Ottoman Intellectuals Research Articles

The stakes of “Imitation”: debating modern poetics and national identity in late ottoman literature

ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, Ottoman culture witnessed a concerted effort to develop a national literature on par with modern European literature and culture. This was also the time when Ottoman intellectuals began to develop a systematic approach to literary analysis. Debates on the imitation, translation, and adaptation of Western forms were central to this period. This article examines the evolution of the concept and practice of imitation as part of these debates. This detailed analysis of the theoretical discourse surrounding the concepts of imitation and authenticity contributes to the broader field of literary theory and comparative literature. By introducing the theoretical rigor inherent in Ottoman-Turkish intellectual practice and highlighting its specific conceptual tradition, the article not only bridges the gap of non-Western critical thought in contemporary literary history, but also offers a fresh perspective on the much-debated East–West paradigms and cross-cultural approaches in literary studies and beyond.

Positioning in Turbulent Times: Ottoman Intellectuals and the South African War (1899–1902)

ABSTRACT The South African War of 1899−1902, between Great Britain and the Boer states, marked by British victory, garnered extensive international attention, thus offering a compelling case study on the influence of modern propaganda globally. European and American audiences closely monitored the conflict between the ‘mighty’ British Empire and the ‘little white Christians’. Employing critical analysis, this article scrutinises Ottoman intellectuals’ pro-British propaganda and their stance on the war. Utilising sources like Young Turk publications and memoirs, particularly focusing on Ismail Kemal Vlora’s work ‘The Question of Transvaal’ (1900), it sheds light on their efforts to legitimise British imperialism in South Africa and beyond. Vlora played a pivotal role in leading the Anglophile faction amongst Ottoman statesmen and intelligentsia and his writings offer crucial insights into their perspectives. This study aims to comprehend the views of Anglophile Ottoman intellectuals on colonialism, imperialism, and civilisation, alongside their advocacy for Britain. Centred on Ottoman perspectives of the war, with supplementary attention to colonial South African history, this research unveils how and why the Southern African conflict impacted Ottoman intelligentsia. This study is embedded within the broader context of the South African War’s substantial international ramifications, emphasising its relevance to global historical discourse.

Ethical Antinomies

Building on recent scholarship on the novel and Middle Eastern modernities, this article examines how Ottoman intellectuals theorized the novel as a realist genre in the nineteenth century as a way of including Ottoman literary knowledge within global novel theories. In the late Ottoman context, the novel was articulated in terms of conceptual separations (primarily as truth/imitation–fiction/creation, which then develops into nature-beauty and romance-realism binaries). Such conceptual divides inform both the history and the theory of the novel by Ottoman intellectuals. Revisiting the problem of realism in light of the dialectics that these divides built up, this article argues that they dialogically establish realism as a symbiotic regime of representation that merges mimeticism and transcendentalism, which had aesthetic as well as political implications. More importantly, negotiating the tension between imitation and creation through Ottoman-Islamicate terms, Ottoman realism complicates the relation between literature and secularization as it speaks to the institutionalization of modern literature.

Writing Sacred Histories in Late Ottoman Egypt: Zaynab Fawwāz and Qadriyya Kāmil’s Descriptions of Early Islam

Abstract This article studies contrasting notions of historiography in Zaynab Fawwāz and Qadriyya Kāmil’s biographical dictionaries. It begins by offering an overview on these authors’ vitas and delves into the historiographical practices that concerned Ottoman intellectuals in the late nineteenth century. It analyses Fawwāz’s dictionary, al-Durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr (1894), which reveals a feminist understanding of Islam as situated within an Arab and pan-Ottoman environment as well as the large arch of Abrahamic monotheism. By highlighting specific figures over others, Fawwāz produces a historical narrative that transcends religious and sectarian divides. The article then introduces Kāmil’s Shahīrāt al-nisāʾ fī l-ʿālam al-islāmī (1924) which depicts a conceptually narrower Islam, shaped by the geo-political circumstances of the early twentieth century. The biographies of the Muslim foremothers Kāmil presents offer normative templates of female piety but are not completely subsumed by the category of gender either. Throughout, the article points to how both authors engage the rules of the biographical genre, arguing that the ways they adhere to or break with its tradition indicate a desire to create new forms of moral and communal belonging.

Sciences and Change of Perception in The Late Ottoman Intellectuals

The cursory overlook of the research shows that Ottoman Empire, in general, has no conflict with science. It invites man to cultivate science. The contribution of Muslims in the field of science has been significant. After the 13th century, they paid more attention to religious teachings to preserve them from negative influences. Especially in the nineteenth century scientific and technological revolution in the West, unfortunately, was misunderstood by many Muslims at that time and lagged.
 We witnessed too much scientific development in the Ottoman period. But, there are some claims for the conflict between science and religion in the Ottoman period. Historically some religious intellectuals like, Sheik al-Islam and ulama opposed scientific development and the majority of them supported scientific development/reforms.

Ahmet Mithat Efendi’nin ‘Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan’ Seyahatnamesi ile ‘Paris’te Bir Türk’ Romanında Hayal ile Gerçeklik Çatışması

“Travel Book”, a literary genre, is a type of writing in which the author writes about his impressions of the places he has travelled and seen. In the 19th century Ottoman press, there was a significant increase in the number of travel books written on Europe. In this study, the conflicts between Ahmet Mithat Efendi’s novel ‘Paris’te Bir Türk’, a fictional travel work, and his travel book ‘Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan’ are examined. The reason for presenting this subject to the attention is to question the contradictions in the approaches of the Ottoman intellectuals to Western civilisation with reference to Ahmet Mithat Efendi. The Ottoman intellectuals of the Westernisation period saw Paris as the centre of progress and development and looked at Europe from the Parisian perspective. Ahmet Mithat made Paris the subject of many of his fictional works through novels, history books, geography books, travel guides, travel books, pictures, maps, encyclopedias and his imagination. The author saw Paris thirteen years after he wrote his novel ‘Paris’te Bir Türk’, the most important of his fictional works in which he chose Paris as a setting. In 1889, the author participated in the VIIIth International Congress of Orientalists held in Stockholm as the Ottoman delegate upon the appointment of Abdülhamid II, and his European travels lasted approximately three and a half months. The author travelled to Paris after the congress and stayed in Paris for twelve days. The author devoted more than 300 pages of his 1044-page travel book ‘Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan’, which is a report of his European journey, to his observations on Paris, where he stayed the longest during his European journey. He describes the squares, parks, churches, schools, hospitals, palaces, museums, theatres, exhibitions, libraries, entertainment venues, factories, and cemeteries of Paris in the context of the Istanbul-Paris comparison. The novel ‘Paris’te Bir Türk’, as a defence against Orientalism, is the narrative of a fictional journey, while ‘Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan’, as an occidentalist defence against Orientalist ideas, is the narrative of a physical journey. The Paris that the author describes with his imagination in ‘Paris’te Bir Türk’ and the Paris that he introduces with his observations in ‘Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan’ are different from each other, and this situation causes a conflict within itself. In his travel book ‘Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan’, it is observed that the author is in an effort to confirm his images and assumptions about Paris, which he learned from books, and his effort to bring Paris, which he learned from books, from his mind to reality gives rise to contradictions. Although he emphasizes that the imaginary Paris he constructs in his mind coincides with the reality, there are some contradictions: Clothes determine prejudices and ideas about people, Europeans’ false images of Islam, Ottomans and Turks, the Seine River, the Eiffel Tower, and the Opera House are small and unpretentious. In our study, we have concluded that Ahmet Mithat Efendi approached Western civilisation with superficial knowledge with the evaluations and determinations we made on the contrasts between an imaginary travel and a physically realised travel.

Legitimizing Private Land Ownership in the Ottoman Empire: State Policy vs Economic Thought

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ideas of both the liberals and the German Historical School (laissez-faire vs. protectionism) began to find an increasingly receptive audience in the Ottoman Empire. This was accompanied by a radical change in the approach to the concept of private land ownership. This article aims at discovering traces of this change in the economic literature produced by Ottoman political economists and social thinkers of the second half of the nineteenth century. The otherwise contrasting approaches of liberal writers, such as Serandi Arsizen (Sarantis Archigenes), Sak?zl? Ohannes Efendi and Mehmet Cavid Bey, on the one hand, and of the protectionist writers, such as Ahmet Mithat Efendi and Musa Akyigitzade, who were inspired more by the German Historical School (and by Friedrich List, in particular), on the other, are examined in order to display similar perceptions of private land ownership in Ottoman economic thought. State-induced private propertization of land received strong support from Ottoman intellectuals from different schools of thought, and the inviolability of property rights in land is considered sine qua non for economic development.

Bewildered and Enchanted: Early Modern Imperial Ottoman Mosques and the Sense of Wonder

ABSTRACT: this paper proposes that early modern Ottoman intellectuals familiar with a medieval cosmographic theory of wonder formed a large emotional community whose members valued and practiced this emotion towards imperial Ottoman mosques. To achieve this objective, I draw upon a variety of sources from the early modern period, including chronicles, treatises on architecture, and travelogues, created by individuals who belonged to this emotional community. Sources such as these contain words, symbols, and gestures, that aided the whole group in recognizing this desirable emotion in the context of imperial architecture. Through their writing, these individuals sought to instill cosmographic wonder among their readers, while at the same time conveying the message that imperial mosques represent the creation of God. Such a narrative was employed by the Ottomans as long as cosmographies were in demand. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, when updated studies on geography gradually replaced cosmographies, there were those within this emotional community who underwent an epistemological change. From this point on, wonder at Ottoman architecture was generated by different stimuli which were not necessarily related to the cosmographic theory of wonder.

A Genealogy of the Concept of Civilization (Medeniyet) in Ottoman Political Thought: A Homegrown Perception?

Since the first translation of the concept of civilization into Turkish as “medeniyet” in 1837 by Sadık Rıfat Pasha, the then Ottoman Ambassador to Vienna, this coinage has turned out to be an essential component of Turkish modernization. This paper aims to establish a genealogy of the concept of “medeniyet” to demonstrate the divergences of Ottoman perceptions in different periods throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that civilization was first perceived by a group of Ottoman intellectuals as a tool to reach an ideal state of being (c. 1840-1860). The next generation of Ottoman intellectuals (c. 1860-1890) defined civilization as “the” ideal state of being, yet they had different views on the concept, particularly concerning the distinction between material and moral elements of civilization. Finally, the third generation of Ottoman intellectuals (c. 1890-1920), whose thoughts were more or less crystallized under three broad political currents labeled as Westernism, Islamism, and Turkism, had different and sometimes contradicting perceptions of civilization based on their political outlooks. By referring to the writings of these intellectuals, the paper will discuss central debates on civilization in the late Ottoman Empire, such as the singularity/plurality of civilization(s), the existence of Islamic civilization as an alternative to European civilization, the degree of importing from European civilization, and the distinction between culture and civilization. Moreover, it argues that the Turkish perception of “medeniyet” is different from the European perception of “civilization”; in other words, while the Ottoman perception of the concept of civilization is not homeborn, it is homegrown. Accordingly, Ottoman intellectuals not only divided the material and moral elements of civilization and opted for importing the former, but they also questioned the singularity and supremacy of European civilization by referring to “Islamic civilization” either as an extinct yet once-present form of civilization or as a potential rival to European civilization.

As an Interpreter: Münif Pasha

On dokuzuncu yüzyılda Batı ile artan ilişkiler sonucunda tercüme faaliyetleri oldukça önem kazanmaya başlamıştır. Bilhassa Tanzimat döneminde dil öğrenmeye büyük bir teveccüh gösterilmiş kimisi devlet eliyle açılmış olan Tercüme Odası’na giderken, kimisi de yurtdışında eğitim alma ve kendini geliştirme yolunu tercih etmiştir. Yazılı basının gelişmesiyle birlikte kendini yetiştirmiş olan Osmanlı aydınları dönemin gazete ve dergilerinde bir taraftan Türkçe yazılar kaleme alırken bir taraftan da Batı’da yayımlanmış çeşitli eserlerden tercümeler yapmaya başlamışlardır. Başta Arapça ve Farsça olmak üzere Fransızca, Almanca, İngilizce bilen ve ömrünün sonlarına doğru Çince öğrenmeye başlayan Münif Paşa da tercüme noktasında çok yönlü bir kişilik olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, Münif Paşa eliyle çıkarılan ilk bilim ve fen dergisi olarak kabul edilen Mecmua-i Fünun’da ve dönemin diğer süreli yayınlarında yaptığı tercümeler üzerinden Münif Paşa’nın tercüme programı analiz edilecek ve onun yapmış olduğu tercümelerin kültür dünyamıza katkıları incelenecektir. Çalışmada kullanılan bilgiler, çoğunlukla Cumhurbaşkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivi’nde bulunan evraklar ve dönemin süreli yayınlarından elde edilmiştir.

Globalizing 'science and religion': examples from the late Ottoman Empire.

This article brings together insights from efforts to develop a global history of science and recent historical and sociological studies on the relations between science and religion. Using the case of the late Ottoman Empire as an example, it argues that 'science and religion' can be seen as a debate that travelled globally in the nineteenth century, generating new conceptualizations of both science and religion in many parts of the world. In their efforts to counter arguments that represented Islam as the enemy of science and progress, young Ottoman intellectuals wrote many texts addressing a specific European author, or an imagined, broad European audience in the mid- to late nineteenth century. These texts described a 'science-friendly' Islam of which not only Europeans but also 'ignorant Muslims' were unaware. Using examples from the Ottoman press, the article demonstrates how this effort involved separating Islam from the lived reality of Muslims, transforming the religion essentially into a text that referred to scientific facts or that instructed adherents to appreciate science. In their contributions to the debate on science and religion, these young intellectuals thus also defined themselves as the legitimate interpreters of Islam in the 'age of science'.

Conversion and Polemic in the Late-Fifteenth Century Ottoman Empire: Two Polemical Treatises Against Judaism

Two Jewish converts to Islam in the service of Bayezid II penned the earliest known anti-Jewish polemicals in the Ottoman Empire. This article aims at exploring the historical context of the two epistles and their connection with Islamic polemical literature. The simultaneous appearances of Abd al-Salam’s Risāla al-hādiya and Abd al-Allam’s Risāla al-ilzām al-Yahūd will be discussed in the context of the Sephardic influx to the Ottoman lands, an encounter that stimulated scholarly interest in the Jewish faith among Ottoman intellectuals. At first glance, the two treatises seem to be structured so as to persuade a Jewish audience to embrace the Muslim faith by abandoning their former religion. However, the choice of Arabic instead of Hebrew, and the circulation of the texts primarily among Muslim readers suggest that ad- dressing the Jews appears to have been a rhetorical tactic. Considering the negative connotations attached to converts by the Ottoman elite, the authors might also have viewed the composition of anti-Jewish treatises as an effort to distance themselves from their Jewish past.

Sea Change: Ottoman Textiles between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean

Sea Change: Ottoman Textiles between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean

AN OVERVIEW OF THE UNIVERSITIES FOUNDED DURING THE REIGN OF ABDULHAMID II AND THEIR RELATIONS WITH TRANSLATION

Many factors, such as the economy, technology, health, and education, affect and determine the level of development of a society. It would not be incorrect to believe that education is the most influential aspect of society's cultural life. Education is a phenomenon that should be evaluated within the dynamics of every society. In this context, the infrastructure in which educational institutions are offered can be an essential starting point.
 Madrasahs are the first thing that comes to mind regarding education in the Ottoman period. Various scientific courses were taught in madrasahs, especially Arabic, Persian, and religious studies. Education was revised in the Ottoman Period due to the modernization of education in all international nations; the new generation's focus was shifted to Europe, and the European-style education model was adopted. In this study, the new civilian schools were founded by the Ottoman intellectuals, who realized that they were lagging behind Europe in scientific progress in the last period, with the support and guidance of the state, and the curricula of these schools transferred through translation were discussed.

The Ottoman Empire and the emergence of its ‘Irish Question’

The Ottoman Empire and Ireland seem an unlikely pair in every respect. In the secondary literature, the paths of the two countries never converge. Except for Sultan Abdülmecid’s famous aid during the Famine, there has been virtually no discussion of the relationship between the two countries. By using the accounts of Ottoman authors and through a careful reading of archival materials from different eras, this article analyses the Ottoman perceptions of Ireland from the early modern era to the twentieth century. These documents and testimonies suggest that there was considerable interest in Ireland among Ottoman intellectuals and statesmen. They saw the country as some sort of anomaly which could be possibly useful in their dealings with Britain. For that reason, they diligently followed the developments taking place in Ireland. The case study developed in this article demonstrates first the importance of Ottoman archival materials for the purposes of comparative history; second the vibrant interest of the Ottoman Empire in the outside world in general and in Ireland in particular.

Ali Shir Navai in Turkish Traditional Literature: Themes and Plots

The legasy of Ali Shir Navai has influenced both Turkish and Ottoman literature and Turkish folklore. His poems penetrated into the Ottoman Empire since the 15th century, and in the 16th century became well known to the Ottoman poets. The article is devoted to the works of Navai in the literature and folklore of Turkey in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. After the reforms of the Tanzimat era, Ottoman intellectuals turned not only to European philosophical thought and Western literature, but also to the Turkic literary heritage of Central Asia. In 1872–1873 (1289 AH), in Istanbul, under the editorship of Ahmed Vefik Pasha, Navai's didactic treatise (which was chronologically one of the poet's latest works) “Mahbub al-kulub” (“Beloved of Hearts”) was published. This publication laid the foundation for the scientific study of Ali Shir Navai in Turkey (works and translations by I. Hakkı, N. Asım, M.F. Köprülüzade), and also to a certain extent anticipated the expression of the ideas of Turkism. After this publication, the Chagatai-Ottoman dictionary of Sheikh Suleiman of Bukhara was published in Istanbul in 1880–1881, which also testifies to the interest in the cultural heritage of the Timurid era in Turkey in the second half of the 19th century. At the same time Ali Shir Navai himself becomes the prototype of the hero of Turkish folklore as the character of the folk narrative about Gül and Mir Ali Şir which performed in Turkey up to the middle of the 20th century

Muslim Modernism in Turkish: Assessing the Thought of Late Ottoman Intellectual Mehmed Akif

Abstract Late Ottoman intellectual Mehmed Akif (1873–1936) was for decades depicted in Turkish public discourse in generic terms as an Islamist radical opposed to the secular nation state. Through Akif’s poetry, articles, translations, correspondence from his exile in Egypt, and biographical detail revealed in the scattered memoirs of students and colleagues, this article offers a reappraisal of his thought as a leading Muslim modernist who adapted the thinking of Egyptian religious scholar Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) to an Ottoman and then Turkish audience in the formulation of an early, prescient compromise between religion and nationalism. The article also notes remarkable similarities between Akif and Indian thinker Muḥammad Iqbāl (1877–1938), whom Akif was instrumental in introducing to Arab audiences, and suggests that, once political Islam had later gained currency across all fields of public life, Akif became an alternative to nationalist icon Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924) as an intellectual symbol of the republic.

Beşir Fuad’s Voltaire: liberating the individual

ABSTRACT Beşir Fuad (1852?-1887) is an obscure figure among late nineteenth century Ottoman intellectuals known for his materialistic views which were unprecedented under the Hamidian regime (1876-1909) and who shocked his contemporaries by committing suicide at an early age, leaving a note and a letter containing his last impressions and world view. Just months before his suicide, Beşir Fuad published a Voltaire biography in which he commemorates him as an Enlightenment ideal to be emulated in humankind’s struggle against religious intolerance. In this article, Beşir Fuad’s Voltaire (1886) is examined, arguing that the monograph was, though in an embryonic form, an early expression and defence of individual liberty, based on a materialistic world view that aims at demystification of the prevailing customs and morals as irrational and superstitious absurdities to pave the way for a future society in which the individual would be in liberty.

Istanbul City Life from the Perspective of an Ottoman Intellectual (20th century)

Ahmed Sâfî Bey (1851-1926) Osmanlı’nın son dönemini ve Cumhuriyet’in ilanının ilk üç senesini görmüş bir entelektüeldir. Yazmış olduğu eserler içerisinde en dikkat çekeni “Sefînetü’s-Sâfî” isimli eseridir. Eser 18 ciltten oluşmaktadır. Günümüz şartlarında ansiklopedi tanımlarına uymasa da kelâm, tarih, İstanbul tarihi, İslam tarihi, edebiyat, tasavvuf, mutfak kültürü, ilm-i nücum, Farsça ve Arapça şiirler gibi farklı konuları ele alması sebebiyle ansiklopedi olarak sayılabilir. Ancak bu konular eserinde tasnif edilmemiştir. Sefîne’nin 16 ve 18. ciltleri İstanbul tarihine dair geniş malumat verir. Bu makalede Sefîne’nin 16 ve 18.ciltlerinde İstanbul üzerine yazılan yazılar incelenmiştir. Eserin şehir tarihine/İstanbul tarihine kaynak olma özelliği ele alınmıştır. Her iki ciltte yer alan İstanbul ile ilgili yazılar konularına göre birkaç başlıkta tasniflenmiştir. Bu başlıklar; İstanbul ve Tabii Âfetler, İstanbul’da Ulaşım, İstanbul’un Kadim Tarihi Hazineleri, Şehrin Av Hayvanları, İstanbul ve Laledir. Bu temaların altında başlıklar teşkil edilmiştir. Ahmed Sâfî Bey’den bazı alıntılarla konu zengin bir şekilde işlenmiştir. Ahmed Sâfî Bey İstanbul üzerine yazdığı yazılarda bazı kaynaklardan yararlanmıştır. Bunlar, yazılı kaynaklar olarak kitaplar ve gazete nüshalarıdır. Bundan başka şahsî gözlemleri, tecrübeleri, çevresinden dinlemiş oldukları da onun kaynaklarını oluşturur. Ahmed Sâfî Bey’in İstanbul’a olan ilgisi bir bütündür. Şehrin geçirdiği tüm dönemleri benimser. Bilhassa son dönemlerde şehrin yaşamış olduğu değişimleri ise tasvip etmemektedir. Bu değişimin başında Batılılaşma tesiri ile ortaya çıkan mimari değişiklikler gelmektedir. Lale devri en çok tenkit ettiği dönemlerin başındadır. Sultan Abdülmecid ve Sultan Abdülaziz dönemini, II. Abdülhamid’in saltanatını sert üslûbuyla eleştirir. Bu tenkitlerinin merkezinde devlette bozulma, idarenin zayıflaması, yöneticilerin halkın ihtiyaçlarından habersiz olması, İstanbul’un imarı, sarayın harcamalarındaki israf gibi konular gelmektedir ancak bu tenkitleri için bir çözüm yolu teklif etmez. Osmanlı’nın geçmiş günlerine dair bir yakınma ve hasret duyar. Ona göre bozulma aslında Kanuni Sultan Süleyman döneminden sonra ortaya çıkmıştır. Kanuni sonrası Batı taklidinin olduğu bir dönemdir ve Kanuni sonrasında basiretsiz idareciler iktidara gelmiştir. Dolayısıyla başarılı bir idareden söz edilemez. Ona göre düzelme ancak bu eskiye dönüşle mümkün olabilir. Osmanlı idaresinden memnun olmayan Ahmed Sâfî Bey, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin kurucusu Mustafa Kemal’i bir kurtarıcı olarak benimsemiştir. Yazılarında terakki, âsâr-ı kadime, kaht-ı rical, ilerlemek-geri kalmak gibi kavramlar dikkati çekmektedir. Sefîne, İstanbul’un geçirdiği değişimleri izlemeye imkân sağlar. Rahat okunan ve anlaşılır bir dile sahiptir. Onu bir İstanbul tarihçisi olarak da görmek mümkündür. Ancak bazı yazılarında herhangi bir kaynak kullanmaması, iddia ettiği konuda şüpheye yol açabilir. Bu yüzden bazı yorumları aşırı veya sübjektif olabilir. Yazdıkları, farklı disiplinlerin çalışmalarına imkân vermektedir. Bunları özellikle kültür tarihi ve kültür sosyolojisi çerçevesinde değerlendirmek mümkündür. Sefîne üzerine yapılacak çalışmaların çoğalması İstanbul tarihi açısından bazı konuların detaylı bilinmesine katkı sağlayacaktır. Böylece Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e geçişte yaşananları o dönem yaşayan bir entelektüelden görmemize yardımcı olacaktır.

Novel Anxieties

Abstract Building on recent scholarship on postcolonial theory and the history of the modern Middle East, this article analyzes the viewpoints of late nineteenth-century Ottoman novelists on the modernization projects of the Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat periods. It argues that the Ottoman novelists Ahmet Midhat, Fatma Aliye, and Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem developed a counter-discourse against rapid modernization projects in Istanbul. Through a depiction of everyday life experiences related to the latest inventions of modern technology, Ottoman novelists thematize individual anxieties on a range of topics, which included a criticism of productivity, changing gender roles for men and women, and the new order of time and space. Keeping in mind that drastic changes in technology introduced distinctive modes of experiencing time and space in the nineteenth century, this article suggests that criticism by Ottoman intellectuals can be better understood within the context of the reaction to shifting time-space schemes and the proliferation of new technologies across the globe.