Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in The Former Ottoman Empire

Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood
in the Former Ottoman Space

Religion, Ethnicity and
Contested Nationhood in the
Former Ottoman Space
Edited by
Jrgen Nielsen
LEIDEN BOSTON
LEIDEN BOSTON
2012
Cover photo taken from Gl McMillan and John Andrew McMillan, eds., Karaman Albm.
Kltr ve Tarih Kenti/City of Culture & History, Konya: McM Medya letiim ve Tic. Ltd., 2001,
p. 4.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Religion, ethnicity and contested nationhood in the former Ottoman space / edited by Jorgen
Nielsen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-90-04-21133-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Turkey--History--Mehmed VI,
1918-1922. 2. Balkan Peninsula--History--1918-1945. 3. Middle East--History--20th century.
I. Nielsen, Jrgen S.
DR589.R45 2012
956.03--dc23
2011036719
ISBN 9789004211339
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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contents
Contributors................................................................................................vii
Introduction: New Perspectives on Ottoman History............................. 1
Jrgen S. Nielsen
Part One
Perspectives on Ottoman History
1. The Young Turks in Power: A Comparative and

Critical Perspective...............................................................................11
Klas-Gran Karlsson
2. The Ottoman Empire between Successors:
Thinking from 1821 to 1922................................................................29
Christine Philliou
Part Two
Negotiating Identities
3. The Non-Muslim Tax Farmers in the Fiscal and Economic

System of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century.......................47
Svetla Ianeva
4. Conceptualizing Difference During the Second
Constitutional Period: New Sources, Old Challenges......................63
Kent F. Schull
5. An Ottoman against the Constitution: The Maronites
of Mount Lebanon and the Question of Representation
in the Ottoman Parliament..................................................................89
Abdulrahim Abuhusayn
6. Late Ottoman State Education..........................................................115
Michael Provence
7. The Art of being Replaced: The last of the Cretan Muslims
between the Empire and the Nation-State.......................................129
Elektra Kostopoulou
vi contents
8.Karamanolu Mehmed Bey: Medieval Anatolian Warlord

or Kemalist Language Reformer? History, Language Politics
and the Celebration of the Language Festival in Karaman,
Turkey, 19612008147
Sara Nur Yildiz
Part Three
National Uses of Ottoman History
9.Ottoman Saida and Problems of a Lebanese

National Narrative173
James A. Reilly
10. Conversion to Islam in Bulgarian Historiography:
An overview187
Rossitsa Gradeva
11. The Short History of Bulgaria for Export223
Evelina Kelbecheva
12. Recent Developments in the Historiography of Bosnia
and Herzegovina Relating to the Ottoman Empire and
their Impact on History Textbooks249
Vera Katz
Sources.......................................................................................................269
Index..........................................................................................................291
Contributors
Abdulrahim Abuhusayn is Professor of History, Department of

History and Archaeology, American University of Beirut (AUB),
Lebanon. He completed his PhD at AUB on the Ottoman history of
Lebanon which continues to be his main research interest. He is the
author of Rebellion, Myth Making and Nation Building: Lebanon from
an Ottoman Mountain Iltizam to a Nation Sate, Tokyo, 2009; The Arab
churches in the Ottoman register of churches 18691922 (in Arabic),
Amman, 1998; and The view from Istanbul: Lebanon and the Druze
Emirate in the Ottoman Chancery Documents, 15461711, London,
2004.
Rossitsa Gradeva is Associate Professor of Ottoman and Balkan
History, American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, and Research
Fellow, Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Her PhD thesis is on the Sharia court in the Ottoman Balkans (Institute
of Balkans Studies, 1989). Since then her research interests have focused
on the relations between non-Muslim communities and Ottoman
authority and the functioning of the Ottoman judicial system, mainly
for the pre-Reform period. She has published two collections of arti-
cles, War and Peace in Rumeli, 15th to beginning of 19th century,
Analecta Isisiana, C, Istanbul, 2008; and Rumeli under the Ottomans,
15th18th centuries: Institutions and Communities, Analecta Isisiana,
LXXVI, Istanbul, 2004.
Svetla Ianeva is Assistant Professor at the Department of History, New
Bulgarian University. She holds a PhD in History and Civilization from
the European University Institute in Florence. Her main field of
research is Ottoman economic and social history in the 19th century.
Her recent publications include The commercial practices and pro-
toindustrial activities of Haci Hristo Rachkov, a Bulgarian trader at the
end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century,
Oriente Moderno, vol 86 (2006), 7792; and Samokov: An Ottoman
Balkan City in the Age of Reforms, in Hayashi Kayoko and Mahir
Aydn (eds.), The Ottoman State and Societies in Change: A Study of the
Nineteenth Century Temettuat Registers, London, 2004, pp. 4776.
viii contributors
Klas-Gran Karlsson is Professor of History and Chairman of two

graduate schools of history at Lund University, Sweden. Since 2001 he
has been in charge of the large research project The Holocaust and
European History Culture. He has specialized in East European history
and has written extensively on interethnic problems, migration, terror
and genocide, and uses of history. His recent publications include
Folkmordens historia. Perspektiv p det moderna samhllets skuggsida
(History of Genocide: Perspectives on the Dark Side of Modern
Society), 2005, with Kristian Gerner, The Holocaust Postwar
Battlefield: Genocide as Historical Culture, 2006, with Ulf Zander, and
Crimes against Humanity under Communist Regimes: Research Review,
2008, with Michael Schoenhals.
Vera Katz is Scientific Associate of the Institute of History in Sarajevo,
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her PhD from University in Sarajevo is in
social and economic history after the Second World War. Since 1986
her research has been focused on Bosnian and Herzegovinian history
during the twentieth century. She is the author of many articles and
Bosnia and Herzegovina (19451953), Sarajevo, forthcoming.
Evelina Kelbecheva is Professor of History and a Jean Monnet title
holder at the American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad. Her PhD
is on cultural history during World War One. She has previously
worked at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and has taught at Sofia
University and as a Fulbright scholar and visiting assistant professor at
the University of California, Irvine. Her major research is on cultural
identity, myths and falsifications in history. She is the author of What is
Fatherland? Bulgarian Intelligentsia between the Wars, and Fakes in
History, Sofia, Guttenberg, forthcoming.
Elektra Kostopoulou currently holds the Ted and Elaine Athanassiades
Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton Universitys Program in Hellenic
Studies. Previously she had taught (200610) at the Department of
History, Bilgi University, Istanbul. Her M.A. thesis was published in
Greek as a monograph entitled The Island of Leros as an Ottoman
Province: History through the Books of the Local Elders (Athens: 2005).
She received her Ph.D. degree in Ottoman History (2009) from
Bosphorus University, Istanbul, with a doctoral dissertation entitled
The Muslim Millet of Autonomous Crete, which examines the trans-
formation of the Eastern Mediterranean during the age of late moder-
nity, through the examination of a focused case study: the Muslim
citizens of Autonomous Crete.
contributors ix
Jrgen S. Nielsen is Professor of Islamic Studies and Director of the

Centre for European Islamic Thought, Faculty of Theology, University
of Copenhagen, Denmark, and previously lecturer and professor at
the University of Birmingham, UK. His PhD is in Arab history from
the American University in Beirut. Since 1978 his research has been
focused on Islam in Europe. He is the author of Towards a European
Islam? London, 1999, Muslims in western Europe, 3rd ed. Edinburgh,
2004, co-editor of Muslim networks and transnational communities in
and across Europe with Stefano Allievi, 2002, and chief editor of
Yearbook of Muslims in Europe, Leiden: Brill.
Christine Philliou is Assistant Professor of Ottoman History at
Columbia Universitys Department of History. She holds a PhD in
History from Princeton University and specializes in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century political and social history of the Ottoman Empire.
Her forthcoming book, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans
in an Age of Revolution (University of California Press), examines the
changes in Ottoman governance leading up to the Tanzimat reforms
of the mid-nineteenth century. It does so using the vantage point of
Phanariots, an Orthodox Christian elite that was intimately involved in
the day-to-day work of governance even though structurally excluded
from the Ottoman state.
Michael Provence is Associate Professor of History and Director of the
Middle East Studies Program, University of California at San Diego,
USA, where he teaches modern Middle Eastern history. He is a special-
ist in the Ottoman and post-Ottoman Arab East, and the author of
The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, Texas, 2005.
He is currently working on a history of the Arab East in the period of
direct colonial rule between 1920 and 1950.
James A. Reilly is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at
the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of
Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His Ph.D. is in Middle Eastern History from
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. His research has been
focused on Syria and Lebanon during the Ottoman period, includ-
ing modern historiography of the Ottoman era. He is the author of
A Small Town in Syria: Ottoman Hama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries, Bern and London, 2002.
Kent F. Schull is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History
at the University of Memphis, USA. His PhD is in modern Middle East
x contributors
history from the University of California, Los Angeles specializing in

the social and cultural history of the late Ottoman Empire. His forth-
coming book, Prisons in the Late Ottoman Empire, will be published by
Edinburgh University Press in spring, 2012.
Sara Nur Yldz is a Research Associate at the Orient-Institut Istanbul.
She is a historian of medieval and early Ottoman Anatolia with inter-
ests in empire-building and frontier politics, political culture and his-
torical writing. She received her PhD from the Department of Near
Eastern Languages, University of Chicago, in 2006. She is completing a
monograph based on her doctoral dissertation, Mongol Rule in Seljuk
Anatolia: the Politics of Conquest and History Writing, 12431282, as
well as working on a general study of Seljuk Anatolia, entitled The
Seljuks of Anatolia: A Muslim Empire on the Frontier.
Introduction: New perspectives on
Ottoman history
Jrgen S. Nielsen
There has been a growing interest in recent years in reviewing the

continued impact of the Ottoman empire even long after its demise at
the end of the First World War. The wars in former Yugoslavia, follow-
ing hot on the civil war in Lebanon, were reminders that the settle-
ments of 191822 were not final. The western parts of the former Arab
provinces (Bilad al-Sham or greater Syria) had remained unsettled
with continuing Syrian resentment at the separation of Lebanon and
the Turkish province of Hatay/Antioch/Alexandretta from the Syrian
lands (the latter only very recently accepted by Syria), not to mention
the running sore of Palestine/Israel. Lebanon was continually at log-
gerheads with itself living through crisis after crisis including armed
conflict in 1958 and then the trauma of fifteen years of civil war 1975
1990. The collapse of the Soviet system and the end of the cold war
contributed to exposing the fault lines of ethnic, religious and national
variation and interaction in south-eastern Europe. The gradual expan-
sion of the European transnational (Council of Europe, Organization
of Security and Cooperation in Europe) and supranational projects
(European Union, NATO) into the region challenged inherited percep-
tions of nations and raised questions about hitherto unquestioned, or
at least suppressed, senses of collective identity. By the 1990s the
Kemalist consensus of the post-Ottoman Turkish political system was
also beginning to weaken and by the beginning of the 21st century was
gradually being replaced by a struggle over Turkishness in which both
religion, in the debate over the public role of Islam, and nationality/
ethnicity, exemplified above all by the contested place of Armenians
and Kurds in relation to the Turkish polity and self-image, played a
central part.
The idea for the theme of this volume came from my many years of
contacts in Lebanon since the 1970s and Bulgaria since 1991. The grad-
ual slide of Lebanon into civil war and the rise of a new kind of confes-
sionalism found resources in the sectarian histories which Kamal Salibi
2 jrgen s. nielsen
analysed in his ground breaking book A House of Many Mansions.1

Prof. Salibi pointed the way for a following generation of Lebanese
historians, prominent among which is Abdulrahim Abuhusayn, repre-
sented in this volume. Although much Lebanese historiographyremains
self-indulgently imprisoned in the confessional rivalries, a few have
started looking at a broader picture.2 After the collapse of the commu-
nist regime in Sofia a new generation of historians began to review the
emphases of the official Bulgarian national history. This was in part
under the impact of the atavistic populism of the new national politics
of the region which, in the extreme case, became violent in the collapse
of Yugoslavia and at times seemed to threaten to draw in neighbouring
countries. But a common element in both instances was also the grow-
ing access to the Ottoman archives both locally and, more importantly,
in Istanbul. This was a result of eased travel, especially in the Bulgarian
case, but also the great growth in the study of Ottoman history within
Turkey itself which had been accompanied by the opening and cata-
loguing of ever more shelf-metres of official documents from the
Ottoman period.
Increasingly, the consequence of these changes has been that the
old national histories are being challenged, and their rootedness in
the times in which they were developed clarified. The new histories
are being written not as national histories in opposition to Ottoman
rule but rather as Ottoman provincial histories. One of the effects of
this is to rediscover the extensive dimension of commonality across the
whole of the former Ottoman space. Another effect has been to show
how far some of the earlier nationalist historiography has been par-
tially mythology, as when Khaled Fahmy, writing about Egypt, reminds
us how Ottoman in nature the government system persisted in being
long after Istanbul had lost all but nominal sovereignty Muhammad
Ali was really Mehmed or Mehmet Ali, and Turkish remained the
administrative language of the government in Cairo well into the sec-
ond half of the 19th century.3
But the old national histories show a stubborn longevity. They are
useful in the hands of politicians and others who prefer the status quo.
1
Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
2
For an analysis of modern Lebanese historiography see Axel Havemann, Geschishte
und Geschichtsschreibung im Libanon 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts: Formen und Funktionen
des historischen Selbstverstndnisses, Beirut: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 2002.
3
Khaled Fahmy, All the Pashas Men: Mehmed Ali, his Army and the Making of
Modern Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
introduction3
And they are deeply ingrained in national communities who were

taught them in school. There are two phases to this. Firstly there are
questions about how ethno-national identities and became national-
isms. This is an area of research which remains contested. There is a
general consensus that modern nationalism as a political-philosophical
phenomenon is associated particularly with the long century from the
French revolution till the first world war, with significant theoretical
input from French and then German philosophers and political impact
notably in the unification of Italy and then Germany, followed by the
disintegration of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Subsequently
nationalism becomes a force for liberation from colonial empires in the
20th century.4 Thus far John Breuillys suggestion that nationalism
arises in opposition to the modern state, at least in its early modern
(19th century) form, can stand, as it can in the struggles for political
independence from the colonial empires. He insists that nationalism
must first be understood as a form of political movement.5 Others take
a longer view which implies also broader definitions of nationalism,
what Breuilly and others often term ethno-nationalism. Adrian
Hastings suggests that English nationhood can be traced rather further
back than is usual among those who locate the rise of nationalism in
the context of the rise of modernity from the 18th century. Hastings
suggests that there is a much closer connection to the growth of Biblical
Christianity in the context of the rise of vernacular literatures, which
would locate the origins of a sense of national identity some centuries
earlier.6 But England is arguably an atypical case, at least in western
Europe, although the reference to the context of growing literacy
and vernacular literature as a driver of nationhood, if not necessar-
ilynationalism, echoes the growth of the imagined communities of
Benedict Anderson.7 If we look at the former Ottoman regions of
south-eastern Europe, Hastings focus on Christianity as an element in
4
This transition from Europe to its colonies is surveyed in the later chapters of Elie
Kedourie, Nationalism, 4th ed., Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. For the Iraqi and Syrian expe-
riences see respectively Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-
State, 3rd ed., Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993, and Michael Provence, The Great Syrian
Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
5
John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1982.
6
Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nation
alism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
7
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, red.ed., London: Verso, 2006.
4 jrgen s. nielsen
burgeoning senses of national community appears to be more relevant.

After all, the Ottoman millet system ensured that religion and its insti-
tutions were sustained as a primary collective identifier over the centu-
ries until, in the 19th, these millets became proto-nations (starting with
Greece), in a process of spreading literacy and the appearance and
growth of vernaculars distinct from the preserved liturgical and eccle-
siastical languages.
Whatever is meant by nationalism and however it arose there
remains the question, which this book is more concerned with, of how
and why such nationalism or ethno-national identity retains its wide
popular appeal, why and how it can be mobilized in later generations to
drive new popular movements and inter-communal conflicts, and
what role history and religion play, actually or potentially, in such
mobilization. There is a fair amount of recent literature suggesting
that the aggressive programmes towards the non-Serb neighbours led
by Slobodan Milosevic at the time of the collapse of Yugoslavia were
built on a decade of targeted and coordinated work by selected Serb
historians.8 A decade ago Roger Petersen sought to identify the motives
which move communities to the kind of ethnic violence which was
experienced in the break-up of Yugoslavia.9 Analysing a series of key
events in eastern Europe from Russia and the Baltic in 1905 till the
break-up of Yugoslavia, Petersen seeks to identify and assess the impact
of the emotions which lead people to engage in ethnic violence. He
specifically looks at the impact of fear, hatred, resentment and rage.
He concludes that the most consistently explanatory emotion is resent-
ment, although the other three can have minor roles to play in very
specific situations he suggests, for example, that ancient hatreds
were a significant aspect of Serb actions against Albanians in Kosovo in
the late 1990s although not in any other of his case studies.
The question remains, however, of what the link may be between
the original appearance of the sense of common identity and common
fate implied in the 19th century nation-state projects reaching their
(temporary) conclusion in the context of the first world war. Here Paul
Connerton may help us:
An early summary of this is to be found in H.T.Norris, Islam in the Balkans:

8
Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World, Columbia : University of
South Carolina Press, 1993.
9
Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred and Resentment in
Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
introduction5
Concerning social memory. we may note that images of the past com-
monly legitimate a present social order. It is an implicit rule that partici-
pants in any social order must presuppose a shared memory.we may
say that our experiences of the present largely depend upon our knowl-
edge of the past, and that our images of the past commonly serve to legit-
imate a present social order.10
Images of the past is here an important dimension which, Connerton
suggests, are conveyed and sustained by (more or less ritual) perfor-
mances,11 which he later proceeds to analyse in detail under the head-
ings commemorative ceremonies and bodily practices.
In a lecture given at Copenhagen University almost two decades
later, Connerton explored the obverse of memory, namely oblivion. He
suggested that collective oblivion can take three main forms. The pre-
scriptive is when states or parties to conflicts agree to set aside the past
for the sake of future social and political harmony. Significant examples
of this, he suggested, were the Westphalia settlement of 1648, the resto-
rations of the monarchy in England in 1660 and France in 1814.
Formation of new social identity requires a process of selection in the
collective social memory in the process of which aspects are discarded
which have lost their relevance. This is a more implicit process than the
prescriptive and can be illustrated with reference to the flexibility of
extended kinship narratives as clans and tribes move and find them-
selves in new relationships which require new foundation myths.
Finally, annulment is the process whereby an excess of handed down
memory, which threatens to overwhelm, is laid aside and archived,
today often quite literarily.12 The annulled memory has not been oblit-
erated but is accessible, should it be needed. Observers of the changing
partisan propaganda of opposing parties in the conflicts in Lebanon
and then former Yugoslavia will recognise this process.
History is the school subject which is the most resistant to new
trends appearing among researchers, and which tends therefore con-
tinuously to reconfirm national myths and thereby contribute to ferti-
lizing the ground on which community tensions and mutual negative
images can flourish. Where it took only a decade for the discovery by
geologists of the phenomenon of tectonic plates to get into school
10
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989, p.3.
11
Connerton, p.4.
12
Lecture given at the University of Copenhagen, 13 March 2008.
6 jrgen s. nielsen
books and syllabuses, it takes at least a generation for something simi-

lar to happen in the teaching of history. There are simply too many
vested interests which are obstacles to change. Given that history is so
often used to mobilize communities to conflict it seems obvious that
the subject must at least be taught in such a way that it cannot be thus
used. Some go further and suggest that it is a subject which above all
others lends itself to be used to reconcile and build peace. Major efforts
and resources have been devoted by the European Union and the OSCE
to develop history text books for the former Yugoslavia which try to
break with the conflictual interpretations of older historiography.
Similar pressures have been put on Israeli and Palestinian authori
ties to amend their school books. Projects to produce a common
history book for the Lebanese schools have so far got nowhere.13 The
Lebanese educationist Munir Bashshur picks up the argument of
Arthur M. Schlesinger against what he calls history as therapy which,
he says,
corrupts history as historyEven if history is sanitized in order to make
people feel good, there is no evidence that the feel-good history promotes
ethnic self-esteem and equips students to grapple with their lives.14
Regardless of his other arguments, Bashshur could have argued simply
that we know that the histories of national triumph and suffering are
too easily mobilized for new conflict, so alternatives have to be tried.
The papers in the present volume arise out of two meetings held in
Istanbul in 2007 and in 2008 to explore these themes. In May 2007 the
Danish Institute in Damascus, where I was then director, cooperated
with the Consulate-General of Sweden in Istanbul under the then
Consul-General Dr Ingmar Karlsson to organize a workshop on the
theme A new post-Ottoman historiography?. There was general agree-
ment that it was worth taking up the subjects discussed again in a more
formal setting. Dr Karlsson offered to host the meeting again, this time
in cooperation with the Centre for European Islamic Thought (CEIT),
which I in the meanwhile had been invited to establish and lead, located
13
See the papers in Recep Kaymakcan and Oddbjrn Leirvik (eds.), Teaching for
Tolerance in Muslim Majority Societies, Istanbul: Centre for values Education (DEM),
2007.
14
Munir Bashshur, History teaching and history textbooks in Lebanon, in ibid.
pp.191209, quoting Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Disuniting of America, New York:
Norton, 1992, p.93.
introduction7
at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, and funded by

the Danish National Research Foundation. The area covered had
expanded from the original idea of comparing Bulgaria and Lebanon
to looking more widely across the former Ottoman space.
The twelve papers which have finally come out of these two meetings
and collected in this volume fall into three parts. In the first part, four
papers provide examples of how Ottoman history is being re-thought
The first two papers (Philliou and Karlsson) survey, at the macro-level,
the re-evaluations which are taking place among contemporary histo-
rians, while the following two (Ianeva and Schull) present more focused
case studies which serve to illustrate how historians are finding
new perspectives. In the second part Abuhusayn and Provence each
investigate processes of contested identify formation in Syria/Lebanon
at a time when questions were just beginning to be asked about the
place of Arabs within an empire where provinces had already broken
loose under national banners. Kostopoulou provides an account of
the late formation of ethno-national identities in Crete as the island
finally moves towards a merger with Greece. Yildiz picks up on recent
reconstructions or inventions of a specific dimension of Turkish
national memory in the language festivals which have developed in
Karaman since the 1960s, showing how their function has changed as
the dominant Kemalist national discourse has weakened. The third
part, finally, presents four papers looking at how aspects of Ottoman
history are presented for contemporary consumption. They range from
comparatively neutral local history (Reilly), through the more contro-
versial matter of Balkan conversions to Islam (Gradeva) and, finally,
how history text books in Bulgaria (Kelbecheva) and Bosnia (Katz)
serve to sustain the approaches to national history which have helped
to feed the recent conflicts.
***
This project could not have come to fruition without the interest and
commitment of the staff of the Swedish Consulate-General under the
then leadership of Dr Ingmar Karlsson. The Swedish Research Institute,
located in the gardens of the Consulate, itself the oldest European dip-
lomatic building in the former Ottoman capital, generously provided
us with the location. My gratitude goes to all of them, but above all I am
indebted to the enthusiastic participation of the unusual variety of
scholars who came together on this project. I can only hope that the
meeting has opened up new channels of common interest across the
now dispersed territories of the former Ottoman space.
Part One
Perspectives on Ottoman history

The Young Turks in Power:
A Comparative and Critical Perspective
Klas-Gran Karlsson
Few historical periods have been depicted in a more multifaceted,

polarized and contradictory way in scholarly discourse than the Young
Turk era of the Ottoman history. In the years 19081918, traditional-
ism met with modernity, decentralisation with centralisation, imperial
Ottomanism with Turkish and other nationalisms, secularism with a
religious revival, liberal reformism with conservative autocratic or rev-
olutionary totalitarian rule, and attempts at socio-political integration
with the most horrendous massacres of ethnic minorities. As an over-
determining factor in many scholarly works, the Tripolitanian War
against Italy 19111912, the Balkan wars 19121913 and the First
World War 19141918, or rather the continuing military disasters of
the Ottoman forces in these wars, enter the historical scene as deus ex
machina to strike a conclusive blow in the Ottoman struggle between
these extremes.
No doubt, the Ottoman wars in general and the First World War in
particular left their strong marks on the Young Turk decade in power,
as did further territorial losses in Europe already before the wars: in
1908, Bulgaria declared itself independent, supported by Russia, at the
same time as Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in 1910
1912, Albania revolted. Lost was the Rumelian heartland, a European
territory that had belonged to the Ottoman Empire for centuries, had
given it much of its multinational character, and had been of utmost
economic and political importance. Long-range social and economic
reconstruction work had to be pushed into the background by more
urgent tasks to handle the war crisis and to hold together the disinte-
grating empire. Consequently, open constitutional processes had to
give way to closed sessions within a Young Turk military oligarchy, and,
from 1913, to a military dictatorship. Liberal, constitutional ideas are
obviously much easier to transform into political practice in peace than
in war, and the rise of an aggressive Turkish nationalism can be regarded
as a more or less natural corollary of the strained war situation and
tendencies of disintegration. As has been stated by an early observer of
12 klas-gran karlsson
the process: To prove successful the Young Turkish revolution needed

ten years of peace, and instead it got 12 years of war.1
But such interpretations are as simplistic as they are general, and
need some analytical precision: What was the character of the Young
Turk overturn of power and political rule? It goes without saying that a
full and detailed answer cannot be presented in a short account like
this. Nevertheless, this is an important question not least because some
historical works with scholarly ambitions have an apologetic, legitimis-
ing leaning. A typical example is historian Justin McCarthy, who has
chosen to simplify the entire Young Turk period in power by depict-
ing a basically successful Ottoman politics turned unsuccessful as a
mechanical response to the external threat:
Unfortunate for the Ottomans, the forces arrayed against them were
powerful, and had little respect for what the Ottomans had achieved. The
factor that was to decide the fate of the Ottomans was not their success in
reform, their increasing openness to human rights, or the modernization
of their system of government. Their fate was to be decided by the mili-
tary power of their adversaries.2
Besides, for a historian normally working in other fields of modern his-
tory like the present author, the recurrent conclusion in the historical
narratives of the late Ottoman era that the foundation of the Turkish
republic was laid in this decade is confusing, to put it mildly. The idea
of this paper is to raise the confusion to a higher analytical level by put-
ting the Young Turk rule and era in a comparative and critical perspec-
tive, relating it to wider historical processes focusing on phenomena
such as revolution and ideology.
Such an approach is not in contrast to but rather supplements
and clarifies the established scholarly interpretations of 20th-century
Ottoman Empire and Turkey as a history of modernisation and moder-
nity. Few of these works make much theoretical effort to define the
essence of the modern predicament.3 It has been argued that this
1
Jackh, Ernest, The Rising Crescent: Turkey Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, New
York: Farrar & Rinehard 1944, p. 96. See also Palmer, Alan, The Decline and Fall of the
Ottoman Empire, London: John Murray 1992, p. 215.
2
McCarthy, Justin, The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire, London: Arnold
2001, p. 37.
3
See for example Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, New York &
Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002 (1961); Ahmad, Feroz, The Making of Modern
Turkey, London: Routledge 1993; Zrcher, Erik, Turkey: A Modern History, London &
New York: I.B. Tauris 1993.
the young turks in power13
literature is based on a simplistic linear notion that the Ottoman and

Turkish modernisation is equivalent to its gradual adaptation to the
mainstay of a Western civilisation.4
Revolution or Reform?
In this essay, the focus is not primarily on the late Ottoman states cor-
respondence to a European ideal type of historical development, but
rather on its parallels to another empire in the European periphery: the
Russian empire. However, it is certainly hard to avoid a modernist,
European paradigm altogether. In early 20th century, many European
countries went through dramatic societal changes when they entered
upon a course towards modernity. With large-scale technology and
large-scale business, industries and towns expanded vastly, and popu-
lations increased rapidly. Simultaneously, with the arrival of the new
mass ideologies socialism and nationalism, political life had a wider
foundation than ever before. Demands for universal suffrage and
democracy were raised everywhere by socialists and radical liberals.
Empire generated a large amount of theorizing, both for and against.
To be sure, the First World War in many ways speeded up modernisa-
tion, but the reverse is definitely also true, that modernisation, includ-
ing mass political mobilisation and heavy industrialisation, made war
a more probable companion. Already around 1905, demonstrations
and general strikes caused upheavals all over Europe, which forced
governments to use the power of the state in order to carry out a more
active politics.
The Ottoman Empire was not unaffected by modernisation. The
process was to a great extent triggered by an impact from Europe, with
regard to ideas, institutions and actors. Foreign investors were highly
involved in the economic development of the Empire, especially in
large-scale investment such as railroad network construction and min-
ing industry that the Ottoman state and capital was unable to provide.
To be sure, there were also internal stimuli to reform state power and
modernise the army. Even Sultan Abdul Hamid II, a sworn enemy of
liberal and constitutional ideas, was not an opponent of reform and
Westernisation, at least not as long as it resulted in the strengthening of
4
Jung, Dietrich & Piccoli, Wolfango, Turkey at the Crossroads. Ottoman Legacies
and a Greater Middle East, London & New York: Zed Books 2001, pp. 112.
the empire and of his own position therein. During his reign, secular
education, from military to medicine, expanded greatly. Progressive
and traditional views went hand in hand, as the ruling elite faced a
dilemma: the West provided useful models for economic and military
development, at the same time as political, social and cultural ideas
from the same West constituted a threat to traditional autocratic power.
The Young Turks were anxious to carry the reform work a bit fur-
ther, at least when it comes to Abdul Hamids position. Educated in
modern military schools and in Europe, some of them fleeing from the
Sultans police, young individuals with a dual intellectual and military
identity organised small societies with the objective of overthrowing
the corrupt Sultan with his inefficient officials and system of misgov-
ernment but not necessarily the Sultanate as an institution. In this
aim, they were attached not only to young Turks living in Paris, Geneva
and other European metropols, but also to Armenian, Greek, Kurdish
and other organised and disaffected ethnic minorities of the empire,
although the massacres of Armenians in the years 18941896 made the
Armenians prone to seeking international guarantees for the accom-
plishment of reform in the Ottoman Empire.5
The Young Turk organisation that would end the existence of the
Ottoman Empire, the Committee of Union and Progress, started in
1889 as a secret student organisation in the Imperial School of Medicine,
but their ideas soon spread to the corresponding military, civil service
and law schools, and to the regular army and bureaucracy. According
to some historiographers, the 19081909 revolution of the Committee
of Unity and Progress was not a real revolution, since it was not a radi-
cal and immediate overturn of the government. Bernard Lewis cer-
tainly adheres to the revolution concept, but on questionable grounds.
He rather describes the event in evolutionary, reformist and restorative
terms when he analyses it as a patriotic movement of Muslim Turks,
mostly soldiers, whose prime objective was to remove a fumbling and
incompetent ruler and replace him by a government better able to
maintain and defend the Empire against the dangers that threatened it.
He continues in the same direction: The young officers were little
interested in ideologies and social panaceas as such. The fundamental
question that concerned them was survival, the survival of the Ottoman
state which they and their fathers had for generations served.6
Cf Lewis 2002, p. 202.

5
Lewis 2002, p. 212.

6
In Shaw and Shaws interpretation, it was one of the strangest events

of its kind ever seen in history, since it was not planned and did not
depose the old ruler. According to them, it did not even take place,
since the revolution in fact consisted of a series of rebellions that
forced the Sultan to reinstitute the Constitution of 1876 and to recall
the Parliament that was shut down in 1878, but without leaving the
throne.7 It was a manvre intended to accomplish a political rather
than a social purpose, and the Sultan played his new role of constitu-
tional monarch with a considerable ability to adapt to the new political
circumstances. But he was not successful for long. In 1909, after a
counterrevolutionary rebellion that for a short time restored autoc-
racy,the Parliament, renamed as the National Assembly and with the
Committe of Union and Progress acting in the background as a shadow
government, deposed Abdul Hamid as Sultan in favour of his brother
Mehmet V and sent the old ruler away from Istanbul.
The Young Turks propagated a new Ottomanism, adjoining a Turkish
nationalism, based on unity and equality. There is no agreement among
the scholars on how sincere they actually were in their commitments.
Most interpretations indicate that unity from the beginning was a more
important objective than equality, but also that changes in political
direction were made under way, with 1913 as an important boundary
year. The question will be further elaborated below.
Encounters with Russia Rhetoric and War
Are there any relevant historical parallels that we can put forward in
order to better understand the Young Turk assumption of power? It has
been demonstrated that the Young Turks, keeping abreast of the latest
developments in Saint Petersburg, were inspired by the attempt to
establish a constitutional regime in Tsarist Russia. To the Young Turks,
the Russian Empire on the one hand represented an old and civilized
empire, but on the other a malfunctioning and corrupt state like their
own. Nevertheless, changes had materialised in Russia. The recent
upheaval against the Tsarist regime had had a broader popular base
than the Young Turks could expect to have. What they had noticed was
7
Shaw, Stanford & Kural Shaw, Ezel, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern
Turkey. Volume II: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808
1975, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997 (1977), pp. 2667.
that two groups had been of crucial importance in the Russian revolu-
tion: the intelligentsia with its mobilising role, and a dedicated cadre of
revolutionaries that had cleared the way for political change.8
If the Young Turks were familiar with and inspired by events in the
Russian Empire, Russian commentators followed closely the develop-
ment in the Ottoman Empire. While conservatives in Russia for a long
time had envied the Sultanate for its absolute dominance over their
subjects, radical groups had dissociated themselves from an unlimited
power similar to Russian Tsarist rule and thus received the revolution
with satisfaction.9 In January 1909, foreign correspondent Leon Trotsky
analysed the Young Turk revolution in his paper Kievskaya mysl.
Testifying to the fact that the revolution was hot stuff in Russia, the
Menshevik and future Bolshevik War Commissar and organiser of the
Red Army Trotsky did not primarily describe the event as a social
revolution, but rather as a fight for control of the State. In his opinion,
in an economically less developed country such as the Ottoman state,
a crucial revolutionary role is played by the army and their tight
network of radical Turkish officers who, in the Ottoman case, func-
tioned like the executive body of the nation. Representing the domi-
nant Turkish nationality, some of these officers will in Trotskys
prophesy react against powerful centrifugal tendencies and favour a
solid central authority, which in its turn will bring them nearer to
the deposed Sultan, thereby siding with the counterrevolution. This
Ottoman betrayal of the revolution must in Trotskys 1909 prediction
be counteracted by radical forces if the Ottoman Empire should not
be carved up by capitalist and dynastic powers, in Europe as well as in
Russia.10
Even in another respect, Russia was involved in the Young Turks
visions and expectations for the future. Having replaced an auto-
craticgovernment with a constitutional administration already in the
Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan had demonstrated that an Asiatic
nation of inferior race could join the ranks of the Western nations in
8
Sohrabi, Nader, Global Waves, Local Actors: What the Young Turks Knew about
Other Revolutions and Why It Mattered, Comparative Studies in Society and History,
vol. 44, no. 1, 2002, pp. 5660. See also Ahmad, Feroz, The Young Turk Revolution,
Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 3, no. 3, 1968, pp. 1920.
9
Cf. McDaniel, Tim, The Agony of the Russian Idea, Princeton: Princeton University
Press 1996, p. 63.
10
Trotsky, Leon, The Young Turks, Kievskaya Mysl, January 3, 1909, www.marxists
.org/archive/trotsky/1909/01/1909-turks.htm (2010-02-28).
a successful non-Western modernisation. In Young Turk perception,

but also among conservative and pro-Islamist elites, the Japanese pro-
cess of progress without change was highly appreciated.11 Japans total
victory over Russia in the war 19041905 reconfirmed this new posi-
tion, a position worth reaching also for the Young Turks. Furthermore,
it reinforced the notion of a Russia in decay and disorder.12
From an external European perspective, both the Ottoman Empire
and Russia were depicted as constitutive Others vis--vis Europe,
struggling to conform to what were considered the standards of
European civilisation.13 Compared already in the mid-nineteenth
century by Ivan Golovin, a Russian-born European intellectual, both
countries did qualify as autocracies with rulers with ambitions to rep-
resent God on earth, with vast bureaucracies and legal systems conse-
quently subordinated to the political powers. Nevertheless, Golovin
was anxious not to place the two autocratic rules on an equal footing,
since he could discern a budding reform movement in the Sultans
Turkey, while Russia in his eyes remains the classical country of des-
potism and servitude.14 However, to many contemporary Europeans,
both countries were regarded as survivors of a vanishing breed of abso-
lute rulers, worthy of the title the sick man of Europe, although it was
a Russian Tsar, Nicholas I, who coined this expression to disparagingly
denote the anachronistic rule of one of the traditional enemies of
Tsarist Russia, the Ottoman Empire.
To be sure, relations between the Ottoman Empire and Russia
werenot only settled on a rhetorical level, but also in real politics. Wars
and war threats between the two countries had been recurrent phe-
nomena for a long time. They had surely been detrimental in the
short run, but had also provided an impetus fr reforms that in the
longer run strengthened the states and their military capacities. Thus,
the Ottoman Constitution of 1876 was promulgated in the face of a
conflict with Russia, and the Russo-Turkish war of 18771878 insti-
tuted a long period of reformist absolutism in the Ottoman state,
imbued with the basic idea to gradually modernise without altering the
11
Bacik, Gkhan, Turkey and Russia: Whither Modernization?, Journal of Eco
nomic and Social Research, vol. 3, no. 2, 20012002, p. 52.
12
Sohrabi 2002, pp. 536.
13
Neumann, Iver B., Uses of the Other. The East in European Identity Formation,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1999, ch. 2 and 3.
14
Golovin, Ivan, The Nations of Russia and Turkey and their Destinies, London:
Trbner & Co, New York: John Wiley 1854, p. 53.
basic structure of Ottoman society and state. In Russia, the defeat of

the Crimean War of 18531856, fought between the Russian Empire
and a European alliance of states for influence over Ottoman ter
ritories, was conducive to carrying through reforms in Russia under
Aleksandr II.15
A Similar Modernisation Dilemma
The following argumentation rests on the assumption that the contem-

porary Russian Empire provides an adequate object for comparison,
not only in terms of influences, but also with regard to factual historical
processes and structures. The similarities between the Sultans decision
in 1908 to reinvigorate the Ottoman Parliament, suspended since 1878,
and the Russian Tsars political concession to install a State Duma in
1905 is conspicious. In both states, an increased level of societal unrest
had forced political concessions upon the rulers. Both events were
upheavals in order to bring about constitutional changes, a parallel
that has inspired one observer to incorporate them in a group of
constitutional or parliamentary revolutions, into which also the 1906
Iranian revolution is attached.16 The day after the events, huge crowds
filled the streets and squares in Istanbul as well as in Saint Petersburg to
celebrate the end of autocracy. In the same short run, the level of cul-
tural, political and social activities rose when various categories of the
population sensed new expectations for the future. Leaders of the mi-
gr movements and those exiled within the empires returned to the
capitals. In a similar way, international interest in the Young Turks
Ottoman state and in Russia increased considerably.
This observation of the similar political developments in the two
states can be substantiated with an analysis of the corresponding socio-
economic structures. In both countries, modernisation was partial
and unbalanced, which indicates that it was concentrated to certain
regions and social categories. In general, the modernisation process
15
For an analysis of how conflicting relations between the Ottoman Empire and
Russia affected both regimes efforts to modernise, see Karpat, Kemal, The Politicization
of Islam. Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman
State, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press 2001, ch. 13.
16
Sohrabi, Nader, Historizing Revolutions: Constitutional Revolutions in the
Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Russia, 19051908, The American Journal of Sociology, vol.
100, no. 6, 1995, pp. 1383447.
was triggered from above. In the scholarly literature, both the Ottoman
and the Russian Empire represent what has been denoted as patrimo-
nial states, based on military and civil elite groups in control of the
court, the army, the administration and official religious services, and
on a considerable distance to the vast majority of the largely illiterate
people who lived isolated from political life in the province. The admin-
istrative and governing elites were exempt from taxation and pro-
vided with various other privileges.17 As historian Geoffrey Hosking
has pointed out with reference to the Russian aristocracy, but proba-
blywith as much validity when characterising the Ottoman askeri, it
was supposed to play two contradictory roles: one as effective and
controlling Asiatic satraps, another as reformist leisured European
gentlemen.18
The modernist dilemma of the Ottoman rulers that reforms can
strengthen a necessary economic and military development but also
threaten political stability was as relevant for the Russian rulers. The
policy so far applied by both regimes, that modernisation merely was a
technological process, could no longer be maintained. To create a mod-
ern society was not only a quantitative industrial effort, measurable in
concrete results, but also a qualitative task, with cultural, political and
social consequences.19 However, neither the Ottoman nor the Russian
modernisation efforts could stop the decline of autocracy and empire.
Unlimited rule was to an increasing extent criticised and called into
question by broad segments of the educated, political, commercial and
professional classes. Like in the Ottoman state, the main source of
unrest in Russia was the universities and the students in the large cities.
Since the 1860s and 1870s, there was in both countries a critique of
absolutist and arbitrary government, and a programme of constitu-
tional reform, but the lack of political and ideological unity between
the various opponents was in both cases manifest. Both the Sultan and
the Tsar made frequent use of their authority to arrest leaders of the
opposition and send critics into internal exile. However, these repres-
sive measures did not silence the critical voices.
17
For the Ottoman Empire, see Jung & Piccoli 2001, pp. 33ff; for the Russian Empire,
see Pipes, Richard, Russia under the Old Regime, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1974,
passim.
18
Hosking, Geoffrey, Russia: People and Empire, 15221917, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press 1997, p. 153.
19
For the technological process of Ottoman and Russian modernisation, see Bacik
20012002, p. 62.
Half-hearted Revolutions?
The radical populist and leftist elements of the opposition to autocracy

were stronger in Russia. The polarisation and irreconcilability of the
Russian radicals had few equivalents among the Ottoman intellectuals,
who often seem to have chosen an attitude of compromise and pragma-
tism in order primarily to save the Empire. In the Ottoman state,there
were no equivalents to the Russian Social Democratic and Social Revo
lutionary parties. This does not mean that socialism was withoutadher-
ents in the Ottoman state; just a few days after the demise of the Sultan,
a Socialist Centre was established in Istanbul, followed the year after by
the Ottoman Socialist Party and the first labour unions. Although
without much real political influence, in late 1910 the Socialist Centre
with its revolutionary language was shut down by the Committee of
Union and Progress, and many socialists were exiled to Anatolia.20
It has been convincingly argued in the Russian case that the
existence of revolutionaries is not sufficient to make us talk about a
revolution.21 Not unlike the Young Turk overthrow of the Sultan, the
Russian upheaval of 1905 that started with the Bloody Sunday was at
best a half-hearted revolution, leaving the Tsar on the throne and
enabling him to put obstacles in the way of a liberal constitutional
development in Russia. Historian Rolf Torstendahl thus maintains that
the first Russian revolution basically constituted of a package of
reforms, codified in the so-called October Manifesto 1905 that the Tsar
undertook in his established position as an autocrat. Furthermore, it
left basic autocratic constitutional and institutional conditions
untouched.22 Nicholas reign lasted longer than Abdul Hamids and did
not end until February 1917 when he, in an era of a more thorough
revolutionary upheaval, was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother.
However, Grand Duke Mikhail declined to accept the throne.
What kind of insights are there to be extracted from a comparison
between the upheavals of the Ottoman and Russian empires in the first
20
Mansel, Philip, Constantinople: City of the Worlds Desire, 14531924, London:
Penguin 1997, p. 355.
21
Torstendahl, Rolf, A Good Beginning that Came to Nothing. Democratic
Culture in Russia, 19051907. The System of Government in Russia and Europe in
19051907, in Johansson, Kenneth & Lindstedt Cronberg, Marie (eds), Vnskap ver
grnser. En festskrift till Eva sterberg, Lund: Studentlitteratur 2007, p. 287.
22
Selunskaya, Natalia & Torstendahl, Rolf, Zarozhdenie demokraticheskoi kultury.
Rossiya v nachale XX veka, Moscow: ROSSPEN 2005, pp. 336.
decade of the 20th century? They have often been denoted as political
revolutions, but it is doubtful whether they really live up to this denom-
ination. To be sure, unlike the Russian Tsar, the Ottoman Sultan was
dethroned as an extension of the event of 1908, but it may be more
appropriate to describe it as a coup dtat or a Putsch by the Young
Turks, at least if we want to earmark the revolution concept for amore
radical and deep-seated political change, including the introduction of
new political institutions and a new set of legitimating ideas. Only if we
adhere to a more functional definition of a revolution, like historian
Crane Brinton in his classical The Anatomy of Revolution, can we pos-
sibly connect the Ottoman and Russian upheavals with a revolution
that ends the worst abuses, the worst inefficiencies of the old regime,
with the result that [t]he machinery of government works more
smoothly after than immediately before the revolution.23
As in Russia, the upheaval was a result of a process in which the
powers brought down on themselves heavy criticism for the way they
ruled their state. At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia as well as
the Ottoman state entered a period of political instability marked by a
state financial crisis and foreign threats. Both rulers stood out as sick
men to their many critics, not least in relationship to the Europe that
both countries were considered to be an integrated if yet peripheral
part of. The grievances concerned internal problems of various kinds,
related to the lack of modernisation and the incapacity to deal with the
minorities, but also the weakness of the state in relationship to the
Great Powers that expressed itself in military defeats, such as Russias
highly unsuccessful war with Japan in 19041905. In both cases, griev-
ances interacted with nationalist aspirations from minorities within
the Empire.
Naturally, there were also differences between the two processes,
some of whom might be helpful in counting for the differences between
the long-terms outcomes of the two upheavals. These outcomes include
the defeat of both the Ottoman and the Russian Empire in the First
World War, which ended their existence. However, their successor
states, Turkey and the Soviet Union, met different fates. While in
Turkey the defeat prompted the next generation of reformist leaders,
notably Kemal Atatrk, to embrace the concept of a modernized,
23
Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution, New York: Vintage Books 1965
(1938), p. 239.
ost-imperial state, patterned on European nation-states, Russia was

p
revived as the Soviet Union, a revolutionary state and empire that
would face decades of civil war, terror and international conflicts.
Can these different outcomes be traced in the Ottoman and Russian
revolutions of the early 20th century?
In 19081909, due to a rapidly deteriorating internal situation, but
also to a skilful and massive propaganda of the Young Turks, the
Ottoman Sultan confronted widespread opposition, held togetherbythe
common goal to put an end to autocracy. The Young Turks primarily
wanted to attain constitutionalism, the European idea that the a uthority
of government derives not from autocratic rule but from fundamental
law. In his study of the Young Turks in power, historian Feroz Ahmad
argues that all conflicting interests were put aside in favour of a united
front against the unconstitutional Hamidian regime.24 It seems reason-
able to argue that this support gained some strength by the fact that the
Young Turks political programme, focusing on the unity, survival and
development of the Ottoman state, did not radically diverge from the
programme that the Sultan had put forward. Ahmad agrees that the
Young Turks support of the existing order and state won for them the
tacit support of the bureaucracy and the aquiescence of many, other-
wise hostile, elements.25 This may explain why scholars are very reluc-
tant to attribute the late Ottoman Empire the existence of a civil society
functioning independently, outside the realm of the state apparatus.26
On the contrary, the 1905 opponents of the Russian Tsar represented
various categories and interests, reaching from moderate reformist and
empire-saving to socialist and revolutionary ideas. All of them wanted
to get rid of autocracy, but only the liberal movement wanted a peace-
ful transition to a constitutional and parliamentary rule with a Russian
monarch at the head of the state. For the advocates of revolutionary
ideas, this was a totally unsufficient political change, and the pro-
gramme of the October Manifesto did not in any way correspond to
their objectives. It would take another full decade, and a full societal
disintegration of Russia caused by the catastrophe of the First World
War, to unite large, sufficiently powerful Russian groups against the
24
Ahmad, Feroz, The Young Turks. The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish
Politics, 19081914, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1969, p. 157.
25
Ahmad 1969, p. 165.
26
Mardin, Serif, Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 11, no. 3, 1969, pp. 25881.
old and weakened Tsarist regime. This plurality of ideas, opinions and
opposition to state power may explain why scholars of revolutionary
Russia more often have related the changes to the embryo of a civil
society.27
The other crucial difference is connected to military force. While the
Young Turks were bound by close ties to the Ottoman army and were
able to turn considerable parts of these forces against the Sultan, the
Russian demonstrators could not, unlike in 1917, count on any sub-
stantial support from soldiers and sailors. The incident when the
battleship Potemkin was taken over by its crew who entered into revo-
lutionary service, made famous by Sergei Eisensteins film, was an
exception to the general pattern of 1905 that military troops turned
against the insurgents.
A Nationalist Revolution?
There is one way of saving the Young Turk takeover as a revolution-

ary process. It is possible to define it as a revolution of expectations,
or a revolution that Alexis de Tocqueville once described as events
that unfold when a bad government in vain tries to reform itself.
Tocqueville strongly underlines the subjective dimensions, or rather
the importance of collective notions, when he maintains that the evil
that one patiently stands as long as it seems inevitable, suddenly
becomes intolerable as soon as one realises that it can be avoided.28
Several historiographers stress that the Young Turks young, patriotic
and disciplined were successful in depicting themselves as carriers
of new and reinvigorating political ideas, completely contrary to the
old rulers, although as argued above their political ambitions in fact
differed little from the Sultans. Thus, it was a time of regeneration,
when the millennium had come, the tension was over, and the
empire would in fact be preserved.29 Another historiographer has
talked about a turnaround in the influence of ideological currents in
the empire.30 It was a time of imagined communities, and of we
27
Cf. Figes, Orlando, A Peoples Tragedy. The Russian Revolution, 18911924,
Harmondsworth: Penguin 1997, pp. 1628.
28
de Tocqueville, Alexis, LAncien Rgime et la Rvolution, Paris: Michel Lvy Frres
1856, p. 292.
29
Shaw & Shaw 1997, p. 273.
30
Zrcher 1993, p. 131.
versus they. In this spirit some scholars, especially those who have
focused on the Ottoman Armenians tragic fate from 1915, have sug-
gested that the assumption of power of the Young Turks can be com-
pared to a nationalist revolution.31
A problem was that the expectations of various collectives within the
Ottoman Empire were different. To a great extent, regions and religious
and ethnonational groups had for centuries lived separately in a system
of organised decentralisation, developing their own world-views and
cultures in relative isolation. It has been argued that not even the Young
Turks own expectations were the same, since, obviously, the desirable
unity and survival can be attained in several ways. Lewis has detected
two basic and contradictory ideological and political tendencies in
Young Turk thinking from the start: a liberal one, favouring decentrali-
sation and autonomous rights for religious and national minorities,
and a nationalist tendency, underlining the need for central authority
and Turkish domination in the Ottoman Empire. As late as 1911, a
liberal group within the ranks, calling itself the New Party, demon-
strated dissatisfaction with the democratic and constitutional develop-
ment.32 The observation is in agreement with scholarly analyses that
the first two years after the overthrow of the Sultan was a period of
constitutional democracy, in which various political parties, among the
the Committee of Union and Progress, worked within the framework
of the Constitution. Legislative actions were taken in Parliament to
introduce individual rights. Political life accelerated in a way not unu-
sual to a society that considers itself newborn: in a rush to make
amends for the years lost by the Hamidian generation, the Young Turks
experimented with virtually every sphere of life.33
However, there was also another tendency that gradually appeared
after the overthrow of the Sultan, a tendency towards growing central-
ism and nationalism that especially alarmed minority groups within
31
See for example Melson, Robert, Revolution and Genocide. On the Origins of
the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, Chicago & London: The University of
Chicago Press 1992, ch. 5; Weitz, Eric, A Century of Genocide. Utopias of Race and
Nation, Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press 2003, pp. 1ff.; Kramer, Alan,
Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War, Oxford &
New York: Oxford University Press 2007; Kiernan, Ben, Blood and Soil, A World History
of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, New Haven & London: Yale
University Press 2007, pp. 395407.
32
Lewis 2002, pp. 213, 220.
33
Ahmad 1993, p. 31.
the Empire. Political life was militarised and brutalised. The scholarly
literature convincingly demonstrates that Young Turk rule turned
repressive and centralist. Turkish nationalist ideas became a political
weapon used more frequently in an official endeavour to assimilate
some and dissimilate others. Obviously, from the perspective of the
Young Turks, internal unity could also be and was in fact by some
members strengthened by adhering to traditional ideas such as
Ottomanism and Islamism that emphasised the individuals basic
affiliation to a supranational imperial or religious community and
primary loyalty to the Sultan, but Turkishness seems to have gained
ground as a primary ideological instrument for unity and stability.
The nationalist development followed a well-known pattern: from a
few intellectuals cultural and populist work with linguistic and histori-
cal dimensions, glorifying an eternal Anatolian peasant living in the
real Turkish homeland, to the introduction of Turkism as a secular and
statist political programme, although hidden behind or blurred with a
traditional Ottomanism. Historian Erik Zrcher argues that these two
nationalist ideas, one of them cultural, retrospective and populist, the
other political, prospective and expansionist, did not succeed each
other chronologically but were both simultaneously alive throughout
the Ottoman period.34 Nevertheless, in the new Young Turk statist
system of active government intervention, a politics of Turkification
meant that the Turkish language and history was actively promoted
in schools and in society. Journals and associations with a specific
Turkish character appeared en masse. Pan-Turanian ideas of gather-
ing the Turkish-speaking peoples all over Asia and Eastern Europe
in a homogeneous community gathered strength. In the words of the
Turkish historian Sina Akin, the Committee of Union and Progress
gradually developed its own consciousness of being the political
organization of Turkism.35
Some scholars depict these political strategies as a response to an
increased violence from Ottoman minorities and neighboring powers;
the more the Ottoman Empire dwindled, the more expansionist was
the nationalist rhetorics of ideologists such as Ziya Gkalp, who
became a leading member of the Committee of Unity and Progress in
Zrcher 1993, p. 1345.

34
Akin, Sina, Turkey from Empire to Revolutionary Republic. The Emergence of the
35
Turkish Nation from 1789 to Present, London: Hurst & Company 2007, p. 84.
1911. One argument in this line is indeed very pragmatic: Since the
Turks had now become the numerically most important element in
the Empire more emphasis had to be given to nationalism.36
Others tend to emphasise the internal roots of the outbreak of
Turkish nationalism, although very few leave the changing interna-
tional situation totally out of consideration. With a Marxist vocabulary
that is not so common in current historiography, this nationalism
stands out as the ideal self-expression of a Turkish bourgeoisie of a
constitutional state, taking over after the revolution that ended the
Sultans feudal-theocratic empire. A more generally modernist inter-
pretation takes the spread of education and literacy and the socialisa-
tion in schools as the starting point to explain the raise in ethnonational
consciousness among Turks, as well as other Ottoman groups. Other
scholars relate the development either to the growing preoccupation
with questions of religious and ethnic identity already mentioned, or to
nation-building and a strict Realpolitik. This means that Turk was
associated not primarily with ethnicity and culture, but with state
power and modernity:
The new government decided that the survival of the state and the
Ottoman Empire and the fate of the ethnic Turks called for the creation
of a Turkish core, that is, a group identified with Turkishness, regardless
of ethnic origin, to make up the backbone of the state.37
Historian David Kushner has pointed out that this Turkish nationalism
should be understood partly in the light of an international intellectual
process, partly as a response to domestic interests to define Turkishness
in terms of history, race, territory and language, and to essentially stress
the Turks inborn capacity to become civilized and to civilize others.38
This process, Kushner maintains, started already in the decades that
preceded the Young Turk era and thus provided the background for
a relatively quick transformation of the Turks from imperial rulers,
loyal primarily to Islam and to the Ottoman dynasty and state, into
ardent nationalists.39
36
Ahmad 1969, p. 154.
37
Karpat 2001, p. 349. See also lker, Erol, Contextualising Turkification: Nation-
Building in the Late Ottoman Empire, 19081918, Nations and Nationalism, vol. 11,
no. 4, 2005, pp. 6136.
38
Kushner, David, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 19761908, London: Frank Cass
1977, pp. 2931.
39
Kushner 1977, p. ix.
This rise of a Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk governmentera,

or at least a shift in the dominant Ottoman ideology from Ottomanism
and Islamism to nationalism, is widely accepted among historians. The
same goes for the inference that this Turkish nationalism developed
later than corresponding nationalistic ideas and movements among
Ottoman minorities such as the Armenians and the Greeks. It is a rea-
sonable premise that these different intellectual construction works
influenced each other. However, it is as reasonable to conclude that the
political strength in the construction of Turk in the Young Turk era
put the minorities in a problematic situation, compared to the previous
situation when multiethnic Ottomanism and pan-Islamism allowed
them to exist as separate communities in the Ottoman Empire.
The situation surely became even more serious, and the ethnic core
of the nationalist ideas more pronounced, when the Young Turks
Ottoman state stumbled into unwelcome wars in which these numeri-
cally inferior minorities, in particular the non-Muslim communities,
were drawn in by means of their preconceived antagonism to the
Turkish rulers of the Empire. Unreliable non-Turks were expelled,
deported and in other ways separated from the Empire as the war-
driven process of disintegration went on, while the Young Turk leaders
began to perceive the Turks as a reliable Anatolian core of the
Empire.40 Even worse, non-Turks were perceived as impossible to live
side-by-side with, and as a threat to the very survival of the Empire.41
The conflict level rose further by the large number of Turkish refugees
from the Balkans who flooded the Ottoman cities.
It would, however, be wrong to describe this intensification of the
internal conflict level in the Ottoman Empire solely as a reactive pro-
cess. It goes without saying than the Young Turks also had objectives
that they wanted to achieve by means of war, and that these objectives
were related to an expansionist Turkish nationalism. Historian Alan
Kramer emphasised these aggressive, expansionist objectives of the
Young Turks when he argues that the new Ottoman rulers regarded
war as the opportunity to enhance their domination within the empire,
accelerate the pace of Turkification under way since their revolution in
1908, redraw the ethnic map and attain the nationalist utopia of an
Karpat 2001, p. 369.

40
Akam, Taner, A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of
41
Turkish Responsibility, New York: Metropolitan Books 2006, p. 8.

ethnically pure Turkish state.42 In the same context, Bernard Lewis

feeds back to an earlier theme in this article:
In 1914 Turkey found itself as war with two great allies against Russia, the
imperial power that ruled over most of the Turkic lands and peoples. For
the first time, there seemed a serious possibility of achieving the pan-
Turkish dream.43
In these respects, the outbreak of war radically changed the situation in
the Ottoman Empire. Thus, it would not be entirely wrong to describe
the formation of a Young Turk military dictatorship in January 1913 as
a revolution. What was left of constitutional rule disappeared. What
the Turkish scholar Erol lker somewhat euphemistically defines as a
demographic and territorial nationalisation, but in reality was mass
repression and terror, followed in its track.44 In Russia, the tracks were
similar, but also different. Mass violence, terror and civil war accompa-
nied world war and revolution. However, unlike in the nationalist
Ottoman Empire of the late Young Turks, communism set the rules.
42
Kramer 2007, p. 144.
43
Lewis, Bernard, The Shaping of the Modern Middle East, New York & Oxford:
Oxford University Press 1994, p. 84.
44
lker 2005, p. 622.
The Ottoman Empire between successors:
thinking from 1821 to 1922
Christine Philliou
I.Introduction
In the past twenty years, mention of the Ottoman past has entered the
fray of current events and popular discussions about history rather
more than in the several decades before. Unfortunately, the occasion
for this renewed relevance of Ottoman history has been the ethnic vio-
lence and foreign, often United States, military intervention in the
Balkans and the Middle Eastindeed a kind of modern rendition of
the nineteenth-century Eastern Question. In such discussions people
often search for the origin of current problems in the first round of the
Eastern Questionthe era of transition between the Ottoman and
post-Ottoman spaces, which, in this schema, is the First World War
broadly speakingin fact from the Balkan Wars of 191213 through
the Treaty of Lausanne in 1922, or most broadly speaking, from the
Congress of Berlin in 1878 to the same endpoint in 1922. Indeed if we
take that frame in and of itself, the Balkans and the Middle East are
the regions that emerged out of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire,
leaving what is now Turkey the rump state, the final successor that
would not have been if not for the Mustafa Kemal-led Turkish national
movement.1
In popular narratives there are both distinctions and parallels
between the formation of the Balkans and the Middle East out of the
Ottoman Empire. On one level, Balkan states emerged piecemeal as
independent entities on the Great Power negotiating table, out of the
coincidence between particular international and geopolitical con-
junctions and local, often apparently ethnic or sectarian conflicts (the
Bulgarian Horrors; the Ilinden Uprising, etc.). The states of the Middle
East took shape within a shorter period and for the most part emerged
1
See von Hagen, Mark and Karen Barkey, eds., After Empire: Multi-ethnic Societies
and Nation-building: The Soviet Union and Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires
(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1997).
30 christine philliou
from Ottoman sovereignty not as independent states but as British or

French Mandate authorities out of the negotiations surrounding the
Treaty of Versailles. There is good reason that this has become the pop-
ular conception of the transition from Ottoman to post-Ottoman
space, or, less politely, of the final disintegration of the Ottoman Empire,
and we continue to see the legacies of this period, not simply in the
ethnic violence that has gone on there recently but in the incidence of
foreign intervention and occupation that continues there.
On another level, in scholarship on the formation of the Balkans and
the Middle East the two are analysed as constructs formed in the
European imagination out of this transition from Ottoman to post-
Ottoman space. Edward Said opened this discussion regarding the
Orient and Maria Todorova has examined analogous processes of
imagination and discourse with regard to the Balkans.2 Both areas
were/are perceived by outsiders in the West as backward and stagnant,
in part, as the narrative goes, thanks to centuries of Ottoman rule, and
both Said and Todorova make fascinating connections between the
production of knowledge and discourse and the formulation of politi-
cal policies toward the two regions in the twentieth century and
beyond.
The work of Said and Todorova, and indeed the entire historiogra-
phies they have generated, complicate and question modern narratives
and political projects regarding the Middle East and Balkans, but in
doing so reinforce the Middle East and Balkans focus for our atten-
tions. This Balkans-Middle East axis has become the natural delinea-
tion in the popularly remembered Ottoman Empirewith the Balkans
being characteristically Slavic and Christian and the Middle East char-
acteristically Arab and Muslimwhether it be to criticize or uphold
the power relations that created these regions.3 I open with this Balkans-
Middle East axis not in the hopes of offering new insights on the popu-
lar history nor on the voluminous and excellent scholarship that has
been published regarding these events and regions. Rather, I refer to
this popular frame for conceptualizing the post-Ottoman space so as to
contrast it with the one that we, as scholars focusing on the Ottoman
2
See Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); and Todorova,
Maria, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
3
This is not to deny that there are important populations of non-Slavs and non-
Christians in the Balkans or of non-Arabs and non-Muslims in the Middle East,
nor that there are many scholars working on the history and experiences of these pop-
ulations, but only to delineate the popular understandings of the respective regions.
the ottoman empire between successors31
Empire, might discussthe longer-term frame of the final long cen-

tury of the Ottoman Empires existence. In that frame, the story is much
more complicated than the binaries between Balkans and Middle East,
Slav and Arab, or Muslim and Christian. It includes the Serbian revolu-
tion of 1804, the Greek Revolution of the 1820s, the state-building
projects of Mehmet Ali and his descendents in Egypt, the British pres-
ence in Egypt as of 1881, the sectarian violence and political autonomy
of Mt. Lebanon from the 1860s, and of course the tangled trajectories
of Ottoman governance and projects for reform, renewal, and reinte-
gration that intersect with all of these storiesprojects and ideologies
from the Tanzimat to Ottomanism, Arabism, Islamism, and Turkism,
for instance.
Turkey and Greece have, in this popular Balkans-Middle East
schema, become the orphans of the post-Ottoman spaceGreece is an
uncomfortable fit in the Balkans (Southeastern Europe is a term that is
sometimes used as an alternative and goes further to include Greece),
and Turkey more and more an uncomfortable fit in the Middle East as
its bid to join the EU gains currency. Greece was not a creation of the
Congress of Berlin nor of the Balkan Wars; and Turkey was not merely
the outcome of Great Power border-making negotiations as were many
states of the Middle East. Perhaps because of this outlier status, while
the Ottoman legacy of the Balkans and the Middle East has been dis-
cussed predominantly in the spheres of history, political science, and
journalistic accounts, Greece and Turkey have seen expressions of this
legacy in national literature. In a past generation the novels of Nikos
Kazantzakis got at the conflicted feelings toward the Ottoman legacy
in Greece without naming it as such, just as in some ways the novels
of Orhan Pamuk describe the indescribably conflicting feelings among
many Turks for the Ottoman past and modern present. And yet
both are seen as depicting a uniquely Greek, or Turkish, experience,
not as speaking about more universal experiences of a post-Ottoman
space.
I would like to argue here that by shifting from the Balkans-Middle
East axis to the historical Greece-Turkey axis we could open broader
terms for our discussion of the post-Ottoman space.4 I will first offer
4
Alternatively we could discuss a Rumeli-Anadolu axis, which would be truer to
an Ottoman imperial reality, although for our purposes this would not be as productive
as it would not bring us into the national, post-Ottoman space. Neither would it allow
us to bring out the oppositions that helped precipitate the formation of the categories
several reasons why this shift could be fruitful for discussions of reli-
gion, ethnicity, and contested nationhood in the post-Ottoman space.
Second, given this shift of axis, I will discuss some of the dynamics of
the Greek War of Independence of the 1820s in light of the Turkish
War of Independence a century later. My hope is to add a dimension to
our discussion by reminding us that, in addition to the fascinating
cases of particular nation-states in the process of formation and the
master narrative of imperial reforms in the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, there were also multiple and persistently imperial pro-
cesses to be examined. I will argue that the Greek and Turkish Wars of
Independence, despite their extreme differences, contain important
isomorphisms as well as causal connections that can lead to new
insights on the creation of a post-Ottoman space in general.
II. The Case for the Greece-Turkey Axis
There are several reasons why the Greece-Turkey axis is a compelling

one for our discussions.5 These can be divided into reasons that have to
do with periodization, interrelationships between multiple categories
of religious, ethnic, and political belonging, and the juxtaposition
between international/geopolitical history and Ottoman imperial his-
tory throughout the long nineteenth century. Throughout we may keep
in mind that the very transition from Ottoman to post-Ottoman began
with the establishment of the Greek Kingdom under Great Power pro-
tection in 1830, almost a decade after the initiation of hostilities
between Greek partisans and the Ottoman state. The axis that connects
Greece as the first nominally independent successor-state based on a
national principle, and Turkey as the last independent successor-state,
of the Greek, and to a greater extent the Turkish nation, as Rumeli and Anadolu were
not opposed to each other, but together constituted the economic and demographic
core of the Ottoman imperial system for the bulk of its existence.
5
Within the Greek national frame, the period from 1821 to 1922 is utterly conven-
tional, although not for the reasons I am putting forward for this same periodization.
In the Greek frame, this century was characterized by the national struggle to unify
Greek populations in Greece with those under Ottoman rule, either by territorial
expansion to encompass the areas of Greek habitation, or ultimately, by forcibly reset-
tling Greeks under Ottoman rule within the confines of the Greek Kingdom. The
Megali Idea, shorthand for this irredentist project, was first formally espoused by
Ioannis Kolettis in the Greek parliament of 1844, was decisive for Greek policy toward
Ottoman lands. While the Greece-Turkey axis concept I am arguing for coincides
with this periodization, I intend a broader and non-national formulation of the pro-
cesses underway therein.
also based on a national principle,6 demonstrates the arc that the two
cases representof the creation of a post-Ottoman space from incep-
tion to completion.
A Greece-Turkey axis thus broadens the chronological limits of our
discussion: from the 18781922 period that focuses on the Balkans and
Middle East, to the century between 1821 and 1922.7 The Balkans-
Middle East frame would allow us to examine only the Hamidian and
CUP regimes in the few decades before World War Oneundoubtedly
this was a crucial era for the Ottoman system and indeed the interna-
tional system. But, broadening to the Greece-Turkey axis would force
us to consider other levels of history and governance as well: not
only the entire experiment with Ottoman state renewal and the
international context of the Napoleonic Wars (as we would also
consider the Nizam- Cedid which in many ways set up the circum-
stances of the Greek Revolution) from the Nizam- Cedid through the
crisis and reconstitution of imperial governance in the 1820s, the
first round of official reforms after 1839, the Crimean War, the second
round of reforms post-1856, the Young Ottoman movement, the first
experiment with constitutionalism and its interruption with the
ascendancy of Sultan Abdlhamit II, and of course the 1908 Revolution
and the vicissitudes of the Second Constitutional regime, leading
into World War One. Through the national lens, the Greece-Turkey
axis would allow a broad comparative frame in which to discuss the
formation of all Ottoman successor-states, from Greece through
thoseof the Balkans and Middle East as they took shape, and finally
to Turkey.
6
I am not considering phenomena such as Israel/Palestine as Ottoman successor-
states by dint of the fact that the area was under British Mandate immediately following
Ottoman rule.
7
The Serbian Revolution of 1804 is often coupled with the Greek Revolution of
1821 and the two are deemed to have initiated national revolutions in the Balkans/
Southeast Europe. The Serbian Revolution was localized in the sense that Serbs were
concentrated in particular provinces of Ottoman domains, and in the sense that
Serbian elites remained in those provinces. While the goal of the Serbian revolution
can be debated (whether independence was the goal or merely the alleviation of
Janissary rule in the area), and while in some ways it emboldened those who would
carry out the Greek insurrections, the effects on the imperial system were not as wide-
spread as would be those in the wake of the Greek insurrections. Finally, as I will dis-
cuss below, the Turkish case provides a useful counterpoint, and is entangled with the
Greek case in a way that the Serbian case was not. For the Serbian and Greek
Revolutions, see Jelavich, Charles and Barbara, Establishment of the Balkan National
States, 18041920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986).
Furthermore, because the Greek Kingdom was the first nominally

independent Ottoman successor-state, that statewhich staked a
claim on a large portion of Ottoman subject populations and terri-
torycoexisted with the Ottoman Empire for the longest period. As
insignificant as the Greek Kingdom was to Great Power politics for
much of the nineteenth century, it came to play a disproportionately
important role in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Communities
of Orthodox Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire numbering in
the millions were claimed as part of Greeces irredentist project
indeed nationalism gone wild, or nationalism at its most robustto
recapture the land and redeem the populations that had been histori-
cally Greek.8 Finally, Greek national armies occupied, first coastal
Anatolia, then much of inland Anatolia in 19191920, precipitating the
formation of a Turkish national resistance more than did the occupa-
tion by European Great Power states of other Ottoman territories.9
It would not be a stretch to say that the Turkish nation developed
against the Greek nation in this final phase of Ottoman history.
Shifting to this Greece-Turkey axis would also force us to consider
the structural factors as well as the many contingencies involved in the
very formation and politicization of ethnic categories out of religious
ones. There were multiple categories of belonging that varied across
time and space in the Ottoman systemamong these categories, that
of Orthodox Christian was uniquely important, and that of Greek-
speaking emerged as a more defining category in the later eighteenth
century, for instance. This un-mixing of religious categories into eth-
nic categories wouldin some interesting waysbe echoed in the
sphere of Islam at the close of the nineteenth century. Expanding to
the Greece-Turkey axis would foster a comparative discussion about
the many-tiered process of transformation from religion to ethnicity
in the case of both Orthodox Christianity and Islam, thereby linking
the master narrative of imperial modernization with the marginalized
8
Skopetea, Elle, To Protypo Vasileio kai He Megali Idea: Opseis tou Ethnikou provli-
matos sten Hellada, 18301880 (Athens: Ekdoseis Polytypo, 1988); Frangoudaki, Anna
and Caglar Keyder, eds. Ways to Modernity in Greece and Turkey: Encounters with
Europe, 18501950 (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007); Anagnastopoulou, Sia, The Passage
from the Ottoman Empire to the Nation-States: A Long and Difficult Process: The Greek
Case (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2004).
9
Mustafa Kemals assignment to Anatolia was followed almost immediately by an
event that, more than any other, stimulated the Turkish War for Independence: the
Greek invasion of Anatolia. Shaw, Stanford, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern
Turkey, vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976) p. 342.
narratives of national movements and territorial devolution for the

final Ottoman century.10
Finally, the Greece-Turkey axis expands the terms of discussions
about geopolitical factors and Great Power involvement in the Ottoman
Empire, issues which were undoubtedly decisive for the Balkans-
Middle East axis and the chain of events between 1878 and 1922. It was
with the Greek Revolution that the Great Powers first became collec-
tively involved in the establishment of successor-states and the con-
comitant tasks of border-drawing, state building, and the resolution of
disputes about land and populations caught between Ottoman and
post-Ottoman territories. Certainly, one or another Great Power had
sparred with Ottoman armies in the eighteenth century, and at times
two had allied against the Ottomans (recall the Russo-Austrian-
Ottoman war of the 1780s). Napoleons invasion of Egypt had provoked
an Anglo-Russian-Ottoman naval alliance. The Serbian Revolution
and Ottoman court factions had been thoroughly entangled with the
trajectories of the Napoleonic Wars and therefore with Great Power
rivalries and alliances. But it was the Conference of London, called in
the late 1820s to resolve the Greek Question, and shortly after it the
series of meetings regarding the Egyptian Question, that signaled a
new level of engagement between Ottoman governance and the emer-
gent empires of Britain, France, and Russia. It was now to be decided in
the arena of multi-state diplomacy which movement for secession from
Ottoman domains merited political independence and which did
notGreece, incidentally, merited political independence, while Egypt
and Serbia did not.11 And it was this engagement, or more accurately
enmeshment, that would continue to characterize Ottoman govern-
ance, and Ottoman-European encounters, through the establishment
of the Turkish Republic out of the Treaty of Lausanne in 19223.
With these justifications in mind for a Greece-Turkey axis, I would
like to suggest a preliminary range of issues and processes that come to
the fore as we connect and compare the Greek War of Independence of
10
Niyazi Berkes, for instance, in his still-classic The Development of Secularism in
Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), glides through the first half of the
nineteenth century and the Ottoman experiments with reform/modernization therein,
without so much as a mention of the Greek War of Independence or its possible effects
on the core story of Ottoman-cum-Turkish modernization.
11
See David Urquharts pamphlet, The Sultan Mahmoud and Mehemet Ali Pasha
(London: J. Ridgeway, 1835) for a fascinating comparative discussion of the Greek and
Egyptian Questions from a somewhat idiosyncratic British perspective.
the 1820s with the Turkish War of Independence in the 1920s. I hope
to convey some of the ways they were both analogous (or were
constructed in retrospect to fit a common template of revolution) and
were connected through a very long and complex matrix of historical-
imperial relationships.
III. Revolutions that Resonatefrom the 1820s to the 1920s
As of 1821, when the Greek insurrections began, categories of linguis-

tic/ethnic belonging and religious confession were blurred on a num-
ber of levels from local to regional, imperial, and even international
(if we consider the involvement of Greek-speakers and/or Orthodox
Christians living outside Ottoman domains, in the Russian and
Austrian Empires, for instance). On the local level, ethnic differentia-
tions in this pre-national era did exist. Indeed in the kad court records
of eighteenth-century Selanik one does see references (although not
consistently) to the taife of Bulgars, Arnavuts, and Sirps.12 But the
political significance of these categories beyond the local was unclear
it seems that before 1821, if one had aspirations for a career within the
Ottoman system (and one wanted to remain Christian and not convert
to Islam) one would have suppress such non-Greek regional or linguis-
tic origins in order to identify as Greek. Even this move is difficult for
us to comprehendas there was no other word aside from Rum
(Gr. Romios) to denote someone who was both Orthodox Christian
and a Greek speaker. The resulting ambiguity meant that, on the one
hand all non-Greek-speakers were administered under the umbrella of
the Rum millet, and on the other those who were Greek speakers seem
to have been differentiated from non-Greek speakersin the way that
the taife of Bulgars or Arnavuts could beonly where Greek-speakers
were a minority.13 Still, this p rocess of hellenization entailed the
12
My thanks to Professor Rositsa Gradeva for pointing this out to me. See also
Konortas, Paraskevas, From taife to millet: Ottoman terms for the Ottoman Greek
Orthodox community, in C. Issawi and D. Gondicas, eds. Ottoman Greeks in the Age of
Nationalism: Politics, Economy, and Society in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton NJ:
Darwin Press, 1999).
13
This is perhaps analogous to the way in which there was no Muslim millet in the
Ottoman administrative system. Instead, Muslims were the default subject category for
much of the empires history. In a related way, there was no Greek taife, since perhaps
to be Greek-speaking was the default category for the Rum millet as a whole in the
eighteenth century.
adoption of a specific set of behaviors and markers that seemed to be

understood by the aspired and the already initiated alike: it involved,
for instance, changing ones name and acquiring training in the Holy
Letters (Gr. Hiera Grammata) and eventually an official position
analogous, perhaps, to Muslims of humble origins who became
Ottoman through a combination of religious and bureaucratic train-
ing, gaining proficiency in the Three languages, (T. Elsine-i Selase) of
Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish.
It seems that in the course of the eighteenth century primacy of
Greek language and cultural identity over other Orthodox Christian
linguistic/regional groups became institutionally more pronounced.
The ecclesiastical status of Pec and Ohrid, which had been Slavic in
character, was reduced from that of Patriarchate to episcopal see by
Sultan Mustafa in 1767, a move which signaled their being subsumed
into the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. The Orthodox Church
gained more ground regarding privileges in the Christian Holy Sites of
Palestine over those of the Latin Catholic and Armenian claimants, an
issue which would come back to haunt all parties on the eve of the
Crimean War. All the while in the eighteenth century, the Greek-
identified Phanariot elite expanded and achieved ascendancy in many
sectors of Ottoman governance, and the proverbial conquering Balkan
Orthodox merchant broadened his field of influence.14
It was the outbreak of Greek insurrections in 1821 that catalyzed
manifold processes of differentiation within the Orthodox Christian,
or Rum millet.15 On the imperial level, PhanariotsGreek-identified
by birth or training who had facilitated the work of Ottoman for-
eign relations and provincial administration across a wide swath of
14
See Philliou, Christine, Communities on the verge: Unraveling the Phanariot
ascendancy in Ottoman governance, Comparative Studies in Society and History
Vol. 51, No. 1 (Jan. 2009): 151181; for Balkan Orthodox merchants see Traian
Stoianovich, The conquering Balkan Orthodox merchant, in Economies and Societies:
traders, Towns, and Households, Vol. 2 of Between East and West: The Balkan and
Mediterranean Worlds (New Rochelle, NY: 1992).
15
Hakan Erdem goes so far as to argue that the formation of a Turkish ethnic cate-
gory emerged at this timein the 1820sin the context of recruitment for the
Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad (Asakir-e Mansure), the military formation that
replaced the Janissary Corps after the latters abolishment in 1826. See Erdem, Hakan,
Recruitment for the Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad, in Israel Gershoni et al, eds.
Histories of the Modern Middle East: New Directions (Boulder, CO: Lynne Riner
Publishers, 2002): 189207. Furthermore, the Greek Revolution was a precipitating
event in the 1826 abolishment of the Janissary Corps.
territorywere officially removed from their positions of power.16

Association with Phanariots was, at least temporarily in the 1820s, a
liability, and many who had become acculturated from Bulgarian or
Romanian origins before the revolts turned back to their ethnic-
linguistic origins for survival. This often meant returning to (or remain-
ing in) ones provincial origins, re-Romanianizing or re-Slavicizing
ones name, marrying back into a non-Greek-identified family, or gen-
erally laying low in the provinces. Muslims came to replace Greek-
identified Phanariots in the Translation Office, which itself became a
nucleus for new generations of reformers and Young Ottomans in the
1860s. Self-proclaimed indigenous Wallachians and Moldavians came
to replace Greek-identified Phanariots in the offices of Voyvoda/
Hospodar of those Danubian Principalities, as new constellations of
power involving Russia and ultimately French influence in the
Romanian lands were established. I argue that the results of the Greek
War of Independence were as disruptive to the old modus vivendi of
Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman system as the destruction of the
Janissary Corps was for the imperial system as a whole.17
The multiple power vacuums opened up by the Greek insurrections
also meant an end to some of the intricate trading relationships in
Rumeli. One example of this has to do with the local producers of dairy
and meat products in Rumeli, who were often Bulgarian-speaking, had
been supplying several tiers of merchants for regional and imperial
trade. Those merchants that were traveling back and forth to Istanbul
were often the Hellenized Bulgarians or born Greek-speakers, if they
were not Muslim merchants with official state licenses to engage in the
state provisioning trade. This apparatus collapsed in the 1820s, and
after that period non-hellenized Bulgarian speakers stepped into the
shoes of the merchants conducting the Istanbul trade, and soon a criti-
cal mass took up residence in Istanbul, creating the first Bulgarian
16
See Philliou, Christine, Ottoman Legacies in the Middle East and Balkans:
Biography of an Empire (forthcoming book), Chapters Two and Three.
17
The 1826 Auspicious Event is widely considered the sine qua non of modernizing
reforms for the Ottoman Empire. See, for instance, Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of
Secularism in Turkey; Mardin, Serif, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in
the Modernization of Turkish Political Thought (Princeton NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1962); Davison, Roderic, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 18561876 (Princeton
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963); Findley, Carter, Bureaucratic Reform in the
Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 17891922 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1980).
community in the capital, centered around Balkapan Han on the Bay

of the Golden Horn. And it was out of this community that the first
Bulgarian-language newspapers were printed, and the demands for a
Bulgarian-speaking parish, church, and priest were first made. While
this should not be elided smoothly with the subsequent Bulgarian
national movement, it does demonstrate the kinds of changes that were
set in motion with the interruption of trade relationships and religious-
ethnic categories stemming from the Greek insurrections.18
And there was the establishment of the Greek Kingdom itself, where
the many repercussions of secession from the Ottoman imperium and
the Orthodox Patriarchate were being worked out. An independent
state under European tutelage and a Bavarian King for the first three
decades of its political existence, by the 1870s Greek politics were
plagued by the dilemma over whether to dedicate resources to develop
a small Greece or to the territorial expansion through military action
of an economically poor Greece. With this Greece-Turkey axis, that is,
the story of the Greek Kingdom would always be split with the story of
the Ottoman Empire, containing as it did so many potential Greek citi-
zens. And the diverse fates of Muslim populations in Greek lands, as
Greek lands multiplied, inevitably contains parallels with those of
Muslim populations in newly-formed Bulgaria if not subsequently in
Yugoslavia.19
18
See Kioutouskas, Georgios He Voulgarike paroikia sten Konstantinoupole os
ta 1878 [The Bulgarian community in Istanbul until 1878] in Penelope Stathi, ed.
He Parousia ton Ethnikon Meionoteton sten Konstantinoupole ston dekato-enato aiona
[The presence of ethnic minorities in Istanbul in the nineteenth century] (Athens: The
Association of the Megale tou Genous Schole Alumni in Athens, 1997) and Philliou,
Christine, Another piece for the mosaic? Establishing a Bulgarian community in
Istanbul, 18301850, conference presentation, 2005 Middle East Studies Association
convention, Washington, DC.
19
That is to say, Muslim populations in the Morea were massacred or driven out in
the course of the Greek War of Independence, while those of Thessaly were merely
driven out in the wake of Greek acquisition of those territories in the 1880s. Those of
Greek Macedonia fared differently from those in Serbian and Bulgarian Macedonia
(those in Greek Macedonia were exchanged in the wake of Lausanne). Those of Crete
were ultimately exchanged to Turkey despite their linguistic ties to Greece. Finally,
Muslim populations remain in Greek/Western Thrace and their social, political, and
economic incorporation into Greece is still a matter of debate. These separate cases
within the larger Greek case in and of themselves constitute a fascinating basis for
comparison with other Ottoman successor-states that dealt in a variety of ways with
the human and demographic legacy of the Ottoman Empire. See, for instance, Karpat,
Kemal, Ottoman Populations, 18301914: Demographic and Social Characteristics
(Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
Returning to the Ottoman imperial sphere, the ecumenical dimen-

sion of Orthodox Christianity was, before and after the 1820s, often a
convenient veneer for the domination of Greek language and letters
and its adherents within the very real power struggles of the Orthodox
Patriarchate. We need only look to the examples of Arabic-speaking
Orthodox Christians, who seem to have been excluded wholesale from
the ecclesiastical power structure beyond the local level, or Bulgarian
and Romanian partisans in the later nineteenth century, who chafed
under the domination of Greek-identified clerics and lay a dministrators
in Rumeli.
The conflicts that prompted and ensued in the course of the Greek
War of Independence set in motion many of the economic, social, and
political changes that, and this is oversimplifying a very complicated
story, opened the way for Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and ultimately
Albanian successor-states. And ultimately each of these states were
brought into being through the multi-state apparatus of diplomacy that
had been set up in response to the Greek Question and the Eastern/
Egyptian Question in the early 1830s. But in addition to the political,
social, and economic processes set in motion in the 1820s, there were
the discursive processes as well that came to influence the terms of sub-
sequent national movements. The construction of a Greek national
past, whether ancient (classical Greece) or medieval (Byzantium)
would legitimate a range of contemporary aspirations to territory and
populations, but it would also pave the way for the construction of a
Bulgarian national past (focused on a medieval Bulgarian Kingdom),
a Romanian national past (with several options that ranged from the
Roman period to medieval times), and eventually a Turkish national
past (going back, by the 1930s, to Hittite and Babylonian times to make
the case) to legitimate modern national projects. Greece was certainly
not the first to come up with this combination of Romanticism and
political revolution, but it seems to have been the first to successfully
make such claims to force a departure from Ottoman domains.
Skipping ahead to the Turkish War of Independence, we see what
was at once a radically different and hauntingly similar scenario. While
the ecumenicity of the Orthodox Christian Church and millet had
been splintered again and again to give way to distinct national claim-
ants to statehood in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth
century, so the ecumenical power of Islam was undermined in the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century, on the one hand by experiments
with successive ideologies such as Ottomanism (which would have
superseded an Islamic ecumenicity to forge an Ottoman political

ecumene), Islamism (a modernizing rendition of Islamic ecumenism),
Arabism, and Turkism, and on the other the realities of the Tanzimat
and Hamidian periods, not to mention the Second Constitutional
regime, that had split the interests of imperial elites along local and
ethnic lines in addition to confessional lines.20
The differences between the Greek and Turkish Wars of Independence
are of course many, and I do not pose the comparison to imply that
they were alike in all senses. In the Greek case of the 1820s, the empire
existed as an autonomous political entity, its structures and practices of
governance strained but intact. By the time of the Turkish War of
Independence, in contrast, the imperial domains were, as had been
feared for decades, under official occupation by an array of European
powers, among them the Greek Kingdom, itself the first successor-state
created a century before. There was formally still a Sultanate and a
Caliphate, but by most accounts the Ottoman Empire was no longer a
state with any capacity to administer or execute policies without the
involvement of the Great Power states that occupied it.
The emergence of the Turkish national movement seems to have
been as much of a surprise to the Great Powers as had been the persis-
tence of the Greek partisans in the 1820s. In neither case did the indi-
vidual Great Power states, each for their own complicated set of reasons,
want to support the respective national movements. In both cases, they
were forced by the success on the ground of these movements, to revise
their existing settlements (whether the Congress of Vienna from 1815
in the Greek case, in which the old regimes of Europe closed ranks
again secessionist movements and revolutions; or the Treaty of Sevres,
which would have annihilated an Ottoman/Turkish national political
entity, in the Turkish case).
The ethnic composition of Turkish national forces also contains fas-
cinating links to that of the Greek partisan forces a century earlier.21
20
See Kayali, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in
the Ottoman Empire, 19081918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) for an
excellent treatment of these complexities vis--vis the Arab provinces of the empire.
See also various chapters in Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and
the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 18761909 (London: I.B. Tauris,
1998)
21
See Philliou, Christine, Breaking the Tetrarchia and saving the Kaymakam: To be
an ambitious Ottoman Christian in 1821, in Antonis Anastasopoulos and Elias
Kolovos, eds. Ottoman Rule and the Balkans, 17601850: Conflict, Transformation,
Adaptation (Rethymno, Crete: University of Crete, 2007)
In both cases, Albanians and other non-Greek/Turkish groups fig-

ured prominently. In the Turkish case, Circassians, too, were major
players,22 refugees from Russian rule in the Caucasus of the 1860s
and after.
The omnipresence of Russia to the north and east is another fac-
tor, hitherto underexplored, that links the Greek and Turkish Wars
of Independence and the imperial history in between. In the 1820s,
Russian overtures for cooperation with the Orthodox Christian
Ottoman insurgents went unfulfilled as the secret society that hatched
the plan for revolution launched their insurgency. This was despite
the claims made then and later by the Russian monarch to be the pro-
tector of Orthodox Christians within the Ottoman Empire. Jumping
ahead to the Turkish War of Independence, Russia had been the
foreign enemy that prompted mass violence on the eastern borders,
and then, by the close of the war, the supranational alternative to a
western capitalist trajectory, not to mention the state that ruled over
large Turkic populations that could be redeemed, in an echo of the
Greek Megali Idea.
Russia was more influential/disruptive in the creation of Greece and
Balkan states than it was in the creation of the states of the Middle East
(having dropped out of World War One before the Treaties that created
mandate states there)and yet in both the 1820s and the 1920s it pre-
sented an alternative to a normative liberal or republican model of
political belonging. In the 1820s, Russia would have (and did, in the
case of the Caucasus and Crimea) ruled Ottoman territories as part of
its empire, annexing them or establishing a protectorate over them. In
the 19191922 moment, the emergent Soviet Union presented a new
alternative to a capitalist nation-state, and indeed there were individu-
als who flirted with the possibility on the Turkish side. In this
schema, the Pan-Slavist movements of the second half of the nine-
teenth century look like an intermediate stage between the 1820s and
the 1920s situation. Again, I bring this set of issues into the discussion
to highlight another kind of potential of the Greece-Turkey axis, and
the multi-faceted ways that the histories of the Russian and Ottoman
Empire were linked.
22
See, for instance, Gingeras, Ryan, Imperial Killing Fields: Revolution, ethnicity,
and Islam in Western Anatolia, 19131938 (unpublished PhD dissertation, University
of Toronto, 2006)
IV.Conclusion
Employing a Greece-Turkey axis for the final Ottoman century might

seem utterly conventional to some. Ottoman historians, after all, have
long taken for granted that Greece and Serbia started a devolution of
the empire that lasted until the establishment of Turkey a century later.
And Ottomanists do often use a broader chronological framework
than the Balkans-Middle East axis that would allow us to discuss the
final transformations of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of a
post-Ottoman space. Those that focus on national movements begin in
1804 (or at times 1774), and those that focus on imperial moderniza-
tion and reforms begin in 1839 (or 1789 with the Nizam- Cedid).
Certainly, to use 1821 as a starting point and 19223 as an endpoint, as
I have, is not to instigate a revolution in scholarly thought about
Ottoman history.
The potential for new insights lies not merely in the periodization
18211922, but in the comparative discussion about the 1821 and 1922
events as both discrete phenomena and as intimately tied together in
the larger narrative of the final Ottoman century. While Greek and
Turkish national historians would hardly be scandalized at the sugges-
tion to examine their respective national revolutions in a comparative
framework, few if any have systematically developed any such com-
parison.23 This is in part due to one of the paradoxes of national master
narratives. On the one hand, each nation is unique and has its own
story of national awakening and self-realization. On the other hand,
each unique story of awakening and self-realization must follow the
generic and universal templateof awakening and self-realization.
Thus, until recently it was not the goal of national historians to com-
pare their national experiences with those of other nations. This,
Iwould argue, has been another obstacle to exploring the possibilities
of discussing the transition from the Ottoman to the post-Ottoman
space along a Greece-Turkey axis. To do so would be to acknowledge
23
Recent edited volumes have begun to explore this dimension (Hirschon, Rene,
ed., Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Greek-Turkish Population Exchange
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2003); Frangoudaki, Anna and alar Keyder, eds. Ways
to Modernity in Greece and Turkey: Encounters with Europe, 18501950; Sofos, Spiros
and Umut zkrml, eds. Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)), but have so far remained at the stage of
juxtaposing studies that remain within their respective national frameworks, rather
than integrating aspects of both national histories into the same studies.
both the uniqueness and the universality of national experiences

emerging out of the Ottoman imperium.
I would hope that the lines of inquiry that can emerge out of a
Greece-Turkey axis for the transition from an Ottoman to a post-
Ottoman space are not limited to those I have laid out here. Instead, the
shift from a Balkans-Middle East axis (determined by contemporary
international relations, and in particular US foreign policy) and from a
frame that examines each national history in its own compartment to a
Greece-Turkey frame could help us incorporate the histories of the
Balkans and the Middle East in new ways, thus appreciating the per-
spectives of those who experienced the transition and not just the
perspectives of today on that past. While Greece and Turkey are left out
of the Balkans-Middle East axis, the states of the Balkans and Middle
East could be discussed in a new light given a Greece-Turkey axis.
Part Two
Negotiating identities
The non-Muslim tax-farmers in the fiscal
and economic system of the Ottoman Empire
in the 19th century.
Svetla Ianeva
The non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire are usually considered in

historiography only as an object of the Ottoman economic and fiscal
system, mainly in their role of tax-payers. This view is almost entirely
dominant, in particular, in the Bulgarian historical narrative as well as
in text-books; therefore it is basically the only one present in the public
space. In this article I will try to demonstrate that some of the non-
Muslims in the Ottoman Empire also played an active and quite impor-
tant role in the Ottoman fiscal system as tax-farmers of different
revenues, sometimes on a large scale. Since there exists some scholarly
research on non-Muslim tax-farmers in the early centuries of Ottoman
rule in the Balkans (15th16th c.), I will focus on their reappearance
and notable presence in this system in the 19th century and on their
roles both as creditors of the state and as intermediaries between the
tax-payers and the authorities, still an unexplored area of research. In
order to try to re-evaluate the non-Muslim tax-farmers social and eco-
nomic roles and their place in 19th century Ottoman society, I will
examine their main business practices such as their tax-farming per-
formances related to other economic activities (trade and credit) and
the formation of cross-national and multi-religious partnerships and
will also address the question of tax-farming as a source of individual
wealth. On this basis I shall argue that the social identity of these tax-
farmers could be reconsidered and that they could be studied as part of
the national as well as of the imperial economic elites.
Tax-farming is quite an ancient system of revenue collection which
was applied for nearly a millennium in the Mediterranean and Indian
Ocean areas, in the East (the Middle East, India, Egypt, the Byzantine
empire) as well as in the West (ancient Rome, France, Spain and Italy in
the 16th and 17th centuries). It consisted in the delegation of the col-
lection of state revenues (revenues from taxes, mints, various state
monopolies, mines, custom and market duties and other state reve-
nues) to private individuals in exchange of the delivery of a certain
48 svetla ianeva
amount of money. Auctions were organized at which the different state

revenues were offered to the candidates willing to collect them in
exchange for an advance payment of part of the money and the delivery
of the rest of the sum due in portions throughout duration of the con-
tract. The advantage for the state from this system was that through
competition at the auctions it could receive more revenue and, most
important, receive part of this money immediately and in advance
(thus using credit from and mobilizing the private capital of wealthy
individuals). This made the state revenues more secure and predicta-
ble, it also saved paying the salaries of state fiscal collectors. For the
tax-farmers, the people who in this way undertook the collection of
state revenues, the advantage was that they could hope that the revenue
yield was higher than the amount of money paid to the treasury. In
good circumstances such as good harvests, positive population trends,
higher trade turnover, inflation, etc, the discrepancies could be quite
important and the tax-farmers could keep the extra money collected as
a profit. They could also sub-farm the revenues to other people at
higher prices, or try to collect more revenues from the tax-payers by
squeezing them. In any case tax-farming was a high risk, high yield
activity.1 It required business abilities, important capital (or ability to
mobilize such capital) and power connections, but it could be quite
profitable.
In the Ottoman Empire tax-farming (known as iltizam) was prac-
ticed since 1455 and became wide spread in the 16th and 17th centu-
ries when it was already also applied to the collection of land revenues,
extraordinary taxes (avariz) and the poll-tax (cizye).2 M. Gkbilgins3
and V. Mutafchievas4 research from the 1950s and 1960s has shown
1
Darling, Linda, Revenue-raising and Legitimacy. Tax Collection and Finance
Administration in the Ottoman Empire 15601660 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996),
pp. 119121.
2
Shaw, Stanford, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development
of Ottoman Egypt 15171798. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 2759;
98121; Nagata, Yuzo, The iltizam system in Egypt and Turkey A comparative
study (in Y. Nagata (ed), Studies on the Social and Economic History of the Ottoman
Empire (Izmir: Akademi Kitabeti, 1995), pp. 5781.
3
Gkbilgin, M. T., XVXVI-nc asrlarda Edirne ve Paa Livas Vakflar, Mlkler,
Mukataalar (stanbul: 1952).
4
Mutaftchieva, Vera, Otkupuvaneto na darjavnite prihodi v Osmanskata imperia
prez XVXVII vek i razvitieto na parichnite otnoshenia (in V. Mutaftchieva, Osmanska
Socialno-ikonomicheska Istoria (Izsledvania). (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Balgarskata
Akademia na Naukite, 1993), pp. 309342.
the non-muslim tax-farmers49
that in the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries among the mukataa tax-
farmers there was quite an important number of non-Muslims, Jews as
well as Christians. Those owners of capital, usually urban dwellers,
included even descendants of the Byzantine royal families Comnenos
and Paleologue. Linda Darlings5 and Murat izakas6 research from
the 1990s (based among others on data collected and published by
H. Sahilliolu7) has reconfirmed by means of new archival evidence the
important role of non-Muslim tax-farmers in the early Ottoman
period. In the late 1400s and early 1500s, for example, there were non-
Muslims among the tax-farmers of the most important mints in
Rumelia those of Istanbul, Edirne, Novo Bardo, Geliboli, skb and
Seres.8 Recapitulating the ethno-religious identity of the tax-farmers of
534 mukataas between 1520 and 1697 Murat izaka concludes that
the Muslim tax-farmers were predominant their shares varied
between 47 and 100% throughout that period. But the percentage of
Jewish tax-farmers was particularly important in the period 1591
1610: 49%. In 15711590 it was still 24%, while the share of Christian
tax-farmers was far lower: 34% in the period 15511610 and 1113 %
between 1611 and 1650.
izaka points out at the radical change in the identity of the tax-
farmers in the second half of the 17th and in the 18th centuries when
the owners of mukataas and maliknes (life tax-farms) were almost
exclusively members of the military class (the askeri) and were all
Muslim. In his perspective, with the beginning of the decline of the
timar system, members of the military were in fact remunerated for
their services through the frozen mukataas.9 Evgeni Radushev has also
demonstrated in his research that since the beginning of the 17th cen-
tury the identity of the tax-farmers of mukataas in the Ottoman empire
was gradually changing and that in the 18th century they were mostly
Darling, Linda, Revenue-raising and Legitimacy.

5
izaka, Murat, A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships. The Islamic

6
World and Europe, with Specific Reference to the Ottoman Archives (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1996).
7
Sahilliolu, Halil, Bir Mltezim Zimem Defterine gre XV. Yzyl Sonunda
Osmanl Darphane Mukataalar, stanbul niversitesi Iktisat Fakltesi Mecmuas,
vol.23, nos 12 (196263), pp. 145218.
8
izaka, Murat, A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships, p. 151153,
based on data by Sahilliolu, Halil, Bir Mltezim Zimem Defterine gre XV. Yzyl
Sonunda Osmanl Darphane Mukataalar, pp. 145218; Darling, Linda, Revenue-
raising and Legitimacy, p. 157.
9
izaka, Murat, A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships, p. 153158.
50 svetla ianeva
askeri members of the military and of the provincial elites, people

who were combining local administrative power with fiscal functions
(the ayans were quite numerous among the 18th century mltezims),
as well as owners of iftliks, money-lenders and other aas, all of them
Muslims.10
Did non-Muslims disappeare entirely from the tax-farming system?
In fact some of them probably converted to Islam at the end of the
16th and in the beginning of the 17th centuries an important number
of Ibn-i Abdulla (sons of Abdulla) appear in the registers as tax-farm-
ers.11 Some Jewish owners of capital assumed a new role, namely that of
creditors of high-level members of the administration in Istanbul. By
contrast, the Armenians mostly became guarantors of the maliknecis
and intermediaries between the tax farmers and the treasury, ensuring
timely payment of the contracted revenues. They also operated as
mediators in the sub-farming of tax revenues. In any case non-Muslims
do not appear in the registers as maliknecis (life tax-farmers) or tax-
farmers of mukataas. In the late 18th century a considerable part of the
tax-farmers were local Muslim notables, the ayans, who became
extremely powerful (both politically and economically) and tried to
escape from control from the central government. Thus tax-farming
became an important precondition for political decentralization.12
This fiscal system was further criticized because it allowed different
malpractices, and during the period of the Tanzimat reforms in the
context of efforts to centralize and modernize the Empire the authori-
ties tried to abolish it. This attempt was unsuccessful, state revenues
dropped drastically in the early 1840s, due to, among others, the inex-
perience of several of the state agents tax-collectors, the involve-
mentof different institutional levels in the tax-collection and the lack
of coordination among them, the necessity to remunerate the tax-
collectors at the expense of the treasury. We should probably also bear
in mind that after the abolition of the timar system the state had to
administer directly and take care of the collection of a much larger
spectrum and amount of revenues than ever before. It had certainly
10
Radushev, Evgeni, Agrarnite institutsii v Osmanskata imperia prez XVII-XVIII vek.
(Sofia: Akademichno Izdatelstvo prof. Marin Drinov, 1995), pp. 8990; 124130.
11
Mutaftchieva, Vera, Otkupuvaneto na darjavnite prihodi v Osmanskata imperia
prez XVXVII vek, pp. 309342; Darling, Linda, Revenue-raising and Legitimacy,
p. 273.
12
Shaw, Stanford, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development
of Ottoman Egypt; Nagata, Yuzo, The iltizam system in Egypt and Turkey; Radushev,
Evgeni, Agrarnite institutsii v Osmanskata imperia prez XVIIXVIII vek., pp. 39134.
also to cope with opposition from the tax-farmers. As a result, the cen-
tral authorities had to go back to the tax-farming system which contin-
ued to exist during the whole 19th century and to be the main way of
collection of many state revenues, including the most important the
tithe revenues. Recent research, including my own, has shown that at
the very end of the 18th and in the 19th century among the tax-farmers
non-Muslims, including Bulgarians, reappear. Their place in the
Ottoman fiscal and economic system during the late Ottoman period
and their impact on the Ottoman economy and state finances are
clearly insufficiently studied. Furthermore, their image, at least in
Bulgarian historiography is almost entirely negative they are almost
exclusively considered to be exploiters of the tax-payers and to be col-
laborators with the authorities in squeezing the poor population. The
study of representatives of this social category has been extremely
unpopular in the last half a century. The few among them who have
been mentioned in scholarly research are usually considered to be part
of the social category of the so-called orbacs, benefiting from a tra-
ditionally predominantly negative evaluation in scholarly research13
and, as a result, even more so in public understanding.
In this article, on the basis of a few representative examples, I will try
to demonstrate that in the 19th century the non-Muslim and in par-
ticular the Bulgarian tax-farmers (whose case I have been able to study
in details) became a minority group, but a power group with consider-
able influence on Bulgarian society and even sometimes on society at a
larger regional and even imperial level, people with power and influ-
ence on various aspects of life, part of the economic elites whose role
deserves a more nuanced interpretation and evaluation. They played
the quite important roles of creditors of the state and of intermediaries
between the authorities and the tax-payers and they combined tax-
farming with other economic activities. They managed to extract
important profits for themselves from this activity, but, as we shell see,
didnt use tax-farming only as a source of individual wealth but invested
also money in public projects, they were supporting education and
culture. I will also address the question, as far as the sources allow it, of
the origin and the scale of their capital because another view in most
national historiographies in the Balkans, and in particular in Bulgarian
13
For a detailed overview of the views on the social role of the orbacs in Bulgarian
historiography see Grancharov, Mihail, Chorbadjiistvoto i balgarskoto obshtestvo prez
Vazrajdaneto (Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo Sv. Kliment Ohridski, 1999), pp. 521.
52 svetla ianeva
historiography, which needs to be challenged, is the emphasis on the

picture of a poorly differentiated local society, composed of a vast
majority of poor peasants exploited by the Ottoman regime.14
My archival research has shown that, for example, a Bulgarian tax-
farmer active in the 1840s and 1850s, haci Mincho haci Tzachev from
Tarnovo, former treasurer (sandk emini) of the Tarnovo kaza meclis,
invested in tax-farming sums of money which varied between 365,000
(in 1848) and 1,900,000 gr. (in 1852 and in 1853). The tax revenues
were undertaken by haci Mincho haci Tzachev in the Ottoman capital
with the mediation of his partner in trade, the important Bulgarian
merchant Hristo Tapchileshtov, and the guarantees of Istanbul
Armenian and Jewish sarafs (money-lenders) for periods of one or two
years. The revenues thus undertaken covered a large spectrum of taxes
and duties these were r, beglik and rusumat revenues (mizan-i
harir, zm r, tahmiz-i kahve, ttn gmr, serim ve derin,
ba-i pazar, ba-i kantar, kara canvar) of several localities mostly in the
Tarnovo kaza (including the kaza centre) as well as beglik revenues of
the Svishtov kaza and of the Vidin sancak. Tax-farming appears thus to
be haci Mincho haci Tzachevs main economic activity and source of
profits (sometimes his profits reached 30 to 40% over the sums invested)
but he was also engaged in international trade and practiced money-
lending to private individuals on a large scale. His profits from tax
farming and trade were not only the source of his personal wealth, they
contributed to public welfare. He supported education in 1849 for
example, he registered 39,018.5 gr. as donation for the construction
and opening of a Bulgarian school in Tarnovo.15
The Chalkov family from Plovdiv (Filibe) and their relatives the
Chomakovs and the Doganovs began to acquire their economic wealth
and their social prestige after starting to supply the Ottoman capital
with meat (they became celeps) and becoming also among the most
important tax-farmers of the tax on sheep and goats of the European
14
Istoria na Balgaria. Volume 6. Balgarsko Vazrajdane 18561878 (Sofia: Izdatelstvo
na Balgarskata Akademia na Naukite, 1987), pp. 6974; Istoria na Balgaria. Volume 5.
Balgarsko Vazrajdane XVIII sredata na XIX vek (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Balgarskata
Akademia na Naukite, 1985), p. 253; Kossev, Konstantin, Struktura na balgarskoto
vazrojdensko obshtestvo. (in Istoria na Balgaria) (Sofia: Hristo Botev, 1993), pp. 271
271; Todev, Ilia, Faktori na Vazrajdaneto. (in Istoria na balgarite. Kysno Srednovekovie
i Vazrajdane) (Sofia: TrudZnanie, 2004), pp.387389.
15
Narodna Biblioteka Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii, Balgarski Istoricheski Arhiv [National
Library of St. Cyril and St. Methodius, Bulgarian Historical Archives] (hereafter NBKM
BIA), fund 307 (haci Mincho haci Tzachev), a. u. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12.
provinces of the Ottoman Empire (beglikcis) during the first half of the
19th century. In some years during the 1830s and 1840s they collected
this tax from all the territories between the Danube and the Stara plan-
ina mountain, from Thrace, the South-western part of the peninsula as
far as the Albanian lands and their profits from this activity reached
nearly 3 million guru in 1846 and 1847. Some of the members of this
family were in close relations with influential figures in the Ottoman
capital, such as the head of the Maliye (the Ministry of finances) Hafz
paa (who was former Filibe kaimakam), as well as with the local
administrative authorities, they were distinguished and respected
members of the local Bulgarian community and intermediaries
between their co-nationals and the local as well as central authorities.16
In 1849 four of them in partnership undertook the tithe of the Plovdiv
region for the amount of 2,740,000 gr. and made more than 600,000 gr.
of profits. With part of that money they bought a iftlik called Saray.17
The profits from tax-farming acquired from the Chalkovs and their
relatives were not only an important source for their personal wealth;
they were also invested in public projects. All members of the family
donated for churches and monasteries and supported education.
Stoyan Teodorovich Chalkov and his brother Valko supported finan-
cially the Rila, Troyan, Karlukovo and Bachkovo monasteries. The
churches of Koprivshtitza, Pleven, Chepelare as well as several churches
in Plovdiv were reconstructed and enlarged on their initiative, and
with their mediation with the authorities for the issuing of the respec-
tive permissions and with their financial support; they organized the
collection of the funds necessary for the opening of Bulgarian schools
in Plovdiv, Koprivchtitza, Braila, sometimes on land owned by them or
specially bought by them and participated with generous donations in
these public enterprises. Stoyan Chalkov bought the land on which the
central Bulgarian school of Plovdiv St. St. Cyril and Methodius was
built, and participated in the collection of the funds necessary for its
opening, contributing financially with important sums. The teachers in
the main school of Plovdiv were remunerated with all the money
remaining as profit from the tax-farming of two taxes undertaken by
Stoyan Chalkovs father and later by Stoyan Chalkov himself (they
16
NBKM BIA, fund 782 (Georgui Stoianovich Chalkov), a. u. 1, 6, 7, 84, 93, 94, 95,
97; fund 70 (Salcho Chomakov), a. u. 6, 18, 26, 39, 63, 67, 84, 137, 140, 142, 143.
17
Ianeva, Svetla, Novi danni za otkupvacheskata deinost na Cahakovi, Bulgarian
Historical Review, vol. 34, nos. 12 (2006), pp. 596606.
54 svetla ianeva
paid the bedel (the equivalent) of the taxes to the treasury and all that
remained as profit after the collection was given to the public institu-
tions in the city and especially to the teachers). Members of this family
were active in the movement for an independent Bulgarian church.18
In order to try to reveal the secrets of these tax-farmers success and
capital accumulation we shall further explore their main business prac-
tices and economic strategies. In both cases examined, of haci Mincho
haci Tzachev and the Chalkovs, business success was conditioned by
their very good knowledge and orientation in the local economic
conjuncture the revenues were usually undertaken only after a care-
ful evaluation of the situation if the harvest was expected to be good,
if the animals were in good health etc. Considerable part of the reve-
nues undertaken were usually subsequently sold (with good profits) to
reliable sub-farmers (partners in trade, influential members of the local
administrative authorities), and in some cases the installments due
were delivered in paper money (kaime) which was an additional source
of profits for the tax-farmers. Both the Cahlkovs and haci Mincho haci
Tzachev were extremely regular in delivering the money due to the
treasury. This fact, as well as their good connections, was probably
among the reason why they were usually successful in the competition
with other tax-farmers in undertaking the collection of state revenues.
Furthermore, in order to mobilize the huge capitals needed for playing
this role of creditors of the state, the Bulgarian tax-farmers often
formed partnerships, mainly including members of the family (this
was very typical of the tax-farmers from the Chalkovs family who
mainly built family partnerships compania) but also other rich and
influential local Muslims and non-Muslims.19 One of the most regu-
lar haci Mincho haci Tzachevs partners in trade and sometimes in
tax-farming was Mestan aa from Tarnovo,20 another was Ruid aa.21
18
NBKM BIA, fund 70, a. u. 63, 96, 142, 172; fund 782, a. u. 6, 86, 120, 97, 166, 170;
Staynova, Mihaila, Asparuh Velkov, Turski documenti za stopanskata deinost na
Chalikovtzi, Izvestia na NBKM, vol. IX (XVI) (1969), pp. 149169; Moravenov,
Konstantin, Pametnik za plovdivskoto hristiansko naselenie v grada i za obshtite zavede-
nia po proiznosno predanie. Podaren na Balgarskoto chitalishte v Tsarigrad 1869. (razch-
itane, sastavitelstvo, prevod, belejki i komentar V. Tileva, Z. Noneva). (Plovdiv: Hristo G.
Danov, 1984, pp. 155, 164, 168169); Mircheva, Keta, Chalkovi (in I. Todev (ed), Koj
koj e sred Balgarite XVXIX vek (Sofia: Anubis, 2000), pp. 291294
19
Ianeva, Svetla, Novi danni za otkupvacheskata deinost na Cahakovi; Fiskalni
praktiki i otkupuvane na danatzi v Tarnovsko prez 40-te 50-te godini na 19 vek,
Istoricheski Pregled, vol. 60, nos. 56 (2004), pp. 166178.
20
NBKM BIA, fund 49 (haci Nikoli Dimov Minchooglu), a. u. 82, f. 7.
21
NBKM BIA, fund 307, a. u. 4, f. 67.
Tax-farmers partnerships quite often thus crossed national and con-

fessional boundaries.
In the early 1850s, till the Crimean war, the brothers Hadjitoshevi
from Vratza participated in several partnerships for tax-farming reve-
nues of the western part of the region between the Danube river and
the Stara planina mountain together with local Muslim notables and
representatives of the local administrative authorities such as Gen aa,
the mdr of Vratza Mehmed Hurid aa and his son Kif bey.22 The
relationships between these partners were actually quite complex. The
Bulgarian merchants and notables from Vratza were using their influ-
ence and contacts on the local level as well as in the Ottoman capital
(their brother Alexander was an Ottoman official and had good posi-
tions and connections there) to promote and support the nomination
of Mehmed Hurid aa and later of his son as mdrs of Vratza.23 At the
same time there was a serious conflict among the partners in tax-farm-
ing over the settlement of some of their accounts, on one occasion the
case even being brought to court.24
A few more examples of cross-national and multi-religious partner-
ships in tax-farming aiming at the mobilization of capital and power
resources, as well as of the important presence of non-Muslims in the
tax-farming system in the 1860s and 1870s could be quoted here. In
1276 (1860/61) financial year Salcho Chomakov from Plovdiv under-
took part of the tax on goats and sheep of the Samokov sancak in part-
nership with three Armenians for the amount of 1,800,000 gr., each
partner investing of this sum, with the mediation and guarantees of
the Istanbul Armenian saraf hoca Agop Mubayaczade.25 In late 1840s
and early 1850s Salcho Chomakov used the guarantees and mediation
of the Istanbul based Jewish saraf Simonolu hoca Hazar. In the 1860s
his intermediary, guarantor and sometimes creditor in tax-farming
activities was another Jewish saraf resident of the Ottoman capital,
apizade Davion, with whom they had a lively correspondence
whichtestifies that the saraf was closely following the auctions of dif-
ferent revenues in the capital, keeping the provincial candidate tax-
farmer constantly informed of the auction prices and conditions and
22
Sharova, Krumka, Keta Mircheva (eds), Semeen arhiv na Hadjitoshevi. T. II.
(18271878) (Vratza: BG Print, 2002), pp. 232235.
23
Ibid., pp. 243253.
24
Ibid., pp. 274277, 287, 296297, 303.
25
NBKM BIA, fund 70, a. u. 60, p.1; a. u. 142, p. 230.
56 svetla ianeva
sometimes giving him advice, then, in case Salcho Chomakov decided

to undertake tax-revenues, representing him at the auctions, giving
also the guarantees needed, mediating his payments to the treasury
and finally providing him with credit from other Istanbul money-
lenders in case of necessity.26
Mixed partnerships in tax-farming could be observed also in later
times and in other regions. In 1865 Nikola G. Tzvetkooglu from
Svishtov asked the well known mediator and guarantor in tax-farming
operations Hristo Tapchileshtov to try to obtain for him and the
Armenian hoca Ovanes the beglik and the rusumat revenues of four
kazas in Rumelia and of four more in Anatolia, located near the capital.
The candidate tax-farmers were willing to invest in this enterprise
550,000, at most 580,000 gr.27 In 1867 Nikola G. Tzvetkooglu under-
took, in partnership with Abdul Halim aa from Rahova, the collection
of the tithe revenues of the kaza Rahova, as well as of several villages in
the kazas Lom, Nikopol and Pleven. After delivering the first taksits to
the treasury, the partners asked Tapchileshtov for a credit of 1,000,000
gr. in order to cover the following taksits due in August and September.28
In 1871 the same tax-farmer undertook, again in partnership with
Abdul Halim aa from Rahova, with the mediation and guarantee of
Hristo Tapchileshtov, the r revenues of several localities in the kazas
Lom, Rahova and Nikopol of the Tuna vilayeti for the total amount of
5,300,000 gr.29
Protocols and defters from the auctions of the r revenues of the
kaza Kstendil in 1869 and 1872, issued by the local kaza meclis, show
that the non-Muslims represented between 20% (in 1869) and 10% (in
1872) of the successful bidders at this lower local level and that one of
them, Georgui Dino, offered the largest capital registered at the auction
of r revenues in 1869 and was among the top ten bidders at the
1872 auction too. At the same time it is interesting and important to
notice that, although a tendency to choose a guarantor from ones own
ethno-confessional community was clearly present at both auctions, in
1869 every fourth non-Muslim bidder who succeeded in undertaking
r revenues at the Kstendil kaza auction designated a guarantor
from the Muslim community while more than 40% of the Muslims had
26
NBKM BIA, fund 70, a. u. 6, p.1.
27
NBKM BIA, I A 5881.
28
NBKM BIA, I A 5925.
29
NBKM BIA, I A 26731.
a non-Muslim kefil. Among these non-Muslim guarantors, a notable

presence of Jewish sarafs and bazarkns can be spotted they provided
their guaranties in 30% of all the cases registered.30
A typical feature of the economic activities of Bulgarian (and also in
general of the non-Muslim) tax-farmers in the 19th century was the
combination of tax-farming with trade, money lending, exploitation of
land (iftliks) and other immovable properties and/or state deliveries.
The economic activities of the family Robevi, active in Macedonia
(with main offices in Ohrid and Bitolia), for example included deliver-
ies of food on state command, money lending, tax-farming and exploi-
tation of iftliks, forests and other immovable properties. At the same
time they were important international merchants who are considered
to have been the main intermediaries between the central European
markets and the South-Western part of the Balkans; they imported
nearly 500 articles of trade and had more then 100 business partners in
central Europe and commercial contacts with companies from
Manchester, London, Glasgow, Marseille, Lyon and even New York and
a vast network of agents, correspondents and partners in the whole
Balkan peninsula.31 The company of the brothers Geshovi from Plovdiv,
international merchants with branches of their company in Vienna
(opened in 1835), Istanbul (1847) and Manchester (1865), invested
capitals not only in trade but also in banking, tax-farming and immov-
able properties in Plovdiv. The Jewish family Arie from Samokov,
whose main economic activities were trade (including foreign trade
with Austria) and money lending, also took part in the tax-farming of
different revenues in the late 1850s and in the 1860s. Using usually as
mediator and guarantor the famous Camondo bank in the Ottoman
capital, they undertook the tithe of the kazas Samako, Breznik, Izladi
and Tran (in 1857), the beglik of Sofia and the rusumat of Sofia and
Vidin (1857), the tithe of Salonica in partnership with Mustafa efendi
from Samokov (1859), the beglik of Sofia sancak in 1861 (from which
enterprise they made 100,000 gr. of profit), the beglik of Sofia sancak (in
1864), the beglik of Sofia and Ni sancaks (the last in partnership with
30
Narodna Biblioteka Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii, Orientalski Otdel, [National Library
of St. Cyril and St. Methodius, Oriental Department], fund 162, a. u. 119, ff. 12; fund
162, a. u. 127, ff. 12.
31
NBKM BIA, fund 27 (bratia Robevi), a. u. 335; Paskaleva, Virginia, Kam istoriata
na targovskite vrazki na Macedonia sas Sredna Evropa prez 19 vek, Izvestia na Instituta
po Istoria, vol.11 (1962), pp. 5182.
58 svetla ianeva
Haim Farhi from Sofia) and the rusumat of Vidin sancak in 1868
and the tithe of Ni sancak in 1869. They used subsequently to resell
in portions the collection of some of the revenues undertaken to
sub-farmers.32
Hristo Tapchileshtov, based in the Ottoman capital, important mer-
chant (with the status of avrupa tucar and an office in Balkapan han)
and moneylender (he gave credit even to the sadrazam Ali paa) com-
bined his commercial activities with participation in tax-framing oper-
ations and money lending to private individuals. Apart from investing
his own capital in tax-farming enterprises, he also performed the role
of intermediary and guarantor of other tax-farmers to the central
Ottoman financial authorities (he represented the candidate-tax-
farmers at the auctions, gave his guarantees, received the installments
due from the provincial tax-farmers and delivered them to the treas-
ury, sometimes lent them money).33 His functions were thus similar to
those of the famous Istanbul Armenian and Jewish sarafs taudis.
In the 19th century the most powerful Jewish taudis in the Ottoman
capital were members of the Camondo family. According to Nora Seni,
the influence of the Istanbul Jewish sarafs started to gradually decline
after the abolishment of the Janissaries, while the importance of the
Armenian and Greek sarafs from Galata grew, so competition among
these two financial lobbies in the Ottoman capital arose during the
period of the Tanzimat reforms.34 Murat izaka, on the other hand,
has pointed out that quite often in tax-farming operations the Istanbul
non-Muslim sarafs assumed the role of sleeping partners (informal
partners) by providing credit to the mltezims and mediating their
relations with the central treasury and therefore being entitled to part
of the profits from tax-farming.35
In the 1860s and 1870s there was a stratum in the Bulgarian eco-
nomic elite whose wealth came from the successful combination of
32
Eshkenazi, Eli, Za nachina na sabirane na niakoi danatzi v Zapadna Bulgaria
prez 19 vek do Osvobojdenieto, Bulletin de lInstitut dHistoire, vols. 1617 (1966),
pp. 333344.
33
NBKM BIA, fund 6 (Hristo Petkov Tapchileshtov i Nikola Tapchileshtov);
Davidova, Evgenia, Targovski capital i otkupuvane na danatzi v Osmanskata impe-
ria prez tretata chetvart na 19 vek, Istoricheski Pregled, vol. 63, nos. 34 (2007),
pp. 6475.
34
Seni, Nora The Camondos and their imprint on 19th century Istanbul,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 26, no. 4 (November 1994),
pp. 663675.
35
izaka, Murat, A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships, p. 207.
tax-farming with international grain trade. After the abolishment of

the monopolies on the export of grain from the Ottoman Empire, these
people specialized in managing tithe revenues (mainly on wheat and
corn) from the fertile plain in nowadays North-Eastern Bulgaria and
exporting the grain collected as tithe in kind abroad with very good
profits. Relevant examples of such combination of tax-farming with
foreign trade are the economic activities of Hristo Karaminkov, of the
brothers Vatzovi, of Nikola Tzvetkooglu and of Tzviatko Radoslavov.36
Usually interpreted in traditional Bulgarian historiography as a sign of
and a result of insecurity of business activities in the Ottoman Empire,
this combination of different economic activities could be also seen, in
my opinion, as a testimony to the great flexibility and entrepreneurial
flair of the local economic elites who were able to extract maximum
profits by transferring part of their capitals from one economic activity
to another or by combining several economic activities at the time
according to the concrete economic and political situation and to cover
almost all the range of endeavors available in the Ottoman empire, fol-
lowing also the economic and trade conjuncture on the international
markets.
In the 19th century non-Muslim tax-farmers were active both in the
Balkan and in the Anatolian provinces of the Empire. According to
E. Frangakis-Syrett, in western Anatolia extensive large-scale tax-
farming, when it took place, was the near-preserve of Greeks and
Armenians, although it was also practiced by Ottoman Muslim and
even by western European traders and entrepreneurs. Greek tax-farm-
ers in Izmir worked closely with their compatriots in the Ottoman
capital, who usually financed these ventures or used their contacts with
the Porte to see them through. For example, in the 1850s the powerful
mercantile and banking house of Baltazzi of Izmir and Istanbul were
tax-farmers for the customhouse of Izmir. Besides making large profits
from the increasing volume of trade that passed through the city port,
they also wielded significant political power, which they used to pro-
mote their own economic interests. In agreement with the Ministry of
Finances they found ways to increase, time and again, the customs
revenue, and neither the governor of Izmir nor the western and local
merchants could succeed in eliminating such increases. The local tax-
farmers were well-versed in the complexities of the monetary system in
NBKM BIA, fund 245 (Hristo Dimov Karaminkov), a. u. 49; II B 2863, II B 2855.
36
60 svetla ianeva
the Ottoman Empire, so some of them managed to negotiate their pay-

ments to the treasury in kaime, while they were reselling the revenues
undertaken for cash and at higher prices to other mltezims.37 It is
important to thus note several similarities in the business practices
and strategies aiming at the augmentation of profits, used by the non-
Muslim tax-farmers. The western Anatolian non-Muslim tax-farmers,
similar to their colleagues in the Balkans (as we have seen in the cases
of haci Mincho haci Tzachev and of the Cahalkovs for example) relied
in their activities on networks of partners, compatriots and relatives,
including people in the Ottoman capital, some of them well con-
nected to representatives of the central authorities, made profits by
paying the treasury in paper money (kaime) and by subsequently sell-
ing the revenues to sub-farmers. Profits from tax-farming were invested
in trade and speculative monetary activities such as money-changing
and money lending and vice-versa.
In conclusion, the Ottoman fiscal system seems to have included and
to have needed the participation of non-Muslims owners of capitals
as tax-farmers, mediators and creditors of the collection of state reve-
nues. Part of them were active at the central level, in the Ottoman capi-
tal, mediating the undertaking at the auctions and the delivery of the
revenues to the treasury, assuming also the role of guarantors at all
stages of the process. The Armenian and Jewish sarafs in Istanbul were
the main social group able to provide for this constant movement and
transfer of important sums of money between individuals, institutions
and across the huge imperial territory.38 A few other non-Muslims
seem also to have assumed similar role at the central imperial level. In
the provinces, despite the changes in the fiscal system during the 19th
century, tax-farming as an important way of collection of state reve-
nues remained mainly in the hands of the local economic (and admin-
istrative) elites, of the local notables. Some of the ayans transformed
their mainly political and military power (in the 18th century) at the
local level in strong economic positions and continued to participate in
37
Frangakis-Syrett, Elena, The economic activities of the Greek community of
Izmir in the second half of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, in
D. Gondicas and Ch. Issawi (eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics,
Economy and Society in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 1999),
pp. 2930.
38
On the kuyruklu sarafs and the Galata bankers see: Nagata, Yuzo The iltizam
system in Egypt and Turkey, p. 69; Seni, Nora The Camondos and their imprint on
19th century Istanbul, pp. 663675.
tax-farming. The rest of the tax-farmers were both Muslim and non-
Muslim merchants, money-lenders, owners of iftliks, providers of dif-
ferent commodities on state command and wealthy people with
entrepreneur abilities in general who were usually combining different
economic activities and were often forming partnerships in order to
mobilize the capitals needed. In the 19th century non-Muslims reap-
pear in the role of tax-farmers and it seems that their share even grows
over time, although the Muslims remain generally the majority of the
tax-farmers.
If we look at the non-Muslim tax-farmers (and in particular in
the case examined, at the Bulgarians) from a national perspective we
could argue that they formed an important part of the economic elite
and of the notables, representatives of the population to the authori-
tiesnot only in fiscal matters but in many formal and informal occa-
sions. They were influential figures, benefited from the respect of
the local population from which they were constantly addressed as
mediators with the local and central authorities or for all kind of public
and private matters of which they took effectively care. The Bulgarian
tax-farmers financed and promoted education and culture, the pub-
lishing of books, manuals and periodicals, public works; many of
them were among the leaders of the movement for an independent
Bulgarian church, both at the regional and central levels (Hadjitoshevi,
Chalkovi, Tapchileshtovi, Robevi etc). The brothers Robevi donated
money for the opening of several schools in Macedonia under the
direction of the Bulgarian exarchate, supported financially the pro-
test movement for the replacement of the Greek bishop of Ohrid
and were among the leaders of this action, their office in Bitolia was
the centre of many meetings where most important political and
public matters were discussed.39 The Tapchileshtovi brothers sup-
portedfinancially the publishing of Bulgarian newspapers and books
in the Ottoman capital, managed to convince the members of the
Tanzimat dairesi that Bulgarian students, as representatives of a sepa-
rate Bulgar millet in the Ottoman Empire, should be given fifteen
scholarships in the Royal medical military school in Istanbul in 1858;
the Tapchileshtovi were among the important sponsors of the con-
struction of the central Bulgarian church St Stephan in the Ottoman
39
Ianeva, Svetla, Robevi (in I. Todev (ed), Koj koj e sred Balgarite 1519 vek (Sofia:
Anubis, 2000), pp. 236238.
62 svetla ianeva
capital and were quite active in the movement for the recognition of
the Bulgarian exarchate.40
Parallel to their significant role in the Ottoman fiscal system of the
19th century as creditors of the state and of intermediaries between the
taxpayers and the authorities, the non-Muslim tax-farmers thus had an
important impact on many aspects of social life. People of considerable
wealth, power, economic and social influence, they became a notable
component of the local imperial elites and, on the national level, the
Bulgarian tax-farmers contributed greatly to establishing a modern
educational system, to the development of the public press. They were
in fact among the most prominent leaders of two of the most relevant
components of the Bulgarian independence movement of the move-
ments for an independent church and for modern education. And if
the abstract image of the tax-farmer in the Bulgarian printed press of
the 1860s and 1870s (published mainly by emigrs) was usually nega-
tive,41 the concrete people whose activities I have been able to trace
were among the most distinguished and respected members not only
of their communities but by their co-nationals in general. They were
considered as part of the orbacs, but at the time the image of this
social category was far from being predominantly negative; they only
became the bad in later Bulgarian Marxist historiography.42 This later
view unfortunately has not changed much in contemporary official
Bulgarian historiography and public understanding.43 Future research-
ers will well to challenge it.
40
Davidova, Evgenia, Tapclileshtovi, in I. Todev (ed), Koj koj e sred Balgarite
1519 vek (Sofia: Anubis, 2000), pp. 270271.
41
As, for example, in some publications of the newspapers Dunavska zora, issue 43,
October 5, 1869, Istochno vreme, issue 42, November 29, 1875 and issue 23, July 19,
1875 and Zname, issue 14, May 2, 1875.
42
On the social role of the tax-farmers in Marxist historiography see for example
Kossev, Konstantin, Naiden Gerov za danachnoto oblagane v Plovdivski sancak prez
60-te i 70-te godini na XIX vek, Izvestia na Darjavnite Arhivi, 8, 1964, pp. 131146;
Istoria na Balgaria. Volume 5. Balgarsko Vazrajdane XVIII sredata na XIX vek. (Sofia:
Izdatelstvo na Balgarskata Akademia na Naukite, 1985), p. 253; Istoria na Balgaria.
Volume 6. Balgarsko Vazrajdane 18561878. (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Balgarskata
Akademia na Naukite, 1987), pp. 7071.
43
Istoria na Balgaria XV-XIX vek. (Sofia: Anubis, 1999), p. 310; 332; Todev, Ilia,
Faktori na Vazrajdaneto. (in Istoria na balgarite. Kysno Srednovekovie i Vazrajdane.
Sofia: TrudZnanie, 2004), pp. 368, 388, to quote just some of the recently published
and widely used in secondary and high school and university education general histo-
ries of Bulgaria and the Bulgarians.
Conceptualizing difference during
the Second Constitutional Period:
new sources, old challenges*
Kent F. Schull
The life of the Turkic migr, Ahmet Aaolu (18691939), is a quin-

tessential example of how fluid racial, ethnic, and especially national
identities were for the Muslim populations of the Russian, Ottoman,
and Qajar Empires during the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury. In fact, Aaolus self-identification as a Persian, a Turk, a Russian
Muslim, and a Turkish Muslim, as well as his service as a representative
in the Ottoman, the Azerbaijani, and the Republic of Turkeys
Parliaments are not examples of fickleness or opportunism, but rather
demonstrate the incredible fluidity of the times.1
* Authors note: Research for this article was generously supported by grants from
Fulbright (200304 and 200405) and the Institute of Turkish Studies (summer 2005).
I want to thank the organizers and participants of the conference panel The Second
Constitutional Period of the Ottoman Empire (19081919): Mass Politics, Negotiation,
Social Control, and Nation-state Formation held at the annual meeting of the
American Historical Association (2007). I am also grateful to Michele Campos, Roger
Deal, Howard Eissenstat, James Gelvin, Scott Marler, Gabi Piterberg, Donald Quataert,
and Aaron Skabelund for their valuable feedback on the content and form of earlier
drafts of this essay. I would also be very remiss if I did not express my sincere gratitude
to the organizers, hosts, and participants of the conference from whence this edited
volume originates Religion, Ethnicity, and Contested Nationhood in the former
Ottoman Space held at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Turkey (April,
2007) and hosted by the Swedish Consulate General of Istanbul, particularly Jrgen S.
Nielsen and Niels Valdemar Vinding of the Centre for European Islamic Thought,
University of Copenhagen.
1
A. Holly Shissler, Between Two Empires: Ahmet Aaolu and the New Turkey
(London: I.B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 21213. See also Howard Eissenstat, Turkic
Immigrants/Turkish Nationalisms: Opportunities and Limitations of a Nationalism in
Exile in The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 25:2 (Fall, 2001)/26:3 (Spring, 2002),
pp. 2550. Aaolu was born in what is today Azerbaijan. He studied in Paris and
St. Petersburg and was heavily influenced by Ernest Renan and James Darmesteter. His
main profession was that of a reporter. He was also a life long proponent of Pan-
Turkism. He moved to Istanbul in 1908 and became an influential member of Turkish
literary societies and an active contributor to their journals. After the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire he moved to the newly independent Azerbaijan, but after the Soviet
takeover he moved to the newly established capital of the Republic of Turkey. He died
in Ankara in 1939.
64 kent f. schull
Ahmet Aaolus life provides important insights into the state of

flux national identity found itself in the late Ottoman and Russian
Empires. It also demonstrates the spread of the culture of nationalism
among the inhabitants of both empires in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century.2 During this period many elites and intellectuals,
such as Aaolu, had already adopted the conceptual framework of
nationalism without committing themselves to a particular nationalist
ideology. As the populations of these respective states adapted Western
concepts of the Enlightenment, political, cultural, and historical con-
tingencies limited, halted, or facilitated the development and adoption
of certain nationalist identities. Aaolu, therefore, could assume all of
the aforementioned identities without appearing capricious.
What was true for Aaolu was also true for the Ottoman Empire
as a whole during the Second Constitutional Period (19081918).
Identity, particularly national identity was in immense flux. Though
Ottomanism (Osmanllk) held currency regarding the national iden-
tity of the majority of the empires Muslim, Jewish, and Christian popu-
lations, contestation existed over which groups or individuals were to
be included or excluded in this form of civic nationalism.3 How the
2
According to James L. Gelvin, the culture of nationalism consists of a social imag-
inary in which five shared assumptions appear natural and self-evident: 1. the world is
naturally divided into entities called nations, 2. nations consist of peoples grouped
together according to a set of shared characteristics, such as language, religion, ethnic-
ity, and history, 3. the only type of government that can promote the common interest
is national self-government, 4. nations are to be based in some territories that are the
repository for the nations history and memory, and 5. though nations may change in
form or shape over time, the nations essence remains the same. These five shared
assumptions spread around the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
through imperialism and defensive modernization. They also constitute the founda-
tion from which individual nationalist movements develop. For a much more detailed
explanation of these concepts, see James L. Gelvins The Modern Middle East: a History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 9146 and The Israel-Palestine Conflict:
One Hundred Years of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 1445.
3
This article uses the term civic nationalism to describe the type of nationalism
officially promoted by the Ottoman Administration during the Second Constitutional
Period. According to Ottoman legal codes, all imperial subjects were equal before and
subject to the same laws. This equality before the law was adopted in 1839 with the
Imperial Decree of the Rose Garden (Glhane Hatt- Hmayunu), iterated in 1856 with
the Islahat Ferman, included in the first Ottoman Constitution of 1876, and again iter-
ated with the re-adoption of the 1876 Ottoman Constitution in 1908. The de jure status
of equality contained within the Ottoman Constitution does not exclude the existence
of favored groups within the Ottoman subject population resulting in de facto privi-
leges or greater access to power. All supposedly civic nationalist states, such as the
United States, France, or the United Kingdom, have a portion of their populations that
receives de facto privileges and favored treatment. In the case of the Ottoman Empire
difference during the second constitutional period65
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the central ruling organiza-

tion of the Ottoman Empire during this period, conceptualized differ-
ence in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, and nationality is the central
question of this article.4
Rather than portraying the CUP as a Turkish nationalist organi
zation, this article argues that the CUPs conception of identity
more closely matched that of the empires population; that is, one of
immense flexibility, alternating inclusive and exclusivist tendencies,
this favored de facto constituency was its Muslim population. For a comprehensive
treatment of the use of religion and the creation of an Ottoman identity based upon the
empires Muslim constituency during the reign of Sultan Abdlhamid II, see Selim
Deringils The Well-protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the
Ottoman Empire, 18761909 ( London: I.B. Tauris, 1998). Also see Kemal Karpats
The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the
Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
4
It must be noted that the Young Turks and the Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP) were two related, but separate organizations. The Young Turks was an umbrella
organization with a very ethnically, linguistically, religiously, and politically diverse
constituency. This constituency was united primarily in its opposition to the rule of
Sultan Abdlhamid II (r. 18761909). The CUP, on the other hand, was just one of
these opposition groups within the Young Turks and consisted primarily of Western
educated, junior level military officers and bureaucrats who were also from diverse
ethnic and religious backgrounds. The CUP developed into an elitist and secretive
society and was heavily influenced by Comtian Positivism and Gustav LeBons fear of
the masses. The CUP often exerted great pressure on Young Turk policies and pro-
grams from behind the scenes until it became an open political party and seized power
in 191213. It then effectively dispelled all other Young Turk opposition to its rule. The
central goals of the CUP were to maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman
Empire; to create a centralized, efficient, and rational administration; to reform and
modernize the military; to industrialize the Ottoman economy by creating an indus-
trial Muslim middle class; and to remove foreign intervention and influence into
Ottoman internal and economic affairs. Therefore, the terms Young Turk and CUP are
not completely interchangeable and must be differentiated. The CUP was by no means
an ideologically or ethnically homogeneous organization. There were many factions
within it, split primarily between the military and the bureaucracy. The main factions
split right down the middle around the two most powerful members of the CUP cen-
tral committeeEnver Pasha (military leader) and Talat Pasha (bureaucratic leader).
These two individuals were often at lagger-heads over budgets and reforms for their
respective pet projects and in their attempts to consolidate power. For more informa-
tion regarding the diversity of and divisions within the Young Turks and CUP see Feroz
Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics,
19081914 (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1969), 205 p., kr Haniolu, The Young Turks in
Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 390 p. and Preparation for a
Revolution: The Young Turks, 19021908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001),
538 p.; M. Naim Turfan, The Rise of the Young Turks: Politics, the Military and Ottoman
Collapse (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000); and Erik Zrcher, Turkey: a Modern History
(London: I.B. Tauris, 2001) and Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish
Nationalists: Identity Politics 19081938 in Kemal Karpat (ed.), Ottoman Past and
Todays Turkey, (ed.) (Leiden, 2000), pp. 150179.
66 kent f. schull
and diversity. At the heart of this debate are the very methodologies
and sources used to write the history of the Committee of Union and
Progress and the Second Constitutional Period, which, for the most
part, have been dominated by chauvinistic nationalist agendas. Rather
than relying solely on intellectual treatises as sources from which to
interpret CUP governing practices, scholars should also integrate
administrative documents and practices, which in many cases better
reflect the routine internalizations of identity conceptualizations than
do the ideological treatises of a few. This article demonstrates the
insights gained from an investigation of such governing practices,
particularly the CUPs conceptions of difference through an analysis of
the categories of identity contained within the Ottoman Prison
Administrations annual prison population surveys. These categories of
identity, particularly millet identity, effectively demonstrate the fluid,
inclusive, and convoluted nature of CUP conceptions of difference and
make clear why the claims of many contemporary scholars that the
CUP was an exclusivist Turkish nationalist organization should be
reevaluated.
The CUP: Turkish or Ottoman Nationalist Organization?
There is a robust literature regarding identity and the development of

individual nationalist movements during the late Ottoman period, par-
ticularly among the Christian and Muslim populations of the empire.
For the purposes of this article, only the literature dealing with the
Committee of Union and Progress and its nationalist proclivities will
be discussed. Although, the debate is complicated and nuanced, gener-
ally speaking, there are two opposing groups, each of whose arguments
hinge on the central question of how the CUP conceptualized differ-
ence among the empires population in terms of ethnicity, race, and
religion during the Second Constitutional Period.
The first group consists of those who claim that the CUP was a
Turkish nationalist organization intent on rationalizing and centraliz-
ing imperial power within the hands of the Turkish portion of the
Ottoman population. This groups argument is based fundamen-
tally upon published intellectual treatises by two CUP central com
mittee membersZiya Gkalp (18761924) and Yusuf Akura
(18761935), in Turkish literary heritage journals. The ideology of
these two members is then taken to be representative for the rest of the
CUPs membership, and most administrative actions and governmen-

tal policies are similarly interpreted through the lens of a Turkish
nationalist agenda.
For example, CUP attempts to mandate Turkish language instruc-
tion in schools; promote Turkish as the official bureaucratic language
of the empire; resettlement practices of Muslim refugees from war-torn
areas; population transfers; government-sponsored atrocities and
genocide; the establishment of Turkish heritage and literary societies
and periodicals by certain CUP members; and the supposed domina-
tion of governmental positions by ethnic Turks are all interpreted
by current scholarship as evidence of a conscious CUP policy of
Turkfication. In other words, it was the CUPs goal to make all Ottoman
Muslims into Turks in terms of their identity, language, and culture.
Those who were not Muslims would be forced out of the empire. Some
actions or proposals that appear to contradict this assumed Turkish
nationalist agenda have been explained away by these scholars as
an example of dubious CUP pragmatism intended to placate opposi-
tion. The assumption of the existence of a CUP Turkification agenda
and, consequently, its Turkish nationalist proclivities, however, is never
challenged.5
These treatises and other works published in the journals of Turkish
literary and heritage societies are also interpreted as evidence of
Turkish nationalist inclinations based upon the authors use of the
words millet and Trk.6 Therefore, concepts and movements such as
Turkism, pride in ones heritage or background, are conflated with
Turkish nationalism without taking into account the diversity of opin-
ions and backgrounds among the CUPs central leadership. In other
words, this first historiographical camp tends to treat the CUP as a
homogeneous, unified group for which Gkalp and Akura were its
5
Erol lkers 2005 article on this topic (Contextualising Turkification: nation-
building in the late Ottoman Empire, 190818 in Nations and Nationalism, 11/4
(2005), pp. 613636) does an admirable job complicating and challenging this argu-
ment concerning a comprehensive CUP Turkification program for the entire empire.
Instead, he argues that the concept and program of Turkification should be limited to
CUP settlement efforts in Anatolia only and not the rest of the empire. The article,
however, still maintains that the CUP was a Turkish nationalist organization based
upon the same intellectual basis found in the works cited below in footnote 7.
6
These two terms (millet and Trk) are often translated as nation or nationality
and as Turkish ethnic identity respectively. This article, however, will demonstrate that
these terms did not have these fixed definitions during the late Ottoman Empire.
68 kent f. schull
ideological spokesmen. These scholars also do not take into account

the very fluid nature, usage, and the ambiguous meanings that terms,
such as millet and Trk, possessed during the late Ottoman period.
Instead, they tend to reify and constrict the meanings of these terms to
situate them within contemporary conceptions of national identity and
ethnicity. In essence, the first groups works consist of genealogical
intellectual histories, which teleologically project current concepts of
nationalism and ethnicity onto the late Ottoman period in an attempt
to uncover the roots, origins, and development of Turkish ethnic
nationalism. As a result, most current scholarship dealing with World
War I, late Ottoman history, the Second Constitutional Period, or the
emergence of the contemporary Middle East state system view the
CUP as a Turkish nationalist organization.7
In response to this position, which is overwhelmingly accepted in
academic and popular circles, a second group of scholars stresses the
fluidity of identity during the late Ottoman Empire by challenging
assumptions that the CUP was a Turkish nationalist organization. In
fact, this group argues that the CUP was an Ottoman nationalist party
in which the core constituency of the nation was centered in the
empires Muslim population. Their arguments focus primarily on the
governmental policies and practices of the CUP during the Second
7
Examples of scholars identified with this first group are Niyazi Berkes, The
Development of Secularism in Turkey (New York: Routledge, 1998), Turkish Nationalism
and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya Gkalp, trans. and ed. with an intro-
duction by Niyazi Berkes (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959); Taha Parla, The
Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gkalp, 18761924 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), pp. 2556;
Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gkalp
(London: Harvill Press, 1950); Ernest Ramsaur, The Young Turks: Prelude to the
Revolution of 1908 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1957), pp. 6774; Bernard Lewis, The
Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968),
pp. 317355; David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 18761908 (London:
Frank Cass, 1977), pp. 714, 97101; Masami Arai, Turkish Nationalism in the Young
Turk Era (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 5765; Fuat Dndar, ttihat ve Terakkinin
Mslmanlar skan Politikas, 19131918 (stanbul: letiim Yaynlar, 2001) and
Modern Trkiyenin ifresi (stanbul: letiim, 2008); and Erol lker, Contextualising
Turkification: nation-building in the late Ottoman Empire, 190818 in Nations and
Nationalism, 11/4 (2005), pp. 613636. The best example of a prominent and respected
scholar who continues to conflate Turkism with Turkish nationalism and claims that
the CUP was a Turkish nationalist organization is M. kr Haniolu. His seminal
works on the development of Young Turk ideology and its intimate relationship to
Turkism and Turkish nationalism are The Young Turks in Opposition (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995) and Preparation for a Revolution (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001) in addition to numerous articles regarding the development of
Young Turk and CUP ideology.
Constitutional Period and subsequent state construction programs of

the early Turkish Republican Era.
This group argues that utilizing ideological treatises to claim a com-
prehensive CUP Turkish nationalist agenda is problematic for several
reasons. Words such as Ottoman, Turk, and Muslim were used by many
CUP leaders, including Mustafa Kemal Atatrk (the founder of the
Republic of Turkey), interchangeably to characterize the Ottoman
nation during the late Ottoman period and even into the early
Republican Era. In other words, concepts such as race, ethnicity, and
national identity were new to the empire in the late Ottoman period
and were often conflated with each other and misunderstood. Therefore,
someone could be a Turk, Muslim, Ottoman, and speak Greek, Kurdish,
or Armenian all at the same time. The term Trk did not necessarily
mean a distinct ethno-linguistic group as it does today.8
Closely related Enlightenment concepts, such as nationalism, race,
and ethnicity, were not germane to the region, language, or culture of
the Ottoman Empire. There were no words in Persian, Turkish, or
Arabic that adequately described what these concepts meant. New
words were adopted from European languages or indigenous words
were imbued with new significance while still maintaining their old,
traditional meanings. This conflation often led to great confusion as to
8
For examples of this burgeoning literature on the fluidity and ambiguity of identity
in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republican period see Eric Zrcher,
Islam in the Service of the National and Pre-national State: the instrumentalisation
of religion for political goals by Turkish regimes between 18801980 in Turkology
Update Leiden Project Working Papers Archive Department of Turkish Studies, Leiden
University (Oct. 2004), pp. 115; The Vocabulary of Muslim Nationalism, Inter
national Journal of Sociology of Science, 137 (1999), pp. 8192; and Young Turks,
Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalists: Identity Politics 19081938 in Ottoman
Past and Todays Turkey, (ed.) Kemal Karpat (Leiden, 2000), pp. 150179. Additionally,
see Hasan Kayal, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the
Ottoman Empire, 19081918 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997); Feroz
Ahmad, Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish Communities of
the Ottoman Empire, 19081914 in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The
Functioning of a Plural Society, (eds.) Bernard Lewis and Benjamin Braude (New York:
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982) pp. 401434 and Politics of Islam in modern
Turkey, Middle Eastern Studies 27/1 (1991), pp. 321; A. Holly Shissler, Between Two
Empires: Ahmet Aaolu and the New Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003) and Howard
Eissenstats Turkic Immigrants/Turkish Nationalisms: Opportunities and Limitations
of a Nationalism in Exile, The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 25:2 (Fall, 2001)/26:3
(Spring, 2002), pp. 2550 and Metaphors of Race and Discourse of Nation: Racial
Theory and the Beginnings of Nationalism in the Turkish Republic in Paul Spickard,
Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World (New York: Routledge, 2005),
pp. 23956.
70 kent f. schull
what the terms in question actually meantso much sothat contem-

porary scholars are still debating the various meanings of these words
today. An excellent example of such a word is millet and its derivatives,
which today have the unambiguous meaning of nation, national,
nationalism, and nationalist in modern Turkish. Scholars of high rep-
utation, such as Feroz Ahmad and M. kr Haniolu, have engaged in
public debate over what this term meant during the late Ottoman
period, especially in the context of the existence of Turkish nationalism
prior to the end of the empire. In the end, however, both scholars
appear to reify the term and do not account for its immense flexibility
during this period.9
The retroactive imposition of present-day meanings of millet and
Trk upon the Second Constitutional Period has led scholars from the
first group to conflate Turkism with Turkish nationalism. It has been
repeatedly asserted that some members of the CUP, such as Akura
and Gkalp, were Turkish nationalists because they formed, promoted,
and contributed to Turkish heritage societies, literary groups, and jour-
nals during the late Ottoman Empire. Some of these Turkist organiza-
tions and journals included The Turks Hearth (Trk Oca), the Turks
Homeland (Trk Yurdu), and the Turks Association (Trk Dernei).10
As evinced by these groups and journals, Turkism certainly existed in
the late Ottoman Empire. There is, however, an essential difference
between Turkism and Turkish nationalism.
Communal identities based upon pride in ones heritage can facili-
tate the creation of nationalist identities, movements, and desires for
9
See the published debate between Ahmad and Haniolu regarding millet, its use,
and meaning and the existence of Turkish nationalism during the late Ottoman Empire
in the American Historical Review, 101/5 (December 1996), pp. 158990 and 102/4
(October 1997), pp. 130103. As a result of these heated exchanges, both scholars
seemingly pigeonhole millet to fit their individual agendas and neither account for its
variable nature. Both scholars attempt to support their particular agendas by referring
to the definition of millet provided by emseddin Samis Turkish dictionary (Kamus-
Trki) first published in 1899. Both scholars do not seem to realize that Samis defini-
tion clearly demonstrates the evolving and dynamic nature of the terms varied mean-
ings among Ottomans during this period. Sami clearly approves of restricting the
meaning of millet to identify groups of people based upon religious affiliation.
He claims that this procedure retains the original meaning of the term based upon its
Quranic roots. He does acknowledge, however, that millet was currently being used in
other capacities, such as identifying peoples according to language or place of origin,
but, personally, he does not approve of this new usage. See emseddin Samis Kamus-
Trki, p. 1400.
10
For an analysis of these organizations and journals see Masami Arai, Turkish
Nationalism in the Young Turk Era (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1992).
self-determination. This possibility, however, does not make such a

development inevitable. Turkism and Turkish nationalism, similar to
Arabism and Arab nationalism, are fundamentally different phenom-
ena: one is a literary or heritage movement, while the other is a move-
ment calling for self-determination and national expression in the
form of a nation-state.11 Literary societies, communal identities, and
religious movements often provide the basis from which nationalist
movements create their ideologies, garner popular support, and main-
tain and legitimate their existences. This was the case with both Turkism
and Arabism. They provided a basis from which nationalist m ovements,
such as Turkish or Arab nationalism, could form a unified political
identity grounded in a common constructed language, culture, history,
and purpose. That purpose was to gain power over a state representing
the political aspirations of that nationalist movement.12 It is from this
unified identity and political aspiration that Turkish and Arab nation-
alist movements fully emerged in order to fill the political and social
void left in the wake of the Ottoman Empires demise.
In light of this understanding of Turkism, its proponents, such as
Gkalp and Akura, should not necessarily be viewed as Turkish
nationalists. Many of these proponents of Turkism were not even
natives of the Ottoman Empire, but were instead immigrants from
Russian-held lands in Tatarstan, Central Asia, and the Caucasus
region.13 The scope of their Turkishness transcended the framework
11
For a similar discussion on the difference between Arabism and Arab nationalism
see James L Gelvins Post hoc ergo propter hoc?: Reassessing the lineages of national-
ism in Bilad Al-Sham in Thomas Philipp and Christoph Schumann (eds.), From the
Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon (Beirut: Ergon Verlag Wrzburg
in Kommission, 2004), pp. 12744 and The Politics of Notables Forty Years After in
Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 40/1 (June 2006), pp. 1930 in which Gelvin
states, There is the assumption that Arab nationalism is just the next logical step after
Arabism, as if the two did not belong to entirely different categories of phenomena
(p. 28).
12
See John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd ed. (Manchester, U.K.:
Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 116. Breuilly convincingly argues that nation-
alist movements are first and foremost about politics and that politics is about power.
Power, in the modern world, is principally about control of the state (p. 1). This is the
underlining and most fundamental characteristic of nationalism that must be realized
and addressed before undertaking an analysis of specific nationalist movements.
13
It must be noted here that Ziya Gkalp was from Diyarbakir, an outlying regionin
Southeastern Anatolia. This region was not a predominantly Turkish area in terms of
its ethnic composition. His ideological development has often been treated in a linear
fashion arriving at Turkish nationalism shortly around the 1908 Young Turk Revolution.
The culmination of his ideas regarding Turkish nationalism was published in 1923
72 kent f. schull
of the Ottoman Empire. Many advocated a Pan-Turkism that ignored

contemporary borders. This type of nationalism, even if called that, is
not the same as the ethnic Turkish nationalism that developed after
the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire as a result of World War I. The
concepts of ethnicity, nationalism, and national identity held by
theseRussian migrs, such as Yusuf Akura, were very different than
those of native Ottomans. It is very important to keep this in mind
when interpreting their ideological texts and assessing their impact on
other CUP members.14 Too often, intellectual history allows for a great
deal of slippage regarding the influence of one person on the thoughts
of another. Just because people were contemporaries or even members
of the same organization, especially one such as the CUP, it does not
mean they ascribed to the same philosophies or ideologies.
In light of these reasons, the motivations behind CUP administra-
tive policies and practices, such as its promotion of Turkish as the
administrative, bureaucratic, and educational language of the empire,
should be reconsidered. In other words, the promotion of this policy
was based upon precedent and did not necessarily exemplify ethnic
Turkish nationalism. In fact, Turkish had been the administrative lan-
guage of the empire for centuries. The Ottoman Constitution of 1876,
which was reinstated as a result of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908,
established Turkish as the official language of the empire. Indeed, for
efficiencys sake, nearly every state throughout history has had a central
administrative language, particularly states consisting of polyglot pop-
ulations spread over far flung territories, such as the Roman, British,
Russian, and French empires, as well as the Ming and Qing Dynasties
of China. The Ottoman Empire was no different from other states in
this regard. Moreover, the Committee of Union and Progress actually
cancelled these so called Turkification policies as outlined above,
because of local opposition in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman
Empire. Many scholars have portrayed Arab opposition to these
shortly before his death. In this article entitled The Principles of Turkism he coher-
ently articulated the ideology of Turkish nationalism. As a result Robert Devereux has
characterized him as the philosopher, the man of ideas, of the Ataturk Revolution.
See Robert Devereuxs Ziya Gkalp: The Principles of Turkism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968),
p. ix.
14
For an insightful discussion of the impact of Russian migrs on the develop-
ment of Turkish nationalism see Howard Eissenstat, Turkic Immigrants/Turkish
Nationalisms: Opportunities and Limitations of a Nationalism in Exile in The Turkish
Studies Association Bulletin, 25:2 (Fall, 2001)/26:3 (Spring, 2002), pp. 2550.
Turkification policies as clashes between rival ethnic nationalist move-

ments, but this is not the case.15 In fact, these conflicts are more accu-
rately portrayed as resistance to administrative centralization and a
desire for greater autonomy, not independence. Finally, at its most fun-
damental level, CUP membership was united behind its broad goal to
create an efficient, powerful, and centralized administration, which in
turn would make possible the preservation of the empire. A unified
administrative language simply makes sense on its own and does not
need to be interpreted as a manifestation of ethnic nationalist proclivi-
ties.16 In light of these arguments, bureaucratic practices and policies
can offer important insights into a regimes motivations, perceptions,
and goals. There are few better practices or documents for understand-
ing a regimes conception of difference than censuses and population
surveys.
Censuses, Population Surveys, and the Power of Naming
Throughout the Second Constitutional Period, the Ottoman prison

acted as an important site of identity conceptualization on both a
communal and national level. Between 1912 and 1918 the Ottoman
Prison Administration (Hapishanler daresi) conducted annual sur-
veysof every prison and house of detention throughout the empire.17
15
See the various articles in Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Reeva Simon and
Muhammad Muslih, eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York, 1991), including
M. kr Haniolu, The Young Turks and the Arabs before the revolution of 1908,
C. Everest Dawn, The Origins of Arab Nationalism, and Rasid Khalidi, Ottomanism
and Arabism in Syria prior to 1914: a Reassessment. See also Mahmoud Haddad, The
Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered, IJMES 26 (1994) and Philip S Khoury, Urban
Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 18601920 (Cambridge,
1983). For a good overview of the historiography on the development of Arab national-
ism see Kayal, pp. 611 and Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in
Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 59.
16
For a convincing and much more comprehensive discussion of why CUP
attempts at administrative centralization should not be portrayed as efforts at
Turkification see Kayal, chapters 24. Also see C. Everest Dawns The Origins of
Arab Nationalism in The Origins of Arab Nationalism, ed. Rashid Khalidi (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 330 and Erol lkers Contextualising
Turkification: nation-building in the late Ottoman Empire, 190818 in Nations and
Nationalism, 11/4 (2005), pp. 613636.
17
See the catalogues for the Ministry of the Interior concerning the Ottoman Prison
AdministrationBOA, DHMBHPS and DHMBHPSM. There are four catalogues
total. Contained within these catalogues are the returned and completed prison sur-
veys. In total there are about forty six different entries that include these completed
74 kent f. schull
The content, categories, and conduct of these surveys offer critical

insights into CUP conceptions of identity associated with Ottomanand
foreign populations, particularly in terms of ethnic, ethno-religious,
communal, and national identities.
On January 18, 1912, the Ottoman Prison Administration com-
menced the most comprehensive prison statistical collection campaign
in the empires history. This campaign distributed the same question-
naire to all of the empires prisons and became the foundation for the
CUPs program to overhaul and modernize the empires ad hoc system
of over a thousand different prisons and houses of detention (hap-
ishaneler ve tevkifhaneler).18 Prior to the 1908 Young Turk Revolution,
prisons within the Ottoman Empire received little attention. Conditions
were horrid and there was no centralized bureaucratic apparatus to
deal with their management. Responsibility for funding, maintenance,
and administration was divided between several governmental agen-
cies. Very little, therefore, was accomplished, because no one was solely
responsible.19
After consolidating a great deal of political power by early 1911, gov-
ernmental representatives of the still clandestine Committee of Union
and Progress set about rationalizing and centralizing the Ottoman
criminal justice system. Enormous amounts of energy and time were
invested in overhauling the Imperial Ottoman Penal Code (IOPC) dur-
ing the summer of 1911. That fall, the first centralized prison adminis-
tration was established and attached to the Ministry of the Interior.
This provided the new administration with a clear budget and com-
mand structure.20
reports. The normal process of distribution and collection of the surveys went through
the provincial centers (vilayet merkezleri) and independent district areas (sancaklar).
In most instances the provincial centers collected all of the prison surveys and then
forwarded them onto the Ottoman central government. After personally collecting
and surveying all of the returned statistical forms found in Istanbul, Turkey at the
Prime Ministers Ottoman Archives (BOA), it appears that most of the surveys were
completed in a timely and correct manner. For example, the statistics of the 1912
Ottoman prison survey for the Canik Sancak and the provinces of Istanbul, Baghdad,
Beirut, and the Hicaz see BOA, DHMBHPSM 5/1, 4/4, 5/9, 4/21, and 3/36.
18
In 1912 there were more than a thousand prisons and houses of detention (hap-
ishaneler and tevkifhaneler) throughout all of the territories in the empire. This ques-
tionnaire was distributed to all of them.
19
For a discussion regarding the state of prisons and other penal institutions within
the Ottoman Empire prior to the Young Turk Revolution see Kent Schull, Penal
Institutions, Nation-state Construction, and Modernity in the Late Ottoman Empire
(19081919), Ph.D. dissertation (Los Angeles: UCLA, 2007), pp. 2965
20
Ibid., pp. 66114.
Immediately following its creation, the prison administration began

to organize a detailed annual prison population survey. This survey
commenced in January 1912 by eliciting information regarding every
aspect of Ottoman prisons, such as budgets, health care, employees,
prison labor, and prisoners.21 Categories of inquiry associated with
prisoners included the specific crimes committed, gender, date of
incarceration, marital and familial status, recidivism, sentence and
punishment, social class and occupation, ethno-religious/national
identity, age, and level of education. Each of these categories was bro-
ken down further into lists of specific items related to the prisoners
identity, which shall be discussed in more detail below.22
Based on the collection and analysis of these statistics, the Ottoman
Prison Administration issued its first comprehensive reform program
for the empires entire prison system on April 4, 1912.23 This program
called for the immediate improvement or renewal (hapishanelerin tec-
didi) of all prisons and houses of detention, based upon a uniform
architectural design.24 Among other items, the directive announced
new financial allocations for extensive renovations and building pro-
jects. It also revealed that there were nearly 28,000 prisoners in the
Ottoman Empires sprawling and decentralized penal system in early
1912.25
What is most significant about this document is not the number of
prisoners in the empire, the aggressive reform program, or even the
substantial sums of money allocated for the project. It is how the CUP
justified and legitimated its efforts. According to the directive, the
reform program was mandated in order to bring Ottoman prison con-
ditions, particularly those related to health and hygiene, in conformity
with the laws of civilization and was legitimated by referencing the
knowledge and power that statistical information provided.26 This doc-
ument reveals an important shift from the nineteenth century in how
Ibid.
21
See the Babakanlk Osmanl Arivi (BOA), DHMBHPSM 3/5.

22
23
BOA, DHMBHPS 145/31.
24
Attempts at making a uniform architectural design had been ongoing since as
early as March 1910 and various designs were drawn up. Please see BOA, DHMBHPS
142/38, 142/54, and 143/3 doc. 1.
25
BOA, DHMBHPS 145/31.
26
The exact phrase is kuvaid-i mediniye. This phrase can be interpreted as laws/
principles or doctrines of civilization and can have a distinctive religious connotation,
which in this context possesses interesting connotations. See BOA, DHMBHPS 145/31.
76 kent f. schull
penal practices, reforms and programs were formulated, justified, and

legitimated.
The level of information collected and tabulated by means of this
survey fits the description of what Michel Foucault called tableaux
vivants. According to Foucault, this table is the first of the great opera-
tions of disciplinewhich transforms the confused, useless or danger-
ous multitudes into ordered multiplicities. The organizing of seemingly
disparate bits of information about prison populations from over a
thousand prisons across a vast empire into a rational system made this
table/questionnaire both a technique of power and a procedure of
knowledge.27 The table was arranged in such a way as to link the singu-
lar and the multiple together within a unitary document. Foucault
claimed that this combination simultaneously provided knowledge of
the individual and the group. This process broke the entire Ottoman
prison population into comprehensible parts and at the same time
totalized it into an intelligible entity that Ottoman authorities could
understand, control, and discipline.
Questionnaires and censuses of this type are important tools that
state administrations utilize in order to quantify, identify, categorize,
and control its population. The process of collecting statistics, espe-
cially through censuses and population surveys, can actually create and
assign identity. The act of making people up in this way is what Ian
Hacking refers to as nominalism. Nominalism reflects intentionality
by the state, and is not some accidental, unintended process. Hackings
argument, however, is problematic because it reifies the power of the
state by making the individual the passive recipient of state nomencla-
ture.28 In the case of prison surveys, however, prisoners are assigned
their identity by state authorities and lack agency in this regard.
Nominalism can have unintended consequences. In Macedonia,
for example, the Ottoman Empire was forced by European powers
to conduct a thorough population survey between 1903 and 1905.29
27
Michel Foucaults Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan
Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995), pp. 148149.
28
Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2002), p. 100.
29
See pek K. Yosmaolus Counting Bodies, Shaping Souls: The 1903 Census
and National Identity in Ottoman Macedonia International Journal of Middle East
Studies, 38 (2006), pp. 5577. Yosmaolus article demonstrates the struggle between
the state and individuals and groups within the population and how the state attempted
By forcing the population to divide itself along sectarian lines for

official demographic purposes, the Macedonian Census further exac-
erbated the already explosive situation among competing Christian
sectarian-nationalist movements. This crisis of competing national-
ist movements traces its roots back to 1872 when the Ottoman
administration established the (Bulgarian-dominated) Exarchate and
recognized it as a separate religious community (millet) from the
(Greek-dominated) Ecumenical Patriarchate. This caused intense
nationalist competition between the different orthodox Christian
sectarian groups in the Balkans over which religious/nationalist com-
munity the population would belong to, especially among the Bulgarian,
Serb, and Greek communities. Each of the groups struggled, especially
the different clergies, for control of the relevant religious community
and perhaps the future nation. If a certain group within the Macedonian
population decided to adhere to the Ecumenical Patriarchate then it
was choosing to be labeled Greek, even if it spoke Bulgarian and vice
versa.30 In short, the census became a site for identification not only for
taxation and military purposes, but also for the populations potential
nationalist proclivities based upon sectarian affiliation. At the same
time as the Ottoman state was trying to impose its own classification
upon its population, the people were also actively identifying and
naming themselves.31 What took place in Macedonia demonstrated to
CUP members the explosive power that statistics could potentially
possess.32
to name them. The article demonstrates that in many cases elements of the population
resisted and thwarted state efforts in an attempt to name themselves. For other
works regarding the naming power of statistics and censuses see Arjun Appadurai,
Number in the Colonial Imagination in Carol A Breckenridge and Peter van der
Veer (eds.), Orientalist and the Post Colonial Predicament: Perspectives on South
Asia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 31439; Bernard
S. Cohen, The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia in An
Anthropologist among the Historians and other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987), pp. 22454; and Sumit Guha, The Politics of Identity and Enumeration
in India C. 16001990, Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, 20 (2003),
pp. 14867.
30
See Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population 18301914: Demographic and Social
Characteristics (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 35 and
Yosmaolu, p. 60. Yosmaolus article contains an excellent description of the schism
between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Bulgarian Exarchate.
31
See Yosmaolus entire article.
32
Ibid., pp. 5965. It is important to note that many CUP members took an active
role in administering the Macedonian census and witnessed first hand its effects.
78 kent f. schull
In this context, it should not be surprising that for the CUP, statistics
were the key to knowledge and power for all of its reform programs.
Earlier Ottoman attempts at statistical collection prior to the 1903
Macedonian Census were myopic in comparison. They were carried
out in order to find more effective ways to tax and conscript the popu-
lation with the unitary focus of addressing immediate imperial con-
cerns of survival in the face of internal unrest and foreign domination.33
Although such campaigns did see the population as an important
imperial commodity, it was not until the CUP that the population was
viewed as the states most vital resource and one that must be exten-
sively tabulated.
Censuses and population surveys, such as the Ottoman prison
questionnaires, provide important statistical data in a general sense,
but they also reveal important insights into how a regime conceptual-
izes difference among the states population. These Ottoman prison
surveys were conducted systematically, regularly, and simultaneously
throughout the entire empire at the height of CUP political and mili-
tary power. They were conducted during the most critical and vola-
tiletimes of CUP rulethe Balkan Wars of 191213 and World War I.
As research has demonstrated, penal and prison reforms were inte-
gralto the CUPs nation-state construction program and prisons acted
as microcosms of modernity for CUP attempts to modernize and
rescue the empire.34 As a result of constant warfare and immense
socialupheaval, which characterized the Second Constitutional Period,
these prison surveys represent the closest attempt to a population
census ever carried out by the CUP.35 The categories of identity
foundinthe prison surveys thus provide the most concrete examples
available for understanding how the CUP conceptualized differ-
encewithin the Ottoman population in terms of ethnicity, religion, and
nationality.
33
For a more detailed discussion of the development of statistics in the Ottoman
Empire during the nineteenth-century see Schull, pp. 2863.
34
Regarding Ottoman prisons as laboratories of modernity, see Schull,
pp. 66115.
35
According to documents found in the Ottoman Ministry of the Interiors
Directorate General of the Administration of Population Registers, there was an
attempt to assess the empires total population in 1914. It was not, however, a real
census. The statistics were apparently drawn from the 1905/6 census and adjusted
according to reported births and deaths which had occurred during the intervening
years. See Karpat, Ottoman Population, p. 189.
Millet: Ethno-Religious Identity, National Identity, or Both?
One of the most intriguing categories of identity contained within

these prison surveys pertains to the individual prisoners millet iden-
tity. In the Ottoman Prison Survey questionnaires of 191218, the cat-
egory requesting the millet identity of the prisoner was labeled
milliyet-i mahkumin.36 According to the contemporary English trans-
lation and most common interpretation of this word by current schol-
ars, this category supposedly represents an inquiry into the prisoners
national identity. This translation, though, actually obfuscates the mul-
tiple and contradictory meanings millet possessed during the late
Ottoman period. Based upon the words usage in the survey a more
accurate, albeit awkward translation of milliyet-i mahkumin would
be the ethno-religious communal/national identity of the prisoners.
Under the category of milliyet-i mahkumin, the possible millet identi-
ties of a prisoner consisted of the following ten categories:
1. slam
2.Rum Katolik ve Protestan (Ecumenical Patriarchate Catholics and
Protestants)37
3. Ermeni Katolik ve Protestan (Armenian Catholics and Protestants)38
4. Musevi (Jewish)
36
BOA, DHMBHPSM 3/5. Mahkumin literally means, prisoner convicted of a
crime.
37
In translating the term Rum in this religious context it is much more clear and
accurate to use Ecumenical Patriarchate instead of Greek Orthodox. Greek is often
incorrectly construed as a national identifier by Western scholars. The word Greek is
a not germane to the Ottoman language. The Turkish word Grek is borrowed from the
West. Ottoman Turkish has a separate germane term for a Greek foreign national
Yunanl, which is a derivative of the Ottoman Turkish name for the Greek nation-
stateYunanstan. The Western term Greek is itself a Western nationalist construct
that portions of the Greek-speaking, Ottoman Christian population adopted in the
early nineteenth century in order to be identified as a separate nation and gain inde-
pendence from the Ottoman Empire. For these reasons, translating the term Rum as
Greek Orthodox can lead to confusion and misunderstanding.
38
It is significant that the numbers of orthodox Armenians and Ecumenical
Patriarchate prisoners were not requested, only the combined number of prison-
ers who were Protestant or Catholic. The numbers of orthodox Armenians and
Ecumenical Patriarchate Ottoman subjects would have greatly outstripped those who
had converted to Catholicism or Protestantism. Surely there were orthodox Armenians
and Ecumenical Patriarchates in Ottoman prisons at this time. Why then is there
no category to include orthodox Armenians and Ecumenical Patriarchate Ottoman
subjects? A convincing explanation to this conundrum is found on the 1914 Ottoman
Prison Survey questionnaire. This version followed the same format and general con-
tent of the 1912 questionnaire however, for the sake of clarity significant changes were
80 kent f. schull

5. Bulgar (Bulgarian Exarchate)

6. Milel-i Muhtelife-yi Osmaniye (Other Ottoman Communities)

7.Alman (German), Fransa (French), ngliz (British), ve Avustral
(Austrian)

8. ranl (Iranian/Persian)

9.Yunanl (citizens of the Greek Nation-state, not Greek Orthodox
Ottoman subjects)
10. Milel-i Muhtelife-yi Ecnebi (Other Foreign Nationals)39
This category was broken into two main divisions dealing with the
subjects of the Ottoman Empire and subjects of foreign states. The divi-
sion related to Ottoman subjects consists of six different groups:
1. Muslims (slam)
2.Ecumenical Patriarchate Catholics and Protestants (Rum Katolik ve
Protestan)
3.Armenian Catholics and Protestants (Ermeni Katolik ve Protestan)
4. Jews (Musevi)
5. Bulgarian Exarchate Christians (Bulgars)
6. Other Ottoman Communities (Milel-i Muhtelife-yi Osmaniye)
The second division, referring to the subjects of foreign states, con-
sisted of four groups:
1.German, French, British, and Austrian foreign nationals (Alman,
Fransa, ngliz, ve Avustral)
2. Iranian foreign nationals (ranl)
3. Greek foreign nationals (Yunanl)
4. Other Foreign Nationals (Milel-i Muhtelife-yi Ecnebi)
The organization of this category, the possible millet options, and the
use and meaning of millet reveal several significant insights into CUP
conceptions of difference within the empires population and between
its subjects and foreigners. First, each of the millet categories related to
made to some of the categories of inquiry. One such correction concerned the number
of Armenian and Ecumenical Patriarchate prisoners. The 1914 questionnaire changed
the 1912 categories requesting the numbers of Rum Katolik ve Protestan (Ecumenical
Patriarchate Catholics and Protestants) and Ermeni Katolik ve Protestan (Armenian
Catholic and Protestants) to Rum ve Rum Katolik ve Protestan (Ecumenical Patriarchate
and Ecumenical Patriarchate Catholics and Protestants) and Ermeni ve Ermeni Katolik
ve Protestan (Armenian and Armenian Catholics and Protestants). It appears that the
original intention of the Ottoman prison survey was to collect the statistics on all those
associated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Armenian communities, however in
the 1912 version it was simply written incorrectly. Compare the 1914 version of the
Ottoman prison survey questionnaire (BOA, DHMBHPS 150/3 docs. 13) with the
original 1912 questionnaire (BOA, DHMBHPS 8/3 doc. 13).
39
BOA, DHMBHPSM 3/5.
the Ottoman population represent divisions and identities based upon

sectarian lines and not along linguistic, quasi-racial, or cultural desig-
nations. Most of these religious groups represented long-standing
Ottoman administrative and bureaucratic designations based largely
upon Islamic law (sharia) and customary law (rf-i hukuk), thus
dividing the Ottoman population along monotheistic sectarian lines
namely, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Previous Ottoman attempts
to collect population statistics during the nineteenth century also cat-
egorized the empires population according to these basic sectarian
designations.40
Of these three monotheistic religions, only Christianity was divided
into additional sectarian subcategories. These Christian millet subdivi-
sions were the Armenian Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the
Bulgarian Exarchate, which was originally a subgroup of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, but was separated in 1872.41 These groupings of Ottoman
subjects according to religious affiliation received official recognition
as the Millet System on April 25, 1861.42 This system was founded,
See Karpat, Ottoman Population, Statistical Appendices, pp. 108189. In each of

40
the empires censuses the categories of identity all ran along confessional lines with the
simplest being Muslim and Non-Muslim. The more detailed and sophisticated
population surveys requested the numbers of Muslims, Cossacks, Ecumenical
Patriarchate Christians (Greeks), Armenians, Bulgars, Wallachians, Greek Catholics,
Armenian Catholics, Protestants, Latins, Maronites, Syriacs, Chaldeans, Jacobites,
Jews, Samaritans, Yezidis, Gypsies, and Foreigners. This categorization came from the
1905/6 Ottoman population survey. See Karpat, Ottoman Population, pp. 162163. The
CUP prison survey appears to have utilized the 1905/6 format, but simplified it to
include what the prison administration saw as the largest population groupings while
combining the smaller groups under the heading of Other Ottoman Communities.
41
Ibid., pp. 35, 46.
42
Yavuz Ercan, Non-Muslim Communities under the Ottoman Empire (Millet
System) in The Great Ottoman, Turkish Civilization, ed. Halil Inalcik, et al., (Ankara:
2000), pp. 38191. There is a debate regarding how long this official confessional sys-
tem referred to as the Ottoman Millet System actually existed. The classical concep-
tion of this system dates it back to 1453, but the relatively recent scholarship of
Benjamin Braude challenges this long-standing view. Through an investigation of the
term millet and its uses in a variety of internal and diplomatic Ottoman imperial docu-
ments, Braude argues that millets meaning in the early modern period entailed a sense
of sovereignty among states, whose sovereignty was legitimated through adherence to
a particular religion. Millet was not, however, used to designate subjects within the
Ottoman Empire according to religious communal identity, such as Jews, Armenians,
or other non-Muslim groups. Millet was used, though, in reference to the Muslim com-
munity within the empire since the sultans legitimacy was based largely upon his role
as leader of the community of Muslims or ummah. It was not until the nineteenth
century that the term millet was extended to the rest of the Ottoman subject popula-
tions, such as Jews, Armenians, and Greek Orthodox. It was during this time that the
Millet System was established. Braudes argument is an important revision of Bernard
82 kent f. schull
inpart, to implement the Imperial Rescripts of 1839 and 1856, which

declared that all Ottoman subjects possessed equal status before the
law regardless of their religious affiliations.43 Even the final category for
classifying the identity of the prisoners who were Ottoman subjects
was based upon confessional lines. This category, Other Ottoman
Communities or Milel-i Muhtelife-yi Osmaniye, acted as a catchall cat-
egory and would have included other religious sects (mezhepler), such
as Alevis, Druze, Yazidis, Maronites, Assyrians, and Coptic Christians.
These religious communities or sects apparently did not merit specific
recognition within the Ottoman Millet System, but fell under broader
monotheistic designations.44
Furthermore, these categories of identity suggest that the concept of
ethnicity based upon linguistic, quasi-racial, or cultural designation
was in its infancy within the Ottoman Empire. This is illustrated by the
inclusion of Catholics and Protestants within the religious millet of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate and Armenian Christianity. This inclusion
implies that these two categories were not strictly based on a unified
religious identity. In other words, if Catholics and Protestants some-
how fell under the category of Ecumenical Patriarchate and Armenian
Christianity, then these designations were not purely religious. They
also appear to represent a quasi-ethnic identity, one intertwined with
religion, culture, and language. That said, within the Ottoman Prison
Survey only Christian millets possessed any sense of ethnicity outside
the lines of strict sectarianism.
By contrast, and more significantly, nowhere in the question-
nairewas there a request for the number of Ottoman subjects consid-
ered Turks, Arabs, or Kurds among the prison population. The CUP
appears to have been content to include Turks, Arabs, and Kurds under
the rubric of Islam without reference to racial, linguistic, religious,
or supposed national differences among these groups. These groups
were not viewed as separate ethno-religious communities possessing
Lewis explanation of millet in chapter 10 of The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London:

Oxford University Press, 1966). See Benjamin Braude, Foundation Myths of the Millet
System in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: the Functioning of a Plural
Society, eds. Bernard Lewis and Benjamin Braude (New York: Holmes & Meier
Publishers, Inc., 1982), pp. 6988.
43
See translations of these two Ottoman Imperial Rescripts in James L. Gelvins The
Modern Middle East, A History (New York, 2005), pp. 148154.
44
This category (Milel-i Muhtelife-yi Osmiye) does include the word millet in its title,
but in its plural formmilel.
nationalistic identities of their own. Rather they were conceptualized

as part of the core constituency of the Ottoman nationMuslims. For
example, a prisoner in Baghdads Central Prison in 1912, Hassan ibn
Hussein, who would be quickly identified today as an Arab Shiite, was
not identified as such by the CUPs Prison Administration. To it, he was
simply a Muslim. The issue of differentiating the ethno-religiousnational
identity of Muslims that is so pervasive and perversely manipulated in
the contemporary Middle East does not appear to have been an impor-
tant issue to the CUP-led Ottoman Prison Administration, as late as
1918.45 During the Second Constitutional Period, other CUP attempts
to collect statistics on various segments of the Ottoman population
either categorized the population along similar sectarian lines as the
prison survey or simply labeled them as Muslim or Non-Muslim.46
45
The ethnic identity of Ottoman prisoners was never requested or collected in any
of the several prison population surveys conducted during the Second Constitutional
Period. It is important to clarify that throughout Ottoman history the bureaucracy did
recognize differences between Muslim groups, such as Albanians, Circassians, Kurds,
Arabs, Turks, etc., but these groups were not officially counted as such in population
censuses, nor were they viewed as distinct racial or national groups. They were part of
the Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire and depending on particular contingent
circumstances were favored or fouled by the central administration. According to Fuat
Dndars important work ttihat ve Terakkinin Mslmanlar skan Politikas, 1913
1918 [The Political Policy of the Committee of Union and Progress Muslim Settlement
Practices, 191318] (stanbul: letiim, 2001) the CUP did collect demographic infor-
mation on Kurds, Armenians, and Nestorians in Southeastern Anatolia as part of a
larger program to make a demographic survey of all regions of the Ottoman Empire as
instructed in a directive from Talat Paa on 20 July 1915 (pp. 8586). This empire wide
survey was never completed, but according to some of the demographic maps that have
survived, its primary focus was on religious (milliyet) identities. For examples of the
demographic maps see Dndars Modern Trkiyenin ifresi (stanbul: letiim, 2008),
pp. 45262.
46
Over the course of the Second Constitutional Period, the Directorate for Public
Security (Emniyet-i Umumiye Mdiriyeti) collected criminal statistics from around the
empire as represented in its 1910/11 general report on criminal activity. The categories
of identity associated with those arrested and charged with crimes only listed whether
the suspect was Muslim or Non-Muslim. See BOA, DH.EUM.MTK 32/13 and
DH.EUM.MTK 8/23. Numerous other files from the Directorate for Public Security
catalogs demonstrate that crime statistics were not collected according to ethnic, racial,
or national identities, but along basic sectarian classifications.
In 1914, the CUP led government attempted a quasi-population census but
According to the official introduction, these statistics were prepared by using the
figures from the 1905/6 census and adding births and subtracting deaths registered
during the intervening years. In other words, no real census was taken during the
Second Constitutional Period, but the CUP run and controlled Ministry of the Interior
did utilize the same categories of identity as the 1905/6 census which were all based on
sectarian identifications. See Karpat, Ottoman Population, pp. 188189. It appears that
the CUP prison survey utilized a simplified version the 1905/6 Ottoman census format.
84 kent f. schull
The only place in the prison survey questionnaire where millet pos-
sesses the possible meaning of national is in the second division of the
milliyet-i mahkumin category. This section deals exclusively with sub-
jects of foreign states who were incarcerated in Ottoman prisons. It is
also organized according to different foreign states that have nothing to
do with sectarian designations. As a result, it is clear that millet does
possess a nationalistic connotation, but only in reference to foreign-
ers, not Ottoman subjects.
Finally, it is essential to point out that within this one category of the
Ottoman Prison Survey questionnaire (milliyet-i mahkumin) the term
millet possessed several different meanings. The survey used it as a des-
ignator for religious, ethno-religious, and national identity and clearly
demonstrates the state of flux the term millet found itself in during this
time. These multiple meanings led to confusion when it came time for
local prison officials to complete these surveys.
New Wine in Old Bottles
As stated above, concepts, such as nationalism, race, and ethnicity were

not germane to the region, language, or culture of the Middle East.
There were no words in Persian, Turkish, or Arabic that adequately
described what these concepts meant. New words were either adopted
from European languages or indigenous words were imbued with new
significance while still maintaining their traditional meanings. This led
to great confusion as to what the terms in question actually meant.
Millet is one such example. Its inclusion in the Ottoman Prison Survey
questionnaire confused the very state officials charged with assigning
millet identity of the empires prisoners. Sometimes these local officials
even gave prisoners multiple millet identities within the same category
of the survey.
For example, in Mecca, the provincial capital of the Hijaz, prison
officials assigned multiple millet identities to the same prisoner. Some
prisoners were identified as both Muslims and as belonging to the
category of Other Ottoman Communities. Additionally, incarcerated
German, French, British, and Austrian subjects were also given dual
millet identities, but in this instance as foreign nationals and as Muslims
simultaneously.47 Hijazi prison officials were not the only ones applying
47
BOA, DHMBHPSM 3/36 doc. 2.
multiple millet identities to the incarcerated. In the Ottoman province

of Baghdad, national identity and religious identity were also conflated
by local prison officials. Officials in the Baghdadi administrative dis-
trict of Kazmiye felt it necessary to indicate the national, religious, and
ethnic identity of its prisoners. Under the millet identity section of the
prison questionnaire, Kazmiye prison officials indicated that prisoners
who were Iranian nationals were also Muslims and whether or not
Muslim Ottoman subjects belonged to Other Ottoman Communities.48
The Beirut district of Haifa and the Yanya district of Margl are two
other examples of this phenomenon.49 They are unique in comparison
with the districts in the Hijaz or Baghdad, because it appears that all
prisoners, not just Muslims, were given multiple millet identities. In
fact, all Ottoman subjects who were assigned a religious millet identity
of either Muslim, Ecumenical Patriarchate, or Jewish were also listed as
belonging to Other Ottoman Communities. It appears that the Haifa
and Margl prison officials made a clear distinction between religious
affiliation and ethnic/communal identity and that the term millet pos-
sessed these two clear and distinct meanings in their minds. These
instances are unique in comparison with the rest of the survey.
In other Ottoman provinces, such as Manastr, Mamretlaziz,
Mosul, and Istanbul, local prison officials did not assign multiple millet
identities. In fact, only a handful of administrative districts from
around the empire assigned multiple millet identities.50 In other words,
they did not specify the religious affiliation of foreign nationals or those
labeled as Other Ottoman Communities. However, the assigning of
multiple millet identities to the same prisoner was not limited to one
isolated province. It cannot, therefore, be explained away as a strange
aberration in one obscure corner of the empire. The areas that did
assign multiple millet identities were spread over the entire empire,
from European provinces to the Arabian Peninsula and to Mesopotamia,
encompassing a variety of different cultures, languages, religions, and
peoples.
BOA, DHMBHPSM 4/21 doc. 1.

48
For Haifa see BOA, DHMBHPSM 5/9 doc. 20. Beirut provinces prison statistics
49
for 1912 are all found in BOA, DHMBHPSM 5/9. For the Margl district of Yanya see
BOA, DHMBHSM 4/20 doc. 5. Yanya provinces complete prison statistics for 1912 are
all found in BOA, DHMBHPSM 4/20.
50
See BOA, DHMBHPSM 6/27 for Manastrs prison statistics, BOA, DHMBHPSM
12/70, 14/65, and 145/26 for Mamretlaziz, Mosul: BOA, DHMBHPS 145/2 and
147/59, for Istanbul BOA, DHMBHPSM 4/4 and DHMBHPS 147/93 and 148/4.
86 kent f. schull
Conclusion
A summation of the significant insights into CUP conceptions of

difference as revealed by the Ottoman Prison Survey is as follows.
Difference among the Ottoman population was classified according to
confessional designation, not supposed ethnic nationalist identities.
Sectarian identification of Ottoman prisoners is consistent with other
forms of population tabulation carried out by the CUP during the
Second Constitutional Period and they are also consistent with previ-
ous population censuses conducted by the Ottoman state during the
nineteenth and early twentieth century. The concept of ethnicity based
upon linguistic, quasi-racial, or cultural designation was in its infancy,
as witnessed by the categories for Catholic and Protestant Armenians
and Ecumenical Patriarchate Christians among the prison population.
This designation, however, relates only to portions of the Christian
populations of the empire. No ethnic distinctions were made among the
Muslim communities of the empire and nowhere does the document
request the numbers of Turks, Arabs, or Kurds. The only time the term
millet does imply the meaning of national is in relation to the subjects
of foreign powers, such as France, Germany, or Greece. When referring
to the Ottoman Empires population, no indication is given that the
state or CUP viewed any grouping of the Ottoman population as dis-
tinct nations possessing some form of sovereign power. The Ottoman
population was still seen as subjects of the state first and the Sultan
second. No ethnic group had precedence over another in some sort of
racial hierarchy. Distinctions of identity were based along monotheis-
tic sectarian lines and all were still supposedly equal before the law. It is
essential to point out that within this one category of the Ottoman
Prison Survey questionnaire (milliyet-i mahkumin) the term millet pos-
sesses several different meanings to include religious, ethno-religious,
and national identity. Millet was not a static concept during the late
Ottoman period, but remained in a state of great flux until well after the
demise of the Ottoman Empire when it obtained its commonly held
contemporary meaning of nation and national in modern Turkish.
The multiple usages and meanings of millet as found in the same cate-
gory of the Ottoman Prison Survey led to confusion when it came time
for local prison officials to fill out the questionnaires themselves.
This detailed investigation into the use and meaning of millet has the
potential for much greater implications regarding late Ottoman nation-
alist historyparticularly in terms of the development of Turkish
nationalism. It challenges the claim that the CUP was dominated by

Turkish nationalists bent on Turkifying the Ottoman Empire in order
to create a Turkish State. This investigation also demonstrates that the
CUP conceptualized difference among the Ottoman population
according to sectarian lines and not necessarily along different ethnic
groups. The CUPs core goals were to centralize and rationalize power
within its hands and the Ottoman bureaucracy; to modernize and
transform the empire into an efficient, powerful state; and to maintain
its territorial integrity. CUP members were elitists, but not separatists.
They were still actively ascribing to and promoting official Ottoman
nationalism (Osmanllk) until the end of the empire. This officialOtto
man nationalism was supposed to transcend linguistic, ethnic, com-
munal, and even religious differences, even though its core constituency
consisted of the empires Muslim population. For the vast majority of
Ottoman Muslims, this form of nationalism held overwhelming cur-
rency until the end of World War I.
Obviously, any administrative document, such as a statistical survey,
belongs to a different discursive field than ideological treatises or liter-
ary texts. Administrative documents, however, provide important
insights that can support or challenge treatises and texts. As the prison
survey demonstrates, identity, especially millet identity, was in great
flux during the late Ottoman Empire. This should be taken into account
when interpreting ideological texts. Additionally, the CUP was not a
monolithic or homogenous organization. There were multiple agendas
and projects at work, not only within the Young Turks, but also within
the CUP itself until the demise of the empire. No one person can speak
for such an organization. Historians of the Second Constitutional
Period should weigh governmental practice and policy as much as
treatises when attempting to define CUP motivations and actions.
An Ottoman against the Constitution: The
Maronites of Mount Lebanon and the question
of representation in the Ottoman Parliament
Abdulrahim Abuhusayn
Throughout much of its existence, Ottoman traditional policy and the

empires notions of law and governance allowed for the existence of a
number of communities who enjoyed some degree of autonomy within
the Ottoman body politic. Even the centralizing tendencies of the
Tanzimat reformers of the 19th century did not extend to the point of
infringing upon the religious identities of its multi-communal citizenry
as the state attempted to forge a common Ottoman identity and instill
loyalty in the Empires citizenry. This particular aspect of the shared
Ottoman experience is often overlooked by students of the modern
Middle East in their reading of the Ottoman era of the successor nation-
states in part since modern nation-states tended to disregard ethnic
and religious identities in favor of more encompassing national ties.
Although the nation-state is itself a recent phenomenon, particularly in
the Middle East, it has nevertheless come to be regarded as the natural
result of the political evolution of modern societies. Moreover, this has
tended to influence the way we read the past and interpret the deeds
and statements of its actors, especially in the period of national ferment
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Maronites of Mount Lebanon were one of these communities
who had reached a certain modus vivendi with the Ottoman state that
not only guaranteed them a preeminent position in their region, but
had also assigned their church a dominant role in the Mountains
affairs. This state of affairs was occasionally tested or negotiated by one
of the parties, but in each case an understanding was once again
reached, as can be seen in the numerous examples of mutual accom-
modation between the Ottomans and the Maronite Church through-
out the period of Ottoman rule. However, the late 19th and early 20th
centuries saw the emergence of a number of politicians and intellectu-
als of both Maronite and non-Maronite origin who clamored simulta-
neously for an end to Ottoman suzerainty over the Mountain and
the leading role of the Church in its affairs. Though the activities and
90 abdulrahim abuhusayn
discourse of these individuals were a nuisance to the Ottoman state

and an embarrassment to the Maronite Church (the Maronite agitators
in particular), since the visions of these individuals were eventually
embodied in the creation of Greater Lebanon, our perceptions of these
individuals have been retrospectively influenced as well, causing many
to read incipient nationalism into many of the texts that were authored
by men of the cloth.1
The work of Bishop Bulus Masad, which is the subject of this
paper, is a case in point. Masad vehemently asserts the Maronites
unyielding loyalty to the Ottoman state while at the same time reject-
ing vociferous local and imperial demands for Lebanons representa-
tion in the Ottoman parliament. One can perceive this case, like many
others, as mere lip service obscuring the Churchs deeper desire for
an independent Lebanese nation-state; however, taken in the context
of 1909 and the brief revival of support for inclusive Ottoman citi
zenship in the period immediately following the 1908 coup, one
might more accurately read the claims of loyalty in Masads work
at face value, viewing it as a defense of the state of affairs that had been
so historically beneficial to the Maronite Church throughout the
Ottoman era.
***
In the wake of a devastating civil war and foreign military and diplo-
matic intervention, Mount Lebanon was established in 1861 as a privi-
leged (mumtaz) Ottoman province (mutasarifiyya) having a special
status with respect to its position within the Ottoman system. The priv-
ileges it was to enjoy, guaranteed by six European powers, were elabo-
rated in an organic statute (Rglement Organique) which amounted to
a constitutional charter. This statute, which was promulgated as an
imperial decree, provided, among other things, that Mount Lebanon
have a representative administrative council and a fully indigenous
administrative, judicial and security apparatus. The person appointed
to govern the mountain was to be an Ottoman Christian, but not one
chosen locally.2
1
An elaboration of this argument can be found in E. Akarli and A. Abuhusayn,
Law and Communal Identity in Ottoman Lebanon (in Light of Two Waqf Disputes in
18931912), al-Abhath (55), 200708, pp. 113145.
2
For the background of the new regime in Mount Lebanon, see Engin Akarli, The
Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 18611920, pp. 1333; John Spagnolo, France and
Ottoman Lebanon, 18611914, Oxford, pp. 2953.
an ottoman against the constitution91
The establishment of the Mutasarifiyya was clearly a success for the

Maronites of Mount Lebanon, although it fell short of meeting their
political aspirations in full. (What the Maronites had been agitating for
since the fall of the Shihab emirate in 1842 was the restoration of that
emirate under the Maronite branch of the Shihab family, which had last
held it.)3 In a special way, the establishment of the Mutasarifiyya was a
triumph for the Maronite church, in that it put a definitive end to the
system of the so-called muqatijis: the power-wielding regional tax
farmers who were the only serious contenders of the church for
Maronite leadership.4 As well, the charter of the Mutasarifiyya estab-
lished full equality between all social categories in the mountain: a
matter which had special resonance in Kisrawan, the Maronite heart-
land and the winter seat of the Maronite patriarchate, in view of the
recent Maronite peasant rebellion in that region (18581860) and of
the significant role the church had played in that rebellion on the side
of the peasants.5 In the circumstances, it was natural for the Ottoman
mutasarifs, starting in 1861, to cultivate good relations with the
Maronite patriarchate for the smooth functioning of their government.
This added further strength to the standing of the Maronite church
which had already emerged as the only indigenous institution in Mount
Lebanon capable of providing social, political, organizational and eco-
nomic leadership in the aftermath of the civil war. In the course of that
war the Maronites and the Christians of the country in general had
been badly beaten by the Druze, so that they came out of the war feel-
ing more keenly the need to band together. The outcome was a height-
ening of the Maronite (and perhaps more broadly Christian) sense of
group solidarity and political community. Using the Mutasarifiyya
infrastructure as a base, and secure in the preponderance the
Mutasarifiyya charter had given them in all areas of government, the
Maronites church and laity began a relentless quest for ways and
means whereby Mount Lebanon could ultimately be turned into an
Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, London, 1965, p. 46.

3
Akarli,The Long Peace, p. 164.

4
5
Article 6 of the Rglement Organique. On the peasant revolt and the role of the
Maronite Church in it, see Y. Porath, The Peasant Revolt of 18581861 in Kisrawan,
Asian and African Studies, vol. 2 (1966), Axel Haveman, Rurale Bewegungen in
Libanongebirge des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin 1983), Marwan Buheiry, The Peasant
revolt of 1858 in Mount Lebanon: Rising Expectations, Economic Malaise and the
Incentive to Arms, in Tarif Khalidi (ed.), Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the
Middle East (Beirut 1984); Wajih Kawtharani, Al-Ittijahat al-Ijtimaiyya al-siyasiyya fi
Jabal Lubnan wa al-Mashriq al-Arabi, Beirut, 1976 (hereafter, Kawtharani).
independent state under Maronite leadership. This outcome was cer-

tainly not envisaged initially; it matured and came to be articulated
during the almost sixty years of the life of the Mutasarifiyya.
Meanwhile, the Ottoman state, within the framework of the
Tanzimat, until 1876, and later under the Hamidian and Young Turk
regimes, pursued a policy of centralization in the Ottoman provinces
which aspired to end all local privilege and replace it with administra-
tive uniformity. In pursuit of this end, the Ottomans would have much
liked to end the privileges of Mount Lebanon, the better to integrate
the country into the Ottoman system. As of 1861, however, Ottoman
action in this direction was constrained by two important considera-
tions: first, the fact that the privileged status the mountain enjoyed was
guaranteed by the European powers and second, the strong attachment
of the local people and especially the Maronites among them to the
privileges that had come to be their lot. To gain goodwill on both sides,
and to avoid giving European powers a pretext for further intervention
in their internal affairs, the Ottomans keenly sought to make the inter-
national arrangement which they had helped forge for the administra-
tion of Mount Lebanon a workable one.6 This naturally deterred them
from pressing the issue of centralization when it came to Mount
Lebanon. Understanding or surmising this to be the Ottoman attitude
on the issue, the Maronite church, representing its followers and the
Christians of the mountain in general, reciprocated in kind. The out-
come was an implicit mutual understanding that came to mark the
relations between the Maronite Church and the Ottoman state from
the birth of the Lebanese Mutasarifiyya until the outbreak of the First
World War, with neither side of the two parties losing sight of its ulti-
mate objective.
Such mutual accommodation between the Ottoman state and the
Maronite church is evident in a number of instances when relations
between the Ottoman mutasarif and the Maronite patriarch were
strained to the point of crisis. One case in point is the Karam affair
where the church, despite its initial support of the Karam uprising,
called on Yusuf Karam, the rebel Maronite chief of Ihdin, to submit
to the authority of the Ottoman mutasarif.7 Another relates to the
6
The Ottomans, notwithstanding Mount Lebanons special regime, continued to
regard it as Ottoman territory and to emphasize the fact that the Mutasarif was an
Ottoman official responsible to the Porte, see Akarli, pp. 3940.
7
Cf, Kawtharani, p. 82.
trouble- making bishop of the Shuf, Butrus al-Bustani, who was ban-
ished by the mutasarif to Jerusalem, the church apparently colluding in
the decision to have him banished. The church subsequently arranged
to have Bustani brought to Bkerke, the seat of the Maronite patriar-
chate, where he was kept for about two years before being restored to
his diocese.8 More significantly, two Maronite patriarchs Bulus Masad
and Ilyas Huwayyik paid visits to Istanbul where they declared their
loyalty to the Ottoman state and were received by the Sultan and deco-
rated, and this despite the fact that the Maronite church consistently
refused to accept Ottoman berats for its patriarchs and bishops. This
issue of these berats, which the Ottoman government pursued for a
long time, was ultimately settled by a compromise whereby the church
informed the mutasarif of a bishops election, and a communiqu
would be issued to this effect by the mutasarrif s office to concerned
parties. This compromise appears to indicate, on the churchs side, its
perception of the local mutasarifiyya administration, which was legally
Ottoman, as a de facto Lebanese one.9
It was hoped that the promulgation of the Ottoman constitution and
the introduction of parliamentary representation would gain the state
the allegiance of its subjects (including those in Mount Lebanon) as
well as the goodwill of the powers. Taking advantage of the widespread
optimism generated by the proclamation of the constitutional order,
the Porte thought it could attempt to reintegrate Mount Lebanon into
the Ottoman Empire by capitalizing on the circumstances and the
temptation of prospects of membership in the Ottoman parliament
(Mebusan, in Turkish). Accordingly, the mutasarif of Mount Lebanon
was ordered to have the Lebanese administrative council elect two dep-
uties to represent Mount Lebanon in the Ottoman parliament. The
administrative council rejected this idea outright, arguing according to
French diplomatic correspondence on the subject that it (the council)
regarded itself as the guardian of the Organic Statute which it was
prepared to defend fiercely, that it considered the Ottoman proposition
an aggression against the Mountain, as there is nothing that justifies
8
For a detailed account of Bishop Bustanis conflict with Mutasarif Ristem Pasha,
see Lahd Khatir, Ahd al-Mutasarifin fi Lubnan, 18611918, pp. 66131. Khatirs
account is based on contemporary press report and quotations attributed to father
(later) Patriarch Ilyas Huwayyik in the biography of the Patriarch written by father
Ibrahim Harfush.
9
Akarli, pp. 148170.
having Lebanese deputies in a central parliament that would address

questions relating to Ottoman affairs in general. They asked rhetori-
cally, What would be the function of the deputies of Mount Lebanon
who are determined to hold on to the guarantees they have? Would
they be expected to demand that such be extended to the other Ottoman
provinces?! Is that what the Sultans government hopes to achieve?!10
This rejection of the proposal was backed locally by the full support
of the Maronite Church and internationally by the opposition of the
French and Russian consuls in Beirut.11 The Maronite Church, obvi-
ously, had come to play the leading role in the defense of the special
regime of Mount Lebanon. And in the face of this determined opposi-
tion, the Porte suspended Mount Lebanons participation in the
Ottoman parliament, though only for that year. By the following year
(1878), however, the constitution had been suspended and the parlia-
ment dissolved. Thus the issue of Lebanese representation in the
Ottoman parliament did not arise again until the Young Turk revolu-
tion of 1908 and the so called ikinci meshrutiyet (the second constitu-
tional period).
By that time, however, significant political developments had
occurred in Mount Lebanon which threatened to undermine the dom-
inant position of the church in the country. Among the Maronites as
among other communities throughout the Mountain, Syria and the
Ottoman Empire at large, a new generation trained in new professional
or modern schools, who were opposed to traditional authority and
hoped for change, was aspiring to make its mark. The Young Turk revo-
lution, the reinstatement of the constitution and imminent restoration
of the parliament reinforced such aspirations. More importantly, the
new vigor with which the Ottoman state pursued its old objective of
centralization provided these new elements in Mount Lebanon with
significant moral, and the expectation of material support.
The founding of Masonic lodges in Mount Lebanon and its immedi-
ate vicinity, in Beirut and other areas, also contributed to the growth of
a liberal anti-clerical sentiment and provided an organizational frame-
work for political action.12 In the Mountain this was best manifested
10
Ahmad Tarabin, Lubnan mundhu Ahd al-Mutasarifiyya ila Bidayat al-Intidab,
18611920, Cairo, 1968, pp. 307309.
11
Tarabin, pp. 309310, see also Kawtharani, p. 168169.
12
Zeine Zeine, The Emergence of Arab Nationalism, 3rd edition, New York, 1973,
pp. 53f.; cf, Kawtharani, pp. 129130.
by the proliferation of cultural societies that were no more than a

cover for Masonic congregations providing a platform for Maronite
intellectuals and bureaucrats to voice their grievances against the
mutasarifs and the Church. Such societies were recognized for what
they were and vehemently attacked by the Maronite patriarch Ilyas
Huwayyik who accused them of spreading the evil spirit in Maronite
societies and Masonic principles under the guise of doing good. He
threatened any one who belongs to them with excommunication.
Thereupon, the Freemasons organized demonstrations in a number of
locations in Mount Lebanon chanting against the Patriarch and
renouncing him as their leader and declaring a certain Faris Mushriq
(a Greek Orthodox and the head of the Sannin Masonic lodge) as their
master.13
Thus, it was only to be expected that these elements would become in

time a political force for both the mutasarif and the Church to reckon
with. The formation of the so-called Liberal Party in Mount Lebanon
actually predates the Young Turk revolution and can be traced back to
the successful efforts of a party of Lebanese individuals to block the
appointment of a certain likely candidate as mutasarif in 1897 and then
again 1902. The Lebanese liberals especially objected to what they
regarded as the autocratic rule of the mutasarifs and the undue influ-
ence the Maronite Church enjoyed with most of them in appointments
to government positions.14
The 1908 Young Turk revolution was received with a great deal of
enthusiasm among many Arab political activists everywhere in the
remaining Arab provinces of the Empire.15 In Mount Lebanon how-
ever, there were discordant voices. The governor, Yusuf Franco Pasha,
under the intense pressure of demonstrators led by Druze notables and
Maronite and other Christian liberal elements,16 allowed the public
reading of the firman restoring the constitution and parliament and left
13
Abdallah al-Mallah, Mutasarifiyat Jabal Lubnan fi Ahd Muzaffar Pasha, 1902
1907, Beirut, 1985, pp. 372373, cf. Akarli, p. 170.
14
On the Liberal Party in Mount Lebanon, see Akarli, pp. 6364, 6871, 7375,
9394, 96100, 128, 159160, 170174, 182.
15
On the different ways in which people in the Arab provinces demonstrated their
enthusiasm, delight and support of the revolution see Tawfiq Birru, Al-Arab wa al-Turk
fi al-Ahd al-Dusturi al-Uthmani, 19081914, Damascus, 1991, pp. 8285.
16
Incl. Shakib Arslan, Habib Pasha al-Saad, Nasib Junblat, Kanan Al-Dahir, Salim
Ammun
it at that. Later in early September 1908, the administrative council,

voted to accept Mount Lebanons representation in the Mebusan with
the proviso that Lebanese deputies were not empowered to consider
the privileges of Mount Lebanon unless explicitly asked to do so by the
Lebanese.17 It is very possible, in view of the earlier resistance of the
Mountain Lebanese to representation in the Ottoman parliament in
the first constitutional period, that the Ottoman government left the
initiative in forcing the issue to be taken by local elements. Also, this
would deprive European powers of a pretext for intervention. This may
explain the mass demonstrations organized outside the palace of
Beiteddine, the summer residence of the mutasarif, led by perhaps the
most vociferous Arab and Lebanese supporter of the Young Turks,
emir Shakib Arslan.18 But there were also mass demonstrations
opposedto Lebanese representation in the Ottoman Parliament, organ-
ized in the town of Dayr al-Qamar, a Maronite stronghold, not far
from Beiteddine. The demonstrators sent a letter to European consuls
in Beirut and the mutasarif protesting the proposed representation on
behalf of the population of Dayr al-Qamar.19
In an atmosphere of freedom of the press, in contrast to the censor-
ship of the Hamidian regime, a public debate erupted for and against
Lebanese representation in the Ottoman parliament. The pro faction
argued that the Lebanese would participate with the stipulation that
Mount Lebanon would keep its privileges and would additionally gain
all the advantages that other Ottomans would enjoy by virtue of the
constitution and the parliament, while the anti faction tried to dem-
onstrate that Lebanese participation was fraught with danger.20
The position of the Maronite Church on this issue had, thus far,
been presented through the French and British consular and other
diplomatic correspondence; and while the opposition of the Church
to Lebanese representation in the Ottoman Parliament was to be
expected and this is what these sources correctly indicate, all studies,
thus far, have relied on external sources to describe this position and
17
Kawtharani, pp. 174175.
18
Shakib Arslan, Sirah Dhatiyya, Beirut, 1969, pp. 3639.
19
Kawtharani, p. 176.
20
As an example of the pro literature, see Sulayman al-Bustani, Ibrah wa dhikra, aw
al-Dawla al-uthmaniya Qabl al-Dustur wa Badah, Beirut, 1908. Wajih Kwatharani
quotes a pamphlet distributed in Mount Lebanon calling for boycotting elections, See
Kawtharani, pp. 176177; on Arab support for the CUP in the wake of the revolution,
see Birru, pp. 8185.
overlooked an important document, that may be described as the

Maronite Churchs paper on the question. I am referring here to a
booklet authored by the Maronite Bishop Bulus Masad, the nephew of
an earlier patriarch by the same name, and published in Cairo in 1908
in the midst of the political heat generated by the debate in Mount
Lebanon over the question of representation.21 It is probably relevant to
note here that Cairo was an important center for Maronite (as well as
other groups) intellectual and political activity and that Patriarch
Huwayyik had actually formed a delegation of three bishops headed by
Mgr. Yusuf Darian, the Patriarchal legate in Cairo, that traveled to Paris
to obtain French support for the Maronite Churchs position of reject-
ing Lebanese representation in the Ottoman parliament.22 Thereafter,
Mgr. Darian presided over a meeting in Cairo of the notable Lebanese
residents of the city. Masad was one of those notables in attendance.
Writing this booklet must have been part of the campaign that the
Lebanese society in Cairo decided upon to defeat the efforts of the pro-
representation party. The question of representation in the Ottoman
parliament was the subject of a heated debate also in Egypt as it was in
Lebanon. Officially, Egypt was still a province of the Ottoman Empire
and there was a strong pro-participation party there as well.23 Bulus
Masad was already an accomplished author (historian) and a high
ranking ecclesiastic.
Thus, this rebuttal is important in as much as it may be regarded as a
statement by the Maronite Church. But as its author had no diocese
and was residing in Cairo, it put some distance between the church and
the statement and thus would not compromise the courtesy that was
usually observed in Maronite communication with the state. Equally
important are the details that the statement provides of the arguments
used by the two sides in the debate. It was not simply a statement of
outright rejection but a much more nuanced position than a mere no
to the constitution and representation. In fact, the books arguments
and occasional ridicule were addressed to the Lebanese pro-represen-
tation party rather than the Ottoman state. Where the Ottoman state is
21
Bulus Masad, Lubnan wa al-Dustur al-Uthmani: Bahth Siyasi Qanuni Tarikhi fi
Mawqif Lubnan al-Hadir iza al-Dawla al-Uthmaniyya qabl al-Dustur wa Badah,
Cairo, 1909 (hereafter, Masad).
22
John P. Spagnolo, France and Ottoman Lebanon, 18611914, London, 1977,
pp. 252253; Masad, pp. 5657.
23
On the Egyptian support for representation in the Mebusan see, see Birru,
pp. 102104.
concerned, it remained within the established Maronite Churchs firm

opposition to any encroachment on Maronite positions in Lebanon
expressed in the strongest terms along with an equal emphasis on full
unwavering loyalty to the Ottoman state which need not be dismissed
outright as pure hypocrisy.
Bulus Masads book, or rather booklet, entitled Lebanon and the
Ottoman Constitution, contains a slanted summary of Lebanese his-
tory, a reproduction of the 18 clauses of the Organic Statute ( Rglement
Organique) and a variety of other information relating to Lebanon.
What is relevant for this paper are the arguments Masad advances in
refutation of what he describes as the claims of the pro-representation
party which he organizes under different headings. Equally important
are his repeated protestations of absolute loyalty to the Ottoman state
and insistence on the compatibility of the special status of Mount
Lebanon with being an integral part of the Ottoman state. Thus he
prefaces his booklet with what he calls the authors creed and wishes.
Among them he asserts that the Lebanese maintain their current privi-
leges, and that they exert their best efforts to maintain their Ottomanism
and demonstrate by material evidence their loyalty to the Ottoman
constitutional state, their utmost attachment to it, and that they share
with it the good and bad times.24
He begins by drawing a rather simplistic political map of Mount
Lebanon. Thus there were the Lebanese Liberals and here the pun was
intended in his usage of the Arabic word ahrar which also refers to the
Free Masons, the arch enemy of the Maronite Church against whom
he launches a virulent attack. He states that since the declaration of the
constitution in the Ottoman sultanate, a group of extreme liberals,
numbering no more than a few dozen among the Lebanese, started to
agitate for freedom without knowing more about it than a bedouin
knows about Western civilization.25
In an attempt to discredit the liberals, Masad accused them of organ-
izing riots which would turn into a civil war that, in turn, would be the
occasion or pretext to integrate Mount Lebanon into the Ottoman
state. Furthermore, and according to him, this group also made contact
with the Free Masons (or liberals?) in Istanbul concerning such inte-
gration and requested military intervention from the neighboring
24
Masad, p. 1.
25
Masad, p. 5.
Beirut province to coerce the people of Mount Lebanon into electing

deputies to the Ottoman parliament. He further accused this group
(the liberals) of resorting to using the names and seals of forty thou-
sand dead people which were affixed to the petitions asking for partici-
pation in the elections which they forwarded to Istanbul to give its act
of treason a legal framework.26
Despite the weakness and the small numbers of the Liberal Party, as
Masad maintained, and despite their declaration that they wished
Lebanon to keep its privileges, Masad (and his church) perceived in
their movement a mortal and imminent danger which caused him
(and his church) great anxiety. They (the liberals) obviously managed
to stir public opinion not only in Mount Lebanon but also elsewhere in
the Ottoman Empire so that Ottoman liberals came to attach a great
deal of importance to the Lebanese liberal movement which, in Masads
view, is aimed at a coup dtat, as obvious to those who knew that
the long-term the policy of the current constitutional government
was to put an end to Mount Lebanons privileges and annexing it
completely.27
As for the conservatives, he described them as the strongest and tru-
est nationalists in terms of their objectives, but they, unfortunately,
lacked a leadership with the knowledge of international politics needed
to steer the nation toward these objectives without incurring the wrath
of the Ottoman state and turning European public opinion against
them.28 Masad is most probably referring here to secular opponents of
representation who were confusing issues and agitating for outstand-
ing Lebanese demands such as the amendment of certain clauses in
the Organic Statute and outstanding issues such as the question of taxes
and access to ports that some members of the administrative council
were pressing. More importantly, Masad, by discrediting the liberals as
traitors and the secular conservatives as decent but incompetent, was
asserting the position of the church as the only leadership with the
knowledge and ability to lead the Lebanese (or Christians) in defense
of their national interests. Masad hastened to add that his reservations
about the secular leadership of opposition to representation were due
to the fact that the [current] condition of the Ottoman state calls for
the loyalty of its subjects and their assistance in every way. Needless to
26
Masad, p. 6.
27
Masad, pp. 58.
28
Masad, pp. 67.
say, he further added, the Lebanese have been and still are among the
most loyal of the subjects of the state and the most attached to their
Ottoman citizenship.29 Masad was drawing attention here to the more
patriotic Ottomanism of the Church as opposed to the position of the
secular defenders of Lebanese interests.
Legal and Ration al Arguments
Under the heading of legal and rational arguments Masad argues that
the Lebanese should absolutely refrain from participating in the
Ottoman parliament because while its desirable that we share with our
Ottoman brothers the rights and duties assigned to them by the new
constitution,30 Lebanon is one of the privileged (mumtaz) provinces,
despite statements to the contrary made by public figures. Hence it is
not within the purview of the Ottoman Parliament because interna-
tional law removes it from the jurisdiction of parliaments except in
matters pertaining to foreign affairs and political issues. These last two
areas are for the Ottoman state and the six European powers to decide
on, regardless of whether Lebanon is represented in parliament or not.
Furthermore, the Lebanese deputies will not be representing the
Lebanese, because the Ottoman constitution states that members of the
Mebusan do not represent their respective constituencies but Ottoman
citizens in general and their opinions or votes are not restricted to par-
ticular issues. Thus the Lebanese deputies cannot enjoy privileges
denied to others or else the very essence of the constitution would be
violated. This being the case how then could the Lebanese deputies
maintain the regime of Mount Lebanon and the rights of its people?
Even if the parliament were to accept granting them such a privilege,
could its action be binding on 35 million Ottomans, Masad asks
rhetorically.
Additionally, the regime of Mount Lebanon is guaranteed by the six
European states. Masad asks how could some of its clauses could be
modified without their consent? If the Ottoman parliament modifies
any one of these clauses in favor of the Lebanese (Masad here adds that
this is most unlikely), would this modification be legal if the European
states do not agree to it?31
29
Masad, p. 7.
30
Masad, p. 17.
31
Masad, p. 18.
Masad then mocks the naivety of the liberals and their claim that
Mount Lebanon could continue to have its privileges and be repre-
sented in the Mebusan at the same time. He states that it is ridiculous
for our Lebanese liberals to claim that they will demand a guarantee
from the Ottoman state and the ambassadors of the European states to
uphold the regime of Mount Lebanon in the form of an officially signed
document, or to limit the mandate of Lebanese deputies by a memo-
randum of instructions beyond which they cannot go in parliamentary
deliberations and voting. Would the exalted state and the people in
charge [of it] go to the extent of accepting deputies in their parliament
under such conditions? If these assumptions turn out to be true, then
the Lebanese of the Mountain would be delighted to send twenty depu-
ties instead of only two or three.32
Masad concludes this introductory section to his legal-rational
exposition by again underlining the fact that Mount Lebanon is still an
integral part of the Ottoman state, stating that Mount Lebanon, apart
from the 18 clauses that constitute its Organic Statute, follows the rules
and regulations of the Ottoman state as in all provinces.33
Ottoman Citizenship
Masad then considers specific legal issues. As for Ottoman citizen-

ship,he argues that Ottoman citizenship in the provinces is the same
as in Lebanon and that the Ottoman constitution does not make us
(the Lebanese) more Ottoman. Again, Masad reaffirms: we are full
Ottomans whether we reside in Lebanon or outside it enjoying the
same rights and having the same obligations as all other Ottomans.
Some people claim that the state can make life difficult for the Lebanese
if they do not join the Mebusan, but this threat is not to be taken into
account because the Ottoman state now is not the same as the past
one. Additionally, the European states, most of whose representa-
tivesdeclared support for maintaining the regime of Mount Lebanon
on many occasions, would not passively tolerate at any trampling
of its rights.34 After this reiteration of three seemingly incompatible
positions: the Ottomanism of the people of Mount Lebanon, their
32
Masad, p. 19.
33
Masad, p. 19.
34
Masad, p. 20.
insistence on their privileges, and the upholding of European guaran-

tees of them against any attempt by the Ottoman state to reintegrate
Mount Lebanon, Masad proceeds to deride the claims of the pro-
representation party that there exist successful political systems based
on the idea of maintaining local liberties with simultaneous represen-
tation in central parliaments. He states that those who argue that
Lebanon can be represented in the Mebusan without losing any of its
privileges, as in the case of the German states or the states of the USA,
make a claim which is untenable. Lebanon cannot be compared with
the German principalities which Emperor Wilhelm I had only been
able to unite after guaranteeing their local laws and privileges and
united them only politically in matters outside the scope of such laws
and privileges. If the German empire were to try to take away the
autonomy of any one of these principalities, this principality would rise
in rebellion against the Empire and defend itself fiercely counting on
the support of all other German principalities, because one of them
could be the next. The same is true in the USA according to Masad.
Lebanon, on the other hand, stands alone since it is the only privileged
Ottoman province with a special regime of its own. Should the Ottoman
state decide to annex it, who but the European states, the very states
that advise us to keep our regime, can help Lebanon? It would thus be
reckless not to heed their advice.35
Military Service
The Lebanese enjoy in their land privileges unimaginable by any other

people. If their only privileges were exemption from taxation and mili-
tary conscription they should be the happiest people. It may be argued
that military service is the most sacred national duty; and in Lebanon
there is not a single person who does not hold patriotism a sacred
obligation. Yes, says Masad to such a statement, again emphasizing
the Ottoman bond, our history abounds with numerous material evi-
dence of our full devotion to the state that rules over us, our sacrifices
in its defense. It can also count on us in times of adversity rather than
in times of ease. Here, Masad cites the example of the British govern-
ment, the first government to lay down the constitutional principles
Masad, pp. 2021.

35
according to him, but which did not impose military conscription, in

its hour of need; even so, regiments of volunteers from its privileged
provinces rushed to the field. Such regiments often performed services
which the regular regiments could not.36
Lebanons Regime and New Laws
Masad responds under this heading to those who argue that being rep-
resented in the Mebusan allows Lebanon to partake of the new laws
that parliament will legislate. Masad counters this claim by arguing
that this in fact is a reason for not being represented because these
laws, no matter how beneficial to and consistent with Lebanese inter-
ests they might be, Lebanon has no way of applying them unless they
are approved by the European states. This is because international law
stipulates that laws and decisions issued by national assemblies such as
parliaments and senates in all countries have no application in matters
subject to international treaties and privileged provinces enjoying spe-
cial status in accordance with international agreements. If the laws
issued by the Mebusan are consistent with regime of Lebanon, the
Lebanese can then enjoy them as all Ottomans, since Lebanon follows
the Ottoman state in all its laws and regulations except for the 18
clauses that constitute the regime of Mount Lebanon.37
Freedom of the Press
The same principle above applies to the issues of freedom of the press
and personal freedom. Since the Ottoman government has granted
these freedoms equally to all Ottomans without distinction between
the people in privileged and normal provinces, it cannot deny them to
the Lebanese because they are general rights inclusive of all Ottomans
since the restoration of the constitution. Also Lebanons special regime
does not deny this freedom as it contains no provisions regarding free-
dom. Masad concludes that the argument made by the pro party,
namely that boycotting the Mebusan would result in the loss of free-
dom of the press, is without any grounds.
Masad, pp. 2122.

36
Masad, p. 22.
37
Benefits of Participation in the Mebusan
The liberals having advanced the argument that Lebanese representa-

tion in the Mebusan does not annul the privileges of Lebanon, Masad
describes such people as ignorant of the fundamentals of constitu-
tional governments and general international laws.38 In his perspective
such claim is refutable on a number of grounds. First and foremost,
Lebanese representation in parliament is tantamount to an advance
acceptance of all decisions, regulations and laws that it will issue regard-
less of whether they are relevant to Lebanon or not. Masad concedes
here that this moral acceptance is not admissible by international law,
as the Lebanese are bound by the will of six European states and cannot
accept new laws or decisions relating to Lebanon without their approval.
But he maintains that it can, nevertheless, be used as an argument
against Lebanon with the European states to dissuade them from sup-
porting its regime should the Ottoman state proceed to annex it and
abolish its privileges. Otherwise, the ambassadors and consuls of these
states would not have communicated to Lebanese leading personalities
in Syria, Egypt and Europe that their governments stand by the special
regime of Lebanon and does not approve of Lebanese representation in
the Ottoman parliament for reasons known to all politicians.39
He further argues that even if it were to be assumed that representa-
tion in the Ottoman parliament is the right thing for Lebanon to do
and there is nothing to fear concerning its privileges, the Lebanese can-
not at the present juncture but be prudent so as not to cause the dis-
pleasure of the European states by being represented, thus these states
would cease to stand by us and this would be a cause of great harm for
Lebanon especially if the Turkish Liberals are not successful.40
Masad concludes this legal exposition by posing the question of
whether it is legally possible to choose from the Ottoman constitution
what is agreeable to the Lebanese as the advocates of representation
argue. This, he states, is a legal issue linked to international law and has
long term repercussions. International law dictates the annulment of
Lebanons regime wherever it contradicts the constitution or a nnulment
of the constitution wherever it contradicts the regime of Lebanon. But
the regime of Lebanon cannot be violated without the consent of the
38
Masad, p. 23.
39
Masad, pp. 2324.
40
Masad, p. 24.
signatory powers, and these states cannot violate it or modify it without

holding an international conference where they decide collectively and
unanimously. Needless to say that states do not hold a special confer-
ence to change a regime which has in actual application obtained great
benefits for the country and guaranteed its security and comfort for
about half a century. If these [European] states urge the Lebanese
to maintain this system, it is because they found it suitable and there is
no reason for annulling it, especially because such an action requires
their special attention. And it is known that these states concern with
Lebanon is confined to their influence in it, because they do not have
economic establishments or political interests that compel them to
make its concerns their priority. Masad here attributes European con-
cern with Lebanese affairs to the Maronite Churchs repeated requests
and European kindness rather than their interests whether political or
economic. Moreover, he argues that they are currently preoccupied
with the Balkans which reduces the chances of their willingness to
examine Lebanese affairs in the near future. Masad concludes, There is
nothing to make the Lebanese hope that the [European] states would
change any part of Lebanons regime until they ascertain that it is no
longer suitable for them. From now until this happens, the Lebanese
should not make this argument a pretext to abandon this regime which
is at present a better guarantee of their interests than the constitution.
In order not to appear oblivious to the need to introduce certain
modifications to the regime as the liberals demanded, Masad adds here
that, notwithstanding the above, I do not deny that the regime of
Mount Lebanon needs modification and improvement because it was
designed about fifty years ago for a different Lebanese people. But there
are two ways of introducing changes: the first is clear and safe and the
second is short and fraught with danger. He asks: Is it wise to choose
the second because of its shortness with risk to our lives and disregard
the second which is free of risk because of its length?
The long road is the one laid down for Lebanon by the European
states and the short one is the road taken by the Ottoman liberals.
Masad here seizes on the opportunity to scoff at the Lebanese liberals
and ridicule their claims and objectives while simultaneously flattering
the Ottoman liberals and applauding their achievements declaring
that, the Ottoman liberals who astounded the world with their great
accomplishment are different from the Lebanese liberals who turned
Lebanon into a bad word among people of civilized nations. Is there a
guarantee that if they take the road taken by the [Turkish] heroes that
it would not lead to Lebanons ruin. He admits that the Lebanese sys-
tem of government needs amendment but waiting even for a long time
for the change to be introduced through the European states is better
than expecting it from the very state which has provided the Lebanese
with material evidence of its intention to annul this system rather than
amend it. This is because it (the Ottoman state) regards Lebanon as one
of its runaway provinces that were detached from it because the
European states had no confidence in its ability to keep the peace in its
territory. But now that the Ottoman state has become a strong consti-
tutional state and demonstrated to Europe that it intends to establish
equality among its subjects without distinction among Christians,
Muslims, Druzes and Shiites, it believes that there is no longer any rea-
son for Lebanon to remain detached and wishes from the bottom of its
heart to embrace it like a mother embracing its child. How divine this
embrace would be were it not for the pains that would be caused by the
many thorns involved which Lebanons weak and emaciated body will
not be able to endure after enjoying prosperity for half a century.
Deriving further support for the preceding arguments from ante-
cedents, Masad states: there is a question that should be considered:
the Mebusan has convened for the first time more than 30 years ago
without any deputies from Lebanon. How did Lebanon acquire now
the right to be represented when the constitution is the same one
drafted by the martyr of the constitution and the Lebanese regime is
the same one recognized by the six European states with all its clauses?
Clinching the argument, Masad concludes: Lebanese participation in
the Mebusan is an act of sharing with others in their rights and med-
dling in their affairs. How could the Lebanese be allowed to share with
the Ottoman state in its rights and decide on its affairs without allow-
ing it to share with them their rights and affairs?41
The Practical Outlook
Masad tries in this brief section to demonstrate that, from the practical
point of view, the Lebanese preservation of their regime in the present
time is advantageous to them outside Mount Lebanon as well as inside
it. Outside, as Ottomans it guarantees to them the opportunity to enjoy
all rights and benefits of all Ottomans whether in Ottoman lands or
Masad, pp. 2528.

41
outside it. But if they are victims of injustice or misfortune outside

Lebanon, such as not being allowed to work in Ottoman territory or
because of an emergency situation, they can then have recourse to that
safe haven and enjoy there the proverbial pleasant simple life of fellow
citizens.42
Clergy and the Regime of Lebanon
Under this heading, Masad tries to establish the absurdity of the liber-
als claim that the clergy is the group that is in control in Mount
Lebanon and that the current regime helps perpetuate this state of
affairs. Hence the clergy are inciting the Lebanese people to uphold the
privileges of Mount Lebanon because these same privileges lend sup-
port to clerical power and makes it possible for the clergy to hold on to
their dominant position. Masad responds in a somewhat circular argu-
ment by stating that these claims are ridiculous and that clerical inter-
vention in the temporal affairs of the Lebanese should not be a source
of concern because it has always been exercised for the preservation of
the Lebanese regime and the protection of the Lebanese peoples inter-
ests against the personal whims of the mutasarifs.43
In support of the forgoing, Masad asks rhetorically: how often
did the mutasarifs try to impose new taxes or come up with devious
schemes to abolish some of the clauses of the Lebanese regime? It was
only the opposition of the clergy who stood up to them and protested
against these abominable actions to the European states that stopped
them. Evidence of such stances can be found in the many copies of the
reports that the religious leaderships sent to state officials in defense of
Lebanon which are still available with them, he maintains. The clergy
have always been supportive of peoples actions in defense of public
interests. They have also always been in the forefront of sponsors of
public projects.44
And here Masad gives examples of water projects in different parts
of Lebanon where, according to him, the clergy where the initiators
and the first subscribers and the greatest supporters whereas the liber-
als were in the forefront of opponents. He also cites an example where
42
Masad, p. 28.
43
Masad, p. 36.
44
Masad, p. 36.
the clergy were accused of obstructing another water project in

Kisrawan which subsequently failed. Masad defends the position of the
clergy by arguing that the project was grossly unfair to the people and
it was the clergys duty to warn their people against participation.45
He then declares that he will always testify to the truth notwith-
standing the accusation that he is one of the clergy and thus would be
expected to defend them. The clergy, he adds, did many great things for
Lebanon which remained unknown because of the clergys discretion,
although they should have publicized such acts to respond to their
detractors.46
More importantly, Masad justifies clerical intervention in Lebanon
on the grounds that there are still no competent [secular] leaders to
defend public interests and if such sincere leaders working for their
country rather than seeking jobs or in pursuit of private interests were
to exist, no clergyman would oppose them. Moreover, clergymens
intervention is, according to him, the result of the weakness of the
Lebanese people who call on the clergy in all of their affairs.47
Masad responds to the charges of clerical despotism that exceeds
that of governors made by some Maronite writers48 a charge which he
obviously does not deny- by challenging them to manage without the
clergy if they are able to do so. He maintains that it is the timidity of the
Lebanese in front of their clergy which gives the clergy the opportunity
to dominate. The freedom that the Lebanese obtained [by virtue of the
special regime or the constitution?] would work to reduce clergys
intervention and its effects and correct their abuses. Anyway, the clergy
would have to correct their ways because writers are discussing the bad
and good in their ways. Criticism alone would change their ways and
make them more consistent with the Lebanese peoples wishes. So free-
dom of the press alone is sufficient to address this problem of clerical
45
Masad, pp. 3637.
46
Masad, pp. 3839.
47
Masad, p. 39.
48
Masad is probably referring here to the criticism directed by a fellow Maronite of
secular inclination that occurs in Sulayman al-Bustani, Ibrah wa Dhikra aw al-Dawlah
al-Uthmaniyyah qabl a-Dustur wa Badah, first published in 1909. Reference here is to
edition of 1978, edited by Khaled Ziyadeh, Beirut, pp. 164165. Masad actually quotes
from Bustani a passage where he cites the role of a Muslim Shaykh and Maronite
bishop in reconciliation in the context of the 1860 civil war. This, of course, is not the
issue under discussion regardless of the veracity of the story. Also Sulayman al-Bustani
was actually elected for the Ottoman Parliament and served as a minister in the
Ottoman cabinet.
despotism and there would be no need to be annexed to the state to get

rid of the dominance and influence of the clergy. This is especially so
because the Ottoman state always supports the clergy and takes their
interests into consideration as every wise government would deal with
a powerful and respectable group.49
Masad further responds to some of the insults hurled collectively
against the clergy by admitting that there are corrupt members of the
clergy as there would be in any social group and it would be wrong to
accuse the clergy as a whole and call it names because of the actions of
a few of its members.50
Another important aspect relating to the clergy that Masad draws
attention to is the fact that Europe regards the Maronite clergy as
the natural leaders of the Lebanese people. Masad agrees with this
European view because according to him clergymen since 1860 enjoy
full domination over the Lebanese people and have replaced the emirs
and shaykhs due to the fact that they control the source of wealth in the
country. Hence their respect in Europe. Also, Masad maintains that the
Europeans realize that Lebanon occupies a central location in a region
which was the birth place of religions and hence clergymen are the true
representatives of their followers and all their actions are in pursuit of
justice. And when they appeal for the assistance of a European state,
they do so on behalf of their countrymen and express the collective
aspirations of a people. This is why there was never an occasion where
the Lebanese people restored one of its trampled rights or gained a
favor without the intermediacy of the clergymen. Moreover, the clergy
are patriots like other Lebanese; if they work for the sake of Lebanon,
they do so with true intentions and complete devotion.
As long as the situation is such and Lebanon lacks men of sincere
intentions working for the good of the country, and as long as the ayan
are preoccupied with their own affairs and make no move to defend the
people, let the clergy, where men concerned with the public good may
be found, take care of Lebanese affairs until Lebanon produces men
who would render the clergy redundant.
Masad concludes his defense of his colleagues by a personal testi-
mony. I, personally, am the most knowledgeable with what the
clergydo for the good of Mount Lebanon contrary to the claim of some
Masad, p. 40.
49
Masad, 41.
50
ignorant people that they do harm to it. If it were possible I would have
listed proofs of this. Also I realize that the overwhelming majority of
readers would accuse me of defending the clergy because of being one
of them.51
On the Motto of the Constitutional State and the Regime of Lebanon:
Masad here states that the motto of the Ottoman state [now] is frater-
nity, liberty and equality. In Lebanon he maintains, we have them all.
Fraternity has been there since olden times by virtue of customs, mor-
als and Christian upbringing. As for freedom, it is not denied to the
Lebanese by the regime. If it was denied to them under the earlier des-
potic state, this was due to their neglect and laxity. Had they called on
the European states repeatedly and consistently, these states would not
have been able to refuse to guarantee their freedom. But he excuses
Lebanese laxity in the Hamidian reign due to what he refers to as the
notoriety of the officials of the mabeyn. Now that the despotic state is
gone, the Lebanese should have no anxiety that any mutasarif, no mat-
ter how despotic, could limit their freedom.52
As for equality, Masad argues here that the regime of Mount Lebanon
contains an unambiguous clause to this effect. Here he seizes the
opportunity to launch an attack against the most important contenders
of the church for leadership, namely the shaykhs, both Maronite and
Druze, and blame them for the calamities of the 1860 civil war in
Mount Lebanon. He maintains that the six European states insisted on
this explicit clause because of the pre-1861 muqatijis oppression of the
people and their hereditary privileges which were the main reasons for
the 1860 massacres. The Europeans abolished these privileges com-
pletely and introduced full and comprehensive equality among all
people. The only exception, he admits, was in government positions
where the Maronites, to compensate them for their significant losses
(in the civil war) and because they constitute the majority of the
Lebanese people, occupy most of higher civil and military posts. The
Maronites were also given double the number of all other sects in lower
posts whereas the muqatijis regained none of their earlier privileges.53
51
Masad, pp. 4243.
52
Masad, 3444.
53
Masad, 4446.
Masads conclusion is that our special regime embraces the motto of

the new constitutional Ottoman government: fraternity, liberty and
equality. There is no need for us to be represented in the mebusan or be
annexed to the state to enjoy them.54
Responding to the claim that the Ottoman state would annex
Lebanon sooner or later regardless of the European states attitude,
Masad claims that Lebanon has never submitted totally to the Ottoman
state. Here, he makes an argument on the basis of a special version of
Lebanese history. He thus maintains that Lebanon was not conquered
by war but surrendered on condition of keeping its autonomy despite
the might of the state then. Thus the current regime is not a new grant
to the Lebanese and if it were to be revoked by the state, Lebanon
wouldlegally go back to its earlier autonomy, which, he adds, may be
better.55
Masad also responds to the few writers who continue, despite
what he qualifies as the overwhelming opinion against Lebanese
participation in the Mebusan in what has been published thus far,
to uphold participation by citing the opinion of Turkish liberals as
expressed by officials in Beirut or in the press of Istanbul and Egypt.
He also cites a conversation that took place between someone and a
leading British politician. Masad here implicitly accuses the Druzes
of being the minority responsible for the pro- representation agitation
and Britain, the Druze traditional ally, of being behind this agitation.56
He goes on to enlist the opinions of Turkish liberals calling for general-
izing Mount Lebanons regime to other provinces such as a statement
attributed to Ismail Kemal bey, a former governor of Beirut and
Macedonian deputy in parliament, and Prince Sabah al-Dins calls for
decentralization.57
Masad ends by stating that we [Lebanese] have two options with no
middle point. Either we destroy our regime and end our independence
and privileges irrevocably and genuinely join with our Ottoman broth-
ers in form and substance and share with them their rights and obliga-
tions, a choice which any body with any sense would not recommend,
Masad, pp. 46.

54
Masad, 4849. This statement is historically without foundation. The whole

55
account of Fakhr a-Din Is appearance before Sultan Selim I, which is the basis for this
claim, has been demonstrated to be a fallacy, if only because the so called Fakhr al-Din
I had died ten full years before the Otoman conquest of Bilad al-Sham.
56
Masad, 4950.
57
Masad, 5053.
or hold tenaciously to our independence. The choice should be

obvious.58
Some observations may be made on the preceding. First, there is no

attempt by Masad to disguise what may be called a Christian or
Maronite sense of political community despite his usage of the term
Lebanese. Lebanese in this text is simply another word for Christian or
Maronite. In fact Masad is occasionally candid in this regard as when
he discusses the role of the clergy or refers to the Christian upbringing
of the Lebanese.59 Also, because of this conception of Lebanon, there is
no attempt to take other communities possible alternative objectives
into consideration. Second, the eloquent expressions of loyalty to the
Ottoman state and Maronite attachment to it may be regarded as being
largely lip service dictated by political realism which, at the time, could
not have envisaged the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Such an interpretation is credible in view of the way Masad gives vent
to his and his communitys deeply ingrained suspicions of Ottoman
intentions toward Mount Lebanon. Hence Masads insistence on the
need for European support for Lebanon and that Lebanese interests
could only be guaranteed by the European powers, and here he had one
European power in mind, France, and accused another European
power, Britain, of supporting the Druzes and liberals keen on under-
mining the regime of Mount Lebanon. One may observe here that the
Maronite bet on France was rewarded not long after the publication of
Masads book when on 1 September 1920, the French General Henri
Gouraud proclaimed the state of Greater Lebanon. Finally, he insists
that clergymen are the natural leaders of the country because of their
traditional role, the wealth of the church and the churchs connections
to European states. Again here what he has in mind is the Maronite
church, the only church enjoying immense wealth and having the most
influential European connections.
But it may be equally true to maintain that we need to read Masads
text, where it relates to Ottoman-Maronite relations, on its own merits
and within its own context rather than in view of what had come to
pass, i.e. the Lebanese nation-state, or in view of what foreign chancery
documents suggested. Such a reading would not preclude the probable
Mas2ad, 5758.
58
See above.
59
authenticity of Masads and his peoples sense of belonging to the

Ottoman state. This was, after all, the year 1909, when it was possible
for an Arab Christian to have multiple identities and to feel Lebanese,
Syrian or Arab and an Ottoman simultaneously. This was the time
when the idea of an inclusive Ottoman citizenship had enjoyed a brief
spell especially in the Arab provinces, including among the Maronites
who had important members in the ranks and leadership of the CUP.
Moreover, this reading is more in keeping with the historical Maronite
Churchs stance vis--vis the Ottoman state. Here the mutual accom-
modation referred to earlier which characterized Ottoman-Maronite
relations throughout the period the mutasarifiyya was still in opera-
tion. Masads simultaneous insistence on full Ottoman citizenship and
unwavering Maronite loyalty to the Ottoman state on the one hand and
the need to uphold Mount Lebanons special status on the other is a
replay of the of the berats controversy simultaneous with patriarchal
visits to Istanbul.60 Masads and the Maronite Churchs quarrel was pri-
marily with the Maronite and other Lebanese advocates of the consti-
tution rather than with the Ottoman State.
See above.
60
Late Ottoman state education
Michael Provence
Education in the Ottoman Empire has long attracted scholarly interest.

Many studies have focused on missionary education or Ottoman civil
education, and both strands of modern education were important in
the late empire and in the formation of the modern Middle East. The
place of military education, by contrast, has been generally missing
from the story of late Ottoman modernization. As this chapter shows,
however, Ottoman military education deserves a huge explanatory role
in the modern history of the region. As the largest state education pro-
ject undertaken in the Ottoman realms, and as a self-conscious engine
of social leveling, the military education project had results that con-
tinue to unfold in Turkey and the Arab Middle East. And yet, despite
the influence of people such as Mustafa Kemal, Enver Pasha, Cemal
Pasha, Nuri al-Said and uncounted others, all produced by the late
Ottoman military system, military schools have only rarely attracted
the attention of historians. The story of civil and missionary education
is rather different.
It is widely acknowledged, for example, that Arab and Turkish cul-
tural nationalism first emerged in missionary and elite civil schools.
Missionary education in the form of the Syrian Protestant College,
founded in 1866 in Beirut, contributed hugely to the Arabic literary
renaissance of the nineteenth century, or the Nahda. George Antonius
and many others argued the Nahda was the well-spring of modern
Arab culture and identity. Furthermore, Catholic and Protestant mis-
sionaries founded many lesser-known schools in Ottoman Syria in the
middle decades of the 19th century.1 Such schools existed in Beirut,
Damascus, Jerusalem, Aleppo, and other smaller towns. The mission-
ary schools often concentrated their educational efforts among mem-
bers of the non-Muslim minorities, but nevertheless had influence
1
Abdul-Rahim AbuHusayn, The Lebanon Schools, (18531873): A Local Venture
in Rural Education in Thomas Philipp and Birgit Schaebler, eds. The Syrian Land:
Processes of Integration and Fragmentation in Bild al-Shm from the 18th to the 20th
Century, (Stuttgart, 1998), pp. 205220.
116 michael provence
through society at large. Robert College founded in 1863 in Istanbul

likewise made a contribution to Ottoman and Turkish education, and
helped prepare the way for the emergence of new identities.
Ottoman state civil education has attracted scarcely less attention.2
The Galatasaray Lyce, founded in 1868 in Istanbul, has enjoyed fame
until today. The Galatasaray School, once also known as the Mekteb-i
Sultan, eventually became a 12-year preparatory school on the French
model, and in the final Ottoman decades often sent its graduates to
the Mekteb-i Mlkiyye-i ahane, or Imperial Civil Service School. The
Mlkiyye school was older, having been founded in 1859, and was in
competition with the Galatasaray school in the 1880s. The Galatasaray
School, probably because of its emphasis on French instruction, pro-
duced a majority of high officials in the Foreign Ministry, while the
Mlkiyye produced a majority of the high officials in the Interior
Ministry.3 After 1909 the Mlkiyye became a special university faculty,
attracting graduating students from the Galatasaray School and other
Sultani schools.4
The growth of foreign and missionary education posed a challenge
to Ottoman officials, and they intended the Galatasaray Lyce to help
counter the influence of foreign education. Ottoman elites worried
ceaselessly about the activities of the missionaries, concerned that
they sought to convert Muslims and subvert non-Muslim Ottoman
subjects.5 The prospect that prominent Ottomans, especially Muslims,
might send their children to be educated by missionaries was particu-
larly troubling. The missionary colleges opened in the mid-1860s, and
in direct response, the Galatasaray Lyce opened in 1868. In 1869, the
government issued a new educational law establishing a multi-tiered
civil education system, including Quranic elementary schools, rdiyye
middle schools, and finally an Imperial Sultani Lyce idadiyye prepara-
tory schools in every provincial capital.6 The plan was ambitious but
implementation was slow.
2
The most recent and most outstanding example is Benjamin Fortna, Imperial
Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire, (London:
2002).
3
Carter Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton: 1989),
pp. 154157.
4
Findley, Civil Officialdom, p. 154.
5
Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the
Ottoman Empire, 18761909, (London: 1998), pp. 104106.
6
Abd al-Azz MuhammadAwad, al-Idara al-uthmaniyya f wilayat suriyya, 1864
1914. (Cairo: 1969), pp. 254256.
late ottoman state education117
Midhat Pasha was the leading late Tanzimat era Ottoman reformist
statesman. Midhat is most famous for leading the Ottoman constitu-
tional movement of 1876; an achievement that led to his execution on
the presumed orders of Sultan Abdl-Hamid. But Midhat was also the
leading figure of Ottoman educational and provincial reform. Claims
of Ottoman decline notwithstanding, the stunning catalog of his inno-
vations predate similar reforms in any number of European countries.
Midhat was governor of Baghdad wilayat from 18691872, Grand
Vezir under Sultan Abdl-Hamid from 1876 to early 1877, and gover-
nor of Syria between late-1878 and 1880, after which time he was tried,
exiled to Arabia, placed in prison, and strangled.7 He ordered the con-
struction of schools, roads, bridges, and markets all over the Ottoman
lands. Many still stand and some, like the famous Midhat Basha suq in
Damascus, still bear his name.
In 1878 Midhat Pasha became provincial governor of Wilayat
Suriyya. When Midhat arrived in Beirut he was pleased to find that
a number of the citys most prominent Muslim citizens had formed
a charitable association for the development of education. With big
ideas but a miniscule budget, Midhat Pasha made the association a
centerpiece of his education reform, and encouraged the establish-
mentof similar associations in Damascus and elsewhere. The Jamiyyat
al-Maqasid al-Khayriyya al-Islamiyya, or the Makkased Society, helped
to fund and establish a number of schools, but the societys fondest
wish was the establishment of a Sultani Lyce on the model of the
Galatasaray School in the imperial capital.8
Sultn Abdl-Hamid judged Midhat and the independent societies
a threat. And as Midhat was removed and exiled, the Makassed Society
was dissolved and a state controlled educational board took its
place. State funding followed and the Beirut Sultani Lyce (Mekteb-i
Sultani) opened in 1883. The Beirut Sultani moved into a splendid new
building in the Basta quarter outside central Beirut. The school soon
enrolled the sons of the most prominent and wealthy Beiruti families.9
The teachers were important scholars and tuition was expensive.
Ali Haydar Midhat, The Life of Midhat Pasha, (London: 1903), p. 176.
7
Jens Hanssen, The Birth of an Educational Quarter, in History, Space and Social
8
Conflict in Beirut (Wrzburg: 2005), pp. 158f., and Donald Cioeta, Islamic Benevolent
Societies and Public Education in Ottoman Syria, 18751882, Islamic Quarterly, 26
(1982), pp. 4647.
9
Sawsan Agha Kassab and Omar Tadmori, Beirut & the Sultan: 200 Photographs
from the albums of Abdul Hamid II (18761909) (Beirut: 2002), p. 60.
Muhammad Abduh taught there briefly during his exile from Egypt.
Students could board at the school or attend during the day, and fees
were up to 15 gold Ottoman lira for board and tuition. By sultanic
decree, students were exempted from military servicea valuable ben-
efit considering the low regard Ottoman-Arab elites held for military
careers. George Antonius notes that prominent families supported elite
civil education as an escape from the military careers they dreaded for
their children.10
The Damascus Sultani Lyce opened two years later in 1885. The
Damascus Sultani was established in a beautiful mansion build by
Damascene Jewish merchant Yusuf Anbar, who had gone bankrupt
building the huge house. After his bankruptcy ownership reverted to
the state. The mansion proved a perfect place to establish a large school,
and the two schools, in Beirut and Damascus, soon enrolled close to
1000 boys between them. The curriculum lasted six years, and a sizable
proportion of boys were boarders from other parts of the Ottoman
realms.11
Damascus Maktab Anbar and the Beirut Sultani have storied lega-
cies. The educational experience at Maktab Anbar was fondly chroni-
cled by several prominent Damascenes, particularly Fakhri al-Barudi,
and Zafir al-Qasimi. The famous scholar and activist Tahir al-Jazairi
taught there, and for almost a century Maktab Anbar has been consid-
ered the nursery of Arab nationalism in Syria.12 It educated several gen-
erations of the most famous Damascene intellectuals, politicians, and
wealthy landowners. The Beirut Sultani has a similar lofty place in
modern history. Many historians have written about both schools and
many have claimed that Maktab Anbar was the first modern prepara-
tory school in Damascus. While Maktab Anbar deserves its fame, these
claims are mistaken: there was a state preparatory school in continuous
operation Damascus fifty years before Maktab Anbar opened its doors.
The existence and lasting influence of provincial military schools have
escaped the notice of historians.
10
Kassab and Tadmori, Beirut and the Sultan, p. 60, and George Antonius, The Arab
Awakening, p. 41.
11
Nadia von Maltzahn, Education in Late Ottoman Damascus, unpublished
MA thesis, Oxford University, 2005, p. 25.
12
Fakr al-Barudi, Mudhakkirat Fakhri al-Barudi (Damascus: 1999), Zafir a l-Qasimi,
Maktab Anbar: anwar wa-dhikrayat min hayatina al-thaqafiyya wa-al-siyasiyya wa-al-
ijtimaiyya (Damascus: 1967).
Ottoman state education began with military academies in the impe-

rial capital. The School of Military Sciences (Mekteb-i Ulum-i Harbiyye)
opened in 1834. Military preparatory schools in the capital soon fol-
lowed.13 But in the Arabic speaking provinces of Egypt and Syria, a new
and more vigorously reforming administration had already arrived.
In 1831 Ibrahim Pasha, son of Egypts wali Muhammad Al marched
on and occupied Ottoman Greater Syria. Among his many reforms
were attempts at male universal military conscription and the intro-
duction of military schools. In 1832 Ibrahim Pasha opened the first
state educational institution in all of Greater Syriaand two years
before the establishment of a similar school in the imperial capital.
The Damascus military school opened in a large Mamluk mosque in
the Marja quarter. With a few interruptions, it would remain the prin-
cipal higher military academy of greater Syria until 1932. Scores of
prominent figures had a connection to the school. Mustafa Kemal
Atatrk taught there as a young staff officer posted to the 5th Ottoman
Army in Damascus between 19051907. Famous serial anti-colonial
revolutionary Fawzi al-Qawuqji attended prior to his travel to the
Imperial Military Academy. Palestinian national icon Izz al-Din al-
Qassam was appointed Ottoman chaplain there in the years before
WWI. Countless Ottoman, later mandate, and independence era mili-
tary and political leaders passed through the school. Lebanese presi-
dent Fuad Chehab was educated there during the French mandate,
when it was the principal military academy for the French-Syrian
Legion. In 1932 the mandate government moved the Syrian military
academy to Homs, where it remains to this day.
Mamluk wali Amir Sayf al-Din Tankz built the mosque and tomb
complex as a burial place for him and his wife in 1317. His wife is bur-
ied in the first tomb but the adjoining tomb is empty since the Mamluk
Sultan in Alexandria executed Tankz for excessive ambition. Along
with the Umayyad mosque and the Ayyubid citadel, it was one of the
largest structures in Damascus for centuries. Ibrahim Pasha opened
his first military academy outside Egypt there and followed with mili-
tary schools in Aleppo and Antakya. They were called Jihadiyya schools
and the students were soldiers and the instructors were serving army
13
Seluk Akin Somel, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman
Empire, 18391908: Islamization, Autocracy and Discipline (Leiden, 2001), pp. 2429.
Somels outstanding and comprehensive work on Ottoman education, notes the exist-
ence of the Egyptian schools.
officers. Discipline was strict and the curriculum was rigid and focused
on practical knowledge like reading and writing, mathematics, geom-
etry, history, geography, and drawing. The Damascus school had
600 students by 1835; the other schools had fewer students. The school
in Damascus seems to have been both a preparatory and advanced
academy, while the other schools offered only preparatory instruction.
Apparently more schools were planned.14
In 1840 a combined Ottoman-British force expelled Ibrahims forces
from Syria. The British imposed a rigid treaty regime on the break-
away province and as Ottoman control was reasserted, the Jihadiyya
schools closed. The Egyptian experiment was over, but in 1845 the cen-
tral Ottoman state decreed that all provincial capitals housing an army
corps headquarters should have a military preparatory school, or idad-
iyye academy.15 Damascus was the first army headquarters outside
Anatolia or Rumelia to open a school, and by 1850 the Damascus mili-
tary preparatory school had re-opened in the Tankiz mosque.16
Ottoman reformers, led by Midhat Pasha, systematized state educa-
tion over the middle decades of the 19th century. After the education
law of 1869, the military and civil educational systems both came to be
based around a similar set of assumptions and goals. The military sys-
tem however, despite the minimal attention of historians, was always
better funded and more carefully organized. The law called for an
elementary school, or ibtidaiyye school, in each village, a middle school,
or rdiyye school in each town, and an idadiyye or sultani preparatory
school in each provincial capital. At the rdiyye level and above, the
schools were divided into either military, (askariyye) or civil (mlki-
yye) civil systems. The ibtidaiyye and rdiyye schools were often
combined to provide a total of six years of instruction. The next step,
the idadiyye provided an additional three years. The idadiyye schools,
which boarded students in the important cities, like the Damascus mil-
itary school, Beirut Sultani, Maktab Anbar, and Galatasaray schools,
provided up to seven years of instruction. The most promising students
would continue their studies in an imperial service academy, either the
14
Abdul-Latif Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 18001901: A Study of
Educational, Literary and Religious Work (Oxford: 1966), pp. 6869. And George
Antonius, Arab Awakening, p. 41. Thanks to Professor John Meloy for details on Tankiz.
15
Somel, p. 23.
16
Library of Congress, Abdul-Hamid collection, Statistical abstract of third year
military high schools for adolescents, This is actually a list of provincial idd askeriyye
schools in 1893, LOT 9519, no. 4, LC-USZ62-81073 (b&w film copy neg.)
military college, Mekteb-i Ulum-i Harbiyye, or the civil service acad-

emy, Mekteb-i Mlkiyye, the imperial medical school, or law school.17
Before the Ottoman constitution, and his brief tenure as governor
of Syria, Midhat was governor of Baghdad province. Unlike Damascus,
there were no state educational institutions in Baghdad, and the new
governor wasted no time in opening a series of government schools
after his arrival in 1869. Notable citizens of Baghdad readily embraced
the emphasis Midhat placed on administrative reform, law and order,
and especially reforming the 6th Army.18 Before he opened civil
schools,he opened military schools, which enrolled far more students
from the beginning, and undoubtedly had a far larger influence on
Iraqi society and history than the civil schools of the province. Midhat
Pasha arrived in Baghdad with an imperial firman that listed a pri-
mary goal to reorganize and improve the Sixth Imperial Army of
Iraq.19 The military middle rdiyye askeriyye school opened in 1869,
and the preparatory (high school) idadi askeriyye school opened in
1871, in time to accept the first class to complete the rdiyye curricu-
lum. Serving staff officers of the Ottoman 6th Army taught at both
schools, and both schools offered free tuition to qualified students. The
Baghdad civil middle school, rdiyye mlkiyye opened in 1871 and
the civil preparatory (high) school mekteb-i sultani opened in 1873.20
By 1900 however, the number of students attending the sultani school
had reached only 96 students, up from 68 in 1898.21 By contrast,
the Baghdad military preparatory school, idadiyye askeriyye, enrolled
256 boys. The Baghdad military middle school, rdiyye askeriyye,
enrolled 846 boys in the same year; a number only slightly lower than
the combined total of all middle and preparatory schools, private, mis-
sionary, and state run, in all of Baghdad, Mosul, and Basrah provinces.22
Over three fourths of the Iraqi prime ministers from 1920 to 1958 were
graduates of the Baghdad military preparatory (high) school.
17
Somel, Apendices 46, curricula of btid, Rdiyye, and dd schools 1904,
pp.297309. Tahsin Ali, Mudhakkirat Tahsn Al 18901980 (Beirut: 2003), p. 15
18
Midhat, Life of Midhat Pasha, p. 4950.
19
al-Zawra (Baghdad newspaper), No.1, 5 rabi al-awwal, AH 1286, quoted in
Abdul-Wahhab Abbas al-Qaysi, The Impact of Modernization on Iraqi Society
During the Ottoman Era: A Study of Intellectual Development in Iraq, 18691917,
Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1958, p. 34.
20
Qaysi, pp. 5859.
21
Istanbul University Archival Collection, [IU], Maarif Nazereti Salnamesi, Istanbul
1316 (1898).
22
IU, Maarif Nazereti Salnamesi, Istanbul 1318 (1901).
Prominent families in Baghdad, Beirut, and Damascus lobbied

tirelessly for elite state civil educational institutions. In each city, how-
ever, the state built and opened military schools before the civil schools.
In Damascus the military preparatory (high) school had been in
operation since 1850, and in 1875, at least ten years before Maktab
Anbar opened, the Damascus military middle school, rdiyye askeri-
yye opened near Damascus Marja quarter.23 The same year the Beirut
rdiyye askeriyye opened in a new and impressive building. And
according to the Ottoman ministry of military education documents,
the state, then on the verge of bankruptcy and insolvency, opened
nine major provincial military rdiyye schools in 1875 alone. School
administrators found that students needed additional work to prepare
for the preparatory or idadiyye schools. Consequently, the government
used scarce resources to open an unprecedented number of military
middle schools over the course of a single year.
In comparison with civil schools, military schools opened earlier,
got better buildings, more funding direct from the state treasury,
enrolled more students, and did not charge tuition. Schools opened in
the civil system, under the Ministry of State Education, by contrast,
opened slower, and were built and operated with a greater concentra-
tion of local funds, and charged very high tuition fees. By 1900 there
were scores of military middle and preparatory (high) schools in oper-
ation enrolling tens of thousands of students from Yemen to the
Balkans.
The civil schools were prestigious and drew their students from the
families of established Ottoman elites. Tuition was expensive and the
schools existed in direct competition to the foreign missionary schools,
which the state and its elites often saw as a threat. Military education by
contrast, was designed to draw the sons of notable rural and provincial
families into the state system. State educational bureaucrats saw rural
security and revenue collection as a key to modernization. State elites
considered the rural and nomadic areas as perennially rebellious,
uncivilized, and in need of constant state supervision and discipline.
While military suppression was necessary to insure security and tax
remissions, indoctrination into the Ottoman system also became an
important tool of state integration. The military schools represented
23
Library of Congress, Abdul-Hamid collection, Statistical abstract of fourth
year military high schools for adolescents Rusdiyye. This is actually a list of rdiyye
askeriyye schools in 1893 LOT 9519, no. 1, LC-USZ62-81070 (b&w film,copy neg.).
what was commonly described as the Sultans effort to draw the people
to himself.24
Boys entered state military schools in towns and villages from Bosnia
to Yemen, to the borders with Iran. Central and local officials actively
sought children from rural regions where the role of the state had tra-
ditionally been unpopular and intermittent. Late Ottoman education
policy placed a value in drawing the people of the fringes and frontiers
into the state system. Since the states officials had continually failed to
convince rural people of the value of paying taxes and conscripting
their children for distant and possibly fatal military campaigns, by the
final decade of the 20th century, the emphasis shifted to a contract
between state and village in which the state offered services, schools,
education, and the selective promise of state employment presumed to
follow.25 Many rural and pastoral regions had opposed by arms the
demands of the state for revenue, registration, census taking, and con-
scription, but schools became quickly popular and oversubscribed. The
policy of attracting the children of influential local families enjoyed
rapid success, and by 1897, there were 28 provincial military prepara-
tory schools (idadiyye), with 7433 students. Three times as many boys
were simultaneously enrolled in the military middle (rdiyye) schools
throughout the empire.26 By 1899 over 25% of the Ottoman officer
corps of 18,000 had been educated and commissioned through the
military educational system.27
Military Academies in the Imperial Capital
The Imperial Military Academy in Istanbul was the final educational

destination for young men from the provinces. But the military pre-
paratory schools were not the only path to the imperial academies.
There was also the Ahiret Mekteb-i Hmayan, or the Tribal School in
Istanbul, which recruited the sons of influential nomadic and rural
families. The school boarded boys from the provinces and provided a
more highly structured curriculum than the provincial schools. The
larger provincial schools boarded some students, but most lived with
24
Merwin Griffiths, The Reorganization of the Ottoman Army under Abdl-
Hamid II 18801907, Unpublished PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1966, Apendix 1,
pp. 175177.
25
Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, pp.100101.
26
Library of Congress, Abdl-Hamid Photo Collection.
27
Griffiths, The Reorganization of the Ottoman Army, p.115.
their families. The Tribal School, by contrast, operated in the imperial

capital and virtually imprisoned students within the school compound.
Boys from the ungoverned frontier regions would attend by nomina-
tion and once at the school they would undergo a civilizing process to
turn them into loyal Ottomans. The journey from Iraq, Yemen, the
Syrian desert, Hijaz, or Libya to the Tribal School might take more than
a month, by land and steamship, after which boys were normally
greeted in a special ceremony attended by imperial dignitaries.28 Tribal
School students received a much heavier dosage of religion, and vari-
ous types of behavioral conditioning, than students in the regular pre-
paratory schools.29 They received remedial level basic skills in reading,
writing, and languages, to compensate for their lack of preparation
relative to other provincial students. Most of the provincial rdiyye
schools and some idadiyye schools also offered remedial courses of
studyan obvious nod to their function as laboratories of state inte-
gration and social leveling.
Both Tribal School and provincial school graduates usually matri
culated to the Imperial Military Academy in Istanbul. By the time
students arrived in the capital they had spent up to nine years in the
Ottoman military education system without expense to their families.
Boys six to eight years old would first attend a primary type ibtidaiyye
school in their town or village for a period of three years. They would
have been taught to read and to write in their native language, perhaps
Arabic, Kurdish, Greek, Bulgarian, or Turkish, followed, where neces-
sary, by instruction in spoken Turkish. All students would have been
taught the rudiments of Arabic grammar. They would receive Islamic
religious instruction, and learn basic math skills, and they would be
taught physical fitness drills and basic hygiene.
The middle rdiyye schools were located in larger provincial towns
and all provincial capitals. Each town of 500 houses was supposed to
warrant a rdiyye; a goal that was generally met in the final Ottoman
decades. The majority of students lived with their families, either
nuclear or extended, but there were usually facilities for boarding
28
Eugene Rogan, Airet Mektebi Abdlhamid IIs School for Tribes (18921907),
IJMES 28, (1996), pp. 83107. Rogans article is the best investigation of the Tribal
School.
29
Istanbul University Archival Collection, [IU], Mekatibi Askeriyye akirdannm
Umumi, Imtihanlarnm neticelerini, Istanbul, 1318 (1901), p. 35. This Istanbul
University collection is based on the contents of the personal library of Sultan Abdl-
Hamid in the Yldz Palace. The materials were transferred in the 1950s.
s tudents and some percentage of students lived at the school in each

region. The instructional curriculum changed at the middle rdiyye
level. Students studied Arabic and Ottoman Turkish grammar, reading
and writing, and math, but they also received instruction in engineer-
ing, record keeping, geography, Islamic history, spoken Turkish, and
French.30 They only received a limited amount of religious instruction
at the beginning of the first year. At higher levels the curriculum
became increasingly secular and scientific. In 1901 there were 507
students enrolled in the Damascus rdiyye school, 740 in Baghdad,
and thousands more in provincial towns throughout the empire.31 The
average literate Ottoman in 1905 had probably passed through the
system, and admittedly unreliable statistics from the period record
literacy rates increasing from low single digits to above 10 or 15%.
Ottoman Ministry of Education documents did not differentiate
military school students by religion. Civil school statistics listed stu-
dents by religion and obviously enrolled non-Muslim students. Civil
school students paid high tuition and were exempted from legally
required military service. Christians were also exempt until after the
re-introduction of the Ottoman Constitution in 1909. Sultan Abdl-
Hamid had evidently vetoed a recommendation early in his reign to
conscript non-Muslims into the Ottoman military.32 In practice mili-
tary schools seem to have enrolled a small number of non-Muslim stu-
dents, particularly in regions where there were significant non-Muslim
populations like Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut.33
Military preparatory idadiyye (high) schools were open in every pro-
vincial capital by the 1880s. Students attended three years, after which
they would normally attend the imperial military academy in Istanbul.
Students could also continue at other university level institutions, like
the civil service academy, Mekteb-i Mlkiyye, in Istanbul, or missionary
colleges like Robert College, later to become Bosphorus University, or
IU Mekatibi Askeriyye akirdannm, 1318 (1901).

30
IU, Maarif Nazerati Salnamesi, Istanbul 1318 (1901), pp. 11801184.

31
32
Griffiths, The Reorganization of the Ottoman Army, pp. 151152. Erik-Jan
Zrcher, The Ottoman Conscription System in Theory and Practice, 18441918,
International Review of Social History 43, 1998, p, 437449. Salim Tamari, The Short
Life of Private Ihsan, Jerusalem 1915, Jerusalem Quarterly 30, Spring 2007.
33
IU, Mekatibi Askeriyye akirdannm Umumi, Imtihanlarnm neticelerini,
Istanbul, 1318 (1901), I base the argument that non-Muslim students may have been
enrolled on a analysis of names, which are listed, complete with course grades, class
standing, and town or region of origin, in the cadet books. At least a few of the listed
students have names typically associated with Arab Christians.
the Syrian Protestant College, later to become the American University

of Beirut. In the 19th and early 20th centuries preparatory school (high
school) graduates were considered highly educated in most countries,
including the Ottoman realms, and many went on to notable careers
without additional schooling.
Those who continued in the military system made the journey to
Istanbul. For Jafar al-Askari, later to be Iraqi Prime Minister, the jour-
ney from Mosul to attend the Baghdad idadiyye askeriyye took days
sailing downriver on the Euphrates on a large raft made from inflated
animal skins. The journey from Baghdad to Istanbul took weeks, first
by land to Aleppo and Alexandretta, and by steam ship to Istanbul.34
Students from other distant Ottoman provinces traveled still farther.
By the first decade of the 20th century, student cadets traveled by train.
They arrived at the military academy, where cadets from the Balkans,
the Turkish regions, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, or Kurdistan lived and
studied together.
Cadets began an intensive three-year education culminating in their
commission as Ottoman military officers. The academy curriculum
followed and refined the secular and practical scientific character of the
idadiyye and rdiyye schools. Military drills, field medicine, survey-
ing, fortifications, reconnaissance, and communications were added to
the study of French, German, and Russian, geography, and math.35
History was taught but there was no religious instruction offered. 60 to
70% of the students came from the Anatolian, Turkish, and Balkan
regions, but Sultan Abdl-Hamid was anxious to increase representa-
tion of the non-Turkish and non-European provinces and actively
recruited young men from the Arab and Kurdish regions. Retired
Turkish Army Staff Colonel Fehmi Dorusz described the policy as
part of the Sultans efforts to draw the people closer to himself.36
Colonel Fehmi was typical of the new beneficiaries of Ottoman mili-
tary reform and subsidized education. He was born in 1884, the son of
an Libyan merchant of apparently modest circumstances, attended the
rdiyye school in Tripoli for four years then traveled to Istanbul where
he attended the idadiyye schools for three additional years. After his
34
Tahsin Ali, Mudhakirrat Tahsin Ali 18801970 (Beirut, 2003), p. 15. Jafar al-
Askari, Mudhakkirat Jafar al-Askari, (Surrey, UK: 1988), pp. 2526.
35
Mekatibi Askeriyye akirdannm Umumi, Imtihanlarnm neticelerini, Istanbul,
1318h (1901).
36
Griffiths, Reorganization of the Ottoman Army, Annex I, pp.175177.
preparatory school graduation, Fehmi Bey attended the Mekteb-i

Harbiyye for three years. Based presumably on his class standing in the
top ten percent, he was selected to continue his studies in the General
Staff College for two more years, finally concluding his studies in 1905
at the age of 21 or 22 after more than 13 years of increasingly rigorous
schooling. By the first decade of the 20th century some officers were
selected for further training on Germany. Based on Colonel Fehmis
brief biography, we may assume that he fought in Libya against the
Italian invasion of his home province in 1911, in the Balkan Wars of
191213, throughout the Great War of 191418, and during the Turkish
War of Independence of 191923. Despite his origin in Arabic speak-
ing Libya, he served as a general staff officer of the post-independence
Turkish Army, and retired in Istanbul.37
Late Ottoman education had lasting influence on the modern Middle
East. Historians of the colonial and post-colonial state have remem-
bered civil and missionary education, but military education has been
mostly forgotten. And yet, the structures and legacies of Ottoman mili-
tary education are ubiquitous in all the Ottoman successor states. From
school buildings still standing, and often still in use in every Ottoman
provincial capital, to common anti-colonial struggles, to the influence
of the military in politics, the echoes of the last Ottoman decades are
intense, whether we choose to hear them or not.
37
This information comes from interviews Merwin Griffiths conducted with Fehmi
Dorusz in the 1950s.
The art of being replaced: the last of the Cretan
Muslims between the empire and the nation-state
Elektra Kostopoulou
From a contemporary perspective, it seems that by the end of the nine-

teenth century the island of Crete constituted a province de facto
seceded from the Ottoman Empire and openly controlled by the
Kingdom of Greece. In this context, little attention has been devoted to
the Muslim community that remained on the island until 1923; even
less effort has been made to discuss the community in question as
something different than a local minority. In fact, however, the story of
Cretan Muslims had varied widely over time. Thus, the very last phase
of their presence on the island formed only a small part of a long and
ramified tradition. This paper will argue that the final community-
stimulation of Cretan Islam between 1897 and 1923 cannot be compre-
hended without reference to the most durable aspect of the above
mentioned tradition: namely the institution of the waqf. In this respect,
the Muslim pious foundations of Crete will be presented here as a
material reality with loaded ideological meaning, flexible enough to
survive the transition of the island from the empire to the nation-state;
and stable enough to inspire loyalty in an era of uncertainty and pro-
found fluidity.
***
One imagines that the Cretan Hseyin Haniotakis left the leasing auc-
tion organized by the Administration of Rethimnis Muslim Pious
Foundations on 28 August 1922 quite satisfied. Part of him was per-
haps a bit nervous, since all newspapers were reporting at that time
the Greek-Turkish war and the Greek invasion, or liberation, of Izmir
(Smyrna). Another part of him, however, would certainly have been
pleased, since the fertile waqf fields of Yannousi had been leased to him
for a term of four years.1 Hseyin could not have known that ten days
later the new Turkish army would defeat the Greek army in Anatolia,
recapturing Izmir (Smyrna). Neither could he have known that on
Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 51/133.

1
130 elektra kostopoulou
24 July 1923 Greece and Turkey would sign the Treaty of Lausanne,
according to which all Muslims would have to leave the island of Crete.
Thus, not knowing yet he had made a rather bad investment, on that
day of August 1922 Hseyin Haniotakis was probably happy.
To the contemporary reader the story of our friend may appear
unintelligible or even unimportant. Throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury, political stability had not been a Cretan particularity. The final
deportation of local Muslims could be viewed, thus, as the natural out-
come of long linear conflicts. The long-term plans of Hseyin, at the
same time, could be interpreted as an isolated, exceptional case of
bad judgment. This approach, however, is challenged by the fact that
Hseyin was not an isolated case.2 The contemporary researcher of the
eras Cretan archives realizes that the same inability to foresee the future
is identified in a lot of other Cretan Muslims who insisted on investing
on a local basis.3 The above retrospectively unwise real estate decisions
contradict traditional readings of the islands past, indicating that the
experiences of the last Cretan Muslims could and shouldbe inter-
preted as something more than linear stories of tragic loss.
This paper is an attempt to carry over a shift in paradigm, revisiting
the world of Hseyin Haniotakis without the lens of later develop-
ments. In what follows, early twentieth century Crete will be discussed
as a transforming geography, shared between Muslims and Christians
through diverse paths of conflict and cooperation. Special focus will be
placed, in particular, on the ways Muslims responded to opportunities
and challenges; factors that forced some of them to leave the island;
reasons that inspired others to stay; and developments that kept them
2
Since the present paper is based on my ongoing doctoral research, its general argu-
ments are supported by numerous cases-studies, only a limited number of which are
being used here.
3
For instance, Ismail Barbajakis, see Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 45/8, or Ahmet
Yinekalaki, Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 45/14, in 1918 continued to be the tenants
of waqf shops in the city of Rethimnis. Accordingly, in 1917, Mehmet Gavalakis would
not hesitate to buy former waqf lands sold through auction by the Rethimnis
Administrations, Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 44/28. On 3 November 1919, the
Director of the Irakliou Muslim Foundations would participate in the auctions of the
waqf real estate himself and would buy a number of residences in the city of Irakliou,
Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 34/3. On November 8, 1920, Sait Arnaoutakis would
pay 2200 drachmas in order to buy an important estate, that was the former Muslim
cemetery, in the periphery of Keramoutsi village, sold through auction by the Irakliou
Directory, Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 34/122. Those being only some of the
numerous cases of Muslim Cretans that didnt seem willing to leave the island, this
paper suggests that Hseyin was a telling case rather than an exceptional one.
the art of being replaced131
involved in a dialectic of continuity and change between the Empire

and the Nation-State.
Before further exploring the above mentioned dynamics, a brief
chronological discussion of the period is in order. In November 1898,
after the Greek defeat in the Greek-Ottoman war, the Ottoman
province of Crete had become autonomous. Under the supervision
of the Great Powers, the Ottoman troops were forced to evacuate the
island and Prince George, son of the King of Greece, was appointed
High Commissioner of Crete. Cretan autonomy was the outcome of a
century of Christian revolts and of continuous Ottoman administrative
reforms. During the long nineteenth century, Cretan society had expe-
rienced long transformations. As a result of the constant political and
social changes, large numbers of Muslims found themselves pressured,
though not yet obliged, to immigrate to the mainland of the Ottoman
Empire.
According to a variety of oral and archival sources, the massive
Muslim emigration from Crete continued during the Balkan Wars
(19121913) and the First World War (19141918). Throughout this
process, the Muslims of Crete gradually declined in numbers and
started to be treated, ideologically and structurally, as a minority. Thus,
although the island was to remain under Ottoman sovereignty until the
Balkan Wars (when it was officially integrated to Greece), one may sug-
gest that, as of 1898, the Ottomans continued to control Crete only in
theory.4 However, this seems too facile an argument, in spite of or due
4
Greeks, more than any other community of scholars, have explored diplomatic
archival sources relevant to the topic. Nevertheless, the majority still presents the
Cretan Question as the result of European policies, which created obstacles to the age-
old dream of the Cretans for union with Greece, see for instance Ladas, Stephen, The
Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York: MacMillan,1932);
Tatsios, T.G., The Cretan Problem and the Eastern Question: A Study of Greek Irredentism,
18661898 (Washington D.C.:University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan,
1967); Tatsios, T.G., The Megali Idea and the Greek-Turkish War of 1897: The impact of
the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism, 18661898 (New York: East European
Monographs,1984); Manousakis, Giorgis, Kritikes Epanastasis, 18211905: Cretan
Revolutions 18211905 (Crete: Ethniko Idrima Erevnon kai Meleton Elefterios
Venizelos, 2004).
On the contrary, most of the Turkish scholars, who have so far dealt with 19th cen-
tury Crete, use the Ottoman archives in a selective way in order to present the island as
a bi-religious, culturally independent society that had been attached to the Greek state
through conspiracies and maneuvers against the Muslims, see for instance In, Mithat,
Tarihte Girit ve Trkler: Crete and the Turks from a historical perspective (Ankara:
Askeri Deniz Matbaas, 1945); Babakanl, T.C. Babakanlk Devlet Arivleri Genel
Mdrl Osmanl Arivi Daire (ed), Ariv belgelerine gre Balkanlar da ve Anadolu
da Yunan Mezalimi: The atrocities of the greeks in the Balkans and Anatolia based on
archival sources. Vol. 22 (Ankara: T.C. Babakanlik Devlet Arivleri Genel Mdrlg
to its plausibility. It seems to be true that, after the 1897 war, Istanbul
lost almost completely its legislative, judicial, and executive powers
over Crete. Still, an important Muslim community remained on the
island until 1923, when in the context of the compulsory exchange of
populations between Turkey and Greece, the situation changed. Was
the above described thirty-year period nothing but a short transition
from the empire to a homogenous Christian Crete? This paper ques-
tions it, suggesting instead that the period deserves to be studied in its
own right. Furthermore, it suggests that the ambiguity of the status of
the Cretan Muslims was, in part, a reflection of the endless transforma-
tions in the broader area of the Eastern Mediterranean.5
The early twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean was still a world
in transition, characterized by tension between unity and diversity,
continuity and change. In this context, the First World War could be
seen as the terminal point of a period of profound uncertainty. Despite
the fact that chronological limits often obscure the everlasting charac-
ter of historical change, one should not overlook the fact that there
were real differences in the local balance of power, before and after the
Great War. In this respect, it is useful to keep in mind that develop-
ments after the war changed the areas Ottoman past to a contested
inheritance, claimed by artificially homogenous nation-states. Until
shortly before the war, at the same time, discourses on national homo-
geneity were intermingled with strategies derived from imperialor
imperialisticfluidity.
In the context of the approach outlined above, the individual choices
of Cretan Muslims become more comprehensible, even if they are still
not completely understood. Individual relationships cannot be
addressed without discussing the forms of discourse that inspired or
constructed them. In addressing the character of the last Muslim expe-
riences in Crete, therefore, the periods profound hybridity should be
Osmanl Arivi Bakanl 1995) For a more moderate study which is based on thor-
ough archival research, see Adyeke, Aye Nkhet, Osmanl Imparatorluu ve Girit
Bunalm (18961908): The Ottoman Empire and the Cretan Question (Ankara: Trk
Tarih Kurumu, 2000). For the most updated and interesting thesis on this issue, see
enk, Pnar, The transformation of Otoman Crete: Cretans, Revolts and Diplomatic
Politics in the late Otoman Empire (stanbul: Doctoral dissertation, Graduate Institute
of Social Sciences, Boazii University, 2007).
5
Eldem Edhem, Goffman Daniel and Masters Bruce (eds), The Ottoman City
between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and stanbul (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999); Hanssen, Jens, Fin de siecle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman
Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
taken into consideration. In the same way, in order to understand when

and how the local Muslim community started to be perceived as a
minority, it is useful to keep in mind the differences among Ottoman,
Autonomous, and Greek Crete. It must not be forgotten that both the
Greek state of the period and mainstream Greek historians of today
have considered Crete to be at the core of the national grand narrative
due to its particular history. Cretan sites of antiquity have been cited as
proof of the nationalistic argument for ethnic regional continuity.
Likewise, Crete has been the site of several bloody revolutions against
the Turkish yoke, thus endowing the island with nationalist symbol-
ism of resistance against the occupier. Naturally, within this narrative,
the Muslim community has been treated as a minority, the culture of
which should be denied or submerged.6 In contrast, the Ottoman
stateand to a large extent the current prevailing Turkish scholarly
literatureseemed to perceive the Muslims of Crete in quite an ambig-
uous way. Although the nineteenth century may prove to be too early
to speak of a Turkish identity, the fact that the Muslims of Crete lived
on an island claimed by the Greek state was enough to enforce the idea
of us against the others. Therefore, after the Ottoman state started to
withdraw from Crete, it seems that Cretan Muslims started to be per-
ceived as a diaspora.7
The above mentioned discourses were not constructed in a vacuum.
After the integration of Crete to Greece, Cretan Islam had gradually
turned into a subculture and the Muslim community had been alien-
ated from the larger Ottoman society. Yet it is really difficult to say how
exactly such issues were perceived by those directly involved in the
process, since relevant developments did not take place in a static
geography. In any case, one should keep in mind that earlier Muslim
experiences had been very different. The problem, it seems, is that most
retrospective readings of local Muslim history fail to differentiate
between the Greek present of the island and its pre-national history.
6
See, for instance, Vernardos, Manouil I., Istoria tis Kritis: History of Crete (Athens:
Karavia, D. N.- Anastatikes Ekdoseis, 2001 [first published in 1846); Zabelios, Spiridon
I., Kondilakis, Ioannis D. and Kritovoulidis Kiriakos, Istoria ton Epanastaseon tis Kritis:
History of the Cretan Revolutions (Athens:1897); Papadakis, Emm. and Detorakis
Theoharis, Istoria tis Kritis: History of Crete (Athens: 1986).
7
See, for instance, Cevdet, Ahmed, Paa, Tarih-i Cevdet. Vol. 1 (stanbul: 1309
[189192); Kopasi, Giritin ahval-i Umumiye ve Tarihesi (in Mecmua-y Ebuzziya.
stanbul: 13151317); Tukin, Cemal, Osmanl mparatorluunda Girit isyanlar:
The Cretan uprisings in the Ottoman Empire, Belleten IX (34).
In the same line of thought, Muslim presence is identified exclu-

sively with local minority experiences, without broader reference to
the communitys past. Developments in early twentieth century Crete,
at the same time, are often misrepresented as local particularities.
In this respect, the history of the community in question is extracted
from its historical-geographical context both vertically and horizon-
tally. In order to overcome this limitation, in what follows reference
shall be made to broader discourses on identity and territory that pre-
sented striking similarities to the case of Crete.
By and large, from the nineteenth century onwards, the semi-
mythical identification of nation-states with exclusive territories
became a mainstream way of claiming exclusive control over the terri-
tories in question. According to that practice, the foreigner had to be
deported not only from the lands but also from the collective history of
the nation. In the Balkan and Mediterranean countries that used to
constitute the Ottoman Empire, historical versions based on this type
of approach are still alive, or even sacred.8 Nevertheless, current his-
torical research demonstrates that the Ottoman legacy in those territo-
ries was of a more local character than nationalist literatures would like
to suggest. Even in the nineteenth century itself, although loyalties
were torn and agony for the future was rising in the old regime, the
triumph of nationalism did not mean the disappearance of different
traditions at the state or public level. This general trend is best illus-
trated in the specific example of Cretan Muslims and in the ways they
remained bound, metaphorically and literally, to their locality through
the institutions of an imperial past. In order to explain what that means,
the following pages will describe the transformations of the commu-
nity under scrutiny by reference to two interconnected politico-eco-
nomic issues: pious foundations and religious minorities.
In the period under scrutiny here, both of these primary terms of
reference lacked conceptual clarity. It seems clear enough, however,
that the concept of minority, as legally applied to a cultural group, has
been a creation of modernity. The term was included in interna
tional diplomatic practice in the context of the 1919 Versailles Peace
8
Neumann, Christoph K.,Tarihin yazar ve Zarar olarak Trk Kimlii: Bir
Akademik deneme (in Tarih retimi ve Ders kitaplar, 1994 Buca Sempozyumu.
stanbul: 1995), pp.98106; Koulouri, Christina., Clio in the Balkans (Thessaloniki:
Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (CDRSEE), 2002),
pp.1548.
Conference.9 During the nineteenth century, or even earlier, the con-

cept was applied to different communities without yet elaborating a
coherent, universalized, constitutional morality. In other words, even if
we accept that pre-twentieth century groups of people employed, or
were forced to adopt, minority rituals in order to establish a unity of
mind among their members, this was not yet an international practice.
It was the early twentieth century that has gradually established the
norm of defining minorities according to criteria that automatically
linked individuals to local communities and local communities to
international patterns. One could argue, therefore, that minorities
could not exist without an organized world system of nation-states.
Nevertheless, since the hybridity of the periods state policies in Eurasia
does not allow for a clear differentiation between existing or potential
empires and nation-states, one can use instead the term modern state.
To define the modern state demands that we accept simply its general
aim to control and to rule over geographies that had previously only
been governed.10
Developments in Crete were in harmony with the above described
dynamics. As the nineteenth century was approaching its end follow-
ing a long and turbulent period of upheavals, social stability and eco-
nomic development prevailed in a part of the world characterized as
the West.11 Law was imposed and Order was visually reshaped on the
newly printed and widely distributed maps.12 At the same time, those
territories in which peace failed to bring conflicts to an end were stig-
matized as the Rest.13 Within this matrix, ramified networks were
9
See the Peace Treaties with the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
Ottoman Empire and Prussian Kingdom, where reference is made to persons who
belong to racial, religious, or linguistic minorities, in Jakson, Jennifer, and Preece,
National Minorities and the European Nation-States System (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998), p. 15.
10
Salzmann, Ariel, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern
State (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2004), pp.1921.
11
By West I mean a larger than the nation, imaginary community of states, which
could be contextualized ideologically and politically, according to the main character-
istics of the most powerful European states of the era. In territorial terms, I suggest that
if the ninettenth century West was a country, its capital would be well defined, though
its borders would remain conveniently flexible.
12
On the cartographic output of geographical societies during the 19th century see
Thrower, Norman Joseph William, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and
Society (Chicago: Chicago University Press: 1999), pp.125162.
13
Nevertheless, both categories remained extremely supple. For instance, in the
1890s, both the Ottoman Empire and Greece would use school maps destined to
represent their territories as part of the West, whereas a lot of the European powers
formed between centers and multiple peripheries. In Crete, the foreign

intervention of 1897; the islands blockade by European navies; the
landing of foreign troops; along with the proclamation of autonomy
and maintenance of the hybrid polity established after the war under
international custody, brought the island into direct contact with the
missions of the West. That led to the establishment of a fragile peace.
Yet, by the early twentieth century, the struggle for land and power
recommenced.14
It was in accordance with that time and place that some communi-
ties started to be treated as cultural or ethnic minorities in an interna-
tional context.15 Crete is a telling case in this regard. According to the
legal texts produced by Autonomous Crete, the Great Powers and
Greece during that period, Cretan Muslims were gradually viewed as a
case of cultural minority-ness.16 However, culture is a very ambiguous
concept. Not to forget, majorities also have cultural identities, which
most of the time are neither stable nor homogenous. In that respect, it
is not a surprise that at the turn of the century the Cretan social reality
was conceptualized according to cultural categories that previously did
not exist.
Simultaneously, in a Mediterranean geography characterized by
increasing western-based criteria of progress, the modernization of
Crete remained incomplete. Electrification of the towns came quite
late to the islands mountains, where mysteries of shadow had been
retained together with a patriarchic romanticism. Yet the concept of
freedom or death, namely, of violence and of rebellion against the
oppressor were not particularities of the Cretan society. In general, the
would consider them both as part of the Rest. See Fortna, Benjamin C., Change in the
School Maps of the Late Ottoman Empire, Imago Mundi The International Journal for
the History of Cartography, vol.57, no.1 (2005), pp.2334; Peckham, Robert Shannan,
Map Mania: nationalism and the politics of place in Greece, 18701922, Political
Geography, vol.19, no.1 (2000), pp.7795.
14
Hobsbawm, E. J, The Age of Empire 18751914 (London: Abacus, 1987).
15
Deringil, Selim, From Ottoman to Turk: Self-Image and Social Engineering in
Turkey (in D. C. Gladney (ed), Making Majorities. Consituting the nation in Japan,
Corea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press, 1998); Paraskevopoulou, Triandafyllidou, When is the
Greek Nation? The Role of Enemies and Minorities, Geopolitics, vol.7, no2 (2002),
pp.7598; Berend, Ivan T., History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long
Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
16
Venizelos, Elftherios, 7 July 1898 Pros ti sinelefsi ton Kriton: Towards the Cretan
Assembly, Mikres Silloges, K51 Arheia Emm. Tsouderou, Apostoli E Fak 28. Athens
(GAK).
virtue of heroic fight against an unjust society became the symbol of

those populations that were nationalized conceptually against urban
communities, the culture of which was in a way different from the
imagined culture of the historic hinterland.17 All around the Balkan
Peninsula, for instance, the newly born national narratives differenti-
ated between oppressed nations and oppressing minorities. The oppres-
sors were commonly identified with urban populations whereas the
oppressed represented rural areas. Despite the actual multicultural
character of the geographies in question, on a symbolic level the battle
between imaginary national majorities and their minorities could be
clearly viewed as an effort to claim historical continuity and literally
urban space.
Not to forget that, a century of violent revolts and turmoil in Crete
had led to the gradual centralization and urbanization of the Muslim
community through internal displacement.18 The massive exodus from
the Cretan villages, which were no longer safe for the Muslims, had
transformed the demographic map of Crete in an interesting way.
Contrary to the general misperception, although the Ottoman Empire
was politically retreating from the island, in the urban centers of
Crete the Muslims were the majority. Hence, the Cretan Muslims
became a community to be perceived as a minority or as a diaspora
mainly through the process of internal dislocation, urbanization, and
population decrease. In this context, the spread of religious violence
and of national fanaticism partly explains why an important number of
Muslims left their country houses for the cities, or why they decided to
abandon the island. Yet, it does not explain why an important number
of them insisted on staying in Crete even after the integration of the
island to Greece. In order to address this issue, one has to discover how
On the way violence both as a concept and as a practice was summoned in order
17
to shape the Balkans see the introduction in Gallagher, Tom, Outcast Europe: The
Balkans, 17891989, from the Ottomans to Milosevic (London and New York: Routledge,
2001); Gerolymatos, Andre, The Balkan Wars: Conquest, Revolution, and Retribution
from the Ottoman Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond (New York: Basic Books,
2002), pp.120159.
18
H 129/ M 1880, Sancaklar: Nefs-i Hanya: Islam 9.488, Hristiyan 3.287. Nefs-i
Resmo: slam 6.703, Hristiyan 2.420. Nefs-i Kandiye: slam 14.592, Hristiyan 6.401,
yekn : slam 73. 487, Hristiyan 204. 680 in BOA .D TNZ 2373;), Statistiki tis Kritis.
Plithismos 1900: Statistics of Crete. The population in 1900 (Hania: 1904); Andriotis,
Nikos, Plithismos ke Ikismi tis Anatolikis Kritis (16th19th): Population and Settlements
in Eastern Crete (16th19th century) (Iraklio: Vikelea Dimotiki Vivliothiki, 2006),
pp. 100135.
the communal identity of Cretan Muslims was shaped in relation to the

islands particular material and ideological realities; which brings us
back to the legacy of pious foundations.
The Muslim pious foundations of Crete are viewed here as simulta-
neously a real estate property, an ideological condition, and a process
of transformation. Naturally, all Cretans who shared the Muslim reli-
gion did not necessarily have common interests or feelings. Nevertheless,
it can be safely argued that the late nineteenth century Administrations
of the Muslim Pious Foundations of Crete became magnets of eco
nomical affiliation that contributed to the shaping of the cultural and
socio-economic profile of a homogenizing and centralized Muslim
community that previously did not exist as such. True, it would be
more than inaccurate to imply that the common element of religion
was more important than the differences of socio-economic back-
ground, gender, generation, or particular locality, among the Muslim
Cretans. The imaginary shaping of that group of people as a commu-
nity, however, was based both ideologically and practically on religion.
Moreover, the fact that the Ottoman institution of the waqf had ulti-
mately survived the empire points toward its unquestionable impor-
tance. It is beyond doubt, in other words, that after 1897 the Muslim
community of Crete was only abstractly linked to the Ottoman Empire
and directly related to the local Muslim pious foundations.
As to the story of the local Muslim foundations per se, it had started
in the late seventeenth century when the Ottomans got hold of the
island after much effort, ending the previous rule of Venice. Numerous
scholars suggest that Crete had been the last significant Ottoman con-
quest.19 While some of them argue that the settlement of the agricul-
tural land was quite different from earlier conquests, others propose
that Cretes landholding system did not constitute a break with the
Ottoman tradition.20 One way or another, the point deserves to be
19
Greene, Molly, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern
Mediterranean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
20
Stavrinidis, N.S., Metafrasis Tourkikon Istorikon Eggrafon Aforodon is tin Istoria tis
Kritis A/ Egrafa tis periodou eton 16571672, Egiras 10671082. B/ Egrafa tis periodou
eton 16721694, Egiras 10831105: Translations of Turkish Historical Archival Material
on the History of Crete. A/ Documents of the Period between 16721694, Hicri 1083
1105. B/ Documents of the Period between 16721694, Hicri 10831105 (Iraklio: Vikelea
Dimotiki Vivliothiki, 1986); Inalcik, Halil, The emergence of big farms Ciftliks: State,
Landlords and Tenants in F.T.G. Keyder (ed), Land Holding and Commercial Agriculture
in the Middle East. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991); Greene, Molly, An Islamic Experiment:
Ottoman Land Policy on Crete, Mediterranean Historical Review, vol.11, no.1 (1996),
stressed that the Ottoman Empire brought to Crete its institution of the
waqf. And after a long period of interaction, transformation, and adap-
tation, the pious foundations of Islam had survived to the twentieth
century as a complex of religious and charitable institutions, such as
mosques, dervish convents, khans, fountains, and soup kitchens. The
source of revenue for the maintenance of all these functions was pro-
vided by endowments including vast agricultural fields in the hinter-
land and urban real estate property. In this respect, Muslim pious
foundations ended up constituting one of the most important aspects
of local economic, social, and political affiliations.21 Despite the fact
that their actual size and ideological essence were constantly reshaped,22
the pious foundations remained the most stable Muslim Ottoman
and later-on just Muslimactor on the island of Crete.
In this framework, developments in nineteenth and early twentieth
century Crete cannot be discussed without focusing on the profound
interdependence between the Muslim local community and the insti-
tution of the waqf. Furthermore, one can suggest that the above local
matrix survived on the island until 1923, as a reminder of the last
rather painfulattempts of the Ottoman capital to control Crete. True,
with regard to nineteenth century Ottoman reforms (Tanzimat), the
island is presented often in the literature as the political and cultural
backwater of the empire. According to such approaches, Crete remained
marginally affected by central strategies. One could propose, however,
that in a way during the second half of the century, Crete lay at the core
of Ottoman transformation; not as an actual geography but as a
symbol.
It is quite safe to argue that, at that time, the central regime viewed
the ideal of political success and of progress as directly related to effi-
cient central control over the provinces. In this context, controlling
Crete became an important test to be passed, both in envisioning the
pp.6078; Brumfield, Allaire, Agriculture and Rural Settlement in Ottoman Crete,

16691898 in L. C. Uzi Baram (ed), A Historical Archeology of the Ottoman Empire:
Breaking New Ground. New York: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers, 2000;
Anastasopoulos, Antonis, In Preparation for the Hajj: The Will of a Serdengenti from
Crete (1782), Archivum Ottomanicum, vol. 23 (2005/2006).
21
For a focused case study, see Anastasopoulos, Antonis, Dervisides kai Dervisikoi
Tekedes stin Kriti ton Arhon tou 19ou aiona: Thriskeftikes, oikonomikes kai koinoni-
kes leitourgies: Dervishes and Dervish Lodges in early 19th century Crete: Religious,
social and economic functions, Pepragmena tou TH Kritologikou Sinedriou C1 (2005),
pp.139150.
22
Brumfield, Agriculture and Rural Settlement, p.39.
future and in reinterpreting the past. It appears that it was to this mat-
ter that the Imperial center turned its attention when negotiating the
legal and administrative situation of the island;23 when having ancient
statuettes of Cretan nymphs sent to Istanbuls Imperial Museum;24
when establishing telegraph offices to keep the capital informed;25 and
when sending Evkaf directors to impose order on archival chaos.26
The contribution, or non-contribution, of reforms and of incorpo-
rating strategies to traveling the metaphorical and actual distance
between Istanbul and Crete will not be discussed here. It is only impor-
tant to keep in mind that, simultaneously to the imperial efforts to con-
trol the provinces, the state of Greece was claiming the right to liberate
the province in question, enforcing order upon and implanting moder-
nity in its soils. The above conflicting interests were among the various
factors that led to the final clash of the two powers over the island in
1897, followed by the foundation of Autonomous Crete. The Imperial
government eventually surrendered to the autonomous authorities the
islands control together with a series of chronic problems: local vio-
lence, debts, conflicting sectarian interests, and the necessity to put in
order the chaotic state of local property rights. At the same time, the
protection of the Muslims would remain the last Ottoman argument
over Crete. Was the war for Crete then a complete Ottoman defeat? Or
was it one last attempt to transform and to protect the Imperial regime?
At the turn of the century, Sultan Abdlhamid II had to deal with
considerable internal turmoil together with an extremely negative rep-
utation attributed to him by the foreign press. Due to the above factors
the sultan could not afford one more massacre in Crete.27 It was per-
haps for this reason that the Imperial regime attempted to re-establish
the Ottoman legacy in Crete not by routing the Christian rebels, but by
23
enk, The Transformation of Ottoman Crete, p.14.
24
Shaw, Wendy M. K., Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archeology, and the
Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (California: University of California
Press, 2003), p.85.
25
The empire, spanning parts of three continents, its cities and provinces separated
by deserts, mountains, seas, and rivers, discovered in the telegraph an ideal system of
communication and union, see Bektas, Yakup, The Sultans Messenger: Cultural
Constructions of Ottoman Telegraphy, 18471880, Technology and Culture, vol.41,
no.4 (2000), pp.669696.
26
Barnes, Robert John, An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman
Empire (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), p.148.
27
See Akam, Taner, A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of
Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).
relying on a novel diplomatic tool. The Ottoman army retreated on the

condition that the European Powers would take on the responsibility of
protecting the rights and properties of the Muslim foundations and
people. Greece and the Cretan Christians had to accept this condition
as the most important term for the maintenance of peace. In view of
this situation, the underlying premise was the shaping of a durable
Muslim community on the island and Istanbuls wish to be accepted by
the Great Powers as a legitimized Muslim sovereign. Indeed this pro-
cess would fail. Nevertheless, it is difficult to say if this failure was the
product of local developments or of the eventual fall of the Hamidian
regime.
One way or another, there exists a contradiction between the linear
understanding of the above process as one of a gradual integration of
Crete into Greece and the fact that a part of the Muslim community
insisted on staying in Crete until 1923, despite violence, insecurity and
terror. Regarding the complexity of the situation, this issue should not
be examined as a dichotomy between winners and losers. It seems, for
instance, that the above outlined developments were not necessarily
considered negative by all Muslims of Crete.28 In a sense, the failed
strategies and final retreat of the Imperial capital from the island left
the local Muslims with the right to administer pious properties both
chaotic and massive; and afforded them with new opportunities of
communal representation. To put it differently, at the turn of the cen-
tury, Cretan Islam was identified with a local community quite urban
and quite influential. It could be suggested, therefore, that from the
point of view of some of its members, the local Muslim community was
growing.
This interpretation of growth is naturally a relative one. In economic
terms, it is based on a classic short-term model, implying that the level
of income per capita is determined by two variables: savings and popu-
lation growth; the higher the rate of savings, the richer the community;
the higher the rate of population growth, the poorer the community.29
Hence, it is possible to imply that, as the population of Cretan Muslims
decreased at a higher rate than did Muslim real estate, the poten-
tial income of those who stayed would be increased. In fact, this
28
Jenkins, L. D., Becoming backward: preferential policies and religious minorities
in India, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, vol.39, no.2 (2001), pp.3250.
29
Solow, Robert M., A contribution to the theory of economic growth, Quarterly
Journal of Economics 70 (1956), pp.6594.
impression derives from the archives rather than a tested model. In any
case, as far as actual humans are concerned, impressions and misim-
pressions influence decisions more powerfully than proven long-term
economic scales. This can potentially explain why becoming a minority
in numbers is not necessarily a negative process when personal inter-
ests are taken into account.
As for social terms, personal interests may be correlated with social
visibility, the right to represent and to participate. Once again, popula-
tion decrease results in increased individual participation in a commu-
nitys administration. Hence, the process shapes a group-based identity
and promotes group-based policies. In the case of Autonomous Crete,
the Muslims were included in a group-category. Furthermore, that cat-
egory was used for protective discrimination policies, since the protec-
tion of the Muslim community was viewed as a major criterion of
Cretan successful administration and of legitimacy. The main assump-
tion, or the main illusion, was that the destiny of the island as a political
unit depended on the ability of the local Christians to respect Muslim
interests. In that way, the minority was shaped by the crossing of liberal
arguments with what was left from the islands Ottoman experience in
the late nineteenth century.
Eventually, the Balkan Wars marked as we have seen the end of
Cretan autonomy. As a result of the islands integration into Greece, the
discourse on legitimacy had changed. The Greek state appeared less
concerned than before with Muslim communal rights. At the same
time, those Muslims who had decided to remain on the island despite
the political change appeared more and more concerned with proving
their loyalty to Greece. Simultaneously, the ill effects of this transition
on the entire waqf real estate structure became quite obvious.30 In this
context, the local Muslims tried to adapt to the changing environment,
culturally and financially, and to compromise with or even to profit
from their minority-ness. It is hard to say what the nature of this last
reconciliation was. Was it an attempt at a long-term re-establishment
of the community, or more of a final opportunity to exploit the pious
foundations through endless auctions, expropriations, legal networks
and suspicious agreements? In any case, it seems that the Muslims atti-
tudes constituted a response to a generally insecure and unpredictable
world rather than the result of conscious strategies.
See for instance Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 51/244, 16 August 1921.

30
In keeping with this, the Christian community of Crete participated

actively into the process described above, claiming the waqf lands
through negotiations, alliances or open conflicts. The level of hostile or
cooperative interaction was, furthermore, influenced by local and
external tensions. Indeed, it seems that at that time it was really difficult
to predict what the result of all this flux would be. Hence, one could
suggest that contemporary actors were not thinking of conflict as a fac-
tor of radical change, since open conflict and violence were a constant
part of their life in a very direct way.
Within this overall fluid framework, both individual choices and
collective strategies cannot be understood but through reference to the
multiple ways Muslim pious foundations and people were intermin-
gled with the islands socio-political transformations. In the same way,
rather than considering the last of the Cretan Muslims a community in
acute decline, one has to realize that their expectations for the future
may have derived from firmly rooted local legacies. For instance, the
waqf as a symbol and as a space remained a vital part of the islands
imaginary geography. The waqf toponyms given to many rural and
urban sites, the cemeteries, mosques, shop quarters, and aqueducts,
constituted a visible and durable Muslim space. Not to forget that
despite the predominant nationalist discourse in Crete, a lot of these
waqf-topoi have survived even to the present day; either on the islands
landscape or in the local collective memory.31As to the essence and
functions of these waqf-topoi, they are best illustrated by the following
example.
The Kara Musa Pasha Rethimnis waqf had been established by
Musa Vei Abdoul Kerim in 1677 (1005 AH). In the late nineteenth cen-
tury it still existed, although after two centuries of institutional trans-
formations it had become a totally different creature. At that time, the
waqf estates consisted of a variety of different categories, which are
impossible to classify32 since the confusion of the archival sources
31
Struever, Nancy S., Topics in History, History and Theory, vol.19, no.4 (1980),
p. 72. N. Struever makes the argument that the topical appeal to a common humanity
is balanced by a precise tactical appreciation of multitudinous dispositions and social
contexts. In line with this, this paper suggests that the lists of the considerable posses-
sions of the foundations and their functionality nourish history and historians as much
as, or even more than, a methodological approach based on loose systems, such as
nationalism or religion.
32
As an example of the general confusion characterizing similar issues, in 1911
the Director of the Irakliou Central Directory pressed charges against the heyhi (sheik)
creates serious obstacles to the accurate comprehension of the different

levels of possession.33 In 1899, dealing with this situation, the authori-
ties of Autonomous Crete published a new regulation on ownership
conditions, according to which the various types of waqf land tenure,
which constituted the Kara Musa foundation, should be turned into
private property. To be more specific, 391 monoteli, small islands of
arable land,34 lying at the Prefecture of Rethymnis between the
Municipality of Arkadi and the Municipality of Milopotamou, were
privatized. While the former mtevell families became landlords of the
islands, the Administration of the Rethimnis Muslim Pious Foundations
was supposed to receive a compensation of 117.500 drachmas/francs.
It is interesting to mention that, apparently, a lot of the relevant families
were Christian.35 At the same time, the Administration being recog-
nized as a legal person represented by its temporal Director, it became
the landlord of another share of the former Kara Musa estates compen-
sating the families of the relevant galledarides.36
In order to receive the compensation money, however, the Adminis
tration would have to spend more than 15 years addressing the Greek
courts and paying Greek lawyers. In this way, the Kara Musa estates,
which were apparently used both for agriculture and for stock breed-
ing; the transformation of their legal status; the local toponyms deriv-
ing from them; the negotiations between the Administration, the
autonomous authorities, and Muslim or Christian individual actors,
created a matrix of interaction between the waqf and the island. To put
of the Mastaba Teke Souleiman Mousoureli Alibabazade for his unauthorized occupa-
tion of waqf lands. The heyhi responded by supporting that the teke estate is known as
to vakoufi but that doesnt mean that it is a waqf; for, in the area monoteli, diteli and
mukataa waqfs and private lands are all called tavakoufia, Ottoman Bank-Cretan
Archive 10/173.
33
In general, it seems that the lands of the waqf were leased as both icre-i vahideli
evkf = Belirli ve ksa bir sure ile kralanan waqf akarlardr and icreteynli evkf = ihti-
yaca dayal olarak sresiz kiraya verilen waqf akarlar, kymetlerine yakn pein ve
seneden seneye verilmek zere meccel az bir cret karlnda kiralanan waqf mus-
akkafat ve mstagallatr. See Kahraman, Seyit Ali, Evkf-i Hmyn Nezreti: The
Ministry of the Imperial Directory of the Muslim Pious Foundations (stanbul: Kitabevi,
2006), pp.7273.
34
35
In 1901 the Administration had petitioned Prince George, complaining that the
present managers had nothing to do with the families of the dedicators and that they
were just appointed employees, Ottoman Bank-Cretan Archive 20/61.
36
In most cases, the dedicators were dedicating the waqf under the condition that
their descendants would be the mtevells and that they would have the right to receive
of the galle-i vkf = vakfn gelirleri.
it differently, a socio-economic and ideological topos that corre-

sponded both to an imagined locality and to a real place and space.
Vast as the local pious foundations may have been their importance
was not limited to their absolute material value, which gradually
decreased. In 1922 the annual budget of the Rethimnis Muslim
Foundations Directory was only 85,685.95 drachmas.37 In comparison,
the islands income only from the exportation of olives, wine, soap and
other olive products approached 12,000,000 drachmas (only for the
period between January and June).38 It is obvious that at the turn of the
century, trade was much more profitable than landholding. Yet,
attempting to differentiate between a class of landowners and a bour-
geois class of merchants would be very problematic. According to the
relevant registers, exports relied on the products of farming and of
stock-breeding; likewise, some Muslims would appear to practice both
trade and agriculture and also to be related one way or another to the
pious foundations. In this respect the Cretan waqf became the venue
for the creation of a communal identity, and a channel of negotiation
between the community in question and the world around it.39
To sum up, the last Muslim community of Crete was shaped by the
combination of a material culture with a formal ideology. In a way, it
constituted a reality derived from the islands previous socio-economic
tradition and yet developed along different lines. The community, in
other words, had been at once physical and imaginary; part of a trans-
forming geography the future of which was yet unknown. In this con-
text, it remains unclear to us what the Muslims thought and felt about
their locality and historical era. Presumably, from their standpoint they
assessed a very limited perspective and what they understood from
that was their only reality. Hence, it is possible that their decision to
leave or to stay was influenced by their everyday practices, or even by
the colour of the Cretan Sea. This paper cannot question the intimacy
of human decisions. Nevertheless, in order to understand Muslim
presence as a collective experience, one needs to address something
more solid than the mysteries of individual affections and needs. In this
respect, it has been suggested that Cretan Islam had survived a series of

37
Olives: 5.848.765 drachmas/ francs, soaps: 5.791.210 drachmas/francs, wines:

38
290.521 drachmas/francs, in Statistique du commerce du Janvier la fin du Juin (1906)

39
See for instance the case of Hamza Arapahmetaki, OTTOMAN BANK-CRETAN
ARCHIVE 4/3.
political changes thanks to an old legacy that remained alive, feeding

individual and communal treasuries; and probably even dreams.
In short, the main argument of this paper has been that amidst the
ideological and material marginalization of Ottoman Islam in Crete, a
localized Muslim community has managed to survive attached to its
local pious foundations. During the uncertain battle among new
nations, capitalist forces, and the old empire, the waqf quietly contin-
ued to claim a piece of the island, forming a material and ideological
shelter for local Islam. Thus, once creating opportunities where we now
see only barriers, the Cretan waqf seemed to have kept the community
alive. And it was probably for this reason the unfortunate Hseyin
Haniotakis was optimistic enough in the summer of 1922, to sign one
more lease for the waqf lands of Crete.
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey:
Medieval Anatolian warlord or Kemalist
language reformer? History, language politics
and the celebration of the Language Festival
in Karaman, Turkey, 196120081
Sara Nur Yildiz
1.Introduction
Early one morning in February 2007, the statue of medieval Anatolian

Turkish warlord Mehmet Bey the Karamanid (Karamanolu) was sur-
reptitiously removed from its prominent location in Aktekke Square of
Karaman in south-central Anatolia.2 Erected in accordance with the
nationalist conceptions of the Turkish Anatolian past, Mehmed Beys
statue conforms to the modern imagination of how a Turkish bey, or
warlord, should be depicted, with its typical Turco-Mongolian garb,
complete with pointed headgear, mailed armour, and fur-lined caftan.
This plastic rendition of Mehmet Bey, however, differs somewhat from
other statues of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Turkish warlords,
including Osman Ghazi, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty.3 Not just
a typical Turco-Mongolian warrior, Mehmed Bey is portrayed as a
medieval social reformer and protector of the Turkish language. Thus,
this particular statue depicts Mehmed Bey in the act of proclamation,
1
I extend many thanks to my colleague at the Orient-Institut Istanbul, Aye Tetik,
who read a version of this paper and provided me with many valuable insights into
Turkish nationalist language politics.
2
Karaman is a medium-sized town of a population of 106,165 lying 40 km to the
southeast of Konya (www.karamankultur.gov.tr, accessed 16 September 2008).
3
The abundance of statues in modern Turkey, the most ubiquitous being those of
Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, the founder of modern Turkey, is well known and much com-
mented upon. Indeed Mustafa Kemal promoted the display of statues, as is evident
from his declaration in January 1923, after his first statue was raised, that [A]ny nation
that claims to be civilized willerect statues and train sculptors. Some people main-
tain that the erection of statues for historical commemoration is against our religion.
These people do not sufficiently understand canonical law (quoted from Klaus Kreiser,
Public Monuments in Turkey and Egypt, 18401916, Muqarnas, vol. 14 [1997],
p. 113). For more on the political dimensions of public statues and their use in con-
structing nationalist communities in Turkey, see Alev nars Modernity, Islam and
Secularism in Turkey. Bodies, Places and Time (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2005).
148 sara nur yildiz
No one from this day on, would speak any language other than Turkish
in the council, the court, the palace, the assembly or the town square.
Taken from Gl McMillan and John Andrew McMillan, eds., Karaman
Albm. Kltr ve Tarih Kenti/City of Culture & History, Konya: McM
Medya letiim ve Tic. Ltd., 2001, p. 4.
karamanolu mehmed bey149
Taken from Tahsin nal, Karamanoullar Tarihi. Published by the

Karaman Esnaf Kefalet Kooperatifi in Konya by the Ar Basmevi
(printing press), 1986.
holding in one hand a long scroll with the official edict (ferman), writ-
ten in modern Turkish, and the other swept upwards, as he declares
Turkish the sole language to be used in persophone Seljuk Konya dur-
ing his brief occupation of the city in 1277.
The removal of Mehmed Beys statue aroused intense emotions, even
causing an uproar among some citizens who demanded that the statue
be returned.4 A month later, Ali Kantrk, the AKP5 mayor of the town
4
One townsmans passions were so unleashed that, upon witnessing the early
morning removal of Mehmet Beys statue, he likened his emotions to those felt when
Saddam Husseins statue was torn down in Baghdad, obviously not aware of the incon-
sistency in comparing his beloved Turkish national hero to a much hated dictator
(Karamanolu Mehmed Bey Heykeli Kaldrld, 19 March, 2007, www.acikistihbarat
.com/Haber/asp?haber=7416, accessed 11 September 2008).
5
AKP or Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi, translated as Justice and Development Party,
is the Islamist-oriented political party under the leadership of the prime minister
Recep Tayyp Erdoan. Not only does the party control the central government, but
150 sara nur yildiz
of Karaman, held a press conference in order to dispel the rumour that

the statue had been destroyed. He informed his detractors and dis-
gruntled citizens, led by the opposition party, the CHP,6 that the statue
of the medieval warlord had been removed to the campus of what
would be the new Karamanolu Mehmed Bey University, which at the
time was still under construction on the outskirts of the town. In
response to accusations questioning his commitment to Kemalism
and Ataturkism, the mayor implied that the removal of the statue to
its namesake university was part of his plan to modernize the town
along more rational lines, and to transform Aktekke Square into a more
tourist-friendly space. Defending the mayors relocation of the familiar
statue, a dean of the soon-to-be established university7 pointed out that
the statues presence on the campus would serve to acquaint students,
especially out-of-towners, with the Karamanid hero.8
The relocation of Karamanolu Mehmed Beys statue, as well as the
emotional outburst it provoked, highlights the iconic status attained by
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey in Karaman, particularly among Kemalist
supporters. Reaction to the change in the urban landscape of Karamans
most important public space, the bustling central hub of Aktekke
due to its victories in local elections, is in control of many municipalities throughout

Turkey today.
6
CHP, or Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, translated as The Peoples Republican Party, is
the party that Mustafa Kemal Atatrk founded and remains the longstanding party
of secular Kemalism. Opposition to removal of the statue from the town square by
the Islamist mayor of Karaman was led by the CHP regional leader Yksel Atik
(Karamanolu Mehmet Bey Heykeli Kaldrld). For more on the CHP, or the
Republic Peoples Party, see Sinan Ciddi, Kemalism in Turkish Politics. The Republican
Peoples Party, Secularism and Nationalism (New York: Routledge, 2008).
7
In September 2007, the Karamanolu Mehmet Bey University, established
according to the Higher Education Ruling no. 5662, initiated its first academic year
with a total of 3100 students studying primarily business and administration, eco
nomics, international affairs, political science and urban studies. The first rector of
the university, Professor Dr. K. Suha Aydn, an academic military doctor of the rank
of Colonel (Tabi Kdemli Albay), was appointed by the Turkish president Ahmet Sezer
(CHP) a few months before Ahmet Gl (AKP) took over the presidency, with the aim
of making the university a bastion of military-style Kemalism in the increasingly
AKP-dominated Karaman (www.kmu.edu.tr, accessed 16 September 2008; Nergis
Demirkaya, Cumhurbakan Sezerden 15 yeni niversiteye rektr, Sabah, 19 May
2007). A recent change in the rectorship has occurred with the appointment of
Sabri Gkmen on 17 September 2008 (Yeni Rektrmz Grevi Trenle Devrald,
online journal Karamandan, www.karamandan.com/karaman-haber/45-mansetler/
363-profesor-doktor-sabri-gokmen-goreve-basladi.html, accessed 18 Sept 2008).
8
Kantrk: K. Mehmet Bey Heykeli, Krlmam nivesite Kamps Alanna
Dikilmitir, 21 March 2007, official website of the Municipality of Karaman,
Turkey, www.karaman.bel.tr/moduls.php?name=News&file=article&sid=41, accessed
10 September, 2008.
Square, exemplifies the politically sensitive role language and history

continue to play in Turkey today, despite waning Kemalism in the
political arena. With the continuing domination of national and local
politics by AKP, language politics appear to take on an even more sen-
sitive role, as Islamist party members strive to frame themselves within
the ideals of the national icon Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, the Founder of
the Turks, despite differences with the more secularist-oriented poli-
cies of the state; nevertheless, the ambiguity of AKPs attitude toward
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey seems to indicate a lack of zeal for some of
the ideals upon which Atatrks westernizing style of modernization
were based.9
Karamanolu Mehmed Beys transformation into a Kemalist icon
reveals a close relationship between the practice of nationalist histori-
ography and language politics in modern Turkey, the extreme version
of which I refer to as language fetishism. Language fetishism embraces
a language-centric conception of Turkishness, which not only con
stitutes Turkish as the main badge10 of Turkish identity, but also as an
almost sacral component of that identity.11 Indeed, the portrayal of the
9
I will not venture to speculate about the mayors intentions in removing the statue
to a less conspicuous location. It should be pointed out, however, that a modern clock
tower now stands in its place in Aktekke Square.
10
John R. Perry, Language Reform in Turkey and Iran, IJMES, vol. 17 (1985),
p. 296. Perry links the z Trke, or pure Turkish movement from 1928 onwards with
the secularizing policy of Atatrks regime, mirroring the nationalist spirit rampant in
other academic fields, particularly that of history, and marching in step with political
and social reforms (pp. 298299). Referring to national language as the last bastion
of the irrational totemic pride, Perry points out that linguistic engineering is especially
problematic when carried out by by generals, politicians, social ideologues and other
amateurs, rather than trained linguists (p. 296). For major studies on language reform
in Turkey, see Uriel Heyd, Language Reform in Modern Turkey (Jerusalem: Israel
Oriental Society, 1964); Hseyin Sadolu, Trkiyede Ulusuluk ve Dil Politikalar
(Istanbul: stanbul Bilgi Yaynlar, 2003); lker Aytrk, Language and Nationalism:
A Comparative Study of Language Revival and Reform in Hebrew and Turkish,
(unpublished Ph.D., Brandeis University, 2005); idem, The First Episode of Language
Reform in Republican Turkey: The Language Council from 1926 to 1931, Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, vol. 18, no. 3 (2008), pp. 275293.
11
Language fetishism derives from the Kemalist concept of Turkishness, regarding
a Turk as comprising [A]ny individual within the Republic of Turkey, whatever his
faith, who speaks Turkish, grows up with Turkish culture and adopts the Turkish ideal
(Eric Jan Zrcher, The Core Terminology of Kemalism: Mefkure, Milli, Muasr,
Medeni, in Hans-Lukas Kieser [ed.], Aspects of the Political Language In Turkey
[Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2002], p. 111). Although a common language was not an
exclusive criterion for membership of a nation-state, according to Carl D. Buck, lan-
guage is a mark of common nationality to which people are most fanatically attached
as the one conspicuous banner of nationality, to be defended against encroachment, as
it is the first object of attack on the part of a power aiming to crush out a distinction of
152 sara nur yildiz
late thirteenth-century Turkish warlord, Karamanolu Mehmet Bey,

as Mustafa Kemal Atatrks medieval predecessor in protecting Turkish
from the hegemony of foreign languages (in this case, Arabic and
Persian), is a particularly salient example of how history combined
with language fetishism serves political ends in modern Turkey. In this
paper, I trace Karamanolu Mehmed Beys transformation from a mar-
ginal historical figure into a nationalist icon. This transformation,
I argue, finds its roots in the annual celebration of the Turkish language
festival (Trk dil bayram) in Karaman. Founded in Karaman in 1961,
this festival celebrates the birth of Turkish as a state language in
Anatolia, based upon the supposed language decree promulgated by
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey in 1277, an event which allowed the
Turkmen of medieval Anatolia to attain their linguistic destiny.
Kemalist nationalism thus finds in the Karamanids a model for the
authentic Anatolian Turk and a historical alternative to the multi-
lingual, Islamic-oriented, cosmopolitan, and degenerate Ottomans,
who, corrupted by the influence of Arabic and Persian, suppressed
Turkish national sentiment.12 By virtue of having been the political
capital of the Karamanids, Karaman, a modestly sized, agriculturally
oriented town, has likewise gained the distinction as the capital of the
Turkish language (Trk dilinin bakenti).13 By examining the interac-
tion of local and national politics in the context of the Turkish language
festival, I demonstrate how politics in the centre maneuver to co-opt
the local, as well as how developments in the periphery shape those in
the centre. Primarily a local event in the past, the Karaman Turkish
language festival took on national significance upon its appropriation
in the 1990s by Kemalist Ankara-based politicians and organizations,
nationality among its subject peoples. Buck also points out that language may seem to
lose importance in face of a strong state (Carl Darling Buck, Language and the
Sentiment of Nationality, The American Political Science Review, vol. 10, no. 1 [1916],
pp. 49, 69).
12
John M. VanderLippe, The Politics of Turkish Democracy: Ismet Inn and
the Formation of the Multi-Party System, 19381950 (Albany, New York: SUNY Press,
2005), pp. 1617; Bay Burhan Belge, Modern Turkey, Royal Institute of International
Affairs, vol. 18, no. 6 (1939), p. 746. Ziya Gkalp rejected all that was Ottoman, and
sought to replace Ottoman culture with the unspoiled natural culture of the Turks
(lhan Bagz, Folklore Studies and Nationalism in Turkey, Journal of the Folklore
Institute, vol. 9, no. 2/3 [1972], p. 166).
13
While I have no information regarding when the town of Karaman was first
dubbed the capital of the Turkish language (Trk Dilinin Bakenti Karaman), this
identity appears to be increasingly fostered by both local and state government as well
as private groups.
seen most clearly in the 1998 festivities. Here we witness national lan-
guage politics in close collaboration with the activities of the Turkish
Language Institute (Trk Dil Kurumu), as a strategy to renew Kemalist
ideals in the periphery as well as the centre. Since this paper is limited
to the political and public uses and perceptions of history, the question
of politics and academic nationalist historiography dealing with the
Karamanid past remains outside its scope.
2. Ottoman Perceptions of the Karamanids
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey was not always a national hero or the cul-
tural icon that he has become today. Indeed, as the son of Karaman, the
founder of the Karamanid dynasty in the second half of the thirteenth
century, Mehmed Bey was an ancestor of the Ottomans most bitter
rivals in central Anatolia. The Karamanids have been long disparaged
by the Ottomans as traitorous vassals, and later, as traitorous subjects
prone to rebellion. Indeed, the Ottoman chronicles aim to delegitimize
the political claims of the Karamanids, their fellow Muslim Turkish
opponents in Anatolia. These works thus portray the Ottoman con-
quest of Karaman as a noble achievement liberating the region from
oppressive rulers of an ignoble lineage,14 base origins,15 and bad
faith.16 The fifteenth-century Ottoman chronicler Akpaazade depicts
the Karamanids as base rivals, whose quest for vengeance against the
Ottomans had no limit and whose enmity was eternal.17 Casting asper-
sions on the Karamanid ruler brahim Bey for being an impious and
unjust Muslim, Akpaazade claims that the Ottoman sultan Murad II
was compelled to interfere in Karaman in the early 1440s, accusing the
Karamanid of having permitted oppressors to commit unlawful acts
with Muslim women and boys.18 The Ottoman smear campaign against
14
Ibn Kemal, Tevarih-i al-i Osman, Book 7, erafettin Turan (ed.), (Ankara: Trk
Tarih Kurumu, 1991), pp. 236237: nesl-i bed-asl-i Karaman. Unless indicated other-
wise, all translations are mine.
15
Ibn Kemal, Book 7, Turan (ed.), p. 326: Evlad-i bed-nijad-i Karaman.
16
Ibn Kemal, Tevarih-i al-i Osman, Book 8, Ahmet Uur (ed.), (Ankara: Trk Tarih
Kurumu, 1997), p. 20: bed-ki-i Karaman (the Karaman of impious faith)
17
Ak Paazade, Osmanoullarnn Tarihi, Kemal Yavuz and M. A. Yekta Sara
(eds.), (Istanbul: K Kitapl, 2003), p. 422: [Karamanogl]: Osmanogl-y-ilan adav-
etm ta kyamete degin bakidur. didi. Ziyade bedbahtlklar dah itdi; p. 419: Yzi gnli
Karamanun karadr/Karanlukda kald zar u mecnun.
18
Ak Paazade, Yavuz and Sara (eds.), p. 472: Karamanogl Mslmanlarun
avratn ve oglann zalimlara na-meru iler itdrdi.
154 sara nur yildiz
the Karamanids transcended dynastic politics; even the holy men in

Karaman were derided by Akpaazade: One wont find one true
friend in Karaman/ Even their many holy men are tricksters and
rogues.19
In a Persian couplet inserted in his historical narrative, the early
sixteenth-century author Ibn Kemal glorifies the destruction of the
Karamanid realm: In the territory of the evil-omened dynastic house
rendered defunct / Villages, together with the dynastic abode, lay in
ruin.20 The Ottomans didnt just wage a smear campaign against the
Karamanids in order to justify their brutal occupation; they also tore
down mosques and medreses constructed by Karamanid rulers in the
town of Larande, the modern town of Karaman, the traditional bastion
of Karamanid power.21 By removing Karamanid monumental con-
struction, the Ottomans attempted to wipe out the physical legacy of
their bitter rivals.
3. Rehabilitating the Karamanids: The Rise of Local Anatolian History

in the Early Twentieth Century and Local Nationalist Historiography
of the Karamanids
Ottoman contempt for the legacy of the Karamanid dynasty remained

more or less constant throughout most of the Ottoman period.22
A revision of attitudes toward the Karamanid dynasty parallels the
development of what at the time was incipient Turkish nationalist sen-
timent, or Trklk, during the period of the CUP (Committee of
19
Karamanda bulnmaz togru bir yar/Veliler ok bile kulma u ayyar. Ak
Paazade, Yavuz and Sara (eds.), p. 422.
20
Dar an marz-i shum-i nigun-khanadan/ Dihi bud viran u bum-ashiyan. Ibn
Kemal, Book 8, Uur, (ed.), p. 40.
21
ikari, ikarinin Karamanoullar Tarihi, M. Mesud Koman and M. Ferid Uur
(eds.), (Konya: Yeni Kitap Basmevi, 1946), pp. 112, 197198. According to ikari, six
congregational mosques, four medreses (religious colleges), and thirty-three mescit
(small mosques) were torn down in order to construct a fortress. Numerous hanikahs
(sufi convents) and hamams (public baths) were destroyed, and the city remained
deserted for many years after Gedik Ahmed Paas assault in 1474. The 1476 evkaf defter
(pious foundations registry) confirms ikaris account (Osman Gm, Tarihi
Corafya Asndan bir Aratrma: XVI. Yzyl Larende (Karaman) Kazasnda Yerleme
ve Nfus [Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 2001], p. 43).
22
A residue of the Ottoman mistrust, if not contempt, for things from Karaman can
be seen in the still current popular saying: Karamann koyunu, sonra kar oyunu,
which, loosely translated, is the Karaman sheep will sooner or later play a trick [on
you]; similar to the idea that, behind every Karaman sheep lies a lurking wolf, that is,
a wolf in sheeps clothing.
Union and Progress).23 As part of an attempt to strengthen Turkish his-

torical claims to Anatolia, an interest in the Karamanid history as well
as in that of the other Turkish principalities in Anatolia preceding the
Ottomans was sparked among a select group of Ottoman intellectuals.
Many of these intellectuals held teaching posts at the Darlfnun, the
institution of higher education in Istanbul, and participated in the vari-
ous cultural associations formed in the period which became involved
in the project of developing a national, or Turkish, culture. Thus the
Turkish Association (Trk Dernei, December 1908), the Association
of Ottoman History (Tarih-i Osmani Encmeni, 1910), the Turkish
Homeland Society (Trk Yurdu Cemiyeti, 1911), and the Turkish
Hearth (Trk Oca, 1912), set out to define and discover Turkishness
through history, culture and other modern branches of knowledge. In
particular, the purported goals of the Turkish Association (Trk
Dernei), founded by the historian Necib Asm (Yazksz) and Konya
native and head of the Mevlevi order, Veled elebi (zbudak), together
with other influential intellectuals,24 was to promote the development
of Anatolian Turkish culture, history, literature, language, folklore,
ethnography, and social life.25 According to its foundation charter
23
For more on the intellectual precedents and foundations of Turkish nationalism
emerging during the Tanzimat and Young Turk period, see Aye Kadolu, The
Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity, Middle
Eastern Studies, vol. 32, no. 2, (1996), pp. 177193. Kadolu points out that a recurring
theme of Turkish modernization was a preoccupation with the balance between
modernity and tradition, Western materialism and Eastern spirituality, as well as
Civilizationbased on the premises of Enlightenmentand Culture based on the
premises of Romanticism (p. 183).
24
Agah Srr Levend, Turk Dilinde Gelime ve Sadeleme Evreleri, 3rd ed. (Ankara:
Trk Dil Kurumu, 1972), p. 300; Fsun stel, mparatorluktan Ulus-Devlete Trk
Milliyetilii: Trk Ocaklar (19121931) (Istanbul: letiim, 1997), p. 18. Veled elebi
was the sahib-i imtiyaz or proprietor of the publication put out by the Association.
He also taught Persian at the Darlfnun. Other founding members include Akura
Yusuf, well-known nationalist ideologist and instructor of political history at the
Harbiye Mektebi and Mlkiye Mektebi; Ahmet Mithat Efendi, an Ottoman historian at
the Darlfnun; Emrullah, the parliamentary representative from Krkkilise and pro-
fessor of philosophy at the Darlfnun; Agop Boyacyan, the head of the mathematics
department at the Darlfunun; Celal, the director of the Mlkiye Mektebi; Celal
Korkmazof; Ahmet Hikmet [Mftolu], who taught Turkish literature at the
Darlfnun, spartal Hakk [Muharririnden]; Rza Tevfik, the parliamentary repre-
sentative of Edirne and teacher of Ottoman history at the Darlfnun; Bursal Tahir;
Ferit; Fuat Ksearif, Yusuf of the Orenburg Vakit newspaper; Akyiitzade Musa, the
Russian teacher at the War College (Harbiye Mektebi).
25
Levend, Turk Dilinde Gelime ve Sadeleme Evreleri, pp. 303304; stel, Trk
Ocaklar, pp. 16, 22. The Trk Dernei remained active for only a few years, from 1909
to 1913. Its members nevertheless remained influential in other capacities, many of
156 sara nur yildiz
(nizamname), the association was to promote cultural activities

through the collection of Turkish songs, sayings and stories from vil-
lages and the drawing up of genealogies of notable Turkish families.
Furthermore, the Turkish Association members promoted the study of
previous Turkish states found in the borders of the Empire, and the
search for and identification of historical and literary manuscripts of
the Turks.26 Since many intellectuals involved in the emerging nation-
alist project were officials and state bureaucrats who were typically
assigned posts in the provinces, they belonged not only to a network of
Istanbul elites, but also formed important ties with provincial notables.
An example of how the ideals of these associations translated into
active promotion of pre-Ottoman Anatolian history among late
Ottoman historians may be seen in the case of Hac Arifi Paa, amateur
historian and member of both the Association of Ottoman History and
the Turkish Association.27 While governor of Konya from 1909 to 1911,
Hac Arifi Paa took an interest in the local history of the region, and
commissioned the copying of manuscripts in the possession of local
notables, intending to bring them to the capital. As a result, the manu-
scripts of a previously unknown sixteenth-century work, ikaris
History of the Karamanids were brought to light, creating interest in the
history of the Karamanids cast along nationalist lines.
Rejecting classic Ottoman conceptions of history, historians such as
Necib Asm (Yazksz) and Arifi Paa began experimenting with new
historical paradigms based on western methodologies informed by
nationalist frameworks. Although attempts to rewrite Ottoman history
based on European methodologies began decades earlier, during the
second half of the mid-nineteenth century,28 it was the rising ideology
of Turkish nationalism and the attempt to create a Turkish identity
based on Anatolian roots that lay behind the interest in the history of
the Anatolian Turkish beyliks, or principalities, such as the Karamanids.
whom became more active in the Trk Yurdu, and the Trk Oca (stel, Trk Ocaklar,
p. 34).
26
stel, Trk Ocaklar, p. 23.
27
Rudi Paul Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington,
Indiana University Press: 1983), p. 149 n. 10; Necib Asm, Anadoluda Bulgarlar,
kdam, no. 8842 (25 Safar 1340/Oct. 28, 1921), p. 4; Hseyin Namk, Histoire des
Karamanides, Krsi Csoma Archiv, vol. 1 (192122), pp. 415417; stel, Trk
Ocaklar, p. 18. stel refers to Hac Arifi Paa simply as Arif, who appears in the Trk
Dernei records dating from 1911.
28
Ebru Boyar, Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans. Empire Lost, Relations Altered
(London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), p 10.
Despite several academic publications dealing with the general out-

lines of Karamanid history cast in a modern nationalist framework,
interest in the Karamanids nevertheless remained marginal in the
capital. Significant for their Turkishness only, the obscure Karamanids
continued to be overshadowed by their Seljuk predecessors, considered
the Turkifiers of Anatolia upon their infiltration into the peninsula
following the battle of Manzikert in 1071. During the early years of
the Turkish Republic, the Seljuks were recast in the historical narrative
as the founding fathers of Muslim Turkish culture,29 in contrast to the
Ottomans, who represented political and cultural decadence. A strain
of anti-Ottoman nationalism continued to develop throughout the
1930s, characterizing the Ottomans as a semi-colony of the western
powers. According to the 1930 state publication, Trk Tarihi Ana
Hatlar, A Handbook of the History of the Turks,30 the importance of
the Seljuk Turks in both world history as well as Turkish history was
due to their role in Turkifying Anatolia as well as protecting the Islamic
world from assault by the Christian crusaders and other enemies,
hence preventing the Islamic world from being subsumed by Christian
hegemony. While this centrist view thus glorified the Seljuks, the
Karamanids remained marginal in the nationalist historical narrative
as regional successors of the Seljuks of only minimal importance.31
The idea that the Seljuks first spread Turkish culture and Islamic civilization in
29
Anatolia was first developed by the Young Turk nationalist ideologue and folklorist
Ziya Gkalp (18761924), and author of Trkln Esaslar (The Principles of
Turkism) in 1923 (Erik Jan Zrcher, The Vocabulary of Muslim Nationalism,
International Journal of the Sociology of Science, vol. 137 [1999], p. 82).
30
Trk Oca, Trk Tarihi Heyeti, Trk Tarihinin Ana Hatlar. Kemalist Ynetimin
resmi tarih tezi (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaas, 1930); 2nd edition, Sadk Perinek, (ed.)
(Istanbul: Analiz Basm Yayn, 1996). This publication is a guide of the state policy
towards the history of the Turks aimed primarily at historical education (Bra Ersanl,
ktidar ve Tarih. Trkiyede Resmi Tarih Tezinin Oluumun (19291937) [Istanbul:
letiim, 2006], pp. 119137). See Birinci Trk tarih kongresi: konferanslar mzakere
zabtlar, vol. 1 (Ankara: Maarif Vekaleti, 1932).
31
There is no published scholarly monograph dealing with the Karamanid dynasty
in depth. The primary academic historian of the Karamanids, M. ehabettin Tekinda,
however produced a series of articles in addition to his unpublished dissertation on the
Karamanids. Parallel to these academic studies, is a branch of local history inspired by
patriotic regionalism, directed towards the general reader, yet seldom meeting aca-
demic standards of scholarship. Some representatives of this genre of local history are:
. Bedri, Balkason Ky ve Karamanolu Mahmut Beyin Hayat (Konya: n. s., 1937);
Halit Bardak, Btn ynleriyle Ermenek (Konya: aba Matbaas, 1976); Abdullah
Uysal, et. al. (eds.), Dn ve Bugnyle Karaman (Konya: Ar Matbaas, 1981); Tahsin
nal, Karamanoullar Tarihi (Konya: Ar Basmevi, 1986); Durmu Ali Glcan,
Karamanoullar Kkenleri ve Seluk-Osmanllar Karsnda Kiilikleri (Eskiehir:
zgr Matbaas, n. d.).
158 sara nur yildiz
In the provincial town of Karaman, some 40 km to the south of

Konya, however amateur historians set about rectifying the national
neglect of their local history. Capitalizing on the anti-Ottoman ideol-
ogy of Kemalism, the local elite sought to promote Karaman as the
locus from which the true Turkish Anatolian identity emerged under
the rule of the Karamanid Turkmen. The movement to promote
Karamanid history grounded its claims on the previous decades of
work supported primarily by the Konya Peoples House (Halkevi)
established in 1932.32 ikaris History of the Karamanids, now widely
available with the edition published in 1946 by two Konya Peoples
House officials, played a significant role in developing pride in the local
history of Karaman. The Turkish translation of the Persian thirteenth-
century history by Ibn Bibi33 around the same time likewise through
the efforts of officials of the Konya Halkevi (Peoples House) made
it possible for local amateur historians to make use of the main source
of Anatolian Seljuk history. It was within the established nationalist
historical narrative of thirteenth-century Mongol-dominated Seljuk
Anatolia that Karamanolu Mehmed Bey emerged as a Turkish hero
and as the protector of the Turkish language. As a result of his lan-
guage decree, regarded as a pivotal first in the history of Turkish
as a state language, Karamanolu Mehmed Bey was thus trans-
formedinto a national hero from the modest town of Karaman, enter-
ing the ranks of great Turks (byk Trkler). The culmination of this
32
The Peoples Houses (Halkevi) were established as cultural and political centers
designed to indoctrinate the masses with the nationalist, secularist and populist ideas
of the Republican regime (Kemal H. Karpat, The Impact of the Peoples Houses on
the Development of Communication in Turkey: 19311951, Die Welt des Islams, New
Series, vol. 15, no. 1/4 [1974], p. 69). Activities promoted by the Peoples Houses con-
tinued previous attempts to establish a national culture through the discovery of
authentic Turkishness in the unspoiled countryside and through folklore. As institu-
tions, they directly replaced the politically independent Turkish Hearths (Trk
Ocaklar), which were founded in 1912 in order to foster nationalism among the
people, as a way to maintain CHPS monopoly of control over all state-sponsored
institutions. The Peoples Houses took the form of adult education centers that were
established throughout the towns and cities of Anatolia and mobilized local intellectu-
als and elites in order to disseminate Kemalist ideals, educate the people and spread
literacy, promote western-style social and cultural activities, in addition to support-
ing CHP propaganda. Both sporting activities as well as the commemoration of
national festivals formed an important aspect of their cultural programs (M. Asm
Karamerliolu, The Peoples Houses and the Cult of the Peasant in Turkey, Middle
Eastern Studies, vol. 34, no. 4 [1998], pp. 6768ff.).
33
M. Nuri Genosman (tr.), Anadolu Seluki Devleti Tarihi: Ibn Bibinin Farsa
Muhtasar Seluknamesinden (Ankara: Uzluk Basmevi, 1941).
local tradition of historical politics is seen in the work of the long-

standing local historian/politician/medical doctor, Hac Mehmet
Armutlu. In his 1997 publication, Trk Dilinin Anadoludaki Temel
Direi: Karamanl, translated as The Turkish Languages Three
Principal Pillars in Anatolia: Three Karamanids, presents Karamanolu
Mehmed Bey, Yunus Emre and Mustafa Kemal Atatrk (who, by ances-
try, has likewise been given a Karamanid identity by local historians!)34
as the three heroes of Karaman. Thanks to his language edict,
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey, the first great Muslim warrior to have reu-
nited the Turkish language with its destiny in its own homeland,35 thus
earned himself a place in the pantheon of Turkish national heroes.
As a local hero taking his place within the national pantheon of
great Turks, the Karamanid warlord Mehmed Bey is thus represented
by two statues in Karaman. One is a bust found in a town park, portray-
ing the stern-faced Karamanid chief with a typical felt cap of medieval
or early Ottoman Anatolia. Mounted on the front of the busts base
is a plaque inscribed with the famous language edict. The second mon-
ument is the statue removed from Aktekke Square: the full-figure
Turco-Mongol figure grasping the language edict scroll. In addition to
the language edict proclaiming Turkish as the official language of
Karamanid-controlled Konya, a plaque mounted on the front of the
statues base is inscribed with the immortal words of Mustafa Kemal
Atatrk, commanding the Turkish nation to protect the Turkish lan-
guage from the yoke of foreign languages.36 It is in the latter statue,
34
It is widely believed among Karaman locals that Mustafa Kemals family from
Selanik were among the Karamanid Turkmen who were exiled by Mehmed II upon his
conquest of the Karaman region to the Balkans.
35
Trk dilini kendi zyurdunda benliine kavuturan ilk byk mcahid Hac
Mehmet Armutlu, Trk Dilinin Anadoludaki Temel Direi: Karamanl. I.
Karamanolu Mehmetbey (Ankara: zkan Matbaaclk Ltd., 1997), p. iv. Trained as a
medical doctor, H. Mehmet Armutlu (d. 2004) served as town mayor of Karaman from
1955 to 1957 (http://www.karamankultur.gov.tr/kulturMd/sayfaGoster.asp?id=700,
and http://karkev.org/ haber_detay.asp?haberID=9 accessed 19 September 2008). The
portrayal of Karamanolu Mehmed Bey as a mucahid (warrior of the faith) reveals the
influence of the ideology known as Turkish-Islamic synthesis, fostered primarily by
extreme right-wing groups, regards Islam as an integral component of Turkish identity.
For an attempt to trace the Turkish-Islamic synthesis throughout Turkish history, see
brahim Kafesolu, Trk-slam Sentizi (Istanbul: Aydnlar Oca, 1985).
36
The exact phrase, taken from a speech given by Atatrk, is Trk Dili, dillerin en
zenginlerindendir; yeter ki bu dil uurla ilensin. lkesini, yksek istiklalini korumasn
bilen Trk milleti, dilini de yabanc diller boyunduruundan kurtarmaldr. (The
Turkish language is one of the richest of languages; it would suffice for this language to
be consciously worked on. The Turkish nation who knows how to protect its country
160 sara nur yildiz
obviously erected at a later date than the more modest bust, that we see
a further refinement of the warlord as a medieval language reformer
along the lines of Mustafa Kemal Atatrk. I venture to guess that both
the latter statue, as well as the recasting of the warlord as language
reformer along the lines of Atatrk, dates from sometime in the early to
mid-1990s.
4. Locating the Local in the Nation: Promoting Karaman with the

Turkish Language Festival, 19612008
First celebrated in June 1961, the Turkish language festival sought

to associate Karaman, the traditional Karamanid capital, with
Karamanolu Mehmed Beys language edict promulgated in Konya in
1277.37 While I know little of the local circumstances in which the fes-
tival took shape, its roots are the cultural activities of Baha Kayseriliolu,
an Istanbul-trained lawyer from a prominent local family of Kemalists,38
who, upon returning from Istanbul to his hometown, founded the
Karaman Association of Tourism and the Preservation of Historical
Monuments in 1960 together with other members of the towns elite,
including the director of the Karaman regional library Sait Erdodu,
and the schoolteachers Cengiz Tartanolu and mer Kayseriliolu.
This association likewise published the local newspapers, Trk Dili
(The Turkish Language), and the daily nklap (Revolution), which,
published from 19611964, sought to address local problems in the
and highest level of freedom must protect its language from the yoke of foreign
languages).
37
Ali nler, Dil Bayramnn Douu ve Nedeni, www.karamanturkdilbayrami.
com/ index.php?pid=5, accessed 16 September 2008.
38
www.ermenek.gov.tr/ermenektarihi.htm, accessed 18 Sept 2008. The Kayseriliolu
family constituted an important Kemalist elite in Karaman. Founder of the CHP
branch in Karaman, Sabit Kayseriliolu served for 27 years as head of the party in addi-
tion to being the founder and director of the ifti Milli Bankas (The National Farmers
Bank). Many members of the Kayseriliolu family served as town mayor under the
CHP regime: Hac mer Kayseriliolu (19281930), Faik Kayseriliolu (19321934),
brahim Kayseriliolu (19491950). The Kayseriliolu appear to lose their near
monopoly over the position of mayor in Karaman upon the advent of Democratic
Party rule in 1950. Presently Celalettin Kayseriliolu serves as president of the Karaman
chapter of the Atatrk Dnce Dernei (ADD), or The Society for Ataturkist
Thinking, a non-governmental Kemalist organization (Ziya Duru, Gemiten
gnmze fotoraflarla Karaman [Karaman: Duru Sarrafiye, 2001]; Karaman; http://
www.larende.com/site/ page_popup.asp?dsy_id=22118; htttp//www.larende.com /list/
list.asp?ktgr_id=1548); http://www.add.org.tr/index.php?option=com_content&task
=view&id=471&Itemid=96; http: //www.karaman.gov.tr/insanhaklari/ocak_2006, all
accessed 18 September 2008).
post-Democratic Party era following the 1960 military coup.39 It was in

conjunction with these pursuits that Kayseriliolu came up with the
idea of the Turkish language festival.
Baha Kayseriliolu sought to channel local pride in the regions his-
tory into a community event which emphasized the authentic Turkish
credentials of the Karamanids. Of all events in thirteenth-century
Anatolian history, none has been more imbued with nationalist sym-
bolism than the language edict attributed to Mehmed Bey. Declaring
that only Turkish was to be used in Konya when the cultural and
bureaucratic language of the Seljuk court was Persian, Karamanolu
Mehmed Beys edict is interpreted by nationalists as the triumph of
Turkish over Persian in Anatolia. The Turkish historian Nejat Kaymaz
proposes that the temporary Karamanid usurpation of Seljuk power by
Mehmed Bey and his famous edict were a popular reaction to the
unbearable foreign occupation of the Anatolian Turks. As Kaymaz
puts it: Mehmed Bey invited to his court the Turkmen throughout the
realm, and held council meetings and made administrative appoint-
ments; (it was) during this period (that) he promulgated his famous
decree which was indicative of the high level of frustration the Anatolian
Turks felt under foreign oppression and administration.40 Drawing on
this body of nationalist historiography, the foundations of which had
been put into place by the efforts of local amateur historians supported
by the Peoples Houses, Kayseriliolu created a forum the language
festival which, through the reenactment of the language edict, made
the Kemalist interpretation of local history more accessible to the
community.
National festivals play an important role in institutionalizing nation-
alist myths. By simplifying and schematizing an event into a political
drama or ritual, as James Orr points out, festivals create a shared expe-
rience with the aim of strengthening communal unity. Through their
reenactment in a festival, events become enshrined as a set of ritual-
ized acts which obscure tensions among competing modern ideals
and traditional political practices.41 Orrs comments regarding the
39
Walter F. Weiker, The Turkish Revolution, 19601961, Aspects of Military Politics
(Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1963).
40
Nejat Kaymaz, Pervane Muind-din Sleyman (Ankara: Ankara niversitesi
Basmevi, 1970, p. 9).
41
James M. Orr, Nationalism in a Local Setting, Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 64,
no. 3 (1991), pp. 142151. For comparative examples of nationalist festivals and cele-
brations, see Jonathan Sperber, Festivals of National Unity in the German Revolution
of 18481849, Past and Present, vol. 136 (1992), pp. 114138, and David E. Lorey,
162 sara nur yildiz
ideological function of local festivals in Turkey have resonance in the

effects and aims in the foundation of the Turkish language festival in
Karaman. Nevertheless, faced with a dearth of published sources, one
is left to speculate about the motives behind the creation of this festi-
val, which, it should be emphasized, was the personal initiative of
Kayseriliolu and his associates, rather than a state-organized event.
While ostensibly modeled on the language festival (dil bayram) cele-
brated by the Turkish Language Society42 every September 26 since
1934,43 Kayseriliolus festival differed from the rather somber indoor
state commemoration of the language festival. Rather, the people of
Karaman participated in the local festivities with great enthusiasm
heightened by pride in their local history, and were entertained by out-
door activities such as folk dancing, historical dramatic reenactments,
and parades, in addition to the usual round of official speeches.
It is possible that the festival was founded with the purpose of bring-
ing about civic unity and political consolidation following the 1960
The Revolutionary Festival in Mexico: November 20 Celebrations in the 1920s and

1930s, The Americas, vol. 54, no. 1 (1997), pp. 3982. Sperber studies public festivity
and its festive discourse of the nation by looking at the changes in symbolic representa-
tion in order to arrive a new understandings of the construction of the state and
national sentiment in the nineteenth century. Lorey argues that the Revolution Day in
Mexico, as a form of cultural engineering, offers a unique case of how political con-
solidation and social change is brought about and affected by public ritual. Indeed,
Revolution-Day observance brought about the creation of a new pantheon of shared
nationalist heroes and thus allowed for the integration of various different experiences
of the Revolution into a more unified one.
42
The Turkish Language Institute (or Society) was founded as a private institution
in 1932 by Mustafa Kemal Atatrk with the mission of Turkifying Turkish through the
purging of foreign words and elements, and the creation of neologisms based on pure
Turkish roots based on archaic forms of Turkish or from other Turkic languages.
Together with the Turkish Historical Institute (Trk Tarih Kurumu), the Turkish
Language Society were among the state sponsored associations which carried out the
Kemalist agenda in popular culture, and served as instruments for defining and dis-
seminating the new national identity, and for carrying it into everyday discourse
(John M. VanderLippe, The Politics of Turkish Democracy: Ismet Inn and the
Formation of the Multi-Party System, 19381950 [Albany, New York: SUNY Press,
2005], p. 16). For a detailed study on the Turkish Language Society, see Frank Tachau,
Language and Politic: Turkish Language Reform, The Review of Politics, vol. 26, no. 2
(1964), pp. 191204.
43
The state-sponsored celebration of the language festival commemorates the
founding of the Turkish Language Institute with their first meeting at on September 26,
1932 at the Dolmabahe Palace in Istanbul. One of the main missions of the Turkish
Language Institute is the eradication of foreign words from Turkish and their
replacement by authentic Turkish in order to create a pure language, or ar Trke
(Taha Akyol, Dil Bayram: Trkenin Dram, http://www.memocal.com/bgvh/
TurkDilBayrami-BirYazi.asp, accessed 18 September 2008).
political coup: could it indeed have been an attempt to heal the wounds
between the Kemalist camp and those who had supported the anti-
Kemalist Democratic Party of the previous decade?44 By tapping into a
post-coup wave of Turkish nationalism,45 the festival may also have
been a way to subtly inculcate in their fellow townsmen Kemalist ideol-
ogy in the new post-Democratic Party era, especially in the absence of
the Kemalist sponsored Peoples Houses which were dissolved in 1950.
Finally, through its linkage of national language politics and regional
history, the festival may have been a strategy devised by Kayseriliolu,
the president of the newly founded Karaman Association of Tourism
and the Preservation of Historical Monuments, to strengthen local ties
with Kemalists nationwide, and thus extend the cultural nexus of power
through which Kayseriliolu and his associates operated.
The festivities played a positive role in the towns local identity and
sense of community; indeed, generations of Karaman citizens who
grew up with celebrating the festival in the 1960s and 1970s retain fond
memories.46 Idris Diners description of the Turkish language festival
celebrated on June 34, 1967 highlights its growing popularity both on
a local and national level.47 The festival was not only attended by locals,
44
Dou Ergil points out that Turkish society became polarized into to hostile politi-
cal camps by the end of the 1950s, depending on how the Democratic Partys economic
policies affected them. Businessmen, industrialists, large landowners and small traders
benefited under the Democratic Party (Dou Ergil, Class Conflict and Turkish
Transformation (19501975), Studia Islamica, vol. 41 [1975], pp. 142143; Manoucher
Parvin and Mukerrem Hi, Land Reform versus Agricultural Reform: Turkish Miracle
or Catastrophe Delayed? International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 16, no. 2
[1984], p. 214).
45
The military coup of 27 May 1960, closed down the Democratic Party and organ-
ized military tribunals against its members accused of being national traitors. After a
year of military rule, a new constitution was put into effect under the influence of
CHP, which promoted land reform, the right to strike and other social welfare state
institutions (Aye Gne Ayata, CHP (rgt ve deoloji) [Ankara: Gndoan Yaynlar,
1992], p. 81). The Democratic Party appears to have had strong local ties in Karaman,
as witnessed by the visit of Celal Bayar and Adnan Menderes to the town in 1954, and
granting of honorary citizenship (fahri hemirelik) of Karaman to Adnan Menderes on
the part of the members of the local government in 1955 (www.karamankultur.gov.tr/,
accessed 16 September 2008; Duru, Fotograflarla Karaman, misc. photographs). The
Democratic Party (19501960) significantly stimulated the growth of a higher Islamic
profile in public life (Jeremy Salt, Nationalism and the Rise of Muslim Sentiment in
Turkey, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 31, no. 1 [1995], p. 15). Also consult Mehmet
Yaar Geyikda, Political Parties in Turkey: The Role of Islam. Praeger (New York,
1984).
46
Nuran Uyar, Trk Dil Bayram, http://www.kgrt.net/sarticle.asp?ID=85,
accessed 19 September 2007.
47
dris Diner, Trk Dili ve Trk Dili Bayram, Araba, vol. 1, no. 1 (18 January
1969), pp. 1415. Idris Diner was the chief editor of the publication Araba, the
164 sara nur yildiz
but attracted numerous out-of-town statesmen, intellectuals and schol-

ars, as well as foreign tourists. Folk dance troupes from all over the
country were invited to perform at the festival. Commemorating the
690th anniversary of the birth of Anatolian Turkish as a state language,
as well as paying honor to Yunus Emre, the thirteenth-century master
of the Turkish language and contemporary of Karamanolu Mehmed
Bey, the festival opened with a speech by its founder, Baha Kayseriliolu,
the president of the Tourism and Information Association (Turizm
Tantma Dernei). Various academics and prominent intellectuals
likewise took the podium, reciting verses from Yunus Emre and prais-
ing his great service to the Turkish language.48 Following the opening
ceremony of speeches and poetry, folk dances began in Aktekke Square,
which had been filled with displays of art by the local school children.
Eager to associate itself with the celebration, The Turkish Language
Association likewise set up a book stand. The opening ceremony closed
with the singing of the national anthem accompanied by a military
band, while a detachment of the Turkish airforce performed aerobatic
stunts above.49
By 1998 the Turkish language festival in Karaman appears to have
become more than a local affair attended by numerous curious out-of-
towners. We see the appropriation of the local festival by Ankara-based
Kemalist politicians and state bureaucrats in charge of agencies and
institutions regulating national language policy, education and the
media. In particular, the festival celebrated in 1998 was attended by
Hikmet etin, the CHP president of the Turkish Grand National
Assembly (TBMM), Ahmet Ercilasun, the president of the Turkish
official publication of the Karaman Association of Culture and Solidarity, a group

based in Ankara promoting Karaman and its culture and history. The publication
appears to have been sponsored by mer Diner, a parliamentary representative from
Istanbul.
48
While analysis of nationalist portrayals of the poet Yunus Emre as the founding
father of Anatolian Turkish falls out of the purview of this study, it will suffice to men-
tion that Yunus Emre was first cast into the role by Mehmet Fuad Kprl in his 1918
work on mystic literature, Turk Edebiyatnda lk Mutassavflar. Kprl, the founder of
modern Turkish literary studies, characterizes Yunus Emre, believed to have lived in
the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, as a pre-Ottoman poet best representing
the Turkish national spirit before it degenerated under the Ottomans. For a study vari-
ous aspects of Yunus Emre, including an evaluation of nationalist interpretations, see
Zekeriya Bakal, Claiming Yunus Emre: Historical Contexts and the Politics of
Reception, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (Madison, University of Wisconsin, 2004),
especially pp. 183ff.
49
dris Diner, Trk Dili ve Trk Dili Bayram, pp. 1416.
Language Society, as well as the president of the National Radio and

Television commission (Radyo Televisyon st Kurulu, or RTK), and
a representative of the National Educational Ministry (MEB).50 The fes-
tivities commenced with a speech by Hikmet etin, the CHP president
of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM), followed by
speeches by other officials from Ankara, interspersed with local speak-
ers. In this meeting of local officials and CHP politicians from Ankara,
we likewise see Karamanolu Mehmed Bey portrayed as the first
reformer of the Turkish language, who ordered that Turkish be spoken
and written in the homeland (anayurdu) of our nation.51 Hikmet etin
proceeded to explain how Karamanolu Mehmed Beys language
reform brought about the flourishing of the Turkish language, making
Yunus Emres brilliant poetry in Turkish possible. More speeches fol-
lowed, touching upon Atatrks role in preserving the Turkish lan-
guage, as well as his warning that Turkish must be protected from
foreign domination. The audience was urged to defend and take
responsibility for the national tongue (dilimize sahip kn!), and thus
follow the examples set by the Karamanid ruler Mehmed Bey and the
poet Yunus Emre.52 The efforts to merge the medieval warrior with
Atatrk were complete: Karamanolu Mehmed Bey was now cast as
language reforming statesman, the direct historical precedent of
Mustafa Kemal Atatrk.
The larger context of the Kemalist ideological appropriation of
the Karaman festival in 1998 is to be found in the 1997 political
battle waged against the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party by the military-
dominated National Security Council. The National Security Council
successfully suppressed the growing political power of the Islamists
who were officially banned on January 16, 1998 after the Constitutional
Court ruled that the partys religious platform was a danger to Turkeys
secular constitution.53 Referred to as the silent, or civilian coup, these
50
TBMM Kltr, Sanat ve Yayn Kurulu, 721. Trk Dili Bayram. Karaman 1314
Mays 1998, Ankara: TBMM Kltr, Sanat ve Yayn Kurulu Yaynlar, c. 1998.
51
TBMM, 721. Trk Dili Bayram, pp. vii-ix.
52
TBMM, 721. Trk Dili Bayram, p. 10ff.
53
Refah rapidly rose to power in the mid-1990s, following victories in the nation-
wide municipal elections in 1994 and 1995, and, in the December 1995 national elec-
tions, with the partys leader, Necmettin Erbakan taking power as prime minister in
June 1996. Erbakan, however, remained in power for only twelve months. He was pres-
sured to leave office in June 1997 by an alliance of secularists led by the Turkish mili-
tary, after the National Security Council, Turkeys top military-led body, had issued
that February a directive to protect the secularist principle of the Republic in face of the
166 sara nur yildiz
events ushered in a new era for Kemalist politics. Unwilling to compro-

mise with the Islamicists, the military-led group of Kemalists would no
longer tolerate the compromised Kemalism of the 1980s and 1990s,
influenced by the ideology of the Turkish-Islamist synthesis.54 In addi-
tion to having the Islamist party banned from politics, the Kemalist
coalition began a campaign to eradicate Islamic symbolism and senti-
ment in the political and public sphere.55 Throughout the late 1990s,
one can detect efforts to redefine Kemalism by returning to its early
Republican roots when radical secularism was promoted by the
CHP-dominated government. Esra zyreks political anthropological
study of Kemalist nostalgism provides insight into the 1998 celebra-
tions of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Turkish Republic.56
Explaining how these celebrations were organized by Kemalist civil
society organizations with government financial support,57 zyrek
threat of Islamic fundamentalism (Salt, Nationalism and the Rise of Muslim Sentiment
in Turkey, p. 15; Asl Aydntaba, The Malaise of Turkish Democracy, Middle East
Reports, vol. 209 [1998], pp. 32, 34; Mehran Kamrava, Pseudo-Democratic Politics
and Populist Possibilities: The Rise and Demise of Turkeys Refah Party, British Journal
of Middle Eastern Studies, vol, 25, vol. 2 [1998], p. 275; Dicle Koacolu, Progress,
Unity, and Democracy: Dissolving Political Parties in Turkey, Law & Society Review,
vol. 38, no. 3 [2004], p. 443).
54
Erturul Krk claims that the states emphasis on Islamic values, from the 1980s
until 1997, packaged as the Turkish-Islamist synthesis, was a stratagem directed
against the revolutionary sentiments of Kurdish separatist groups. Thus by appealing to
the traditional conservatism and religious sentiments of Kurdish tribal leaders, and
binding them closer to the state, the military junta of 1983 hoped to deflect the local
impact of the Kurdish separatist movement based on an atheist Marxist-Leninist ideol-
ogy. The states adoption of the Turkish-Islamist synthesis also was a way to co-opt both
fascists and Islamists into the state bureaucracy and security services (Erturul Krk,
The Crisis of the Turkish State, The Middle East Report, vol. 199 [1996], p. 3). One
should add that the Turkish-Islamist synthesis was a strategy aimed against leftist
groups as well. For more on the way the Turkish state promoted Islamic institutions
and sentiment following the 1980 coup, consult M. Hakan Yavuz, Political Islam
and the Welfare (Refah) Party in Turkey, Comparative Politics, vol. 30, no. 1 (1997),
pp. 6382.
55
The Constitutional Court banned the Welfare Party and barred Erbakan from
politics, on the grounds that it lacked democratic parliamentary credentials and had
tried to alter the secularist nature of the Turkish state (Aydntaba, The Malaise of
Turkish Democracy, p. 33).
56
Esra zyrek, Nostalgia for the Modern. State Secularism and Everyday Politics in
Turkey (Durham, North Carolina and London: Duke University Press, 2006).
57
zyrek identifies the growing phenomenon of Neo-Kemalism, or the private
initiatives through associations and other civil society organizations in supporting
Kemalism in face of the Islamist rise to power: In the late 1990s, for the first time in
Republican history, dozens of independent foundations and organizations with a total
of more than one hundred thousand members nation-wideorganized beyond the
traditional boundaries of the state and outside government officespromoted Kemalist
ideology (zyrek, Nostalgia for the Modern, p. 17).
points out that they depicted a 1930s utopian past in which all Turkish
citizens were imagined as having fully internalized the goals and
policies of the modernizing Turkish state.58 Wide popular participation
in the festivities of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Republic became
a top priority for the organizers; indeed, this event seemed to celebrate
the recent Kemalist coup against the Islamists as much as the founding
of the Republic. Thus this re-vitalized Kemalism, with its emphasis on
popular support expressed in the commemorative celebrations of the
Rebublics milestone anniversary, likewise appears to have influenced
the 1998 Turkish language festival celebrated in Karaman.
Local attempts to capitalize on Ankaras attention in the 1998 cele-
bration of the language festival in Karaman can also be detected.
Toward the end of the round of official speeches at the opening cere-
monies, an academician from the nearby Seljuk University in Konya
launched into a nationalist rendition of Karamanid history, ending
with the bid for the establishment of a university in Karaman. He
reminded the audience of the unique position the Karamanids held in
the nationalist historical narrative as authentic Turks, in contrast to the
Persianized Seljuks and the multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan Ottomans.
Pointing out that the Karamanids originated from a pure Turkish fam-
ily (z be z bir Trk ailesi), and that Karaman was a pure Turkish land
(z be z bir Trk yurdudur), as well as the capital of the Trkmen, the
speaker emphasized the fact that the Karamanids were neither a con-
tinuation of the Seljuks nor a predecessor of the Ottomans, but an
entity entirely to itself (balbana bir ekoldr). He lamented that
despite this, the Karamanids had been greatly neglected by the schol-
arly community. Stating that the Karamanids, in fact, have not yet
received their due as historical actors, and their art and cultural
contributions remained insufficiently recognized, the academician
announced the need for an educational institution in Karaman, with
the proposed name of Karamanolu Mehmed Bey University.59 This
nationalist rendering of the regions history, with its historical amnesia
regarding the large Greek Christian population of the region, resonated
with the Kemalist ideology that had taken hold of the nation. Framing
their appeals to the prevailing ideologies of the centre, these local actors
proved successful in their solicitation of government support. The long
zyrek, Nostalgia for the Modern, p. 16.

58
TBMM, 721. Trk Dili Bayram, pp. 119120.

59
168 sara nur yildiz
sought-after local university, an initiative that the local politician/ama-

teur historian Armutlu and his associates had been pursuing for many
years, finally found fruition nine years later with the founding of the
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey University by the central government.
The festival, officially known as the The Karaman Turkish Language
Festival and the Activities Commemorating Yunus Emre (Karaman
Trk Dil Bayram ve Yunus Emre Anma Etkinlikleri) continues to be
celebrated in Karaman today, as well as in the towns, such as Ermenek
and Mut, which are similarly steeped in a Karamanid past. In conjunc-
tion the local government of Karaman, kr Haluk Akaln, the presi-
dent of the Turkish Language Institute since 2001, plays a major role in
the planning of the festivities. In addition to the usual references to the
preservation and development of Turkish by Karamanolu Mehmed
Bey and Yunus Emre, the festival partakes in the ongoing campaign
waged by the Turkish Language Institute against the infiltration of
foreign words into Turkish.60 Thus, primarily as a result of the long-
standing interest of the Turkish Language Institute in this local festival,
Karamanolu Mehmed Bey has become invested with iconic status
that transcends local patriotism. Kararamanolu Mehmed Bey has
been adopted as a logo of the Turkish Language Institute.61 The poem
by Yusuf Yan, granted an award by the Turkish Language Institute,
illustrates how Karamanolu Mehmed Bey has become caricaturized
as a warrior on behalf of Turkish against the media and commercial
onslaught of English:62
Oh where have the days of Karamanolu Mehmed Bey gone?
Dont you knowhavent any of you heard of them?
He proclaimed an edict ordering that, From now on, no language
other than Turkish will be spoken in the imperial council, the
palace, the baracks, the assembly or the square.
Isnt there anyone among you who remembers this?
60
Glcan Usal, Karaman 45. Trk Dil Bayram ve Yunus Emrenin Anma
Etkinlikleri Treni Karamanda yapld, www.tdk.gov.tr/tr/dosyagoster.aspx?dil=1
&belgeanah=1163& dosyaisim=haber02.htm, accessed 18 September 2008; www
.karamankultur.gov.tr/, accessed 16 September 2008).
61
Karamanolu Mehmet Beyin Fermanndan 720 Yl Sonra Trke. ukurova
niversitesi Trkoloji Aratrmalar Merkezi, http://turkoloji.cu.edu.tr/YENI
%20TURK%20DILI/6.php, and http://turkoloji.cu.edu.tr/kisisel/akalin/index.html,
accessed 18 September 2008.
62
This is a partial and somewhat lose translation of Karamanolu Mehmet Beyi
aryorum. A full version of the Turkish original was published in the Turkish Language
Institutes monthly publication, Trk Dili, vol. 568, no. 1 (April, 1999), pp. 310311.
Isnt there anyone among you, throughout the towns, villages, mar-
kets and bazaars in the four corners of this land, who still pays
attention to the edict?
Speechless and astonished, I wonder
If any of you are disturbed by non-Turkish words that we encounter
everywhere we turn?
Arent any of you disconcerted by the use of words like demo, spiker
(speaker), showmen, diskjokey (disc jockey), and first lady?
Dont any of you find something wrong with using store, market,
pochette,, super, hiper, gross market, and dumping?
Thus stripped of his historical and local identity, Karamanolu Mehmed
Bey leads the struggle against what is perceived as the greatest threat
to the Turkish language: English, which dominates the vocabulary of
consumerism and technology.
5. Conclusion: The Myth of Karamanolu Mehmed Bey

in Service of Nationalist Conceptions of History
This paper examines the attempts to define Karamanolu Mehmed

Beys historical role in accordance to Kemalist ideology, looking at
the interaction between local and national politics. It also traces the
appropriation of the medieval warlord by Ankara-based politicians
and state institutions, a phenomenon which has resulted in his trans-
formation into a national symbol of Kemalist language politics. This
transformation, I argue, was made possible through the language festi-
val celebrated annually in Karaman. Through its reenactment at the
language festival, Karamanolu Mehmed Beys language decree has
come to be regarded as the historical precedent for Atatrks language
reform, and the modern leaders decree to protect Turkish from the
yoke of foreign languages. The Kemalist appropriation of the local lan-
guage festival, most evident in 1998, occurred in the aftermath of a
political crisis in response to the rise to power of the Islamist Welfare
Party. A wave of popular Kemalism emerged at this time when Kemalist
values, as well as the secular foundations of the state, were perceived
to be in grave danger from political Islam. Part of this popular resur-
gent Kemalism in the mid- to late 1990s was the revival of the Kemalist
discourse calling for the protection of Turkish from foreign words
English in particular as Turkey became further entrenched in the
global economy and American-dominated consumer culture. Tran
scending his local identity as the hero of Karaman, Karamanolu
170 sara nur yildiz
Mehmed Bey has likewise become a national logo, calling for the
renewal of the purity of Turkish.
Prasenjit Duaras statement that (h)istorical consciousness in mod-
ern society has been overwhelmingly framed by the nation-state,63
points to the difficulty faced by historians in the treating the past with-
out imprinting it with nationalist content, forms and teleologies.
Medieval Anatolian history today remains in the stranglehold of the
ideological dictates of nationalist politics, as secularists and Islamists
battle over control of the nations cultural and historical heritage.
As the interpretation of Karamanolu Mehmed Beys language edict
becomes more centrally located into the Kemalist national historical
framework, it increasingly moves farther away from the historical con-
text of thirteenth-century Anatolia. Furthermore, as a result of the inti-
mate relationship between history and politics, both on the national
and local level, nationalist interpretations of historical events continue
to be institutionalized in ways which render an alternative historical
narrative virtually impossible. As long as Turkish historians continue
to be constrained by the highly charged atmosphere of Turkish politics,
we will see few new developments in the historiography. At the moment,
the legacy of the Karamanids remains caught in between the struggle
over control of the Anatolian past between secularist Kemalists and
Islamist-oriented politicians. The former exalt the Karamanids as the
Anatolian Turkish alternative to the cosmopolitan and decadent
Ottoman past, and look to Karamanolu Mehmed Bey as a defender of
the Turkish language along the lines of Mustafa Kemal Atatrk. The
Islamists, on the other hand, have less use for the Karamanids, who, as
the traditional enemy of the Ottomans, hardly fit the Islamist model of
the glorious Ottoman empire which provides them the primary his-
torical example of an Islamic Turkish state.
Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of

63
Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 3.

Part Three
National uses of Ottoman history

Ottoman Saida and problems of a Lebanese
national narrative1
James A. Reilly
1. The Emergence of National History
The challenge of constructing a national historical narrative faces

many societies that emerged in modern times from multi-national
empires. Historians in Ottoman successor states have found various
ways of relating the old empire to modern issues and identities, ranging
from angry or dismissive condemnation of the Ottoman past, to selec-
tive incorporation, and even to nostalgia. This paper looks at issues in
recent Lebanese historical writing about the Ottoman period, using
three studies of Ottoman Saida as its material.
Lebanese writing about the country during the Ottoman period
has in large part focused on the histories of the Mountain-based Mani
and Shihabi emirates for the earlier centuries, and the Mutasarrifiyya
for the later decades. Typically these were seen as precursors to the
modern Lebanese state.2 Although the Emirate and Mutasarrifiyya
existed within an Ottoman framework, national-minded historians
tended to treat Ottomans as outsiders to the Lebanese story on par
with other outsiders represented by Europeans. The coastal cities
such as Saida where most Lebanese citizens today live were mar-
ginal or peripheral to this nascent Lebanese national narrative.3 True,
narratives regarding the supposed Phoenician ancestry of modern
Lebanon could symbolically incorporate the coastal cities into an his-
torical vision of the country.4 But with respect to the immediate politi-
cal antecedents of the modern Lebanese state, the largest coastal cities
1
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 41st annual meeting of the
Middle East Studies Association of North America in Montreal, 1720 November
2007.
2
Traboulsi, Fawwaz, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto, 2007), p. 3.
3
On the Mountain focus of earlier Lebanese history, see Salibi, Kamal, A House of
Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989),
chaps. 6 and 7.
4
Kaufman, Asher, Reviving Phoenicia: In Search of Identity in Lebanon (London:
I. B. Tauris, 2004), chap. 1, passim.
174 james a. reilly
were or had been centers of Ottoman provincial administrations. In

religious terms the coastal cities populations had been predominantly
Sunni Muslim, whereas the confessional protagonists in Mountain-
based narratives were mainly Maronites and Druze.
The appearance over a period of 15 years in the 1980s and 1990s
of three monograph-length works dealing with Ottoman Saida (Sidon,
Sayda) presents an opportunity for historiographic investigation.
Do these accounts fit into some kind of an expanded Lebanese narra-
tive extending beyond the Mountain? Are there elements of confes-
sional special pleading in any of these accounts? Finally, these works
invite readers to consider how the authors understand their countrys
Ottoman past in a more general sense.
In sorting, organizing, and making sense of their material, histori-
ans work represents socially institutionalized knowledge of the past.5
Social memory is not spontaneously shared; rather it is culturally cre-
ated and historians are participants in that creative process. Moreover,
as part of constructing or redefining identities associated with moder-
nity, examination of the past offers a way to develop and propagate an
historically rooted modern sense of the community.6 In societies
undergoing profound and wrenching change, reinterpretation of the
historical record provides one of the most powerfully resonant vehicles
by which to convey new images of society and to discard old or unpal-
atable ones.7 In authoritarian states there is likely to be tension between
independent scholarly investigation and regimes use of history to
reconcile the imperatives of regime legitimacy, state loyalty, and
national identity through historical references,8 but history production
in Lebanon has a different dynamic given that the deliberately weak
Lebanese state was built alongside a conscious institutionalization of
confessional identities.
The genesis of modern social identities in the East Mediterranean
region including Lebanon accompanied the creation of a kind of o fficial
5
McDougall, James, History and Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 4.
6
Gordon, David C., Self-Determination and History in the Third World (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 6.
7
Anderson, Lisa, Legitimacy, Identity, and the Writing of History in Libya
(in Eric Davis and Nicolas Gavrielides (eds.), Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil,
Historical Memory, and Popular Culture. Miami: Florida International University Press,
1991), p. 91.
8
Ibid., p. 73.
problems of a lebanese national narrative175
nationalism in the later Ottoman Empire. Ottoman elites sought to

nationalize their dynastic empire, but in so doing they dissolved or
repudiated earlier forms of political legitimacy, and unwittingly facili-
tated novel types of modern identity that did not necessarily support
the revamped Ottoman framework.9 Those who emerged as interpret-
ers of the past were the modern intelligentsia, a new elite who criticized
the recent past in order to legitimize their leadership role in calls for
reform.10 The Ottomans bad press among the intelligentsia of its
Middle Eastern successor states was promoted by widespread accept-
ance of the influential decline paradigm for understanding the major-
ity of the Ottoman centuries.11 A combination of the decline paradigm
with expressions of nationalism in the Ottoman successor states gave
rise to a historiography emphasizing politics of local notables and sig-
nificance of the ayan. This historiography could be used to promote an
anachronistic nationalist framework for understanding the Ottoman
experience, since it meshed particularly well with the nationalist
assumptions of a native Arab elite in at least implicit confrontation
with an imposed Turkish elite.12
Issues of identity in the Arab Middle East not only must deal with
the Ottoman past, but also with a European colonial history. Sometimes
nationalist-minded writers conceptually conflated the Ottoman and
European periods as successive instances of colonial rule. Yet under the
rubric decolonization of history, nationalist narratives could end up
offering mirror images of colonial discourse.13 Like the colonial histo-
ries they mirrored, nationalist histories were progressive narratives:
pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial. Most nationalist histories privi-
leged urban elite perspectives and left rural people, ethnic minorities
and women in the shadows. Nationalist narrators often characterized
Zeevi, Dror, Kul and Getting Cooler: The Dissolution of Elite Collective Identity
9
and the Formation of Official Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, Mediterranean

Historical Review, vol. 11, no. 2 (1996), p. 195.
10
Hess, Andrew Christie, Islamic Civilization and the Legend of Political Failure,
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 44, no. 1 (1985), p. 32.
11
Quataert, Donald, Ottoman History Writing and Changing Attitudes towards
the Notion of Decline, History Compass, vol. 1 (2003), pp. 13.
12
Hathaway, Jane, Rewriting Eighteenth-Century Ottoman History, Mediterranean
Historical Review, vol. 19, no. 1 (2004), p. 35.
13
Burke III, Edmund, Theorizing the Histories of Colonialism and Nationalism
in the Arab Maghrib, (in Ali Abdullatif Ahmida (ed.), Beyond Colonialism and
Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture, and Politics, New York: Palgrave, 2000),
pp. 2223.
176 james a. reilly
the pre-colonial past as a kind of unspoiled Eden to which they longed

to return. In the words of Maghrib historian Edmund Burke III: Both
colonial and nationalist histories present a homogenized and essential-
ized vision of both Self and Other.14 Typically, nationalists subsume
dissonant voices of pre-colonial protest into an elite and nationalist
master narrative in which the agency of subalterns is not admitted.
Moreover, nationalists tend to present the process of colonial conquest
as a Manichean contest between light and darkness, overlooking ways
in which colonial conquest included a political dimension that inter-
acted with the (unacknowledged) politics of the pre-colonial era.15
Preoccupation with heritage, and wishing to reconnect with a rup-
tured pre-colonial past, are typical exercises in the development of
modern communal and national identities. In nationalist historiogra-
phy this process is usually characterized as an awakening of heretofore
slumbering collective consciousness. Awakening a slumbering nation
includes the corollary that there is a national essence that can be identi-
fied and traced over the centuries. Thus nation-as-essence (including,
in the Lebanese case, the temptation of communal essentialism) is ret-
roactively projected into an eternal nation.16 Criticisms of Lebanese
historians confessional readings of history including varieties of
confessional essentialism have been published over the last quarter-
century both within and outside of Lebanon.17
Histories working within patriotic, nationalist or confessional para-
digms risk narrowing their visions to ask questions already defined by
the nature of their subject. The result, as Youssef Choueri notes, is a
succession of partial views and glimpses of a richer and more complex
reality. Thus a major gap in Arab Ottoman and colonial-era studies is
the relative absence of the ordinary Arab man and woman, their needs,
fears, and aspirations.18
14
Ibid., p. 23.
15
Idem.
16
For an Algerian example: McDougall, James, History and Culture of Nationalism,
pp. 1416.
17
Beydoun, Ahmed, Identit confessionnelle et temps social chez les historiens liba-
nais contemporains (Beirut: Librairie Orientale, 1984), passim; Salibi, Kamal, House of
Many Mansions, chap. 11; Havemann, Axel, Lebanons Ottoman Past as Reflected in
Modern Lebanese Historiography, in R. Brunner et al. (eds.), Islamstudien Ohne Ende:
Festschrift fr Werner Ende zum 65. Gerburtstag. Wrzburg: Ergon, 2002), pp. 168172;
Kawtharani, Wajih Nationalist Thought and the Vision of the Ottoman Period during
the First Half of the Twentieth Century: The Example of Lebanon, in Kemal H. Karpat
(ed.), Ottoman Past and Todays Turkey, (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 256269.
18
Choueri, Youssef M., Modern Arab Historiography: Historical Discourse and the
Nation-State (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 200.
Modern national consciousness itself often first took root in those

Arab lands that were most tightly bound up with the Ottoman state.
Arabs who embraced the idea of the modern state frequently did so not
in opposition to the Ottoman movement of reform and state rationali-
zation, but in association with it. Choueiri asserts that Arab scholar-
ship to 1918 advanced a generally positive view of the Ottoman state as
defender of the Islamic caliphate-sultanate. The Ottoman option as a
path to modernity was not decisively closed off till 1918, after which
the nation-state paradigm asserted itself inter alia through denigration
of the recently deceased Empire.19
2. Three Historians of Saida
With these issues in mind, let us turn to considering three recent

Lebanese studies of the coastal city of Saida in the Ottoman period.
The earliest of them is Tarikh Sayda al-Ijtimai 18401914 by Talal
Majid al-Majdhub, published in 1983 and based on doctoral work that
he did with the senior historian Nicola Ziadeh who wrote an introduc-
tion.20 Al-Majdhub attributes his choice of subject and period to both
personal and academic reasons: a long absence from the city and a wish
to become reacquainted with it, on the one hand; and a wish to exam-
ine an important period in the history of Saida that had not attracted
much scholarly notice till then.21 His books periodization relates to
Saidas political history, beginning with its reincorporation into the
Tanzimat-era Ottoman administration in 1840, after nearly a decade of
Egyptian rule; and ending with the Empires entry into the First World
War.
Al-Majdhubs book is a richly documented account based on a range
of primary source materials in Arabic and in English. He used sharia
court registers, monastery and patriarchate archives, Saida municipal
records, waqf and land registry documents, and period newspapers in
addition to American and British consular reports. The chapters are
arranged topically, not chronologically, and deal with topics such as
administration, taxes, military service, land and agriculture, urban
Ibid., pp. 205207; Abou El-Haj, Rifaat, The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab
19
Historiography of Ottoman Rule, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 14

(1982): 186187.
20
al-Majdhub, Talal Majid, Tarikh Sayda al-Ijtimai 18401914 (Beirut: al-Maktaba
al-Asriyya, 1983).
21
Ibid., p. 7.
178 james a. reilly
geography, commerce, communications, and family life. The book ends

suddenly and abruptly without a summarizing conclusion.
On the face of it, this is a descriptive account of multifarious aspects
of Saida, its quarters, neighborhoods, districts and holy places, its insti-
tutions and its people in the final Ottoman decades. It does not offer an
evident or obvious sense of overall historical development or historical
change. It is as though the author felt that unearthing, sorting and
organizing his data was justification enough to publish the material.
Considering al-Majdhub on that level for a moment, one might be
tempted to agree with his prioritization of archival exploration. After
all, the rising young Lebanese historian Antoine Abdel Nour had noted
in a book published one year before al-Majdhubs appeared that schol-
arly knowledge of the social organization of Ottoman Syrian towns was
still rudimentary.22 Al-Majdhub pays homage to Abdel Nour as one of
those who encouraged and inspired his work. And in his introduction,
al-Majdhubs mentor Ziadeh emphasizes the novelty of social history in
modern Arab historiography, observing that earlier generations were
preoccupied with political-historical narratives.23 Interestingly, Ziadeh
makes explicit his assumption that historians have a dual calling both
to meet the requirements of academic methodology and to reflect
patriotic feelings in their work.24
However, when one looks closely at al-Majdhubs book a kind of
overarching thesis does emerge even if he does not identify or highlight
it as such. The underlying message, appearing and reappearing in a
number of places, is the ongoing assumption of responsibility by public
state institutions that supplanted private institutions usually associated
with religion. The overall tone is one of progressive change, including
public works, communications, safety, and education. Al-Majdhub fre-
quently cites new laws and regulations put into place by the municipal
or Ottoman provincial governments aimed at achieving urban improve-
ments. The reader is left with a sense of historical change that is state
driven, and that generally has a progressive aspect (e.g., planting trees,
paving roads, taking modern education in hand, ensuring personal
safety and security).
22
Abdel Nour, Antoine, Introduction lhistoire urbaine de la Syrie ottomane
(XVIeXVIIIe sicle) (Beirut: Lebanese University, 1982), p. 185. Abdel Nours life was
cut short when he died in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
23
Ziadeh, Nicola, Introduction (in Talal Majid al-Majdhub, Tarikh Sayda al-
Ijtimai, op. cit.), p. 6.
24
Idem.
One area of state activity with a potential for negative or more criti-
cal treatment is mandatory military service. However, al-Majdhubs
discussion of military service is an almost clinical description of the
means by which conscription was administered and how incidents of
popular opposition (represented by flight or avoidance) were bureau-
cratically managed. He does note that Ottoman conscription to fight in
faraway places (Yemen, Libya, Crete, Balkans) was a burden on Saidas
population, but he implies that this burden was shared and was not
arbitrarily imposed, inasmuch as government officials (often them-
selves local people) hosted and participated in popular rejoicing
when local troops returned home. Moreover, he notes that sometimes
Christians chose to demonstrate their patriotism and their com
mitment to civic equality by voluntarily enlisting rather than pay the
military service exemption tax. Thus readers are encouraged to con-
clude that Ottoman military service was a patriotic duty, not an exter-
nal imposition. Even during the First World War whose agonies left
some of the worst memories of life under the later Ottoman Empire
al-Majdhub reports that people in Saida were convinced the govern-
ment would pay them generously for needed war supplies.25
What is missing in this social history is a sense of social analysis.
The advent of modern state institutions marks an historical watershed
in any society, but al-Majdhub does not ask who was empowered or
disempowered, or who won or who lost, as a consequence of the
modern states increasing intrusion into peoples lives.26
Al-Majdhubs is a modernist work that appreciates the textures of
the past, and renders them in detail, but he does not wax nostalgic
for a lost Eden. Instead his work conveys a message about the poten-
tially positive or progressive role that the modern state can play in
development of society. His account does not deal with wider Ottoman
concerns (for instance, the pressures and issues responsible for the cre-
ation of municipalities in the first place). Nor does he address the
impact of these administrative changes on the relationship between
Saida and higher levels of Ottoman government. But to summarize
again what it offers: al-Majdhubs is a modernist and implicitly nation-
alist approach, inasmuch as he looks to the state as an engine or agent
of progressive change.
al-Majdhub, Talal Majid, Tarikh Sayda al-Ijtimai, p. 73.

25
Cf. Gelvin, James, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the
26
Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 1319.

180 james a. reilly
Issues inherent in a confessional or religious-national approach to

history are identifiable in a work that appeared five years later, Madinat
Sayda 18181860: Dirasa fi al-umran al-hadari min khilal wathaiq
mahkamatiha al-shariyya by Ghassan Munir Sinnu.27 Originally this
was a Masters thesis written under the supervision of prominent
Islamic Studies scholar Ridwan al-Sayyid. The period selected is deter-
mined by the authors sources, namely, the sharia law court registers of
Saida. His is a source-specific study, the author explains, foregoing the
use of other sources except as needed to clarify what is in the law court
registers.28 Sinnus eye for detail is thorough and painstaking. He exten-
sively glosses archaic or colloquial words and phrases, so that readers
can almost use his book as a reference or as an entre into the language
and concerns of Saidas Ottoman-era registers. Though in form the
book is documentary, a few unstated assumptions inform the authors
presentation and organization of material. Additional assumptions are
articulated in al-Sayyids introduction to the book.
The authors first assumption is that the fundamental distinction in
Ottoman Saida was confessional, i.e., between Muslims and Christians
(with the Ottoman citys small Jewish presence mentioned in passing).
This is not a source-driven conclusion, but rather it is an a priori
assumption that the author brought to his material. Whereas the
authors overall approach is relentlessly empirical, including extensive
verbatim quotations from the sharia court documents, he devotes a
good deal of his analytic time and effort to disclosing patterns of
Muslim-Christian interaction and difference. Whether with respect to
housing and landownership patterns, to endowments, to commercial
activities and to commercial property holding, and even to clothing
and personal possessions, he offers an analysis highlighting confes-
sional identities. Other kinds of Ottoman-era social distinctions (based
for instance on class, status, gender or region of origin) receive cursory
notice but he neither dwells on nor develops them.
A second assumption, specific to the subject of endowments, is that
personal piety is the key to understanding the history of Muslim
endowments or waqfs. Sinnus depiction of waqfs and how they
workedeconomically and socially is reportorial and to the point, yet
27
Sinnu, Ghassan Munir, Madinat Sayda 18181860: Dirasa fi al-umran al-hadari
min khilal wathaiq mahkamatiha al-shariyya (Beirut: Dar al-Arabiyya lil-Ulum,
1988).
28
Ibid., p. 7.
the presentation is wrapped in layers of piety. At the very least one sees
here a kind of identification between the author and the social values
that he believes the waqf institution represented.29
A third assumption is that the court registers can speak for them-
selves, once they are read carefully and their content made plain (as in
his book). Sinnu characterizes the registers as exact, accurate and
objective,30 and he praises them for their freedom from personal or
partisan opinions.31 He acknowledges their limitations as sources, inas-
much as only events and socio-legal practices and institutions that
were officially recognized came to authorities attention and thus were
recorded in them.32 Yet despite this acknowledgment he reiterates
in his conclusion that the registers are important because of their
objectivity, their freedom from ideological or political bias, and their
commitment to recording uncontested or unimpeachable facts.33 An
inference from these paradoxical remarks is that the author, himself,
identifies with the outlook and the worldview implicit in the registers
and their ordering of society. Their tone and their content ring true;
therefore they must be objective. By taking his sources at face value
admittedly a temptation for data-starved historians whether pious or
not Sinnu opts not to ask questions about the power relationships
embedded within the sharia law court documents. At the end of his
text, Sinnu summarizes the subjects that he has covered but offers no
explicit analytic conclusion for readers to consider.34
In terms of his works retrospective treatment of the Ottoman period,
Sinnu volunteers no clear opinions on the Ottomans or their overarch-
ing imperial system. Certainly, however, he conveys no hostility to the
Ottomans as a state or as a ruling group. One can interpret Sinnus
book as an implicitly religio-nationalist look at a relatively idyllic pre-
colonial world, in which the Ottomans were at worst a neutral presence
and (to the extent that they supported the institutions and outlook
inscribed in the registers) more often a benign one.
The author does not attempt to place his work in historical context as
much as in a source-specific one. His review of the sharia court regis-
ters literature (Arabic, English and French) up to the mid-1980s is
29
Ibid., pp. 453458.
30
Ibid., p. 7.
31
Ibid, p. 16.
32
Ibid, pp. 1618.
33
Ibid., p. 511.
34
Ibid., pp. 511516.
182 james a. reilly
mostly current (though he overlooked Andr Raymonds two volumes

on Cairo), but Sinnus review of literature relating to Arab, Muslim or
Ottoman cities is sparse. He cites secondary sources pertaining to
Saida, published or written in Arabic from 1913 onward, as well as
Antoine Abdel Nours book on Arab cities. But Sinnu does not engage
Abdel Nours book on any issues.
In view of Sinnus reticence with respect to his works assumptions
and context, his mentor Ridwan al-Sayyids introduction to the book is
interesting for its explicit though summarily stated formulations.
Al-Sayyid characterizes the sharia court registers in a manner that
complements Sinnus willingness to regard the registers as largely
unproblematic reflections of social reality.35 Moreover, al-Sayyid argues
that Sinnus study demonstrates the reality of the Islamic city, and
al-Sayyid uses this concept to refute and criticize those (unnamed)
who believe that Islam lacked a proper urban structure. (Probably
al-Sayyid is thinking of Max Weber here.) Moreover, al-Sayyid contin-
ues, Islamic cities have been defined not only by their physical struc-
tures but also by their theoretical and political roles within Islamic
societies. He cites early Islamic examples of the encampment (misr)
and the phenomenon of emigration (hijra) to make the point. An
essentialist kind of religio-national agenda appears to be on full display
here. Whilst al-Sayyids assertions are offered purportedly as refuta-
tions of elements of colonial or Orientalist historiography, they end up
supporting a paradigm (the Islamic city) and advocating a causal
mechanism (the decisive role of a reified Islam) that emerged out of the
Oriental Studies tradition.36
A subsequent work on Saida is Muhammad Hasan al-Rawwass dis-
sertation filed in 1997, written at the Lebanese University under the
supervision of prolific historian Hassan Hallaq.37 In contrast to Sinnu,
this work is more of a self-conscious historical narrative that seeks to
define and explain social structure in a context of changing times. Its
periodization is political: from the end of Egyptian rule in Syria in
1840, to Saidas subsumption into the new province of Beirut in 1888.
Al-Rawwass work fits in the genre of urban/regional histories that have
35
al-Sayyid, Ridwan, Introduction (in Ghassan Munir Sinnu, Madinat Sayda, op.
cit.), p. 4.
36
Eldem, Edhem et al., The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and
Istanbul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 12.
37
al-Rawwas, Muhammad Hasan, Al-Hayat al-iqtisadiyya fi Sayda al-uthmaniyya,
18401888, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Lebanese University, 1997.
marked much of the international historiography of the Ottoman Arab

provinces over the past 25 years. As such his is not a nationalist his-
tory per se, since the subject is not the nation but the urban center and
its dependencies or tributaries.
Al-Rawwas bases his work largely on documents from Saidas sharia
court and its waqf administration, referring occasionally to the books
of al-Majdhub and Sinnu for clarification or background perspectives.
Like Abdel Nour, and like historians of the urban-regional school,
al-Rawwas is keen to place Saida in its geographic and economic con-
text. The dissertations empirical content is particularly rich when it
comes to describing the various waqfs of Saida as well as the families,
markets and institutions to which they were linked. One comes away
from al-Rawwass text with a good sense of the citys physical and social
space, even though he eschews any political analysis along the lines of
politics of the notables or development of the modern state. His con-
cern is Saidas loss of standing in the later nineteenth century, as Beiruts
municipal leaders skillfully exploited new opportunities linked to the
emerging world economy under the aegis of a Eurocentric capitalism.
Al-Rawwas does not share Sinnus intense interest in drawing atten-
tion to non-Muslims and to devising various statistical analyses around
religious and confessional affiliations. Christian and Jewish individuals
and institutions are mentioned in passing but they do not constitute an
axis of al-Rawwass analysis. However, like Sinnu, al-Rawwas does
establish a pre-colonial baseline against which subsequent develop-
ments can be seen. Although his tone is mostly detached and meas-
ured, al-Rawwas becomes defensive and polemical in parts of his
Introduction.38 He accuses unnamed Arab historians of slandering and
falsifying Ottoman history, following in the footsteps of their European
teachers and masters. He denounces equally unnamed European histo-
rians for their pejorative generalizations about Saida and offers a
riposte. Much of this reads as a straw man argument, particularly as
the miscreants are not identified and neither are their alleged defama-
tory statements sourced to enable checking. The introduction is a clue
that al-Rawwas will offer a generally positive or favorable vision of
Saida and its society under Ottoman administration and especially
under Islamic law. The other kinds of histories, he says, are corrupt.
Hence al-Rawwass perspective fits a pattern, noted above in Burkes
Ibid., pp. viviiii [jim-ha].

38
184 james a. reilly
treatment of North Africa, wherein pre-colonial society is depoliticized

and portrayed as a kind of abstract or idealized model.
Al-Rawwass abstract model derives from the idea of an Islamic City
whose characteristics are very much derived in the first instance from
principles of the Quran and fiqh.39 He asserts that Saidas physical,
social and institutional structure in Ottoman times conformed to fiqh
injunctions with respect to personal privacy, public behavior, and pub-
lic/private space.40
Here again, the reader finds an adamant denunciation of (unnamed)
European and European-influenced Arab historians. Yet the proposed
remedy is itself drawn from the armory of Orientalist-empiricist
methodology, so that the historian who reads sources with the proper
mindset can present a true picture of the historical past, including a
Weltanschauung appropriately labeled Islamic.
3. Reconnecting to the Ottoman Past?
Of these three historians, al-Majdhub would appear best to meet the

expectations of a state-nationalist approach to the Ottoman era, yet
in a way that does not so much posit the awakening nation against
the imperial system, as posit the awakening of state and society to the
demands of life in the modern era. He does not explicitly address the
issue of the Ottoman option, but his protagonist is the modern munic-
ipality, itself very much a reflection of the Ottoman option at the local
level. It is tempting to see in al-Majdhubs work an implicit appeal for
faith in the modern state, and for the construction of a state capable of
nation-building. Al-Majdhub wrote and published when the Lebanese
state and its institutions were in advanced states of disintegration.
His work could without too much twisting or bending be made to fit
within a wider national narrative of the development of modern state
institutions, yet at the same time there is nothing uniquely Lebanese
about the story he relates.
Sinnus work, though resembling a reference manual in many ways,
is suffused with a sense of reverence and respect for Islamic law and for
the system of rule that enabled society to be so ordered. To the extent
that he attempts analysis, he is predominantly occupied with issues of
Ibid., p. 22. This sounds Weberian; cf. Eldem, Edhem et al., Ottoman City, p. 1.
39
al-Rawwas, Muhammad Hasan, Al-Hayat al-iqtisadiyya, pp. 2223.

40
Muslim-Christian relationships and distinctions between them in

Saidas society. He presents an implicitly positive depiction of the
Ottoman period, though the focus throughout remains very much on
the local level. Perhaps both Sinnus preoccupation with confessional
relations and his presentation of a depoliticized, uncontentious recent
historical past under the aegis of Islamic law flow out of convictions
formed at a time (1980s) when assertions of political interests based
on religious identity were particularly acute and raw in a society that
was war-torn, without functioning institutions and threatened with
lawlessness.
Al-Rawwass work is a more explicit statement of a religious-
nationalist agenda. By arguing that the Quran and fiqh provided the
basic principles of Islamic urban life; by asserting that Ottoman Saida
was an Islamic city according to this definition; by demonstrating how
fiqh principles regulated public life, economic activities, and civic val-
ues in Saida, al-Rawwas posits a pre-colonial Eden of sorts which
already was under assault in the period that he studied. In this case the
Ottomans historically had been protectors and patrons of the cher-
ished social model, but by the nineteenth century new values were
ascendant as represented by the rise of Beirut and the consequent
eclipse of Saida. Here there is a kind of idealization of the Islamic
Ottoman Empire without fully considering how the Empire was itself
engaged in a project of modernity. Although the modernizing Ottoman
officials cast their project in Islamic-national terms, nevertheless their
new laws and institutions challenged many pre-existing institutions
and social assumptions. Was nineteenth-century Beirut a challenge
to the Ottoman idea? Or did upstart Beirut represent a model for the
fulfillment of Choueris Ottoman option, whose potentials (for better
or for ill) were cut short by the political ruptures of the First World
War?41 And what are the implications of this kind of historical narrative
for a nation-state (the Lebanese Republic) built to some extent around
the city of Beirut, and around an ideology that emphasizes Beiruts
(and Lebanons) alleged intermediary role between West and East?
At least two of these historians (al-Majdhub and al-Rawwas) have
roots in Saida. And with respect to confessional interpretations
of the past, two of the three Sinnu and al-Rawwas might well be
41
Modern Beirut as an Ottoman project is explored in Hanssen, Jens, Fin de Sicle
Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005),
chap. 9.
186 james a. reilly
characterized as confessional historians. That is, their sense of social

solidarity, their sense of historical connection, is expressed in terms
of reverence for Islamic law and manifest regret (in al-Rawwass case)
for the passing of a historically rooted Islamic urbanism. But one
author al-Majdhub appears as a state-oriented modernist who
does not relate to the Islamic aspects of Saidas past in the quite the
same way as the other two historians. As this small sample indicates,
not all histories produced in Lebanon in recent years can neatly be
pigeonholed into a confessional mold, though some are more easily
understood that way than others. And even confessional history, when
done conscientiously, offers empirical riches ripe for incorporation
into a broader Ottoman historiographic synthesis.
In this survey, the Ottomans (or at least the Ottoman era) emerge
with some historical credit. None of the authors uses the Ottomans or
the Turks as straw men in historical polemics; rather, it is unnamed
Orientalists and Western-trained Arab historians who bear the brunt
of such treatment. None of these studies engages with the Ottoman
environment in a sustained way, yet all implicitly or explicitly accept
the legitimacy of laws and institutions associated with the Ottoman
era, whether this era is seen as one of progressive state-generated mod-
ernization (al-Majdhub), or as a regrettably lost expression of verities
and virtues associated with a society ordered under Islamic law within
the Islamic City (Sinnu and al-Rawwas). While outwardly focusing on
the history of one city in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, on
a deeper level all three authors have attempted to make something sen-
sible and valuable of their societys Ottoman past. Their efforts take on
urgency and poignancy given that all wrote during a period of severe
social and political trials for Lebanons society and state.
Conversion to Islam in Bulgarian historiography1:
an overview2
Rossitsa Gradeva
There are few problems in national history which can still ignite heated
discussions outside the professional circles in Bulgaria. Undoubtedly,
one of them is the issue of conversion to Islam during the Ottoman
rule. It alone, in the view of many Bulgarians, justifies the definition of
its five centuries as yoke/slavery and dark age, terms that are still
popular among the wider public, in Bulgarian mass media and even
academic publications.
1
Defining Bulgarian historiography is a difficult task, especially after 1989, as the
political changes gave the opportunity to many Bulgarians to pursue academic careers
outside the country. In what follows, without claiming to have accessed all their pro-
duction, I shall consider the works of some of them who, although based in foreign
academic institutions, continue to publish and/or work in Bulgarian and thus exert
some influence on public opinion in the country. I am tempted to quote here the reflec-
tions of one of them with a view to the theme of conversion to Islam, although it is
difficult to tell how representative it is: Indeed, there is perhaps no other topic in the
field of Ottoman history that has produced differences between native and outside
scholars that are more profound. The inspiration for me derives from the fact that
I come from a native scholarly tradition, while, on the other hand, I have lived and
studied long enough outside this tradition to consider myself immersed in the outside
point of view as well. My objective, therefore, is to combine the natives intuition and
experience, shorn of any social and moral prejudices, with the outsiders objectivity
and impartiality, yet retaining an intimate familiarity with the particular historical situ-
ation. On the other hand, one of the realizations of our postmodern age is that no one
can be entirely objective or independent of ones social and cultural milieu. This means
that in my case as well, the natives or the outsiders background may eventually pre-
vail at certain points. I can only try to overcome the shortcomings of both points of
view, while drawing on their respective advantages. (Minkov, Anton, Conversion to
Islam in the Balkans. Kisve Bahas Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 16701730
(Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 12. Being a native scholar myself, I am more inclined to
regard all these issues as a matter of responsibility to our vocation as historians rather
than as related to ones nationality. Let us say that biased and partial scholarship is not
the privilege of Bulgaria alone, even in this highly sensitive topic.
2
Some of the issues below are discussed in more or less detail in: Dimitrov,
Strashimir, Ottoman Studies in Bulgaria after the Second World War, Etudes balka-
niques, vol. 36, no 1 (2000), pp. 2958; Gradeva, Rossitsa, and Ivanova, Svetlana,
Researching the Past and the Present of Muslim Culture in Bulgaria: the popular and
high layers, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (Birmingham), vol. 12, no 3 (July
2001), pp. 317337; Zhelyazkova, Antonina, Islamization in the Balkans as an
Historiographical Problem: the Southeast-European Perspective in F. Adanr and
188 rossitsa gradeva
The scholarly interest into the Muslim communities and the spread
of Islam in the territories usually referred to in Bulgarian historiogra-
phy as the Bulgarian lands3 emerged in the second half of the 19th
century, when Bulgaria was still under Ottoman rule and the question
of the relations between Orthodox Christian and Muslim Bulgarian-
speakers was only beginning to surface. Since then the origins of the
Bulgarian-speaking Muslims/Pomaks, who inhabit mainly the terri-
tory of the Rhodope Mountains on both sides of the Greco-Bulgarian
border4 has been and is even today invariably on the agenda. Regarded
as one the most negative Ottoman legacies in the region, the explana-
tion of the phenomenon and the neutralization of its effect have become
an integral component of the nation-building process. Over time the
narrower notion of conversion to Islam5 of local people was integrated
into the wider ones of spread of Islam and Islamization, both of which
take into account the colonization and migration of Muslims, the
establishment of the Islamic institutions, the construction of Muslim
cult buildings and generally the appropriation of the Balkan space by
S. Faroqhi (eds), The Ottomans and the Balkans. A Discussion of Historiography (Leiden:
Brill, 2002), pp. 223266; Grozdanova, Elena, Bulgarian Ottoman Studies at the Turn
of Two Centuries: Continuity and Innovation, Etudes balkaniques, vol. 41, no 3 (2005),
pp. 93146; Georgieva, Tsvetana, Izsledvaniyata po istoriyata na blgarskiya narod
prez rannite stoletiya na osmanskoto vladichestvo v hoda na poredniya blgarski pre-
hod (19892004) in I. Baeva and Pl. Mitev (eds), Predizvikatelstvata na promianata
(Sofia: Sofiyski Universitet Sv. Kliment Ohridski, 2006), pp. 98113.
3
When speaking of Bulgaria one should be beware that no strict borders divided
Bulgarians from their neighbours within the Ottoman state. On the contrary, there
existed large contact zones shared by many ethnicities, which from the 19th century
onwards have been contested by the emerging nation-states. The so-called Bulgarian
lands came to denote the territories regarded by Bulgarians as theirs, reflecting the
San Stephano Bulgaria dream. At the same time, it is difficult to limit any research for
the Ottoman period strictly within the boundaries of modern Bulgaria since Balkan
peoples lived in administrative units with fluctuating borders which were not subject
to ethnic considerations.
4
A small Pomak community lives also in the region of the town of Lovech, North
Bulgaria. Essentially, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims are similar to Bosnians, Albanians,
Torbeshi and other Muslim communities in the Balkans described as indigenous
population which have preserved their language.
5
The term for conversion to Islam both in mass usage and in academic works was
poturchvane, that is Turkicization, reflecting the common understanding that the
adoption of Islam led in the majority of the cases to a change of the ethnic/national
identity of the person involved. It also reflects the importance attributed to religion in
building the national identity. It is not surprising that Pomaks were often called and
until 1905 were registered in censuses under the same heading as Turks. Finally, the
term has also a nuance of an enforced act rather than one of free will. Only relatively
recently has the more correct and broader term Islamization been introduced in aca-
demic research, which has also reached the school textbooks.
conversion to islam in bulgarian historiography189
the Ottoman authority. Conversion (to Islam) as an object of study has

become more nuanced and specialists have come to distinguish a whole
range of its aspects. The source basis has also expanded and diversified,
from a few Bulgarian narrative texts with disputable historical value
and the folklore, to an ever increasing number and types, including
Ottoman documents.
The approach to the study of conversion in Bulgaria has always
depended on the complex impact of a number of factors. Of particular
importance among them are the time at which the concrete research is
undertaken, this involving the availability of primary historical sources
and the influence of the political imperatives of the day, as well as the
personal qualification and the ideological predispositions of its stu-
dents. Their effect has produced and continues to produce very dispa-
rate combinations. Thus sober and analytical studies appeared even at
times of nationalistic upheavals, balanced by the solid qualification of
the author and a critical mass of accumulated sources. Alternately,
though in a more sophisticated way, ideas and paradigms which date
back to the early communist period are still being reproduced in the
years after the political changes in Bulgaria in 1989 even in academic
circles.
Yet, the development of studies in the spread of Islam actually
follows closely the political changes in the country to whose influ-
ence history as a branch of the humanities has been exposed, often
being exploited in domestic politics: under Ottoman rule; between the
Liberation and WWII (18781944); the communist regime (1944
1989); after the fall of the totalitarian state.6 Below I shall analyse
the evolution of the historiography of the conversion to Islam and the
related processes of colonization and migration which have led to the
emergence of the Muslim communities in Bulgaria, against the back-
drop of the political priorities in the country during the last century
and a half and of the progress of Ottoman studies and knowledge
aboutOttoman and local sources. My aim is to trace the major trends
in historical research in the field with a focus on pre-1989 develop-
ments. The political changes in the last twenty years have largely freed
the discussions from the strict political control exerted on intellectual
6
For a short overview of Bulgarian history in the modern period in English see
Crampton, Richard, A Concise History of Bulgaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005, 2nd ed.). Hereafter where possible, I shall refer to the English-language
publications and editions of works published originally or subsequently in Bulgarian.
production under the communist regime. This has allowed freedom of

expression and thought which would have been unthinkable before, at
least in a written and published form. The relaxation of the political
situation has also provoked processes of identity-formation among the
Bulgarian-speaking Muslims leading to the emergence of texts claim-
ing to express their own views of their roots, the time and mechanisms
of spread of Islam among them being in the core of their history.
Nationalist circles also offer their versions of history, mainly repeating
already established models in Bulgarian historiography of the early
communist period, the primary goal being to counteract more moder-
ate views on the Ottoman past. The complex developments in this last
period will be discussed in more detail elsewhere - here I shall only
outline them with reference to my goals.
1. Before 18787
Long before the age of the national struggles of the Balkan peoples,
Christian men of letters have identified conversion to Islam as a major
threat for Christianity under Islam. The theme is also a central motif in
(late) Bulgarian folklore where abducted beautiful Bulgarian women
resisting the temptations of the Harem and janissaries feature promi-
nently.8 Towards the end of the 18th century the authors of the first
Bulgarian Histories of Bulgarians formulated definitions of the Ottoman
rule for generations of their co-nationals. To summarise them: For
Father Paissii of Hilandar (1762) the history of Bulgarians ends with
the Ottoman conquest; yet, within the text he sets the general frame-
work of the evaluation of the period, characterized by him as yoke in
which Bulgarians were the lowest Turkish slaves. From a highly emo-
tive description the reader learns about the devastation to which
7
I have discussed some of the issues dealt with in this chapter in Turks
and Bulgarians, Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, Journal of Mediterranean Studies,
vol. 5, no 1 (1995) (special issue: I. Beller-Hann and K. Fleet (eds), European Perception
of the Ottomans), pp. 17387, and Turtsite v blgarskata knizhnina, XV-XVIII vek (in
N. Aretov and N. Chernokozhev (eds), Balkanski identichnosti v blgarskata kultura ot
modernata epoha (XIX-XX vek) (Sofia: Otvoreno obshtestvo, 2001), pp. 11234.
8
See, for example, open denunciations of Islam as a faith and of those who convert
abandoning Christianity in the works of Bulgarian writers of the 18th century in
Angelov, Boniu, Svremennitsi na Paissii, vol. 1 (Sofia: BAN, 1963), pp. 5863 (Yosif
Bradati); vol. 2 (Sofia: BAN, 1964), pp. 197210 (Partenii Pavlovi), pp. 10912 (Pop
Todor Vrachanski), pp. 22728 (Theophan Rilski), pp. 14647 (Pop Yoan Vrachanski),
and others.
Bulgarian lands were subjected by the invaders, the seizure of churches

and monasteries and their transformation into mosques, about the
young and handsome lads who were pressed as janissaries and
Turkicized by force,9 the murder of Bulgarian notables. The only topic
he considers of interest in the Ottoman period is that of saints of
Bulgarian extraction, especially neo-martyrs. However, Paissii identi-
fies Greeks, the Ecumenical Patriarchs and Greek culture as the main
threat for Bulgarians, even more dangerous to Bulgarian-ness than
Turks and Islam, and the actual reason for most of the sufferings of
Bulgarians under the Turks.10 This line of thought was continued by
Hieromonk Spiridon, the author of another History of Bulgarians
(1792) who adds another important element which is to remain in the
national perception of the Ottoman period, namely, the second devas-
tation of Bulgaria. According to him it took place in 1522 during the
reign of Sultan Selim II, although Selim II actually reigned 156874.11
9
The theme of the blood levy, as devirme is called in the folklore of most Balkan
peoples, is invariably referred to in popular representations of Ottoman rule even
today. No surprise that most contain considerable inaccuracies and exaggerations.
10
See a facsimile and English translation of the so-called Zographou (or draft)
History in Paisy Hilendarski, A Slavo-Bulgarian History, K. Topalov, B. Hristova and
N.Voutova (eds) (Sofia: St Kliment Ohridski University Press, 2000), pp. 209, 23940,
and passim; Paissii Hilendarski, Istoriya slavianoblgarska. Prepis-belova na Paisieviya
avtograf (Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo Sv. Kliment Ohridski, 2003); Paissii
Hilendarski, Istoriya Slavianobolgarskaia. Prvi Sofroniev prepis ot 1765, B. Raykov
(ed.) (Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo, 1972), ff. 56r-v, 59v60r; Paissii Hilendarski, Istoriya
slavianobolgarskaya. 1771. Samokovski prepis (Sofia: Sdruzhenie Demokratichna
mrezha, Sdruzhenie Blgariya 681, 2004), pp. 17981, 19192. The latter two are fac-
simile editions of the first copies of the History respectively from 1765 and 1771. These
texts are uniformly present in the early copies of Paissiis History until the end of the
18th and beginning of the 19th century. None of them contains any lengthy exposs on
forced conversion, only the levy of boys as janissaries.
11
Contemporary Orthodox men of letters are divided in their assessment of Sultan
Selim I (15121520)s relations with his Christian subjects. Some of them describe him
as an oppressor who ordered the seizure of all churches in Istanbul and their transfor-
mation into mosques as well as the enforced conversion of all Christians, which was
neutralised by the Grand Vezir, the eyhlislm and the Patriarch; others speak of him
as a generous donor (ktitor) and protector of monasteries on Mount Athos and else-
where. Sultan Selim II (15661574) is known for the so-called sale of monasteries/
churches which financially ruined many of the Christian cult institutions. I shall not
discuss the plausibility of Spiridons claims here. The contradiction between the year
1522 and the actual reign of Sultan Selim II was noticed very early (Drinov, Marin,
Istorichesko osvetlenie vrh statistikata na narodnostite v iztochnata chast na
Blgarskoto kniazhestvo, Periodichesko spizanie na Blgarskoto knizhovno druzhestvo v
Sredets, vol. 7 (1884), pp. 124, vol. 8 (1884), pp. 6875). Authors who use this story as
part of their instrumentation, usually try to adjust/explain it with events that make
both sultans plausible.
The devastation was inspired by the evil Greek Patriarch who

explained to the sultan how rebellious and unreliable Bulgarians were.
It led to the conversion of many of the Bulgarian notables who chose to
preserve their position, the destruction of the churches, burning and
seizure of holy relics; the abolition of the Bulgarian Patriarchate; every
year each village was to send a boy and a girl to the palace of the
Sultan.12 Paissiis History actually served as a political platform in the
nation-building processes in the century after its compilation, and its
messages influence has lasted even longer. There are numerous copies
and remakes, in which the original text of Paissii was often comple-
mented with motifs from Spiridons, one of them invariably being a
version of the devastation.13 This served as the basis of the history text-
book, the so-called Tsarstvenik [A Book of Tsars] (1844) taught to gen-
erations of Bulgarians in the 19th century and moulding the mindset of
even more. Neither of the first two histories or their earliest copies,
however, contains anything specific on conversion. This phenomenon
is mentioned only in the context of the conquest (the notables) and of
the boys levied as janissaries and Turkicized by force.
The 19th century and especially the last decades of the Ottoman rule
in Bulgaria were marked by the fierce controversy between Bulgarians
and the Ecumenical Patriarchate mainly around the issue of the
establishment of an autocephalous Bulgarian ecclesiastical hierarchy.
It triggered the first attempts at the delineation of the parameters of
Bulgarian-ness. It is probably within this frame, in the 1830s, that for
the first time the origins of the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, or Pomaks
as they were known among their Orthodox Christian neighbours,
seem to have been brought up. The theme appears more and more per-
sistently in the remakes of Paissiis History. Around that time texts were
produced which, especially after their publication, exerted powerful
influence on the perception of conversion to Islam in the years to fol-
low.14 From the 1860s70s onwards, the time and the circumstances in
12
Spiridon Jeroshimonah, Istoriya vo krattse o bolgarskom narode slovenskom
1792 (facsimile edition with an Introduction by B. Hristova (Sofia: Gal-Iko, 1992).
The description is included at two places in the history with almost identical texts,
ff. 37v38r, 76r77r.
13
Later copyists did not always acknowledge Paissiis copyright, omitting his name
as the author and approaching the original rather creatively, adding new texts, explana-
tions, and even more anti-Greek pathos.
14
The so-called Gerov (by the name of the owner of the copy) remake of 1831
describes the Second Devastation of Bulgaria and the Turkicization of vast territories
populated by Bulgarians. Its author concludes that despite the claims of Greeks that
which this group had come into being were to become a core problem
for Bulgarian historiography of the Ottoman period and of the conver-
sion to Islam problmatique in particular. During the pre-1878 period
the most disputed and most influential source about conversion to
Islam in Bulgaria, the so-called Chronicle of [Pop] Metodi Draginov,
was published. It attributes the emergence of the Pomaks in the
Rhodopes to a campaign launched by the Ottoman rulers at the insti-
gation of the Greek metropolitan in Plovdiv, sometime in the 1660s,
and accompanied by bloodshed, persecution and destruction of all the
Christian cult buildings in the region. Actually the Pop Metodis story
narrates the fate of seven villages in the Chepino County. Very quickly,
however, it was projected onto the whole of the Rhodopes and Bulgaria
in general, becoming the most authoritative source for the conversion
to Islam of the local population.15 More or less simultaneously one of
the remakes of Paissiis History was published which includes a text on
the second devastation of Bulgaria, but attributing it definitely to the
reign of Selim I. In this version it is not just destruction but also a wave
of forced conversion of Bulgarians in the territories regarded as part of
the Bulgarian space at the time as well as in other parts of the Balkans.
Again it blamed the Greek Patriarch for having caused it on purpose
and directed the sultans rage at Bulgarians. The publications of the
texts transferred the theme from the sphere of mass media and debates
within Bulgarian society to the academic field. One may say that at the
Bulgarians converted to Islam to avoid paying the cizye, it was actually the Greek
Patriarch who had caused the massive campaign of violence undertaken by the
Ottoman authority which led to the Turkicization of the Rhodopes, Bosnia,
Herzegovina, Albania. The text was published first (1869) by N. Lamanskii in a study
on Bulgarian literature of the 18th century. I have used it as rendered in Marin Drinov,
Otets Paissii. Negovoto vreme, negovata istoriya i uchenitsite mu, Periodichesko spiza-
nie na BKD (Braila), vol. I, no 4 (1871), pp. 1519. In a later study (Istorichesko
osvetlenie, p. 8) Drinov attributes this remake to Neophyte Bozveli, one of the most
radical leaders of Bulgarian struggles for an autocephalous Bulgarian ecclesiastical
hierarchy, and a fierce opponent of Greek clergy and cultural influence. In a more
recent publication, however, its authorship is attributed to the monk Hariton
(see Stoyanov, Manio and Kodov, Hristo, Opis na slavianskite rkopisi v Sofiyskata
Narodna biblioteka, vol. 3 (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1964), pp. 450451). After the 1870s
the devastation is invariably dated to Sultan Selim Is rule.
15
Zahariev, Stefan, Geografiko-istoriko-statistichesko opisanie na Tatarpazard
zhishkata kaaza (Wien, 1870, facsimile edition and commentary, Sofia: OF, 1973),
pp. 6769. See also the Historical Notes from the beginning of the 19th century which
attribute the enforced Turkicization of the same region to 1620, Kodov, Hristo, Opis
na slavianskite rkopisi v Bibliotekata na Blgarskata Akademiya na Naukite (Sofia:
BAN, 1969), pp. 25658.
time the two stories (Pop Metodis and the Second Devastation) served
several purposes. In the first place, they were a powerful instrument in
the Bulgaro-Greek conflict, attributing the misfortunes of Bulgarians
almost uniquely to the high Greek clergy. Secondly, the faith was pre-
sumably changed under threat of death making the act probably more
acceptable to Christian Bulgarians. Without being that important from
the point of view of the development of professional historiography
per se the works produced in this period have had a lasting impact
on Bulgarian perceptions of conversion to Islam as imposed by
force and resulting from the deliberate Ottoman policy with respect
to their Christian (Bulgarian) subjects. In the years to follow the Pomak
Question16 and the violence, that was presumably applied by the
Ottoman state to force the Rhodope Bulgarians to convert to Islam
in particular, were to become an integral component of the academic
and the popular understanding of the Ottoman rule in Bulgaria as the
Turkish yoke.
2.18781944
After the establishment of the tributary Bulgarian Principality and the

autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia, and especially after their
unification (1885), the Pomak Question became very acute and, prob-
ably second to the Macedonian, one of the major fields engaging the
efforts of specialists in various fields. In both cases scores of profes-
sional scholars and local enthusiasts tried to prove the Bulgarian-ness
of the respective region and its population. Unlike Macedonia where
Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian military and ideological propagandas
clashed, the Rhodopes were regarded more as an internal problem. The
focus there was on proving the Bulgarian origins of a population that
hardly cared for that and was even hostile to such an idea. It was also
provoked by the unequivocal siding of Pomaks with the Ottoman state
during the April Uprising (1876), the Russo-Ottoman war (187778)
and after the establishment of Bulgarian statehood.17 For the Orthodox
16
Cf. in more detail on the Pomak theme in Bulgarian humanities Alexiev, Bozhidar,
Rodopskoto naselenie v blgarskata humanitaristika (in A. Zhelyazkova (ed.),
Miusiulmanskite obshtnosti na Balkanite i v Blgariya. Istoricheski eskizi (Sofia: IMIR,
1997), pp. 57112.
17
More than twenty Pomak villages which fell within the boundaries of Eastern
Rumelia refused to recognise the new authority and established a sort of autonomous
Christian Bulgarians, however, the Bulgarian roots of the (Bulgarian-

speaking) Muslims in the Rhodopes and the enforced conversion to
Islam of the Rhodope population by the Ottomans had turned into
a truism mainly through its constant repetition in the educational
system.
Very few works prepared during this period deal directly and exclu-
sively with the issue of Islamization. The re-construction of the events
was based mainly on the so-called domestic sources all of which by the
beginning of the 20th century had already been retrieved, published
and widely circulated in scholarly, popular and school texts. These nar-
ratives reiterate the main motifs of Pop Metodi Draginovs Chronicle and
The Second Devastation of Bulgaria, in particular the conversion of
Bulgarians in the Rhodopes at the point of the sword and initiated by
the Greek clergy.18 It is important to point out here that with the excep-
tion of one of the texts, preserved in an early 19th-century copy, the
rest seem to have been lost in various more or less fabulous circum-
stances and reproduced later by memory, as their publishers explain.19
entity, the so-called Pomak Republic, ruled by local notables. Maria Todorova
(Identity (Trans)Formation among Bulgarian Muslims, in B. Crawford and
R. Lipschutz (eds), The Myth of Ethnic Conflict: Politics, Economics, and Cultural
Violence, vol. 98 (1998), p. 476, University of California, International Area Studies
Digital Collection, Research Series # 98/ 1998, http://repositories.cdlib.org/uciaspubs/
research/98, accessed 10 April 2008) rightly points to the fact that the Pomak Republic
has so far escaped the attention of Bulgarian scholars. See for a few exceptions Jireek,
Konstantin, Ptuvaniya po Blgariya, trans. from the first Czech edition (1888) by
Stoyan Argirov, E. Buzhashki and V. Velkov (eds) (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1974),
pp. 46877, and the titles referred to in Todorovas article. Despite his Czech nationality
I have included Jireeks publications not only because of their authority and influence
on Bulgarian scholarship but also because of his position of Minister of Education and
Director of the National Library in the young Bulgarian Principality. See also Lory,
Bernard, Ahmed Aa Tamralijata: the Last Derebey of the Rhodopes (in K. Karpat
(ed.), The Turks of Bulgaria, the history, culture and political fate of a minority (Istanbul:
The Isis Press, 1990), pp. 193201.
18
Interestingly the central role of the Greek high clergy gradually lost its original
meaning and, especially in the next period it was the Ottomans who occupied unques-
tionably the role of the main protagonist in carrying out the campaign.
19
These include: Popkonstantinov, Hristo, Pisma ot Rodopite, Svoboda,
no 1070/7.04.1893; Nachov, Nacho, List ot hronika, nameren v s. Goliamo Belovo,
Blgarski pregled, vol. 5, no 2 (1898), pp. 14951, published also in Kodov, Opis, 256
58, who attributes it to the beginning of the 19th century; another version of the
latter story, whose original was lost and reproduced by memory, is published in
Mutafchiev, Petr, Stari gradishta i drumove iz dolinite na Striama i Topolnitsa
(in Idem, Izbrani proizvedeniya, vol. 1 (1st ed., 1915, 2nd ed, Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo,
1973), pp. 36668; third version is published by an anonymous correspondent
(probably Stefan Zahariev) in the newspaper Bulgaria, II, no 65, of 15.06. 1860
Only at a much later time was the fact that we do not have access to any
contemporary confirmation of the events considered a defect with
regard to their reliability. The narratives were immediately integrated
into the set of historical sources used in Bulgarian historiography to
explain and define conversion to Islam and the Ottoman period in
general, and in political discourse to justify the policy with regard to
Bulgarian-speaking Muslims.
During the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century began also
the collection of folklore in the Rhodopes. More or less simultaneously
the first doubts were voiced as to the reliability of folk songs and tales
as sources for the reconstruction of the past events, and of the cam-
paigns of conversion by force in particular. It is worth mentioning here
a remark of K. Jireek when discussing the influence of a local history
book on the tales circulating mainly among the Christians in that
region: The influence of written literature on the legends in the
[Balkan] Peninsula is far greater than is usually recognized.20 In paral-
lel, outside the mainstream historical research, a specific trend devel-
oped. Driven by motives sometimes at variance with the official policy,
the Rhodope enthusiasts, as I would call the local lay historians,
referred to the decisive role of violence during the conquest and in the
17th century, too, but also to a process of creeping Islamization, moti-
vated by economic incentives, which had started with the conquest in
the 14th and continued through to the 19th and even the beginning of
the 20th century. All of them accentuate the traditionally good rela-
tions between Muslims and Christians in the Rhodopes and try to
downplay the moments of open hostility, such as the active participa-
tion of Pomaks in the suppression of the April Uprising in 1876, as well
(also unknown original). Hristo Kodov points to the similarities among the texts
and concludes that the possible interactions and influences need yet to be studied.
See on this circle of texts also Angelov, Boniu, Letopisni schineniya v staroblgarskata
literatura, Staroblragska literatura, vol. 15 (1984), pp. 6073. Somewhat independent
but also related to the Rhodopes is Poptodorov, Anastas, Iz minaloto na Rodopa.
Istoricheski belezhki za poturchvaneto na rodopskite blgari, Rodopski pregled, vol. 2
(1931), no 1, pp. 1115, no 3, pp. 5962. The latter are published as a body of text in
Nachev, Ventseslav and Fermandzhiev, Nikola, Pizahme da se znae. Pripiski i letopisi
(Sofia: OF, 1984), pp. 28386. Cf. also an overview in Aleksiev, Bozhidar, Rodopskoto
naselenie, pp. 7990.
20
Jireek, Konstantin, Ptuvaniya po Blgariya, p. 456. Less explicit but still existent
were the suspicions with regard to folkloric evidence among some of the very local
enthusiasts who collected it. See for example, Popkonstantinov, Hristo, Chepino. Edno
blgarsko kraishte v severozapadnite razkloneniya na Rodopskite planini, Sbornik za
narodni umotvoreniya i nauchna knizhnina, vol. 15 (1898), pp. 23031.
as the acts of retaliation on the part of Christian Bulgarians during the

war of 187778 and the Balkan Wars of 191213.21
By the end of the 19th century the official name for the Bulgarian-
speaking Muslims had become Bulgarian Muhammadans (along with
the informal Pomaks, Ahriyans,22 and several others of lesser popular-
ity), manifesting the claim on them as an integral part of the Bulgarian
nation and the attempt at overcoming the religious difference by stress-
ing the common language identifier. No doubt it also aimed at counter-
acting any possible claims that the neighbours (Greece, the Ottoman
empire/Turkey, Yugoslavia) might raise with respect to the group.23
This term has remained in use until the present day; only after the
political changes in Bulgaria is it gradually being replaced by Bulgarian/
Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. The imposition by force of Islam in the
past had come to be regarded as a justification for the enforced restora-
tion of their Bulgarian-ness. During the First Balkan War this under-
standing triggered a futile campaign for their re-conversion to
Christianity undertaken by the Bulgarian authorities.24 The attempts at
the re-appropriation of Pomaks continued also later, admittedly more
21
Dechev, Vasil, Minaloto na Chepelare. Prinos za istoriyata na Rodopa, vol. 1
(Sofia: Gladston, 1928; 2nd ed., Plovdiv: Hr. G. Danov, 1978), vol. 2 (18781900)
(Sofia: Pechatnitsa Andreev i Jotov, 1938); Shishkov, Stoiu, Blgaro-Mohamedanite
(Pomatsi). Istoriko-zemepisen i narodouchen pregled s obrazi (Plovdiv: Trgovska
pechatnitsa, 1936; reprint in Shishkov, Stoiu Izbrani proizvedeniya (Plovdiv: Hristo G.
Danov, 1965), pp. 169282.
22
See the analysis of the term and its explanation in Mnage, Victor, On the
Ottoman word Ahriyan/ Ahryan, Archivum Ottomanicum, vol. 1 (1969), pp. 197212,
who summarises also the views of Bulgarian historians and linguists.
23
See the analysis of the various names of the group in Todorova, Maria, Identity
(Trans)Formation, pp. 48088. The other term worth discussing is Mohammedans
which reflects a combination of ignorance about and disparaging attitude to Islam.
This can be traced back to the very beginning of the attempts of understanding
Islam in the Christian world, which I shall not discuss here. In this respect Bulgarian
humanities probably followed the existing terminology in international scholarship,
although the heritage of the long-standing tradition of naming the Muslim other in
the Orthodox Christian clerical polemic writing cannot be dismissed, too. It is interest-
ing to note here that Jireek used the terms Muslim Bulgarians (instead of
Mohammedans) and Pomaks interchangeably. Jireek, Konstantin Pomashki pesni ot
Chepino, Periodichesko spizanie na BKD v Sredets, vol. 8 (1884), p. 78.
24
Konstantinov, Yulian, An Account of Pomak Conversions in Bulgaria (1912
1990) (in G. Seewann (ed.), Minderheitenfragen in Sdosteuropa (Mnchen: Sdost-
Institut, R. Oldenborg Verlag, 1992), pp. 34359; Georgiev, Velichko and Trifonov,
Stayko, Pokrstvaneto na blgarite mohamedani 19121913. Dokumenti (Sofia: Prof.
Marin Drinov Publishing House, 1995); Eldarov, Svetlozar, Blgarskata Pravoslavna
Tsrkva i blgarite miusiulmani 18781944 (in R. Gradeva (ed.), Istoriya na miusiul-
manskata kultura po blgarskite zemi (Sofia: IMIR, 2001), pp. 592639.
carefully, without openly attacking their affiliation to Islam, with the

activities of the Rodina [Motherland] Society in the 1930s to mid-1940s
which targeted the attire, some of the Muslims customs and eventually
their names, the long-term goal being their full integration into the
Bulgarian nation.25
During the pre-WWII period two explanations for the emergence of
the large Muslim communities in Bulgaria became deeply entrenched
in Bulgarian historiography and in popular perception. One of them,
based largely on descriptions in the published Ottoman and Byzantine
chronicles, marginal notes in manuscripts left by contemporaries,
sought the reasons for the presence of the Turks, especially in the east-
ern parts of Bulgaria, in the massive devastation during the conquest.
The depopulation caused by the extinction and the flight of the indig-
enous Bulgarians had opened space for the settlement of Muslims,
mainly nomads from Anatolia, significantly contributing to the change
in the ratio between Christians and Muslims in the plains. Through the
authoritative writing of C. Jireek26 it became an indelible component
of Bulgarian assessment of the Ottoman rule. Without being explicitly
expressed in this period,27 at least not in publications accessible to me,
this gradually came to be regarded as historical grounds for the policy
of negotiating with the Ottoman empire and the Republic of Turkey
and encouraging several emigration waves of Turks during the post-
1878 period. This continued also in the first two decades of the com-
munist regime.
A problem which is closely related to the issue of the spread of Islam,
brought up towards the end of this period but to develop in the next, is
the ethnic composition of the population of another contested region,
the Dobrudzha and Northeast Bulgaria in general. The origins of the
25
The Society was founded by Bulgarian-speaking Muslim intelligentsia which
supported the pro-Bulgarian evolution of the group. Very soon its activities were sup-
ported semi-officially by various central and local state bodies. On Rodina see Hristov,
Hristo, and Karamandzhukov, Alexander, Druzhba Rodina i vzrozhdenskoto dviz-
henie v Rodopa, 19371947. Dokumenti, Rodopski sbornik, vol. 7 (1995); Alexiev,
Bozhidar, Rodopskoto naselenie, p. 75, and the bibliography referred to in these
studies. See also the discussion about the Society and the movement on the pages of
Rodopi Journal, vols 25 (1990) and 26 (1991).
26
Jireek, Constantine, Geschichte der Bulgarien (Prag, 1876), p. 44. Cf. on Jireeks
role in building this image in Dimitrov, Strashimir, Ottoman Studies in Bulgaria,
pp. 4445.
27
This argumentation, however, was officially used in the political discourse in
198489.
Gagaouzes, today a small Turkish-speaking Christian group, were to

become another focus of discussion. It involved also international
scholarship. In brief, the bone of contention was, and still is, around the
question of their roots - whether they might be considered descendants
of the Seljuk prince Izz al-Din Kaykaus II and his followers who after
1261 were settled by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos
into the Dobrudzha, and subsequently adopted Christianity, or of
(proto)Bulgarians and other Turkic-speaking tribes who invaded the
region from the North during the pre-Ottoman times and preserved
their specifics all through the Middle Ages.28
The other one aimed at explaining the origins of Pomaks. The emer-
gence of the group was attributed to conversion carried out by the
Ottoman authorities with brutal force mainly in the 17th century but
also earlier, during the conquest and at the time of Sultan Selim I. It is
based exclusively on the so-called domestic narratives whose authen-
ticity had never been seriously challenged in the pre-1944 period29 and
which, together with the folklore, were widely used in Bulgarian
humanities in the interpretation of the nature and the course of the
conversion. Another important trend, mainly in the ethnographic and
folkloric studies on the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, which often com-
plemented the historical research, aimed at proving the common
ancestry of Muslims and Christians in the region through the similari-
ties in their customs, folklore and material culture. Interestingly, the
thesis that a process of gradual and voluntary conversion to Islam had
begun simultaneously with the conquest and continued throughout
the Ottoman rule30 gradually waned in historical writing. The study of
28
See Mutafchiev, Petr, Mnimoto preselenie na seldzhushkite turtsi v Dobrudzha
prez XIII vek (in Idem, Izbrani proizvedeniya, vol. 2 (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1973),
which was also published in German, together with a supporting article by Herbert
Duda (in 1943), who both insisted that it was Turkic tribes from the North rather than
from the South. At this early stage the debate involved also Tadeusz Kowalski, Paul
Wittek and other scholars.
29
See Drinov, Marin, Istorichesko osvetlenie, where he discusses at length some
inconsistencies in Paissiis remake of 1831 but finally concludes that it must be based
on real facts. See also Cholakov, Romeo, Pop Metodievii letopisen razkaz za poturch-
vaneto na Chepinskite blgari, Duhovna kultura 24 (1925), pp. 8196, with a revised
critical edition of the narrative. He subjects the text to a meticulous linguistic analysis
and concludes that its language is actually 19th-century one rather than the assumed
17th century. Despite his doubts as to the authenticity of the language he does not raise
doubts as to the authenticity of the text itself.
30
See for example Jireek, Konstantin, Ptuvaniya po Blgariya, p. 466, who
relies for this conclusion on indirect evidence from the beadrolls of the Bachkovo
Monastery.
conversion, and of the Pomak Question, developed independently from

and outside the first publications based on Ottoman documents which
focused on Ottoman land ownership and on the status of non-Muslims
and their institutions. The violence of the Ottoman conquerors was
what remained in the core of popular and academic understanding of
the period now universally31 described as a yoke.32
3.19441989
After WWII studies in the Ottoman period, and humanities in general,

developed in the context of the Cold War and the rivalry between
NATO and the Warsaw Pact, between the capitalist world and the
socialist camp to which Turkey and Bulgaria then respectively
belonged. This fact and especially state-supported propaganda
enhanced the already existing suspiciousness, if not animosity to
Turkey as the heir of the Ottoman state, and the fear that the Republic
of Turkey might use the Muslim minority as her fifth column in
Bulgaria. Yet, at least officially until the late 1950s-early 1960s, educa-
tion, publication of books and newspapers, and theatre performances
in Turkish were tolerated in the country. The Rodina Society was con-
demned as a fascist organization and Pomaks who had been pressed
by its members to change their names and customs were allowed to
return to their traditional lifestyle. The relative relaxation in the politi-
cal climate after 1956, when a campaign for the condemnation of the
Stalinist cult of personality was launched was, however, paralleled by a
visible change in the rhetoric and real policy versus the Muslim minor-
ity. The Turkish-language educational and cultural institutions were
gradually closed. An experience all Bulgarian citizens Christians,
Muslims and Jews - shared was the total state control over their reli-
gious institutions. The Muslim minorities, however, were subjected to
an even stronger pressure and stricter control which began under the
guise of modernization campaigns, against traditional attire and way of
31
With the exception of the few specialised works of the Ottomanist specialists
Glb Glbov, Boris Nedkov, Joseph Kabrda, published in this period in Bulgarian
reviews.
32
Apart from Paissii of Hilandars History a very powerful factor which fixed this
term for generations of Bulgarians is the seminal novel Pod igoto/Under the Yoke
(published first in 1894 and undergoing dozens of editions subsequently) by Ivan
Vazov, the so-called patriarch of Bulgarian literature, which was immediately included
in the curriculum of Bulgarian schools.
life, and of an aggressive atheism. In the next decades the political

authorities undertook several steps to enhance the unity of the social-
ist (Bulgarian) nation, reaching a peak with the change of names of the
Pomaks in the late 1960s and beginning of 1970s, and of the Turks, in
198489, called in the contemporary rhetoric rebirth or revival pro-
cess, referring to the presumed identification of Pomaks and Turks
with their own deep roots in the Bulgarian (Christian) nation and
sudden urge to return to them.33
Each of these campaigns was prepared by and in its turn provoked
an even greater spate of publications which were expected to justify the
government policy in the eyes of Bulgarians and abroad (especially
where Turks were concerned). The majority of them had propaganda
goals and are interesting mainly as a source about the views and atti-
tudes taught to generations of Bulgarians at school, at the university,
through the mass media.34 By contrast, although within limits imposed
by the communist regime and/or self-censure, historians and other
specialists in the humanities have been far from unanimous on many
issues related to the mechanisms of and the reasons for the spread of
Islam and in the assessment of the Ottoman period in general.
One of the most important factors for the emergence of this diver-
sitywas the discovery of the potential of the Ottoman documentation
and the development of Ottoman studies worldwide, Bulgarian his
toriography of the 15th18th century-Balkans having already despite
the ideological restrictions - become an integral element of them.
Several collections of documents about the Ottoman period appeared
33
These campaigns were undertaken with all the power of the totalitarian state and
large-scale involvement of police and armed forces leading to casualties, imprison-
ment, displacement of groups of population, and finally to the exodus of Turks in the
summer of 1989. Officially the religion was not attacked but the name-changing cam-
paign was accompanied by desecration of graveyards, closing/destruction of mosques
or just of their minarets. There is vast literature on these processes in Bulgaria and
abroad which I shall not discuss here. For more recent publications on the state policy
to Bulgarian Muslims see in particular, Gruev, Mihail, Mezhdu petolchkata i polume-
setsa. Blgarite miusiulmani i politicheskiyat rezhim (19441959) (Sofia: IK Kota,
2003), which also gives a perspective on the developments in the next period; and on
Turks, Stoyanov, Valeri, Turskoto naselenie v Blgariya mezhdu poliusite na etnicheskata
politika (Sofia: Lik, 1998), pp. 94233.
34
Among the most representative with a view to the name-changing campaigns
against Pomaks and Turks in Bulgaria are: Vassilev, Kiril, Rodopskite blgari moha
medani (Plovdiv: Hristo G. Danov, 1961); Yankov, Georgi, Dimitrov, Strashimir and
Zagorov, Orlin (eds), Problemi na razvitieto na blgarskata narodnost i natsiya (Sofia:
Blgarska Akademiya na Naukite, 1988); I. Stefanov (ed.), Demografski i etnosotsialni
problemi v Iztochnite Rodopi (Plovdiv: Hristo G. Danov, 1989).
containing among others also a number of newly-translated Ottoman

sources addressing in particular the legal frame and the realities in
which Christians (Bulgarians) lived in the Ottoman state. In some,
in line with Marxist ideology, the accent shifts to economic and fiscal
pressures as a factor for conversion,35 an innovation in the hitherto
uniform representation of Islamization as the result of a deliberate
campaign and violence in the first place. In others the stress is still on
the de-nationalization of Bulgarians as a special goal in the domestic
policy of the Ottoman state.36
In parallel began the solid academic publications of series of Ottoman
sources. After the pioneering work of H. nalck,37 scores of tapu tahrir
registers relating to the functioning of the timar system and the
Ottoman agrarian regime in general were translated in the Balkan
countries (Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia). In Bulgaria, where schol-
ars relied exclusively on the local archives, the primary objective was
the study of the socio-economic system. However, their value, espe-
cially that of the detailed (mufassal) versions,38 was soon appreciated
also with a view to research both on conversion and the settlement of
Turkic groups in the Balkans.39 Different types of Ottoman documents
relating to the collection of the cizye, the (poll-)tax on non-Muslims,
were also used to fill the blank spots in the available documentary basis
35
Todorov, Nikolai (ed.), Polozhenieto na blgarskiya narod pod tursko robstvo.
Dokumenti i materiali (Sofia: BAN, 1953).
36
Petrov, Petr (ed.), Asimilatorskata politika na turskite zavoevateli. Sbornik ot
dokumenti za pomohamedanchvaniya i poturchvaniya (xv-xix vek) (Sofia: Izdatelstvo
na BKP, 1962 (1st ed.), 1964 (2nd ed.); idem (ed.), Po sledite na nasilieto. Dokumenti i
materiali za nalagane na isliama, vols 12 (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 19871988).
37
nalck, Halil, Hicr 835 Tarihli Suret-i Defter-i Sancak-i Arvanid (Ankara: TTK
1954).
38
There is near to universal agreement in Ottoman scholarship that Abdullah as
patronym would normally signify a new convert. Indeed, despite the fact that it was
also in use as a given name its popularity is incompatible with the number of people,
men and women who had some Abdullah as their father. This makes me think that
even for the late 17th and in the 18th centuries it remains a rather solid identification
marker of a convert. See on the specialized use of Abdullah, Stoyanov, Valeri, Lichnite
imena i prozvishteto Abdullah v osmanoturskite dokumenti, Istoricheski pregled,
vol. 42, no 1 (1986), pp. 5157; Venedikova, Katerina, Sinovete na Abdullah, Blgarski
folklor, vol. 22, no 34 (1996), pp. 420.
39
It is impossible to list here all publications of tapu tahrir defters and registers of
various population groups. Probably the most representative among them is the series
published by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Izvori za blgarskata istoriya, vols.: 10
(B. Tsvetkova and V. Mutafchieva (eds), Sofia: BAN, 1964); 13 (N. Todorov and
B. Nedkov (eds), Sofia: BAN, 1966); 16 (B. Tsvetkova and A. Razboynikov (eds), Sofia:
BAN, 1972); 20 (B. Tsvetkova (ed.), Sofia: BAN, 1974).
for research in the field, mainly for the 17th century for which
Bulgarianscholars did not at the time dispose of any better material.40
One of the most interesting collections of Ottoman documents about
the Islamization process was prepared in the pre-1989 period.41
Containing selections of kad documents about manumission of slaves,
fetvas of Ottoman eyhlislms, applications by new converts for their
due allocations (the so-called kisve-bahas petitions),42 and payrolls of
Janissary units, it brought to light aspects of the phenomenon that had
been rarely, if at all, touched upon previously. Leaving aside the politi-
cal circumstances in which it had been conceived and prepared, this
volume remains an invaluable source which has inspired further stud-
ies in the field after the political changes in the country.
While considerably increasing the possibilities for a more complex
and nuanced analysis of the process of conversion and the role of the
Ottoman state in the spread of Islam, these sources have their limita-
tions which became the subject of formal and, more often, informal
debates. Thus the major problems in the use of the cizye registers are
seen in the lack of a fixed definition of the basic tax unit, hane,43 which
makes it unsuitable for statistical exploitation, especially when there
are no possibilities of crosschecking with other complementary con-
temporaneous sources. Since they cover only the non-Muslim popula-
tion, they do not allow the comparing of developments within them
with the processes among the Muslims. Hence, the decrease in the
number of the tax units may not be attributed uniquely to conversion
to Islam unless this is explicitly proven. It was soon discovered that the
timar registers do not cover the whole population of any district,
See Dimitrov, Strashimir, Grozdanova, Elena and Andreev, Stefan (eds), Izvori za
40
blgarskata istoriya, vol. 26 (Sofia: BAN, 1986); Todorov, Nikolai and Velkov, Asparuh,
Situation dmographique de la Peninsule balkanique (fin du XVe s. debut du XVIe s.)
(Sofia: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1988); Andreev, Stefan and Dimitrov, Strashimir
(eds), Turski dokumenti za blgarskata istoriya. Arhivite govoriat (Sofia: Glavno
Upravlenie na Arhivite, 2001).
41
Kalitsin, Mariya, Velkov, Asparuh, and Radushev, Evgeniy (eds), Osmanski izvori
za isliamizatsionnite protsesi na Balkanite (XVI-XIXv.) (Sofia: NBKM and Institut po
balkanistika, 1990).
42
These documents were introduced in academic research in Bulgaria by Antonina
Zheliazkova in her PhD thesis Etno-religiozni promeni v chast ot Zapadnobalkanskite
provintsii na Osmanskata imperiya prez XV-XVIII vek (Sofia: Institute for Balkan
Studies, 1983). See its reworked version, Razprostranenie na isliama v Zapadnobalkan
skite zemi pod osmanska vlast, XV-XVIII vek (Sofia: Institute of Balkan Studies, 1990).
43
Grozdanova, Elena, Za danchnata edinitsa hane v demografskite prouchvaniya,
Istoricheski pregled, vol. 28, no 3 (1972), pp. 8191.
asspecial defters were compiled for the vakf reaya and for various spe-
cial categories of tax-payers. In that case, even an available series of
detailed registers would not be sufficient to assess the process. Only in
the 1990s, after the political changes in Bulgaria and the agreement for
exchange of documents between Bulgarian and Turkish archives were
the advantages of the detailed avarz registers discovered by Bulgarian
scholarship, in the first place the fact that they contain data not only
about all tax-payers in a given settlement but also about the tax-exempt
members of the ulema, the bureaucracy and the military, and for the
17th and early 18th century. However, there are settlements which were
exempt from these taxes and for this reason fell out of the registrations.
The conclusion is that any calculations with respect to numbers of con-
verts should be treated very carefully. Registers can provide some basis
for tracing trends, but are unsuitable for comparative statistical use,
and while they give some idea about the possible course of the process
they certainly do not go beyond that.44 For the fetvas, it is the common
problem of whether they reflect real-life situations or more often were
just theoretical speculations in which muftis showed their learnedness;
how representative the collections of the eyhlislms are with regard
to their own legal production; the principles on which the selections
were prepared; were their opinions applied in the everyday practice of
the Sharia courts. Certainly their potential with respect to the analysis
of conversion may not be dismissed either. Sometimes they provide
unique glimpses of practices and their interpretation by the higher
legal authorities in the Ottoman empire. The applications also raise
many questions which do not seem to have been answered as yet: who
filed them, the converts themselves or Ottoman officials, and in the lat-
ter case, how reliable they are with a view to the facts they contain;
what people actually turned to the central authorities with them, in
short, how representative they are about the personality and real moti-
vation of the (voluntary) converts, and about conversion in general.45
44
Unfortunately most of the authors who attempt an evaluation do not explain the
limitations of their sources. It is only in the last twenty years or so that some of them
describe their methods as quantitative. See the reflections of Grozdanova, Elena,
Bulgarian Ottoman Studies, pp. 1056. A solid analysis of the advantages and disad-
vantages of this approach to Islamization as a process is still lacking.
45
See the reviews of Minkov, Anton, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans, based
almost uniquely on this source, by Rossitsa Gradeva (Islam and Christian-Muslim
Relations, vol. 17, no 3 (2006), pp. 37677), Tijana Krsti (JESHO, vol. 50, no 1 (2007),
pp. 8890), and Nikolay Antov (MITEJMES, vol. 7 (Spring 2007), pp. 21116, which
raise many questions with regard to the uncritical use of this source in the attempt to
With all the disadvantages which one sees today, at the time, the
publication of Ottoman registers led to a qualification of the existing
views on the share of the various mechanisms of spread of Islam. They
revealed a relatively limited settlement of Muslims, mainly in the first
two centuries after the conquest and in the eastern parts of the Balkan
Peninsula. The Ottoman documentation showed also a process which
was gaining momentum - the Islamization of the local population. This
provided sufficient grounds for the launching of a historiographical
thesis new to Bulgaria, namely that the growth of the Muslim commu-
nity in the Balkans should be considered the result of individual vol-
untary conversion, rather than of colonization of Muslims or mass
campaigns of direct violence over large groups in various parts of the
region.46
Interestingly, the so-called catastrophe thesis evolved further on the
basis of the Ottoman registers, too. Inherited to some extent from
the previous period, it found its most developed version in a book of
H. Gandev.47 The author estimated that during the conquest Bulgarians
had undergone a demographic collapse having lost nearly one third
of their total number (around 680,000 people) while the vacated large
territories in the plains were filled by Turkish settlers. His methodology
and conclusions were refuted with solid academic arguments48 but
its impact can be tracked down even to the present day, mainly in pop-
ular writing and media which address and influence wide circles of
Bulgarian society. His arguments are summarized in various academic
and popular histories, too, mainly with the purpose of showing the
destruction and devastation during the conquest. Whether due to the
new political imperatives after the 1960s, aiming at the assimilation
of the Muslim population rather than at its expulsion, or as the result of
reconstruct the process of Islamization, especially when it is not compared to and

complemented with other contemporary sources.
46
Todorov, Nikolai, Za demografskoto sstoyanie na Balkanskiya poluostrov
prez XV-XVI vek, Godishnik na Sofiyskiya Universitet-Filosofsko-Istoricheski Fakultet,
vol. 53, no 2 (1960), pp. 193225. For Balkan towns in particular, idem, Po niakoi
vprosi na balkanskiya grad prez XV-XVII vek, Istoricheski pregled, vol. 18, no 1 (1962),
pp. 3258; idem, The Balkan City, 14001900 (Seattle: University of Washington, 1983),
Chapter 3, pp. 4475.
47
Gandev, Hristo, Blgarskata narodnost prez XV vek. Demografsko i etnografsko
izsledvane (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1972, 2nd ed., 1989).
48
Mutafchieva, Vera, Za tochnite metodi v oblastta na istoricheskata demografiya,
Istoricheski pregled, vol. 29, no 4 (1973), pp. 13441; Dimitrov, Strashimir, Mezrite i
demografskiyat kolaps na blgarskata narodnost prez XV vek, Vekove, vol. 2, no 6
(1973), pp. 5065.
the developments in Ottoman studies and reflecting the findings on

the basis of the Ottoman sources, or, most likely, for both reasons, the
dominant line in research on the emergence of the Muslim com
munities focused more and more on conversion to Islam as the most
important channel for the expansion of the Muslim community.
The Ottoman registers allowed the preparation of studies about
larger or smaller districts through the centuries which try to quantify
the process with the help of the mufassal tahrir registers, or just the
losses for Christianity, on the basis of the cizye registers, measuring
their weight against the colonizing Muslims or simply establishing the
general trend of decrease of the number of the Christian hanes.49 The
amassed vast empirical material revealed that the spread of Islam was a
process which had started with the conquest and lasted until literally
the very end of the Ottoman rule in all parts of Bulgaria. Though with
some regional variations in terms of scale, pace and factors, it was
established that its peak was reached between the late 16th and the
mid-18th century, after which it went in decline.
Since the late 1960s one of the major discussions in Bulgarian
historiography of the Ottoman period had focused on the methods
of Islamization: whether it was the result of massive campaigns enforc-
ing Islam or a gradual process including acts of various degrees of
voluntariness. It was provoked by an article of S. Dimitrov about the
spread of Islam in a small area in the Rhodopes whose population
today is predominantly Pomak.50 Despite its scanty source basis, mainly
49
Koleva, Elena, Istoricheski svedeniya za naselenieto na Plovdivskiya kray prez
perioda na osmanskoto robstvo, Izvestiya na muzeite v Yuzhna Blgariya, vol. 3 (1977),
pp. 163174; Grozdanova, Elena, Demografski promeni v Rusensko prez vtorata
polovina na XVII vek, Vekove, vol. 4, no 5 (1975), pp. 6168; Eadem, Za demograf-
skoto sstoyanie na Karnobatsko i Aytosko prez XVII-XVIII v., Istoricheski pregled,
vol. 32, no 6 (1976), pp. 8188; Eadem, Promeni v poselishtnata mrezha i demografs-
kiya oblik na Elhovskiya kray prez XV-XVIII v., Istoricheski Pregled, vol. 35, no 6
(1979), pp. 10821; Eadem, Promeni v demografskiya oblik na blgarskite zemi prez
XVII v., Istoricheski pregled, vol. 41, no 7 (1985), pp. 2037; Grozdanova, Elena and
Gruevski, Petko, Naselenieto na Petrich i Petrichka kaza spored poimenen registr ot
1665, Istoricheski pregled, vol. 38, no 4 (1982), pp. 11425, and others of E. Grozdanova
on her own and in collaboration with other scholars. The peak of this trend of research
on Islamization can be seen in Grozdanova, Elena, Blgarskata narodnost prez XVII
vek. Demografsko izsledvane (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1989), which is based mainly on
cizye registers. Having analysed the data the author reaches the conclusion that the
drop in the number of cizye hanes should be attributed in the first place to conversion
to Islam by direct or indirect coercion although she considers also other possible rea-
sons such as natural dizasters, famine, plagues.
50
Dimitrov, Strashimir, Demografski otnosheniya i pronikvane na isliama v
Zapadnite Rodopi i dolinata na Mesta prez XV-XVII v., Rodopski sbornik, vol. 1 (1965),
pp. 63114.
synoptic (icmal) tapu tahrir and cizye registers from the Ottoman
archive in Sofia, this ground-breaking study demonstrated clearly that
Islam had been adopted there gradually, in the course of several centu-
ries after the conquest and continued until the 18th century. Without
explicitly questioning the validity of the official model, it challenged
the stories in the so-called domestic sources where violence was the
single reason for the conversion of the Rhodope Muslims. Further
research, especially a critical linguistic analysis of Pop Metodis text,
supported these findings from a different perspective.51 Doubts were
raised with regard to the authenticity of all Bulgarian narrative sources
which deal with administratively imposed Islam by mass campaigns
and violence.52 Views on the Pomak question split, ranging from total
disagreement with the mass conversion in the violence theory, to a
critical approach to a particular source but still considering it an echo
of real events, and to its staunch defence and full acceptance. The
Rhodopes remained a focus of academic research for historians,
archaeologists, anthropologists and folklorists. Most studies were
engaged in proving again and again the common roots of the Muslim
and Christian Bulgarian-speaking population of the region.53
During this period Dobrudzha (in north-eastern Bulgaria), as a
region and population, continued to attract scholarly attention, the
accent being on establishing the historical roots of the significant
51
Todorov, Iliya, Letopisniyat razkaz na pop Metodi Draginov, Staroblgarska
literatura, vol. 16 (1984), pp. 5679. In the view of specialists in the field of Bulgarian
letters, the language of the texts in question dates from the 19th century, but all of them
must have been very unprofessionally copied from an earlier original. Thus they still
may reflect more or less real events. See a critical assessment also in Zhelyazkova,
Antonina, The problem of the authenticity of some domestic sources on the
Islamization of the Rhodopes, deeply rooted in Bulgarian historiography, Etudes bal-
kaniques, vol. 26, no 4 (1990), pp. 10511, which discusses weaknesses and inconsist-
encies of the so-called domestic sources for the conversion to Islam of the Rhodope
population from historical point of view. The latter article was actually written and
circulated among a wide circle of colleagues in the years before 1989. It was also read
as a paper at a conference in 1988. The political rgimes goals with the name-changing
campaign, however, prevented its earlier publication.
52
See for example the discussion on the pages of the Rodopi Journal which engaged
professional and local historians, and in particular Marinov, Petr, Istini i zabludi,
vol. 12, no 11 (1977), pp. 2832.
53
One of the fora in which these findings by scholars from central and provin-
cial academic institutions as well as documents were published, is the Rodopski
Sbornik,whose last volumes were published after 1989. More popular versions of these
articles as well as some contributions of non-academic authors were made known to
a wider audience on the pages of Rodopi, sometimes as part of important discussions,
but in the period before 1989 mainly to convey the official views to the readers in the
region.
Turkish-speaking presence in some parts of the region.54 The hypoth-

esis of P. Mutafchiev was further developed by S. Dimitrov who consid-
ered the Turks of North-eastern Bulgaria the descendants of the (proto)
Bulgarians and other Turkic-speaking groups who settled on the terri-
tory of medieval Bulgaria and who had remained a separate entity
throughout the Middle Ages until the conquest. In his view the linguis-
tic proximity facilitated their faster adoption of Islam, while those who
did not eventually formed the Gagaouz group.55 He, too, opposed the
historicity of the settlement of Seljuk Turks on the territory of contem-
porary Bulgaria.56 Some historians and ethnographers saw the origins
of the Kzlba who live in the eastern parts of Bulgaria also in the
(proto)Bulgarians.57
The issues of the conversion of local population and the settlement
of colonists by the Ottoman authorities at the time of the conquest, and
their respective contribution to the emergence of the Muslim groups
in Bulgaria, became also an area of indirect debate between Turkish
and Bulgarian scholars, an indication of the political implications
invested in the scholarly discussion. According to some of the Bulgarian
specialists, and the political authority behind them, the major role of
Islamization was sufficient to justify the political act of name-changing,
54
Vasileva, Margarita, Demografski protsesi v Dobrudzha ot kraya na XIV vek do
40-te godini na XX vek (in D. Todorov (ed), Dobrudzha: etnografski, folklorni i ezikovi
prouchvaniya (Sofia: BAN, 1974), pp. 921; Dimitrov, Strashimir, Km demografskata
istoriya na Dobrudzha prez XV-XVII v., Izvestiya na Blgarskoto istorichesko dru
zhestvo, vol. 35 (1983), pp. 2761, Dimitrov, Strashimir, Zhechev, Nikolai, and Tonev,
Velko, Istoriya na Dobrudzha, vol. 3 (Sofia: BAN, 1988), pp. 1539. See also the vol-
umes of the regional series Dobrudzha, similar in its profile to the Rodopski Sbornik.
55
Dimitrov, Strashimir, Etnicheski i religiozni protsesi sred blgarskata narodnost
prez XV-XVIII vek, Blgarska etnografiya vol. 5, no 1 (1980), pp. 1631. This hypoth-
esis, however, was not supported by the official authorities, probably because it
challenged another holy cow in the official history of Bulgaria, namely the peaceful
assimilation of (proto)Bulgarians into the Slavic sea, and their total disappearance
from the political scene by the late 10th century, especially after the official adoption of
Christianity. Archaeological and historical evidence, which I shall not discuss here,
seems to support the existence of significant Turkic groups on the territory of Northeast
Bulgaria until the fall of Bulgaria under the Ottomans.
56
It seems that until 1989 the fundamental critique of Mutafchievs views in two
studies of Paul Wittek (Yazijioghlu Ali on the Christian Turks of the Dobrudja, Studies
Presented to Vladimir Minorsky by His Colleagues and Friends, BSOAS, vol. 14, no 3
(1952), pp. 63968, and Les Gagaouzes=les gens de Kaykaus, Rocznik Orientalistyczny,
vol. 17 (1953, for 195152), pp. 1224) had remained inaccessible or neglected by
Bulgarian scholarship.
57
See an overview of these discussions in Gramatikova, Nevena, Changing Fates
and the Issue of Alevi Identity in Bulgaria (in A. Zhelyazkova and J. Nielsen (eds),
Ethnology of the Sufi Orders: Theory and Practice (Sofia: IMIR, 2001), pp. 564621.
which presumably aimed at bringing Pomaks and Turks back to their

Bulgarian roots. The exclusive role of the colonization in the view of
some Turkish publicists and historians obviously would prove the
ethnic Turkish roots of the Turkish-speaking minority in Bulgaria,
and thus counteracted Bulgarian claims over the Turks,58 and Muslims
in general.59
The accumulation of data and the variety of sources allowed towards
the end of this period for a move from the pseudo-statistical parame-
ters of the spread of Islam among the non-Muslims and the coloniza-
tion of Muslim settlers in smaller or larger parts of Bulgaria to the
discussion of the factors which triggered conversion to Islam and of the
major ways for the expansion of Islam in the Balkans under direct60
or indirect coercion, or voluntary, in massive campaigns or as individ-
ual acts. The motivation for the individual/voluntary act was then seen
more as a pragmatic calculation of the expected economic and social
benefits or stemming from purely personal considerations, mainly as a
reaction to the discriminatory regime for the non-Muslims but not
necessarily resulting from administrative pressure exerted by the state.
A new development in the study of the conversion to Islam problma-
tique in the 1980s aimed at revealing the process of integration of the
first-generation converts into their new milieu, the measures under-
taken by the Islamic religious functionaries for the prevention of con-
tacts between the new Muslims and their former community and of the
58
See for example, ahin, Ilhan, Emecen, Feridun & Halaolu, Yusuf, Turkish
Settlements in Rumelia (Bulgaria) in the 15th and 16th century (in K. Karpat (ed.), The
Turks of Bulgaria), pp. 2342. Despite the intense relations between Turkey and
Bulgaria at the time when this volume was prepared, the openly politicised framework
and some polemic papers, it contains also a number of interesting and informative
contributions.
59
Even Pomaks in the opinion of some extreme supporters of this line of research
were the descendants of Turkic tribes who had settled in the Balkans and lost their
language but preserved their faith. Memiolu, Hseyin, Pomak Trklerinin Tarihi
Gemiinden Sayfalar (Ankara: at the expense of the author, 1991), and other pub
lications of this author. Greek nationalist historiography has launched an even more
fabulous explanation of their origins, describing them as Slavic-speaking Muslims
of Greek or Hellenised Thracian stock. See a summary of these views in Todorova,
Maria, Identity (Trans)Formation, pp. 47576, and the respective bibliography.
60
Despite the popularity of the janissary motif in the description of the Turkish
yoke as one of the most disastrous for the Bulgarian nation, with its methods of forced
conversion to Islam, it is only in this period that the provincial janissaries and the
impact of the devirme were studied on the basis of a wide range of Ottoman, Bulgarian
and European sources. See Georgieva, Tsvetana, Enicharite v blgarskite zemi (Sofia:
Nauka i izkustvo, 1988).
observance of infidel customs and habits.61 Most of the publications

of this period which are based on anthropological and archaeological
evidence attribute the instances of deviant practices among Muslims
in the past to crypto-Christianity, aiming in the first place to prove
the Bulgarian roots of the Bulgarian-speaking Muslims,62 later also of
Turks in Bulgaria. An important problem that was only sketched con-
cerns the role of the various Islamic institutions, the pious foundations
in particular, in the spread of Islam among the local population and in
the physical changes in the Balkan towns which transformed them into
Ottoman.63 The military and paramilitary institutions were also identi-
fied among the channels for the spread of Islam among non-Muslims
who voluntarily or not became their members;64 so was slavery.65
Although real diversity of views is hard to detect in the mass produc-
tion, scholars were far from united behind one single opinion on each
one of these issues. Supporters of violence and direct pressure as the
major instrument of spread of Islam, however, remained more vocal
and their views were the ones that found their way to a wide audience.66
61
Dimitrov, Strashimir, Fetvi za izkoreniavane na blgarskata hristiyanska miro-
gledna sistema sred pomohamedanchvanite blgari, Vekove, vol. 16, no 2 (1987),
pp. 2739; idem, Skritoto hristijanstvo i isliamizatsionnite protsesi v osmanskata
drzhava, Istoricheski pregled, vol. 43, no 3 (1987), pp. 1833.
62
See for example, Vakarelski, Christo, Altertmliche Elemente in Lebensweise
und Kultur der bulgarischen Mohammedaner, Zeitschrift fr Balkanologie IV (1966),
pp. 149172, and the majority of the publications in Rodopski Sbornik or Rodopi.
63
Staynova, Mihaila, Islam i islamskaya religioznaya propaganda v Bolgarii (in
V. Danilov, M. Meyer and S. Oreshkova (eds), Osmanskaya imperiya: sistema gosu-
darstvennogo upravleniya, sotsialnye i etnoreligioznye problemy (Moskva: Mysl, 1986),
pp. 83102.
64
Dimitrov, Strashimir Za yuriushkata organizatsiya i roliata i v etnoasimilator-
skite protsesi, Vekove, vol. 11, no 12 (1982), pp. 3343; Grozdanova, Elena, Km
vprosa za yurutsite v blgarskite i niakoi ot ssednite im zemi, XV-XVIII vek, Vekove,
vol. 13, no 4 (1984), pp. 2329; Radushev, Evgenii, Imalo li e trayno yurushko nastani-
avane v Rodopite (in I. Stefanov (ed.), Demografski i etnosotsialni problemi), pp. 6876;
Idem, Roliata na osmanskata voyska v isliamsko asimilatsionniya protses na Balkanite
(in G. Danchev et al (eds), Turskite zavoevaniya i sdbata na balkanskite narodi, otra-
zeni v istoricheski i literaturni pametnitsi ot XIV-XVIII vek. Mezhdunarodna nauchna
konferentsiya, Veliko Trnovo, 2022 may 1987 g. (Veliko Trnovo: Velikotrnovski
Universitet, 1992), pp. 20412; Zhelyazkova, Antonina, Nekotorye aspekty raspros-
traneniya islama na Balkanskom poluostrove v XV-XVIII vv. (in V. Danilov, M. Meyer
and S. Oreshkova (eds), Osmanskaya imperiya: sistema gosudarstvennogo upravleniya),
pp. 10316.
65
Dimitrov, Strashimir, Iz rannata istoriya na isliamizatsiyata v severnite sklonove
na Rodopite, Vekove, vol. 15, no 3 (1986), pp. 4350.
66
One of the most widely publicised authors who support the violence thesis and
the view of a conscious de-nationalising policy of the Ottoman authorities in particu-
lar with regard to Bulgarians is Petr Petrov. See the apex of his work in this respect,
In textbooks,67 popular writing and fiction, brutality was overexposed.

It found its way into the mass perceptions of the events through the
powerful means of fiction and cinema.68 The debates remained largely
confined within the circles of specialists in the humanities, away from
education and mass media, very often to be read between the lines, or
just oral rather than in publications. The dominant tone in the represen
tation of the Ottoman rule was still that of a dark period and yoke.69
Sdbonosni vekove za blgarskata narodnost, kraya na XIV vek-1912 godina (Sofia:

Nauka i izkustvo, 1975). It relies largely on the so-called domestic sources and on a
careful selection of Ottoman and western sources. The popularity of this author might
be seen as part of the academically-based propaganda publications which in the view
of the authorities would justify the name-changing campaigns launched against the
Bulgarian-speaking Muslims and against the Turks in Bulgaria. The need to exploit the
entire Bulgarian scholarship in the campaigns and secure some support from abroad
led also to the convening of two large international conferences, in Veliko Trnovo,
1987 (see Turskite zavoevaniya, which includes the proceedings of most of the papers
presented at the conference), and Sofia, 1988, on The Christian Balkan Nations during
the Ottoman Period, 14th19th centuries, organized under the aegis of the Bulgarian
Orthodox Church.
67
Here I shall not discuss the history textbook-writing which has evolved as a
theme in its own. See an overview on Muslims in Bulgarian history textbooks in the
19th and 20th centuries, in Ivanova, Svetlana, Etnokulturnite obshtnosti v blgarskite
uchebnitsi po natsionalna istoriya sstoyanie i perspektivi (in V. Rusanov (ed.),
Aspekti na etnokulturnata situatsiya. Osem godini po-ksno (Sofia: Otvoreno obshtestvo,
2000), pp. 45984); Isov, Miumiun, Nay-razlichniyat ssed. Obrazt na osmantsite
(turtsite) i Osmanskata imperiya (Turtsiya) v blgarskite uchebnitsi po istoriya prez
vtorata polovina na XX vek (Sofia: IMIR, 2005).
68
Donchev, Anton, Vreme razdelno (Sofia: Blgarski pizatel, 1964), based on Pop
Metodis narrative and the Historical Notebook. The novel has undergone more than ten
editions. The filmed version of the novel (the English-language version is entitled Time
of Violence, director Liudmil Staykov) released in 1988, in the peak of the campaign
against Bulgarian Turks, had been shown on the national TV channels for the national
holiday, 3 March, until only three to four years ago. See an analysis of the film and the
novel against the backdrop of the discussion of the historicity of Pop Metodis text in
Todorova, Maria, Conversion to Islam as a Trope in Bulgarian Historiography, Fiction
and Film (in Todorova, Maria (ed.), Balkan Identities. Nation and Memory (New York:
New York University Press, 2004), pp. 12957, published also in Bulgarian in
Izsledvaniya v chest na chl.-kor. Prof. Str. Dimitrov, Studia balcanica, vol. 23, pt 1 (Sofia,
2001), pp. 36991. See also a novel which has been very popular and influential in
shaping public opinion on the events during the April uprising, which, too, was pub-
lished on the eve of the campaigns undertaken by the Bulgarian authorities in the
Rhodopes, namely Stoev, Gencho, Tsenata na zlatoto (Sofia, 1965). It has also under-
gone more than ten editions since, the last one in 2006, although it can in no way
compete in popularity with Donchevs. At this point I am unable to claim any direct
connection between state policy and the publication of these novels, but the coinci-
dence in time is striking.
69
It should be pointed out, however, that even at the peak of the nationalist
campaigns these terms were usually avoided in strictly academic publications by the
specialists in the pre-Reform Ottoman period.
4. After 1989
The political changes in Bulgaria in November 1989 have triggered a

process of reconsideration and re-evaluation of all periods in the his-
tory of Bulgaria with an understandable accent on the more recent
ones. It is not surprising then that they had an impact on research in
the history of minorities, especially since the name-changing campaign
(198489) and the exodus of Turks in the summer of 1989 are believed
to be among the major reasons for the downfall of the communist
regime. The new state leadership restored the names of the Muslims -
under international pressure and in the tense atmosphere of demon-
strations of Turks and Bulgarian-speaking Muslims in Sofia and
elsewhere in the country but also of alternative ones, of adherents to
the mushrooming nationalist organizations. After the heavy exploita-
tion of history in the service of domestic politics by the communist
state, with the exception of publications already prepared under the old
regime,70 conversion to Islam and more generally the spread of Islam,
have for several years become if not a taboo, certainly not a popular
topic. The interest shifted to the fate of the minorities in the post-1878
period with a focus on developments in the communist period.71
70
I have referred to some of them above. To them I should add also Dimitrov,
Strashimir, Prvite osmanski garnizoni v Ungariya i problemite na osmanskata kolo-
nizatsiya, Istoricheski Pregled, vol. 49, no 45 (1993), pp. 320, published also as
Introduction in Velkov, Asparuch and Radushev, Evgeniy, Ottoman Garrisons on the
Middle Danube Based on Austrian National Library MS MXT 562 of 956/ 15491550
(Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1996), pp. 928, the translation of the register and the
whole volume were prepared in the late 1980s but the publication was delayed until
after the political changes. Two PhD theses were also defended which were begun
under the old regime and treat extensively conversion to Islam: Mutafova, Krassimira,
Konfesionalni otnosheniya mezhdu hristiyani i miusiulmani i isliamizatsiyata v
blgarskite zemi prez XV-XVII vek (Sofia: Sv Kliment Ohridski Sofia University, 1997,
unpublished), and Kalionski, Alexei, Yurutsite (Sofia: Prosveta, 2007), Chapter 2, which
includes discussion of their role in the colonization and the Islamization.
71
It is impossible to list all the publications by Bulgarian scholars and publicists,
academic or targeting a larger audience in the country and abroad which discuss the
fate of the Muslim communities in Bulgaria in more recent times. I have referred to
some of them above: Gruev, Mihail, Mezhdu petolchkata i polumesetsa; Todorova,
Maria, Identity (Trans)Formation among Bulgarian Muslims; Stoyanov, Valeri,
Turskoto naselenie v Bulgaria. Here I shall add a few more which in my view are repre-
sentative of the academic production of Bulgarian scholars: Zhelyazkova, Antonina,
Bulgaria in Transition: the Muslim minorities, Georgieva, Tsvetana, Pomaks: Muslim
Bulgarians, Mancheva, Mila, Image and Policy: the case of Turks and Pomaks in inter-
war Bulgaria, 191844 (with special reference to education), all in the special issue
of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, vol. 12, no 3 (July 2001), respectively
pp. 283301, 303316, and 355374; Konstantinov, Yulian, Strategies for Sustaining a
Themajority contain overviews of the historical background but the

questions of conversion to Islam and colonization are far from being a
priority. Rather, they repeat, rarely re-interpret, already existing mate-
rial, views and conclusions, which are used as the background to their
primary focus discussion of the policy of the Bulgarian state or the
developments within the community in question. Turkish and western
scholars have also turned their attention to more recent events with
respect to Muslims in Bulgaria.72 Local enthusiasts related to or
Vulnerable Identity: the case of the Bulgarian Pomaks (in H. Poulton and S. Taji-
Farouki (eds), Muslim Identity and the Balkan State (London: Hurst & Company,
1997), pp. 3353; Ilchev, Ivan, and Perry, Duncan, The Muslims of Bulgaria (in
G. Nonneman, T. Niblock, and B. Szajkowski (eds), Muslim Communities in the New
Europe (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1997), pp. 115137; Dimitrov, Vesselin, In Search of a
Homogeneous Nation: The Assimilation of Bulgarias Turkish Minority, Journal
Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, vol. 1, no 2 (July 2001), accessed on 3 May
2008, pp. 121. Several PhD theses were defended (and published) which discuss vari-
ous aspects of the history and anthropology of these groups: Kiurkchieva, Iva, Svett na
blgarite miusiulmani ot Tetevensko - prehod km modernost (Sofia: IMIR, 2004);
Maeva, Mila, Blgarskite turtsi-preselnitsi v Republika Turtsiya (Kultura i identichnost)
(Sofia: IMIR, 2006). See also Zhelyazkova, Antonina, Nielsen, Jorgen and Kepell, Jilles
(eds), Relations of Compatibility and Incompatibility between Christians and Muslims in
Bulgaria (Sofia: IMIR, 1995); Rusanov, Valerii (ed.), Aspekti na etnokulturnata situat-
siya v Blgariya (Sofia: Tsentr za izsledvane na demokratsiyata & Friedrich-Naumann-
Stiftung, 1992); Idem (ed.), Aspekti na etnokulturnata situatsiya v Blgariya (Sofia:
Assotsiatsiya Access, 1994); Idem (ed.), Aspekti na etnokulturnata situatsiya. Osem
godini po-ksno (Sofia: Assotsiatiya Access & Otvoreno obshtestvo, 2000); The Fate of
Muslim Communities in the Balkans series of IMIR: vols 1 (A. Zhelyazkova (ed.), Sofia:
IMIR,1997), 2 (R. Gradeva and S. Ivanova (eds), (Sofia: IMIR, 1998), 3 (A. Zhelyazkova
(ed.), (Sofia: IMIR, 1998), 4 (G. Lozanova and L. Mikov (eds), (Sofia: IMIR, 1999), 7
(R. Gradeva (ed.) (Sofia: IMIR, 2001), and 8 (A. Zhelyazkova and J. Nilsen (eds), (Sofia:
IMIR, 2001), which include publications related to the Muslim minorities in Bulgaria.
72
This interest has actually begun earlier, especially with the name-changing cam-
paign in 1984: Popovic, Alexandre, Lislam balkanique : les musulmans du sud-est euro-
pen dans la priode post-ottomane (Berlin: Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universitt
Berlin; Wiesbaden : In Kommission bei O. Harrassowitz, 1986); Troebst, Stefan, Zur
bulgarischen Assimilationspolitik gegenber der trkischen Minderheit: Geschichten
aus Politbro und 1001 Nacht (Dokumentation), Sdosteuropa (SOE), vol. 34, no 9
(1985), pp. 486506; Hpken, Wolfgang, Auenpolitische Aspekte der bulgarischen
Trken-Politik (Dokumentation), SOE, vol. 34, no 9 (1985), pp. 477485; Lory,
Bernard, Une communaut musulmane oublie: Les Pomaks de Love, Turcica, vol. 19
(1987), pp. 95117. All these authors have manifested continuous interest in the sub-
ject of Bulgarias policy to its Muslim minorities which continues to this day. I am
unable to include here their numerous publications in the field. See also the more
recent ones: Brunnbauer, Ulf, Histories and Identities: Nation-state and Minority
Discourses. The Case of Bulgarian Pomaks, In and Out of the Collective: Papers on
Former Soviet Bloc Rural Communities, vol. 1 (February 1998), pp. 110; Neuburger,
Mary, The Orient Within. Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in
Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004); Eminov, Ali,
Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities of Bulgaria (London: Hurst & Company, 1997);
embers of the Pomak group in particular, have also offered their

m
scientific versions of the past of the community which defend its
respectable place in relaton to ethnic Turks and Christian Bulgarians.
The origins play a key role in these attempts at identity-building. The
essence of their pseudo-scholarly attempts can be summarized as seek-
ing to prove that Pomaks became Muslims before the Ottoman con-
quest and that they are better Muslims than the Turks.73 Finally, active
participants in the change-of-name campaigns and members of
Bulgarian communist government have also published their explana-
tions of Bulgarias policy with regard to its Muslim minorities, often
historical arguments (the conversion issue) being referred to as justifi-
cation for the decisions.74
It is only in the second half of the 1990s that academic interest in the
conversion process was revived. This can to a great extent be attributed
to the improvement of the relations between Turkey and Bulgaria as a
result of which Bulgarian Ottomanists were able to work in Turkish
archives and especially to the agreement for exchange of documents
between the state archives of the two neighbouring countries. Bulgarian
scholars received invaluable sources from the hitherto inaccessible
Ottoman archives in Istanbul.75 Unfortunately, the positive changes are
to a great extent being neutralised by the considerable reduction of the
Turan, mer, The Turkish Minority in Bulgaria (18781908) (Ankara: TTK, 1998);
Bchsenschtz, Ulrich, Maltsinstvenata politika v Blgaria. Politikata na Blgarskata
komunisticheska partiya km evrei, romi, pomatsi i turtsi 19441989) [Minderheiten
Politik in Bulgarien. Die Politik der Bulgarischen Kommunistischen Partei gegenuber
den Juden, Roma, Pomaken and Turken 1944 bis 1989] (Sofia: IMIR, 2002).
73
According to Mehmed Dorsunski, for example (Istoriya na pomatsite (s.l., s.a.),
Pomaks are descendants of the Arabs who tried to conquer Constantinople in the 7th
8th centuries but were forced to withdraw in the nearby mountain of the Rhodopes
where they married women from the Slav tribes and thus lost their language but kept
their religion; Yapov, Petr, Pomatsite (Sofia: Sdruzhenite mostove, 2006); Mehmed,
Hseyin, Pomatsite i torbeshite v Miziya, Trakiya i Makedoniya (Sofia, no publisher,
2007). The tendency to Arabicize the Pomaks origins were first (to my knowledge)
reported by Tsvetana Georgieva (Struktura na vlastta v traditsionnata obshtnost na
pomatsite v rayona na Chech (Zapadni Rodopi), Etnicheskata kartina v Blgariya
(Sofia: Klub 90, 1993, pp. 7374).
74
Assenov, Boncho, Vzroditelniyat protses i Drzhavna sigurnost (Sofia: Gea-Inf,
1996); Gocheva, Paunka, Prez Bosfora km Vzroditelniya protses (Sofia, 1994); Iahiel,
Niko, Todor Zhivkov i lichnata vlast: spomeni, dokumenti, analizi (Sofia, 1997);
Mihaylov, Stoyan, Vzrozhdenskiyat protses v Blgariya (Sofia: M-8-M, 1992);
Mladenov, Petr, Zhivott: Pliusove i Minusi (Sofia: IK Peteks, 1992).
75
See on the exchange of archival material Radushev, Evgeni and Kovachev, Rumen,
Inventory of Registers from the Ottoman Archive in Istanbul at the General Directorate of
State Archives in the Republic of Turkey (Sofia: NBKM, 1996), pp. XLVLXXIV.
funds allocated to research in general, and by the commercialization of

publishing. Besides, history in general and the Ottoman period in par-
ticular, is less and less seen as a viable career by young people. One may
say that young Bulgarians who study abroad and choose themes in
Ottoman history or Bulgarian history under Ottoman rule are proba-
bly as many or even more than those who pursue their studies in the
field in Bulgaria. Looking at the age distribution, it is mainly middle-
aged to elderly scholars at Bulgarian academic institutions who still
work on conversion but some of the young Bulgarian scholars abroad
still continue the theme. For one or another reason after the political
changes very few new sources that are relevant to the theme have been
published in extenso, mainly tapu tahrir and cizye defters, or just
excerpts covering specific regions.76
The expanded source base and the political climate allowed for the
diversification of the aspects of the phenomenon of conversion to
Islam studied by Bulgarian scholars which now include also the views
of the Orthodox Church about mixed marriages as a channel for the
spread of Islam among Bulgarians, women in the first place, and with
respect to contacts between Christians and Muslims in general;77 the
role of the Sufi brotherhoods for the expansion of the space of Islam
and for the conversion of local population, more particularly the role of
holy places shared by Muslims and Christians;78 the neo-martyrs,79 and
76
Kovachev, Rumen, Opis na Nikopolskiya sandzhak ot 80te godini na XV vek.
Prevod i komentar na novootkrit timarski opis ot poslednata chetvrt na XV vek,
shraniavan v Orientalskiya otdel na Narodnata Biblioteka Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii (Sofia:
NBKM, 1997), pp. 10572; Idem, Samokov i Samokovskata kaza prez XVI vek spored
opisi ot Istanbulskiya arhiv (Sofia: NBKM, 2001), pp. 123340; Matanov, Hristo,
Vznikvane i oblik na Kiustendilskiya sandzhak prez XV-XVI vek (Sofia: IF-94, 2000),
pp. 15279 (translation by E. Radushev); Kalitsin, Maria and Mutafova, Krassimira,
Podbrani osmanski dokumenti za Trnovo i Trnovskata kaza (Veliko Trnovo:
Universitetsko izdatelstvo Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii, 2003); Radushev, Evgeniy, Pomatsite.
Hristiyanstvo i isliam v Zapadnite Rodopi s dolinata na Mesta, XV-30-te godini na XVIII
vek, vol. 2 (Sofia: NBKM, 2005).
77
Todorova, Olga, Evoliutsiya hristiyanskih vzgliadov na smeshannye braki
(hristian s musulmanami) v XV-XVIII vv., Bulgarian Historical Review, vol. 19, no 1
(1991), pp. 4662; Gradeva, Rossitsa, Turks and Bulgarians, passim.
78
See for example Dimitrov, Strashimir, Km istoriyata na dobrudzhanskite dvuo-
bredni svetilishta, Dobrudzha, vol. 11 (1994), pp. 7697; Radionova, Diana, Teketo na
Ak Yazl Baba pri selo Obrochishte, Balchishko, ibid., pp. 6175; Mutafova, Krasimira,
Kultt kam svettsite v narodniya isliam i utrakvistichnite svetilishta (in Etnologiyata
na granitsata na dva veka (Veliko Trnovo: Universitetsko izdatelstvo Sv. Sv. Kiril I
Metodii, 2000), pp. 24965.
79
Gradeva, Rossitsa, Apostasy in Rumeli in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century,
Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies, vol. 22 (September 2000), pp. 2973;
the image of the Turk in literature and textbook-writing. Yet, research

in the field of conversion to Islam continues mainly along the already
established tracks. At least in terms of numbers the old standard themes
and approaches have remained dominant. Several articles and chapters
in books deal with the process of spread of Islam tracing the graph of
the drop of the Christian population in a number of Bulgarian parts
on the basis of the various tax registers.80 Some of these are written by
foreign scholars and published in Bulgarian editions.81
Nihoritis, Konstantinos, Sveta gora-Aton i blgarskoto novomchenichestvo (Sofia:

Akademichno izdatelstvo Marin Drinov, 2001); Aretov, Nikolay, The Abducted
Faith and Bulgarian National Mythology, Etudes balkaniques, vol. 39, no 2 (2003),
pp. 10334.
80
Radushev, Evgenii, Demografski i etnoreligiozni protsesi v Zapadnite Rodopi
prez XV-XVIII vek (Opit za preosmislyane na ustoychivi istoriografski modeli),
Istorichesko bdeshte, vol. 2, no 1 (1998), pp. 4689; Boykov, Grigor, Etno-religiozniyat
oblik na osmanskiya grad Filibe, kraya na XV-nachaloto na XVI vek (in E. Radushev
and St. Fetvadzhieva (eds), Balkanski identichnosti), pp. 130151; Kovachev, Rumen,
Novopostpili osmanoturski opisi kato izvor za selishtnata sistema, naselenieto i
administrativnoto delenie na Rodopite (vtorata polovina na XVI vek), Part 1,
Rhodopica, II, no 1 (1999), pp. 14974, Part 2, Rhodopica, III, no 12 (2002), pp. 191
212 (this author has also dedicated attention to the changing ratio between Muslims
and non-Muslims in the sancak of Nikopol (Opis), and in the Samokov district
(Samokov); Razhdavichka, Evelina, Situation ethnodmographique et processus reli-
gieux Nikopol au debut du XVIe sicle, Etudes balkaniques, vol. 40, no 2 (2004),
pp. 88108; and others.
81
Among them Machiel Kiel features most prominently. See his more recent publi-
cations, Razprostranenie na isliama v blgarskoto selo prez osmanskata epoha
(XV-XVIII v.): kolonizatsiya i isliamizatsiya, (in R. Gradeva and Sv. Ivanova (eds),
Miusiulmanskata kultura po blgarskite zemi. Izsledvaniya (Sofia: IMIR, 1998),
pp. 56126, about the Rhodopes and Sevlievo; Izladi/Zlatitsa. Population Changes,
Colonization and Islamization in a Bulgarian Mountain Canton, 15th19th centuries
(in E. Radushev and Z. Kostova (eds), Studia in Honorem Professoris Verae Mutafcieva
(Sofia:Amicitia, 2001), pp. 175187; idem, Svishtov i rayont prez XV- XIX vek.
Poselishtna istoriya, istoricheska demografiya i posleditsi ot voynite v edna ravninna
oblast na Dunavska Blgariya (in R. Gradeva (ed.), Istoriya na miusiulmanskata
kultura), pp. 54770. A selection of these and several more of his articles about a num-
ber of Bulgarian places and districts have been translated and published as a collection
in Bulgarian, see Kiel, Machiel, Hora i selishta v Blgariya prez osmanskiya period
(Sofia: Amicitia, 2006). In a very polemic way Kiel has attacked the views on conver-
sion which dominated Bulgarian mass media and historiography at the time of the
change-of-name of Turks campaign in his book dedicated to Art and Society of Bulgaria
in the Turkish Period: a sketch of economic, juridical and artistic preconditions of
Bulgarian post-Byzantine art and its place in the development of the art of the Christian
Balkans, 1360/701700: a new interpretation (Assen/ Maastricht-Van Gorcum, 1985),
translated in Bulgarian as Izkustvo i obshtestvo v Blgariya prez turskiya period (Sofia:
Liubomdrie-Hronika, 2002). See also Gzler, Kemal, Les origins des Pomaks de
Lofa daprs les tahrir defters ottomans: 14791579, Turcica, vol. 31 (1999), pp. 3566;
Ilhan, M. Mehdi, Varna at the end of the sixteenth century: timariot holdings and
population (in: Romano-Turcica, I (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2003), pp. 5174.
The two regional debates continue to attract attention and one can
still feel a strong political loading in some of the studies, though prob-
ably not as explicit as prior to 1989. The issue of force as an element in
the conversion of the Rhodope population has remained among the
most sensitive topics in Bulgarian history and a major criterion in the
assessment of the Ottoman past. This is partly a legacy of the pre-1989
period, partly comes as a reaction to the processes of identity-formation
among the Pomaks, and is certainly influenced by the acquisition of
Ottoman archival material through the exchange between the two
countries.82 In a strange way the Chronicle of [Pop] Metodi Draginov is
still the main battleground between supporters and opponents of the
violent campaign sometime in the second half of the 17th century. The
doubts raised by the article of S. Dimitrov in the 1960s are supported
by the newly-retrieved Ottoman material which makes it clear that in
the villages described by Draginov and in the rest of the Rhodopes
Islam had actually started gaining followers as early as the 15th cen-
tury, and had carried on even in the 18th century, that is, long before
and after the presumed campaign of the Ottoman army which is said to
have led to the forced conversion of the local people. With the excep-
tion of two periods in the late 16th and mid-17th centuries, when the
process seems to have accelerated and reached a kind of peak, it can be
described as slow but steady, gaining new souls most probably by the
decision of the individuals concerned.83 While many questions remain
unanswered, such as why one person would adopt Islam and his neigh-
bour would not, and generally about the motivation of potential con-
verts, there can be no doubt that for the vast majority of the converts
this was a matter of personal choice, and directly applied pressure can-
not be blamed for the decision.84 For some scholars, however, the
defence of the authenticity of the much debated chronicle has turned
82
Dimitrov, Strashimir, Shte imame li nauchni pozitsii po problemite na isliami
zatsiyata i sdbinite na blgarite mohamedani?, Rhodopica, vol. 2, no 1 (1999),
pp. 13148.
83
Kiel, Machiel, Razprostranenie na isliama v blgarskoto selo brings to light data
about the expansion of Islam in the very same villages which are mentioned in
Draginovs narrative. The author has touched upon a number of inconsistencies also
in the Historical Notebook. The same line is being continued by E. Radushev in his book
on the Nevrokop area, Pomatsite, vol 1 (Sofia: NBKM, 2005).
84
Of course, here we should not forget about the rise of religious fanaticism in
the 17th century and the proselytizing fervour of Sultan Mehmed IV (16481687).
See Baer, Marc, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in the Ottoman
Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
into a kind of personal cause. Despite the linguistic objections and the
historical evidence about the gradual process of the spread of Islam in
the mountain, brought up even in the communist period, proofsarestill
sought for its veracity and for the application of violence as the major
route for the emergence of the Pomak group. The documentation,
however, has led to a modification of the original view that the Rhodope
conversion was caused by brutality only. Today it includes also a state-
ment that there probably had been a process of creeping Islamization
in parallel which complements the campaign of the 1660s.85 Also from
before was inherited the question of the origins of the Gagaouzes and
the Kzlba in Northeast Bulgaria. The post-1989 period has so far
seen a relative boom in the publications on both groups. While there is
no doubt any longer about the Anatolian roots of the latter,86 Bulgarian
scholarship is still very reluctant to accept any connection between the
Gagaouzes and the Seljuk Turks of Izz al-Din.87
Not much progress has been achieved in identifying the factors
for the individual conversions which were not the result of direct force.
In the view of most scholars who deal with the issue this choice
was certainly facilitated by the various benefits ranging from the tax
alleviation to social re-categorization which the new converts expected,
85
See in particular, Grozdanova, Elena, Falshifikat li e letopisniyat razkaz na pop
Metodi Draginov?, Istoricheski Pregled, vol. 49, no 2 (1993), pp. 146157; Grozdanova,
Elena and Andreev, Stefan, Kniga na zhalbite i hronikata na pop Metodi Draginov,
Rodopi, vol. 27, no 6 (1992), pp. 24; iidem, Za i protiv hronikata na Pop Metodi
Draginov bez pristrastiya i predubedenost, Rhodopica, vol. 3, no 12 (2002),
pp. 46582, and the comment of Georgieva, Tsvetana, Izsledvaniyata po istoriyata,
p. 104.
86
The registers from Istanbul did contribute to the qualification of existing views
in this respect, see Dimitrov, Strashimir, Novi danni za demografskite otnosheniya v
Yuzhna Dobrudzha prez prvata polovina na XVI vek, Dobrudzha, vol. 1416 (2001,
for 199899), pp. 278333, which takes into account data from the newly-acquired
copies of registers from Istanbul revealing that the settlement of Kzlba in the region
during the late 15th and early 16th century was part of the Ottoman policy of dealing
with the Safavid threat. The Kzlba as a group, although not a major theme, have
been the subject of several, mainly ethnographic studies. See also the publications of
Nevena Grammatikova, Liubomir Mikov, Bozhidar Alexiev, who study the community
combining historical, ethnographic and folkloric sources and methodology.
87
Mutafova, Krassimira, Teorii i hipotezi za gagauzite, in Blgarite v Severnoto
Prichernomorie. Izsledvaniya i materiali, vol. 2 (Veliko Trnovo: Universitetsko
izdatelstvo Sv.Sv. Kiril i Metodii, 1993), pp. 94110; Dimitrov, Strashimir, Gagauzkiyat
problem, ibid., vol. 4 (Veliko Trnovo: Universitetsko izdatelstvo Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii,
1995), pp.14768; idem, Oshte edno mnenie za proizhoda na imeto gagauzi, ibid.,
vol. 5 (Veliko Trnovo: Universitetsko izdatelstvo Sv.Sv. Kiril i Metodii, 1996),
pp. 199220; Gradeshliev, Ivan, Gagauzite (Dobrich, 1994), as well as a special issue of
Blgarska etnologiya (vol. 26, no 1 (2000) dedicated to Gagauzes.
or just for personal reasons, a view that is not new and which should
probably be regarded as the most plausible in the majority of the cases
of conversion. For the Rhodopes in particular, both Kiel and Radushev
consider of primary importance the populations notorious poverty
along with the natural striving for an improvement of ones social sta-
tus. Unfortunately the value of the personal applications of converts as
an independent source for the study of the motivation and of the trends
in the conversion process has been overestimated in more recent
research.88 Another hypothesis of S. Dimitrov has also been supported
with more solid material, namely that new converts tended to move to
the towns or to other more Muslim settlements rather than stay in the
minority in their native places. Certainly not novel is also the view that
there were voluntary Janissaries, but during this period it was devel-
oped further to the claim that the voluntary devirme actually ousted
and replaced the so-called blood levy.89 There is yet, however, a lot to
be done both in the delineation of the concrete parameters of the pro-
cess of Islamization of the local population and the settlement of
Muslims in various parts of Bulgaria. Even more needed is a deeper
understanding of the factors that would lead a non-Muslim to convert,
the religious situation in pre-Ottoman Bulgaria, the role of various
Islamic institutions in attracting new converts, their adaptation into
their new milieu, the balance between pragmatism, direct pressure and
sincere adoption of the new religion. Hopefully these important ques-
tions will not escape the attention of the next generations of Ottoman
specialists, and not only in the Balkans.
5.Conclusion
For good or ill, since the late 19th century the spread of Islam in the
past has become a focal issue in the nation-building process in Bulgaria.
88
Cf. for example Minkov, Anton, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans; idem, Obrazt
na dobrovolniya obrshtenets v isliama v perioda 16701730 spored molbite kisve
bahas ( in E. Radushev and St. Fetvadzhieva (eds), Balkanski identchnosti, vol. 3),
pp.98129; idem Isliamizatsiyata i evoliutsiyata na osmanskiya imperski model (in
R. Kovachev (ed.), Obshtuvane s Iztoka. Yubileen sbornik, posveten na 60-godishninata
na Stoyanka Kenderova (Sofia: NBKM, 2007), pp. 96113.
89
Radushev, Evgenii, Osmanskata voenna nomenklatura prez XVI-XVII v.
(Monopol na devshirmetata vrhu vlastta prvi i vtori etap), Istorichesko bdeshte,
vol. 3, no 12 (1999), pp. 344; idem, Smislt na istoriografskite mitove za isliamizat-
siyata (in E. Radushev and St. Fetvadzhieva (eds), Balkanski identichnosti, pp. 15297.
See also Minkovs works referred to in note 88.
While in the earlier centuries conversion to Islam was regarded as a

dangerous erosion of Christianity, and in the view of their former co-
religionists, as soon as they performed the act the converts became
Turks, in the age of national(ist) upsurge the tone changed significantly.
Popular opinion still regarded them, even the Bulgarian-speaking
Pomaks, as Turks indicating the dominant role of religion (as com-
pared to language) as the real dividing line.90 For the leaders of the
Bulgarian national movement, however, every soul seems to have
mattered in the struggle for winning over space in the contest with
neighbours. It is not clear what exactly inspired the horror stories
which started appearing in the first half of the 19th century and which
described a particularly brutal campaign for the conversion of Bulgarian
highlanders in the Rhodopes sometime in the 17th century, blaming it
on the Greek clergy. The narratives, as has already been pointed out,
were published at the peak of the Bulgaro-Greek controversy around
the establishment of an autocephalous Bulgarian ecclesiastical hierar-
chy. One is tempted to suggest that they were specially written to hit
two targets delineating Bulgarian-ness and its enemies. After 1878
the Pomak group remained the focus of attention of both politicians
and scholars, and politics and scholarship in the field seem to have
interacted closely with regard to this group. Similarly to Bosnia,
Islamization as a phenomenon has often been resorted to in domestic
political life. In this country it has been used as the justification for
mainly unfortunate decisions concerning the Bulgarian-speaking
Muslims which aimed at their re-integration in the Bulgarian nation.
But unlike any other Balkan country, over the last century and a half,
Bulgaria developed a sort of cult for the particularly cruel version of
the enforced Islamization described in the so-called domestic sources
which was accompanied by state-organized destruction and universal
disaster.91
90
Until the late 19th century this was hardly the case with the Gagaouzes, however.
See on the complex relations within a multi-ethnic Christian community, including
Greeks, Gagaouzes and Bulgarians, and versus the others, Ivanova, Svetlana, Varna
during the Late Middle Ages Regional versus National History, Etudes balkaniques,
vol. 40, no 2 (2004), pp. 10943.
91
Interestingly this explanation remains confined to Bulgaria. Albanians, Muslims
including, have developed several explanations that they were forced by the Ottomans
by fiscal pressure and they converted only superficially, preserving their identity, or
that they converted to Islam to counteract the aggression of their Slavic/ Greek neigh-
bours. For the rest of the Balkan peoples, Greeks, Serbs and in Macedonia, the converts
were simply traitors, implying a voluntary decision.
The demographic realities in the newly-established Bulgarian

Principality forced Bulgarian politicians to consider also the issue of
the ratio between Bulgarians and Turks, and undertake measures to
improve it. In the pre-1944 period this implied in the first place stimu-
lating the emigration of members of the minority (but not of Pomaks!)
towards the Ottoman empire/Turkey, with history again providing a
useful excuse: since Turks were regarded at that time as direct descend-
ants of the conquerors of the 14th15th century who had ousted
Bulgarians, it was only logical to expect them to go where they had
presumably come from. Later, when the process of individual non-
enforced conversion was revealed, it too came to be used in domestic
policy with regard to the Turkish minority, as part of the efforts of the
Bulgarian communist elite to soothe the differences between the two
major ethno-confessional segments of Bulgarias population. Thus we
may say that politics with regard to the Muslim minorities in Bulgaria
was closely intertwined with historical research and the political
imperatives of the day were usually substantiated with arguments from
the nearer or more distant past.
This, however, does not mean that historical research simply fol-
lowed the political necessities. Very important in this respect is also the
enrichment of the source base for research, especially the introduction
of the Ottoman documentation and narratives. During the last half
century Islamization and its various aspects have engaged relatively
considerable attention in diverse academic circles. Debates focused in
the first place on the origins of Pomaks, then moved on to the problem
of the ratio between the colonization of Turks from Asia Minor and
conversion of local people as the reasons for the emergence of the
Muslim groups in Bulgaria. In parallel, the question was raised of
whether conversion had indeed been imposed by force alone through
one or several campaigns directed by the Ottoman state (initiated by
the Greek clergy) or had been undertaken voluntarily and evolved as a
gradual process. By the mid-1980s most of the specialists in the
Ottoman period in Bulgaria had abandoned the ready explanation
attributing the adoption of the new faith only to campaigns directed by
the Ottoman state or other forms of violence (abduction of women,
devirme, neo-martyrs). The factors for the unfolding of the process
were more and more seen in the striving for the improvement of the
personal social and material standing. This brought to the fore even
more questions about the role of various Ottoman institutions (the
Janissary corps, the Yrks, and others) in the process; the social
groups more apt to convert and the reasons for such a decision; the
ensuing changes in the life of converts. The range of themes expanded,
including women, mixed marriages, the attitude of the Church and of
Bulgarian men of letters with regard to conversion.
However, despite the gradual stripping of historical research in gen-
eral and of the issue of the spread of Islam in particular from direct
political influences after 1989, and the increasing range of sources that
have entered historians laboratory, there is still a lot to be expected in
the elucidation of the phenomenon. In the first place, even today the
imperative to analyse more carefully the potential and the limitations
of the existing historical evidence remains. Very few of the scholars
approach the problmatique on the basis of a combination of sources,
narrative and documentary, Ottoman and Balkan. For example, the
applications of converts need to be juxtaposed with data in kadi
sicills, tahrir and cizye registers, sources produced by the non-Muslim
communities. There is still much to be expected in the study of the
religious factor, the Balkan heresies, and the role of the Islamic institu-
tions, mainly the Sufi brotherhoods, needs much deeper analysis. The
specifics of the process in the 19th century are untouched in Bulgarian
scholarship. Not much attention is paid to a comparison among the
various parts of the Ottoman Balkans and the discussion of the causes
for their peculiarities with respect to conversion. The Pomak question
as such also awaits a resolution mainly in terms of causes and factors
for the specific developments in the mountain. Even more important is
that unbiased academic research reaches the wider Bulgarian public
and triggers a more critical approach to historical events and their
interpretation with a view to the present.
The short history of Bulgaria for export
Evelina Kelbecheva
Like fairy tales-tellers in non-writing and non-literate societies, text-

books in history are charged with the responsibility of conveying to
youth what adults believe they should know about their own culture
as well as that of other societies.1
The purpose of the short history for export, a specific genre of concise
historiography, very close to the classical history textbook logic and
goals, is to represent Bulgaria abroad. This genre of history is underes-
timated both as circulation and impact. Hundreds of volumes are used
by university seminars on Bulgarian language and culture in Europe
and the USA, in India and Australia. Short histories of Bulgaria are
distributed at diplomatic and other international summits, including
those at which the new members of the European Union present their
culture and their past. Thus the short history for export becomes an
important channel of communication for Bulgarian history on an
international scale. The main goal of this genre of history is at least
threefold: to present Bulgarian history abroad, to advocate Bulgarian
interests, and at the same time to meet high academic standards and to
reflect the latest development of Bulgarian historiography.2
The object of my analysis is this specific genre of historical work
published in English and French in almost a decade between 1998 and
2005:
1) A History of Bulgaria in an Outline by Milcho Lalkov (Sofia: St. Kli-
ment Ohridski University Press, 1998) was the first such book in the
genre. The author (19442000) was Professor of Balkan History and
1
Perceptions of History. International Textbook Research on Britain, Germany and
the United States, ed. Volker Berghan and Hanna Schissler (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987), p.141
2
This is why I do not include in this article the works of Bozhidar Dimitrov, Director
of the National History Museum in Sofia, (since July 2009 Minister for Bulgarians
abroad without portfolio) which are very popular in Bulgaria and published also in
English, since his aim is to reach the common audience with popular writings in his-
tory like Illustrated History of Bulgaria, Twelve Myths of Bulgarian History, Bulgarians
the First Christians etc..
224 evelina kelbecheva
served for almost twenty years as Head of the Chair of Balkan His-
tory at the Sofia University. Lalkov was a recognized expert of mod-
ern and contemporary Balkan political history.
2)Bulgaria: History Retold in Brief edited by Alexander Fol, written
by Valeria Fol, Raina Gavrilova, Nikolay Ovcharov and Borislav
Gavrilov (Sofia: Riva Publishing House, 1999). This book appeared
one year after the volume by Milcho Lalkov and was clearly per-
ceived as an alternative narrative to it. The editor of this volume,
Professor Alexander Fol (19322006), was the founder of the
Institute for Thracian Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
in 1972 and served as Deputy Minister of Culture and Minister
of Peoples Education in the 1980s. The co-authors are all professors
at Sofia University and at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
RainaGavrilova (born 1957) served also as a Director of the Open
Society Foundation in Bulgaria and is currently Chairperson of the
Trust for Civil Society in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE Trust).
Nikolay Ovcharov (born 1957) is the most famous Bulgarian
archaeologist of the moment, both as an academic and as a public
media figure.
3) The Rose of the Balkans by Ivan Ilchev (Sofia: Colibri, 2005). Ivan
Ilchev (born 1953) is an esteemed Professor of History, served as a
Dean of the Department of History, and since 2008 is a President of
the Sofia University. Author of numerous monographs on Bulgarian
and Balkan history.
For comparison with short histories published abroad I use AConcise

History of Bulgaria by Richard. J. Crampton (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), the volume on Bulgaria for the Oxford History
of Modern Europe series. Richard Crampton is the most well know
expert on Bulgarian history abroad and a recognized specialist on
Eastern European history, now Emeritus Fellow at St Edmund Hall,
Oxford University.
The second text used for comparison is The Bulgarians by Christ
Anastasoff, (Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1977). Christ (Christo)
Anastasoff (18951981) got his MA degree in history from Washington
University, Saint Louis. The author was a Bulgarian migr in the USA,
member of the Central Committee of the Macedonian Patriotic
Organization, and a founder of its Information Bureau. Thus, all the
authors whose concise histories are the subject of this essay are interna-
tionally recognized historians. Furthermore, most among them are not
the short history of bulgaria for export225
only academics, but they have assumed leading political positions.

They all could be perceived in some way as institutions per se.
In this chapter my aim is to discover the extent to which newer
short history for export turns out to be a kind of anachronistic
remnant of the Bulgarian canonical historiography, including the
one that developed under Communism, and to what extent it incorpo-
rates innovations and revisions of existing, commonly-accepted views
of the past, or the fairy-tale-like history retold from generation to
generation.
Comparative analysis of the different works consists of a structural
analysis, comparing the relative place and weight of each chapter of the
book, dedicated to different period of Bulgarian historical develop-
ment. It also covers the study of the text itself, which helps to outline
particular features of historiography in terms of how these different
periods have been reflected and assessed by the authors and what was
the intended messages of the textbooks. The two most important topics
of my contextual analysis are the ways the Ottoman period and partly
the Communist period are narrated, not only because they are the two
most traumatic, yet asymmetrically researched and assessed stages of
Bulgarian history. My specific emphasis is on the narrative about the
destruction of the Muslim minorities in Bulgaria during Communism.
Thus, my study includes the characteristics of the Ottoman rule and the
Bulgarian struggle against it; and finally, the so-called Regenerative
Process (19841989), the climax of the gradual policy of assimilation
of the Turkish minorities in Bulgaria.
The choice, the length and the composition of the diverse chapters,
subjects, and facts chosen to be included in the short histories for
export are the following:
The most ancient periods pre-history and Thracian antiquity
receive different attention from different authors. The largest share is in
a book edited by Fol, where it is more than half of the content of the
book, which is an obvious discrepancy in the balance of the text. This
is understandable given the fact that the very influential editor was an
expert in ancient history and archaeology. Lalkov uses only 5% of the
content to cover the most ancient times, Ilchev only 15%. The relative
share in Crampons book is similar, but this includes the two medieval
Bulgarian states.
The Ottoman period is even more unevenly presented. Lalkov, who
gives the most unfavorable assessment of the era, dedicates 21% of his
narrative to it, almost the same as Ilchev 20 %. The volume edited by
Fol spends around 1% on the topic, which covers a period of five cen-
turies. This choice represents another obvious disproportion in the
book. In Cramptons history the proportion given to the Ottoman
period is 10%.
All the authors wrote their longest sections on the Third
Bulgarian Kingdom from 1878 to 1944: Lalkov 30%, Ilchev 55%,
Crampton 35%. The Communist period is covered as follows: Lalkov
21% and Ilchev6%,while in Cramptons book the equivalent share is
15%. In Fols book it is less than 1%! The period from the fall of
Communism and the transition towards democracy is non-existent in
Fols book; Lalkov has 10% on it, Ilchev 3%. The comparison with the
Cambridge history shows that Crampton chose to focus on the topic
with 25% of the content devoted to the transition from Communism to
democracy.
The comparative analysis of the relative content-distribution of the
chapters in the different narratives in the short histories of Bulgaria
presents their authors judgment of the value and the importance of the
different periods in the course of the Bulgarian historical development.
The Bulgarian authors tend to focus on the periods they themselves are
expert on, without clearly specifying their choice and the motivation
for this choice. This disproportion is most evident in the case of Fols
book. The obvious imbalance in the content and the structure of the
book is not only a minus, it could be seen as a manipulation, since the
generic goal of the genre is to represent abroad Bulgarian history as a
whole in a coherent, yet concise way. Ilchev has also expended half of
his total account on the period 18781944, where the focus is on the
Balkan War and World War One.
Another striking fact is the minuscule part of the short history books
that covers the Communist period. Here again Lalkov has the most
balanced text, while Fol and Ilchev decided to virtually ignore the
period Fol with 1% and Ilchev with 6%. A self-evident conclusion
emerges the last two authors have neither the interest, nor the desire
to interpret contemporary Bulgarian history. Assessing differently the
importance and legacy of Communism in Bulgaria, Crampton devotes
15% of his narrative to this specific era.
The imbalance among and the omissions of whole periods of the
Bulgarian history in the volumes discussed are striking. It appears even
stranger, since the intent of the authors is to situate the people, state-
hood and culture in the context of European civilization, not to treat
the past as a romantic experience, to quote the text on the cover of
Fols volume. One reason for it could be that in the text itself, which
reveals the attitude of the authors towards their past, the facts need-
ing to be incorporated are still debatable and lack legitimacy in the
public space. As a rule, the blank spots, the problematic topics, the
questions and the doubts do not have place in such canonical texts.
Thus, the short history for export mirrors the officially accepted nor-
mative, even canonical form of Bulgarian Historical Grand Narrative,
fixed in the textbooks.
Still, the genre of the concise history clearly presupposes representa-
tiveness and balance in both coverage of the different stages of history
and the historiographical assessment of these periods. But the case
with the Bulgarian authors of short history for export shows that this
goal is far from being achieved.
Bulgarian Society Under Ottoman and Communist Rules According to

the Bulgarian Authors (Lalkov, Fol and Ilchev).
The major focus of the second stage of the analysis is the contextual
analysis of the representation of one of the two3 most traumatic realms
in Bulgarian history Bulgarian society under Ottoman rule, and, on
the other hand, eventually the culmination of the gradual policy of
assimilation of the Turkish minorities in Bulgaria under Communism
during the so-called Regenerative Process (19841989).
In the chapter entitled In the shadow of the Ottoman Empire
Milcho Lalkov accepts the common theory that the Ottoman conquest
was an unmitigated catastrophe. He repeats the allegation that over
1000 of the elite Boyars, clergy and intellectuals were massacred
during the conquest. In addition at least 600,000 were slaughtered
in the course of the invasion, while another considerable number
wereenslaved. 1.5 million people left Bulgaria. Those were the param-
eters of the demographic catastrophe. The author follows the idea
that the Ottoman conquest severed Bulgaria from the rest of Europe
and the Renaissance, as well as from the Slavonic culture, and caused
tangible retardation of the Bulgarian people. In addition, the
Ottomanmilitary and feudal system, characterized as a typical Asiatic
mode of production, is considered to be by far more primitive then
3
The second most traumatic realm being Communist rule in Bulgaria
(19441989)
the social, economic and political relations that the Turks found in
the Peninsula.4
All the possible means of the planned assimilation were listed: from
mass Islamization to the devshirme. Lalkov stresses that Bulgarians at
the beginning of the 15th century initiated a consistent epic struggle,
which helped safeguard their identity as a people, and he presents a list
of all international military campaigns against the Ottomans, along
with Haidouk movements in the 16th and 17th centuries there were
detachments that numbered 400500 people. Lalkov refers to the mass
Tarnovo uprising in 1598, which has been proven to be a 19th century
falsification.
The Revival period is also treated separately, without real connection
to the processes in the Ottoman Empire. The only well-established rela-
tion is the crisis and the beginning disintegration of the Empire in the
18th century. There is no sound explanation for the rapid economical
development of the Bulgarian regions. The author does mention the
names of the greatest Bulgarian international merchants, but fails to
draw conclusions from this. This is why the conclusion is ambiguous:
Lalkov on one hand outlines the barriers placed before the Bulgarian
economy by the foreign bondage and the Ottoman feudal and des-
potic system but acknowledges the rapid economic progress during
the Revival.
The part about the revolutionary struggle falls into the same well-
known pattern. There is no mention of the different wings among the
political emigration, or of the ambiguous projects of some Bulgarian
political leaders. The climax of the revolutionary trend is, of course
the April Uprising of 1876. There is no special emphasis on the Batak
massacre, which became the epitome for Turkish atrocities against
Bulgarians. The number of the estimated innocent victims of the mas-
sacre varies between 1200 and 7000 people.5 This was the main event
which eventually provoked international attention toward the Bulgarian
issue in the framework of the Eastern Question and led to the Russo-
Turkish war 18771878. Liberation from Ottoman rule and the San
Stefano peace treaty stories are retold in the usual way, without any
critical assessment of the only preliminary peace treaty between Russia
4
Lalkov, Milcho, A History of Bulgaria in an Outline (Sofia: St. Kliment Ohridski
University Press, 1998), p. 83.
5
For the further analysis of the Batak case see the Epilogue at the end of this
chapter.
and the Ottoman Empire. The Russian-Turkish war of 187778 is seen

above all as the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
The Communist period is covered in fifty pages, where the emphasis
is on the political agenda of the different governments. The Red Terror,
which was unleashed by a coup dtat on 9 September 1944, is not even
mentioned. Instead, Lalkov recites the euphemisms of the Communist
propaganda like intensification of the revolutionary process by the
peoples democracy. Still, the author is bold enough to state that: the
Communist regime resurrected the primitive structure of the olden
patriarchal dependence in a new totalitarian hierarchy, which limited
the human outlook to the needs of physical survival.6
Lalkov characterizes the policy towards the Muslims as a swing of
the pendulum from purposeful tolerance to persecution on religious
grounds and coercive replacement of names with Bulgarian ones.7
There is not even a mention of the so-called Regenerative Process.
Obviously, this process is considered neither a violation of basic human
and civil rights, nor a further cause for the international isolation of
Bulgaria.
Lalkovs general conclusion is that the Bulgarian foreign policy was
constructive, free from the burden of territorial claims and revenge
seeking aspirations with respect to the neighbors. I could argue that all
the virtues of the Bulgarian foreign policy were dictated by Realpolitik
given the existence of the NATO neighbours on our borders. It is hard
to agree that the Regenerative Process was a constructive act!
In the volume edited by Alexander Fol, The Dark Ages of the
Ottoman Rule is covered in thirteen pages in chapter seven. It begins
with the drama of the Ottoman conquest, which started a heroic and
tragic struggle. We are told that the inferior numbers of the Bulgarian
army defended every fortress and tower.8 Kosovo is quoted among
them! The last Bulgarian king, Ivan Shishman, is glorified for his con-
sistent and endless unflagging efforts to ally with other neighbouring
Christian rulers, which is still a very questionable fact.
The attempts at liberation between the 15th and 17th centuries are
the focus, rather than a description of the nature of Ottoman rule in the
Lalkov, p. 238
6
Ibid, p. 258
7
8
Bulgaria: History Retold in Brief, ed. Alexander Fol, written by Valeria Fol, Raina
Gavrilova, Nikolay Ovcharov and Borislav Gavrilov, (Sofia: Riva Publishing House,
1999), p. 101.
Balkans. The clich that the Bulgarians were barred from professing
their religion or were forced to do so out of sight of the the true believ-
ers the Turks is repeated. In addition, the myth of low domeless
churches is sustained, as is the statement about massive Turkification
(rather than Islamization) in the 16th and 17th centuries. The same
goes for the determination of the Haidouks as avengers and defenders
of the people. The orthodox culture is seen as a pillar of the Bulgarian
national consciousness, on which grounds the Bulgarian Revival
started already around 1700. Again, there is no real correlation between
the Ottoman reforms and the Revival, with one exception the first
joint-stock credit company with Bulgarian participation in the 1860s.
The April Uprising of 1876 is again seen as the major event which trig-
gered the spread of the news about atrocities in Bulgaria. There is no
specific mention of the Batak massacre.
Bulgaria under Communism is discussed for ten pages as the big
experiment. At least, the victims of the Peoples Tribunal are mentioned
as liquidations of the political and economic elite. The most dramatic
crisis was seen in the Revival Process, mistakenly dated to 1989. This is
the year when more than 300,000 ethnic Turks left the country. Finally,
the authors believe that the damage caused by totalitarianism can be
cured and a moderate optimism is apparent in Bulgarian society.
Ivan Ilchev dedicates 70 pages to the Ottoman period, where he
draws a much wider and diversified picture of the Empires invasions
towards the West; Bulgarias relationship with other European states;
and the beginning of the Catholic coalitions against the Sultans. As for
Bulgarian history proper, the author does not review the catastrophe
theory. Still, the story of the killing of the aristocracy and of its forceful
Islamization is repeated.9
There is a revision of the existing historiographical myths related
only to the Greek clergy. The author denies that, when ruling over the
Bulgarian parishes, they tried to assimilate the Bulgarians, as Bulgarian
propaganda during the Revival has claimed.
There is another problematic statement, though, that is reproduced
that of the social equality of the Bulgarians and that of a society without
leaders. In one paragraph the author mentions the special status which
granted certain privileges to different categories of the population. But
the emphasis is on the serious obligations, not on the privileges.
9
Ilchev, Ivan, The Rose of the Balkans, (Sofia: Colibri, 2005), p. 83.
Ilchev is truly innovative in his assessment of everyday life during

the five centuries of Ottoman rule. He asserts that there has been a bal-
anced relationship between Turks and Bulgarians, but equality, even
in the most elementary sense of the word, has never been achieved. In
the courtroom the demands of the Christians were very rarely taken
into consideration. This is a highly contestable statement. Being aware
of this, Ilchev draws a parallel with France, where the peasant serfs
could not even dream of being represented in court. At the same time
the author underlines that all the subjects of the Sultan were his slaves.
The Sultan was able to promote or demote anyone in the social hierar-
chy, a fact which speaks by itself for the unique social mobility of the
Ottoman society. Of course, this was valid only for the Muslim popula-
tion of the Empire, he says.
Ilchev repeats the story about the devshirme, but still concludes, as
distinct from the other authors that not everything in the Empire was
as bad as it seemed to the nationalists of the later centuries, however.10
His examples are: the peace in the Balkan provinces until the 18th cen-
tury and the steady demographic growth.
Still, Ilchev cannot let go of the trivial story about forceful Islamiza
tion. Thus he believes that the basic problem was that Bulgaria was torn
apart from Europe. The final statement of the chapter concludes that
the backwardness of the Balkans grew over those centuries. This is why
the next chapter is entitled Rising from the Ashes, which covers the
Bulgarian National Revival. Ilchev acknowledges the new development
in historiography, which explores and finds parallels in the history of
Turks and Bulgarians, but concludes that at that time it was the differ-
ences that determined the way they lived.11
The beginning of the Revival period is called The Torch of the
Pioneers, of which the first one is Father Paisii. It is highly surprising
that the author sticks to the wrong assessment of this widely circu-
lated Slav Bulgarian history. It is a well established fact, now, that
Father Paisiis history had not influenced Bulgarian society until it
was published in 1844, a fact which is also acknowledged only by
R. Crampton.
Another novelty in the work of Ilchev is the introduction of ele-
mentsof social history, examples of everyday life patterns, details about
Ilchev, Ivan, p. 99.

10
Ibid, p. 104.
11
lifestyle, urbanization, diet, etc. But in the story about the revolution-
ary struggle against the Ottomans, called Liberty or Death there is
still one historiographical anachronism: the haidouk bands are defined
as the most clear-cut and consistent expression of discontent. It is
a well established fact, though, that those paramilitary detachments
were comprised of international brigands (Turks, Bulgarians, Greeks,
Gypsies, etc.) who continuously attacked the caravans of international
traders in the Balkans. The author reemphasizes the role of the haid-
ouks in the Serb and Greek national uprisings. It is important to note
that the notorious April Uprising is retold in a different way, without
using the traditional victimization discourse. At the end of the chapter
the author is trapped in the truism of a Bulgarian who would have
defended Batak.
The title of the last chapter of The Rose of the Balkans is Imposing
Soviet-type Socialism in Bulgaria. The Red Terror is mentioned only
in the captions under certain illustrations of political leaders during
the Peoples Tribunal in 194445. Ilchev admits that Bulgaria won
the questionable fame of being the Soviet Unions most faithful and
submissive satellite.12 The author does not see the link between the
Regenerative Process against the Turks and the fall of Zhivkov himself.
Actually, the Regenerative Process is recognized in this book only in the
captions under a photograph of Bulgarian Turks during their exodus.
The author admits that the decision was unexpected and absurd, most
probably due to the outdated thinking of Bulgarias political leader-
ship.13 This statement is both low-key and inaccurate. Ilchev does not
consider the events of 19841989 as a climax of the anti-Muslim and
anti-Turkish policy of the Bulgarian Communist Party, neither does he
admit the growth of Bulgarian nationalism, which become a guiding
principle of the Party ideology, which had also to make up for the
failure of the communist ideology by the end of the 1970s. Meanwhile,
in the same caption, Ilchev tries to justify the Regenerative Process, con-
cluding that At that, such a policy was not new in the Balkans. The
Bulgarians in Greek and Serbian Macedonia were never given the right
to free expression of will, while the Turkish propaganda did not admit
the existence of Kurds in Turkey.14 On the other hand, in the main text,
Ilchev did not forget to emphasize clandestine Turkish organizations
12
13
14
Ibid, p. 399.
that made several terrorist attacks in which innocent women and chil-
dren died.15 Thus the emphasis is not on the schizophrenic act of the
Bulgarian communist authorities, but rather on the terroristic response
from several members of the Turkish minority.
Bulgarian History from the Outside: Anastasoff and Crampton
Christ Anastasoff is the author of The Bulgarians, published by Exposi

tion Press, Hicksville, New York, in 1977. This book was one of the very
few concise histories of Bulgaria, published for international audience
at the time and had wide circulation among the Bulgarian and
Macedonian diasporas in Canada and in the US. The author starts with
the prehistory of the South-Eastern Europe, and then dedicates a spe-
cial chapter to Macedonia, surveying its expansion and influence. This
chapter is very important for the further development of the arguments
about the Macedonian question in Bulgarian foreign policy. The author
quotes further all the examples of major figures of Bulgarian history
that were born or work in Macedonia Cyril and Methodius, Father
Paisii, and other leaders of the Bulgarian Renaissance, which in the
early part of the 19th century began in Macedonia.16
Bulgaria under Turkish rule is examined in ten pages in chapter 5,
which deals primarily with Byzantium and the Second Bulgarian state.
He believes that Bulgarian civilization from the 15th century was on a
par with that of rest of Europe. The feudal social system was marked
by the division of society into three social classes: the clergy and the
nobles, the praying class and the fighting class. The peasant-workers,
the third class, are ignored. Turkish feudalism in the Bulgarian lands
was seen as oppressive and obnoxious. It is interesting that Anastasoff
deviates from other authors in his view about the haidouks. He accepts
that the haidout, the Serbian haidouk and the Greek klephtis all mean
brigand, but they were viewed with sympathy by the population and
were glorified in the folklore. Their role in the liberation from the Turks
was stressed.
The conclusion is that the Turkish regime unconsciously worked for
the distraction of the national consciousness of the conquered Balkan
Ibid, p. 402.
15
Anastasoff, Christ, The Bulgarians (Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1977),

16
p. 123
peoples in the most effective possible way. The Turks banished or

assimilated the ruling class or the warrior class in the conquered coun-
tries. In the communities no one remained but the village peasants,
whose only ethnic bond was that of religion. Thus the establishment of
Turkish rule upon the Balkans was detrimental to all the Christian
inhabitants, but particularly to the Bulgarians (the others were able to
preserve their spiritual integrity).17 The author contradicts himself on
two consecutive pages. First he says that rum-milleti was the common
ethnic name given to all the orthodox population, but on the next page
he claims that the Greeks under this name have formed a separate com-
munity with a full church and civil autonomy with their patriarch as its
leader.
Anastasoff depicts the high Greek clergy as men of low character,
greedy and ferocious. Obviously, Hellenization was seen as no less
a danger for the Bulgarians than the Turkish assimilation. The aboli-
tion of the Bulgarian archbishopric of Ohrid in 1767 was its climax.
The Bulgarian church, school, social institutions, liturgy, literature,
and even the language were passing through the darkest period in the
history of the Bulgarian people. The latter were now not only under the
political domination of the Sultan of Turkey but also under the spirit-
ual oppression of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The precursors of Bulgarian self-preservation and awakening are
seen in the guilds, the highly glorified haidouks, mainly in Macedonia,
and the men of letters Father Paisii, Sofronii Vrachanski, Yuri Venelin
and Vasil Aprilov. The very special emphasis is given to the leading
Bulgarian figures in Macedonia Hadji Yokam Kirkovski from Kichevo
and Cyril Peichinovich from Tetovo, Hadji Teodosii from Doiran,Neofit
Rilski from Bansko, bishop Nataniel from Scopie, Raiko Zhenzifov
from Veles and the notorious Miladinov brothers, who were helped by
bishop Josef Strossmaier; and finally Grigor Parlichev from Ohrid.
The whole era of the Tanzimat occupies three paragraphs, while the
story of the haidouks, mountaineer national defenders, is told in six
pages, again with special emphasis on Apostol Petkov, Macedonias
most legendary haidouk. Abdul Hamid allegedly invited him to his pal-
ace for a month in 1903 after the insurrection in Macedonia, but to no
avail. The Bulgarian horrors of 1876 had hardly a parallel in all the
history of European peoples.18 The Batak massacre is again the major
Ibid, p. 134.
17
Anastasoff, Christ, p. 167

18
proof for this argument with its 7000 victims. Anastasoff writes exten-
sively about Americans in Bulgarian history, and especially about the
role of MacGahan the military correspondent for the New World and
the Daily News as the liberator of Bulgaria. The role of Robert College
for both the education and the political defence of the Bulgarians is
also well underlined.
The rest of the book, from chapter 9 to chapter 13, is basically the
history of the Macedonian question, not only as the overwhelming part
of the national question for the Bulgarians, but also as the source of
discord with their neighbours. According to this view, the Balkan wars
against the Turks are defined as Bulgarias wars for the liberation of the
Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace.19
The chapter which deals with the recent Bulgarian history is a mix-
ture between the history of the Macedonia question after the Second
World War and the list of the most important Bulgarian writers, poets,
academics and artists. There is no mention at all of the Red Terror;
rather there is a short history of the socialist movement in Bulgaria.
More surprising is the absence of any referral to the persecutions
against the IMRO activists and the coercive Macedonization of the
Pirin Macedonia. Rather, there is a description of the establishment of
the Macedonia nation and language in Titos Macedonia. Most proba-
bly these are the ideas for which the author was accused of becoming
loyal to the Communist regime in Bulgaria.
The most well balanced account of the Bulgarian history belongs to
the Oxford historian Richard J. Crampton. In chapter 3, Ottoman rule
in the Bulgarian lands he states: It would be unwise to imagine the
Ottoman empire as some form of lost, multi-cultural paradise, but on
the other hand it would also be wrong to deny that at some periods in
its history the empire assured for all its subjects, irrespective of r eligion,
stability, security and a degree of prosperity.20
The author describes the imperial administration, the millet system,
the timar and vakuf, and the devshirme. Crampton is the only author
who mentiones that the devshirme was terminated in 1685. Further,
19
According to a survey conducted in 1997, between 4551% of Bulgarian students
think that the Macedonians are in fact Bulgarians and that Bulgaria is indivisible from
Macedonia, See Zvetanski, Zvetan, The Macedonians: Romanticism against Realism
According to a Recent Sociological Survey, in Clio in the Balkans (Thessaloniki: Center
for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe, 2000), p. 283.
20
Crampton, Richard, J., A Concise History of Bulgaria, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997)
he explores the process of Islamization (only 8% of the population

were Christian Bulgarians), both voluntary and forced. Crampton does
not accept the concept of the total equality of Bulgarian society
and quotes the kmets, the chorbadji and the esnafs (which were ethni-
callymixed). The villages with special privileges were very important.
He concludes: The experience gained by those villages was to be useful
in organizing the schools and other institution which so helped the
Bulgarian national revival.21
Still the conquest is seen as cultural and political disaster for the
Bulgarian nation. An example of this is seen in the fact that when
Catherine the Great compiled her samples of 279 languages and dia-
lects, Bulgarian was not mentioned, nor was it by Josef Dobrovski, the
father of Slavic studies. Yet Bulgarian survived, mostly with the help of
the local churches and the schools and scriptoria in monasteries.
According to Crampton, the protest against the Ottoman power was
not a Christian monopoly. It started with the revolt of Beddredin in
1416 and was particularly wide-spread among the Catholics, especially
the Saxons in Chiprovetz. The decline of the Ottoman Empire and the
timar system, engulfed by the vakuf and the sale of office were the
major elements of this decline. The British historian does not repeat
the almost folkloric tales about the haidouks and the rebellions against
the Ottomans as the permanent resistance of the Bulgarians. He is
the only one who points out that Paisiis book was a virtually unknown
and anonymous work until its printed version appeared in 1844 in
Budapest. It was Marin Drinov, who in 1871 made Paisii the father of
the Bulgarian Revival. Another non-traditional idea is that Bulgarians
called for their recognition not because of the consciousness of the
past, gained from reading Paisii and the others, but rather because of
the contact with the outside world gained through commerce, educa-
tion abroad, proliferation of western ideas, and participation in other
Balkan national rebellions. The crisis of the time of troubles and the
consequent changes in the empire pressed for reforms. The economic
boom of the Bulgarian lands was prompted by the reforms.
Crampton mentions the terrible vengeance on villages that rebelled
in 1876 and gives the examples of 5000 victims in Batak. The Bulgarian
question had become a European one. The San Stefano Treaty was not
seen as realistic and thus the Berlin Congress ratified the new Treaty
Crampton, Richard, p. 49
21
which gave the Bulgarians 37.5% of the territory promised at San

Stefano. Still, the Bulgarian state was born.
In the chapter dedicated to Bulgaria under Communist rule Richard
Crampton gives a real account of the Regenerative Process against
the Turkish minority and its international condemnation.
Myth, History and Nation-Building
The specific genre of short history for export reflects the commonly
accepted canons of Bulgarian history, created as a part of the general
scheme of building national ideologies that serve to preserve t raditional
cultural values. One valuable possible explanation for the canonical
character of the short histories of Bulgaria is the predominant essen-
tialist mode of thinking: Essentialism is one of the safest and most
comforting intellectual harbors of the human mind.In its reliance on
myths and mythmaking, essentialist thinking is a functional fantasy in
the creation of nationalist fictions to establish national solidarity.22
Thus, the short history for export could be compared to the most
canonical texts the history textbooks with reference to its mission-
ary function as fundamental narratives for representing Bulgarian
history. As with every textbook, the short histories also are heavily
dependant on the dominant political and ideological agenda of the
state. Some of the old negative stereotypes are still sustained, and some
new ones are created by the short histories for export, despite the grad-
ual improvement of the efforts to implant some new ideas in Bulgarian
historiography.
Bulgarian history textbooks demonstrate a strange mixture of ethnic
(Herder-type) and civic (French-type) nationalism.23 I would argue
that despite the coexistence and the discrepancy between those two
22
Belge, Murat and Jale Parla, Preface, Balkan Literatures in the Era of Nationalism,
(Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2009), p. xvi.
23
Dimitrova, Snezhana and Naum Kaichev, The Happiness and the Progress of the
Nation Are Attainable Only Provided That Not a Single Part of This Peoples Body
Hurts:Bulgarian Historical Education and Perspectives of the National Identity,
Balkanistic forum, X, 1-2-3, Special Issue: MigrationSelfreflectionMemory,Editors:
Snezhana Dimitrova, Kristina Popova, Issued by: Mezhdunarodniyat universitetski
seminar za balkanisitchni prouchvaniya i specializacii pri yugozapadniya universitet
Neofit Rilski- Blagoevgrad The International university seminar for Balkan
researches and specializations in the South-Western University Neofit Rilski-
Blagoevgrad) (Blagoevgrad: Southwestern University, 1999), p. 5781.
understandings of nationalism in Europe since the late 18th century,

the overwhelming discourse in Bulgarian history is still the ethnic-
nationalistic one, purveyed as patriotism. Even the Communist ideol-
ogy was not able to annihilate the overwhelming grand narrative of
the sufferings, struggles and the virtues of Bulgarian people.
Bulgarian history is still thought of as an ethnohistory. Most
of the non-Bulgarian entities cannot find space in the national
history narrative. There are minimal data about different minorities
in Bulgaria between the 15th and the 19th centuries, although they
do hint that diverse minorities played a role in Bulgarian history, not
only in the present. It is still a paradox that Bulgarian Muslims disap-
pear from any historical text after the process of islamization/
de-bulgarization.24
It is important to note that the current omnipresence of the bulgaro-
centrism, which gives birth to a generic distortion of the historical nar-
rative, has not been always the case. In the textbooks used in Bulgaria
between 1878 and 1944 there was a clear tendency for a subtle and
tolerant description of the Turks, of the successes and the glory of their
state, as well as differentiation between the different stages of the his-
tory of the Ottoman Empire. There was a special emphasis on the toler-
ant nature of the Bulgarian nation and the conditions for peaceful
coexistence between the diverse ethnic groups and religions.25 In this
respect one observes a growing negative tendency after 1944. In con-
trast, the foreign historiography on Bulgaria asserts different views on
the subject of the Ottoman Rule, as for example in the volume by
Richard Crampton.
From the guiding principle of ethnocentrism arises the rule that the
history of Bulgaria between the 15th and the 19th centuries is to be
depicted as a total, endless and senseless evil. The clashes and hostilities
between the Turks, the traditional arch-enemy, and the Bulgarians
form the most important, overwhelming and influential spectrum of
the national historical narrative, which even today is (mis)used by pop-
ulist nationalistic propaganda. All this led to a recent international
24
Ivanova, Svetla, Etnokulturni obshtnosti v balgarskite uchebnitsi po natsionalna
istoria sastoianie I perspektivi (Ethno-cultural Communities in Bulgaria National
History Textbooks: Present Situation and Possible Perspectives), in Aspekti na etno-
kulturnata situatsia (Aspects of the Ethno-Cultural Situation in Bulgaria), (Sofia:
Association ACCESS, Open Society, 2000) pp. 470480.
25
Ivanova, Svetla, p. 468.
scandal around the attempt to study the construction of the memory of

the massacre in Batak in 1878.26
It is no longer debatable that the most persistent yet invisible virus
of the historically constructed Bulgarian identity is the story of the
Turkish yoke and the Turkish genocide against the Bulgarians.27
Almost all the short histories of Bulgaria for export convey the same
generic, essentialist message. Because of this permanent demonization
of the Turks, there persists an asymmetry in the assessment of the grad-
ual process of assimilation of the Muslim minorities in Bulgaria.
In a sharp distinction with the previous period, the Revival func-
tions for Bulgarians as a constitutive myth, a foundation myth for the
beginning of the modern nation. It has always been represented in a
highly optimistic perspective, as a contrast with the previous centuries
of sleep and darkness. The whole epoch is sacred and the leaders
of the national movement are institution of heroic dedication to the
ideals of the nation. Obviously, it is impossible for Bulgarian historians
to take another more neutral approach to the topics of the revival
and for the academic discourse to prevail over the nationalistic zeal.
Liberalism cannot win over the nationalistic discourse.28
The second highly problematic and traumatic topos in recent
Bulgarian historiography is the Communist period and the way it is
described and assessed. There are striking similarities of repetitions of
both omissions and use of ideological clichs, as it is the case with the
narratives of the Ottoman period but this is a subject of another
detailed analysis. It is important for the present survey, because the
climax of the anti-Muslim policy of the Communist Party was the so-
called Regenerative Process aimed at the total assimilation of the Turks
in Bulgaria (19841989). It is only briefly mentioned in most short his-
tories of Bulgaria for export. Let us remember that the lack of mem-
ory and the historical errors are also corner-stones in the foundation
of the nation, as Renan said.
The latest works of Bulgarian historiography in the genre of short
history shows that the persistent ideological and national myths of
26
See the newly published papers from the aborted conference Batak Ein Bul
garischer Erinnerungsort, eds Baleva, Martina and Ulf Brunnbauer (Berlin: Geschichts
werksatt Europa, 2008).
27
Ivanova, Svetla, p. 472.
28
Daskalov, Rumen, Die Wiedergeburt als bulgarischer Nationalmythos, in Baleva
Martina and Ulf Brunnbauer (eds), Batak Ein Bulgarischer Erinnerungsort, pp. 8498.
Bulgarian grand narrative are still retold. These myths could be regarded
as myths of weakness and as a compensation for this weakness.29
One opinion asserts that there is one very important characteristic of
the academic historiography of the Ottoman period: it does not differ
too much from the popular history and the school books.30 I would
argue that this is not the case.
Bulgaria is known for prominent development of Ottoman histori-
ography, and some of the works of Bulgarian Ottomanists are interna-
tionally recognized as classics in the field. Further, in the past decades
a distinct and strong academic trend has emerged among the latest
generation of historians which aims at revising some of the most per-
sistent clichs and myths of Bulgarian history.31 At the same time inno-
vative research was done also on the image of the other.32
29
Schoppflin, George, Nations, Identity, Power. The New Politics of Europe, (London:
Hurst, 2000), p. 92.
30
Daskalov, Rumen, op.cit, p. 73.
31
Daskalov, Rumen, The Making of a Nation in the Balkans (Budapest: Central
European University Press 2006); Aretov, Nikolay, Nacionalna mitologiya i nacionalna
literaturea (National mythology and national literature), (Sofia: Kralica Mab, 2006);
Zelijazkova, Antonina, The Problem of the Authenticity of Some Domestic Sources
on the Islamization of the Rhodopes, Deeply Rooted in Bulgarian Historiography,
Etudes Balkaniques, 4, (1990), pp. 105111; Georgieva, Tzvetana, Transformaciite na
edin sblasak na civilizacii hriastianstvoto i isliama na Balkanite (Transformation of
one clash of civilizations Christianity and Islam on the Balkans), in Balkanski
identichnosti(Balkan Identities), vol. 3, (Sofia: Institute for Study of Integration, 2003),
pp. 4976; Radushev, Evgenii, Smisalat na istoriografskite mitove za isliamizaciata
(The Meaning of the Historiographical Myths on Islamization), in Balkanski identich-
nosti, vol. 3 (Sofia: Institute for Study of Integration, 2003), pp. 152197; Mishkova,
Diana, Predimstvata na izostanalia-nachaloto na Balkanskata modernizacia (The
Adventages of the Lay-Behinder on the Beginning of Balkan Modernization),
Sociologicheski problemi, 10, 2 (1995), pp. 3653. Gradeva, R., S. Ivanova, Vyvedenie.
Izsledvane na istoriata I syvremennoto systoianie na miusulmanskata kultura po bal-
garskite zemi naroden I visok plast(Introduction. Research on the history and the
present situation of the Muslim culture in Bulgarian lands common and elite strata),
in Miusulmanskata kultura po balgarskite zemi, vol.2, 1998, pp. 952. Vezenkov,
Alexander, Obvious Only at First Glance, in Mishkova, Diana, The Balkan XIX cen-
tury Other Approaches, (Sofia: Riva, 2006) pp. 209215.
32
See the detailed analysis in Isov, Myumyun, Nai-razlichniyat sassed (The most
different neighbour, (Sofia: IMIR, 2005); Obrazat na drugite na Balkanite The Image
of the Other in the Balkans, (Sofia: Fondacia Balkanski koleji, 1998) ; Danova, Nadia,
Obrazat na drugia v balgarskite uchebnici prez Vazrajdaneto (The Image of the
Other in the Bulgarian Textbooks during the Revival), in Vrazki na savmestimost i
nesavmestimost mejdu hristiani i musulmani v Balgaria (Contacts and Conflictsbetween
Christians and Muslims in Bulgaria), (Sofia: IMIR, 1994), pp. 232238; Panaiotova, B.,
Obrazat na drugite v uchebnicite po istoria prez 20-te I 50-te godini na XX vek (The
Image of the Other in the History Textbooks in the 1920s and the 1950s), ibid,
Despite these significant achievements of recent Bulgarian histori-

ography, the majority of the textbooks still follow the traditional canon
of self-victimization and heroization. Thus, it does not seem paradoxi-
cal that only few and partial attempts are made to include if not rec-
oncile the new trends in Ottoman historiography in Bulgaria and in
the Balkans with the narratives for international audience.
The problem is that all other historical controversies can be dis-
cussed in an academic tone, except the Ottoman period. The artificially
ignited fire against the new revisionist historians reflected the national
instinct, which would not allow the academic revisiting of the period
between the 15th and the 19th centuries. The mass public knowledge,
constructed by the traditional textbooks and by all the various media
safeguarded the belief that for five centuries Bulgarians were slaves to
the Sultan, that the devshirme turned millions of Bulgarian children
into slaves to the Turks, that Bulgarian people led a permanent and
heroic struggle against the Turkish yoke, and that the Ottomans main
ambition was to convert every Bulgarian to Islam, and in the process
tremendous atrocities occurred. The self-victimization syndrome
mingled once again with the desire for self-heroization. The entire nar-
rative seems to mirror the logic of a fairy tale, where in the dark time
of a bloody struggle (Turkish yoke) between Good (Bulgarians) and
Evil (Turks, i.e Ottomans), fantastic heroes appear (haidouks, rebels),
which bravery and self sacrifice led the people to the happy ending
(Liberation).
Thus, the canon of historiographical representation of the Ottoman
period, once created around the middle of the 19th century has proven
to be untouchable in the public consciousness. Even minor changes in
terminology and assessment of the historical process during the
Ottoman age were either rejected, or used as a pretext to launch a pub-
lic campaign for the defence of Bulgarian patriotism.
pp. 239241; Kazakov, Georgi, Obrazat na drugia v balgarskite uchebnici po istoria

(The Image of the Other in the Bulgarian History Textbooks), Leteratura,
vol.19 (1998), pp. 37. Kalionski, Alexei, Ottoman Macedonia in Bulgarian History
Textbooks for Secondary School, in Clio in the Balkans (Thessaloniki: Center for
Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe, 2000), pp. 276281; Kalionski,
Alexey and Valery Kolev, Multiethnic Empires, National Rivalry and Religion in
Bulgarian History Textbooks, ibid, pp. 118133;Kalionski, Alexei, The Ethnic and
Religious Climate in Bulgaria after 1989. Preliminary Notes for Discussion, ibid,
pp. 320330; Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoglu and Vasilia Liian Antonio, A Common
Regional Past? Portrayals of Byzantine and Ottoman Heritages from Within and
Without, ibid, pp. 5373.
Conclusion
This brief study speaks clearly about several sustained trends in text-
book historiography, including the one for export:
1. The Ottoman period is the most traumatic dimension of Bulgarian
history.
2.The representation of the Ottoman period is highly conservative in
textbooks and visual presentations.
3.The Bulgarian public as a whole is totally inflexible when challenged
with revision of the Ottoman period and the attempt to adequately
represent the past.
4.A new factor appeared in the equation after 1990, namely the newly
formed Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), the party of the
Turkish minority of Bulgaria. The tremendous rise of the new party
and the fact that they became a guarantee for the success of any
Bulgarian government after 1990 triggered a paranoid public
response, mostly from the far-left.
In Bulgaria today any attempt at revision of the historiography of the
Ottoman period depends not only on the expertise, professionalism
and will of academic historians, but on the prejudices of the common
public and, recently, also on the reaction towards the political role of
the Turkish minority in the country.
This is further proof that the link is broken between the academic
historiography (which has already provided advanced and adequate
knowledge of the past) and the production of common historical
knowledge aimed at the general public, which takes on the character of
proliferation of myths. I consider this gulf between academic discourse
and public knowledge a generic symptom of the abuse of historical
knowledge in Bulgaria. This gap is the reason for the questionable
response to the attempts for revisions in history and for the everlasting
clichs about the Ottoman past in Bulgaria. The legacy of both nation-
alist (and) communist historiography in Bulgaria is well preserved and
widespread. In addition, it circulates abroad throughout the short his-
tories of Bulgaria for international audience.
Epilogue The International Controversy around Batak
In 2008 a notorious public scandal arose around the international

project entitled Batak as a Realm of Memory. It turned an academic
project into a political and even a physical clash. The project concerned
the epochal uprising against the Ottomans in 1876.33 Although the
planned conference was cancelled, as we shall see below, the papers
were published in German and Bulgarian, i.e. it was meant to reach an
international audience.34 This controversy is closely related to the topic
of my analysis, so closely that it becomes a case study of it. The aim of
the international project was to explore the ways - visual representa-
tions (including the famous paintings by the Polish artist Piotrovskii)35,
canonical texts, commemorations, museums etc. - through which
the massacre in Batak in 1876 became the most sacred symbol of
Bulgarian martyrdom, the symbol of Turkish/Muslim atrocities against
Bulgarians.
The project was co-sponsored by German educational institutions
and involved leading German and Bulgarian historians and cultural
anthropologists like Martina Baleva, Ulf Brunnbauer, Evgenia Ivanova,
Monika Flacke, Rumen Daskalov, Alexander Vezenkov, Evgenija
Troeva and Dimitrar G. Dimitrov. Immediately the authors of the pro-
ject were labeled, deniers of the historical truth, only because they
dared to use the term myth to designate the phenomenon of the for-
mation of the memory about the events of Batak in 1876.
Each of the contributors had made a special point, deconstructing
the functioning of Batak as a realm of memory.
33
The story is the following: In April 1876 in certain parts in Bulgaria there was an
insurrection against the Ottoman Empire which ended with a massacre in the village
of Batak with around 1500 victims. The slaughter of an unarmed civil population
which had sought refuge in the local church became the most important realm of
memory for Bulgarian national history for the entire Ottoman period. The news
about the massacre and the incorrect number of 5000 (in some accounts even 7000)
victims was first spread by the American journalist MacGhahan. Then the story about
Batak was retold in the famous Notes of Bulgarian Uprising by Zachary Stoianov, and
finally the poet Ivan Vazov sealed the national memory about the devastated village.
Since the end of the 19th century Batak became the most sacred lieu de memoire of the
Bulgarian national pantheon, and the church in the village was turned into a museum,
where almost every Bulgarian child is taken as a part of mandatory school study trips.
Later on the crypt of the church, where the sculls of the victims of the massacre were
preserved, was turned also into a crypt for the partisans, guerilla fighters against the
so called monarcho-fascist regime in Bulgaria. This was part of the specific political
and ideological agenda, adopted by the late Communist governments, which had the
ambition to merge the stories about the freedom fighters in Bulgaria against the Turks
and those later against the fascists).
34
Baleva, Martina and Ulf Brunnbauer (eds), Batak Ein Bulgarischer Erinnerungsort
(Berlin: Geschichtswerksatt Europa, 2008).
35
Baleva, Martina, Das Bild von Batak im kollektiven Gadchtnis der Bulgaren, in
Baleva, Martina and Ulf Brunnbauer (eds), pp. 3348
Alexander Vezenkov summarized the most discussed issues around

Batak as follows:
1. Revolt or Massacre
The idea of a peaceful, innocent population, subjected to Asian atroci-
ties, was a cry to humanistic Europe for help. Thus any kind of revo-
lutionary spirit was suppressed for the purpose of the victimization.
The contemporaries, first and above all Zachary Stoyanov, asserted that
Bulgarian Muslims (or Pomaks) conducted the massacre. It is extremely
important to know that the first great historian of the Revival and the
April uprising itself, Dimitar Strashimirov, clearly presented contro-
versial explanations about the leader of the revolt in Batak, Petar
Goranov, who left the village with his family and a few others and thus
survived the massacre. Either he abandoned the village to avoid paying
the price for his ill-conceived heroism, or they became victims because
they did not follow him. As a contrast, recent Bulgarian historiography
does not even mention the tension between Goranov and the others,
and glorifies both of them.
2. The Perpetrators
This question has two major dimensions: were Bulgarian Muslims the
culprits, and were they part of the Bashibozuk, (irregular, para-military
units) or of the regular Ottoman army? Despite the fact that all the
sources and memoirs talk about the Pomaks, still engraved in the pop-
ular memory is the idea of Turkish atrocities. There is even a recorded
statement, which asserts that the measures of the authorities reflected
the alliance between the blood brothers Bulgarian Christians and
Bulgarian Muslims! The regular Turkish armys involvement in the
massacre in Batak has been disputed also by the Ottoman government.
Bulgarian historiography did not contradict the official statement
about the local character of the conflict. Todays Bulgarian historiogra-
phy insists, though, that the atrocities are due to the involvement of the
regular army, as a result of Ottoman imperial policy.
3. The Local Character of the Rebellion

The facts reveal that what was later called the April uprising was in fact
a revolt of several villages Panagiurichte, Koprivchtica, Klisura,
Bratsigovo and Perushtica, but not Batak. We should distinguish the
topics of the victims from the one of the construction of the historical
memory about them, and from the issue of instrumentalization of this
memory for political or ideological goals. The formation of the modern
nation is not only a process of shared memory but also a process of
shared oblivions, as well as of shared false memories.36 Ulf Brunnbauer
asserted that, first, the representation of the massacre is typical of
all Balkan nations narratives about the heroic struggle for libera-
tion.Second, this narrative is a double-edged sword: one goal is to rep-
resent the struggle for liberation of the Bulgarians/Christians against
Turks/Muslims. But since the massacre was executed by Bulgarian
Muslims, or Pomaks, and the official policy of the Bulgarian state was
to reintegrate them into the Bulgarian society, there was no mention of
Bulgarians killed Bulgarians. During the whole 20th century in the
official documents and in the public discourse the Pomaks are repre-
sented as ethnic Bulgarians, forcibly turned to Islam but still maintain-
ing their ethnic identity. Thus it would have been impossible to indicate
the fact that Pomaks were mostly guilty of the massacre, so the Turks
were given this role.37
Following the publication of the book, in March 2009 the Red
House for Culture and Debate in Sofia a leading cultural institution,
specialized in organizing wide public discussions coordinated an
open debate on the topic. The debate was between scholars defending
the freedom of academic research on the mechanisms and the prolif-
eration of knowledge about the tragic events in Batak May 1876, and
those (academic historians, students and general public) who refused
to accept the term myth to describe the event, thus accusing both
international and Bulgarian participants in the project as traitors and
national nihilists. As in the case of the phony allegation against histo-
rians who wanted to replace the term Turkish yoke with Ottoman
presence in the early 1990s, twenty years later the same groundless
populist accusations were directed towards the academics who dared
to investigate the formation of the national memory.38
Vezenkov, Alexander, in Baleva, Martina and Ulf Brunnbauer, pp. 110116.

36
Brunnbauer, Ulf, Ethnische Landschaften: Batak als Ort des Erinnerns und
37
Vergessens, in Baleva, Martina and Ulf Brunnbauer, pp. 98106.

38
Needless to say, no historian ever denied the fact of the massacre, nor any other
atrocities that occurred at that time; nor did anyone challenge the idea that the inter-
national resonance of the atrocities in Bulgaria triggered the further diplomatic and
political attempts of the Great Powers to resolve the Bulgarian question, finalized with
the Russian-Turkish war from 18771878.
The highly emotional negative reaction of certain political and aca-

demic circles starting with professors from the Bulgarian Academy of
Science and ending with the semi-military youth organization of the
extreme left nationalistic party Ataka (who were present at the public
debate in the Red House, but left the hall) is alarming. It is alarming
regarding the refusal of the Bulgarian public to engage in constructive,
enlightening and innovative debate about traumatic, but still unex-
plored and unexplained phenomena of national history.
In fact, in spite of the initial desire of the participants in the project
for a wide public debate, it never occurred. The planned conference,
which was supposed to finalize the results of the project, was canceled,
because the director of the Institute of Ethnography at the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences refused to provide the promised facilities for it.
Martina Baleva, who resides in Germany, has been periodically threat-
ened on the phone and considers it unsafe to return to her native
Bulgaria. On countless websites the debate went on the defenders of
national pride were far more active and aggressive than the academ-
ics, who defended their right to independent research.39 It was clear
that certain party headquarters were actively involved in the organiza-
tion of the attacks against these who dared to conduct further critical
study of the Batak phenomenon.
There is one almost absurd epilogue to the scandal around interna-
tional research about Batak. In November 2009 during a conference
dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, organized
by the Institute of Study of the Recent Past in Sofia, Ulf Brunn
bauerwasinvited as one of the speakers. The hotel Arena di Serdika,
where the conference was held, was surrounded by demonstrators, rep-
resentatives of different political groups, who virtually besieged the
conference and did not allow Brunnbauer to leave the hotel. The police
had to intervene in order to prevent physical clashes. The slogans of
39
Following a lecture given at the American University in Bulgaria by Egenia
Ivanova, author in the volume and participant at the public debate in the Red House,
the student virtual fora were inundated by comments accusing her and myself as
deniers of the Batak massacre, thus of the glorious past of Bulgaria. The response of
Bulgarian students at the American University in Bulgaria (the most international uni-
versity in the region, featuring students form 37 different, mostly ex-communist coun-
tries) was not expected. The reaction to the controversy around Batak of the highly
educated Bulgarian students was the same as the one presented by marginal groups
that are easily attracted by chauvinistic propaganda or those who are activists of
nationalistic political parties.
the patriots were calling for the expulsion of Brunnbauer from

Bulgaria, to take revenge on him and other foreign anti-Bulgarian
forces etc. Dimitar Stoyanov, deputy leader of the mentioned Ataka
party (who had become known for his anti-Roma declarations, while
he was a member of the European Parliament), forced the conference
to listen to a declaration issued by his party, accusing the conference
participants of national treason.
The brief story about the most recent development in Bulgaria con-
nected to the attempt to initiate a public debate on controversial topics
of Bulgarian history under the Ottoman period demonstrates clearly
that the present situation of Bulgarian society as a whole prevents such
intellectual enterprise. Ideological clichs, political zeal, hatred towards
the most alien neighbour and aggressive populism are much more
powerful then the efforts of a handful of historians to challenge the
historical stereotypes.
In this process the normative, symbolic, coded actually the whole
ideological functioning of the Ottoman Empire, respectively Turkey -
in the national consciousness designates once again the Ottoman
period as the most traumatic, alien and emotion-inspiring part of the
Bulgarian history. On this background leading Bulgarian historians
who write for foreign audiences do not differ fundamentally from the
established, almost canonical views about Bulgarian history during
the Ottoman period, despite the academic achievements of number of
Bulgarian Ottomanists and historians from the newest generation.
Recent developments in the historiography
of Bosnia and Herzegovina relating to
the Ottoman Empire and their impact on
history textbooks
Vera Katz
1. From War to New Nation
The war that was waged in the 1990s has interrupted both the scientific
research projects and the development of research institutions in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. When the Dayton Peace Agreement was
signed, conditions began to develop for the renewed development of
historiography. During the decade after the war, several academic gath-
erings were held on the issues concerning the historiography in Bosnia
and Herzegovina and in the countries of the former Yugoslavia and
South-East Europe.1 A number of these scientific debates dealt with the
historiography of the Ottoman period, although it was not systemati-
cally analysed, as the key theme, so that the results could eventually be
transposed to the teaching of history in our schools and universities.
This paper will try to point at some themes that have not been suffi-
ciently elaborated, or have been deemed controversial and sensitive in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, that primarily relate to the historiography of
the Ottoman period of the countrys history. Situating this theme in
the context of the post-war society, we have to keep in mind that
there are three constituent peoples that fought fiercely in the 1992
1995 war, and that continue to struggle for their political interest
even after the war, this time using non-violent means. Unfortunately,
history has been continuously used for political aims, and in Bosnia
and Herzegovina we have the situation where historical events are
1
Historiografija o Bosni i Hercegovini 19801998, Prilozi no.29 (Sarajevo: Institut
za istoriju, 2000), pp. 11424.; Istorijska nauka o Bosni i Hercegovini u razdoblju 1990
2000. godine, (Sarajevo: Akademija nauka i umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine, 2003);
Historiografija u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1990. do 2003. godine (Sarajevo: Friedrich
Naumann Stiftung, 2003); Zgodovinopisje v dravah naslednicah SFRJ 19912004,
Prispevki za novejo zgodovino, no. XLIV (Ljubljana: Intitut za novejo zgodovino,
2004).
250 vera katz
usually interpreted in two, even three different ways. This relates to all
historic events, those from the Ottoman period included.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a very interesting country for research
given that both its peoples and individual citizens are burdened with a
condensed sense of history, while they need one another in order to
define their own identities, at the same maintaining the integrity of
their own fundamental relations. Parallel to this, we need to establish
harmonious mutual relations. In addition, the historical terminology
used in Bosnia and Herzegovina always reflects current political devel-
opments. We need to be subtle in using different nuances of words such
as nation, state, ethnic group in order to be able to describe relations
more clearly, while making sure not to offend anyone. This differs from
the situation in other countries because ethnicity relates to the com-
mitment of an individual to his/her religious and political heritage.
This is the first task students have to learn and they need to do it for
very practical reasons - when they have to complete forms written in
English. If a form requires filling in the box under the heading nation,
they do not know whether they should write Bosnia and Herzegovina,
or their ethnicity since, locally, the term nation applies to ethnic affilia-
tion rather than to nation in the modern, English sense of the term.
The box entitled citizenship is thus the one to be filled with the name of
the country, i.e. Bosnia and Herzegovina. This remains confusing for
most students even after they graduate from secondary school.
In order to understand issues related to the history of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, we need to clarify that this historiography deals with
three main ethno-political groups, i.e. Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, as
they define themselves. In our constitution and in political discourse
there is also the term Others. However, the so-called Others do not play
any major role in mainstream political developments in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and consequently in its historiography. It has been agreed
that the terms Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs refer to the three constituent
peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina that are recognized in the Dayton
Peace Agreement, whereby each of these ethnic (national) groups has
its own extreme religious and nationalistic factions. In order to make
the complexities of the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina under-
standable, it needs to be stressed that Croats and Serbs exist both within
and beyond the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina. From time to time,
the Croats and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina chose to consider
the neighbouring states of Croatia and Serbia respectively as their
mother countries in the sense of cultural reference. This implies that,
historiography of bosnia and herzegovina251
through them, very strong and significant influences are exerted on the
historiography of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the historiographies of
its neighbouring countries. As for the Bosniaks, they began declaring
themselves as such in 1963, while they were officially recognized as a
people (i.e. as a nationality) in the Yugoslav Constitution adopted in
1974. In this constitution, they were called Muslims and what distin-
guished this denomination from their religious denomination was the
way it was written, i.e. the capital M vs. the small m, a very important
distinction given subsequent history. The modern term Bosniak also
gives rise to different interpretations, although it has to be noted that it
has become a generally accepted term in all the ethnic communities,
which is significant progress in everyday political communications in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. We also need to point to the fact that all the
three ethnic groups acknowledge, to different extents, their belonging
to Bosnia and Herzegovina and that they all consider Bosnia and
Herzegovina their homeland. However, whenever political crises arise
in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croats, and much more often the Serbs,
start expressing their separatist intentions and desires to join their
mother countries. For the time being, the Dayton Peace Agreement
safeguards the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Bosniaks as well
as Bosnians, who come from all ethnic groups, hope that it will remain
so in the future as well. Certainly, this political situation is reflected
in historiography. If we use the term Bosnian-Herzegovinian histori-
ography, then we immediately hear some historians denying the
termbecause they advocate Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak historiog-
raphy instead. This paper uses the term historiography in Bosnia and
Herzegovina as the national (state) historiography, since historio-
graphic works - if they are grounded in science should not have any
ethnic affiliation or colour.
After the exceptionally atrocious war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it
is very important to teach history within a public education system,
since it is one of the main factors in the reconstruction of its society.
This is the stance taken by many international and domestic actors in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a lot has been achieved in this respect.
We need to make up for many things that have accumulated since the
World War II, when a relatively controlled historiography had been
established, while, in the privacy of their homes, people tended to cul-
tivate separate and partial narratives that only exploded in the recent
war. During the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia, the teaching of history
was used as the main instrument to create ethnic awareness and a ctivate
252 vera katz
nationalistic plans to legitimize the delineation of new borders and the

realization of political agendas. The practice employed in the time of
the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia contributed to this devel-
opment, given that denial and silence of historians were the only
responses to the problematic issues of history. Instead of the commonly
held prejudice that Bosnia and Herzegovina is the country of ancient
hatreds, we need to explain how antagonised identities, based on ethni-
cally divided interpretations of history, have produced political disun-
ion and, consequently, violence and war. There still remains an open
question whether, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we want to talk about
our past in an honest and frank manner. Is it possible to exclude emo-
tions, presenting ones own views as the only evident truths, or leave it
to the facts to speak for themselves? For the historiography of Bosnia
and Herzegovina today, the best way would be to speak openly about
events, avoiding silence about sensitive and controversial issues, and
then interpreting historic events based on jointly established facts. It is
in this search for truth that we establish the relationship between
a researcher and the subject of his/her research, which should help
toward facing ones own past, and - when transferred to the teaching of
history - to the establishment of open and frank dialogue between stu-
dents and teachers as well as among the parties directly concerned.
When we speak about the results of the historiography of the
Ottoman period and how it could be transferred into history textbooks,
we immediately become aware of the full impact of these considera-
tions. Firstly, the history textbooks for primary and secondary schools
contain lessons on the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. When the
territories outside the former Yugoslavia are dealt with, there are no
major objections since we know little about them, or else the history of
distant lands does not concern us so much. However, what is needed
today in the society of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a clear and undisputed
explanation of the legacy that is so deeply rooted, irrespective of the
religious group one belongs to. Certainly, this tradition and collective
memory are stronger among the Muslim population, yet they are not
irrelevant among the Christians either and they need to be understood
in order to reach mutual understanding.
Positive developments in the post-war period are reflected in the
terminology that is now generally adopted. As an example, the histori-
ography of all the ethnic groups mainly use the proper term Ottoman,
instead of the term Turkish, which constitutes considerable pro
gress. Only a few individuals still stick to their misconceptions or
manipulation in this respect. There were attempts to suppress this tra-

ditionalism in the approach to legacy from the earlier historic periods,
the Ottoman period included, and to replace it with the brotherhood
and unity slogans that were used in the socialist era when attempts
were made to create a supra-national state. However, this legacy was
deeply rooted in the private sphere of life and, with the collapse of com-
munism, it only resurfaced, unfortunately this time greatly abused for
political purposes. In the time of socialism, the Ottoman period was
presented in textbooks in very negative terms, and when democratiza-
tion started, some Bosniak historians went all the way to the opposite
extreme and praised it uncritically. The others maintained the old
socialist matrix, which translated into political discourse and trans-
posed to political scene - led to very antagonistic discussions. In any
case, those opposite interpretations have found their place in the text-
books developed for the pupils and students of different ethnicities.
This certainly could not lead to mutual understanding.
One important issue in this context is the process of Islamization in
Bosnia and Herzegovina. This process was presented as something that
was separate from the general framework of the Ottoman Empire,
whereas it was not different from the process in other parts of this huge
empire. This must be understood and, as long as discussions are focused
on the issue of voluntary vs. forcible conversion to Islam, we will not be
able to grasp the process itself. The picture is not monotone. We need
to explain to our pupils and students that individuals or social groups
and, later, major parts of population converted to Islam for many
different reasons. Some reasons were probably more prevalent than
others, yet they should not be presented to students as the only ones.
In relation to this, we need to emphasise the devshirme as a social phe-
nomenon of that era. Here again, we need to explain that these cases
were not always the cases of forcible dispossession of children, but also
resulted from the desire of parents to provide their children with any
education and opportunities to reach high positions in the Ottoman
Porte. We need to confront with factual data all the prejudices and ste-
reotypes on many issues, this one included. If consensus cannot be
reached in historiography, then different explanations of historic events
can be offered so that pupils and students c devnelop their own critical
thinking.
We need to explain to pupils and students the period of Ottoman
conquests and their occupation of huge territories, the establishment of
their rule through institutions, as well as the way that rule functioned,
254 vera katz
the position of sultans and officials at all levels of the hierarchy, explain-
ing also how lower segments of society struggled to survive - each in
line with its social status, religious affiliation, place of residence and
other characteristics in those turbulent days of Ottoman rule.
With its conquest of immense territories, the Ottoman Empire
encompassed many different peoples and thus became a multi-ethnic
state. However, in some textbooks this notion of multi-ethnicity is used
in its modern meaning. We need to explain the process of conquest and
of the establishment of central government that ensued and that was
accepted differently in different countries. However, what is omitted in
the teaching of history is the explanation of the extent to which the
Ottoman Empire inherited the cultural values of the peoples it had
conquered.
A particularly sensitive issue is that of religious institutions and reli-
gious communities in the Ottoman period. In different historiographi-
cal works we find different interpretations, ranging from those that
assert that non-Muslims were solely victims of the political system, to
assertions about unprecedented religious tolerance. Individual exam-
ples are drawn from the history of that period, corroborated by written
documents and then used for generalization that includes whole
regions and entire religious communities. Of course, such examples
need to be registered, yet we should not allow them to blur the full
picture of this era. The Ottoman rulers destroyed religious buildings
they saw as an obstacle to their conquest, yet most probably did not go
and search for them with the intent to destroy them. One needs to be
objective and state clearly and precisely what was destroyed from the
medieval heritage and what remained intact.
The textbooks often cite information about conquests, peace agree-
ments and similar elements of political and military history, yet there is
no information about peoples everyday lives. What was the life of ordi-
nary people like, what did they do to make their living, what did the
political elite do, etc? If there are pictures depicting differences in the
style of clothes, they only indicate the great diversity of peoples, their
professions, their way of entertainment, etc. If one is to compare urban
and rural lifestyles, or enumerate all the professions and the variety of
cuisines, the types of communications or the status of women in soci-
ety, one would get a completely different picture than the one we are
used to, i.e. that non-Muslims were starved, punished, killed and so on,
while the Muslim population was privileged, regardless of their social
group. Lessons dealing with the fact that in this era, many towns were
founded and numerous monumental edifices built, are not included in

the textbooks. Then, the fact that the quality of life of urban popula-
tions was greatly improved with the systematic construction of water
supply systems, public baths, fountains, sewage system, guest-houses,
coffee shops and the like, should also be mentioned. In the context of
the Ottoman conquests, the textbooks could also include explanations
for the arrival of Jews in the major towns of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Lessons on the Ottoman period end with the Empires crisis, rebel-
lions of non-Muslim population, and the struggle of Muslim elites
against reforms that were introduced by the Empire in an attempt to
survive, ending with gradual withdrawal of the Ottomans towards the
East. Of course, for the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this was the
end of one rule and the beginning of another, i.e. the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy that was welcomed by local Catholics, received with discon-
tent by Orthodox Christians, and with a wave of emigration of Muslims.
It was followed by the immigration of members of different nations
that had been part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, who immedi-
ately become superior to the indigenous population and started
modernizing the country, destroying and building again, yet keeping
intact some of the architectural legacy of the previous period. A ques-
tion remains as to what extent our pupils and students can comprehend
these historical events. Or is it just a case of their learning about the
chronological sequence of events, wars, peace agreements and then
taking negative or positive attitudes towards them depending on
their own religious and ethnic bias?
In the course of Bosnian-Herzegovinian history, a variety of peoples,
cultures, religions, languages, artistic styles and expressions, architec-
tural styles, etc. developed. However, we do not learn in our textbooks
about the need for national integration, or, rather, of relations between
political authorities towards different phases of this integration.
In 2008, we marked the 40th anniversary of the political decision of the
Central Committee of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herze
govina that declared Muslims a nation. In order to understand this
decision of the then authorities, we need to explain attitudes towards
the national identity of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the
Second World War. Historians have tried hard to prove that they were
either Serbs or Croats, depending on who made those claims or a mere
ethnic or religious group, rather than a nation of its own. As a matter of
fact, historical facts are not presented in the textbooks that seek to
explain why the communist rulers decided to affirm publicly the
256 vera katz
Bosniak national identity. It is only with the knowledge of previous

historic periods that one can understand the context and relations of
different identities that were developed in socialism and later, after the
fall of communism at the end of the 20th century. With a precise expla-
nation of this national identity, we would get also an explanation of the
affirmation by socialist Yugoslavia of new national identities, given the
recognition also of Macedonian and Montenegrin nations. Today, both
Macedonia and Montenegro are independent states, and their national
identities are still challenged politically both within those countries
and in their neighbourhood. Therefore, these processes are definitely
mutually linked, given that the socialist Yugoslav society tried to
become, or at least to present itself, as supra-national.
Having presented these basic premises of my theme, I suggest that it
would be useful to analyse what pupils and students in Bosnia and
Herzegovina are taught about the period of Ottoman rule from their
textbooks, from their teachers who are in the position to impose their
own interpretation, from their parents who also share their own views
with them, and finally what they learn from cultural heritage that they
can easily see with their own eyes.
2. Examples of the Curriculum Content on the Ottoman Period

in the History Textbooks in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the
School Year 2007/2008
By applying the method of comparative presentation of the content of

some themes elaborated in the textbooks that are currently in use in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, one can identify the similarities and differ-
ences in the teaching of history in the primary and secondary schools
in the country. Each of the ethnic communities uses its own textbooks,
and the themes elaborated in them - in this case those relating to the
history of the country in the Ottoman period are presented below.
One of the unavoidable themes is the process of Islamization of the
countrys population after the Ottoman conquest. In a Serb textbook
one reads:
In the Turkish Empire, religious divisions were evident. Islam was the
state religion and Muslims had a privileged position; they were the only
ones who could make a military and political career. Although other reli-
gious communities were tolerated, many non-Muslims converted to the
religion of their conquerors, which happened mainly in urban areas.
At the later stages, there were elements of violence in these conversions.

Islamization was particularly widespread in Bosnia, Albania and in parts
of todays Bulgaria.2
In the more extensive lessons contained in this textbook, the focus is
on Orthodox Christianity and its ecclesiastical structure. This is how
Islamization was treated in a Croat textbook:
With the arrival of the Ottomans, a process of expansion of Islam, i.e.
Islamization began. Islamization took the deepest roots in Bosnia. The
people of Bosnia did not have any strong ecclesiastical organization. For
all those who had converted to Islam the door was opened to the highest
positions, irrespective of their ethnic background. This was beneficial for
Islamization. [] However, in order to be able to continue living in their
own faith, Christians were highly taxed. Non-Muslims, as subjects of the
Muslim state, paid the so-called Imperial Tax per each male head in the
household.3
The Serb textbook, when referring to the non-Muslim population, only
marginally refers to Catholics, mainly Franciscans, while the focus is
on the Orthodox Church. In the Croat textbook, it is the other way
around. Thus, for example, in Croat textbook, references to the
Orthodox Church are only marginal, while Franciscans and the
Catholic Church are elaborated quite extensively, especially when com-
pared to the size of text dedicated to Bosnia and Herzegovina in gen-
eral. Croat textbooks refer to it in the following way:
Franciscans played an important role during the Ottoman rule in Bosnia.
They were the only Catholic priests active in Bosnia in the Ottoman era.
Through their persistent and diligent work, they succeeded to get a char-
ter issued by Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror that allowed them to per-
form spiritual service; however, it was not fully respected. [] After the
Vienna War, many Catholics were expelled to Slavonia. The number of
Catholics in Bosnia dropped to a quarter of their earlier number within
one century. In the course of the 18th century, the number grew, yet
rather slowly and gradually.4
Conceptually, the third type of textbook is Bosnian. They are used in
the part of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina which has a
Vujadinovi, eljko, et.al. Istorija za 8. razred osnovne kole (Istono Sarajevo:

2
Zavod za udbenike i nastavna sredstva, 2007), p. 42.

3
Brdal, eljko, et. al, Tragom prolosti, Udbenik povijesti za 6. razred osnovne kole
(Mostar: kolska naklada, 2007), p. 175.
4
Brdal, eljko, et. al, Tragom prolosti, p. 176.
258 vera katz
Bosniak majority. This textbook refers to the influence of Ottoman

conquest in the following way:
Ever more frequent incursions of the Ottoman Army, at the beginning of
the 15th century created a need for a rapprochement of Bosnia to the
European states. This rapprochement could not be achieved without a
change of attitude towards the Bosnian Church. In order to prove its loy-
alty to Christianity, King Stjepan Toma (14401461) started persecuting
the members of the Bosnian Church who found refuge in the lands ruled
by Herzeg Stjepan. Although the historical sources of the period after the
Ottoman conquest of Bosnia do refer to the Christians (i.e., Krstjani), the
Bosnian Church disappeared from the historical scene due to the actions
of King Stjepan Toma.5
One of the most frequent narratives was the one about devshirma.
In the above- mentioned Serb textbook there are several references to it.
The military consisted of the army and the navy. Alongside cavalry, the
Spahijas, the main bulk of the Turkish army was made of infantry, the
Janissaries. The Janissaries were not of Muslim origin, but were recruited
from children collected among the subjects and then educated in Islam
and trained for their military service. This selection of boys was called
devshirma and, among the conquered people, it was known as the tax in
blood.6
The authors refer to the best-known case in a separate chapter:
Mehmed Sokolovi (15051579), a Bosnian Serb by origin, was born
near Viegrad. He was taken in a campaign of the tax in blood andbecame
a Janissary trainee. Due to his exceptional talents, he made a swift career.
He was the admiral of the Turkish Fleet, the Pasha (Beglerbey) of Rumeli,
and then the third, then the second and finally, the Grand Vizier (1565).
[] His was the decision to contribute to the re-establishment of the
Patriarchy of Pe in 1557, when his close relative Makarije was made
the Patriarch. He left numerous legacies, of which the most famous is the
Bridge on the Drina near Viegrad (the central theme of the famous
novel by Nobel laureate Ivo Andri) and a mosque in Constantinople. In
1579, Mehmed Pasha was assassinated.7
In the Croat textbook, he is not mentioned at all. Another chapter in
the Serb textbook includes a drawing illustrating devshirma entitled
Children enlisted for devshirma (tax in blood). It was conducted until
5
Fori, Melisa, et. al, Historija-Povijest za 6. razred osnovne kole (Sarajevo: Bosanska
rije, 2007), p. 231.
6
Vujadinovi, eljko, et. al, Istorija za 8. razred osnovne kole, p. 4142.
7
the beginning of the 17th century. Devshirma included about 200,000

Christian boys and young men.8 In its methodological segment From
Historical Sources, this textbook again gives the example of devshirma
in the following way:
Whenever they made an incursion into a country and conquered its peo-
ple, their imperial notary came after them to collect all the boys into the
Janissaries. [], and dispatched them across the sea to Anatolia, where
the boys were held. There were usually about two thousand of these boys
held there. Moreover, if the enemy did not have enough of his own men,
he used to take the boys from every village from Christian families living
in the Empire, whereby they had determined the maximum number of
boys every village should give so that there would always be the exact
number in place. [] This practice is very poignantly described in the
novel Bridge on the Drina.9
Devshirma is explained also in the section dealing with new notions:
Devshirma (aka the tax in blood) means the collection of Christian chil-
dren into the Janissaries. The Turks selected male children in the inter-
vals of five to ten years in different provinces of its Empire and took them
to Constantinople to islamise them. Exceptionally talented boys were
channelled into the court service.10
Therefore, devshirma was taken as an example in all types of didactical
materials, and Ivo Andris work of literature offers an impressive nar-
rative for it. Unlike the Serb textbooks, the Croat ones do not mention
devshirma nor do they refer to tax in blood, but use instead the term
abduction of children. There is only one reference to it when this text-
book refers to the military and it does in rather moderate terms:
The key striking force of the Ottoman Army was made of the infantry
units of the Janissaries that were recruited from the selected young pris-
oners of war. Later, when it was necessary, the sultans abductors used
to kidnap Christian boys who were in good health in the age between
10 and 15. They were then raised in the spirit of Islam and trained for
military and administrative services, so that their main characteristic
was their fanatical loyalty, or more precisely, absolute faithfulness to the
Sultan. Judged by the standards of their time, they were the best soldiers
in the world.11
8
9
10
11
260 vera katz
In the Bosnian textbook, the term devsha or tax in blood is not

mentioned at all, while the Janissaries are mentioned in such a way that
these terms are avoided:
The Janissaries were formed during the rule of Sultan Murat I (1362
1389). At the beginning, the Janissaries were recruited from prisoners of
war. The Porte kept one-fifth of its POWs at its own disposal and then
gave them to the Ottoman peasant families in Anatolia to raise them in
the Ottoman spirit. These selected POWs performed agricultural work
until they mastered Turkish language. Contrary to other military orders,
the Janissaries remained in the barracks even after they completed mili-
tary training; they were not allowed to get married and to have their own
families.12
The historiography still maintains different views of the Ottoman con-
quest of medieval Bosnia. The prevalent view is that Bosnia was con-
quered militarily in one single assault. In the new Serbian textbooks,
the view of the fall of medieval Bosnia has been slightly moderated so
that now they say that,
The fall of the medieval Bosnian state was preceded by several decades
of Ottoman pressure. Incursions and military campaigns, initiated in
1386 and 1388, did not stop until 1463. In 1415, Bosnia was obliged to
pay tribute. The annual tax payable to Sultan amounted to 50,000 ducats.
From mid-15th century, the Ottomans ruled the County of Vrhbosna.
In the conquered parts of the country, they established the Bosansko
krajite or the Hodidjed Vilayet. After the military campaigns launched by
Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror and the execution of King Stefan
Tomaevi in 1463, the medieval Bosnian state ceased to exist. The lands
owned by Stefan Kosaa and his heirs were appropriated at the beginning
of 1482. Turkish conquests of the territory of the todays Bosnia and
Herzegovina lasted until the end of the 16th century. They ended with the
conquest of Biha in 1592.13
Unlike the Serb textbook, the Croat offers very little information about
medieval Bosnia, and what is included in the lesson focuses on Croatia.
The fall of Bosnia is referred to in one single paragraph:
More and more, Turkey enters the world stage, threatening to take the
territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The last Bosnian King, Stjepan
Toma, together with Stjepan Tomaevi, a nobleman from Jajce tried to
save Bosnia; in this effort, these two men had the Popes support.
However, this was not enough. Bosnia fell under Turkish rule in 1463,
Fori, Melisa, et. al, Historija-Povijest, p. 181.

12

13
followed by Herzegovina in 1482, although the Banovina of Jajce and

the Banovina of Srebrenica remained free until 1527, and 1528
respectively.14
The use of the term Bosnia and Herzegovina is not appropriate when
referring to this period because we are talking here about medieval
Bosnia. There is only one more reference to Bosnia and Herzegovina in
the Croat textbook covering the entire time-span from coming under
Ottoman rule until the end of the 16th century without any additional
information:
The Turks turned the conquered Bosnian lands into the Bosnian Sanjak.
In towns, they deployed their scarce troops. The Venetians and
Hungarians made an alliance to fight against the Turks and thus they
liberated Jajce, Donji Kraji, Usora and Soli, turning them into the
Banovinas of Jajce and Srebrenica. Herzegovina formed the Herzegovina
Sanjak. From the occupied territories, the Turks continued with their
incursions into the areas of Dalmatia and Slavonia. After the battle for
Moha, the Turks conquered the Jajce Banovina and annexed it to the
Bosnian Sanjak. In 1580, the Turks formed the Bosnian Pashaluk that
encompassed almost entire territory of what is today Bosnia and
Herzegovina.15
On the basis of these scarce historiographic facts, one can learn very
little about the past of the country. The phrase what is today Bosnia
and Herzegovina is much more appropriate for use in this context. The
Bosnian textbook deals at length with the fall of the medieval Bosnia,
using almost three pages, while in the final conquest of Bosnia, under
the title Fall of Capital Towns and the Last Bosnian King, facts are pre-
sented in the following way:
After the fall of the Serbian despots, Bosnia found itself in the way of
Ottoman conquests. The Sultan found pretexts for his assault on Bosnia
in the cancellation of the annual tax. Since he did not receive the expected
help from Hungary, the Vatican and other European states, Bosnian King
Stjepan Tomaevi made a truce with the Sultan. [] When the Sultan
promised to spare his life and grant him freedom, King Stjepan Tomaevi
surrendered. The Sultan did not keep his promise, but forced him to issue
an order to all his military commanders to surrender, and then executed
him together with the noble families Pavlovi and Kovaevi. Thus, the
Bosnian Kingdom ceased to exist.16
14
15
16
262 vera katz
The fall of Herzegovina was described as follows:

Faced with the threat of Ottoman conquests, Hungary and Venice as the
most threatened European states made an alliance against the Sultan in
1463. [] The last part of Herzegs lands were conquered by the Ottomans
in 1482, thus the Ottoman conquest of the medieval Bosnian state was
completed.17
The Bosnian textbook includes a chapter that describes the tactic
applied by Turkish commanders:
The Ottomans began their conquest of foreign lands with marauding
incursions that were undertaken with the aim of intimidating the local
population who would either be taken away as slaves, or forced to flee, so
that morale was weakened and fear instilled in those who remained. The
annual tax (hara) was imposed on the lands that acknowledged the
supreme authority of the Ottomans. This tactic was aimed at economic
weakening of the conquered lands, which made it much easier to impose
their absolute rule.18
In the past twenty years, there have been works published about the last
Bosnian Queen. Unlike the Serb textbook, which does not mention her
at all, the Bosnian and Croat textbooks do pay some attention to this
historical figure, with some basic facts that depict her as tragic figure.
In the Bosnian textbook, one can read that,
The last Bosnian Queen was Katarina Kotromani-Kosaa, the second
wife of King Stjepan Toma and the daughter of Stjepan Vuki Kosaa.
[] When, in 1463, Sultan Mehmed II conquered Bosnia, Queen
Katarina found refuge in Dubrovnik, whereas her children, Sigismund
and Katarina were captured and taken to Constantinople (Istanbul) by
the Ottomans. In 1466, she moved to Rome, where Pope Paul II deter-
mined that she should receive financial assistance from the papal treas-
ury. Queen Katarina died on 25 October 1478 and was buried in the
Aracoeli Church in Rome.19
In the Croat textbook, there is brief paragraph: Katarina Kosaa, the
daughter of Stjepan Kosaa and the wife of Bosnian King Stjepan
Toma. After the kings death, she fled to Dubrovnik and then pro-
ceeded to Rome, where she enjoyed papal protection.20
17
18
19
Fori, Melisa, et. al, Historija Povijest, p. 236.
20
Brdal eljko, et. al, Tragom prolosti, p. 123.
Historians of this period offer different views on the resistance of the

Bosnian Beyluk to the reforms introduced by the Ottoman govern-
ment. The opinions range from assertions that this was a quest for a
degree of autonomy for the Bosnian Eyalet, to those that view it as a
quest for full independence from the Ottoman Empire. This is how it is
presented in the Serb textbook:
The reform course of the Porte, commenced by the end of the 18th cen-
tury, was met with great resistance. Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of
the focal points of the anti-reformist movement. Beys saw reforms as a
threat to their position and started armed resistance. This resistance was
inspired by the abolition of the Janissaries in 1826, the autonomy granted
to Serbia in 1830, the independence of Greece, as well as by the separatist
movement in Egypt. [] The consequence of this rebellion and particu-
larly of its defeat was a radical change of the situation in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Although it was abolished in other parts of the Empire, the
timar-spahi system was maintained in this country. The resistance of feu-
dal lords had not been overcome, neither were reforms introduced. The
Porte saw the solution in forceful imposition of reforms. Immediately
after the rebels defeat, the Porte abolished the last captains seats and
introduced districts.21
Unlike the Serb textbook, in the Croat textbook, the chapter Bosnian
Pashaluk and Croatia in the New Era (16th to 18th century), gives pri-
ority to the name Bosnia and Herzegovina, although this section makes
only a brief reference to the two centuries of the history of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and it is done in a way that is incomprehensible for the
pupils of that age:
This pashaluk was a Turkish administrative unit formed in Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1580; it consisted of the following smaller territorial
units, i.e. sanjaks: [] When the state-owned land was acquired by pri-
vate individuals, the rights of peasants in the country were reduced and
landowners exploited them greatly. The fiscal burden that fell on these
peasants was much heavier. The term raya was used as synonymous with
the term Christian. [] Nevertheless, the Christian population increased
in size in the 18th century. Other elements of discrimination were applied
on them; thus, from the 18th century, the local Christians were not
allowed to dress nicely and to wear green clothes. They had to behave
with humility towards the Muslims. This increased resistance towards
authorities and their later collapse.22
Vujadinovi, eljko, et. al, Istorija za 8. razred osnovne kole, pp. 165166.
21
Brdal, eljko, et. al., Tragom prolosti, pp. 224.

22
264 vera katz
Unlike the Serb textbook that explains in detail the situation in

Bosnia and Herzegovina from mid-19th century to the Berlin Congress,
the Croat textbook does not mention it at all. The Bosnian textbook, on
the other hand, dedicates a whole section to this segment of the coun-
trys history (pp. 107134). It contains a detailed explanation of reforms
in the Ottoman Empire and in the Bosnian Eyalet, the Sultans Edict of
Glhane, movement for autonomy of Bosnia, changes in the structure
of the Bosnian Eyalet in the 19th century, social structure and relations,
migrations, agrarian issues, the Safer Order, the beginnings of capitalist
economy, national movements, the place of Bosnia and Herzegovina in
international politics, as well as about the Eastern Crisis and decisions
taken at the Berlin Congress.23
One of the issues I have selected for this paper is related to the
judicial system of that period. In the Serb textbook, it is described as
follows:
The Turkish judiciary was impregnated with religion. Judges (kadi) adju-
dicated on the basis of Islamic religious law (Sharia), grounded in the
Koran and amended by the Sultans orders and decrees. The existing legal
order was respected, while family law and religious relations of Christian
population were left completely to the jurisdiction of the Orthodox
Church. Very well structured, from the beginning, Turkish judiciary later
started manifesting its weaknesses.24
In the Croat textbook, the judiciary in the Ottoman period is not men-
tioned, although it was a very important aspect of social relations of the
time. In the Bosnian textbook, there are two paragraphs dealing with
the law in the Ottoman state that was in force in the Bosnian part of the
Empire:
In the legal system of the Ottoman Empire, there were two types of laws:
Sharia and Kanun. Sharia was the body of religious laws that were devel-
oped out of the Koran and the Hadis. Kanun represented the secular law
and its legal provisions had to be harmonized with Sharia. Kanuns were
issued by sultans, whenever legal issues that were not regulated by Sharia
emerged. The provisions of Sharia related to all the citizens of Empire,
even the sultan himself. Kadis were in charge of implementation of
the provisions of Sharia and Kanun. In judicial district (kadiluk), kadis
did not have only the function of judges, but performed the function of
23
Isakovi, Arifa, Historija-Povijest za 7. razred osnovne kole sa radnim listovima
(Sarajevo: Bosanska rije, 2007), pp. 107134.
24
notaries and registry books registrars, and controlled state administra-

tion reporting to the sultan on all of these services.25
In the Serb textbook, there is also a reference to culture:
Cultural life, deeply impregnated with religion, was realized within reli-
gious communities. As carriers of Arabic, Persian and Byzantine culture,
the Ottomans achieved significant results in architecture, the construc-
tion of bridges, literature, and the arts. Although representative, cultural
activities of the conquered peoples did not achieve the height of the
medieval period. Due to social conditions, as a specific form of cultural
life, a patriarchal culture developed.26
There are three places in this textbook that offer subtly repeated the
same assertions and views, however, with one minor addition: The
Orthodox Christian population continued the medieval cultural tradi-
tion, while the creative work of the Catholics was deeply marked by the
activities of Bosnian Franciscans. The cultural life was enriched by the
creative work of the Sephardic Jews.27 The Croat textbook makes no
reference to the Sephardic Jews, while it describes cultural develop-
ment in the following way:
In Bosnia, Islamic culture was most present in urban areas. In towns, the
commercial districts, i.e. the market area known as arija (with crafts,
commercial activities, great mosques, secondary religious schools,madra-
sas and administrative buildings) from residential quarters (mahala).
Architecturally, the most prominent buildings were mosques, of which
the most beautiful were built by the end of the 16th century. [] A num-
ber of Bosnian authors of that period have made a great contribution to
Ottoman culture and poetry. The Croatian language assimilated many
Turkish words due to the close vicinity of Islamic culture.28
The best information on cultural and educational development is
to be found in the Bosnian textbook. On education and schools, it
states:
Until the Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878, schools in Bosnia
and Herzegovina had a confessional character. The attempts made by
Ottoman rulers to pass the Law on Schools in 1869 that regulated
the opening of public schools failed, so the parallel three educational sys-
tems continued to exist. [] Reforms included much great number of
25
26
27
28
Brdal, eljko, et. al. Tragom prolosti, p. 225.
266 vera katz
children into the educational system and the curricula had more secular
subjects.29
In addition to schools, the textbooks describe the cultural activities
and creative works produced by Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox
Christians.
The countrys economic development is described only briefly in the
Serb textbook:
The Turkish conquest was marked by great destruction. Many settle-
ments were devastated, developed medieval mining gradually died,
agriculture regressed, while cattle breeding slowly developed. Trade con-
tinued to go through the seaports, but from the 17th century onwards,
commerce was in decrease. Some urban settlements died away, while
economic growth occurred in the towns where the governmental institu-
tions and big military units were located. These settlements had an
Oriental appearance. The urban population was mainly concerned with
crafts and trade. Turkish feudalism did not enable development of the
kind of trade that existed in Europe and inclusion into the European
economy.30
There is no separate overview of economic development in the Croat
textbook, except for the reference to the difficult position of the
conquered population, yet without any elaboration of this assertion.
The Bosnian textbook offers the most comprehensive description of
the state of economy. The agrarian question was the most acute one.
The textbook describes it as follows:
After the abolition of the timar-spahiya system, the greatest problem fac-
ing Ottoman rule in Bosnia were the ifluks. In the system of ifluks, that
assumed its final shape in the first half of the 19th century, the status of
peasants was much more difficult than in the timar-spahi system. [] To
regulate agrarian relations, the Porta passed on the 12th of September
1859 a lex specialis, i.e., the Law on ifluks. Since, according to Hijjra
calendar that was used in the Ottoman Empire, it was published on the
14th of Safer 1256, the law is known in historical literature as the Safer
Edict. [] The publishing of the Safer Edict did not bring about any
major changes in the life of raya. Since it only confirmed the existing rela-
tions that were developed in the time of collapse of timar-spahiya system.
Agrarian relations defined by the Law on ifluks remained unchanged
until the fall of the Ottoman rule in Bosnia, in 1878.31
29
Isakovi, Arifa, Historija-Povijest, p. 136.
30
31
The Bosnian textbook speaks also about the beginnings of capitalist

economy:
With the implementation of reforms, in Bosnia the conditions were met
for the development of a capitalist economy. Particularly important was
the abolition of esnafs, i.e., the craftsmen organisations that represented
the main obstacle for economic development. A number of craftsmen
succeeded after the abolition of their organization to organize their pro-
duction in workshops based on the model of European manufacturers.
Since then, the economy started developing in Bosnia on capitalist prin-
ciples and in this new type of economy, particularly successful were Jews
and Orthodox Christians. The appearance of domestic, and particularly
European industrial goods on the market, caused the collapse of old,
traditional crafts. The first industrial enterprises were a carpet factory,
several sawmills and a brewery in Sarajevo.32 In addition to these devel-
opments, there were also road and telegraph communications.
Bosniakdom is referred to only in the Bosnian textbook and in the fol-
lowing way:
Until the appearance of national movements in the first half of the 19th
century, the entire population of Bosnia were called Bosniaks. Until then,
the population differed only according to their religion, which means
that there were Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews.
Influenced by national movements, the Orthodox and Catholic Christians
started opting for their self-determination on national grounds.Orthodox
Christians started declaring themselves Serbs, and Catholics Croats. In
parallel with the appearance of the Orthodox Christian and Catholic
affiliation, there emerged the idea of integral Bosniakdom, based on the
assertion that there is only one, i.e. Bosnian people with certain ethnic
particularities, the people historically linked with Bosnia. The idea of
integral Bosniakdom was officially supported by the Ottoman rulers,
and, for a certain period, it was advocated by Bosnian Franciscans, espe-
cially Ivan Franjo Juki. However, it could not last for long since, among
the Orthodox Christian population, the Serb national awareness was
soon developed, while Catholics became spiritually more and more
linked to Croatia.33
The idea of integral Bosniakdom is mentioned in Bosnian textbooks in
the time of Austro-Hungarian rule and Kalays attempts to revive this
idea. The textbooks for the 20th century do not offer a comprehensive
explanation of the national question in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a
question that has remained relevant until our time. Every mention of

32

33
268 vera katz
the Bosnian language as one of the languages spoken in Bosnia and

Herzegovina is met with numerous polemics that are more political
than academic in nature. However, it requires a much more extensive
explanation than can be developed within the present limited space.
These are the most significant examples from the textbooks in
Bosnia and Herzegovina dealing with the history of the Ottoman
period. Conceptually, there are three kinds of textbooks, for each of the
majority Serb, Bosniak and Croat territorial areas. Firstly, the term
Turkish is used by Serb and Croat textbooks, while Bosniak textbooks
use Ottoman. Furthermore, in Croat textbook there is very little history
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while in Serb textbook there is much more
of it. These textbooks give preference to the history of neighbouring
countries, i.e. Serbia and Croatia. Unlike them, Bosniak (Bosnian)
textbooks set Bosnia and Herzegovina as the focus of attention, while
they interpret the history of neighbouring countries in the context of
understanding their own past. In addition, the curricula are not har-
monized across the country in relation to different grades of primary
and secondary schools. Given the administrative-territorial division of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, these textbooks therefore continue to con-
firm the divide between future generations in the society of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
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INDEX
Abdul Hamid (Sultan Abdlhamid) Committee of Union and Progress

1315, 20, 117, 125f, 150, 234 (CUP) 19f, 22, 24f, 33, 6570, 7275,
Adelet ve Kalknma Partisi 149151 77f, 8083, 86f, 96, 123, 154
Agaoglu, Ahmet 63f, 69 communism 28, 225227, 230, 246,
Ahriyans197 253, 256
AKP, see Adelet ve Kalknma Partisi Constantinople (see also Istanbul) 234,
Albania/Albanians 4, 11, 40, 42, 53, 83, 258f, 262
188, 193, 202, 220, 257 Constitutional Court (Turkey) 165
Aleppo 115, 119, 126 conversion/converts 35, 50, 79, 116,
Anastasoff, Christ 224, 233235 187222, 241, 243, 253, 256f
Ankara 152, 164f, 167, 169 Crampton, Richard J. 224, 226, 231, 235,
April Uprising (1876) 194, 196, 211, 236238
228, 230, 233, 244 Crete 7, 19, 39, 129146, 179
Arabism 31, 41, 69, 71, 73 Crimean War (185356) 18, 33,
Armenians 1, 14, 24, 27, 50, 55, 59, 79, 37, 55
81, 83, 86 Croatia 250f, 260, 263, 265, 267f
Association of Ottoman History 155f Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi 150, 158,
Atatrk, Kemal 21, 69, 72, 119, 147, 160, 163166
150152, 159f, 160, 165, 169f CUP see Committee of Union and
Austria 11, 36, 57, 90, 94 Progress
Baghdad 74, 83, 85, 117, 121f, Damascus 115, 117122, 125
125f, 149 Dayton Peace Agreement
Balkan Wars (191213) 11, 29, 31, 78, (1995)249251
127, 131, 142, 197, 226, 235 devshirme 228, 231, 235, 241, 254
Batak massacre (1876) 228, 230, 232, Dogrusz, Col. Fehmi 126f
234, 236, 239, 242246 Dobrudzha198f
Beirut 85, 94, 96, 98, 11, 115, 117f, 120, Druze 82, 95, 106, 110112, 174
122, 125f, 182f, 185
Berlin, Congress of (1878) 29, 31, Ecumenical Patriarchate 37, 39, 40, 77,
236, 264 8086, 191193, 234
Bosnia 11, 139, 193, 220, 249268 Edirne 49, 155
Britain/British 30, 31, 33, 35, 72, Egypt 2, 31, 35, 40, 47, 97, 104, 111,
80, 84, 95, 102, 111f, 120, 118120, 177, 182, 263
177, 236 Emre, Yunus 159, 164f, 168
Bulgaria 1f, 7, 11, 29, 3840, Erbakan, Necmettin 165f
4562, 77, 80f, 124, 131, 187222, evkaf, see waqf
223247, 257
al-Bustani, Butrus 93, 108 Fol, Alexander 224, 226f
France/French 3, 5, 30, 35, 47, 64,
Catholics 37, 7982, 86, 115, 230, 236, 72, 80, 84, 86, 93f, 96f, 112, 116, 119,
255, 257, 265267 126, 231
etin, Hikmet 164f Free Masons 94f, 98
Chalikov, family 51, 53f
Chomakov, family 52, 55f Gagaouze 189, 208, 218, 220
CHP, see Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Galatasaray Lyce 116f, 120
cizye (poll tax) 48, 192f, 202f, 206f, Germany/Germans 3, 80, 84, 86, 102,
215, 222 126f, 161, 199, 223, 243, 246
292 index
Gkalp, Ziya 25f, 6771, 152, 157 Mehmed II 257, 260, 262
Golovin, Ivan 17 Mehmet Ali 2, 31
Greece/Greek 3142, 80, 129, Metodi Gradinov, Pop 193, 195
131137, 140142, 197, 263 Mevlevi order 155
Greeks 14, 25, 32, 34, 36f, 39f, 43, 5861, Midhat Pasha 117, 120f
69, 77, 7981, 104, 124, 131, 167, Mincho haci Tzachev 52, 54, 60
19195, 209, 220f, 231, 233f Moldavian38
Mongols 147, 158f
Hadjitoshev, family 55, 61
Haidouk 228, 230, 232234, 236, 241 National Security Council (Turkey) 165
Haniotakis, Hseyin 129f, 146 nationalism 24, 11, 13, 15, 24, 26,
Hungary261f 27, 34, 64, 6873, 84, 87, 90, 115, 118,
Huwayyik, Ilyas 93, 95, 98 134, 143, 152, 156158, 163, 175,
232, 237f
Ilchev, Ivan 224227, 230232 Nicholas I, Tsar 7, 20
Imperial Military Academy 119,
123125 Ohrid 37, 57, 61, 234
Islamism 25, 27, 31, 41 Orthodox 34, 3640, 42, 77, 80f, 95, 133,
Istanbul (see also Constantinople) 2, 15, 188, 191f, 194, 197, 211, 215, 230, 255,
18, 20, 3739, 49, 50, 52, 553, 85, 93, 257, 264267
98f, 111, 113, 116, 123127, 132, 140f, Ottoman Constitution 17, 72, 93, 98,
155f, 160, 162, 164, 214 100f, 104, 121, 125
Izmir 59f, 160 Ottomanism 11, 15, 25, 27, 31, 40f, 64,
73, 98, 100f
Janissaries 33, 37f, 58, 190192, 203,
209, 219, 221, 258260, 263 Paissi of Hilandar, Father 190193
Japan 16f, 21 Parliament (Ottoman) 15, 18, 22, 24,
Jerusalem 93, 115 63, 90, 9397, 99104, 106, 108, 111,
Jews 49f, 52, 55, 57f, 60, 64, 69, 8082, 155, 164
85, 118, 180, 183, 200, 265, 267 Pec 37, 258
Phanariots37f
Kara Musa Pasha 143f Plovdiv 52f, 55, 57, 193
Karam, Yusuf 92 poll tax, see cizye
Karaman147170 Pomaks 188, 192197, 199201, 209,
Karamanids152170 214, 217, 220f, 244f
Karamanoglu Mehmet Bey 152 Protestants7982
Kemalism/Kemalists 1, 7, 150170 al-Rawwas, Muhammad Hasan 182186
Konya 149, 156159, 161, 167
Kosovo 4, 229 Refah Partisi 165f
Regenerative Process (Bulgaria 1984
Lalkov, Milcho 223229 89) 225, 227, 229, 232, 237, 239
Lausanne, Treaty of (1923) 29, 35, Rhodope (mountain region) 188,
39, 130 193196, 206f, 211, 214, 216220
Lebanon 1f, 5, 7, 31, 71, 89114, 173f, Robevi, family 57, 61
176, 178, 186 Rodina (Motherland) Society 198, 200
Libya 124, 126f, 179 Romanian 38, 40
Russia 4, 11, 13, 1523, 28f, 35f, 38, 42,
Macedonia 39, 57, 61, 7678, 111, 194, 63f, 71f, 94, 126, 155, 228f, 245
220, 224, 232235, 241, 256 Russo-Turkish (Ottoman) War
al-Majdhub, Talal Majid 177179, (187778) 17, 194, 228
183186
Maronites 81f, 89113, 174 San Stefano Treaty (1878) 228, 236f
Masad, Bulus 90113 Selim I 199
Mebusan, see Parliament Selim II 191
index293
Seljuks 149, 157f, 161, 167, 199, Turkey 1f, 1128, 2944, 63, 69, 74, 115,
208, 218 130, 132, 136, 14769, 187f, 200, 209,
Serbia 31, 33, 35, 39f, 43, 194, 232f, 250f, 214, 222f, 234, 247, 260
260f, 263, 268 Turkish Association 165f
Shiites106 Turkish Language Festival 152,
Sidon/Saida173186 160164, 167f
Sinnu, Ghassan Munir 180186
socialism 13, 20, 232, 253, 256 United States 29, 102, 223f
Soviet Union 21f, 29, 42, 232
Spiridon, Hieromonk 191f Versaille, Treaty of (1919) 30, 135
Syria 1, 3, 7, 71, 73, 94, 104, 115,
117121, 136, 178, 182 Wallachian 38, 81
waqf (evkaf) 129f, 130146, 177,
Tanzimat 31, 41, 50, 58, 61, 89, 181183
92, 117, 139, 155, 177, 234 World War I (191418) 1, 3, 11, 13, 21f,
Tapchileshtov, family 52, 56, 58, 61 28f, 33, 42, 68, 72, 78, 87, 92, 131f,
Tarnovo 52, 54, 228 177, 178, 185, 225, 235
timar 49f, 202f, 216, 235f, World War II (193945) 251, 255
263, 266
Tocqueville, Alexis de 23 Yemen 112, 123f, 126, 179
Tribal School 123f Young Turks 1128, 41, 65, 68,
Tripolitanian war (191112) 11 70, 7274, 87, 9496, 155, 157
Trotsky, Leon 16 Yugoslavia 1f, 46, 197, 202, 251f, 256

Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in The Former Ottoman Empire

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Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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1. The Young Turks in Power: A Comparative and

3. The Non-Muslim Tax Farmers in the Fiscal and Economic

8.Karamanolu Mehmed Bey: Medieval Anatolian Warlord

9.Ottoman Saida and Problems of a Lebanese

Abdulrahim Abuhusayn is Professor of History, Department of

Klas-Gran Karlsson is Professor of History and Chairman of two

Jrgen S. Nielsen is Professor of Islamic Studies and Director of the

history from the University of California, Los Angeles specializing in

There has been a growing interest in recent years in reviewing the

analysed in his ground breaking book A House of Many Mansions.1

And they are deeply ingrained in national communities who were

burgeoning senses of national community appears to be more relevant.

An early summary of this is to be found in H.T.Norris, Islam in the Balkans:

books and syllabuses, it takes at least a generation for something simi-

at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, and funded by

Perspectives on Ottoman history

Few historical periods have been depicted in a more multifaceted,

the process: To prove successful the Young Turkish revolution needed

literature is based on a simplistic linear notion that the Ottoman and

Cf Lewis 2002, p. 202.

Lewis 2002, p. 212.

In Shaw and Shaws interpretation, it was one of the strangest events

Encounters with Russia Rhetoric and War

a successful non-Western modernisation. In Young Turk perception,

basic structure of Ottoman society and state. In Russia, the defeat of

A Similar Modernisation Dilemma

The following argumentation rests on the assumption that the contem-

The radical populist and leftist elements of the opposition to autocracy

ost-imperial state, patterned on European nation-states, Russia was

There is one way of saving the Young Turk takeover as a revolution-

Zrcher 1993, p. 1345.

This rise of a Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk governmentera,

Karpat 2001, p. 369.

Turkish Responsibility, New York: Metropolitan Books 2006, p. 8.

ethnically pure Turkish state.42 In the same context, Bernard Lewis

from Ottoman sovereignty not as independent states but as British or

Empire, might discussthe longer-term frame of the final long cen-

II. The Case for the Greece-Turkey Axis

There are several reasons why the Greece-Turkey axis is a compelling

Furthermore, because the Greek Kingdom was the first nominally

narratives of national movements and territorial devolution for the

III. Revolutions that Resonatefrom the 1820s to the 1920s

As of 1821, when the Greek insurrections began, categories of linguis-

adoption of a specific set of behaviors and markers that seemed to be

territorywere officially removed from their positions of power.16

community in the capital, centered around Balkapan Han on the Bay

Returning to the Ottoman imperial sphere, the ecumenical dimen-

superseded an Islamic ecumenicity to forge an Ottoman political

In both cases, Albanians and other non-Greek/Turkish groups fig-

Employing a Greece-Turkey axis for the final Ottoman century might

both the uniqueness and the universality of national experiences

The non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire are usually considered in

amount of money. Auctions were organized at which the different state

Darling, Linda, Revenue-raising and Legitimacy.

izaka, Murat, A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships. The Islamic

askeri members of the military and of the provincial elites, people

historiography, which needs to be challenged, is the emphasis on the

8.Karamanolu Mehmed Bey: Medieval Anatolian Warlord

9.Ottoman Saida and Problems of a Lebanese