6.1

 

The Ottoman perception of travel, particularly the personal travel, as an arduous, if not dangerous, affair might be another discouraging factor. Even, in the mightiest days of the Ottoman Empire, neither distant land routes, nor sea lanes had been safe and comfortable enough to make the travel more enjoyable. Brigandage and piracy could not be eliminated totally; despite relative development of caravanserais and inns along the trade routes, travel still meant a considerable and exhausting effort. Only a few routes were accessible for long- distance wheeled traffic, which forced the travellers to ride camels, horses or other kinds of pack-animals.¹⁴⁷ All these factors contributed to the negative perception of personal travel and distracted the Ottoman elites from frequent or voluntary travelling. Therefore, if travelling was inevitable, Ottomans generally preferred to travel in large and safer groups, in which personal security had been more or less guaranteed. Armies, protected trade caravans, or the “imperial pilgrimage groups” (surre alayları), accompanied by the troops assigned by the Sultan, were favoured compared to personal travel. Despite such measures for easing travel, the Ottoman travellers generally complained about their travels; even some of them entitled the pieces that they had written on their experiences in a way to emphasize the difficulties that they had encountered during their journeys.¹⁴⁸

 

¹⁴⁷ Wolf-Dieter Hütteroth, “Ecology of the Ottoman Lands,” in The Later Ottoman Empire, (1603-1839), in Suraiya N. Farouqhi (ed.), Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of Turkey, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 18-43, 42.

 

¹⁴⁸ Der Beyan-ı Meşakkat-ı Sefer ü Zaruret-i Mülazemet (The Description of the Difficulties of Journey and Distress of Travel) written by Cemalî to describe the difficulties as a soldier participated in the Albanian campaign of Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481) in 1478, Hasbihal-i Asakir-i Pür-melal der Taraf-ı Kal’a-yi Kamaniçe (The Conversation of the Depressed Soldiers from the Castle of Kamaniçe) written by a poet named Hasan to describe the Ottoman defeat at Hotin and the misery he experienced in retreating from Poland in 1673, or Mihnet-i Keşan (The Tribulation of Keşan) written by Keçecizade Đzzet Molla (1785-1829) to describe the hardship and misfortune he encountered during his exile and travel to Keşan in Eastern Thrace in 1823 were some of such pieces contributing to the negative perception of travel. See Menderes Coşkun, “Seyahatnâme ve Sefâretnâmeler,” in Talat Sait Halman [et.al.] (eds.), Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi, (Đstanbul: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınlığı, 2007), Vol. 2, 327-344, 333-335.

Besides these general causes, there are several practical factors that contributed to the underdevelopment of travel literature. One of them is quite related to the nature of the interrelationship between the ruling elite and the Ottoman men of letters. The grants by the patrons (câize), such as the governors, viziers or the Sultan himself, were a considerable source of revenue for the Ottoman men of letters; that is why some subgenres of kasîde (poems praising the bravery and heroism of the Sultan or his viziers) were extraordinarily developed in the Ottoman classical poetry. Not only the poets but also the prose- writers, the historians, theologians, or geographers, preferred to dedicate their writings to the Sultan or some viziers, who supported them financially.¹⁴⁹ The financial dependence of the men of letters to the ruling elite might lead them to write about the themes that would favour the patron, while deterring them to write about their personal experiences, such as travelling, which was considered to be unattractive for whom the pieces had been dedicated to.

Another practical reason that discouraged the Ottoman travellers to write about their experiences might be the costs of book production. In the Ottoman classical age, compilation of manuscripts as a book was a costly endeavour, since there were many steps requiring significant payments for the transformation of manuscripts into books. Accordingly, the manuscripts had to be copied by eminent calligraphers and bound and gilded by respected artists. They were sometimes illustrated by able miniaturists, and this process increased the cost further. Finally, the low level of literacy among the Ottoman population had shrunk the market for books, which was another major disincentive for the writers.¹⁵⁰ In sum, the book was a valuable item; the subjects to be written should be chosen properly in order not to waste all these investment to produce an attractive book for the buyers.

¹⁴⁹ For a detailed analysis of the interrelationship between the ruling elite and the men of letters in the classical age see, Halil Đnalcık, “The Poet and the Patron: A Sociological Treatise upon the Patrimonial State and the Arts,” Journal of Turkish Literature, Vol. 2 (2005): 9-70.

 

¹⁵⁰ For a brief analysis on the costs of book production and the patterns of reading in the Ottoman Empire see Fahri Sakal, “Osmanlı Ailesinde Kitap,” in Güler Eren (ed.), Osmanlı, (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, 1999), Vol. 11, 732-738, 736.

Considering all these factors the Ottoman men of letters preferred to write about more general themes, such as poems on love and heroism in verse and history, theology and philosophy in prose, which might have attracted the attention of the small group of book-purchasers, rather than writing about their travels, which was perceived as an extremely personal affair.

 

3.1.           Genres Including Travel Narration in the Ottoman Classical Age

Despite the underdevelopment of travel literature as a distinguishable genre in the Ottoman classical age, still, there are numerous pieces including descriptions of the travels performed by the Ottomans. They can not be labelled as travelogues in essence, but they include significant information, which provide the reader with a panorama of places and peoples of the period. In order to understand the emergence of such travel narrations, one should focus on the reasons for the Ottoman travel in the classical age as well as the motives that directed the people to include their travel experiences in the pieces written for other purposes. Among these reasons, war, pilgrimage, trade, or geographical studies are quite significant. What is more, there are even some anomalous examples, which can be considered as extremely closer to the genre of travelogue in a modern sense. The rest of this chapter is, therefore, devoted to the sources of travel narration and exemplified some pieces that are perceived as milestones of Ottoman travel writing in the classical age.

 

3.1.1.    War as a Source of Travel Writing:

Arguably, the Ottomans had naturalized war as a way of life. In their poems, songs and anthems, they sometimes expressed how they admired the peculiar vehemence and grandeur of war; sometimes how they disliked the destructiveness of its longevity. It is not surprising, therefore, that the bulk of the travel narrations before the mid-nineteenth century is composed of the pieces written by soldier-poets or poets accompanied their masters during military campaigns. In other words, wars turned out to be an important opportunity for the Ottomans to travel abroad, and the verse and prose describing the road of campaigns, the soldiers’ life, the cities and regions passed along or conquered, or

the peoples encountered became the precedents of travel writing in the Ottoman literature.

Of course, such descriptions do not form the essence of these pieces; the author had other intentions such as recording the proceeding of the campaign, heralding the victories of the Ottoman armies, praising the heroism of the commanders, describing the routes that the army followed, or expressing the difficulties encountered during the war. For Vatin, all these intentions serve for two purposes, one general and one practical. The general purpose was the reproduction of the authority of the master (either being the Sultan or viziers commanding the Ottoman armies).¹⁵¹ The soldier-poets participated in war within the entourage of their patrons; hence they were both paid and esteemed for writing about the courage of the master and his successful administration of the campaign. Their narration contributed to the image of his grandeur; hence his legitimate authority was consolidated in the eyes of the public. The practical purpose, on the other hand, was the writer’s intention to give information on the conduct of the Ottoman campaign to those who would intend to participate in similar military activities in the future. In other words, these pieces “[…] serve as a guide for travellers as well as for those who join in royal expeditions.”¹⁵² To sum up, these earlier pieces had both a legitimizing and informing impact on the Ottoman society.

The narrations on campaigns were written in various forms, which can be classified under five categories, namely gazavâtnâme, rûznâme, fethnâme (or sometimes zafernâme), menâzilnâme, and finally esâretnâme. Gazavâtnâme (literary means “the document/register of [religious] wars”), as an Ottoman classical literary genre, emerged in the earlier establishment of the Empire as a result of the conquests after a special kind of warfare, known as ghaza in the

¹⁵¹ Vatin, “Bir Osmanlı Türkü Yaptığı Seyahati Niçin Anlatırdı?,” 163.

 

¹⁵² Quoted from Hüseyin Gazi Yurtaydın in Nicolas Vatin, “Itinéraires d’agents de la Porte en Italie (1483-1495): Réflexions sur l’organisation des missions ottomanes et sur la transcription des noms de lieux italiens,” Turcica, No. 19 (1987): 29-50; cited in Vatin “Bir Osmanlı Türkü Yaptığı Seyahati Niçin Anlatırdı?,” 164.

Ottoman/Islamic terminology.¹⁵³ They were generally written by those, who were commissioned by the Sultan or by the commanders of the Ottoman armies to watch and record their campaigns; therefore, the author/poet wrote extensively on the heroism and particularly on the service of his master to the spread of Islam in the lands of the “infidel.”¹⁵⁴ These pieces are also interesting for describing the lands that the campaigns had been directed to, as well as for reflecting the Ottoman perception of different communities living in those regions.¹⁵⁵ As a literary genre, gazavatnâme had declined considerably with the relative secularization of warfare starting from the mid-sixteenth century onwards.

Rûznâme (literary means “daily records”) is written as a diary kept during military campaigns and most of them included daily records of the march of the army, transportation of ammunition and weaponry, and the speeches of the Sultan or viziers commanding the army before, during and after the campaign. These pieces, generally written in verse, included descriptions of the regions that

 

 

 

 

¹⁵³ The word ghaza stems from the word ghazva connoting the wars to which the Prophet himself participated. In its narrowest sense, it meant “fighting with the enemy.” In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, this notion meant spread of Islam and enlargement of the territories controlled by Muslims. After 1260 Çobanogulları Beylik was assigned to fight with the Byzantines and among the labels used for Çobanogulları was nusret-ul guzzat (meaning “the victor of ghaza”). The label ghazi (meaning “the one fighting for the God”) was also used for denoting the Bey of Sinop and Aydın, who were contemporaries of Osman Bey, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. Cemal Kafadar, “Gaza,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Islam Ansiklopedisi, 37 Volumes (continues to be published), (Đstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Đslâm Ansiklopedisi Genel Müdürlüğü, 1988 onwards), Vol. 13, 427-429, 427.

 

¹⁵⁴ For an analysis of Gazavâtnâme in Ottoman literature, see Agah Sırrı Levend, Gazavât- nâmeler ve Mihaloğlu Ali Bey Gazavât-nâmesi, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1956).

 

¹⁵⁵ For example, Gazavât-ı Hayrettin Paşa (The [Religious] Wars of Hayrettin Paşa), written by Seyyid Muradî, a naval officer who had been assigned by Barbaros Hayreddin Paşa (1478-1546) to write about his warfare against the “infidels” in accordance with the orders coming from Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520-1566), is one of the most known examples of this genre. It describes the Mediterranean port cities as well as the Christian communities, such as the Venetians, Spanish, and Maltese. See, Seyyid Muradî, Seyyid Muradî’nin Kaleminden Kaptan Paşa’nın Seyir Defteri: Gazavât-ı Hayreddin Paşa, transliterated and edited by Ahmet Şimşirgil, (Đstanbul: Babıali Kültür Yayıncılığı, 2003).

the army marched along; hence they contributed to the travel narration in the Ottoman classical age.¹⁵⁶

Fethnâme (literary means “document/register of conquest”) is also a kind of narration of the campaigns undertaken by Sultans or viziers, however, different from rûznâme or gazavâtnâme, it was generally written in the form of a letter sent by the Sultan to the foreign monarchs or to the prominent people of the Ottoman Empire, such as high-rank bureaucrats or governors, heralding the conquest of a particular city or region (in case of an Ottoman victory, the genre is called as zafernâme, meaning “the document/register of victory”).¹⁵⁷

More practical in essence and less colourful in style, menâzilnâme (literary means “the document/register of military camping posts”) was particularly written to determine the distances between two camping posts (menzil) of the Ottoman armies, and to describe these posts in a quite simple way. One of the most popular menâzilnâmes was the one written by Matrakçı Nasuh (?-1564) and entitled Beyân-ı Menâzil-i Sefer-i Irakeyn¹⁵⁸ (The Description of the Camping Posts of the Campaign on Two Iraqs), which also included the miniatures drawn by the author himself, depicting the camping

¹⁵⁶ For example, the Rûznâme written by Haydar Çelebi, who participated in the campaigns of Selim I (r. 1512-1520) against the Safavids and Mamluks between 1514 and 1516, informed the reader not only about the Ottoman troops, their administration and the heroism of the Sultan, but also about the territories and peoples under the rule of these dynasties. See, Haydar Çelebi, Haydar Çelebi Rûznâmesi, transliterated and edited by Yavuz Senemoğlu, (Đstanbul: Tercüman Yayınları, [unknown year of publication]). From the late seventeenth century onwards, when the Sultans gave up leading the military campaigns, the genre of rûznâme was transformed into a palace diary, which narrated the daily routines of the Ottoman imperial palace. For example, see

V. Sema Arıkan, III. Selim'in Sırkatibi Ahmed Efendi Tarafından Tutulan Rûznâme, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1993). One of the last examples of this genre is Manzume-i Sivastopol (A Piece of Verse on Sivastopol), written by Rızaî describing the day-by-day developments of Crimean War in detail. For an analysis of Manzume-i Sivastopol, see Necat Birinci, Edebiyat Üzerine Đncelemeler, (Đstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 2000), 31-42.

 

¹⁵⁷ According to Franz Babinger, Fethnâme-i Sultan Mehmed (The Fethnâme of Sultan Mehmed) written by Kıvamî in the late fifteenth century was one of the earliest examples of this genre and described the conquests of Mehmed II period. See Kıvamî, Fetihname-i Sultan Mehmed, transliterated and edited by Franz Babinger, (Đstanbul: Maarif Basımevi, 1955). For other examples, see Levend, Gazavât-nâmeler ve Mihaloğlu Ali Bey Gazavât-nâmesi, 50-52.

 

¹⁵⁸ Nasuh üs-Silahî (Matrakçı), Beyân-ı Menâzil-i Sefer-i 'Irakeyn-i Sultan Süleyman Han, transliterated and edited by Hüseyin Gazi Yurtaydın, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1976).

posts that the Ottoman army had stopped during Süleyman’s campaign to Baghdad in 1534.¹⁵⁹

At least for some of the Ottoman soldiers, wars had not ended successfully since they were captured by the enemy forces; however, some of these captives had produced one of the most interesting forms of travel writing in the Ottoman classical age, namely the esâretnâme (literary means the “document/register of captivity”).¹⁶⁰

All in all, campaigns produced the earliest and primitive forms of travel literature in the Ottoman classical age. Although they can not easily been classified under the genre of travelogue, still they incorporate narrations regarding the Ottoman perception of outlying regions and the peoples that had been encountered. Hence they reflect the Ottoman understanding of the world and supply the reader with significant clues on the practice of travel before mid- nineteenth century.

 

3.1.2.    Pilgrimage as a Source of Travel Writing:

Besides military campaigns, pilgrimage provided a fertile ground for the Ottomans to write their memoirs; hence emerged the genre of menâsik-i hacc.¹⁶¹

¹⁵⁹ For the analysis of the miniatures see Nurhan Atasoy, “Matrakçı Nasuh and Evliya Çelebi: Perspectives on Ottoman Gardens (1534-1682),” in Michael Conan (ed.), Middle East Garden Traditions: Unity and Diversity, (Dumbarton Oaks: Harvard University Press, 2008), 197-220, 197-198.

 

¹⁶⁰ According to Menderes Coşkun, the earliest esaretnâmes was written in letter form by two soldiers named Hüseyin and Abdî Çelebi, who were captured by the pirates in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century; he cited Vakıât-ı Sultan Cem (The Sultan Cem Affair), which was presumed to be written by Haydar Çelebi who accompanied Prince Cem in his exile in Rhodes and Europe between 1481 and 1495 after being defeated by his brother Bayezid II (r. 1481-1502) on his quest to the throne, as another example. See Coşkun, “Seyahatnâme ve Sefâretnameler,” 331-332. According to Vatin, Vakıât-ı Sultan Cem was one of the writings closest to a travelogue in modern sense, since it described the European cities such as Lyon, social characteristics such as the dresses of women, institutions such as Papacy or techniques such as whale hunting in a linear fashion, meaning following a temporal sequence between different events. See Vatin, “Bir Osmanlı Türkü Yaptığı Seyahati Niçin Anlatırdı?,” 165.

 

¹⁶¹ The word menâsik is the plural form of nüsk, meaning certain religious requirements that a pilgrim should perform during the pilgrimage; hence menâsik-i hacc emerged as a practical guide instead of a travelogue, aiming to inform the prospective pilgrims on the performance of pilgrimage. For a detailed account of pilgrimage practice in the Ottoman Empire and its socio- political implications, see Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans (1517-1683), (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994).

These pieces would later be transformed into one of the most literate and adorned narrations on travel with religious motives. However, except for a couple of examples, such pieces could not be frequently encountered. Indeed, this underdevelopment is difficult to understand, since thousands of Ottomans performed this ritual annually. The reasons for the scarcity of pilgrimage narratives despite the huge numbers of pilgrims are suggested by Menderes Coşkun as (1) the pilgrims’ perception of pilgrimage as a duty, not as an adventurous endeavour, (2) the ordinariness of pilgrimage because of the huge numbers of pilgrims, and (3) the monotony of the route and unsurprising travel within a large caravan protected by imperial troops.¹⁶² In other words, pilgrimage was perceived as a religious requirement and presumed to be known by the entire Islamic community in detail; therefore, according to pilgrims, there was no need (and even it might be perceived as nonsense) to mention about the practice of pilgrimage journeys.¹⁶³

Although initially designed as practical guides, the pilgrimage narratives provide the reader not only with the perception of religious motives behind the pilgrimage as a form of travel, but also with the descriptions of Ottoman Anatolia, Middle East and Arabia, including the cities like Konya, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Medina and Mecca. Hence, pilgrimage narratives turned out to be a significant source of travel writing in the Ottoman classical age.

¹⁶² Menderes Coşkun, “Osmanlı Türkçesiyle Kaleme Alınmış Edebî Nitelikli Hac Seyahatnâme- leri,” in Hasan Celal Güzel [et. al.] (eds.), Türkler, (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları, 1999) Vol. 11, 806-814, 806.

 

¹⁶³ The oldest piece on the travel for pilgrimage was written by Ahmed Fakîh in the beginning of the fifteenth century, entitled Kitâb-ı Evsâf-ı Mesâcid üş-Şerîfe (The Book on the Characteristics of the Sacred Mosques) in which he described the three holy sites of Islam, namely Jerusalem, Medina and Mecca. For the full text of this travelogue see Ahmed Fakih, Kitâb-ı Evsâf-ı Mesâcid üş-Şerîfe, transliterated and edited by Hasibe Mazıoğlu, (Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, 1974). The ninth volume of the ten-volume travelogue of Evliya Çelebi (1611-1683) was also devoted for describing his pilgrimage. It can be argued, on the other hand, that the most popular pilgrimage travelogue was Nâbî’s (1642-1712) Tuhfetü’l Harameyn (The Gift of Mecca and Medina) written in 1712. For the full text of this pilgrimage travelogue see, Nâbî, Hicaz Seyahâtnâmesi: Tuhfetü’l Harameyn, transliterated and edited by Seyfettin Ünlü, (Đstanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 1996). Menderes Coşkun labelled this travelogue as the “most literate” pilgrimage travelogue ever written in the Ottoman literature. Coşkun, “Osmanlı Türkçesiyle Kaleme Alınmış Edebî Nitelikli Hac Seyahatnâmeleri,” 812.

3.1.3.    Trade as a Source of Travel Writing:

Besides military and religious motives, commercial activity contributed to the travel literature before the mid-nineteenth century; however, this contribution was extraordinarily limited, since the merchants did not generally write about the trade routes, the cities and regions that they visited for economic purposes. Nevertheless, it is quite ironic that one of the oldest travelogues of the Ottoman classical literature was written by a merchant, Ali Ekber Hataî. It was entitled Kanunnâme-i Hıtâ ve Hotan ve Çin ve Maçin, more commonly known as Hıtaînâme.¹⁶⁴ Ali Ekber Hataî wrote this travelogue in Persian in 1515, after his travel to China between 1508 and 1510, leading a trade caravan. It was first presented to Selim I (r. 1512-1520) and then to Süleyman (r. 1520-1566), and was later translated into Turkish in the period of Murad III (r. 1574-1595).¹⁶⁵ Another example was Acâibnâme-i Hindûstan (The Records of Wonders of India), written by merchant/traveller, Ahmed bin Đbrahim el-Tokadî, in the late sixteenth century, whose manuscript included the descriptions of Central Asia, India and Arabian Peninsula, since he went India via Kabul and returned Đstanbul following the sea trade route from India to Egypt via Basra, Yemen and Hejaz.¹⁶⁶ Besides these two pieces, travel narrations emerged out of travels performed for economic purposes have not reached today.

 

3.1.4.    The Manuscripts on Geography as a Source of Travel Writing:

The pieces on geography written in the Ottoman classical age also include the personal experiences of their authors; therefore, at least some parts of

¹⁶⁴ The word kânunnâme can be translated as “code,” however it does not exactly match the meaning in this context. Hıtâ was diverted from the labelling of China by the Han Chinese during the Ming Dynasty; Hotan was another name given to China by the northern and western tribes during the Liao period. The expression “Çin ve Maçin” is visible in the Turkish texts from Kaşgarlı Mahmud’s Turkish lexicon, Divân-ı Lugati’t Türk, and described the Chinese territory as well. For a detailed analysis of all these concepts see Alimcan Đnayet, “Divanü Lûğat-it- Türk’te Geçen “Çin” ve “Maçin” Adı Üzerine,” Turkish Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Fall 2007): 1174- 1184.

 

¹⁶⁵ Gökyay, “Türkçe’de Gezi Kitapları,” 459.

 

¹⁶⁶ Gökyay, “Türkçe’de Gezi Kitapları,” 459.

these pieces could be perceived as travel narration. For example, the Kitâb-ı Bahriyye (The Book of Navigation), written by Pîrî Reis (1465-1554) in 1521 (later extended in 1526), followed the tradition of portolan¹⁶⁷ texts and charts, and aimed to describe the entire Mediterranean ports, winds, and streams for the Ottoman sailors. Divided into chapters, each describing a different coastal area of the Mediterranean, the manuscript included maps of these coasts as well. Although the manuscript is not in the form of a travelogue in essence, Pîrî Reis’ description of the cities and peoples during his voyages makes the work closer to the genre of travelogue.¹⁶⁸

Kitāb al-muhît fî ‘ilm al aflāk va’l-abhur (The Book of Settings on the Science of Skies and Seas) written by Seydî Ali Reis (1498-1562) was another example. Accordingly, after his assignment in 1553 of bringing the Ottoman naval squadron from Basra to Suez, Seydî Ali Reis left Basra; however, off the coasts of Oman, the Ottoman fleet was forced by the Portuguese to retreat towards India after a naval battle. Seydî Ali Reis came to Gujarat and decided to return to Đstanbul by land. During his stay in Hyderabad in 1554, he wrote this manuscript for the sailors sailing in the Indian Ocean. Besides citing the previous manuscripts on the winds, port cities, islands, or streams of the Indian Ocean, Seydî Ali Reis included his own observations. Excerpts from the manuscript were later translated into English, German and Italian.¹⁶⁹

 

¹⁶⁷ Portolan or portolano is an Italian technical navigation term meaning a manual of navigating along coastal regions of a particular sea or ocean.

 

¹⁶⁸ Svat Soucek, “Piri Reis,” Encyclopedia of Islam, (Leiden: Brill, 1960-2005), Vol. 8, 308-309,

308. The original manuscript of Kitāb-ı Bahriyye is currently present in the Süleymaniye Library, Ayasofya Section, numbered 2612. It was later published as an edition of Fevzi Kurdoğlu and Haydar Alpagut, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1935). For an analysis of the book as a cartographic work see, Dimitris Loupis, “Piri Reis’ Book on Navigation (Kitab-ı Bahriyye) as a Geography Handbook,” in George Tolias and Dimitris Loupis (eds.), Eastern Mediterranean Cartographies, (Athens: Institute for Neohellenic Research, National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2004), 35-49.

 

¹⁶⁹ Şerafettin Turan, “Seydî Ali Reis,” Đslam Ansiklopedisi, (Đstanbul: Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1945-1986), Vol. 10, 528-531, 531. For a review of this manuscript see Sayyid Maqbul Ahmed, A History of Arab-Islamic Geography (9th-16th Century), (Amman: Al-Bayt University Press, 1995), 248-251.

Menâzirü’l Avâlim (The Panorama of Worlds) written by Aşık Mehmed bin Ömer (1557-1598) in 1596 and Kitâb-ı Cihannümâ (The Book of Cosmorama) written by Kâtip Çelebi (1608-1656) in 1648 (rewritten in 1654) included the personal experiences of their authors as well. Aşık Mehmed spent twenty years of his life travelling almost all parts of the Ottoman Empire. Although his book seems to be a geography book, indeed it deserves to be labelled as a travelogue.¹⁷⁰ Similarly, in writing Kitâb-ı Cihannümâ, Kâtip Çelebi benefitted much from his travels undertaken to participate in several military campaigns in the mid-seventeenth century.¹⁷¹

The inability to discern between the manuscripts on geography and the travelogues is quite understandable in the Ottoman classical age in whih the literary genres were extremely intermingled. Still, as long as the geography manuscripts include the travel experiences of their authors, they deserve to be examined in detail in order to figure out the Ottoman perception of the world in this period.

 

3.1.5.    Diplomatic Missions as a Source of Travel Writing:

If the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed primitive travel narrations either in verse such as the poems on campaigns or pilgrimage, or in prose such as the books on travels of merchants or geography, in the eighteenth century travels were begun to be narrated in the form of ambassadorial reports, or sefâretnâme. Compared to the previous pieces, they were more detailed in terms of describing the travels of the Ottoman envoys to the distant parts of Europe, Asia, as well as Africa. What is more, they were closer to the genre of travelogue in modern sense, since they followed a linear temporal narrative regarding the journey and a detailed description of the cities visited and the peoples encountered.

¹⁷⁰ For the full text of this book see, Aşık Mehmed, Menâzirü’l Avâlim, transliterated and edited by Mahmud Ak, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2007).

 

¹⁷¹ Gökyay, “Türkçe’de Gezi Kitapları,” 459. Also see, Orhan Şaik Gökyay (ed.), Katip Çelebi: Hayatı ve Eserleri Hakkında Đncelemeler, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1957).

From the very onset of the Ottoman Empire, ad hoc diplomatic missions were commissioned for several reasons. Informing the foreign rulers about the enthronement of the Ottoman sultans (such as Ziştovili Ali Ağa sent to Poland for informing the King of Poland about the enthronement of Osman III (r. 1754- 1757) in 1754), representing the Ottoman Empire in the enthronement of foreign monarchs (such as Ali Çavuş sent to Germany for the enthronement of Maximilian (r. 1564-1576) in 1564), engaging in diplomatic negotiations (such as Mehmed Ağa sent to Russia for boundary demarcation negotiations in 1722), delivering the approved versions of bilateral treaties (such as Mehmed Bey sent to Austria for delivering the approved version of bilateral treaty between the Ottoman Empire and Austria in 1573), delivering the letters of Ottoman Sultans to the foreign monarchs (such as Halil Çavuş sent to Venice for delivering the Fethnâme of Süleyman I to the Doge of Venice written to celebrate the conquest of Belgrade in 1521), and establishing or continuing friendly relations with foreign states (such as Mehmed Bey sent to Iran for delivering the gifts of the Sultan to continue Ottoman-Iranian peace in 1697) are among the motives for sending diplomatic missions.¹⁷²

Although, it can be inferred from the archival documents that from 1417 onwards Ottoman diplomatic missions frequently visited foreign capitals, except for some primitive documents dated back to the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the earliest ambassadorial report found in the archives was written by Kara Mehmed Paşa (? – 1684) in 1665, who was sent to Vienna in order to re- establish peaceful relations between Austria and the Ottoman Empire after the Treaty of Vasvar.¹⁷³ Following this earliest travelogue, Unat’s study enlisted forty-one ambassadorial reports written between 1665 and 1838 by the heads or

¹⁷² Faik Reşit Unat, Osmanlı Sefirleri ve Sefâretnameleri, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1992), 17-19. The examples mentioned are chosen from the table included by Unat at the end of his study showing the ad hoc diplomatic missions until 1835, 221-236. For another analysis of Ottoman ambassadorial reports see, Hadiye Tuncer and Hüner Tuncer, Osmanlı Diplomasisi ve Sefâretnameler, (Ankara: Ümit Yayıncılık, 1997).

 

¹⁷³ According to Faik Reşit Unat, this sefâretnâme was penned by Evliya Çelebi, who had been in the entourage of Kara Mehmed Paşa, and this explains the reason why Evliya Çelebi included the full text of this document in the seventh volume of his own travelogue. Unat, Osmanlı Sefirleri ve Sefâretnameleri, 47-49.

the clerks of the diplomatic missions sent various parts of the world, including Austria, Bukhara, England, France, India, Iran, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Prussia, Russia and Spain.¹⁷⁴

Sefâretnâme constituted a transitory genre between the classical forms of travel narration generally written in verse and the modern forms of travelogues generally written in prose. The decline of Ottoman military power and increasing reliance to diplomacy instead of long and exhausting wars contributed to the development of sefâretnâme literature. The European capitals, such as Berlin, London, Madrid, Moscow, Vienna, and especially Paris were introduced to the Ottoman public opinion with a mixed admiration of European advancement in science and technology vis-à-vis its moral decadence. Hence these ambassadorial reports resulted in the emergence of an idea of “Europe” in the Ottoman minds and altered the Ottoman perception of civilization to a considerable degree.

 

3.1.6.    Travel Itself as a Source of Travel Writing:

Although Ottoman travellers did not generally travel for the sake of travel, there are two pieces extremely closer to the genre of travelogue understood in modern sense, namely Mir’âtü’l Memâlik (The Mirror of Countries) written by Seydî Ali Reis and Seyâhatnâme (The Book of Travel) written by Evliya Çelebi (1611-1684), since it was the travel itself that

 

¹⁷⁴ Among them, Fransa Sefâretnamesi (The Ambassadorial Report on France) written by Yirmi Sekiz Çelebi Mehmet Efendi in 1721, Viyana Sefâretnamesi (The Ambassadorial Report on Vienna) written by Ahmet Resmî Efendi in 1758, Sefâretname-i Abdülkerim Paşa (The Ambassadorial Report of Abdülkerim Paşa) written in 1776, Nemçe Sefâretnamesi (The Ambassadorial Report on Austria) written by Ebubekir Ratip Efendi in 1792, and Avrupa Risalesi (The Treatise of Europe) written by Mustafa Sami Efendi in 1838 attracted the attention of Turkish and foreign scholars and they have been published separately. See Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi, Paris'te Bir Osmanlı Sefiri: Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi'nin Fransa Seyahâtnâmesi, transliterated and edited by Şevket Rado, (Đstanbul: Türkiye Đş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2006); for a detailed analysis and English translation of Sefâretname-i Abdülkerim Paşa see Norman Itzkowitz and Max Mote, Mubadele: An Ottoman-Russian Exchange of Ambassadors, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Ebubekir Ratip Efendi, Ebubekir Ratip Efendi’nin Nemçe Sefâretnamesi, transliterated and edited by Abdullah Uçman, (Đstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 1999); Virginia Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi, 1700-1783, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); Mustafa Sami Efendi, Avrupa Risalesi, (Đstanbul: Takvim-i Vekayi Matbaası, 1256 [1840]), transliterated and edited by Fatih Andı, (Đstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 1996).

constituted the core theme of these pieces, not the other themes, such as war, pilgrimage, or trade.

Indeed, even these two travellers had not travelled for the sake of travel itself. Seydî Ali Reis aimed to reach Đstanbul after being defeated by the Portuguese off the Indian coast, while Evliya Çelebi generally travelled as part of an official mission, either within the entourage of a vizier or as an envoy. Seydî Ali Reis wrote his memoirs to save his life after being defeated by the Portuguese;¹⁷⁵ while Evliya Çelebi, as narrated by himself, became a traveller after demanding “travel” (seyâhat) instead of “intercession” (şefâat) from the Prophet Muhammad in his dream as a result of his tongue’s lapse. In other words, they were accidental travellers in their own expressions. However, although they had not travelled for the sake of travel, they utilized their travels as a source of travel writing and give precedence to the travel itself, rather than the reason for their travels. Hence, main theme of their writing was not a diplomatic negotiation, a merchandise activity, pilgrimage ritual, or writing a book on geography, but solely their travel. It is this quality of their work that makes their work closer to the genre of travelogue as the term understood today.

In Mir’âtü’l Memâlik, Seydî Ali Reis described the lands he had visited during his travels, such as Kokand, Bedakhshan, Khwarizm, and Horasan, the rulers and peoples that he had encountered during his voyage, as well as the adventurous events that he experienced.¹⁷⁶ The literary style of this travelogue was so significant and novel for the age of its inscription that Orhan Şaik Gökyay labelled it as the “only travelogue known from the Ottoman classical

¹⁷⁵ As it has been mentioned above, Seydî Ali Reis had to retreat to India after loosing a naval battle with the Portuguese fleet in the Indian Ocean. He left the remaining ships he had commanded to the Sultan of Gujarat and turned back to Đstanbul via following a land route passing through Central Asia and Iran. He had already witnessed the fate of Pîrî Reis, who had been executed in 1554 after his failure against the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. Therefore, in order to make himself forgiven by the Sultan, with the encouragement of his friends, he decided to write his travel from India to the Ottoman Empire.

 

¹⁷⁶ Turan, “Seydî Ali Reis,” 531. The manuscript was first published by Necip Âsım, (Đstanbul: Đkdam, 1313 [1885/86]). For the transcription of the manuscript see Seydi Ali Reis, Mirat-ül Memalik, transliterated and edited by Necdet Akyıldız, (Đstanbul: Tercüman Yayınları, [unknown year of publication]).

age;”¹⁷⁷ while, according to Nicolas Vatin, this piece is “the most suitable one to the definition of the genre of travelogue.”¹⁷⁸

The first travelogue that comes to one’s mind, when this genre is somehow mentioned in Turkish literature, is Evliya Çelebi’s Seyâhatnâme. This travelogue was an oddity, if not an anomaly; in the Ottoman travel literature since it had no significant predecessor as well as successor. In other words, neither in the previous, nor in the subsequent ages until the mid-nineteenth century, a travelogue like Seyâhatnâme existed.¹⁷⁹ Indeed, Seyâhatnâme was not a single book, but a ten-volume colossal piece, including the account of forty years of Evliya Çelebi’s travels in various parts of the Ottoman Empire and its periphery.¹⁸⁰ He did not generally travel alone except for a few excursions to the environs of Đstanbul, but rather within a large group such as a diplomatic mission or a pilgrimage caravan; however, different from previous travellers what he prioritized, unlike other travel narrations of the Ottoman classical age, was the travel itself. All other issues, such as detailed descriptions of diplomatic negotiations, the character of the people that he travelled with, the letters sent or treaties concluded had been mentioned as details not as the foci of the travelogue.

¹⁷⁷ Gökyay, “Türkçe’de Gezi Kitapları,” 459-460.

 

¹⁷⁸ Vatin, “Bir Osmanlı Türkü Yaptığı Seyahati Niçin Anlatırdı?,” 166.

 

¹⁷⁹ According to Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar what makes Evliya Çelebi so distinguished was his talent to describe what he had seen as successful as a painter; in other words, his “picturesque pleasure” as well as his simple style free from literary ornaments of the classical literature produced the best known travelogue of the Turkish literature. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Edebiyat Üzerine Makaleler, (Ankara: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1969), 169. Robert Dankoff, on the other hand, focused on the multi-layered personality of Evliya Çelebi to claim for his originality. Accordingly, he defined Evliya Çelebi as “a man of Đstanbul,” “a man of the world,” “servitor of the Sultan,” “gentleman and dervish,” “raconteur” and “reporter and entertainer.” All these different identities attached to him resulted in the most colourful travelogue of the classical Ottoman age. For a detailed analysis of all these different identities, see Robert Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Çelebi, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006). For a brief account of Evliya Çelebi’s life and travels see Mücteba Đlgürel, “Evliya Çelebi,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Đslam Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 11, 529-533.

 

¹⁸⁰ The routes of travel stretched from the Balkan provinces of the Empire to Caucasus, from Crimea to Crete, from Egypt and Sudan to Aleppo, Damascus and Jerusalem, from Medina and Mecca to Vienna. Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahâtnâmesi, transliterated and edited by various authors, 9 Volumes, (Đstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1996).

In sum, Seyâhatnâme is an extremely complex piece for studying; some authors find it unreliable due to Evliya Çelebi’s frequent exaggerations, while others perceived it as a useful text to understand the Ottoman perception of the world. However, almost all of them agree that it is an anomalous piece both in terms of its volume and content. As Đbrahim Hakkı Akyol mentioned, Evliya Çelebi was “the last and, perhaps, the most interesting representative” of the Ottoman geography: “[… W]ith Evliya Çelebi, in the widest sense, the lineage of great Eastern geographers had come to an end.”¹⁸¹

All in all, although travel writing had not emerged as a distinct genre before the mid-nineteenth century in the Ottoman literature, travel was narrated in various forms, generally as a part of other literary genres. The reasons for the underdevelopment of travel writing are very much related to the nature of travels, travellers and the writing activity. The practical reasons ranging from the interrelationship between the patrons and men of letters to the costs of book production also discouraged the travellers to write their experiences.

Despite this underdevelopment, travel narration was not altogether absent in the Ottoman literature. The accounts of soldier-poets regarding the Ottoman wars with its neighbours, of pilgrims wandering around the “holy lands” of Islam, of merchants regarding the routes of their merchandise activity, of the missions sent for diplomatic communication, of some men of letters or sailors producing geography texts included significant travel narrations. Indeed, it is these narrations carefully picked up from these pieces that contributed our knowledge of Ottoman perception of the world in the Ottoman classical period. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, with the intellectual, technological and socio-cultural transformation of the Ottoman Empire, new forms of travel and travel writing had emerged. Travel writing became a more discernable genre compared to the classical age. The factors that contributed to this transformation and the emergence of a new travel-literature is examined in the next chapter.

 

¹⁸¹ Đbrahim Hakkı Akyol, “Tanzimat Devrinde Bizde Coğrafya ve Jeoloji,” in Tanzimat I: Yüzüncü Yıl Münasebetile, (Đstanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1940), 511-571, 521-522.

CHAPTER 4

 

 

OTTOMAN TRAVEL WRITING

FROM THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY ONWARDS

 

 

Ottoman travel writing had entered into an unproductive period after Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatnâme. The reasons for this lack of productivity in this genre are many. To start with, continuous Ottoman defeats in long and exhausting wars undermined the raison d’être of several sub-genres of the Ottoman classical poetry regarding military campaigns such as gazavâtnâme, fethnâme, zafernâme, or menâzilnâme, which include substantial travel narration. Secondly, the shift of the centre of world trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic diminished the significance of classical trade routes passing through the Ottoman realm. Ottoman merchants could not compete with their European counterparts; hence long-distance trade, which had been another source of travel writing, became not as attractive and lucrative as before. Third, except for two notable exceptions, Nâbî’s Tuhfetü’l Harameyn and Mehmed Edib’s Menâsikü’l Hacc, pilgrimage travelogues turned out to be simple replications of the previous pieces; hence they lost their allure in the Ottoman literary circles. Fourth, domestic insecurity as a result of Celâlî rebellions in the seventeenth century and the revolts of local notables (a’yân) in the eighteenth century, as well as external insecurity due to prolonged wars discouraged people from travelling within and outside the borders of the Empire. All in all, except for the genre of sefâretnâme, which reached its zenith in the eighteenth century, travelogues hardly existed in the Ottoman literature.

In the nineteenth century, this trend was reversed. Quantitatively and qualitatively the genre of travelogue experienced a significant development. What is more, travelogues extremely closer to the European samples of this genre were produced. The reasons for this reversal should be elaborated more closely. Therefore, this chapter is devoted to an analysis of intellectual,

technological and socio-cultural factors, which resulted in the increasing interest of the Ottomans about travelling as well as travel writing in this period.

 

4.1.           Intellectual Factors Contributing to the Rise of Travel and Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century

Ottoman military decline and subsequent internal problems from the late seventeenth century onwards resulted in the emergence of a mentality transformation, although this transformation was initially very slow and limited to certain fields, particularly the military issues.¹⁸² However, the infiltration of new ideas into the Ottoman Empire even from these small cracks had revolutionary consequences for the Ottoman modernization movement, which would reflect themselves clearly in the nineteenth century.

 

4.1.1.     Perception of External World as a Subject to be Studied Scientifically:

Towards the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman intellectuals systematically began to perceive the external world as a subject to be studied “scientifically” in order to prevent and even reverse the decline of the Empire. This perception contributed to the re-emergence of travel literature, this time in a more modern sense. This generalization needs to be elaborated further; it does not necessarily mean that the Ottoman intellectuals of the classical age were totally incognizant of the external developments. It does not also mean that before the nineteenth century they had never engaged in a “scientific” analysis of the world.¹⁸³ Contrarily, the decline of Ottoman military power together with internal disturbances starting from the late seventeenth century onwards forced the Ottoman intellectuals to examine the reasons for this decline. One of the

¹⁸² For a detailed analysis of earlier modernization attempts in the Ottoman Empire, see Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, (London: Hurst&Company, 1964), 23-49.

 

¹⁸³ Indeed according to Ramazan Korkmaz, the Ottoman intellectuals had followed the developments in the West in the sixteenth century “[…] closely and timely, not with a systematic consistency but with a selective attention.” See Ramazan Korkmaz, “Yenileşmenin Tarihî, Sosyo-Kültürel ve Estetik Temelleri,” Talat Sait Halman [et.al.] (eds.), Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi, (Đstanbul: T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınlığı, 2007), Vol. 3, 17-42, 19.

most significant results of this consideration is the renewed emphasis on the concept of “science” (ilm). Indeed, the Ottoman classical literature on science distinguished between the “theological sciences” (naklî ilimler) and “positive sciences” (aklî ilimler), and prioritize the former over the latter. However, starting from the late seventeenth century onwards, the neglect of positive sciences came to be regarded as one of the most significant reasons for the military failures in the hands of Western adversaries of the Empire. This concern resulted in the Ottoman intellectual’s interest in the Western sources; some of them were directly translated from their original languages, while some others were indirectly referred to in the Ottoman manuscripts on science in this period.¹⁸⁴

Two men of letters, one from the seventeenth (Kâtip Çelebi) and the other from the eighteenth century (Đbrahim Müteferrika, 1674-1745) contributed much to the transformation of the Ottoman perception of positive sciences. Their works resulted in a renewed interest in science, particularly in the scientific development of Europe. Their perception of geography as one of the most useful sciences for understanding the external reasons of the decline of the Ottoman Empire opened a way for the transmission of Western geographical knowledge into the Ottoman Empire, which also triggered the Ottoman interest in travel and travel writing.¹⁸⁵

¹⁸⁴ For the earlier encounters of the Ottoman intellectuals with Western sources on science before the nineteenth century, see Ekmeleddin Đhsanoğlu, “Introduction of Western Science to the Ottoman World: A Case Study of Modern Astronomy (1660-1860),” in Ekmeleddin Đhsanoğlu (ed.), Transfer of Modern Science and Technology to the Muslim World, (Đstanbul: IRCICA Publications, 1992), 67-120. Translations from Western resources became a practice not only in Đstanbul but also in various parts of the Empire. For example, Osman bin Abdülmennan el- Mühtedi translated four books from European scientific literature in Belgrade upon the recommendation of Hafız Ahmed Paşa, the governor of Belgrade in the late eighteenth century. See, George N. Vlahakis [et.al.], Imperialism and Science: Social Impact and Interaction, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 86.

 

¹⁸⁵ Indeed, the significance of Katip Çelebi comes from his deep knowledge not only on Islamic works but also on the findings of Western studies on geography. He translated some European geography books and atlases into Turkish and used them extensively in his manuscripts. What is more, he considered several premises of the new European geography as more accurate and thus utilized them in his own works. For example, Cihannüma is one of the first Ottoman works on geography, in which the world was divided into continents whereas the former manuscripts on Islamic geography were based on the classical division of the world on seven climes. See Gökyay, Katip Çelebi: Hayatı ve Eserleri Hakkında Đncelemeler, 129-133. The works of Đbrahim

These earlier works, which increased the credibility of Western scientific sources in the eyes of the Ottoman intellectuals, were followed by other pieces clearly accepting the scientific and technological supremacy of Europe towards the end of the eighteenth and in the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Establishment of modern military education,¹⁸⁶ appointment of a group of Western technicians as teachers in the new imperial schools, and sending Ottoman students to European capitals to get higher education demonstrated that the Ottoman intellectuals began to believe in the adoption of the European science and technology as the remedy to reverse the continuous decline of the Empire.¹⁸⁷

Parallel to these developments, the Ottoman intellectuals and bureaucrats were faced with the works of European enlightenment starting from the first decades of the nineteenth century. Particularly, the diplomats and students sent to

 

Müteferrika, on the other hand, reflected the significant increase in the emphasis on science and scientific understanding of the world in the eighteenth century, since he claimed that the decadence of the Empire could be reversed by relying on scientific methods. That’s why his famous manuscript written in 1732 was entitled as Usul ül-Hikem Fî Nizam ül-Ümem (translated by Niyazi Berkes as Rational Bases for the Polities of Nations). In this pamphlet, Đbrahim Müteferrika argued that one of the reasons for the deterioration of internal and external conditions of the Empire was the neglect of scientific methods and the knowledge of the enemy; hence to reverse this situation the ruler should give precedence to several sciences, most important of all, geography. Đbrahim Müteferrika, Milletlerin Düzeninde Đlmi Usuller, transliterated and edited by Ömer Okutan, (Đstanbul: Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları, 2000), 63. For a review of this piece see Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, 36-45.

 

¹⁸⁶ Among these military schools, the Mühendishâne-i Berr-i Hümâyûn (Royal Military Engineering Academy) had already been established in 1773 and two decades later, in 1793, Selim III opened the Mühendishâne-i Bahr-i Hümâyûn (Royal Naval Engineering Academy). The Mekteb-i Ulûm-i Harbiye (Military Sciences College) and Mekteb-i Harbiye (Military Academy) followed the suit in 1834 and 1846, respectively. For a brief account of these schools, see Berkes, Development of Secularism in Turkey, 45-50.

 

¹⁸⁷ Accordingly, the first four Ottoman students were sent to Paris in 1830 for military education. This was followed by eleven students in 1840 for medicine and science education, thirty two students between 1847 and 1856 for positive and social sciences education, sixty one students between 1856 and 1864, which resulted in the establishment of an Ottoman School (Mekteb-i Osmanî) in Paris, and ninety three students between 1864 and 1876, this time for technical education. See Ekmeleddin Đhsanoğlu, “Tanzimat Öncesi ve Tanzimat Dönemi Osmanlı Bilim ve Eğitim Anlayışı,” in Hakkı Dursun Yıldız (ed.) 150. Yılında Tanzimat, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1992), 335-397, 374. For a detailed account of these students, see Adnan Şişman, Tanzimat Döneminde Fransa'ya Gönderilen. Osmanlı Öğrencileri (1839-1876), (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2004).

European capitals were influenced from the positivist philosophy.¹⁸⁸ The reception of European positivist literature by the Ottoman intellectuals brought the knowledge of external world to the forefront more, and encouraged the Ottomans to focus on travelling to observe the West through their own eyes. In other words, reading from Western sources would not suffice to learn about the reasons for the supremacy of the West; travel would provide the Ottoman intellectuals with the opportunity to be aware of these reasons by their own observations.

A parallel development contributing to the perception of external world as a field to be studied scientifically was the increasing significance attached to geography in the first half of the nineteenth century. The achievements of Europe in the field of geography were followed by the Ottomans with great curiosity. For example, it was in the 1830s that the Prussian soldier/technicians serving in the Ottoman army were ordered to prepare the European-style maps of the Empire. This was soon followed by the Ottoman military geographers, and the first map, produced by the Ottomans, was presented to the Sultan in 1859.¹⁸⁹ In other words, the Ottoman ruling elite considered European-style maps as more accurate compared to the classical maps of the Ottoman Empire, and they perceived map-making as a key element for the proper defence of the Ottoman territories.

What is more, at the same time, geography was begun to be taught at the Ottoman  modern  schools.  Starting  from  1840s  onwards,  many  European

¹⁸⁸ For a detailed review of the earlier encounters of the nineteenth century intellectuals with positivism see Murtaza Korlaelçi, “Bazı Tanzimatçılarımızın Pozitivistlerle Đlişkileri,” in Tanzimatın 150. Yıldönümü Uluslararası Sempozyumu, Ankara, 31 Ekim-3 Kasım 1989, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1994), 25-43. The works of these philosophers were so quickly spread in the new Ottoman schools that one of the foreign visitors of Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Şâhâne (Imperial School of Medicine), Charles McFarlaine, had been surprised when he saw that the students had been reading not only positivist but also the popular materialist literature of the time, such as Jacques le Fataliste et Son Maître written by Denise Diderot (1713-1784), Système de la Nature written by Baron d’Holbach (1723-1789), or Le Compere Mathieu written by Henri Joseph du Laurens (1719-1793). Charles McFarlaine, Turkey and Its Destiny, (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), Vol. 2, 163, 167, quoted by Berkes, Development of Secularism in Turkey, 116-117.

 

¹⁸⁹ Akyol, “Tanzimat Devrinde Bizde Coğrafya ve Jeoloji,” 542-543.

geography books were translated into Turkish and taught not only in military academies, but also in secondary schools (rüşdiye) and high schools (idâdî).¹⁹⁰ The significance attached to geography in the nineteenth century was so clear that among the 242 scientific books published in the Ottoman Empire between 1840 and 1876, after mathematics and medicine, geography was the third field that the Ottomans published the most.¹⁹¹

To sum up so far, one of the most significant reasons for the importance attached to travel and travel writing from the mid-nineteenth century onwards was the Ottoman perception of the external world as a subject to be studied scientifically. In other words, the external world, generally unknown to the Ottoman intellectual, became a matter of curiosity. Of course, the military failures of the Ottoman Empire vis-à-vis the West contributed to this mentality transformation. The sense of Ottoman supremacy in the earlier centuries of the Empire led the Ottoman intellectuals to de-prioritize the study of the external world; however, the perception of European supremacy starting from the late eighteenth century onwards resulted in a renewed interest about the achievements of Europe. This triggered Ottoman travel, particularly to the West, and transformed the Ottoman perception of travel to a considerable degree.

 

4.1.2 Perception of Travel as a Useful Endeavour, Even as a Component of Civilization:

The significance attached to European science and technology as the basic factor behind the European military supremacy resulted in the Ottoman modernization. The higher echelons of the Ottoman bureaucracy, which had assumed political power in the Tanzimat period, had been learning about

¹⁹⁰ For an analysis of geography education in the Otoman Empire, see Ramazan Özey, “Osmanlı Devleti Döneminde Coğrafya ve Öğretimi,” in Eren (ed.), Osmanlı, Vol. 8, 326-333. Among the geography books taught at Ottoman schools, Hüseyin Rıfkı’s El Medhal Fi’l Coğrafya (Introduction to Geography) published in 1830, Osman Saib’s Muhtasar Coğrafya (Abridged Geography) published in 1841 and Ahmed Hamdi’s Usûl-i Coğrafya (The Method of Geography) can be cited. For a detailed analysis of translations of geography books, see Akyol, “Tanzimat Devrinde Bizde Coğrafya ve Jeoloji,” 557-559.

 

¹⁹¹ Đhsanoğlu, “Tanzimat Öncesi ve Tanzimat Dönemi Osmanlı Bilim ve Eğitim Anlayışı,” 376.

European civilization, culture and current developments directly from eminent European sources.¹⁹² However, some of them, who had been to European capitals as diplomats, students, or simply as travellers, were not satisfied with indirect accumulation of knowledge through books, and relied on their own observations in Europe.¹⁹³ Therefore, travel within and outside the borders of the Empire by the Ottoman ruling elite became a widespread endeavour.¹⁹⁴

The perception of external world as a subject of study and the appreciation of the advancement of European science and technology not only increased the number of travels to Europe, but also transformed the perception of travel. Travelling, which had been perceived as a troublesome and difficult endeavour, was now considered as a useful way of understanding the world.

¹⁹² For an analysis of the translation activities and the reading habits of Ottoman elite see Remzi Demir, Philosophia Ottomanica: Osmanlı Đmparatorluğu Döneminde Türk Felsefesi, (Đstanbul: Lotus Yayınevi, 2007), Vol. 3, 28-31 and Johann Strauss, “Who Read What in the Ottoman Empire (19th-20th Centuries)?,” Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan. 2003): 39-76.

 

¹⁹³ The eminent bureaucrats of the Tanzimat era such as Mustafa Reşid Paşa, Sadık Rıfat Paşa, Ali Paşa, Fuad Paşa, etc., were among the intellectuals who had been to Europe mainly for diplomatic purposes. They were followed by students such as Đbrahim Şinasi in 1850s, escapee Young Ottoman intellectuals starting from mid-1860s onwards such as Namık Kemal, Ali Suavi, Agah Efendi and Reşad Bey, and finally travellers seeking for self-education or utilizing their purpose of being in Europe to travel the whole continent from 1880s onwards. Ahmed Đhsan, who travelled to learn latest printing technology in Europe, was an example for the first category, while Ahmed Midhat was an example for the second category, travelling to attend the Congress of Orientalists in Stockholm and using this opportunity to travel all around Europe.

 

¹⁹⁴ Not only the bureaucrats or diplomats, but even the Sultans themselves began to travel. It was Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839), who first travelled within the Ottoman Empire not for political or military purposes, or simply for hunting, but for examining various parts of his realm. He travelled around the Danubian provinces as well as Đzmir and Rhodes. Abdülmecid (r. 1839- 1861) followed the suit by engaging in two domestic travels, the first one in 1844 to Bursa, Çanakkale, Gallipoli and Lesbos and the second one in 1846 to Rumelian cities including Edirne, Varna, Rusçuk and Silistre. Nihat Karaer cited from Hayreddin Bey’s Vesâik-i Tarihiye ve Siyâsiye (Đstanbul: Ahmet Đhsan Matbaası, 1326 [1908-1909]) that indeed Abdülmecid was the first Sultan who also intended to travel to Europe after being invited by Prince Napoleon, the nephew of French Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852-1870), who had been to Đstanbul to participate the Crimean War. See Nihat Karaer, Paris, Londra, Viyana: Abdülaziz’in Avrupa Seyahati, (Đstanbul: Phoenix Yayınları, 2007), 33-34. This desire to visit Europe would later be realized by his successor, namely Sultan Abdülaziz’s (r. 1861-1876) in 1867, turning him to the first Ottoman Sultan travelling to European capitals including Paris, London and Vienna for peaceful purposes, namely for attending the opening ceremony of the Exposition Universelle. For a detailed analysis of Abdülaziz’s travel to Europe and Egypt see, Nihat Karaer, Paris, Londra, Viyana: Abdülaziz’in Avrupa Seyahati; Cemal Kutay, Sultan Abdülaziz’in Avrupa Seyahati, (Đstanbul: Boğaziçi Yayınları, 1991); Ali Kemali Aksüt, Sultan Aziz’in Mısır ve Avrupa Seyahati, (Đstanbul: Ahmet Sait Matbaası, 1944).

What is more, travel for the sake of travel began to become a popular practice in Europe towards mid-nineteenth century, and this development was imitated by the Ottomans as in other fields. As Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu noted, “[t]he desire to travel is not a home product. As many of our desires, it comes from the West.”¹⁹⁵ Ahmed Đhsan (Tokgöz, 1868-1942) was one of the most ardent supporters

of travel as a practice serving self-development. In the preface of his fictional travelogue entitled Asya-yı Şarkî’ye Seyahat (Travel to the East Asia), he wrote that in Europe travel had been perceived as a scientific and educative enterprise. He defined travel as the “first medium for the real expansion and enlightenment of the ideas emerged out of scientific studies” ([t]etebbû-u ulûm ile küşayiş bulan fikrin cidden tevsî ve tenvîr etmesi için birinci vâsıta) and argued that in Europe travel had long been perceived as such. He further mentioned that geographical studies might be beneficial for understanding the world; however, they were quite abstract and “could not exceed beyond the limits of theory” (dâire-yi nazariyâttan kurtulamaz). ¹⁹⁶ Therefore, personal travels were necessary to increase knowledge and for self-development.

Having appreciated the European inclination towards travelling as a way of accumulation of knowledge, the Ottoman travellers were quick to adopt European methods of travel as well. They began to utilize European travel agencies to conduct their travels not only to Europe, but also to the other parts of the world.¹⁹⁷ What is more, they carefully followed the European travel guides, particularly those published by the Baedecker Company, in order to be informed

 

 

¹⁹⁵ Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Canım Anadolu, (Đstanbul: Varlık Yayınları, 1953), 3.

 

¹⁹⁶ Ahmed Đhsan, Asya-yı Şarkiye Seyahat, (Đstanbul: Alem Matbaası, 1307 [1890]), 1.

 

¹⁹⁷ For example, Azmzade Sadık el-Müeyyed, who was assigned as a diplomatic envoy to the Emperor of Abyssinia, Menelik II, in 1904, first went from Đstanbul to Marseilles via a passenger ship of French travel company, Messagerie Maritimes, instead of travelling with an Ottoman ship sailing to Egypt. See Azmzade Sadık el-Müeyyed, Habeş Seyahâtnâmesi, (Đstanbul: Đkdam Matbaası, 1322 [1906]), 4. The comfort of European travel agencies were preferred by the Ottoman elites in this period; even Babanzade Đsmail Hakkı openly criticized the Ottoman failure to set up their own travel agencies, which turned out to be a lucrative enterprise. See Babanzade Đsmail Hakkı, Irak Mektupları, (Đstanbul: Tanîn Matbaası, 1329 [1911]), 6.

about the cities they had visited.¹⁹⁸ For example, Ahmed Đhsan always referred to his Baedecker Guide of Paris, while he was wandering in that city in 1891 and cited some information from that particular guidebook in his own travelogue.¹⁹⁹

Ottoman intellectuals were not only interested in travel, but they also began to criticize the neglect of their predecessors, who generally refrained from engaging in what now became a praiseworthy enterprise. Indeed, the perception of travel as a matter of civilization, as a novel practice for one’s self-refinement, resulted in a critical outlook to the former stagnancy of the Ottoman intellectuals. One of such criticisms was reflected in the preface written by Ahmed Midhat to the travelogue of Seyyah Mehmed Emin. He wrote:

We, the Ottomans, attach rather little significance to travel compared to other nations. Each ship which goes to sea from the countries of Europe and each traveller who thus sets out on a journey tours every part of the world. While they make a trip around the world and include the features of their journeys in brilliant travelogues, we rarely travel properly even in our own country. ²⁰⁰

 

In the same text, Ahmed Midhat indirectly criticized the wealthy Ottoman elite’s neglect of travel as well; he wrote that the lack of Ottoman travel could not be explained by the financial insufficiencies. The Ottomans had spent huge sums of money to build mansions and kiosks, which could easily burn to the ground by a flick, while they refrained from spending even a very small portion

¹⁹⁸ After buying a bankrupt publishing house in 1832, whose list included several primitive travel guidebooks on Germany, the publisher Karl Baedecker (1801-1859) decided to publish more detailed travel guidebooks on various countries of Europe. After his death his three sons enlarged the publishing house and began to publish guidebooks on various parts of the world, including Syria, Palestine and Russia. For a brief account of Baedecker guidebooks, see Kevin J. Hayes, “Baedeker Guides,” in Jennifer Speake (ed.), Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia, (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003), Vol. 1, 58-60.

 

¹⁹⁹ Ahmed Đhsan, Avrupa’da Ne Gördüm, transliterated and edited by Alain Servantie and Fahriye Gündoğdu, (Đstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2007). The book was published probably in his own printing house in 1892. For the details of publication see the preface written by Servantie and Gündoğdu, ix-lxv.

 

²⁰⁰ “Biz yani Osmanlılar milel-i sâireye nispetle seyahate pek az ehemmiyet vermişiz. Avrupa bilâdından kalkan bir gemi veyahud yola çıkan bir seyyâh dünyanın her tarafını dolaşarak bir devr-i âlem seyâhati icra ve suret-i seyâhatlerini mükemmel seyâhatnâmelere derc eylemiş oldukları halde bizim kendi memleketimiz dâhilinde bile layıkıyla deveran edenlerimiz pek az görülmüştür.” Mehmed Emin, Đstanbul’dan Asya-yı Vusta’ya Seyahat, 2. The excerpt translated was taken from p. 2; its translation was quoted from Herzog and Motika, “Orientalism alla

of such expenditures for travel. Hence the problem was not lack of enough financial resources but the Ottoman intolerance to the difficulties of travel. “However”, he wrote, “travel does not mean trouble, but enormous pleasure and huge enjoyment that has no equivalent in this world.”²⁰¹

Similar to Ahmed Midhat, Mehmed Mihri, who wrote a travelogue on Sudan, criticized the Ottomans for not travelling, while he appraised the efforts of the European travellers for revealing the unknown regions of the world. He wrote regretfully (and for self-appraisal) that among the Easterners, nobody had travelled to distant regions of the world such as Sudan and nobody wrote their observations and feelings open-mindedly.²⁰²

Another significant aspect regarding the transformation of the perception of travel in this century was that the Ottoman intellectuals began to establish a linkage between travel and civilization. Mentioning about the necessity of travel, Ahmed Midhat argued that travel should be an indispensible effort for the Ottomans because of the peculiar characteristic of the Ottoman Empire situated between the European and Islamic civilizations. He wrote:

Europe is progressive with so many inventions and modernized with new laws of civilization and has really amazed the human mind, while the vast Islamic world in fact needs our guidance in matters of progress and innovation. As we are between both, it is our greatest and sacred duty to take a closer look to the state of civilization in Europe and the Islamic countries and compare them . While this duty includes our taking travelling seriously, we have not seen this as our responsibility. So let us attach to travel the importance it deserves.²⁰³

 

²⁰¹ “Halbuki seyâhat bir zahmet değil cihanda hiçbir şeyde bulunmayacak kadar azîm bir zevk ve nihâyetsiz bir lezzettir.” Mehmed Emin, Đstanbul’dan Asya-yı Vusta’ya Seyahat, 4. The translation was quoted from Herzog and Motika, “Orientalism alla turca,” 144.

 

²⁰² Mehmed Mihri, Sudan Seyahâtnâmesi, (Đstanbul: Ahmed Đhsan ve Şürekası, 1326 [1910]), 5.

 

²⁰³ “Zira etrâfında bunca muhteriât ile müterakkî ve kavanin-i cedide-i medeniyetle müteceddid olup her hâl-ü şânları hakîkaten hayret-fermâ-yı ukul ve ebnâ-yı beşer olan Avrupa’nın ve diğer taraftan dahi terakkî ve terakkî ve teceddüdleri emrinde gerçekten bizim delaletimize myhtaç bulunan azîm bir kıt’a-yı Đslamiyenin arasında bulunduğumuz hasebiyle gerek Avrupa’nın ve gerek memâlik-i Đslamiyenin ahval-i medeniyesini yakından görüp birbirine tatbik eylemek bizim en büyük ve hatta mukaddes bir vazifemiz olduğu ve şu vazife-i seyâhat hususuna ehemmiyet vermekliğimizi icap eylediği halde biz o vazife ile kendimizi muvazzıf bilmemişiz ki hatta seyâhate dahi layık olduğu ehemmiyeti verebilelim.” Mehmed Emin, Đstanbul’dan Asya-yı Vusta’ya Seyahat, 2. The translation was quoted from Herzog and Motika, “Orientalism alla

Besides travel, travel writing was considered as a civilized practice as well. For example, Ahmed Hamdi Efendi, who wrote his memoirs during his diplomatic visit to Afghanistan in 1877, underlined the importance of travel writing by perceiving the genre of travelogue as a “[…] laudable work that serves civilizing purposes to the benefit of the whole mankind.”²⁰⁴

Another significant transformation of travel writing experienced in the late Ottoman Empire was the perception of travelogues not only as useful pieces for self-development, but also as pieces for amusement. The publishers became aware of their popularity and began to publish more travelogues to meet this demand. Even some newspapers began to distribute illustrated travelogues as a gift for their readers. For example in 1898, following the second visit of the German Emperor, Wilhelm II (r. 1888-1918), to Đstanbul, the Sabah newspaper distributed a travelogue entitled Hâtırâ-ı Seyahât (The Travel Memoirs) written by an anonymous correspondent accompanying the Emperor. In the subtitle of this travelogue, it was especially mentioned that it was a gift to the readers of the newspaper.²⁰⁵ Another example was the publishing of Musavver Hindistan Seyahatnamesi (Illustrated Travelogue of India), written by Selanikli Mehmed Tevfik as a compilation of several European travelogues. In the preface of his work, the administration of the Sabah newspaper claimed that it was “the illustrated travelogues that the readers read with a great joy and desire”.²⁰⁶ It was also added that “[…t]hese travelogues both inform the readers about the

 

 

 

²⁰⁴ “[…] cem’iyyet-i beşeriyyenin menâfi’i ve fevâid-i temeddüniyelerine hizmet eder bir eser-i cemil […]” See Şirvanlı Ahmet Hamdi Efendi, Seyahâtnâme: Hindistan, Svat ve Afganistan, (Đstanbul: Mahmud Bey Matbaası, 1300 [1883]), 292.

 

²⁰⁵ Hatıra-yı Seyahat: Almanya Đmparatoru Haşmetlu Wilhelm ve Đmparatoriçe Augusta Viktorya Hazeratı’nın Dersaadeti Def’a-i Saniye Olarak Ziyaretleriyle Suriye Seyahatlerine Bir Hatıra-i Naçiz Olmak Üzere (Sabah) Gazetesi Tarafndan Kar’iin-i Osmaniyeye Hediye Edilmiştir, Đstanbul: Mihran Matbaası, 1316 [1889].

 

²⁰⁶ “[…] erbab-ı mütâlaanın en ziyade lezzetle, rağbetle okudukları şey resimli seyahâtnâmelerdir.” Selanikli Mehmed Tevfik, Musavver Hindistan Seyahâtnâmesi, (Đstanbul: Mihran Matbaası, 1318 [1900]), 3.

customs, morality and other characteristics of some distant countries and make them benefit from these informations, and at the same time amuse them.”²⁰⁷

The perception of travel as a useful endeavour, even as a condition of civilization, resulted in a renewed interest on the travel literature. On the one hand, the European travelogues, both real and fictional, were translated into Turkish; on the other hand, imitating the Western literature, fictitious travel novels were written.²⁰⁸ However, relying solely on books about distant regions as well as their inhabitants was insufficient for some of the Ottoman intellectuals. Increasing curiosity about the world thanks to the translation of European books on geography and science, as well as the newspapers informing the readers on external developments, contributed to the Ottoman desire to travel. This preference of travel to reading travel books was clearly reflected in several pieces written in the late nineteenth century.²⁰⁹

²⁰⁷ “Bu seyahâtnâmeler erbâb-ı mütâlaaya hem bir takım memâlik-i bâide ahalisi âdât ve ahlâkı ve ahvâl-i sairesi hakkında malûmat verir, müstefîd eyler, hem de onları eğlendirir.” Selanikli Mehmed Tevfik, Musavver Hindistan Seyahâtnâmesi, 3.

 

²⁰⁸ For some examples of translations from European travelogues see, George August Schweinfurth’s Im Herzen von Afrika (The Heart of Africa), (Leipzig, F. A. Brockhous, 1874), was translated by Ahmed Bey and Mustafa Said Bey as Şıvınfort'un Afrika Seyahâtnâmesi, (Dersaadet [Đstanbul]: Basiret Matbaası, 1291 [1874-1875]); Januarius Aloysius MacGahan’s Campaigning on the Oxus and the Fall of Khiva, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1874) was translated by Kolağası Ahmed Bey as Hive Seyahâtnâmesi ve Tarih-i Musavver, (Dersaadet [Đstanbul]: Basiret Matbaası, 1292, [1875]); Eugene Schuyler’s Turkestan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Kokand, Bukhara and Kuldja (New York: Scibner-Armstrong, 1876) was translated again by Kolağası Ahmed Bey as Musavver Türkistan Tarihi ve Seyahâtnâmesi (Dersaadet [Đstanbul]: Basiret Matbaası, 1294, [1877]). Ahmed Đhsan was one of the major translators of fictional European travelogues into the Ottoman. He translated Jules Verne’s Les Tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine (Tribulations of a Chinese in China), (Paris: Hetzel, 1879) as Çin’den Seyahat (Đstanbul: Alem Matbaası, 1308 [1891]); Deux Ans de Vacances (Two Year’s Vacation), (Paris: Hetzel, 1888) as Mektep Tatili (Đstanbul: Matbaatü'l-Alem, 1308 [1891]; and César Cascabel, (Paris, Hetzel, 1890) as Araba ile Devr-i Alem Yahud Sezar Kaskabel (Đstanbul: Matbaatü'l-Alem, 1309 [1892]).For the Ottoman fictional travel literature see, for example, Ahmed Đhsan, Asya-i Şarkiye Seyahat, (Đstanbul: Alem Matbaası, 1307 [1890]); Ahmed Midhat, Acâib-i Âlem, (Đstanbul: Tercüman-ı Hakikat Matbaası, 1299 [1882]), later transliterated and edited by Nurullah Şenol and published with the same title (Đstanbul: Bordo-Siyah Yayınları, 2004).

 

²⁰⁹ For example, the protagonist of the fictitious travel novel written by Ahmed Midhat in 1882 and entitled Acâib-i Âlem (The Wonders of the World), Subhi Bey, who decided to travel to the polar regions, was asked by his future travel-mate, Hicabi Bey, whether sitting in his library and reading books on external world was not preferable to bear the difficulties of travelling. He answered that it was impossible to get the same pleasure by reading a travelogue compared to travelling. Ahmed Midhat, Acâib-i Âlem, 42. The footnote was given from the edition of Şenol.

According to the Ottoman intellectuals, another disadvantage of relying solely on reading travelogues instead of actual travelling was the unreliability of some European travelogues. For example, Mehmed Mihri particularly emphasized that his travelogue should not be compared with the other travelogues previously translated by the Ottoman authors, because the translations were not useful for the Ottoman readers since they were written in accordance with the “patriotic efforts of the author felt towards his own country” (kendi memleketi hakkındaki amel-i vatanperverânesi).²¹⁰ In other words, national peculiarities resulted in different evaluations of the same reality, and the Ottomans should not be misled by reading the travelogues serving the interests of other nations.

Although Ottoman intellectuals/travellers advised learning about the world through travel instead of reading travelogues, they were also aware that it was impossible for all the Ottoman citizens to travel abroad. Therefore, travelogues, written by the Ottoman travellers properly, would avail the readers to benefit as much as possible from others’ experiences. As Ahmed Midhat wrote:

In any case, it is beyond the measure of possibility to make all individuals of a nation travellers; it is even beyond imagination […] While this is so, it could be judged only as absurd to encourage all our compatriots to travel around the world […] If we ourselves do not find the opportunity to travel throughout the world and see the wonders and curiosities, can we not at least partake in the pleasures by reading the works of those who managed to travel?²¹¹

 

He answered this question affirmatively and argued that the reason of mass production of travelogues in Europe was the people’s interest in learning

²¹⁰ Mehmed Mihri, Sudan Seyahâtnâmesi, 4. Perception of travel writing as a patriotic effort because of the informative nature of the travelogues is also visible in the travelogue of Halid Ziyaeddin, who wrote that he decided to pen his memoirs because he perceived this effort as “a complementary of patriotic duties.” (vazîfe-i vatanperverî mütemmemâtından). Halid Ziyaeddin, Musavver Mısır Hatıratı, (Đstanbul: Agob Matosyan Matbaası, 1326 [1910]), 4.

 

²¹¹ “Zaten bir milletin kaffe-i efradını seyyah etmek hadd-i imkanın değil tasavvurun bile haricindedir. […] Hal bu derecede iken bütün hemşehrilerimizi devr-i alem seyahatlerine teşvik eylemek gülünç olmaktan başka bir hokum tevlid etmez. […] Biz kendimiz dünyayı seyahat ederek acaib ve garaibini görmeye imkan bulamıyor ve muvaffak olamıyor isek buna muvaffak olanların asarını okuyarak onların aldıkları lezaize iştirak edemez miyiz?” Mehmed Emin, Đstanbul’dan Asya-yı Vusta’ya Seyahat, 9-10. The excerpt was quoted from Herzog and Motika, “Orientalism alla turca,” 147.

from others’ experiences. In other words, giving information about the distant lands and their inhabitants was one of the most important motives, which encouraged not only the European but also the Ottoman travellers to write travelogues from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Almost all the travelogues written in this period included a justification paragraph mentioning that the reason for writing the travel memoirs was mainly to inform the Ottoman readers about the external world. For example, Abdülkadir Câmî, who wrote a travelogue on Tripoli and Fezzan, wrote the rationale behind writing his memoirs as such:

I will be happy, if I am able to produce an idea of Tripoli for my compatriots and to attract the attention of our enterprising, sound, self-confident youth to these regions, this deserted and isolated province, which has been left far away from the support of the motherland requiring more active, smart and devoted administration compared to other provinces of the Ottoman Empire.²¹²

 

Likewise, Mehmed Fazlı wrote in the introduction of his travelogue on Afghanistan that except for some mythical narratives, there was no single book about the past and contemporary situation of this country since almost no Ottoman citizen had ever been there and even if they had been, they had not written what they had seen there. Therefore, he decided to write this travelogue to inform the Ottomans about the political and military situation of Afghanistan in order to increase the Ottoman sense of love and friendship to this country.²¹³ Mehmed Hurşid similarly argued that he composed his travelogue on the Ottoman-Iranian border in a way to describe the characteristics of the local tribes, which had either not been recorded in their totality so far, or remained unknown because of different and inconsistent narratives regarding them.²¹⁴ All in all, the educative purpose in writing the travelogues was quite extensive in this period.

²¹² Abdülkâdir Câmî, Trablusgarp’ten Sahra-yı Kebîr’e Doğru, (Dersaadet [Đstanbul]: [Unknown Publisher], 1326 [1909]), 7.

 

²¹³ Mehmet Fazlı, Resimli Afganistan Seyahati, (Đstanbul: Matbaa-i Ahmet Đhsan, 1325 [1909- 1910]), 1.

 

²¹⁴ Mehmed Hurşid, Seyahâtnâme-i Hudûd, (Đstanbul: Takvîmhane-i Amire, 1277 [1860-1861]),

2. Later transliterated and edited by Alaattin Eser and published with the same title (Đstanbul: Simurg Yayınevi, 1997), p. 2.

Another significant aspect of travel writing from the mid-nineteenth century onwards is the traveller/author’s emphasis on the reliability of their own travelogues. The experiences of Ottoman travellers in distant parts of the world were so unfamiliar to the Ottoman public opinion that the authors were concerned about suspicion and even disbelief of the readers on what they had written. This concern forced them to underline the reality of their experiences, however odd and weird they might seem. Hence, they repeatedly wrote that they noted down only what they had seen, nothing more. For example, Mehmed Fazlı wrote in the introductory chapter of his travelogue that he “[…] wrote as [he] had seen and felt without adding anything.”²¹⁵ Similarly, Rüşdi Paşa, who wrote his memoirs on Yemen, mentioned that his “[…] expressions stands to [his] observations and investigations” (ifadâtım müşahedâtıma ve tetkikâtıma müstenîddir.)²¹⁶

Visualizing the travelogues was another significant novelty particularly in the early twentieth century, which contributed to the reliability of the travelogue. Indeed visualization was also a common practice in the Ottoman classical age to make the travel narration more attractive. In the classical pieces, miniatures had been utilized to colour the writings of the author. In the nineteenth century; however, more realistic illustrations were begun to be utilized. The travellers to Europe tried to obtain the illustrations of the monuments, gardens, or some peculiar personalities in order to visualize their travel experiences. Hence there emerged several travelogues, which included the word musavver (illustrated) in their titles. Starting from the 1890s onwards, after the Ottoman encounter with photography, Ottoman travelogues began to include photographs, which were treated as the proof of the credibility of the author since photographs were perceived as more reliable compared to illustrations.²¹⁷

²¹⁵ Mehmet Fazlı, Resimli Afganistan Seyahati, 2.

 

²¹⁶ Rüşdi Paşa, Yemen Hatırası, (Đstanbul: Kütübhane-i Đslam ve Askeri - Đbrahim Hilmi, 1327 [1910-1911]), 3.

 

²¹⁷ For a detailed account of the history of photography in the Ottoman Empire, see Engin Özendes, Osmanlı Đmparatorluğu’nda Fotoğraf, (Đstanbul: Đletişim Yayınları, 1995).

Besides the authors’ emphasis on their own observations and incorporation of visual materials, a third factor increasing the reliability of the travelogues was citing the sources utilized by the traveller/author in composing his travelogue. The European travelogues, Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahâtnâme, Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah and some other history books were among the most referred texts in the travelogues. For example, before commencing on narrating his travels, unlike other travelogues, Mehmed Mihri enlisted the Islamic and Western sources that he utilized in writing his travelogue.²¹⁸

All in all, the negative connotation attached to travel in the Ottoman classical age was gradually replaced by a more positive connotation. Travel was still perceived as an arduous endeavour; however, the traveller should bear the burdens of travel because the benefits acquired from travel would far exceed the difficulties encountered. Travel was considered not only as a way of accumulating knowledge about the external world which would contribute to the civilization of the Ottoman society, but also as a civilized practice in itself. In other words, the Ottomans argued that the traveller is a civilized man, or in reverse, a civilized man would enjoy travelling. One of the most significant reasons for the renewed interest in travel and travel writing in the Ottoman literary circles from the mid-nineteenth century onwards was, therefore, the linkage established between travel and civilization.

 

4.2.           Technological Factors Contributing to the Rise of Travel and Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century

The perception of external world as a subject to be studied and the growing interest in understanding the reasons for European supremacy were the intellectual motives behind the increasing popularity of travel towards the mid- nineteenth  century.  Meanwhile,  the  development  of  transportation  and

²¹⁸ Among the Western sources, there were history books written by Bonaparte or Herodotus as well as other travelogues, the most renowned of which was the one written by Schweinfurt. Among the Islamic sources he cited several history books, such as Naum Şakir’s Sudan Tarihi, Tarih-i Abdüllatif Bağdadi, Tarih-i Bediüzzaman Hamedani, Tuhfet-ün Nazirin, Selaset-üt Tevarih, Tarih-i Arab Kabl-el Islam, Tarih-i Ibn-ül Feda, Tac-üt Tevarih and Tarih-i Ibn Khaldun. See Mehmed Mihri, Sudan Seyahâtnâmesi, 3.

communication technology eased travelling from and to the Ottoman Empire and facilitated gathering information regarding the developments in the external world. All these factors increased the quality and quantity of travel as well as travel writing in the late Ottoman Empire.

To start with the development of communication technologies, the establishment of the Ministry of Post in 1840 and rapid linkage of Ottoman postal services with the European ones contributed to the Ottoman awareness about the external world. The Ottoman officials and students sent to the European capitals began to communicate with their families as well as with the Porte through sending letters, which turned out to be one of the most significant sources including travel narrations in the nineteenth century.²¹⁹

Establishment of telegraph lines was another significant factor facilitating Ottoman awareness of the developments in external world.²²⁰ Telegraph was far more revolutionary compared to postal services, since it connected the Ottoman Empire with the external world more quickly. Telegraph was frequently used by the Ottoman journalists, who were assigned by their newspapers to travel to the distant parts of the Empire and to report about the recent developments. Even, the travelogue of Ahmed Şerif was composed of the telegraphs that he sent to the Tanîn newspaper from where he had visited.²²¹

²¹⁹ The letters of Namık Kemal from Paris and London, Abdülhak Hamid from London and Bombay, Süleyman Nazif from Iraq etc., were among such sources. See, Fevziye Abdullah Tansel (ed.), Namık Kemal’in Hususi Mektupları, 8 Volumes, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1967-1986); Đnci Enginün (ed.), Abdülhak Hamid’in Mektupları, 2 Volumes, (Đstanbul, Dergah Yayınları, 1995).

 

²²⁰ After a decade from the utilization of the telegraph in the West, Ottomans were cognizant of this device and the Crimean War provided the opportunity to establish several telegraph lines connecting Đstanbul to Europe. In 1847, telegraph was first introduced to Abdülmecid by one of the colleagues of Samuel Morse and the appreciation of Abdülmecid about the device was so strong that Samuel Morse had once said “Abdülmecid is the first great European man understanding the value of my invention.” During the Crimean War, in the year of 1855, Varna- Balaklava and Varna-Kilyos sea lines as well as Đstanbul-Edirne and Edirne-Şumnu land lines were constructed. The same year Ottoman Telegraph Agency (Osmanlı Telgraf Đdaresi) was established. By early 1860s, many Ottoman cities were connected via telegraph lines. For a detailed account of the history of telegraph in the Ottoman Empire, see Nesimi Yazıcı, “Osmanlı Haberleşme Kurumu,” in 150. Yılında Tanzimat, ed. Hakkı Dursun Yıldız, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1992), 139-209.

 

²²¹ Ahmed Şerif, Arnavudluk’da, Sûriye’de, Trablusgarb’de Tanîn, transliterated and edited by Mehmet Çetin Börekçi, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1999).

Regarding the development of transportation facilities in the Ottoman Empire, two vehicles, the train and the steamboat, became extremely significant for the increasing number of travels in the late Ottoman Empire. Massive railway constructions had already tied many European cities in 1850s and 1860s.²²² With the construction of Đstanbul-Edirne railway line, the Ottoman capital was tied to European capitals by train in 1888. Orient Express, a special train from Paris to Đstanbul began to operate regularly one year later in 1889. In other words, towards the end of the nineteenth century, it took only a couple of days for an Ottoman traveller to reach Paris. Parallel to the development of railway transportation, maritime travels increased as well thanks to the establishment of travel agencies, such as British Cook Company and French Messagerie Maritimes.²²³

The ease of travelling was so extensively felt by the Ottoman travellers that even Babanzade Đsmail Hakkı referred to the former usage of the word travel as a difficult practice, and argued that this word lost its meaning:

Travel!... I think this word has actually been abused; because although this word has been perceived as one of the fundamental principles of humanity, currently, with the provision of gradual developments it almost totally lost its meaning. It only preserved its real and original meaning for the countries [whose inhabitants were] in the stage of nomadism and in the earlier phases of humanity.²²⁴

 

All in all, the development of communication and transportation technologies  facilitated  travels  of  the  Ottomans  and  contributed  to  the

²²² In 1850, European railways hardly exceeded 18000 kilometres, while only two decades later this number was more than 58.000 kilometres. For a detailed analysis of railway construction in Europe see, Robert Millward, Private and Public Enterprise in Europe: Energy, Telecommunications and Transport, 1830-1990, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 59-75.

 

²²³ For the impact of these agencies on Ottoman tourism see Susan Nance, “A Facilitated Access Model and Ottoman Empire Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Oct., 2007): 1056–1077.

 

²²⁴ “Seyahat!.. Bence bu kelime artık suistimal ediliyor. Zira bu kelime mebâdî-i beşeriyetde vaz’ olunmuş olduğu halde bilâhare tedricen terakkiyat vâki’ ola ola medlûlünü heman tamamen denilecek derecede kaybetmiş ve yalnız hâl-i bedâyet ve bedâvette bulunan memleketler için medlûl-ü hakiki ve vaz’-ı ibtidaîsini muhafaza eylemiştir.” Babanzade Đsmail Hakkı, Irak Mektupları, 58-59.

transformation of the Ottoman perception of travel from an arduous and troublesome activity to a more pleasuring one. This was another reason for the development of travel writing from the late nineteenth century onwards.

 

4.3.           Socio-Cultural Factors Contributing to the Rise of Travel and Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century

Not only intellectual and technological, but also socio-cultural factors contributed to the renewal of the Ottoman interest in travel and particularly travel writing. Among these factors, two of them are of considerable significance, and therefore require closer examination. The first one is the transformation of the Ottoman literature and the emergence of a new literary style in the nineteenth century, which contributed to the appearance of travelogues as a more distinct genre. The second one is the development of Ottoman printing and press, which had not only fostered the Ottoman awareness about the external world, but also resulted in the utilization of a simpler and purer language, enlarging the target group of the literary works, including the travelogues.

 

4.3.1.     Transformation of the Ottoman Literature:

One of the most significant factors contributing to the development of travel writing from the mid-nineteenth century onwards was the changing mentality of the Ottoman men of letters. In the classical age, Ottoman literature was mainly confined to a limited group of writers and a limited group of readers. The very concept of divân edebiyâtı (court literature) means that the classical literature was developed around the palace circles and could not generally reach to wide masses. However, according to Ziyaeddin Fahri Fındıkoğlu, from the late eighteenth century onwards, the monopolization of literary writing by a small group of people began to decline; writing activity was no more done for a particular category of people but for a wider recipient group.²²⁵

²²⁵ What is more, the gap between the court poet (divân şairi) and the ordinary people began to get closer. There emerged court poets, who preserved the classical genres of the Ottoman poetry but at the same time gave up writing in an extremely adorned style such as Nedim (1680-1730); while some of the folk poets (halk şairi) began to compile his literary works in a divân (the compilations made by court poets) such as Bayburtlu Zihni (1795-1859). Ziyaeddin Fahri

A parallel development was the purification of language to make new works accessible to masses. As it is mentioned before, the classical Ottoman authors preferred adorned literary expressions (kelâm) over more simple and neutral ones (kâl/söz). In the nineteenth century, however, a movement for simplification and purification of language was started by the prominent Ottoman men of letters. Among them, Namık Kemal was one of the most significant proponents of simplification of language. He mentioned about the precedence given to söz instead of kelâm by writing that the Ottoman language had so far been ignored since it was thought that the “the ordinary people had not the capacity to understand the literary language” (lisân-ı edebîyi anlamaya avâm muktedîr değildir). In other words, in the Ottoman literature, the meaning was being sacrificed for art (edebiyâtımızda mânâ san’at uğruna fedâ olunageldiğinden) and in order to reach the masses, a simpler and purer language was a necessity.²²⁶

The relative closure of the gap between the men of letters and the common people, and the attempts to establish a purer and simpler language were consolidated during the implementation of Tanzimat reforms, which had extremely significant implications for the transformation of Ottoman literature. To start with, the emergence of a strong bureaucracy besides the imperial dynasty, sharing the authority of the Sultan, altered the classical interrelation between the poet and the patron. In the Ottoman classical age, the poet was extremely dependent on his patron, either being a governor, a vizier, or the Sultan himself, since the patron was not only his protector but also his financer. This interrelationship declined with the emergence of alternative sources of authority, or alternative patrons. In the 1840s and 1850s, this alternative source of authority was the bureaucracy itself. The men of letters of the period were either high-level bureaucrats or middle officials serving under the entourage of the ruling elite of Tanzimat. That is why, for example, Đbrahim Şinasi (1826-

Fındıkoğlu, “Tanzimatta Đçtimai Hayat,” Tanzimat I, (Đstanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1940), 619-659, 637

 

²²⁶ Đsmail Parlatır, “XIX. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Türkçesi,” Eren (ed.), Osmanlı, Vol. 9, 471-481, 472.

1871), could dare to write about the virtues of rational understanding of the world instead of a religious one; without the protection of Mustafa Reşid Paşa (1800-1858), it would be an extremely dangerous enterprise to shatter the classical foundations of the Ottoman mentality.²²⁷ In the 1860s and 1870s, the bureaucracy produced its own rivals, namely the Young Ottomans, who bitterly criticized the very foundations of Tanzimat. They had to flee to Europe under the auspices of a new patron, an Egyptian prince, Mustafa Fazıl Paşa (1829-1875). Having found alternative sources of income, the Ottoman authors began to write for the cause they were defending besides praising their financers. The breakdown of former patron-client relationship resulted in the politicization of the Ottoman authors, and the politicization resulted in writing for the masses to get public support.

Secondly, with the transformation of Ottoman subjects into Ottoman citizens through Tanzimat reforms, the significance of “individual” was recognized better. Orhan Koloğlu argues that before these reforms, Ottoman ruling elite had refrained from engaging in closer relations with their subjects; he summarized the spirit of the classical age with the popular phrase: “Becoming closer with the people is a sign of bankruptcy” (Nâs ile istinâs, âlamet-i iflâs).²²⁸ Such an understanding was gradually abandoned starting from early nineteenth century onwards. Fındıkoğlu displayed one of the earliest indications of the altered interrelationship between the ruler and the ruled by citing a line from one of the poems of Sultan Selim III (r. 1789-1807), who wrote: “Serving the people is the purest joy for me” (Eylemek mahz-ı safâdır bana nâsa hizmet).²²⁹ In other words, the “individual” acquired an identity; hence the themes regarding his daily life became important. That is why the Ottoman prose was enriched after Tanzimat with Western genres like novel, story, or article, which generally

²²⁷ For the pioneering impact of Şinasi on secularization see Berkes, Development of Secularism in Turkey, 197-198.

 

²²⁸ Orhan Koloğlu, “Osmanlı’da Kamuoyunun Oluşumu,” Eren (ed.), Osmanlı, Vol. 7, 327-336, 328.

 

²²⁹ Fındıkoğlu, “Tanzimatta Đçtimai Hayat,” 638.

processed individual experiences as a theme.²³⁰ Translations from Western literature, particularly translation of novels, contributed to the development of Ottoman perception that there was another lifestyle in Europe.²³¹

All in all, writing for the masses instead of a limited group of people became one of the major characteristics of the new Ottoman literature. The combination of the growing interest in personal themes about the daily lives of the individuals including travel, and the desire to write for a wider group of readers, contributed to the rise of travel literature. The educational purpose attached to the literature and the self-imposed responsibility of the Ottoman intellectuals about enlightening the ordinary people were also important in the proliferation of the genre of travel writing, which was perceived as both educational and interesting for the ordinary people. In other words, writing travel memoirs not for a limited group of people but for the benefit of a wider group of recipients became a significant concern for the Ottoman travellers.

In sum, the transformation of the Ottoman literature was another significant factor for the revitalization of travel writing in the Ottoman literature in a modern sense. The convergence of the increasing curiosity of the Ottoman public opinion about the external world and the self-assumed responsibility of the intellectuals to feed these knowledge-hungry souls contributed to the popularity of travel narration as a travelogue or in various other genres.

 

4.3.2      Development of Ottoman Printing and Press:

The development of Ottoman printing and press was an equally important factor for the increase in travel writing in the Ottoman Empire. The newspapers

²³⁰ Parlatır, “XIX. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Türkçesi,” 473.

 

²³¹ What is more, Ottoman authors began to model these novels to write their own; in other words, personal experiences turned out to be the theme of this new literature. Starting from the first novel in Turkish, Taaşşuk-u Talat ve Fitnat (The Love Affair of Talat and Fitnat), written by Şemseddin Sami in 1872, personal experiences, including travel became the topic of many pieces. Yusuf Kamil Paşa translated Fenelon’s Telemaque in 1859; Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables was translated as Hikaye-i Mağdurin in the same year. Theodore Kasap translated Alexandre Dumas’ Les Comte de Monte Cristo and Alain-René Lesage’s Le Diable Boiteux in 1872. For similar translations, see Korkmaz, “Yenileşmenin Tarihî, Sosyo-Kültürel ve Estetik Temelleri,” 25-29.

and periodicals, which were published starting from 1830s onwards, not only raised the interest of the public opinion regarding the external developments, but also encouraged travel narration to a great extent, either by publishing travel letters or sending correspondents for following external developments. ²³²

Indeed, the Ottomans met with newspapers even before Tanzimat era. The first newspaper in the Ottoman realm was published in 1828 in Egypt under the administration of Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Paşa (1789-1848). Entitled Vakayi’-i Mısriyye, this newspaper had a limited total daily circulation of only six hundred prints; however, it forced the Ottoman ruling elite to create a counter official newspaper in 1831, entitled Takvîm-i Vakayi’. According to Koloğlu, the establishment of these two newspapers and particularly their polemical stance during the rebellion of Kavalalı and Ottoman-Egyptian wars between 1831 and 1833 contributed to the emergence of Ottoman public opinion.²³³

The first article published in Takvîm-i Vakayi’ entitled Mukaddime (Preface) was extremely important to demonstrate the transformation of Ottoman mentality regarding the awareness of the public about internal and external developments. Accordingly, the article criticized the former evaluation of the internal and external developments through the official historians of the Empire (vak’anüvîs) of being extremely literary and generally useless because of their style not intended for informing the people. Therefore, one of the major reasons for publishing Takvîm-i Vakayi’ was to catch up with the latest developments and to inform the people about these developments rapidly.²³⁴

In other words, the Ottomans began to be aware of the internal and external developments, albeit officially, and this resulted in an increasing interest

²³² Cenap Şehabettin’s Hac Yolunda and Babanzade Đsmail Hakkı’s Irak Mektupları were initially published as letters in Ottoman newspapers; Ahmed Şerif, on the other hand, was sent as a correspondent to Albania, Syria and Tripoli to write about the political as well as military developments in these provinces.

 

²³³ Koloğlu, “Osmanlı Toplumunda Kamuoyunun Evrimi,” 329.

 

²³⁴ “Mukaddime-i Takvîm-i Vakayi’,” Takvîm-i Vakayi’, No. 1, 1 November 1831, cited in Ali Budak, Batılılaşma Sürecinde Çok Yönlü Bir Osmanlı Aydını: Münif Paşa, (Đstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 2004), 102.

regarding daily political issues. Ali Suavi (1839-1878), one of the most notable nineteenth century journalists of the Ottoman Empire, emphasized the Ottoman eagerness to learn about external world as such. He wrote that the Ottomans tried to be cognizant of the secrets of political, economic and foreign affairs and for that reason they began to spend money to buy newspapers.235 Similarly, Namık Kemal wrote that while initially a journalist had been content to publish three hundred copies of newspaper a day, the popular demand to newspapers was so high in the early 1870s that the same journalist did not satisfy with three thousand copies a day.²³⁶ He further praised the development of Ottoman press by mentioning that in six years the newspapers saved the Ottoman literature from Arabic and Persian influence enduring for six centuries by purifying the Ottoman language and by catching up with the contemporary ideas prevailing in the Western world.²³⁷

All in all, the development of Ottoman printing and press contributed to the renewal of Ottoman interest to travel writing. On the one hand, quantitatively, the development of Ottoman printing increased the number of books published and made books cheaper and easier to purchase. This encouraged the travellers to write their experiences, since they were confident that their books would be sold. On the other hand, qualitatively, the development of Ottoman press increased information flow and further triggered Ottoman curiosity about the wonders and oddities regarding the external world. Indirectly, the establishment of Ottoman public opinion through newspapers increased the

²³⁵ Ali Suavi, “Gazete,” Muhbir, No. 28, 3 March 1867, cited in Parlatır, “XIX. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Türkçesi,” 473.

 

²³⁶ Namık Kemal, “Gazete Muharrirliği ve Đbret,” Đbret, No. 97, 20 January 1873, cited in Namık Kemal, Osmanlı Modernleşmesinin Meseleleri, Bütün Makaleleri 1, compiled, transliterated and edited by Nergiz Yılmaz Aydoğdu and Đsmail Kara, (Đstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2005), 402. After the introduction of Tanzimat reforms, the establishment of semi-official Ceride-i Havadis newspaper in 1840 and then Đbrahim Şinasi’s first private Ottoman newspaper, Tercüman-ı Ahvâl in 1860, and particularly his Tasvîr-i Efkâr published in 1862 increased the Ottoman awareness of external world and particularly contributed to the emergence of alternative non-official evaluations of the events. The mushrooming of both metropolitan and provincial newspapers from 1860s onwards spread this consciousness to the periphery of the Ottoman capital.

 

²³⁷ Namık Kemal, “Matbuat-ı Osmaniye,” Hadîka, No. 8, 19 November 1872, cited in Namık Kemal, Osmanlı Modernleşmesinin Meseleleri, Bütün Makaleleri 1, 533.

readers’ demand of being aware of the course of Ottoman as well as foreign developments. All these factors contributed to the consolidation of travel writing as a genre in the late Ottoman Empire.

 

To sum up, most of the reasons for underdevelopment of travel writing in the Ottoman literature disappeared in the nineteenth century particularly with the Ottoman modernization. Travel, which had been perceived in the Ottoman classical age as a dangerous and personal endeavour worthless for mentioning in detail, turned out to be a matter of civilization in the nineteenth century. The prevalence given to scientific understanding of the external world as a result of the Ottoman decline contributed to the curiosity about the distant lands and thus resulted in a renewed interest in travel writing. The popularization of the Ottoman literature and the breakdown of traditional patron-client relationship between the political elite and the men of letters also established the basis for revitalization of travel literature.

Not only intellectual and socio-cultural, but also technological factors resulted in the establishment of travel writing as a more distinguishable genre. Facilitation of travel through establishment of railways and travel agencies, and development of communication technologies contributed to the popularization of travel and travel writing. What is more, the development of Ottoman press decreased the costs of book production and increased the number of publications as well as the number of readers. The Ottoman newspapers, on the other hand, not only fed the Ottoman curiosity regarding the external issues but also reinforced the purification of language, which indirectly contributed to the popularity of travel literature. In all, a new age of travel was opened and the Ottoman travellers once more wandered on the distant parts of the world. The Ottomans travelling to the East were among these travellers and the reasons for their travels as well as their travelogues need closer attention in order to display how the transformation of the political, economic and social structure of the Empire was reflected in Ottoman patterns of travel and travel writing.

CHAPTER 5

 

 

OTTOMAN TRAVELLERS IN THE “EAST” IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE (1850-1920)

 

Despite intellectual, technological and socio-cultural factors contributing to the practice of travel and travel writing, considering the travels of Ottomans to the non-European world, it can be argued that travel for the sake of travel hardly experienced in the modern age as well. These travels still had a purpose other than travelling, being military, economic, or diplomatic. What distinguishes the Ottoman travelogues from classical travel narration was, therefore, not the changing purpose of travel but the changing style of travel writing. While the description of the purpose of travel surpassed its description in the classical travel narration, the description of travel prevailed over its purpose in the late Ottoman literature. In other words, the late Ottoman travelogues especially focused on the conduct of travel; the purpose of travel turned out to be a detail within the text.

In this chapter these travelogues are classified both chronologically and according to the purpose of travel. In the first section, travelogues written between 1860 and 1876 are covered; in other words, the renewed interest in the non-European world during the Azizian era is examined. The second section, on the other hand, focused on the Hamidian travelogues written between 1876 and 1908. It is underlined in this section that both the quantity and the quality of travel writing regarding the non-European world increased tremendously thanks to the Pan-Islamic rhetoric of Abdülhamid II. Finally, the third section deals with the post-Hamidian travelogues, which were extremely significant for their critical tune, compared to their predecessors in terms of the Ottoman neglect of the East as well the negative effects of the infiltration of European influence in the region.

5.1.           Earlier Travelogues to the Non-European World (1860-1876)

The first travel to the non-European world in the nineteenth century ending with the penning of a travelogue is the one performed by Mehmed Hurşid (?-1882) from Basra to Ağrı along the Ottoman-Iranian border. Mehmed Hurşid was one of the scribes (kâtib) of the Commission for Border Demarcation, which had been established in 1848 to solve the border disputes between Iran and the Ottoman Empire. His travelogue, written during his four-year mission along the border and thus entitled Seyahâtnâme-i Hudûd (The Travelogue of Borders), was published in 1860.²³⁸ In the introduction of the travelogue, Mehmed Hurşid narrated how the Commission passed along and visited the cities of the border provinces, namely Basra, Baghdad, Shehr-i Zôr, Mosul, Van and Bayezid, and described the nomadic and settled inhabitants as well as the agricultural and industrial production in these provinces. The travelogue is composed of six chapters; each one is devoted for a particular province. Within this framework, not only the geography of the region and its inhabitants’ economic activities are analysed, but also the characteristics of “the nomadic Arab and Kurdish tribes and clans” (urbân ve ekrâd aşâyir ve kabâ’ili) are examined.²³⁹

Following this first travelogue, in the 1860s, three travelogues had been penned by the Ottoman travellers about the remotest regions that had ever been reached by the Ottomans so far, namely about Brazil and South Africa. The purpose of these travels to the non-European world was both practical and even accidental. The first of these travels was performed by Ebubekir Efendi, a member of Baghdadi ulama, to South Africa in 1862, who was sent by Abdülaziz in order to end the hostilities among the Javanese Muslim community living in Capetown and to teach them the “true path of Islam.” He was accompanied by a young disciple, Ömer Lütfî Efendi, who recorded not only their voyage to, but also their experiences in South Africa. As a result, the

²³⁸ For the establishment of this commission and its activities, see Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, “Fragile Frontiers: The Diminishing Domains of Qajar Iran,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (May, 1997): 205-234, 213.

 

²³⁹ Mehmed Hurşid, Seyahâtnâme-i Hudud, (Đstanbul: Takvimhane-i Amire, 1277 [1860]).

travelogue entitled Ümit Burnu Seyahâtnâmesi (The Travelogue of Cape of Good Hope) was penned, which informed the reader about the characteristics of the Javanese Muslims, as well as the Ottoman perception of Africa in the mid- nineteenth century. ²⁴⁰

The other two travelogues on Brazil and the coastal Africa were the products of the same military mission, performed after Abdülaziz had ordered two Ottoman corvettes, named Bursa and Izmir, to join the Ottoman fleet in the Persian Gulf. Since the Suez Canal had not opened yet, they had to sail around the African continent. Indeed, what Abdülaziz intended was to demonstrate the strength of the Ottoman navy, on which he invested huge amounts of money. The corvettes left Đstanbul on 12 September 1865 and after a long journey they entered the Atlantic Ocean, where they were caught in a storm dragging them along the ocean. Finally, they were able to arrive at Rio de Janeiro and stayed there for two months for the repairing of the corvettes. Afterwards, they ended their journey in Basra passing a long route including the port cities of Capetown, Port Louis, Bombay, Muscat, and Bushehr. This adventurous voyage was penned by two Ottoman officials serving on these corvettes, one engineer and one imam.

²⁴⁰ Towards the mid-nineteenth century, a group of Javanese Muslims from Capetown went Mecca for pilgrimage and they understood that their religious beliefs did not totally comply with the rest of the Muslim world. When they returned Capetown, they began to tell other Muslims that their understanding of Islam was quite different from the “real” Islam they had practiced during the pilgrimage. However, this resulted in a significant contention between those conservative Muslims, who did not want to abandon their traditions and those reformers who aimed to teach Muslims the “real” religion. The contention soon transformed into a bloody conflict among the Javanese Muslim community. The elites of the Javanese Muslims, who wanted to end these hostilities dividing the community, applied to the British governor of Capetown to demand a religious scholar from the Ottoman Sultan, which was also the Caliph of all Muslims, to solve their problems, and to teach them the authentic version of Islam. The governor informed the British government about the situation and the British government applied to the Ottoman government via the Ottoman Ambassador to London, Kostaki Müsürüs Paşa (1814-1891). The then Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz complied with this demand and ordered the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Âli Paşa, to send an able religious scholar to the region, who was able to end hostilities among the Muslim community (ihtilâfın ref ve izâlesine muktedir). Âli Paşa informed Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, who had been transferred to the ranks of bureaucracy from the echelons of ulama and thus familiar with those members of this community bearing the aforementioned qualities. He advised Ebubekir Efendi, a religious scholar from Baghdad, who had been in Đstanbul at that time in order to settle a local religious dispute in the province of Shehr-i Zôr. Ömer Lütfî, Ümitburnu Seyahâtnâmesi, (Đstanbul: Basiret Matbaası, 1292 [1868]), transliterated and transliterated by Hüseyin Yorulmaz, Yüzyıl Önce Güney Afrika: Ümitburnu Seyahâtnâmesi, (Đstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 2006), 3.

The travelogue of the former, Mühendis Faik, entitled Seyahâtnâme-i Bahr-i Muhît (The Travelogue of Atlantic Ocean) was published in 1868.²⁴¹ The other travelogue, written in Arabic by the imam of Bursa corvette, Bağdadlı Abdurrahman Efendi, was entitled Seyahâtnâme-i Brezilya²⁴² (The Travelogue of Brazil); it was first translated into Turkish by Antepli Mehmed Şerif and published three years later in 1871. Seyahâtnâme-i Bahr-i Muhît was composed of two parallel narratives. The first one is about the cities, peoples and customs that the author had personally observed or learned from external resources, the second one is about the events that he encountered during his voyage. Thus, the first narrative is quite informative; it even resembles to a geography book. On the other hand, the second narrative is very vivid, demonstrating the amazement of an Ottoman traveller in extremely distant parts of the world. Seyahâtnâme-i Brezilya was more autobiographical than informative. Accordingly, Bağdadlı Abdurrahman Efendi wrote about his decision to stay in Brazil in order to teach Islamic principles in the Muslim community living in the region, and he introduced the reader the Muslims in these distant lands.

These earlier travelogues could hardly exceed traditional forms of travel writing. Despite the authors’ eagerness to write about their personal experiences, the informative style permeated over the whole text. However, still, these earlier attempts to portray non-European cultures and communities reflected the growing Ottoman interest towards the external world, and thus significant to understand the perception of the Ottoman encounter with the people that they had not encountered before.

 

5.2.           Hamidian Travelogues to the Non-European World (1876-1908)

Utilization of ad hoc diplomatic missions continued even after the establishment  of  permanent  embassies;  since  except  Teheran,  Ottoman

²⁴¹ Mühendis Faik, Seyahâtnâme-i Bahr-i Muhît, Đstanbul: Mekteb-i Bahriye-i Şahane Matbaası, 1285 [1868]).

 

²⁴² Bağdadlı Abdurrahman Efendi, Seyahâtnâme-i Brezilya, translated into Ottoman Turkish by Antepli Mehmet Şerif, (Đstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1288 [1871]).

administration did not open a permanent embassy in Asian and African states.²⁴³ Therefore, inter-state relations with the East were generally conducted by temporary envoys. This was particularly the case in the Hamidian era, in which Pan-Islamist diplomatic initiatives required such missions to a great extent.²⁴⁴ This resulted in a strong affiliation between the traveller and political authority, since the former was assigned by the latter; in other words, it should not be overlooked that the narrations of the travellers reflect this strong interrelationship.

During this period, two diplomatic missions ended up with travelogues. The first mission was conducted right after the eruption of the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-78, which prompted the Ottomans to mobilize the Muslims of the Caucasus, Central Asia and Afghanistan through using the spiritual influence of the Caliphate. The new Ottoman Sultan, Abdülhamid II, who had found himself in the midst of a war threatening the very integrity of the Empire just one year after his enthronement, immediately began to seek for collaboration with Central Asian Muslims, particularly the state of Afghanistan, for a joint endeavour against the Russians.²⁴⁵ As a result of the intensification of Ottoman-Russian War, and particularly through the encouragement of British Ambassador to the Porte, Sir Henry Layard (1817-1894), Abdülhamid II decided to send an envoy to the ruler of Afghanistan, Shir Ali Khan (1825-1879), headed by a member of ulama, Kazasker Ahmed Hulusi Efendi, in order to inform Shir Ali Khan “[…] of the Caliph’s requests, that is, Russia was the enemy of Islam and wanted to

²⁴³ Indeed except for Abyssinia, Iran, China, Siam, and Japan, there was no totally independent state in Asia and Africa at that time; this was one of the most significant reasons for the lack of establishment of permanent embassies in the region.

 

²⁴⁴ For a detailed account of Pan-Islamism in the Hamidian era see Azmi Özcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain (1877-1924), (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997); Cemil Aydın, Politics of Anti-Westernism: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Jacob M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).

 

²⁴⁵ Dwight E. Lee, “A Turkish Mission to Afghanistan, 1877,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep. 1941): 335-356, 336. Azmi Özcan writes “[s]uch attempts were the first and one of the most dramatic Pan-Islamic steps taken by the Ottomans in modern times.” Özcan, Pan-Islamism, 78.

destroy the Muslim lands, therefore the Amir should not show favour of Russia.”²⁴⁶ It was planned that the Ottoman mission would reach Afghanistan via India and the journey started on July 12, 1877 from Đstanbul. After reaching India, Ahmed Hulusi Efendi headed for Afghanistan, and on the way, he sent one of the members of his envoy, Şirvanî Ahmed Hamdi Efendi (?-1889)²⁴⁷, to the city of Saidu, where the Akhund of Swat (1784-1877), “[…] an ascetic, who was thought to have great influence among the Muslims of Afghanistan and the northwest frontier of India,”²⁴⁸ resided, in order to prompt him to convince Shir Ali Khan on obeying the orders of the Caliph. In other words, while Ahmed Hulusi Efendi would try to ignite the belligerent nature of the Afghans against the Russians, Ahmed Hamdi Efendi would aim for convincing the religious authority to influence the secular one. Both missions failed because of the anti- British policies of the Afghans and the only outcome of this enterprise was the travelogue entitled Hindistan ve Svat ve Afganistan Seyahatnamesi (The Travelogue of India and Swat and Afghanistan) by Ahmed Hamdi Efendi.²⁴⁹ This travelogue was one of the most significant texts on Ottoman perception of India and Afghanistan since the travelogue of Seydî Ali Reis written in the sixteenth century.

The second diplomatic mission assigned by Abdülhamid II and ended with a travelogue was Azmzade Sadık el-Müeyyed’s (1858-1911) mission to

 

²⁴⁶ Özcan, Pan-Islamism, 81.

 

²⁴⁷ Born in Şirvan, a region in Eastern Caucasia, as the son of a religious scholar, Ahmed Hamdi Efendi came to Đstanbul where he studied at various medreses. After his education, he reached the grades of müderris (professor) and he worked in the bureau of Grand Mufti as well as in some educational institutions such as the Assembly of Education (Meclis-i Maarif) and the Board of Inspectors (Encümen-i Teftiş). He authored several books on religious as well as non religious fields, such as geography, logic and literature. See Herzog and Motika, “Orientalism ‘alla turca’,” 154.

 

²⁴⁸ Lee, “A Turkish Mission to Afghanistan, 1877,” 344.

 

²⁴⁹ Şirvanlı Ahmet Hamdi Efendi, Hindistan ve Svat ve Afganistan Seyahâtnâmesi, (Đstanbul: Mahmud Bey Matbaası, 1300 [1883]). For a descriptive account of this travelogue, see Wasti, Syed Tanvir, “Two Muslim Travelogues: to and from Đstanbul”, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 (1991): 457-476.

Abyssinia in 1904.²⁵⁰ Accordingly, the mission was sent in response to the envoy of Menelik II (r. 1889-1913), the Emperor of Abyssinia, sent to the Porte in 1896 in order to secure several rights of the Abyssinians living in Jerusalem.²⁵¹ In order not to disappoint the Abyssinian envoy, Abdülhamid II preferred neither to reject nor to accept this demand, while he reciprocated the Abyssinian diplomatic initiative by sending the envoy headed by Sadık El-Müeyyed to Menelik.²⁵² The mission hardly passed beyond a courtesy visit; however, the travelogue, Habeş Seyahâtnâmesi (The Travelogue of Abyssinia) written by Sadık el-Müeyyed during his journey provided the reader with a colourful account of Abyssinia and with a sample of Ottoman perception of Africa at the turn of the twentieth century.²⁵³

Besides these inter-state diplomatic missions, another travelogue was written after an ad hoc semi-diplomatic travel by Sadık el-Müeyyed on the

²⁵⁰ Azmzade Sadık El-Müeyyed (later Paşa) was born in Damascus as a member of a notable Anatolian-origin Syrian family. After graduated from Ottoman Military Academy in 1880, he was appointed as aide-de-camp (yâver-i hazret-i şehriyâri) of Abdülhamid II. Before being assigned as an envoy to Abyssinia, he was sent to Libya two times in order to send the gifts of Abdülhamid II to the Sanussi Sheikh Muhammed el-Mehdi in 1887 and 1895. He was sent to Germany within an envoy celebrating the enthronment of Wilhelm II as the King of Germany in 1888 and accompanied Grand Duchy of Russia, Sergei Alexandrovich during his visit to Jerusalem in the same year. In 1900, this time he was assigned to coordinate the establishment of Hejaz telegraph line. After his diplomatic mission to Abyssinia in 1904, he was appointed as Commissioner-General to Bulgaria and continued this duty until 1908. Sadık el-Müeyyed, Afrika Sahrâ-yı Kebîri’nde Seyahat, (Đstanbul: Alem Matbaası, 1314 [1896-1897]), transliterated and edited by Đdris Bostan, (Đstanbul: Çamlıca, 2008). For a detailed biography of Azmzade Sadık el- Müeyyed, see the preface written by Đdris Bostan to his travelogue, xi-xxv.

 

²⁵¹ The Abyssinian community of Jerusalem demanded the control of Deyr-üs Saltana monastery over which they and the Egyptian Copts had contested. In the letter that Menelik sent to Abdülhamid II, he mentioned that he demanded similar rights for the Abyssinians living in Jerusalem that he granted to the Muslims living in Abyssinia. Azmzade Sadık el-Müeyyed, Habeş Seyahâtnâmesi, see the preface written by Mustafa Baydemir, 13.

 

²⁵² Cengiz Orhonlu, Osmanlı Đmparatorluğu’nun Güney Siyaseti: Habeş Eyaleti, (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1996), 163-164.

 

²⁵³ Sadık el-Müeyyed followed a long route to reach Abyssinia. He first went to Marseilles and then to Port Said. Passing the Suez Canal, he reached at Djibouti on a French warship. From Djibouti, he headed for Dire Dewa and Harar by train and afterwards he had to go to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Abyssinia, on mules since there was neither railway nor a regular road. During this journey, he was accompanied by two Ottoman officers, major (binbaşı) Talip Bey and sergeant (çavuş) Yasin Efendi and some thirty local soldiers, servants and muleteers, who were provided by local authorities.

Saharan Desert. The mission was sent to Benghazi and al-Jaghbub (in contemporary Libya) in order to deliver the gifts of Abdülhamid II to the Sheikh of Sanusiyya movement, Muhammed al-Mehdi al-Sanussi (1845-1902), in 1887. The travelogue written after this mission was entitled Afrika Sahrâ-yı Kebîri’nde Seyahat (Travel in the African Great Sahara). This was not a diplomatic mission in essence; Sadık el-Müeyyed was sent to deliver the gifts from the Sultan to the Sheikh of Sanussiyya in order to ensure that the Sheikh would continue his efforts to control the bedouins and to encourage them to struggle against French colonial aggression.²⁵⁴ The travelogue is quite valuable especially for its depiction of the desert life and the Ottoman perceptions of the Bedouins.

Besides diplomatic or semi-diplomatic initiatives, another official duty assigned to the Ottoman soldiers or bureaucrats in the nineteenth century was accompanying foreign monarchs or delegations visiting the Ottoman Empire. Particularly, starting from the Crimean War onwards, the rulers of European countries visited Đstanbul and other parts of the Empire, most notably Jerusalem, for religious purposes and they were guided not only by Ottoman officials, but also by journalists during their visits. Two of such visits were of considerable significance since the Ottomans accompanying the foreign delegations wrote their memoirs in the form of a travelogue. The first one was the Seyahâtnâme-i Arz-ı Filistin (The Travelogue of the Land of Palestine), written by an Ottoman soldier, Colonel Mehmet Refet Bey, who accompanied Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel of Italy (1869-1947) in 1886 during his visit to Palestine and Jerusalem. The travelogue was composed of sixteen chapters, which described the sixteen itineraries that the Crown Prince and the Italian delegation had followed. Although the travelogue consists of 196 pages, only 61 pages of it were written in the form of a travelogue. The remaining parts were designed as an encyclopaedia describing the sites, rulers, philosophers, prophets or historical monuments of Palestine.²⁵⁵ The second travelogue was not written by an

²⁵⁴ Sadık el-Müeyyed, Afrika Sahrâ-yı Kebîri’nde Seyahat, (Đstanbul: Alem Matbaası, 1314 [1896-1897]).

 

²⁵⁵ Mehmet Refet Paşa, Seyahâtnâme-i Arz-ı Filistin, (Suriye: Suriye Vilayet Matbaası, 1305 [1887]).

Ottoman official, but an unknown correspondent of Sabah newspaper, who followed the travel of German Emperor, Wilhelm II (r. 1888-1918), towards Syrian and Palestinian provinces of the Ottoman Empire in 1899. Accordingly, the German delegation first went to Beirut by sea, and then they visited Jaffa, Haifa, Sidon, Tripoli and Jerusalem, and the travelogue recounted all these destinations in detail.²⁵⁶

Economic motives resulted in travels in Hamidian era as well. The bankruptcy of the Ottoman economy in 1875, and subsequent establishment of the Ottoman Debt Administration (Duyûn-u Umûmiye) in 1881, resulted in the accumulation of several tax revenues under a single authority in order to pay the debts of the Ottoman Empire.²⁵⁷ The Debt Administration employed Ottoman officials to write reports on the resources on which the taxes could be imposed. Among these employees, Âli Bey’s (1844-1899) mission towards Eastern Anatolia as well as the Iraqi provinces of the Empire ended with a travelogue entitled Seyahât Jurnali (The Travel Diary). Âli Bey was first sent to Eastern Anatolia in 1884 as an inspector to control the operations of the Debt Administration; he was then instructed to go to the Iraqi provinces of the Empire. After his inspections in these provinces, he returned to Đstanbul through a long journey via India in 1888. His travelogue was conspicuous not only for the Kurdish tribal life in the late nineteenth century, but also for providing a vivid Ottoman portrayal of India. ²⁵⁸

²⁵⁶ Hatıra-yı Seyahat: Almanya Đmparatoru Haşmetlu Wilhelm ve Đmparatoriçe Augusta Viktorya Hazeratı’nın Dersaadeti Def’a-i Saniye Olarak Ziyaretleriyle Suriye Seyahatlerine Bir Hatıra-i Naçiz Olmak Üzere (Sabah) Gazetesi Tarafndan Kar’iin-i Osmaniyeye Hediye Edilmiştir, (Đstanbul: Mihran Matbaası, 1316 [1889]).

 

²⁵⁷ Şevket Pamuk, “The Ottoman Empire in the ‘Great Depression’ of 1873-1896,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Mar., 1984): 107-118, 114. For a detailed account of Duyun-u Umumiye, see Faruk Yılmaz, Devlet Borçlanması ve Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyete Dış Borçlar: Duyun-u Umumiye, (Đstanbul: Birleşik Yayıncılık, 1996).

 

²⁵⁸ Indeed, Âli Bey was one of the most significant play writers of Tanzimat era, known for his plays such as Ayyar Hamza, Kokona Yatıyor and Geveze Berber. He was also among the publishers of the famous humour magazine, Diyojen. Âli Bey was later appointed as the Governor of Trabzon in 1896 and the Director of the Ottoman Debt Administration. That’s why he was also known as Direktör (Director) Âli Bey. Âli Bey, Seyahat Jurnali: Đstanbul’dan Bağdad’a ve Hindistan’a, min sene 1300 ilâ sene 1304, (Đstanbul: Rauf Bey Kütüphanesi, 1314 [1898]).

The military missions were another source of travel writing in the Hamidian era. Two travelogues had emerged from the military missions sent to one of the most problematic provinces of the Ottoman Empire, namely Yemen. One of such missions was the military mission of Rüşdi Paşa who served in Yemen for two years between 1896 and 1898. He both stayed in Hudaydah for administering the transfer of troops from Đstanbul to Yemen and in the inner parts of the province to suppress local rebellions.²⁵⁹ Accordingly, in order to prevent corruption and bribery which had resulted in the rebellion of Yemen and in order to realize necessary reforms a Committee of Reform (Heyet-i Islahiye) had been established. He was appointed with the rank of lieutenant colonel in order to control the transfer of the troops and he left Đstanbul on June 7, 1896. His travelogue, entitled Yemen Hatırası (The Memoirs of Yemen) described the peoples and regions of nineteenth century Yemen and narrated the miserable conditions that the Ottoman soldiers experienced there. Another travelogue was written by a military doctor, Đbrahim Abdüsselam (?-1927), entitled Yemen Seyahâtnâmesi ve Coğrafya-yı Nebâtiyesi (The Travelogue of Yemen and Its Botanical Geography), who was sent to Yemen in 1894 for a visit of inspection. In this travelogue, while informing the reader on the flora of the Yemeni lands, he referred to the lifestyle of Yemeni people as well. ²⁶⁰

Another military mission in this period was undertaken by Abdülkadir Câmî (Baykut, 1877-1958), an officer and a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which was a clandestine anti-Hamidian organization at that time. His critical stance towards Hamidian administration encouraged him to accept a difficult mission that might have required voluntary self-exile. The mission was the establishment of the Ottoman authority over the small but strategic town of Ghat on the Ottoman-Algerian border, which was carried out in response to the request of the inhabitants of this town fearing the French colonial intentions for the Province of Tripolitania. As a result, Abdülhamid sent

²⁵⁹ Rüşdi Paşa, Yemen Hatırası, 4

 

²⁶⁰ Đbrahim Abdüsselam, Yemen Seyahâtnâmesi ve Coğrafya-yı Nebatiyesi, (Dersaadet [Đstanbul]: Hilal Matbaası, 1324 [1908]).

Abdülkadir Câmî there as a district governor. His travel account from Tripoli to Ghat was published in 1909 as a travelogue entitled Trablusgarp’ten Sahra-yı Kebîr’e Doğru (From Tripoli to the Great Sahara).²⁶¹ In this travelogue, he not only criticized the Hamidian regime, but also portrayed the desert life and the nomadic tribes.

Sanitary inspection was another motive for travel in the Hamidian era and three sanitary missions to struggle with epidemics in several provinces of the Empire ended up with travelogues. The first one of such kind was written by Mehmed Şakir Bey (1851-1897) as a result of both personal and official reasons. Indeed, Mehmed Şakir Bey had already been serving as a sanitary officer in the Ottoman army and travelled to Hejaz, India, Baghdad, Basra, Comoro Islands and Yemen to investigate the sanitary conditions of the pilgrims travelling to Mecca. In 1890, he decided to perform pilgrimage; however, he was assigned an additional duty by Abdülhamid II, who wanted him to write about the sanitary conditions of Hejaz and possible reforms for preventing the epidemics, particularly cholera, in the region. His report delivered to the Sultan was more than a simple report; indeed, it might be perceived as a travelogue on Hejaz.²⁶²

The second travelogue written after a travel for sanitary purposes was written by Cenap Şehabettin (1870-1934), who was sent in 1896 to Hedjaz as a military doctor in an attempt to contain an outbreak of the cholera disease. He

²⁶¹ Abdülkadir Câmî, Trablusgarp’den Sahra-yı Kebîr’e Doğru [From Tripoli to the Great Sahara], (Dersaadet [Đstanbul]: [Unknown Publisher], 1326 [1909]). Abdülkâdir Câmî, Trablusgarp’ten Sahra-yı Kebîr’e Doğru, 163. Abdülkâdir Câmî (Baykut) was graduated from the Military Academy. After the re-proclamation of Ottoman Constitution in 1908, he resigned from the army and became the deputy of Fezzan in the Ottoman Parliament. After the First World War, he participated in the national liberation movement and became the first Minister of Interior of the nationalist forces in Ankara. After his retirement from active politics until his death he wrote articles in many newspapers. For the establishment of the Ghat district and the role of Abdülkâdir Câmî in this process, see Ahmet Kavas, “Büyük Sahra’da Gat Kazasının Kurulması ve Osmanlı-Tevarık Münasebetleri,” Đslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, No. 3 (1999),171- 195, 172.

 

²⁶² This report was not published as a separate book; the only manuscript is in the collection of Đstanbul University Library. Its title is Hicaz’ın Ahval-i Umumiye-i Sıhhiye ve Islahat-i Esasiye-i Hazırasına Dair Bazı Müşahedat ve Mülahazat-ı Bendegânemi Havi Bir Layiha-yı Tıbbiye (A Medical Pamphlet Consisting of Some of His Servant’s Observations and Remarks about the General Sanitary Conditions and Current Principal Reforms of Hejaz). It is transliterated and edited by Gülden Sarıyıldız and Ayşe Kavak with the titleHalife II. Abdülhamid II’in Hac Siyaseti: Dr. M. Şakir Bey’in Hicaz Hatıraları, (Đstanbul: Timaş, 2009).

recorded his travel to Jeddah via Egypt in seventeen letters first published between 1896 and 1898 in Servet-i Fünûn (The Riches of Sciences) journal and later compiled as a travelogue in 1922 entitled Hac Yolunda (On the Way to Pilgrimage).²⁶³ Đsmail Habib Sevük, an eminent scholar of Turkish literature, defines this travelogue, which described Egypt, its cities and inhabitants in detail, as the ‘first literary travelogue’ of the Turkish literature because of its artistic style and pompous use of language, compared to the previous travelogues written in a plainer fashion.²⁶⁴

A similar travelogue, entitled Seyahat Hatıraları (Travel Memoirs) was written by Şerafettin Mağmumi (1869-1927), who was appointed as a sanitary inspector in 1899 to the Province of Syria to struggle with the outbreak of cholera epidemic sweeping the region in the late 1890s and early 1900s.²⁶⁵ His travelogue depicted not only the Western and Southern Anatolian cities that he passed along to reach his final destination but also the prominent cities of the province of Syria, such as Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut. Being one of the ardent supporters and members of the CUP, the travelogue is quite critical regarding the underdevelopment of the province of Syria and since it was published after the Constitutional Revolution of 1908, this critical tune was very much preserved.

Avlonyalı Ekrem Bey’s (1885-1964) memoirs, published in Germany in 1968, did not originally form a travelogue; however having served the Ottoman

²⁶³ Cenap Şehabettin, Hac Yolunda, (Đstanbul: Matbaa-i Kanaat, 1341 [1922-1923]). After graduating from Military High School and Military Academy of Medicine, Cenap Şehabettin was sent to Paris for further education and after his return he was assigned for health inspection missions in Mersin, Rhodes and Jeddah. However, besides his military background, he was renowned as one of the most famous poets of the late Ottoman era. See Celal Tarakçı, “Cenab Şehabettin,” in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Đslam Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 7, 346-349.

 

²⁶⁴ Đsmail Habib Sevük, Tanzimattan Beri Edebiyat Tarihi, 2 Volumes, (Đstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1942), Vol. 1, 380.

 

²⁶⁵ Similar to Cenap Şehabettin, Şerafettin Mağmumi was also a graduate of the Military Academy of Medicine; however, different from him, he became one of the founding members of the Society (later Committee) of Union and Progress. His interest in politics resulted in his fleeing to Paris in 1896 and after the split of the Committee between Ahmed Rıza and Mehmed Murad, he became one of the ardent supporters of the latter. This resulted in his exclusion from the Committee, which assumed power after the re-proclamation of Ottoman constitution. He spent his remaining life in Cairo and died there. Şerafettin Mağmumi, Seyahât Hatıraları, (Mısrü’l Kahire: Matbaatü’l Fütuh, 1327 [1909]).

Empire in various missions, Ekrem Bey was quite eager to write down his travel experiences. Therefore, he produced one of the most colourful descriptions of the late-Hamidian Ottoman Middle East.²⁶⁶ Accordingly, in 1904, at the age of 19, as a young secretary in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry, Ekrem Bey was invited by the second chamberlain of Abdülhamid II, Đzzet Holo Paşa (1852-1924), to participate in the opening ceremony of the Hejaz Railway as the representative of the Foreign Ministry. His descriptions of the provinces of Syria and Hejaz as well as the nomadic tribes of the region in his memoirs are quite interesting. One year later after his return from this mission, Ekrem Bey was sent with Ottoman warships to Persian Gulf in order to “[…] demonstrate the presence of Turkish navy in the remotest parts of the Arabian Peninsula.”²⁶⁷ This time, he wrote about the cities and peoples living in the coastal regions of the Arabian Peninsula and emphasized their allegiance to the Porte. In sum, the memoirs of Ekrem Bey are important for touching upon various parts of Ottoman Empire ranging from the Arabian deserts to Persian Gulf, from Cairo to the ancient sites of Levant.

During the Hamidian period, the Ottomans did not only travel for official purposes; there were some exceptional Ottomans who had engaged in travels to distant parts of the world for personal reasons. One of them was Mehmed Emin (1854-1925), who had decided to travel to India in 1876 both for sanitary reasons to remedy his depressive mood and in order to find his father, who, he heard, had been residing there. His travelogue, entitled Đstanbul’dan Asya’yı Vusta’ya Seyahât (Travel from Đstanbul to Central Asia) did not mention about India, his final destination, but rather provides the reader with the Ottoman perception of Central Asia as well as the precursors of Turkish nationalism and pan-Turkist sentiments in its most primitive forms.

²⁶⁶ The Avlonyalı [Vlore] dynasty was one of the oldest families of Albania, which the Ottoman Empire had collaborated to pursue its sovereignty over this country. Ekrem Bey was a member of that family serving for the Ottoman Empire. His memoirs provide the reader with interesting details not only about the Albanian independence movement but also about various parts of the Ottoman Empire since he travelled a lot. Avlonyalı Ekrem Bey, Osmanlı Arnavutluk’undan Anılar (1885-1912), translated by Atilla Dirim, (Đstanbul: Đletişim, 2006). Originally published as Ekrem Bey Vlora: Lebenserinnerungen (1885-1912), (München: Wissenschaftsverlag Gmbh, 1968).

 

²⁶⁷ Avlonyalı Ekrem Bey, Osmanlı Arnavutluk’undan Anılar (1885-1912), 143.

Karçınzade Süleyman Şükrü (1865-1922?) was probably the man, who had travelled to the widest area that had ever been seen by a single Ottoman traveller during his travels between 1901 and 1907 to parts of Iran, Central Asia, Europe, North Africa, South Asia and China. Born as a descendent of an ulama family in the town of Eğirdir in south-western Anatolia, he was appointed as a postal official in various parts of the empire after his education in his home town. He wrote that the reason for his travel was his escape from the city of Deir ez- Zor in contemporary Syria, where he was exiled in 1901 as a result of being defamed by his rivals.²⁶⁸ However, he did not clearly explain how and why he undertook such a long and expensive journey. This ambiguity has led some scholars to argue that he was a clandestine agent supported by Abdülhamid for carrying out his Pan-Islamist policies.²⁶⁹ Indeed, Süleyman Şükrü’s pro- Hamidian stance and his staunch critique of Abdülhamid’s opponents strengthen this claim. His travelogue entitled Seyahat-i Kübra (The Great Travel) was published in 1907 after he had reached at St. Petersburg.²⁷⁰ This travelogue is one of the most interesting accounts of the perceptions of an Ottoman citizen regarding the European as well as the non-European world.

Halil Halid’s (1869-1931) Cezayir Hatıratından (From the Memories of Algeria) was another interesting personal travelogue, which emerged as a result of his travel to Algeria not on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, but because he was sent as a delegate of Cambridge University to the Fourteenth Congress of Orientalists organized in Algiers in 1905.²⁷¹ Similar to Abdülkadir Câmî, his

²⁶⁸ Süleyman Şükrü, Seyahat-i Kübra, pp. 130-31.

 

²⁶⁹ According to Hee Soo Lee and Arzu Ocaklı, Süleyman Şükrü was sent by Abdülhamid under the auspices of the Grand Vizier Tahsin Paşa in order to launch Pan-Islamist propaganda in the region. See Hee Soo Lee and Đbrahim Đlhan, Osmanlı-Japon Münasebetleri ve Japonya’da Đslamiyet, (Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayınları, 1989), 367; Arzu Ocaklı, “XIX. Yüzyıl Sonu ve XX. Yüzyılın Başında Çin Müslümanları ve Osmanlı Đlişkileri,” in Eren (ed.), Osmanlı, Vol. 1, 588-93, 593

 

²⁷⁰ Karçınzade Süleyman Şükrü, Seyahat-i Kübra, (Petersburg: [The Printing House of Abdürreşid Đbrahim], 1907).

 

²⁷¹ Halil Halid was born in 1869 to a notable family living in Ankara; after his primary education in this city, he was sent by his family to Đstanbul for further education. As a reaction to the confiscation of his hereditary lands by Abdülhamid II, he fled to Britain in 1894 and later appointed as Lecturer of Turkish in the University of Cambridge in 1902. After 1908, he returned

stance was quite anti-Hamidian because the Hamidian administration had confiscated the properties of his family, which resulted in his escape to Great Britain and his admission to Cambridge University as an instructor of Turkish. However, unlike Abdülkadir Câmî, he published his memoirs as a travelogue within the Hamidian period in 1906, in the Idjtihad publishing house run by Abdullah Cevdet (1869-1932, also an ardent opponent of the Hamidian regime) in Cairo under the patronage of the Khedivate. Halil Halid’s travelogue is also important for the description of French colonial administration in Algeria as well as his critique of the Orientalist discourse presented at the Congress of Orientalists.

Another ardent opponent of Abdülhamid who travelled for his own personal reasons in this period was Mehmed Fazlı, whose journey to Afghanistan was not previously planned but came about quite haphazardly. In Cairo, in January 1906, where he was residing as an exile due to his opposition to the Hamidian regime, he and some of his friends were invited by Mahmud Tarzi (1865-1933), the Afghan reformer acting at that time as the chief of bureau of translation for the Afghan royal court, who had expressed his need for talented people to serve for the modernization of Afghanistan.²⁷² Mehmed Fazlı’s journey to Afghanistan via a long route over Russia and Central Asia provided the reader with a significant critique of the Ottoman neglect towards the Central Asia as well as with interesting insights regarding the modernization of Afghanistan.

All in all, the Hamidian era was one of the most fertile periods considering the genre of travel writing. The Ottoman officers and officials, who had travelled both within and outside the Empire for official as well as personal reasons, preferred to record their memoirs in the form of travelogue. Some of

to Đstanbul and participated to the Ottoman Parliament as the Deputy of Ankara. In 1913, he was sent to Bombay as consul general and then returned to his academic life in Đstanbul in the Faculty of Literature and then the Faculty of Theology in Đstanbul. Halil Halid, Cezayir Hatıratından, (Mısır: Matbaa-i Đçtihad, 1906), transliterated and edited by Cemil Çiftçi, (Đstanbul: Hece Yayınları, 2007). For his biography, see the preface written by Cemil Çiftçi to his travelogue, 7- 14.

 

²⁷² Mehmed Fazlı, Resimli Afganistan Seyahati, see the preface written by Kenan Karabulut to his travelogue, 4-10.

these travellers acted as diplomatic agents or agents for the implementation of Pan-Islamist policies; some others were also sent officially; however, they were not sincerely loyal to the Sultan and they would later be seen in the circles of the opposition movements. Finally, there were some personal travellers, who preferred to write and publish their memoirs for informing the readers. In sum, the travelogues of the Hamidian era are extremely useful for understanding the Ottoman travellers’ perception of the East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

 

5.3.           Post-Hamidian Travelogues to the Non-European World (1908-1920)

In terms of the reasons for travel, post-Hamidian travels did not differ much from the previous period; the Ottomans went to distant parts of the Empire as well as the world for official as well as non-official purposes. What distinguishes the post-Hamidian travelogues from the Hamidian ones was their critical tune. Although some Hamidian travelogues also included critical evaluations, particularly regarding the underdeveloped parts of the Empire, the degree of criticism was within the limits prescribed by the censure of the period; otherwise it would be impossible for them to be published. Post-Hamidian travelogues, either on the periphery of the Empire or on the Asian and African countries, included significant criticisms regarding the Hamidian suppression. According to these travelogues, the underdevelopment of remoter provinces of the Empire was the outcome of the negligence of previous administrations. What is more, the Ottoman travellers to the East frequently associated what they had seen in the non-European world with the underdevelopment of the Ottoman Empire, and thus blamed the Ottoman administration.

To start with the outcomes of individual experiences, three travelogues, written by authors having no official duty but engaging in voluntary travels, attract attention. The first of these travelogues, entitled Âlem-i Đslam ve Japonya’da Đntişâr-ı Đslâmiyet (The Muslim World and the Spread of Islam in Japan) was written by Abdürreşid Đbrahim after his travel to the Far East between September 1908 and October 1909, and it was one of the most voluminous travelogues  of  the  Ottoman  literature  consisted  of  two large

volumes.²⁷³ Although Abdürreşid Đbrahim was not an Ottoman citizen during his travel to the Far East, he can still be considered as an Ottoman traveller because he acted as if he was an Ottoman traveller during his travels to the Far East. Indeed, Abdürreşid Đbrahim declared that the reason for his travels in these distant lands was personal; he claimed to just be obeying the religious prescriptions advising Muslims to travel and undertook this long and exhausting voyage.²⁷⁴ However, his intimate connection with Sultan Abdülhamid II makes some scholars to maintain that Abdürreşid Đbrahim was a special agent supported by the sultan both for missionary purposes and for the provision of the continuation of local Muslim communities’ allegiance to the Caliph.²⁷⁵ Whether an agent of Abdülhamid or not, his travelogue is perhaps the most detailed account of the Far East ever written by an Ottoman about these lands.

The second travelogue, emerged out of personal reasons, was entitled Sudan Seyahâtnâmesi (The Travelogue of Sudan) and written by Mehmed Mihri (1849-1915?), who penned down his voyage with the Crown Prince of Egypt, Yusuf Kemal to the interior parts of Egypt and Sudan for a hunting expedition in

 

²⁷³ Abdürreşid Đbrahim, Âlem-i Đslam ve Japonya’da Đntişâr-ı Đslâmiyet, 2 Volumes, (Đstanbul: Ahmed Saki Bey Matbaası, 1328 [1910]). Abdürreşid Đbrahim was born to a Bukharan Uzbek family in the small town of Tara in the Tobolsk Province of Siberia. After having basic religious education in his home town, he went to Medina where he stayed five years and attended prominent religious schools of the city. During his return voyage to Russia, he came to Đstanbul where he attracted the attention of Münif Paşa (1830-1910), the then Minister of Education of the Ottoman government, whose mansion had been renowned to be a guesthouse for the theologians, philosophers and artists both from the East and the West. His encounter with Münif Paşa resulted in his presentation to the Ottoman bureaucratic and intellectual circles as well as Sultan Abdülhamid II. Although he returned to his hometown, he continued to visit Đstanbul and these frequent visits ended with the granting of Ottoman citizenship to him in 1912. This was also the date when he published his travelogue. For the brief biography of Abdürreşid Đbrahim, see the preface written by Ertuğrul Özalp who transliterated and edited this travelogue, 2 Volumes, (Đstanbul, Đşaret Yayınları 2003), Vol. 1, 21-32.

 

²⁷⁴ Abdürreşid Đbrahim, Âlem-i Đslam, Vol. 1, 7.

 

²⁷⁵ For example, see Lee and Đlhan, Osmanlı-Japon Münasebetleri, 367; Ocaklı, “XIX. Yüzyıl Sonu ve XX. Yüzyılın Başında Çin Müslümanları ve Osmanlı Đlişkileri,” 593. Selim Deringil, on the other hand, argues the contrary and writes that “the popular conception of Abdürreşid as Abdülhamid’s envoy and missionary is misplaced.” See Selim Deringil, “Ottoman-Japanese Relations in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Selçuk Esenbel and Inaba Chiharu (eds.), The Rising Sun and the Turkish Crescent, (Đstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2003), 42-47, 44.

the spring of 1909.²⁷⁶ In writing this travelogue, he stated his aim as informing the Ottomans about the general conditions, climate and history and natural economic sources of Sudan.²⁷⁷ Moreover, during the hunting trip, he encountered many African tribes, whom he portrayed in detail. His writings on the ethnic taxonomy of these tribes were quite important in understanding the Ottoman perception of the concept of race.

Finally, the third travelogue written after travels undertaken for personal reasons and entitled Âfâk-ı Irak (The Horizons of Iraq) was written by Cenap Şehabettin during his voyage in the Iraqi provinces of the Empire. Indeed, he did not clearly define the purpose of his voyage he made in 1916, put it was presumably a personal matter. This travelogue was particularly important for its extensive elaboration on the distinction between urban and non-urban space as well as between nomadism and civilization.²⁷⁸

Ali Suad’s Seyahatlerim (My Travels) is another travelogue about the Iraqi provinces of the Empire. There is almost no information regarding the life of Ali Suad or his purpose of travel; however, still, it can be inferred from his travelogue that he went to the region as a member of a commission given the duty of “investigating some important issues regarding the [local] government and the tribes” (hükümete ve aşaire ait bazı mesâil-i mühimmenin tahkîki).²⁷⁹ His travelogue was quite similar to the aforementioned travelogue of Cenap Şehabettin due to his emphasis on nomadism vs. civilization distinction. However, his utopian projects for the revitalization of these desolated provinces

²⁷⁶ Born in Kirkuk to a local religious scholar of Turcoman origin, Mehmed Mihri joined the entourage of Mustafa Fazıl Paşa in the mid-1860s. After several years in the Chamber of Translation, he was assigned as the Ottoman consul in Khoy in 1878. From the beginning of the 1880s, until the First World War he was in the service of the Khedivian family. He was a poly- linguist commanding not only Arabic and Persian, but also French and English. See Herzog and Motika, “Orientalism alla turca,” 152.

 

²⁷⁷ Mehmed Mihri, Sudan Seyahâtnâmesi, 1.

 

²⁷⁸ Cenap Şehabettin, Âfâk-ı Irak: Kızıldeniz’den Bağdat’a Hatıralar, transliterated and edited by Bülent Yorulmaz, (Đstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2002).

 

²⁷⁹ Ali Suad, Seyahatlerim, (Dersaadet: Kanaat Matbaası, 1332 [1914]), 36.

were more significant since they demonstrated what the Ottoman travellers prescribed to reverse the decline of the Empire in the periphery.

Another bureaucrat writing his memoirs in the post-Hamidian period was Halid Ziyaeddin. He was sent to Cairo for a purpose, which he did not mention clearly in his travelogue entitled Musavver Mısır Hatırası (Illustrated Memories of Egypt); however, he wrote that he decided to write down his memoirs in order to present the reader an account of Egyptian modernization and what the Ottomans could learn from the Egyptian experiences. What is more, he added the photographs taken during his travel and visualized the early twentieth century Egypt in the eyes of the readers.²⁸⁰

Journalists were another group of Ottoman intellectuals, who visited the Middle Eastern provinces of the Empire and sent their observations regularly as letters or telegraphs to their newspapers in the post-Hamidian era. Especially Tanîn newspaper published such correspondence in this period. One of these journalists was Babanzade Đsmail Hakkı, who was elected as the Deputy of Baghdad to the Ottoman Parliament and soon performed a travel in 1908 towards the province that he represented. His letters sent to Tanîn were compiled by the author himself three years later; therefore his travelogue, entitled Irak Mektupları (Letters of Iraq) on his travel memoirs from Beirut to Kuwait, had emerged.²⁸¹ In these letters, Đsmail Hakkı repeated most of the discussions frequently encountered in the travelogues written about the Ottoman Middle East at that period, such as the underdevelopment of the Ottoman territories, the emergence of Arab nationalism, the rebellious nomadic tribes, the failures of Ottoman armies in the region, and the English hegemony over the Persian Gulf.

Another journalist was Ahmed Şerif, who engaged in several travels between 1910 and 1912 in various parts of the Ottoman Empire in order to inform the readers about the reflections of the re-proclamation of the Ottoman constitution and parliamentary system. After visiting Albania, and watching the

²⁸⁰ Halid Ziyaeddin, Musavver Mısır Hatırası, (Đstanbul: Agob Matosyan Matbaası, 1326 [1910]).

 

²⁸¹ Đsmail Hakkı Babanzade, Irak Mektupları, (Đstanbul: Tanîn Matbaası, 1329 [1911]).

unrest in this region because of the maladministration of the Ottoman government, he went to Syria and Lebanon in order to examine the conditions of Syria, Hawran and Jabal Druze and to follow the military expedition against the Druze rebellions in the region.²⁸² However, he not only reported about these military incursions, but also wrote his travel memoirs about the regions he visited. From Lebanon, after the eruption of the Ottoman-Italian War in Tripolitania, Ahmed Şerif went to the Ottoman headquarters in Aziziye, near Darnah, Tripolitania, in order to follow the Turco-Italian war. Hence his correspondence with the newspaper provided the reader with the perception of these vast regions by a journalist sympathetic to the CUP.

Diplomatic and non-diplomatic, even clandestine, missions to the Asian states were also visible in the post-Hamidian period, particularly on the eve of and during the First World War. The reason for these missions was to obtain the support of Central Asian Turks to the Ottoman struggle against the Allied States. However, all these missions failed, either as a result of the reluctance of Central Asian Turks to cooperate with the Ottomans, or the Russian, and particularly the Chinese pressure on the missions for preventing the accomplishment of their aims. The diplomatic mission of Ubeydullah Efendi (1858-1937), who was appointed as the Ottoman Ambassador to Afghanistan in 1915, was one of them.²⁸³ He gathered his memoirs written during this mission in two volumes when he returned, and later decided to deliver these manuscripts shortly before

²⁸² Ahmed Şerif, Arnavudluk’da, Sûriye’de, Trablusgarb’de Tanîn, 101.

 

²⁸³ Mehmed Ubeydullah (Hatipoğlu) was born to a notable ulama family of Đzmir; after his education, his political ideas resulted in his fleeing to Paris. After his return in late 1890s, he was assigned to participate into the Universal Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. He wandered on the American continent visiting not only the United States, but also Mexico and Cuba. This journey lasted for five years. From 1901 to 1906, he was in exile in Taif; he could only feel comfortable after the re-proclamation of the Ottoman constitution in 1908. After that he became the Deputy of Aydın in the Parliament. During the First World War, he was sent to Afghanistan; however, his mission failed. After the War, he was arrested by the British and sent to Malta for trial. In the Republican era, he published many articles on various newspapers and once more became a Deputy in the Ottoman Parliament. He died in Đstanbul in 1937. For a detailed information about his life and travels see Ömer Hakan Özalp (ed.), Mehmed Ubeydullah Efendi’nin Malta, Afganistan ve Đran Hatıraları, (Đstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2002) and Ahmet Turan Alkan, Sıradışı Bir Jöntürk: Ubeydullah Efendi’nin Amerika Hatıraları, (Đstanbul: Đletişim Yayınları, 1997).

his death to a famous journalist, Hikmet Feridun Es (1910-1992), who published some excerpts and summaries from these notes in some journals and newspapers during 1930s and 40s. These memoirs included quite satirical and extremely interesting accounts regarding the Ottoman perception of Iranians and Central Asian Turks as well as their counter-perception.²⁸⁴

The First World War also produced three more travelogues written by Pan-Turkist young Ottoman officers, who were extremely eager to save their country through a strong alliance among the Turks. In other words, Pan-Turkist ideals led them to cooperate with the CUP and particularly with the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı Mahsûsa). One of such missions was performed by Habibzade Ahmed Kemal (Đlkul, 1889-1966), who went Kasghar in 1913 in order to educate Turkish youngsters in Turkistan living under oppressive Chinese rule.²⁸⁵ In some cities of Turkistan, such as Kasghar, Artux, Kucha and Urumchi, he attempted to introduce modern education to the Turkish youngsters; however, he encountered the opposition of the local Muslim elites, who opposed the  youngsters  being  inculcated  with  ideas  such  as  liberty,  equality,  or

²⁸⁴ Ubeydullah Efendi started his mission on April 8, 1915; the ambassadorial mission was composed of himself as the ambassador, the former governor of Basra, Süleyman Şefik Paşa, as the military attaché, several secretaries from the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs, his personal aide and an imam. However, when they reached Mosul, the envoy was warned that the way ahead was not safe due to rebellions of local tribes; therefore the members of the envoy did not want to go further. This did not stop Ubeydullah Efendi and he continued his mission on his own. On September 7, he reached at Hamadan, in which they were welcomed with a great respect; everyone closed their shops and the Jewish community of Hamadan, who were both Ottoman citizens and dominating the trade of the city, expressed their content for the arrival of the mission to their city. In Hamadan, he heard the similar warnings; but he was insisted on continuing the mission; so he left Hamadan and went Sultanabad, where he was welcomed as an “emperor.” Then he left for Isfahan, Yezd and Kerman. In the environs of Kerman, he was captured by the British; however one of the local Turkish tribal leaders attacked the British garrison and saved Ubeydullah Efendi. Özalp (ed.), Mehmed Ubeydullah Efendi’nin Malta, Afganistan ve Đran Hatıraları, 206-222.

 

²⁸⁵ Habibzade Ahmed Kemal was born in Rhodes in 1889 to a merchant family; he took his education from Medrese-i Süleymaniye established by Ahmed Midhat Efendi when he had been in exile on this island and he also took private lessons from Ottoman intellectuals exiled to the island, such as Vicdani Bey and Tevfik Bey. After his education he served as teacher in various Aegean islands; in 1911, he had to flee from Meis after the Dodecanese were invaded by the Italians. Then, he came to Đstanbul, participated to the CUP and he became one of the closest aides of Talat Paşa. In 1913, a notable local elite from Kasghar, Ebulhasan Hacı arrived Đstanbul on his way to pilgrimage and after listening the ignorance of the youngsters of Turkistan, Talat Bey decided to send Ahmed Kemal to Kasghar as a teacher. See the preface written by Yusuf Gedikli to Çin-Türkistan Hatıraları, Şangay Hatıraları, (Đstanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, 1997), 1-13.

abandonment of religious dogmatism, which would shatter the local elites’ authority in the region. As a result of the tacit collaboration between these elites and the Chinese, Ahmed Kemal was imprisoned by the Chinese authorities, who later brought him to Shanghai and took him into custody. He was released in 1919 due to the intervention of the Consul of the Netherlands and was able to return to Đstanbul a year later. His adventurous memoirs were compiled in two travelogues, the first one, entitled Çin Türkistan Hatıraları (Memories of China- Turkistan), was published in 1925 and the second one, entitled Şangay Hatıraları (Memories of Shanghai), was published in 1939.²⁸⁶ In these travelogues, he not only criticized the Muslims of Turkistan for their ignorance and bigotry but also narrated the Far Eastern cities he visited and peoples he encountered along his exile route from Kasghar to Shanghai.

The second Pan-Turkist mission was undertaken by Adil Hikmet and his four companions during World War I. In 1914, on the eve of World War I, Adil Hikmet and four other Ottoman officers were ordered by the CUP administration to organize the Central Asian Turks and, if possible, to ignite a Turkish rebellion against Russia. During their mission, they were captured by the Russians in 1915, tried and sentenced to death; however, with the intervention of the German Embassy in Beijing, they were imprisoned in Kapal, China. In 1916, they were able to escape and returned Turkistan. Then they took the leadership of the local Kirghiz rebels and launched one of the most significant rebellions against the Russians during World War I. After this rebellion had been suppressed by the Russians, Adil Hikmet and his fellow officers fled to Khotan by passing through the Taklamakan Desert. Finally, in June 1918 they reached Shanghai, where Adil Hikmet stayed for three years. His memoirs were published in the Cumhuriyet

 

 

 

²⁸⁶ See Habibzade Ahmed Kemal, Çin Türkistan Hatıraları, (Đzmir: Marifet Matbaası, 1341 [1925]); Şangay Hatıraları (Đstanbul: Kader Basımevi, 1939). The first one of these two travelogues was transliterated by N. Ahmet Özalp, (Đstanbul: Kitabevi, 1996). This travelogue was combined with the second one under a single volume as well. See, Ahmed Kemal Đlkul, Çin- Türkistan Hatıraları, Şangay Hatıraları, transliterated and edited by Yusuf Gedikli, (Đstanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, 1997).

newspaper in 1928 and later compiled as a book.²⁸⁷ These memoirs were particularly important for understanding the Ottoman perception of the central Asian Turks as well as the Chinese and the presence of European colonial powers in China.

All in all, post-Hamidian travelogues were significant for their fervent political tune; the CUP’s political agenda leaked into most of these texts and the Hamidian regime was presented as the major source of underdevelopment of the peripheral regions of the Ottoman Empire. The travels to the Middle East in this period reflected the miserable conditions of the cities and peoples. Like many of the travelogues of the preceding periods; they focused on the distinction between nomadism and civilization as well. On the other hand, the travelogues to the Central Asia and particularly Turkistan reflected the Pan-Turkist exuberance and included quite positive accounts of the Turks living in the region.

 

One of the most significant but one of the most underestimated sources to understand the Ottoman perception of the East in the late nineteenth century were the travelogues written by the Ottoman travellers to the non-European world. Despite the difference of styles and contents, these travelogues have some common characteristics. To start with the patterns of travel, it can be argued that they did not change much from the classical to the modern era; official duties, including military, diplomatic or economic missions, established the basic motives to travel; however, particularly by the 1870s and onwards, personal travels became more frequent.

Secondly, regarding the content, it can be argued that the major difference between classical and modern travel-narration was the latter’s prevalence given to the travel memoirs rather than the purpose of travel. This prevalence also resulted in the politicization of travelogues from the very beginning. For example, the Ottoman discontent regarding nomadism (as for Mehmed  Hurşid),  their  centuries-long  rivalry  with  neighbouring  states,

²⁸⁷ Adil Hikmet Bey, Asya’da Beş Türk [Five Turks in Asia], compiled, transliterated and edited by Yusuf Gedikli, (Đstanbul, Ötüken Neşriyat, 1998). For the brief biography of Adil Hikmet, see the appendix written by Gedikli, 551-554.

particularly with Iran (as for Mehmed Fazlı) and Russia (as for Habibzade Ahmed Kemal), the opposition to Hamidian regime (as for Abdülkadir Câmî), or the dislike of Young Turks by some pro-Hamidian travellers (as for Karçınzade Süleyman Şükrü) permeated the lines of the travelogues. Hence these travelogues were not only written for enjoying the readers but also for presenting the political thoughts of the author directly or indirectly.

Finally, regarding the style, it can be argued that most of the travelogues were extremely informative. The educative purpose attached to the travelogues was so dominant that even parts of some travelogues were totally derived from Islamic as well as Western history or geography books. This sometimes dried the style; however still, there were several travelogues written by the most famous men of letters of the age such as Cenap Şehabettin, Direktör Âli Bey or Babanzade Đsmail Hakkı, which could be labelled as the most brilliant pieces of Ottoman travel writing. In other words, travel literature contributes to the Ottoman knowledge regarding the external world and did so by attracting the attention of the reader through colourful descriptions of the regions visited and the peoples encountered. These pieces are also important for their presentation of the Ottoman perception of the concept of civilization both in the European sense of this word and in the traditional Islamic sense displaying this concept as the opposite of the concept of nomadism; the notion of civilization and its reception by the Ottoman intellectuals/travellers is the theme of the next part of this dissertation.

PART III

 

 

THE CONCEPT OF CIVILIZATION: EUROPEAN AND OTTOMAN VERSIONS

 

Any study on the Ottoman perception of the East can not be fulfilled without an analysis of the idea of civilization in the Ottoman Empire, since this perception is very much shaped by this concept. The word civilization, which had emerged in Europe in the mid-eighteenth century as an ideal to elevate the humanity to a higher stage of being, soon reached the Ottoman Empire first as a technique to prevent the decadence of the Empire and to provide her a place among the civilized nations, and then as an ideal for social as well as individual development. However, the Ottoman intellectuals did not simply emulate the European understanding of this concept. When they were adopting it, they transformed its meaning through incorporating a selective approach by distinguishing between the material and moral elements of civilization, and through blending the European conceptualizations with the Ottoman/Islamic notions and perceptions. On the one hand, since the Ottomans learned about the material and moral aspects of the European civilization directly from the European sources, their perception of civilization had significant parallels with the evolution of the understanding of this concept in Europe. On the other hand, some of the notions of civilization had already been present in the Ottoman/Islamic culture; hence these notions were revitalized and harmonized with the European ones. In sum, the outcome is a unique perception of civilization, which has both similarities with and differences from the meaning of this concept in Europe.

The analysis of the emergence and evolution of the concept of civilization in Europe and in the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is therefore essential to understand the Ottoman perception of the East. As mentioned previously, the central argument of this dissertation is that the Ottomans did not perceive the East as the Westerners did,

and one of the most significant justifications of this argument is the originality of the Ottoman conception of civilization. The reason of writing this part of the dissertation is, therefore, to demonstrate the roots of this originality by referring to three sets of differences, being (1) the differences between the European and Ottoman conceptions of civilization; (2) the different perceptions in the Ottoman intellectual circles in different periods; and (3) the differences between the perceptions of the Ottoman intellectuals, most of whom had never been to the East, and the Ottoman travellers who had actually experienced it.

This part is composed of three chapters. The first chapter is devoted to the emergence and evolution of the idea of civilization in Europe, since the discussions on this idea forms one of the most significant sources of the Ottoman perception of civilization. In doing that, the transformation of this concept from a universal phenomenon to a European one is covered in order to demonstrate the Ottoman reaction to this transformation. The second chapter deals with the Ottoman intellectuals’ perception of this concept and its evolution during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The parallel narrative of these two chapters is useful to understand how the Ottoman perceptions had been influenced from the transformation of the concept in Europe. Finally, the third chapter particularly focuses on the Ottoman travellers’ perception of civilization and how it resembles and differs from the perception of other Ottoman intellectuals, who had never been to the East. Engaging in such a differentiation demonstrates that these two groups of intellectuals focused on different aspects of the notion of civilization in order to compare and contrast the East and the West.

CHAPTER 6

 

 

EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION OF

THE CONCEPT OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE

 

 

The concept of civilization has not a single meaning prevalent at all times and in all places. Like many other concepts, it has emerged and evolved within a peculiar temporal and spatial framework; in other words, its meaning varied in different periods and in different regions. For example, the ancient Greek perception of the Persians had something quite interrelated with the modern conception of the word civilization based on the distinction between the civilized and uncivilized, since the Greeks distinguished between themselves as the defenders of freedom and by extension as civilized, and the Persians as the defenders of despotism/tyranny, in other words as uncivilized.²⁸⁸ The concept of umran, which had extensively analyzed in the writings of the fourteenth century Arab philosopher and historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), had significant similarities with the concept of civilization in the nineteenth century.²⁸⁹ The Chinese, from the third century B.C. to the tenth century A.D. had the concept of li, meaning courtesy, propriety, or politeness, and distinguished between their li- based culture and “little people,” who could not accomplish such a level of refinement. This perception reminded the aforementioned distinction between the civilized and uncivilized as well.²⁹⁰ All these examples show that it was not

²⁸⁸ Bruce Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 3.

 

²⁸⁹ In his article on Ibn Khaldun, Mohammed Talbi translated the concept of al-umran as “the civilized society” (la société civilisée). See Mohammed Talbi, “Ibn Haldūn et le sens de l'Histoire,” Studia Islamica, No. 26 (1967): 73-148, 79; For a detailed account of umran see the introduction written by Franz Rosenthal to Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah: Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History, translated and introduced by Franz Rosenthal, abridged and edited by N. J. Dawood, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967).

 

²⁹⁰ Charles Halcombe, The Genesis of East Asia, 221 B.C. – A.D. 907, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 42-44.

the idea of civilization, but its word form, emerged in a particular period (i.e., mid-eighteenth century) and in a particular place (i.e., Europe, more particularly France).

The Ottomans encountered with the word civilization in the early nineteenth century, and the Ottoman version of this word, medeniyet, was coined after this encounter. What is more, the evolution of the concept of medeniyet had significant parallels with the evolution of the concept of civilization. The reason for focusing initially on the emergence and evolution of the European understanding of civilization is, therefore, important to reveal how the Ottomans had perceived all these transformations, and how the concept of medeniyet had been conceived accordingly. In doing that, a chronological sequence is followed. First of all, the precursors of the concept of civilization are examined in line with the particular historical experiences of Europe before the mid-eighteenth century. Then the emergence and consolidation of the concept from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century is analysed through referring the socio-political conditions in Europe that resulted in this neologism. Finally, the transformation of the concept of civilization from a universal phenomenon, first to a more particularistic, and then to a more racist one throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is covered in order to draw attention to its flexibility.

 

6.1.           The Precursors of the Idea of Civilization before Mid-Eighteenth Century (1500-1750)

In order to understand the emergence of the concept of civilization in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, the evolution of its precursors, such as the words civiliser (to civilize) and civilité (civility), should be examined. Although the root of all these three words (civiliser, civilité, and civilization) descended from the Latin word civis (citizen) or civitas (city), they acquired their meanings closer to the contemporary understanding only from the sixteenth century onwards.²⁹¹ The socio-political developments of the early

²⁹¹ Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 24-25.

modern Europe are therefore quite important in understanding the emergence of the precursors of the idea of civilization.

According to Thomas Patterson, it was the geographical explorations that added a new connotation to the words civiliser and civilité, with which they were utilized as a distinguishing medium between the native communities and the European explorers. This distinction would soon evolve into the oppositional duality between the civilized and the uncivilized.²⁹² Similarly, Bruce Mazlish claims that the encounter with primitives evoked the query of how the civilized man did arise; this query would evolve into the presentation of civilization as “the last stage of mankind from an original barbarism and savagery” in coming years.²⁹³

The European encounter with the native communities of America and Africa, combined with Europe’s increasing maritime trade with Asia, resulted in the flow of abundant information about the non-European world. This flow carved the discussion regarding the differences between the Europeans and the non-Europeans, and resulted in the categorization of non-European people in terms of religion, more particularly, in terms of their capacity to adopt Christianity. In other words, a European medium (i.e., Christianity) was utilized to demonstrate the distinctiveness of a particular group of people from others.²⁹⁴

While religion and civility were closely interrelated, more secular categorizations, based on the notion of progress of the humanity, were also quite popular in the early modern period. In 1568, the French historian Loys le Roy (1510 - 1577) claimed that the ancient inhabitants of Europe had been as rude

²⁹² Thomas Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997), 30.

 

²⁹³ Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 8.

 

²⁹⁴ For example, José de Acosta (1539-1600), a Jesuit missionary served in Peru, wrote in late 1570s in his book entitled Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (The Natural and Moral History of the Indies) that the non-European peoples could be divided into three, being (1) the subjects of non-Christian monarchies like China and Japan who could be converted to Christianity through peaceful teaching, (2) the illiterate barbarians like the Incas and Aztecs who could be converted only through a strong Christian ruler, and (3) the savages like the peoples of the Amazon basin who could only be converted by force. See Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, p. 31.

and uncivilized as the contemporary communities encountered in America and Africa, and he utilized the verb civiliser to describe the process denoting the change from a primitive, natural condition to a more advanced one.²⁹⁵ This was one of the earliest indications of the notion of progress, and the progressive understanding of history, which would later be an essential part of the debates of civilization.

In the seventeenth century the precursory words of civilization, namely civiliser and civilité, had developed in three distinct but interrelated paths (1) as an individual attribution, (2) as a source of progress through reason, and (3) as a legal process. To start with, the relative decline of aristocracy and the parallel rise of bourgeoisie, according to Norbert Elias, resulted in the replacement of the French words of courtoisie (courtesy) and policé (politeness) with the word civilité in the seventeenth century, and this replacement facilitated the transformation of this word into the word civilization a century later.²⁹⁶ Accordingly, the word civilité was defined in the Dictionnaire Universal (Universal Dictionary) of Antoine Furetière (1619-1688) as polite and courteous behaviour attributed to individuals, and this usage was utilized extensively thenceforward.²⁹⁷

The second meaning of civilization, associated with progress through reason, began to emerge towards the mid-seventeenth century. In the writings of proto-Enlightenment philosophers such as Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and René Descartes (1596-1650), reason was appraised as a uniquely human attribute differentiating people from animals and nature; it was argued that in case of the systematic application of reason, irrational customs and superstitions could be eliminated, nature could be controlled and social institutions could be improved. According to Patterson, all these processes, achieved through the application of

²⁹⁵ Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, 32

 

²⁹⁶ Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, translated by Edmund Jephcott, (London: Blackwell, 2000), 10.

 

²⁹⁷ Lucien Febvre, Uygarlık, Kapitalizm ve Kapitalistler, translated by Mehmet Ali Kılıçbay, (Ankara: Đmge Kitabevi, 1995), 22

reason, would turn out to be the fundamental aspects of the idea of civilization in the eighteenth century.²⁹⁸ The prevalence of reason over divinity also resulted in the secularization of the understanding of the world, and particularly, Europe. The continent was generally referred as the Respublica Christiana, which gradually lost its significance from the seventeenth century onwards. From then on, Europe was begun to be defined as a continent composed of people sharing some commonalities besides religion. Hence, this line of thinking contributed to the Europeans’ differentiation of their continent from the non-European world, which would in turn be one of the most important elements of modern understanding of civilization.²⁹⁹

Third, particularly after the Treaty of Westphalia, in the second half of the seventeenth century, the verb civiliser acquired a technical meaning in law; namely “to subject to the law of civil or social propriety” and “to make lawful or proper in a civil community.”³⁰⁰ This legal usage was so popular in the eighteenth century that the famous French Encyclopédie included only a juristic meaning for the verb civiliser, namely “to change a criminal legal action into a civil one.”³⁰¹

All in all, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the precursors of the idea of civilization were evolved in a way to prepare the ground for the coinage of the concept of civilization. The geographical explorations, which introduced the non-European/inferior other to the Europeans, the relative decline of aristocracy vis-à-vis bourgeoisie, which enlarged the scope of the concept of civilité from the narrow courtly circles to a wider group of individuals, the focus on reason, radically altering the static perception of history and creating a

²⁹⁸ Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, 35.

 

²⁹⁹ For this line of argumentation see Anthony Pagden, “Europe: Conceptualizing A Continent,” in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe: From the Antiquity to the European Union, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33-54, 52-53.

 

³⁰⁰ A. Nuri Yurdusev, International Relations and the Philosophy of History: A Civilizational Approach, (London and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003), 58.

 

³⁰¹ A[lfred] L[ouis] Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, (New York: Vintage Books, 1952), 17.

dynamic version of social development based on the idea of progress, and finally the acquisition of European military superiority over the non-European world in the mid-eighteenth century contributed to the formulation of the word civilization.

 

6.2.           The Emergence and Consolidation of the Word Civilization (1750- 1800)

Although the precursors of the idea of civilization can be traced back to the early modern period, the actual coinage of the word was an outcome of the Enlightenment, namely the eighteenth century intellectual developments in Europe.³⁰² The first usage of the word civilization was a matter of discussion. According to Lucien Febvre, the word had not been used before Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger’s (1722-1759) L’Antiquité Devoilée par ses Usages (The Antiquity Revealed by Its Uses), published in 1766.³⁰³ According to Emile Benveniste, on the other hand, the first usage of the word appeared a decade ago in Marquis de Mirabeau’s (1749-1791) L’Ami des Hommes (The Friend of the Men), printed in 1756.³⁰⁴ In Mirabeau’s usage in this text, the word appeared three times. It was first related to religion; Mirabeau writes that “religion [...] is the mainspring of civilization.”³⁰⁵ In the other two usages, Mirabeau related the concept of civilization with barbarity and established the famous formula of civilization vs. barbarity. Accordingly, the second usage follows as “[f]rom there one can see how the natural circle leading to barbarism to decadence, by way of civilization and wealth, might be begun against by a clever and attentive minister [...]” and

 

 

³⁰² For a detailed analysis on the theorizing regarding the concept of civilization and a good review of twentieth century literature on this concept see Johann P. Arnason, “Civilizational Patters and Civilizing Processes,” International Sociology, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2001): 387-405.

 

³⁰³ Febvre, Uygarlık, Kapitalizm ve Kapitalistler, 13

 

³⁰⁴ Emile Benveniste, Problemes de Linguistique Générale, (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 337-338.

 

³⁰⁵ Indeed, Mazlish founds that usage quite surprising since the Enlightenment period had a tendency to secularization. See, Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 5-6.

the third usage as “[...] in financial affairs we can see this ghost of spectre of barbarism and oppression weighing down on civilization and liberty.”³⁰⁶

In sum, the concept of civilization first appeared in word form in the second half of the eighteenth century. Then the question is what socio-political circumstances resulted in the appearance of this concept in that particular period? According to Elias, one should refer to the emergence of a new understanding of society in the Enlightenment period in order to understand the coinage of the word civilization. He argues that the transfer of the perception of civilized behaviour from the court society to the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century necessitated the reformulation of courtesy and politeness not only as an individual character, but also as an attribution to society. Hence emerged, in his words, the natural life of middle classes as opposed to the unnatural life of court society; this naturalization of life and its spread from the small echelons of nobility to the wider middle classes increased the interest of people towards a refined – or rather a civilized – lifestyle.³⁰⁷ In other words, the aim of the Enlightenment philosophers was to derive a general characteristic for the society, namely civilization, from the individualistic conception of the homme civilisé (the civilized man).³⁰⁸

The second significant factor in the coinage of the concept of civilization in the eighteenth century was the primordial crystallization of the social sciences. According to Mazlish, the disciplines of social sciences began to appear out of “sciences of man,” and the emerging awareness that the society could be continuously transformed by human reason created a fertile ground for the emergence of the word civilization.³⁰⁹ He further argues that, particularly as a result of the works of the Encyclopédistes, the key words such as public, public opinion, public sphere, social, and sociability became omnipresent; these words:

³⁰⁶ Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 6

 

³⁰⁷ Elias, The Civilizing Process, 17.

 

³⁰⁸ Elias, The Civilizing Process, 35.

 

³⁰⁹ Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 11.

[…] are all part of an effort to describe, understand, and project new forms of social bonding. They arise in the face of an awareness that the old ties and structures are crumbling when confronted by impending revolutionary change, both political and economical.³¹⁰

 

The perception of society as a collectivity that could be improved through human reason would later be associated with the progressive understanding of social development; civilization would, therefore, appear as an ideal to realize the positive transformation of the society to a better state of being.

In sum, in this period, the self-perception of the Europeans based on religion began to be replaced by a more secular understanding of civilization based on the ideas of Enlightenment. According to Pim den Boer:

Christianity continued to play a role in the self image of Europeans during the eighteenth century but it was no longer the dominant force that it had been in previous centuries. By the end of the eighteenth century Europe and Christendom were no longer synonyms. European feelings of superiority were based on a conglomeration of ideas proceeding from the Enlightenment which, in turn, came to be associated with the notion of civilization.³¹¹

 

Besides the internal developments in Europe and secularization of spatical conceptualization of the continent another significant reason for the emergence of the concept of civilization in the mid-eighteenth century is the consolidation of the European superiority over the non-European world in this period. Until the mid-eighteenth century, Europe was only controlling the Americas to some extent and some Oceanic islands in the Pacific region; the core parts of the Old World were still dominated by non-European powers, such as the Ottoman, Mughal and Chinese Empires. However, from the early eighteenth century onwards, all these three non-European powers began to decline vis-à-vis Europe, which increased European penetration in the regions that they had been controlling. In other words, the search for the idea of European superiority contributed to the emergence of the concept of civilization which had been assumed as a motive to understand this idea.

 

 

³¹⁰ Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 12.

 

³¹¹ Den Boer, “Europe to 1914: The Making of An Idea,” 38.

Eighteenth century did not only witness the emergence of the concept of civilization, but also a renewed understanding of its opponents. As mentioned above, the words like savage and barbarian had already been referred as antonyms of the concept of civilized; however, in the eighteenth century their meanings were more established and consolidated in relation to the concept of civilization. The hierarchy once established in the sixteenth century on religious grounds was replaced by a similar hierarchy this time based on the civilizational patterns. Accordingly, the bottom of this hierarchy was constituted by the savage, which had been defined in the eighteenth century under two categories, being the ignoble savage, who was violent to any kind of human being either civilized or uncivilized, and the noble savage, whose innocence was appreciated by the Romantics to criticize the negative aspects of European civilization. The savage, in both forms, was perceived as a childish human being; he was closer to nature, and he could be educated to mimic the European manners, either peacefully (for the noble savage) or through force (for the ignoble savage).³¹²

Between the savage and the civilized man, the category of barbarian resided. The barbarian was more developed compared to the savage; however, he was perceived as irredeemable and dangerous unlike the savages. Thus the barbarians can not be educated and continue to present a threat for the civilized. Indeed, although the savage constituted the bottom of this hierarchy, it was a more favoured category, since the barbarian was feared to have a system alternative to that of the civilized. In other words, the civilized was associated within a system, in which elements of Christianity and sovereignty based on rule of law merged; the barbarian had a system as well, which was composed of a mono/polytheistic but an established belief system together with sovereignty based on despotism. The existence of an inferior, but still an alternative system made the promulgators of the universality of civilization in the eighteenth century more reactive to the barbarian than to the savage.³¹³

³¹² Mark Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations, (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 20-21.

 

³¹³ Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations, 22.

After its coinage, the concept of civilization was consolidated until the end of the eighteenth century.³¹⁴ According to Patterson, the word was extensively used by French physiocrats³¹⁵ and Scottish philosophers.³¹⁶ He wrote that the word became so popular that even in 1792 the newborn daughter of a French deputy was named Civilisation.³¹⁷ What is more, the expression la civilisation européenne (The European civilization) was first used in 1766 by the French physiocrat Abbé Baudeau (1730-1792), who recommended “[…] not only converting the American Indians to Christianity but also to European civilization in order to make real Frenchmen of them;” such a usage clearly distinguished between Christianity and civilization since Christianization did not suffice to civilize an uncivilized man.³¹⁸

In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, the concept of civilization had not meant the same everywhere in Europe. Particularly, there are

³¹⁴ Following Mirabeau and Boulanger, Abbé Raynal (1711-1796) used the word in his L'Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes (The Philosophical and Political History of the Establishments and Commerce of Europeans in Two Indias) published in 1770; this was followed by Denis Diderot’s (1713-1784) Réfutation d'Helvétius (The Refutation of Helvetius) in 1774, and Henri Linguet’s (1736-1794) Théorie des Lois Civiles ou Principes Fondamentaux de la Société (The Civil Law Theory and the Fundamental Principles of the Society) in 1776. Febvre, Uygarlık, Kapitalizm ve Kapitalistler, 16; Benveniste, Problemes de Linguistique Générale, 341

 

³¹⁵ The physiocracy was perceived as one of the earliest economic theories. Emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century (hence, a contemporary of the word “civilization”), this theory argues that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development. For a detailed account of physiocracy see Phillippe Steiner, “Physiocracy and French Pre-Classical Political Economy,” in Jeff E. Biddle [et. al.] (eds.), A Companion to the History of Economic Thought, (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2003).

 

³¹⁶ The word civilization was soon imported by the English authors. According to Benveniste, the first English usage of the word was realized by the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson (1723- 1816) in his book entitled An Essay on the History of Civil Society published in 1767; this was followed by another Scottish philosopher and historian John Millar’s (1735-1801) Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society published in Amsterdam in 1771. See Benveniste, Problemes de Linguistique Générale, 342-343. Febvre added that it was the English lawyer and author James Boswell (1740-1795), who wrote in 1772 in his memoirs that he could not convince the famous British lexicographer Samuel Johnson of using the word civilization as an antonym of barbarity, meaning that the British intellectuals were aware of the significance of the concept. Febvre, Uygarlık, Kapitalizm ve Kapitalistler, 18.

 

³¹⁷ Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, 42.

 

³¹⁸ Den Boer, “Europe to 1914: The Making of An Idea,” 45.

two different, if not opposing, perceptions of civilization. One of them was promulgated by the Anglo-French authors; whereas the other was stemmed from the German tradition. According to Elias, the Anglo-French conception of civilization “[…] sums up in a single term their pride in the significance of their own nations for the progress of the West and of humankind.”³¹⁹ The German conception, on the other hand, preferred to utilize Kultur instead of Zivilisation in order to denote what the Anglo-French conception meant. Accordingly, Zivilisation was of secondary importance for the Germans, “[…] comprising only the outer appearance of human beings, the surface of human existence.”³²⁰

According to Elias, therefore, there are significant differences between the concepts of civilisation and Kultur. The first difference is that while the Anglo-French conception refers to the political, economic, religious, technical, moral or social facts, the German conception clearly divides between the intellectual, artistic and religious attributes on the one hand, and political, economic and social attributes on the other. Secondly, the Anglo-French conception describes a progressive process, something in constant motion forward; it ignores national differences between peoples and emphasizes the commonalities of all human beings. The German conception, on the other hand, places special stress on national differences and the particular identities of social groups. In other words, the universalizing tendency of the Anglo-French understanding of civilization clearly contradicts with the more particularistic German conception of Kultur.³²¹

The division between civilization and Kultur soon evolved into a significant debate in the last years of the eighteenth century, which would later form the basis of the criticisms towards the utilization of the concept of civilization as a veil over European imperialism. The main source of this debate

³¹⁹ Elias, The Civilizing Process, 6.

 

³²⁰ Elias, The Civilizing Process, 6.

 

³²¹ Elias, The Civilizing Process, 6-7. As Julie Reeves summarized, “[f]rom the German perspective Zivilisation was artificial, foreign and of no benefit to the intelligentsia […,] whereas Kultur was something altogether more natural and pure; something that spoke for the German people and their achievements.” Reeves, Culture and International Relations, 21.

was the German romanticism and the main protagonist was the famous German historian and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), who bitterly criticized the Enlightenment view of civilization, which legitimated, in his eyes, the subordination and exploitation of non-European peoples with claims about the superiority of European civilization.³²² Herder’s distinction between civilization and culture and his prioritization of the latter over the former was significant for the non-European states. This distinction would later be adopted by the modernizing states of Asia, such as Turkey and Japan; the promulgators of modernization in these states such as Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924) and Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901), who extensively utilized the distinction to argue for the possibility of adopting civilization without abandoning national characteristics.³²³

In sum, the second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the emergence not only of the concept of civilization but also of the essential debates regarding its perception. While, on the one hand, the English soon adopted the French version of the concept and contributed to the consolidation of an Anglo- French understanding of civilization, the Germans resisted against this perception by utilizing the concept of Kultur in lieu of civilization in order to emphasize the national particularities rather than the universalizing nature of the new-born concept.

 

6.3.           The Evolution of the Concept of Civilization from the Napoleonic Wars until the First World War (1800-1914)

If enlightenment was one of the major factors that led to the coinage of the word civilization, it was the Industrial Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769-1821) military expedition to Egypt in 1798 that resulted in the quick spread and consolidation of this new concept. Accordingly, the Industrial

³²² Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, 72.

 

³²³ See Alastair Bonnett, “Makers of the West: National identity and Occidentalism in the Work of Fukuzawa Yukichi and Ziya Gokalp,” Scottish Geographical Journal, Vol. 118, No. 3 (2002): 165-182.

Revolution, which contributed to the wealth and prosperity of Europe compared to the other parts of the world, strengthened the already established idea of European superiority, and the concept of civilization “[…] seemed most appropriate for distinguishing the achievers from under-achievers.”³²⁴ What is more, it was after the Industrial Revolution that the imperialist expansion of European powers extended to a considerable degree. Meanwhile, Napoleon, who was accompanied by hundreds of historians, archaeologists, geographers, and cartographers, was aware that his Egyptian expedition was more than a military one. It was reported that he had told his troops as they set off for Egypt, “[s]oldiers, you are undertaking a conquest with incalculable consequences for civilization.”³²⁵

Hence the idea of civilization turned out to be a popular term at the turn of the nineteenth century. “By the early 1800s,” wrote Patterson, “civilization was being viewed as both a process and an achieved condition characterized by social order, refined manners and behaviour, and the accumulation of knowledge.”³²⁶ Thus the two meanings of the concept, namely civilization as a quality and civilization as a condition or process were consolidated in this period more.³²⁷ Furthermore, there emerged a third meaning towards the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century. According to Febvre, in 1819, in the book entitled Le Vieillard et le Jeune Homme (The Old Man and the Young) written by a counter-revolutionary author Pierre-Simon Ballanche (1776-1847), for the first time, the word civilization was utilized in its plural form.³²⁸

³²⁴ Reeves, Culture and International Relations, 16.

 

³²⁵ Reeves, Culture and International Relations, 16.

 

³²⁶ Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, 42.

 

³²⁷ According to Yurdusev, the first usage, namely civilization as a quality, “[…] refers to the state of being civilized, to the possession of good manners and self-control.” Through this meaning, it qualified both the individual and society. The second usage, on the other hand, indicated civilization as a condition and process, which reflects “[…] a particular condition of men and societies, and also a process the result of which is that particular condition, called civilization.” See Yurdusev, International Relations and the Philosophy of History, 63

 

³²⁸ Febvre, Uygarlık, Kapitalizm ve Kapitalistler, 37.

Combined with the German Romantics’ critique of universality of the Enlightenment and thereby civilization, this effort would evolve into the third meaning of this concept, namely civilization as a collectivity. Accordingly, the proponents of the plural form of civilization argue that there were “[…] separate, distinct societies of human beings, which have their own identifiable characteristics worthy of being called ‘civilized.’”³²⁹ However, initially, the idea of multiple civilizations was associated with the historical collectivities; in other words, in history, there were civilizations coexisted or succeeded each other. Herder’s conception of history as “structural cycles of civilizations” contributed to the plural understanding of civilization.³³⁰ Such a perception ironically fed the European idea that there was civilizational singularity in the nineteenth century; there was “one civilization” – the European one – at that particular period. The European emphasis on Chinese or Indian civilizations was only a reference to a historical phenomenon; the nineteenth century Chinese and Indian cultures had not been depicted as civilizations.³³¹

1820s did not only witness the plural usage of the concept of civilization, but also the first serious studies on this concept. In other words, until 1820s, the word civilization was utilized simply as a word to denote a process, a condition, or a quality. This was changed by the works of a French historian and statesman François Guizot (1787-1874), who perceived the concept of civilization as a field of study.³³² Although Guizot referred to a universal civilization encompassing all aspects of social life in his works, indeed, what he examined was the “European civilization” in general, and the “French civilization” in particular. According to

³²⁹ Yurdusev, International Relations and the Philosophy of History, 63.

 

³³⁰ Maike Oergel, Culture and Identity: Historicity in German Literature and Thought, 1770– 1815, (Berlin: Walter de Grutyer, 2006), 26.

 

³³¹ Despite the emergence of plural conception of the word civilization in the first half of the nineteenth century, according to Roger Wescott, before 1918, only two historians, the French philosopher and historian Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and the Russian naturalist and historian Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky, enumerated different civilizations. See Roger Wescott, “The Enumeration of Civilizations,” History and Theory, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1970): 59-85, 59.

 

³³² Ceri Crossley, French Historians and Romanticism: Thierry, Guizot, the Saint-Simonians, Quinet, Michelet, (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 72.

Febvre, he delivered lectures in Sorbonne on the history of civilization in Europe in 1823 and the history of civilization in France in 1829.³³³ In these lectures, he had established the basics of European understanding of civilization as the supremacy of European civilization and the inevitability of progress in civilizational history. 334

Guizot further argued that in modern European civilization all the principles of social organization existed together, and unlike other civilizations, different social powers were in a continuous struggle among themselves without anyone having sufficient force to master the others and take sole possession of the society. It was this diversity that made the European civilization so peculiar and so superior compared to the other civilizations.³³⁵

As previously mentioned, although the concept of civilization had always been a hierarchical one, defined in opposition to the concept of un- civilization/barbarity, in its earlier life, it had been an inclusive concept. In other words, “[…] there was one civilization to which all people, in theory, belonged;” therefore, “[a]ll people had the potential to become ‘civilized.’”³³⁶ However, by the mid-nineteenth century onwards, a paradigm shift occurred, which ended up with the consolidation of two significant theoretical openings, namely Social Evolutionism and Social Darwinism, which resulted in the incorporation of the concept of race to the idea of civilization. Both theories were fed from two sources, being the biological revolution thanks to the introduction of evolution

³³³ Febvre, Uygarlık, Kapitalizm ve Kapitalistler, 47.

 

³³⁴ According to Crossley, Guizot defines civilisation as intrinsically progressive in nature. She quoted from Guizot the following excerpt which clearly determined the singularity of European civilization: “The idea of progress, of development, appears to me to be the fundamental idea contained in the word, civilisation’ […] The historian of civilisation studies the progressive actualisation of principles. Since civilisation designates a process and not a state and since Europe alone displays real progress we should perhaps conclude that, in this sense, only Europe is truly civilised.” See Crossley, French Historians and Romanticism, 86.

 

³³⁵ Marcello Verga, “European Civilization and the ‘Emulation of the Nations’: Histories of Europe from the Enlightenment to Guizot,” History of European Ideas, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Dec. 2008): 353-360, 359.

 

³³⁶ Reeves, Culture and International Relations, 23.

theory, and the spread of nationalist ideas over Europe, which emphasized national characteristics, instead of a universal civilized body.

Indeed, the idea of evolution was a product of positivism and the critique of the theory of fixity of species. Although the theory of evolution was very much associated with Charles Darwin (1809-1882), indeed, its basics could be found in the writings of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744- 1829), whose studies would later influence Darwin and other evolutionists to a considerable degree. It was Lamarck, who had written almost half a century before Darwin that all species were transformed from the simplest and the most imperfect state to a perfect complexity.³³⁷ What makes him more significant for social evolution theory was his combination of biological and environmental factors in understanding evolution unlike Darwin, whose theory was explicitly biological.³³⁸

Social evolutionism experienced its “golden age” in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly with the application of Lamarckian ideas to the social field.³³⁹ Its rise owes much to the studies of the British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), particularly to his perception of the ideal society, or the “social state.”³⁴⁰ Accordingly, the “social state” was established by a society “[…] based upon amity, individual altruism, an elaborate specialization of functions, criteria which recognize only achieved qualities (as opposed to ascribed ones), and primarily, a voluntary cooperation among highly disciplined individuals.”³⁴¹ In other words, this was an ideal future society and the movement towards its achievement was called by Spencer as “social progress” or

³³⁷ Ralph F. Shaner, “Lamarck and the Evolution Theory,” The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Mar., 1927): 251-255, 252.

 

³³⁸ Reeves, Culture and International Relations, 24.

 

³³⁹ Stephen K. Sanderson, Social Evolutionism: A Critical History, (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 2.

 

³⁴⁰ For a detailed account of Herbert Spencer’s contribution to social evolutionism see Sanderson,

Social Evolutionism, 10-12.

 

³⁴¹ Robert G. Perin, “Herbert Spencer's Four Theories of Social Evolution,” The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 81, No. 6 (May, 1976): 1339-1359, 1343.

“social evolution.”³⁴² However, different societies and races were advancing to this ideal state at different speeds, and the reason of this difference depended both on the biological inheritance (in other words, the race) and environmental factors.³⁴³

Social Darwinism was clearer in terms of the relevance of race in different degrees of development of different communities. Darwin’s biological concepts, such as struggle for existence, adaptation, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest, were incorporated into the social theory, though they were often distorted in this transfer.³⁴⁴ Accordingly, Social Darwinists argue that:

[…the] human society had always been a battleground for competing individuals and races in which the fittest survived and the unfit were cruelly eliminated; and, for the sake of human progress, this struggle for existence must be allowed to continue unchecked by governmental intervention or social reform.³⁴⁵

 

The incorporation of race to the concept of civilization found its clearest representations in the writings of the French philosopher Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882), who brought social Darwinism one step further through classifying the peoples hierarchically based on the concept of race.³⁴⁶ According to Gobineau, it was the race that determined the degree of civilization of different communities; he once wrote in his significant work Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (Essays on the Inequality of Human Races) that “the racial

 

³⁴² Perin, “Herbert Spencer's Four Theories of Social Evolution,” 1343.

 

³⁴³ Patterson, Inventing Western Civilization, 45.

 

³⁴⁴ Kenneth E. Bock, “Darwin and Social Theory,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1955): 123-134, 124.

 

³⁴⁵ Howard L. Kaye, The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social Darwinism to Sociobiology, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 12.

 

³⁴⁶ Indeed, Social Darwinism was not a popular intellectual movement among French social evolutionist; they rather tried to combine Darwinian and Lamarckian evolutionism. Even they preferred to use the concept transformisme instead of Darwinisme to emphasize that the ideas associated with Darwin had already been covered by Lamarck. See Linda L. Clark, “Social Darwinism in France,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 53, No. 1, On Demand Supplement (Mar., 1981): D1025-D1044, D1029.

question over-shadows all other problems of history.”³⁴⁷ He argued that the civilizations were based on the accomplishments of a pure race, and through its degeneration by a mixing of blood, the civilization established by that pure race declined.³⁴⁸ What is more, Gobineau classified between the races under three categories being “[…] the brutal, sensual, and cowardly black race; the weak, materialistic, and mediocre yellow race; and the intelligent, energetic, and courageous white race.”³⁴⁹ In all, Gobineau’s classification was complementing the former division between the savage, barbarian and the civilized in a racist way.

According to Reeves, first the evolutionist and then the racist theories:

[…] changed the meaning of civilization from an inclusive concept to one based on a fundamental separation of peoples based on their blood. Whereas in the eighteenth century the idea of civilization had been thought to be the destiny of the whole of humanity, by the late nineteenth century a different set of assumptions had come to prevail. These assumptions rested on the ideas about the divisible nature of humanity.³⁵⁰

 

By the turn of the twentieth century, then, the language of race became the prominent discourse in the study of civilization, and the synthesis between three concepts, being the white skinned, superior and civilized, was complete. Hence the years between 1900 and 1914 were the years in which there emerged significant distinction between different degrees of civilization both vertically (i.e., upper classes are more civilized than the lower classes) and horizontally (i.e., colonial powers are more civilized than the colonies).³⁵¹

The perception of European civilization as superior to other civilizations produced the idea of mission civilisatrice, or the civilizing mission. Indeed, the various versions of the idea of civilizing mission, “[…] of extending Empire for

³⁴⁷ Quoted by Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 59.

 

³⁴⁸ Mazlish, Civilization and Its Discontents, 59.

 

³⁴⁹ Paul A. Fortier, “Gobineau and German Racism,” Comparative Literature, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Autumn, 1967), 341-350, 342.

 

³⁵⁰ Reeves, Culture and International Relations, 25.

 

³⁵¹ Reeves, Culture and International Relations, 26-27.

the higher purpose of educating and rescuing the barbarian,” were used by all the actors, which participated in imperial expansion throughout history.³⁵² However, it was by the mid-nineteenth century that the civilizing mission had demonstrated itself clearly in imperialist discourses. The information about non-European world was processed to feed the perception of European superiority, and with the British and French colonial expansion, the idea of civilizing mission became widespread.

All in all, the evolution of the concept of civilization can be followed in three phases. The first phase comprised the period from the coinage of the word until the early nineteenth century, in which civilization was perceived as a higher stage of being attainable by any society having the capacity to employ reason. The second phase from the beginning until the mid-nineteenth century witnessed the consolidation of the idea of European civilization. This transformation from the universality of civilization based on reason to the universality of civilization based on a particular geography was the result of the sense of European supremacy over non-Europe. Finally, the third phase, stretching from the mid- nineteenth century until the First World War, was dominated by the association of civilization with race, which not only enhanced the idea of European supremacy on the one hand, but also monopolized the concept of civilization to a particular race and resulted in the reaction of non-European cultures against this monopolization. All these different perceptions of civilization influenced the Ottoman perceptions of this concept and resulted in a parallel evolution in the Ottoman intellectual circles, which establishes the subject matter of the next chapter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

³⁵² Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 96.

CHAPTER 7

 

 

EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION OF

THE CONCEPT OF CIVILIZATION IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

 

 

Starting from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, the interest of the Ottoman intellectuals in European achievements gradually increased. The desire to prevent the decline of the Empire led them to seek the reasons of their backwardness. This search resulted in the Ottoman awareness of the new social concepts of Europe. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Ottomans began to utilize the concept of civilization only a few decades after its consolidation in Europe. This chapter, thus, intends to examine the emergence and the evolution of the concept of civilization in the Ottoman Empire in order to show the divergence of perceptions in different periods and the originality of the Ottoman understanding of this concept. Such a survey is also useful to set the background of the answer to the question of why the Ottoman intellectuals could not perceive the East as the Westerners did in the nineteenth century.

This chapter is composed of three sections. The first section deals with the coinage of the word medeniyet to meet the word “civilization” in the third decade of the nineteenth century, and focuses on a group of Ottoman diplomats, who utilized this concept in their diplomatic despatches. The second section is devoted to the consolidation of the idea of civilization among the Ottoman intellectuals, and the emergence of basic discussions around it between 1860s and 1890s. In the third section, the crystallization of three political movements, namely Westernism, Islamism, and Turkism, and their different perceptions of civilization from 1890s onwards to the end of First World War, are covered.

 

7.1.           The Coinage of the Word Medeniyet and the First Generation of the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Intellectuals (1834-1856)

In the previous part of the dissertation, it is argued that by the turn of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman curiosity about the developments in Europe

increased tremendously, and Ottoman youngsters were sent to Europe either for education or as the part of several diplomatic missions. These students and diplomats did not only experience what they had been taught there; they also became acquainted with the concepts that had already been established in the Western literary circles, such as liberty (hürriyet), fatherland (vatan), progress (terakkî), and most importantly, civilization (medeniyet).³⁵³ Besides these conceptual elements of Europe, the visual elements they had seen in various European cities amazed them as well; especially Paris and London turned out to be an ideal. The well-planned construction of the city, the refinement of its people, new colossal buildings such as museums, theatres, observatories, laboratories, and botanical gardens, attracted their attention and resulted in the perception of Paris as a model to be achieved in the Ottoman imperial capital.³⁵⁴

All these experiences ended up with the Ottoman perception of civilization as a catchword to acquire what the Europeans had achieved, and thereby to increase the well-being of the Ottoman society. As Cemil Aydın mentions, “[…] it was only during the 1830s that Ottoman Muslim elites began to conceptualize a holistic image of Europe as a model for reform and as the potential future of the Ottoman polity.”³⁵⁵ Therefore, it is not a coincidence that the word civilization was first utilized by three young Ottoman diplomats, born in the first decade of the nineteenth century and sent to European capitals around 1830s. These three members of 1800 generation, Mustafa Reşid Paşa (1800- 1858), Mehmet Sadık Rıfat Paşa (1807-1857) and Mustafa Sami Efendi (1800?- 1855) did not only introduce the word civilization to the Ottoman literary circles,

³⁵³ According to Ali Budak, most of these diplomats began their career in the Chamber of Translation, which acted as a platform for transferring Western knowledge to the Ottoman Empire. For a list of members of the Chamber of Translation who had been appointed as diplomats to the European capitals see Ali Budak, Batılılaşma ve Türk Edebiyatı: Lale Devri’nden Tanzimat’a Yenileşme, (Đstanbul: Bilge Kültür Sanat, 2008), 390-393.

 

³⁵⁴ Niyazi Berkes argue that the Ottomans did not admire the consumer products of the Western civilization in the nineteenth century; rather what they admired was the Western living-style and principles on the one hand, and technological achievements and colossal buildings on the other. Niyazi Berkes, Batıcılık, Ulusçuluk ve Toplumsal Devrimler, (Đstanbul: Yön Yayınları, 1965), 31- 32.

 

³⁵⁵ Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 15.

but also added an additional meaning to it, different from its usual conceptions in Europe.

The first usage of the word civilization in a Turkish text was dated 1834. The user was the Ottoman Ambassador to Paris, Mustafa Reşid Paşa, who wrote the word in some of his despatches without translation, but with a similar pronunciation, as sivilizasyon.³⁵⁶ The context that he utilized this word was quite important in order to understand the meaning given to it. Accordingly, Mustafa Reşid Paşa employed the word civilization within a socio-political context, through referring to two significant political developments, which were vital to the very existence of the Ottoman Empire, namely the Egyptian question and the French occupation of Algeria in 1830.³⁵⁷ In the first despatch, Mustafa Reşid Paşa wrote that the Europeans, particularly the French, had been favouring Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Paşa for his modernizing reforms; however, these reforms were cosmetic in essence. In order to display that the Ottomans were not reluctant about modernization, Mustafa Reşid Paşa wrote that the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmud II, paid significant attention to the “technique of civilization, in other words, the issues of decency of people and enforcement of laws”

³⁵⁶ Mustafa Reşid Efendi was later appointed as the Ottoman Foreign Minister and the Grand Vizier in various Ottoman governments; he was also known as the architect of the Edict of Tanzimat. This claim of first usage belongs to Tuncer Baykara, who probably makes the only study regarding the importation of the concept of civilization to the Ottoman Empire. See Tuncer Baykara, Osmanlılarda Medeniyet Kavramı ve Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıla Dair Araştırmalar, (Đzmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 1999), 12. However, Baykara also mentions that the word civilization had already been translated by French linguists into Turkish in the French-Turkish dictionaries published in the second decade of the nineteenth century. In 1828, two dictionaries, the Vocabulaire Français-Turc published in St. Petersburg by Georges Rhasis and Dictionnaire Français-Arabe published in Paris by Ellious Bochtor, translated the word civilization as ünsiyet (sociable familiarity), tehzib-i ahlâk (moral improvement), te’nis (to make sociably familiar), te’dib (to discipline) and ta’lim (to educate). In 1831, two dictionaries added the expression, edeb ve erkan (politeness and propriety). Baykara, Osmanlılarda Medeniyet Kavramı, 20. These earlier translations demonstrate that the socio-political connotation of the word, denoting a higher stage of being for a particular community, had not much consolidated in a way to be included in the dictionaries. Rather, the former European words to meet the concept of civilization, namely refinement, politeness, propriety, etc, were utilized to define the word in Turkish and Arabic languages.

 

³⁵⁷ One of the primary aims of Mustafa Reşid Efendi’s mission to Paris in 1834 was to avert the negative Egyptian propaganda against the Ottoman Empire and to prevent further French intentions in North Africa. Cavid Baysun, “Mustafa Reşid Paşa’nın Paris ve Londra Sefaretleri Esnasındaki Siyasi Yazıları,” Tarih Vesikaları, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Dec., 1941): 283-296, 284-285.

(sivilizasyon usûlüne, yani terbiye-i nâs ve icrâ-yi nizamât husûslarına).³⁵⁸ In another despatch, he wrote that Mehmed Ali Paşa was able to get the support of the French public opinion through arguing that he had been applying the “technique of civilization” properly, and that the Ottoman Empire refused to do the same.³⁵⁹ To prevent such negative propaganda, Mustafa Reşid Paşa advised the government to publish articles about some developments in the Ottoman Empire, which had been perceived in Paris as “the appurtenance of the technique of civilization” (sivilizasyon usûlünün müteferriâtından).³⁶⁰

If the concept of civilization was first imported by Mustafa Reşid Paşa, its first translation into Turkish was realized in a small treatise written by another Ottoman diplomat, Mehmed Sadık Rıfat Paşa, in 1837, when he was serving as the Ottoman Ambassador to Vienna.³⁶¹ In this treatise, Sadık Rıfat Paşa utilized the expression of “contemporary European civilization, in other words, the technique of sociable familiarity and civilization” (Avrupa’nın şimdiki sivilizasyonu, yani usûl-ü me’nûsiyet ve medeniyeti); this was the first usage of the word medeniyet to meet the word civilization, which would quickly replace the word sivilizasyon.³⁶² Both the French and the Turkish versions of the word were derived from the same root, namely “city” (civitas in Latin and medina in Arabic). In other words, medeniyet excellently met the word civilization.

³⁵⁸ The despatches sent by Mustafa Reşid Efendi from Paris to the Porte were published by Cavid Baysun as a series of articles in the journal of Tarih Vesikaları. For this particular despatch dated November 9, 1834, see, Cavid Baysun, “Mustafa Reşid Paşa’nın Paris ve Londra Sefaretleri Esnasındaki Siyasi Yazıları,” 287.

 

³⁵⁹ For this despatch see Cavid Baysun, “Mustafa Reşid Paşa’nın Paris ve Londra Sefaretleri Esnasındaki Siyasi Yazıları,” Tarih Vesikaları, Vol. 2 No. 9 (Oct., 1942): 208-219, 211.

 

³⁶⁰ For this despatch see Cavid Baysun, “Mustafa Reşid Paşa’nın Paris ve Londra Sefaretleri Esnasındaki Siyasi Yazıları,” Tarih Vesikaları, Vol. 1, No. 6 (Apr., 1942): 430-442, 432.

 

³⁶¹ Whether this treatise was written as a despatch or as a separate work was not clear; it was first published in 1858 by Takvimhane-i Amire after the death of Mehmet Sadık Rıfat Paşa. This edition was entitled as Avrupa’nın Ahvaline Dair Bir Risale (A Treatise on the Conditions of Europe). In his collection of works entitled Müntehâbat-ı Asar, which was also compiled in 1873 after his death, the treatise was once more published.

 

³⁶² Mehmed Sadık Rıfat Paşa, Avrupa’nın Ahvaline Dair Bir Risale, (Đstanbul: Takvimhane-i Amire, 1275 [1858]), 9.

In the subsequent lines of the treatise, Sadık Rıfat Paşa argued that Europe became civilized through several processes, namely the increase in population (taksîr-i efrâd-ı millet), provision of prosperity of the country and the state (imâr-ı memâlik ve devlet), and of security and comfort (istihsâl-i asâyiş ve rahat) of the people.³⁶³ In other words, he implied that such European achievements were only realized through the technique of civilization, and the Ottoman Empire should follow this technique in order to attain them properly. This analysis of European achievements leads Berkes to label Sadık Rıfat Paşa as the “first statesman able to see not only the mere externals of European civilization, but also its fundamental distinctiveness from non-European civilizations.”³⁶⁴ Similarly for Tanpınar:

He [Sadık Rıfat Paşa] is not a traveller or a witness, who brings his simple- hearted admiration wherever he goes and who closes his eyes to the essence. Contrarily, he is a statesman with vigilant ideas, who seeks for the secret, even the system, that gives [… social] life its direction and conscience and that makes the meaning and character of its vitality.³⁶⁵

 

Besides Mustafa Reşid Paşa and Sadık Rıfat Paşa, a third influential author/diplomat of the same period was Mustafa Sami Efendi, who had served in the Ottoman Embassy to Paris between 1838 and 1839. His voyage to Paris and his experiences in this city would later be published in 1840 by himself as a book entitled Avrupa Risâlesi (A Treatise on Europe).³⁶⁶ This piece was very significant not for its descriptions of Paris and other European cities, which had already been done by his predecessors, but for the first utilization of the word medeniyet in a published book, since Mustafa Reşid’s despatches were not published until 1940s, while Sadık Rıfat’s small treatise could only be published

³⁶³ Mehmed Sadık Rıfat Paşa, Avrupa’nın Ahvaline Dair Bir Risale, 9.

 

³⁶⁴ Berkes, Development of Secularism in Turkey, 131.

 

³⁶⁵ Tanpınar, XIX. Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi, 119.

 

³⁶⁶ Mustafa Sami Efendi, Avrupa Risâlesi, (Đstanbul: Takvim-i Vekayi Matbaası, 1256 [1840]), later transliterated and edited by Fatih Andı with a detailed introduction to the life and Works of Mustafa Sami Efendi. See Fatih Andı, Bir Osmanlı Bürokratının Avrupa Đzlenimleri: Mustafa Sami Efendi ve Avrupa Risalesi, Đstanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 1996. The footnotes below will be given from the edition of Andı.

in 1858. What is more, the simpler style of Mustafa Sami Efendi demonstrates that his book was written for a wider group of readers; therefore, his work presumably served the consolidation of the concept of civilization in the Ottoman literary circles more than his predecessors.³⁶⁷ Indeed, Mustafa Sami clearly stated that his aim in writing this piece was to mention about the achievements of the Europeans as a result of their “technique of civilization” (usûl-i medeniyet), and to serve the people (avâm-ı millet) through attempting to demonstrate the underlying reasons of European achievements.³⁶⁸ What is more, according to Berkes, Mustafa Sami’s book was the earliest attempt to explain the causes of things to be admired in the European civilization. The role of science, religious freedom and the continuity maintained between the new acquisitions and the achievements of the past were the three significant features attracted his admiration.³⁶⁹ Similarly according to Aydın, different from the earlier selective approach to Europe, Mustafa Sami “[…] offers a holistic assessment of the excellence of Europe and its superiority, connecting all the positive characteristics of European institutions and practices in a civilizational unity [.]”³⁷⁰

Considering the writings of these three diplomats, what is striking is that they perceived civilization as a technique or as a practice, rather than a condition, a stage, or a phase. In other words, civilization itself had not been perceived as an ideal condition to be reached; rather it was evaluated as a tool to reach an ideal condition.³⁷¹ This usage was not encountered in European texts, which

³⁶⁷ Tanpınar, XIX. Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi, 124.

 

³⁶⁸ Mustafa Sami Efendi, Avrupa Risalesi, 3-4.

 

³⁶⁹ Berkes, Development of Secularism in Turkey, 129.

 

³⁷⁰ Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism, 17. For another review of Avrupa Risalesi, see Budak, Batılılaşma ve Türk Edebiyatı, 427-431.

 

³⁷¹ According to Berkes, in these years, the European civilization was not strongly characterized by expansionism and imperialism; rather, the Enlightenment universality and scientificity had been living its heyday. Therefore the achievements of Europe were idealized by the Ottoman diplomats and intellectuals; this resulted in the perception of civilization as a technique to achieve what the Europeans had achieved. Berkes, Batıcılık, Ulusçuluk ve Toplumsal Devrimler, 33.

glorify civilization as an ideal stage of being from the very beginning of the utilization of this concept. Therefore, the Ottoman usage was both a contribution to the understanding of civilization and an indication that the Ottomans did not solely adopt the concept as it had been conceived in Europe. The Ottoman selectivity, which would be one of the main characteristics of the next generation of Ottoman intellectuals, showed its earlier manifestations in these earlier texts. However still, it should also be mentioned that there had been no detailed analysis on this concept yet; rather, the word could only be glimpsed in these texts. This means that although their authors were aware of this word and its significance for the development of Europe, they did not centralize it as an ideal. This centralization would wait for the next generation of Ottoman intellectuals.

 

7.2.           Dualism as the Great Debate in the Tanzimat Period and the Second Generation of the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Intellectuals (1856- 1890)

In the first section of this chapter, it was argued that the European ideas began to leak into the Ottoman intellectual circles from the early nineteenth century onwards through the increasing interaction of the Ottoman students and diplomats with Europe. By the mid-1850s, however, the Ottoman elite had already begun to adopt, either forcefully (i.e., the dress reforms of Mahmud II) or voluntarily (i.e., as a result of increasing connection with the West or with the Westerners in Đstanbul), some aspects of European life-style. Therefore, European practices began to coexist with traditional Ottoman life-style and the Ottoman elites were eager to merge these two.³⁷²

This coexistence produced the question of the degree of adoption from the European civilization; in other words, how much should be taken from the

³⁷² Particularly, the presence of European journalists, soldiers, and diplomats in the capital because of the Crimean War (1853-1856) resulted in a colourful social life in Đstanbul and introduced the Western life-style to the Ottoman elite. The Ottoman bureaucrats, even the Sultan himself, attended the balls organized by the diplomatic missions. Ahmet Cevdet Paşa wrote that from 1854 onwards, Ottoman Grand Viziers began to attend such balls in the European Embassies. On February 1, 1856, Abdülmecid attended to the ball organized by the British ambassador to the Porte, Stratford Canning (1786-1880). This was the first attendance of and Ottoman sultan to such an organization. Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir, Vol. 1, 61.

European civilization and how much should be preserved became the most significant debate of the Ottoman intellectuals regarding the concept of civilization during Tanzimat period, and afterwards. Accordingly, there emerged three perceptions; two of them established the margins and the third emerged as a middle way.³⁷³ The margins were composed of those, who argue for total adoption of the European civilization regardless the distinction between its material (scientific, technological, institutional, or administrative) and moral (lifestyle, daily habits, or culture) elements, and those who argue for its total rejection. Indeed, both of these views perceived civilization as an indivisible totality, which should either be adopted or rejected as a whole. Therefore, they either sacralised or de-sacralised the concept of civilization.

Those, arguing for the adoption of European civilization as a whole, treated civilization as the only way to provide the survival of the Empire. For example, one of the former ministers of education, Saffet Paşa (1814-1883), wrote in one of his letters from Paris in 1879 that “[…] unless Turkey […] accepts the civilization of Europe in its entirety – in short, proves herself to be a reformed and civilized state – she will never free herself from the European intervention and tutelage [.]”³⁷⁴ Hence, the only way to prevent the losing of Ottoman prestige and independence vis-à-vis Europe was to become a European state, which could only be achieved through total adoption of the European civilization. On the other hand, those arguments totally rejecting the European civilization rested on the equation of European civilization with Christianity and even with blasphemy. The rejectionists accused the total adoptionists of being neglectful in terms of religion, if not of being infidels.³⁷⁵ In other words, for the

³⁷³ Berkes, Batıcılık, Ulusçuluk ve Toplumsal Devrimler, 50.

 

³⁷⁴ Quoted by Berkes, Development of Secularism in Turkey, 185.

 

³⁷⁵ Even the importation of the practice of quarantine, the Ottoman bureaucrat and historian Ahmet Cevdet Paşa wrote, made this group reactive to Mustafa Reşid Paşa due to his “inclination towards the new methods” (usul-ü cedideye inhimâkı). See Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir, Vol. 1,

8. He further noted that the discussions regarding the translation and application of French laws in the Ottoman Empire frustrated the ulama so much so that they “[…] declared those, who diverged to such alla franca ideas, as infidels” (ulema güruhu ise o makule alafranga efkâra sapanları tekfîr ederlerdi). See Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir, Vol. 1, 63.

rejectionists, even the adoption of the smallest elements of European civilization might be enough to diverge from the true path of Islam, and therefore to label the adoptionists as infidels.

Both these margins were at the extremes and those who argued for partial adoption of European civilization composed the bulk of the intellectual community. The majority of the Ottoman intellectuals were aware that the reason behind European development was civilization, and benefitting from European achievements was inevitable to reverse the decline of the Empire. The discussion was not, therefore, erupted on whether elements of European civilization should be adopted or not, but rather on which elements of European civilization should be adopted and how they should be incorporated to the Ottoman/Islamic/Eastern system/culture/civilization. This discussion on the Ottoman selectivity is one of the main reasons of the unique perception of civilization developed by the Ottoman intellectuals in the second half of the nineteenth century.