Download PDF | Helen Pfeifer - Empire of Salons_ Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands-Princeton University Press (2022).
321 Pages
Introduction
stepping across the threshold into the literary salon, many an Ottoman gentleman must have felt the excitement and fear of the boxer entering the ring. To be sure, there were countless physical comforts: goldthreaded sofa spreads lined with velvet cushions; gilded platters loaded with honeyed sweets; marble walls rosied by the glow of candlelight. Such sensory pleasures could help to bring men into heady communion with one another, spurring spontaneous recitations of verse and impassioned expressions of love. But equally often, the mood was combative. In a rapidly expanding empire, the salon was a theater for fierce disputes over status and power whose echoes resounded across far-flung Ottoman lands.
This was the Ottoman Empire on twenty square meters of carpet: the salon of empire in an empire of salons. Informal gatherings of gentlemen were an indispensible part of Ottoman political, social, and intellectual life in the early modern period (c. 1400– 1800 CE). In cities and towns stretching from Albania to Arabia, elite salons brought leading figures from diverse ethnic and geographical backgrounds into close contact. Part business, part pleasure, and highly flexible in their form, these gatherings yielded to whatever the needs of the era were. In times of plenty, they served an incorporative function, drawing outsiders in and helping knowledge to circulate. When belts were tightened, however, so too were the boundaries of the salon, keeping newcomers out and resources in. In either case, salons functioned as key institutions of empire, contributing substantially to the Ottoman system of governance.
Salons were especially important in the wake of the Ottoman expansion into the Arab Middle East in the early part of the sixteenth century. Since the medieval period, salons had offered a forum for socializing that was shared, at least in its roughest outlines, all across the Islamic world.1 With the Ottoman conquest of Greater Syria, Egypt, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula in 1516–7, such assemblies offered a venue in which encounters between the Turkish-speaking Ottoman ruling elite and local Arab notables could take place. Although in many ways the salon reproduced the asymmetrical relations between conqueror and conquered, in other key ways the imperatives of salon conversation generated their own social hierarchies, hierarchies that were a function not of political office but of eloquence, learning, and wit. This book views the salon in this transformative era as it looked from the Syrian city of Damascus through the perspective of one Arab notable, Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi (d. 1577). Born in Damascus in 1499 during the last decades of the expiring Mamluk Sultanate, Ghazzi adjusted quickly to the new imperial order; he became friendly with the Ottoman functionaries that now passed through his hometown and eventually developed into one of the city’s leading scholars.
Ghazzi possessed all of the traits required to shine in the salon, including a powerful intellect, a deep erudition, and a seemingly endless repertoire of anecdotes and poems. But he, too, had his weaknesses, especially his stutter, which thwarted his ability to partake in the kind of verbal acrobatics that were the hallmark of elite sociability. Though his knowledge and stature meant that few ever dared to oppose him, by the end of his life Ghazzi was fending off a growing number of challengers from home and afar.
Ottoman Salons The most recognizable and widely studied forum for early modern Ottoman sociability is the coffeehouse. Ever since Jürgen Habermas made the coffeehouse a cornerstone of his theory of the public sphere, scholars eager to incorporate non-Western lands into histories of modernity have shown how this distinctly Ottoman invention promoted new, more public lifestyles and offered a more inclusive space for social and political action.2 The most recognizable and widely-studied forum for Ottoman intellectual activity, in turn, is the classic Islamic institution of higher education, the madrasa (Tur. medrese). Primarily designed to train students in the religious sciences, madrasas were also dynamic social centers, since they were often attached to larger mosque complexes and offered accommodation to many pupils.3 Finally, the most recognizable and widely studied forum for sixteenth-century Ottoman state-building is the formal bureaucracy, with a strong sultan at the top and administrative support structures cascading down like so many domes and arches on an Ottoman imperial mosque.
The renown of these institutions is well deserved, especially in light of the markedly weaker institutionalization common amongst most of the empire’s Eurasian contemporaries.4 However, historians’ focus on these structures also reflects modern expectations of separation between state and society, work and leisure, as well as private and public spheres. In fact, these institutions coexisted with, and in part developed out of, another social form more difficult to classify according to such divisions: the salon. When the coffeehouse first emerged in the sixteenth century, it was viewed by many Ottoman elites as a competitor to, and indeed usurper of, domestic forms of hospitality. The madrasa was just one theater for a wider culture of instruction and intellectual debate that flourished equally in mosques or at home. As for the Ottoman bureaucratic system, much of the daily business of governing was performed in the houses of imperial officials. However institutionalized the Ottoman Empire became, loosely defined gatherings held in multifunctional spaces continued to play an important societal role. All members of early modern Ottoman society had opportunities to socialize. Ottoman sultans conversed with courtiers in pavilions overlooking the Bosphorus or in royal tents while on campaign.5 Women congregated in bathhouses or in the family quarters of the home.6 Neither did religious minorities lack for social occasions nor, in prosperous circles, for magnificent chambers in which to hold them, to judge from the spectacular reception hall owned by a Christian merchant of Aleppo in the first years of the seventeenth century (see figure 0.2).7 Nonelites, too, cultivated rich social lives; in Anatolia and the Arab lands alike, artisans and peasants met to talk, play music, or even drink in private chambers, barbershops, or orchards.8 Although many of these occasions were no doubt enjoyable, calling on other people was not merely a pleasure, but an obligation. According to Ottoman etiquette writers, regular visits were owed by adult children to their parents; by members of Sufi orders to one another; and by all men regardless of status to their social superiors.
The resulting social pressure was such that some people—our Ghazzi included—opted to withdraw from socializing altogether. Around the age of forty, Ghazzi moved into a chamber on the eastern side of the Great Mosque of Damascus, vowing a life of seclusion. And yet, even this did not free him from social obligations: he continued to host students, scholars, and state officials for learned debates and even banquets. Although such socializing was common to all social groups, much of it occurred in parallel. In the sixteenth century, Ottoman writers began to show increasing discomfort with mixed company of all sorts, whether across the lines of gender, religion, or class. Whereas fifteenth-century elite gatherings sometimes featured female poets alongside their male counterparts, later biographers sought to explain away such practices, which were thought to compromise the honor of a lady.9 Likewise, few sixteenthcentury writers documented the kind of interreligious dialogue that had flourished in the assemblies of earlier eras (and continued in other parts of the Islamic world).10
As for socializing across the lines of class, the defense of one Damascene scholar who was criticized for associating with men of modest means sums up the prevailing attitude: “I am poor, so I socialize with the poor.”11 In point of fact, many gatherings were more heterogeneous than writers cared to admit. That judicial courts occasionally prosecuted unrelated men and women for mixing in private is indisputable evidence that such mixing occurred.12 Architectural remains suggest that Christians and Muslims mingled privately too: the Christian owner of the Aleppo Chamber selected the inscriptions of the reception hall to avoid offending the religious sensibility of his Muslim guests.13 Even at the gatherings of elite Muslim men, servants were omnipresent and women sometimes watched from the wings—Ghazzi himself was rarely seen without a following of enslaved Ethiopian women.14 However, such figures played subsidiary, supporting roles. Physically and discursively, women, Christians, and nonelites remained at the margins of that most celebrated of social spaces: the salon. The salon was the domain of Muslim gentlemen par excellence. I define salons as exclusive gatherings held for the purpose of enlightened conversation and structured around the relationship between host and guest. Participating in such gatherings was one of the defining attributes of upper-class Muslim men, since doing so allowed them to practice many of the privileges particular to their caste. This included exercising hospitality and performing acts of generosity, pursuits that were impracticable for social groups with single-room dwellings and little disposable income. It also included utilizing refined speech and displaying bookish knowledge of the sort inacessible to anyone without a higher education.15 Contemporary descriptions of polite conversation conceptualize it as a distinctly masculine sport, drawing on the martial language of swordsmanship or even the sexualized language of penetration.16 Nonetheless, as exclusionary as these gatherings were, they often did bring together men from different sectors of the Ottoman elite, including scholars, administrators, and military officials.
Ottoman writers had a variety of concepts to describe the gatherings I refer to as salons. One of the most common and generic of these was the Arabic majlis, meclis in Ottoman Turkish (pl. majalis, mecalis). Literally meaning “sitting” or “session,” with the verb “to sit” at its root, the word— just like the French salon—could carry both the meaning of “assembly” and of the physical space in which such assemblies were held.17 However, unlike in the French case, the Arabic term designated an occasion long before it indicated an architectural feature, and indeed a majlis could be held almost anywhere: not only in a domestic interior, but also in a courtyard, garden, or even in a publicly accessible space like a madrasa or mosque.18 Nonetheless, privately owned reception areas played an especially important role in the lives of Ottoman elites, whose sprawling compounds housed many such spaces and acted as the center of operations for the large households that underpinned early modern Ottoman society and politics.19
That elites could gather in the privacy of the home was a fact of enormous significance since it shielded them from the long arm of the law.20 However, the upper classes also had the luxury of utilizing a range of public spaces for their gatherings, and Ghazzi and many of his contemporaries received visitors in highly visible locations in urban mosques.21 Thanks to the retinues of servants that trailed most Ottoman elites wherever they went, such publicly staged hospitality mimicked many aspects of the kind practiced in private.22 Elite salon culture thus found its expression wherever a group of Ottoman gentlemen chose to sit.
Part of the attraction of Ottoman salons was their flexibility. Depending on the needs of the host or his guests, salons could be put to a variety of different social ends. One of the most important was entertainment and leisure, as existing scholarship has shown. Many contemporaries reveled in the era’s celebratory banquets (Ar. diyafa, Tur. ziyafet), lavish drinking parties (Tur. bezm, meclis-i ʿişret), and elegant soirées (Ar. mahfil, Tur. mehfil ).23 These were the sorts of occasions to which a sultan would retire to hear music and watch dancing, or to which friends would flock to engage in friendly conversation (sohbet) or to gaze at handsome prepubescent boys.24 Usually, a special role was reserved for poetry and literature, and contemporaries singled out the gatherings of poets or the literati (Ar. majlis adab, Tur. meclis-i şuʿaraʾ) for particular praise.25 Yet, the pleasurable aspects of such occasions should not overshadow the hard work of Ottoman sociability. Initially conceptualized by Georg Simmel as a form of social interaction that was devoid of meaningful content and performed purely for its own sake, sociability has since been recast as something far more serious, as “work with a purpose.”26
In Ottoman gatherings as elsewhere, many apparently superficial interactions relied on extensive training and considerable physical and mental labor. What is more, even the most humdrum of exchanges could serve the purpose of strengthening social cohesion within groups or upholding distinctions between them.27 But participating in Ottoman salons also constituted work in a stricter sense. For scholars, salons were key arenas for exchanging ideas and building intellectual authority. Throughout the early modern period, not only poems, but also writings of a more academic nature were regularly conceived of and received in learned salons (Ar. majlis ʿilm, Tur. meclis-iʿilm).28 For the unemployed, salons were key stops on the way to new patrons: job seekers began their work by paying courtesy visits to Istanbul’s power holders or securing invitations to their soirées. Political decisions, too, were often made in informal contexts; for ambassadors, a visit to the Topkapı Palace was the culmination of numerous private meetings with the sultan’s advisors.29 Even judicial verdicts were often the result of negotiations that occurred outside of the Islamic court, with many formal hearings taking place only after decisions had been reached privately.30 Contemporaries did attempt to separate out the various functions of informal gatherings and to differentiate work from leisure. Etiquette manuals stressed that drinking parties should only be held in the evenings and discouraged the sultan from involving his boon companions (Ar. nadim, Tur. nedim) in the affairs of the state.31 Some men of stature reserved mornings for private sessions and afternoons for more public audiences (or vice versa).32
However, in practice these lines were often blurry. Pleas for patronage were best couched in polite banter or rhetorical flourish and, at the assemblies held in Damascus when a new judge arrived from Istanbul, a particularly clever repartee could win a man a job.33 Scholarly discussions gave way to poetry exchanges.34 Paperwork catalyzed disputes over grammar.35 A meeting Ghazzi had with a leader of a Sufi religious order and the latter’s brothers in the Syrian town of Hama was typical of the different modes of interaction that coexisted in a single gathering. In a magnificent chamber in the order’s lodge overlooking the Orontes river, the men spoke about what they had seen and done since they had last met. They discussed scholarly topics, both religious and secular. Ghazzi inspected the Sufi shaykh’s appointment deed, jotting down an approving note in response. He issued the shaykh an academic license (ijaza). At one point, a man from the shaykh’s entourage asked Ghazzi for a legal opinion, which he provided on the spot. And, when the sun disappeared over the horizon and the black dust of the night settled into the eyes of the lands, the men performed the sunset prayer together. Since it was the month of Ramadan, they broke their fast with a sumptuous buffet. Only then did Ghazzi take his leave of the gentlemen.36 Diverse as Ottoman gatherings were, this book uses the word “salon” as an umbrella term designating the whole spectrum of elite assemblies.
It is used interchangeably with the generic “gathering” and “assembly,” and supplemented by more specific designations whenever possible (e.g., banquet, scholarly gathering, soirée). The importance of salons is confirmed by their ubiquity in the Ottoman written record. They feature in travel narratives, biographical compendia, chronicles, etiquette manuals, paintings, and poems. Arabic travel accounts (rihla) were often more concerned with the social landscape of a given locale than with the mosques or monuments that preoccupied betterknown Ottoman travelers like Evliya Çelebi or many European visitors to the empire. The descriptions of leading figures compiled in both Arabic and Turkish-language biographical anthologies (tarajim, tezkire) also often dwelled on social gatherings. To give an extreme, but not atypical, example, a four-thousand-word biography of a fifteenth-century Ottoman scholar chronicled a banquet he hosted to honor his father; a feast followed by a lesson he held for a Persian traveler; the scholar’s visit, in the company of some of his students, to the home of a vizier; a learned disputation in front of the sultan; and another debate that soured when a guest refused to take his assigned seat.37 Prescriptive sources devote no less attention to social gatherings, and Ghazzi wrote books of etiquette (adab) on sharing meals, joking, and interacting with fellow members of a Sufi order, to name only a few.38
Though these prescriptive sources should not be confused with descriptions of actual fact, the substantial overlap between theory and practice suggests how seriously prescriptions were taken.39 Finally, paintings and poems often put salons center stage. Illustrated manuscripts regularly depicted elite gatherings, their painters supplementing textual cues with first-hand observations of Ottoman social life.40 Contemporary poetry likewise dwelt on convivial themes, with much of its stock imagery—candles, goblets, blossoms—evoking the trappings of elite sociability. Indeed, however concerned poets were with literary form, they crafted their verses from the stuff of daily life, not least from the poetic séances where those verses were so often performed.41 Poems should thus be seen less as reflections of Ottoman salons than as participants within them. What is the wisdom of referring to this distinctly Ottoman social form using the French term salon? Doing so may seem at best imprecise and at worst misleading. Few institutions have been laden with more worldhistorical meaning. French salons have variously been credited with incubating gender equality, the Enlightenment, democratic politics, and the bourgeois public sphere, thus taking a leading role not only in French national history but in the rise of Western modernity itself.42 And yet, recent historiography has cut French salons down to size, rejecting some of their exalted associations in favor of a more sober account rooted in distinctly early modern conceptions of etiquette and social hierarchy. Women, it seems, played more circumscribed, more gendered roles than was once believed; if salons helped to engender egalitarian thought, then they were also vehicles of royal patronage and dominated by aristocratic notions of civility; and the public sphere that developed around these and other spaces had close ties to, indeed relied upon, state networks.43 Even the term salon has come to seem anachronistic, since its use to designate a polite gathering developed only in the nineteenth century when what was left of the culture it denoted was heavily cloaked in nostalgia. Before that, contemporaries spoke of a larger culture of elite hospitality built around “houses,” “circles,” and, above all, “societies.”44
This reinterpretation of the French salon clears the way for a less loaded usage of the term in other historical contexts.45 To speak of Ottoman salons is not to imply that Ottoman sociability was just like French sociability, real or imagined. Not only did Ottoman salon culture by and large exclude women, but its forms of association were self-consciously Islamic and developed around substantial differences in material culture and social practice.46 The division between “polite” and “scholarly” culture, so salient in eighteenth-century France, never operated in Ottoman circles, where self-respecting gentlemen were expected to master both. And yet, Ottoman salons did have notable similarities to elite gatherings across early modern Eurasia, including the importance of poetry, the role of patronage, and the concern with physical expressions of social hierarchies.47 Although this book emphasizes the distinctiveness of Ottoman sociability, it uses the term salon to evoke a social form that was commensurable across coeval elite cultures.
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