cities of rice: risiculture and environmental change in the Early Modern Ottoman Balkans

The evolution of a global market for rice is associated with the rise of capitalism. However, the expansion of rice farming in the Ottoman state during the Early Modern Period has not been accounted for in the formation of this global market, nor have its environmental effects in the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean been explored. This article traces the history of rice production in the Ottoman Balkans in the 15th through 17th centuries. Focusing on the case of rice agriculture in the city of Filibe (Plovdiv, present-day Bulgaria), it traces the causes and implications, both environmental and economic, of the new waterscapes that arose in this region with the spread of rice agriculture. It argues that the appearance of these new waterscapes was connected to a process of agricultural change throughout the region, new forms of control over land and in some instances the introduction of wage labour. Of particular interest is a government order of 1583 that repeats a complaint from Filibe’s elite residents about the city’s bad air and the prevalence there of fevers, which the residents explicitly blamed on the local rice fields. The article examines how responses to rice agriculture were part of an emerging awareness in the Early Modern period of the relationship between economic activity and environmental change. It also frames local environmental change within a global economic transformation.

Business Partnerships and Practices from the 19th-Century Ottoman Balkans

Business Partnerships and Practices from the 19th-Century Ottoman Balkans