Download PDF | V.L. Ménage_ Colin Imber - Ottoman Historical Documents_ The Institutions of an Empire-Edinburgh University Press (2022).
248 Pages
Preface
V. L. Ménage (1920-2015)! — Vic to his friends and colleagues — was lecturer in Turkish and then Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, from 1955 until his retirement in 1983. Over his years of teaching, he translated a series of Ottoman documents dating largely from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, which formed the basis of his famous course on ‘Ottoman Institutions’. Upon his retirement he gave the collection to his SOAS colleague Dr Colin Heywood, with the instruction: ‘Do whatever you like with it’.
Vic himself never envisaged publication, but Colin immediately recognised its importance for anyone studying or teaching this period of Ottoman history and, with the intention that we should jointly edit and publish the collection, made copies for Dr (later Professor) Michael Ursinus and myself. As it turned out, other commitments soon got in our way and the project was never realised.
The idea of editing the documents remained buried somewhere in my subconscious, but it was not until over three decades later that my colleague Dr Georg Christ learned of their existence and at once realised their importance, not only for Ottoman historians, but equally for historians of late medieval and early modern Europe, and especially for students in his own fields of Venetian and Mamluk history. It was Georg who finally prodded me into action.
He did not, however, confine himself to stirring my conscience, but immediately set about organising the collection into a useable format and making an electronic copy which rendered the process of editing much simpler. And that was not all. He also arranged for Dr Johannes Lotze to re-type much of the original typescript (including Vic’s handwritten notes) in the period between completing his PhD and winning the Royal Asiatic Society’s inaugural Bayly Prize for the best thesis on an Asiatic subject. Without Georg’s and Johannes’ help and continuing encouragement, Vic’s document collection would still be slumbering on a shelf. I am also greatly indebted to Dr Kate Fleet for permission to use her translation of the 1387 Ottoman—Genoese treaty and to Dr Christine Woodhead for her fluent translation of a tricky passage from Selanikt’s History.
When Vic was teaching the course, Ottoman history was still an exotic subject with almost no place in conventional university history departments in Europe or North America. Even in departments offering courses on the Middle East, Turkish and Ottoman studies tended to be marginal. Nor was it a subject in which academic publishers showed much interest. As a result, anyone teaching the subject frequently had to fall back on their own resources for the provision of teaching materials. Another problem that teachers faced, and continue to face, is linguistic in nature.
The Ottoman Empire was multi-lingual and, although the language of the court, the government and the literate elite was Turkish, Ottoman Turkish is so far removed from the Turkish of today as to be almost incomprehensible to modern Turks. Furthermore, official documents — and especially legal material — are likely to be written in Arabic, or — especially if they are treasury documents — in Persian. Before the mid-fifteenth century Turkish sources are rare, and Greek, Slavonic, Latin or Italian materials are often more significant.
With the emergence of the Ottoman Empire as a great power from the late fifteenth century, the languages of the neighbouring states in Europe and the Middle East also become increasingly important both for records of diplomatic exchanges, and for the accounts of European residents and travellers in Ottoman lands. In brief, the array of languages confronting any aspiring Ottoman historian is bewildering.
A solution to the problems facing students as they attempt to hack their way through this linguistic jungle is to provide translations of representative Ottoman and Ottoman-related texts. There has recently been a welcome increase in the number of such translations available, but when Vic was teaching, there was little available. Hence, with characteristic thoroughness, he made his own.
Vic made the collection to accompany his course on ‘Ottoman Institutions’, with the translated documents in each of the ten chapters illustrating one particular institution or aspect of Ottoman government. The first four chapters concern the organs of central government — that is, the Ottoman dynasty itself and the vizierate. Chapter V deals with provincial government, and Chapters VI and VII with the legal system and the law. Chapter VIII presents documents concerning finance and taxation and Chapter IX the closely related subject of waqfs.
The collection ends with a series of treaty texts and other documents on foreign relations. In their original format as materials to be handed out and studied in class or in a seminar, the translations did not require an introduction or explanatory notes. I have, however, assumed that readers will usually be working on their own and therefore provided each chapter with a very brief introduction which places the documents in context. I have also added explanatory notes where these seemed necessary, and a glossary of the innumerable technical terms encountered. Vic’s typescript also had handwritten annotations, evidently for his own use.
Many of these were clearly prompts, pointing to larger issues raised in the text, which could become the subject of a group discussion. Some raised specific problems of interpretation, or queries for further consideration, while others were technical, noting emendations, variant readings and other matters. Most of these I have omitted, often reluctantly, in order to prevent the text becoming too long and unwieldy. Some I have incorporated into my own notes, and some I have incorporated verbatim. These are identified by the siglum ‘VLM’.
I have not made any changes to the original translations, and I have presented them in the order in which they appear in the typescript. I could not match the accuracy or elegance of Vic’s translations, and any changes in the order would have upset the coherence of each chapter. I have, however, added a few texts and also one or two passages which Vic omitted in the original translations or gave only in summary.
In one case I have to confess that I had to substitute my own translation, as I had lost the original. However, more than eighty percent of the text is exactly as Vic left it. There is one omission some Ottomanists might find surprising. This is the so-called kaniinname (‘law-book’) of Mehmed IJ on ‘state organisation’ which has been a major source of reference for many studies of the Ottoman court and government. Vic himself recognised the difficulties that this text presents, noting in a preamble to his partial translation: ‘It is a compilation probably made in the late sixteenth century and fathered on Mehmed II. . .
Thus, though it may contain a nucleus of regulations dating from Mehmed II’s reign, the only safe approach to it now is that no statement in it is to be accepted as valid for that reign without independent corroboration’. I agree with this assessment, although I suspect that it dates from the early seventeenth century. Given the many problems surrounding this text, it seemed wiser to omit it. As a substitute, I have included short extracts from the 1525 kaniinname of Egypt.
Vic originally made the collection for student use, and it is primarily with students and teachers of Ottoman history in mind that I have made an edited version. The collection should also be useful for anyone with a serious interest in Ottoman history. Since Vic’s retirement in 1983, the study of Ottoman history has expanded beyond recognition: new fields of research have opened up, new journals devoted to Turkish and Ottoman Studies have been founded and new scholars have come into the field. Nonetheless, the translations presented here remain as relevant as ever. Documents and other primary source materials do not go out of date, and the topics covered in the collection remain essential to an understanding of the Ottoman Empire’s history between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. I hope that readers will find it useful.
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