Ottoman Intellectuals Research Articles

Intellectual Dependency: Late Ottoman Intellectuals between Fiqh and Social Science

Modernization led to the intellectual dependency of the Muslim world on the West for social theories. Human action Carnal) is the subject matter of both Islamic/z<//z and Western social science (i.e. of all those sciences which attempt to apply empirical methods drawn from the natural sciences to the sphere of human society, including education and law). Though different in many aspects, both have a claim on widely overlapping intellectual territories. Social science in its different forms conquered the space traditionally occupied by fiqh, and its professional representatives (such as academicians, jurists, educationists, and writers) replaced the fuqah?'. This article thus points to a dialectic tension between^//? and Western social science which shaped Muslim intellectual history since the 19th century. This article unearths this latent tension by using the example of late Ottoman intellectuals as Ziya G?kalp, Said Halim Pasha and izmirli ismail Hakki. In the Ottoman case it brought about a new cleavage in the Muslim intellectual community between advocates of social science and advocates o? fiqh. Yet many intellectuals and even some fuqah?* attempted a synthesis between both fields. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the modern Turkish Republic adopted the policy of wholesale westernization, an element of which was the adoption of Western social science to replace fiqh in explaining and ordering human action. This intervention in the intellectual life increased the dependence of modern Turkish intellectuals on the state; which is another aspect of their intellectual dependency explored in this article. The increasingly intensified encounter between Muslim and Western civilizations during the 19th century finally also led to an engagement o?fiqh and European social science among Ottoman intellectuals. The

From “Stab in the Back” to “Good Riddance”: Recollections of Ayyam al-Atrak

Selim Deringil's The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War is an account of five memoirs written after World War I by leading Ottoman military commanders and intellectuals who spent the war years in the Arab provinces. The memoirs include those of Falih Rifki Atay, Ahmad Cemal Pasha's deputy in the Fourth Army and head of intelligence in Damascus and Jerusalem; Hüseyin Kazım Kadri, a founder of the Young Turk movement and editor of Tanin; Naci Kaşif Kıcıman, the chief intelligence officer in Hijaz during the Great Revolt; Münevver Ayaşlı, the daughter of the Turkish head of the Ottoman tobacco monopoly who became an ardent Islamic feminist in the Republican period; and Ali Fuad Erden, the Fourth Army's chief of staff. Deringil's introduction, which references other works on the final days of Ottoman rule in Syria and Palestine, provides a critical framing of these narratives in the context of (some) Turkish claims that the Great Revolt constituted a “stab in the back” to the Ottoman war effort and a betrayal of the state. The memoirs contain vivid accounts of daily life in Beirut, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Medina during World War I.

Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History

Book Review| November 01 2019 Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History. Havlioğlu, Didem. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2017. xxv + 220 pages. isbn 9780815635499. N. İpek Hüner Cora N. İpek Hüner Cora N. İPEK HÜNER CORA is lecturer in the Department of Turkish Languages and Literatures at Boğaziçi University. Contact: ipek.cora@boun.edu.tr. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (2019) 15 (3): 395–397. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-7720795 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation N. İpek Hüner Cora; Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 1 November 2019; 15 (3): 395–397. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-7720795 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsJournal of Middle East Women's Studies Search Advanced Search Focusing on the celebrated woman poet Mihrî Hatun (ca. 1460–1515), this book is a timely addition to early modern Ottoman literary history, which deploys gender as an analytic category. The introduction presents Mihrî Hatun and provides a literature review on Ottoman poetry and on studies of her, contextualized with examples from European and Islamicate literatures. It also introduces different concepts of gender analysis, such as marginality, performativity, and the subject position, using Mihrî Hatun as an example. The remainder of the book consists of six chapters divided into two thematic sections, followed by an epilogue and an appendix containing a selection of her poetry.The first part is titled “Mihrî Hatun: The Making of a Woman Poet.” Starting with paraphrases of her poetry, the first chapter introduces Mihrî Hatun the woman, anxious after a poetic exchange with a... Copyright © 2019 by the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies2019 You do not currently have access to this content.

Turkish Intellectuals' Viewpoint of Arabic Letters and Calligraphy Art in the Context of Alphabet Reform

Cumhuriyet’in ilanından sonra ivme kazanan harf inkılâbı tartışmalarının kökeni Tanzimat yıllarına kadar uzanır. Başlangıçta, Arap harflerinin Türkçe dil yapısına uymasında yaşanan zorluklara temas eden Osmanlı aydınları zaman zaman konuyu gündeme getirmişler ve ilmî açıklamalarla bunun gerekliliğini ispatlamaya çalışmışlardır. İmlâ sorunlarının çözümü için farklı teklifler sunmuşlardır. Buna mukabil, Arap harflerine taraftar olan çoğunluk ise kendi tezlerini yine ilmî gerekçelerle ortaya koymuşlardır. Ancak bilhassa Cumhuriyet sonrasında Latin harflerine geçilmesini savunanların sayısı artmış ve gerekçeleri de modern Batı toplumuna uyum sağlama, yani çağdaşlaşma eksenli olmuştur. Bu sıralarda bazı aydınlar eski yazıyla alay eden, hatta Arap harflerine hakaretler içeren makaleler kaleme almışlardır. Ahmet Haşim ve Refik Halid Karay bu isimlerdendir. Ahmet Haşim, sadece Arap harflerinin değiştirilmesini savunmamış, bu harflerle icra edilen hat sanatının bile devrinin kapandığını iddia etmiştir. Bununla birlikte, vaktiyle Latin harflerine geçilmesini destekleyen aydınlardan bazıları ise daha sonra pişmanlık duymuşlardır.

Mihri Hatun: Performance, Gender Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History. Didem Havlioğlu.

<i>Mihri Hatun: Performance, Gender Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History</i>. Didem Havlioğlu.

Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History by Didem Havlioğlu

Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Ottoman Intellectual History by Didem Havlioğlu

NAMIK KEMAL’S ECONOMIC THOUGHTS

The state’s economy policies were discussed on press organs and journalists wrote about them. One of those journalists was Namik Kemal. Being the most known of Ottoman intellectuals in 19th century and the most effective journalist of the period Namik Kemal wrote many articles about the state’s economy policies on press of the period even though he wasn’t an economist. Kemal showed the government of the state as the reason of nondevelopment. He wanted that the agriculture being in the first place, industry and trade sectors should also be considered important and improved for the state’s development. Even though Kemal wanted the state would be governed in the direction of free trade thinking, he also spoke of the free trade’s damages to country. Expressing that the 1838 trade agreement was early and his criticisms such as the fact that the state could not produce effective policies in the development of industry and trade showed that Kemal wasn’t a huge fan of free trade. In this study, Namik Kemal’s economic thoughts are expressed considering his articles about economics on Tasvir-i Efkâr, Hurryet, Ibret, Cuzdan and Diyojen newspapers.

The alla franca dandy; modernity and the novel in the late 19th-century Ottoman Empire

ABSTRACT In the late 19th-century Ottoman novel, an iconic character draws attention: the alla franca dandy; a man who admires the Western culture to the point of mindless imitation, and who stands aloof from his own society as he condemns the Ottoman/Islamic culture in aesthetical terms. He was born out of the Ottoman intellectuals’ ideas of and anxiety over Westernization, who sought to modernize the society without subverting the traditional foundations. As the Ottoman/Islamic and Western cultures collided, the alla franca dandy figure became the embodiment of Westernization gone astray and served the intellectuals’ objective to educate the masses by setting a bad example to be avoided. However, though the alla franca dandy figure was brought forth, in this manner, to circumscribe the proper limits of modernization, he ironically evolved, through the novels of different authors, to express individualistic attitudes, and put forth a modernist critique of the Ottoman/Islamic tradition as the intellectuals’ epistemological assumptions eroded and the society’s present is questioned and problematized as in need of intervention.

The reading processes of a Scottish Ottomanist: E. J. W. Gibb and his young Ottoman sources

ABSTRACTI shed light on the writing processes of the Ottoman literary narrative that the Scottish Ottomanist Elias John Wilkinson Gibb (1857–1901) created from 1882 until his early death in 1901. I discuss the Young Ottoman reformist Namık Kemal’s (1840–1888) influence on Gibb and the extent to which Namık Kemal’s criticism of Ottoman poetry is reflected in Gibb’s work. Gibb was familiar with Namık Kemal’s works through various channels and was profoundly affected by his views and criticism of Ottoman literature. Through some of the primary sources found in the Gibb Collection and the E. G. Browne Papers at the Cambridge University Library, I reveal the writing processes of the literary narrative that Gibb put forward in “Ottoman Literature,” Ottoman Poems, and A History of Ottoman Poetry. Furthermore, I elucidate Gibb’s understanding of Ottoman poetry by analyzing his marginalia, translations, and his personal communications. Based on my research, I argue that Gibb’s critical attitude was shaped by the literary culture nurtured by Young Ottoman intellectuals as well as their criticism of classical Ottoman literature.

DISCUSSIONS ON SA’Y U AMEL IN THE OTTOMAN PRESS

The Ottoman intellectuals began to follow developments in the West as they recognized that the Ottoman state in the 19th century has fallen economically against Western states and they are proceeded to identify the main reasons behind the economic development of European states. Intellectuals observed that in the West the people conducted in private enterprise activities by acting on the idea of personal enterprise and working psychology played an important role in all sectors of economy. For this reason, they tried to overcome the idea of private enterprise to Ottoman people. In this direction, they thought that the economic troubles in the country would be removed and production will increase from the standpoint of the people turning to private enterprise. The intellectuals benefited from the newspapers to reach out to the public and to educate them and for this reason they received many articles in order to inform the people in the periodicals and to give them modern ideas. The intellectuals have received many articles in the press of the period on the subject of this study. With these letters, it is desired to increase the interest of the people to entrepreneurship and it has been stated that the people should work in the direction of the private enterprise. It has also been expressed that people should give importance to scientific studies besides economic effort and also mentioned that today’s modern technologies are the result of these studies. They also wanted to strengthen the scientific accumulation of the people for the development of the Ottoman state and the improvement of technology in the country. In this study, the articles of private enterprise seen in the Ottoman Press were determined and the content analysis of the published works was made.

İznik’te Ne Oldu? Osmanlı İlmî Hayatının Teşekkülü ve Dâvûd Kayserî

İznik’te Ne Oldu? Osmanlı İlmî Hayatının Teşekkülü ve Dâvûd Kayserî

READING DURKHEIM THROUGH OTTOMAN LENSES: INTERPRETATIONS OF CUSTOMARY LAW, RELIGION, AND SOCIETY BY THE SCHOOL OF GÖKALP

This article focuses on how late Ottoman intellectuals selectively read the sociologist Emile Durkheim and used his thoughts to rediscover and reform their own classical, normative Islamic and social theories. Emile Durkheim, a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French thinker who combined philosophy with social and political issues, powerfully inspired one of the late Ottoman intellectual circles that aimed to provide theoretical underpinnings for a significant transformation of Turkish society. The article takes a closer look at the school of Ziya Gökalp, the acknowledged pioneer of social thought in Turkey, highlighting also lesser-known works of some of his followers, and how they perceived—in distinct ways—Durkheim's views in a Gökalpian manner, seeking a new synthesis with Islamic legal and religious interpretations to modernize their society in connection with the past. It thus explores some creative Ottoman appropriations of Durkheimian methodology for a different cultural environment.

TÜRK SOSYOLOJİSİNDE ORGANİZMACI VE EVRİMCİ AKIM

The adventure of sociology throughout Turkish idea is developed simultaneously with the westernization adventure of the Turkish society. The westernization progress of the Turkish society turned its face to western values which were known more or less but were at the same time outside the Turkish society’s social structure and organization. It was the first to encounter of the Enlightenment mentality which was explaning the physical and social world with a different counter-method and instrument then its own perception of the physical and social world. Following this, movements of thought such as Romanticism, new Positivism, New Realism, Historical Materialism and Evolutionism have entered the Turkish intellectual life. In this sense, sociology was regarded by the Ottoman intellectuals as a science which would guide the society for westernization, economic development and modernization. Evolutionist sociology that can be easily observed in the preparation and formation stages, seems to have ended with the Behice Boran in the development stage.

İMPARATORLUK-MEŞRUTİYET-CUMHURİYET TARTIŞMALARI ARASINDA BİRİNCİ KUŞAK TÜRK SOSYOLOGLARININ SİYASAL HASSASİYETLERİ VE SİYASET-SOSYOLOJİ İLİŞKİSİ

Sociology, as it is in Europe where its origin took place, has been in a direct relation and interaction with the political ideologies since it appeared in the Ottoman Empire from the first phase. Ottoman intellectuals were interested in sociological theories in terms of political reasons to a great extent. In the last quarter century of the empire, Ottomanism, Islamism and Turkism policies had an effect on the intellectual tendencies of Ottoman intellectuals. Sociology in Turkey has improved with regard to these policies. In the process of the disintegration of the empire, sociology undertook a redemptive mission. The dominant concern of the first Turkish sociologists was to analyze the possibilities and conditions of maintaining the political role of the empire in the Western political balances. The differences between sociology schools has also realized depending on sociologists’ political preferences.

Aşıkpazâde’deki Türk: Bir Özel Şahsın Osmanlı Tarihi

During the late fifteenth century Ottoman intellectuals used history books as a venue to practice civilian power. This essay focuses on Aşıkpaşazâde and his history of the Ottomans, Kitâb-ı Tevârih-i Âli Osman. The essay argues that the book was an example of how civilians contributed to the construction of Ottoman identity and legitimacy. It explains the emergence of an explicitly Turkic discourse within the early Ottoman history books and Aşıkpaşazâde’s role in this phenomenon. The essay also evaluates Aşıkpaşazâde’s life from a theoretical perspective, building on Halil İnalcık and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s arguments. It describes Aşıkpaşazâde as a private individual, and suggests that the dynamics of power sharing between people and the state in the early modern

Besir Fuad (1852-1887) and the Introduction of Philosophical Materialism into the Ottoman Intellectual Life

Besir Fuad (1852-1887) and the Introduction of Philosophical Materialism into the Ottoman Intellectual Life Serdar Poyraz Abstract On 5 February 1887, around nine o'clock at night, Besir Fuad, a former officer in the Ottoman army and an important Turkish intellectual who had contributed significantly to the debates about science and literature in the late Ottoman period, committed suicide in the private study of his house in Istanbul. Before committing suicide, he wrote letters to his friends, explaining the reasons for his action, as well as a brief note to the police, informing them that his death was a well-planned suicide and that they should not further bother his wife with a criminal investigation. Moreover, he decided to turn his suicide into a scientific experiment, and after injecting cocaine into his left arm and carefully cutting his veins in four different places with a razor, he calmly wrote on a sheet of paper about the effects of bleeding on the body and the feeling and sensation of death that it induced. Diverging significantly from the first generation of Tanzimat-era Ottoman intellectuals who also advocated the study of western science but justified their positions by explicitly or implicitly referring to the Islamic tradition, Besir Fuad never used any religious arguments whatsoever to justify his position on science. In Besir Fuad, we also see, for the first time, an Ottoman intellectual who consciously referred to the writings of German vulgar materialists, especially Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899), in order to elevate science to an almost metaphysical level, believing that science was the ultimate arbiter of “truth” in human life. For this reason alone, his works are worth studying. In fact, I argue that Besir Fuad was the true founder of Ottoman materialism, which would subsequently become the preferred philosophy of a significant number of influential Ottoman intellectuals and statesmen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, not to mention the founders of the future Turkish Republic. Therefore, his works and ideas are crucial to understand not only the intellectual currents of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods but also the early Republicans' rather uncompromising political attitude against religion. This paper discusses Fuad’s life and major works. Relying on primary sources, I explain Besir Fuad's philosophical materialism and put them in the context of nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectual life. Finally, I expand on Besir Fuad's literary ideas and his hard-headed defense of literary realism. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/rhps.v2n3-4a1

Namık Kemal’de “terakki” ve “maarif” düşüncesi

The last century of Ottoman history witnessed the discussion between Ottoman intellectuals about Turkish modernization. One of the foremost intellectuals is Namik Kemal being famous with the fame ‘nation and liberty’. He had an impact on century using the modern era concepts like nation, liberty, equality, popular sovereignty, parliamentary system. He was deal with all these concepts and values in the civilization circle. According to him, civilization is the common set of values that mankind reaches at science, practice, thought, law, industry and administration. The Western World being forward at civilization is powerful to lead other parts of world. The development of Ottoman which has a part on Europe was possible when the western civilization was realized and comprehended. The development means ‘to protect and reconstruct’ can start and continue only with education. This study deals with Kemal’s thought about development and education and comparison of person, society and government order between Ottoman and Western civilization. The Kemal’s thoughts in this study were evaluated making use of his essays in newspapers like Ibret, Hurriyet, Hadika and Diogenes.

Foreign direct investment in the Ottoman Empire: Attitudes and political risk

This study examines political risk for foreign direct investment in the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such a study has not previously been carried out. Despite many vicissitudes, such as wars and rebellions, the investment climate was more welcoming as compared to neighbouring lands such as Russia and the Balkan countries. While the Ottomans had a corrupt bureaucracy, as in Russia and the Balkans, they were free of xenophobia. Even those Ottoman intellectuals who were against complete freedom in international trade acknowledged the necessity of attracting foreign capital to the country, and suggested policy recommendations.

The Economic Views of a Nineteenth Century Ottoman Intellectual: The Relationship between International Trade and Foreign Direct Investment

Ahmed Midhat Efendi, a nineteenth century Turkish author, maintained that it was necessary to establish customs duties and other barriers against foreign sellers in order to convince them to produce locally in the Ottoman Empire. This would be a way to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to a country in need of capital and technology. However, today, liberals around the world as well as in Turkey see a free trade environment as a prerequisite for FDI. This study tries to find out whether a relationship existed between free trade and FDI inflows in Turkey during a period when the Turkish foreign trade and financial markets were almost completely liberalized.

Şemseddin Sami’s Treatise of Astronomy Gök (Sky): An Effort towards the Formation of Turkish Scientific Language and Popularizing Science

After the modernization process that started in the 18th gave a new orientation to the Ottoman Empire towards the West, simplifying and making Turkish the language of state, education and press became one of the most emphasized issues during the Reform Era (Tanzimat, 1839-1876). The simplification of language was deemed to be a social issue for the first time in this era, as the Ottoman intellectuals thought that advances in philosophical thinking, expansion of education and even diffusion of scientific knowledge would only be possible through a simplified language. Among those who succeeded in these efforts was Şemseddin Sami, well known for his multi-dimensional studies in the field of language and his remarkable lexicographic work. This article introduces the Gök, a monograph written in simple language and style in 1879 by Şemseddin Sami. Gök is not a scientific work on astronomy. Rather, it attempts to introduce the readers to basic knowledge in astronomy and to inform them about the developments in this field. Therefore, Şemseddin Sami’s treatise Gök, along with his other works included in the Pocket Library edition can be understood as one of the first examples of popularization of science in the Ottoman Empire. Şemseddin Sami’s use of simplified language in popularizing science actually paved the way for further attempts at making Turkish the language of science at large. In a certain sense, Gök, which is analyzed in this paper, could be seen as Şemseddin Sami’s contribution, at the social level, to the academic endeavors of making Turkish language of science.