Download PDF | A Social History of Ottoman Istanbul, By Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, Cambridge University Press (2010).
378 Pages
Using a wealth of contemporary Ottoman sources, this book recreates the social history of Istanbul, a huge, cosmopolitan metropolis and imperial capital of the Ottoman Empire. Seat of the sultan and an opulent international emporium, Istanbul was also a city of violence, shaken regularly by natural disasters and by the turmoil of sultanic politics and violent revolt. Its inhabitants, entertained by imperial festivities and cared for by the great pious foundations which touched every aspect of their lives, also amused themselves in the numerous pleasure gardens and the many public baths of the city. The authors capture the lives of those who lived in this vibrant, violent, luxurious and cosmopolitan city through intimate portraits. While the book focuses on Istanbul, it presents a broad picture of Ottoman society, how it was structured and how it developed and transformed across four centuries. As such, the book offers an exciting alternative to the more traditional histories of the Ottoman Empire.
EBRU BOYAR is Assistant Professor in the International Relations Department at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Her previous publications include The Ottomans and Trade (edited with Kate Fleet, 2006) and Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans: Empire Lost, Relations Altered (2007).
KATE FLEET is Director of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, and Newton Trust Lecturer in Ottoman History in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her previous publications include The Ottoman Capitulations: Text and Context (edited with Maurits van den Boogert, 2003) and The Cambridge History of Turkey, Vol. I. Byzantium to Turkey, 1071-1453 (ed., Cambridge, 2008).
Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to the memory of Susan Skilliter, Lecturer in Turkish Studies at Cambridge University and Fellow of Newnham College, who on her death in 1985 left her books and money to found a centre for research in Ottoman studies. It was Dr Skilliter’s foresight, together with the imagination and strength of Sheila Browne, then Principal of Newnham College, which resulted in the establishment of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, an institution to which we are both grateful. We are also dedicating this book to the memory of Julian Chrysostomides, an inspirational supervisor and truly generous person who lives on through the many, many students she inspired, cared for and intellectually reared.
This book grew out of a series of lectures we gave in September 2005 on the Skilliter Centre tour of Istanbul, Bursa and Edirne. The tour was for us a most enjoyable experience and we learnt a great deal both from preparing and giving the lectures and from the questions, interest and enthusiasm of those with whom we travelled. We should like to thank in particular all those who took part in the tour and who stimulated us to consider writing this book in the first place.
We should also like to thank Rebecca Gower, the Librarian of the Skilliter Centre, for her help with the illustrations and editing. Her calmness and ability are considerable assets for the Centre. We are also most grateful to Dr Tuba Cavdar, who was instrumental in procuring the cover illustration for us, to Marigold Acland, Jo Breeze and Sarah Green at Cambridge University Press, and to our copy-editor Alison Thomas. Our thanks are also due to the staff of the University Library, Cambridge, the library of the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, the library of the Turkish Historical Association, Ankara, the Principal, Fellows and Members of Newnham College, Cambridge, the Middle East Technical University, Muharrem Ozsait and the Boyar family.
Introduction
I looked at you yesterday from a hill, oh beloved Istanbul I saw no place which I have not wandered through and loved As long as I live, use my heart as it pleases you Just to love one neighbourhood is worth a lifetime. Many splendid cities exist in the world But it is you who have created enchanted beauties For those who have lived many years in you, died in you and lie buried in you I say that they have lived in a beautiful and everlasting dream.’
For 470 years Istanbul was the capital of the Ottoman empire, which at its heyday stretched from Morocco to Ukraine, from the borders of Iran to Hungary. This was the artistic and intellectual centre of the Ottoman world, a commercial magnet for merchants from across the globe and the political piston of the empire. Its citizens lived surrounded by the pageantry of power and spectacle, caught up in the violence of the capital, and sustained by the enormous web of welfare that kept the city together. Our book offers a social portrait of this vibrant, violent, dynamic and cosmopolitan capital.
Captured in 1453 by Mehmed II (1444-46, 1451-81), known in Turkish as the conqueror, Istanbul became the capital of an everexpanding empire as Mehmed II’s successors, Bayezid IH (1481-1512), Selim I (1512-20) and Stileyman I (1520-66) — the magnificent for the West, the lawgiver for the Ottomans — expanded the frontiers, conquering eastern Anatolia, parts of Iran, Syria, Egypt, the North African coast to Morocco, Rhodes, much of the Balkans, and reaching as far west as the gates of Vienna, which was besieged twice but not taken. Under succeeding sultans, the expansion was to slow, but territory did continue to fall to the Ottomans, with Siileyman I’s successor Selim II (1566—74) taking Cyprus in 1570. The last major territory in the West to be captured by the Ottomans was Crete in 1669.
Under Selim II’s successors, Murad III (1574-95), Mehmed III (1595-1603) and Ahmed I (1603-17), the city was hit by economic problems as the empire struggled with the influx of silver from the New World and the difficulties of maintaining the value of its currency. This period also saw destructive wars with the Safavids in Iran and major upheavals in Anatolia, the Celali rebellions, which caused population movements into the city and disrupted its food supplies.
Economic difficulties continued during the reign of the following sultans: Mustafa I (1617-18, 1622-23), Osman II (1618-22), Murad IV (1623-40) and Ibrahim (1640-48). The city was the setting for great political upheavals, with the accession to the throne of the mentally incapable Mustafa I and the deposition and murder of Osman II. This was the period known as the sultanate of the women, when the role of the women of the harem (private quarters) in politics was particularly influential. Késem Sultan, the mother of Murad IV and Ibrahim, was a key figure in the running of the state.
In the second half of the century, this influential role was to be taken over by the K6priili family, which produced a series of grand vezirs. Militarily the period was dominated by wars with the Habsburgs. During this time, the sultans Mehmed IV (1648-87), Stileyman II (1687-91), Ahmed II (1691-95) and Mustafa II (1695-1703) spent an increasing amount of time away from the capital in the empire’s second city, Edirne, until, by the reign of Mustafa II, Edirne had become their de facto residence. This was bitterly resented by Istanbul’s population, which revolted, demanding the return of the sultan in what was known as the Edirne incident (1703).
Ahmed III (1703-30) therefore came to the throne in Istanbul. His reign was to usher in the Lale Devri (the Tulip Age), a period of extravagant display and cultural effervescence, which highlighted Istanbul’s return to its central position as capital of the empire. Ahmed’s reign came to an abrupt halt in 1730 with the Patrona Halil revolt, which saw the sultan deposed and the grand vezir murdered.
Under Ahmed III’s successors, Mahmud I (1730-54), Osman III (1754-57), Mustafa III (1757-74) and Abdtilhamid I (1774-89), the empire suffered a series of military defeats against the Russians, loss of territory and further economic difficulties. Istanbul was hit by great waves of immigration, which threatened the stability and internal order of the city. The coming to the throne of Selim II (1789-1807) marked the beginning of a major movement of reform, as the sultans grappled with military defeat and loss of central control over the provinces.
Selim’s attempts to restructure the army eventually led to his overthrow in 1807 and his subsequent murder in 1808. He was very briefly followed by Mustafa IV (1807-08), in a period of political upheaval during which the capital witnessed great violence and a total lack of political authority as factions jostled for power. Removed from the throne in 1808, Mustafa was replaced by Mahmud II (1808-39), who, after bringing the violence in the city under control and after a long and careful process of preparing the ground, introduced a series of very firm and far-reaching changes, which ushered in immense reforms in the empire over the following decades. He was unable, however, to prevent further loss of territory. Serbia gained its full autonomy in 1829 and Greece became independent in 1830, due to the support of the Great Powers who were to interfere more and more in the internal affairs of the empire as the century wore on. Mahmud also lost de facto control of Egypt, invaded briefly by Napoleon in 1798, although it was technically to remain Ottoman territory until the First World War.
In 1839 the Tanzimat began. This was a period of reforms in which the direction of the state was largely in the hands of three bureaucrats, Mustafa Resid Pasa (d.1858), Ali Pasa (d.1871) and Fuad Pasa (d.1869), and the sultans Abdiilmecid (1839-61) and Abdiilaziz (1861-76) were less politically significant. Economically the empire became more and more enmeshed in a series of loans, and more and more entangled in the tentacles of imperialism, until the state eventually went bankrupt in 1875. In 1881 the Public Debt Administration — a European body headed alternately by the British and the French — was set up to ensure repayment of the many loans the empire had taken out. By the beginning of the twentieth century, this body was to control a considerable section of the empire’s economy, in effect reducing it to a semicolony. The empire also suffered territorial loss, with much of its Balkan territory becoming independent or autonomous under the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. This triggered a wave of migration into the city, to be repeated after the Balkan Wars in 1912-13, when Istanbul received thousands of Muslim refugees fleeing the aggression of the Balkan states.
After the brief reign of Murad V, declared mad and removed a few months after his accession in 1876, Abdtilhamid II (1876-1909) came to the throne and, despite the great vicissitudes of the period, the hostility of the Great Powers and the development of a very hostile opposition movement, the Young Turks, managed to stay there for over thirty years, being deposed only in 1909, to be succeeded by Mehmed V (Resad) (1909-18), who was in turn followed by Mehmed VI (Vahdeddin) (1918-22). By this time, however, power was in the hands of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which had orchestrated the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and which, under the triumvirate of Enver Pasa, Talat Pasa and Cemal Pasa, was to run the empire until its collapse after the First World War and the defeat of its ally Germany.
The nineteenth century saw many changes as the Ottomans engaged dynamically with Europe, importing much from the West and adapting or rejecting it. Much changed as new concepts of the role of the state, new political theories and ideas of identity were discussed. Fashions changed, the novel was introduced and the position of women was revolutionised. By the outbreak of the First World War the city was a very different one from that which had ushered in the previous century.
After the First World War the city was occupied by the victorious Allies and the British took control. The CUP leaders fled to Berlin, to be assassinated shortly afterwards — Talat Pasa in Germany in 1921, Cemal Pasa on his way to Moscow in 1922, and Enver Pasa dying the same year in Cegen in Tajikistan, still dreaming of a comeback. The last sultan, Mehmed VI (Vahdeddin), was a mere cipher in the hands of the new British masters, agreeing unconditionally to whatever demands were made. Under the Treaty of Sevres drawn up in 1920, the Allies carved up the Middle East between them, assigning a small, rump state to the Turks in the north-west of Anatolia, with Istanbul under Allied control and the Straits turned into a consortium-controlled waterway.
Acceptable to the sultan — a puppet in the hands of the British, who had no interest in seeing a strong, independent Turkish state and who largely orchestrated the unsuccessful Greek invasion of Anatolia in 1919-22 — the treaty was rejected by the Turkish resistance movement which developed under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atattirk and which set itself up in Ankara in the heartland of central Anatolia. After a gruelling war with the Greeks, this movement successfully regained territory, expelled the foreign powers and forced a new treaty on the Allies, the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923. The new Turkish Republic was established with its capital at Ankara, the only country to arise in the Middle East from the ashes of the First World War as an independent nation state
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