Ordering Imperial Worlds: From Late Medieval Spain to the Modern Middle East 9781399517867, 9781399517881, 9781399517898

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Ordering Imperial Worlds

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Ordering Imperial Worlds From Late Medieval Spain to the Modern Middle East

Edited by Susan Slyomovics

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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Susan Slyomovics, 2023 © the chapters their several authors, 2023 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10.5/13 EB Garamond by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 3995 1786 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 3995 1788 1 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 3995 1789 8 (epub) The right of Susan Slyomovics to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

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Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements The Contributors Note on Translation and Transliteration Introduction: Engaging the Work of Zeynep Çelik Susan Slyomovics

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Part 1 Unbounded Methodologies Part 1 Introduction Susan Slyomovics 1 Overlapping Modernities: Jerusalem between the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early British Mandate Zeynep Çelik 2 The Virgin as Colonial Agent Jerrilynn Dodds 3 Shipwrecks and Navigations: North Africa in the Eighteenthcentury Mediterranean through the Chronicle and Life of Muhammad al-Saghir ibn Yusuf, c. 1693–1771 Julia Clancy-Smith 4 Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City: Urban Histories of Aleppo during the French Mandate Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh

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Part 2 Variations on Late Ottoman Culture Part 2 Introduction Susan Slyomovics

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Contents 5 An Atlas of Desire: Enderunlu Fazıl’s View of the World from the Late Eighteenth Century Selim S. Kuru 6 European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court (1599–1846): Diplomacy and Fantasy from an English Organ to the Forty French Singers’ Ottoman Odyssey Nicolas Dufetel 7 Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie, Once Again Edhem Eldem

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Part 3 Chronologies and Spaces of Containment Part 3 Introduction Susan Slyomovics

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8 Crossing Paths: Lucien Libert’s Medical Journey to the Orient Burçak Özlüdil Altın

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9 Carceral Experiences and the Transmission of Memory in a French Political Prison: Montluc, between the Second World War and the Algerian War of Independence Marc André

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10 Toxifying the Sahara: On France’s Atomic Built Environments Samia Henni

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Index

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Figures 1.1 1.2

General Allenby’s entrance into Jerusalem (December 1917) Jaffa Gate, view from the exterior, showing the breach in the city wall 1.3 Detail from a project by W. H. McLean (22 July 1918) 1.4 ‘Jaffa Gate as it was when the “Kaiser’s breach” was made’ 1.5 Jaffa Gate, ‘Great Market improvement Scheme, with Market’ (1920) 1.6 Jaffa Road market and Ashbee’s proposal 1.7 Damascus Gate (between 1898 and 1914) 1.8 Damascus Gate, proposal for a Khan (1920) 1.9 ‘Jerusalem Park System’, plan (1920) by Ashbee 1.10 Jerusalem, plan showing the inner park system along the walls (1918) 1.11–12 Jerusalem, street views showing architectural details ‘then’ and ‘now’ (1920) 1.13 Entrance to the branch of the Imperial Museum in the garden of the Bursa High School 1.14 Inauguration ceremonies in front of the Jerusalem High School 1.15 The Citadel (between 1898 and 1946) 1.16 The Citadel, plan by Ashbee 1.17 The Citadel, section drawing by Austen St. B. Harrison 1.18 The ‘Way House’ Museum, view from the garden (between 1898 and 1946) 1.19 Museum (Rockefeller) in Jerusalem, view from the city wall looking north (between 1934 and 1939) 1.20 ‘The War of the Nations’, portfolio in rotogravure etchings, compiled from the Mid-week Pictorial (New York), 1919 1.21 The entrance of Selaheddin Eyyubi Külliye-i İslamiyesi, with [Friedrich Bronsart] von Schellendorf, Enver Pasha and Cemal Pasha in the front row 2.1 Musicians from the Cantigas de Santa María 2.2 Illustration page for the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169)

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11 14 16 19 20 21 21 22 23 25 27 29 30 33 34 36 37 38 39 41 53 58

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Figures 2.3 Detail, the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169) 59 2.4 Virgin of la Arrixaca, polychromed wood, second third of the thirteenth century 60 2.5 Detail from the Murcia cantiga: Alfonso X as prince before Muslim subjects 61 2.6 Alexander recounting the story of the Trojan War to his troops 61 2.7 Detail from the Murcia cantiga: Muslim subjects from the image of Alfonso as Prince 62 2.8 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): James 1 before Muslim subjects 63 2.9 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): Alfonso X as King before Muslim subjects 63 2.10 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): The Muslim king before his subjects 66 2.11 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): The troops of Abu Yusuf attempt to destroy the church of La Arrixaca 70 3.1 Claude-Joseph Vernet, The Shipwreck, 1772 76 4.1 General Henri Gouraud’s procession on al-Khandaq (Moat) Street in Aleppo, 13 September 1920 108 4.2 Diagram of Aleppo’s ramparts, from al-Ghazzi, Nahr al-dhahab 113 4.3 One of the images in the sequence of plans of Aleppo, from Sauvaget, Alep 119 4.4 Aleppo’s new system of municipal garbage collection, from Surmeyan, Patmutiwn 123 5.1 Opening pages of the Hûbân-nâme 142 5.2 Zenân-nâme 143 5.3 Map of the world 146 5.4 Zenân-nâme 148 7.1 Title page, frontispiece and illustrated plates of Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 197 7.2 Geographic distribution of the costumes in Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 197 7.3 Frontispiece and illustrated plates of Brindesi’s Elbicei Atika: Musée des anciens costumes turcs de Constantinople 200 7.4 Osman Hamdi Bey in Oriental garb, Vienna, 1873 204 7.5 ‘Kurdish Woman from the Vicinity of Sivas’, ‘Kurdish Lady from Sivas’ and ‘Muslim Woman from Prizren’ 207 7.6 Comparison of illustrations in Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 and commercial photographs by Sébah 208

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Figures 7.7 Detail from a stereoscopic photograph of the Ottoman section at the Vienna World Exposition 7.8 Plate III-37 of Les Costumes populaires 7.9 Incriminated plates from Les Costumes populaires, showing unacceptable depictions of Muslim women, circled in red (author’s collection) 7.10 Plates from Les Costumes populaires showing armed Muslims from the Balkans 7.11 Five costumes in Racinet’s Le Costume historique (vol. III, pl. 177) and their corresponding models from Les Costumes populaires 8.1 Libert’s itinerary on his map of ‘Insane Asylums of the Orient’ 8.2 Messageries Maritime routes 1902 8.3 Among the graves in Üsküdar 8.4 A men’s ward in the Toptaşı Asylum 8.5 Asylum in Edirne, located in the Beyazid II Imperial Complex 8.6 Lucien Libert’s tomb 10.1 The construction site of the life base of the Centre Saharien d’expérimentations militaires in Reggane 10.2 The construction site of the blockhaus Alpha in the zone of ground zero at Hamoudia, the Centre Saharien d’expérimentations militaires in Reggane 10.3 OASIS II base at the Centre d’expérimentations militaires des oasis in In Ecker 10.4 Image captured by Bruno Barrillot during a visit to Reggane and In Ecker nuclear sites with Larbi Benchiha

210 213 216 218 220 238 241 246 247 250 254 290 292 294 296

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Acknowledgements Many individuals contributed to the success of the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Conference and Award for Excellence in Islamic Studies, an event held in May 2019 to honour the scholarship, teaching and mentorship of Zeynep Çelik. The conference was organised by the Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). I am extremely grateful to the staff of UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies for their expert conference organisation: CNES director Ali Behdad, programme director Johanna Romero and financial officer Christian Rodriguez. I thank Ussama Makdisi for his participation, as well as panel chairs and discussants Ali Behdad, Lamia Balafrej, Diane Favro, Ira Lapidus and Scott Waugh. Financial support was provided by UCLA’s Levi Della Vida Endowment. For this edited volume, I gratefully acknowledge book subventions by UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies and additional support from UCLA’s Faculty Research Grant programme.

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The Contributors Burçak Özlüdil Altın is an architect and architectural historian whose research focuses on the intersection of human sciences and urban/architectural space, and uses of computational tools in these fields. Her research received support from the Social Science Research Council and the Turkish Cultural Foundation. She was awarded a Getty Foundation Fellowship for a collaborative project on the incorporation of agent-based modelling in the study of historical space (2018–19) and a grant from the International Istanbul Biennial for a collaborative space-based AI installation called [AI]stanbul (2018). Özlüdil Altın is the co-founder of Digital Spatial History Lab and SpatioScholar, a scholarly digital platform for temporospatial analysis. She teaches courses on architectural history, medical history and digital humanities. Marc André is maître de conférence of contemporary French history at the University of Rouen-Normandie. His expertise lies in the histories of Algerian immigration in France, the Algerian War, military justice and prisons, and the dynamics of memory transmission. He has authored numerous articles and is the author of two books: Une prison pour mémoire: Montluc de 1944 à nos jours (A Prison for Memories: Montluc from 1944 to the Present; 2022) and Femmes dévoilées: Des Algériennes en France à l’heure de la décolonisation (Women Unveiled: Algerian Women in France at the Hour of Decolonisation; 2016). He is currently working on a third book on the Algerian War as a fratricidal conflict in metropolitan France. Zeynep Çelik is Sakıp Sabancı Visiting Professor in the History Department at Columbia University and Distinguished Professor Emerita, New Jersey Institute of Technology. Her publications include The Remaking of Istanbul (1986, winner of the 1987 Institute of Turkish Studies Book Award); Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam in Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (1992); Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule (1997); Empire, Architecture, and the City: French–Ottoman Encounters, 1830–1914 (2008, winner of the 2010 Society of Architectural Historians’ Spiro Kostof Book Award); About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire (2016); and Europe xi

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Contributors Knows Nothing about the Orient: A Critical Discourse from the East, 1872–1932 (2022). She co-edited Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space (1993); Walls of Algiers (2009); Scramble for the Past (2011); and Camera Ottomana (2014). Among the exhibitions she co-curated are Walls of Algiers (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2009), Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914 (SALT, Istanbul, 2011–12) and Camera Ottomana (Koç University, Istanbul, 2015). She has received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2004), American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (1992, 2004 and 2011), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2012), Vehbi Koç Foundation Award (2013) and the Sarton Medal from Ghent University (2014). She is the recipient of the 2019 Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal honouring outstanding achievement in Islamic Studies. Julia Clancy-Smith is Regents Professor of History at the University of Arizona, Tucson, School of Middle East and North African Studies. She was recently awarded a Guggenheim Research Fellowship for a monograph devoted to women, gender and schooling in colonial North Africa. Clancy-Smith authored Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c.1800–1900 (2011) and Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (1994). She co-edited Domesticating the Empire: Languages of Gender, Race, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism, 1830–1962 (1998), as well as Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City in Text and Image (2009). Her Occasional Paper, Tunisian Revolutions: Reflections on Seas, Coasts, and Interiors (2014) examines women and gender in the Arab uprisings. She co-authored the textbook The Middle East and North Africa: A History in Documents (2014) and is completing another textbook titled North Africa: From Carthage and Queen Dido to the Arab Spring (2019). Jerrilynn Dodds is Harlequin Adair Dammann Professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Among her publications are Architecture and Ideology of Early Medieval Spain; New York Masjid, the Mosques of New York City and Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture, co-authored with Maria Menocal and Abigail Balbale. She curated a number of exhibitions and was editor of the catalogue Al Andalus: The Arts of Islamic Spain (Metropolitan Museum of Art); co-editor of Convivencia (with Glick and Mann, The Jewish Museum); and co-editor of The Arts of Medieval Spain (with Little, Moralejo and Williams, Metropolitan Museum of Art), among other exhibitions and publications. She has also written and directed documentary films exploring architecture and transculturation. Professor Dodds was awarded the Cruz de la Orden de Mérito Civil by King Felipe IV of Spain in 2018. xii

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Contributors Nicolas Dufetel is Chargé de recherche at the CNRS and Deputy director of IReMus (Institut de recherche en musicologie) in Paris. He teaches Music History at the Université Catholique de l’Ouest (Angers) and received his PhD in musicology on Franz Liszt’s religious music. He was awarded the Joan Nordell Fellowship at Harvard University (Houghton Library) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in Weimar. His research concerns the nineteenth century, especially Liszt, aesthetics, philology and critical editions, epistemology, European culture and the history of western music in the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat. His recent publications include Tout le ciel en musique: Pensées intempestives de Liszt (2016), Le Château de La moutte: Saint Tropez romantique (2021) and Felix Mendelssohn’s Lettres européennes (2022). He recently edited La Musique religieuse en France au XIXe siècle (2022) and, with Sarga Moussa, Voyages croisés entre l’Europe et l’Empire ottoman au XIXe siècle: Écrivains, artistes et musiciens à l’époque des Tanzimat (forthcoming). Edhem Eldem teaches in the Department of History of Boğaziçi University and has held the international chair of Turkish and Ottoman History at the Collège de France. Among his interests are the eighteenth-century Levant trade, Ottoman funerary epigraphy, the development of an urban bourgeoisie in Istanbul, the history of the Ottoman Bank, the history of archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, late-nineteenth-century Ottoman first-person narratives and biographies, and the history of photography in the Ottoman Empire. His publications include Un Ottoman en Orient: Osman Hamdi Bey en Irak (1869– 1871) (2010); Le voyage à Nemrud Dağı d’Osman Hamdi Bey et Osgan Efendi (2010); Osman Hamdi Bey Sözlüğü (2010); Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914 (2011); Mendel-Sebah: Müze-i Hümayun’u Belgelemek / Mendel-Sebah: Documenting the Imperial Museum (2014); Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1870–1914 (2015); L’Empire ottoman et la Turquie face à l’Occident (2018); L’Alhambra: À la croisée des histoires (2021); L’Empire ottoman (2022). Samia Henni is a historian of built, destroyed and imagined environments. She received her PhD in the history and theory of architecture (with distinction, ETH Medal) from ETH Zurich and has taught at Princeton University, ETH Zurich, Geneva University of Art and Design, and now Cornell University. Her teaching and research interests include questions of colonialism, displacement, gender, extraction and wars. She is the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (English, 2017; French, 2019), the editor of War Zones: gta papers 2 (2018) and Deserts Are Not Empty (2022), and the maker of exhibitions such as Housing xiii

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Contributors Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020) and Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, 2017–19). Her upcoming book, Colonial Toxicity: The French Army in the Sahara, examines France’s nuclear weapons programme in the Sahara in 1960–66. Selim S. Kuru is Associate Professor in the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures Department at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research interests are the Ottoman Empire and Anatolian Turkish literary history, with a focus on genres that handle love and sexuality and their place in elite Ottoman society. His recent publications include ‘Generic Desires: Homoerotic Love in Ottoman Turkish Poetry’, in Mediterranean Crossing: Sexual Transgressions in Islam and Christianity (2020), and ‘Istanbul: City of Man’, in the Brill Companion to Early Modern Istanbul (2022). ‘Sex in Istanbul in the Sixteenth Century ce’ will appear in the third volume of the Cambridge World History of Sexualities. Kuru is the co-director of the Svoboda Diaries Digital Humanities Project at the University of Washington. Susan Slyomovics is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Merchant of Art: An Egyptian Hilali Epic Poet in Performance (1988); The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (1998); Women and Power in the Middle East (co-editor, 2001); The Walled Arab City in Literature, Architecture and History: The Living Medina in the Maghrib (editor, 2001); The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (2005); How to Accept German Reparations (2014); and Race, Trace, Place: Essays in Honour of Patrick Wolfe (co-editor, 2022). Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh is Professor of Art History at the University of California, Davis. She researches the visual cultures of the Middle East, including issues of architectural preservation, museums and cultural heritage. Her book The Image of an Ottoman City: Architecture in Aleppo received the Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. She edited a special issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, on ‘Cultural Heritage and the Arab Spring’ (2016). Her book, The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice (2019) is the first book to receive prizes from both the Society for Armenian Studies and the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, as well as the Gold Medal in World History from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. She is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar. xiv

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Note on Translation and Transliteration Authors often provide texts only in translation and not their original languages. The choice has been left up to individual chapter authors concerning transliteration protocols, terms and names from modern Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Persian and Armenian languages.

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Introduction: Engaging the Work of Zeynep Çelik Susan Slyomovics

A more accurate subtitle for this edited volume is ‘essays in honour of Zeynep Celik.’ Individual chapters were first presented at the 30–31 May 2019 conference to award the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal for Excellence in Islamic Studies to Zeynep Çelik, distinguished professor of Ottoman history and architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the Federated Department of History at the NJIT and Rutgers-Newark. The selection process for such a renowned scholar was overseen traditionally by a committee appointed by the Chancellor of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and headed by the university’s Director of the G. E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES). This endowed award to Zeynep Çelik is rooted in the deep, enthusiastic appreciation of her academic achievements. It also acknowledges the exodus of Europeans scholars to California during World War II, an enduring global movement to the American academy which has been enriched by the excellence of scholars, among them Zeynep Çelik, relocating from all parts of the world. In effect, the conference and this volume constitute the intellectual convergence of three eminent professors – Von Grunebaum, Levi Della Vida and Çelik – each affiliated sometime during their illustrious careers with the University of California. It began in 1967 when Gustave E. Von Grunebaum (1909–72), first director of UCLA’s centre and a scholar of Islamic Studies, established the Levi Della Vida Award to honour the life and scholarship of Giorgio Levi Della Vida (1886–1967). An Italian Jewish professor of comparative Semitic languages and Islamic Studies at Rome University, Levi Della Vida was a signatory of the ‘Manifesto of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals’ in 1925 and only one among twelve Italian university professors refusing to pledge the oath of loyalty to Italy’s Fascist leaders and regime that was imposed on 28 August 1931. He was expelled from his university post in 1932 and forced to flee 1

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Susan Slyomovics after the promulgation of Italian racial laws against Jews in 1939. He became a professor at the universities of Pennsylvania and California until 1945, when he returned to be reinstated at Rome University. As a token of his gratitude for the hospitality and tenure in the University of California system, he donated his personal collection of books and manuscripts to the library. The year of his death in 1967, UCLA created the award, since then bestowed on a roster of major intellectual figures in the field. Gustav E. Von Grunebaum, who also established UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies in 1957, was an Austrian scholar of Jewish ancestry who fled to the US in 1938 to escape the Nazi annexation of his country. UCLA’s was among the first batch of some seventeen centres established in 1957 across the US as part of the post-World War II American push to expand international education in universities. American institutions have benefited from international scholars, artists, filmmakers and intellectuals who made the country their home during and after the war. They continue to do so, including the 2019 Levi Della Vida award recipient, Zeynep Çelik, Sakıp Sabancı Visiting Professor of Turkish Studies in the Department of History at Columbia University and Distinguished Professor Emerita at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, as of this writing. As the preeminent architectural historian of the Mediterranean world, Zeynep Çelik has transformed scholarship on cities, walls, streets, images, museums and archaeological sites. Her work is devoted to the multiple intersections of empire, colony and colonised populations in general and, in particular to the modernisation of architecture in the cities of the Middle East and North Africa during the Ottoman Empire and into the century of England and France and their overseas colonies in the region. Her research and life history traverse continents, leading to a rich array of multi-lingual academic apprenticeships. Born in Istanbul, Çelik was educated at the American College for Girls before obtaining her bachelor’s degree in architecture at Istanbul Technical University in 1975.1 Her studies in architecture led to a Fulbright Fellowship and advanced degrees at Rice University (M. Arch. 1978) where she met and married fellow architecture student Perry Winston. After they moved to northern California, Çelik shifted to architectural and urban history while attending the University of California, Berkeley, supervised by Spiro Kostof, a leading architectural historian also from Istanbul. She obtained her PhD in 1984, the year their son Ali was born. Cross-cultural exchanges across the Mediterranean have been at the centre of her research beginning with her dissertation, revised and published as The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (1986), on the transformation of Istanbul under European influence in the nineteenth century. Her second book, Displaying the Orient (1992), focuses on Islamic exhibitions at universal expositions in Europe and the United States. 2

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Introduction In Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations (1997), she examines the imposition of new design practices on the ‘Islamic’ urban fabric of Algiers under French rule. Bringing together several areas of interest, her next single-authored volume, Empire, Architecture, and the City (2008), is a comparative analysis of the nineteenth-century French and Ottoman Empires through the lens of modernity according to the urban forms and architecture imposed on their respective colonies in North Africa and the Middle East. Researching her 2008 book evolved organically into a study of the role played by antiquities in politics in About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire (2016). In addition to a rich corpus of articles and edited volumes over decades, her most recent project is a remarkable collaboration with translators, prefaced by her extensive introduction for the provocatively titled Europe Knows Nothing about the Orient: A Critical Discourse (1872–1932) (2021). To English readers, she brings together an anthology of incisive critiques of Orientalism in literature and art history that circulated long before Edward Said’s Orientalism and presents the vibrant intellectual worlds of Ottoman and Turkish newspapers and journalism. Her extensive scholarly output is enhanced by public outreach through collaboratively curated museum exhibitions, each accompanied by a catalogue or publication: Walls of Algiers, an exhibition at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (May–October 2009); Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914, an exhibition at SALT, Istanbul (November 2011–March 2012); 1001 Faces of Orientalism, Sabancı Museum, Istanbul, April 2013–October 2013; and Camera Ottomana, an exhibition at Koç University (April–August 2015). The Levi Della Vida award carries with it a bronze medal, together with the obligation to present a formal lecture as part of a conference held on the UCLA campus. The recipient of the award chooses the theme of the conference and selects the other participants. Zeynep Çelik chose the theme ‘Perspectives on French Colonial and Late Ottoman Cultural History’, resulting in this edited volume. Ten chapters are organised into three broad themes to which junior and senior scholars have contributed from their specialist disciplines in conversation with Çelik’s oeuvre: methodology, late Ottoman culture and spaces of containment. Offering a sustained critical reflection on cross-cultural exchanges across the Mediterranean, this volume assembles new interdisciplinary methodologies that focus on the intersection of multiple geographical and historical times and spaces. In many aspects, the volume’s approaches can be teased out from the oil painting featured as the book cover, as chosen by Çelik. The image, entitled Haremde Goethe (1898) by Caliph Abdülmecid II (1868–1944), is part of the collection of the State Painting and Sculpture Museum of Ankara. 3

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Susan Slyomovics The painting depicts Şehsuvar Hanım (1881–1945), the first wife of the last caliph of the Ottoman Caliphate. She reclines on a crimson settee, resting her bare alabaster arm on a pale blue and white pillow. Dressed fashionably in a beautiful, short-sleeved gold and grey frock in the contemporary French style, she reveals a delicate high-heeled shoe which emerges from her artfully draped dress folds. Her left hand plays with her necklace, while her right hand holds the novel Faust by the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), reflecting an educated elite’s interest in European writings. She has paused her reading to stare forthrightly at the painter, her husband, hence also at us, her viewers and the volume’s readers. The artist is Abdülmecid II, educated in both Ottoman and contemporary French culture. He studied and composed classical Western and Turkish music, often playing with his wife. As an art student of Osman Hamdi Bey, he painted both in the style of Western painting and Ottoman calligraphy. He was a talented musician, calligrapher and professional painter. This image of his Circassian wife reading Goethe not only constitutes a historical document, but also reveals a dynamic aesthetic perspective. Furthermore, so Çelik notes in relation to ‘Oriental’ artists and intellectuals such as herself, there is ‘a dialogue between cultures and about contesting the dominant norms’.2 Thus inspired by Çelik’s research, these chapters traverse Muslim and Christian Spain, the Ottoman Empire and France, Europe and its overseas empire in the Middle East and North Africa, and more. Combining social, cultural and urban history, as well as visual studies and collective political memory, scholars from Turkey, France, Algeria and the US chart detailed, contextualised studies of art, architecture, cities, landscapes and literature, each in their own way in an ongoing dialogue with her.

Notes  1. A classmate of Orhan Pamuk, Çelik describes their undergraduate years at Istanbul Technical University in ‘Pamuk à l’école d’architecture’, Orhan Pamuk, edited by Sophie Basch and Nilufer Gole (Paris: Éditions de L’Herne, 2017), 275–82.  2. Zeynep Çelik, ‘Speaking Back to Orientalist Discourse’, in Orientalism’s Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography, edited by J. Beaulieu and M. Roberts (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 19–42.

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Part 1 Unbounded Methodologies

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Part 1 Introduction Susan Slyomovics

Part 1 consists of four chapters that delineate the aims, scope and argument of this volume in relation to the pioneering fieldwork, writing and historical approaches by Zeynep Çelik. In Chapter 1, Çelik models methodological innovations that situate architecture and urbanism as expressions of social, cultural and political formations during decisive moments of historical and political change, by triangulating urban transformations through physical forms. She charts the transitional period between the late Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate in Jerusalem by focusing on three fragments of the urban fabric: the clock tower built in celebration of Sultan Abdülhamid II’s twentyfifth jubilee, the fortifications dating from the sixteenth century and the Imperial Museum of Antiquities dating from 1904. Through these three key structures, she demonstrates the ways in which British policies differed: the tower, arguably the most visible symbol of Ottoman modernity in the city, was demolished; the fortifications, belonging to an earlier era, were carefully restored; and the museum was appropriated wholesale. Examining Hamidian and British positions toward specific urban artifacts opens up topics relevant to not only ruptures, but also continuities between two empires, framed by seemingly opposing ideologies. Revised from her keynote speech delivered on the occasion of receiving the prestigious 2019 Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award for Excellence in Islamic Studies, this chapter points to new research directions in urban architectural studies of the Middle East when one empire cedes to another. Chapter 2, Jerrilynn Dodds’ ‘Architecture, Conversion and Projection in Colonial Castile’, captures an unprecedented type of colonial discourse constructed by rulers and churchmen confronted by the expansion of the Kingdom of Leon and Castile that resulted in Muslim-ruled polities in the thirteenth century. Just as Çelik’s interest in the French and British Mandates 7

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Susan Slyomovics in the Middle East contributed to her project on urban and architectural interventions, archaeology and museology during the interwar years in the cities of the Levant, so too does Dodds take the measure of a Christian empire ruling over Muslims. In Chapter 3, ‘Navigations: Re-Imagining North Africa in the Mediterranean, c. 1750–1900’, Julia Clancy-Smith re-imagines historical mappings and critical junctures for the Maghrib by writing against the grain of a ‘disaster history’ that usually emphasises key years linked to Europe’s expansion in North Africa. For example, 1798, 1830 and 1881 marked both France’s increasing clout in the region and the Ottoman retreat from the North African littoral. By scrutinising shipwreck narratives from an eighteenth-century Tunisian chronicler and their curious afterlife under French colonialism, her chapter interrogates periodisation in modern Mediterranean history. She argues for a land-and-sea perspective that steers us toward uncharted turning points in the overlapping histories of North Africa, France and the Ottomans. In Chapter 4, Heghnar Watenpaugh’s ‘Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City: Urban Histories of Aleppo During the French Mandate’ focuses on three scholars who wrote multi-volume urban histories of Aleppo at a time of transition. These three writers straddled the ends of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the French Mandate: Jean Sauvaget’s influential Frenchlanguage historic panorama; Kamil al-Ghazzi’s Arabic-language history, revered in Aleppo but little known elsewhere; and Archbishop A. Surmeyan’s almostforgotten Armenian-language history. By placing the three scholars in conversation with each other, she asks: what was at stake in writing urban history at that juncture, and how do their visions and varied perspectives both complement and contradict each other?

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1 Overlapping Modernities: Jerusalem between the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early British Mandate Zeynep Çelik

Ronald Storrs, the military governor of Jerusalem from 1917 to 1921, then civil governor of Jerusalem and Judea from 1921 to 1926(?), summarised the essence of Britain’s mission to ‘save’ Palestine in the following words: For four centuries the Arabs, Moslems, as well as Christians, of Syria and Palestine [ . . . ] had groaned under the heavy hand of Ottoman misrule. After the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 the grasp had seen for a while to lighten, but too soon the Arabs found that though forms may alter, facts remained unchanged [ . . . ] The gaze of Syria was bent on the Southwest [Egypt . . . ] another ancient country, restored to prosperity and endowed with the civilization of Europe by the power of Great Britain and the genius of an Englishman [ . . . ] For Syrians the hope had been that after the next war Britain would expel the Turks and do for Syria what she had done for Egypt.’.1 One of the main challenges of the British mission was to save Jerusalem, ‘a city of invincible and unutterable attraction’, from its current ‘primitive condition’.2 Here, I will examine the British initiatives to achieve this goal by focusing on three fragments of the city: the Clock Tower, the fortifications and the Jerusalem Museum. The transition from the late Ottoman to the early Mandate period reveals the new rulers’ quarrels with the legacies of Ottoman modernity; these were expressed through both loud negations and quiet appropriations. Political agendas and urban planning are famously entangled. In Jerusalem, the struggle to impose one empire’s image over the other’s dominated other 9

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Zeynep Çelik concerns, mainly stemming from the city’s unique religious status. The opening of the Balfour declaration of 7 November 1917, had declared clearly: ‘His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’, adding that it was committed to ‘facilitate the achievement of this object’. However, the same sentence was followed by a qualifying statement that ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine’.3 This ambivalence toward religious multiplicity echoed on planning decisions. Patrick Geddes, the most committed of early Zionist designers, acted unilaterally as a British imperial planner. He admitted to his colleague Charles Robert Ashbee in 1920 that he conducted his work in Jerusalem ‘with the same independence of Jewish or other specific influence or bias as in any previous city’.4 My threepartite focus in this article demonstrates the emphasis of the British planners of Jerusalem on imperial agendas, which tiptoed around religious and ethnic issues. I am neither the first nor the last scholar to examine these thorny decades. Especially surrounding the centennial of World War I, historians returned to investigate the changes imposed on the Middle East from new angles. Several books have focused on Jerusalem itself, among them Jerusalem: From the Ottomans to the British by Roberto Mazza, Jérusalem 1900: La ville sainte à l’âge des possibilités by Jules Mires, and From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule by Abigail Jacobson.5 Each of these works triangulated urban transformations from various angles, albeit leaving the physical forms in the background. My paper departs from these approaches by highlighting the city’s very physicality. As such, my methodology is closer to Mark Levine’s Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948, whose case-studies notably do not include Jerusalem.6 The perspective that all of these books overlook, that of the ordinary people who lived in Jerusalem, is also absent in my research – at least for now. Recent scholarship has produced excellent literature on the political and ideological positions of notables in Jerusalem; with few exceptions, however, I could find no significant detail about the nitty-gritty details of everyday life, such as local reactions to urban transformations. The latter may not have mattered much in the midst and in the aftermath of the horrible famine, which had turned the streets of Jerusalem into places of ‘begging, theft, and prostitution’.7 I regretfully admit that I, too, have ended up writing a history from above, but this is still work-in-progress.

The Clock Tower General Allenby entered Jerusalem on foot through the Jaffa Gate on 9 December 1917, reportedly ‘in simplicity and reverence [ . . . ] like the Caliph Omar’, 10

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Figure 1.1 General Allenby’s entrance into Jerusalem (December 1917), photograph by Underwood & Underwood (Source: Library of Congress LC-USZ62-93094)

who, according to legend, had demounted from his camel to make his own humble entry into the city in 638 (Figure 1.1).8 Allenby delivered his famous speech two days later, standing on the steps of the citadel, part of the sixteenth-century walls built during Sultan Süleyman’s reign, and in the shadow of the clock tower erected to celebrate the jubilee of Sultan Abdülhamid II’s ascension to the throne. Both architectural features symbolised the Ottoman Empire’s prowess and represented powerful sultans: the walls marked the height of the empire during its ‘magnificent century’, and the clock tower stood as a statement of late Ottoman modernity. However, British authorities treated these two symbols very differently. A film documenting Allenby’s entry, titled With the Crusaders in the Holy Land: Allenby, the Conqueror, described him as ‘the man who has freed Palestine, Arabia, Syria and Mesopotamia, thereby breaking the barbarous yoke of the Turk, after five hundred years of oppression’. This was the beginning of a new age: ‘The Turkish Empire has crumbled and fallen, and a new 11

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Zeynep Çelik Arab nation is in the making. The Holy Land is once more free!’9 Allenby’s proclamation was offered to the residents of Jerusalem in six languages: English, Arabic, Hebrew, French, Italian, Greek and Russian. The essence of his message was the respectful manner in which the British promised to govern the city: . . . since your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of the three great religions of mankind, and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers of and pilgrimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions for many centuries, therefore do I make known to you that every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment, pious bequest, or customary place of prayer, of whatsoever form of the three religions, will be maintained and protected according to the existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faiths they are sacred.10 Charles Robert Ashbee, an architect and the Civic Advisor to the City of Jerusalem, referred to Allenby’s speech to express his frustration with the greatest obstacle he encountered during his tenure as a planner. Allenby’s ‘noble pronouncement’ at the foot of the tower had perhaps unwittingly engraved a historic moment, a historic memory, onto the monumental fabric of the city, thereby giving the place an untouchable status, albeit a short one, that prevented the architect from ‘shifting off the Jaffa Gate from the hideous Turkish clock tower’.11 Ashbee described its style as ‘midway between that of the Eddystone lighthouse and a jubilee memorial to commemorate the thirtythird year [sic] of the auspicious reign of the late Sultan Abdul Hamid’.12 The sentiment was shared among British rulers. For Storrs, the ‘Turkish “Jubilee” Clock Tower’ was an offense.13 Clifford Holliday became the architect and planner for the Pro-Jerusalem Society in 1922; it was he who, in the words of his spouse, ultimately took down the ‘horrible eyesore in the city in the shape of a Turkish clock tower’ in the summer of 1923. Nevertheless, since the Pro-Jerusalem Society did not want to do away with it completely, Holliday relocated it to a ‘more or less inconspicuous position’ in the Post Office Square.14 In its new location, the tower stood ‘less aggressively’ and was ‘shorn of its more offensive trimmings’,15 as Ashbee had earlier recommended in strong words: ‘The dreadful clock tower [ . . . ] might with advantage be unbuilt and the clock provided it can be got to strike correctly put up somewhere else’.16 Not missing the chance to reiterate the Ottomans’ apparent dysfunctionality, Ashbee asserted that under British rule the clock tower would strike correctly. 12

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Overlapping Modernities The tower that was considered so offensive to the new conquerors had been erected in 1902 and belonged to the compendium of clock towers that celebrated Abdülhamid’s twenty-fifth anniversary on the throne. Varying in both their architectural expression and their location in the urban fabric, each told a different story which, when combined, served the larger agenda of the empire’s move toward modernity through the regularisation of time. The rationale for the Jerusalem tower was religious competition. An official document explained the need: ‘Although there are clock towers showing European time in almost every corner of the city of Jerusalem, there is none that shows the time of prayer’. The new tower would do just that, while displaying the imperial adoption of advanced technology and modernity. In accordance with its mission, the tower’s ‘ornamented’ architecture would differ from Jerusalem’s other towers by boasting a ‘beautiful Arab style’, opening yet another page in Ottoman Orientalism.17 Pascal Sarophim, the tower’s architect, was local. Although it was not one of Jerusalem’s most important buildings dating from its Ottoman centuries, the tower’s height and location at the Jaffa Gate made it highly visible. Furthermore, the municipality had placed four ‘Lux’ lamps on its corners, making it visible over far distances.18 It was indeed a new addition to the buildings that defined the city’s urban image. It may be reasonable to explain the British obsession with it, considering that it represented the modernity of the toppled empire – deemed decadent, backward and uncivilised – in an ‘Islamic’ language and erected only fifteen years before the British takeover. Did the tower muddle the British claim to bring the city from the dark times into the present age? In terms of the era’s architectural discourse, quarrels with its aesthetics do not seem to make much sense, considering that its turn-of-the-century eclecticism with random references to local forms should have sat comfortably with British tastes of the time. The dominant arts and crafts movement, itself a mish-mash of revivalist design ideas and infamously confused about ‘Islamic art’, could have embraced the tower’s aesthetics easily. In fact, Ashbee was a passionate arts and crafts advocate and had started a programme to introduce the style to Jerusalem. Britain’s investment in tile production, for example, first in the restoration of the Dome of the Rock’s tiles, then in building the industry in general, resulted in an ‘Islamic’ style and testifies to this commitment. However, Ashbee (and others) were also searching for a ‘purity’ in the old city and waged war against the ‘spoiling of the Old City by the erection of unsuitable buildings’.19 Another ‘unsuitable building’ was a fountain (accompanying a cistern) that had been inaugurated in 1900 (two years before the clock tower’s construction), again to celebrate Abdülhamid II’s twenty-fifth year on the throne (Figure 1.2). 13

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Figure 1.2 Jaffa Gate, view from the exterior, showing the breach in the city wall with the Clock Tower to the left and the Fountain erected for Abdülhamid’s jubilee on the right (between 1907 and 1914) (Source: Library of Congress LC-M361-319A)

Decorated with the Sultan’s tuğra and praises to the royal majesty (medâyih-i seniyye-i cenâb-i tâcdârî), it was situated, according to an Ottoman document, in the city’s ‘most honourable place’ (en muteber cihet), right outside the Jaffa Gate.20 Here, a historic building type associated with a benevolent act recycled the older form of a small circular chamber topped with a dome. The dome terminated with a decorated spire bearing the crescent and the star – the muchrepeated insignia of Hamidian memorials. Built of white stone alternating horizontally with brown stones, the fountain stood out awkwardly against the sombre mass of the walls, not only in its materials, but also in its circular form that did not fit well into its context. It should come as no surprise that the British architects and administrators considered it to be another ‘eye sore’. Furthermore, complementing the clock tower, it enhanced Abdülhamid’s presence in the city and the associated modernisation projects (attempts?) of his era. The fountain’s demolition happened without debate or fuss in 1921; it was replaced somewhat ignominiously by a latrine. 14

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The Walls and the Gates By contrast, British architects and planners did not have a problem with Jerusalem’s sixteenth-century fortifications. Even though they had been built by the most powerful Ottoman sultan, they represented days gone by, seemed frozen in time and did not reflect present-day realities. Addressing the demands of an eager market, innumerable artists had memorialised and romanticised their picturesque outlook long before the invention of photography. In painting after painting, drawing after drawing, the holy city viewed from a distance appeared neatly contained within its walls, often enriched by scenes of local people engaged in timeless activities. David Roberts, who was there, consistently added ‘lazy Arabs’ to the foreground. Joseph Mallord William Turner, who had not set foot in Palestine, used his superb artistic skills to reiterate the same image from London. This artistic heritage must have contributed to policies adopted during the British mandate. History lived in every stone and had to be valorised. Achieving the British agenda to bring true town planning reform to Jerusalem required assuring the preservation of suitable antiquities through new by-laws. A ‘civic policy’ was to accompany the new legislation to ‘educate’ local citizens so that they would understand its provisions. The newly established Pro-Jerusalem Society would assume those responsibilities in a universalist and humanistic manner, ‘free of the old religious and nationalist prejudices’, and ‘stand up and fight for the amenities of the old city’. ‘Saving the walls of al-Quds’ was among its top priorities, and under Ashbee’s leadership they were ‘jealously preserved’.21 Before Ashbee, the first town plan for Jerusalem – prepared by W. H. M. McLean, engineer-in-chief in Alexandria, signed by the mayor Moussa Kassem el Husseini and approved by Allenby on 22 July 1918 – had already emphasised the walls’ integrity and called for the establishment of green zones in the west and north, outside the walls (Figure 1.3). In the west, the green zone stretched from the Jaffa Gate and the citadel toward the south; in the north from the Bab al-Gedid (the New Gate) to Herod’s Gate (Bab al-Zahir), with the Damascus Gate in the middle. Two lines of trees linked the Jaffa Gate to the Bab al-Gedid, thereby creating a complete buffer to the west and north where extra muros quarters had developed. The complicated geography did not encourage development in the city’s eastern and southern sections, and the routes from these gates were secondary.22 The landscape design called for the clearance of any late additions that disrupted the character of the ramparts; instead, it accentuated the highlights, especially the citadel and the nodes around the gates. Already by 1918, construction of any new buildings in the areas abutting the walls was 15

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Figure 1.3 Detail from a project by W. H. McLean (22 July 1918) (Source: National Archives, Kew, CO 1047.773)

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Overlapping Modernities banned.23 Patrick Geddes, approached in 1919 by the pro-Jerusalem Society for his opinion on how to re-plan Jerusalem, also advocated for the preservation of the walls and the integrity of the old city. His plan, a synthesis of McLean’s project and Ashbee’s suggestions, included the Mount of Olives and the area to the south and proposed a green zone around the old city.24 Storrs issued a further order in 1922, prohibiting the ‘demolition, erection, alteration, or repair’ of any building without a permit within a 2,500-metre radius from the Damascus Gate.25 The Ottomans had also kept a close eye on the walls and maintained them as they deemed necessary. The British difference lay in their integration of a preservation strategy regulated by a master plan that considered the entirety of Jerusalem – old, new and developing – in accordance with the principles of the contemporary ‘town planning’ movement. As clearly articulated by Ashbee in a report dated to August 1918, the British would pursue a . . . . . . civic survey and a civic plan, not in the mere architectural sense of preserving certain buildings and historic sites, not in the mere hygienic sense of cleaning the City, nor in the engineering sense of providing water, drainage, and good alignments, not in the educational sense of providing schools, but one that will embrace all these; one that shall forecast the probable future needs of the population.26 In the Ottoman context, repairs had not been systematic, but rather random and fragmented. For example, a mid-nineteenth-century document recorded work restricted only to the citadel.27 The attention paid to the aesthetic integrity of the walls was voiced later in the century in another document: noting that a hotel inside the Jaffa Gate (Bab-i Halil) was higher than the walls, it called on the local authorities to intervene.28 The decision to demolish a section of the walls at the Jaffa Gate to allow for the passage of carriages demonstrates the abrupt nature of the Ottoman operations.29 While the road from Jaffa that linked the old city to the new neighbourhoods had become very busy, leading to chaotic traffic congestion at the narrow gate, this intervention was in reality prompted by Kaiser Wilhelm II’s upcoming visit to Jerusalem in 1898. The ‘bombastic’ entrance of the Kaiser and his entourage caused a harsh break in the walls, damaging their integrity.30 The additions of the fountain and the clock tower in the following years turned this key location into a hybrid collage, one that carried mixed signs of the imperial transformation and international politics that characterised Abdülhamid II’s reign. Nevertheless, the late Ottoman administration was not entirely pleased with the subsequent and uncontrollable growth of commercial 17

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Zeynep Çelik structures at the gate. A decree in 1910, for example, called for the demolition of the ‘wooden shacks and shops’ deemed to pose a threat to ‘public health’ (sıhhat-i umumiye).31 Cemal Pasha, the Commander of the Fourth Army, had more systematic plans for the walls. Developed during the first two years of the war, these plans included constructing a government office and a small palace (daire-i hükümetle ufak bir saray) on the land adjacent to the citadel and creating a ‘terrace’ along the walls. They also involved ‘returning the square and the ditches outside the Damascus Gate to their former state’. Professor Maximilian Zürcher, hired by Cemal Pasha in 1914 as Director of the Construction Division of the Fourth Army, had drafted a plan, but – like those he had projected for Damascus, Beirut and Aleppo – it was not realised because of the war.32 Ali Fuad [Erden], Cemal Pasha’s chief of staff (kurmay başkanı) explained the dilemma, arguing that construction was beneficial during peaceful times and harmful during wars. Zürcher’s seemingly endless requests – which involved manpower, materials and especially time (to listen to his presentations and examine his projects) – all worked against national defence. For Ali Fuad, Professor Zürcher was at once the most charming and the most detrimental of all foreign wartime consultants.33 Cemal Pasha was passionate about urban improvements. He also tainted the public spaces opened during the late Ottoman era in the major cities of the empire’s Middle Eastern provinces by engraving the violence of his tenure on them. During 1915 and 1916, the area outside the Jaffa Gate, the Marja Square in Damascus and the Cannon Square in Beirut turned into execution stages for his Arab opponents and defectors from the army. The photographs of hanging bodies survive as visual reminders of these nasty episodes of the late Ottoman era. Not surprisingly, they were capitalised upon by the British. For example, in memory of Ahmed Arif al-Husseini, the Mufti of Gaza, and his son Mustafa, both executed in Jerusalem, a memorial service was organised two years later by British authorities at the tomb of the victims. In front of ‘many people [ . . . ] invited’, the Mufti’s son gave a speech, and his daughter read a poem. It was reported that ‘incidents such as these serve a useful purpose in contrasting the ruthless methods of the turks [sic] with the present régime in Palestine’.34 Like the Ottoman administrators, the British put special emphasis on the area outside the Jaffa Gate. Ashbee’s initial reaction was to rebuild the demolished part of the wall (Figure 1.4).35 This was not done in the end, but the idea of creating a ‘great meidan’ was put forward to keep an area clear of construction so that the gate could be viewed without impediment.36 Ashbee sarcastically referred to the existing shops as ‘corrugated iron shacks and petrol tines’, a 18

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Figure 1.4 ‘Jaffa Gate as it was when the “Kaiser’s breach” was made, and before the building of the Turkish Clock Tower’ (1898) and ‘Suggested Reconstruction of the fosse at the Jaffa Gate’ (1920) (Source: Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920)

‘landmark [ . . . ] left by the Turk’. He proposed to establish in their place a new market, in accordance with and recalling the Ottoman rationale, ‘the interest of public health’ (Figure 1.5).37 His design consisted of a single structure that followed the slope and that was composed of modular units – all inspired by the city’s historic markets, but ‘authenticising’ them further. Banks, a hotel and a café completed the commercial square’s character. Ashbee’s penchant for cleaning up messy shops for introverted market structures, accentuated with domes, resulted in another ‘Islamicised’ proposal along the Jaffa Road (Figure 1.6). British rule continued the process of demolishing impeding structures along the walls with increasing rigour. The ‘dream’ of returning the ‘wonderful’ Damascus Gate to its former purity started with clearing rubbish from the moat and removing the old shops that blemished its image (Figure 1.7). Ashbee’s proposals for the Damascus Gate replaced the shops on the eastern side with an architecturally more coherent compound, using the same architectural language as his additions to the Jaffa Gate. The architect chose to alter the heights of the units in order to not obstruct views of the fortifications, thereby 19

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Figure 1.5 Jaffa Gate, ‘Great Market improvement Scheme, with Market’ (1920) (Source: Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920)

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Figure 1.6 Jaffa Road market (above) and Ashbee’s proposal (below) (1920) (Source: Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920)

Figure 1.7 Damascus Gate (between 1898 and 1914) (Source: American Colony, Jerusalem, Photo Department, LC-M36-391C)

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Figure 1.8 Damascus Gate, proposal for a Khan (1920) (Source: Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920)

creating a picturesque courtyard whose fourth side was defined by a segment of the historic structure (Figure 1.8). The Times described the essence of the work, referring to the general principles of Lord Allenby’s town planning scheme: reserve a belt of land surrounding the walls so that a ‘Modern City’ could develop outside and preserve the ‘medieval aspects of the Old City within the walls’.38 Ashbee also advocated systematic landscape gardening in consultation with horticulturalists and botanical experts; beating on Cemal Pasha again, he pointed to the latter’s tendency to plant but not water what was planted. In Ashbee’s vision, the overall model should follow ‘the excellent American method’ characterised by a ‘Park System’ and ‘Green Belt’ (Figure 1.9). 22

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Figure 1.9 ‘Jerusalem Park System’, plan (1920) by Ashbee (Source: Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920)

Zeynep Çelik The walk along the ramparts would form Jerusalem’s ‘first enceinte’ in its ‘Park System’. The vision was reminiscent of Viollet-le-Duc’s design for Carcasonne – particularly appropriate since both were medieval cities.39 An ‘inner park system’ would complement the promenade on the exterior (Figure 1.10). Strips of green spaces along the walls, started by Cemal Pasha’s garden proposal that extended from the Ottoman Barracks to the southeastern corner of the walls, were to be made, and no building permissions would be given for these areas.40 Later British schemes repeated the principle of green zones encircling the old city, ultimately calling for an extensive park system. In 1918, Ashbee surveyed the damage done to Jerusalem over the previous twenty-five years. The Muslim quarters had maintained their character reasonably well, most likely ‘not through any special merit’, but rather through ‘a good sense to leave their sacred places alone’ – despite ‘Jamal Pasha’s efforts to Germanize the city’. The more destructive transformations had taken place in the Christian quarter through the ‘neo-religious commercialism’ of rich religious organisations and through ‘the medium of mechanical power’, which provided ‘infinite cheap and tawdry splendour’ – the statements in the typical discourse of the Arts and Crafts movement. Here, red Marseille tiles and corrugated iron had replaced the stone domes, but the abundant use of corrugated iron in the screens and overhanging eaves, formerly constructed of wood, was unsuitable both climatically and aesthetically. On the eve of the British Mandate, Jerusalem looked like ‘a bastard Florence, a bastard Nuremberg, a bastard Moscow, an imitation of Lourdes, a Bavarian suburb and an imitation of Oxford’.41 Before Ashbee, during the war years, a young Ottoman officer named Falih Rıfkı had expressed similar thoughts, associating Jerusalem with ‘a Western theater that had made a play out of religion’. Here, he continued, ‘hotels are half churches, their servants are half priests, and their maids are half nurses. All their robes, crosses and white hats, tuxedos, and aprons hang in the same closet’. The city was as foreign to him as Florence. In fact, in this ‘new Palestine’, German, English, French, all languages were spoken; only Hebrew, the language of Jews, Turkish, the language of the State, and Arabic, the language of the majority of residents, were not.42 The Arab Bulletin was in accord: Jerusalem was a ‘dirty town which all semitic religions [had] made holy’. As to its people, they were ‘characterless as hotel servants, living on the crowd of visitors passing through’.43 The British Town Planning Ordinances valorised the architectural character of the old city, defined by its ‘flat roofs, vaults, domes, arches, abutments, and buttresses’ and prohibited the use of asbestos sheets, Marseille tiles and corrugated iron.44 The preserved walls thus were to encircle an ‘ancient’ city, cleaned of the debris of modernity and returned to its authentic aesthetics, paralleling a common colonial mentality toward historic fabrics. Ashbee’s quaint additions 24

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Figure 1.10 Jerusalem, plan showing the inner park system along the walls (1918) (Source: Report by Mr C. R. Ashbee)

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Zeynep Çelik to the areas outside the Jaffa and Damascus gates may not be too far from Henri Prost’s projects in Morocco, for example, but they were also in harmony with the mindset of the British arts and crafts movement. Inside the walls, so as ‘not to ruin the city’, conservation was essential, ‘no matter what the cost’.45 To make his case about the urgency of conservation, Ashbee included photographs that showcased architectural details ‘then’ and ‘now’ (Figures 1.11 and 1.12). He argued for the indispensability of a ‘civic’ school, inspired from a range of similar institutions that included the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, the Liverpool School of Architecture, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Boston Arts and Crafts Society, Miss Rich’s School in Santa Barbara and the Wiener Werkstätte. This institution would play a central role in preserving the city’s ‘traditional’ architecture, as well as in providing guiding principles for new construction. Indeed, the ‘prime function’ of the school was to ensure that ‘every building in the Old City or the New [was] to be built in the spirit of the whole’. One of the first tasks of the Civic School would be to conduct a thorough survey of historic buildings. The school and the city were to work hand in hand to form a civic trust. The state would hence serve as trustee if an owner neglected the preservation of his property in the specified manner. In a practical move, the British authority found Article One of the Ottoman Municipal Regulation on expropriations useful for this practice, on the argument that ‘public good’, the rationale for expropriation, formed the essence of conserving the character of ancient Jerusalem.46 Storrs summarised the work achieved during the first decades of the British rule simply as: ‘put[ting] back the fallen stones, the pinnacles and the battlements’, as well as restoring the walls and freeing them from ‘numberless encroachments’. He wrote: ‘We repaired, cleaned, and cleared of many hundred tons of Turkish barrack rubble’.47 The restoration of the walls served as the key for the ‘isolation of the ancient city from Solomon to Suleyman the Magnificent’ and to ‘jealously preserve [ . . . ] all [its] beauty spots’.48 The British administration thus had put an end to the ‘erection of unsuitable buildings and the demolition of interesting old ones’, which characteristically had happened before the war.49

The Museum Within the walls, the northeast corner of Jerusalem was the location of a quiet but important Ottoman cultural establishment that became a major cultural institution under the British Mandate: a branch of the Imperial Museum. A discussion of this museum calls for some background information. Recent 26

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Figure 1.11–1.12 Jerusalem, street views showing architectural details ‘then’ and ‘now’ (1920) (Source: Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920)

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Zeynep Çelik scholarship has opened new pages in the history of late Ottoman archaeology, but as far as museums go, the focus has remained on Istanbul – for good reason. The entire theatre of archaeology within imperial boundaries, including the passing of antiquities laws, was directed from its impressive headquarters. Based on an official policy to appropriate antiquities into the empire’s cultural heritage, a series of laws were passed during the second half of the nineteenth century to regulate the practice of archaeology. While the main concern was geared towards preventing the looting of antiquities, there were other provisions and many revisions. In the shadow of the 1884 Law, an 1889 legislation on the Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümayun Nizamnamesi) specified the need to create regional museums.50 The intent to endow the empire’s key urban centres with such institutions surfaces also in the listing of ‘honorary museum directors’ (as in Mosul and Aleppo) and ‘honorary museum officers’ (as in Jerusalem) in Ottoman yearbooks, even when the museums did not yet exist.51 Nevertheless, mainly due to financial restraints, regional museums did not materialise seamlessly. An innovative and urgent solution designated high school buildings as antiquities storage places, sometimes permanently. As reported in 1897, newly found artifacts were to be transported to nearby high schools, where they would be photographed. The ‘most important’ would then be sent to the Imperial Museum in Istanbul, and the rest would be exhibited in school courtyards.52 This temporary solution led to the foundation of branches of the Imperial Museum in three major cities: Konya, Bursa and Jerusalem. They were appended to high schools (idadi), the latter dating from the 1880s and the 1890s in the aftermath of the 1869 education reforms.53 Inaugurated during the first years of the twentieth century, these museums were either situated in independent buildings in school gardens, or directly inside high school buildings. During a period of dire economic hardship, this seems like a wise strategy, especially because the Imperial Museum operated under the auspices of the Ministry of Education. The educational reforms, the integration of world history (tarih-i umumi) with Ottoman history (tarih-i osmani) in the curricula, the explosion in school construction, the building of new headquarters for the Imperial Museum in Istanbul and the civilisational values associated with museology were closely knit pieces of an important aspect of late Ottoman modernity. The museum in Konya was inaugurated in December 1899, together with the renovated idadi (converted from a municipal hospital in 1889 and substantially renovated ten years later) in a one-story building specifically designed for this function and located in the gated school garden. On the right side of the gate, the museum could be accessed via a path lined with antique sculptures 28

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Overlapping Modernities and architectural fragments. This ‘perfect museum, constructed on a large budget’, according to a communication from Avlonyalı Ferid Pasha, the governor of Konya, was intended to be the destination for historic objects found throughout the province. By the time of its opening, its single exhibition hall contained between sixty and seventy objects from the Roman, Byzantine and Seljuk eras.54 The Imperial Museum in Bursa occupied a new building in the ‘charming’ (latif) garden of the Mekteb-i İdadi-i Mülkiye. It was realised through the initiative of Azmi Bey, the provincial Director of Education, and inaugurated on 1 September 1904, the (stretched) anniversary of Sultan Abdülhamid II’s accession to the throne (Figure 1.13). Reached by a stone-paved path, defined by pine trees and flowerbeds, the cubic structure consisted of two halls, one on each side of the entrance. One hall was reserved for Islamic antiquities (Seljuk and Ottoman), while the other offered ‘the most precious’ Greek, Roman and Byzantine objects. Antiquities of secondary importance were placed in the garden and along the pathway leading to the entrance.55

Figure 1.13 Entrance to the branch of the Imperial Museum in the garden of the Bursa High School (Source: Șehbal, 15 Șubat 1329 / 28 February 1914)

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Figure 1.14 Inauguration ceremonies in front of the Jerusalem High School (Source: Servet-i Fünun, 18 Teşrinisani 1309 / 1 December 1893)

The Müze-i Hümayun (Imperial Museum) in Jerusalem, whose Ottoman era stretches from 1901 to 1917, began inside a high school building; the institution ultimately became the British Museum of Antiquities (in a new building, from 1921 to 1930) and then the Rockefeller Museum (from 1939 onward) (Figure 1.14).56 Three men played instrumental roles in its creation: Osman Hamdi Bey from Istanbul; İsmail Bey, the director of the Jerusalem Department of Public Instruction; and Frederick Jones Bliss, an archaeologist and son of the founder of the American College in Beirut. The decision to have a local museum ‘open to the public’ in Jerusalem dated from 1899 and came from Istanbul. However, as a testament to Jerusalem’s significance for the Ottoman government in terms of antiquities, there already was an honorary museum officer, Şevket Efendi, in the city before the museum itself.57 Bliss, who at the time worked for the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF), supported the Ottoman initiative whole-heartedly. In doing so, however, he opposed the PEF itself. Bliss argued that the museum would be good for archaeology in general and for the PEF in particular, as it would allow travellers to see the results of the fund’s work. Having already committed himself to help arrange the objects, he emphasised the importance of cooperating with the Ottoman authorities to ensure that the displays were designed according to established museum practices. This meant that ‘the objects should be preserved in cases, instead of lying around on the floor’. With İsmail Bey’s promise ‘to secure a room and cases for the museum’, Bliss noted that it was ‘[important] to keep friends with the Turks, and do nothing to shake their confidence’.58 The difficult mediating role that Bliss played between the Ottoman authorities 30

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Overlapping Modernities and the PEF was evident in his lengthy explanations to the latter that Osman Hamdi, the Director of the Imperial Museum, would undoubtedly follow the laws, keep all objects within the empire and not allow their exportation to London (as desired by the PEF), unless they were duplicates.59 Bliss worked closely with Ottoman officers, at the cost of frequently confronting and alienating the PEF. The idadi, also known as Mamuniye, was built in 1893 within the walled city, just inside Herod’s Gate. Bliss justified the choice of the location for the museum as being one that was ‘convenient for travelers, as the museum can be visited after the inspection of the Church of St. Anne and the Pool of Bethesda by making a very small detour from the main road going north from St. Stephen’s Gate’. One room was dedicated to the displays, and the visitors had to pay an entrance fee. Bliss punctuated the ‘unique character’ of this institution that exhibited the only comprehensive collection from which ‘the history of Palestinian pottery may be studied from pre-Israelite to Roman times’. By the time of its opening, the museum housed 465 objects, mainly from excavations undertaken at Tell Gezer and ‘Ain Shems by the PEF, as well as from Tell Ta’anach, Tell el-Mutteselim (Megiddo), Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) and Samaria.60 Conforming to antiquities laws and under pressure from the directorate of the Imperial Museum in Istanbul, a large number of original objects (about 400 in 1900) were sent to the capital, even though R. A. S. MacAlister, Bliss’s assistant, claimed that ‘a lot of things were lost on their way to Constantinople’.61 In 1902, the practice continued, as MacAlister noted: ‘The antiquities found during the year are now deposited in the museum here, the best things being pushed aside for sending subsequently to Constantinople. With the consent of Surraya Effendi I have reserved a selection of duplicates for which to ask Hamdi Bey as a grant’.62 The Jerusalem museum had to be content with what were considered second-rate objects and casts. Still, housing around 6,000 pieces in 1910, it was a major cultural institution. Indeed, its growth necessitated a larger structure, and Makridi Bey, the Commissioner of Ottoman Antiquities, proposed to separate it from the high school and move it to the citadel, pointing to the benefit of being closer to tourist sites.63 Cemal Pasha endorsed the decision to repair the citadel to its original authenticity (hal-i sabıkına) in order to make room for the museum here.64 The Imperial Museum administration considered its branch in Jerusalem to be a small but serious institution, complete with its own catalogue (prepared by Bliss). The catalogue’s introduction divided the objects housed there into three classes: pre-Isrealite, Jewish and Seleucian. It also stated that Bliss and MacAlister had discovered the majority of those objects between 1898 and 1900 during their excavations for the PEF, working with a permit received from the sultan. 31

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Zeynep Çelik Some of the remaining objects came from the excavations of Bliss and Sir William Flinders Petrie in 1890–92, while the rest were given to the museum by İsmail Bey.65 Nevertheless, there were problems. Noting that the catalogue was not even printed, MacAlister reported: ‘The Museum founded at Jerusalem with such a flourish of tempest is, like everything here, a farce. It is practically shut away from everyone, no one being admitted who has not an order from the head of Public Instruction’.66 He recorded improvements a couple of years later, realised by Makridi Bey during his visit to Jerusalem. Although now ‘beautifully’ arranged, MacAlister was still cautious about the museum’s accessibility and described the possibility of future improvements as ‘a doubtful matter still’.67 According to the British, Ottoman involvement in antiquities became practically non-existent in the aftermath of the war. The directorate of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem summarised the situation in 1920: ‘No systematized antiquities service was maintained by the Turkish Government nor was there any methodical and scientific research work; though casual discoveries were frequently investigated by the Director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum’.68 Associating ‘scientific archaeology’ with ‘civic service’ and, hence, underlining the need for a ‘civic museum’, Ashbee’s post-war idea for a museum in Jerusalem went beyond that of a typical museum. It comprised a working crafts section and a second section dedicated to the city’s history. This dual structure would enable the museum to be more than a museum by making it ‘alive’. Ashbee acknowledged that the foundations of a museum were already in place and that the museum included ‘all the Palestine Survey Finds’. Not knowing its earlier Ottoman history, he attributed its origins to Cemal Pasha.69 Also unaware of the earlier Turkish intention to move the museum from the Mamuniye School to the citadel, Ashbee proposed the same location, which, in his proposal, would also house the Civic School and its accompanying workshops (Figures 1.15 and 1.16). He argued that, as the Turks had left, the citadel had lost its military function; now, it stood in all its glory, even ‘more wonderful’ than legendary fortresses such as the Châteaux Comtal (Carcassone), de Courcy and de Pierrefonds, the Tower of London, Nuremberg Castle and Carisbrooke Castle. He cautioned, however, that, although the existing structure was ‘a noble 16th century building’, several years would be needed to study its historic layers, which went back to Herodian times.70 John Garstang, the Director Elect of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, had a more practical (and less romantic) vision of the site and proposed that the citadel (or the kaleh) should be designated exclusively to the Department of Antiquities before a permanent 32

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Figure 1.15 The Citadel (between 1898 and 1946) (Source: American Colony, Jerusalem, Photo Department, LC-M32-50559-x)

museum could be completed. For the time being, the ‘most suitable rooms and mural chambers would be reserved for the display of antiquities’.71 The museum was the manifestation of Britain’s appropriation of antiquities in Palestine and of the claims that the region would remain ‘under the supremacy and protection of Great Britain’ – ‘not only would England appear as a guard of the interests of Western culture, but she would [ . . . ] be a protector of the scriptural archaeological excavations’.72 As F. G. Kenyon, director of the British Museum, punctuated, the antiquities were ‘the inheritance of the entire civilised world’. Those found in lands that would not remain in Turkish hands after the peace treaty (notably Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia) were safe under the protection of ‘civilised powers’, with no possibility of reverting back to their ‘late Turkish masters’.73 The special status of the Holy Land (and Jerusalem), due to its association with the foundations of ‘the two great religions of our lands’ and ‘a third religion, which shares its vital principles with them’, meant that the ‘whole world’ had acclaimed the ‘liberation of Palestine by the troops under the command of General Allenby’. As such, it was now Britain’s responsibility to ‘safeguard its historical monuments and sites’ and to develop knowledge about them. Garstang, the author of these lines, however, cautioned against multiplying local museums: despite the need for each 33

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Figure 1.16 The Citadel, plan by Ashbee (used in the frontispiece of Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920) (Source: Israel Antiquities Authority IAA, Jerusalem, 2nd jacket ATQ_32–263 / 260)

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Overlapping Modernities province to house government (meaning British) possessions, small museums often quickly became ‘mere rubbish heaps’, in addition to encouraging ‘local jealousy’ about antiquities and making the work of scholars difficult.74 Abolishing the power of the Ottoman Imperial Museum emerged as a priority during the organisation of the Department of Antiquities and its accompanying institution, the Palestine Museum of Antiquities. Repeating the by-now familiar phrase, ‘now that the country is emancipated’, Garstang made an urgent call that the collections discovered during the excavations conducted by ‘the sanction of the Turkish authority’ should be reclaimed from the Ottoman government at the Peace Conference. Especially important were the antiquities from Gezer and ‘Ain Shems, both sites previously excavated by the PEF.75 There were even attempts to recall antiquities excavated by American and English archaeologists before the war and removed from Palestine to Istanbul, so that they could be ‘placed in the Museum that is being [ . . . ] established for archaeological and educational purposes’ in Jerusalem. Ashbee had identified three groups of antiquities ‘carried off by the Turks’ to the Imperial Museum: from Megiddo and Tanach (by German archaeologists), from Jericho (by Austrians) and from Samaria (by Americans from the Harvard Expedition).76 A draft Treaty for Peace in Turkey put it clearly that ‘all objects of religion, archaeological or artistic interest which have been removed since [1 August 1914] from any of the territories which now cease to form part of the Turkish dominions will be restored by the Ottoman Government to the Government of the territory from which such objects were removed’.77 After the establishment of the British Mandate, the ‘discovery’ of more than 120 cases of antiquities (until then in Ottoman hands) came with the request for a ‘central museum’, with possible local museums in places such as Acre, Askalon and Tiberias. The National Museum of Palestine opened officially on 31 October 1921 in the citadel. Nevertheless, the conditions required the re-purposing of the historic structure. Austen St. B. Harrison, the architect who later took charge of the Rockefeller Museum, developed a proposal that entailed a main ‘Hall of Antiquities’ surrounded by smaller chambers which would be refurbished with skylights for ethnologic collections; the rather dark mosque space was suitable for lectures (Figure 1.17). These were preliminary design ideas, however, since first the refuse that covered the ruins had to be cleared.78 The museum was moved in 1924, to the ‘Way House’, a three-story Ottoman stone mansion, which housed the British School of Archaeology and the Department of Antiquities (Figure 1.18). Situated on the Coeur de Lion Road, which in time became known as Museum Road, the Palestine museum stayed in this location until the construction of the new building was made possible by a generous gift 35

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Figure 1.17 The Citadel, section drawing by Austen St. B. Harrison, showing the transformation of the Citadel into a museum (July 1923) (Source: IAA, The Museum at Jerusalem, ATQ_1185--85–94)

Overlapping Modernities

Figure 1.18 The ‘Way House’ Museum, view from the garden [between 1898 and 1946] (Source: Library of Congress, LC-M32-51964-x)

from J. D. Rockefeller Jr.79 In a letter to the High Commissioner of Jerusalem in 1927, Rockefeller expressed his enthusiasm for the project and his commitment to ‘pledge whatever may be necessary up to two million dollars toward the cost of the building, equipping and endowing the museum’.80 Construction started in 1930 according to architect Harrison’s plans and was completed in 1935. Although announced to open the year of completion, preparations took longer than expected; the pristine new museum on Jericho Road past Herod’s Gate was inaugurated only in 1938, sprawling over an eight-acre area (Figure 1.19).81

The Ottoman Perspective on the Early British Mandate British interventions may have followed the beginnings established and the paths already taken by the Ottomans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, their impact and scale brought radical change to Jerusalem. With the exception of the fractured Crusader occupations between 1096 and 1291, the city had been under Islamic administration since the seventh century. Although different rulers had each left their individual marks, the 37

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Figure 1.19 Museum (Rockefeller) in Jerusalem, view from the city wall looking north, American Colony, Jerusalem (between 1934 and 1939) (Source: Library of Congress, LC-M32-7370)

institutional structure, with the waqf system as its backbone, had continued without interruption. Until the end of World War I, other places in the region also maintained the same political continuity and harboured religious and ethnic diversity. Yet, Jerusalem was unique, due to its charged significance for three religions. Governing a city sacred to all was a particularly delicate balancing act. British rule had broken a continuity – as amply recorded by the Western press at the time (Figure 1.20). The Ottomans sensed that a foreign and unfamiliar order was set to replace their centuries-old rule. A lengthy and confidential report by Süleyman Fethi, the governor of Nablus, to the High Office of the Beirut Province, in 1911 expressed a set of concerns about the British intention to gain total control of the entire region from India to Egypt. Fethi Bey emphasised the quiet but persistent English policies designed to achieve their goals – in rivalry with the French. In his opinion, the Middle East had turned into a ‘competition court’ (meydan-ı müsabaka), in part because of the ‘awakening’ (uyanmaları) of the Japanese and the Chinese which would lead to the diminishing of European hegemony in the Far East. The British were especially clever in their infiltration techniques enacted through institutions such as monasteries, schools and 38

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Figure 1.20 ‘The War of the Nations’, portfolio in rotogravure etchings, compiled from the Mid-week Pictorial (New York), 1919 (Image 269) (Source: Library of Congress)

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Zeynep Çelik orphanages, seemingly founded for religious and humanitarian causes, but in effect pursuing political agendas. The results were alarming, as many citizens, including Muslim youths educated in the schools at Jaffa, Jerusalem and Beirut, spoke English and French – and ‘not a word of the official language of the state’ (lisan-i resmi-i devletten bir kelime anlamaz). Furthermore, Arabic was in danger of being forgotten. Planning for a future of hundreds of years, Fethi Bey argued that the Ottomans had to strike back with the same tools. As a beginning point, he advocated for the foundation of a university on the Harem al-Sharif, either by restoring the old madrasas, now sadly turned into shops, or by constructing new buildings. In this important city, located at the crossroads of Egypt, Hijaz and Syria, the new Ottoman university would include the teaching of Turkish in its curriculum and aspire to equal al-Azhar in Cairo.82 The proposal did not lead anywhere near as ambitious. Its significance lies in displaying the Ottoman despair that looked for non-military solutions to the predicted political disasters a few years before the war. Nevertheless, it served as the impetus for the Selahaddin Eyyubi Külliye-i İslamiyesi, an upperlevel institution promoted by Cemal Pasha. Al-Kulliya as-Salahhiye (as it was known in Arabic) was inaugurated on 28 January 1915, not on the Haram al-Sharif, but to its north, in a school building appropriated from St Anne’s Church complex whose origins went back to a madrasa founded here by Salahaddin Ayyubi (Figure 1.21). The project assumed a lofty mission: to re-establish the Ottoman Empire worldwide and declare it as the leader of the Ottoman and Islamic people everywhere.83 Spreading over ten years (seven years of secondary and three years of higher education) and with a comprehensive curriculum that included religion, law, sciences and (eastern and western) languages, this institution aimed to train religious leaders. Based on the rationale that Arabic is the language of Islam, the language of instruction was Arabic, although some courses (such as Tarih-i Osmani / Ottoman History, Hukuk-i Düvel / International Law and Tarihi Siyasi / Political History) were taught in Turkish. The student body, to be composed of one hundred students admitted every year, expressed the universal agenda, as ten would come from Jerusalem, fifty from other Ottoman provinces and the remaining forty from other places, stretching from Morocco over South Africa to China.84 The British read Cemal Pasha’s project as an attempt ‘firstly to ingratiate himself with the Arabs by giving them an Arab University run on apparently liberal lines, and secondly, by putting his own men on the staff, covertly to create pro-Turkish and pan-Islamic feeling’. Nevertheless, this enterprise, ‘like many other Turkish enterprises, [ . . . ] had ended in smoke’. The school was allegedly moved to Aleppo.85 40

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Figure 1.21 The entrance of Selaheddin Eyyubi Külliye-i İslamiyesi, with [Friedrich Bronsart] von Schellendorf, Enver Pasha and Cemal Pasha in the front row, American Colony, Jerusalem (sometime between 1914 and 1917) (Source: Library of Congress, LC-M31-60143-x)

The significance of Süleyman Fethi’s proposal and Cemal Pasha’s attempt to open an ‘Islamic’ university lie in displaying Ottoman despair that looked for non-military solutions to the predicted political disasters a few years before the war. Even well after the occupation of Jerusalem, the Ottomans were not convinced that military victory, colonial expansion and the new world order sufficed to rationalise the passage of Jerusalem from Ottoman to British rule. The journal Sebilürreşad, the organ of Ottoman intellectuals who sought a political and moral ideology interlaced with Islam, shared the position of the Egyptian al-Ahbar. In 1923, an article targeted British protection of the holy sites in Mecca and Medina (haremeyn-i şerifeyn) in light of Islamic collective rage against the British Mandate in Palestine (as well as in Iraq and other places). The call to take action was addressed directly to Mustafa Kemal as the highest officer of the Turkish National government in Ankara, a few months before the Republic was declared.86 41

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Zeynep Çelik While there was a great deal of coverage in the very late Ottoman and early Turkish Republican press on the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine and Iraq, it primarily addressed military and political issues. I have not yet unearthed any news or commentaries about the interventions brought to key places in Jerusalem. I have encountered total silence about the fate of the clock tower, the town planning schemes that affected the fortifications and the museum. There may be many reasons for this distance from transformations to monuments, urban forms and cultural institutions. One can perhaps reflect on the priorities of the time to understand the mindsets: military defeats, territorial losses, very difficult political negotiations with European powers ongoing at the time and the penchant to leave behind the Ottoman past (and especially Abdülhamid’s reign), among them. The rare attention to urban forms that I encountered was about the sacred sites. For example, a photograph published in İkdam on 25 October 1918, showed the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Harem al-Sharif, British soldiers standing in the foreground. The caption stated: ‘English soldiers protecting Masjid-i Aqsa in Jerusalem, the fall of which during the first weeks of the British attack caused deep echoes in the Christian world’. The accompanying text noted the advances of the empire’s enemies (illustrating the situation with a map) and their persistence in expanding the entire coast of the Eastern Mediterranean from Palestine to Iskenderun. It expressed an emotional reaction to the situation: ‘It is not possible for any Ottoman citizen not to shed bitter tears when faced with the vast regions, sacred places, productive, wealthy lands we lost in Syria, Palestine and Iraq’.87 Ottomans enforced on the site another layer of meaning just before the British victory, when Cemal Pasha appropriated it as a weekly ceremonial meeting place with local people, most likely to improve an image that had been seriously blemished by hangings, arrests and deportations. According to Ali Fuad, after the noon prayer every Friday, Cemal Pasha sat in front of the minbar and – surrounded by his first aide-de camp, the governor of Jerusalem, the chief of police, the commander of the gendarmerie, the chief judge, the head of the treasury, the head of the recruiting office and the military commander (merkez kumandanı) – faced a crowd carrying petitions, listening to their problems. He personally attended to business, made the decisions and passed them on to the right authorities for implementation there and then.88 Allenby’s declaration had centred on Jerusalem’s long history of ethnic and religious coexistence and attempted to re-frame it as one of oppression by Ottomans. The Ottoman reaction to British occupation also focused on the issue of peaceful pluralism. An article published in February 1918 in Sebilürreşad reported in conflicting tones the call of the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘the 42

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Overlapping Modernities religious leader of England’, for extraordinary (  fevkalade) celebrations in all churches in the country to salute the ‘liberation of Jerusalem and Palestine from Turkish domination’. It cited the wishes of the archbishop for a ‘period of happiness for this region which is sacred to all of us’ (hepimize göre mukaddes olan bu havali için bir devr-i saadetten mübayir olsun) and his predicament that the administration of the land was ‘very difficult and delicate’ (pek müşkül ve nazik). According to Sebilürreşad, the Archbishop had admitted that under Muslim rule the sentiments of different communities were respected, adding that they should be under the new rule as well. Yet, the article questioned some other English attitudes towards Muslims that contradicted the archbishop’s words, and it suggested with a touch of sarcasm that the British would soon be forced to give Jerusalem back to the Muslims to maintain its sacredness.89 A few years later, the same periodical published another article, provocatively titled ‘Disgraces of Western Civilisation in Jerusalem the Honourable’, repeating a parallel message and now focusing on an issue brought to the attention of the League of Nations through the Papal Office. This was a complaint about the opening of cafés, cinemas and various entertainment establishments, all deemed to have a negative effect on public morals. The pope desired to preserve the former sacredness of the city, in accord with the ‘religious sentiments and life during the Ottoman times’ (idare-i Osmaniye zamanındaki hayat ve hissiyat-i diniyesi). Sebilürreşad argued that the sacredness of Jerusalem and the Ottomans’ special emphasis on public morals resulted in a deep respect for Christians. The Ottoman government had pursued sensible rules. For example, the ‘famous visitations to Christ’ (meşhur İsa ziyaretleri) in the Holy Sepulchre were regulated to give separate time slots to Catholics, Armenians and the Orthodox, in order to prevent the habitual conflicts between them; furthermore, security and protection were provided by Ottoman soldiers. The article ended with a quotation from Bismarck: ‘If one day Ottoman lands are divided up, Palestine would be the last to go. It would be most difficult to establish there an administration that can preserve [Palestine] neutrally as the Ottomans do’.90 To conclude with some general observations, my analysis of late Ottoman and early British Mandate practices displays significant overlaps, revealing once again the existence of a ‘connected world of empires’.91 Nevertheless, different historic circumstances gave shape to specific imperial policies. The Ottoman Empire had ruled the Middle East for four centuries (the conquest of Jerusalem was in 1517), according to a decentralised and idiosyncratic pre-modern political system. Falling out of competition with the practices of modern European colonial empires, the Ottomans attempted to fix their governance patterns. On the eve of World War I, they were making a final effort to cling to their territories in the Middle East, with experiments fluctuating between pan-Islamism, 43

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Zeynep Çelik Ottomanism and military impositions. The imperial days were soon over, and the search for nationhood culminated in the declaration of the Turkish Republic, a rather lonely state during the first years of its existence. In contrast, Britain was at the height of its expansion, and its long past as a colonial power had been reinforced by the creation of the Mandate regime in the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. The new form of governance may have been informed by the older implementations, but British authorities also experimented with cutting-edge ideas and initiatives. The two empires’ respective levels of stability and self-confidence reflected on the visions that they had for Jerusalem and the interventions that each brought to the city. Jerusalem lives with the legacies of both empires – and much more.

Notes  1. Ronald Storrs, Orientations (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1937), 411–12.  2. Storrs, Orientations, 463.  3. British Library, Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, 2 November 1917.  4. Quoted in Noah Esther Hysler Rubin, ‘Geography, Colonialism and Town Planning: Patrick Geddes’ Plan for Mandatory Jerusalem’, Cultural Geographies 18, no. 2 (April 2011): 234. Hysler Rubin also made an argument about Geddes’ operation in Jerusalem (241). Geddes’ commitment to and impact on Zionist planning emerges in the settlements from the 1920s, designed according to the Garden City model. The model responded to the movement’s ‘voluntary liberal socialism and anti-urbanism’ and its cooperative penchant. See Miki Zaidman and Ruth Kark, ‘Garden Cities in the Jewish Yishuv of Palestine: Zionist Ideology and Practice 1905–1945’, Planning Perspectives 31, no. 1 (2016): 56–57, 75–76.  5. Roberto Mazza, Jerusalem: From the Ottomans to the British (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009); Jules Mires, Jérusalem 1900: La ville sainte à l’âge des possibilités (Paris: Armand Collin, 2013); Abigail Jacobson, From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011).  6. Mark Levine, Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880–1948 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005).  7. Salim Tamari, The Year of the Locust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 7. See also Abigail Jacobson, ‘Negotiating Ottomanism in Times of War: Jerusalem during World War I through the Eyes of a Local Muslim Resident,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 1 (February 2008): 69–88, esp. 75–78. Jacobson reads the everyday life in Jerusalem through the diary of Ihsan Tourjman, the descendant of an Ottoman clerical family.  8. The Illustrated London News (19 January 1918): 73.  9. Jacobson, From Empire to Empire, 117. 10. Jacobson, From Empire to Empire, 28, 132. 11. C. R. Ashbee, A Palestine Notebook, 1918–1923 (Garden City and New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923), 181–82. 12. C. R. Ashbee (ed.), Jerusalem, 1920–1922: Being the Records of the Pro-Jerusalem Council during the Period of the British Military Administration (London: John Murray, 1924), vi.

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Overlapping Modernities 13. Storrs, Orientations, 514. 14. Eunice Holliday, Letters from Jerusalem during the Palestine Mandate, ed. John Holliday (London and New York: Radcliffe Press, 1977), 25, 34. The tower was seriously damaged during an earthquake in July 1927. See Holliday, Letters from Jerusalem, 74. It was finally taken down in 1934. See https://www.loc.gov/item/mpc2010002308/PP/. 15. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1920–1922, vi. 16. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee on the Arts and Crafts of Jerusalem and District, 1918, 45 (Getty Research Institute). This manuscript formed a draft for Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920. 17. Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereafter BOA), Y. PRK. UM 80/69 (1325/1907). 18. Wasif Jawhariyyeh, Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, 1904–1948 (Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2013), 39. 19. National Archives, Kew, CO733/339/3. ‘Spoiling the Holy City’, Letter from W. H. McLean to the editor, in response to an article by the Professor on 8 February 1937, The Times (4 March 1937). 20. BOA, DH. MKT, 2385/155, 8 Rebiülahir sene [1]318 ve fi 24 Temmuz sene [1]316 / [6 Ağustos 1900 / 6 August 1900]. 21. Ashbee, A Palestine Notebook, 79, 167. 22. National Archives, Kew, CO1047/773. 23. Henry Kendell, Jerusalem, the City Plan: Preservation and Development during the British Mandate, 1918–1948, with a foreword by Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1948), 6. 24. Geddes’s direct involvement with the planning of Jerusalem seems to have ended here and the job was assigned to Ashbee. Nonetheless, the Zionist Commission published his report, addressed to the ‘General Administration of Palestine’. See Hysler Rubin, ‘Geography, Colonialism and Town Planning’, 234, 239. 25. Holliday, Letters from Jerusalem, 5. 26. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee on the Arts and Crafts of Jerusalem and District, 3. 27. BOA, A. MKT.NZD/78-8 (7 Şaban 1269 / 16 May 1853). 28. BOA, ŞD. 2286/4 (28 Muharrem 1314 / 9 July 1896). 29. BOA, BEO. 1171/87544 (13 Rebiülevvel 1316 / 1 August 1898), and MF.MKT. 1173/81 (16 Rebiülevvel 1316 / 4 August 1898). 30. The Illustrated London News used the word ‘bombastic’ to compare the Kaiser’s entry with General Allenby’s, the latter ‘without pomp’. See The Illustrated London News (19 January 1918): 73. 31. BOA, MV.143.16 (6 Şaban 1328 / 13 August 1910). 32. Cemal Paşa, Hatırat, 1913–1933 (Dersaadet: 1922), 230. The projects were collected in two albums, which were stored in the Bahriye Nezareti. See Cemal Paşa, Hatırat, 231. Unfortunately, I could not locate these albums. Hans Theunissen mentions the urban renovation projects in his article on Cemal Pasha’s restoration of Islamic monuments in Damascus. See Hand Theunissen, ‘War, Propaganda and Architecture: Camal Pasha’s Restoration of Islamic Architecture in Damascus during World War I’, in Jihad and Islam in World War I, ed. Erik-Jan Zürcher (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2016), 224. According to Ali Fuad [Erden], Cemal Pasha’s chief of staff (kurmay başkanı), Zürcher, was sent to the Fourth Army Headquarters by Enver Pasha in 1916. See Ali Fuad Erden, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Suriye Hatıraları – I (Istanbul: Kopernik, 2018), 178.

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Zeynep Çelik 33. Erden, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Suriye Hatıraları – I, 178–79. In addition, Ali Fuad sarcastically detailed Zürcher’s working requests: as he could not work on ‘ordinary tables’, he designed special desks, which had to be built by army carpenters; the stationery had to be imported from Germany, for which Zürcher had to take a special trip. Erden, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Suriye Hatıraları – I, 179. 34. Arab Bulletin, no. 99 (6 August 1918), in The Arab Bulletin: Bulletin of the Arab Bureau in Cairo, 1916–1919, vol. III (Oxford: Archive Editions, 1986), 273. 35. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 45. 36. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920, Figure 40. 37. Ashbee, Jerusalem, 1918–1920, 23, 26. 38. National Archives, Kew, CO733/339/3. ‘Spoiling the Holy City’, Letter from W. H. McLean to the editor of The Times, in response to an article by the Professor on 8 February 1937, The Times (4 March 1937). 39. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 13, 15. 40. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 95. 41. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 44, 47. 42. Falih Rıfkı Atay, Zeytindağı (Istanbul: Bateş, A. Ş., 1981), 39, 59, 62. 43. The Arab Bulletin, no. 44 (Cairo, 12 March 1917), in The Arab Bulletin, vol. II (1917) (Gerrards Cross: Archive Editions, 1986), 110. 44. Storrs, Orientations, 514. 45. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 70. 46. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 71, 74, 75. 47. Storrs, Orientations, 366. 48. Ashbee, A Palestine Notebook, 79–80. 49. National Archives, Kew, CO733/339/3. Letter from W. H. McLean, 16 June 1937. 50. Hüseyin Muşmal, ‘Anadolu’nun İlk Eski Eser (Arkeoloji) Müzesi: Konya Âsar-i Âtika Müzesi’nin Kuruluşu’, Tarihin Peşinde 1 (2009): 129. 51. Salname-i Maarif (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1316 / 1899), 962 (Aleppo), 1200 (Mosul) and 1246 (Jerusalem). 52. Moniteur Oriental (26 January 1897), quoted in George Young, Corps de droit ottoman Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), vol. 2, 389, as a note to Article 3 of the 1884 Law of Antiquities. 53. Süleyman Özkan, ‘Osmanlı Devletinde Eski Eser Koleksiyonculuğu’, Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 91, no. 2 (December 2004): 70. There were also antiquity museums in three significant American colleges: Robert College, American College for Girls and Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut). See Özkan, ‘Osmanlı Devletinde Eski Eser Koleksiyonculuğu’, 70. The museum in the Syrian Protestant College displayed the collections from Cyprus donated by Luigi Palma di Cesnola as early as 1868. A special building, Post Hall, was constructed to house the museum in 1902. See http://website.aub.edu.lb/museum_archeo. 54. Muşmal, ‘Anadolu’nun İlk Eski Eser (Arkeoloji) Müzesi’, 131–33; Konya ve Rehberi (Istanbul: Ahmed İhsan ve Şurekası, 1330 / 1923), 79–80. 55. Gustave Mendel, Catalogue des sculptures grecques, romaines et byzantines du Musée de Brousse (Constantinople: Musées Impériaux Ottomans, 1914), v; ‘Bursa’nin Görülecek Yerlerinden: Asar-ı Atika Müze Şubesi’, Bursa Sergisi 12 (10 Temmuz 325 / 25 July 1909), reproduced and transliterated in Gürhan Korkmaz and Halit Eken, Türkiye’de Fuarcılığın İlk Adımlarından 1909 Bursa Sergisi (Bursa: Bursa Büyükşehir Belediyesi

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Overlapping Modernities Kitaplığı, 2013), 82–84, 96–97; ‘Bursa’da Mekteb-i Sultani Bahçesinde Müze-i Hümayun Şubesi’, Şehbal (15 Şubat 1329 / 28 February 1914): 371. 56. For the Imperial Museum in Jerusalem, see Felicity Cobbing and Jonathan Tubb, ‘Before the Rockefeller: The First Palestine Museum in Jerusalem’, Mediterraneum 5 (2007): 79–89, and Beatrice St Laurent with Himmet Taşkömür, ‘The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem, 1890–1930: An Alternative Narrative’, Jerusalem Quarterly 55 (Autumn 2013): 6–45. 57. Salname-i Maarif, 1246. 58. Palestine Exploration Fund (hereafter PEF), DA/BLISS/82, 18 July 1899; DA/BLISS/63, 9 January 1899. 59. PEF, DA/BLISS/191, 22 October 1900. 60. Cobbing and Tubb, ‘Before the Rockefeller’, 85–87; St Laurent, ‘The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem’, 18. 61. PEF, DA/MAC/32. Letter from MacAlister to ‘Sir Charles’, 31 October 1901. 62. PEF, DA/MAC/129. Letter from MacAlister to ‘Mr Crace’, 28 September 1902. 63. St Laurent, ‘The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem’, 19–25. 64. Cemal Paşa, Hatırat, 230. See also M. Talha Çiçek, War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s Governate during World War I, 1914–1917 (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 230. 65. PEF, DA/BLISS/132. ‘Catalogue of Palestine Antiquities in the Jerusalem Museum’, 1900. 66. PEF, DA/MAC/76. Letter from MacAlister to ‘Sir Charles’, 30 June 1902. 67. PEF, DA/MAC/ 151. Letter from MacAlister to ‘Mr Crace’, 20 July 1904. 68. PEF, Minutes of the British School of Archaeology, 14 April 1920. 69. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 76, 77. 70. Report by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, 80, 81. 71. National Archives, Kew, FO 141/687/6/8703. John Garstang, Memorandum titled ‘Antiquities of Palestine’, 30 March 1919. See also St Laurent, ‘The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem’, 27; Cobbing and Tubb, ‘Before the Rockefeller’, 88. 72. National Archives, Kew, FO 608/82/21. ‘Prememoria’ from V. Frisk to Henry Cooke, 30 January 1919. 73. National Archives, Kew, FO 608/82/1541. F. C. Kenyon, ‘Memorandum on Antiquities’, 11 January 1919, 134, 139. 74. National Archives, Kew, FO 141/687/6/8703. John Garstang, Memorandum titled ‘Antiquities of Palestine’, 30 March 1919. 75. National Archives, Kew, FO 141/687/6/8703. John Garstang, Memorandum titled ‘Antiquities of Palestine’, 30 March 1919. 76. National Archives, Kew, FO 608/82/473. 77. National Archives, Kew, FO 608/116/6. ‘Sketch of Draft Treaty of Peace between Turkey and the Allied States’, 1919. 78. Israel Antiquities Authority (hereafter IAA), ‘Memorandum on the Possible Use of the Citadel as a Government Museum’, 1 July 1923. 79. Cobbing and Tubb, ‘Before the Rockefeller’, 80, 81, 88; St Laurent, ‘The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem’, 28–30. 80. IAA, ‘Plan to Construct the Archaeological Museum. Investment and Conditions by Mr. J. D. Rockefeller J’, 13 October 1927.

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Zeynep Çelik 81. National Archives, Kew, CO 733/172/4; Cook’s Traveller’s Handbook to Palestine, Syria & Iraq, sixth edition (London: Simpkin Marshall, 1934), 167–68; St Laurent, ‘The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem’, 6. 82. BOA, DH. ID, 34/14 (16 Cemaziyelevvel 1329 and 2 Mayıs 1327 / 15 May 1911). 83. Kenan Ziya Taş, Osmanlının Son Cihan Projesi: Kudüs Selahaddin Eyyubi Külliye-i İslamiyesi (Istanbul: Post Yayın Dağıtım, 2016), 31, 27. 84. Zeki Salih Zengin, ‘II. Meşrutiyet Döneminde Kudüs ve Medine’de İki Eğitim Kurumu: Medrese-i Külliye ve Selahaddin Eyyubi Külliye-i İslamiyesi’, Belleten 82, no. 291 (2017): 601–12. For the curriculum, see also Taş, Osmanlının Son Cihan Projesi, 55–60, and Martin von Strohmeier, Al-Kulliya as-Salahiya in Jerusalem (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1991), 18–22. 85. Arab Bulletin, no. 89 (14 May 1918), in The Arab Bulletin, 159. 86. ‘Haremeyn-i Şerifeyn’, Sebilürreşad 21, no. 542–43 (5 Temmuz 1339 / 5 July 1923): 182. 87. ‘Filistin’de Homa’nın Terki’, İkdam 25, no. 7795 (18 Muharrem 1337 / 25 Teşrinievvel 1336 / 25 October 1918). 88. Erden, Birinci Dünya Harbinde, 139. 89. ‘Filistin Muzafferiyeti ve İngilizlerin Taassub-u Diniyesi’, Sebilürreşad 15, no. 376 (Teşrinievvel 1334 / October 1918): 232. 90. ‘Kudüs-i Şerif’de Mütefessih Garb Medeniyetinin Rezaletleri’, Sebilürreşad 19, no. 487 (8 Temmuz 1921/ 8 July 1921): 206. 91. C. A. Bayly and Leila Tarazi Fawaz (eds), Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Bayly and Fawaz coined and developed this concept in the Introduction.

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2 The Virgin as Colonial Agent Jerrilynn Dodds1

With the fall of the great Umayyad Caliphate around the year 1000, its lands on the Iberian Peninsula fragmented into a number of small ‘Taifa’ kingdoms, heirs to the rich culture of the Umayyads, if not to their military capacity. Relations between these polities ruled by Muslims and northern kingdoms principally ruled by Christians, with all of their attendant demographic and cultural variations were, as Glick and Pi-Sunyer famously declared, kaleidoscopic.2 Political relationships rarely polarised uniquely on the basis of religion, for the Taifas struggled with one another, as did the sometimes fratricidal kingdoms of León, Castile, Galicia and Aragon in the north, and any might as easily take a Christian king as an ally as a Muslim ruler. And as the northern kingdoms strengthened over time, they did not at first seek to occupy Taifa lands, but instead developed variations on feudal relations, extorting colossal tribute and military duties from the often fragile kingdoms. In general – although the reformed papacy tried on the language of ‘reconquest’ and crusade in its correspondence with Iberian monarchs – the northern monarchs allied themselves as they pleased, while passing on some of the financial windfall of their feudal arrangements to the monastery of Cluny, for clerical arbitration and intervention with Rome.3 These intricate, complex interactions relegated the notion of a simple bipolar opposition based on confession to documentary posturing in the political realm, at least until the appearance on the peninsula of North African armies led by the Almoravid and Almohad regimes. It is in particular, then, during the late eleventh through to the first third of the thirteenth centuries – when the primary Muslim adversary was not Spanish, but perceived as foreign – that the idea of a crusade – which was by then a consistent part of papal discourse – was seized upon as a strategic alternative for Christian Iberian 49

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Jerrilynn Dodds monarchs, bringing, as it did, not only a sacred obligation, but also a wider swath of personnel, fiduciary support and a new kind of high moral ground. However, other polities ruled by Muslims had established identities as defenders of Iberian Islam against the North African regimes, and this was in particular the case for the city state of Murcia. Ibn Mardanish (1147–72), called the Wolf King, was at times a key ally of Alfonso VII (1126–57).4 This alliance with Ibn Mardanish of Murcia and Valencia with Castile continued intermittently through the minority of Alfonso VIII (1158–1214), who secured his throne in Toledo by overcoming the supporters of his uncle, Ferdinand of Leon. The Wolf King was one of the first to offer his fealty to the young Alfonso; they shared, after all, ardent anti-Almohad policies. At Ibn Mardanish’s death, the Almohads would take the city of Murcia, and, after their demise, it would be governed by Muhammad ibn Yusuf (al-Mutawakkil) Ibn Hud (1228–38), another charismatic independent Muslim ruler who, like Ibn Mardanish, fashioned an Iberian Islamic identity in defiance of the Almohads (and in occasional alliance with the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad). This made Murcia a place at once Islamic and ardently Iberian, although not, in Ibn Hud’s time, tremendously powerful. Like Ibn Mardanish, ibn Hud was by necessity an occasional Castilian client and ally, which meant that he could be celebrated with approbation in the thirteenth century by Archbishop Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada as a ruler who ‘cut off all the heads of the Almohads he could find’.5 Seizing on the Almohad’s dynastic weakness during the second quarter of the thirteenth century, Ferdinand III of Castille (1217–52) and Leon (1230–52) made conquests that would transform the face of the peninsula, taking the great plural cities of al-Andalus – Ubeda in 1233, Cordoba in 1236 and, finally, Seville in 1248 – acquiring not only client states that paid tribute, but also new lands whose exploitation required a different economic model: direct colonial intervention, bringing lively, diverse populations underneath the Castilian-Leónese banner. Castile-León now combined the role of feudal landlord with colonial administrator, and into this new world was born Ferdinand’s heir, the prince who would become King Alfonso X of Castile, Leon and Galicia (1252–84).

Crusade, Reconquista and Colonialism In 1975, Father Robert Burns characterised the Aragonese appropriation of Valencia by James I of Aragon in 1238 as ‘Colonial Mudejarism’, using the term commonly employed to refer to Muslims submitted to Christian rule to identify the subaltern in this specific negotiation of power.6 It is a particular characteristic 50

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent of colonialism on the Iberian Peninsula that religious differences tended to be the terms in which the political and social negotiations with colonial subjects were expressed in the primary literature. This can create the misapprehension of a neat binary – ideologically and politically aligned – that is then presumed to be reified on the ground in the appropriation, by Christian rulers, of territories with majority Muslim populations. But of course, the Castilian and Aragonese systems of organising ‘parallel antipathetic societies’ in which subjected Muslims were absorbed, administered and, most importantly, taxed was far more complex, and they varied widely in reference to circumstances.7 And the heterogeneity of political and economic relationships between Muslim and Christian rulers and populations – both preceding and following this moment of extensive Castilian and Aragonese expansion – created a tension that challenged the notion of a simple bipolar opposition. While the idea of a protected Christian minority is inscribed in Islamic law, contemporary Christianity viewed pluralism largely as an unsustainable state: Christian rulers conquered in the name of a church that offered no possible ideological structure for the construction of a multi-confessional society – indeed, it maintained that the very existence of alternate faiths threatened its essential claim to absolute truth. However, there was an urgent practical need to build political alliances and maintain client relationships with Muslims who made the holding of territories and cities and the exploitation of lands possible. This internal contradiction is particularly apparent in the case of rulers whose conquests were periodically pursued as crusades.8 The use of the ideological and economic structure of a crusade on the Iberian Peninsula had been promoted sporadically by the papacy to combat Iberian Muslims since the eleventh century. The papal calling for an Iberian crusade had the ideological advantage of aligning with the reformed papacy’s construction of Christian identity in simple opposition to Islam, an idea most effectively expressed in the crusades to the Holy Lands, but more difficult to consummate with precision on the Iberian Peninsula, where inter-confessional dependencies could structure parts of political and social life. Crusades pursued by Iberian monarchs thus tended to unwittingly showcase the inherent contradiction between a quest for exploitable territory and a quest for religious purity that was, on a practical level, impossible to reconcile. As Burns memorably declares, ‘[a]t the ideological level, the subordination of Islam was the main preoccupation of the crusaders. At the more immediate human or social level the theme of chivalric function was repeatedly sounded. In terms of abiding advantage, however, the permanent acquisition of tax resources moved crusade leaders deeply’.9 Such an economic interdependence produced a motive for the appeasement and official protection of the Muslim majority, which was still propelling the colonial Iberian economies under the domination of Christian polities. 51

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Jerrilynn Dodds Of course, although this ideological inconsistency provokes a critical discussion of the peculiarities of Medieval Iberian colonialism, it does not impede the productive use of the term. But because Colonialism supposes the inclusion of Muslims in an extension of Christian authority over newly acquired territories, its practice conflicts with the mythologised notion of Reconquista, which presumes instead a continual process of ‘recuperation’ – over seven centuries – of intrinsically Christian lands, and the simultaneous erasure of Muslims and their faith.10 This was a concept that won great favour in the nineteenth century, when Spanish identity became synonymous with triumphal Catholic confession, although reconquista was not a consistent part of Medieval Iberian discourse, in which warfare and relations were far more intricate and complicated, and not always tethered to confession.11 Damian Smith proposed that disparate early Medieval ideas regarding the recuperation of lands were reified in the concept of reconquista by the reformed papacy – that is, popes whose letters are peppered with words such as ‘recuperare’ and ‘restituere’, as an extension of the ideologies that buttressed the crusades.12 When, in 1229, Pope Gregory IX explained to James I that his obligation as a crusader was to ‘capture’ or ‘disperse’ the Muslim enemy so that ‘the land may return to the divine cult’, we see his deployment of this same idea.13 However, ardent as James was to bring about the triumph of the divine cult, his desire to hold and exploit lands conquered meant that he was not eager about the dispersion of its Muslim inhabitants. In the Middle Ages, this religious discourse thus had an ideological value that elided the complex negotiations of colonial occupation. But employed by scholars today, reconquest is a historical idea that obscures the intricate interactions of dozens of polities and political factions in the interests of a reductive narrative constructed around confession. The politics of the Iberian Peninsula of the thirteenth century were clearly far too complex and mercurial to support such a Manichean historical structure.

Alfonso X in Murcia On 2 April 1243, Ibn Hud’s son, Muhammed ibn Hud, surrendered the city of Murcia to the young prince Alfonso and became a semi-independent vassal of Ferdinand’s Kingdom of Castile-Leon. Murcia, a vibrant Islamic city of an independent Islamic territory, had not been depopulated by Ferdinand, as had Cordoba: it became a protectorate that retained its own king; local political, religious and economic affairs remained almost untouched under the Banu Hud, who kept an army and minted their own coinage. The Castilians, in return, received half of its revenue, maintained their own garrison and appointed their own administrator.14 In this early conflation of feudalism and colonial dominion, 52

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent Castile’s Muslim clients were far from quiescent, but they were essential for the continuation of agricultural and mercantile economy, without which it would be impossible to hold the lands and realise much needed revenue.15 In Murcia, Prince Alfonso came in contact with the famous madrasa of Ibn abu Bakr Al Riquti, where instruction was not only in Arabic, but also in Romance, and where he might have been introduced to written Arabic. Alfonso was keenly intent on learning from Arab scholars, promoting the translation of texts and creating for Castile an elite secular literary culture equivalent to adab in Arab courts.16 Hence, even though his father, Ferdinand III, had fatally disrupted scholarly communities when he took Córdoba and Seville, Alfonso preserved the Islamic intellectual establishment of Murcia intact.17 The attention given by Alfonso’s movement to Arabic learning is sometimes interpreted as part of a culture of inclusion. But for Alfonso, this was the recuperation of a continuum of knowledge into the cosmic dominion of the Christian tradition: a kind of intellectual conquest. Translation became part of, in Pick’s words, ‘Christian expansion, self-definition and representation’.18 Alfonso’s intellectual project was, then, appropriative, a part of his cultural imperialism and the manifestation of a political goal which he, ultimately, was not entirely capable of implementing in his world. Thus, when we see the much-reproduced image of musicians from Alfonso’s Cantigas (Figure 2.1), usually interpreted as a Christian and a Muslim (although its racial stereotypes are contextually more complex, as we shall see), we should not be beguiled into thinking it so much

Figure 2.1 Musicians from the Cantigas de Santa María, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, cantiga 120 (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

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Jerrilynn Dodds a poster for a sentimentalised confessional convivencia, as it is one for a pacified expropriative cultural colonialism. After all, these are musicians playing in praise of the Virgin.19 Indeed, as he assumed the throne at the death of his father nine years later, in 1252, Alfonso X would gradually move to exert more personal control within his protectorate of Murcia, as he brought municipal governments throughout Andalucia under royal authority.20 Beginning in 1257, he initiated various questionably effective attempts at repartimiento or repopulation, granting land to Christian settlers, some of which violated the Treaty of Alcaraz, which he had made with his Murcian clients.21 This transgression would not be forgotten. In 1264, an uprising of submitted Muslims throughout Andalucia erupted in Murcia, largely through the stimulus of another feudal client of Alfonso: Muhammed I (ibn al-Ahmar, 1238–73), the ruler of the Emirate of Granada and founder of the Nasrid dynasty. But it was in part also a response to Alfonso’s gradual despoliation of Castile’s treaty with the Murcians, in particular the redistribution of Murcian lands to Christian settlers in an effort to tip the confessional balance. The revolt was put down in 1266 by Alfonso’s father-in-law, King James of Aragon (1213–76) on behalf of Alfonso, as well as in the interest of the security of his own bordering lands.22 James was not simply the father of Alfonso’s wife Violante, but also Alfonso’s most potent rival; Castilian relations with Aragon were another moving part to this complex colonial scene. In his new agreement with the submitted Muslims of Murcia, James granted them a number of the rights that they requested, many of these based on the earlier Castilian treaty, which itself echoed certain aspects of dhimma pacts, as was customary.23 Murcia’s Muslims were able to retain their goods, to practice their religion, to give the call to prayer and to have the right to be judged by their own courts, all concessions repeated in James’ desire to return Murcia to a productive colony.24 When the wazir of Murcia complained to James that the city was being sacked, the Aragonese king responded that he would immediately ‘send three men to stop (the looters) from getting beyond the castle’ so that the Muslims might retain their own goods according to the treaty.25 However, James demanded that Ibn al Ahmar’s military commander be expelled, and he also appropriated the main mosque of the city, in opposition to the original treaty, in which Muslim places of worship were protected from destruction or appropriation.26 James himself recounts how this came about during the negotiations for the surrender of the city: When morning came, after mass we climbed up to the castle, and he [the wazir?] was with us and five of the chief Saracens of the city of Murcia [ . . . ] We said that the mosque near to the castle should belong 54

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent to the Christians [ . . . ] and be included in our sector of the city, but they said that would not be right, for the treaties said they were to have their mosques, and keep them just as in Saracen times. We said that was correct, but they did not understand: we wanted them to keep their mosques, but what were the Christians to do, they had no church to which to go? And the church should be at the castle gate. For us to be able to hear the muezzin right by our head when we were asleep is, if you think about it, not fitting. You have two mosques in the city, pray in them, and leave us this one. They said they agreed.27 It is questionable whether they had a choice. Although their pact allowed them to keep their mosques, the existence of mosques in the protectorate was theologically dangerous terrain, while the creation of churches was essential to perform confessional transcendence. James’ comment that, really, it did not make sense for him to have to hear the call to prayer, is delivered with a certain swagger, and it has a history. It echoes a venerable trope reminiscent of the writings of ninth-century Cordoban Christians, who complained bitterly about the call to prayer, while the Umayyads assiduously exerted control over the ringing of bells in churches.28 In one of his devastating northern raids around 1000, al-Mansur was said to have taken the bells from the church of Santiago de Compostela to Cordoba, where they were deprived of their clappers, silencing them, to be used as scaffolds for lamps in Cordoba’s great mosque. This practice was continued by the Almoravids, Almohads and Merinids, which is why we find bells from Spanish churches fashioned into lamps in the Qarawiyyan mosque in Fez.29 And this is why, if we are to believe Lucas of Tuy, Alfonso’s father Ferdinand III, when he conquered Cordoba in 1236, sent Cordoba’s bell lamps all the way back ‘to the church of St James’ of Compostela, ‘on the shoulders of Sarracins’, continuing a dialogue that had reverberated on both sides of the confessional divide for centuries.30 When this same James of Aragon took Valencia, the poet Ibn ‘Amira, so John Tolan reminds us, lamented that in his city the call of the muezzin would be replaced by the sound of bells.31 James’ directive is a trope (and a taunt) that, – whereas before Murcian Muslims had controlled this space and its sounds, they would now forfeit aural control of the city. He is, in essence, rubbing it in and documenting his relief as well. For though colonial rulers might countenance the presence of Muslims in their need to conjure uninterrupted economies, there was significant anxiety hidden in the appropriation of urban fabrics in which Muslims outnumbered their Christian lords and possessed, by treaty, the right to their own religious monuments – the right to a material and aural manifestation of Islam in a Christian city. That right constituted a marker meant to erase the contradiction between the confessional 55

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Jerrilynn Dodds and economic foundations of conquest. For while James worked to establish a productive Muslim minority, Pope Clement IV, unfettered by such practical concerns, chided him for his policies and urged James to expel them from his realm altogether.32 And yet, religious belief was not simply the symbolic terms by which a game of political one-upmanship was enacted: this same James, so full of bravado, also wrote about his personal feeling as he mounted an altar to the Virgin in this same, newly converted mosque in Murcia. ‘Embracing the altar’, he wrote, ‘we wept so strongly and so heartfeltly, that for the time it takes to go a mile, we could not stop crying nor leave the altar’.33 ‘The balance to be struck between the expectation of profit and the risk of subversion’, Linehan concludes, ‘would continue to haunt him until his deathbed’.34 The polysemy of conversion is not just about the body of the mosque converted into a church, but also about a violent colonial project infused with deep belief. As Alfonso took control of the city from his father-in-law, he enacted a different and more coercive policy.35 He revoked James’ orders regarding certain of the Murcian Muslims’ rights, transferring their lands to a less favourable area. He then expelled all Muslims from the madina to the suburb of La Arrixaca (‘because it is a place apart, and they will be safer and better guarded’).36 By walling the suburb off from the madina, he hoped to effect a repopulation of the city centre with Christians.37 The leader of the Muslim community would no longer be ‘King of Murcia’, but now ‘King of the Moors of la Arrixica in Murcia’. Alfonso closed one of the city gates that led to the suburb of la Arrixaca, destroyed the bridges over the ravine at the limit of the suburb and reinforced existing walls in order to keep the Muslim population enclosed when they were within the city38. This enclosing and controlling of the population were not as productive of social stability and economic continuity as the Aragonese policies of James. And indeed, the city became restive; Murcia’s submitted Muslims would in the end still outnumber Castilians, Aragonese and Catalan settlers, a kind of colonial environment in which, as Burns remarks, ‘an overgrid of Christian settlers uneasily governed the conquered but restless Muslim majority’ and a condition that made political stability tentative, leaving a ravaged economy.39 Gradual and systematic incursions of Christians into this neighbourhood subsequently occurred, although Alfonso’s s attempts at resettlement were neither consistent or successful.40

The Murcia Cantiga But Alfonso would tell quite a different story about his interventions in Murcia, perhaps a decade later, in one illustrated song of his Cantigas de Santa María, a collection of 420 songs narrating miracles of the Virgin Mary. 56

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent The Cantigas are part of a specific genre of Spanish Medieval lyric verse dedicated to the Virgin41 – but one in which Mary’s conventional role as mediatrix is extended in a remarkably political manner.42 The Murcia cantiga frames the story of its miracle within Alfonso’s life, charting, for over twenty years, his relationship with the city of Murcia. Cantiga 169 is particularly compelling because it is part of Alfonso’s own history, told in the first person.43 Indeed, one is struck by Alfonso’s insistence on his personal experience in this song, and by its relationship to contemporary events, which he seems to wish to mould into a heroic narrative. In the first part of the cantiga, he lays out the miracle of Murcia’s Virgin and evokes his personal acquaintance with Muslims as authority for the veracity of the tale. . . . I shall tell a great miracle, which I saw when God granted me Murcia. I also heard it told by many Moors who formerly lived there and held the territory, to our dismay, and who often remembered this. The miracle happened to an ancient church of the Peerless Queen which stood there in the district of La Arrijaca. [ . . . T]he Moors had no power to do any harm whatever in that holy place, nor to remove the church from there, although it lay in their domain. Although many times they begged me to have the church removed, showing me that it would be a good thing if I did so, and their request was granted, it availed them nothing.44 In the miniatures of Codex J.b.2 of the Cantigas in the library of the Escorial, the story begins with the church of the Virgin in that suburb of La Arrixaca, its exterior wall cut away so that the cult image is visible within, seated on a high altar that is rather like a throne draped in textiles. The image in the miniature is iconic and frontal to the nave – tucked into a church that towers over a dense cityscape of walls and turrets, yet even in this tiny painting it radiates potential animation, leaning forward slightly, as if poised for action (Figures 2.2 and 2.3). In this composition, the Virgin is diminutive yet monumental; the one immovable force. She is one with the building, and her identification with the church reminds us that she transcends changes in rule: that mere humans have, in the words of the cantiga, ‘no power to do any harm whatever in that holy place’. Out of time, her tiny statue rises above the cacophony of interactions and alliances that were thirteenth-century Murcia. This image of the Virgin within the church, and at the heart of a city, begins and ends the narrative, standing sentry to the gestures, negotiations and crowds of the other images that illustrate this cantiga. 57

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Figure 2.2 Illustration page for the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169), Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, F226v (Source: Alamy)

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent

Figure 2.3 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): The Church of la Arrixaca in Murcia, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, f. 226v (Source: Alamy)

Cult images of the Virgin played a part in Castilian colonial conquests, as the Cantigas do not fail to mention. Cantiga 292 recounts that Ferdinand III, ‘when he conquered some city from the Moors [ . . . ] placed Her statue in the portico of the mosque’, and the king’s ghost hastens to remind a craftsman he has visited in a dream that he brought a statue of the Virgin ‘all the way from Toledo’ to erect in Seville.45 Ferdinand was, indeed, buried with an ivory image of the ‘Virgin de las Batallas’ (Virgin of the Battles), which he is thought to have carried on his person.46 In the text of cantiga 169, however, there is no mention of an image in the church of Arrixaca, and in this grid of miniatures – illustrating a song in which the intervention of the Virgin is so key – neither is there another representation of Mary, as is often the case in other cantigas in which she intervenes miraculously.47 The statue in the church is an invention of the artist through which we are meant to understand that the cult image of the Virgin of Arrixaca embodies the Virgin herself in the context of this story.48 Because this cult image existed (and still exists today) in reality, it became a powerful material link between the story as told by Alfonso in the cantiga, and the actual place and time in which it was written (Figure 2.4). The image both bore witness to and reified Alfonso’s mythologised narrative of a still remembered history and infused an uneasy urban world with an aura of divine justice. 59

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Figure 2.4 Virgin of la Arrixaca, polychromed wood, second third of the thirteenth century, Chapel of Our Lady of La Arrixaca, Murcia (Source: Creative Commons, Public Domain)

Like King Ferdinand’s statue of the Virgin, this actual cult image – carved in a Castilian tradition – was likely brought from Castile to Murcia in the second half of the thirteenth century by conquering Castilians.49 She is, thus, in both her inanimate and animated states, a colonial agent par excellence. In the second frame of cantiga 169, Alfonso makes his first appearance as a prince, wearing not a crown but the biretta, much like the preserved biretta of his oldest son, Ferdinand de la Cerda, who died in 1275. The depiction thus explicitly marks this early epoch of Alfonso’s history in Murcia, and he looks here for all the world like the young Alexander – in whom he was deeply interested – as he appears in a fourteenth-century drawing from the Libro de Alexandre (Figure 2.6). Indeed, like Alexander, Alfonso – from his youth – governed a territory much larger than that into which he had been born, one with multiple languages, cultures and confessions. Thus, in the cantiga, Alfonso constructs his own heroic narrative, beginning with his time in Murcia in the 1240s, just after his father had concluded the Treaty of Alcaraz. He recounts that, ‘[a]lthough many times (the Moors) begged me to have the church removed, showing me it would be a good thing if I did so, and their request was granted, it availed them nothing’. 60

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Figure 2.5 Detail from the Murcia cantiga: Alfonso X as prince before Muslim subjects, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, f. 226v (Source: Alamy)

Figure 2.6 Alexander recounting the story of the Trojan War to his troops, Libro de Alexandre, Ms. O, f 45v, Biblioteca Nacional de España, VITR/5/10, early fourteenth century (Source: Creative Commons, Public Domain)

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Jerrilynn Dodds Alfonso’s gesture of acquiescence underscores the fulfilment of the pact between the Murcian Muslims and their Christian lord. In the world of cantiga 169, Alfonso supported the petition of these Muslims to destroy the church of the Virgin, as it ‘lay in their domain’, and he is pictured as the just and pragmatic prince who understands that the productive interaction of peoples in a colonial setting demands binding obligation to his promises, despite the fact that the protagonists are not Christians. In the text, Alfonso represents himself, in this regard, as the model colonial prince he had not been in reality, one governed by a dedication to justice. Enframed beneath one arch of a gothic arcade, a compositional devise common to many of the cantigas, Alfonso is both part of the narrative – the culmination of the attention of a group of kneeling Muslims – and yet also a frontal, iconic seated ruler. But there is, in the oppressively authoritative language of the composition, a sense of unease that we might read in the prince’s frontality juxtaposed with the constrained, kneeling knot of Muslims in profile; while Alfonso is enframed and unimpeded, the Muslims’ compressed collective is bisected by a column, so that they seem subtly caged (one figure actually holds on to the column as if it were, not a compositional convention, but physical bars by which they were restrained), marking both the artistic and social confines within which Muslims must move in this representation of uncontested control (Figure 2.7). By contrast, even the Castilian guards and courtiers behind them are relaxed and unimpeded.

Figure 2.7 Detail from the Murcia cantiga: Muslim subjects before Alfonso as Prince, Codex J.b.2, f. 226v (Source: Alamy)

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent Alfonso carefully delineates these relationships in the Cantigas: what Muslims might and might not be in a Christian realm. Perhaps part of the performative language of this representation reflects his desire that the Cantigas would be recited or sung with music on Marian feast days in the Cathedral of Seville – which at the time was still housed in the building of Seville’s Great Mosque – as a way of disseminating this vision of a utopian society under the rule of CastileLeón and the cloak of the Virgin.50 With this in mind, the images of petitioning Muslims take on the character of politically instructive tableaux vivantes.51 The action evoked in the next frame of the miniature occurred over twenty years later than the image of Alfonso as prince, and yet the Murcian Muslims are frozen in the same kneeling posture, suspended in time in identical subjugation, as if to assuage the demographic anxiety of a Christian minority in the face of a restive Muslim majority. In the third frame, the Murcian Muslims are shown petitioning King James I of Aragon, following the uprising of 1264 when ‘the Moors rebelled from Murcia to Seville’ (Figure 2.8). The cantiga bypasses the complexities of the governance of Murcia following the rebellion, recounting only that James ‘made the cathedral out of the Great Mosque’, fixating on the theme of this particular cantiga, which is confessional real estate. The Murcian Muslims again ask permission to have the church of the Virgin removed from the suburb to which they now have been confined, and yet miraculously, ‘(a)lthough he consented to it, they could not touch a single nail of it’. Next, Alfonso X, now as crowned king – acquiesces once more in the next panel (Figure 2.9). The cantiga does not record Alfonso’s repudiation of James’

Figure 2.8 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): James I before Muslim subjects, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, f. 226v (Source: Alamy)

Figure 2.9 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): Alfonso X as King before Muslim subjects, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, f. 226v (Source: Alamy)

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Jerrilynn Dodds pact with the Muslims, nor the forced exile of the Muslim community to the suburb la Arrixaca, called here ‘their domain’. Instead, the repeated image of kneeling Muslims imagines the unrealised Alfonsine ideal of colonial Castile and León in al-Andalus: a regulated society in which submitted Muslims petition their sovereign from a position of mutually acknowledged subjugation. It repeats again the composition of Muslim supplicants before a king, in which Christian rulers embody a kind of timeless authority, while the Muslims, servile, constrained and in profile – in potential movement – are an evanescent presence in history. And yet, even though the images are formulaic, Alfonso’s written account is quite personal for this moment, which falls during the years in which some of Alfonso’s cantigas were composed. He writes: After this, it happened that I went to Murcia, and most of the Muslim community asked me to remove the church from their midst, but I was loathe to do so, for it had just been freshly painted. However, very reluctantly, I granted their request’. The juxtaposition of personal, even anecdotal experience (‘it happened that I went to Murcia’ and ‘it had just been freshly painted’) in the text with the recurrence of the formal, repetitive and authoritative compositions marks Alfonso’s attempt to reconceive his legacy as the just Alexandrine monarch of a successful colonial empire. And yet, Alfonso in reality had upheld neither Castile’s original pact with the Muslims, nor those made by James, and his attempts at repopulation had faltered. He had achieved neither a Christian city, nor a stable multi-confessional polity.52 The legacy he sought would also be expressed in the Siete Partidas – Alfonso’s compilation of civil law, which, although never promulgated in his lifetime, constituted his ‘forensic ideal’, in the words of Carpenter.53 It is of particular interest here, because an early version was almost surely written during the very years chronicled in the cantiga: between 1256 and 1265.54 The Partidas outline a legislative theory in which Jews and Muslims were regulated according to criminal law and in which fear of conversion and apostasy were paramount.55 Muhammed’s religion, it declares, is ‘an insult to God’, and for this reason legal restrictions are necessary to inhibit the spread of their beliefs. Tolan has noted that Alfonso created here the same kind of ideological justification that Said found in nineteenth-century advocates for French and British colonialism.56 And part of this defence clearly has to do with a physical and aural control of cities, in urban planning that conflated political 64

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent and confessional identity. Partida VII proclaims that ‘Moors [ . . . ] shall not have mosques in Christian towns [ . . . ]. The mosques which they formerly possessed shall belong to the king; and he can give them to whomsoever he wishes’. And indeed, after the rebellion of Murcia’s Muslims Alfonso conceded the mosques that remained in the madina to Christian settlers.57 The creation and destruction of churches are at issue here because of the way in which mosques and churches bridge the cultural and pactual permeability that are now acknowledged parts of conquest with the confessional immutability which constitutes the ideological wall in Alfonso’s narrative. The Murcia cantiga drives home the paradox: the Castilian colonial project required the maintenance of a pacified indigenous population with its own houses of worship. And yet, the submission devotedly pictured in the Escorial miniatures was increasingly unlikely, as the Murcian Muslims were relegated to a sliver of land beyond the walls of the madina, sequestered physically and caught up in a treacherous, unstable legal state. We can read an indication of this in a kind of slippage in the framing miniatures of the Virgin in her church (Figure 2.3), a visual echo of the dilemma of the Murcian Muslims in the face of this myth of order and control. The compact urban fabric ringed tightly by crenelated walls is made denser and more impenetrable by skewed roof lines and overlapping forms redolent of the constricted circumstances of the Muslims; a hint of empathy at their reduced circumstances; their justification for wishing to remove the church, which attracted Christians from beyond the peninsula. Indeed, by the resettlement of 1272, Murcian Muslims lived in less than half the area they had possessed in 1266.58 But then, the same image also depicts the Virgin’s church in the embrace of this compressed and displaced community of Muslims that has lost homes, property and its own mosque. It envisions, as the triumphal text cannot, twin colonial dilemmas posed by the resettlement of Murcia: the subalterns’ sequestration and the colonists’ anxiety in the face of their numbers, in fear of another revolt. And thus, the panel of miniatures reiterates its visual topos of kneeling subjects, like a repeated incantation for the subjugation and control of Muslims, one in which the scale of the church, and the Virgin herself, create a mythic vision of control. The final miniature of Muslims prostrated before a leader is structured by the same Gothic arches; they are on one hand palatial, but we begin to understand that they also signify the consistent structure of the law, of Castilian-Leonese rule, in a frame emblazoned with the arms of Leon and Castile. Beneath the scaffold of that law, the kneeling Muslims make their pleas before their local authority, to their own ‘king’, Alfonso’s vassal (Figure 2.10).59 65

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Figure 2.10 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): The Muslim king before his subjects, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, f. 226v (Source: Alamy)

The text tells us that, after Alfonso had given them permission, once again, to destroy the church in La Arrixaca, the community then applied to their own authority to bring this about. The text reads: . . . all the Muslim community went to the Muslim king to ask him to have it done, but he said: ‘I will not, for Mariame deals severely with those who displease her’. Interestingly, the ‘Muslim King’ acts here in much the same way in which the Murcians’ actual local Muslim leaders were compelled to act throughout the Castilian occupation of Murcia. They were called upon to validate their own dispossession: to systematically authorise concessions to Castilians and other settlers of territories and privileges originally conceded to them. This ruler resolves Alfonso’s ideological problem, much as his puppet rulers solved his political dilemma: how to stabilise and rule a multi-confessional community by 66

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent law and at the same time serve the needs of the church, which cannot be held to terms of compromise as regards alternative faiths. In the Cantiga, the Virgin bridges this gap: apparently understanding Alfonso’s dilemma, she intervened to re-establish cosmic order where it was needed. Alfonso was certainly aware of the inclusion of the Virgin in the Qu’ran and of Muslim participation in certain of her cults of devotion. But the Muslim leader of the Murcian community who says ‘I will not, for Mariame deals severely with those who displease her’ is rather acknowledging the Virgin’s power as a frontier authority. As a colonial Muslim of Castilian desire, he recognises her sovereignty. He sits beneath a single arch of the triple arcade but, unlike Alfonso and James, in three-quarter view on a chair posed on a dais, a device that allows the painter to diminish the iconic implications of the frontal presentation of the Christian kings. And our gaze does not rest on the Muslim leader but is deflected heavenwards by this pointing finger. He is, like the other Muslims, more in profile, his authority contingent on his actions and ultimately fleeting. Thus, the compositional devices creating associations with authority in the previous miniatures of James and Alfonso are diminished for the Muslim ruler, but those signifying local authority – kneeling supplicants before an enthroned figure beneath an arch – remain. And the contingency of that authority is clearly marked, readable from afar when one looks at the entire composite page, for this panel reverses the direction of the other images, so that we must read it from right to left, as if it were an Arabic text. Among the many ways in which this reversal works in the language of the composition is to remind us that this panel depicts a different language of law, one to which Christians are not subject, but that nevertheless falls within the dazzling breadth of the Virgin’s authority. It reveals the third space, the transculturative world, within which Alfonso’s most controlled of propaganda machines worked. Cosmic polarities were impossible in this colonial state, although Alfonso’s cultural project endeavours to sweep every hint of ambivalence into the folds of the Virgin’s cloak; to make each a purposeful part of her increasingly complex cosmos. Because the actual occupied Murcia was not in the consistent, ethical order that the miniature – and the cantiga – would like us to suppose, there is an urgency here to create images of subtly defined hierarchies, which visually perform control over the boundaries between Muslims and Christians in the midst of their uneasy coexistence. But encased in that inverted composition is a palimpsest of ambivalence and anxiety. These are, on one hand, a cantiga and a miniature that assume a common recognition of how the Arabic language is read, and it deploys this for meaning; they betray an understanding of the workings of local Muslim government, an understanding of the diverse positions that 67

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Jerrilynn Dodds a Muslim might hold in Christian society and an understanding that Muslims are a necessary part of this colonial state. They further acknowledge as within the possible order of things a situation in a colonial city in which a church might be destroyed in a Muslim neighbourhood, despite uncontested Christian hegemony. The image attempts to contain these colonial contradictions in an orderly structure, but they are so tightly packed, so disciplined and contained that they betray chinks in the armour of the Castilians’ actual ability to successfully colonise the city.

The El Puerto de Santa María Cantigas In another of Alfonso’s first-person accounts is the story, told in multiple cantigas, of his acquisition of a much-desired Mediterranean port: al Qanatir, or Alcanate in the cantiga, which he moved to repopulate in the 1260s. In one of these cantigas, a powerful Muslim official, an aguacil, complained that Christians were calling the town by the name El Puerto de Santa María, in contravention of their treaty. It must have sounded to him as if the Virgin were preparing an offensive, which indeed she was. The name of this cantiga is, after all, ‘How Holy Mary Took a Place for Herself in the Kingdom of Seville and Called It Puerto de Santa Maria’. As in the Murcia cantiga, Alfonso depicts himself as going to great lengths to uphold his pact, violently punishing Christians who used this forbidden new Marian name.60 But in the end, under the persuasive influence of the Virgin, the aguacil yields both the city and its name ‘to secure peace in the land’.61 Here again, docile and wise Muslims yield rights and transgress their own boundaries in the name of peace. This laundered history is also intimately interwoven with miracles surrounding the creation of a new church. In three cantigas, the Virgin helps a mason, Master Ali, find a cache of stone when materials are needed; she creates a flood that brings wood to the very construction site and saves workers from a falling tower during construction.62 But the cycle in no place states what archaeology has taught us: that this church, in what is today the Castillo de San Marcos, was built within a converted mosque. A qibla wall marked by a mihrab was covered beneath plaster, while the church arcades reused spolia appropriated from the mosque’s prayer hall arcades.63 The cantigas of Puerto de Santa María are entirely mute regarding the conversion, but they betray substantial slippage as regards the connection of the church to the mosque that was there before. The falling tower of cantiga 364, so many agree, must have been the minaret of the mosque;64 and the mason Master Ali, with the prescience common to good Muslims in the cantigas, ‘realized that the Virgin had kept those stones like a treasure [ . . . ] although he was a Moor’.65 And 68

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent the miraculous stones themselves, ‘found just like that under the earth, good sized and neatly squared’ hover like the intertextual spectres of a pre-existing building wilfully erased, transmuted from a mosque into a miracle, but still haunting the construction of the church of the Virgin. Alfonso X was not interested, in this late literary fashioning of his legacy, in being known for converting mosque buildings into churches, as his father and father-in-law had; he wished to be known for making churches anew; he wished to, as the Siete Partidas proclaims, ‘make churches where there had not been any’. Within the gothic arcades of the Murcia cantiga, he sought to obscure the ambivalence of conversion in a dream of containment and erasure. And for this act of erasure, he was increasingly obliged to rely on the Virgin, to manage the impossible twin agendas of colonial conquest and the cosmic expectations of the dominion of Christ. The final miniature in cantiga 169 is a kind of postscript to the bulk of the story (Figure 2.11). Imbricated in the dense mass of walls and towers, we see caricatured black heads and arms bristling with the tools needed to dismantle the Virgin’s church. Behind these are three beturbaned, light-complexioned Muslims – like the Murcian Muslims of the preceding miniatures – who watch the proceedings. The figures of the attackers are subsumed by the architecture of the scene, as if to depict their apparent insignificance in the face of the towering church. The text continues: Later, when Abo yucaf,66 lord of Sale, passed by with a great army [ . . . ] the Moors thought to take Murcia by trickery, in order to exalt their faith. However, the Holy Virgin undid their treacherous plot, for she drove them out of there [ . . . ] Therefore, her church is now free, for never can Muhammad hold power there because She conquered it, and furthermore, She will conquer Spain and Morocco and Ceuta and Asilah. This final image is set at the time of Marinid invasions of Andalusia in 1275,67 and the black-complexioned caricatures seem to be types for ‘foreign’, nonSpanish Muslims. The cantiga does not state that the troops of Abu Yusuf attempted to dismantle the church, but the painter seizes on this idea as a way of picturing their impotence in the face of the Virgin’s power. It is possible that the miniaturist is unclear which Muslims ‘thought to take Murcia by trickery’ – the Murcian Muslims or the Merinids. But the artist nevertheless goes to great pains to distinguish the two groups: the dark-complexioned figures with pick-axes, and the beturbaned light-complexioned Murcian 69

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Figure 2.11 Detail from the Murcia cantiga (cantiga 169): The troops of Abu Yusuf attempt to destroy the church of La Arrixaca, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo del Escorial, Codex J.b.2, f. 226v (Source: Alamy)

Muslims behind them. Although their complicity is implied, what is most interesting is their liminality, neither participating in the attempted destruction of the church, nor maintaining a salubrious distance from the Merinid invaders; the painter recognises their dilemma and expresses it in terms of race and dress: they are neither foreigners nor Christians. They are the famous Murcian Muslims, once proud, independent Castilian allies, now sadly contingent and vulnerable, harbouring an identity for which there will soon be no real place in thirteenth-century Iberia: that of Iberian Muslims. The cult image of the Virgin of Arrixaca gave material credence to this miracle that was thought to take place scarcely more than a decade before the composition of this cantiga. The cantiga was perhaps meant to reassure Christian settlers that their appropriated land was under control, while Muslims were trapped in a splinter of territory just beyond their walls. It reminded them that they could depend on the Virgin to bridge the divide between life on the frontier and the cosmic expectations of sacred history. Who else but the Virgin can compel Muslim vassals, Murcian Iberians for over five centuries, to suppress their own interests and subvert their own agency in the ultimate interests of a peace won at the price of their own erasure? 70

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent

Notes  1. This article is dedicated to Zeynep Çelik, whose work has transformed the way in which a generation understands the complex interactions and protean identity formations expressed in the material and literary culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essay in particular bears witness to the way in which the reach of Professor Çelik’s work extends much farther, to deepen and enrich the thinking of a Medievalist; in this case, one who is a grateful friend and admiring colleague.  Furthermore, I wish to express my thanks to Susan Slyomovics, both for the stimulating and enriching conference organised on occasion of Professor Çelik receiving the Levi Della Vida Award and for her care, valuable guidance and great patience in the preparation of this volume. I am indebted to Geoffrey Danisher of the Rauchenberg Library at Sarah Lawrence College for incredible bibliographic heroism in obtaining sometimes quite obscure sources during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to Simon Doubleday and Samuel English for their aid as well. I explored some of these themes in a preliminary manner in Isidro Bango’s monumental catalogue and reference, Alfonso X el Sabio (Murcia: Editora Regional de Murcia, 2009), 740–49.  2. Thomas Glick and Oriol Pi-Sunyer, ‘Acculturation as an Explanatory Concept in Spanish History’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 11, no. 2 (1969), 144.  3. Damian Smith, ‘“Soli Hispanii?” Innocent III and Las Navas de Tolosa’, Hispania Sacra 51, no. 104 (1999): 500.  4. Peter Linehan, Spain 1137–1130: A Partible Inheritance (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2007), 34.  5. Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie sive historia gotica, 9.13 (10–20). Castilian translation in Historia de los Hechos de España o Historia Gótica, translated by Juan Fernández Valverde (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989), 345–46.  6. Mudejar is the name commonly given to Muslims who, without changing their religion, remained in territories ruled by Christians, and this definition can include the implication of vassalage to Christian rulers as well. Harvey cites Arabic texts that use the ‘people who stayed on’ of which the principal form is mudajjan – finding it is usually employed by those authors with ‘opprobium’. It has also, he finds, subtle semantic links to mudajin and dawajin, used in reference to domesticated animals, suggesting a taunt by free Muslims that grew to become a name for a status for which there was no other existing term; see Harvey, Islamic Spain 1250–1500, 3–5.  7. Robert I. Burns, Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 10. Regarding Castile, see particularly the work of Heather Ecker, ‘How to Administer a Conquered City in Al-Andalus: Mosque, Parish Churches and Parishes’, in Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile, ed. Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi (Boston: Brill, 2005), 45–65, and From Masjid to Casa-Mezquita: Neighbourhood Mosques in Seville after the Castilian Conquest (1248–1634) (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2000).  8. Burns, Medieval Colonialism, 5; Joseph O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 99–100.  9. Burns, Medieval Colonialism, 17. 10. Jose Antonio Maraval was among the first to separate the political and religious discourses of the term Reconquista. See his El Concepto de España en la Edad Media (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1964), 262–37, as well as R. Fletcher,

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Jerrilynn Dodds ‘Reconquest and Crusade in Spain c. 1050–1150’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 37 (1987): 31–47; J. N. Hillgarth, ‘Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality’, History and Theory 24 (1985): 23–43; Smith, ‘Soli Hispanii?’, esp. 496–502; Alejandro García Sanjuán, La conquista islámica de la península ibérica y la tergiversación del pasado (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2013); Kennth Baxter Wolf, ‘Myth, History and the Origins of al Andalus: A Historiographical Essay’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 11, no. 3 (2019): 378–401. 11. Alejandro García-Sanjuán, ‘Rejecting al Andalus, Exalting the Reconquista: Historical Memory in Contemporary Spain’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 10, no. 1 (2018): 127–45, demonstrates how ‘historiographical discourse, with its heavy burden of prejudices, can feed ideologies’ (139). 12. Smith, ‘Soli Hispanii?’, 500. 13. Quoted in John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 175. 14. The terms of the Treaty of Alcaraz have been articulated in Juan Torres Fontes, Incorporacíon del reino de Murcia a la Corona de Castilla (Murcia: Academia de Alfonso X, 1973), 36–48; ‘Incorporación de Murcia a la corona de Castilla’, in Fueros y Privilegios de Alfonso X el Sabio al Reino de Murcia: Coleccíon de Documentos para la Historia del Reino de Murcia, vol. II (Murcia: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1973), 16. 15. Linehan, A Partible Inheritance, 150–55. 16. See Robert Burns (ed.), Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), and the extensive volume and catalogue of Bango, Alfonso X el Sabio, including complete bibliography; regarding Murcia, see esp. 688–761. 17. Linehan, A Partible Inheritance, 135. 18. Lucy Pick, Conflict and Coexistance: Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 5. 19. They illustrate cantiga 120, which declares that those who do not praise Holy Mary ‘for without her they will not have God’; Kathleen Kulp Hill (trans.), Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa María (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), 148. 20. Manuel González Jiménez, ‘Alfonso X, Repoblador’, in El Mundo Urbano en la Castilla del Siglo XIII, ed. Manuel González Jiménez (Sevilla: Monte de Piedad de Sevilla, 2006), 17–31 (here 20–21). 21. H. Salvador Martínez, Alfonso X, the Learned: A Biography (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 166; Linehan, A Partible Inheritance, 71–74, 149–56. 22. Carlos de Ayala Martínez, ‘Jaime 1 y la sublevacíon mudéjar-granadina de 1264’, in Homenaje al professor Juan Torres Fontes (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1987), 93–97; Linehan, A Partible Inheritance, 151. 23. Burns notes that, while Sassanid and Byzantine traditions also had an impact on Castilian practice, ‘the insistent example for centuries of a more advanced Islamic society as immediate neighbors of Spanish Christian principalities [ . . . ] suggests at least a strong supporting role for the Dhimma in the evolution of the analogous Christian arrangements’. Robert Burns (ed.), Las Siete Partidas, vol. 5: Underworlds: The Dead, the Criminal, and the Marginalized (Partidas VI and VII) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), xxviii. 24. According to Burns, James well understood the value of Mudejar agricultural tenants, whom he imported into his own lands (Las Siete Partidas, vol. 7, xxxiii). See also Torres

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent Fontes, Incorporacíon de Murcia, 36–48. ‘All this Jaime readily granted’, Linehan recounts, ‘and assurances were given “that we would make the king of Castile observe all the agreements that they had with us”, though without consulting the king of Castile himself’. Linehan, A Partible Inheritance, 155. 25. Translation from Harvey, Islamic Spain 1250–1500, 47. 26. Harvey, Islamic Spain 1250–1500, 46–48; Torres Fontes, Incorporacíon de Murcia, 6–48; de Ayala Martínez, ‘Jaime 1 y la sublevacíon mudéjar-granadina’, 103–4. 27. Translation from Harvey, Islamic Spain 1250–1500, 47. Regarding the appropriation of the mosques of Murcia, see Susana Calvo Capilla, ‘Et las mezquitas que habien deben seer del rey: La cristianizacíon de Murcia tras la conquista de Alfonso X’, in Alfonso X el Sabio, ed. Isidro Bango (Murcia: Editora Regional de Murcia, 2009), 688–94. 28. Jerrilynn Dodds, Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 1989), 102–3. 29. Abdellatif El-Hajjami and Lhaj Moussa Aouna, ‘Lamp from the Qarawiyyin Mosque, Fez’, in Al Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain, ed. Jerrilyn Dodds (New York: Abrams, 1992), 272–73, 278–79. 30. John Tolan, ‘Affreux vacarme: Sons de cloches et voix de muezzins dans la polémique interconfessionnelle en péninsule ibérique’, in Guerres pouvoirs et ideologies dans l’Espagne chrétien aux alentours de l’an mil, ed. Thomas Deswarte and Philip Sénac (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 60. 31. Tolan, ‘Affreux vacarme’, 62. 32. Joseph O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 47. 33. James I of Aragon, The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon: A Translation of the Catalan Llibre de Fets, trans. Damian Smith and Helena Buffery (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); quoted in Linehan, A Partible Inheritance, 156; Juan Torres Fontes, Reconquista de Murcia por Jaime I de Aragón (Murcia: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1987), 152–54. 34. Linehan, A Partible Inheritance, 151. 35. Gonzalez Jimenez, ‘Alfonso X, Repoblador’, 24. 36. Quoted in Juan Torres Fontes, ‘Jaime I y Alfonso X: Dos criterios de repoblacíon’, in VII Congreso de la Historia de la Corona de Aragón (Barcelona: [n. p.], 1962), 334. 37. O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade, 52. 38. Torres Fontes, ‘Dos criterios’, 334. James had built a separation of Christians and Muslims that turned out to be only temporary, and the generous half of the city he conceded to the Muslims was a source of discontent among his men (331). 39. Burns, Las Siete Partidas, xxxiv. See also de Ayala Martínez, ‘Jaime 1 y la sublevacíon mudéjar-granadina’, 103–4. 40. Burns, Las Siete Partidas, xxxiv; de Ayala Martínez, ‘Jaime 1 y la sublevacíon mudéjargranadina’, 103–4. 41. This cantiga was likely written between 1275 and Alfonso’s death in 1284; Joseph O’Callaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa María: A Poetic Biography (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 121–22. Concerning authorship, see also Joseph T. Snow, ‘The Central Role of the Troubadour Persona of Alfonso X in the CSM’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 56 (1979): 305–16. 42. Paul Bétérous, Les collections des Miracles de la Vierge en Gallo et Ibéro-Roman au XIIIe Siècle (Dayton: University of Dayton, 1984); Connie Scarborough (in Kulp Hill [trans.], Songs of Holy Mary, xx) calls Mary ‘an ardent supporter of Alfonso’s political aims’.

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Jerrilynn Dodds See also Connie Scarborough, A Holy Alliance: Alfonso X’s Use of Marian Poetry (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2009). 43. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa María, 122. 44. Translation from Kulp Hill, Songs of Holy Mary, 204, for this and all subsequent quotes from cantiga 169. 45. Translation from Kulp Hill, Songs of Holy Mary, 352. 46. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa María, 51. 47. For instance, cantiga 107, which shows the Virgin appearing from the heavens, actively performing the narrative’s key miracle. The sculpted image of the Virgin is also distinct from that pictured in the Escorial manuscript of another Murcian miracle regarding a sinning man (cantiga 239). 48. Beate Pongratz-Leisten and Karen Sonik, ‘Between Cognition and Culture: Theorizing the Materiality of Divine Agency in Cross-Cultural Perspective’, in The Materiality of Divine Agency, ed. Beate Pongratz-Leisten and Karen Sonik (Boston: De Guyter, 2015), 16. 49. Clara Fernández-Ladreda Aguadé, ‘Virgin de la Arrixaca’, in Alfonso X el Sabio, edited by Isidro Bango (Murcia: Editora Regional de Murcia, 2009), 750–51. The wooden, polychromed image was altered in the baroque period and suffered further restorations in the nineteenth century, so that there is little assurance as to what extent the present statue of a Throne of Wisdom reflects its original Medieval disposition. FernándezLadreda, in connecting the cult image to that of Villamuriel (Valladolid), posits that it might have been brought by the Castilians in their conquest of Murcia (750). 50. A codicil to Alfonso’s will stipulates: ‘We also command that all the books of the songs of praise of Holy Mary should be kept in that church where our body will be interred, and that they should cause them to be sung on the feasts of Holy Mary’. This suggests that they were indeed originally intended to be performed. However, Ferreira points out that, ‘if some cantigas were indeed sung on selected feast days in accordance with Alfonso’s will, the practice seems to have been discontinued not long afterward’. Manuel Pedro Ferreira, ‘The Medieval Fate of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Iberian Politics Meets Song’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 69, no. 2 (2016): 309–10. 51. One might further consider, in this context, Susana Calvo’s analysis of the section of the Siete Partidas that declares ‘Moors [ . . . ] shall not [ . . . ] make their sacrifices publicly in the presence of men’. O’Callaghan saw the allusion to ‘sacrifices’ as a misunderstanding of Islamic custom; Joseph O’Callaghan, Alfonso X the Justinian of his Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), 227. However, Calvo uses a series of local regulations from Murcia to link this phrase to specific practices of the Murcian Muslim community in a complaint not only meant to curb the call to prayer, but also the celebration of Id al-fitr (the end of Ramadan) and Id al-adha (the Feast of the Sacrifice), celebrations that could include processions and even singing in a celebratory atmosphere. One wonders if performances of the Cantigas could have been developed in reactive adaptation to such suppressed practices, appropriated across a border and harnessed for the assimilation of submitted Muslims to the Castilian’s utopian social ideal. ‘Et las mezquitas que habien deben seer del rey’, 688–89. The order reads: ‘non sultan, nin ruanin con zambrase cantigas de azales a las alboradas tañendo adufes, albarillas, albogues e cimbalos, nin fogaten con luminarias’. The documents are cited in Juan Torres-Fontes, Repartimiento y Repoblacíon de Murcia en el siglo XIII (Murcia: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1990), 275. Calvo points out that these celebrations could have an ‘aspecto ludico recriminado por los hombres de religíon musulmanes’ (688).

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The Virgin as Colonial Agent 52. Juan Torres Fontes, ‘La repoblacíon Murciana en el siglo XIII’, in Actas del III Simposio Internaciónal de Mudejarismo (Teruel: Insitutuo de Estudios Turolenses, 1986), 55–66. 53. Burns, Las Siete Partidas, vol. 5, 1438–40; Duane Carpenter, ‘Minorities in Medieval Spain: The Legal Status of Jews and Muslims in the Siete Partidas’, Romance Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1986): 279. 54. The Siete Partidas followed three earlier law-codes, known today as the Fuero real, Espéculo and Sentenario. R. A. Macdonald, ‘Law and Politics: Alfonso’s Program of Political Reform’, in The Worlds of Alfonso the Learned and James the Conqueror: Intellect and force in the Middle Ages, ed. R. Burns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985): 150–202; Alfonso García-Gallo, ‘La obra legislativa de Alfonso X: Hechos e hipótesis’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho español 54 (1984): 97–162. 55. Translation by Samuel Parsons Scott in Las Siete Partidas, vol. 5, 1438–40. In fact, of the ten laws in this section of the law-code, only one addresses the status of Muslims who live under Christian rule. 56. Tolan, Saracens, 174–75. 57. Translation by Samuel Parsons Scott in Las Siete Partidas, vol. 5, 1438; Calvo, ‘Et las mezquitas que habien deben seer del rey’, 693. 58. O’Callaghan, The Learned King, 192. The number of Muslims in Murcia was diminishing in the years in which this cantiga was written, as those Muslims who could began to emigrate to the Kingdom of Granada, a depopulation that would become much to be deplored. 59. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, 125; The Learned King, 104. 60. Alfonso’s troops were billeted in Alcanate, possibly in violation of his agreement regarding the autonomy of the citizens of Jerez. Manuel Gonzalez Jiménez, En torno a los origins de Andalucía: La repoblacíon del siglo XIII (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1980), 21–22. 61. Kulp Hill, Songs of Holy Mary, 398–99. 62. Kulp Hill, Songs of Holy Mary, 437, 435, 443 (cantigas 358, 356, 364). 63. Calvo, Las mezquitas de al-Andalus, 551–55; Leopoldo Torres Balbas, ‘Las mezquita de al-Qanatir y el sanctuario de Alfonso el Sabio en el Puerto de Santa María’, in Obra Dispersa: Al Andalus: Crónica de la España Musulmana, vol. 2 (Madrid: Instituto de España, 1982), 149–71. 64. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa María, 181. 65. Kulp Hill, Songs of Holy Mary, 437 (cantiga 358). 66. The Merinid ruler Abu Yusuf. 67. Mettman sees this as related to the Merinid campaign of 1264–65. Because it is represented as occurring after the revolt of the Murcian Mudejares in the cantiga, this early a date seems unlikely, even though this cantiga is not known for its historical rigour. Walter Mettmann (ed.), Cantigas de Santa María, vol. II (Vigo: Editorial Xerais, 1981), 174.

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3 Shipwrecks and Navigations: North Africa in the Eighteenth-century Mediterranean through the Chronicle and Life of Muhammad al-Saghir ibn Yusuf, c. 1693–1771 Julia Clancy-Smith

Figure 3.1 Claude-Joseph Vernet, The Shipwreck, 1772, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)1

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Shipwrecks and Navigations

Orientations Professor Çelik’s rich œuvre on cities, walls, streets, empires, images and archaeology has not only transformed fields of knowledge, but also generated a new cultural architectural lexicon. Her work, which has investigated the multiple intersections between the Ottoman Empire and la France d’outre mer in multiple scales and registers, inspires my paper.2 A long-standing preoccupation of Çelik’s research has been the fraught questions surrounding periodisation for what is known as ‘modern North Africa and the Middle East’. Despite pleas to re-imagine historical mappings, critical junctures for the Maghrib remain largely in the mode of a ‘disaster history’ whose principal nodes are 1798, 1830, 1881, 1882, 1911 and so forth. Needless to say, these junctures mark Europe’s increasing clout in the region and Ottoman retreat along the North African littoral. Conventional turning points tend to privilege rulers and elites, capital city regions, major ports and urban dwellers – of whatever background. Moreover, in the current scholarly ‘rush to the Sea’ some historians brand as Mediterranean anything and/or anyone even vaguely near the water. But I seek other perspectives, especially those that force us out of ‘dry dock’ maritime history onto the beach and into the water where other worlds emerge. This chapter is on a quest to undertake three things: decentre the centre; render Mediterranean history less cadastral; and, above all, explore new turning points. To do so, I revisit the work and life of an unusual eighteenthcentury ‘Tunisian’ historian, Muhammad al-Saghir (or al-Sughayyar) ibn Yusuf (c. 1693–c.1771). One principal reason for selecting Ibn Yusuf was that he did not hail from Tunis but from the ‘provinces’; he was both an outsider and an insider. He was born in Beja and died there. Significantly, he was a kulughli, the ‘son of a slave’ or ‘Turkish’ soldier who served in an Ottoman infantry unit likely dispatched to Tunisia in the seventeenth century.3 Against the social norms of the day, he composed a chronicle that remains historically significant. The conclusion of Ibn Yusuf’s history devoted to the early Husaynid Dynasty contains one of the most arresting accounts of shipwrecks written by a North African chronicler. This is particularly valuable because the events occurred not in the capital city’s port but elsewhere. My chapter draws on Ibn Yusuf’s rich material in reconstructing the lives and deaths of ships that foundered off the Tunisian coast almost simultaneously in 1762 during the spring equinox. I argue for a land-and-sea perspective that steers historians toward uncharted turning points, or merely unexplored shores.4 I argue that this year, 1762, is important because it is un-important – before Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and all that ensued. And the kinds of incidents 77

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Julia Clancy-Smith recreated in this chapter do not figure in standard narratives for our field. Yet, no matter where or when one peers at the Mediterranean, what emerges are: countless ships in distress, people struggling in roiling waters, or vessels, things and cargoes disappeared into the seabed. These tragic ends for many people, but not all, were the outcomes of battles lost, pirates, inauspicious weather, navigational blunders, or purposeful decisions. I have selected the 1762 events because of the dramatic detail that they reveal about people and objects in motion – or brought to a shuddering halt by an angry sea. The structural filaments of unsuspected political economies surface that, when sutured together, evoke the matter of turning points. What ultimately emerges is how banal or mundane, but crucial, these sorts of catastrophes were to local, regional and trans-regional communities and exchange networks. Subsequently, my paper unfurls the larger contextual envelope seen through the chronicler’s life and work. I argue that the identity of the chronicler, Ibn Yusuf, who hunted down witnesses and collated from oral sources the written versions of the wrecks, is critical to rewriting Maghribi history in and of the Mediterranean as well as of the ‘interior’.5 A new political centre, commanding strategic maritime zones along the Sardinian and Sicilian channels, was in the making. A post-script considers the shadowy afterlife of this chronicle translated and published immediately after the onset of the 1881 French Protectorate. I argue that the semi-concealed journeys of Ibn Yusuf’s manuscript after his death presumably in 1771 are critical for revisiting early French colonialism and alternative modernities. Thus, my paper branches out into three lines of inquiry, including the connective webs or sinews that bind them: the wrecks, the narrator/chronicler and his good and bad times, and the Chronicle’s subsequent voyages and redactions. As an ensemble, these pieces nudge us closer to unlikely entry points and unexpected dead ends.6

Sources and Historiographies A bounty of diverse records on North Africa and the Sea in multiple languages exist from long before the eighteenth century. We have voluminous correspondence, published and unpublished, exchanged between Tunisia’s Husaynid rulers (1705–1956), the Ottomans and Moroccans, and European powers.7 These highly diverse records illustrate meticulous, contentious negotiations over crews, cargoes, bills of lading and ships lost at sea or smashed against the shoreline.8 Yet, the majority are penned by courtiers, consuls, captains and commercants of diverse, and often uncertain nationalities. In addition, the damp, dark shards of evidence languishing for centuries or more below the waters have been largely ignored for the modern period. 78

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Shipwrecks and Navigations In contrast, a close reading of Ibn Yusuf’s work invites us into the spaces of provincial peoples and places generally shunned by historians. In addition, this ‘Tunisian’ chronicler’s multi-layered background and complex writings document subtle shifts as well as tectonic upheavals in the politics of the Central Mediterranean corridor. In sum, Ibn Yusuf’s own story nudges us closer to ‘land and sea turning points’. In a sense, I am poaching from Professor Çelik’s vast and varied repertoire to construct an architecture of wrecks and their political, economic and cultural flows and meanings, both on sea and land. And I am indebted to decades of highly original research on longue durée Mediterranean histories by fellow scholars specialised in many periods.9 For the Maghrib, the historiography remains sparse on the connections between the sea and the ‘interior’; thus, it misses essential processes, such as vessels aground, Bedouins as water specialists, swimmers, submerged marketplaces and local as well as global grey markets. My approach is to begin with the tragedies at sea and on shore in 1762, which contemporaries regarded as both woeful and wonderful. To engage in history from ‘below’, or ‘sideways’, we need reconnoitre a ‘provincial’ area of Northwest Tunisia, near or on the beach, far – but not too much so – from Tunis where events in Beja eventually resonated with fury. In the chapter, I eschew the kind of frame that delivers context first and only after erecting a super-structure delves into the story. The tale itself is too good, at least in our chronicler’s telling, to linger in wait for the disciplinary practitioners – the history masons, carpenters and draftspersons – to arrive on the scene.

What Happened in 1762? That year, two maritime disasters (at least) transpired nearly simultaneously, but on different coastlines of Tunisia: one near Beja, the other off Mahdia. The spring equinox erupts in late March or early April, and it has always been a season notorious for stormy, foul weather that churns up the sea and lands adjacent for weeks. During the 1762 equinox, a ‘ghost ship’ appeared between Tabarka and Bizerte, a dangerous expanse of water off Sardinia, Eastern Algeria and Northern Tunisia. In Arabic, the ship was characterised as a ‘safina kabira ghariba’.10 As was true of Mahdia, the scene of the second disaster, this stretch of coastline near Cap Serrat witnessed innumerable wrecks over the centuries.11 One of the most notorious came in 1895, when the Aslan, an Ottoman vessel en route from Bône to Istanbul via Malta, carrying tobacco, peanuts and clothing, sank near the same spot. This triggered protracted international controversy among colonial officials in both Algeria and Tunisia, as well as Ottoman naval authorities over crews, cargoes and 79

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Julia Clancy-Smith the ship itself, thereby generating abundant documentation.12 But this drama happened over a century later than our story. Let us begin with sightings of the first ship, characterised as ‘the most curious episode that transpired during the reign of Amir ‘Ali’.13 Ibn Yusuf and denizens of the Beja region deemed the incident bizarre for several reasons. The vessel proved to have no passengers on board and, when it cracked open, unimaginable riches spewed forth to the delight of hordes of scavengers – rural, tribal and eventually urban. Here is how it all began, at least according to onlookers lining the shore. Shepherds tending flocks, and the faithful visiting a saint’s shrine near the sea, first espied the ship early in April 1762. One eyewitness recounted the events to a second who subsequently related the story to Ibn Yusuf, who then took pains to ascertain the probity of sources and veracity of the ‘facts’. He interweaves diverse observations into a pastiche: During the equinox, the sea threw a great ship onto the shore facing the territory of the Muq‘ads. The people of this tribe ran to the bluffs to watch [ . . . ] Perceived in the distance the ship, with masts but no sails, at times approached the shore, at others drew away. It was the month of April [1762/1175] and the weather was unusually cold [ . . . ] The next morning, the vessel veered towards shore while a violent tempest raged. Finally, the sea hurled it upon rocks where it shattered with a noise like a cannon shot and all the commodities of East and West washed ashore with the currents. It is impossible to describe the vessel’s treasures [ . . . ] the riches of the East and West were scattered on the beach.14 For the locals – pastoralists, farmers, and townspeople – the catastrophe proved a wondrous blessing. After the huge swells subsided, ‘a crowd of men and women hurried to comb the beaches for grey amber, musk, and precious stones and textiles [ . . . ] the price for textiles dropped [ . . . ] because markets and homes were filled with these commodities [ . . . ] even the tents of the pastoralists.15 But before the ship cracked totally apart, the son of the Muq‘ad tribe’s shaykh had stationed guards day and night along the rocky escarpment to survey its erratic movements buffeted by gale winds. With daylight, ‘the shaykh asked men of good faith who knew well how to swim’ to go out to the battered semi-submerged vessel to rescue survivors. Three men disrobed and began swimming among ‘waves as big as mountains’. They reached the ship but only ‘found a dog barking’; some said there were ‘pigs onboard’. Unearthed in the cabins were: ‘a hat decorated with precious stones set in gold and silver that appeared to belong to a noble Christian dignitary [ . . . ] a sword whose sheath 80

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Shipwrecks and Navigations was encrusted with gold, silver, and gems and two small pistols decorated with silver [ . . . ] ’ but no passengers.16 Each swimmer helped himself to the goods and plunged back into the foaming waters; but the surf proved so violent that they barely made it ashore – without their treasures. These came to rest in the depths and stocked the collective sand suq whose inventory followed the rhythms and whims of winds and currents over months, even years. As soon as the ill-fated vessel broke open, trains of pack animals quickly carried away some of the spoils washed ashore. The Muq‘ad confederacy clearly boasted a welloiled system for profiting from maritime adversity, and some of its members knew how to swim.17 Littering the beach in small boxes was coffee, already widely consumed in North Africa. Other containers of white iron sheltered ‘unknown products [ . . . ] small round leaves, similar to those of capers’.18 Taken to Bizerte, townspeople identified the mystery plant as tea that, made into an infusion, could be drunk like coffee. Thus, this snippet might indicate that tea was consumed in North African ports but largely unknown in, or unavailable to, rural households.19 Inhabitants in the area harvested the hull and masts for firewood, tent-poles and building materials until little remained but a skeletal hulk. For several years, stuff washed ashore. This spit of coastline must have attracted water gleaners from all over, and for a long time. And numerous similar sites for aquatic gleaning must have punctuated the rocky indented shores between Eastern Algeria and Tunisia, although they are not yet on our radar. However, enough evidence exists to argue that Cap Serrat located mid-point between Tabarka and Bizerte constituted a ‘local pluri-universe’ where submerged markets fed landscapes and scavenging micro-economies connected with world commerce. Topography, together with seasonal winds and currents funnelling through the Sardinian-Tunisian channel, incubated the ‘perfect storm’ for vulnerable ships.20 Intricate, converging strands, big and small, facilitated the circulation of things from near and far, as they were lost, found, sold, purchased and repurposed. Some goods floating through underwater bazaars were familiar; others were new, at least for certain social classes.21 ‘Pastoralists’ come into view as purveyors of ‘imported’ commodities. The Muq‘ad tribe customarily grazed its flocks on verdant bluffs nearby when early spring rains yielded pasturage. It was their shaykh who, when informed of the errant vessel tossed about by tumultuous seas, sprang into action. Did the Muq‘ads realise that the spring equinox was a fortuitous season to ‘reap all of the riches of East and West’? Did they manipulate this knowledge, perhaps instigating wrecks by lighting flares at night-time, or during daytime when fog obscured spatial reckoning based on landmarks? If so, they would not be alone in global maritime culture, 81

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Julia Clancy-Smith particularly for the cabotage trade. Across seas and oceans, the older system of nocturnal flares, ostensibly to enlighten vessels regarding positioning and hazards, such as reefs, deceived unwary captains, enriching foragers as ships shattered on shoals or rocks.22 Predictably, people began gossiping about these strange occurrences, above all the fact that no humans were aboard ship but ‘only a dog’.23 We need recall that passengers were as valuable, perhaps more so, than silver pistols or luxury textiles. People as individuals and groups were enslaved, exchanged, traded and bargained over in convoluted dealings that might endure for years.24 Some captives were enslaved temporarily; others were condemned to life-long servitude, depending on a host of factors, particularly social class and ability to pay ransom, as well as the skills of brokers. Moreover, captive persons claiming scientific and technological knowledge – iron-forgers, gunners and engineers – might be granted freedom and a plum position at court.25 Act I of the ghost ship epic commenced with a violent tempest, a wreck, swimmers, a mad dash to wrest objects from waves or harvest them from the shore, and the recycling of goods. Apparently, some bargain hunters were ignorant of the true worth of the Indian and European white cotton, satin and velour thrown up on the sand. Ibn Yusuf’s account emphasises how valuable these textiles were, ‘a special kind of cloth belonging to kings and notables’.26 Yet, pastoral peoples unknowingly exchanged lengths of rare foreign-made cloth salvaged from the waters for ordinary woollen haiks. But news moved rapidly; Tunis buzzed with rumours, and the folks there recognised the cargo’s value. Putting aside their traditional disdain for country bumpkins, the bourgeoisie (or baldis) invaded the territory of the Muq‘ad tribe, as did eager shoppers from across the realm. The elite demand for these kinds of textiles was satisfied: ‘The merchants of Tunis soon had as much stock as they could handle [ . . . ] the poor became rich’.27 Now our gaze can shift to the capital city – instead of vice versa – in accordance with history from below and side-ways. Thus commences Act II in the Bardo Palace, where high-ranking courtiers broached the matter of the wreck with the bey. ‘Ali ibn Husayn reigned from 1759 to 1782; Ibn Yusuf partially narrated his reign in his chronicle. ‘Ali Bey’s father had secured the throne only after decades of internecine battles pitting rival family members against one another, rebellions by the Turkish jund or army, and invasions from Algeria. These bitter struggles resonated beyond Tunisia, Algeria and the Maghrib, agitating wider Mediterranean relations for decades. A pious but prudent man, ‘Ali Bey reigned so that his era ‘marked a new stage in the reinforcement of beylical authority in the Regency’ and the establishment of cordial relations with both the Ottomans and Christian powers.28 82

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Shipwrecks and Navigations This brings us to the bey’s behaviour in 1762 and his initial disinterest in the wrecked ship. A disquieting element was that the vessel bore no flag identifying national status or belonging. The knots of bi-lateral treaties concluded over centuries between Tunis and a wide range of trading partners could get messy. And relations with France over the Compagnie d’Afrique were increasingly tense. Indeed, in 1770, King Louis XV ordered Admiral De Broves to bombard the cities of Bizerte, Porto Farina and Monastir in retaliation for ‘acts of piracy’, probably carried out by free-lance corsairs. This may explain why the prince appeared oddly discomfited at first about the news from the provincial abroad. Eventually the bey acknowledged the ship’s worth. Hearsay had it that the hull remained above water; surely the submerged part sheltered merchandise not yet disgorged by waves and snatched by beachcombers. The ruler decreed that ‘divers from Bizerte’ go to the site and search the hold. Swimmers were dispatched, but their efforts yielded lead ingots and stones, doubtless ballast, and little else. What the palace did not realise was that other water specialists had gotten there first.29 In the sequel, Act III, the ruler reluctantly ordered that the ship’s freight, by then dispersed far and wide, be collected by armed force and deposited with the khaznadar or minister of finance. Here the saga gets even better. The palace dispatched hanbas, or gendarmes, to villages and tribal camps. ‘The most honest bribed the hanbas, handing over only one-tenth of what they had seized; the others denied having partaken of the goods at all’. As a reward, the latter were imprisoned until they relinquished some beach booty.30 The bey’s greatest fears were realised. Diplomatic wrangling ramped up as European consuls besieged ‘Ali Bey, demanding an inquiry into the vessel’s registry and claims to its contents. Because ‘if the ship belonged to a country at peace with Tunisia, the people did not have the right to its cargo’. The bey responded: ‘If Tunisian corsairs were to capture at sea ships belonging to an allied nation I would not hesitate to punish them and restitute the merchandise but God has bequeathed a windfall (  furtuna) upon my subjects, I cannot intervene’.31 Ceding to pressures, the ruler deputised emissaries to travel to the countryside to inspect the scavenged items. ‘An educated Christian was sent to each village in the mountains’. Another travelled to Beja where he used a ruse to gather information: ‘Pretending that he desired to purchase wheat, the people showed him textiles of velour, satin, and cloth of all kinds; he (the envoy) examined these materials but found no indication of provenance and the evidence was entered into the record. And thus it went in other places’.32 Needless to say, this first shipwreck is rich in questions and problems. The mention of pigs on board may, or may not, represent ‘reality’ but marks the ship as Christian. That the swimming ‘Bedouins’ from the Muq‘ad tribe 83

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Julia Clancy-Smith recognised the bejewelled hat as belonging ‘to a European dignitary’ is also significant. This means that information about European elite sartorial habits had penetrated the interior. One conduit might have been the numerous diplomatic delegations that Husaynid rulers sent to France in the course of the eighteenth century. These missions lasted for months and introduced knowledge upon return to Tunisia about such things as ‘the headgear befitting a nobleman’.33 The bey’s hesitancy to ‘get involved’ might signal a strategic stance vis à vis not only the troublesome Europeans but also his own subjects, who benefitted so handsomely from the disaster. Indeed, the ship may not have originally headed to North Africa at all but could have set sail for another destination, only to encounter storms driving it off course and towards untold misfortune (or fortune), a common fate. The greatest mystery of all – what happened to the crew and passengers? Had they perished en route of disease, or during a mutiny? Had they stopped for provisions, or encountered tumultuous seas and, attempting to save themselves, disembarked on one of the many small islets dotting passageways between Sardinia and Tunisia? Had pirates rounded them up somewhere, intending to seize the ship as well, but then failed to secure the vessel? We can speculate endlessly about this. Apparently, the ship’s national identity and owners were never satisfactorily ascertained. There is no mention of these events in the nineteenth century’s foremost chronicle, the work by Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf (1804–74), titled Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk tunis wa ‘ahd al-aman. This is hardly surprising, because the author provided more detailed information after he assumed a scribal position in the Husaynid bureaucracy during the 1830s. Moreover, as private secretary to the bey, he was loathe, as were all court chroniclers, to report negative decisions or actions made by his patron. For the eighteenth century, Ibn Diyaf tersely noted a maritime occurrence in 1764/65 when ‘Ali Bey ordered the construction of war ships in Halq al-Wadi (La Goulette) of ‘wood from the forests of Tabarka’.34 He provided more ample documentation on the twin calamities during the 1820s that wiped out the Tunisian fleet, one climatic, the other political. Ongoing hostilities with Algeria induced the minister of the navy to transfer the bulk of the fleet, normally stationed in Porto Farina for protection, to La Goulette for repairs in 1820. Environmental factors were also at work because Porto Farina was rapidly silting up; getting ships out of the harbour was proving increasingly difficult. In 1821, the newly renovated fleet was sent out against Algeria, but it did not get far from home. A huge storm nearly wiped it out not far from La Goulette, with great loss of life and armaments. Not deterred, Mahmud Bey had ships built in Marseille ‘ready-made’, which sailed to Tunis. However, the coup de grace came during the Greek 84

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Shipwrecks and Navigations revolts against the Ottomans, culminating in the Battle of Navarino in 1827, when the Tunisian navy allied with the Turks lost at least six vessels. Another negative outcome was that the Greek rebellions blocked access to Levantine sailors, formerly recruited by the Husaynid government, which then turned to ‘press gangs’ of Tunisians to fill the ranks of crews.35 Some regions of the country had reputed water specialists. This raises the not inconsequential matter of swimmers. Bizerte was reputed for its expert divers because it had operated as a hub for the lucrative, ancient coral industry. Indeed, branches of the finest coral fetched up from the waters represented ‘currency’ or tax payments made to Tunisian rulers in return for concessions to harvest the red sea gold with its protective talismanic powers. Yet, that ‘pastoralists’ took to the waves seems intriguing and suggests that we need to revisit older geo-historical and cultural configurations that slice off, or quarantine, the ‘interior’ from the sea. Swimming represented a high-value art akin to navigational savvy. Most importantly, after combing through shards of evidence on the next ship disaster, it seems that ‘those who knew how to swim’ may have furnished eye-witness material that Ibn Yusuf wove into his own vivid account of 1762. We can speculate, too, that the kulughli community of Mahdia may have acted as informants. Thus, a sort of architectural blueprint for recuperating land and sea political economy and society begins to surface. During the same inclement equinox, another catastrophe was unfolding near Mahdia, a small port of not more than 5,000 souls. Located on Tunisia’s eastern rim facing Sicily and Malta, the town sits squarely on hazardous narrows opposite the islet of Lampedusa. One of the best-studied wrecks from Antiquity, which disappeared in about 80 bce, was discovered in this micro-region of the Mediterranean and named ‘the Mahdia’. Countless more sunken vessels await recovery in this particular zone.36 Here is the preface to the second calamity: ‘In 1762, a certain number of bourgeois from Beja, Bedouins, Tunis notables, great merchants, and rich people pooled resources to journey to Mecca. They rented a ship from the Christians of Doublet-Benadi that was taking to the sea for the first time’.37 Among them was the daughter of Shaykh Bil-Qasim al-Samadhi, a rich well-connected woman from Beja, the same city as our chronicler who probably knew her because the town only boasted about 5,000 inhabitants at the time. Recently widowed, she was free to manage her own affairs and fulfil her heart’s desire – namely, performing the hajj. In preparation for this most sacred of journeys, the widow converted part of her assets into material goods for sustenance along the way, reserved berth on this vessel soon to depart Halq al-Wadi for Alexandria and travelled to Tunis to await embarkment. Despite her well-laid plans, she fortuitously missed the boat, narrowly escaping death.38 85

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Julia Clancy-Smith After loading cargo and passengers numbering between 300 and 400, the ship departed. Soon after weighing anchor, the vessel encountered a ferocious tempest that even smashed to bits ships safely moored in ports. For several days and nights, the gale blew with such force that the hajj vessel nearly capsized; the captain lost all sense of direction. With daylight, the passengers spotted the village of Baqalta, 14 kilometres northeast of Mahdia.39 Futilely, the ra’is (captain) scrambled to run up new sails but winds tore them to shreds. The pilgrims awaited death. Then, with a mighty roar ‘like thunder’, the boat smashed onto an outcropping; goods and people spilled into the churning tides. On board, however, were ‘numerous Bedouins from Beja who swam, saving themselves, with the exception of two; a woman was also saved’. Taken to Baqalta, they were warmed by fire and given olive oil and food. Only fifty or sixty souls survived, including some Christians, but the captain perished. As with the ghost ship, the tragedy yielded to Baqalta’s inhabitants a trove of incalculable worth: ‘They filled their houses with goods and enriched themselves with the money belts of the pilgrims. Each cadaver spewed up on the shore was robbed and buried in the sand’.40 At least this is what the chronicler Ibn Yusuf and his host of informants claimed, above all, those who knew how to swim.41 Objects surely washed up for some time along this stretch of coast, as they had for centuries, thereby nourishing the scavenger economy. In contrast to the ‘ghost ship’ without humans aboard, the violent winds that hurled the hajj ship onto shoals provoked great loss of life and fortune, therefore unleashing a firestorm in the capital.42 The ruler vainly sought to keep it a secret, but the rumour mill spun wildly until the consuls in Tunis made public the vessel’s fate. The families of the doomed pilgrims, and traders with cargoes onboard, laid charges against the qa’id of Baqalta. Summoned to the beylical court, he claimed to have taken nothing. After tumultuous proceedings, the palace doled out ‘large sums of money’ to the wronged parties.43 Later that same year, in 1762, the commander of a Dutch warship arrived at the Bardo Palace to press for the recovery of cargo from a merchant ship that went down in the environs where the ghost ship had appeared. The commander’s demand elicited a startling admission from the Husaynid prince: that he lacked the political and military clout to wrest the purloined merchandise snatched from the shore by his own subjects.44 What questions and answers does this second shipwreck raise? This vessel took to the water ‘for the first time’. Does this mean that captain and crewmen, whose identities remain unknown, were unschooled in the know-how to navigate the perilous Sicilian channel? The ship was leased from ‘Christians from the Venetian states’ who were probably long-term residents of Tunisia. Why would this be so? Tunisia still constructed its own vessels and boasted skilled 86

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Shipwrecks and Navigations navigators. But relations with Malta were always fraught, despite earlier ‘olive branches’ or peace overtures; it may have been safer to engage a ship flying the Venetian flag.45 Directly related, the number of passengers, if true, might suggest what kind of vessel it was. Third, we see how women as pilgrims arranged journeys to the Haramayn and how they were financed. By serendipity, or Sidi ‘Abd al-Rahman Sharif’s baraka (blessings), the daughter of Shaykh Bil-Qasim al-Samadhi had failed to reach La Goulette in time for the ship’s departure. And, as with the ghost ship, wonderous objects circulated in disaster’s wake, and tragedy at sea unleashed protracted international legal proceedings in the capital city.46 Finally, there arises the question of how Ibn Yusuf had gathered such kaleidoscopic details about the pilgrimage wreck. Mahdia had a relatively large community of kulughlis who were, while enrolled in the military registers, mainly involved in the olive oil export trade with Christian commercial partners. It seems that this identifiable group, numbering over 300 in a small port, shifted their political allegiances and alliances during internecine dynastic conflicts to whomever would advance their trading interests. One can speculate that the members of this community were known to Ibn Yusuf and furnished information to him on the dreadful denouement of the 1762 pilgrimage journey; in addition, the fact that his fellow Bejans had organised the trip to the Hijaz, and some had survived the catastrophe, would offer another oral source.47 By now complex threads and patterns have partially come to light. Our narrator is not only Ibn Yusuf but also other informants, eyewitnesses, storytellers and rumour mongers.48 We can almost hear their constant murmurs behind his words, especially those of the swimmers. Indeed, he mentions that a Moroccan appeared in Beja, as people in 1762 mourned for loved ones drowned on their way to the Holy Cities. Returning from the pilgrimage, but wrecked at Benghazi, the unnamed Moroccan recounted that all the passengers had been saved but the vessel’s merchandise ‘of incalculable wealth’ had vanished into the sea.49 Second, our chronicler does not shy away from revealing unsavoury matters here or elsewhere in his Chronicle – he takes pleasure in recording the misdeeds of his contemporaries, especially notables. The most damning was the plight of drowned pilgrims heading for the Haramayn; even the faithful en route to lands deemed sacred were subject to plunder. Like the holds of fragile vessels broken on rocks, Muḥammad al-Ṣaghīr ibn Yūsuf’s accounts are replete with precious little objects, shards of floating stuff awaiting historians. Wrecks were so common globally that they ‘created an entire underclass of scavengers who haunted the coast, waiting for the tide to deposit treasures’.50 The archaeological literature on shipwrecks during Antiquity is enormous, and much ink has been spilled on seafaring for the British Isles, navy 87

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Julia Clancy-Smith and empire.51 In scientific, literary and beaux arts works, the shipwreck not only as a cruel reality but also as a powerful metaphor, trope and genre has generated a stunning corpus of fiction, visual material, musical composition and so on. Well-studied for European and American coasts, narratives of disasters at sea, or within sight of land, are largely absent from Maghribi historiography. That scholars of Tunisian history of whatever generation have totally ignored this part of the chronicle is perplexing. But if the preoccupation is with the origins of the modern state and nation, other processes and peoples will be side-lined. Finally, tacking back to periodisation, surely the inhabitants of the Beja region, particularly the Muq‘ad peoples, the ones who got there first, recalled the spring equinox of 1762 as a turning point, the best year in memory. They may still be talking about it today. Nevertheless, given the frequency of wrecks, quasi-wrecks, or near misses, there must have been a number of these incidents during 1762 and all the years covered by Ibn Yusuf’s chronicle. And in view of his evident awareness of mishaps that threatened his grain trading, he would not have been indifferent to news of ships in distress. Our author probably decided to give full narrative rein to these two incidents, because fellow Bejans were involved in both and provided eye-witness data, and because the ghost ship surely spooked the locals for years to come. These ‘just-so’ stories of people and things in the sea or on adjacent shores are problematic; issues of sources, orality, paratextuality and translation arise. Why, and for whom, did Ibn Yusuf narrate these dismal dramas, which are recounted at the end of a long story, replete with endless political and social malheurs? These questions steer us to the author’s life trajectory and to his times.

Who Was Muhammad al-Saghir ibn Yusuf? We mentioned above that Ibn Yusuf hailed from the small city of Beja, the graingrowing heart of Africa Proconsularis, near the sea as well as the border with Algeria. His work documented the tumult attendant to the rise of a nascent dynasty, the Husaynids, seeking autonomy from their overlords, the Ottomans. To this end, Husaynid rulers, particularly from the 1740s onwards, engaged in a calculated policy of ‘de-turkification’ in the composition of the Tunisian armed forces, which had Hanafi Janissaries and sipahis largely recruited by the Porte from the Levant, as well as Tunisian infantry and cavalry increasingly recruited from Tunisian tribal confederations.52 The author and his life story are remarkable for a number of reasons. First, his social status rendered him ill-suited, indeed wholly unlikely, to assume the mantle of chronicler.53 Ibn Yusuf hailed from the ranks of the kulughli, the son of a ‘Turkish’ father attached to the Ottoman jund (military) dispatched from 88

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Shipwrecks and Navigations eastern Ottoman lands to North Africa and a Tunisian woman from Beja. Locally educated, he was not schooled in the capital city in the manner of the snobby baldi ‘ulama; he was not a faqih. Standard biographical dictionaries of the period exclude Ibn Yusuf, making the historian’s task of reconstructing his life more daunting. But he was a bibliophile and collected or borrowed manuscripts from libraries in Tunis and elsewhere, laboriously copying some of them for his own use. Included in his personal papers were copies of partial works attributed to Ibn Khaldun and many other writers; much of this material only came to light a century after his death in mosques in Tunis and al-Qayrawan. The son of a slave, a part-time soldier turned farmer, was at the same time a scholar.54 Enrolled before 1741 in the infantry with a salary and some tax breaks, Ibn Yusuf evinced scant enthusiasm for combat, preferring to carefully tend his estates and the remunerative trade in grains. He proved a relatively prosperous farmer, attentive to the deleterious effects of politics and adverse climatic fluctuations upon fields and flocks. Most of his chronicle is straight-up political history, but he also reported bad weather and sailing conditions so critical for delivering harvests to markets. He approvingly noted the construction or restoration of irrigation works, which betrays a keen interest in agrarian science and technology related to water supplies and crops.55 Times were tough. He and his family – he had four sons – experienced dreadful reversals: princely quarrels, relentless invasions from the west, the retraction of his jund stipend, loss of part of his fortune, blighted crops and flights to the safety of Tunis – in short, hardships and travails marked his life and shaped his account. The turmoil resulted from the fact that two rival branches of the emergent dynasty struggled to establish legitimacy. This bitter fight was imbricated with Algerian military incursions that sought to establish the hegemony of Algiers over the rich agricultural lands of Northern Tunisia and the policies of the Porte. As the warring Husaynid princes fought to exert mastery over their realm, fiscal privileges for kulughli infantrymen, like Ibn Yusuf, in villages and towns were eliminated in 1742, but not in the capital city; later military wages would be restored, but at much reduced rates. At play here was the role of both Istanbul and Algeria in Tunisian affairs and the problem of which military forces could be ‘trusted’ during Algerian invasions. Moreover, treaties were re-negotiated with long-standing Mediterranean powers; older enemies, such as Malta, became uncertain friends, for a while at least. Older ‘friendly’ Italian states became foes. In 1741, the bey’s army occupied the island of Tabarka which had been conceded to the Genoese in the mid-sixteenth century for coral fishing and trade with local tribes. Some sources claim that the Genoese were enslaved and that the French-held comptoir 89

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Julia Clancy-Smith at Cap Nègre or Cap Serrat destroyed, perhaps because of secret negotiations with France to hand over exclusive rights to the lucrative coral banks.56 An early modern, reconfigured version of the Ottoman province, combining elements of the older Hafsid state (1229–1574), was in the making in the Central Mediterranean corridor.57 All of these elements shaped Ibn Yusuf’s life and his writings, but one critical element is that he had been born in Beja. Most significantly, Beja hosted the summer mahalla, a mobile military expedition reaffirming dynastic legitimacy that functioned as a giant tax-collecting campaign, a travelling court of law and a seasonal market whose wake stirred up thousands of people. Not surprisingly, the expedition set out each year just after the grain harvest. And the qadi of the mahalla, a key position in the Husaynid state, was himself from Beja and a close friend of Ibn Yusuf. Despite intimacy with inner ruling circles, ‘he never held judicial or administrative positions’. Members of his family, still residing in Beja around 1900, characterised him as ‘enjoying the reputation of a very learned individual who the beys held in high esteem and always invited to their table’ when they resided in Beja.58 Our author’s bookish personality gestures to yet another topic awaiting its historian: the fact that ‘provincial’ towns or small cities like Beja could produce learned persons. Because Ibn Yusuf was a regular at the summer palace, a grain merchant, and because he frequented Tunis, he witnessed, heard, and knew a lot, and toward the end of his life he converted research notebooks (kunash) into narrative form. Our author began labouring away on the history around 1763 or 1764 and concluded before 1771. The last section contains the saga of the two ships, curiously the most ‘curious event’ of a turbulent era.59 The wrecks near Beja and Mahdia, told and retold by his numerous informants, must have been fresh in the collective mind, because they had just transpired and because goods probably still washed ashore. As for the question of audience or readership, it appears that the chronicle was for the author’s personal collection and delight, rendering it even more valuable than a commissioned dynastic history. People must have known that he was writing because he borrowed books from libraries and sought out eyewitnesses to events. It was mainly, although not entirely, composed in the ‘vernacular’ of the period, and presumably a more or less literate person could read it. I would argue that in a sense his scribblings represented ‘literary captivity narratives’ because they were not only accessible (to some) but also recorded infamous deeds, salacious acts and immoral behaviour. In short, his work may have held ‘hostage’ some of his contemporaries who enjoyed power in the last years of the 1760s. Ibn Yusuf’s work was translated over a century later into French from what Arabists today characterise as darija. With Ibn Yusuf’s death around 90

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Shipwrecks and Navigations 1771, the chronicle in several different manuscript versions seems to vanish from view, according to Muhammad Lasram and Victor Serres who oversaw its translation and publication. Yet, prior to the 1890s, it must have been circulating among erudite Tunisians in several iterations between Beja, Tunis and al-Qayrawan.60 Its long-drawn-out peregrinations from the ‘vernacular’ into published French and into late-twentieth-century Arabic points to the complex, irregular transitions from manuscript to print, a story that still needs to be pieced together.61 As far as we know, Ibn Yusuf never journeyed beyond the confines of eighteen-century Tunisia, yet he was a cosmopolitan figure. Our chronicler travelled often, voluntarily or not, between the capital city and his native town and talked to many people, of many social stations, including the Muq‘ad tribesmen, the swimmers and those in ‘Ali Bey’s entourage. During the over seventy years of his life, the world beyond came into his universe through warfare, shipping, migrations, travellers, news and connections to communities such as the kulughlis of Mahdia. As stated above, Ibn Yusuf’s work offers one of the fullest, most animated accounts of North African shipwrecks available for this period, written by an ‘indigenous’ historian, and one from the provinces, to boot. Our author acknowledged that he was but one among many whose testimonies paint the vivid canvas of the 1762 tragedies, as well as the political upheavals he recorded throughout his history. He admits to collating eye-witness accounts from a range of informants, even inviting the reader to correct his version; sometimes two slightly different editions of the same incident are proposed.62 Moreover, the author takes delight in relating acts of infamy – and not only about his co-religionists’ immoral behaviour during the pilgrimage fiasco, the theft of money-belts. He favours the ethnographic and savours his role as raconteur. His stories clearly had a moral intent. Perhaps his manuscript might have represented a peculiar sort of ‘ransom narrative’. Recall that he had sat at the ‘bey’s table’. His entrée to the Beja summer palace may have been due to his profound knowledge of this region so critical to the country’s fortunes. As Chérif pointed out decades ago, most political and other elites in the capital only entertained a fuzzy notion of conditions among, let’s say, the Muq‘ad tribal peoples. Thus, the Bardo regularly consulted with provincial notables and shaykhs as ‘informants’. Ibn Yusuf may have served as one such informant, but he had an enormous corpus of notebooks. His account decisively shaped French understandings of the nature of the ‘traditional’ or pre-colonial state and, above all, how two rival soffs, or tribally based alliance systems, came into existence during the early years of the eighteenth century. This was of supreme strategic concern to the Protectorate 91

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Julia Clancy-Smith military responsible for maintaining order in tribal zones and, above all, along the borders with Algeria, as well as in the deep south. In the final section below, we follow the post-1771 peregrinations – as far as can be ascertained – of the chronicle and its diverse textual incarnations during the early colonial period, from 1883 until about 1914.63

After-lives: The Chronicle and French Colonialism in ‘Post-Ottoman’ Tunisia The discovery and uses made of Ibn Yusuf’s work (and others like it), so I argue, signal a profound, if only short-lived, shift in the trajectory of French colonialism in the Maghrib. This brief era, from 1883 to 1900, might represent a potential, but unrealised, turning point. Invaded by a ‘French’ army from Algeria in 1881, Tunisia suffered years of military ‘pacification’ and tribal uprisings along its two frontiers, north and south. A decade later, l’Institut de Carthage was founded in Tunis in 1894 as ‘une académie des arts et des lettres, des sciences et d’histoire’ and organised a promotional campaign. As part of that promotion, the institute created a journal, Revue Tunisienne (RT), which was inspired by the Algerian Revue Africaine and continued to be published for decades. Collaborating in both the institute and the journal were Tunisian, French and European literati, notables, officials, scholars and amateur archaeologists.64 How French authorities stumbled across Ibn Yusuf’s account remains a bit hazy but is important to the issue of after-lives and turning points. At least one manuscript came to light when an Arabic-speaking military interpreter and contrôleur civil named Canova discovered it in the Great Mosque in al-Qayrawan. Intending to render the text into French, Canova never achieved his ambition. Transferred to Tozeur, where a cholera epidemic raged, he succumbed in 1893. Apparently, Canova flagged the chronicle’s importance to Protectorate officials, including Mohamed Lasram (1866–1925) and Victor Serres, the former Directeur de l’Administration des Forêts d’oliviers, the latter Contrôleur civil attaché à la Résidence Générale à Tunis. In the Protectorate’s pecking order, Lasram held an extremely powerful post, overseer of the forests, al-Ghaba, and hailed from a notable family of high-ranking chancellors or ra’is al-kataba; he was also a graduate of the prestigious Sadiki College in Tunis. Lineage and erudition conferred upon him membership in the ‘conseil d’administration de la Khaldounia’, created in 1896; he eventually headed this important intellectual society from 1900 until 1909.65 Biographical documentation on Serres is harder to find but Protectorate archives in Tunis and Nantes will hopefully provide information. 92

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Shipwrecks and Navigations In collaboration, Lasram and Serres translated Ibn Yusuf’s chronicle into French and published their text, with annotations and excisions, in serial installments in the Revue Tunisienne beginning in the mid-1890s. They worked with two copies of the manuscript: one from the al-Qayrawan mosque that proved incomplete; the other from the Zaytuna collection. Moreover, they conferred with Tunisian ‘ulama, savants and archivists, as well as with locals from Beja. Here we need pause once again. No scholar has interrogated these instalments printed over a four-year period by the Institut de Carthage, nor compared the RT accounts with the 1900 book. My close examination of the journal issues and the subsequent book indicates that they are identical. Another question is how the readers of the RT received these translations from 1895 onwards, given that the journal was the premier scholarly venue for the dissemination of research in many disciplines. And who exactly subscribed to it?66 In their preface to the 1900 book, the translators admitted deleting material judged tedious or grammatically infelicitous, because they deemed the manuscript a work of ‘history not literature’. They also cited the last volume of Plantet’s Correspondance des beys de Tunis appearing in 1899, which indicates that published materials circulated rapidly between Paris and Tunis. Needless to say, colonial authorities mined Ibn Yusuf’s text for intelligence on the interior, tribes and borders; above all, the contrôleurs civils and military officials prized the data on how the Bashiya and Hassiniya factions came to be. Significantly, the translators expressed gratitude to the French ResidentGeneral René Millet (1849–1919; in office, 1894–1900) for his support: ‘nos plus vifs et nos plus sincères remerciements’. Thus, the first book-length edition appeared in 1900 in Tunis and Paris, with the blessings of the most powerful figure in France’s Protectorate.67 By the standards of this period, Millet was very well-disposed toward Tunisian society and Islam; he not only patronised publications and FrancoTunisian cultural organisations but also partially financed the first school for Muslim girls which opened its doors in 1900.68 Lasram and Serres continued translating together. Another Arabic manuscript was published in 1903 in Paris as Voyage au pays des Senoussia à travers la Tripolitaine et les pays Touareg. Shaykh Mohamed Hachaïchi, who had assisted them with the Ibn Yusuf undertaking in his capacity as the conservator at the Zaytuna, composed this work in 1896 in Arabic.69 There was nothing innocent about these collaborations and translation projects, of course. The grand obsession of France, Great Britain and Italy was the Sanusiya Sufi Order. The translation projects of Lasram and Serres, and others like them, have gone largely unappreciated in the annals of French colonialism in the Maghrib 93

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Julia Clancy-Smith at a particular historical juncture. Should we read these multiple collaborations, scholarly as well as politically motivated, as simply a colonial quest for knowledge to rule more effectively? By 1900, Millet was ferociously attacked as too sympathetic to Islam and Tunisia – as an ‘Arabophile’. One can see why. In 1899, he courageously made a provocative statement in public, to the effect that it was a pity that France had not put the Husaynid dynasty on the thrones of Constantine and Oran during the early conquest era, as proposed by Marechal Clauzel before General Bugeaud assumed power in Algeria in 1840. Denounced by the colonial lobby and its press, as well as by pro-empire advocates in the Metropole, Millet was hounded from office by the extremist wing of the European settlers in Tunisia. In a prescient statement issued from Paris in 1902, Millet warned his fellow countrymen of the dangers of creating in Tunisia ‘a regime of reducing and driving back the native population, a regime of [legally] exceptional measures, of assigning to the French alone all the budgetary resources [ . . . ] such a regime existed in Algeria and its [negative] results are too well known to be necessary to recall’.70 Soon thereafter came the Great War. The work of Lasram and Serres has gone through several reprints since the 1930s, but no new editions since 1900; the last French imprint of Ibn Yusuf’s Chronicle came in 1978 by Bouslama in Tunis. Post-colonial historians, Tunisian and otherwise, have mainly relied on the 1900 French translation for data on the early Husaynid state – its finances, taxation, factions and military organisation. In the 1970s, Ahmed Abdessalam closely scrutinised the three or so extant Arabic manuscripts in an erudite study of Tunisian historiography over the centuries; but the shipwreck narrative went unnoticed. Beginning in 1998, Ahmad al-Tawili (in French, Touili) issued volume 1 of the first Arabic edition, which does not cover the 1762 equinox; the final volume, numbered 4, only appeared in 2008.71 Grammatical infelicities, regional ‘dialectical’ Arabic, distasteful or morally objectionable details and the author’s social identity explain perhaps why the manuscript was not published in Arabic until the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Yet, the increasing purchase and legitimacy of ‘vernacular’ Arabic literature in published form during the past several decades surely played a role in its eventual appearance. Ibn Yusuf’s flawed education and prose are fortuitous for Mediterranean Studies today. He (and named or unnamed co-narrators) recorded what he saw and heard, unencumbered by the scholarly conventions and filters used by ‘ulama schooled in the capital.72 Social origins and literary vice represent windfall for the historian. Is there enough or any evidence to interpret Ibn Yusuf’s history as a ‘ransom narrative’ at the time of its eighteenth-century composition? This question, and many more, await. 94

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Conclusions and Postscript I have scrutinised the shipwreck narratives from various angles and scales for many purposes. However, the main thrust is that the chronicle itself and the writer’s life raise problems of periodisation. I argue for a land-and-sea perspective that steers us towards uncharted turning points in the many histories of North Africa, France and the Ottomans. One of my methodological arguments is that scholars need ferret out strange stuff and poke around in unlikely places and times for bewildering objects and unexpected persons. In this way, we arrive at views from the water’s edge, and from there we imagine novel turning points and periodisations. Despite calls to reconfigure historical mappings, the critical junctures for our field remain largely imperial, dynastic, or disaster history. Although valuable, these markers are somewhat threadbare and have even become teleological. They betray colonial interpretive tranches of time, skewed perhaps by the nation-state, lurking on future horizons. If some chronological ruptures have proven overly abrupt in politically-driven narratives, the slow-motion unfolding of others appears troubling. In the Mediterranean of the millennium, or the hang-glider’s macro vista, events seem more or less the same, suspiciously so – as seamless continuities punctuated by predictable ruptures. As for conventional meso-chronologies, often Euro-centric, the precise GPS locations of the pre-modern, the early modern, even the long nineteenth century, are increasingly blurry. What do shipwrecks during an un-important year, an eighteenth-century writer, micro-foci on water and land, and the after-lives of a literary and historical record tell us about turning points and periodisation? First, the identity of the chronicler begs for more study. Why and how did someone characterised as a kulughli come to write this account? Indeed, the taxonomy itself invites historical reflection because it is so widespread in the North African literature for Algeria, Tunisia and Libya in specific periods. Moreover, the fact that Ibn Yusuf composed in darija, the language(s) of those taking pen to paper to record events, suggests that one of the Mediterranean’s major linguistic groups, ignored for the most part, was in fact a constellation of ‘vernaculars’.73 Second, if broken vessels, drowned pilgrims and passengers gone missing represent the ‘end’ of a story, and a terrible one indeed, these melancholy events unleashed other beginnings, in fact. Pastoral-nomadic peoples, confined to vaguely threatening semi-arid interiors (from the state’s and often the historian’s view) now appear as keen observers of ship movements, savvy in the arts of redistributing water booty. 95

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Julia Clancy-Smith An unexamined assumption in much of the literature on the Mediterranean begs for reflection: the notion that ‘to be connected’ was deemed desirable, positive, for contemporaries. The construction of modern lighthouses along the Algerian and Tunisian coastlines in the nineteenth century was greeted with delight by many, but dismay by some.74 The prime example of unwelcome connections during the long nineteenth century was the steam ship that put some seamen out of business, as it could only berth in certain kinds of large ports. At the same time, the ‘age of steam’ paradoxically launched more sail- and oarpowered boats onto the water than ever before. The point is that, for communities in earlier or later epochs, novel linkages – whether nurtured by transport technologies, instruments for credit or association, or deadlier warfare – were experienced differentially, a boon for some, a disadvantage for others. Some older, more comfortable connections succumbed to unfamiliar ones, but others were re-invented or re-oriented. A cruel example in the twenty-first century’s wake of the ‘Arab uprisings’ is the rubber dinghy or repurposed fishing boat laden with unfortunate souls on the Mediterranean. The dramas triggered by the spring equinox illustrate the centrality of water specialists who anticipated disaster and profited from it, swam to safety and scavenged. Unsuspected actors, anonymous bearers of local maritime science, surface either to navigate deadly shoals or fail to do so. Micro-islets, beaches and reefs, as well as winds, seasons, climates and currents become historical actors that shaped political and economic pulses. And we observe how objects, rare and mundane, circulated, were possessed and repurposed. Finally, imperial and inter-state haggling over treaty obligations fixated on sodden bits of satin and velour and took place in pastoralists’ tents in the ‘Massifs’ of the Muq‘ad tribe and on the beach – as well as in palaces, courts, or consular offices. In the eighteenth century, distance from the capital city, which was measured and imagined differently in that period, did not mean detachment. Moreover, the maritime zones where the wrecks occurred, one on the Sardinian passages, the other off the Sicilian-Maltese Channel, while characterised as small villages or provincial cities, represented a potent mix of centrality and marginality. As yet unperceived ecological and environmental forces intertwined at this juncture and in these spaces after 1762, shaping incipient empires. Nevertheless, looking at things solely from an imperial or central state perspective leads us astray.75 Trudging through the debris left behind, the historian discovers that the ghost ship’s hull, picked clean by scavengers, renders visible shortages of essential resources – wood was scarce in the Maghrib. By the nineteenth century, the docking of ever larger vessels was problematic in many of its ports. Earlier seizures of European ships at sea had furnished prototypes and skilled craftsmen, whether local or recruited from elsewhere. But supply chain issues, particularly 96

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Shipwrecks and Navigations in naval stores, increasingly posed obstacles to North African ship-building.76 After the 1816 Anglo-Dutch Exmouth expedition, Husaynid captains no longer confiscated vessels from nations ‘at war with Tunisia’. Indeed, the beylik had to maintain peace with all states rimming the Mediterranean because its waters held enormous dangers. For the Muq‘ad peoples and others like them, one wonders if steam transport gradually undermined the maritime scavenger economy nourishing their principal, if precarious, subsistence activities, herding and farming. Bigger, more seaworthy vessels may not have run aground on shores adjacent to their pastures, although the cabotage trade with its smaller vessels endured for a long time. What impact might the light house have had? In his capacity as Minister of the Navy, Khayr al-Din initiated light house construction during the 1850s; the French resident general Millet completed the project by 1900 so that the entire Tunisian coast boasted these edifices, as did Algeria’s shores. During the nineteenth century, the Tunisian state acquired the means, firepower and otherwise, to subjugate at least temporarily the once formidable tribal confederations of the mountainous interior, particularly during and after the 1864 revolts, thanks to European support.77 As I have argued elsewhere, the 1816 Exmouth campaign to North Africa embodied a medium velocity, or meso-chronology, ‘turning point’ for trans-sea encounters. Previously, ransom captives, slaves, renegados, folks washed ashore, expatriates fleeing home, runaways and adventurers filled the ranks of peoples in motion, largely but not exclusively from the Mediterranean’s northern edges. Soon after 1816, labour and other kinds of migrants pushed north to south at an accelerated pace, replacing, not entirely, the older mobile circuits or arteries.78 Recall that, to date, historians have totally ignored Ibn Yusuf’s chronicle as a record of fortune and misfortune on land and sea. Of course, the question of where terrain and water begin and end needs to be raised when dealing with estuaries and deltas, like the Majarda River system near Beja. Archivally-derived shipping statistics for major ports in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before the advent of steam transport, document international commerce: numbers and types of vessels, cargoes, crews, identities of passengers and so forth. But these only provide an imperfect accounting of things and people crossing the unruly waters. In addition, the cabotage trade, invariably sliding into black and grey markets from the state’s view, remains elusive. Moreover, the fishing and cabotage professions, which were never distinct, have been downgraded by historians in favour of ‘big’ maritime commerce.79 And with that downgrading, the nautical and navigational skills of those involved have been dismissed. Nevertheless, one can argue that all three water professions bled into one another. And, the peoples of coastal villages, the most populated areas of Tunisia, from 97

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Julia Clancy-Smith Tabarka to Djerba, including the Kerkenna Islands, mingled the agrarian, aquatic and pastoral in their peasant economies. From these older statistical bases, however, historians have spun larger arguments about the circulation of commodities and capital between North African, Ottoman and European lands and economies. The scavenger and wreck economies involving trading partners around the Mediterranean’s edges and beyond might tell a slightly different story, if integrated into conventional narratives. These would also offer multiple, yet webbed temporalities, and periodisations. Floating bits of terrain, the role of islets and uninhabited micro-islands are frequently excised from the narrative or charts: as prisons, havens, navigational markers, suppliers of water and food. Islands functioned as places of exile for the children of ‘unwed’ mothers well into the twentieth century, demographic nurseries, dispersing people near and far. Regarding periodisation, the sixteenth-century Ottoman conquests of North Africa spawned a tenacious dynasty, somewhat by accident (the Muradites, ruling 1613–1702, should be considered precursors).80 Founded by the son of a Muslim from Crete, the Husaynids not only mirrored but also shaped the larger play of trans-Mediterranean politics for centuries. But so did the peoples on the ‘margins’: in the massifs near the water’s edge, on the coasts and in the ‘interior’. Historians have traced the incremental Ottoman losses of EuroBalkan lands through warfare from the cusp of the eighteenth century onwards. Across the sea, a slightly different span of time can be re-imagined: from Ibn Yusuf’s later years through the reign of Hammuda ibn ‘Ali Pasha (r. 1782–1814), until circa 1816, which includes the French Revolutions. This new, yet old, state controlling the Central Mediterranean corridor has been filed away in the wrong historical drawer – going directly from an Ottoman province to French colonial possession. As for the afterlives of the Chronicle during the early Protectorate, from about the 1880s until 1900, the intimate collaborations of Lasram, Bashir Sfar, Serres, Millet and others suggest that another type of colonial encounter might have been possible. In June 1920, Millet’s widow, who had helped establish the School for Muslim Girls twenty years earlier, organised a public reception for the members of the Dustur nationalist party in the heart of the Metropole. They had journeyed to Paris to present their demands and grievances directly to the French government as the Peace conference was underway. In the longue durée of the Mediterranean, did the years clustered around 1762, fore and aft, constitute a period of ‘dross’, or do these moments signal deeply entangled processes of intensification and abatement that might suggest alternative turning points, or at least historical possibilities? 98

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Notes * This chapter benefitted greatly from the 2019 Levi Della Vida Conference held at UCLA, the Princeton University History Department and Mediterranean Seminar, and the international conference ‘Mapping Tunisia: How to Do Mediterranean Studies’, jointly sponsored by the Harvard University Center for Middle East Studies in Tunisia and the University of Tunis. Special gratitude goes to Susan Slyomovics, Nancy E. Gallagher, Molly Greene, William Granara, Sihem Lamine, Brian Catlos and Sharon Kinoshita.  1. Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–89) was among the most celebrated painters of sea and landscapes during the second half of the eighteenth century. Commissioned by the monarchy, Vernet travelled the realm to execute precise studies of ports so important to France’s imperial and economic interests. This work portrays a ship flying the Dutch colours, which had crashed on cliffs amid a tempest. Significantly, Vernet, who never visited North Africa but painted throughout southern Italy, was a contemporary of Muhammad ibn Yusuf. I argue that we can align these two individuals in terms of life stories and artistic or literary output: the first, Vernet, employed paint and canvas to convey the dangers of the voyage; the second, Ibn Yusuf, could not draw on an indigenous tradition of grand landscape painting, for one did not exist in his day, but instead relied on a vibrant vernacular language to express the terror of sea and storm. On Vernet, see Philip Conisbee, Art for the Nation, exhibition catalogue (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 2000).  2. Zeynep Çelik’s publications are too numerous to cite here. However, the collaboration with Frances Terpak on our collectively edited volume, The Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City through Text and Image (Los Angeles and Seattle: Getty Research Institute, University of Washington Press, 2009), stands out as a most remarkable scholarly experience.  3. In Arabic, kurghuli; in French, kouloughli.  4. This piece is inspired by meditations on how to combine ‘thinking in the past tense’, while simultaneously inhabiting ‘past spaces’ when conceptualising, narrating and framing. It represents a sort of ballon d’essai for a monograph (tentatively) titled Navigations: North Africa, the Sea, and the World, c. 1750–Present. Initial arguments were sketched out in ‘A View from the Water’s Edge: Greater Tunisia, France, and the Mediterranean before Colonialism, c. 1700–1840s’, special issue on France and the Mediterranean in the Early Modern World, ed. Megan Armstrong and Gillian Weiss, French History 1, no. 29 (2015): 24–30; and Julia Clancy-Smith, ‘The Mediterranean of the Barbary Coasts: Gone Missing’, in The Making of the Modern Mediterranean: Views from the South, ed. Judith Tucker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), 36–66.  5. His chronicle, al-Mashraʻ al-mulki fi saltanat awlad ʻAli Turki, whose textual history is exceedingly complex, was edited by Ahmad al-Tawili, with introduction and annotation (Tunis: al-Matbaʻa al-‘Asriyya, 1998–2008), in four volumes – more than two centuries after the ‘completion’ of the Arabic manuscript. However, several original manuscripts, or partial copies, were translated by 1900 into French as Muhammad Lasram and Victor Serres (trans.), Mechra El Melki: Chronique Tunisienne du règne des fils d’Ali Turki (1705–1771) (Tunis: Imprimerie Rapide, 1900; second edition: Bouslama, 1978), introduction and brief biography, 1–5. Hereafter, the French translation from 1900 is cited as Ibn Yusuf-F and Tawili’s edition as Ibn Yusuf-A. The last in-depth study of Ibn Yusuf and his work was half of a century ago: Ahmed Abdesselem, Historiens Tunisiens des XVII, XVIII et XIX siècles: Essai d’histoire culturelle (Paris: Klincksieck, 1973), 243–59.

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Julia Clancy-Smith  6. The classic work on the dynasty’s earliest origins is Mohamed-Hedi Chérif, Pouvoir et société dans la Tunisie de Husayn Bin ʻAli (1705–40), 2 vols (Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1984). Husayn ibn ʻAli was born in Tunisia to ‘Ali al-Turki, a Janissary from Candia or Crete and member of the Ottoman jund in Tunisia. His father married two ‘local’ women, one from an Arab tribal confederation, the Shannufi, near al-Kaf, along the border with Algeria; a second wife, a Berber, hailed from the alQayrawan region. Husayn’s mother was the second spouse. The strategic nature of these marriages deserves more research. Husayn apparently was unversed in Turkish; Arabic was his mother language. See also Asma Moalla, The Regency of Tunis and the Ottoman Porte, 1777–1814: Army and Government of a North-African Ottoman Eyalet at the End of the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2004); Amy Aisen Kallander, Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013); M’hamed Oualdi, Esclaves et maîtres: Les mamelouks au service des beys de Tunis du XVIIe siècle aux années 1880 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2011); Youssef Ben Ismail, ‘Sovereignty across Empires: France, the Ottoman Empire and the Imperial Struggle over Tunis (ca. 1830–1920)’ (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2021); and Andreas Tunger-Zanetti, La communication entre Tunis et Istanbul 1860–1913: Province et métropole (Paris: Éditions de l’Harmattan, 1996).  7. A rich corpus of unpublished correspondence exists in the National Archives of Tunisia, Tunis, in the ‘historical section collection’. In addition, correspondence and related documents are found throughout archives in Europe, for example, in the Archives Nationales, Paris, and the Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes.  8. For example, Louis de Mas Latrie (ed.), Traités de paix et de commerce et documents divers concernant les relations des Chrétians avec les Arabes de l’Afrique septentriole au moyen âge (Paris: Henri Plon, 1866); and Eugène Plantet’s Correspondance des beys de Tunis et des consuls de France avec la cour, 1577–1830, 3 vols (Paris: Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, 1893–99).  9. Lucette Valensi initiated research on North Africa and the Mediterranean during the 1960s. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) and David Abulafia can be credited with sparking Neo-Mediterranean Studies. In our field, the work of Edmund Burke III, Molly Greene, Nabil Matar, John McNeil, Judith Tucker, Joshua White and many others should be noted for the modern eras. Sharon Kinoshita and Brian Catlos sparked a similar revolution through their research and establishment of the Mediterranean Seminar. Christine Isom-Verhaaren, The Sultan’s Fleet: Seafarers of the Ottoman Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2021), signals a profound shift in interest among Ottoman historians. 10. Ibn Yusuf-A, vol. 4, 200. The author does not employ the term ‘ghost ship’, but this was a common label in sea and ocean narratives of ships adrift without humans aboard. 11. A long deposition dated 1846, in the National Archives of Tunisia, carton 206, dossier 87, armoire 21, ‘Correspondance of the Beys with the Consuls of France’, contains detailed nautical data on the complex itinerary of a vessel (gondole) from Ajjacio during the spring equinox. Headed for Bône and Philippeville, huge seas drove the ship from islands and islets across the Central Mediterranean until violent storms forced it to beach on Cap Serrat. The unusually detailed ship’s log reveals that the captain was islet-hopping to cope with intemperate weather. This was also in keeping with age-old navigational strategies.

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Shipwrecks and Navigations 12. Youssef Ben Ismail, Columbia University, graciously brought the documentation to my attention and digitised the file; ‘Documents relatifs à l’affaire du naufrage du navire ottoman “Aslan” au large de Nefza (1895)’, in Archives Nationales de Tunisie, Série H, Carton 223.400BIS. 13. Ibn Yusuf-A, vol. 4, 200. 14. Ibn Yusuf-F, 438–39; the account is not linear but circles around to add details to the narrative, based once again on multiple observations and a range of informants and sources. 15. Ibid., 438–41. 16. Ibid., 440. 17. Recent scholarship on the Muqʻad tribe is scant; see Secrétariat général du gouvernement Tunisien, Nomenclature et repartition des tribus de Tunisie (Chalon-sur-Saône: Imprimerie Française et Orientale E. Bertrand, 1900). 18. Ibn Yusuf-F, 441. 19. Helen Saberi, Tea: A Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 79–80, maintains that only after the Crimean War did British tea merchants seeking new markets in the Western Mediterranean introduce tea to Morocco. 20. The Galite Islands (Tunisian Arabic: Jalita; Italian: Isola della Caletta), a string of volcanic islets located 38 kilometres northwest of Cape Serrat, are situated in one of the most dangerous navigational zones. They lie 150 kilometres south of Cape Spartivento in the south of Sardinia and for centuries served as ancient stepping-stones between North Africa and the Mediterranean islands. In 1684, a French map was published in Paris, entitled ‘La Rade au dessous de Galita’, author-cartographer unknown, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, section cartographique, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. That the French navy surveyed this section of coastline is significant and related perhaps to the presence of rich coral banks off the islands granted as concessions to various Italian rulers and traders. See Fiorenzo Toso, ‘Tabarchini e tabarchino in Tunisia dopo la diaspora’, Bollettino di Studi Sardi 3 (December 2010): 43–73; and Philippe Gourdin, Tabarka: Histoire et archéologie d’un préside espagnol et d’un comptoir génois en terre africaine (XVe–XVIIIe siècle) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2008). 21. Thanks to work by Paula Findlen (ed.), Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800 (New York: Routledge, 2013), and others, the history of things, a subfield of the history of consumption, represents a solid field; see Alan Mikhail, ‘Anatolian Timber and Egyptian Grain: Things that Made the Ottoman Empire’, in Early Modern Things, 274–93. 22. Ruby Grantham et al. (eds), ‘Spatiotemporal Determinants of Seasonal Gleaning’, People and Nature 3, no. 2 (April 2021), 376–90. 23. Animals on board ships were common – and important – but have hardly been studied. In addition, creatures large and small had been exchanged as gifts between North Africa and European powers since the time of Carthage. Horses, camels, lions and gazelles were dispatched from Tunis to Paris; for example, in 1690 animals were sent to Louis XIV as part of a diplomatic mission. See A. Pellegrin, ‘Envoyés Tunisiens en France avant 1881’, Bulletin Économique et Social de la Tunisie 98 (March 1955), 75–88. A major question remains: how were these animals transported? 24. Tamar Herzig, ‘Slavery and Interethnic Sexual Violence: A Multiple Perpetrator Rape in Seventeenth-Century Livorno’, American Historical Review 127, no. 1 (March 2022): 194–222, offers an exhaustive bibliography of the most recent scholarship on women and enslavement from Italian and other Mediterranean archival sources.

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Julia Clancy-Smith 25. See Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.), Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, intr. Nabil Matar (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 89–95, on scientific expertise and enslavement. A late-seventeenth-century account attributed to Jean Bonnet, Histoire de l’esclavage d’un marchand de la ville de Cassis à Tunis, ed. Catherine Guénot and Nadia Vasquez (Paris: Éditions la Bibliothèque, 1993), 94–95, provides documentation on enslavement and maritime savvy. Bonnet notes that nineteen slaves of diverse nationalities – French, Italian, Sicilian, Maltese, Portuguese, Dutch and Greek – excelling in the arts of navigation were called upon by the captain to cross a particularly treacherous expanse of water off the Tunisian and Sardinian coasts. 26. Ibn Yusuf-A, vol. 4, 200. 27. Ibn Yusuf-F, 441–42. 28. Moalla, The Regency, quote 44. 29. For the late seventeenth century, see Étienne Cleirac, Usages and Customs of the Sea (Bordeaux: [n. p.], 1647); Joshua M. White, Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2018); and Hassan S. Khalilieh, Islamic Maritime Law: An Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 1998). White introduces the crucial issue of the ‘reach’ of Ottoman and European laws at sea and thereby raises other questions. Did the Husaynids as well as local maritime authorities or traders observe Islamic laws governing ships and cargoes as property? And who interpreted them? The thick corpus of treaties concluded with non-Muslim states and entities greatly complicated things. Another likely scenario is that older Mediterranean norms and practices were combined with diplomatic arrangements, depending on time, place and circumstances. Directly related is the legal question of jettisoning, the more or less voluntary dumping of cargo to save a ship in distress, or to conceal its contents from authorities in pursuit of illicit traffic and traders. 30. Ibn Yusuf-F, 438. 31. Ibid., 441. 32. Ibid., 441–42. The mention of ‘educated Christians’ raises the question of identity as well as the critical issue of ‘indirect diplomacy’ and its multiple political roles in a wide range of activities subsumed under the unsatisfactory rubrics of ‘trade and commerce’. 33. Mathieu Grenet, ‘Muslim Missions to Early Modern France, c.1610–c.1780: Notes for a Social History of Cross-Cultural Diplomacy’, Journal of Early Modern History 19 (2015): 223–44. 34. Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf, Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk tunis wa ‘ahd al-aman, 8 vols (Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiya lil-Nashr, 1963–66), vol. 2, 200; this work was first published in Tunis in 1901 by al-Matbaʻa al-rasmiya al-ʻarabiya. 35. Ibid., vol. 3, 133–35; Charles Monchicourt, Documents historiques sur la Tunisie: Relations inédits de Nyssen, Filippi et Calligaris (17, 1829, 1834) (Paris: [n. p.], 1912), 140–41; and Adolphe Rousseau, Annales tunisiennes (Algiers: [n. p.], 1864), 343–44. Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 143–45, notes that by 1839 most of the remaining Tunisian vessels were disarmed and employed for commerce. On military reforms and the navy, see 299–303. 36. William N. Bates, ‘Archaeological News’, American Journal of Archaeology 15, no. 1 (January–March 1911): 77–129. In a series of underwater campaigns from 1907 until 1913, priceless artifacts, including sculptures and bronze reliefs, were recovered and deposited at the Musée National du Bardo, Tunis, and elsewhere. French archaeologist

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Shipwrecks and Navigations Alfred Merlin, Director of Antiquities in the Protectorate of Tunisia, oversaw the campaigns that World War I disrupted. 37. Ibn Yusuf-F, 442–43. 38. How did Ibn Yusuf come to know the story of the pious daughter of Shaykh Bil-Qasim al-Samadhi? He probably knew her family in Beja, and word travelled fast in that small city. If she never realised her desire to perform the hajj to the Haramayn, her story ended up not in Mecca but at the Saudi Royal Library in Riyadh, which recently purchased one of Ibn Yusuf’s manuscripts for its collection. Finally, the historian longs for an inventory of what the widow’s travel trunks contained; see Elizabeth A. Lambourn, Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 39. Ibn Yusuf-F, 442–43. 40. Ibid., 443. 41. Ibid., 444. 42. Mediterranean scholars have long studied ‘cultural’ phenomena, above all the critical question of identities and religion, ports and politics. Yet, other sources of data beckon us; the geo-marine sciences and climatology direct us to where political and cultural worlds collide with geology and geography. The Skerki Banks or narrows, a zone of relatively shallow open sea, lie between Sicily and Tunisia adjacent to the Cap Bon; these banks have proven especially treacherous for centuries, even millennia. During the Little Ice Age, known reefs – such as the Esquirques, volcanic outcroppings surrounded by sandbanks – receded under higher water levels; their location apparently disappeared from shipping charts or orally-transmitted nautical knowledge, provoking numerous wrecks. Since 1988, archaeological surveys have revealed a concentration of shipwrecks, ancient and more modern, in this zone. Christian Weitmeyer and Hardi Döhler, ‘Traces of Roman Offshore Navigation in Skerki Bank (Strait of Sicily)’, The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 38, no. 2 (2009): 254–80. See also Giuseppe M. R. Manzella, ‘The Seasonal Variability of the Water Masses and Transport through the Strait of Sicily’, in Seasonal and Interannual Variability of the Western Mediterranean Sea, ed. Paul E, La Violette (Washington DC: American Geophysical Union Publications, 1994), 33–45. 43. Ibn Yusuf-F, 443–44. 44. In October 1762, the French consul in Tunis reported that ‘M. Rinter, commander of a Dutch warship, arrived in Tunis to insist that the bey recover cargo on board a vessel of the Compagnie de Hollande that sank near Cap Nègre. The prince welcomed Rinter with evident displeasure and informed him that the peoples residing near the shores of this shipwreck enjoyed the haven of inaccessible mountains, thus it was impossible for him to acquiesce to these demands’. Plantet (ed.), Correspondance, 587–88. Here the ‘mountains’ or jabal may refer to are the Muq‘ad massifs, not far from and parallel to the shore. These massifs are often missing from modern maps. 45. Ibn Yusuf-A, vol. 4, 209. Lucette Valensi, ‘Relations commerciales entre la Régence de Tunis et Malte au XVIIIe siècle’, Cahiers de Tunisie 11 (1963): 71–83, made the critical point that corsair activity pitting Malta against Tunisia blocked the evolution of the latter’s maritime economy; moreover, the proceeds from the corso were hardly worth the while. 46. The widow’s story is told at length in Clancy-Smith, ‘The Mediterranean of the Barbary Coast’. She may have narrated her part of the tale to Ibn Yusuf, a fellow Bejan.

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Julia Clancy-Smith 47. Chérif, Pouvoir et société. 48. On the information order, see Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), Chapter Four. 49. Ibn Yusuf-F, 444. 50. Eric Jay Dolin, Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016). See Nataniel Rich’s review, ‘To the Lighthouse’, New York Review of Books 63, no. 9 (26 May 2016): 26–29, quote 26. 51. For approaches to the worlds of seamen, see Robert Lee, ‘The Seafarers’ Urban World: A Critical Review’, International Journal of Maritime History 25, no. 1 (June 2013): 23–64; the most recent bibliographical overview is Cian T. McMahon, ‘“That City Af loat”: Maritime Dimensions of Ireland’s Great Famine Migration’, American Historical Review 127, no. 1 (March 2022): 100–28. 52. Mohamed-Hedi Chérif, ‘La déturquisation du pouvoir en Tunisie: Classes dirigeantes et société tunisienne de la fin du XVIIème siècle jusqu’à 1881’, Les Cahiers de Tunisie 67–68 (1981): 177–97. 53. One might compare him – with great care – to Khayr al-Din Pasha (c. 1810–90), originally a Circassian slave brought from the Porte to Tunis where he was enrolled in the army around 1830. Khayr al-Din differed in that he was a palace mamluk groomed for service in Istanbul and the beylical household. Nevertheless, his origins made him an unlikely candidate for the composition of one of the most brilliant political treatises of the period, Aqwam al-masalik fi maʻrifat ahwal al-mamalik (first Arabic edition, Tunis, 1867). In a similar vein, Ibn Yusuf’s social background as a kulughli educated in local schools in Beja rendered him atypical to assume the mantle of chronicler. 54. Julia Clancy-Smith, ‘The “Son of a Slave”: Kulughlis Abroad and Ottoman Demographic Diasporas in North Africa, 18th to 19th Centuries’ (unpubl. manuscript). See also Sami Bargaoui, ‘Des Turcs aux Ḥanafiyya: La construction d’une catégorie “métisse” à Tunis aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, in Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 60, no. 1 (February 2005): 209–28. The question of how his papers travelled from Beja to Tunis and Qayrawan is of great significance, but answers are difficult to track down at present. Part of his personal library ended up in the inheritance of one of the early twentieth-century beys. 55. Ibn Yusuf-A, vol. 1, 23–25, among other examples; and Abdesselem, Historiens, 255. 56. Moalla, The Regency, 41–44, contains inaccuracies. As Christian Windler observed in his review of Philippe Gourdin’s, Tabarka: Histoire et archéologie d’un préside espagnol et d’un comptoir génois en terre africaine (XVe–XVIIIe siècle) (Rome, École française de Rome, 2008), coral banks around Tabarka had been exploited by Catalan and then Genoese fishermen since the late Middle Ages. The Lomellini family of Genoa made the industry into a flourishing affair. 57. Clancy-Smith, ‘A View from the Water’s Edge’, 26. Hussein Fancy’s The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 75–77, argues that the Crown of Aragon’s motive for seizing Sicily was to take Tunis and Carthage and rule the central Mediterranean – an age-old pattern. 58. Serres and Lasram, ‘Introduction’, in Ibn Yusuf-F, 2. 59. Ibn Yusuf-F, 438.

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Shipwrecks and Navigations 60. Abdesselem, Historiens; Lasram and Serres, ‘Introduction’; and Benjamin Koerber, ‘Vernacular Arabic Literature in Tunisia in the 19th through 21st Centuries’, African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures (20 April 2022) [online]. 61. Alex Hidalgo, ‘The Book as Archive’, American Historical Review 127, no. 1 (March 2022): 373–84. 62. Abdesselem, Historiens. 63. Kenneth J. Perkins, Qaids, Captains, and Colons: French Military Administration in the Colonial Maghrib, 1844–1934 (New York: Africana, 1981). 64. Revue Tunisienne 1 (Tunis, 1894), introduction to origins of the RT and its organisers; see Kenneth J. Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 65. See Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 73–82, on the illustrious Lasram lineage, and 82, note 104, on Mohamed who translated a number of works from Arabic into French, played a lead part in the Jeunes Tunisiens and occupied several key posts in the bey’s government under the Protectorate. See also Sadok Zmerli, Figures tunisiennes: Les successeurs (Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l’Edition, 1967), 87–98. 66. Fathiyah Balhajj, al-Thaqafa al-Tunisiya zaman al-istiʻmar faransi: Majallat ‘La Revue Tunisienne’ (Manuba: Institute of Advanced Studies on Nationalism, 2014). 67. Lasram and Serres, ‘Introduction’, quote 3, and quote 5 of thanks to Millet. 68. On Millet, see Julia Clancy-Smith, ‘Envisioning Knowledge: Educating the Muslim Woman in Colonial North Africa, 1850–1918’, in Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki Keddie, ed. Beth Baron and Rudi Matthee (Los Angeles: Mazda Press, 2000), 99–118.  Georges Perrot, À Jules Ferry, Tunis, 24 avril 1899 (Paris: [n. p.], 1899); préface de Gaston Deschamps, discours de René Millet, where Millet states: ‘On me permettra de regretter pour l’Algérie que l’expérience n’ait pas été faite’ (16). 69. Its editor was Challamel, but the name of the series was more to the point: ‘librarie maritime et coloniale’. 70. Perkins, History, 57. 71. Ibn Yusuf-A, vol. 4. 72. A comparison need be made with other chroniclers of Ibn Yusuf’s era. The closest would be Hammuda ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (died 1775) whose al-Kitab al-Bashi Abdesselem deemed important but characterised it as being a panegyric to the ruler mainly focused on elites in the capital; Les historiens, 262–67. 73. This is my argument. However, for the ‘medieval’ periods, see Karla Mallette, Lives of the Great Languages: Latin and Arabic in the Medieval Mediterranean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021). Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Karla Mallette (eds), A Sea of Languages: Rethinking the Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), would probably agree. 74. Naji Djellouli, Les Fortifications côtières ottomanes de la régence de Tunis, XVIe–XIXe siècles (Zaghouan: Fondation Temmi pour la recherche scientifique et l’information, 1995). 75. James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). 76. The man-of-war under construction in Tripoli’s port during the late seventeenth century took over five years because timber and naval stores were lacking; see Adrian Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests, and Captivity in the SeventeenthCentury Mediterranean (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010), 259.

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Julia Clancy-Smith 77. Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 142–44, argued that Tunisia’s maritime decline had begun by the time that the Husaynids had secured authority in the late eighteenth century, and that after 1815 its naval force only survived due to the precarious balance of power in Europe. However, Ahmad Bey (r. 1837–55) did seek to reinvigorate the naval yards in Gharh al-Milh, or Porto Farina, where twelve ships were constructed. An indepth history of the navy is wanting, as well as a study that combines analyses of how cabotage, fishing and big shipping and commerce intersected. 78. Julia Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: Europe and North Africa in an Age of Migration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty and Matthias van Rossum (eds), A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019). Unfortunately, this volume does not include essays on the Ottoman Empire or MENA. The expanding purchase of ‘Water Studies’, combined with deep socio-environmental research, is reflected in the American Historical Review’s two featured reviews, 26, no. 1 (March 2021): 237–43, by Debjani Bhattacharyya and Maya K. Peterson. 79. Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 368–72, touches upon wrecks from Antiquity to the Middle Ages within the context of debates regarding the relationships between ‘high commerce’ and the local or regional cabotage trades. 80. André Raymond, Tunis sous les Mouradites: La ville et ses habitants aux XVIIé Siècle (Tunis: Cérès Éditions, 2006).

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4 Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City: Urban Histories of Aleppo during the French Mandate Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh

During the French Mandate over Syria, the production of knowledge about the past and its material remains intensified to become more diverse, competitive and uneven. At a time of transformation – which was also a time of tension – three scholars wrote multi-volume urban histories of Aleppo. They were in conversation with each other and constituted part of interlocking networks of intellectuals throughout Syria and the region, even though they occupied very different positions of power in that network. Written in different languages and for distinct audiences, their books have had divergent careers. Kamil al-Ghazzi’s Arabic-language history is revered in Aleppo, but little known beyond it. Jean Sauvaget’s French-language historic panorama has influenced generations of scholars. Ardavazt Surmeyan’s Armenian-language history is almost forgotten. Yet, these three books present telling convergences and prompt important questions. What was at stake in writing urban history at that juncture? And why did these scholars seize upon urban history as their medium? This essay will show that, at this historical moment, urban history as an ekphrastic text constituted a privileged medium, not only to describe and narrate the city, but also to think about the present of urban society and to formulate prescriptions for the future. The inhabitants of Aleppo experienced the first half of the twentieth century as a series of jarring ruptures.1 As the capital of an important province in the Ottoman Empire, Aleppo had long forged deep social, cultural and economic connections to its large hinterland, and it was the centre of a global trade network. The first two decades of the twentieth century saw the 1908 107

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh revolution, World War I and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. Subsequently, when the post-war map of the Middle East was drawn, Aleppo fell south of a new international border that cut it off from its traditional hinterland. It was now in a new political formation, Syria, placed under French Mandate by the United Nations in 1922, along with Lebanon. Eventually, Damascus was chosen as Syria’s capital, relegating Aleppo to provincial status. In 1939, Aleppo lost even more of its traditional sphere when the Republic of Turkey annexed the sanjak of Alexandretta (renamed Hatay Province). Consequently, Aleppo lost its access to the sea through the port of Alexandretta and its longstanding trade networks (Figure 4.1). These political transformations had economic and social impacts. Demographically, Aleppo had always been diverse. In addition to its multi-ethnic and multi-religious communities, it had long-standing connections with the communities of the desert and attracted traders from Europe and the Far East. Following World War I, it absorbed a large number of Armenians who were evicted from their homeland in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian Genocide. While many in this refugee community transited through Aleppo to ultimately depart towards other countries, a significant proportion remained in Aleppo, received Syrian citizenship during the Mandate and became a permanent fixture of the urban landscape. Other groups made Aleppo their home as

Figure 4.1 General Henri Gouraud’s procession on al-Khandaq (Moat) Street in Aleppo, 13 September 1920, photograph by Vartan Derounian (postcard).

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City well – migrants from the countryside as well as several waves of Palestinians in the 1940s. New neighbourhoods sprang up to absorb these groups, setting in motion urban patterns that would intensify over the next decades.2 Aleppines participated in these political changes and reacted to them in various ways. New ideological movements such as Ottomanism and Arab nationalism held differing views about the right political entity to which Aleppo ought to belong. Some leaders held on to an Ottoman notion of society and culture. Others opposed Ottoman rule, favoured independence from the French Mandate and were oriented towards developments in other Arab cities, such as Damascus, Beirut and Cairo.3 This period of transformation was also a period of competing forms of knowledge and contested histories. Aleppo had longstanding traditions of history-writing in Arabic, usually by men of religion. Since the late nineteenth century, elites adopted modern modes and technologies of writing, including a vibrant press. With the Mandate, French scholars gained greater access to fieldwork in Syria and created an infrastructure of scholarship that researched and re-wrote the history of the country from its most ancient times to the present. The history of culture, and especially the history of architecture and cities, held pride of place among these intellectual creations.4 Against this backdrop, three authors independently and nearly simultaneously set for themselves a similar task. Al-Ghazzi, Sauvaget and Surmeyan chose Aleppo as their subject, and they treated that subject in a way that was selfconsciously comprehensive, even totalising. They did not simply aim at writing about Aleppo, they aimed at writing books that contained all of Aleppo. They produced works that were monumental in both intent and size: al-Ghazzi’s book was planned as a four-volume work, Surmeyan’s takes up three volumes, and Sauvaget’s takes up a large-format volume and an album. These three individuals were part of a network of scholars, politicians and bureaucrats in Mandate-era Syria, as well as of intersecting circles of intellectuals, institutions and non-governmental organisations within Syria, between Syria and France, and between Syria and what had been the Ottoman Empire. They knew each other, had social and scholarly interactions, and shared many common friends and colleagues. Yet, they were not equal players in this network in terms of power, access, or reach. The colonial setting and unequal relationships of power determined their roles and the afterlives of their works. These three individuals are emblematic of the production of knowledge in the late Ottoman and French periods. Yet, they have never been considered together as having engaged in a common or broader intellectual project. This is partly because we are still grappling with the consequences of the end of the Ottoman Empire as well as the rise of the nation-states and the colonial entities 109

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh that followed it. This is also due to the fact that different types of knowledge accrue authority and prestige at vastly different rates. Colonialism and power dynamics are baked into the development of the field of urban studies of the Middle East. Still, it is instructive to consider these three texts together, because French knowledge of Syria or the colonial terrain in general has too often been considered alone, as if French researchers were never in conversation with any local interlocutors. The heroic French explorer narrative that still holds some sway must be critiqued. Instead, when these three texts are studied together, it becomes clear that each is part of a network within which ideas circulated and resonated.5 This kind of resonance operated in many ways – producing not only circulation and amplification, but also distortion.

Al-Ghazzi: Islamic City Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi (1852 or 1853–1933) published three volumes of his monumental study of Aleppo, Kitab Nahr al-Dhahab fi Tarikh Halab (The River of Gold in the History of Aleppo) from 1923 to 1926.6 Al-Ghazzi was at the centre of the intellectual life of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Aleppo. He was a Sunni Muslim cleric, a bureaucrat, jurist, public intellectual and historian. His vision of Aleppo represents the ‘Islamic City’ – or perhaps the ‘Ottoman Islamic City’. It is a vision of urban history that is deeply rooted in Arabic-language Islamic discursive traditions and informed by the juridical and social worldview of late Ottoman modernity. Here I use the term ‘Islamic City’ not to reference its loaded use by scholars of Middle Eastern urbanism, but rather in the restricted sense of emphasising the continuity of discourses on the city by Muslim clerics.7 Kamil al-Ghazzi was a respected figure of Aleppo’s Sunni establishment, even though he did not come from one of the local notable lineages that dominated late Ottoman politics. Rather, he was the only son of Husayn b. Muhammad al-Ghazzi (d. 1855), an ‘alim from Ghazza who had studied at al-Azhar before following a famed Naqshabandi shaykh to Aleppo. Al-Ghazzi père died young, leaving a glittering reputation as a charismatic teacher who revived intellectual life in Aleppo and counted many notables as his students.8 His son Kamil, as a studious young man, became the protégé of the Ottoman governor of Aleppo and followed him to his next posting in the Hijaz, until his patron’s death around 1874, before returning home to serve as imam.9 Ottoman official patronage remained a hallmark of his career. The governor Husayn Jamil Pasha appointed him director of the official weekly, the bilingual Ottoman and Arabic journal al-Furat, in 1882.10 Al-Ghazzi composed poems in praise of Sultan Abdul Hamid II on the occasion of renovations at the Great Mosque 110

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City of Aleppo, and he pronounced the khutba during the opening of the clock tower at Bab al-Faraj Square in 1898, both major urban projects sponsored by the central Ottoman government.11 Al-Ghazzi helped research and write the Salname, the Ottoman official almanac for the province of Aleppo. Even in changing times around the constitutional revolution of 1908, al-Ghazzi continued to compose poetry in praise of the sultan.12 When newspapers proliferated in the wake of the revolution, he served on the editorial boards of several, such as Sada’ al-Shahba’.13 He managed to maintain his positions of authority through the troubled years of World War I, the period of the Arab Kingdom of Faysal and the French Mandate. His authority was anchored not only in his links to important officials, but also in his positions of responsibility at the shari‘a courts, as well as in his work for the Tribunal du commerce and the chamber of commerce, and in his service as a member of Aleppo’s municipal council.14 Al-Ghazzi was known and respected beyond Aleppo as well: the newly established Arab Academy in Damascus elected him a member in 1921, and he became the president of its Aleppo section.15 In the years following the end of the Ottoman Empire, al-Ghazzi was involved in all major cultural endeavours in Aleppo: he helped establish the local branch of the national library, Dar al-kutub al-wataniyya, around 1924.16 He was a founding member of the Archaeological Society (Jam‘iyyat al-‘Adiyyat) around 1931 and served as its president until his death.17 He served on the board of the new National Museum in Aleppo.18 He was an indispensable guest at the literary salons of the city, and he enjoyed the friendship and respect of its glitterati.19 Al-Ghazzi contributed prolifically to Arabic-language journals and magazines.20 He was also the author of published and unpublished works that are cited by his friends, including poems, works of advice and an intriguing unpublished treatise on the rights of non-Muslims titled Jala’ al-zulma fi huquq ahl al-dhimma (Dispelling the Darkness on the Rights of Non-Muslims).21 The fact that al-Ghazzi published an Arabic translation of a noted Ottoman Turkish treatise on the law of endowments (awqaf) underscores both his facility with Ottoman Turkish and his expertise in Islamic law.22 Al-Ghazzi’s celebrated achievement, Nahr al-dhahab, follows in form the established genres of traditional Arabic-language historiography.23 From the evocative title with its internal rhyme to the structure of the work and its sources, al-Ghazzi’s book is faithful to that genre, while being anchored in the early-twentieth-century present of its author. Nahr al-Dhahab is intertextual: it extensively quotes passages from previous histories. It thus preserves parts of earlier chronicles that existed only in manuscript copies and that have since become lost or inaccessible. In addition, it also makes extensive use of legal documents such as endowment deeds, to which al-Ghazzi had access by 111

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh virtue of his work at the sharia court.24 Some endowment deeds related to key monuments in Aleppo are even quoted in their entirety, indicating a nearfetishisation of the legal document.25 The book also evinces first-hand knowledge of the city, obtained through familiarity with its streets, neighbourhoods and monuments. Its descriptions provide a snapshot of the state of key buildings at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nahr al-Dhahab was conceived as a four-part work, a compendium of the ways in which traditional Arabic-language historiography wrote about the city. The first section (published as volume 1) was an introduction that surveyed the medieval chronicles of Aleppo and described the city’s hinterland, with localities presented with their Ottoman-era administrative designations. Next came a historical topography in the genre of khitat, which surveyed Aleppo neighbourhood by neighbourhood (published as volume 2). An annals section chronicled historical events arranged by years in the hijri calendar (published as volume 3). The fourth and final section was a biographical dictionary, or tabaqat. While the latter appears to have been written, it was unfortunately never published and is presumed to be lost.26 In the historical topography (volume 2), the author systematically described the state of the city, including contemporary information as well as a discussion of athar – antiquities or historic monuments. Al-Ghazzi proceeded methodically, beginning with the ramparts and city gates, the citadel, then sections on each neighbourhood. He used the same template to present every quarter: he began with demographic figures – no doubt derived from his access to Ottoman official sources – and some basic historical information, then described monuments in hierarchical order, beginning with the largest Islamic religious sites, then religious sites associated with other sects, public buildings such as fountains and markets, and finally houses. For each monument, al-Ghazzi presented their histories, often quoting inscriptions, with a special emphasis on analysing their endowments with the aid of extensive excerpts from legal documents from the Islamic courts – such as waqfiyyas. In this sense his vision is very much that of a Muslim jurist. His writing style is factual, declarative and descriptive. Interpretation or opinion intrude into the text on occasion, while quotes from poetry, past and present, are plentiful. Following the tradition of historical topographies, al-Ghazzi privileged information on the social use of buildings rather than their visual character.27 He included no photographs and only a couple of basic diagrams of the urban ramparts. As Nora Lafi noted, al-Ghazzi’s narration underscored the link between the urban fabric, the endowments that sustained urban functions and the notables tasked with the civic duty of preserving this order (Figure 4.2).28 112

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City

Figure 4.2 This diagram of Aleppo’s ramparts is one of the few visuals in alGhazzi, Nahr al-dhahab, vol. 2, p. 18

Al-Ghazzi’s vision of Aleppo was distinct from other Islamic visions of urban history, exemplified by a long poem by the Sufi Shaykh Muhammad Abu al-Wafa’ al-Rifa‘i (1765–1847). Titled Awliya’ Halab (Saints of Aleppo), it presents an alternative sacred geography of Aleppo that maps the city through shrines, tombs and other spaces associated with Friends of God or Islamic saints.29 Written in the early nineteenth century and certainly known to alGhazzi, the poem was likely part of a corpus of literature that has largely vanished. Al-Ghazzi included these shrines in his description of Aleppo as well, but integrated them within his systematic, hierarchical structure of urban description, rather than making them the centre of discussion. Al-Ghazzi’s adherence to ‘traditional’ historical formats notwithstanding, his production of knowledge about the history of the city is an artifact of the early 1920s.30 An affinity between al-Ghazzi’s work for the Ottoman imperial almanac and Nahr al-Dhahab can be seen in the categories of information privileged in both texts. For example, al-Ghazzi prefaced his description of each neighbourhood with a table of demographic information drawn from Ottoman official population figures. Unlike Sauvaget, for example, al-Ghazzi was very interested in the modern layer of Aleppo, not only its medieval or early modern glory. He wrote approvingly about Aleppo’s modern neighbourhoods. 113

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh He described the suburb of ‘Aziziyya (begun in the 1870s through Ottoman patronage) in this way: ‘It is considered one of the greatest neighbourhoods of Aleppo and the one with the largest streets and most magnificent houses [ . . . the houses] combine the old style and the new style [ . . . ] you see houses there [that] are like great palaces on wide streets’.31 In his chronicle of the year 1893, al-Ghazzi celebrated the opening of Jaddat al-Khandaq, or Moat Street, a modern boulevard to the west of the city constructed on the site of what had once been the moat outside the ramparts: ‘People could go on it with great ease. It used to be a garden outside the walls [. . . now] there is the telegraph in it’.32 The new street, lined with modern buildings, became an important transport link. The opening of Moat Street was covered in Istanbul newspapers such as Servet-i Fünun as a marker of Ottoman modernisation, as Zeynep Çelik has shown.33 Al-Ghazzi appears to have been aware of European history and modes of writing. For example, in the chronicle section, upon noting that France held a Mandate over Syria, he proceeded to present an overview of French history, including a discussion of Jeanne D’Arc.34 Yet, he preferred to use a traditional textual form, unlike others in his intellectual circle, who opted to experiment with modern historiographic forms. Examples include Qustaki al-Himsi’s history of literary figures of Aleppo, or Ferdinand Taoutel’s volumes of historical documents on Aleppo, which privilege a historicist notion of ‘the primary source’.35 This may in part be due to the fact that both were Arabicspeaking Christians (Taoutel was a Jesuit priest) who were not employed in the shari‘a courts. Al-Ghazzi’s focus on a great city was in line with traditional forms of historiography, yet his choice to maintain this focus on the city itself should not be taken for granted, since he was writing at a time of unprecedented upheaval. The Ottoman social order, where he occupied a position of respect and prestige and where Aleppo was the capital of an extensive province, underwent great changes before collapsing after World War I. Aleppo became part of new political formations such as the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Faysal and, later, the newly created Syrian state under the French Mandate. Much of Aleppo’s traditional hinterland and the trade networks of its inhabitants now fell on the wrong side of a new international border. In a general sense, al-Ghazzi was politically conservative, a person invested in the traditional social hierarchies of the Ottoman polity, which formed the source of his social privilege. Among the range of political positions of intellectuals in Aleppo at the time, he occupied something of a middle ground. Some of his contemporaries were more vocal in their nostalgia and support for Ottoman institutions (such as Raghib al-Tabbakh), while others were firmly in the camp of Arab nationalism and resistance against French rule (Edmond Rabbath).36 Despite his close association with Ottoman officials 114

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City and panegyrics to Abdul Hamid II, al-Ghazzi nevertheless wrote negative judgments of Ottoman policies during World War I and of figures such as Jamal Pasha (Ahmet Cemal Pasha, 1872–1922), one of the ‘Three Pashas’ who ruled the Ottoman Empire during the war, a figure reviled in Arabic historiography. For al-Ghazzi, the Ottoman Empire comprised two great peoples – the Arabs and the Turks. Many of the problems of World War I he blamed on the Turks and their poor decisions. Keith David Watenpaugh has noted that al-Ghazzi was a proponent of a form of civic comity he called husn al-mukafa’a, understood as a benevolent system of recompense or something akin to an exchange of social goods.37 In the context of al-Ghazzi’s book, this described a social balance maintained through an agreed-upon proper form of public behaviour, where each urban group knew their place, and which, when properly upheld, could provide the basis for urban harmony in a social environment of great ethnic and religious diversity. When he talked about the influx of Armenian Genocide survivors into Aleppo during and after the war, al-Ghazzi expressed notions of hospitality to the stranger, tolerance and charity; but this was predicated on the refugee’s proper behaviour and the respect for social hierarchies.38 Thus, Al-Ghazzi’s notion could be interpreted as an ethics of urban living in a diverse and stratified society under the tremendous pressures of the war. Al-Ghazzi was writing at a time when the social and urban order he celebrated was in the midst of irreversible change. As he was writing it, his book was becoming a monument to a vanishing political system. Moreover, within a few years of the last volume’s publication in 1926, Aleppo, like other Syrian cities, underwent great changes – architectural, economic and demographic. It expanded in size and absorbed new populations – displaced Armenians as well as migrants from the countryside, and, after World War II, Palestinians. For Mandate-era French scholars and planners, al-Ghazzi represented the continuity with the Ottoman period. Even though he was the President of the Archaeological Society, he was marginalised by the French colonial urbanists as they reshaped the city by demolishing large areas in the old urban core.39 Many of the neighbourhoods and monuments described by Ghazzi became unrecognisable within a couple of decades.40 Since the Syrian civil war, of course, this has become all the more true. For Aleppines, al-Ghazzi’s work remains popular, often paired with the biographical dictionary by al-Tabbakh, also published in the 1920s. The two works enjoy both a scholarly and a popular audience, and their reissue in the early 1990s is a testament to their enduring appeal. The eager reception of al-Ghazzi’s book by the late twentieth century prompts questions; the book may have represented a nostalgic view of an ‘authentic’ past, one that meshed with the 1990s movement towards ‘a return to history’.41 115

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh Nahr al-dhahab guided the research of Mandate-era French scholars such as Sauvaget, was known to Surmeyan and remains a key source for academics. Yet, only recently has this work been seen as something beyond a handy compendium of facts and documents, and as a text to be read critically. Still, al-Ghazzi’s work remains marginal in Middle East Studies or Arabic literary history at large. It is a measure of its obscurity that very few copies of it exist in US university libraries.

Sauvaget: ‘Colonial City’ Jean Sauvaget’s scholarship is as indebted to al-Ghazzi’s book as anyone’s; yet, it was his inventory of Islamic monuments of Aleppo, and not al-Ghazzi’s text, that informed generations of urban planners intent on modernising Aleppo and managing its architectural patrimony. The influence of Jean Sauvaget (1901–50) on the urban history of the Middle East is difficult to under-estimate. By his untimely and tragic death, he had been appointed a professor at the Collège de France, and he had created a substantial record in the study of Islamic Syria, with a special interest in urban and architectural history. His masterpiece is his book Alep: Essai sur le développement d’une grande ville syrienne, des origines au milieu du XIXe siècle, published in 1941. As the title indicates, it is a comprehensive history of Aleppo, one of the longest continuously inhabited cities in the world, from the dawn of history to the mid-nineteenth century. Supported by the colonial knowledge infrastructure in Syria, Sauvaget emphasised the use of primary sources in Arabic and fieldwork with the material remains of medieval sites. His research both expanded the scope of the urban history of Arab cities and simultaneously formulated a narrative of their development. Nevertheless, Sauvaget subscribed to certain orientalist tropes, including the decline paradigm. His work is foundational and important – in some ways unequalled – even as it is compromised by these tropes. His work remains immensely influential, even though scholars have pointedly critiqued his colonial blind spots – most notably André Raymond.42 The continuing impact of Sauvaget’s work is no doubt due not only to its rigour and scope, but also to the fact that it benefited from the colonial context and from the ongoing Eurocentrism that privileges works in European languages and receives advantage from the continued support of French scholarly networks, so much so that Sauvaget continues to be recalled in near-hagiographic terms. The 1965 publication in English of Sauvaget’s handbook for the study of the Muslim Middle East amplified his impact in the North American academy.43 I call his contribution to Aleppo’s urban history ‘colonial city’ to underscore the importance of the colonial reality in shaping his work while acknowledging the importance of his achievements. 116

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City Sauvaget arrived in Syria soon after the establishment of the Mandate as an arabisant. His institutional base was the French Institute for Arab Studies in Damascus. Founded in 1922, it endures today as one of the branches of the Institut français du Proche-Orient.44 The institute was the site where research was supported, fieldwork was launched, and discoveries were published in a quest for a savoir colonial.45 Despite recent critical evaluations of the role of French research institutions in Mandate-era Syria and Lebanon, an image of heroic French young men – always men – in search of knowledge in colonial terrains predominates.46 Less highlighted in Sauvaget’s storied career are his Syrian teachers and collaborators – a network of scholars and societies, as well as journals and books such as al-Ghazzi’s. The most critical among them was the young Damascene intellectual and artist Khaled Moaz. He and Sauvaget were ‘inseparable’ during fieldwork throughout Syria.47 Moaz’s careful architectural drawings often appear in Sauvaget’s publications, sometimes credited and sometimes not. Differentials of power and access were present in this collaboration, as throughout Sauvaget’s network. Long after Sauvaget’s death, Moaz continued his work in scholarship and cultural heritage management in Damascus.48 In 1931, at just thirty years of age, Jean Sauvaget was commissioned to produce an inventory of important ‘Muslim monuments’ in Aleppo.49 This list, along with lists of ancient and Christian monuments compiled by other French scholars, played a critical role in defining what counted as a monument of lasting value in the city. The lists shaped a French colonial vision of Aleppo’s built patrimony and informed the work of urban planners tasked with modernising Aleppo while protecting the inventoried monuments. Sauvaget’s method focused on the social history of medieval cities in Syria and the history of everyday life. As he emphasised in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France in 1946, he found some sources more critical than others. First, he privileged material culture, studied through what he called ‘l’archéologie urbaine’, which meant architectural surveys of urban layers rather than excavations.50 He documented it extensively through architectural drawings and photographs – indeed, Alep’s second volume is made up entirely of visual documentation. Second, he sought out medieval archival documents that presented raw and objective facts, or ‘les faits eux-mêmes, présentés à l’état brut et en toute objectivité’, that he preferred over what he saw as the halftruths of court chronicles and panegyrics.51 In addition to primary sources, Sauvaget’s Alep was also indebted to the work of al-Ghazzi and other modern Arabic-language studies, even though such authors were marginalised both in scholarship and in terms of influence on the process of urban planning and cultural heritage management on the ground. 117

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh In addition to this rigorous evidentiary base, Sauvaget also distinguished himself by his periodisation and his interest in the transition of Syria’s cities from the late antique to the Islamic periods. Sauvaget sought to uncover the Greco-Roman grid of antique cities such as Damascus, Aleppo, Lattakia and Bosra beneath their present state. Thus, by the nature of the material he assigned to himself, Sauvaget was more likely to see the relationship between the antique and Islamic periods as one of continual reuse and, in his view, decline. Moreover, Sauvaget used categories that were products of the twentieth century, such as ‘Syrian cities’ and ‘Arab cities’, even when he discussed time periods during which the regions that he studied had been part of the Ayyubid, Seljuk, Mamluk, or Ottoman states. His history of Aleppo from its foundation to the nineteenth century defines it as ‘une grande ville syrienne’, employing the neologism of ‘Syria’ as a transhistorical marker.52 Sauvaget’s most explicit colonial language appears in his repeated characterisation that Islam’s contribution to urban history was ‘essentiellement négative’.53 Sauvaget equated political and administrative stability with social harmony, the construction of public buildings and the regularity of urban planning, what he called ‘l’unité morale’ of a city. As such, the Greco-Roman city, with its unified orthogonal plan and civic buildings, was an ideal type with moral superiority. Unity of form rather than fragmentation and communal consensus rather than individual action were the building blocks of the ‘moral unity’ of a city.54 Consequently, his history of Syrian cities demonstrated the slow and inexorable degeneration of this ideal type, which reached its nadir in the Ottoman period. In Aleppo, Sauvaget had chosen a city that boasted a glorious medieval period, but had also been thoroughly reshaped by the Ottomans, who erected its most striking features – great mosques in the Istanbul style, the largest covered bazaar in the world and monumental caravanserais with richly decorated façades. And yet, famously, Sauvaget derided the Ottoman architecture of Aleppo as nothing but a ‘trompe-l’œil’, ‘a sumptuous façade behind which there are only ruins’.55 For Sauvaget, Ottoman decline was most apparent in the lack of a civic consciousness and urban planning. To him, the great urban complexes endowed by Ottoman patrons in the sixteenth century that so thoroughly reshaped the city centre were merely the haphazard result of expansion driven by the ambition and greed of individual patrons.56 True, Sauvaget did not find Ottoman-era master plans in the archives located in Aleppo. Architectural historians such as Gülru Necipoğlu have since shown that, in the imperial Ottoman context, the place to look for such plans was not provincial Aleppo but rather Istanbul, the capital, and she has studied the complex process at the centre that produced imperial urban plans for Aleppo and other provincial 118

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City cities.57 Yet, even without archival evidence, Sauvaget’s own research on the architectural remains indicates a concerted, deliberate transformation of the city rather than a random accumulation of individualistic, self-serving acts of patronage. Thus, at the heart of Sauvaget’s work is a contradiction: while his research documented the fact that the fabric of Syria’s cities was largely Ottoman, his narrative could not acknowledge the Ottoman period as primary, but rather rejected it in the strongest possible terms. He categorically denied any type of planning and asserted a lack of civic consciousness. Thus, Sauvaget’s study of Aleppo reads like a moral parable that demonstrates the ultimate superiority of the European cultural ideal. In short, Sauvaget created a framework for the study of Muslim cities along the Mediterranean littoral that centred on a narrative of irreversible decline from the rational grid plan of classical antiquity to the slow degeneration into the irrational diagonals, meandering alleys and culs-de-sac of the Muslim present. Sauvaget emphasised this decline not only in his narrative, but also through the visual tool of a sequence of full-page diagrams that highlighted the transformation of urban form through the centuries and the dilution of the antique plan (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3 Sauvaget visualised the transformation of Aleppo through a sequence of urban plans (Source: Sauvaget, Alep, vol. 2, pl. LXX)

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh Importantly, Sauvaget’s study of Aleppo ignored or downplayed its modern neighbourhoods that had so enthralled al-Ghazzi. His history of the city stops in the middle of the nineteenth century, just before the major urban projects of late Ottoman governors. In his broader work, Sauvaget hardly discussed the modern spaces of Syrian cities, even though his headquarters in Damascus, the French Institute, housed at the eighteenth-century ‘Adhm Palace at that time, was adjacent to the modern Suq al-Hamidiyya, and despite the fact that he visited the modern apartment buildings and clubs in the ‘Aziziyya neighbourhood of Aleppo (the same neighbourhood discussed by al-Ghazzi above).58 The elision of the modern in this discourse represents an absence so consistent and so striking that it was certainly constructed. Eliding the late-Ottoman modernity of Syria had important implications. Sauvaget stated it explicitly at the end of Alep: ‘Au moment où s’achève notre étude, devenue exsangue, elle [la civilisation islamique] meurt, laissant le ProcheOrient, et Alep avec lui, à la remorque de l’Occident’.59 In his words, Islamic civilisation, drained of blood, finally died in the early twentieth century, leaving Aleppo and the Middle East as a whole in thrall to the West. In this conception, it is implied, the French mandatory power was the champion of modernity in the space where pre-modern backwardness had reigned. This stark presentation spoke of a Sauvaget quite far from the serious and open-minded scholar who seemed to stand apart from the more stereotypically colonial attitudes of his peers, who instead engaged with Arab society, read the Arabic-language press, conducted fieldwork with Syrian colleagues and set exacting standards of Arabic study for his students.

Surmeyan: ‘Refugee City’ Ardavazt Surmeyan (1889–1951) met Sauvaget during the latter’s fieldwork in Aleppo and gave him one of his works, a brief article in French on the city’s Armenian community, which is the sole source cited in Alep regarding the centuries-old Armenian community. Surmeyan served as the Archbishop of the Armenians of Aleppo between 1925 and 1940.60 Educated in Istanbul, he had been a public intellectual and political activist, supporter of the ideas of Ottoman equality that fuelled the 1908 revolution. Ottoman Brotherhood became a casualty of World War I. After narrowly surviving the Armenian Genocide, Surmeyan became a priest. During his time in Aleppo, he not only joined local intellectual circles such as the Archaeological Society, but also engaged actively with French scholars. He published a large number of studies on history and cultural heritage in Syria, most in Armenian. His most notable work is the three-volume Patmutiwn Halepi Hayots or History of the Armenians of 120

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City Aleppo: Topographical, Statistical and Historical (published 1940–50).61 This work includes a comprehensive urban history of Aleppo, similar in scope and ambition to those of al-Ghazzi and Sauvaget. I call Surmeyan’s vision of Aleppo ‘Refugee City’, not only because that is what he calls Aleppo (‘apastan,’ a place of refuge), but also because of what was at stake for him: to make refugees into citizens through urban history. He meant his work to be a road map for the Armenians who, like him, had arrived in Aleppo in the wake of the Genocide and now were struggling to integrate themselves into the new Syrian polity. Surmeyan represents a gambit – to make Armenian survivors of the Genocide into full-fledged Syrians – that was partially successful. While Surmeyan remains a vivid memory for Aleppo’s Armenian community, his work is completely forgotten in Middle Eastern Studies.62 This is quite simply because it is in Armenian. Yet, his work is fascinating because it shows us a view of Aleppo during the French Mandate by a progressive late Ottoman intellectual from Istanbul, who had tremendous access to legal and historical documents and who knew all the key players, both Syrian and French. The jurisdiction of the Prelate of the Armenians of Aleppo encompassed northern Syria, from the Mediterranean to the Tigris River. Since the creation of the Republic of Turkey and the final forced exodus of communities of genocide survivors from their ancient homelands, Aleppo and its hinterland were frequently their destination or point of transit. The roles and responsibilities of the Prelate had multiplied, as he served not only as regional head of the church, but also as the de facto political leader of the heterogeneous and vulnerable Armenian community. True, the Syrian state under the French Mandate had taken steps to absorb them. However, in addition to social and economic problems, the refugees faced discrimination from the local population, including violence.63 Al-Ghazzi wrote extensively about a massacre of the Armenian refugees in 1919.64 It fell to Surmeyan to lead his community in treacherous times. He capitalised on his command of the French language, which allowed him to engage Mandate officials directly; his modern sensibility; and his network of influential friends throughout the former Ottoman Empire and in the now-farflung Armenian diaspora. Surmeyan meant to uphold the dignity of the Armenian community that had so recently experienced the degradation of genocide, exile and displacement. He found in history and culture a source to connect the Armenian refugees to Aleppo and to uplift them. He soon developed an affinity for the city: ‘The more I stayed in Aleppo [ . . . ] the more I loved its ancient history’.65 Within months of his arrival in Aleppo, he founded a new Armenian-language periodical.66 While Surmeyan worked long days absorbed in the religious and 121

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh political duties of his office, he spent his evenings in the library of the Church of the Forty Martyrs, toiling to preserve and revive what remained of Armenian art and culture: ‘Working only at night, I catalogued each manuscript’.67 Surmeyan came to see this work of inventorying and recording as a first step in the compilation of the historical documents that would form the basis of his comprehensive history of the Armenian community of Aleppo. In addition to his catalogue of manuscripts, he devoted another book to the Armenian cemetery of Aleppo and its centuries-old, inscribed tombstones.68 Surmeyan was steeped in church traditions, yet his writing was informed by modern historiography. His fluency in the French language and intellectual tradition – a legacy of his Istanbul education – placed him in conversation with French-language historiography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was part of the network of French and francophone researchers active in Syria, such as Charles Godard, an official in charge of the Aleppo Railway and the author of a study of Aleppo replete with technical information.69 Surmeyan also participated in Aleppo’s intellectual circles where he was a frequent lecturer.70 Surmeyan was an assiduous researcher in primary documents from historic periods as well as his own contemporary moment. He had complete access to the archives of the Prelacy dating back to medieval times. During his trips to Europe, he consulted manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.71 As for his quest for up-to-date information, he obtained reports ‘with exact numbers’ from government offices.72 He corresponded with officials in Damascus to obtain information and did not hesitate to demand the intervention of the High Commissioner of Syria and Lebanon with the Russian engineer who supervised irrigation works in the region of Homs, to obtain a government report.73 He summarised or transcribed many of these documents and data sets in his Patmutiwn. In addition to tracking down documents, Surmeyan also organised site visits, including, for example, his 1925 expedition to the strategic medieval fortress of Bagras, located on a promontory adjoining Beylan Pass not far from Antioch.74 He documented sites through his descriptions as well as through photographs. Surmeyan commissioned noted photographers in Aleppo, such as Vartan Derounian and Hrad, to take pictures of sites such as the Dervish Lodge of Abu Bakr, one of the two most important Sufi lodges of Aleppo.75 Sauvaget, too, published photographs by Derounian; however, his interest in visual documentation was more systematic than Surmeyan’s. Unlike Sauvaget, but similar to al-Ghazzi, Surmeyan was enthralled by everything new and modern. He devoted an entire chapter to the new system of garbage collection, illustrated with especially commissioned photographs (Figure 4.4). 122

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City

Figure 4.4 Surmeyan’s Patmutiwn Halepi Hayots includes specially commissioned photographs such as this one by Hrad, which illustrates Aleppo’s new system of municipal garbage collection (Source: Surmeyan, Patmutiwn, vol. 2, 772)

Surmeyan’s frenetic scholarly output during his Aleppo years illuminates the transitions that Ottoman Armenians made from citizens of the empire that sought to eradicate them to refugees and, finally, to citizens of the new republics, where their presence began in the most precarious conditions and where they now formed a diaspora. Even after he had left Aleppo to become the Prelate of Beirut and later Paris, where he died in 1951 and is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Surmeyan continued his research on the history and cultural heritage of Aleppo’s Armenians. His publications, such as the inventory of manuscripts and the studies of icons and tombstones, provided the raw historic documents for his great book, The History of the Armenians of Aleppo, published in three monumental volumes over ten years. Yet, this work covers more than its title suggests. In addition to a history of the Armenian community of Aleppo from its medieval origins to 1908, it also contains a comprehensive history of Syria in its entirety, as well as an account of the city of Aleppo, from the dawn of humanity to the present. Surmeyan chose to place the history of the Armenians in his adopted city into a larger narrative arc: the millennial history of the land where he and his flock now lived, exiled from their lands of origin. Surmeyan emphasised the long-standing presence of Armenians in Syria and the medieval 123

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh Armenian church of Aleppo and celebrated the religious, economic and artistic contributions of Armenians to Aleppo. He considered his study a tribute, ‘a work of gratitude to a city where I lived [ . . . ] and which had been for centuries a place of refuge [apastan] and a mercantile haven for Armenians’.76 At the same time, Surmeyan wished to educate Armenians about the deep history of the country where they were now settled. ‘My goal is [ . . . ] to introduce the 150,000 Armenians of Syria and Lebanon to the topography and history of a hospitable land rich with history, where we live, and which we must love as much as our own homeland, and in order to love it [ . . . ] we must know it, its past history and current administration’.77 Thus, Surmeyan intended his work to help Armenian survivors of the genocide embrace their new homeland and recognise the place of their own community within it. In this History, Surmeyan did not raise the possibility of Armenians’ eventual return to the lands from which they had been so recently and violently evicted. He did not imply that Armenians should cease to be Armenians and fully assimilate into Syrian society. To the contrary, his commitment to the preservation of the Armenian community, its institutions and its culture is unmistakable. But his explicit emphasis on the need for recent Armenian transplants to fully embrace the new Syrian homeland distinguishes him from other prominent Armenian community leaders of the time, who kept alive as a goal a return to their former Ottoman hometowns. In hindsight, Surmeyan’s vision of Armenian acculturation and citizenship in the new Syrian state seems prescient. It is also worth noting that his vision for the future hinged on culture, and on material culture and urban history, specifically. Thus, Surmeyan, like al-Ghazzi and Sauvaget, saw in urban history an opportunity to present to his audience a prescription for a better future.

Conclusion This essay places three near-simultaneous books on the urban history of Aleppo in conversation with each other in order to introduce a way of thinking about the politics of knowledge and of cultural heritage in Mandate-era Syria, focusing on networks of scholars and highlighting convergent aspects of their intellectual projects. The focus on networks does not imply that all participants enjoyed an equal status within it, or that they were not enmeshed in layers of power relationships. On the contrary, the focus on networks highlights power imbalance and can be a way of undoing or mitigating the fact that some actors in a network enjoy greater privileges than others, in ways that are changing and contextual. The three authors had different backgrounds and training and were spurred to write urban history for distinct reasons. Al-Ghazzi and Surmeyan were lateOttoman intellectuals; the war and its aftermath had dislocated their world and 124

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City forced them to reassess and reinvent themselves in the new geopolitical reality of the mandate. They had to come to terms with the fact that the late Ottoman norms and structures of knowledge in which they were trained were gone, and that the new Republic of Turkey had no place for them – for very different reasons. They each turned to urban history as a way to make sense of these changes and to forge a new way of being urban in a new state. Sauvaget, too, faced a new world after World War I: but for him, the French Mandate afforded unprecedented professional opportunities to make his mark as a creator of knowledge about the Islamic world. Each author made choices regarding the form and content of their work. While all focused on the city, they each had distinct ways of imaging the city – primarily verbal for al-Ghazzi, through especially commissioned photographs for Surmeyan and for Sauvaget through a wealth of visualisation tools such as photographs, ground plans of monuments and successive diagrams that documented urban growth. The authors also selected different languages in which to write. The choice of language indicates their intended audiences at the time of writing – namely, for al-Ghazzi the Arabic-speaking reading public in Aleppo, for Surmeyan those members of Aleppo’s Armenian community who had settled there in the aftermath of the genocide, and for Sauvaget the francophone scholarly reader in France, Europe, as well as Syria. The choice of language continues to determine the audiences for these books decades after their publication. Of these three individuals, al-Ghazzi is hardly known today outside of Aleppo, and Surmeyan is nearly forgotten. Only Sauvaget remains influential, as scholars engage and respond to his work even when they critique some of its aspects. The fact that of these three major intellectuals who played such an important role both in conceptualising the city in Syria and in writing its history, only the Frenchman is remembered and revered today is telling. Decades later, even in the wake of powerful critiques, the prestige and authority of colonial narratives remain intact and continue to eclipse local narratives – indigenous or non-colonial. At a time of traumatic change, three very different authors seized upon urban history as the medium through which critical issues were thought: how to make sense of the transformation from Ottoman Empire to Syria under Mandate; questions of identity and intersectarian and intercommunal relationships; how to define the past; how to define the present; how to determine the role of citizens today. It is telling that these narratives were written in and centre on Aleppo – on the one-time capital of a major province that found itself much diminished in a new state – rather than Damascus, an ancient city on the rise once more as the new capital of modern Syria. 125

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh Each of these authors in their own distinct manner was ostensibly writing about the past, but in fact each was commenting on the present. Al-Ghazzi emphasised the layered richness of Aleppo’s past and its dynamic present and sought to lay out an ethics of urban living in a heterogeneous society. Surmeyan recalled Aleppo’s diverse past as a context for the future of his own nearly exterminated community, as a way to integrate new citizens in a new state. Sauvaget reconceptualised historical narrative and periodisation in a way that concluded with a triumphant colonial narrative, where Europe was the lodestar for the future of a city irreversibly caught in a decrepit oriental order. Perhaps it is especially pertinent to look back at these three books from the vantage point of our present – and the destruction visited on Aleppo during the Syrian civil war. Not to nostalgically evoke Aleppo’s timeless past, but to recall that urban history is always historically situated. Urban history also looks to the future and may suggest avenues for an ethics of urban living in the wake of war and its horrors.

Notes  1. Edmond Rabbath, L’Évolution politique de la Syrie sous Mandat de 1920 à 1925 (Paris: Les Presses modernes, 1928); Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates (London: Routledge, 2015).  2. Dawn Chatty, Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).  3. Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).  4. François-Xavier Trégan, ‘Approche des savoirs de l’Institut français de Damas: À la recherche d’un temps mandataire’, in The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspective, ed. Nadine Méouchy and Peter Sluglett (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 235–47; Heghnar Watenpaugh, ‘Museums and the Construction of National History in Syria and Lebanon’, in The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspective, ed. Nadine Méouchy and Peter Sluglett (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 185–202; Anneka Lenssen, Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020), Chapter 2.  5. Here I borrow a phrase from Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Resonance and Wonder’, in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics ad Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Stephen D. Lavine (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 42.  6. Kamil al-Ghazzi, Kitab Nahr al-Dhahab fi Tarikh Halab (Aleppo: al-Matba‘a alMaruniyya, 1923–26), 3 vols. Page numbers used in this chapter refer to the reprint edition: 2nd ed., 3 vols, ed. Shawqi Sha‘th and Mahmud Fakhuri (Aleppo: Dar al-Qalam al-‘Arabi, 1991–93).

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City  7. Heghnar Watenpaugh, ‘Resonance and Circulation: The Category “Islamic Art and Architecture”’, in The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, ed. Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), vol. 2, 1223–44.  8. Raghib al-Tabbakh, I‘lam al-nubala’ bi-tarikh Halab al-shahba’, 2nd ed., ed. Muhammad Kamal (Aleppo: Dar al-Qalam al-‘Arabi, 1988–92; Orig. ed. Aleppo: al-Matba‘a al-‘Ilmiyya, 1923–26).), vol. 7, 281–85; Gabriel Rabbath, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux du Cheikh Kamel el Ghazzy’, Revue Archéologique Syrienne/ Majallat al-‘Adiyyat alSuriyya 3, no. 1–2 (1933): 1–5. 9. G. Rabbath, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux’, 3; Amr al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil alGhazzi’, in Kitab Nahr al-Dhahab fi Tarikh Halab, by Kamil al-Ghazzi (Aleppo: alMatba‘a al-Maruniyya, 1923–26), vol. 1, 471. 10. Al-Ghazzi, Nahr al-Dhahab, vol. 3, 300; K. Watenpaugh, Being Modern, 201; alMallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 470. 11. Al-Tabbakh, I‘lam al-nubala’ bi-tarikh Halab al-shahba’, vol. 3, 37; al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 471. 12. Al-Tabbakh, I‘lam al-nubala’ bi-tarikh Halab al-shahba’, vol. 3, 402. 13. al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 474; K. Watenpaugh, Being Modern, 72. 14. G. Rabbath, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux’, 3. 15. G. Rabbath, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux’, 5; al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 470. 16. Al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 470. 17. Al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 470; G. Rabbath, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux’, 5. 18. Al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 470. 19. G. Rabbath, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux’, 4; Antuan Sha‘rawi, ‘Al al-Marrash wa’lsalunat al-adabiyya fi Halab fi al-nisf al-thani min al-qarn al-tasi‘ ‘ashar’, Majallat alDad 9 (September 1995): 23–65. 20. Al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 474. 21. Al-Mallah, ‘Shaykh Kamil al-Ghazzi’, 474; Rabbath, a Jesuit priest, summarised the treatise on non-Muslims in approving terms in G. Rabbath, ‘Notice sur la vie et les travaux’, 4. 22. Kamil al-Ghazzi, Ittihaf al-akhlaf fi ahkam al-awqaf (Aleppo: Matba‘at al-Ba’, 1909), a translation of Ömer Hilmi Efendi, İthaf ül-ahlâf fi ahkâm il-evkaf (İstanbul: Matbaa-yı Âmire, 1307 [1889 or 1890]). 23. Heghnar Watenpaugh, The Image of an Ottoman City: Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2004), Chapter 6; Bruce Masters, ‘The View from the Province: Syrian Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 114, no. 3 (1994): 353–62. 24. Shawqi Sha‘th and Mahmud Fakhuri, ‘Editors’ Introduction’, in Kitab Nahr al-Dhahab fi Tarikh Halab, by Kamil al-Ghazzi (Aleppo: al-Matba‘a al-Maruniyya, 1923–26), vol. 1, 13. 25. For example, H. Watenpaugh, Image, 60–77. 26. Sha‘th and Fakhuri, ‘Editors’ Introduction’, 12. Some of al-Ghazzi’s biographies in the unpublished fourth volume are quoted extensively in al-Tabbakh, I‘lam al-nubala’ bitarikh Halab al-shahba’. 27. H. Watenpaugh, Image, Chapter 6; H. Watenpaugh ‘Architecture without Images’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 3 (2013): 585–88.

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh 28. Nora Lafi, ‘Building and Destroying Authenticity in Aleppo: Heritage between Conservation, Transformation, Destruction, and Re-Invention’, in Gebaute Geschichte. Historische Authentizität im Stadtraum, ed. Christoph Bernhardt, Martin Sabrow and Achim Saupe (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2017), 206–28. 29. Ferdinand Taoutel, Watha’iq tarikhiyya ‘an Halab, Vol. 2: Awliya’ Halab fi manzumat al-Shaykh Wafa’ (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1941); Heghnar Watenpaugh, ‘Deviant Dervishes: Space, Gender and the Construction of Antinomian Piety in Ottoman Aleppo’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 37, no. 4 (2005): 535–65. 30. K. Watenpaugh, Being Modern, 126–28. 31. Al-Ghazzi, Nahr al-dhahab, vol. 2, 397. 32. Al-Ghazzi, Nahr al-dhahab, vol. 3, 324. 33. Zeynep Çelik, Empire, Architecture and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830– 1914 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), 81. 34. K. Watenpaugh, Being Modern, 207. 35. Qustaki al-Himsi, Udaba’ Halab dhu al-athar fi al-qarn al-tasi‘ ‘ashar (Aleppo: AlMatba‘a al-Maruniyya, 1925); Taoutel, Watha’iq tarikhiyya. 36. E. Rabbath, L’Évolution politique de la Syrie; al-Tabbakh, I‘lam al-nubala’ bi-tarikh Halab al-shahba’. 37. K. Watenpaugh, Being Modern, 198–209; al-Ghazzi, Nahr al-dhahab, vol. 3, 553. 38. al-Ghazzi, Nahr al-dhahab, vol. 3, 572. 39. Lafi, ‘Building and Destroying Authenticity in Aleppo’. 40. Heghnar Watenpaugh, ‘A History of Cultural Heritage in Aleppo’, in Reconstruction as Violence in Syria, ed. Nasser Rabbat and Deen Sharp (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, forthcoming). 41. K. Watenpaugh, Being Modern, 209. Heghnar Watenpaugh, ‘The Harem as Biography: Domestic Architecture, Gender and Nostalgia in Modern Syria’, in Harem Histories: Lived Spaces and Envisioned Places, ed. Marilyn Booth (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2010), 211–36. 42. One of his earliest critiques is André Raymond, ‘Signes urbains et étude de la population des grandes villes arabes à l’époque ottomane’, Bulletin d’Études Orientales 27 (1974): 183–93; Dominique Mallet, ‘Le bel orientaliste’, in Études sur les villes du procheorient, XVIe–XIXe siècle: Hommage à André Raymond, ed. Brigitte Marino (Damas: Institut français d’études arabes de Damas, 2001), 7–13. For a biography and bibliography of Sauvaget, see Mémorial Jean Sauvaget, 2 vols (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1954–61). 43. Jean Sauvaget, Introduction à l’histoire de l’Orient musulman: Éléments de bibliographie (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1943), revised in French by Claude Cahen in 1961, was translated as Introduction to the History of the Muslim East: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965). 44. Renaud Avez, L’Institut français de Damas au Palais Azem (1922–1946) à travers les archives (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1993); Trégan, ‘Approche’. 45. Archives of IFEAD, Damascus; Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Nantes (henceforth MAE-Nantes), especially Fonds Beyrouth, 2e versement, Instruction Publique series. 46. Trégan, ‘Approche;’ Heghnar Z. Watenpaugh, ‘An Uneasy Historiography: The Legacy of Ottoman Architecture in the Former Arab Provinces’, Muqarnas 24 (2007): 27–43; Lenssen, Beautiful Agitation, Chapter 2.

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Islamic City, Colonial City, Refugee City 47. Avez, L’Institut français; Mallet, ‘Le bel orientaliste’. I am grateful to Dr Abd al-Razzaq Moaz for discussing his father’s work with me and for sharing the family archive. 48. Khaled Moaz and Solange Ory, Inscriptions arabes de Damas: Les stèles funéraires, vol. 1 (Damas: Institut français de Damas, 1977). 49. Jean Sauvaget, ‘Inventaire des monuments musulmans de la ville d’Alep’, Revue des études islamiques 5, no. 1 (1931): 59–114. On this list, see Lafi, ‘Building and Destroying Authenticity in Aleppo’; H. Watenpaugh, ‘History of Cultural Heritage’. 50. Mémorial Jean Sauvaget, vol. 1, 171. 51. Mémorial Jean Sauvaget, vol. 1, 172. Mallet, ‘Le bel orientaliste’. Sauvaget published many medieval sources in the original as well as in the French translation. 52. H. Watenpaugh, ‘Uneasy Historiography’. 53. Jean Sauvaget, Alep: Essai sur le développement d’une grande ville syrienne, des origines au milieu du XIXe siècle (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1941), vol. 1, 248. 54. Sauvaget, Alep, vol. 1, 108, 162–63. 55. Sauvaget, Alep, vol. 1, 239. 56. Sauvaget, Alep, vol. 1, 214. André Raymond, ‘Les grands waqfs et l’organisation de l’espace urbain à Alep et au Caire à l’époque ottomane (XVIe–XVIIe siècles)’, Bulletin d’Études Orientales 31 (1979): 113–32; Watenpaugh, Image, Chapter 1. 57. Gülru Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 471–72. 58. H. Watenpaugh, ‘Uneasy Historiography’. 59. Sauvaget, Alep, vol. 1, 239 (italics mine). 60. For a biography of Surmeyan, see Heghnar Watenpaugh, The Missing Pages: The Modern Life of a Medieval Manuscript, from Genocide to Justice (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2019), Chapter 5. 61. Artawazd Siwrmeian [Ardavazt Surmeyan], Patmut’iwn Halepi Hayots, vol. 1: Suria (Aleppo: Tp. Ani, 1940); vol. 2: Halep (Beirut: M. Magsutian, 1946); vol. 3: 1355–1908 (Paris: Imprimerie Araxes, 1950). 62. Patmut’iwn Halepi Hayots reprint: vol. 1 and 2 (Aleppo: Kilikia, 2002–3). Scholars of Armenian studies have long made extensive use of Surmeyan’s work. 63. Keith D. Watenpaugh, ‘Towards a New Category of Colonial Theory: Colonial Cooperation and the Survivor’s Bargain – the Case of the Post Genocide Armenian Community of Syria under French Mandate’, in The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspective, ed. Nadine Méouchy and Peter Sluglett (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 597–622; Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). 64. Al-Ghazzi, Nahr al-Dhahab, vol. 3, 553; K. Watenpaugh, Being Modern, 202–6. 65. Surmeyan, Patmutiwn, vol. 1, i. 66. Tatew (Aleppo). 67. Artawazd Siwrmeian [Ardavazt Surmeyan], Mayr Ts’uts’ak hayeren tseragrats’ S. K’arasun Mankunk’ ekeghets’voy Halepi, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Tparan Srboy Yakobeani, 1935), ix. 68. Siwrmeian, Mayr Ts’uts’ak; Artawazd Siwrmeian [Ardavazt Surmeyan], Patmut’iwn Halepi azgayin gerezmanatants ew artsanagir hayeren tapanakareru (Aleppo: Tpagr. A. Ter Sahakian, 1935). 69. Surmeyan, Patmutiwn, vol. 1, iv. Charles Godard, Alep: Essai de géographie urbaine et d’économie politique et sociale (Aleppo: [Imp. Rotos], 1938).

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Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh 70. The published version of one of these lectures, La vie et la culture arméniennes à Alep au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Araxe, 1934), appears in the personal libraries of several French intellectuals in Syria and was cited in Sauvaget’s Alep. 71. Artawazd Arkepiskopos [Ardavazt Surmeyan], Paghrasi Berde (Aleppo: Tparan A. Ter Sahakian, 1937), 7. 72. Surmeyan, Patmutiwn, vol. 1, iii–iv. 73. Surmeyan, Patmutiwn, vol. 1, iv. 74. Surmeyan, Paghrasi Berde. 75. Sauvaget published photographs by Derounian as well. Vartan Derounian, Lévon Nordiguian (ed.), Mémoire arménienne: Photographies du camp de réfugiés d’Alep, 1922–1936 (Beirut: Presses de l’Université Saint-Joseph, 2010). 76. Surmeyan, Patmutiwn, vol. 1, ii–iii (emphasis mine). 77. Surmeyan, Patmutiwn, vol. 1, iv (emphasis mine).

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Part 2 Variations on Late Ottoman Culture

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Part 2 Introduction Susan Slyomovics

Part 2 presents three chapters of case-studies in the fields of music, architecture, literature and photography to introduce new intersections in which exchanges and influences between late Ottoman and European cultural productions are further elaborated. Chapter 5 by Selim S. Kuru, ‘An Atlas of Desire: Enderunlu Fazıl’s View of the World from the Late Eighteenth Century’, analyses two verse-narratives: Hubanname (The Book of Beautiful Young Men) and Zenanname (The Book of Women), composed in 1792 by Enderunlu Fazil (1757– 1810). Both combine conventions of classical Ottoman Turkish literature with climate- and place-based theories of human difference foundational to nineteenth-century European colonialism. These two parallel works set forth a catalogue of young men and women from more than thirty population groupings that are geographically, linguistically and ethnically differentiated and defined, yet framed within a meta-narrative of love and desire. Attracting little scholarly attention from literary historians, the two verse-narratives were instead deployed as uncontextualised source material for art history and Ottoman social history. This chapter interrogates the authorial intentions, compositional principles and ideological frameworks that informed these works. In providing a detailed description of the work and literary commentary, Kuru closely reads the lengthy section on young men and women from Istanbul alongside sections on Istanbul’s minority Greek, Jewish and Armenian communities. Nicolas Dufetel’s ‘European Musicians at the Sultan Court (1599–1846): Diplomacy and Fantasy from an English Organ to the Forty French Singers’ Ottoman Odyssey’ chronicles Europe’s discovery of the Ottoman sultans and their taste for music through the history and circumstances of a cross-cultural musical exchange. His questions are: when did western music first appear at the Ottoman court? Was it in private settings? And who were the first musicians to 133

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Susan Slyomovics perform for the sultan himself, or at least in his palace? This chapter discusses the first European musicians who performed for the Ottoman sultans from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, with a focus on the early role of keyboard diplomacy that continued into the first years of Tanzimat reform period (1839–1871). Chapter 7, Edhem Eldem’s ‘Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie, Once Again’, revisits the famous illustrated volume of popular costumes published by the Ottoman government for the 1873 Universal Exposition in Vienna, a volume that has become an unavoidable, almost canonical, feature of late Ottoman cultural history and is taken for granted based on its appealing surface. Eldem’s thorough and critical recontextualisation of this project shows that there was much more, but also much less, to the volume than has been assumed to this day.

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5 An Atlas of Desire: Enderunlu Fazıl’s View of the World from the Late Eighteenth Century Selim S. Kuru

The Hûbân-nâme (Book of Beautiful Young Men) and the Zenân-nâme (Book of Women), by Fâzıl-ı Enderuni, or Fâzıl of Enderun (1757?–1810), are two connected verse-narratives that present a humorous catalogue of beautiful young men and women of the world organised according to the Ptolemaic system of seven climes. Introduced through a meta-narrative of a discussion between the poet and his young male beloved, the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme follow a parallel sequence that differs only slightly between the two texts, as I will explain below. Fâzıl-ı Enderuni was a prolific late-eighteenth-century Ottoman author who had been trained at the Topkapı Palace. He has been widely acknowledged in general literary histories as one of the final representatives of Ottoman Turkish classical poetry. Various manuscript and print copies of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme appeared until the late nineteenth century; yet the author and his works have failed to attract the scholarly attention that they deserve.1 This chapter draws on the oldest known manuscript copy of the Hûbânnâme and the Zenân-nâme, which was produced in 1793 with many illustrations and is preserved in the İstanbul University Library, as İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi T5502 (İÜ T5502).2 Following a description of the content of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme as well as reflections on their respective paintings, I will comment on Fâzıl’s exceptionalist worldview as a palace-educated Ottoman elite author. I will then offer an analysis of the compositional and genre-related peculiarities of these works, an approach that is generally denied to Ottoman literary texts. The latter are either archived in transcribed 135

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Selim S. Kuru editions or, when studied as literary texts, are commonly interrogated for what they lack – such as realism, political expression, characters and a sense of narration that is generally found in modern literary forms such as the novel. Since the publication of Walter Andrews’ Poetry’s Voice and Society’s Song, there have been very few attempts to develop methodologies to investigate the place and function of literature within the Ottoman governing elite. For this group, I follow Ussama Makdisi’s definition of ‘what it meant to be Ottoman’, where he defines the term as ‘a member of ruling elite, urban, above all aware of multiple ethnicities, a Muslim in the service of the sultan, who from İstanbul ruled over a vast polyglot empire composed of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, or Turks’.3 I would add that this predominantly male elite converged through its proximity to the palace and was organised hierarchically according to each individual’s level of interaction within the wider palace constellation. Makdisi’s article on Ottoman Orientalism is also helpful to understand premodern reiterations of how what he calls Ottoman racialism frames the works on the beautiful young men and women of the world by Fâzıl, a member of the late Ottoman male elite. A description of the composition and content of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, as a first step towards a more detailed analysis and interpretation of these works, may complicate flattening understandings and apologetic accounts of Ottoman intellectual history. My reading of Fâzıl’s Hûbân-nâme and Zenân-nâme reveal the importance of these works for a better understanding of the construction and production of difference among the late-eighteenth-century Ottoman elite. The production of difference is not typically considered in the study of Ottoman literary culture, particularly its popular, satirical and eroto-pornographic literary works that are generally evaluated with little attention to their contexts, production and circulation.4 However, both the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme invite such attention: they provide, through a perfunctory partition of the world’s regions as the basis for difference among humans, ample data about ethnic othering strategies that may not be explicitly sounded in other genres.5 In this article, rather than presenting a detailed interrogation of the construction of difference in the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, which would require a critical edition of the works, I focus on how Fâzıl presents through these works an inflection of Ottoman elite literary discourses on love versus sexuality. Fâzıl’s full biography has yet to be written, although existing accounts relate his background in some detail: he was the grandson of Zâhir el-Omar, an Arab tribal leader from Safed in Palestine, whose claim for local control of Akka was crushed by the Ottomans in 1775.6 Fâzıl was delivered to İstanbul after his father, Ali Zâhir, was also captured and executed in 1776. He was probably around seventeen or eighteen years of age at the time of his arrival, along with his brother Kâmil, 136

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An Atlas of Desire at the palace.7 Fâzıl recounted the story of his palace years in an autobiographical verse narrative titled Defter-i Aşk (Register of Love), which he composed in 1795, three years after completing the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme.8 Fâzıl left the palace in 1783, during the reign of Abdülhamid I (r. 1774–89). A number of questions remain unanswered with respect to his birth date, his entry into the palace system, the reasons behind his departure from the palace at a relatively young age (in his late twenties) and his productive years outside the palace, which seemingly started with the ascension of Selîm III in the fateful year of 1789. The reconstruction of his life after Fâzıl had left the palace requires detailed research and will provide further information about intellectual and official life during this important period in the Ottoman Empire. Of particular note, as the production of the İÜ T5502 copy with its dedication to Selim III and appreciation pieces by two palace notables testify, is the fact that he kept close relations with palace networks and became part of the ‘modernising’ elite of the late eighteenth century. Even though certain sources noted that Fâzıl was not able to find patronage or even a position for more than a decade, relying instead on a limited pension, he was ultimately given an administrative position after Selim III’s enthronement. Upon some yet to be identified complaints, he was later exiled to Rhodes in 1799; after a short time, he was forgiven and returned to İstanbul, where he died in 1810 in his fifties, two years after the assassination of Selim III.9 Fâzıl might have fallen out of favour with the palace after his resignation, yet the works he composed after 1793, which begin with the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, indicate that he became a part of the elite networks with full force when Selim III took the throne. His sizable divan, a collection of poetry that was printed in 1842 in Bulaq (Egypt), includes, among other things, 203 panegyrics and chronograms dedicated to the Ottoman governing elite and palace officers of his time.10 His chronograms celebrate major events (among which two celebratory odes to the conquest of Egypt in 1801 may be noted) and imperial building projects by dating them in verse using the numeric values of letters, a verse-date composition that became increasingly popular in the late eighteenth century.11 Fâzıl also composed the Çengî-nâme or Rakkasnâme (Book of Dancing Boys), a list of İstanbul’s famous dancing boys from various ethnic backgrounds; this work is preserved in several manuscript copies and print editions as well. It is an unruly verse that includes playful descriptions of forty-three dancing boys and consists of 118 quatrains full of sexually explicit vocabulary.12 The four verse-narratives – the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, the Defter-i Aşk and the Çenginame – include around 3,000 lines of poetry in short metrical organisation. While his gazels, lyric poems, chronograms and panegyrics composed for the governing elite display his skills in classical poetic 137

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Selim S. Kuru forms, alongside his knowledge of the mystical understanding of the material world as signs of the Divine, these verse-narratives reveal another side of Ottoman Turkish poetry: satirical descriptions of the crude realities of the Created World. As they display an ethnographic interest informed by an imperial vision, Fâzıl’s works offer a unique perspective through which to investigate the place of literature in the construction of historical approaches to the world, geography, and ethnic and linguistic difference. As an Arab and a palace graduate, Fâzıl’s interest in creating a satirical description of the world’s nations through the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, along with his original autobiographical Defter-i Aşk and the Çengî-nâme, was unprecedented in the Ottoman literary archive; it thus complicates the literary history of the late Ottoman Empire. These works, with the elite look that they reflect on the manners and customs of ordinary people, also contribute to current scholarly work on Ottoman exceptionalism, as well as on the intellectual and moral crisis experienced by the late-eighteenth-century Ottoman elite.13 In the Zenân-nâme, Fâzıl underscores his own elite status in a verse appearing in the section about the women of the province of Damascus. In a sub-section on marriage customs in Safed, he acknowledges Safed as his birthplace with an expression of embarrassment: Even though it is my birthplace, my homeland My mouth does not mention it out of shame14 Fâzıl’s training and relations to the palace distinguish him, as an Ottoman imperial subject, from the ordinary people of the world, providing him with an omniscient narrator’s voice that can cast a discerning look over young men and women around the globe. The Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, while listing descriptions of young men and women of the world according to their desirability for men, provide an atlas of desire. This foundational premise of the texts, however, manifest another reiteration of zealous misogyny prevalent in Ottoman elite literature. Nevertheless, the text subverts the misogynistic conventions, as it relates information, stories and legends about different people of the world, of whom Fâzıl claims to have a deep knowledge. Current references to these works, however, visit them for specific information or scholarly acquiescence.

Fâzıl and his Works Then and Now Ottoman Turkish high literature experienced a major break in the mid-nineteenth century, when a core tripod of imperial literary forms – gazel (lyric), kaside (panegyric) and mesnevi (verse narrative) – were overwhelmed by the 138

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An Atlas of Desire colonising forms of free verse, short story and novel. The waning of the ‘old’ forms was slower than presented in general literary histories, however, and throughout the long century the older and newer forms interacted in creative ways.15 It was in such a changing literary landscape that the earliest edition of Fâzıl’s Hûbân-nâme and Zenân-nâme appeared in print in 1839 and later in 1870. Fâzıl’s voluminous poetry collection was first printed in 1842. While his close contemporary critics were singing praises for his poetry, as the ‘takriz’ in İÜ T5502 testify, some slighted him as ‘lisanına perhizsiz’ – that is, foulmouthed or careless with his language – and ‘bi-perva’ – that is, reckless.16 Extant scholarship has referred to Fâzıl Enderuni’s works mostly with respect to social history and sexuality in the Ottoman Empire. Still, there exists no significant critical approach to the study of Fâzıl and his works, nor even a detailed description or close reading of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme. Sections from Fazıl’s works have been quoted in a problematic manner, presented as straightforward sources to explore/investigate cultural life in the Ottoman Empire, or the general transformation in literary or cultural tastes at the end of the eighteenth century. His works are further employed in a series of Turkish publications to support a discourse on pederasty and homosexuality as a foundational/primary characteristic of the Ottoman elite.17 Evaluating his works as part of a generically-defined ‘mahallileşme’ (localisation movement), or part of an unscrutinised ‘realist movement’ with respect to language and themes, modern criticism does not go beyond these generalised descriptions.18 The formulation of the localisation movement incorporates a long-lasting satirical vein of Ottoman classical literary culture that developed and flourished alongside other genres. However, instead of being indicative of a movement, local elements had always been an integral part of the rich Ottoman literary system.19 Fâzıl’s texts – particularly the Hûbân-nâme, Zenân-nâme and Rakkâsnâme/Çengî-nâme – have also been investigated for cultural information about ‘Ottoman’ customs and ethnic groups in the empire, even though they are considered unreliable historical documents or curious satirical texts devoid of literary value by positivist impulses of modern-day historiography.20 As result, Fâzıl, an original poet who left significant traces of a changing imperial aesthetic, has been transformed into a reference point, while the individuality of his work has disappeared under the weight of prevailing, dubious and antiquated approaches to the study of the Ottoman Empire. Such approaches include counting, editing, publishing and ultimately connecting each text through its conventional formal aspects to the generically defined Ottoman literary archive. This valuable effort to produce reliable editions of texts unfortunately erases individual characteristics of texts and neglects arguments contained in them. The Hûbânnâme and the Zenân-nâme are investigated for fact-checking and found lacking 139

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Selim S. Kuru in this respect; however, their inventiveness and function in late-eighteenthcentury intellectual circles, and the reasons behind their popularity are rarely investigated. Available editions of these texts rely on later print editions and source manuscripts which are yet to be identified, and they are far from reflecting scholarly rigour.21 Few studies that take up the formulations of sexuality and gender in Ottoman Turkish literary texts – as valuable as they have been in breaking the ground for more focused analysis – generally assemble tropes and categories found in literary works while providing useful snapshots of the state of sexuality in the empire, without recognising the individuality of these works and their authors, or problematising the Orientalist homogenising discourses that define them. Nor is there an appreciation of the fact that these works were produced from an elite perspective, especially those satirical works that depict norms and practices of the non-elite others. Thus, while these studies provide a critical approach to discourses found in literary works, they may not escape from the trappings of their contemporary discursive lenses and reiterate the binaries that haunt the field. Furthermore, they do not provide philologically critical readings of the texts in their original contexts that consider authorial intentions and ideas, however much they may be reiterations of formal conventions.22 As for historical ethnography, some studies refer to the information given on individual groups in the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, but they do not focus on how these works organise various human societies across the lines of race, ethnicity, language and gender after an existing discourse on seven climes. This is caused, in part, by the lack of close reading strategies that involve philologically critical reading. Content is, of course, both entangled in various other texts in the galaxy of Ottoman Turkish literary writing and informed by a traditional system of form; yet each individual work established an important node in this network and needs to be approached with various reading and interpretation techniques. Popular literary works in high-register Ottoman Turkish have not yet been considered an important part of the Ottoman Turkish literary archive in Ottoman studies, except for an interest in the explicit themes and linguistic material they contain. For example, the lack of a reliable edition of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, regardless of all the contemporaneous and contemporary attention that these texts attracted, point to this neglect. What I call popular works in high-register Ottoman Turkish are different from folk or oral-based literary traditions in their fashioning. They are rather an integral part of the existing literary system, kept under checks and balances through strategies such as parody and altering classical forms, genres and language in order to refresh the conventions. Popular and sexually explicit works that engage in the formal, generic and 140

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An Atlas of Desire linguistic characteristics of Ottoman literary production are not only creative works of art of their own accord, since they are creative as well as subversive, but they also open windows for scrutiny about individuality and historicity in Ottoman literary studies. A cursory review of his works reveals that Fâzıl was a creative and subversive author who had good knowledge of the literary tools of his time and who was able to creatively alter existing genres and language through critical descriptions in the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme. The Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme are generally labelled as derivative of the popular sixteenth-century şehrengiz genre that described the beautiful boys of particular cities.23 However, şehrengiz works produced in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries catalogued and praised individual boys who lived in a particular town, framed by a meta-narrative of neo-platonic love. The şehrengiz texts do not provide any specific information about the young men listed; rather, to each young man is dedicated a number of verses, which generally display the poet’s talents in figures of speech with reference to each young man’s name, profession, or a physical feature. No manuscript copies or print editions refer to the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme as a ‘şehrengiz’. The textual and meta-textual evidence does not support the current scholarly, mostly little informed classification of these works as şehrengiz. Unlike the şehrengiz works, the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme classify the boys and women of different nations in a way more reminiscent of costume albums, and even more of the ‘cartes à figure’ maps, which included pictorial depictions of people from different nations of the world on the margins of maps.24 The comparison is especially apt when one considers that the illustrated copies of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme included a world map and illustrations of boys and women from several nations, mostly differentiated by their outfits and skin colour. I will explain below why these two texts establish a diptych, which together reflect an age-old trope that sets the ideal against the real, homoerotic love against a zealous misogynistic vision of love for women. The popularity of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, beyond their value for literary history, is testified by numerous surviving hand-written copies, especially the earliest dated copy that is lavishly illustrated, and two print editions published in the nineteenth century. The illustrated presentation copy, which includes two takriz (praises by notables in support of the work), was a collaborative project that included at least Fâzıl, a calligrapher and one illustrator. This copy, in turn, raises further questions about book production as well as the continuing power of verse narratives in the eighteenth-century Ottoman İstanbul. In short, Fâzıl’s life and works upend much of what we thought we knew about the production of Ottoman literature and its place among the eighteenth-century Ottoman palace elite. 141

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A Classical Vehicle for Two Modern Works: İÜ T5502 A late sample of luxurious manuscript production in the Ottoman Empire, İÜ T5502 preserves the earliest recension of the Hûbân-nâme (fols 1b–72b) and the Zenân-nâme (fols 73b–154b). It is an exquisitely copied and illustrated manuscript that includes a colophon (fol. 152b) with the completion date of 12 Rebiü’l-evvel 1208 (18 October 1793).25 The colophon also identifies the calligrapher as Seyyid İhya, hâdim li’s-suddeti’l-seniyyeti’l-hakaniyye – that is, a ‘servant at the imperial sublime port’. Seyyid İhya, whose full name is Seyyid Şerif Yahya (d. 1813), was renowned for his talik style according to biographical dictionaries. Not only was he the scribe of İÜ T5502 but, pointing to an intellectual communication, his own poetry collection also includes a poem parallel to one of Fâzıl’s gazels and a verse that expands on another one (tahmis).26 The manuscript contains 152 folios with fully gilded and illuminated title pages in baroque style (Hûbân-nâme, fols 1b–2a; Zenân-nâme, fols 73b–74a; Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Opening pages of the Hûbân-nâme (Source: İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi 5502, 1b–2a)

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An Atlas of Desire The Hûbân-nâme includes forty illustrations, of which thirty-eight depict young men from different communities; the other two are of a world map and of an entertainment scene from a Greek tavern. For its part, the Zenân-nâme includes forty-four paintings, forty of which are of young women from different communities. Distinct from the Hûbân-nâme, it also includes four tableaux or general scenes of women’s outings in Kağıthane (fol. 78a), a birth (fol. 142a; Figure 5.2), a women’s bath (fol. 145a) and a raid by the people of a district on the house of a suspected adulteress (fol. 128a). Each work includes thirty-five sections, separated by sub-titles about people from four parts of the world. Unlike sections that identify regions, these four parts of the world were not marked by sub-titles, but noted in the margins of the Hûbân-nâme in red ink by the copyist (or a later reader): under ‘Zikr-i bilad-ı Asya’ (Citing the Countries in Asia; fol. 7b), there are three sections identifying various people; under ‘Sıfat-ı Nahiyye-i Afrika’ (The Characteristics of the Regions in Africa; fol. 10b), there are twelve, including Spain; and under the ‘Zikr-i iklim-i bilad-ı Avrupa’ (Citing the Climes of the Regions of

Figure 5.2 Zenân-nâme (Source: İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi 5502, 141b–a)

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Selim S. Kuru Europe; fol. 29b), there are nineteen, including İstanbul as well as three ethnic groups: the Rum (that is, the Greeks of Anatolia), Jews and Armenians. Finally, under ‘Sıfat-ı Canib-i Dünya-yı Cedid’ (The Characteristics of the Land of the New World; fol. 66a), there is only one section. Print editions do not present this level of organisation. The section titles that introduce each community of young men and women may serve as an example of how this manuscript copy adds to our understanding of the text, as they classify young men in the Hûbân-nâme in a categorical fashion. Some section titles point to a nahiyye (region), others to a bilad (country) and a güruh (group, nation), while in three cases – namely, the beloved young men of Rum (Greeks), Leh (Polish) and Rus (Russian) – they refer to a millet (nation). This selective use of terminology may imply the author’s categorical approach to human groups.27 Finally, İÜ T5502 holds some clues that the Hûbân-nâme was the first of the two texts to be composed and reviewed by the two above-mentioned palace notables, since their review immediately follows the text in the manuscript. The numeric value of the letters of a phrase – ‘mahşer-i huban’ (a crowd of beauties) executed in red ink in a verse in the introductory section – reveals the year 1207 (1792; fol. 4b), one year before the completion of İÜ T5502. The Zenân-nâme’s last verse, however, has the word ‘âmîn’ in red ink, with the date it reveals on the left-hand side in one of the two flanking square gilded panels as 16 Muharrem 1208 (20 August 1793; fol. 106b). These dates show that the copy of the Zenân-nâme was completed two months before the year of the completion of the manuscript volume İÜ T5502, in October 1793, which is cited above. Thus, the success of the Hûbân-nâme in palace circles may be the real reason behind the Zenân-nâme’s composition and behind İÜ T5502, which was dedicated to Sultan Selim III. However, this discussion requires further codicological study of recensions and copies of the works, for an identification of a better production and transmission history. The İÜ T5502 copy of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, along with a selection of poetry from Selim III’s divan, Divan-ı İlhâmi (Topkapı Palace Museum, Hazine 112), may be one of the last illustrated Ottoman literary works to emerge from a workshop; with eighty-eight paintings, it is definitely the copy that contains the most illustrations. Moreover, with its dedication to Selim III and with two praises in poetry (takriz) added to the copy by palace notables – one by Arif from the Hâssa chamber at the Topkapı Palace (fols 71a–71b) and another one by the above-mentioned Seyyid İhya (fol. 72a) – the İÜ T5502 points to a project that was realised through a network of relations that are centred around the palace, rather than military or university circles.28 While all these observations complicate the means of manuscript production and book 144

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An Atlas of Desire painting in late-eighteenth-century İstanbul, the main reason for my focus on İÜ T5502 and its preservation of the oldest versions of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme is to avoid the sticky issue of the differences that exist among the many early- to mid-nineteenth century renditions of these works in manuscript copies and print editions. Generalising and reductionist approaches that deny proper philological attention to the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme robs them of the promise that pulses through their verses. The promise that these works present points to creative and playful possibilities of classical forms of Ottoman Turkish elite literature at the dawn of important so-called modern forms. The Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme are unique works that employ classical metre and rhyme as well as form of verse narratives. Even its frame story is reminiscent of age-old conventions. However, by taking up the mission of describing seven climes (with the young men and women that populate four of them) and by tweaking conventional formal characteristics of premodern Ottoman literature, Fazıl presents a (proto)modern text in classical garb.29 A cursory look at the structure of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme may demonstrate some of the ways in which Fâzıl composed these intriguing verse-narratives.

A Modern Work in Classical Garb: The Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme Fâzıl’s classical works resonated in a world that was undergoing a transformation. The process of composing his diptych of texts must have been shaped by that great transformation. Both the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme gesture towards a male ‘Ottoman’ reader, when the word still indicated an elite learned man, and address the objects of love and carnal desire in order to inform and entertain him. At the same time, however, and without any reference, these works present an unprecedented romantic perception of the world that is established on the pillars of ethnic, national, racial and sexual difference. These two works can also be read as a mystical denial of desire for this seditious world of nations with their beguiling boys and treacherous women. Furthermore, the existence of multiple illustrated copies that were produced within two decades after the completion of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme signify that text and image were closely linked together. In fact, some verses point the reader to the illustrations; for example, one verse in the introduction of the Hûbân-nâme points the reader to the map (Figure 5.3). The Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme were written at the request of a young Greek man who was the poet’s beloved. Such requests were a trope commonly employed by poets to explain the intent behind a literary composition. 145

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Figure 5.3 Map of the world (Source: İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi 5502, 5b–6a)

Yet, Fâzıl added a twist to this tradition and composed his diptych through a meta-narrative wherein his beloved first asks for a book that describes characteristics of young men from different communities of people on the world. Upon the completion of the Hûbân-nâme, the young man returns to Fâzıl to request another work; this time, he wants the poet to describe the women of those communities. Both the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme have their own prologues and epilogues that follow the formal peculiarities of Islamicate verse-narratives developed in Ottoman high cultural contexts by the late eighteenth century. As mentioned above, the main body of each text includes a parallel catalogue of young men and women of various ethnicities from different cities or regions that are located in the four inhabitable regions of the seven climes, under subtitles. At first glance, this catalogue may not reflect the hierarchical design that 146

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An Atlas of Desire lay behind it, appearing instead as an illustrated list. For example, while the character and characteristics of Moroccan women are described in nine couplets (fol. 95a), the women of Hijaz – that is, Mecca and Medina – are described in seventy-one (fols 95b–99a). The longest and most intriguing section in both works is the one on İstanbul, which follows those on regions and peoples of Asian and African countries and precedes those defined as European and the single entry on the Americas. The İstanbul section includes sub-sections about different communities that lived in many parts of the empire, such as the Rum (Ottoman Greeks), Jews, Armenians and Roma; yet, their descriptions are listed after the section on İstanbul. Moreover, in the İstanbul section of the Hûbân-nâme, the city is described as a microcosm, and young men of the city are defined as a product of refinement through mixing (fols 22a–26a), while in the Zenân-nâme women are described under four categories according to their servitude to men (fols 109a–115a). Neither young men nor women were identified by any ethnic or linguistic markers; however, the listing of Rum, Jewish, Armenian and Roma, which constitute sizable communities in the city, immediately after this section implies that these are Muslim citizens. Each section, or catalogue entry, begins by addressing his beloved young man and praising him with allusions to the topic. For example, the description of English women (Figure 5.2) begins as follows: O you, whose dark mole is Hindustan Whose tresses are the realms of Frengistan30 As Gibb – the primary and most influential critic of Fâzıl’s works, on whom I will comment below – suggests, Hindustan may be mentioned here with reference to the relationship between England and India. Alluded to as the black mole of the English lady, this likely points to the regions of India ruled by Europeans.31 Through this simile, Fâzıl points to the common trope of dark hair as the realm of unbelief by calling it Frengistan (the realm of Christians) – that is, non-belief. These opening lines talk to the young man who asked for the works to be composed, by linking his beauty to the regions described. The subsequent sections present markers that distinguish the young men and women from different regions as their physical characteristics, such as colour and height, their moral behaviours and their outfits. The prologue of the Hûbân-nâme begins with invocations to God’s creations, as is common in Islamicate literature. This section is constructed as a discourse about the guile of ‘heart-fetchers’ (dilber) – that is, beautiful young men – who are created in order to test people (khalq) in this world (fols 1b–2b). 147

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Figure 5.4 Zenân-nâme (Source: İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi 5502, 174a)

Fâzıl informs his readers that whatever is desired from the physical world is sedition, since the material signs of this world may afflict the hearts of men.32 This short section, comprising twenty-one couplets, ends with the statement that nobody is immune to the seditious nature of the beautiful young men of creation. A ten-couplet praise for Sultan Selim III transitions into a preface about why the work was composed. Fâzıl describes himself as so constantly afflicted by love that, ‘wherever he turns his face, he becomes a captive of love, and due to the wounds inflicted by the side glances of beautiful young men, his chest turns into a sample sheet of a seal maker’.33 Fâzıl explains the reason behind the writing of the Hûbân-nâme in detail. During a drinking feast, as mentioned above, his beloved praises Fâzıl for his knowledge and asks for a depiction of young men of different nations. First, he wants Fâzıl to describe the young men from different parts of the world, and then he wants him to paint pictures of each of them. Fâzıl immediately starts composing the work in order to gain the young man’s favour (fols 2b–4a).34 148

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An Atlas of Desire In this section, Fâzıl also states that he has knowledge of various nations (milel-i muhtelife) and that he has studied books of wisdom to learn the ‘characteristics of the seven climes (heft iklim)’. He adds that he has such a good understanding of the differences among various nations that, even when he sees a boy (naked) in a bathhouse, he can tell where the boy comes from (fol. 4b).35 As the source of his knowledge of young men, Fâzıl cites his personal experience, and as for his information about the climes of the world, books of wisdom which allowed him to classify people based on their regions. This knowledge, drawn from both experience and reading, implicitly lends authority to the author and gives credence to his descriptions of the characteristics of young men and women of various nations in the catalogue sections of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme. In the fifth section titled ‘Description of the Sphere of Earth’ (Der beyan-ı küre-i ruy-i zemin), Fâzıl notes that he relies on ‘the wise men of ancient Greece, and specifically on Ptolemy’s Almagest (Macastî)’ (fols 4b–5b). Here, he informs his beloved that the world was originally divided into seven climes, but humans initially inhabited only three – Asia, Africa and Europe. America joined later. According to Fâzıl, in his day the most favourable of all became the countries of Europe. He further argues that İstanbul is in Europe and identifies the city as having the most favourable location which is the reason behind the eloquence of the people living there (fol. 4a).36 This argument implies that Fâzıl was aware of the late-eighteenth-century Ottoman ‘moral and intellectual crisis’ haunting the governing elite, who faced pressure from European nations. Fâzıl’s response to this pressure may be read as defensive posturing.37 The fifth section also explains that the Equator is the line that demarcates hot areas, where excessive heat precludes the habitation of any living being. In these verses, Fâzıl draws on the Islamic formulation of the seven climes theory, according to which the southern sphere is uninhabited, while the northern sphere is divided into seven climates. These sections resonate with those found in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah.38 Between the Equator and the North Pole, the most favourable climate for human development is identified as the fifth. The fourth and sixth are reportedly conducive to intelligence and beauty, while the first and seventh are noted as being either uninhabitable or, at the least, rendering those who lived there unintelligent and unattractive.39 Fâzıl ends this twenty-four-couplet description of the seven climes with a disclaimer that he has described only what is necessary, adding that whoever finds error in his writing may look at a map of ‘the sphere surrounded by the ocean’ (resm-i kürre-i bahr-i muhît) included in his work (Figure 5.3). As mentioned above, his reference to a book painting may point to the fact that Fâzıl purposefully composed the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme for 149

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Selim S. Kuru an illustrated edition, or that, once the manuscript project started, he added verses referring to the paintings. Following the Ptolemaic model, the sixth section titled ‘Description of the Sphere of Earth and Water and on the Summation of Seven Climes’ provides a description of the seven climes in association with their ruling planets. Here, Fâzıl locates İstanbul in the fifth sphere dominated by Venus.40 Before he starts listing the young men of the world, Fâzıl ends this eighteen-couplet section with the following verse: When you understand the essence of the world, You will understand the moral characteristics of beloved men41 The description of the seven climes and the planets that dominate them establish a second level of framing, following the meta-story of a young boy’s request for a listing of young men of the world. It also reveals the principle behind Fazıl’s organisation of his composition. As explained above, the young men would be listed under four habitable parts of the seven climes of Asia, Africa, Europe and America. Of course, the prologue of the Zenân-nâme does not repeat this organisational principle of the four continents and seven climes theory, which is already presented in the Hûbân-nâme. The text opens with a verse that defines women as tricksters by creation: Gratefulness to the creator with works of wisdom, Who created the women of the world as tricksters42 After mentioning the creation of Adam and Eve, the pleasures of sexual interaction and its necessity for procreation, the short fifteen-couplet preface swiftly transitions into the second section about the reason for composing the Zenân-nâme. Here, his beloved thanks Fâzıl for composing the Hûbân-nâme at his request and says that, since Fâzıl already knows his taste for women, he is now curious about different women of the world. He promises that ‘he will be Fâzıl’s, and Fâzıl his’, if the poet composes a book about women in the same fashion as the Hûbân-nâme.43 In these lines the young man does not see a conflict between his carnal desire for a woman and his platonic engagement with Fâzıl, and he understands what a hard task that would be for Fâzıl; consequently, a wrangle ensues. In the end, even after stating that to allow a woman into their works/presence (divan) shames a poet, Fâzıl yields to the boy’s request (fols 74a–77b).44 A lengthy third section titled ‘The Introduction to the Versified Narration’ develops a detailed discourse about how to seduce women. Even though this comes at the beginning of the Zenân-nâme, it mirrors a section 150

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An Atlas of Desire placed in the epilogue of the Hûbân-nâme, which describes the acts and outfit of an ideal young man as a love object under the title ‘Sıfat-ı Mā-lezem-i Mahbubi’ (The Necessary Qualities of a Beloved; fols 69a–71a). Although apart from the listing of the women, the Zenân-nâme’s epilogue and prologue have compositional characteristics quite different from the Hûbân-nâme, its content matter presents an intended upside-down vision of love in comparison. First, the Hûbân-nâme cautions against the guile of beautiful young men but ultimately honours love for young men as a step forward in the quest for the eternal love of God. The prologue to the Zenân-nâme, by contrast, argues that women are entirely of this world. Women were created ‘hairless’, with adornments (zînet), so that men would desire them, and the satisfaction of this carnal desire would guarantee the survival of the human species. As such, the Zenân-nâme is not only about women, but also about the sexual desire inspired by them, which, unlike the love of boys, is worldly. In the last decade of the eighteenth century, Fâzıl thus reiterates – through a versified atlas of the world – an ancient trope that contrasts boys and women as different objects for men’s desires. This convergence of a climatic categorisation of people of the world with the contrasting positions of young men and women as men’s love objects requires further contextualisation against the prevalent contemporary discourses, so as to understand Fâzıl’s position within the intellectual networks of the time. The Zenân-nâme epilogue’s treatment of women, for example, is worth considering. Its critique of marriage includes inventive and original witticisms yet signals harsh rejection of the institution itself. In İÜ T5502, the three tableaux (fols 141a–154b) depicting the women’s bathhouse, the night raid and childbirth are larger than the other paintings. These paintings are directly related to the verses describing interactions among women and men, which are parodied and rendered grotesque. The women’s bathhouse, for example, does not depict the romantic vision found in the European imaginary. Instead, in Fâzıl’s telling, the bathhouse is where women give free rein to their foul tongues and insult their husbands by making fun of their physical features.45 The versified anecdotes and the paintings accompanying them are not directly relevant to the atlas of desire that the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme provide, but they introduce a stark comparison between young men and women and decide in favour of the former. Through the tableaux, then, Fâzıl strengthens his argument that for men no comfort is found in women. One of Fâzıl’s earlier critics – Elias John Wilkinson Gibb (1857–1901) – did notice how Fâzıl distinguished between boys and women as objects of love and sex, respectively. This late-nineteenth-century critic’s approach, in a way itself as intriguing as Fâzıl’s works, transports us to a colonial metropolis, London. It 151

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Selim S. Kuru also allows us to revisit an Orientalist’s highly influential posthumously published work, the History of Ottoman Poetry, which contributed to the formation of a still pervasive modern canon.

‘A Quick-witted Arab Lad’: Fâzıl and his Critic Arguably the best evaluation of Fâzıl’s Hûbân-nâme and Zenân-nâme is a section from a chapter in the above-mentioned History of Ottoman Poetry by Elias John Wilkinson Gibb. Here, I will use Gibb’s commentary as a foil to tease out certain aspects of Fâzıl’s Hûbân-nâme and Zenân-nâme. This exercise also reflects on certain continuities between distinct forms of imperialism and nationalism that resonate in both authors’ discourses – a point I would like to focus on in another study. Ziya Paşa’s (1825–80) colossal modern anthology of Ottoman Turkish poetry, titled Harabat (Ruins; 1874–75), and Namık Kemal (1840–88)’s subsequent criticism of this anthology initiated a momentous debate regarding the role of classical Ottoman Turkish literature in the modernising Ottoman Empire.46 Informed by these discussions, Gibb single-handedly developed his own canon, published posthumously as A History of Ottoman Poetry, which includes a comprehensive approach to Fâzıl’s works in the form of a commentary.47 Published a century after Fâzıl’s death, this intriguing twenty-page essay constitutes an object of study in itself, due to the underlying racial and sexual norms presented in the text; yet, it also provides the seeds for the germination of modern approaches to Fâzıl’s works, especially the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme. Gibb employs an evolutionary scheme to tell the story of Anatolian Turkish literature from its inception until the late nineteenth century, modelling his work after common nineteenth-century European literary histories.48 In his introduction to Islamic literature, Gibb assigns wisdom to the Arabs, aesthetics to the Persians and military prowess and honesty to the Turks. He posits that Turkish literature was pastoral, simple and childish before it succumbed to the influence of Persian literature.49 Following the age-old tradition in European Orientalist scholarship, and under the influence of nascent Turkish nationalism, Gibb repeatedly refers to the Ottomans as ‘Turks’, thus disregarding the complexity of the Ottoman Empire’s high literary culture.50 Gibb’s framing of Ottoman literature was determined by the Ottoman intellectuals whom he had met in England and/or corresponded with through letter-writing, and his fascinating commentary on pre-modern Ottoman Turkish texts was shaped under the shadow of a modernist critical approach that valorised national purity in literary works over imperial hybridity.51 As such, his work developed under the auspices of a nineteenth-century 152

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An Atlas of Desire philology that classified literatures according to the imagined comparative study of nations. Gibb had already contributed to Turkey, a volume that appeared as a title in the project ‘Story of the Nations’ (1885–1908), a liberal internationalist project started by Thomas Fisher Unwin (1848–1935).52 In A History of Ottoman Poetry, Gibb stated that ‘[t]hat great race [the Turks] to which the Ottomans belong [ . . . ] has never produced any religion, philosophy or literature which bears the stamp of individual genius’.53 According to Gibb’s formulation, Ottoman literary history began with an elevated Ancient period of pure and simple works/writing/literature, but subsequently lost its national purity in a Classical period under the influence of Persian literature; this, in turn, was replaced by a Romanticist period, followed by the rise of ‘Occidental’ national period, which, at the time when Gibbs was writing, was still in its infancy. In a chapter titled ‘The Culmination of the Romanticist Movement’, Gibb evaluates and characterises Fâzıl, along with his contemporaries Sünbülzade Vehbi (d. 1809) and Sururi (1752–1814), as very popular but somewhat unruly poets of the late eighteenth century.54 For Gibb, Romanticism in Ottoman poetry emerges in parallel with what he calls the third and last Persian school in Ottoman Turkish poetry, ultimately replacing it in the eighteenth century. This final Persian school was, as noted above, replaced by a Romanticism that brings in a national spirit, thanks to the ‘Occidentalism of the present day’.55 Within Gibb’s framework which hinges on ideas of nationalism, Fâzıl, a ‘quick-witted Arab lad’, appears as ‘the most stalwart champion of the Turkish spirit in Turkish poetry’, despite the fact that he is simultaneously cast as, ‘save by education, no Turk at all’ and as ‘no true poet; in his writings there is no reflection, however faint, of that light that never was on sea or land’.56 Still, in Fâzıl’s works, Gibb finds ‘not only the revelation of a marked individuality, but a veritable treasury of the folk-lore [sic] of the author’s age and country’. By referring to Fâzıl as both an ‘Arab lad’ and a champion of ‘Turkish spirit’, Gibb reveals his skewed racial understanding and explains Fâzıl’s ‘Turkishness’ through his education. His moralistic and high cultural approach to literature, however, does not allow Gibb to appreciate Fâzıl’s satirical style that alters and transforms a rich and varied classical tradition. For Gibb, Fâzıl is an informant/representative of his country and age. Thus, Gibb’s ‘individuality’ refers to a national trait. This is a conception of individuality very different from what is generally understood today. It is an ‘individuality’ that is defined by the shared attributes of a linguistic community which, in turn, are identified in their literary products to establish a basis for that group’s claim to be a nation. 153

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Selim S. Kuru Fâzıl also informs Gibb’s ideas regarding the ‘local’ folklore of his period: Gibb finds in Fâzıl’s works a ‘full and clear account of the way in which the old Turks, while yet absolutely uninfluenced by Western ideas, viewed the various nationalities with whom they had come in contact, whether within or without the frontiers of their Empire’.57 Through this approach, Gibb underscores three aspects of Fâzıl’s works: (1) Fâzıl is a secondary poet; (2) Fâzıl’s work is realistic; and (3) Fâzıl’s writing constitutes an archive of information about the Turks/ Ottomans. As such, Gibb turns Fâzıl into an expression of racialised Turkish essence (even though he originally introduces him as an Arab), or maybe of an Ottoman who considered himself above those who are defined by ethnicity or locality, like the young men and women in his Hûbân-nâme and Zenân-nâme. Gibb notes a fourth parameter that characterises Fâzıl as an erotic poet. Focusing on Fâzıl’s Defter-i Aşk, Gibb was at first perplexed. In this autobiographical account in verse, which tells about four love affairs that he had experienced, Fâzıl develops a discourse on the nature of boy-love, favouring a platonic approach over a carnal one. Later, however, when he takes up Fâzıl’s Hûbânnâme and Zenân-nâme, Gibb identifies the poet’s differing attitude towards young men and women, according to which Fâzıl is much more ‘reticent in dealing with his boys than with his girls’. Gibb continues: The reason for this is not hard to divine. To an Oriental of those days it was an accepted fact, indisputable and undisputed, that a noble-minded man might, and often did, entertain for a boy an amorous affection in which the profoundest admiration was conjoined with the most perfect purity [ . . . ] On the other hand, if a man desired a woman, it could be for one thing only. [ . . . ] Thus in this pair of books we have presented to us more clearly than anywhere else in Turkish literature the attitude which is the direct antithesis of our own, through virtue of which what with us is reckoned shame was accounted honour, and what we hold for our glory and our boast was esteemed grace.58 Gibb concludes this fascinatingly othering discourse in his perceptive analysis of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, in which he states: ‘And yet it is but in the object through which the sentiment of love is evoked that the difference lies; in their highest conception of true love with its soul transforming power East and West are one’.59 Thus, a deeply differentiating discourse is subsumed by a liberal, cosmopolitan and ultimately colonial narrative. This discourse relies on a selective approach that is necessary to establish the binary ‘us’ versus ‘them’ and conceals varied and multi-layered discourses on male-to-male love developed in England and Ottoman Empire at the same time.60 154

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An Atlas of Desire

A Versified World The aspects of the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme that I have delineated in the first part of this article are not found in Gibb’s reading. While Gibb is perceptive about the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme and organises a convincing discourse around them, his commentary weaves a dark net of difference in order to reach a conclusion of similarity. His incisive comment on love as a ‘soul-transforming power’ connects Fâzıl and Gibb across a century, while his indifference regarding the rules of satire and the opaque lens of a colonial nationalism precludes him from seeing Fâzıl as an individual. Fâzıl’s painstaking effort to identify difference among nations located in different climes does not pique Gibb’s interest. In a sense, Gibb mirrors Fâzıl, who, rather than identify and record existing differences, sought and invented them among different young men and women by drawing on his imperial vision of the world. Gibb, in his literary history, sought and invented Fâzıl according to his own colonising gaze. While presenting a thematically versified atlas of the world in a satire, Fâzıl ends up crafting a particular vision of the world. Like any representation, the image of the world constructed through the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme (the two are siblings, as the author jokingly says) is selective and relies on the limits of Fâzıl’s learning as well as his experience (there is no mention of China, for example, nor of any Central Asian city or region, nor even the Kurdish or Laz communities of Anatolia). But the parallel structuring and categories that are employed to define boys and women imply an attempt to identify and construct differences among the people of the world. As such, the wings of the diptych close upon each other, keeping these two distinct objects of desire – which are defined as worldly through cities and regions in which they are found – separate from the desiring men who are in an elite position and able to imagine themselves beyond this world. Fâzıl was aware that he was accomplishing something new, although he was not interested in informing scholars of our time about his age and customs. Nor was he interested in providing ammunition for future critiques of the Ottoman elite. What Fâzıl claimed as original in his Hûbân-nâme and Zenânnâme was most probably the way in which he versified the world’s nations in order to offer a new topic for Ottoman Turkish literature that will also revive an ancient debate about love and sexuality, this time framed by an ancient understanding of the seven climes. As such, the discourse he developed in the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, although well-sustained and consistent, pulses with convictions shaped by formal constraints; in this sense, it is similar to the discourse that Gibb later developed to locate him in the history of Ottoman Turkish literature. 155

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Sub-titles in İÜ T5502 I.

Ḫūbān-nāme

1b

II. Ẕikr-i mefrūże-i ıẖlāṣ-ı duʿā

2b

III. Der beyān-ı sebeb-i manẓūme

2b

IV. Ẕikr-i fermān-ı cānān

3b

V.

4b

Der beyān-ı küre-i rū-yı zemīn

VI. Resm-i şekl-i küre-i mā vü türāb der beyān-ı derec-i heft iḳlīm

5b

 1. Ṣıfat-ı nāḥiyye-i Hindustān

7a



1a. Ẕikr-i bilād-ı Asyā

(on the margin) 7a

 2. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı nevāḥī-yi ʿAcem

7b

 3. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı nevāḥī-yi ʿIraḳ

10b



3b. Ṣıfat-ı nāḥiyye-i Afriḳā

(on the margin) 10b

 4. Ẕikr-i maḥbūbī-i Ümm-i Dünyā

12a

 5. Ẕikr-i taʿrīf-i ġulāmān-ı siyāh

14a

 6. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı nevāḥī-yi Ḥabeş

14b

 7. Sıfat-ı ḥālet-i ẖūbān-ı Yemen

17a

 8. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı bilād-ı Maġreb

17a

 9. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı Cezāyir-i Tūnus

17b

10. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı nevāḥī-yi Ḥicāz

21a

11. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı nevāḥī-yi Dımışḳ

21b

12. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı bilād-ı Şehbā

25b

13. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı bilād-ı Anaṭolu

27a

14. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı baḥr-i sefīd

29a

15. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı İspānya

29b



15b. Ẕikr-i iḳlīm-i bilād-ı Avruba

(on the margin) 29b

16. Şehriyān-ı beled-i İslāmbol

32a

17. Ẕikr-i efrenc-i bilād-ı İslām

36a

18. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı millet-i Rūm

36b



40a

18b. Ḳıṣṣa-i mīrāŝ-yidi

19. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı Ermeniyān

42a 156

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An Atlas of Desire 20. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı ḳavm-i Yahūd

44a

21. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı Çengāne

46a

22. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı bilād-ı Rūm-ili

46a

23. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı Arnabud

49b

24. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı gürūh-ı Boşnaḳ

51a

25. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı gürūh-ı Tatar

51a

26. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı Gürciyān

51b

27. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı gürūh-ı Çerkes

55b

28. Ẕikr-i baʿż ez milel-i Tersāyān

57a

29. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı millet-i Leh

57b

30. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı gürūh-ı Nemçe

60a

31. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı millet-i Rus

60b

32. Der beyān-ı ṣıfat-ı Frence

63a

33. Ṣıfat-ı İngiliz-i şevḳ-engiz

63b

34. Ẕikr-i ẖūbān-ı gürūh-ı Felemenk

66a

35. Ṣıfat-ı cānib-i dünyā-yı Cedid

66a



35b. Ṣıfat-ı nāḥiyye-i Amriḳa

(on the margin) 66a

VI. Ṣıfat-ı mā-lezem-i maḥbūbī

69a

VII. Ḳubbe-i ẖātime-i manẓūme

70a

VIII. Taḳrīż-i ʿĀrif ez ẖademe-i Enderūn-ı Humāyūn ẖāne-i ẖāṣṣa-i Sulṭāniyye dāme vücūdihi IX. Taḳrīż-i āẖirül-kātibiʿl-ẖurūf El-seyyid iḥyāü’d-dāʿī

71a

I.

73b

Zenān-nāme

II. Der beyān-ı sebeb-i īn teˀlīf

74a

III. Ẕikr-i muḳaddeme-i manẓūme

77a

 1. Der beyān-ı zen-i Hind-i şarkī

80a

 2. Ṣıfat-ı ḥālet-i nisvān-ı ʿAcem

83a

 3. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-i nisā-yı Baġdād

83b 157

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Selim S. Kuru  4. Der beyān-ı zen-i ümm-i dünyā

85a



4b. Ṣıfat-ı ġarībe

87b



4c. Aʿcūbe-i ġarībe

87b

 5. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-i zenān-ı Sūdān

89a

 6. Ṣıfat-ı ḥālet-i nisvān-ı Ḥabeş

89a

 7. Ṣıfat-ı ḥālet-i nisvān-ı Yemen

92a

 8. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-i zenān-ı Maġreb

92b

 9. Ṣıfat-ı nisvān-ı Cezāyir-i Tūnus

95a

10. Ṣıfat-i ḥālet-i nisvān-ı Ḥicāz

95b



10a. Ceng-i ʿurbān

97a



10b. Zeġārīt ʿurbān nisāsına maḥṣūṣ bir naġme-i meşhūredir

97b



10c. Nikāḥ-ı ʿurbān

97b



10d. Zifāf-ı ʿurbān

98b

11. Ṣıfat-ı ḥālet-i nisvān-ı Dımışk

99a



11a. Bilād-ı Ḥavrān

103a



11b. Bilād-ı Ṣafed

103a



11c. Ẕikr-i Dürzī-i ṭāġī

104a

12. Ṣıfat-ı ḥālet-i nisvān-ı Ḥaleb

104a

13. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-i zenān-ı Anaṭol

104b



104b

13a. Zifāf-ı etrāk

14. Ẕikr-i aḥvāl-i zen-i Bahr-i Sefīd

107a

15. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-i zen-i İspānya

107b

16. Ẕikr-i aḥvāl-i zen-i İslambol

109a



16a. Fırḳa-i yeküm

109b



16b. Fırḳa-i düvüm

111a



16c. Fırḳa-i süvüm

112b



16d. Fırḳa-i cehārüm

113a

17. Ẕikr-i Efrenc-i bilād-ı İslām

115a

18. Ṣıfat-ı hüsn-i zen-i millet-i Rūm

115b

19. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-i nisā-yı Ermen

119a

20. Sıfat-ı ḥālet-i nisvān-ı Yahūd

121a 158

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An Atlas of Desire 21. Ẕikr-i aḥvāl-i zen-i Çengāne

121b

22. Ẕikr-i nisvān-ı bilād-ı Rūmili

121b

23. Ẕikr-i aḥvāl-i zen-i Ārnabūd

121b

24. Ṣıfat-ı ḥālet-i zenān-ı Bōşnāḳ

126a

25. Ẕikr-i aḥvāl-i zenān-ı Tātār

126a

26. Ṣıfat-ı medḥ-i zenān-ı Gürcī

126b

27. Ṣıfat-i hüsn-i zenān-ı Çerkes

130a

28. Ẕikr-i baʿż ez-milel-i Tersāyān

130b

29. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-o zen-i millet-i Leh

134a

30. Ẕikr-i nisvān-ı gürūh-ı Nemçe

134a

31. Ṣıfat-ı ḳubḥ-ı millet-i Rūs

134a

32. Ẕikr-i aḥvāl-i zen-i Efrençe

137a

33. Ṣıfat-ı ḥāl-i zen-i İngilīz

137b

34. Ẕikr-i aḥvāl-i zenān-ı Felemenk

137b

35. Ẕikr-i ḥāl-i zen-i Dünyā-yı cedīd

137b

IV. Ṣaded-i ġāˀile-i emr-i nikāḥ

141a

V. Nebze-i ḳıṣṣa-i ḥammām-ı nisā

143b

VI. Ḥamle-i ehl-i maḥalle ve imām

146b

VII. Beyt-i naḳş-ı ẕikr-i aşufte

149b

VIII. Müfred IX. Dīger X. Dīger XI. Dīger XII. Dīger

149b

XIII. Dīger

150a

XIV. Der beyān-ı żarar-i farṭ-i cimāʿ

150a

XV. Ṣaded-i feẕleke-i manẓūme

150b

XVI. Temmet (m)

152b

Ḥarrere el-ʿabd el-dāʿī li el-devle el-ʿaliyye el-ʿOsmāniyye / ve el-ḥādim li el-sidde el-seniyye el-ẖāḳāniyye / el-Seyyid iḥyā / sutire ẕenūbe /1208 fi [Receb] 12

154b

159

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Selim S. Kuru

Notes  1. Basic modern sources about Fâzıl’s biography are short encyclopaedia entries. See Ali Cânib Yöntem, ‘Fâzıl’, in İslam Ansiklopedisi (İstanbul: MEB, 1945), vol. 4, 529–31; Sabahattin Küçük, ‘Enderunlu Fâzıl’, in TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi (İstanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 1995), vol. 11, 188–89.  2. For an edition of the Zenân-nâme, see Nebile Öztürk, ‘Zenân-nâme: Enderunlu Fâzıl’ (unpubl. MA thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 2002). For art historical studies of the illustrations in manuscript copies of Fâzıl’s Hûbân-nâme and Zenân-nâme that focus on Westernisation, see Günsel Renda, ‘Traditional Turkish Painting and the Beginnings of Western Trends’, in A History of Turkish Painting, ed. Oleg Grabar (İstanbul: Tiglat Gallery, 1987), 15–88; on the transformation of public space, see Shirineh Hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures: İstanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington, 2004). For a French translation of a section from the Hûbân-nâme on the boys of Istanbul, see Selim S. Kuru and Irvin C. Schick, ‘Les gitons d’Istanbul à la fin du XVIIIe siècle: Une sélection du Hûbân-nâme d’Enderûnlu Fâzıl Bey’, in Les Ottomans par euxmêmes, ed. Elisabetta Borromeo and Nicolas Vatin (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2020), 89–98.  3. Ussama Makdisi, ‘Ottoman Orientalism’, The American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002): 773.  4. For an important collection of essays on ‘othering’ in Ottoman texts, see H. T. Karateke, Erdem Cipa and Helga Anetshofer, Disliking Others: Loathing, Hostility and Distrust in Ottoman Lands (Brighton: Academic Publishers, 2018).  5. Even though it focuses on the place of sexual and pornographic literary production in Europe in order to formulate the other, Irvin Cemil Schick’s methodology in his pioneering work on ethnopornography helped me read Fâzıl’s works with a fresh eye. See Irvin Cemil Schick, The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse (London: Verso, 1999).  6. Feridun Emecen, ‘Zâhir el Ömer’, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2013), https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/zahir-el-omer.  7. For a brief account of Fâzıl’s life and a short mention of his brother Kamil, who died at an unidentified young age before Fâzıl left the palace, see Esad Mehmed Efendi, Bağçe-i Safâ-Endûz (comp. 1835), ed. Rıza Oğraş (Ankara: T. C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 2018), https://ekitap.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/59393,esad-mehmed-efendi-bagce-i-safa-enduzpdf.pdf?0.  8. For a detailed description and a preliminary edition of the Defter-i Aşk, see Selim S. Kuru, ‘Sex in the Text: Deli Birader’s Dâfiü’l-gumûm ve Râfi‘ü’l-humûm and the Ottoman Literary Canon’, Middle Eastern Literatures 10, no. 2 (2007): 157–74. There, I have attempted to reconstruct a chronology of Fâzıl’s life following the clues in his Defter-i Aşk; however, that reconstruction now needs major revisions based on my current research.  9. Current biographical sketches do not clarify or add to Yöntem, ‘Fâzıl’. Yener Bayar identified Fâzıl’s uncles from his father’s side, who were settled in Bursa, most probably after their brother’s execution; Yener Bayar, Facebook message to author, 10 July 2020. 10. Fâzıl-ı Enderunî, Divan-ı Fâzıl Bey Enderuni (Bulak, Egypt: [n. p.], 1258 [1842]). 11. Hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures, not only draws an interesting picture of the social atmosphere of eighteenth-century İstanbul, but also includes examples and analyses of Fâzıl’s chronograms to substantiate her arguments. For an edition of the elegy that Fâzıl

160

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An Atlas of Desire composed after Selim III’s execution in 1808, see Mesut Bayram Düzenli, ‘Enderunlu Fâzıl’ın III. Selim Mersiyesi (İnceleme – Metin)’, Balıkesir University Journal of Social Sciences Institute 21, no. 39 (2018): 19–37. 12. Barış Karacasu, ‘“Bize Çengîleri Kıl Rûşen ü Pâk”: Ya da “Hayra Hezlin Dahi Bir Rehberi Var”’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları 28 (2006): 133–60. 13. Ethan L. Menchinger, ‘Dreams of Destiny and Omens of Greatness: Exceptionalism in Ottoman Political and Historical Thought’, Journal of Islamic Studies 31, no. 1 (2020): 1–30. 14. Gerçe ol maskat-ı re’sim vatanım / söylemez lik müdara dehanım (İÜ T5502, fol. 102a). All references to quotations from the works are to the folio numbers of İÜ T5502, unless noted otherwise. 15. When printing started to become more widespread in early-nineteenth-century İstanbul, most publications presented editions of contemporaneous eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury works, including many literary works, such as Fâzıl’s, which had been composed in a manuscript culture. For an analytical study of early Ottoman Turkish publications, see Günil Ayaydın Cebe, ‘19. Yüzyılda Osmanlı Toplumu ve Basılı Türkçe Edebiyat: Etkileşimler, Değişimler, Çeşitlilik’ (Unpubl. PhD diss., Bilkent Üniversitesi, 2009). 16. Ziya Yılmazer, Şânî-zâde Tarihi: Osmanlı Tarihi 1223–1237/1808–1821) (İstanbul: Çamlıca Yayınları, 2008), vol. 1, 419. 17. For references and a short analysis of these modern approaches to Ottoman Turkish homoerotic texts, see Kuru, ‘Sex in the Text’, and Abdulhamit Arvas, ‘From the Pervert, Back to the Beloved: Homosexuality and Ottoman Literary History, 1453–1923’, in Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, ed. E. L. McCallum and Mikko Tuhkanen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 146–49. For a recent example, see Rıza Zelyut, Osmanlı’da Oğlancılık (İstanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 2016); for references to Fâzıl’s Çengînâme, see 166–80. In his survey, the title of which translates into English as ‘Pederasty among Ottomans’, Zelyut defines the Ottoman elite as ‘pederasts’ through references to various Ottoman Turkish literary works. 18. Osman Horata, ‘Mesneviler’, in Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi, ed. Talât Sait Halman (İstanbul: T. C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları, 2006), vol. 2, 548. 19. For a general evaluation of this period, see Hatice Aynur, ‘Ottoman Literature’, in The Cambridge History of Turkey, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), vol. 3, 481–520. 20. See Jan Schmidt, ‘Fâzıl Beg Enderuni: Social Historian or Poet?’ in Decision Making and Change in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Cesar Farah (Kirksville: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1993), 183–92. As an example of how Fazıl’s works are interrogated for evidence about a particular community, see Ozan Yılmaz, ‘Enderunlu Fâzıl Divanında Yahudilikle İlgili Unsurlar ve Andname-i Yahudi Beçe’, Türk Bilig 22 (2011): 1–30. 21. For a popular and abridged edition of Zenân-nâme, see Fâzıl-ı Enderunî, Hûbanname [sic] ve Zenanname, ed. Ercümend Muhib (İstanbul: Yeni Şark Kitabevi, 1945); Fâzıl-ı Enderunî, Zenân-nâme Kadınlar Kitabı / The Book of Women: Enderunlu Fâzıl, ed. Filiz Bingölçe, trans. Kevser Demir (Ankara: Alt Üst Yayınları, 2006). See a brief comment by Irvin Cemil Schick on Bingölçe’s edition and translation in Hûbân-nâme-i Nev-edâ: Bir İstanbul Esnaf Güzellemesi (İstanbul: Kalem ve Hokka Yayınları, 2017), 16. For a scholarly edition of the Zenân-nâme, see Öztürk, ‘Zenân-nâme: Enderunlu Fâzıl’. Hûbân-nâme editions are even more problematic. On a rewriting of the Hûbân-nâme in French with attribution to Fâzıl published in 1870s, see Irvin Cemil Schick, ‘Review

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Selim S. Kuru of Enderunlu Fazıl Bey, Güzel Oğlanlar Kitabı, trans. Reşit İmrahor (Istanbul: Cin Sel, 2009)’, Virgül 128 (May–June 2009): 40. 22. In his ground-breaking work, Ze’evi maps certain genres of writing, from bureaucratic to instructional or narrative; see Dror Ze’evi, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500–1900 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006). In Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), Khaled El-Rouayheb, focusing on Ottoman Arab lands, identifies three types of homoerotic and homosexual discourses for the premodern period. Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), map the objects of desire for men across a variety of genres in a comparative frame in order to question the representative and formative power of literary works. 23. For a detailed annotated bibliography of şehrengiz texts, see Barış Karacasu, ‘Türk Edebiyatında Şehrengîzler’, Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi 5, no. 10 (2007): 259–313. 24. For ‘cartes à figure’ maps, see C. Koeman, G. Schilder, M. Egmond and P. Krogt, ‘Commercial Cartography and Map Production in the Low Countries, 1500–ca. 1672’, in The History of Cartography, ed. David Woodward and G. Malcom Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), vol. 3, 1316, 1326. 25. A typed-on printout note on the inner back cover identifies the date of production erroneously as 1796. Günsel Renda introduced İÜ T5502, along with other illustrated manuscripts of Fâzıl’s Hûbân-nâme and Zenânname, in Batılılaşma Döneminde Türk Resim Sanatı (Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1977), 46–52. For detailed descriptions of the illustrations in İÜ T5502, as well as in other extant manuscript copies, see Saliha İçen, ‘Hûbânname ve Zenânname’de Metin-Resim İlişkisi’ (Unpubl. PhD diss., Hacettepe Üniversitesi, 2001), 4, 159. I am thankful to Müslüm Yılmaz who helped me acquire digital images of İÜ T5502. 26. İçen, ‘Hubanname’, and Renda, Batılılaşma Döneminde, 53, use the given name of the scribe, Yahya, which is recorded in the colophon merely as Seyyid İhya. About the calligrapher and poet Seyyid Şerif Yahya Efendi (d. 1813), who used the penname İhya, see Mehmet Halil Erzen, ‘İhyâ Dîvânı ve Tahlîli: İnceleme, Tahlîl, Tenkitli Metin’ (Unpubl. PhD diss., Yüzüncü Yıl Üniversitesi, 2012). For Seyyid Yahya’s talent in talik hand, see 13; for the parallel to Fâzıl’s gazel, see 59; and for the tahmis, see 737–38. 27. While the lithograph print edition of 1838 preserved some of these terms, the moveable print edition of 1870 erased any regional qualifiers for place or group names; Fâzıl-ı Enderunî, Der Vasf-ı Hûbân-nâme, Der Vasf-ı Zenân-nâm-i Fâzıl, Der Vasf-ı Rakkâsnâme ([İstanbul[?]: [n. p.], 1255 [1838]); Fâzıl-ı Enderunî, Defter-i Aşk, Hûbân-nâme, Zenân-nâme, Çenginame, Şevkengiz (İstanbul: Rıza Efendi Matbaası, 1286 [1870]). The Zenân-nâme, however, does not pursue regional qualifiers (for the subtitles in İÜ T5502, see the Appendix). 28. These two takriz are found only in İÜ T5502. The two print editions include a short dedication to Fâzıl’s patron, Ratib Efendi (1750–99), at the end of the Hûbân-nâme, which may point to another recension of the text as the basis of print editions (Fâzıl-ı Enderunî, Der Vasf-ı Hûbân-nâme, 47–48; Defter-i Aşk, 55). 29. Here I use ‘modern’ as a heuristic device to refer to the appearance of new forms in Ottoman Turkish literary culture, which happened in the nineteenth century.

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An Atlas of Desire Otherwise, the creativity in these works points to the conditions of possibility within the literary culture, as well as to the individual interests that Fâzıl had in the possibilities that culture provided, and not to the linearity which the term ‘modern’ may imply. 30. Ey ki hâli siyehi Hindustan, turresi milket-i Efrencistan (fol. 137b). 31. Elias John Wilkinson Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry (London: The E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 1900–9), vol 4, 241. 32. Fitnedür ‘âleme hüsn-i mergûb, aña Hakk eyledi teshîr-i kulûb / Evliya olmadı pes andan ma’sûm, ehline cümle kısaslar ma‘lûm (fol. 2a–b). 33. Oldı bu güne tecelli-i fakîr, ne yaña gitdi ise aşka esîr / Dag-ı hûbân ile sinem toldı / sanki mecmu‘a-i hakkâk oldı (fol. 3a). In fact, Fâzıl returned to the theme of boy-love two years after composing the Hûbân-nâme and the Zenân-nâme, in his autobiographical Defter-i Aşk; see Selim S. Kuru, ‘Biçimin Kıskacında Bir “Tarih-i Nev-icad”: Enderunlu Fazıl Bey ve Defter-i Aşk Adlı Mesnevisi’, in Şinasi Tekin’in Anısına Uygurlardan Osmanlıya, ed. Günay Kut (İstanbul: Simurg, 2005), 486. In this work, he recounts four love affairs which tormented him, only to realise after the fourth affair that love for boys is temporary, as their beauty is transitory. Ultimately, Fâzıl contends that worldly love affairs are a necessary experience in order to discover the eternal true beauty and love of God. 34. Evvelâ vasfını takrir eyle, ba‘dehu resmini tasvîr eyle / Nuş idersin dahı itmâmında, cur‘a-i lutfimi encâmında (fol. 4a). 35. Milel-i muhtelife ma‘lûmum, levh-i endişede hep mersûmum / Kütb-i hikmeti kıldum ta‘lîm, bilürem nidügi tab‘-ı iklim / Ya‘ni hammâmda görsem bir yâr, bî-tekellüm bilürem kangı diyar (fol. 4b). This implies that Fâzıl knows about ilm-i kıyafet – that is, physiognomy. This couplet also points to the sartorial regimes in the Ottoman Empire, which signified ethnic, regional and/or religious difference. 36. Gerçe taksimi bu güne selefüñ, geldi ammâ ukalâsı halefüñ / üç bölük eylediler dünyayı, kesdiler hâsılı bu gavgâyı / Yeñi dünyâ dahı itdükde zuhur, dört bölük oldı mahall-i ma‘mûr / biri Asya ile Afrikadur, biri Avrupa ile Amrikadur / Cümlenüñ eltafı şimdi ammâ, semt-i iklîm-i bilâd-ı Avrupa / Andadur şehr-i Stanbul-ı şerîf, cümleden olmaya mı pâk ü latîf (fol. 5a). 37. About the moral and intellectual crisis among the Ottoman governing elite/intellectuals in the late eighteenth century, see Menchinger, ‘Dreams of Destiny’; Fatih Yeşil, ‘How to Be(come) an Ottoman at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları/ Journal of Ottoman Studies 44 (2014): 123–39. 38. See Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (New York: Bollingen Series, 1958), vol. 1, 87–176. 39. On climate as a cause of physical and mental difference among humans in Ibn Khaldun and Montesquieu’s works, see Aytekin Demircioğlu, ‘A Comparison of the Views of Ibn Khaldun and Montesquieu in Terms of the Effect of Climatic Conditions on Human Life’, The Anthropologist 17, no. 3 (2017): 725–33. On the nineteenth-century moral discourse of climate, see David N. Livingston, ‘The Moral Discourse of Climate: Historical Considerations on Race, Place and Virtue’, Journal of Historical Geography 17, no. 4 (1991): 413–34. 40. Ahmet Karamustafa, ‘Cosmographical Diagrams’, in The History of Cartography, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), vol. 2, 75–80; Pınar Emiralioğlu, Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 67.

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Selim S. Kuru 41. See a brief description of this section and translations of some verses in Irvin Cemil Schick and Ayşen Anadol, Çerkes Güzeli: Bir Şarkiyatçı İmgenin Serüveni (İstanbul: Oğlak Yayıncılık, 2004), 95–96. 42. Minnet ol hâlik-i hikmet-kâre zen-i dünyâyı iden mekkâre (fol. 73b). 43. Bilürüm tab’ına ağırdur bu meşreb-i pâke mugayirdür bu / Hâtrum çekesin bunda ta’b ne kadar olsa hilâf-i meşreb / Bu da tekmîl olıcak velhâsıl ben senin sen benümsün Fâzıl (fol. 75b). 44. Şairiz şeyn virür şanımıza / Fahişe giremez divanımıza (fol. 75b). 45. These tableaux are reminiscent of the novels of modern Turkish author Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar (1864–1944). There, vivid parodies of interaction among the lower-income groups mimic their conversations. This is what Fâzıl does in his work on women in general, and especially in this original section. 46. For debates on classical literature in the Ottoman Empire, see Mehmet Kahraman, Divan Edebiyatı Üzerine Tartışmalar (İstanbul: Beyan Yayınları, 1996). 47. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 220–42. 48. For a brief description of the development of literary histories in the nineteenth century, see James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of Modern Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 162–66. 49. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 220–42. 50. In his evolutionary perspective, Gibb celebrates the rising ‘New Literature’ of the Tanzimat era as modern, national and real, at the expense of classical/imperial Ottoman literature. On the incessant use of ‘Turkey’ to define the multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual Ottoman Empire and ‘Turk’ for its Muslim subjects in Western European countries, see the discussion by Gerald MacLean, Looking East: English Writing and the Ottoman Empire Before 1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 6–8. 51. About Gibb’s correspondences with the Ottoman intellectuals, see Nagihan Gür, ‘J. W. Redhouse ve E. J. W. Gibb’in Entelektüel Paylaşımları ve Osmanlı Kültürünü Anlama Çabaları’, Hacettepe Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 29 (2018): 103–24. 52. Elias John Wilkinson Gibb, Turkey (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1888). 53. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 1, 6. 54. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 220. 55. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 3. 56. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 221. 57. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 223. 58. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 230–32. 59. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4, 231. 60. For discussion of genre and discourse formation in Ottoman literature, see Selim S. Kuru, ‘Generic Desires: Homoerotic Love in Ottoman Turkish Poetry’, in Mediterranean Crossings: Sexual Transgressions in Islam and Christianity (10–18th Centuries), ed. Umberto Grassi (Rome: Viella English Series, 2020), 43–63.

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6 European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court (1599–1846): Diplomacy and Fantasy from an English Organ to the Forty French Singers’ Ottoman Odyssey Nicolas Dufetel

He wears modern dress and is very fond of our wines, our music and our cigars1 (René Spitaels about Ahmed Feyzi Kapudan Pasha, 1839) It seems impossible to know with any certainty when the first European, or ‘western’ musician performed in Constantinople, and even more difficult to say who it was. Yet, to answer these questions, we also would need to agree on a definition of ‘western music’ (instrumental, vocal, orchestral, secular or religious, dance, opera and so on), as well as on the nature of the performance and on its context: such categories challenge, indeed, the definition of music in history, and the oriental (that is, non-western) conceptions of what music is may not always apply to western practice and society. In Europe the words ‘music’ and ‘concert’ are already complex ones.2 Words and notions have evolved over several centuries and in parallel with society: to sum up, as far as music-making is concerned, it is sometimes impossible – as it is different from one period to another and from one society to another – to establish a simple dichotomy between a private concert and a public one. There are countless nuances, countless intermediary positions. The eighteenth-century duality between Kenner (connaisseur) and Liebhaber (amateur) was also an important concept and corresponded to different styles of composition that were sometimes advertised in the titles of the published scores, for example, by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach and even by his father Johann Sebastian. In the nineteenth century (the period 165

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Nicolas Dufetel at the core of this chapter), the salon recital was, for example, both public and private, or an in-between social space. But in either case – public or private, Kenner and Liebhaber – it was limited to, and shaped by, certain circles in society. All of these questions about the role of music in western societies apply equally to the western, or ‘alla franca’ music in the history of Constantinople. Beyond the necessary cautious approach to orientalist thought, it still must be taken into consideration when constructing a comparative study of music between the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Occident’. The emergence of western music in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire has already been studied by several Turkish historians and musicians, such as Mahmut R. Gâzimihâl, who can be considered the Turkish pioneer musicologist, and more recently Bülent Aksoy, Evren Kutlay Baydar and Artemur Orkun Gündoğdu. Yet, they mainly focus on the Hamidian period.3 Emre Aracı, however, is an exception for he has devoted monographic studies to Donizetti Pasha, active in Constantinople from 1828 to 1856, and the Naum Theater in the 1840s.4 Vittorio Cattelan’s recent doctoral dissertation sheds new light on the central Italian aspects of the phenomenon.5 However, a comprehensive historical and musicological study of the phenomenon, as well as a thorough survey of the first decades of the musical westernisation of the Tanzimat era,6 the western reception and finally a critical history that would contextualise this westernisation of music in the Ottoman Empire, endogenous or exogeneous, and interrogate the orientalist, globalisation and post-colonial paradigms is still to be done. The first question would be that of the origin and status of the musicians who performed western music in the Ottoman cities, especially Constantinople, as it is obviously the most documented place: endogenous, exogenous, travelling, or ‘implanted’ musicians. As a matter of fact, musicians are often nomadic, migratory social and artistic beings who travel either singly or in groups – chamber ensembles, small or important choirs, orchestras. For centuries this was the case with musicians who accompanied princes, dignitaries, diplomats and the courts whom they served. There can be no doubt, then, that for centuries Ottoman Constantinople was visited by western musicians because of the presence of the Franks.7 But these anonymous appearances in the privacy of private homes, among families, in legations, or in any other circles of Frankish society are mostly undocumented and may be hard to retrace – a vast research endeavour involving diplomatic, private and public sources in western and Turkish archives, shall shed new light on it, but goes beyond the goal of this summary study. Not until the nineteenth century are we better informed on account of two complementary factors: first, the increase in western musical practices associated with the Tanzimat, and second, the wealth of documentary 166

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court evidence available from this period, together with the development in travelling. This article is part of a more general research study made possible in part by developments in terms of the local and European contemporary press, and in part by the existence of primary sources in Istanbul and in Europe. Western sources (newspapers, travel memoirs, correspondences) may be more numerous than oriental ones about the first decades of the century and, of course, easier to find for western researchers unfamiliar with the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Yet, one cannot rely only on them to have a complete view, unless one intends to conduct a reception study that should therefore be accompanied by all critical tools and contextualised with the orientalist patterns. If the question of the first ‘western’ musician in Constantinople may be impossible to answer and may also be irrelevant regarding the global history of melting musical cultures, a more pointed one would be when western music first appeared at the Ottoman court, in a private setting, and hence who the first musicians to perform for the sultan himself, or at least in his palace, were. It is on this aspect that the present article will focus: the European musicians who performed for the sultan from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, with a focus on early keyboard diplomacy, then on the first years of the Tanzimat. From the 1820s onwards, Europe discovered the sultans’ taste for music – especially Mahmud II and Abdülmecid, who welcomed travelling virtuosos and even the pittoresque ‘Forty Pyrenean Singers’ who in 1846, led by Alfred Roland, had taken on an extraordinary journey through Egypt and the Ottoman Empire.

1. Early Examples: Musical Trade and Keyboard Diplomacy A. ‘Feminising’ Instruments: François I and Süleyman At the time of the Franco-Ottoman Alliance, King François I sent to his ally Süleyman the Magnificent music instruments and certainly accompanying musicians. The precise date of this gift is not known, but this diplomatic musical offering may have been presented around 1530–40. This episode is often quoted, yet rarely sourced with contemporary documents. The earliest known source I have yet been able to find, dating back to a couple of decades after it happened, is Theodor Zwinger’s 1565 Theatrum vitae humanum, republished in 1615 by Michael Praetorius in his famous Syntagma Musicum. The account states that, after a first time of discovery, excitement and enthusiasm for the new experience provided by the obviously western – hence exotic – music, the sultan, seeing that the Turks were liking it to the point of desiring to learn to play the new instruments, decided to destroy them. He feared that his subjects 167

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Nicolas Dufetel would be ‘effeminated’ (affoeminarentur) by this western art and sent the musicians back to France: SOLYMANNUS, Turcarum Imperator, cum a Rege Francisco I. Gallorum peritissimos in omni genere Musicae artifices dono accepisset, illis primo summopere delectatus fuit; Mox cum Constantinopoli summo studio populum ad audiendum concurrere, & earum artium disciplinam affectare cerneret: veritus ne animi civium affoeminarentur, Instrumentis omnibus confractis & igni absumtis, Musicos ipsos Gallo remisit. Carent omnino Turcae musicis instrumentis, bellicis tantum tympanis etiam in nuptijs utentes. Cavit enim perfidus Mahometus omnia ea, quae animos excitare & emollire possent: vinum, musicam, artes denique omnes liberales.8 SOLIMAN, the Emperor of the Turks, when he received as a gift from the King of the French [Gallic] François I music instruments [objects] of all kinds, was at first highly charmed. Then when he saw that in Constantinople, the people came to listen to it with the greatest interest and tried to master this art [technique], he feared that the spirit of his citizen be effeminate and after having broken and burnt all the instruments, he sent back the musicians to Gallia. The Turks are totally devoid of music instruments, they only use military drums for weddings. Indeed, the perfidious Mahomet warned against wine, music and other liberal arts, because they could excite and soften the soul. This account is to be found in the section of the Theatrum vitae humanum and Syntagma Musicum dedicated to the power of music on the human soul (an old topic in the philosophy from Antiquity onwards), in the context of battles and in connection to kings, historical figures and heads of states. It is also typical of the usual orientalist and racist clichés about the Turks being only interested in military music, without any gentleness. This episode found its way into later sources, for example in Bourdelot’s 1715 Histoire de la musique et de ses effets depuis son origine jusqu’à present (again the ‘power’ of music). Here are given a date (1543) and the mention of the untraced memoires of Jehan de La Forest, who was the French ambassador around the time.9 As Turkish musicologist Raouf Yekta recalls in 1913, the oral tradition states that the presence of the French musicians is the origin of two rhythms in Turkish music: frenkçin (12/4) and frengi feri (14/4).10 This is but one example of surviving memories, throughout the centuries, of musical exchanges between West and East. 168

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court There is no certainty about the nature of the instruments sent by François I: it may have been string or wind instruments as well as keyboards (maybe portable organs, already known in Constantinople among Christian communities). As noted by Ian Woodfield in his article about keyboard recital in sixteenthcentury oriental diplomacy, ‘to appear before the Sultan or the Great Mughal with a feeble or even a mildly inadequate offering was to put at risk the very interests in which the gifts were given’.11 Therefore, the gift had to be impressive, and offering automata such as clocks or organs was, for sure, a way to make a coup and show off western technique and modernity to foreign potentates. Gifts of musical instruments between Orient and Occident, especially organs, can be traced back to the eighth century, when Emperor Constantine Copronymus is said to have offered in 757 an organ to Pepin the Short, King of the Franks.12 After all, the organ was an oriental invention, traced back to the third century bce and attributed to Ctesibius of Alexandria who invented the pipe, or water organ (hydraulis), an instrument that, before spreading in the Christian Churches around the Mediterranean Sea, was used in the Roman arenas. It had been on display in Constantinople for more than a millennium before the Muslim conquest, right in the heart of the city, on the pedestal of the Obelisk of Theodosius. Therefore, it is impossible to label portable organs as typically western, as it is clearly an example of cultural exchange.

B. Imperial Organs: Queen Elizabeth I and Mehmed III Western keyboard instruments, portable organs and small harpsichords became known in the Far East as soon as the Christian missionaries settled there. St Francis Xavier himself brought an organ to Japan in 1551.13 But music instruments of the West could also be disconnected from any religious context, and the Portuguese seem to have been the first to use keyboards as diplomacy. In 1520, organs were presented by two diplomatic missions from Goa to Vijayanagar and Ethiopia.14 Other European countries and trade companies (Barbary Company, Russia Company, Levant Company) started to imitate the Portuguese in presenting music instruments and organs to the princes with whom they wanted good relations. If organs were known in Constantinople from a ‘Frankish’ point of view and in Christian churches, gigantic, mechanical and complex instruments were something else. Setting one at the imperial court was another step towards the idea of marking a cultural otherness.15 It clearly meant the penetration of western modernity into the core of Islamic power. A German organ was bought in Italy in 1533 by the Livrieri family, traders based in Constantinople, to be offered to the sultan, together with a German organist to play it.16 In 1568, another organ was ordered from Venice 169

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Nicolas Dufetel by Piyale Pasha and his wife, Gevherhan, daughter of Selim II, as a gift for the latter. The instrument arrived in June 1569, and Francesco Barbaro, son of the Bailo Marcantonio Barbaro, was sent to the palace to play it. The Venetian Senate was informed about the success of a diplomatic offering that managed to penetrate the harem. Francesco Barbaro was indeed ‘invited into the harem to show the sultan’s wife and other ladies’ how to play: ‘he stayed there a long time, to everyone’s astonishment, because, as is well known, the sultan’s wife and the other fine ladies never let anyone see them, not even their own brothers and brothers-in-law. And I promise your Serenity that never has any gift given greater satisfaction’.17 Queen Elizabeth I of England, at that time a rogue state isolated from mostly Catholic Europe, worked hard to consolidate her relationship with non-Catholic countries. In 1586, after the death of Ivan IV of Russia, she presented precious gifts to Tsar Feodor, including musical instruments (organs, virginals): ‘provicion of lyons, bulls, doggs, guilt halberds, pistolls, peces, armor, wynes, store of druges of all sorts, organes, virgenalls, musicions, scarletts, perrell chaines, plate of curious makinge and of other costly things of great value’.18 The instrument was admired by the tsar and Boris Godounov. Thirteen years later, when the isolated island kingdom was strengthening its capitulatory agreement with the remote Porte, it was the turn of Sultan Mehmed III to be offered an organ. An enormous and luxurious mechanical instrument sent by the Levant Company, it included a clock and was the work of the organ builder Thomas Dallam, who kept a detailed diary of his travels to Constantinople. Dallam’s journal also includes an account of the organ’s installation in the Topkapı Palace, in a small ‘house’ that he describes in considerable detail, situated at the far end of the imperial complex where the sultan ‘had nyntene brotheres put to death in it, and it was bulte for no other use but for the stranglinge of everie emperors bretherin’.19 This sentence reveals that Dallam embraces the usual clichés of oriental despotism and ‘orientalist fears’.20 However, the Englishman recalls dining in the Seraglio almost every day for a month, something, he writes, that no Christian had done before. He also mentions how frightened he was when he had to play for the sultan, who wanted to see his hands: He satt in a verrie ritche Chaire of estate, upon his thumbe a ringe with a diamon in it halfe an inche square, a faire simeterie by his side, a bow, and a quiver of Arros. He satt so righte behinde me that he could not see what I did.21 Another contemporary source, not traced since its publication in 1860 by The Illustrated London News, gives some details with the illustration of an 170

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court organ ordered by the Levant Company that may have been the one intended for the sultan, or at least similar to a Dallam instrument.22 The quoted specification and the drawing of the organ, said to be copied from an original manuscript, represent an instrument clearly fit to be sent from the queen to any powerful ruler she wanted to impress. The organ was decorated at the top with a little automated Queen Elizabeth raising her sceptre. The contract also specifies that the merchant’s desire to have ‘a new instruments of extraordinary kind, and endowed with various motions, both musical and of other special use, such as for the rarity and art therein used may render it fit to be sent from her Majesty to any Prince or Potentate whatever’. It should be ‘twelve feet and a half or thereabouts in height’, five feet and a half the breadth, four feet and a half the depth, ‘while raised and supported six inches from the ground by five small brazen lions of diverse forms’. The base would be of carved oak, and a panelarch ‘garnished with very curious pointed work of gold and other rich colours’. It included eight Corinthians pillars of oak, ‘carved and gilded’, and the whole was to be surmounted by a vase and a crescent. In the centre was ‘The Presence’ of Queen Elizabeth: a figure with sparkling diamonds, emeralds and rubies, moving figures, and the royal arms ‘embossed, painted, and gilded, and on each side a trumpeter’. The description (which differs a bit from Dallam’s diary) also includes a short presentation of the sounds: ‘unison recorder, octavo principal, and a flute, besides a shaking stop, a drum, and a nightingale’ (however, there is no mention of the tunes played). Nine motions are playable: one for the clock showing the ‘true course of the sun and of the moon, and shall show the age of the moon truly every day, with her increasing and decreasing’, another for armed men who strike the quarter of the hour and the twelve hours of the day. Eight persons may move to ‘The Presence’ to ‘make their obeisance to the Queen’s Majesty’s image, and her personage to move her hand with her sceptre to every one of them as they pass before her’. The two trumpeters shall raise and sound. The total cost of the instruments was 550 pounds, including 300 ounces of ‘pure silver’. The specification states that the instrument must be built in ten months and delivered before the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist; guarantee shall be for seven years. The maker is to alter it or amend the instrument at the pleasure of the merchants and can deviate from the original plan upon discussion with them.23 This openness to modification can explain the differences between the specification and Dallam’s description. Dallam’s diary – despite its orientalist clichés that must be understood and criticised within psychosocial, literary and historical contexts – is interesting for his description of the journey, his stay in Constantinople and the installation of the organ in the imperial palace. It provides us with the earliest direct and most detailed evidence of a musician at the Ottoman court. His organ, however, was 171

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Nicolas Dufetel destroyed during the reign of Mehmed’s son, Ahmed. Indeed, European rulers and merchants used to renew their offerings anytime a new sultan arrived on the throne.24 However, doubtless Dallam’s instrument, close to the Sacred Relics, was believed by some to be a Trojan horse from a cultural, moral and religious point of view. This extraordinary story has inspired numerous literary flights of fancy, and Dallam’s own account may be considered as such, even if the very existence of his organ, at the heart of Topkapı Palace, is certain. These accounts culminate in the novel My Name is Red, in which Orhan Pamuk returns to this episode and describes the sultan himself with a battle-axe reducing the instrument to matchsticks.

2. Close Encounters and Entertainment: The Streets and the Embassies A. Streets and Embassies In the case of the gifts from François I and Elizabeth I, which found a place at the sultan’s court, music was undeniably associated with diplomacy and trade agreements. But western music was also performed in churches, foreign legations and palaces, in places that would not defy the Islamic banishment of music serving only as entertainment. These were places for foreigners – maybe also Muslim guests were free to enjoy music – and certainly dominated by the globalised Italians, then Viennese musicians. ‘Alla franca’ performances may also have occurred in the streets of the Frankish parts of Constantinople. In 1524, a musical-theatrical performance for the Carnival that might have mixed Turkish and western music, with a ‘moresca’ ballet-pantomime, was organised by the Venetian and the Florentine communities.25 Similar events may have happened and require further study. In addition, western ambassadors hired western musicians. For example, in 1711, the flautist Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin was in the service of the French ambassador in Constantinople, where he taught a musician whose name is well known today: Johann Jacob Bach, the elder brother of the celebrated Johann Sebastian Bach, who came to Constantinople in 1712–13 with the exiled king Charles XII of Sweden. It was certainly by way of a tribute to his much-travelled brother that Johann Sebastian wrote his Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo (Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother), BWV 992. In 1729, celebrations – ‘réjouissances’ – marking the birth of the Dauphin Louis of France were held in Constantinople, where they were overseen by the French ambassador, Louis-Sauveur de Villeneuve.26 The French embassy of the period echoed with the sound of music alla franca, as did the embassies 172

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court of other western legations. Elizabeth Craven, who travelled to the Ottoman Empire and Greece in 1785 and 1786, notes that the French ambassador, Mr de Choiseul, gave concerts and had ‘some excellent musicians’.27 When she was in Tarabya (on the Bosporus) in June, she notes that concerts were held every night by the German musicians sent to the ambassador from Vienna: they were the ‘best performers’ she had heard, ‘playing always the finest Italian or German music’.28 In this case, the French ambassador did call musicians from France, but others came from the city that was considered the best musical city in Europe, which was of course closer to Constantinople than Paris. At the same time, on 22 February 1786, an opera by Salieri was performed at the Swedish Legation – again the Italian-Viennese musical connection. Joseph Gabriel Monnier de Courtois, a French soldier, notes in his diary that ‘today was played at the Swedish Palace an opera buffa entitled La Scuola de’ gelosi / The School of the Jealous in two acts’.29 It was also mediatised by the contemporary German music journal Magazin der Musik, and Suna Suner has published a letter of the Swedish Ambassador Heidenstam, about the performance in which he took part.30

B. Imperial Visits and Instruments Around the same time, Christoph Wilhelm Lüdecke, who published a description of his travels in the Ottoman Empire in 1778 (Beschreibung des türkischen Reiches), observed much precious European furniture, especially an organ and a ‘Klavier’ in the Topkapı Palace.31 The sultan’s court and family did not await the Tanzimat to have a domestic interest in western music and own alla franca instruments. They relied not only on diplomatic gifts, as they too seem to have also looked sometimes for western exoticism. In 1675, for example, Mehmed IV asked the bailo to invite Venetian musicians to perform at the Edirne festivities, organised for the wedding of his daughter and the circumcision of his sons. However, his attempt failed because of the short time between the request and the festivities.32 It is also known that, a century later, sometime between 1784 and 1802, Selim III, known for his interest in music, attended a performance of harp and dance by two European ladies on the occasion of a visit to his sister Hatice Sultan in her pavilion at Defterdarburnu. Antoine Ignace Melling records the scene in his Voyage pittoresque: the two European ladies were the daughters of a former French Consul in Smyrna (Mademoiselle Amoureux) and the current Sicilian Ambassador (Mademoiselle de Ludolf). The first started by playing and sang different airs on the harp, as noted by Melling, although serious and ‘savantes’ pieces were not much praised, while the witty and gay ones charmed the audience. One can sense here a distinction 173

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Nicolas Dufetel between the Kenner und Liebhaber or connoisseur et amateur, and there is no surprise that the latter would please the imperial taste more. After the music ended, both mesdemoiselles danced minuets and allemandes. The sultan, placed behind a folding screen, watched the scene without being seen.33 In 1793, the same Selim III observed French musicians and dancers in the Topkapı Palace, where he is said to have often welcomed those artists whom he took pleasure in observing. The event is recorded by his chronicler Ahmed Efendi who mentions the Șevkiye Kiosk.34 In his Reise der Russisch-Kaiserlichen Ausserordentlichen Gesandtschaft an die Othomanische Pforte im Jahr 1793, Heinrich Christoph von Reimers notes that the sultan observed the Franks in his palace and, hidden behind a lattice, enjoyed his favourite song, Malborough s’en va-t-en guerre, played by a Frenchman on a small organ. As it pleased the sultan, so writes Reimers, it soon became popular as a ‘folksong’ sung by the boatmen (Caïkschy).35 The same Selim III also ordered an opera in his palace in 1797, yet no details are known.36

3. Sultan Mahmud II and his ‘Musically Civilised Capital’ A. The Westernisation of Music The westernisation of music in the Ottoman capital peaked during the reign of Selim III’s cousin Mahmud II. It developed in parallel to the latter’s reforms and was observed by the West from the end of the 1820s onwards, right after Giuseppe Donizetti was appointed Director of Imperial Music in 1828. The disbandment of the Janissary corps in 1826 led to reforms of military music based on the western model. Three years after the Vaka-i Hayriye, Charles MacFarlane, a British visitor, writes in his travel memoirs (Constantinople in 1828) that he witnessed the sultan’s music in a ‘large barrack, where the band of the regiment was practising a march from Rossini, under the direction of an old purblind Italian’.37 At the same time, another English visitor, Sir Adolphus Slade, recalls listening on the banks of the Bosporus to a band rehearsing ‘Rossini’s music, executed in a manner very creditable to Professor Signor Donizetti’.38 The imperial interest in music was an important aspect of the westernisation of the Ottomans, and its perception in Europe, first seen with mockery and circumspection, was a mark of ‘civilisation’. The Turks were reforming themselves and showing it off: to be ‘modern’ (westernised) was one thing, and to let it be known was just as important. Even if his predecessors showed interest in western music, Mahmud II must be seen as the first westernised sultan from this point of view – and he lost no occasion to demonstrate this. 174

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court Whereas Selim III concealed himself to attend western performances in his own palace and in his sister’s pavilion, some thirty years later his cousin Mahmud was no longer in hiding. On 10 June 1829, after departing on his boat from Tarabya on his way to observe the preparation of the bayram festivities, he stopped in Büyükdere to visit the famous garden and the house of the Baronin Hübsch, mother of the Danish chargé d’affaires and an important spot of the Levantine way of life.39 There the Franks had their villegiatura, where for instance Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall had enjoyed dance and music in 1799,40 and many musicians visited after him – from harpist Elias Parish-Alvars in 1832 to Liszt in 1847. Le Courrier de Smyrne gives a long, detailed account of the unexpected imperial visit on 21 June 1829. The sultan stayed a few hours in Büyükdere, discussing with the Frankish family in a ‘conversation’ style, admiring the artistic skills in painting and music of the young ladies of the house. As he wanted to listen to some piano music, the family instrument was brought from the apartment to the garden, where one of the ladies played some works by ‘the ancient masters’. Mahmud then visited the house to ask one of the ladies to make a portrait of him during the forthcoming feast. The sultan was no longer hiding, as he was in the same room as the European ladies. Le Courrier de Smyrne also concludes that Mahmud ‘managed in a very short time to defeat so many prejudices that the whole Europe said were immutable’.41 With Madame Hübsch and her family, he enjoyed the typical gallant salon experience. Information about his visit rapidly found its way into many journals across Europe after the first publication in Le Courrier de Smyrne.42 Slade also evokes the episode in his Records of Travel: Sultan Mahmud, thus attended, stopped one day, quite unannounced, at the door of the Baroness Hubsch. His gallantry in every respect deserves record. In the first place, he left his suite outside, and went upstairs accompanied only by his secretary: in the next place, seeing the lady rising to give him the place of honour on the divan, he desired her to retain it, and placed himself on a chair beside her. He conversed for some time in Turkish, of which language she is perfect mistress, and requested her amiable and accomplished daughters to play to him on the piano. He looked at the beautiful drawings of Mademoiselle Emilie, and asked her if she would take his portrait. The young lady excused herself, on the plea that she had not made that branch of the art her study, but offered to introduce him in a drawing which she intended making of the Kurban Bayramı (eid al-adha), to be celebrated in a few days. The sultan was pleased with the idea, and at the 175

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Nicolas Dufetel festival caused a tent to be erected for her in the most convenient spot for commanding the view. The picture was exceedingly well and spiritedly executed, but unfortunately it was sent to the seraglio before a copy was taken. From the saloon the sultan repaired to the garden with the ladies, where he took refreshments, and then departed, leaving the whole family in an ecstasy, from which it will probably never recover. The bench in the garden whereon he sat was removed, and a stand of flowers placed in its room in order to prevent meaner mortals from standing on a spot so ennobled; the chair he occupied in the saloon was likewise prohibited to inferior seats. This step caused universal astonishment, and her house in consequence became the resort of the young beys who aspired to polish themselves; they did not find it a bad school. I had the pleasure of knowing the family intimately, and of receiving innumerable civilities from it.43 Sultan Mahmud’s fondness for music was known about early in the West. Showing interest in western arts and ways of life was an unexpected desacralisation. Many European journals gave brief news accounts about these cultural reforms, sometimes astonished and amused, sometimes with sceptical remarks that transformed into racist clichés, depending on the editorial line of the journals. At first, the sultan’s taste was scoffed at, as there was no longer a diplomatic context in which the West was offering itself to the East, but on the contrary, a voluntary movement of otherness from the inside. Soon, over the years and after enough virtuosos performed in Constantinople in the 1830s and 1840s, western audiences became piano piano accustomed to what would have been seen before as a fantasy, easy to mock and in parallel with operas based on oriental histories, from Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail to Rossini’s Turco in Italia or Italiana in Algeri. In 1829, Förster published in Breslau Achmet Aga’s Marche militaire et favorite du grand turc Mahmud II for two-hand and four-hand piano with a portrait of the sultan on the title-page. The latter indicates that Ahmet Aga is ‘Chef de toutes les troupes regulaires turques’; in general, the musical westernisation of the Ottoman Empire in the pre-Tanzimat period was clearly seen as linked to military affairs. The same year, the Gazzetta piemontese, without using any mocking tone, informed readers that the two schools conducted by Giuseppe Donizetti were making speedy progress, and that two military bands with fifty musicians each were already in service: ‘The Grand Signiore, who loves a lot war music, is very satisfied with it’.44 The same year, it informed that, on the evening of the Kurban Bayramı, the sultan, in order to ‘increase the joy of the day’, asked his Italian Director to play sonatas on the pianoforte. 176

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court Donizetti also combined two western music bands (those of the sultan and of the serasker) to perform ‘playful symphonies’ (liete sinfonie) during the night. Many foreigners attended the ‘new show’.45 From a private visit to a Frank family in Büyükdere to the evening of an important religious feast, any opportunity for Mahmud to show off his taste for western music – that is, his modernity – was apparently seized and mediatised. In 1832, when mentioning that Donizetti had been awarded the ‘İftihar Madalyası’, the ‘Foreign Musical Report’ of The Harmonicon, an influential London-based music journal, described Mahmud as ‘liberal and enlightened’: CONSTANTINOPLE Music no less than the other arts finds encouragement under the auspices of the present liberal and enlightened sultan who in token of his appreciation of the meritorious exertions of M. Joseph Donizetti brother of the celebrated composer of the same name conductor of His Highness’s band presented to him with his own hands the order of the Thaurat lately founded. The decoration is a golden medal encircled with brilliants and containing in the centre the cipher of the Commander of the Faithful.46 In 1835 (the year of the publication of Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient), The Times wrote that Constantinople was changing fast, and that the personal taste of Mahmud may influence his capital more widely: Here everything is undergoing change and being fashioned after the European manner. Ere long, it is not impossible that we may have a theatre and an Italian Opera in Constantinople. The Sultan takes great pleasure in fine singing. At an evening’s entertainment given by the French Ambassador, at which, to the great astonishment of the whole capital, His Highness was present, he rapturously applauded the vocal performers, although he knew nothing of their language.47 The Revue et gazette musicale de Paris was more mocking, when it facetiously announced the same year that Sultan Mahmud, ‘amateur passionné de la musique’, was said to invite an Italian troupe in Constantinople to perform Il turco in Italia; yet, playing on the orientalist mirror of confusion between an Oriental in the West and a Westerner in the Orient, it advised instead the performance of another Rossini opera: L’Italiana in Algeri.48 As the news had been announced on mardi gras, the journal even wondered whether this was a joke. 177

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Nicolas Dufetel

B. ‘Mahmud as a Composer’ The Paris-based Le Ménestrel in 1836 published an article in which the ironic tone may also convey scepticism and astonishment: Clearly Sultan Mahmud is keen to raise his fine city of Constantinople to the same high level as that of our own civilisation. The celebrations that are being prepared to mark the marriage of the Sultana will have all the modern glamour of our European festivities. Arrangements have been made in Paris in the name of the Ottoman court for an orchestra made up of sixty musicians to be assembled. They will travel to Constantinople at the expense of the Turkish government.49 If these surviving accounts are reliable, then this orchestra – unlike the orchestra of François I three centuries earlier – was not a gift from the West but was ordered by the Sublime Porte itself. The Journal des débats (8 May 1836) quotes an article from Le Moniteur ottoman, dated 7 April, about the wedding of Mihrimah (daughter of Mahmud) with Mehmed Said Pasha, which continued with the circumcision of his sons Abdülmecid and Abülaziz, two future sultans also known for their taste for music. Other European journals published news about the wedding, sometimes with descriptions of the feast, some mentioning music, but without citing any European musicians. Certainly, the imperial band performed, conducted by Donizetti, which may have caused confusion and been the source of Le Ménestrel’s misrepresentation. Interest in Mahmud’s taste for music – and then the transformation of the Ottoman Empire and its society – was more and more present in the western press. Still in 1836, Le Ménestrel published some ‘Variétés musicales’ by Castil Blaze, about the organ sent by Constantine Copronymus to Pepin and the musicians offered by François I to Süleyman, saying that the latter attended three concerts before breaking their instruments and sending the musicians back.50 And at the end of the same year, the question of Turkish music was raised on the title-page of the journal, in a short article titled ‘Mahmud Compositeur’ (Mahmud as a Composer),51 in form of a letter dated Constantinople, 15 November, and signed ‘Ed. De V’. Here it was announced that the sultan himself had composed some works that may have been sent to the journal for publication. Mahmud was also said to be secretly writing an opera for Paris. I am unaware of any scores by Mahmud that were published in the West, as the only example of a sultan’s music printed in Europe was, to my knowledge, a handful published by Abdülaziz in Milan (F. Lucca) in the early 1860s. However, it 178

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court is known that Mahmud composed in the western style, or more precisely, that Donizetti transcribed and copied in western notation some of his music. Donizetti’s 1832 manuscript collection of music includes two ‘canzone’ by the sultan: the ‘Canzona Turca composta dal Gran Signore medesimo’ and the ‘Canzone composta dal Gran Signore medesimo – musica e Poesia. Ghiüinum ol sciuchi ghiul ÿzar’ (Gönlüm ol sûh-i gülizar).52 Both are written for piano, in the orientalist a minor tonality with two augmented seconds (d# and g#). The title of the second piece refers to the traditional love between a nightingale and a rose, an oriental and romantic theme (for example, Andersen’s A Rose from Homer’s Grave and The Nightingale), also present in Turkish poetry since Yunus Emre’s Bülbül Kasidesi.53 There is no mistaking the irony in these comments on Mahmud’s music in Le Ménestrel: ‘It is not a tale or a fable or an illusion’. His opera project, too, was teased: ‘Turkish music, of course, presupposes an oriental indulgence in the brass, the noise of which keeps on increasing in the style of Esmeralda’. Mahmud is said to be ‘infatuated with Italian music’, which he had introduced to his army. Finally, a western view of the subject would not be western if it did not mention the commonplace of women and the harem. And the Parisian journal does indeed state that the sultan had pianos imported from Vienna ‘for the women, although we do not know how they can learn the instrument, since no one is allowed access to them’. The article concludes that people in Constantinople take little interest in music: ‘There are only two piano teachers, who give lessons on all manner of instruments’. But by way of an example of the changes affecting this musical phenomenon that took place over the next fifty years, it is worth mentioning that, in 1891, there were 107 music teachers in Constantinople. Of these, thirty-three taught the piano; furthermore, there were eleven piano tuners.54 In 1839, a few weeks before Mahmud died, The Musical World mentioned that western music had found its way into the imperial palace and the sultan’s way of life, including Beethoven’s piano sonatas: The gods have made his Sublimity, Mahmud, musical and in return he has determined to infuse his tastes into his harem. With this view he has recently given a concert to the fair ones, at which a young Turk, who had acquired his education at Paris, played among other pieces one of Beethoven’s sonatas with variations, which enraptured the assembly and drew down thunders of applause.55 After the musical-military reforms and the growing prominence of western music in the imperial palaces, another step of westernisation and secularisation 179

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Nicolas Dufetel was that of a music society in the broader sense: an opera house, and an opera season. That, too, was in preparation: ‘A plan of founding a Theatre in the environs of this city is very likely to be completed’, wrote The Foreign Quarterly Review in 1839: The intention is to bring out Italian and French operas. Donizetti’s brother is director of music to the Sultan. The Italian company from Odessa performed the opera of La Straniera of Bellini and L’Italiana in Algieri before the Sultan at which he seemed highly delighted. We strongly recommend M Donizetti to search for genuine Eastern Melodies so as to found something like a National Opera in this musically civilised capital.56 There had been a travelling Italian company in Smyrna, but soon a theatre would be established in Constantinople. Before the famous Naum Theatre, in November 1838 Mahmud authorised the acrobat Gaetano Mele to build one in Pera.57 Another theatre, built on the family Naum’s Land, was opened by the magician Bartolomeo Bosco around 1839.58 ‘The Italian Opera at Constantinople’, reported the New York journal The Corsair just one week before Mahmud died, ‘continues to maintain the favour it met with on its opening. The house is not only filled every night, but the performances are much more frequent than at first. [ . . . ] The new theatre at Pera is advancing rapidly, and will open in September with Don Giovanni or the Nozze di Figaro’.59 The following is from the Baltimore-based newsweekly Niles’ National Register, a few weeks later: Among the many innovations which have been made of late years in the east, certainly the establishment of an Italian opera in Constantinople is not the least remarkable. The Turkish fashionables are so carried away by their rage for the opera, that, unable to wait till the erection of the theatre in Pera, for which two experienced French architects are engaged, they have had a large hotel in the square called Almeidan, fitted up for the purpose, and have operas three or four times a week. Notwithstanding the high price of the places, (from two to ten heavy piastres, or from 8s to 2l.) the theatre is always cramed [sic] with Turks, who, in spite of their habitual early hours, loll there contentedly till midnight [. . . ] The Grand Seignor himself has visited the opera, which will, perhaps, do as much as his absolute commands to amalgamate his people with those of Western Europe.60 180

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court In August 1839, the year Mahmud II died, Le Ménestrel published on its titlepage a column entitled ‘La Musique en Turquie’, with a very serious tone: ‘From recent observations made in these lands by knowledgeable travellers, it appears that the Turks love music a lot, yet without giving to it the status of art. Today, it is fashionable in Constantinople to find pleasure in music and to know how to play an instrument’.61 The rest of the column is devoted to Turkish music in general (with condescension about the poverty of the lyrics, only about ‘love and war’, its lack of nuances and its poor harmony) and the dervishes in particular. When publishing the sultan’s necrology in September, Le Magasin pittoresque mentioned his passion for Europeans, literature and music, noting that, as any enlightened autocrat, he sometimes composed verses and music: Sultan Mahmud was well-versed in Turkish, Persian and Arabic literature. He composed quite beautiful verses, and sometimes even some music. The chief of his guard’s musicians, Donizetti, brother of the famous maestro of that name, notated several romances by him, one of which especially is remarkable for having a lot of grace, melancholy and caprice.62

4. Traveling Musicians: The Example of Roland and his Forty French Singers in 1845 A. Abdülmecid and Travelling Musicians Abdülmecid’s reign corresponded with an increase in travelling virtuosos and opera life in Constantinople. However, a few pioneers came in the early 1830s, for example, the harpist Elias Parish-Alvars, who travelled with Wilhelm von Lenz in 1832. The latter, also a disciple of Liszt, published his travel memoirs in 1850 under the title Aus dem Tagebuche eines Livländers. While not on a proper musical tour, Parish-Alvars gave some concerts in Büyükdere.63 Four years after his travels, he published an arrangement for harp of Donizetti’s Marche favorite du sultan (Vienna, 1836), and in 1846, when virtuosos were usual visitors in Constantinople and musical travelogues were regularly published, he published his Voyage d’un Harpiste en Orient: Recueil d’airs et de mélodies populaires en Turquie et en Asie mineure, op. 62 (Vienna, 1846). The volume is dedicated to Princess Smaragda Morousi, married to Alexander Mavrocordato (ex-Hospodar of Wallachia of Constantinople). According to Lady Stanhope’s memoirs, the princess had a palace on the European side of the Bosporus and a piano-forte in her house in Constantinople.64 According 181

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Nicolas Dufetel to the beautifully luxuriant illustrated title page of the score, the six compositions are based on melodies ‘performed before the Sultan and in the soirées of the Russian Ambassador Count Boutinoff in Bujukdere’: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Souvenir du Bosphore: chant des jeunes filles grecques à Bujukdéré Danse bulgarienne [sic] Air hébreu de Philopopolis Air arménien Marche de Parade du Sultan Chanson grec [sic] de Santorino

The year after the sojourns of Parish-Alvars and Lenz, the Saint-Simonians’ visit to Constantinople was a case apart since, strictly speaking, they were not musicians. Music played a major role in their social, mystical and political utopia, and they were accompanied in the Orient by musicians, one of whom was the orientalist Félicien David. In any event, they were soon hounded out of Constantinople and barely had the time to stroll through the city and show off their unusual clothes, most notably to the sultan, before they were arrested and packed off to Smyrna.65 Although the score of David’s piano piece Le Harem is dated ‘Constantinople, 18 April 1833’, it is impossible to tell from the present state of research where and how the Saint-Simonians had the time to write and perform music. The mystical and exhibitionist nature of their travels and their quest for the archetypal oriental ‘Woman’ were more like incendiary actions on the part of latterday Crusaders than a tour undertaken by travellers whose only goal was to make music. The 1840s, corresponding to the beginning of Abdülmecid’s reign, are the starting point of regular tours of European musicians to Constantinople, where they used to play in Büyükdere or in the capital for the Franks, the Turks and the sultan in his palace. In 1843, the German soprano Henriette Carl performed in Büyükdere and in the Seraglio. Leopold de Meyer, a piano virtuoso, also played for the Grand Seigneur, and his long stay during that summer in Constantinople occupies a good portion of his 1845 biography, where one can also find an illustration of his concert for the sultan, who is seen smoking the shisha.66 This episode gave birth to a lot of imaginary reinterpretations. In 1847 and 1848, Franz Liszt and Henri Vieuxtemps (a famous Belgian violin virtuoso) stayed a few weeks and performed for Abdülmecid. However, I will now focus on a very special group of musicians who were not soloists, but the first well-documented western music ensemble to perform for the sultan. 182

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court

B. An Ottoman Odyssey In 1846, thirteen years after the Saint-Simonians had been expelled from Constantinople (and three centuries after the arrival of François I’s musicians), another group of Frenchmen – this time real musicians who were announced as such – toured the Ottoman Empire and gave a number of concerts in Constantinople, where they also performed for Abdülmecid: the ‘Chanteurs montagnards’, founded in 1838 by Alfred Roland. Yet, if the journey of these forty French singers from the Pyrenees was not, like that of the Saint-Simonians, motivated by a mishmash of social and political ideas, their tour had a strong social and religious element to it. The question remains why the French singers were not kicked out of Constantinople and banished to Smyrna or elsewhere, as had happened earlier to the Saint-Simonians, but were allowed to perform officially for the sultan in his Çırağan Palace. Alfred Roland had been born in Paris in 1797 and raised in France and Italy in the cult of Napoleon. His father, François-Stanislas, born in Besançon in 1765, was the director of the French administration of the ‘Enregistrements et domaines’ and a Freemason who from 1809 to 1814 was ‘Vénérable’ of the Loge des Amis de Napoléon le Grand in Alessandria, Italy. It is not known if his son Alfred was a Freemason, too, but he followed in his father’s professional footsteps in becoming an officer in the same Registration and State Property administration. In 1832, Alfred Roland was appointed to a post in Bagnères-de-Bigorre in the French Pyrenees. But he was also a musician, and soon he established a Conservatoire de musique in his new city, mainly dedicated to vocal and choral music. He chose forty of the finest singers from his school, men and boys, to establish a male vocal choir, one of France’s first ‘Orphéons’, or choral societies. Such societies were typical of the French post-Revolutionary social and artistic movements widespread in Paris and the rest of the country after 1830. Originally, and this was the case with Roland’s choir, the Orphéons dedicated themselves to the needs of the working class, and choral singing was promoted as a symbol of democracy itself. Yet they also had a strong social and liberal Catholic background. Thus, Roland’s Forty Singers were a Christian choir, singing secular as well as religious works, chansons, motets and masses, and it was as such that they toured the Orient and performed for the Caliph of Islam. Roland’s undertaking is rooted in the social, religious, liberal and Catholic revival specific to French Romanticism. During the 1830s and 1840s, Félicité de Lammenais, Charles de Montalembert, Henri Lacordaire and others were advocating a social, independent form of Catholicism. This was also the time of Romantic ‘humanitarianism’, an expression associated with Musset, 183

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Nicolas Dufetel Lamartine, Liszt and others.67 The same context spread the Saint-Simonist utopia: many poets, writers, philosophers, painters, artists and musicians thought that a new social system was possible. Musicians such as Félicien David and Franz Liszt believed that art, and music especially, could raise the lowest classes of society. Roland’s ideas must be understood in the context of that taste for a universal utopia. His Forty Singers were also presented as a charity organisation: the money earned during their tours was indeed sent to the conservatory in Bagnères in order to teach music to every social class. The social and artistic identity of Roland’s enterprise encountered the musicians’ taste for travel. With his singers, he started touring the French provinces and Paris at the end of the 1830s. They soon went abroad: London and Brussels in 1839, Holland and Denmark in 1840, Germany, Russia and Poland in 1841, Austria and Italy in 1842. Between 1842 and 1844, they undertook a new tour in France, before preparing for travel to the Orient. On their way, they also visited the cities or places of Napoleonic battles and performed there – hence, Waterloo and Austerlitz. Beyond society, music and religion, their music-making also embraced the légende napoléonienne. As with the Saint-Simonians, the Pyrenean singers wore a specific costume, but theirs was rooted in the local traditions of their mountains, an identity they proudly showed off: white pants, blue vest, red wool (or black leather) belt and a blue traditional béret. The ‘Chanteurs montagnards’ were the first travelling singers, maybe the first travelling group of musicians in history who toured as much and as long. In Rome, Roland and his singers sang for the pope who blessed their ‘Sainte Bannière’ (Holy Banner), which was made of garnet-coloured velvet and edged with a golden fringe. On one side, four words were embroidered in gold letters: ‘Civilisation – BeauxArts – Religion – Patrie’ (Civilisation, Fine Arts, Religion, Fatherland). On the other side was the motto of the Forty Singers, which was also part of the lyrics of their hit, the song Halte-là: ‘Halte-là! Les Montagnards sont là!’ – that is, ‘Halt here! The Montagnards are here!’ On top of the banner’s pole, Roland would eventually set a reliquary of a piece of the True Cross that the Armenian patriarch offered him in Palestine. All the music sung by the forty ‘Chanteurs montagnards’ was composed by Roland himself, including two masses (Messe de Rome and Messe de Jérusalem) and almost a hundred choruses, all published in the Collection du Ménestrel des Pyrénées between 1841 and 1869. Roland’s compositions express not only local traditions (Le Boléro des Pyrénées, La Tyrolienne des Pyrénées) but are also linked to his travels. Some were composed on special occasions, to celebrate a particular moment or a generous patron, and the scores were published after the choir’s return from its travels, clearly Roland’s musical travelogue. The compositions linked to the oriental voyage appear in chronological order in the 184

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court list below. The compositions listed embody the musicians’ Romantic curiosity for folk music and local traditions. Seen as exotic, these traditions helped to renew musical inspiration and expression. They also underline the process of secularisation (religious music outside the place of worship) and, of course, the goût du voyage: • Le Départ pour la Palestine • La sainte crèche • 2ème Grand Messe solennelle [de Jérusalem] Kyrie Gloria Credo Sanctus Agnus Dei Domine, Salvum fac Imperatorem • L’Ave Maria du Mont Carmel • Hymnes et Cantiques de Terre Sainte Tantum ergo Jésu Salutaris Jésu dulcis memoria Ave Regina Adoremus • Les 40 Montagnards aux Pyramides • L’Alleluia de Jérusalem • 12 Litanies de Terre Sainte • Royal Souvenir • Le cantique à la croix • L’Orage au Mont Liban • Marseillaise de la paix • En Crimée Beyond a taste for travelling, universality and the Napoleonic legend, Roland had another obsession. He did everything he could to document his concerts, and so he asked for letters, acknowledgements and other memorabilia from the authorities or celebrities for whom they sang. He kept evidence of his adventures in scrapbooks; one of them is completely devoted to his oriental voyage.68 Roland was obsessed with meeting the authorities and the representatives of secular and religious power: emperors, kings, princes and religious leaders. This obsession is illustrated in the printed scores, for example, in the Tantum ergo, 185

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Nicolas Dufetel where one can read the following sentence: ‘His pupils pilgrims of Rome and Jerusalem, whom he had the honour to make sing at the courts of 70 Monarchs from all parts of the world as well as in the churches, chapels, colleges and schools, seminaries and convents of the whole of Christendom’.69 In the long peritext to the sheet music, Roland clearly presents his concerts as charity events, as the money was sent to the Conservatoire de Bagnères, an ‘institution de bienfaisance’. The title-page of the Ménestrel des Pyrénées describes his undertakings through compositions and concerts as an ‘œuvre de la propagande universelle du chant religieux et national’ and himself as ‘chef de la Mission’. Although these scores were published after his travels, they epitomise the idea beyond the whole mission. Roland saw himself as the founder of a universal, peaceful and cosmopolitan propaganda. Maybe only French society, at that time, could produce such post-Revolution mishmash of ideas and activities – in a way an ideology that gave rise to the Saint-Simonian idea to go to Egypt and start digging the Suez Canal. It was in 1845, after his European tours, that Roland decided to go with his singers to the Orient. Their ten-month tour is documented in two published diaries, one by Jean-Pierre Pécondom, the other by Roland himself, both published in Bagnères-de-Bigorre in 1899. Pécondom’s diary stops in Jerusalem, the city that was the original final destination of their musical pilgrimage, but Roland decided to continue. The latter’s dairy includes the trip to Constantinople. Some information can be found in parallel sources such as the Journal de Constantinople, but the most interesting primary source is the ‘Album de la Mission’, the scrapbook of original documents, letters, portraits, maps and other memorabilia of the oriental journey which may be the source for the 1899 Voyage en Orient. As for the printed scores, they too may be considered a musical diary or travelogue, with compositions dedicated to people and linked to episodes of their journey. Before departing and all along his way, Roland asked priests and bishops to bless his expedition and his singers. The chorus Départ pour la Palestine leaves us in no doubt about this, as it is also titled La Nouvelle Croisade. As with the Saint-Simonians, the Forty Singers were going to the East with a goal – not in search of the ‘Mère’, but for a religious purpose. Roland and his singers left Marseilles on 3 October 1845. One week later, they landed in Alexandria, and by 3 November they were in Cairo, where they sang for the viceroy. Mehmed Ali Pasha welcomed them and helped them organise their visit to Egypt and Palestine. It was in Giza that one of the most famous and funniest episodes of their expedition took place: their ascent of the Pyramid of Cheops. At the top, Roland toasted the protectors of their mission. There they sang a Te Deum, the Salut ô Sainte bannière, the Marseillaise and a cantata composed especially for 186

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court the occasion. They also carved the words ‘Vive la France!’ into the stones. On the title-page of the Ménestrel des Pyrénées, a pyramid is depicted. The general shape may recall the Masonic symbols, with the light coming from behind, from the Orient, but there are also two smaller pyramids behind the main one, with the Sphinx on the right-hand side. This illustration is both symbolic and concrete, as one may see tiny Frenchmen climbing the Great Pyramid of Giza. Protected by Mehmed Ali, Roland and his singers were given safe passage; they arrived in Jaffa on 1 December, and by 12 December they were in Jerusalem. They sang the Messe de Jérusalem in the Holy Sepulchre. For Christmas, they were in Bethlehem, where they also sang. Jerusalem and the Holy Land were clearly the main goal of this pilgrimage-tour. They left Palestine to go to Beirut, where the wali Assad Pasha welcomed them to his palace. He signed a ferman asking the other governors to help Roland, feed the singers and provide horses and lodging, ‘as would be done to the sultan’s emissaries’,70 writes a very proud Roland. After Beirut they went to Baalbek, Mount Lebanon and Damascus (3 March). Because of quarantine, they could not go directly to Constantinople and sailed for Malta, where they stayed for three weeks. Everywhere they sang for governors, princes, bishops and diplomats, and on 2 May, after a few days in Athens, they sailed from Piraeus to Smyrna. Table 6.1 Main stops of the Forty Singers’ Oriental travel 1845

1846

3 October: Marseille

January: Mont Liban

11 October: Alexandria

9 February: Beirut

3 November: Cairo

25 February: Baalbek

1 December: Jaffa

3 March: Damas

12 December: Jerusalem

9 April: Malta

25 December: Bethlehem

2 May: Athens 18 May: Smyrna 25 May: Constantinople (Bebek)

On 11 May, the Journal de Constantinople announced the arrival of the ‘young 40 French mountain singers’ to Constantinople after a concert in Smyrna. They landed fourteen days later and stayed for two months, lodging in Pera. Roland wrote that, in the ‘vast ritornello of costumes and colours’ of the half-European, half-Turkish atmosphere, he abandoned his ‘Arab coat’ 187

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Nicolas Dufetel and returned to wearing the ‘costume of the mountains’, with which they were hugely successful in the streets of Pera. It is interesting to note that in the Ottoman capital they felt free to be themselves and assume their identity by wearing their traditional costume. They gave their first concert after a week for the French ambassador, Baron François-Adolphe Bourqueney, who invited other European diplomats and the elite of Turkish society to attend the event. As with all other travelling musicians, the gate to the Sublime Porte could be opened with the intercession of the European legations, but Roland writes that the Holy Banner could not be unfurled in front of the sultan.71 A second concert, this time a public one, was organised by Giuseppe Donizetti at the Italian Theatre in Pera, where Roland noted that the audience was mainly European. Within these walls, the Holy Banner could be acclaimed. Other concerts were planned, but Roland lamented the country’s administrative slowness. They finally performed at the French Collège de Bebek under the patronage of the French ambassador, in two Turkish palaces at Büyükdere and in the Santa Maria and Saint-Antoine Churches, and they gave a second concert at the Italian Theatre. Roland writes that the benevolent Turkish authorities enabled them to walk everywhere as ‘splendides seigneurs’. After a meeting with Reşid Pasha, they eventually performed for him and for members of the court. They even visited the saray while the sultan was away. Finally, the ‘Invisible Sultan’72 agreed to hear them in his palace on the occasion of the anniversary of his accession to the throne on 1 July 1846. A document from the Ottoman archives gives some details about their introduction to the court.73 It says that there were forty singers and names Roland. There are details about the Pyrenees, a city called ‘Bayneze Debuguv’ (phonetic transliteration of Bagnères de Bigorre), the patronage of the French king, their concerts for princes and kings in Europe and in Egypt, and about the ‘Conservatoire’ (musiki meşkhanesi), where music was taught to the poor and the working class. Roland presented the sultan with a poem about peace and asked permission to compose the music and perform it for him. The details of the imperial concert are known thanks to Roland’s diary. He composed the new cantata for Abdülmecid very quickly and had the singers’ costumes cleaned. Horse guards went to pick them up from where they were staying before going back with them to the Çırağan Palace in an official procession. The Holy Banner received a military salute at the gate of the palace, and the singers walked between two lines of ‘superb soldiers with red paletots and white pants’. In the main alley, the ‘Musique ottomane’ conducted by Donizetti played the Marche turque, almost certainly the Mecidiye March composed by Donizetti Pasha. The chamberlain gave some instructions in French, the singers removed their shoes and put on ‘official babouches’ or slippers. Roland 188

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court and his singers formed a ‘half-circle’ then started to sing the Tyrolienne du midi with castanets, which cheered up the officers. The young sultan then appeared with his ministers and generals. With his fez, blue redingote, white silk pants and horse boots, he looked very simple, so writes Roland, in comparison to the surrounding splendour. Interestingly, every chorus was sung in alternation with the Ottoman music played outside by Donizetti: Montagne des Pyrénées, La Catalane, Halte-là, L’Enfant des montagnes, L’Hymne au drapeau and finally the new cantata. Unfortunately, the score is untraced, but the lyrics included the sultan’s name.74 Upon hearing it, Abdülmecid, with a still inexpressive face and ‘lost in profound contemplation’, walked over and stood in front of the singers. After he left, Reşid Pasha asked Roland to repeat the Salut à la Sainte Bannière. The grand vizier eventually asked which court was the most generous before giving Roland an enormous purse full of gold, thereby prompting Roland to acknowledge that the ‘Magnificence of the Serail outdoes in musical generosity all the European thrones’.75 Before leaving, they were given a banquet and then returned home. The gathering lasted around two hours, and after the concert the First Dragoman of the French embassy, Lauxerrois, sent 15,000 piastres from the sultan – money to be sent to the French Pyrenees. The musicians stayed two more weeks after the concert for the sultan and were invited to many private concerts and churches. The scrapbook titled ‘Album de la Mission d’Orient’ contains several manuscripts from the French ambassador, the French dragoman, Reşid Pasha and religious authorities that testify to the concerts in Constantinople. It must also be noted that the scrapbook equally contains some documents about Dr Barrachin and his ‘Régénération de l’Empire ottoman’, showing Roland’s interest in the idea of liberté, égalité and fraternité, an idea deeply rooted in his own philosophical outlook. In 1854, during the Crimean War, Roland published a song dedicated to the sultan, En Crimée!!! Chant religieux et national, in remembrance of the ‘honorable imperial seance of 1st July, 1846’. The lyrics are about the war in Crimea and do not include Abdülmecid’s name.76 Yet it is possible that Roland has reused the music of the cantata he conducted at the Çırağan Palace for the young sultan. The presence of musicians in Constantinople making music in both private and public concerts and at the sultan’s court is one of the most fascinating yet least studied aspects of the Tanzimat era. And it is a long story, especially if one takes into consideration the first decades of the westernisation process and even the previous centuries. By 1861 and the end of Abdülmecid’s reign, the fact that musicians, pianists, violinists and so on played for the sultans was no longer exceptional. His two successors, Abdülaziz and Murad V, composed music. However, the presence of the Forty French Pilgrim-Singers at the 189

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Nicolas Dufetel caliph’s court in 1846 must be seen as exceptional – maybe the most daring music-making in Ottoman history in comparison to traditional opera singers, or piano or violin virtuosos. Their intrusion as officially Christian musicians engaged in a charitable and philanthropic undertaking bearing the democratic ideals of the French Post-Revolutionary period that had become melded with the new liberal Catholicism, and this is striking enough to make us wonder about the opposition that the invitation of the sultan and Reşid Pasha may have faced. Would they have been authorised to perform in the Topkapı Palace, close to the Holy Relics where François I’s musicians performed three centuries earlier before being expelled, or where Dallam’s organ was destroyed? Unlike these early examples, they succeeded. In 1846, the Çırağan Palace may have been secularised enough to welcome strangers and Christians. Another step would be taken by Abdülmecid in constructing a theatre in the Dolmabahçe Palace, where today pianos still recall the presence of western music at the Ottoman court: most of these instruments are not those of the French Republic, but of the empire.77 After Roland’s Forty Singers, all kinds of musicians, men and women, would continue to play for the sultans for more than eighty years, but would there be any other such daring and intrepid concerts? If in the nineteenth century offering instruments and musicians was no longer a way to impress the Ottomans, as they had imbibed western fashion, could music-making still hold a symbolic role in the realm of diplomacy? Let us just quote, after the 1854 ‘Crimean’ cantata by Roland marking the Franco-Ottoman friendship, the 1908 concerts of the Berliner Liedertafel in Constantinople, an ensemble that must be paralleled with the French Romantic Orpheon but that is an anticipation of the Ottoman-German alliance.78 Music-making may still be seen as a diplomatic tool. However, the romantic ‘Pyrenean’ episode of the Tanzimat era may actually tell us as much about European society and ideas as about the westernisation of the Ottoman Empire. Hence, the musical gatherings in the early stages of the Tanzimat, or pre-Hamidian period, deserve special attention and must be seen as a topic that may encourage us to think rather more about a common and shared history of the Tanzimat era, both in the empire and in Europe.

Notes  1. René Spitaels, De Bruxelles à Constantinople, par un touriste flamand (Bruxelles: Librairie polytechnique, 1839), vol. 3, 241.  2. To quote just one example, in French, during the eighteenth century, the word ‘concert’ did not mean the music-making it means today but an ensemble of musicians, what we now call an ‘orchestra’, while in the liturgical context, plain-chant was not considered music, as opposed to ‘la musique’, meaning the instruments)

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court  3. See, for example, Mahmut R Gâzimihâl, Türkiye-Avrupa Musiki Münasebetleri (İstanbul: Numune Matbaası, 1939); Bülent Aksoy, Avrupalı Gezginlerin Gözüyle Osmanlılarda Musiki (İstanbul: Pan Yayıncılık, 2003); Evren Kutlay Baydar, Osmanlı’nın “Avrupalı” Müzisyenleri (İstanbul: Kapı Yayınları, 2010); Artemur Orkun Gündoğdu, Osmanlı / Türk Müzik Kültürlerinde Avrupa Müziğinin Yaygınlaşması Süreci ve Levanten Müzikçiler (Ankara: Başkent Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, 2016). See also Ottoman Empire and European Theatre, vol. 1: The Age of Mozart and Selim III (1756–1808); vol. 2: The Time of Joseph Haydn: From Sultan Mahmud I to Mahmud II (r.1730–1839), vol. 4: Seraglios in Theatre, Music and Literature, ed. Michael Hüttler and Hans Ernst Weidinger (Vienna: Hollitzer, 2013, 2014, 2016). See especially Suna Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World and the Role of Diplomacy’, in Ottoman Empire and European Theatre, vol. 1: The Age of Mozart and Selim III (1756–1808), ed. Michael Hüttler and Hans Ernst Weidinger (Vienna: Hollitzer, 2013), 155–222.  4. Emre Aracı, Donizetti Paşa: Osmanlı Sarayının İtalyan Maestrosu (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2006); Emre Aracı, Naum Tiyatrosu: 19 Yüzyıl İstanbul’unun İtalyan Operası (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2010); Emre Aracı, ‘From Napoleon to Mahmud: The Chequered Career of the Other Donizetti’, in Giuseppe Donizetti Pashà Traiettorie Musicali e storiche tra Italia e Turchia: Atti del convegno internazionale, ‘Giuseppe Donizetti Pascià: una vita Levantina: Traiettorie musicali e storiche tra Bergamo e Istanbul’, ed. Federico Spinetti (Ranica: Maggioni Lino Srl, 2010), 3–16.  5. Vittorio Cattelan, La cultura dell’Opera italiana a Costantinopoli nella prima fase delle Tanzimat: Le canzoni e gli inni di Donizetti Paşa (1828–56); il Metastasio sacro di Giovanni Eremian (1831–39); Angelo Mariani al Teatro Naum di Pera (1848–51) (Venice: Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, 2020).  6. About the periodisation of the Tanzimat era, see Edhem Eldem, ‘Les Tanzimat: Une période méconnue’, in Écrivains, musiciens et artistes face aux Tanzimat: Musique, arts et littérature à l’époque des Tanzimat, ed. Nicolas Dufetel and Sarga Moussa (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2023).  7. The term ‘Franks’ was used in the nineteenth century for ‘Europeans’ in Constantinople. See, for example, Théophile Gautier, Constantinople Paris (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1853), ‘les Francs’; and Constantinople of To-Day, trans. Robert Howe Gould (London: David Bohue, 1854), ‘the Franks’.  8. Theodor Zwinger, Theatrum vitae humanum (Basileæ: Ex officina Frobeniana, 1571), vol. 3, 294; Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum (Wittenberg: Johannes Richter, 1615), vol. 1, 221.  9. These memoirs, the earliest primary western source for this episode, are to my knowledge still to be found. Christelle Cazaux-Kowalski quoted this episode and several sources but has not been able to go back earlier than the eighteenth century; see her La musique à la cour de François 1er (Paris: École nationale des Chartes, 2002), 50–51. 10. Raouf Yekta, ‘La musique turque’, in Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire, ed. Albert Lavignac and Lionel de La Laurencie (Paris: C. Delagrave, 1922), vol. I/5, 2945–3064 (here 3044). His article was written in 1913 but published only in 1922. Rauf Yekta quotes the episode and the date 1543 from Olivier Aubert, Histoire abrégée de la musique ancienne et moderne (Paris: [self-published], 1827), 23. About Rauf Yekta and his importance as one of the first Turkish ethnomusicologists, see Feza Tansuğ, ‘Rauf Yekta Bey et le nationalisme de la musique turque’, Études Balkaniques

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Nicolas Dufetel 13, no. 1 (2006): 171–84. See also Owen Wright, ‘How French is frenkçin?’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21, no. 3 (2011): 261–81. 11. Ian Woodfield, ‘The Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy, 1520–1620’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 115, no. 1 (1990): 33–62. See also Joyce Lindorff, ‘Missionaries, Keyboards and Musical Exchange in the Ming and Qing Courts’, Early Music 32, no. 3 (2004): 403–14. 12. Stephen Bicknell, The History of the English Organ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 11. 13. Woodfield, ‘The Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy, 1520–1620’, 35. 14. Ibid., 34. 15. About the idea of ‘Otherness’ and English travellers, see Jennifer Linhart Wood, Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel: Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). See especially the chapter about Dallam, ‘An Organ’s Metamorphosis: Thomas Dallam’s Sonic Transformations in the Ottoman Empire’, 167–204. 16. Bonnie J. Blackburn, ‘Instrumentalists and Instrument Makers before c. 1550’, in A Companion to Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice, ed. Ketlijne Schiltz (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 272–91. 17. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, ‘Dispacci degli Ambasciatori al Senato’: Costantinopoli, filza 4, 25 June 1569. Quoted in Deborah Howard, ‘Cultural Transfer between Venice and the Ottomans in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, vol. 4: Forging European Identities, 1400–1700, ed. Robert Muchembled, Heinz Schilling, István György Tóth, Donatella Calabi and Stephen Turk Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 138–77 (here 151). 18. Letter of Jerome Horsey, who was Ambassador to Russia in 1586, quoted in Woodfield, ‘The Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy’, 38. 19. Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant I. — The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam, 1599–1600. II. — Extracts from the Diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670–1679, ed. James Theodore Bent (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1893), 63. This is the first publication of the manuscript, held at the British Library (Add MS 17480). See also Stanley Mayes, An Organ for the Sultan (London, Putnam, 1956); Gerald MacLean, The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 3–47; Wood, Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel, 167–204. 20. Wood, Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel, 193. 21. Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant I. — The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam, 71. 22. The Illustrated London News (20 October 1860). For a critical study of the untraced manuscript, see Wood, Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel, 167–68. 23. The Illustrated London News (20 October 1860). 24. Wood, Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel, 202. 25. Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World’. 26. Sinan Kuneralp (ed.), Les rapports de Louis-Sauveur marquis de Villeneuve ambassadeur du roi de France auprès de la Sublime Porte ottomane (1728–1741), t. 1: 1728–31 (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 2019), notes 94, 96. 27. Elizabeth Craven, A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople: In a Series of Letters (Vienna: Sammer, 1800), 354.

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court 28. Craven, A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople, 495. 29. ‘Aujourd’hui on a joué au palais de Suède un opéra bouffon italien intitulé La scuola de’ gelosi L’école des jaloux en deux actes’. Joseph Gabriel Monnier, Journal de voyage de Marseille à Constantinople: Seconde partie (unpublished manuscript), Bourg-en-Bresse: Médiathèque Elisabeth & Roger Vailland, Ms 63. See also Carl Friedrich Cramer (ed.), Magazin der Musik, II/2 (Hamburg: Musicalische Niederlage, 1786), 956–57; Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World’, 189–92. 30. Suner interprets the letter as if the ambassador himself had composed the music, but this seems doubtful. Maybe he meant to emphasise the fact that he arranged the performance and took part himself as a leading musician; see Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World’, 190. 31. Christoph Wilhelm Lüdeke, Beschreibung des Türkischen Reiches nach seiner Religionsund Staatsverfassung in der letzten Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Junius 1778), vol. 2, 254. 32. Albert Vandal, L’odyssée d’un ambassadeur: Les voyages du marquis de Nointel (1670– 1680) (Paris: Plon, 1900), 196–97; Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World’, 183–86. 33. Antoine Melling, Voyage Pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore: D’après les dessins de M. Melling, Architecte de l’Empereur Sélim III, et dessinateur de la Sultane Hadidgé sa soeur (Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1819), [87]. See also Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World’, 193–94. 34. Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World’, 195. 35. Heinrich Christoph von Reimers, Reise der russisch-kaiserlichen ausserordentlichen Gesandtschaft an die Othomanische Pforte im Jahr 1793: Drei Theile vertrauter Briefe eines Ehstländers an einen seiner Freunde in Reval: mit Kupfern und einer Karte (St Petersburg: Schnoor, 1803), vol. 2, 16. 36. Suner, ‘The Earliest Opera Performances in the Ottoman World’, 195–200. In his celebrated memoirs, Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi, who was sent to France in 1720 as an ambassador of Ahmed III to Louis XV, gives an account of an opera performance he attended while in Paris: ‘Apparently there is a famous play which is a speciality of the city of Paris. It is called opera. All the polite company in the city patronise it, even including the King himself. [ . . . ] This thing called opera even has a respectable director from the nobility. Because it is very expensive to run, they have even invested state money into it [ . . . ]. They have shown us such surprising things, that they are impossible to describe; thunders, lightnings and unbelievably strange and weird things’; Şevket Rado, Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi’nin Fransa Seyahatnamesi (Istanbul: Hayat Tarih Mecmuası Yayınları, 1970), 51–53. 37. Charles MacFarlane, Constantinople in 1828 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1829), vol. 1, 259. 38. Sir Adolphus Slade, Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece etc, and of a Cruise in the Black Sea with Capitan Pasha in the years 1829, 1830 and 1831 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1833), 135. 39. Catarina von Hübsch (1756–1837) was the widow of Friedrich Hübsch Freiherr von Großthal (1740–1814), representant of Saxony between 1768 und 1813. Their son Casimir Hübsch (1791–1865) was chargé d’affaires of Denmark. They were Levantine, born in Constantinople. See Frank Castiglione, ‘Family of Empires: The Pisanis in the Ottoman and British Empires’ (unpubl. PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2016), 56.

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Nicolas Dufetel 40. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben: 1841–1852, ed. Reinhardt Bachofen von Echt (Wien and Leipzig: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1940), 38. 41. Le Courrier de Smyrne (21 June 1829). 42. I assume that it was the first publication of the news, which was followed by the Allgemeine Zeitung (3 July), Gazzetta di Milano (6 July), Allgemeine Zeitung München (19 July), Münchener politische Zeitung (20 July), Leipziger Zeitung (25 July) and so on. 43. Slade, Records of Travels in Turkey, 182–83. 44. Gazzetta piemontese (2 May 1829). 45. Gazzetta piemontese (14 August 1829). 46. The Harmonicon (1832), 121. Information also given by Allgemeiner musikalischer Anzeiger (31 May 1832). 47. The Times (2 March 1835). 48. Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (8 March 1835). See also The Musical Magazine (April 1835). 49. Le Ménestrel (1 May 1836). 50. Le Ménestrel (3 July 1836). 51. Le Ménestrel (18 December 1836). 52. Giuseppe Donizetti, manuscript Costantinopoli 1832 / Raccolta di diversi pezzi di musica composti da Giuseppe Donizetti per musica militare e ridotti per Piano forte dall’autore, Naples, Biblioteca del conservatorio San Pietro a Majella, NA0059 20.7.3 [35.4.51], 52–53, nos 68 and 69 in the collection. 53. Cattelan, La cultura dell’Opera italiana a Costantinopoli, 25–29. 54. Nicolas Dufetel, Les Orientales de Liszt: Liszt, Doğu’dan İzdüşümler (Istanbul: Lycée français Notre Dame de Sion, 2019), 24. 55. The Musical World (6 June 1839). 56. The Foreign Quarterly Review (1839), 222. 57. Moniteur ottoman (23 November 1838). 58. Adam Mestyan, ‘A Garden with Mellow Fruits of Refinement: Music Theatres and Cultural Politics in Cairo and Istanbul 1867–1892’ (unpubl. PhD diss., Central European University Budapest, 2011), 107–9. 59. The Corsair (22 June 1839). 60. Niles’ National Register (31 August 1839). 61. Le Ménestrel (18 August 1839). 62. Le Magasin pittoresque (September 1839), 282. 63. [Wilhem von Lenz], Aus dem Tagebuche eines Livländers: Moskau, Constantinopel, Burgos, Madrid, das Violen-Conzert von Beethoven in St. Petersburg und die FastenMusiken (Wien: Gerold, 1850). 64. Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope, Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope: Forming the Completion of her Memoirs, Narrated by Her Physician [Charles Lewis Meryon] (London: Colburn, 1846), vol. 1, 70. Robert Walsh, A Residence at Constantinople, during a Period Including the Commencement, Progress, and Termination of the Greek and Turkish Revolutions (London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, 1836), 389. 65. Ralph P. Locke, Music, Musicians, and the Saint-Simonians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 185–90. 66. The Biography of Leopold de Meyer, Imperial and Royal Court Pianist by Diploma of Their Majesties of Austria and Russia (London: Palmer and Clayton, 1845).

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European Musicians at the Sultan’s Court 67. Paul Bénichou, ‘Le credo humanitaire et sa diffusion’, in Le Temps des prophètes: Doctrines de l’âge romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 381–422. 68. Bagnères de Bigorre, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 309. 69. Alfred Roland, Hymnes et cantiques de Terre Sainte N 1, Tantum ergo (Paris: RégnierCanaux), plate number R. C. 2117. 70. Théo [Bouget], Les 40 Chanteurs Montagnards: Voyage en Orient, d’après les Mémoires d’Alfred Roland (Bagnères-de-Bigorre: Dominique Bérot, 1899), 291. This book may have been prepared by Théo Bouget, a former member of the Chanteurs Montagnards, from the scrapbook, or from another still untraced source. 71. Ibid., 334. 72. Ibid., 344. 73. Cumhurbaşkanlığı Devlet Arşivleri, Osmanlı Arşivi, İstanbul, TS-MA-E 752/21. 74. Théo [Bouget], Les 40 Chanteurs Montagnards, 346. 75. Ibid. 76. In the Ménestrel des Pyrénées: En Crimée!!! Chant religieux et national, ‘Souvenir de l’honorable séance Impériale du 1 juillet 1846’ (Paris: Régnier-Canaux), plate number R. C. 2125. 77. Evren Kutlay, ‘Musical Instruments in Ottoman Seraglios and Harems of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’, Ottoman Empire and European Theatre, vol. 4: Seraglios in Theatre, Music and Literature, ed. Michael Hüttler and Hans Ernst Weidinger (Vienna: Hollitzer, 2016), 255–62. 78. Gotthold Schulz-Labischin, Die Sängerreise der Berliner Liedertafel nach dem Orient (Bukarest, Konstanza, Konstantinopel, Smyrna, Athen, Saloniki, Budapest): 28. April bis 15. Mai 1908 (Berlin: Im Selbstverlage des Vereins, 1908).

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7 Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie, Once Again Edhem Eldem

Introduction In 1873, the Ottoman government published a large in-folio volume called Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873, or ‘Costumes of the Peoples of Turkey in 1873’. As indicated on the title page, the work was ‘published under the aegis of the Imperial Ottoman Commission for the World Exposition at Vienna’. The text was by Osman Hamdi Bey, head of said commission, and Marie de Launay, member of both the Imperial Commission and the Exposition’s International Jury, while the photographic work was signed by Pascal Sébah. There were 319 pages of text, followed by a seven-page table of contents; as to the illustrations, they consisted of a total of seventy-four full-page photographic plates, divided into three major sections: (I) Turkey in Europe (23 plates); (II) The Ottoman Islands (9 plates); and (III) Turkey in Asia (42 plates). On each plate, an average of three individuals exhibited the traditional or current costume of one particular area of the Ottoman Empire, adding up to 210 individual costumes (Figure 7.1). Of these, ninety-six were women, and the remaining 114 men. Religious affiliation was also rather evenly distributed, if one considers the demographic circumstances of the time: ninety-eight Muslims (of which twelve Kurds, nine Bedouins, three Turkmens, two Yörüks and two Zeybeks), sixty-two Christians (of which twenty-two Greeks, nine Bulgarians and six Armenians), twelve Jews and four Druses. As to their geographical distribution, it can safely be qualified as balanced, albeit with a relative under-representation of Eastern Anatolia and Iraq (Figure 7.2).1 196

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie

Figure 7.1 Title page, frontispiece and illustrated plates of Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 (Source: Author’s collection, Istanbul)

Figure 7.2 Geographic distribution of the costumes in Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 (Source: 1903 map of the Ottoman Empire from the author’s collection, Istanbul)

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Edhem Eldem None of this information is new. In fact, Les Costumes populaires stands among one of the best-known, or at least most often mentioned, works concerning Ottoman self-representation and ethnography. Zeynep Çelik was one of the first to use it in that particular context, albeit briefly.2 Followers were legion, but one needs only to cite the most thorough work on the topic, namely Ahmet Ersoy’s article devoted exclusively to this publication.3 With such a profusion of scholarship, there should be little left to say about the contents and context of this publication. Indeed, from Çelik to Ersoy, most specialists have underlined the album’s claim to avoid orientalist stereotypes and to favour a neutral, ethnographic and scholarly vision of costume.4 A similar stress was put on the authors’ claims about the superiority of costume over clothing,5 their insistence on ‘unity in diversity’ as a leitmotif evocative of the Ottoman ethnic and religious patchwork, and their tendency to fall for the illusion of timelessness as one of the main characteristics of costume.6 As a result, Les Costumes populaires has become one of the cornerstones of late Ottoman cultural history, an almost unavoidable and canonical illustration of the image that the Ottoman government and intelligentsia wanted to give of the empire to a Western audience. I believe that this assessment is largely correct; however, I also think that our vision of this work is tainted by a somewhat narrow and restrictive perspective, which tends to concentrate on its intended message, leaving aside so many other aspects of the question, most particularly, the way in which the project was conceived, the circumstances of its realisation, a proper assessment of its reception and its surprising afterlife. This, in my opinion, is a rather frequent weakness that characterises Ottoman cultural studies devoted to art, architecture, or literature, whereby a tendency to concentrate on the contents, form and meaning of a work overshadows a more systematic treatment of its context and circumstances. This phenomenon, which I have abundantly observed and criticised in the case of Osman Hamdi Bey’s intellectual and artistic production,7 was behind my urge to apply a similar critical revision to one the major works attributed to him. Four articles published in Turkish form the groundwork of the present study.8

The Question of Antecedents If one takes – as one should – any work of some importance as a process rather than as an isolated end-product, one of the major lacunae in the story of Les Costumes populaires is the lack of a proper investigation into its possible antecedents and sources of inspiration. Ersoy rightly pointed to two points in this direction: first, that the interest in popular costume was very typical of the period, and that the Ottomans themselves had already indulged in this fashion at the 1867 Paris 198

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie Exposition;9 and second, that the idea of the difference between clothing and costume, with a nostalgic preference for the latter, was not new and had already been promoted by Armand-Dumaresq in his report on the section of the 1867 exposition devoted to ‘examples of popular costume in several lands’.10 To this, one should add the other leitmotif of Les Costumes, that of ‘unity in diversity’, an age-old motto that can be traced back to a number of religious, philosophical, aesthetical and political concepts, from Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ‘waḥdat-al wujūd’ (unity of being) and ʿAbdel Karim al-Jīlī’s ‘al waḥdat fī’l kathrat wa’l-kathrat fī’lwaḥdat’ (unity in plurality and plurality in unity), over Leibniz’s ‘harmonia est unitas in varietate’ (harmony is unity in diversity), to Ernesto Teodoro Moneta’s ‘in varietate unitas’, a motto of the Italian Risorgimento.11 All of this comes to show that not much in Les Costumes populaires was really new. This, however, would have deserved more attention, especially with respect to the Ottoman experience of 1867. Indeed, a closer look at ArmandDumaresq’s report and at the exposition’s official catalogue reveals how popular costume exhibits had been in Paris. Apart from the Ottoman Empire, practically every participating country had contributed to the fad with collections of varying size and nature, from illustrations to life-size models, and from dolls to costumes alone.12 France itself had one of the largest collections, consisting of seventy life-size models, numerous costumes, costumed dolls and illustrations by artists, not only by Armand-Dumaresq himself, but also by celebrities such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gustave Boulanger.13 The Ottoman costume exhibit at the 1867 Paris exposition was apparently one of the best, enough to warrant a silver medal, second only to Sweden and Norway’s gold.14 A large central glass case contained twenty life-size models of Ottoman officers, from the sultan’s aide-de-camps down to fire watchmen, provided by the government.15 The rest of the exhibit consisted of about sixty regional costumes, the list of which reads like an abridged version of Les Costumes populaires.16 Of course, there were antecedents to this antecedent, especially the Museum of Ancient Costume (Musée des anciens costumes or Elbise-i Atika), created in 1852, which displayed some 300 life-size wooden models wearing ‘all the costumes, which Ottoman subjects, from the highest officials to the lowest classes, have worn, from the beginnings of the monarchy to the year 1261 of the Hegira, both at official ceremonies and on ordinary days’.17 Western curiosity for Ottoman exotic garb, especially Janissary outfits, turned this collection into a major attraction for tourists and visitors. The similarity with Les Costumes populaires can be stretched to the fact that the ‘museum’ also had its album, in the form of twenty-two colour plates by the artist Jean Brindesi depicting more than eighty pre-1826 Ottoman military and official costumes (Figure 7.3).18 199

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Edhem Eldem

Figure 7.3 Frontispiece and illustrated plates of Brindesi’s Elbicei Atika: Musée des anciens costumes turcs de Constantinople (Source: New York Public Library, b13993327; available at https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-6777a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99)

To this one should add Count Amadeo Preziosi’s Stamboul, an album of about thirty colour lithographs depicting street life and types of the Ottoman capital, published in English in 1858, and in French in 1861 and 1865.19 In a sense, Les Costumes populaires constituted a form of culmination of a twenty-yearlong process that had gradually moved from Janissaries to ordinary subjects, from past to present, from orientalism to ethnography, from watercolour to photography, and from Constantinople to Vienna.

Authorship and Intent If anyone should be credited with the ‘upgrading’ of the 1867 show in 1873, it certainly was Les Costumes’s co-author, Marie de Launay. Again, Ersoy has rightly noted that de Launay had been very active in the organisation of the 200

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie Ottoman participation in the 1867 exposition, particularly with respect to costumes, on which he commented in great detail.20 Yet, there was much more to it, if one looks closely at the text: the three first paragraphs from de Launay’s 1867 text reproduces, word for word, the introduction of the 1873 section on Constantinople.21 The costumes had changed, with consequent modifications to the descriptions of each plate; but it was clear that de Launay was the major, if not the only, author behind the text. This also showed in the general tone, by any standard very French, with frequent tongue-in-cheek, sometimes even rather condescending remarks on the taste or customs of the individuals described.22 Other inconsistencies in the text also point in the same direction. Quite a number of translation and transcription errors are clearly incompatible with a proper knowledge of Turkish. A striking example is the way in which the term bachi bozouk (başıbozuk) was translated as ‘briseur de têtes’ (head cracker), a far cry from the real meaning of the word, used to describe irregular troops.23 Moreover, in a volume where the use of Turkish was limited to the headings of the plates, the frequency of misspellings in this language betrays rather sloppy work, despite the relatively high quality of the calligraphy.24 Finally, one discovers with some astonishment that several passages of the introduction to the section on the province of Baghdad were taken almost verbatim from a French traveller from twenty years earlier, Ferdinand Hoefer.25 Considering that Osman Hamdi Bey spent about two years in Baghdad just before he was appointed commissioner to the Vienna Exposition, this ‘inspiration’ seems to reinforce the impression that his involvement in the writing of Les Costumes may have been, to say the least, minimal. This is not to say that there was practically no Ottoman involvement in the making of this project. The errors in the Turkish titles and captions are not due to foreign intervention; they are just proof that no need was felt to have them carefully edited once completed. In fact, in some ways, these inscriptions are extremely Turkish, when, for example they reveal a marked tendency to use the rather derogatory term ‘karı’ (woman, in rather rough parlance) when speaking of non-Muslim women, as opposed to the more formal ‘kadın’ or ‘nisvan’ applied to their Muslim counterparts – a lexical distinction entirely incompatible with Osman Hamdi’s polished style. Even in the French text, a reference to Kurds as ‘half-savage hordes’,26 or the statement that ‘the Turkmens are essentially peaceful and honest, [while] the Kurds are wild, restless, quarrelsome and seekers of the property of others’27 casts some doubt on the ‘detached ethnographic viewpoint’ with which Ersoy credits the authors.28 Was it an Ottoman(ist) twist imposed by Hamdi whose orientalist take on nomadic peoples is no secret, or was it a sympathetic and pre-emptive move by de Launay?29 201

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Edhem Eldem At any rate, despite some variations, it seems important to underline one of the major characteristics of the volume – namely, its ‘bon pour l’Occident’ nature. The project found its inspiration in the West, and its intended audience was likewise the West. As a result, the Ottoman government had opted for a format and content that made sense from this perspective, disregarding any probability of a local use within the empire. However, a closer look at the documentation reveals that the initial plan was somewhat different. It seems that the project originally consisted only of costumed models. Pietro Montani’s initial report, dated 29 January 1872, focused almost exclusively on architectural projects – a mansion (konak), a peasant house, a copy of the Ahmed III fountain and a small cemetery – but included an oblique reference to costumes under the strange title of ‘piyedestal’ (from the French piédestal): ‘250 pedestals will be built on which the costumes (kostümler) will be placed and displayed’.30 Apparently, it was only in the following months that the decision was made to complement the display with an album. The contract was signed on 1 May 1872, between the Ottoman commission, represented by its president, Edhem Pasha, on the one hand, and by Hamdi, Sébah and de Launay, on the other. Yet, it was not before November that the necessary procedure was completed, authorising an addition of 120,000 piasters to the budget in order to meet the expenses of a volume on Ottoman architecture,31 and of ‘a book regrouping the costumes (kıyafet) of male and female Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of the Imperial domains’.32 The contract answers many questions left pending to this day. The contractors agreed to submit by early May 1873 a book containing the photographs of 200 costumes to be provided by the commission33 in sixty to sixty-five folio plates printed on high-quality paper. Each plate was to be accompanied by a one- or two-page explanation in Turkish and in French. A print run of 600 was agreed upon, against a payment of 17,000 francs, roughly 740 liras (Article 1). The first half of this sum was to be paid by 15 May, within two weeks, one half to Sébah and the other half to de Launay. The remaining half would be paid upon completion of the work (Article 2). Based on the calculation of an average cost of 30 francs (130 piasters) per copy, the sales price was agreed upon as 50 francs (217 piasters). As such, the sale of the first 340 copies would be earmarked to meet the 17,000 francs disbursed by the commission. Based on 7.85 francs per copy, the sale of the following 240 copies would constitute the equivalent of the interest at 12 percent accrued on the 17,000-franc payment, to be distributed equally among the three contractors (Article 3). After the sale of all 600 copies, providing a joint decision, the three contractors would be free to reprint the work for their own profit (Article 4). Article 5 specified the exact wording of the title page – namely, the mention of Edhem Pasha’s patronage as president of the Ottoman commission, of Hamdi 202

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie Bey as author of the Turkish text, of de Launay as author of the French text and of Sébah as photographer by appointment.34 This information puts an end to any misgivings about Hamdi’s authorship. It is clear that, once the idea of a Turkish text was dropped, his role fell through, but remained on the title page as a vague form of co-authorship. This confirms my earlier impression about the very French character of the text; evidently, Hamdi’s role would have been limited to translating de Launay’s original text. Of course, one cannot exclude the possibility of some consultation, but our knowledge that Hamdi spent much of his time travelling back and forth between Istanbul and Vienna seriously reduces the likelihood of a sustained collaboration.35 For all scholarly purposes, I believe that Les Costumes populaires needs to be treated primarily as Marie de Launay’s project, and not Osman Hamdi Bey’s. Hamdi’s role in this is clearly of a much more complex and problematic nature. The fact that he was not only the head commissioner of the project, but also the president’s son, casts some doubts as to the propriety of taking up this project as one of its three contractors. While this may be the reason why he was not mentioned as one of the recipients of the 17,000 francs, this overlap demonstrates to what extent the boundaries between the public and the private were porous in the realisation of this project. A closer look at the process of production reveals how the whole matter was handled by a small group of individuals, who took upon themselves the mission of promoting the empire’s image among Western audiences.

Usual Suspects and Fluid Methods In an obituary for Ahmed Midhat Efendi in 1913, Hamdi’s (much) younger brother Halil Edhem reminisced about how, four decades earlier, ‘renowned artists of the time’ – Montani, Barborini, Boghos Shashian, Koçeoğlu Krikor, Maillard and, of course, Ahmed Midhat – would convene at their home, Edhem Pasha’s mansion in Kantarcılar, to work on the Ottoman architecture volume for the Vienna Exposition. He then noted that this was why ‘many celebrities’ appeared on the plates of Les Costumes populaires, which Sébah was preparing in his photographic studio. He gave the example of Ahmed Midhat Efendi himself, who posed as a ‘Lebanese Bedouin’, adjoining the corresponding plate from the volume.36 It is difficult to identify other such ‘celebrities’ among over 200 different types, given that we lack any consistent photographic documentation on them. Bahattin Öztuncay has managed to identify de Launay himself, who posed three times, as a hodja from Scutari/Shkodra (pl. I-13), as an inhabitant of Mostar (pl. I-23) and as a Turkmen from the surroundings of Bursa (pl. III-1).37 203

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Edhem Eldem

Figure 7.4 Osman Hamdi Bey in Oriental garb, 1873, Fritz Luckhardt photograph studio, Vienna (Source: Author’s collection)

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie I personally think that I may have a chance proposing Montani as the ‘inhabitant of Jiyaddele’ (pl. III-39) and Parvillée as the ‘inhabitant of Rhodes’ (pl. II-6) and/or the ‘Christian from Diyarbekir’ (pl. III-21). There are probably many, or some, more, who may be discovered in the future. Osman Hamdi, who apparently had missed all the fun at Sébah’s studio, made up for it in Vienna, when he posed in an outfit combining elements of the Kurdish costumes from Palu (pl. III-21) and Mardin (pl. III-23) (Figure 7.4). Particularly striking is the informality that seems to have characterised a process controlled by a small number of close friends and colleagues, who felt comfortable enough to turn an official commission into a somewhat playful experience. This attitude finds an echo in de Launay’s writing style, which, as noted earlier, bears traces of a rather patronising humour, often bordering on cheekiness.38 True, Les Costumes populaires set itself apart from its purely orientalist predecessors by adopting a resolutely ethnographic stand, but when scratched, this veneer revealed layers of stereotypes and clichés that belied this apparently neutral attitude.

Photographs and Models: The Rules of Soft Orientalism If the text bore traces of ambiguity, navigating between orientalism and ethnography, so were the images. The photographs were taken against a rather austere and unchanging backdrop, consisting of a plain wall with thigh-high wood panelling, the floor covered with a typical rough straw mat. Ersoy pointed this out as another indicator of the project’s ‘objective’ ethnographic twist, adding that this décor had been set up in Edhem Pasha’s residence.39 He was right about the context, but wrong about the setting, for Halil Edhem was very clear about the locations used for each project: L’Architecture ottomane was indeed drafted at ‘our home’, meaning Edhem Pasha’s mansion – Halil Edhem was only twelve at the time – while Les Costumes populaires ‘was photographed and printed at Sébah’s photographic studio’.40 This is further confirmed by the fact that there are many other Sébah photographs that use exactly the same background, albeit with the addition of props and furniture. Of course, a plain backdrop is a plain backdrop, regardless of whether it is located in a pasha’s mansion or a photographer’s studio. However, looking at Pascal Sébah’s rich production of the time, one striking phenomenon is the existence of a large number of photographs from his commercial stock that are very similar to those of Les Costumes populaires. These are generally portraits of one of the many models used in the group photographs of the album, or, more rarely, of a different model wearing an outfit identical with one of those displayed in the same plates. One group of such photographs perfectly suits the 205

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Edhem Eldem argument of a conscious ethnographic ‘neutralisation’ of the subjects in view of the preparation of the volume. These are the images where the same models and/or costumes are displayed in such a way as to create the illusion of a ‘typical’ scene, generally with strong orientalist undertones. A striking example is a photograph involving exactly the same individuals as in plate III-40, but in a ‘quaint’ scene: the man is drinking from a jar held by one of the women with a coy smile, while the other is sitting pensively, leaning on a cardboard rock. Interestingly, there is another similar photograph, involving the same three models, but with the addition of three armed Bedouin men, probably meant to represent a tribal reunion of some sort.41 In similar fashion, one discovers that the ‘Kurdish woman from the vicinity of Sivas’ in the centre of plate III-16 could become a ‘Kurdish lady from Sivas’, the only difference being that she is no longer standing, but comfortably seated on a sofa. A similar situation characterises the ‘Muslim woman from Prizren’, whom we find in the same garb as in the Costumes plate, but leaning over cardboard rocks (Figure 7.5). Perhaps because the two Zeybeks on plate III-4 looked a little too chubby and peaceful, Sébah seems to have favoured a taller, thinner model to pose alone in the same outfit, trying to look fearsome with his hand on his dagger and a sword between his teeth. Nevertheless, there was no problem, it seems, in having him pose right in front of the same plain wall and wood panelling. Plate I-18, depicting a happy family of prosperous Albanians provides yet another interesting example of derivative images. In yet another commercial image, Sébah has made use of another male model, but with the exact same outfit as the paterfamilias of the Costumes populaires plate, with the only addition of two pistols stuck in his belt. The whole setting has changed, too: he is standing on the same straw mat, but in front of an assemblage of cardboard rocks against an Alpine backdrop of pine trees and mountains. The man’s identity has also morphed radically: from a ‘wealthy Albanian from Ioannina’ in Les Costumes populaires, he has turned into a ‘Grec hellène’, a pleonastic expression used to distinguish him from a Rum, a Greek-Orthodox Ottoman subject. Apparently, a pair of pistols and the wild scenery in the background had been enough to transform a peaceful bourgeois into a fierce freedom fighter (Figure 7.6). At the other end of this spectrum of photographic derivatives stood a number of photographs that remained faithful to the ethnographic view of the album.42 How are we to interpret these variations on a theme? One could imagine that the individual photographs were taken in preparation of an earlier version of the book, before the decision was made to make groups of two or three. Or else, more likely, that Sébah saw the immediate advantage that could be drawn from the operation by creating a parallel – and marketable – series of 206

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Figure 7.5 Left: ‘Kurdish Woman from the Vicinity of Sivas’ at the centre of plate III-16 of Les Costumes populaires. Top, centre: ‘Kurdish Lady from Sivas’ by Sébah. Right: ‘Muslim Woman from Prizren’ at the left of plate I-12 of Les Costumes populaires. Bottom, centre: The same woman on a commercial photograph by Sébah (Source: Costumes populaires plates from the author’s collection, Istanbul; commercial photographs from the Getty Research Institute, 96.R.14(A25) neg. n° 90 and 96.R.14 PF.B5.031.)

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Figure 7.6 Left: ‘Zeybeks’ on plate III-4 of Les Costumes populaires. Top, centre: Commercial photograph of a Zeybek by Sébah. Right: ‘Wealthy Albanian Family from Ioannina’ on plate I-18 of Les Costumes populaires. Bottom, centre: ‘Hellenic Greek’ by Sébah (Source: Costumes populaires plates from the author’s collection; commercial photographs from the Uğur Yeğin collection [top]; and Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, NUM PH 8105 [bottom])

Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie local costume, together with a few fantasy shots that could spice up otherwise rather uniform material. The fact that most of these photographs are numbered and captioned seems to confirm that they were destined to enrich the studio’s impressive stock of photographs for sale.43 If anything, this should remind us that the boundaries between picturesque, orientalist, exotic and ethnographic were blurred and easily transgressed. Sébah knew well that tourists were no longer content with clichés and caricatures of the Orient, and that they wanted images that were closer to reality. Much as the ‘Turkish lady’ had gradually supplanted imaginary odalisques, sober images of the ethnic and religious variety of the empire had become part of a new, softer, but perhaps more insidious, form of orientalism. The Costumes populaires followed suit, finding the way to adapt an age-old tradition of costume albums to the needs and preferences of the time. That Pascal Sébah could sell images that were practically identical to those of the empire’s ‘ethnographic survey’ was a sure sign that exoticism and orientalism were still alive and well. In other words, to view this album as countering orientalism may have more to do with our own post-Saidian wishful thinking than with the real intent of its creators and promoters. Browsing the images and commentaries on the Ottoman section at the Vienna Exposition allows for an assessment of the reception and impact of Ottoman costumes by the Viennese audience. Let us note first that the number of models exhibited exceeded that of the costumes included in the volume, by 258 against 210. A closer look at the list of models reveals that this difference was not exclusively in favour of the models. While there were indeed seventy-one costumes displayed in Vienna that were not included in the album, the reverse was also true of twenty-three costumes, which appeared on the plates but were not exhibited, meaning that the total number of costumes produced was actually 281.44 Nevertheless, these differences seem to have been entirely random, without any meaningful pattern or choice to be singled out. Contemporary photographs and images in the illustrated press give a rather accurate sense of the arrangement of the Ottoman gallery. In the centre of the gallery were a series of large glass showcases, vertical and horizontal, containing a great variety of objects; one open area of this central section held a motley display of objects: birdcages, tables, books, jars, ewers, ceramics and so on. Carpets and other textiles hung from the ceiling and from the pilasters supporting it. Most of the costumed models, placed on individual octagonal stands, were lined up two by two against the wall; others were set in groups of six around the main pilasters of the central area (Figure 7.7).45 While a close look at these images helps establish parallels between some of the models and the album plates, there is no way that one can carry out this 209

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Figure 7.7 Detail from a stereoscopic photograph of the Ottoman section at the Vienna World Exposition, Association of Vienna Photographers, 1873, albumen prints pasted on cardboard (Source: Albertina, Vienna, on permanent loan as ‘Dauerleihgabe der höheren graphischen Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, Wien’)

comparison in an exhaustive manner, or with any degree of precision. As to Ersoy’s claim that the collection also included ‘janissaries and palace officials in their historic garb’, it seems that this is the result of a misinterpretation of an image depicting the entrance to the gallery.46 A commentary in one of the most popular illustrated magazines of the time gives a sense of the impression left by this rich collection of costumes: These models form the liveliest teaching material for those who wish to learn about the mosaic of peoples formed by the subjects of the Sultan. Some of them are wild characters in primitive clothes, often armed with weapons of another age. The differences among them are so striking that, just by looking at these models, one realizes the difficulty of creating a unified state out of this set of lands.47 Indeed, the public was invited to discover the variety and diversity of Ottoman peoples through the collection, but the stress was elsewhere, on the wild and primitive nature of some of the costumes, a typical way of titillating the public’s taste for exotic and orientalist thrills. As to the final remark, it brings an ironic 210

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie twist to Les Costumes populaires’s leitmotif of ‘diversity in unity’, by implying that such diversity was in fact a major obstacle to the constitution of a ‘unified state’ – in other words, a modern state. If the exhibit’s purpose, as has been suggested, was to de-exoticise and de-orientalise the Ottoman Empire, as well as to prove that there was unity in diversity, these observations cast some doubt as to its overall success in this matter.

A Resounding Flop? That the Ottoman commission should not have been able – or perhaps even willing – to oppose well-established orientalist stereotypes is not really surprising. It would have taken much more to achieve such a goal, especially if one considers that the major and most visible exhibits consisted of examples of Ottoman-Muslim architecture: a copy of the Ahmed III fountain, a building inspired from the Imperial Palace’s Yalı Kiosk, a bath, a coffeehouse, a bazaar and a neo-orientalist domed pavilion housing a selection of objects from the Imperial Treasury.48 Of course, one should not be too harsh and demanding in this respect. The rules of the game were pretty much set, and there was a limit as to how much transgression was allowed, given the deep-rooted expectations of western audiences. In that sense, there is no doubt that Les Costumes populaires was a commendable effort at widening the scope of western curiosity from a predominantly Islamised fantasy to a more ecumenical reality. This could be likened to Çelik’s remark that, contrary to the 1867 constructions, the 1873 buildings combined a historic perspective with an emphasis on the vernacular.49 My suggestion that Les Costumes populaires may have been a failure does not, therefore, refer to the way in which the album and the costumes themselves were received and perceived by the Viennese public, but rather to a very concrete issue concerning its ability to reach any form of audience. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that, contrary to plan, the printing of the book was not completed in time for the event, and that only a very limited number of copies made it to Vienna in 1873. A concrete indication of this failure can be found in Sébah’s repeated claims that he had not received proper payment for the works that he had been commissioned to complete. In 1873, his complaint concerned only the volume on architecture, for which he claimed he had received only 10,000 francs (435 liras) out of the 2,500 liras he had been promised by contract. As a result, he warned the government that he would be unable to deliver the book.50 Although no mention was made of Les Costumes populaires, later documents reveal that the problem actually concerned both publications. In July 1877, he submitted a statement of the 687.35 liras due to him for the two 211

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Edhem Eldem projects. Without going into the details of Sébah’s accounting and of printing costs, the statement reveals one crucially important piece of information: the total number of Costumes populaires printed was 365, barely half of the 600 initially planned. Of these, only sixty-five had been delivered to the Vienna Exposition commission, while the remaining 300 were given to another commission created in 1876 for the Philadelphia Exposition.51 Given that, as we will see below, the number of unsold copies of the album in 1902 was 217, it appears that the total number of copies sold barely reached 150. We do not know when the sixty-five copies reached Vienna. Nevertheless, the absence of any reference to the album in the press brings to mind that it was never properly distributed or made accessible. In the exposition’s official catalogue, it appeared with its title translated into German, under two entries of Group XII (Graphic arts and commercial drawings), with no connection to the collection of costumes. The first entry referred to John Laffan-Hanly, the owner of the Levant Times and Shipping Gazette, where the album had been printed; the second referred to Sébah.52 The only concrete reference to the album being viewed was an engraving, which unmistakably copied plate III-37, depicting an ‘Arab lady from Jerusalem’, flanked by a peasant couple from the region. Yet, neither the caption nor the accompanying text made any mention whatsoever of the source from which the picture had originated (Figure 7.8).53 The fact that the book was advertised for sale only about a year after the exhibition further confirms the impression that it had utterly failed to reach its intended audience.54 The problem, then, is to understand to what extent Les Costumes populaires may have impacted western audiences, especially within the relatively short period of time during which the exposition was open to the public. Ersoy considers that the ‘scholarly format’ of the album ‘provided a legible and authoritative structure’, which ‘turned what might have been viewed merely as an exotic spectacle into an organized and encyclopaedic whole’.55 I have already expressed some doubts about the ‘scholarly’ nature of the project, due to its tendency to flirt with a softened form of orientalism and exoticism, and have shown some evidence to the effect that it was indeed perceived and received as an exotic curiosity by the public at large. If one is to add the possibility, not to say the probability, that the book failed to reach any significant audience, we may be faced with a rather awkward situation, not unlike that of the famous photograph albums sent to Britain and to the United States some twenty years later by Sultan Abdülhamid II. This voluminous public relations operation, consisting of some fifty albums filled with photographs attesting to the progress and modernity of the Ottoman Empire, was technically a monumental flop, since these imperial gifts were safely stored away in national libraries until they were ‘discovered’ by scholars in the 1980s, almost a century later. Yet, students 212

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Figure 7.8 Plate III-37 of Les Costumes populaires representing types from Jerusalem (right) and its reproduction as ‘Oriental Types’ in the Allgemeine illustrirte Weltausstellungs-Zeitung, III/9 (15 June 1873), 102 (left) (Source: Costumes populaires plate from the author’s collection, Istanbul; illustrated magazine page from the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische StaatsBibliothek), accessed at https://daten.digitalesammlungen.de/0005/bsb00058593/images/index.html?id=00058593&groesser=&fip=193.174.98.30&no=&seite=106)

Edhem Eldem of Ottoman history still work on this appealing source, without necessarily considering that this is a rare example of a publicity enterprise that largely failed to reach its intended audience.

An ‘Accidental’ Reception This is not to say that Les Costumes populaires should be disregarded or discarded because of its possible or relative failure; rather, the point is to suggest that no text or work should be taken at face value, without paying proper attention to the processes that led to it and the way in which it was eventually received. The temptation is frequent, especially when the document itself is of appealing nature, to forget this basic rule of method, thus opening the way to decontextualised and almost ahistorical reading. Ironically, in the case of Les Costumes populaires, while the intended objective may not have been reached, the album’s long-term career unfolded in very surprising and contradictory ways, none of which have been studied to this day. The first of these has to do with the ‘domestic’ career of the work, obviously an unintended consequence, if one considers that the whole project, contrary to the initial plan, was never designed to have any form of repercussion within the Ottoman lands. What caused this strange outcome was an ‘accident’, as one would have to label any unintended, unexpected, even unwanted result of an action. What provoked this accident was a belated inquiry into the ways in which the government could try to recover the sums owed by Pascal Sébah. This happened in 1899, thirteen years after the photographer’s death and twenty-six years after the publication of Les Costumes populaires; the reason for this delay and the nature of his debts are unclear; at any rate, they do not affect the matter at hand. Suffice it to say that the Ministry of Finance came up with the idea of seizing his stock of unsold copies of L’Architecture ottomane and Les Costumes populaires in order to have them auctioned. These being Hamidian times, the realisation of this plan depended on the verification that there was no legal impediment to their sale, as appears in an exchange between the ministries of Finance and of Public Instruction.56 An investigation was carried out by a certain Vafir Bey, inspector, or rather censor, at the latter ministry. His report cleared L’Architecture ottomane, which he found useful. However, he had a very different opinion of Les Costumes populaires, for his eagle eye had spotted that six of the plates ‘depicted the features and clothing of pure Muslim women’.57 It took the Ministry of Public Instruction two months to announce the final verdict: L’Architecture ottomane was ‘clean,’ but Les Costumes populaires could be sold only once the sacrilegious pages were removed.58 Clearly, Vafir Bey was in tune with the conservative policies of Abdülhamid’s autocracy.59 214

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie One can only imagine how disappointed the Ministry of Finance was at the idea of a potential loss of revenue. On 28 September 1899, the minister, Reşad Bey, reminded his colleague that this book had been prepared at great cost and that removing pages would considerably reduce its value.60 If he thought that this would soften the Minister of Public Instruction Zühdü Pasha’s or his bureaucrats’ stand or dampen their zeal, he was very mistaken. When the answer to his plea came, almost three months later, the situation had even worsened, for the board of censors had re-examined the book and had found two more plates with unacceptable depictions of Muslim women. The conclusion was damning: ‘The sale by the government of this book in its actual state, exposing it to the sight of all, would be much more harmful than the loss one might expect from its actual value’ (Figure 7.9).61 Sobered by this experience, the Ministry of Finance dropped the matter altogether. When it did take it up again, in late 1902, it cautiously avoided the Ministry of Public Instruction and asked permission directly from the Grand Vizierate; moreover, it took the additional precaution of speaking only of L’Architecture ottomane, proposing that it be auctioned at 23 piasters, over twenty times less than its original price in 1873.62 Surprisingly, however, in its response, the Grand Vizierate inquired about the remaining stocks of not only L’Architecture ottomane, but also Les Costumes populaires.63 That is how we learn that, thirty years after publication, there were still 320 left of the former, and 217 of the latter.64 This is precisely when yet another ‘accident’, unrelated to the ongoing attempts by the ministry to cash in its losses, once again brought Les Costumes populaires to the attention of the Ottoman government and bureaucracy. This time, it was the Tax Administration (Rüsumat İdaresi), who had triggered the process, by intercepting and seizing a copy of the book that had been purchased by the director and students of the Hungarian Oriental Academy (Keleti Akadémia). The administration had dutifully submitted the book to their own ‘book inspection officer’, Kemaleddin Bey, who had decreed that the book should not be allowed to leave the country. His short report, however, is worth quoting in full for the originality and novelty of the arguments put forward: As the illustrated album of costumes, which the Oriental Academy of Budapest requested be allowed through customs, not only shows the domestic and public garments of pure Muslim women among the garb and costumes of all the races and tribes, Muslim and Christian, living in the Imperial domains; but also shows the Muslim inhabitants of the Imperial provinces of Rumelia armed from head to toe, while the Bulgarians and Christians are depicted unarmed, it is humbly suggested that, in these times, it would not be proper to allow this book to transit to Europe.65 215

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Figure 7.9 Incriminated plates from Les Costumes populaires, showing unacceptable depictions of Muslim women, circled in red (Source: Author’s collection, Istanbul)

Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie This report shows that, four years later, Vafir Bey’s anathema against Les Costumes populaires was still remembered; but with remarkable insight, Kemaleddin Bey had spotted another vicious pattern in Les Costumes populaires, on top of its sacrilegious treatment of Muslim women. It also carried a message of violence, embodied in the blatant contrast between Rumelian Muslims armed to the teeth and the unarmed and helpless Christians of the region (Figure 7.10). I must reassure cultural historians today, who might feel some envy and frustration for not having spotted – or ‘read’ – this subtle but fascinating bias embedded in the album’s plates. Kemaleddin Bey had a sizeable advantage over them, that of a political context that forced him to see evil behind anything that even remotely reminded him of unrest in the Balkans, and more particularly of the Macedonian crisis.66 The very negative treatment that the Ottoman Empire received in the European press during this crisis was sufficient to create a sense of paranoia which then triggered Kemaleddin Bey’s reaction.67 But was Kemaleddin Bey right? Did the book’s plates truly suggest the existence of such a clear ‘division of labour’ between predatory Muslims and their Christian preys? A head count of the Rumelian plates reveals that this was merely a half-truth. Out of the forty-nine individuals depicted in this section, twenty-three were women and unarmed, regardless of their creed. Of the twenty-six men, only five were armed; but they all happened to be Muslim. As to the twenty-one unarmed men, leaving aside the only Jew, they were equally distributed between Muslims and Christians. Statistically speaking, Kemaleddin Bey’s claim was untenable, yet he was expressing a feeling that made sense at that point in time.68

From Failure to Relative Success, by Proxy This strange coincidence is an occasion to revisit the political and ideological context of Les Costumes populaires from a broader perspective, by connecting it to the history of the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. The book was conceived and produced in 1872–73, only a few years before the Bulgarian crisis of 1876, known in Europe as the Bulgarian atrocities. The Ottomanist dream inaugurated by the 1856 Reform Decree was still on the agenda, despite growing difficulties. Bringing together the colourful diversity of Ottoman peoples was an exercise that served this purpose, while at the same time it satisfied exotic expectations on the western front. Thirty years later, the situation had completely changed. Ottomanism, in its Tanzimat version, was dead and almost buried, gradually replaced by the rise to pre-eminence of the Muslim population as the only legitimate recipient of Abdülhamid II’s autocratic attention. In Europe, as sympathies for the Ottoman Empire receded in the face of state 217

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Figure 7.10 Plates from Les Costumes populaires showing armed Muslims from the Balkans, with weapons circled in red (Source: Author’s collection, Istanbul)

218

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie discrimination and violence against non-Muslim populations, orientalism morphed into a growingly racist ideology, fuelled by imperialism. Les Costumes populaires may have been an ill-conceived and mismanaged project from the very start, thus undermining its potential, both as a (somewhat) ethnographic publication and as a tool of imperial public relations. Yet, it was also a victim of its time. Born at the very end of the lifespan of the ideology that it was supposed to represent and promote, its chances of survival in Hamidian times were extremely limited. Had the Ministry of Finance decided to recoup its losses a few years earlier, an equivalent of the Macedonian ‘accident’ of 1903 would have probably taken place with respect to Christian subjects in the eastern provinces, whose unarmed presence next to armed and fierce-looking Turks, Kurds and other Muslims would have most likely reminded censors of the accusations of massacres against the Armenian population. It is striking, and certainly ironic, that a book produced with no concern whatsoever for an internal audience ended up having more of an impact within the empire than in the foreign circles it intended to influence. This internal impact, however, had nothing to do with a real audience or readership; it was limited to a small number of bureaucrats who pondered about the fragile balance between the revenues to be obtained from the book’s unsold stocks and the political and moral consequences of its unlikely diffusion. Nevertheless, despite all these shortcomings and obstacles, Les Costumes populaires eventually did manage to gain some visibility, albeit through the proxy of another, more ambitious and better-distributed work, Albert Racinet’s six-volume Le Costume historique, published in 1888.69 This was intended as a universal history of costume throughout the ages, and to illustrate the Ottoman Empire, Racinet had borrowed images and texts from other authors. For earlier times, he had relied on d’Ohsson’s and Melling’s famous illustrated works; but when it came to contemporary ‘Turkey’, he had found all the material he needed in Les Costumes populaires. The format of his encyclopaedic work made it particularly easy to appropriate and adapt the images. Racinet did not use photographs but drawings, some in colour, others in shades (camaïeu). He could therefore single out and pick individuals from Sébah’s plates and reassemble them in whichever number and way he wanted. Out of the 210 costumes he chose ninety, which he rearranged in groups, to form nine different plates (Figure 7.11). He did the same with the texts, shortening them whenever he needed, thus ending up reproducing almost half of Les Costumes populaires.70 Racinet was outspoken about all this borrowing. At the end of each section consisting of a plate and explanatory texts, he referred to Les Costumes populaires, which he presented as Sébah’s work, explaining how the drawings had been made based on the photographic plates. This explanation made no mention of 219

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Figure 7.11 Five costumes in Racinet’s Le Costume historique (vol. III, pl. 177) and their corresponding models from Les Costumes populaires. From left to right: Kurdish woman from Sarıkaya (III-10-3); Başıbozuk from Ankara (III-12-1); Greek woman from Burdur (III-9-1); wife of an artisan from Ankara (III-13-3); and Jewish woman from Bursa (III-3-3) (Source: Author’s collection, Istanbul)

the text, but it did provide information regarding the colouration of the costumes. Indeed, one may wonder how black-and-white photographs could have provided any clue as to the bright colours on Racinet’s plates. The answer was extremely interesting: ‘The details of the costumes, as well as their colours, were taken from the original models exhibited by the Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués (Musée du Costume, 1874)’. This was a reference to a very specific exhibition that was set up in 1874 by the Central Union of Applied Fine Arts, an organisation founded in 1864 220

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie in the Arts and Crafts tradition after the South Kensington Museum of London.71 One of the Union’s major activities was the organisation of exhibitions on themes relevant to its mission, the promotion of arts and crafts applied to industrial production. Each time, the main exhibition would be accompanied by a specialised display on a selected theme, taken from a historical perspective under the generic title of ‘musée rétrospectif ’. In 1874, the exhibition on ‘fine arts applied to industry’ housed a historical exhibition that retraced the history of costume throughout the world. Inaugurated by the President of the Republic, Marshal MacMahon and his wife, the Duchess of Magenta, the exhibition was a great success and drew thousands to the prestigious Palais de l’Industrie et des Beaux-Arts on the Champs-Élysées.72 This may have been an additional incentive for the honourable mention, which Hamdi – alone – received for the Costumes at the International Congress of Geographical Sciences, held in Paris in August 1875.73 Unfortunately, I have failed to find any trace of the Ottoman costume collection travelling to Paris and being displayed by the Union. The catalogue of the exhibition makes no mention of the ‘retrospective display’, other than noting its existence and placing it on the general map. One thus discovers that the historical exhibition was located on the first floor and spread along eleven rooms, organised in thematic or chronological fashion. Among these, Room 6 was labelled as ‘Mediterranean Basin and Orient’, suggesting that this is where the Elbise collection might have been displayed.74 Then again, despite recent research in the archives of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, heir to the Union centrale, including numerous files concerning the 1874 exhibition, nothing has come up that might validate Racinet’s claims.75 Even the catalogue of this particular exhibition remains silent on any presence of the Ottoman costumes. The list of exhibitors does not mention Hamdi, de Launay, or Sébah, and none of the objects from the Ottoman lands correspond to any of the Vienna costume series.76 However, knowing that Racinet himself was among the founders and board members of the Union Centrale, I have little reason to doubt the veracity of his statement. For the time being, I can only hope that future research may eventually lead to some solution to this mystery and, perhaps, even the discovery of some surviving costumes.

Epilogue We had left the sad career of Les Costumes populaires at the point where it was caught for the second time by Hamidian censorship. On 17 June 1903, one month after the discovery of the work’s subversive power, the Hungarian visitors tried to reason with the Ottoman authorities by pointing out that it 221

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Edhem Eldem seemed strange that a book published by the imperial government should not be allowed to leave the country. If that were the case, however, they would need to be reimbursed the two liras they had paid for it.77 The administration did not yield; consulted on this point, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs agreed that the book should be seized, especially with respect to the photographs of Muslim women. A few days later, the Grand Vizierate confirmed this decision and ordered that the two liras be paid to the Austrian embassy from the Imperial Museum’s budget.78 Why the Imperial Museum? When the Ministry of Finance was contemplating the sale by auction of the remaining volumes, the Grand Vizierate had come up with the idea of entrusting the unsold copies to the Ministry of Public Instruction for safekeeping and possible repairs. The custody of the volumes was thus transferred to the Imperial Museum, including their estimated market value.79 What happened to the 320 copies of L’Architecture ottomane and 217 of Les Costumes populaires – 218 with the copy bought back from the Hungarians? The state archives are silent on this point, except for one mention in 1906 by the Ministry of Public Instruction that their total value of 3,638.5 piasters could not be budgeted for that year due to a lack of funds.80 The striking point was the very low value that was set on these stocks. The amount of 36 liras for almost 540 copies set the average price of a volume at less than 7 piasters. With an original price tag set at 500 and 217 piasters, respectively, L’Architecture ottomane and Les Costumes populaires had apparently lost practically their entire value over the course of some thirty years. We have no idea about the fate of the stock kept at the Imperial Museum, which seems to have vanished into thin air. Today, Worldcat® records forty-one copies in libraries worldwide.81 The book appears occasionally on auction websites, valued anywhere between US$20,000 and 30,000.82 Clearly, if the lost stock of the Imperial Museum still exists and were to be unearthed, it would bring crashing down the price of this collector’s item on the international market. From a scholarly perspective, one striking point is that this story looks like a repetition of a common feature of some of the cultural projects commissioned by the Ottoman state in the last two centuries of its existence. The incunabula of Müteferrika’s printing press (1720s) can reach much higher prices than some manuscripts from the same period. The Cedid Atlas Tercümesi (New Atlas) by Mahmud Raif Efendi (1803) is among the rarest printed atlases in the world. In a sense, Les Costumes populaires fits that very particular pattern of an intellectual and scholarly enterprise, which, failing to reach out to a significant audience, ultimately became a rarity and a collector’s item. If anything, this is a reminder that such documents cannot, or rather should not, be studied in a ‘bubble’ and that they need to be contextualised in such a 222

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie way as to critically assess the entire process, from inspiration to conception, from intent to format, from production to diffusion, and from reception to revision. I believe that the application of this principle to Les Costumes populaires has shown that there was much more, but also much less, to it than has been assumed to this day.

Notes  1. Osman Hamdi and Marie de Launay, Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873: Ouvrage publié sous le patronage de la commission impériale ottomane pour l’Exposition universelle de Vienne: Texte par Son Excellence Hamdy Bey, commissaire général, et Marie de Launay, membre de la commission impériale et du jury international, Phototypie de Sébah (Constantinople: Imprimerie du Levant Times & Shipping Gazette, 1873). The Turkish title of Bin İki Yüz Doksan Senesinde Elbise-i Osmaniye (Ottoman Costume in 1290) appears only as a cosmetic addition to some volumes. I would like to take this occasion to express all my gratitude to Mr Halil Ertuğral, to whom I owe the immense pleasure of owning a copy of this rare publication.  2. Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 42–43.  3. Ahmet Ersoy, ‘A Sartorial Tribute to Late Tanzimat Ottomanism: The Elbise-i `Osmāniyye Album’, Muqarnas 20 (2003): 187–207. Ersoy was also involved in the preparation of the Turkish facsimile version of the work, published as 1873 Yılında Türkiye’de Halk Giysileri: Elbise-i Osmaniyye: Metin Bölümü Fuardaki Türk Pavyonu Genel Komiseri Osman Hamdi Bey ve İmparatorluk Komisyonu ve Uluslararası Jüri Üyesi Marie de Launay Tarafından Yazılmıştır, Sebah Fotoğrafhanesi (Istanbul: Sabancı Üniversitesi, 1999).  4. Çelik, Displaying the Orient, 42; Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 191, 194.  5. Çelik, Displaying the Orient, 42; Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 195.  6. Çelik, Displaying the Orient, 42; Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 195–96.  7. See, for example, Edhem Eldem, ‘Making Sense of Osman Hamdi Bey and His Paintings’, Muqarnas 29 (2012): 339–83; ‘How Does One Become an Oriental Orientalist? The Life and Mind of Osman Hamdi Bey, 1842–1910’, in Orientality: Cultural Orientalism and Mentality (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015), 36–61.  8. Eldem, ‘Elbise-i Osmaniye’yi Tekrar Ele Almak’, Toplumsal Tarih 248 (August 2014): 23–31; 250 (October 2014): 46–51; 252 (December 2014): 72–77; 253 (January 2015): 42–49.  9. Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 191, 203 n. 7, 205 n. 27. 10. Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 201, 207 n. 50; Édouard Armand-Dumaresq, ‘Classe 92: Spécimens des costumes populaires des diverses contrées’, in Exposition universelle de 1867 à Paris: Rapports du jury international, vol. XIII, Groupe X. Classes 89 à 95, ed. Michel Chevalier (Paris: Imprimerie administrative de Paul Dupont, 1868), 857–78. 11. ‘Unity in Diversity’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_in_ diversity#Origins (accessed 22 May 2021). There is an overwhelming number of publications of the mid-nineteenth century that refer to Leibniz’s concept of harmony and present ‘unity and diversity’ as a precondition of aesthetic perfection. There is no need to cite all the political mottos that take up the same notion to celebrate the

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Edhem Eldem union of different parts, such as the American ‘e pluribus unum’ or the European Union’s ‘in varietate concordia’. 12. The countries and lands listed are Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Greece, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Romania, Italy, Prussia, Austria, Argentina, Tunisia, Morocco, Japan, China, Cape Town and Malta. Armand-Dumaresq, ‘Classe 92’, 863–70; Exposition universelle de 1867 à Paris: Catalogue général publié par la commission impériale, 10e livraison: Objets spécialement exposés en vue d’améliorer la condition physique et morale de la population (Paris: E. Dentu, [1867]), 61–124; Carl Eduard Bauerschmid, ‘Volkstrachten aus allen Theilen des Erdballes: Classe XCII’, in Bericht über die WeltAusstellung zu Paris in Jahre 1867 (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1869), vol. 6, 342–70. 13. Dumaresq, ‘Classe 92’, 871–78; Objets spécialement exposés, 58–60; Bauerschmid, ‘Volkstrachten’, 350–52. 14. Exposition universelle de 1867 à Paris: Catalogue officiel des exposants récompensés par le jury international: Agriculture et industrie, Groupe X (Paris: E. Dentu, [1867]), 34; Marie de Launay, ‘Installations du Palais – Empire ottoman’, L’Exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée 31 (19 August 1867): 3. 15. Objets spécialement exposés, 112–13; Bauerschmid, ‘Volkstrachten’, 361; Dumaresq, ‘Classe 92’, 864. According to Marie de Launay, the commission was limited to eighteen models, due to a lack of space, out of a hundred complete costumes at its disposal; see de Launay, ‘Installations du Palais’, 3. 16. Albanian men, women and children; several Zeybeks; several Bulgarian men and women; Bosnian; Laz from Trebizond; Circassian couple; couple from Lebanon; Kurdish couple; Jews from Jerusalem and Bethlehem; men from Damascus and Salonica; woman from Asia Minor; upholsterer and cook from Constantinople; Turkish townsman; porter and shepherd; Bulgarian bride; men from Jeddah, Baghdad and Mecca; ploughmen from Aleppo; Syrian banker; men and women of the Urban tribe; Bashibozouk; Greek brides; Bedouin; fellah; Muslims and Christians from Harput; trader, tailor, cobbler, coppersmith, dyer and peasant from Prizren; Mevlevi dervish; Bulgarian gardener; Turkish child and black servant; craftsman from Pera . . . (Objets spécialement exposés, 112–13). 17. ‘Avis: Le Musée des anciens Costumes, El Biceï Atica’, Journal de Constantinople 7, no. 374 (9 May 1852): 4; Georges Noguès, ‘Elbicéi Atika’, Journal de Constantinople 7, no. 379 (4 June 1852): 1–2; ‘Elbicéi Atika’, Journal de Constantinople 7, no. 380 (9 June 1852): 1. 18. Jean Brindesi, Elbicei Atika: Musée des anciens costumes turcs de Constantinople (Paris: Lemercier, [1855]). 19. Amadeo Preziosi, Stamboul: Recollections of Eastern Life (Paris: Lemercier, 1858), 29 pl.; Stamboul: Souvenirs d’Orient (Paris: Lemercier, 1861; 1865). 20. Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 205 n. 22 and 27; Marie de Launay, ‘Costumes populaires de Constantinople’, L’Exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée 39 (16 September 1867): 133–34. 21. De Launay, ‘Costumes populaires de Constantinople’, 134; Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 11–12. 22. See the comments about the savagery of Kurds in the next paragraph. The text can also speak of ‘lower-class Jews’ as being ‘stuck in systematic ignorance and full of their political and religious superiority over all other peoples’ (‘Jewish woman from Constantinople’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 28) or of ‘the clumsy vanity of the Sarajevo bourgeois’ (‘Bourgeois from Sarajevo’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 96–97). 23. Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 172.

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie 24. Some prominent examples are: Süvari with a ṣ instead of an s (plate I-6, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 34–35), Hanoya instead of Hanya (plate II-2, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 106–7), Rados instead of Rodos (plates II-6–7, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 120–21), Magosa with a ṣ instead of an s (plate II-9, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 124–25), Elem instead of Elmalı (plate III-7, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 154–55), Yozgat instead of Yozgad (plates III-11, 13, and 15, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 168–69, 174–75, 190–91), Cîzre instead of Cizre (plate III-23, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 232–33), Sârid instead of Siird (plate III-24, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 236–37), Haçin with a ḥ instead of a kh (plate III-26, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 250–51), Şanlı instead of Şamlı and Urba instead of Urban (plate III-32, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 274–75) and Zûbeyd instead of Zubeyd (plate III-38, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 296–97). Some of these spelling errors point to a very strange editorial process. For example, ‘Hanoya’ for ‘Hania’ (plate II-2) is evidently a phonetical transcription from the French text, where the town is called ‘Hanoïa’. Strangely, the same toponym is spelled correctly on plate II-1, which is accompanied by a French text using ‘Hanïa’. One is tempted to link this to a form of Greek ‘contamination’, caused by iotacism – that is, the merging of the diphthong ‘οι/ oi’ into a single ‘ι/I’. How this may have happened remains a mystery. 25. Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 291–96; Ferdinand Hoefer, Chaldée, Assyrie, Médie, Babylonie, Mésopotamie, Phénicie, Palmyrène (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1852). The most obvious borrowings relate to the descriptions of Mosul (Costumes populaires, 293; Hoefer, Chaldée, 333–36), Basra (Costumes populaires, 293–94; Hoefer, Chaldée, 367–68), Korna (Costumes populaires, 294; Hoefer, Chaldée, 368), Erbil (Costumes populaires, 294, Hoefer, Chaldée, 339–40), Anah (Costumes populaires, 294; Hoefer, Chaldée, 349), Kerbela (Costumes populaires, 294; Hoefer, Chaldée, 361), Mashhad Ali (Costumes populaires, 294; Hoefer, Chaldée, 362), homing pigeons (Costumes populaires, 293; Hoefer, Chaldée, 366) and bitumen deposits (Costumes populaires, 295; Hoefer, Chaldée, 360). 26. ‘Kurd from Viranşehir’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 185. 27. ‘Kurdish woman from Sarıkaya’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 163–64. 28. Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 191. This distinction between Kurds and Turkmens should not be mistaken for the ‘proto-nationalist’ feelings exploited in the following decades by Sultan Abdülhamid II and his entourage to promote the Karakeçili tribe as a representation of Ottoman ancestry; see Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains. Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 32–33; Ahmet Ersoy, ‘The Sultan and his Tribe: Documenting Ottoman Roots in the Abdülhamid II Photographic Albums’, in Ottoman Arcadia: The Ottoman Expedition to the Land of Tribal Roots (1886), ed. Bahattin Öztuncay and Özge Ertem (Istanbul: Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, 2018), 31–63. 29. When noting that ‘the rowdy Bedouins, Zeybek brigands, Kurdish horsemen, and all other “wild things” are depicted, like colonial subjects, in their colourful and picturesque peculiarity, with a clear accent on their primitiveness and savagery’, Ersoy suggests that these depictions ‘appealed to the modernizing Ottoman elite not only as disparate relics enriching the vast and diverse Ottoman heritage but also as domestic marginals subjected to the power and control of the centralized state’; see Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 201.

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Edhem Eldem 30. Turkish State Archives, Ottoman Section (hereafter BOA), İ. MMS. 43/17. 31. Marie de Launay, Pierre Montani, Boghos Chachian, Maillard and Pascal Sébah, L’architecture ottomane/Die ottomanische Baukunst (Constantinople, [n. p.], 1873). 32. BOA, DH. 659/45907, 28 November 1872; İ. DH. 659/45907, 9 and 12 December 1872. 33. Interestingly, the original Gallicism of ‘Osmanlı kostümleri’ was crossed out and replaced with ‘elbise-i milliye-i Osmaniye’ (Ottoman national costumes). 34. BOA, HR. TO. 463/19. 35. From the contemporary press, we understand that Osman Hamdi Bey left Istanbul for Vienna twice in 1872, from 7 June to early July, and from 10 December to January of the following year; see La Turquie 6, no. 127 (6 June 1872): 1; 6, no. 142 (24 June 1872): 3; 6, no. 285 (11 December 1872): 1. He was posted in Vienna throughout most of 1873. 36. Halil Edhem [Eldem], ‘Teracim-i Ahval: Ahmed Midhat Efendi: Tarih-i Vefatı 18 Muharrem 1331’, Şehbal 3, no. 70 (15 February 1328/28 February 1913): 428–29. The plate on which Ahmed Midhat appeared is III-31, where he is captioned as a ‘Bedouin of Mount Lebanon’ (Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 272–73). 37. Bahattin Öztuncay, Dersaadet’in Fotoğrafçıları: 19. Yüzyıl İstanbul’unda Fotoğraf: Öncüler, Stüdyolar, Sanatçılar (Istanbul: Aygaz, 2003), vol. 1, 266–71. 38. This very French humour ranges from the remark that the ‘Turkish’ way of writing from right to left amounts to beginning from the end, a sure sign of progress (‘Turkish schoolboy’, Hamdy and Delaunay, Costumes populaires, 25), over the mention of numerous Bulgarian communities ‘which Basil the Bulgar Slayer (Βουλγαροκτόνος) had forgotten to exterminate’ (‘Bulgarian woman from Scutari’, Hamdy and Delaunay, Costumes populaires, 39), to the reference to raki as the Muslim Bulgarian’s greatest temptation (‘Bulgarian Muslim from Vidin’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 52). 39. ‘For each plate, models clad in meticulously assembled traditional outfits were photographed, without exception, in groups of two or three against a blank wall in Edhem Paşa’s residence at Kantarcılar’; see Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 193. 40. Metni Fransızca olan Elbise-i Osmaniye albümünde o zaman Memalik-i Osmaniye’ye dahil bulunan bilcümle vilayat ahalisinin milli elbisesi eşhas üzerine giydirilerek Sebah fotoğrafhanesinde tersim ve tab ettirilmiş idi; see Halil Edhem, ‘Ahmed Midhat Efendi’, 429. Actually, the book was printed at the Levant Times and Shipping Gazette printing house. In all likelihood, Halil Edhem’s reference is to the printing (developing) of the photographs, rather than the volume. 41. I have previously published and analysed these images in my ‘Powerful Images: The Dissemination and Impact of Photography in the Ottoman Empire, 1870–1914’, in Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840–1914, ed. Zeynep Çelik and Edhem Eldem (Istanbul: Koç University Press, 2015), 112, 114–15, and ‘The Search for an Ottoman Vernacular Photography’, The Indigenous Lens? Early Photography in the Near and Middle East, ed. Markus Ritter and Staci G. Scheiwiller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 33–36. 42. The ‘Greek woman from Burdur’ seems to have simply stepped out from plate III-9 (Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 158–59); the same is true of the ‘Jewish woman from Bursa’ (plate III-3, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 136–37), of the Muslim woman from Yozgad (plate III-13, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 174–75), or of the women of Lemnos and Chios, both from plate II-5 (Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 116–17).

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie 43. One legitimate question would be whether Sébah’s ‘commercial’ photographs were produced before or after the Costumes series. Unfortunately, I have found no means of dating them with enough precision to allow for a clear answer. That they should have followed seems more likely, as one can easily imagine that Sébah took advantage of the sponsored photographic campaign to produce a selection of shots to be marketed with the rest of his production. The opposite scenario, meaning that Sébah might have started the project on his own and then found a way to ‘sell’ it to the government, is not impossible, but seems more unlikely. 44. ‘Additionnelle Ausstellung von Figuren, darstellend die Costüme des türkischen Reiches’, in Welt-Ausstellung 1873 in Wien: Officieller General-Catalog (Vienna: Verlag der General Direction, 1873), 703–5. 45. See, for example, ‘Wiener Weltausstellung: Aus der türkischen Abtheilung’, Illustrirte Zeitung 61, no. 1584 (8 November 1873): 349; ‘Wiener Weltausstellung: Türkische Galerie’, Über Land und Meer 130, no. 9 (7 December 1873): 164; J. Löroy, Türkische Galerie, photograph Nr. 807 (Vienna: Verlag der Wiener Photographen-Association, 1873). 46. Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 190–92. The image depicted a crowd in front of two models on pedestals, one of which seems to have a helmet that reminds of a Janissary or military costume. However, a closer look at the picture shows that the man is unarmed, a situation unthinkable when representing a Janissary; see ‘In der orientalischen Abtheilung des Industrie-Palastes’, Allgemeine illustrirte Weltausstellungs-Zeitung 3, no. 9 (15 June 1873): 103. Nowhere in the commentary linked to the image (100) is there any mention of a Janissary or any kind of ‘historic’ model. Likewise, the section of the official catalogue devoted to the ‘Turkish’ participation does not include a single reference to Janissaries or to any other form of historic costume (Officieller General-Catalog, 647–728). 47. ‘Von der Wiener Weltausstellung: Die türkische Ausstellung’, Illustrirte Zeitung 61, no. 1584 (8 November 1873): 350. 48. Çelik, Displaying the Orient, 63–67. 49. Çelik, Displaying the Orient, 63. 50. BOA, A. MKT. MHM. 462/80, 28 and 29 August 1873; A. MKT. MHM. 463/17, 5 September 1873; A. MKT. MHM. 465/96, 3 October 1873; A. MKT. MHM. 467/17, 22 October 1873; A. MKT. MHM. 467/26, 15 and 22 October 1873. 51. BOA, HR. TO. 463/19. 52. Officieller General-Catalog, 721. 53. Allgemeine illustrirte Weltausstellungs-Zeitung 3, no. 9 (15 June 1873): 100, 102. 54. It was advertised in Austria at the price of 40 Thalers in July 1874 and at 45 in October of the same year; see Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel 155 (8 July 1874): 2486; and 235 (10 October 1874): 3720. The famous German bookshop of Istanbul, Lorentz & Keil, offered it for 56 Marks two years later; see Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel 130 (8 June 1876): 2067. 55. Ersoy, ‘Sartorial Tribute’, 193. 56. BOA, MF. MKT. 466/1, 13 July 1899. 57. BOA, MF. MKT. 466/1, 25 July 1899. 58. BOA, MF. MKT. 466/1, 5 September 1899. 59. On the issue of photographing (or not) Muslim women, see Edhem Eldem, ‘Powerful Images’, 107–12, 228–29, 238–39. 60. BOA, MF. MKT. 466/1, 28 September 1899.

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Edhem Eldem 61. BOA, MF. MKT. 466/1, 25 December 1899. A total of eight plates (nine women) were thus identified as contrary to Islamic precepts regarding the appearance of women: plate I-4 (‘Muslim woman in her interior dress’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 22–23), plate II-6 (‘Muslim woman from Rhodes in her interior dress’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 120–21), plate III-17 (‘Muslim woman from the vicinity of Trabzon’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 202–03), plate III-18 (‘Muslim woman from Trabzon in her interior dress’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 206–7), plate III-22 (‘Kurdish woman from Palu’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 230–31), plate III-24 (‘Woman from Siirt in her interior dress; Kurdish woman from Harput’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 236–37), plate III-27 (‘Muslim woman from Beirut in her summer dress’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 262–63) and plate III-41 (‘Muslim woman from Sanaa’, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 314–15). 62. BOA, BEO. 1945/145814, 31 October 1902. 63. BOA, BEO. 1945/145814, 3 November 1902. 64. BOA, BEO. 2060/154458, 3 April 1903. 65. BOA, BEO. 2098/157282, 17 June 1903; MF. MKT. 709/23, n.d. 66. İpek Yosmaoğlu-Turner, Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). 67. For example, in early 1903, the government was confronted with a major crisis concerning the images of Ottoman gendarmes posing with the severed heads of Macedonian fighters. See Eldem, ‘Powerful Images’, 120–29. 68. It is worth noting that, in both cases, it was only the book’s visual material that was questioned, despite the fact that the text would have certainly offered over-zealous censors a lot to munch on. 69. Albert-Charles-Auguste Racinet, Le Costume historique: Cinq cents planches, trois cents en couleurs, or et argent, deux cents en camaïeu: Types principaux du vêtement et de la parure, rapprochés de ceux de l’intérieur de l’habitation dans tous les temps et chez tous les peuples, avec de nombreux détails sur le mobilier, les armes, les objets usuels, les moyens de transport (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1888), 6 vols. 70. Racinet, Costume historique. The plates pertaining to ‘Turkey in Asia’ are in volume II; those on ‘Turkey in Europe’ in volume VI. 71. Bulletin de l’Union centrale: Revue mensuelle des Beaux-Arts appliqués à l’Industrie 1, no. 1 (August 1874). 72. ‘IVe exposition de l’Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie’, La Chronique des arts et des curiosités 27 (10 August 1874): 258; Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (11 August 1874): 2; Léon de Lora, ‘Exposition des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie’, Le Gaulois 7, no. 2129 (12 August 1874): 2; Le Monde illustré 18, no. 905 (15 August 1874): 97, 102; Paul Leroi, ‘IVe exposition de l’Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie’, Chronique des arts et des curiosités 29 (1 September 1874): 277–80; H. P., ‘IVe exposition de l’Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie’, Chronique des arts et des curiosités 30 (10 September 1874): 292; O. Sancey, ‘Exposition des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie – I’, Journal officiel de la République française 6, no. 256 (18 September 1874): 6589–91; O. Sancey, ‘Exposition des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie – II’, Journal officiel de la République française 6, no. 258 (18 September 1874): 6622–23; Eugène Véron, ‘IVe exposition de l’Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie’, Chronique des arts et des curiosités 31 (10 September 1874): 299–300; Revue de France 4, no. 12 (October 1874): 1131.

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Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie 73. Congrès international des sciences géographiques tenu à Paris du 1er au 11 août 1875: Compte rendu des séances (Paris: Société de géographie, 1878), vol. 1, 421. 74. Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie: Quatrième exposition 1874: Catalogue des œuvres et des produits modernes exposés au Palais de l’industrie (Paris: A. Chaix et Cie, 1874). 75. Archives du Musée des Arts Décoratifs (hereafter MAD), D1/4, Exposition de 1874; D 1/10, Photographies anciennes; albums Maciet. 76. Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie: Quatrième exposition 1874: Musée historique du costume (Paris: A. Chaix et Cie, 1874), ix–xi, 25–26, 28–35. 77. BOA, BEO 2098/157282, 17 June 1903. 78. BOA, BEO 2098/157282, 21 June 1903. 79. BOA, BEO 2079/155921, 27 and 29 May 1903; BEO 2156/161680, 24 and 30 August 1903. 80. BOA, MF. MKT. 912/21, 2 and 18 February 1906. 81. ‘Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873’, WorldCat, https://www.worldcat. org/title/costumes-populaires-de-la-turquie-en-1873-ouvrage-publie-sous-le-patronage-de-la-commission-imperiale-ottomane-pour-lexposition-universelle-de-vienne/ oclc/560006011&referer=brief_results (accessed 22 May 2021). 82. See, for example, ‘Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873’, Zentrales Verzeichnis Antiquarischer Bücher, https://www.zvab.com/erstausgabe/costumes-populaires-Turquie-1873-Hamdi-Bey/20025767730/bd (accessed 22 May 2021); ‘Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873’, AbeBooks, https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchRe sults?fe=on&sortby=17&tn=les+costumes+populaires+turquie+1873&cm_sp=pan-_srp-_-fe (accessed 22 May 2021).

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Part 3 Chronologies and Spaces of Containment

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Part 3 Introduction Susan Slyomovics

Part 3 expands the approaches and methodologies of exchange and dialogue from Parts 1 and 2 into topics relevant to the modern Middle East and North Africa. These three chapters investigate the darker side of post-imperial consequences that were initiated and carried on in the prison, the asylum and the hospital. The focus is on France and French institutions, in relation to the region as well as to its colonised populations in Algeria and the metropole. Chapter 8 by Burçak Özlüdil Altın, ‘Crossing Paths: Lucien Libert’s Medical Journeys to the Orient’, introduces French psychiatrist Lucien Libert. He went on an extensive ‘journey of scientific studies to the Orient’ in 1911–12, resulting in a comprehensive account of mental health facilities from Greece to Egypt. Following in his footsteps, Burçak Özlüdil Altın explores the Ottoman world and the medical scene he encountered not long after the declaration of the Second Constitution in 1908. The new Ottoman administration was preoccupied with public health issues and revisited the management of the asylum system across the empire, as the region was in the middle of yet another cholera outbreak. Libert’s account offers a perspective into Ottoman medical-psychiatric practice and theory from the vantage point of a physician and scientist, trained in colonial France yet shaped by his day-to-day experience on steamboats, trains and sometimes on foot on his way to several asylums in various cities around the Mediterranean. In Chapter 9, Marc André’s ‘Carceral Experiences and the Transmission of Memory in a French Political Prison’ examines relationships between prison architecture and memory construction by considering the case of Montluc Prison in Lyon, France. He discusses the spatial and conceptual conditions framing appropriations of France’s memories of World War II resistance by Algerian political prisoners, both at the time of their incarceration in France 233

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Susan Slyomovics during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) and again after 2010, when their former prison became a major memorial site for preserving primarily the memory of Nazi repression. Chapter 10, ‘Toxifying the Sahara: France’s First Atomic Bombs (1960–66)’ by Samia Henni investigates the aftermath of France’s first atomic bomb successfully detonated on 13 February 1960 in Reggane, the Sahara Desert of colonised southern Algeria. Immediately, General Charles de Gaulle, then President of the French Fifth Republic, announced: ‘Hurrah for France! Since this morning, she is stronger and prouder. From the bottom of my heart, my thanks to you and to those who have obtained for her this magnificent success’. France had entered the exclusive nuclear weapons club, becoming the fourth country to possess weapons of mass destruction after the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom. French pride remained unaffected by the destruction of human, animal and vegetal lives, as well as the toxification of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of built and unbuilt environments in Algeria and elsewhere. This volume offers a sustained critical reflection on cross-cultural exchanges across the Mediterranean, using new interdisciplinary methodologies that focus on the intersection of multiple geographical and historical times and spaces. Inspired by Zeynep Çelik’s research, the chapters traverse Muslim and Christian Spain, the Ottoman Empire and France, Europe and its overseas empire in the Middle East and North Africa, and more. Combining social, cultural and urban history, as well as visual studies and collective political memory, scholars from Turkey, France, Algeria and the US chart detailed, contextualised studies of art, architecture, cities, landscapes and literature.

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8 Crossing Paths: Lucien Libert’s Medical Journey to the Orient Burçak Özlüdil Altın

On an early spring night a few years ago, the question dawned on me: when did he die? This ‘he’ was Lucien Libert, a French psychiatrist whom I met at graduate school. Libert had been my companion for some time, although I never called him by his first name. Our paths crossed, a hundred years apart, in Üsküdar, Istanbul, as he climbed a run-down street toward the Toptaşı Asylum on an autumn morning in 1911. This asylum brought us together. He was 29, I was 32.

On the Road: Istanbul After waiting for cholera to recede from Istanbul, the steamboat carrying Libert was finally on the blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. He saw the Ottoman capital ‘rise out of the morning mist in the enchantment of the rising sun and its minarets looming over the blue sky’.1 As the steamer swept around Sarayburnu and entered the Golden Horn, to the south appeared the seven low hills of the ancient city crowned with domes and shattered walls. To the north lie the Galata Tower, and behind it, the heights of Pera where he was going to stay. Looking northwards, he glimpsed the portals of Dolmabahçe, along with imperial palaces and kiosks and terraced gardens. What struck him were ‘the majestic cypress trees, which, on the Asian side, cover the land of Scutari’ marking the cemeteries.2 The steamer docked at the Messageries Maritime landing-place in Galata.3 Libert located the dragoman, who was wearing a cape embroidered with the name of the hotel at which he would stay. He then proceeded to the Customs House for 235

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın his passport/baggage checks and to get his visa. Once cleared, a porter carried his luggage, as Libert started climbing the hill to Pera and his hotel.* * * * Lucien Libert’s visit to Toptaşı Asylum was part of his ‘journey of scientific studies’ visiting the ‘insane of the Orient’ in eighteen cities across Greece, the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, from October 1911 to March 1912. Articles based on this five-month journey appeared serially in L’Informateur des Aliénistes et des Neurologistes (L’informateur hereafter) in 1912 and 1913. ‘Les Aliénés en Orient (Grèce, Empire Ottoman, Égypte)’ was one of the most comprehensive accounts of mental health facilities in these regions up to that point. This article has multiple objectives: to introduce the largely unrecorded life of Dr Lucien Libert, to situate his position within the field of psychiatry and to explore the Ottoman world he encountered, in terms of both medicine/psychiatry and its physical context. The story is not complete without noticing the epidemics that were such an integral part of life then, as they are now.4 Finally, the article tells the story of the ‘relationship’ that I had with one of my sources as I wrote the history of Ottoman insane asylums. We, as scholars, rarely talk openly about the relationships that we develop with our sources. Sometimes we like or appreciate them, sometimes we do not; sometimes we believe them, sometimes we question every word they record. Nevertheless, when we start writing, these feelings are filtered out, and our statements/evaluations eventually appear ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’. Although they are also shaped by our perceptions of the source and our emotional reactions to it, our impressions are subsequently cleansed of sentimental value and, finally, carefully inserted into the text in an objective manner, or added as a calm footnote. Here I discuss my personal journey of getting to know a long-gone source, discovering his life and position, and trying to contextualise his gaze as it leaked into my narrative.

A Scientific Journey Libert’s methodical approach makes his first-hand observations particularly important. His first article in the series ‘Les Aliénés en Orient (Grèce, Empire Ottoman, Égypte)’ laid out the general structure that the subsequent instalments followed: (1) the current state of assistance for the insane; (2) the history * Libert did not typically discuss the logistics of his journey. The italicised sections in this article offer a semi-hypothetical reconstruction of his journey, informed by his writing, as well as other historical evidence such as guidebooks and timetables.

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Crossing Paths of asylums; (3) ongoing prejudices among different peoples of the East about mental illnesses, including popular and mystical treatments of different psychoses; and (4) the psychopathology in some religious manifestations.5 Libert’s narrative followed three major geographical ‘chapters’: (I) Greece, (II) Ottoman Empire, and (III) Asia Minor. He not only visited health facilities to assess psychiatric help, but also toured convents, churches and religious establishments – every place that he identified as places of intervention for mental disorders. He discussed these interventions under the general title of ‘Prejudices’, which spanned popular and mystical treatments of different psychoses. Given their ‘mystical/popular’ nature, Libert separated these treatments by religious/ethnic group: Greek, Maronite, Armenian, Turk, Persian and Arab. In fact, he addressed many cities in his itinerary under the sub-section ‘Prejudices’ within the chapter on the Ottoman Empire. While several factors shaped his account of asylums, first and foremost was his subjectivity as a physician in colonial France. His general education in the sciences, followed by medical training and then psychiatric training, provided the intellectual and scientific framework through which he saw the world. Within that training and profession, Libert’s psychiatric work and publications spanned multiple genres: some were clinical and nosological studies, some addressed the history of psychiatry, and others offered a combination. All affected how he researched, viewed and documented asylums in the Orient. Of particular interest here is his history of psychiatry corpus. Libert worked with primary documents and published/presented specifically on topics such as the treatment of the insane in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, asile de surete in the Ancien Régime, prisons, lettres de cachet and confinement, the Bastille and its prisoners. Some pieces he co-authored with Paul Sérieux (1864–1947), his mentor and friend. Sérieux and Libert compared the psychiatric practices and legal processes (such as voluntary confinement or family rights) of Ancien Régime asylums to those in which they actively practiced in early-twentieth-century France.6 Libert and Sérieux’s historical work did not escape the attention and criticism of Michel Foucault in the latter’s History of Madness. Libert and Sérieux suggested that their psychiatric practices (that called for medicalisation of insanity and its hospitals) had already been largely established by the 1780s, going against the Whiggish psychiatric history of the time accepted by most contemporary alienists. Their historical model, which proposed a continuity in its approach to mental illness, also opposed the model that Foucault conceptualised fifty years later, which was built on shifts happening in societal responses to madness. While Libert and Sérieux asserted that the widespread ideas of their colleagues did not rely on historical evidence, Foucault accused 237

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Figure 8.1 Libert’s itenarary on his map of ‘Insane Asylums of the Orient’: (1) Athens, (2) Corfu, (3) Istanbul, (4) Edirne, (5) Bursa, (6) Izmir, (7) Manisa, (8) Ephesus, (9) Rhodes, (10) Beirut, (11) Baalbek, (12) Damascus, (13) Aleppo, (14) Jaffa, (15) Jerusalem, (16) Port-Saïd, (17) Alexandria and (18) Cairo (Source: Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’, Février 1914; gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque H. Ey. C. H. de SainteAnne)

Crossing Paths them of imagining an immutable and timeless madness, ‘whose truth was only gradually discovered’.7 Based on their study of archival materials, so Libert and Sérieux wrote, the 1838 law (which was and still is widely considered a breaking point in psychiatric history) was not so revolutionary in nature, as internment regulations were prefigured in eighteenth-century operations.8 Foucault attributed this ‘certain interpretation of events’ to Sérieux categorised under ‘a group of historians’,9 and he criticised them for failing to see the link between ‘policing confinement and political economy’, in a chapter unsurprisingly titled ‘The Correctional World’.10 Based on this research, Libert paid close attention to legal processes and regulations around confinement in the Ottoman Empire, making references to and comparisons between Ottoman and French practices, both historical and current.11 Furthermore, as a well-educated man, Libert must have had a notion of the Orient, both through Orientalism as a scholarly field and through popular publications, including magazines, oriental travel writing and guidebooks. The strongly internalised sense that the Orient was stagnant, uncivilised and sick appeared occasionally in Libert’s writing, re-framing and replacing what he saw with his own eyes. Libert’s view also was affected deeply by his physical and sensory experience of the ‘Orient’. One can trace how his day-to-day experience shaped his perceptions, just as it would any traveller. The weather – the temperature and whether it was raining under grey skies or a beautiful day with blue skies – was one factor. He certainly paid attention to the landscape and the flora, about which he appears to have been knowledgeable. Libert also often mentioned city soundscapes: the birds, the call to prayer, the wind. Another notable factor in his musings was infrastructure. For a traveller on the road and often on foot, infrastructure significantly affected the ease of travelling from one place to the next: how well the road was paved, as well as the existence or absence of public transportation certainly must have shaped his experience. One can guess by the places that he chose to visit and his rare comments about them that Libert extensively used public transportation. Last but not least, the people he met, his guide(s?), the doctors who gave him tours, the random soldier he met on a train, women he saw around the city or sitting in the cemetery – all of them created the atmosphere that influenced his work. I thus include as many daily details as I can, whether openly referenced in Libert’s writings, or deducible from available information.

On the Road: Greece Since leaving Marseilles on Friday, 13 October 1911, for Athens, Lucien Libert had been on the road for forty-seven days. He took a steamboat to Piraeus with 239

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın the French Messageries Maritime Company. This was the principal line, and its steamers linked Marseilles to almost every port on the Mediterranean Sea. After arriving in the port of Piraeus, Libert took the railway that connected Piraeus to Athens (constructed in 1869), or perhaps a carriage. He visited de l’asile Dromocation, La Clinique Eginition and few private asylums (maisons de sante privées). Then he moved on to the Ionian Islands, especially to Corfu, to visit the Asylum of Corfu and the prisons and Greek convents that housed the mentally ill. The only other facility that Libert addressed in detail – in both text and photograph – was St Gerasimos in Argostoli, on the island of Cephalonia.12 A look at his itinerary suggests that Libert must have relied heavily on the Mediterranean Sea routes. It was the wide availability of lines and their interconnectedness that made this trip feasible. Of the eighteen cities he visited, nine were port-cities with regular service to each other, and the other nine were easily accessible from those port-cities. The Messageries Maritime Company, a merchant shipping company that primarily carried mail, offered two lines from 1895 onwards. Libert’s itinerary matches them perfectly.13 Libert’s journey was interrupted by a cholera outbreak, part of the sixth cholera pandemic of 1899 to 1923. He could not reach Istanbul as he had originally planned, given the quarantine measures imposed on all liners. He was only able to set foot in the Ottoman capital later, during the second half of November, after the outbreak had slowed down, although some institutions were still operating under the cordon sanitaire.14 The threat of outbreaks or epidemics has always been a standard fixture and source of fear in the life of city inhabitants, local and governmental officials, and certainly healthcare facilities. After severely affecting the Ottoman capital in 1892–95 and interrupting life at the Toptaşı Asylum,15 cholera hit Istanbul again in September 1910, killing 4,023 before 12 January 1911; it returned in June, killing another 1,583 Istanbulites from a total population of approximately 900,000.16 It was this outbreak that crossed paths with Libert, who was by no means a stranger to epidemics. In 1907, he had been awarded the French Medal of Honour for Epidemics and would later receive another one, the silver medal, in 1915.17 One wonders: why did Libert embark on this adventure, and why then? He knew that the Orient was ‘having a bad summer’,18 referring to the cholera outbreaks. Yet, travel guidebooks of the time19 placed the high season for travel in the ‘East’ from April to June and October to November; he picked the OctoberNovember timeframe. Summer and early fall were not generally advisable because of malaria. It is unclear whether he planned this trip to be five months long, or whether he revised the timeline. The timing of the journey, season-wise, seems straightforward. The reason why he took it, however, requires more analysis. 240

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Figure 8.2 Messageries Maritime routes after 1895 (Source: Archive de L’Association French Lines, AFL. 1997 002 5205)

Burçak Özlüdil Altın

Who is Libert? Libert embarked on this scientific journey precisely when interning at MaisonBlanche Asylum; in other words, as he was undertaking his psychiatric training. At this point, he had already completed his medical training (between 1903 and 1909) as an externe20 in Paris’s hospitals. In 1909, at the age of twenty-seven, he became interested in the ‘studies of psychopathology’ and its practice and entered the competition to become an intern at the insane asylums of the Seine, where Paul Sérieux was the chief physician. Libert had been born in Paris in 1882. His grandfather was an officer in the Grande Armée,21 and he attributed his interest in the natural sciences and medical studies to his uncle, Théophile Louvard (1842–1907), calling him his first ‘guide and master’.22 Louvard was a pharmacist at Versailles and the president of the Société des sciences naturelles et médicales de Seine-et-Oise; he held many other positions in various organisations.23 Before his medical education, Libert worked at the Sorbonne zoology laboratories at Wimereux and Roscoff, with Maurice Jules Gaston Corneille Caullery and Etienne Rabaud; he eventually passed the licensure exam in Natural Sciences in 1911 (today’s Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences). At the same time, he took courses in law and pursued his long-held interest in astronomy. For several years, he undertook extensive research at the Juvisy Observatory (later known as the Camille Flammarion Observatory) and published a series of memoirs in publications such as Bulletin de la Société astronomique de France, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, Revue scientifique and in the proceedings of Congrès de l’Association française pour l’avancement des sciences from 1905 to 1908. Earlier, in 1898, he had published his research on shooting stars, lunar volcanic activity, ‘flying shadows’ and the Perseids (meteor showers). However, his major work was Le Monde de Jupiter,24 a two-volume study on Jupiter, covering both the historiography of studies on Jupiter and new observations. In 1905, Libert had obtained the titles of Astronomical Society laureate and member of the Astronomical Societies of France and London. In fact, he was sent to Tripoli to observe a total eclipse of the sun before his 1911 visit to the ‘East’. On his return, he published the report of his ‘mission’.25 While the two journeys differed in their disciplinary traditions, Libert was familiar with the concept of study-travel and subsequently publishing his findings. In psychiatry, this had typically taken the form of institutional visits. These visits had long been a part of knowledge acquisition and technological transfer within the field. In fact, the culture of visiting institutions such as prisons, workhouses, schools, or health facilities began to develop in bourgeois civil society during the Victorian period.26 Various persons undertook 242

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Crossing Paths such visits for many reasons, from inspection to fundraising, from volunteering to information-gathering. Those who visited asylums typically worked to ‘manage change’ (physicians, reformers and so on) as the first step in gathering information. Another major role of asylum/hospital visiting was educational: prior to modern venues of instruction, visiting was an important way for individuals to acquire information about new or alternative treatments. These professional visitors always paid close attention to the regulations and general organisational structures that governed the institutions. Last but not least, the architecture of asylums was one of the crucial aspects about which visitors took extensive notes. While this was true of many health facilities, for psychiatry it held particular importance: as Roy Porter, the prominent historian of psychiatry, reminds us, the asylum was ‘not instituted for the practice of psychiatry; psychiatry was the practice developed to manage the asylum inmates’.27 Indeed, before it was called psychiatry, the field was referred to as ‘asylum science’. With the establishment and spread of moral treatment and its founding principles, asylum spaces became increasingly central to the field. As the field increasingly medicalised, the arrangement of these spaces took on additional scientific and medical meanings. Were institutional visits made within the ‘western world’ and those to the ‘East/Orient’ fundamentally different from each other? It is not possible to answer this question with a simple yes or no, and not within the limitations of this article, but it is possible to make some observations: throughout the nineteenth century, numerous physicians/reformers came to the Ottoman Empire to visit its asylums and/or hospitals.28 In addition to Istanbul and sometimes other parts of the Ottoman Empire and the Orient, many of these trips included cities in Western Europe and stops along the Mediterranean coast. Visitors’ accounts documented the current state of the asylums, their staffing and their architectural qualities, in addition to the types of patients and treatments found in them. Yet, some expeditions were exclusively to the Orient, and accounts of them often portrayed the Orient and its healthscape as the civilised West’s ‘other’. Popular earlier themes on what I call ‘Oriental psychiatry’ particularly focused on the uses and effects of opium and the famous Oriental insane (usually imagined as ‘wise-fool’), remarked on with twinned tones of fascination and disdain. Orientalist tendencies were clearest in oriental travel writing and, as Varlık points out, in narratives of epidemiological fronts, particularly in constructions of the ‘Oriental plague’.29 The study of mental illnesses in the Orient both distinguished itself significantly from the study of physical disease, particularly contagious diseases, and shared many tropes with it. Perhaps the main difference was the direct connection made between contagious diseases, issues of hygiene and 243

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın public health, which together became the major markers of a ‘civilised society’, and through which Westerners identified the ‘inability’ of oriental governments to meet the basic needs of their citizens. Psychiatric conditions, while still tied to regions, were not seen as direct consequences of the geographical space itself, but rather as products of the customs, religion and ideas that a certain geography carried and fostered. Of course, hereditary factors became increasingly important in these considerations and were rendered more central in the early twentieth century. By contrast, civilisation was not perceived to be a benefit for mental health; on the contrary, the effects of modern life allegedly were one of the triggers of mental illness in the ‘civilised West’. Many Western observers and physicians interpreted that the ‘uncivilised Orient’ had fewer cases of mental illness as they were being spared from the devastating effects of civilisation.30 Libert had access to information about the routes taken by early visitors and the conventions of the genre of hospital visiting. His writing sometimes refers directly to publications that came out of earlier visits/chronicles, such as ‘Les Hôpitaux en Orient’ that Paul Aubry published in 1887 (also note the similarity in the articles’ titles).31 Libert thus was following a tradition,32 although by the beginning of the twentieth century this tradition of professional asylum visiting was fading, or at least changing, paralleling shifts in psychiatry itself. The field was increasingly characterised by medicine locating its roots in a biologicallyoriented science aided by a new kind of technology, and less by approaches such as moral treatment that assigned a specific therapeutic role to asylum spaces. Another factor was the institutionalisation of psychiatric education, which increasingly depended on clinical settings, laboratories and universities. Obviously, it was not only Europeans and Americans who wrote about the asylums in the Ottoman Empire, in Western Europe, or elsewhere. Ottomans were also invested in gathering information and statistics about asylums, both at home and abroad, as they envisioned a new asylum system. These efforts accelerated with the empire’s new regime that preceded Libert’s visit.

The Ottoman Realm Libert came to the Ottoman Empire not long after the declaration of the Second Constitution in 1908, when the Young Turk Revolution overthrew the Hamidian regime. Promising to install a constitutional monarchy founded on the rule of law, press freedom and unlimited individual liberties, the revolutionaries led by the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) envisioned a parliamentary democracy headed by a responsible government and administered by a meritocratic bureaucracy. While the revolutionary nature of this new regime has long been debated, it did bring several changes to asylum 244

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Crossing Paths management. First, the newly established Secretariat of [Public] Health Institutions (Müessesat-ı Hayriye-i Sıhhiye Müdüriyeti) now oversaw the administration of medical units, including asylums, and social welfare foundations (albeit only briefly between 1909 and 1912). Avni Bey was appointed as the new chief physician of the empire’s major public asylum, Toptaşı Asylum, replacing Avram de Castro who had held the position since 1882. Muhiddin Bey, the director of the Secretariat of [Public] Health Institutions, opened a new mental health facility on 10 July 1911.33 After acquiring special expertise in these matters through several trips to Western Europe, Muhiddin Bey then established a ‘proper’ observation centre – that is, the Haseki Insane Observation Centre (Mecanin Müşahedehanesi).34 Just like Toptaşı Asylum, Haseki Insane Observation Centre used the renovated buildings of a classical Ottoman imperial complex. The Secretariat of Health Institutions carried out a survey of the empire’s asylums with the help of a newly formed ‘Asylum Commission’.35 The information gathered by the secretariat appeared in the 1911 publication Müessesat-ı Hayriye-i Sıhhiye Müdüriyeti.36 Authored by historian Osman Nuri Ergin (1883–1961), who worked at the secretariat, the book included information and statistics about the health facilities in Istanbul. Libert’s account and Müessesat-ı Hayriye-i Sıhhiye Müdüriyeti used a very similar layout, the same images and the same data; both measured the Toptaşı Asylum against the same alleged universal and scientific standards of medicine (Ergin and Libert were almost the same age). While there is no evidence that Libert had access to the book (in Ottoman script), one can safely assume that he, in fact, did have the book in some form (or at least its statistics). We do know that Libert read Luigi Mongeri’s (1815–82)37 French-language article(s) on ‘mental alienation in the Orient’.38 Libert needed different types of permissions to implement his travel and visit plans, including, presumably, permissions to visit the health facilities and to travel around the empire, called travelling passport (yol tezkeresi). While it had been fairly easy for public and official guests to visit Ottoman asylums a century earlier, the practice had been banned and strictly regulated by the early 1840s. The ban took on a new meaning during the long reign of Abdülhamid II (1876– 1909), as he also imposed a ban on the use of any words related to madness and publications on the topic. After the Young Turk Revolution, we can assume that visiting became relatively easier, if only to prove that there was nothing to hide in the asylums; even so, Libert still must have needed permission. At last, Libert set out to visit the Toptaşı Asylum towards the end of November. The Toptaşı Asylum was the first mental health facility that Libert visited in the Ottoman Empire. It was a natural selection since it functioned as the major state mental hospital in the empire between 1873 and 1924. 245

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın The Toptaşı Asylum was situated within a late-sixteenth-century imperial complex designed by the Ottoman court architect Sinan (originally called Nurbanu Sultan Külliyesi and later known as Atik Valide Külliyesi). The complex underwent significant changes during its life as an asylum.39

On the Road: Üsküdar ‘Tombs everywhere! In the streets and alleys, in Pera, as in Stamboul, on the squares, along the great walls, at the mosque doors, between the shops of the Turkish merchants; the city is only a vast cemetery sleeping in the tranquillity of its grand cypresses’.40 Nowhere were the cypress trees as prominent as they were in Üsküdar. On the morning of 29 November, Libert met his friend Dr Thesée Papadopoulo, a surgeon at the Cerrahpaşa Hospital, for their journey to Üsküdar where the Toptaşı Asylum was located. They took a steamboat from the Galata Bridge to Üsküdar, landing at the Büyük İskele. From there, it was a short walk (about 1.5 kilometres, or less than one mile) to the asylum. Flocks of sheep, adorned with colourful paper flowers, had taken over the narrow streets of Üsküdar; they were to be sold for sacrifice during Kurban Bayramı (Eid al-Adha), to be observed in two days. Libert was particularly taken by how, after purchasing it, a porter carried the sheep on his back.

Figure 8.3 The original caption reads: ‘Among the graves in Üsküdar’ (Source: Libert, ‘Cimetières Turcs’, Æsculape 2, no. 4 [April 1912])

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Crossing Paths Their first stop was the Aşçıbaşı Mansion, which housed the asylum’s administrative offices and pharmacy. Dr Ali Muhlis, the assistant medical officer, greeted the visitors there and was their guide for the asylum tour. Given the recent cholera outbreak, and with the cordon sanitaire still in place, they had to go through a disinfection process before entering the asylum.41 Walking through a monumental marble main entrance, they found themselves in a domed dark lobby. With their windows facing inward to the numerous courtyards, many of the asylum’s spaces were dim. Just as the men started their tour, the sound of the ezan (call to prayer) from the mosque next door caused the crows and pigeons – both staples of the ‘Orient’ – to flutter about, their birdsong against a background of swaying cypress trees completing the scene. It did not help that it was raining: ‘The day I visited the asylum’, Libert later noted, ‘was a sad and grey day [and] most insane stayed in bed’.42 After the Toptaşı Asylum, Libert also visited the Haseki Insane Observation Centre, the psychiatry clinic at the Haydarpaşa Hospital, the Darülaceze (Poorhouse), services for the military insane in the Haydarpaşa Hospital, the Yedikule Greek Hospital (Balıklı Rum), La Paix Hospital, the Yedikule Armenian Hospital (Surp Pırgiç) and the Surp Agop Hospital (for Armenian Catholics) in Istanbul. In all institutions, he was greeted and guided by physicians. Some of these physicians were already familiar to Libert; some had been trained in Europe, some were known for their scholarship.

Figure 8.4 A men’s ward in the Toptaşı Asylum (Source: Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ [January 1913], Plate VI)

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın Libert’s accounts of these mental health facilities followed his systematic layout, relying on both his observations and secondary sources. His style was rather consistent: whether he wrote about Jupiter, a French asylum, or a fictional character, he included a historical section and a literature review, when relevant. For the asylums, he prepared one section on the history and one on the management of the asylum. This was typically followed by an analysis of the asylum’s spatial qualities, intertwined with the types of patients found in each part of the building. Finally, most pieces ended with statistical data about the facility. Libert typically spent time discussing the data which he had acquired – some institutions had annual reports, some had hand-written notes, some had none – including statistics about the patients (number of admitted and discharged, details of diagnosis, length of stay, sorted by race/ethnicity/religion) and a categorisation of diseases. The tables he generated were not consistent across the institutions, however: as he was relying on the institution to provide the data, he could only include the information with which he was provided. He also often compared the general state of the asylum and the numbers he was given with any historical document he found; one piece he consistently used was Aubry’s article.43 Libert carefully documented the types of patients and their diagnosis; he described, if briefly, which ward housed what types of patients and the treatments they received. Diagnosis and categorisation of diseases was an important part of his scholarly interest, reflecting the state of the field at the time. Of particular fascination to him was what was known as the ‘French chronic delusional states’. This should not come as a surprise, considering his direct academic association with the topic. Particularly notable in the work of Jacques-Joseph Valentin Magnan (1835–1916), there had been a long tradition of regarding delusions as the essence of psychosis in France. Valentin Magnan introduced the notion of ‘chronic systematised delusional disorder’ in 1886.44 Paul Sérieux was Magnan’s student, and the two co-authored Le délire chronique à évolution systématique in 1892. Sérieux was none other than Libert’s mentor when he interned at the Seine asylums. In 1909 (when Libert began interning at MaisonBlanche Asylum), Sérieux and Jean-Marie-Joseph Capgras45 (1873–1950, also a pupil of Magnan) wrote Les folies raisonnantes: Le délire d’interprétation (Intelligent Insanity: Delusional Thinking), in which they defined ‘delusional thinking’ (délire d’interprétation) as ‘false reasoning having as its point of departure a real sensation, a precise fact which [ . . . ] driven by erroneous deductions or inductions, takes on personal significance for the patient, who ineluctably is compelled to relate everything to himself’.46 Libert’s studies on délires raisonnants (reasoned/intelligent delusions) can be seen as his original contribution to the topic. During the same period, Libert wrote pieces on similar issues, such as delusional thinking (le délire d’interprétation) and delusional jealousy.47 248

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Crossing Paths His thesis, which he began as soon as he started his internship under the supervision of Gilbert Ballet (1853–1916), used Sérieux and Capgras’ framework to analyse Don Quixote’s ideas and behaviour as delusional thinking. Entitled La folie de Don Quichotte: Un cas littéraire de délire d’interprétation and published in 1909, this 175-page work analysed Don Quixote (and Cervantes as the interpreter), by listening to his ‘hopes, dreams and especially his misadventures’ and by placing the hero in his milieu in which ‘his delusions evolved’.48 The second clinical genre to which Libert contributed holds a place within neurology today: articles on general paralysis (specifically senile general paralysis and presbyophrenia, a form of senile dementia), general paralysis and syphilitic eruptions, presbyophrenia and traumatic epilepsy, as well as alcoholism.49 He always noted the presence of these conditions in the asylums of the Orient.

On the Road: Edirne and Bursa It was finally time to leave Istanbul after spending some two months there. Libert had visited many medical establishments, particularly enjoying his frequent visits to the Yedikule Greek Hospital, because he found it peaceful. He used public transportation widely: the trams, the suburban trains and the steamboats. When necessary, he used a carriage. Libert’s next stop was Edirne. He took an overnight train from Istanbul to Kırkağaç on a cold January night, running past deserted plateaus. It was still dark when the train arrived at the station. At dawn, Libert and his guide started to walk through Kırkağaç; the town with its wooden chalets strangely reminded him of seaside resorts in France, like Berck or a very ordinary Royan. Libert added: ‘It is a European neighbourhood, which has nothing of the Turkish character’.50 It was three to four kilometres further to Edirne, and Libert and his companion walked there on this freezing early morning on a ‘very well paved road, built by the Young Turk regime, lined with poplars with gold leaves and plane trees with red copper leaves’. After arriving at the Meriç (Maritsa) River, the trees ended, and there suddenly appeared Edirne ‘with its minarets, like thin needles that shoot towards the sky’.51 It was an impressive moment, reminding him of the first time he saw Istanbul from the steamer. Yet, Libert felt gloomy; there was no peace similar to what he had felt in the garden of Yedikule Greek Hospital. It was a sad winter day. The river rolled at their feet in torrents of brackish water, a freezing wind whistled gloriously through the poplars, crows swirled with ominous cries. It evoked feelings of a death scene, with grey minarets looming from the grey sky. It was, so Libert wrote, ‘a whole vision of winter and sadness, reminiscent of the landscapes of the North with snow at the end of tree branches’.52 249

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın Libert was completely underwhelmed by Edirne and its asylum. He introduced no other city with such a long dark preamble. The city looked unkempt. Even the bazaar, the usual Orientalist-pleaser, was not right! Shops were piled up; all the trades were in disarray: the pottery bazaar, the fish bazaar, the fruit bazaar tangled. Turkish houses seemed ‘so horribly old, with their cracked and collapsed walls, often replaced by pierced fabrics or by zinc plates’. Libert was overcome by his longing for order and hygiene: ‘Only fires’, he wrote, ‘can sometimes introduce a little hygiene [here] and correct alignments’.53 From the city centre, there was still roughly another two kilometres to walk to the asylum at the other end of the city. The hellish descriptions did not end: once out of the city, the men were greeted by fields covered with dried thistles. Beyond the Tunca (Tundzha) River, lined with willows and mulberry fields, stood the Beyazid II Imperial Complex, with its mosque and the darüşşifa (imperial hospital) used as the asylum. One of the minarets had collapsed, becoming a nest for thousands of pigeons. ‘It was founded in the year 1500’, Libert wrote, ‘and has since remained fixed, as everything in Turkey, in its secular immutability’.54 His visit to the asylum was brief and disappointing. The two men walked back to the city as the snow started to fall. Libert again found peace, sighting a humble cemetery covered with purple plants on a random corner. As they made their way to the station, which was crowded with soldiers, they heard a gypsy band playing slow waltzes. He took a train back that night. Befriending a soldier, coincidentally they talked about war and death.

Figure 8.5 Asylum in Edirne, located in the Beyazid II Imperial Complex (Source: Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ [June 1913], Plate XI)

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Crossing Paths Libert was not wrong. The asylum itself was not in good order. It also had been the target of harsh criticism by the press and the Ottoman government due to its treatment of the insane, specifically for its use of chains and shackles.55 The well-known photo of the famous Turkish psychiatrist Mazhar Osman freeing the insane from their chains was taken in the Edirne Asylum in 1908. They were back in chains when Libert visited in 1912. However, it is crucial to note here how Libert placed the old, poorly-run asylum within the context of a grey, old, sick city; the entire place reminded him of death. It appears that Libert had finally found the ‘Orient’ he had imagined: sick and on its deathbed. His impression of Istanbul, which he rarely wrote about, seems to have been substantially different from that of Edirne. In that sense, using Edirne and generalising it to ‘everything in Turkey’ reminds us of the orientalist trope of the ‘stuck-in-the-past-Orient’, underdeveloped and certainly not civilised. This does not seem to have been his general impression of health facilities in Istanbul, however; most of the time, Libert generally – albeit silently – seemed to approve of the practices he saw in many institutions there. Those he approved of were not announced; those he did not were subtly acknowledged. His visit to Bursa likewise did not carry that negative tone. Libert took a six-hour steamboat ride to Mudanya, then the suburban line from Mudanya to Bursa. The station was not far from the municipal hospital which included a section for mental patients. The hospital stood on a hill, ‘dotted with ferns and clematis’, wrote Libert, adding that ‘small waterfalls fall on sedum in the crevices of the rocks, and in the distance, Olympus [Uludağ], shrouded in snow, closes the horizon’. Bursa he depicted as peaceful and beautiful, including the cemeteries that he generally found moving. Near the hospital were the tombs of Osman and Orhan, the founder of the Ottoman Empire and his son, surrounded by other graves. ‘This is where lies the Princess Nilüfer’, Libert wrote, ‘who gave her name to the graceful river whose capricious meanderings roam the plains lined with mulberry and silver poplars’. A very similar flora had filled Libert with emotions completely different from those he felt in Edirne, just a couple of days earlier. Underwhelmed by the asylum’s physician (Dr Tevfik Efendi), as well as the lack of statistics and diagnosis, Libert left with an unpleasant impression of the facility but still happy to be in Bursa. He later wrote: ‘Poor people! Poor Turkey! And what a relief it is to find ourselves outside [of the hospital] among the cemeteries! The tomb of a saint is there nearby, and in this brutal winter, it still disappears under a lily curtain!’56 He was constantly drawn to cemeteries, with strong emotions. About Istanbul he noted: ‘Istanbul has a unique charm in the world, a charm born from the melancholy and the pain of all those who sleep in this earth, made, more than anywhere else, of the dust of the dead’.57 Little did he know that he was looking for his own. 251

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın

On the Road: Going South After travelling to Edirne and Bursa from Istanbul and returning to the capital each time, Libert hopped on steamboats for the rest of his journey: his next stop was Izmir, from where he travelled to Manisa by train (to visit another imperial hospital used as an asylum), and then Ephesus. He was back to Izmir to take a liner to Rhodes, and then to Beirut, all on the same Messageries Maritime line. From Beirut, he travelled to Baalbek, Damascus and Aleppo. The next port was Jaffa; from there he went to Jerusalem, and then from Jaffa to Port-Said, Alexandria and Cairo, his last stop. Another Messageries Maritime line took him from Alexandria directly back to Marseilles. Libert was home by 13 March 1912. As soon as he came back, Libert returned to interning at the Seine asylums. And publishing. In fact, a first piece about his impressions of Greece appeared even before his arrival, in the February issue of Æsculape, titled ‘Paysages et cités d’orient’. He serially published short and popular pieces about his travel to the Orient in this journal throughout 1912 and 1913, on topics that were somewhat related to medicine, such as the Turkish cemeteries, hospitals in Istanbul, or dervishes. His much more detailed series about the insane of the Orient started appearing in L’informateur in September 1912 (five months after his return to France). In March 1914, a competition for ten new positions in insane asylums opened. Libert decided to devote himself henceforth to psychiatry. He was appointed, by decree, in July 1914, as an assistant doctor at the Pas-de-Calais Asylum. The asylum in which he interned, Maison-Blanche, was a relatively new purpose-built asylum constructed in 1894. The one to which he was eventually appointed in 1914, the infamous Pas-de-Calais Asylum, had originally been created by the order of St François in 1702 and underwent many design additions throughout the nineteenth century, very much like the repurposed Ottoman asylums about which he had raised questions.

A Tomb of his Own This appointment was a turning point in Libert’s life. I discovered this while wondering about his fate that spring night. Three weeks into his appointment at the Pas-de-Calais Asylum, World War I erupted. I immediately began to search for the next issue of L’informateur. Eventually, when I found it, instead of his anticipated next article, I came across a note: ‘As for the copy of the last article, it never reached us. Libert was mobilised as of 1 August 1914; he is at the front and was not able to write it’.58 I anxiously kept looking, only to find another note dated 1916 announcing his recent death: 252

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Crossing Paths Le Dr Lucien Libert, médecin adjoint à l’asile d’aliénés de Sain’tVenant, membre correspondant de la Société médico-psychologique, vient de succomber. C’est pour les siens une douleur cruellement ressentie. Pour ceux qui l’ont aimé, aux joies les plus douces de l’amitié out succédé les tristesses les plus amères et no sentiment invincible de solitude. Pour la psychiatrie française enfin, c’est une perte qu’il faut tenir pour irréparable [ . . . ].59 Libert was first assigned as a second-class aide-major to a battalion of the Lorraine army (his father’s homeland). In September 1914, he was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel. During the following months, at Carency, his unit was constantly under fire. His horse was hit by two projectiles. In December, he was rewarded with a second rank. But this was not what killed him. In early 1915, the Serbian Government asked French military doctors to help fight epidemics and to replace the 130 Serbian doctors carried off by typhus. On 10 March, Libert was posted to the French medical mission in Serbia, with the rank of second-class medical officer. Upon his arrival in Valievo in April, he re-organised hospital services to fight against typhus (the hospital had just lost its doctors, pharmacist and bursar to the disease). After several months of hard and dangerous work, Libert obtained the Silver Medal for Epidemics. In his spare time, he conducted an investigation into the insane in Serbia and collected observations on mental disorders related to typhus. Libert was then assigned to the army and sent to the front, winning the honours of the White Eagle and the Military Medal of Serbia, as well as the Croix de Guerre. After two months of winter in the snow-covered mountains and suffering from cold, hunger and physical and moral exhaustion, Libert finally arrived at the Adriatic coast. A few days later, in early January 1916, he returned home. His parents and his friends were happy to see him again after so many worries. But Libert had returned exhausted, very thin, suffering from pain, and infected. The day after his return, he went to bed. The disease made rapid progress. On 22 January 1916, Dr Lucien Libert ceased to live. Sérieux ended his obituary with these words: Que de projets Libert portait en lui! Que de ‘mémoires’ qui ne seront jamais écrits, car seul il eut su le faire! Son œuvre scientifique – œuvre de quelques années seulement – atteste tout ce qu’une longue vie eut donné si, pour cette activité et cette vitalité, toujours ignorantes du repos, l’éternel repos ne fût venu. [ . . . ] Jamais le destin ne parut ni plus injuste ni plus aveugle que le jour où il a anéanti tant d’avenir et tant d’espérances. [ . . . ] Mais les survivants doivent-ils s’abandonner à des 253

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın sentiments de découragement et de révolte ? Non. Libert ne meurt pas tout entier. [ . . . ] Son œuvre, encore qu’incomplète, demeurera ; elle portera témoignage de ses mérites. Sa vie si brève, mais si remplie, ne laisse pas que des regrets.60 I was unexpectedly shaken by this century-old news. I felt as though I had lost a companion, someone I knew intellectually, but of whom I never saw a photo. Sérieux’s obituary description gave him flesh and blood, replacing the noncorporeal silhouette I had placed in all the locations he visited: a medium-sized, modest-looking, sympathetic man whose blue eyes illuminated his youthful face. Then I realised that he never wrote the remaining pieces of this major undertaking. What did he see in the infamous Manisa Asylum? Where did he go in Ephesus? What about the twelve other cities he visited, but could not write about?

Figure 8.6 Lucien Libert’s tomb (Source: Pierre-Yves Beaudouin, Tomb of Libert and Chaigneau, 13 March 2017, Père Lachaise Cemetery; Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

While Libert’s articles did not give me all the answers I sought, they offered me peeks into these settings – whether staged by the hosts or orientalised by his gaze. As I got to know him, I began to read between the lines, to see the things about which he did not write openly, his feelings, his prejudices, the baggage he carried as a French intellectual. I have thought a lot about the relationships we have with our sources. I got to see a different side of the case-studies of my research through the eyes of this twenty-nine-year-old French doctor. His subjectivity was like the subjectivity of my other sources: the seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller, the nineteenthcentury European and American alienists, the official Ottoman historian, the 254

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Crossing Paths Ottoman government, the Ottoman physicians. All of their perspectives and agendas, all of their perceptions, were shaped not only by these active sites of knowledge, but also by the weather, the sights, the sounds. Their experiences have leaked into the mainstream and official narratives of Ottoman history, medicine and architecture. And as importantly, our knowledge of the sites has been irrevocably shaped by their visits, their gaze and words – both said and unsaid.

Notes  1. Lucien Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’, L’Informateur des aliénistes et des neurologistes 8 (June 1913): 327. All translations are my own.  2. Lucien Libert, ‘Cimetières Turcs’, Æsculape 2, no. 4 (April 1912): 73.  3. I assume that Libert used the Messageries Maritime Company. The company had a strong presence in Istanbul, including an office and its own landing-place. Libert’s itinerary matches almost perfectly the company’s schedule at the time, as seen in Figures 8.1 and 8.2.  4. I write these lines during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Historical pandemic/epidemic experiences suddenly became much more familiar and relatable to us, despite the many differences that the century that separates us from Libert introduces.  5. Lucien Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (September 1912), 284.  6. For instance, see Paul Sérieux and Lucien Libert, ‘Le régime des Aliénés en France Au XVIIIe siècle d’après des documents inédits’, Annales médico-psychologiques 7 (1916): 74–98; Paul Sérieux and Lucien Libert, ‘La Bastille, Asile d’aliènes et Asile de Sureté’, Æsculape 1, no. 10 (October 1911): 217–23.  7. Michel Foucault, History of Madness, 1st ed., ed. Jean Khalfa, trans. Jonathan Murphy (New York: Routledge, 2006), 79.  8. Paul Sérieux and Lucien Libert, L’assistance et le traitement des maladies mentales au temps de Louis XVI (Paris: Société française d’imprimerie et de librairie, 1915). For a study that contextualises Sérieux and Libert’s work, see Elizabeth Nelson, ‘Running in Circles: A Return to an Old Idea about Asylum Reform in Nineteenth-Century France’, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 42 (2014): 115–25.  9. Foucault makes direct reference to Paul Sérieux, but does not mention Libert by name, even though the two co-authored the article on which Foucault comments. 10. Foucault, History of Madness, 78–79, 604 n. 1. 11. One striking example is manifested in Libert’s reaction towards the rumours that he heard about Ottoman state asylums being used for ‘arbitrary detention’. (These accounts were particularly popular and widespread throughout the Hamidian period.) Libert was sceptical about these cases, noting that, ‘looking at what journalists are reporting and what is actually happening in France, perhaps we should not believe [these cases here either]’. Lucien Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (January 1913), 29. 12. It is not clear whether Libert actually visited this island; he did not list it but included a photograph of the building. 13. Süleyman Uygun, ‘Messageries Maritimes Vapur Şirketi’nin İstanbul’un Yolcu ve Eşya Taşımacılığındaki Yeri’, in Antik Çağdan 21. Yüzyıla Büyük İstanbul Tarihi Ansiklopedisi (İstanbul: Kültür A. Ş., 2016), 492–501.

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın 14. Ekrem Kadri Unat, ‘Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda 1910–1913 Yıllarındaki Kolera Salgınları ve Bunlarla İlgili Olaylar’, Yeni Tıp Tarihi Araştırmaları = The New History of Medicine Studies 1 (1995): 55–65. 15. For the effects of the outbreak in the Ottoman Empire, see Mesut Ayar, Osmanlı Devletinde Kolera: İstanbul Örneği (1892–1895) (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2007). For the effects of the outbreak, measures taken against and plans to control the outbreak at the Toptaşı Asylum, see Burçak Özlüdil Altın, ‘Madness and Empire: The Ottoman Asylum, 1830– 1930’ (Unpubl. PhD diss., New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, 2017), 254–58. 16. Ayar, Osmanlı Devletinde Kolera, 37; Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830– 1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 162–71. 17. The French Medal of Honour for Epidemics rewarded individuals who showed exceptional devotion combatting epidemic diseases, either by caring for infected patients, or by undertaking actions to contain the spread of an infectious disease, while exposing themselves to dangers of contamination. 18. Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (September 1912), 284. 19. See, for instance, John Murray (Firm), Handbook for Travellers in Constantinople, Brûsa, and the Troad: With Index and Directory for 1907 (London: J. Murray, 1907). 20. This was a type of medical training. During this period, Libert worked with such notables as Antoine Marfan and Anatole Chauffard. The first Medal of Honour for Epidemics came during this time in 1907. 21. The primary source for biographical information about Libert comes from his obituary authored by Paul Sérieux; see Paul Sérieux, ‘Chronique: Dr Lucien Libert (1882–1916)’, Annales médico-psychologiques no. n 07 (1916): 137–51. There is no information about the women in Libert’s life. 22. Lucien Libert, La folie de Don Quichotte: Un cas littéraire de délire d’interprétation (Paris: G. Steinheil, 1909). 23. For brief biographical information on Louvard, see Seine-et-Oise: Dictionnaire Biographique et Album (Paris: Flammarion, 1893), 257. Medical publications of the time contain advertisements for a Louvard Pharmacy located in Versailles, which might be the uncle’s business and which explains why Sérieux mentions that Libert’s interest in the medical sciences was driven by a ‘vocation that went back to his childhood’; see Sérieux, ‘Chronique: Dr Lucien Libert’, 137. 24. Lucien Libert, Le monde de Jupiter (Paris: H. Micaux, 1903). This book was made available once again in 2012 ‘due to its cultural importance’, according to its new publisher. Lucien Libert, Le Monde de Jupiter (Charleston: Nabu Press, 2012). 25. Sérieux, ‘Chronique: Dr Lucien Libert’, 138. 26. Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz (eds), Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009), 18–20. 27. Roy Porter, Madness: A Brief History, 1st ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 100. 28. I am not considering here the many other visitors to the Ottoman Empire who wrote about their general impressions. These visits also included hospitals, but in many cases, comments are made only in passing. Whether they actually visited health facilities or simply convey information gathered by other means is not clear.

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Crossing Paths 29. Nükhet Varlık, ‘“Oriental Plague” or Epidemiological Orientalism? Revisiting the Plague Episteme of the Early Modern Mediterranean’, in Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean: New Histories of Disease in Ottoman Society, ed. Nükhet Varlık (Kalamazoo: Arc Humanities Press, 2017), 57–88. 30. I discuss this at length in Özlüdil Altın, ‘Madness and Empire’, 127–29. 31. Paul Aubry, ‘Les Hôpitaux En Orient’, Bulletin de La Société de Géographie Commerciale de Paris Gallica 10 (1887): 337–46. 32. Sérieux was another institutional traveller: he was appointed to visit neighbouring countries to survey and report on the state of mental health care. His influential 1,062-page book found that French psychiatry lagged behind and called for psychiatric reform in France. Paul Sérieux, L’assistance des aliénés en France, en Allemagne, en Italie et en Suisse (Paris: Imprimerie municipale, 1903). 33. Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (November 1912): 419–20. 34. Considering the influence of German practice and theory in the Ottoman Empire during this period, the observation centre might have been inspired by the German urban asylums (Stadtasyl) for so-called transitory, short-term patients that were built near large population centres. The restrictive bureaucratic barriers to admission and discharge were reduced to a minimum. 35. BOA, DH.UMVM. 95/9, 17 Mart 1326 [30 March 1910]. 36. Osman Nuri Ergin, Müessesat-ı Hayriye-yi Sıhhiye Müdiriyeti (Direction Générale de l’Assistance Publique de Constantinople) (Istanbul: Matbaa-yı Arşak Garoyan, 1911). 37. Luigi (or Louis) Mongeri studied medicine at the University of Pavia in Lombardy, Italy. He first arrived in Istanbul in 1839; after his second visit in 1850, he never left. He was appointed chief physician (tabib-i evvel) to the Süleymaniye Asylum on 30 March 1856, and then he became the chief physician of the Toptaşı Asylum in 1873, where he served until his death in 1882. 38. It is impossible to know which of Mongeri’s writings Libert had read. 39. I discuss these changes and what they mean for the theory and practice of psychiatry in Burçak Özlüdil Altın, ‘Psychiatry, Space, and Time: Case of an Ottoman Asylum’, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 5, no. 1 (2018): 67–89. 40. Libert, ‘Cimetières Turcs’ (April 1912), 73. 41. Of the twenty-one cholera cases seen in the asylum, eight patients died during this outbreak. Active cases were isolated in a mansion in Nurkuyusu, not far from the asylum; see Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (January 1913), 31. 42. Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (January 1913), 33–37. 43. Aubry, ‘Les Hôpitaux en Orient’ (1887), 337–46. 44. Valentin Magnan presented the condition during a lecture at the Medical-Psychological Society, as a chronic kind of well-circumscribed delusional disorder that progressed through four stages after a period of incubation: inquietude-hallucinations, persecution, manic-grandeur, dementia. The delusions were highly structured, hence the adjective ‘systematic’, or ‘systematised’. Edward Shorter, A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 208. 45. Capgras was about to become chief psychiatrist at the Maison-Blanche Asylum right around this time. 46. Quoted in Shorter, Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry, 107, 208. 47. Ibid., 107–8, 208–9.

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Burçak Özlüdil Altın 48. Libert, La folie de Don Quichotte, 15. It was republished recently, as Lucien Libert, La Folie de Don Quichotte (London: Forgotten Books, 2018). 49. During this time, he authored and co-authored many articles (forty by Sérieux’s count) and attended the Congrès des médecins aliénistes in Amiens, London, Ypres-Tournay, Puy, Bruges, Cologne and Ghent, making a name for himself, as well as connections both in France and internationally. Sérieux, ‘Chronique: Dr Lucien Libert’, 139–40. 50. Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (June 1913), 326. 51. Ibid., 327. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. For instance, see BOA, DH.MKT. 1244/16, 29 S 1326 [2 April 1908], for a complaint and a newspaper article about patients being chained. 56. Libert, ‘Les Aliénés en Orient’ (June 1913), 326. 57. Libert, ‘Cimetières Turcs’ (April 1912), 73. Ottoman cemeteries had certainly been a popular theme in oriental travel writing, and Libert did not skip the topic in this popular and less detailed piece. He visited the cemeteries of Istanbul and, as we just read, those of Bursa; he was struck by their deep intertwining with life. 58. The note refers to the anticipated piece as the ‘last article’. As I only alluded throughout the article, in an attempt to avoid spoilers, the last article covered Izmir under the general heading ‘III Asia Minor’. I assume that it would also have discussed Manisa and Ephesus. It is unclear if he had intended another chapter for Egypt, as the title of the series suggests, or whether whatever he wrote under the heading ‘Prejudices’ covered all other cities that I overview in the section ‘On the Road: Going South’. The asylum series in the L’Informateur only discusses four Ottoman cities: Istanbul, Edirne, Bursa and Izmir. 59. Sérieux, ‘Chronique: Dr Lucien Libert’, 137. 60. Ibid., 151.

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9 Carceral Experiences and the Transmission of Memory in a French Political Prison: Montluc, between the Second World War and the Algerian War of Independence Marc André

‘How many people have mounted the scaffold in the courtyard of the Santé prison and in the courtyard of Montluc, how many French men and women during the 1940s, how many Algerians since 1954 . . . How many. How many’.1 These were the pointed questions posed by writer Charlotte Delbo in Les belles lettres (1961), a commentary on France’s brutal suppression of anti-colonial resistance during the height of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). Delbo, a former Communist member of the French Resistance and a nonJewish survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, was an ardent anti-colonial activist during the war. Les belles lettres, a compilation of open letters culled from newspapers and magazines which spoke to the violence of the Algerian War, was Delbo’s tribute to epistolary manifestos. These lines appear in the book as part of Delbo’s longer reflection on one such manifesto denouncing de Gaulle and heralding the victory of the FLN army. The manifesto was authored by a defiant Algerian death row inmate, Bouceta Hamou, as a farewell note to his wife just before his execution in the courtyard of the Santé prison in Paris in 1960.2 For comparative literature scholar Michael Rothberg, Delbo’s Les belles lettres was an example of how traumatic memories were ‘harnessed’ to ‘prompt unexpected acts of empathy and solidarity’, and more concretely, how memories of the Holocaust became entwined with a concentration camp survivor’s empathetic engagement in anti-colonial struggles in the ‘age of decolonisation’.3 Rothberg pointed out many more such cases of the ‘multi-directional’ 259

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Marc André mobilisation of memory through his examination of a dozen or more philosophical, literary and cinematographic works, all published between 1945 and 1962.4 This chapter, which draws on my book Une prison pour memoire: Montluc de 1944 à nos jours, interrogates another unexplored history – that of the dynamic superposition of memories, as it occurred within the particular social environment of the prison. More specifically, it asks how a distinctive logic of memory transmission emerged from a shared carceral experience in the Montluc prison of Lyon, in the decades following the expulsion of the Gestapo and the liberation of the prison in August 1944. Delbo’s allusion to Montluc and the Santé prison was in remembrance of those who died from the savage punishments meted out first by the Nazis and later by the French colonial regime. Poignant and impassioned, the author could hardly have imagined the immense historical weight and significance behind the name she had conjured: Montluc. In this chapter, I focus on Montluc to analyse the dual histories in France, of memory transmission from 1944 to 1963 and the politics of commemoration from 1944 to the present. Immediately after liberation, Montluc was used to detain individuals charged with offenses against the ‘territorial integrity of the nation’ (intégrité territoriale de la nation). Broad-sweeping in scope, the clause was used over time to convict an assortment of suspects brought in on various charges related either to World War II, or the successive wars of decolonisation, first in Indochina (1946–54) and later in Algeria (1954–62). Montluc thus suddenly became a detention centre for German war criminals, as well as former members of the Resistance, communists, conscientious objectors of decolonisation wars, anti-colonial activists of various backgrounds and Algerian nationalists – all confined next to each other within close quarters, sometimes in adjoining cell blocks and corridors. With the incarceration of such a diverse set of political detainees, Montluc became a repository of memories and narratives drawn from widely varying historical contexts and experiences. Far from promoting enmity and contention, however, the heterogeneity of memories encouraged a distinctive dialogic fellowship among the prisoners as they experienced life inside the prison. Once in Montluc, the temporal consciousness of the detainees was rewired as their interactions and senses were subordinated to the daily life within the prison. Prisoners therefore not only drew on their respective pasts and experiences, but they also had recourse to a common carceral experience to devise a new discourse relevant to a shared present. To borrow from Gilles Deleuze, ‘the entire past coexisted with a new present in relation to which it is now past [ . . . ]’.5 What emerged from within the social environment of Montluc was a new set of narratives that cut across the different backgrounds and experiences in what I call a transversal transmission of memories.6 These narratives, while drawing on 260

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Carceral Experiences distinct pasts and memories, converged to express a universal sense of indignation, suffering, empathy and a common desire for justice. Taking Montluc as the focal point of dynamic memory interactions has doubly significant implications. First, contrary to the arguments that memories of Nazi occupation and the Shoah were all but forgotten or silenced in France until the 1970s, I show that memories of the Nazi past had always been in active circulation in French society since the Liberation. Second, the notion of competitive memories is countervailed by the evident solidarity that was forged across the different social groups in Montluc, who have often been viewed as having conflicting commemorative interests in France – namely, anti-colonial activists and survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than trace the ways in which past historical traumas are mobilised across time and space to address the injustices in the present, as does Rothberg, I foreground the prison as the reference point for a synchronous coexistence of heterogeneous and interpenetrating memories, each linked to different temporalities and historical contexts. The dynamic transversal transmission of memories in Montluc can best be understood through the notion of the ‘simultaneity of non-simultaneity’, developed first by Michel Foucault and later by historian François Hartog. The phrase refers to temporally separated ‘non-simultaneous’ events, which ‘are suddenly prompted to coexist in simultaneity’ within a particularly charged environment.7 In Montluc, memories of the occupation remained animate in the narratives about the present period of decolonisation, while narratives about the present were expressed through terms directly drawn from memories related to different instances in the past. This past never really became defunct in Montluc. Much like the Bergsonian notion of the ‘sheets of the past’ (nappes du passé), as taken up by Deleuze, each past remained integral and intact as separate ‘sheets’, until mobilised to underwrite thoughts related to the present.8 Montluc, in many ways, also epitomised what Pierre Nora has called the milieux de mémoire, an environment in which memories would circulate as living mechanisms for generating dynamic discourses rather than remain as vestiges of a bygone past, as is the case with lieux de mémoire.9 Delbo’s coincident allusion to Montluc and the Santé is noteworthy as a testimonial of the inhumanity endemic to wartime punishments. Not only did she close the temporal distance between the Nazi period and the Algerian War, she also assigned a common fate to the two social groups – Algerian and French – that were presently at war. Delbo left unsaid that it was the prison, and especially Montluc, that provided a clear historical reference and setting for articulating the commonalities, which she drew between the Algerians and the French men and women who had fallen victim to the Nazi and colonial regimes. 261

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Marc André

Montluc: A Brief History from Prison to Memorial First established in 1921 as a military fort and prison, Montluc was run by Vichy officials from 1940 to 1942, before it was turned over to the Gestapo and placed under the supervision of the SS operative Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’, in February 1943. Here, 10,000 individuals including Jews, members of the Resistance and hostages captured by the Gestapo were tried by the Nazi military tribunal located inside the walls of Fort Montluc. Starting in August 1944, the Provisional Government of the French Republic took over Montluc, converting it into a prison for German war criminals and different groups of militants that were considered a menace to the Gaullist Republic – namely, communists, conscientious objectors of decolonisation wars, anti-colonial activists and anti-French nationalists of mainly Algerian background. After Algeria’s independence in 1962, most of these detainees were released and the military tribunal dismantled, but the prison continued to function until 2009. In 2010, Montluc prison was officially inaugurated as Montluc Memorial, one of ten national sites of commemoration (haut lieu de mémoire). Since 2010, the polemic around Montluc as a rightful monument to the Nazi past continued at the insistence of leading representatives of Vichy and Nazi-era victims, the Association of the Survivors of Montluc. Proposals to recognise the Algerian War years as an integral part of the memorial’s heritage were rejected, and in the end, Montluc’s mission was firmly dedicated to commemorating the ‘Resistance, Jews and the hostages and other victims of Nazi occupation and Vichy’.10 Forcibly written out of Montluc’s history and memory, were the approximately 1,000 detainees who were tried and imprisoned for their anticolonial politics. The prominence given to the memory of the victims of Nazi occupation has since made the prison a lightning rod for debates surrounding the commemoration of Vichy, the Holocaust and the Algerian War in Montluc. Any attempt to analyze the historical dynamics of memory transmission inside Montluc must consider the full scope of the prison’s social environment or ambiance sociale: the carceral conditions and routines, the tribunal and its military justice, the human interactions, including the executions, the media, the city of Lyon and, not least, the physical traits of the prison. Montluc, in many ways, was a prison like any other. On the exterior – with its surrounding walls, the roundabout path encircling the prison, the cell bars and the cell blocks – it was a typical prison. A wide-angle view of the site reveals a larger spatial complex of ‘Fort Montluc’, enclosed on all sides by an outer wall. The main access to the fort was through an arched entryway capped by a simple header with an inscription befitting its austere architecture: ‘Military Prison’. Historically, on one side of the prison building stood 262

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Carceral Experiences the tribunal – first the Nazi military tribunal (1943–44), then the French military tribunal (1945–53) and, later, the permanent tribunal of the armed forces in Lyon, or Le Tribunal permanent des forces armées de Lyon or TPFA (1954–62) – where every prisoner was tried before entering the prison, from the Nazi occupation until the end of the Algerian War. On another side of the cell block section stood the military barracks. Montluc was also a prison that was unlike any other. The penitentiary functioned in tandem with the tribunal, an alloy of Nazi and post-liberation judiciary practices. Details in the architecture were critical to the social environment. A noteworthy detail was a small door that led the prisoners from the tribunal directly through to the cell block in an uninterrupted procession to their place of confinement. This relay of political detainees from one part of Montluc to another, as if through a turnstile, made the prison a ‘permanent system of exceptional jurisdiction’, to use sociologist Vanessa Codaccioni’s phrase.11 The judgements they received as threats to state security only further reinforced the sense among the convicted that they were locked in a shared struggle against an all-abusive judiciary. Montluc’s environment was also made up of its living, breathing occupants who were subject to highly regimented routines. Montluc was the interaction among these individuals. These included not just the prisoners, but also the guards, lawyers, the media and, not least, the visitors and demonstrators who stood in solidarity with the detainees beyond the fort. From the outset, officials in charge of the prison did everything to maintain a strict disciplinary system. Prisoners were confined to designated spaces based on a series of opposing judicial, gendered and political categories: the civilian section was set apart from the military section, men apart from women, those awaiting execution apart from those awaiting trial, the FLN (Front libération nationale) apart from the MNA (Mouvement national algérien), and the prisoners charged with crimes related to World War II apart from those who were detained for their anti-colonial politics. Such restrictions and terms of internment did nothing to halt or suppress the dialogic interactions and the transversal transmission of memories that would unfold within the walls of the prison. Physical barriers and restrictions could not contain the dynamic flow of memories and the forging of solidarity and empathy across the prison. The next sections analyse the dynamic circulation of memories and the making of new narratives in and around Montluc after 1944.

Franco-French Resonance in Montluc On 23 March 1950, some one-hundred people gathered at the train station in the commune of Roanne in the Loire, for a protest organised by the French 263

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Marc André Communist Party to block the transport of armaments destined for Indochina. The demonstration soon degenerated into a violent clash between the protestors and the police. Nineteen protesters were arrested and charged with the ‘violent obstruction of military transport’ before they were taken to Montluc. Among the nineteen so-called ‘Roanne freedom fighters’12 was Lucien Benoit, a former communist member of the French Resistance and, at the time of his arrest in 1950, a correspondent for the Roanne-based paper Le Patriot.13 Benoit was also a member of the ‘Combatants for Peace and Freedom’ and actively took part in demonstrations against colonial wars and anti-communist aggression all throughout the 1950s. Benoit had already served a two-year sentence in Montluc for his communist activism from 1940 to 1942.14 During his hearing, Benoit declared: ‘I was imprisoned in Montluc during the Nazi occupation. Many of my comrades were deported and died. I am against yet another war, and that is why I was right there at the heart of the demonstration’.15 For Benoit, the memories of Vichy, the Gestapo and the deportation of Jews became inextricably bound up with his indignation towards the war in Indochina. News of Benoit’s arrest galvanised former deportees into action. They held demonstrations in front of the plaque on the outer wall of Montluc, which honored the victims of Nazi occupation. During the gathering, such slogans as ‘Free the nineteen!’ and ‘The SS in prison!’ were called out16 and were quickly echoed in the local newspaper, the République de Lyon. In one journalist’s words, the current state of affairs was ‘remindful of Vichy in every respect and indicative of the government’s bad conscience, weakness, and ill will in this war’.17 The slogan CRS (Compagnies républicaines de sécurité) = SS, often associated with the May 1968 movement, was already being used to impute blame to the national security forces for acting as accomplices to Nazi crimes. Montluc had animated an entire slate of memories related to World War II to underwrite ongoing protests against the political detainment of anti-colonial activists. The Rhône delegation of the former French deportees (FNDIRP), along with the four representatives of the Loire section of deportees, headed to the military tribunal to file a resolution against the military authorities and, when met with disdain, declared: ‘The authorities refuse to receive the delegation of those who suffered in the death camps’.18 With regard to the intimidation by the police, they stated: ‘We thought we were reading letters being passed around by the Gestapo – the same politics, the same policing methods!’19 During the demonstration in front of Montluc’s plaque, protestors declared: On the grey wall of the Montluc prison, a marble plaque reminds us that behind these cut stones are the men and women who were imprisoned by the Gestapo: ‘In memory of all who were imprisoned, suffered and 264

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Carceral Experiences were victims of Nazi savagery’. What false pretence is this plaque! [ . . . ] Mister Lucien Benoit, correspondent of Le Patriot is incarcerated in this sinister prison for a second time. He is among those ‘who were imprisoned and suffered’!20 The discursive interplay between the Nazi past and France’s colonial abuses outside of the prison walls found reverberations in the interior of Montluc as well. Upon receiving the nineteen Roanne fighters, the prison guards began showing them preferential treatment, even arranging clandestine reunions with family members, permitting them to walk about freely in the detention area, allowing collective meals in the dining hall, letting prisoners engage in group activities such as playing cards and granting them extended visitation hours. Guards took extra steps to ensure their daily comfort. These gestures showed utter disregard for the established rules of surveillance in the prison and stood in stark contrast to the harsh treatment imposed on the German prisoners. The presence of the Nazis gave the guards an incentive to show the French detainees preferential treatment, even when the latter’s politics had not much to do with fighting the Nazis. On 5 June 1956, several hundred people were amassed in the Aubenas railway station in the Ardèche, this time to stop a train carrying two draftees to Algeria. The protest led to the arrest of four communist activists who were then taken to Montluc. The four demonstrators declared: ‘We found ourselves once again on familiar terrain. Did we not face the same accusations based on the same laws of 1950 that led to the arrest of the Roanne freedom fighters?’21 Once in Montluc, memories of the past rebounded, unleashing discourses that remonstrated with the French state and its oppressive measures. Committees in defence of republican freedoms were convened to ‘claim their indignation in face of the vicious policing methods reminiscent of the pro-fascist methods long condemned by the region’s population’.22 Talk circulated once again about ‘the rebirth of fascism’,23 ‘machinations of the police’ and ‘Pétain-style aggression’.24 Pierre Renoux, a former member of the Resistance, was among the four arrested at the Aubenas station. Renoux recounted years later just how affected he was by the German prisoners on the other side of the cell walls while held in Montluc. He was even more dumbfounded by the demands made by the prison authorities on their behalf: ‘I was told not to sing or whistle for fear of annoying those on death row. Three Nazis were on the floor below us, undoubtedly awaiting their liberation, which Adenauer would unquestionably demand!’25 These were Klaus Barbie’s henchmen detained in Montluc prison in June 1956, courtesy of the ‘Moscow declaration’ of 30 October 1943, which stipulated that the Nazis were to be ‘returned to the scene of their crimes and judged by 265

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Marc André the people whom they had wronged’.26 The sudden realisation that he was in such close proximity to the German prisoners had apparently caused Renoux’s mind to short-circuit, and he uttered the particularly evocative term ‘hostage’ to describe his fate.27 It was also known that the German war criminals held in Montluc were responsible for the massacres of the summer of 1944. Of the Montluc detainees held by the Nazis, 120 had lost their lives at Saint-Genis-Laval on 20 August. The discordant array of penal categories28 and the ‘highly irregular’29 comingling of prisoners rattled officials, including the ministers of justice and the interior as well as the prison coming into contact. A special supervisor was soon appointed to manage the explosive situation, and just as many more steps were taken to prevent the French and German prisoners from crossing paths. Alternate recreation periods were assigned to different categories of prisoners, for example, and collective meals in the prison canteen were strictly barred. These measures were ineffective when it came to preventing the interaction and circulation of memories both inside and outside of Montluc. Encounters and conversations, carceral routines and restrictions, as well as the prison environment only served to enhance the dialogic synergy amongst the lived pasts of the prisoners. Memories of Nazi oppression surged and transgressed not only the prison’s spaces, but also the fort walls, to contravene the strictures that barred all physical contact and communication, not only between the detainees, but also between the detainees and the public. Renoux, who was well-informed of the past incarcerations of his party ‘comrades’ in Montluc, saw himself as belonging to a lineage of such prisoners. One comrade wrote to Renoux and noted that the address of the prison was one he knew ‘all too well, sadly’. Renoux had reminded the letter writer of his teacher, Jules Delval, a name he thought might be known to Renoux, especially as Delval had also been imprisoned in Montluc and was known to many as an exemplary communist: He was also imprisoned at Montluc because he wanted peace. Maybe he was in your cell, or maybe in the one occupied by one of your comrades. No matter. He was brought out of prison by the people of France, and the Nazis were defeated. Today, other defenders of the peace have been arrested and thrown into jail.30 Letters similar to those sent to Renoux were received by other prisoners who were reminded of the presence and memories of the many who had shared their plight. Louis Seyve, arrested during a protest at the Beaurepaire train station on 2 May 1956, was informed in a letter by one communist comrade that ‘somewhere in the Montluc fort lie the remains of my comrade Max Barel, an engineer, 266

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Carceral Experiences tortured and killed in July 1944 by the Gestapo’.31 Public lettering in the form of graffiti also began to appear on the city walls, as the crackdown on communists and anti-colonial activists inflamed public opinion. At the very moment of Seyve’s trial, one Claude Marty, the son of a former Resistance fighter who had been killed during the occupation, wrote to the president of the Republic to make clear his refusal to don his uniform for military service should he be ordered to serve under the Nazi who had murdered his father. Marty was referring to Hans Speidel, former chief of staff to German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the occupation and a key negotiator for Germany’s entry into NATO. Speidel had recently been named commander of the Allied Land ForcesCentral Europe in 1957. Graffiti spread across the city calling for their release. Petitions were drafted and circulated as part of a public campaign to liberate the ‘sons of martyrs’ held captive in Montluc: Marty, Seyve and Porrain. The public outcry that stemmed from movements that called for peace in Algeria also condemned the government’s continued collaboration with the likes of Speidel.32 Angry protesters decried the fact that these former Resistance fighters had been placed in cells next to the Nazi prisoners, who, for years, ‘had been allowed to take physical exercise so they could keep in shape’.33 There was also outrage against the imprisonment of ‘twenty-five young draftees who refused to leave for Algeria and serve under Speidel, the Nazi who was behind the assassination of Marty’s father’.34 Montluc thus became the rallying point for those in and around the prison as they deployed memories of Nazi oppression to express universal indignation against what they perceived to be an extension of Vichy and Nazi abuses. One journalist of La République at the time wrote that, ‘in real life, there appear symbols that would make a fiction writer’s pen hesitate’.35 The ‘patriots of Aubenas’, imprisoned at Montluc from early June to mid-July 1956, were transferred for three weeks in July to the Saint-Paul prison so that a film dedicated ‘to the glory of the Resistance could be shot in the fortress’.36 In fact, Robert Bresson had obtained permission from the Defence Ministry to shoot a film on location titled A Man Escaped (Un condamné à mort s’est échappé, Gaumont, 1956), about the heroic escape from Montluc of a Resistance fighter, André Devigny, in 1943.37 Devigny’s escape had become legendary as he had successfully evaded the Gestapo. Devigny had advised Bresson on the film, but during the actual filming, he was in southern Algeria serving as a lieutenant colonel and head of special operations (1955–62). The making of the film about the Resistance at the very moment when the former Resistance fighters or their sons were imprisoned in Montluc alongside anti-colonial activists, further reinforced the interconnections between memories of the Nazi occupation and decolonisation politics despite Devigny’s military assignment in Algeria. 267

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Marc André Bresson’s film had a profound impact on the dynamics of memory transmission in and around Montluc. For the prisoners, the film validated and reinforced the symbolism of Montluc, fostering memorial connections between the Resistance and the turmoil of the Algerian War. For the authorities, the temporary transfer of prisoners provided an opportunity to remove the graffiti left behind from the Nazi occupation – graffiti still visible today in a film reel of the prison from 1944. Conscientious objectors of the Algerian War who had seen the film prior to their detainment recognised details of the prison interior upon their arrival at Montluc. Take the case of the communist conscientious objector who refused to fight in Algeria, Jean Clavel. Clavel had seen Bresson’s film, A Man Escaped, before he was arrested and placed in the cell block specifically designated for those who had been sentenced to death. In an interview with the author in September 2018, Clavel recalled that upon entering the prison, he could recall different details of the prison interior from having seen the film. It was in fact the memory of Devigny and other Resistance fighters of World War II during the occupation that allowed Clavel to consider the resonances between the past and the suffering in the present. ‘The film moved at a slow pace, and as I was interested in the Resistance, it really impassioned me’.38 Another conscientious objector and artist, Didier Poiraud, imprisoned in Montluc during the Algerian War, had also seen Bresson’s film prior to his arrest. For Poiraud, the film offered up a visual catalogue of images, which later upon his arrival in Montluc allowed him to recall the Resistance fighters who had once inhabited the prison and to relay their relevance to his present condition. As he noted during the interview with the author, ‘[i]f Montluc was hardly a sanctuary, we were at least in a historical place’.39

Franco-Algerian Resonance in Montluc The arrival of Algerians at Montluc just as the Algerian War was intensifying in metropolitan France, further fuelled the active mobilisation of memories related to the Vichy and Nazi eras. An old policing tactic and throwback to the Vichy years – the roundup – was resurrected to take Algerians into police custody. The policing of Algerians appeared to replay the tactics used against the Jews during Vichy, in the manner of what Jim House called ‘similarity in difference’.40 The repressive tactics of the police in both the Vichy and decolonisation periods certainly resembled one another, even though they were not historically identical. What mattered was that the persecution of Algerians recalled the past, and that this past lived on as active memories to fuel the political support for the Algerians in the present. 268

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Carceral Experiences In the first instance, starting in the summer of 1957, massive roundups of Algerians were conducted across different sectors of greater Lyon. Algerian suspects were detained for various lengths of time in the barracks of Fort Montluc, repurposed as an ‘Identification Centre’.41 For the city’s authorities, the roundups of Lyon’s ‘French Muslims’ were supposed to produce a ‘psychological shock’ for an already alert and sensitised public in the wake of a series of armed attacks in the city. For city officials, the hope was to reinforce the idea that Algerians were a societal threat.42 But if there ever was any shock, it was not the kind anticipated by the authorities. Instead, a reawakening of traumatic memories related to Vichy instigated new calls for solidarity with the Algerians. Immediately after the massive roundup of 24 July 1957, the communist newspaper La République condemned this ‘most unlawful of procedures’, a reference to de Gaulle’s turn to emergency powers in metropolitan France, which had not yet been ratified by the Senate. One journalist maintained that ‘the emotions touched off by the roundup operations pulsated throughout the city when restrictions were placed on the daily movement of local inhabitants. When forced to show their identity cards at various checkpoints, citizens invoked comparisons with “the heyday of the occupation”’.43 For the journalist, this ‘anti-Algerian police raid’ showed itself as ‘an unfortunate tendency [by the police] to use the odious methods we all remember so well’.44 The unlawful exercise of ‘special powers’ recalled ‘the absolute powers exercised by Pétain’,45 and the ‘abominable documents’ were likened to ‘the laws of Vichy,46 as the police could demand that individuals show their papers day or night. Never, except in the most odious moments of the German occupation and of the Vichy regime, have such restrictions ever been placed on our freedoms’.47 Historical memory became a potent means to lambast the present-day persecution of Algerians. Slogans such as ‘The Vichy regime thrives again!’48 needed no further embellishment. The rhetoric against the unjust treatment of Algerians cycled through an inventory of Vichy references still fresh in public memory. When referring to the racial profiling of Algerians and anti-Arab slurs such as bicot and bougnoule,49 the public recalled Vichy-era ‘racial pogroms’50 and ‘racial persecution’ (la chasse aux faciès)51 in protestation. In newspapers, too, the memories of the Vichy past were animated to speak volumes. Next to a photo of one roundup, where Algerians were detained by the police with their hands held up against the wall, read the caption: ‘Yes, exactly like the Gestapo’.52 Contrary to what the authorities envisioned, the mass roundups and the detainment of Algerians resulted in calls for solidarity and expressions of indignation throughout Lyon. Following the indiscriminate roundups during the summer of 1957, subsequent police operations specifically targeted those Algerians whom they had 269

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Marc André marked as ringleaders in their communities. Almost 300 Algerian militants with suspected ties to the FLN (National Liberation Front) or the MNA (Algerian National Movement)53 were arrested and detained for several weeks in Montluc before being transferred to internment camps in Algeria. Prior to the Law of 7 October 1958, the internment of Algerians in camps on metropolitan soil had been forbidden. The roundup was the only device available to authorities who were after Algerians.54 After the law of 7 October, Montluc became the detention centre. The expulsion and internment in Algeria of Mostefa Merzoug-Belhadj, a prominent member of the Association of Muslim Algerian students in Lyon, illustrates the various ways in which memories of Vichy and the Nazi past were conjured to highlight the atrocious actions of the police past and present. Mostefa’s wife Jeannine, taken by surprise on the morning of her husband’s arrest on 6 December 1957, rushed over to the central police station and pounded on the door as she called out to the police chief with the rebuke: ‘Listen, I cannot trust you! We already came looking for my father here in Pétain’s time. Why would I believe anything you say? I do not trust the police – of any kind – whatsoever’! Jeannine then headed for Montluc where she tried to see her husband, but in vain. She soon learned from the lawyer Emma Gounot that he was being held in Montluc, in a cell next to the very Nazis whom Gounot had defended several years earlier. When Jeannine finally learned of her husband’s transfer to a camp in Beni-Messous in Algeria, she fulminated against his ‘deportation’ and the ‘Vichy-like tactics’ that put him there.55 Lawyers pleading his case rallied the support of a public that corroborated the unlawful ‘deportation’ and internment of Algerians and demanded to know the whereabouts of the missing persons who remained unaccounted for. Objections raised against the detainment of Algerians in Montluc drew on recent memories of the Vichy-era deportations of Jews, thus perpetuating the memory of the Shoah in discourses about the injustices suffered by the Algerians. ‘What has become of Bali and Belhadj?’56 were questions posed when Algerians were transferred to internment camps. Such questions as to the whereabouts of Algerians were echoed in the search for Maurice Audin, just as they were in the inquiries directed at deported Jews during the occupation. Public opposition to the tactics being used to repress anti-colonial activists and Algerian nationalists relied on anti-fascist language when denouncing the ‘intimidation tactics’ reminiscent of the recent past. In a transversal transmission of memories that cut across the different identities and backgrounds of the victims, fellow students of Maurice Audin created two watchdog associations: the Committee of Anti-Fascist Jewish Students and the Liberal Students of North Africa.57 270

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Carceral Experiences No sooner was the law of 7 October 1958 sanctioning the internment of Algerians in France promulgated than the most politically active Algerians were handed over to the military justice tribunal. On the following day, on 8 October, several categories of Algerians – political assassins, the various leaders of militant networks and their French accomplices – were referred to the tribunal for trial. The roundups and internment of Algerians in France and in Montluc especially, brought on new concerns about security in the detention centres. When the 1958 law was passed, the security system in Montluc was reassessed and new barriers put in place. First, separate wings were designated for men and women respectively. When Montluc was decided as the prison for death row inmates, numerous architectural modifications were made to the interior of the prison. On the whole, Montluc had all the basic security measures in place: a fivemetre-high exterior wall, a secured roundabout path, a modern entry station and iron rack-and-pinion gates. But the general consensus in the 1950s was that Montluc had none of ‘the desirable security guarantees’. Surveillance of the prisoners relied mainly on a small aperture on the cell doors. The complex was also exposed to a variety of security gaps. Prisoners could, if given the chance, scale the utility poles that lined the exterior wall, which encircled the roundabout path, or they could pass unseen between the prison buildings and shield themselves from view. In short, there were many elements that could assist escape if prisoners were willing to take the risk.58 It took the arrival of Algerians in Montluc to convert the prison complex into a fortress with heightened security. A courtyard was paved and closed off by a 2.5-metre-high wall to allow for walkabouts without disrupting the daily routine of other prisoners.59 A new gallery was created and separated from the other floors through a special railing.60 New locks and portholes were installed on cell doors.61 Phone lines connecting the detention door inside the prison to the main exterior door were buried below ground, while a new exterior telephone line was installed to connect the prison directly to the gendarmerie. In short, the Algerians were wholly segregated from the other prisoners and isolated under heightened security measures. None of these measures could staunch the circulation of memories in Montluc however. In the various texts written by the prisoners after their release and in the interviews that I conducted in Algeria between 2011 and 2018,62 former partisans of Algeria’s national liberation movement testified to the impact that the traces of World War II in Montluc had on their historical consciousness and memory. Salah Khalef, a survivor of Montluc who had been sentenced to death during the war, did not have to be asked too many questions before he recalled the vivid imprints of the past inside Montluc: ‘Lots of things happened there [ . . . ] When I entered the prison, I was struck by the 271

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Marc André bullet holes that covered the walls’.63 Amar Bireche, another interviewee, noted that there were plenty of bullet holes (from the World War II period) on the exterior of the prison.64 Lamri Boukhalfa remarked that ‘the Germans must have executed I don’t know how many French people there’.65 In some instances, it was the prison guards who played educator to the prisoners. In transiting from the tribunal to the prison, it was possible to take into view the wall of execution at the far end of the roundabout path. As Khalef recalled: ‘There was an old prison guard – very old, who did not want to retire and who practically lived there [ . . . ]. He told me that the Germans used to shoot at the outer walls of Montluc when the prisoners scaled their cell walls to reach the windows’. In the wing where the women were confined, female guards kept surveillance and likewise relayed particular views of the past to the prisoners. According to Claudie Duhamel, a young student anti-colonial activist at the time of her imprisonment, the guards would draw explicit connections between the Nazi past and the decolonizing present, sometimes with the intent to intimidate the prisoners. Duhamel recalled the chilling words of one female guard who decided to enlighten her on the putsch of the generals: “‘You see that wall” – it was the wall that still bore the marks of executions of resistance fighters – “that’s where you’ll be lined up, too”’. As Duhamel remembered, ‘the jangling of the keys at night [ . . . ] spelled the end for me’.66 Apart from the bullet marks, quite a few prisoners during decolonization mentioned the graffiti left behind by members of the Resistance. When Moussa Lachtar wrote in his little notebook the maxim ‘To die for the patrie is the most beautiful end to a beautiful life’, we have to wonder whether he might have been inspired by the graffiti left behind by one Fleury Seive, who wrote: ‘To die for the patrie is the most beautiful, the most dignified act of all’.67 The refrain of the Song of the Girondins, an old anthem dating back to the French Second Republic (1848–1951) was carved on the stone wall inside the prison, stirring up nationalist feeling among the detainees – first, for a Frenchman seeking liberation from the Nazi occupation, and later for an Algerian seeking independence from French colonial rule. As these tell-tale narratives would reveal, even Montluc’s walls were conduits of memories with signifiers that could be conjugated to articulate present-day hopes and aspirations. As prisoners who entered Montluc during the Algerian War reappropriated the memories that circulated throughout the prison, they also imagined a long genealogy of resistance fighters. Khalef remembered that ‘Montluc was the prison of the very man who had coordinated the French Resistance; it was the prison of Jean Moulin. He had written his name in one of the cells. It was also the prison of Bourguiba. We were somewhat proud of being there, in this historic prison. So why not us, too?’68 The connection was obvious for 272

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Carceral Experiences Khalef: ‘We were fighting colonialism, they were fighting Nazism, a kind of colonialism – an occupation’. This was also true for Lamri Boukhalfa: ‘These Resistance fighters – we recognise them. They were like us’.69 Moussa Lachtar, another Montluc survivor in 1962, would publish a book about his experiences while in prison and dedicate it to the Resistance. If the incarceration of Algerians instigated the circulation of memories inside the prison, then outside of Montluc, the ripple effect of a juridical debacle which led to the botched sentencing of an Algerian would soon spur on a mass mobilisation of supporters. Abderrahmane Lakhlifi was executed on 8 July 1960, the eighth among the eleven Algerians to be guillotined in Montluc. While the executions of the first seven Algerians in Montluc were met with indifference by the public, Lakhlifi’s case would set in motion a campaign to raise consciousness about the plight of the Algerians. The communist newspaper Le Secours Populaire published Lakhlifi’s last letter to his father with a commentary that reminded readers of the many such letters that had been written during the occupation: ‘How could anyone not be moved? Is this the language of an assassin, of a bandit? Inevitably [ . . . ] one cannot avoid thinking about all the other letters written to their family members by the French people during the occupation, just minutes before they were shot’.70 The socialist paper L’Aurore pointed to the long period of indifference and cowardice that prevailed with regard to the executions of Algerians: ‘Even the Germans distinguished between common rights and politics [ . . . ] It would seem that the horrors of society do not concern us [ . . . ] I have walked past Montluc. Right around the corner from us, in these very buildings are people who are aware that we know about them [ . . . ] even if we do not see them’.71 While drawing comparisons between the present colonial regime and the fascist regimes of the past, the newspaper highlighted the paradoxical outcome of political oppression: ‘During the Nazi occupation of France, among other countries, the death of each patriot incited armed insurgencies against the occupants. The attacks on Nantes, Châteaubriant and Mont-Valérien were all followed by destructions of German trains and barracks’. For the journalist of the Secours populaire, the suffering of the Algerian families would likewise breed deep resentment and stir further violence and hatred. The paper brought together numerous associations of former combatants of World War II, mainly communists, along with the Committee of the Liaison of the Resistance in Lyon, the Association of Combatant Prisoners of the War in the Rhône and the Association of the Parents of Conscripted Soldiers in North Africa. The FLN in their nationalist discourse would also link France’s presentday colonial oppression with the German occupation. Speaking of de Gaulle, one FLN fighter declared: 273

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Marc André People of France! They judge, condemn, and guillotine men in your name—the men whose sacrifice is no different from that of the Resistance. In the past, it was Gerd von Rundstedt who gunned down the patriots of France; today, it is de Gaulle who guillotines the patriots of Algeria! In days past, it was the Germans who gunned down the French prisoners of Montluc. Today, it is de Gaulle who executes the Algerians in this very same prison! In days past, de Gaulle denounced von Rundstedt. Today, de Gaulle is von Rundstedt!72 Here, as in other FLN declarations, the memory of the Nazi past and the ongoing appeal to public conscience pivoted around Montluc to weave together a narrative that denounced the present-day oppression and sought common ground with those who had suffered in the past during World War II. In January 1961, Salah Dehil, an Algerian nationalist with FLN filiation, was guillotined in Montluc. His death made Montluc the deadliest of prisons for Algerians in France. A media campaign ensued in the wake of his death, making Montluc synonymous with political executions. Its edifice was the architectural trope for capital punishment, so much so that a newspaper article on the political prisoners in the penitentiary of Fresnes published a photo of Montluc in its stead. But in one corner emerged memorial movements that began to identify Montluc as a symbol of courage and struggle for freedom. Members of the Association of the Survivors of Montluc (Association des rescapés de Montluc), for example, described Montluc as a ‘citadel of freedom’. During an interview with a journalist, the president of the Paris branch of the association, Roger Maria, recalled the mass execution of Montluc’s prisoners by the Gestapo in June 1944 and the story of a survivor who barely made it out alive under his care. In the end, he urged readers to mobilise in support of the Algerians.73 The article was followed immediately by the news of the execution of Salah Dehil. The two stories together in the same paper confirmed as well as reinforced the memorial ties between the Nazi occupation during World War II and the ongoing struggles during decolonisation, validating Montluc’s symbolism as a site of oppression and the struggle against it all at once.

The Memorialisation of World War II and the Demise of Solidarity in Montluc As the Algerian War drew to an end, commemorations around Montluc converged on the victims of Nazi occupation, gradually loosening the prison’s historical ties to the Algerian War and other decolonisation struggles. In 1961, 274

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Carceral Experiences a stele was placed in Montluc, reminding the public that ‘from 1941 to 1944, several thousand French patriots were incarcerated in Fort Montluc before their execution or deportation to the Nazi extermination camps’. These words marked the closure of twenty years of Montluc’s tragic but dynamic history by establishing Montluc as a memorial with a mono-focal fixation on World War II. With the incontrovertible consecration of Montluc as an exclusive memorial to the Shoah and the victims of Vichy and the German occupation, the stele effectively extruded the Algerian heritage from Montluc. At the same time, the living embodiments of the Algerian past were also removed from the premises, as Algerian prisoners, including those awaiting execution, were released and expelled from France with the signing of the Evian Accords on 19 March 1962. The trial of Klaus Barbie in the 1980s marked the final transition of Montluc from a social environment of living memories and solidarity to a lieu de mémoire, a site of memories focused solely on World War II. According to a televised broadcast on 6 February 1983, just one day after Klaus Barbie’s arrest, . . . Klaus Barbie, war criminal and former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, spent his first night in prison at Fort Montluc, a symbolic choice, since it was in this very place where Barbie had imprisoned and murdered thousands of French Resistance fighters, including their leader, Jean Moulin, and had detained almost 7,500 Jews before their deportation.74 The symbolism around Montluc’s connection to Nazi oppression was worked over with great care throughout the trial. Montluc’s part in shaping the politics of memorialisation in France becomes all the more evident when we compare the debates surrounding the 1987 landmark trial of Klaus Barbie to those surrounding the provocative 1997 trial of Maurice Papon, former Prefect of the Paris Police. Papon was tried for his role in the deportation of Jews in Bordeaux during World War II. During the trial, historian Jean-Luc Einaudi testified against Papon for his role on the night of 17 October 1961, which resulted in the murders and drowning of Algerians in the Seine.75 Although Papon was not charged formally for this crime, his trial presented an opportunity for a public indictment and media debate about the massacre of 17 October 1961, one of the most heinous episodes of the Algerian War in metropolitan France. The debate took a very different turn in the trial of Barbie. Like Papon, Barbie was convicted on charges related to crimes against humanity. But unlike with Papon, the accusations levelled against Barbie revealed that the very meaning of ‘crime against humanity’ had now become identified with the Nazi past 275

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Marc André and deportation. Jacques Vergès, the lead defence lawyer for Barbie, was among the rare few to argue for the similitude between the Nazi and colonial regimes. Vergès, who had earned the reputation of being a ‘defender of terror’, persisted with the claim that ‘the actual abuses committed by the French army in Algeria’ was on a par with ‘the Nazi attempt to annihilate an entire people’.76 In Le Quotidien de Paris, journalist Dominique Jamet resumed that ‘Vergès and his team addressed the tribunal in the name of humanity’ and placed Barbie’s actions in a long line of crimes against humanity that included slavery, the mass displacement of Africans and numerous colonial ‘pacification’ operations: ‘For Vergès and his team, to consider crimes against humanity as the sole prerogative of the Nazis was a flat-out denial of all other crimes committed against humanity’. In a similar vein, historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who was unwavering in his twofold battle against Holocaust denial and French colonial crimes, would write in Le monde that ‘no juridical course of action has ever been pursued with regards to France’s actions in Algeria, Indochina, or Madagascar’.77 These arguments, however, were no longer persuasive. It was Ugo Iannucci, the lawyer for the civilian parties who stood against Barbie and who would later become a human rights lawyer, and who would gain the upper hand in the trial. Iannucci fired off the argument that ‘the forced displacement of people [ . . . ] in Algeria [ . . . ] cannot possibly be compared to the extermination of the whole of the Jewish population in Europe.78 It was Iannucci’s, and not Vergès’ argument that would prevail in the end. Following Barbie’s trial, the transformation of Montluc into a World War II memorial was achieved across successive phases, each marked by a particular event. First, in 1994, the local Committee of Interest of Sans-Souci, the name of the neighbourhood where Montluc is located, launched a project to paint a mural over the prison’s outer walls, which had long been covered in graffiti. The mural with a series of World War II-related images remains there still. Measuring 160 metres across and 4.5 metres in height, the mural begins with a black-and-white image of two children running towards overlapping brushstrokes of orange and reddish hues that eventually blend into a field of red, its horizon met by a dark blue sky. Against one part of the mural stands a stele framed by a stone façade, engraved with the of the victims of Nazi oppression. The most blatant imagery is a large portrait of Jean Moulin, outlined over the landscape. Another part of the mural shows tally marks to conjure the markings left behind by prisoners counting down the days in their cells. The last image on the mural is of two children re-emerging, this time awash in colour, running happily along. Montluc, on one side of the wall, faces the University of Jean Moulin Lyon-3, whose history was tainted with Holocaust denial and anti-semitism.79 As if to impose on the university a constant reminder of its 276

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Carceral Experiences shameful history, Montluc projects its mission and imagery outward to pay overt and exclusive homage to the Resistance. In 2004, the Association of the Survivors of Montluc requested the designation of Montluc as a historical site, not for any architectural distinction – ‘for nothing about it is extraordinary’ – but for the purpose of preserving the select memory of World War II victims.80 The president of the Association, Bruno Permezel, responded that, ‘if Algeria is not a mere side-show, neither is it the main event. Montluc’s edifice is ‘first and foremost recognised as the prison of the Gestapos’.81 ‘As for the regional delegation of the Sons and Daughters of the Jewish Deportees of France’, it proposed that Montluc remain a site of memory exclusively dedicated to World War II, ‘because the objective and purpose of the Memorial are about honouring that history’.82 Five years later, in 2009, a group of actors – the prefect and representatives of the Centre for the History of the Resistance and Deportation, the Association of the Survivors of Montluc and the former Resistance and Deportees – transformed the prison into one of France’s ten national memorials. With this, the memories of the Algerian past were definitively expunged. Concomitant with the decision to classify some of Montluc’s architectural elements as national heritage features – including the entryway, the prison cells and the wall with bullet holes – it was decided that Montluc should be restored to its features of the 1940s before the imprisonment of the Algerians. Even on the exterior, traces of the Algerian past were scrubbed off to certify Montluc as a World War II memorial. On 25 June 2009, the site was officially declared a historical monument. No sooner had the memorial opened on this day than the competition between memories got underway. The inauguration of the site coincided with the publication in Algeria of a book written by a former Montluc prisoner, an Algerian, who had survived the death penalty: Mostefa Boudina. Boudina, once an FLN fighter, was now the president of the Algerian association of prisoners who had received the death penalty during the war. On a filmed visit to Montluc where he had once been detained, the controversial and outspoken Boudina forcefully raised the issue of the Algerian prisoners’ exclusion from the site. During the visit, when the director of the memorial was heard speaking of the ‘deportations of Jews to Drancy’,83 Boudina interjected: ‘I see traces of all those who suffered in this prison, but I cannot not find any trace of the Algerians’. Since then, Boudina has led a fight to place a plaque in the memorial, in remembrance of the eleven comrades who were guillotined in Montluc.84 Boudina’s vocal agenda to reinstate the history of Algerians at the memorial has further alienated Montluc from its history as a regenerative social environment where many temporalities, memories and voices actively forged a narrative 277

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Marc André of mutual recognition and solidarity. To insist on Montluc as a safe haven for discrete blocs of memories would be to obfuscate the prolonged transversal transmission of memories that once reverberated throughout the prison. The polemic surrounding the memorial today has not only effaced the multitude of voices that once spoke to one another’s struggles, but it has also turned the memories of World War II into sterile signifiers of an obsolete past. Any attempt to insert the Algerian War into Montluc as an object of remembrance without considering the multi-directional dialogic interactions between the prisoners who had experienced both World War II and the wars of decolonisation would fall short of recognising Montluc’s actual heritage.

Conclusion Montluc’s history spanned the turbulent conflicts of the twentieth century and the successive regimes that held power in France, from Vichy to the Fifth Republic. While each of these pasts remained integral to the memories that congregated in Montluc, the dialogic synergy between these resulted in a unique historical moment. Montluc’s political detainees drew on their shared carceral experience to devise new communal memories of solidarity during a tumultuous period of political upheaval. Once the prison was transformed into a memorial, however, memories became subject to commemorative battles that remained oblivious to past solidarities. From 1944 to 1962, Montluc was an internment site, a commemorative space, a social environment and a sounding board for resonant memories and narratives. Those who had survived past oppressive regimes encountered those who suffered in the present, engaging in dialogue to surmount the barriers that divided the prisoners. In Montluc, prisoners lived in the shadow of imminent death, but they also imagined a community and found solidarity despite it all. Prisoners who had survived the Gestapo feared not only for their own lives but also for those of others who shared the same carceral space. They witnessed the deaths of prisoners following long hours of torture and saw others leave ‘without suitcases’, never to return. Prisoners who were interned for their anticolonial politics – Algerians especially – recalled the plight of those who had come before them and, in response, called for a collective rather than personal liberation. These interchanges created a veritable ‘oasis of resonance’. After the war, they testified in public about the horrors of incarceration and amplified their voices in defence of all those who succumbed to arbitrary acts of injustice. In 2010, when the memorial was oriented primarily toward the victims of World War II, the site was emptied, cleaned and repainted. From this moment onwards, Montluc became an echo chamber anchored firmly in World War II 278

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Carceral Experiences memories. If there was space to be made in the memorial, it was reserved only for narratives tied to the Nazi past. The multiple axes of resonances that had once filled Montluc’s spaces and its environs gave way to a dissonance of voices that only talk over and past one another. The polemics surrounding Montluc after 2009 were symptomatic of a broader societal phenomenon in France. At a time when historical recognition had become a scarce resource, various advocates for the commemoration of World War II acted as stakeholders in a fierce competition to capitalise on what remained of symbolic recognition in French society. Spokespersons for the victims of the Gestapo and the sons and daughters of French deportees, on the one side, and those representing former prisoners who had received the death penalty on the other, sought to privatise and close off their respective echo chambers. The past was no longer a living force, but an instrument in the project to formally stamp the memorial as a monument dedicated only to those who died in World War II. Not all is lost, however. There are still those who lean in to listen and remain tuned in to the reverberations of the past. There are the curious – historians, artists and journalists – who discreetly seek out the traces that remain of the solidarity that once emerged out of Montluc. And there are still those who speak, if only in murmurs, in a quiet chorus.

Notes  1. Charlotte Delbo, Les belles lettres (Paris: Minuit, 2012), 151; Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press), 276.  2. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 19–21. There is a discrepancy between the spellings of Bousetta Hamou’s name. In the trial records, the same name is spelled ‘Boucetta Hammou’. See Marc André, Une prison pour mémoire: Montluc de 1944 à nos jours (Lyon: ENS éditions, 2022), 15.  3. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 19.  4. Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 21.  5. Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2015), 148.  6. André, Une prison pour mémoire, 204.  7. André, Une prison pour mémoire, 19. See Michel Foucault, ‘Des lieux autres’, Dits et écrits vol. 2: 1976–88 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), 1571; François Hartog, Confrontations avec l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 2021), 70.  8. Deleuze, ‘Verité et temps’, unpubl. lecture (12 June 1983), 3, http://www2.univ-paris8. fr/deleuze/article.php3?id_article=362.  9. See the introduction to Pierre Nora, Lieux de mémoire, Tome I: La République (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 15–42. See also Rothberg’s reference to milieux de mémoire in his Multidirectional Memory, 298.

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Marc André 10. See the statement on Montluc’s official webpage, https://www.memorial-montluc.fr/ lieu/memorial. 11. Vanessa Codacionni, Justice d’exception: L’État face aux crimes politiques et terroristes (CNRS Éditions, 2015), 19. See also Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 127. A prime example of the kind of juridical exception that Codacionni analysed emerged during the Algerian War in 1958, when Charles de Gaulle finally did away with traditional judicial procedures, ‘marginalised parliament’ and ‘rewire[d] the legal system’ with the goal of convicting members of the secret armed organisation OAS (Organisation de l’armée secrete), which had resorted to terrorist tactics in their fight against de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic and his decision to withdraw from Algeria. 12. The trial took place on 26 August 1950. Among other affairs tried in France, see the ‘ten of Bocca’, tried by the Marseilles tribunal in October 1950, as well as the ‘twelve of Saint-Brieuc’ and the ‘nine of Nantes’, tried by the military tribunal of Paris in January and March 1951, respectively. 13. In February 1948, the French Communist Party created the ‘combatants for freedom’, a group composed of approximately fifty members of the Resistance. In June, the group became the ‘movement for peace and freedom’. Vanessa Codaccioni, Punir les opposants: PCF et procès politiques, 1947–1962 (Paris: CNRS éditions, 2013), 76. 14. Archives Tribunal militaire de Lyon, Jugement n°205/4900. 15. An autobiographical account detailing his multiple incarcerations was published posthumously; see Lucien Benoît, Histoire de prison, du maquis et d’ailleurs (Lyon: Aleas Éditeur, 2006). 16. Le Patriote (31 March 1950). 17. Le Patriote (12 April 1950). 18. La République de Lyon (7 April 1950). 19. La République de Lyon (7 April 1950). 20. La République de Lyon (7 April 1950). 21. La République (12 July 1956): 3. 22. Les Allobroges (11 June 1956): 2. 23. Les Allobroges (12 June 1956): 1. 24. Flyer ‘More Than Ever, a Cease-Fire in Algeria’. 25. Interview, Lyon, 11 June 1956. 26. The Moscow Declaration was decided during a meeting between Britain’s Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, the American Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Vyacheslav Molotov of the Soviet Union. On this topic, see Annette Wieviorka, Auschwitz: La mémoire d’un lieu (Paris: Hachette Litérature, 2006), 46. 27. Pierre Renoux, Montluc, 10 June 1956. On 29 June, he continued: ‘Guy Mollet and Lacoste do not want to come empty-handed to the table to face the reactionary authorities who supported their Algerian policy. They are making up for the lack of military victories by taking hostages’. 28. Inspection report. The director of the penitentiary office in Lyon to the Minister of Justice, 5 February 1952. Archive nationales de France (hereafter AN), 19960148/117. 29. Report of the Lyon regional office on the operation of penitentiary institutions: Prison of Lyon-Montluc, 1948–85. The 123 prisoners included thirty-four members of the military, sixty Germans, eleven communists and fourteen prisoners who had been sentenced to death. AN, 19960148/117.

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Carceral Experiences 30. Private archives of Pierre Renoux, Lettre, Le Teil, 12 June 1956. 31. La République (10 July 1957). 32. André, Une prison pour mémoire, 120. 33. La Défense (December 1957): 2. 34. La Défense (December 1957): 2. 35. La République (11 July 1956): 3. 36. AN, 19960148/117. 37. Note on the conditions under which Bresson could film on location in Montluc about Devigny, 5 March 1956. AN, 19960148/117. See André, Prison pour mémoire, 153. 38. Interview with Jean Clavel, 18 September 2018. 39. Interview with Didier Poiraud, 5 July 2018. 40. Jim House, ‘Memory and the Creation of Solidarity during the Decolonization of Algeria’, in Nœuds de Mémoires: Multidirectional Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture, ed. Michael Rothberg (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 15. 41. A police centre was established in Montluc in 1957 to register the identity and fingerprints of all Algerians in Lyon, even though they possessed full French citizenship. A police record was created for each male Algerian. See Alexis Spire’s analysis of ‘paradoxical citizenship’ in ‘Semblables et pourtant différents: La citoyenneté paradoxale des “Français musulmans d’Algérie” en métropole’, Genèses 53, no. 4 (2003): 48–68. 42. DHL (26 July 1957). 43. La République (24 July 1957). 44. La République (25 July 1957). 45. La République (20–21 July 1957). 46. La République (16 July 1957). 47. La République (16 July 1957). 48. La Défense (October 1957): 2. 49. La République (11 December 1957). 50. La République (25 July 1957). 51. La République (12 August 1957). 52. La République (December 1957). 53. The first Algerian nationalist party, L’Étoile nord-africaine, founded in metropolitan France in 1927, was dissolved in 1937 and then succeeded by the MTLD (Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques), which subsequently split into two opposing pro-independence parties in 1954: the MNA, which favoured a non-violent solution, and the FLN, which advocated for armed conflict. The FLN would prevail and launch the war of independence on Toussaint, in 1954. 54. The Law of the State of Emergency law of 3 April 1953 was restored to the governorgeneral after having been suspended in 1945. The law accorded the governor-general the right to place under house arrest any individual whose activities proved to be ‘dangerous to public order and security’. In May 1955, the first camps were opened in Algeria. Illegal at first, the camps were legalised by the law of special powers, promulgated on 16 March 1956. Sylvie Thénault, Une drôle de justice: Les magistrats dans la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2004), 48. 55. Interview with Jeannine Merzoug Belhadj, in André, Une prison pour mémoire, 190–91. 56. La République (17 January 1957). 57. La République (11 December 1957). 58. Prison Montluc, 28 June 1950. AN, 19960148/117.

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Marc André 59. Regional director of the penitentiary office of Lyon to the Ministry of Justice, 19 February 1959. AN, 19960148/117. 60. Director of Prisons of Lyon to the Keeper of the Seals of France (Garde des Sceaux), 3 July 1959. AN, 19960148/117. 61. Director of the penitentiary office of Lyon to the Minister of Justice, Lyon, 11 May 1959. AN, 19960148/117. 62. The project included forty interviews with former Montluc prisoners, among whom several had received the death penalty. 63. Interview, 8 November 2012. 64. Interview, 11 November 2012. 65. Interview, 10 November 2012. 66. Lyon Prisons, personnel files; Archives départementales du Rhȏne, 2089W85. 67. Fleury Seive, De Montluc à Fresnes (Paris: Éditions Arthaud, 1945), 35. 68. Jean Moulin, sent to Lyon by de Gaulle to unify the Resistance movements, was imprisoned at Montluc under the pseudonym Jacques Martel from 21 June to 8 July 1943. Habib Bourguiba passed through Montluc on 23 November 1942, on his way to Fort Valencia in Ain, from where he was ‘liberated’ by the Germans in 1943. 69. Moussa Lachtar, La guillotine (Paris: Maspero, 1962). 70. La Défense (September 1960). 71. L’Aurore (4 August 1960). 72. El Moudjahid, 71 (14 October 1960): 250. 73. La Défense (April 1961). 74. ‘Lyon ce matin’, France 2 (6 February 1983), http://www.ina.fr/video/CAB8300095201. 75. See Jean-Luc Einaudi, Octobre 1961: Un massacre à Paris (Paris: Pluriel, 2011). 76. Claude Carrez, Ugo Iannucci: Des baraques au Barreau: Itinéraire d’un fils d’antifasciste italien (Lyon: Aléas éditeur, 2010), 86–87. 77. Le monde (16 June 1987). 78. Ugo Iannucci, Soldat dans les gorges de Palestro: Journal de guerre (Lyon: Aléas éditeur, 2006), 18–19. 79. Henry Rousso, Le Dossier de Lyon III: Le rapport sur le racisme et le négationnisme à l’université Jean-Moulin (Paris: Fayard, 2004). 80. Marie Bardisa, conservationist of historical monuments at the Regional Directory of Cultural Affairs, ‘Les prémices 1994–2004: L’association des rescapés et le procès Barbie’ [video]. 81. B. Permezel, ‘Un mémoire centré sur la période 1943–1944’ [video 1.1.4], 8:24, http:// www.patrimonum.fr/monluc/ 82. Jean Lévy, ‘Montluc entre mémoires et histoire’ [video]. 83. Mohamed Zaoui, Retour à Montluc, Yasmine Media, 2013, 49:30. 84. Zaoui, Retour à Montluc.

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10 Toxifying the Sahara: On France’s Atomic Built Environments Samia Henni

In the early hours of 13 February 1960, the French authorities detonated their very first atomic bomb in Reggane, in the Tanezrouft Plain of the Algerian Sahara, approximately 1,150 kilometres south of Algiers. Immediately afterwards, General Charles de Gaulle, the then President of the French Fifth Republic, declared: ‘Hurrah for France! As of this morning, it is stronger and prouder. From the bottom of my heart, my thanks to you and to those who have obtained for her this magnificent success’.1 France had thus made its entry into the exclusive nuclear weapons club, becoming the fourth country to possess these weapons of mass destruction after the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Kingdom. Such pride rarely seemed to be affected by the destruction of human, animal and vegetal lives and the toxification of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of natural, living and built environments in Algeria and elsewhere. In fact, between February 1960 – about five years after the outbreak of the Algerian Revolution and four years after the first exploitation of Algerian oil – and February 1966 – around four years after Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule – France detonated seventeen nuclear bombs in the Algerian Sahara and tested other nuclear technologies and weapons, spreading radioactive fallout across Algeria, Central and West Africa, as well as the Mediterranean (including southern Europe), causing irreversible contamination. Following the four atmospheric detonations and the thirty-five nuclear tests, the French colonial regime detonated thirteen more underground nuclear bombs and tested other weapons at In Ecker, in the Hoggar Mountains of the Algerian Sahara. These atomic explosions were conducted 283

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Samia Henni despite the approval of Algeria’s referendum on self-determination by 75 percent of voters on 8 January 1961 and the ensuing independence from France in March 1962, after 132 years of French colonial rule. In 1966, France moved its nuclear weapons testing from Algeria to another territory under French rule: the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls in colonised Tahiti Nui (French Polynesia) in the southern Pacific Ocean. Despite objections and protests, the French colonial authorities conducted nearly 200 atmospheric and underground nuclear experiments there between 1966 and 1996, further toxifying colonised environments. This paper examines France’s nuclear programme in the Algerian Sahara, specifically the environments that were built to meet the objective of this programme, namely, two nuclear sites: the Centre saharien d’expérimentations militaires (CSEM, or Saharan Centre for Military Experiments) in Reggane and the Centre d’expérimentations militaires des oasis (CEMO, or the Centre of Military Tests of Oases) in In Ecker, about 600 kilometres southeast of Reggane. The paper also interrogates the role that France’s civil and military institutions and authorities play today in taking responsibility for decontaminating the environments that it toxified in the 1960s and questions the accessibility of the official sources that enable the writing of these histories.

The Militarisation of France’s Nuclear Programme France’s nuclear programme began immediately after the United States dropped its atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. In October of the same year, General Charles de Gaulle, then Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic, created the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA, or Atomic Energy Commission, now called the French Alternatives Energies and Atomic Energy Commission). He appointed Jean Frédéric JoliotCurie, a French physicist who together with his wife Irène Joliot-Curie had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935, as France’s first High Commissioner for Atomic Energy. Raoul Dautry, a French engineer, former Minister of Armaments and War Production and former Minister of Reconstruction and Urban Development, was nominated as General Director of the CEA.2 The aim of this publicly funded French civil institution was to conduct atomic research in sciences, industry and national defence. On 26 October 1954, four days before the outbreak of the Algerian Revolution, the French government presided by René Coty (1882–1962), whose Prime Minister was Pierre Mendès France (1907–82), established the Commission supérieure des applications militaires de l’énergie atomique (High Commission of Military Applications of Atomic Energy). One of its 284

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Toxifying the Sahara subdivisions consisted of the Comité des explosifs nucléaires (Nuclear Explosives Committee), its military personnel attached to the civil CEA.3 The fall of 1954 marked not only the onset of the Algerian Revolution (or Algerian War of Independence),4 which culminated in the practices and theories of modern warfare – also known as asymmetric war, psychological war, or counter-revolution (today, ‘counter-insurgency’)5 – but also the adoption by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)6 of a doctrine aiming at using tactical nuclear weapons in the event of aggression by Soviet forces in Europe. These two events incited the French army to accelerate the development of its nuclear armament programme. To meet this military objective, a new Groupe d’études des expérimentations spéciales (Study Group of Special Experiments) was established on 13 February 1956, under the Commandement des armées spéciales de l’Armée de Terre (Special Weapons Command of Land Forces). Its mission was ‘to study the military technical problems raised by eventual nuclear tests; to study the organization of these tests and prepare the training of the required military personnel’.7 On 5 December 1956, another decree created the Comité des applications militaires de l’énergie atomique (CAMEA, or Committee for Military Applications of Atomic Energy) under the leadership of General Paul Ely, Chief of Staff of French National Defence. The CAMEA decree abolished both the High Commission of Military Applications of Atomic Energy Nuclear Explosives Committee and brought together the civil scientists of the CEA and military forces around a joint long-term nuclear weapons programme. The CAMEA was to be consulted on ‘the joint research and work programs of the CEA and the Armed Forces’, as well as on ‘the allocation of the funds assigned by the CEA and by the Armed Forces for carrying out joint atomic programs’.8 On 18 March 1957, to further reinforce cooperation between France’s civil and military authorities, the Ministry of the Armies and the CEA ordered the creation of two working groups: a Groupe mixte des expérimentations nucléaires (Mixed Group for Nuclear Experiments) and a Groupe militaire des expérimentations nucléaires (Military Group for Nuclear Experiments). These new institutions were established just a few days before the founding of the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC, or Euratom) by the Euratom Treaty of 25 March 1957. Whereas the first (mixed) group included officers or military engineers as well as representatives of the CEA, the second group was composed exclusively of military representatives. The mixed group was charged with studying scientific and technical tests, proposing a distribution of tasks among civil and military employees, as well as organising, carrying out and executing the nuclear programme and tests. Its military counterpart was tasked with studying technical military issues regarding the tests, including ‘logistical 285

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Samia Henni means and necessary staff, installation of bases, ground and air security, organization and instruction of detection and decontamination units as well as organizing and conducting the preparation and carrying out of military tests’.9 The Military Group for Nuclear Experiments became the Commandement intermarmées des armes spéciales (CIAS, or Joint Commandment of Special Weapons) in February 1958. About a month before the French Generals’ putsch of 13 May 1958 in Algiers, the French authorities signed a resolution ordering that ‘the first series of military atomic device test explosions [begin] in the first quarter of 1960’.10 However, amid the Algerian independence war, the putsch marked not only General de Gaulle’s return to power, but also the collapse of the French Fourth Republic (1946–58) that had initiated the nuclear programme, as well as the acceleration of the French atomic armament programme. The coup was led by the apostles of l’Algérie française (French Algeria), including General Jacques Massu, Commander-in-Chief of the bloody Battle of Algiers (1956–57), and General Raoul Salan, France’s most decorated soldier at the time, one of the forefathers of counter-revolutionary warfare. The latter co-founded the paramilitary terrorist group Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS, or Secret Army Organisation) in 1961, which violently opposed Algeria’s independence and de Gaulle’s strategies. The putsch and de Gaulle’s return were fully supported by right-wing colons (colonists), known as the ultras, as well as figures such as Jacques Soustelle, a French ethnologist who served as Governor-General of Algeria between January 1955 and January 1956.11 In the aftermath of ‘May 58’, de Gaulle appointed Jacques Soustelle as Delegate Minister of Overseas Territories and Departments, the Sahara and Atomic Energy, a post that existed from February 1959 to February 1960 under de Gaulle’s Prime Minister, Michel Debré. In September 1958, de Gaulle established another institution within the CEA: the Direction des applications militaires (DAM, or Military Applications Directorate).12 Under the authority of the Premier, the Minister of Armed Forces and the CEA continued working on the joint mission of carrying out France’s nuclear armament programme. The CEA was responsible for manufacturing the bomb. The DAM, led by General Albert Buchalet (1911–87), and the Commandement interarmées des armes spéciales (CIAS), helmed by General Charles Ailleret (1907–68), were both responsible for the atomic tests, the construction of centres and infrastructure for the nuclear bombs in the Sahara, as well as for choosing, preparing and carrying out the tests. In other words, the DAM and CIAS jointly planned and administered the detonation of the atomic bombs.13 Given that the bombs were at once scientific, technical and military, their preparation and execution were entrusted to the Groupe 286

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Toxifying the Sahara mixte des expérimentations nucléaires, which comprised members of both the CEA’s DAM and the CIAS. This Groupe mixte was also responsible for safety measures regarding the staff and civilian populations. When conducting the atomic experiments in the Sahara, the group was known as the Groupement opérationnel des expérimentations nucléaires (Operational Unit for Nuclear Experiments).14

The Construction Sites of Atmospheric Bombs One of the results of the militarisation of France’s nuclear programme was that the French army took charge of the selection of the nuclear site, as well as the design, construction and management of the nuclear bases, infrastructure and launch fields in the Sahara. In early 1957, about two years after the outbreak of the Algerian Revolution, the armed forces ‘reviewed on the map all the territories then available to France that would be suitable for the testing’.15 They believed that the desert of the Algerian Sahara, specifically the Tanezrouft Plain, where the inhabited town of Reggane is located, was the ideal site for France’s first atomic bombs. According to Charles Ailleret, the head of the CIAS, known as ‘a Resistance fighter officer, Gaullist, patriot, republican and an engineering graduate of the École Polytechnique’,16 this territory was ‘fairly distant’ – from mainland France – and a ‘land of thirst and fear, from which all life was reputedly absent in the immense spaces between Reggane and Tessalit’.17 Ailleret argued that the area was characterised by ‘the total absence of animal and vegetal lives’. To confirm this choice, a French delegation visited the United States’ Nevada Test Site (today Nevada National Security Site) in 1957 and 1958 and witnessed the impacts of the bomb.18 However, contrary to Ailleret’s statement, the town of Reggane was inhabited, the surrounding region was crossed by nomadic and semi-nomadic populations, and fauna and flora were evidently not inexistent. Soon after this decision, military reconnaissance missions and water searches were conducted in Tanezrouft to demarcate the area to be employed for the preparation and detonation of weapons of mass destruction. In his book L’aventure atomique française: Comment naquit la force de frappe: Souvenirs et réflexions (The French Atomic Adventure: How the Strike Force Was Born: Memories and Reflections), Ailleret argued that ‘[t]he organisation of a fairly distant firing range, where considerable technical means had to be deployed, was going to pose very important problems of construction, logistics and safety’.19 The various factors that caused these ‘problems’ included a very short schedule for the construction of the infrastructure and bases, the absence of water and electricity, the lack of a transportation system for goods and people, and high summer temperatures reaching 50°C during the daytime. 287

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Samia Henni Even though French military officers serving in the Sahara advised the Parisian army officials responsible for the execution of the nuclear programme to postpone reconnaissance to after the summer, the operations were conducted in the summer of 1957. The military group in charge of the realisation of the construction projects was expected to coordinate the activities of the engineering units, air infrastructure department, administration, equipment, health and communications, as well as to organise air, land and sea transportation.20 On 23 July 1957, while the brutal Battle of Algiers was raging, the French General Assembly and the Council of the French Republic adopted law no. 57–820, authorising the use of 200 billion francs for the development of atomic energy between 1957 and 1961.21 Three months later, the secret construction sites were launched. The French army demarcated an area of about 100,000 square kilometres for the preparation and execution of its first atomic bombs. Named the Centre Saharien d’expérimentations militaires (CSEM, or Saharan Centre for Military Experiments), this immense area in the Algerian Sahara encompassed four geographic and functional zones: (1) an existing Saharan town known as RegganeVille located near an oasis; (2) a new base-vie (life base) called Reggane-Plateau for about 10,000 civil and military personnel, with underground laboratories and ateliers for the CEA’s employees; (3) a new advanced base (Hamoudia); and (4) a new ground zero zones (zone des points zéro), where the bombs were to be detonated. All these areas were to be connected with paved roads. Whereas Reggane-Plateau was located about 12 kilometres east of Reggane-Ville, the shooting field was situated approximately 15 kilometres south of the Hamoudia base and roughly 50 kilometres southwest of Reggane.22 In the spring of 1960, most of the constructions planned for the CSEM were completed, comprising 82,000 square metres of buildings, 7,000 square metres of underground works, 100 kilometres of roads, a water production of 1,200 cubic metres per day, 4,400 kilovolts of power in three power plants, more than 200 kilometres of underground cables and pipes, and 7,000 cubic metres of reinforced concrete in the ground zero zones.23 Reggane-Ville comprised three existing military fortified bases called ‘Bordj’: Bordj Estienne, Bordj of the Senegalese and Bordj of Saharan Affairs. Bordj Estienne hosted the residences of the CSEM commandant, the officers of its general staff and the engineers and officers on duty. Whereas engineers used the Bordj of the Senegalese, in which they had a large fleet of cars, the civil administration services of the region and the police forces were located at the Bordj of Saharan Affairs. The offices of the CSEM commandant and his officers were located at the Reggane-Plateau military base. This base hosted the non-advanced means of action, including troops, an airfield, laboratories, workshops, material and 288

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Toxifying the Sahara ammunition and fuel depots. It included living quarters, technical premises, a hospital, sports facilities, a swimming pool, water towers and an aerodrome with a 2,400-metre runway. The personnel lived and took their meals in Reggane-Plateau. A transportation service was provided to enable them to reach their workplace.24 A classified report (confidentiel défense) titled ‘Volume 1: The Genesis of the Organisation and Experiments in the Sahara (CSEM and CEMO)’ – which was leaked, partially published and commented on in the French daily newspaper Le Parisien of Tuesday, 16 February 2010, and is now available on the online platform of the French Observatoire des armements (Armaments Observatory)25 – argues that . . . Reggane’s construction site allows the Special Engineering Works Department to develop and test two construction processes adapted to the country’s climate. The so-called ‘Saharan’ single-floor pavilions and the prefabricated three-floor metal buildings. These two types of construction, which in fact derive from the same principle, namely the use of cavity walls with air circulation, have from the outset been studied according to their air conditioning.26 It was also believed that the three-floor metal buildings offered better natural ventilation of the rooms and protected the occupants of the upper floors from the bulk of the sand and dust that the wind almost constantly carried into the Saharan region. Furthermore, this spatial arrangement was expected to increase the density of the buildings, decrease the effect of heat reflection from the ground and reduce the cost of roads and air conditioning systems.27 The laboratories and workshops of the CEA were installed in galleries dug into a cliff in the southern part of Reggane-Plateau. According to Bruno Barrillot, winner of the 2010 Nuclear-Free Future Award and co-founder of the above-mentioned Observatoire des armements, a French independent nonprofit centre of expertise and documentation founded in Lyon in 1984, ‘it was here that the atomic devices arriving from France in spare parts were checked and assembled and that the first analyses of radioactive products had to be carried out after the explosions’.28 By 13 March 1960, the underground works carried out included a main structure of 4,913 square metres, six secondary structures with a total surface area of 717 square metres and several reconnaissance structures with a surface area of 650 square metres. When the planned works and extensions were completed, the total surface reached 7,000 square metres.29 To observe, control, record, measure and transmit the results of the devastating nuclear explosions, additional buildings were constructed on the advanced 289

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Figure 10.1 The construction site of life base of the Centre Saharien d’expérimentations militaires (CSEM, or Saharan Center for Military Experiments) in Reggane (July 1959) © Observatoire des armements – Lyon, France

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Toxifying the Sahara base of Hamoudia by the end of the summer of 1958. These included 5,800 square metres of indoor spaces, an electric power plant, a sending trail, a water supply pipeline coming from Reggane-Plateau, a water tower and paved roads connecting these constructions. The buildings comprised the Poste de commandement et de contrôle des mesures (PCCM, or Command and Measurement Control Centre), DAM offices and workshops, detection and decontamination centres, warehouses, barracks, camps and dwellings for the personnel participating in the equipment of the launch field in the ground zero zones.30 In this area, further installations were designed and built, including a very large blockhouse (Blockhaus Alpha) made of reinforced concrete. This elongated bunker barely emerged from the ground and was equipped with measuring instruments and numerous portholes behind which cameras were placed.31 After approximately two and a half years of designing and constructing the enormous infrastructure and buildings, the first bomb was successfully detonated in February 1960. Code-named Gerboise bleue (Blue Jerboa), after a tiny jumping desert rodent, the bomb had a blast capacity of about 60–70 kilotons.32 This was roughly four times the strength of Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, about a month before the end of World War II. Gerboise bleue was followed by three other bombs: Gerboise blanche (White Jerboa) on 1 April 1960; Gerboise rouge (Red Jerboa) on 27 December 1960; and Gerboise verte (Green Jerboa) on 25 April 1961. While the colours of the first three atmospheric bombs represented the French flag with blue, white and red, the last three bombs euphemistically formed the Algerian flag with white, red and green. However, the French colonial regime did not tolerate the presence of any Algerian flags in colonised Algeria, for two reasons: first, the three northern civil territories of colonised Algeria – Algiers, Constantine and Oran – had been deemed French departments since 1848, and the Algerian Sahara had been a French territory administered by the French army since 1902. Second, the French military and civil authorities had been fighting against the Algerian Revolution since 1954 and defended their economic and political interests in Algeria.33 General Charles Ailleret described the first explosion as follows: At exactly 07:04 am, just as the loudspeaker announced zero, a point of extraordinary brilliance, even through glasses that barely let in the sunshine in broad daylight, appeared where the top of the tower was. Then, instantly, there was the huge fireball that lasted between two and three seconds, rising at full speed into space. Finally, the cloud that we saw forming in the sky, which, while the earth was still in darkness, began to show the light of dawn.34 291

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Figure 10.2 The construction site of the blockhaus Alpha in the zone of ground zero at Hamoudia, the Centre Saharien d’expérimentations militaires (CSEM, or Saharan Center for Military Experiments) in Reggane (July 1959) © Observatoire des armements – Lyon, France

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Toxifying the Sahara Gerboise bleue was ignited from a metal tower with a height of approximately 100 metres, located in the ground zero zones in Hamoudia. The tower was surrounded by a metal fence and guarded by the army, and it contained an elevator that allowed the bomb to reach the top. A self-guided device carried out the final assembly of the atomic device. At the PCCM in Hamoudia, the officials could watch the last automatic manoeuvres thanks to cameras.35 The firing tower was completely destroyed by the blast after the explosion of the nuclear bomb. The blue, white, red and green Jerboas were plutonium fission devices. Unlike the first three atmospheric nuclear bombs, Gerboise verte was promptly and prematurely detonated three days after the second Generals’ Putsch, which took place in Algiers on 22 April 1961. General Raoul Salan – together with Generals Maurice Challe, Edmond Jouhaud and André Zeller – attempted to overthrow General de Gaulle, as they firmly opposed the secret negotiations between the French colonial authorities and the representatives of the Algerian Front de libération nationale (FLN, or National Liberation Front). Detonating Gerboise verte ahead of schedule probably ensured that the bomb would not fall into the hands of the generals involved in the putsch and – most likely – the members of the Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS, or Secret Army Organisation), a paramilitary extremist group founded by General Salan in 1961. The French authorities have yet to confirm or reject this hypothesis.36

The Tunnels and Accidents of Underground Bombs Following the detonation of the four atmospheric atomic bombs, the French colonial authorities continued to implement France’s nuclear programme in the Algerian Sahara. However, diplomatic tensions, various protests in independent African countries and elsewhere, as well as the mutual agreement of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States to stop their nuclear atmospheric experiments between 1958 and 1961 forced the French colonial authorities to switch to an underground nuclear plant.37 Consequently, they had to search for a mountainous site and build a new centre for this kind of bomb. With the creation of the Commission provisoire de recherche de sites souterrains pour expérimentations nucléaires (Temporary Commission for the Research of Underground Sites for Nuclear Experimentations) in September 1958, under the Minister of Armed Forces, French scientists and officers began examining and analysing sites in mainland France and elsewhere, including the Crête de Pranetz, the Tête de Cluasis and the Martin Alp in the Briançonnais region, le Grand Groyer, the Crête de la Boulière, the Cime de Pal in the Alpes de Provence region and Corsica.38 Although the geological characteristics 293

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Samia Henni of some of these sites were ideal, none of them were selected. Instead, the Temporary Commission designated the granite massif of Taourirt Tan Afella at In Ecker, approximately 600 kilometres southeast of Reggane, as the new site for CEMO. The massif of Taourirt Tan Afella covered a perimeter of 40 kilometres at an altitude of 1,500–2,000 metres, and the surrounding plateau stood at an altitude of 1,000 metres.39 The decision to establish CEMO was made on 12 July 1960. The centre housed approximately 2,000 CEA civil employees and military officials, among them ninety officers, 300 non-commissioned officers and 750 civil servants and engineers. CEMO comprised a living base called Camp Saint-Laurent in northern In Amguel, near Oued Takormiasse, 35 kilometres south of In Ecker. It also included an airbase located 15 kilometres north of In Amguel, an advanced camp (OASIS I) at the foot of the eastern flank of the Tan Afella massif for miners and DAM personnel, and an additional advanced based (OASIS II). OASIS I and II were organised in four distinct zones: dwellings, offices, leisure and catering, and workshops. Between the Camp Saint-Laurent and OASIS I lay an existing French military base known as Bordj In-Ecker, which was extended and transformed into an advanced military base called the In Ecker Military Camp.40

Figure 10.3 OASIS II base at the Centre d’expérimentations militaires des oasis (CEMO, or the Center of Military Tests of Oases) in In Ecker (1963) © Observatoire des armements – Lyon, France

The firing of underground atomic bombs took place at the bottom of tunnels dug horizontally into the rock of the Hoggar Mountain. The total length of the tunnels was about 1 kilometre. The so-called gallerie de tir (the firing tunnel) ended in a spiral so that the mechanical effect of the firing on the rock caused the tunnel to close. A concrete stopper locked the entrance of the gallery. Safety doors were built at various intervals to reduce the venting of radioactive gases. In addition, recesses were placed on the sides of the tunnel in which a number of measuring and recording instruments were positioned.41 Each bomb was placed at the end of this spiral-shaped tunnel. According to 294

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Toxifying the Sahara the French Office parlementaire d’évaluation des choix scientifiques et technologiques (Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices), these techniques were inspired by the United States’ experiments in the Nevada desert.42 France detonated thirteen underground atomic bombs in Taourirt Tan Afella and carried out five additional atomic tests called expériences complémentaires (complementary experiments) in Taourirt Tan Ataram between 1964 and 1966.43 The underground atomic bombs were code-named after gemstones and detonated as follows: Agathe on 7 November 1961; Béryl on 1 May 1962; Émeraude on 18 March 1963; Améthyste on 30 March 1963; Rubis on 20 October 1963; Opale on 14 February 1964; Topaze on 15 June 1964; Turquoise on 28 November 1964; Saphir on 27 February 1965; Jade on 30 May 1965; Corindon on 1 October 1965; Tourmaline on 1 December 1965; and Grenat on 16 February 1966. The yield of these atomic bombs ranged between 5 and 150 kilotons.44 The explosions of Béryl, Améthyste, Rubis and Jade were not fully contained and confined. Béryl was the most perilous accident of the four. The bomb was detonated two months before the celebrations of Algeria’s independence from France. The nuclear accident significantly exposed nearby sedentary and nomadic populations as well as civil and military personnel to highly hazardous radiation levels and further contaminated the natural environment. In his book Les irradiés de Béryl: L’essai nucléaire français non contrôlé (The Irradiated of Beryl: The Uncontrolled French Nuclear Test), published in 2011, forty-nine years after the accident, Louis Bulidon, a French chemistry engineer who witnessed the Béryl disaster, stated that ‘the State, the Army and their institutions in charge of nuclear affairs, in particular the CEA [ . . . ], dare to pretend up to this day that nothing, or little, happened on 1 May 1962 in In-Ekker’.45 The book was published one year after the adoption of law no. 2010–2 of 5 January 2010, ‘relative à la reconnaissance et à l’indemnisation des victimes des essais nucléaires français’ (on the recognition and compensation of the victims of French nuclear tests).46 The Béryl catastrophe and the independence of Algeria in July 1962 did not prevent the French authorities from continuing to implement their nuclear programme in the Algerian Sahara. The French-Algerian Évian Accords, a treaty signed in March 1962 in Évian-les-Bains in France, by the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic and the French Fifth Republic presided over by General de Gaulle, not only proclaimed a cease-fire but also formalised various arrangements and protections of French interests in (independent) Algeria. The Évian Accords guaranteed France the use of several Algerian territories, such as oil and gas extraction sites, and military installations, such as the base of Mers El Kebir, for another fifteen years. The treaty also granted France 295

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Samia Henni access to and full independence in its military nuclear centres and sites in the Algerian Sahara. CEMO formally operated until 1966. However, the radioactivity produced by the underground and atmospheric bombs in the Sahara and elsewhere will remain for countless years. Despite national and international protests and criticism during and after the implementation of France’s nuclear programme, France did very little to acknowledge its responsibility, compensate the victims, decontaminate the Saharan regions, clean up its toxic (if not deadly) waste and debris, and declassify the archives documenting these events to allow historians to historicise them. When the French colonial civil and military authorities left Reggane and In Ecker in 1966, they dug large holes and buried contaminated engines, equipment, objects and materials in the Sahara, covering them with contaminated soil and sand. However, over the years, the winds and the population of the Sahara uncovered these toxic remains.47 France’s toxicity – which severely damaged and contaminated human, animal, vegetal and mineral lives, as well as their surrounding environments – was once again on display. One of the testimonies published in Barrillot’s Les irradiés de la République: Les victimes des essais

Figure 10.4 Image captured by Bruno Barrillot, the co-founder of the Observatoire des armements in Lyon (France), during a visit to Reggane and In Ecker nuclear sites with the filmmaker Larbi Benchiha and his team in November 2007. Courtesy Observatoire des armements © Observatoire des armements – Lyon, France

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Toxifying the Sahara nucléaires français prennent la parole (The Irradiated of the Republic: Victims of the French Nuclear Tests Speak Out), titled ‘Enfouissement des matériels contaminés’ (Burying of Contaminated Materials), asserts that, ‘after the departure of the French, many locals went to retrieve equipment from the spaces and facilities, despite the bans’, and that ‘there was no particular medical follow-up for the population around Reggane’.48

Obscure Assessments, Classified Sources In September 1995, a resolution of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called on all states ‘to fulfil their responsibilities to ensure that sites where nuclear tests have been conducted are monitored scrupulously and to take appropriate steps to avoid adverse impacts on health, safety and the environment as a consequence of such nuclear testing’.49 In 1999, representatives of the Algerian government requested the IAEA to carry out an expert mission and study of the radiological situation at France’s former testing sites of nuclear weapons in the Sahara. The IAEA’s special team was composed of experts from France, New Zealand, Slovenia, the United States and the IAEA itself. Seven experts from the Algerian Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (Atomic Energy Commission) supported and assisted the internal IAEA team. Over the course of an eight-day mission to both the Reggane and In Ekker sites, the team collected samples of sand, fused sand, solidified lava, vegetation, well water and other materials, to be analysed in the IAEA’s laboratories in Seibersdorf, Austria.50 In a report titled ‘Radiological Conditions at the Former French Nuclear Test Sites in Algeria: Preliminary Assessment and Recommendations’, which was made public only in 2005, the mission of the IAEA’s team was described as aiming to . . . . . . make a preliminary assessment of the present radiological situation of the Reggane (atmospheric tests) and In-Ekker test sites (underground nuclear test site and radioactive waste sites) by performing radioactivity measurements at the sites and at selected inhabited locations, i. e., external dose rates, in-situ gamma spectroscopy. – Selected environmental and food samples should be collected and subsequently analysed. – The results of these measurements should be used to set up a plan to monitor the test sites more comprehensively, if justified, and to perform a preliminary dose assessment.51 According to the IAEA, ‘[t]he mission was able to achieve more than expected as a consequence of the detailed information provided by France. 297

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Samia Henni The information was essential for understanding the kinds and degree of contamination’.52 This statement poses a question: if France provided details to the experts from France, New Zealand, Slovenia, the United States of America and the IAEA, then why did it not (1) declassify archival documents on nuclear bombs in Algeria, and (2) provide Algerian experts and the Algerian and French victims of nuclear fallout with these details at the time of the mission (1995) and the publication of its results (2005)? In 2013, following a favourable response from the French Commission consultative du secret de la défense nationale (Advisory Board on National Defence Secrets) on 21 March, the French Minister of Defence opened access to 154 documents on the nuclear tests in the Sahara. The lifting of secrecy occurred thanks to a legal case initiated in 2004 by two associations, Moruroa e tatou and Aven (Association des vétérans des essais nucléaires, or Association of the Veterans of Nuclear Tests), in the context of a complaint against X filed with the Health Unit of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office.53 The 154 documents include various charts and tables of air radioactivity records at the Reggane-Hamoudia sites (CSEM) and In Ecker-In Amguel (CEMO). For example, thirty-eight documents titled ‘radioactivity of the air’ and ninety-five documents titled ‘radioactivity measurements’ show only graphs and weekly or monthly reports of air radioactivity at both sites; the great majority of these documents does not contain any comments. The most useful documents, when they are legible, are those that report on air radioactivity after each of the seventeen atmospheric and underground detonations. It is thus possible to verify that all In Ecker underground tests caused radioactive leaks that were noted and measured.54 This information was revealed in more detail by the classified document ‘The Genesis of the Organisation and Experiments in the Sahara (CSEM and CEMO)’, which was made public by the French press in 2010.55 According to a commentary by Barrillot, the 154 documents include many duplicates. For example, the air radioactivity records of 1960 in Reggane and Hamoudia, following the aerial tests of 13 February and 1 April are presented in two documents dated 13–20 March 1960 and 1–20 April 1960, and they are reproduced identically in a third document covering the period from 13 February to 10 May 1960. Furthermore, other radioactivity surveys have little value in assessing risks to staff and populations, because they concern periods when no tests were carried out. Thus, for 1960, thirteen documents relating to daily records of air radioactivity at Reganne and Hamoudia for the period from April to December 1960 are available, while the detonation of the third bomb at Hamoudia took place on 27 December 1960, after these declassified documents were produced. Barrillot states that, ‘[c]ertainly, the radiological and biological and other monitoring services have developed more detailed reports, but they 298

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Toxifying the Sahara are not part of the documents declassified in March 2013. This means that only partial or even truncated information is available, which is difficult to use’.56 The above-mentioned IAEA report titled ‘Radiological Conditions at the Former French Nuclear Test Sites in Algeria: Preliminary Assessment and Recommendations’ indicates that most of the areas surrounding the nuclear sites show little residual activity, with two exceptions. The experts who visited the Saharan nuclear sites stated that ‘the two sites that have high residual activity are: The Reggane test site at the ground zero localities of the Gerboise Blanche and Gerboise Bleue atmospheric tests; Taourirt Tan Afella in the vicinity of the E2 tunnel, where highly radioactive lava was ejected during an underground test’.57 This begs the question of who should be held responsible for decontaminating these radioactive soils and environments and, particularly, whether the French authorities are accountable for these highly toxic territories. In his 2014 article ‘Essais nucléaires français: À quand une véritable transparence?’ (French Nuclear Tests: When Will There Be Real Transparency?), Barrillot denounced the French government’s ambiguity about its nuclear bombs and their toxic consequences in the Algerian Sahara. He asked: ‘Is it not time now for complete transparency and for the French government to begin negotiations with the Algerian government on this painful page in the history of French-Algerian relations in order to agree on concrete actions of “rehabilitation” and “reparation”?’58 It is time, indeed.

Notes  1. ‘Hourra pour la France! Depuis ce matin, elle est plus forte et plus fière. Du fond du cœur, merci à vous et à ceux qui ont pour elle remporté ce magnifique succès’; Serge Berstein and Pierre Milza, Histoire de la France Au XXe siècle (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1999), 315.  2. On the development of France’s nuclear programme, see, for example, Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); Bertrand Goldschmidt, The Atomic Adventure: Its Political and Technical Aspects (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1964).  3. Service de presse et d’information France Ambassade (U.S.), France’s First Atomic Explosion (Ambassade de France, Service de presse et d’information, 1960), 8.  4. The term ‘war’ was not formally recognised until thirty-seven years after the cease-fire in 1962, when on 18 October 1999, under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, the French authorities finally approved the use of the official appellation la Guerre d’Algérie (‘the Algerian War’, alternatively translated as ‘the War for Algeria’) in French schools and in official terminology. Before 1999, the French government euphemistically called the unnamed and undeclared war les opérations de maintien de l’ordre (operations for the enforcement of law and order) or les évènements d’Algérie (Algerian events).  5. Samia Henni, Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (Zurich: gta Verlag, 2017), 51–78.

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Samia Henni  6. ‘Rapport sur les essais nucléaires français (1960–1996), Tome 1: La genèse de l’organisation et les experimentations au Sahara (C.S.E.M et C.E.M.O)’, http://www. obsarm.org/essais-nucleaires.pdf (accessed on 1 May 2019).  7. France Ambassade (U.S.), France’s First Atomic Explosion, 10.  8. Ibid., 10.  9. Ibid., 11. 10. Ibid. 11. On Jacques Soustelle’s role in Algeria during the Algerian Revolution, see, for example, Henni, Architecture of Counterrevolution, 20–78. 12. Prior to this institution, similar units that studied the military employment of nuclear physics existed and were created secretly: the Bureau d’études générales (General Studies Office) and the Département des techniques nouvelles (Department of New Techniques). 13. Wilfrid L. Kohl, French Nuclear Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 82–84. 14. France Ambassade (U.S.), France’s First Atomic Explosion, 12. 15. ‘Nous fîmes sur la carte le tour de tous les territoires alors disponible pour la France qui seraient convenables au point de vue de nos essaies’; Charles Ailleret, L’aventure atomique française: Comment naquit la force de frappe: Souvenirs et réflexions (Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1968), 228. 16. ‘Un officier résistant, gaulliste, patriote, républicain, et polytechnicien’ (italics in original); see preface to Charles Ailleret, Général du contingent: En Algérie, 1960–1962 (Paris: B. Grasset, 1998), I. 17 ‘. . . pays de la soife et de la peur, d’où toute vie était réputée absente dans les espaces immenses qui séparent Reggane de Tessalit’; Ailleret, L’aventure atomique française, 229. 18. Kenneth R. Timmerman, The French Betrayal of America (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005). 19. ‘L’organisation d’un champ de tir assez lointain où devaient être déployés des moyens techniques considérables, allait poser des problèmes très importants de construction, de logistique et de sûreté’; Ailleret, L’aventure atomique française, 227. 20. Ibid., 240. 21. Loi n° 57–820 du 23 juillet 1957 relative au plan de développement de l’énergie atomique pour les années 1957 à 1961, https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000 000692936?init=true&page=1&query=57-820&searchField=ALL&tab_selection=all (accessed May 2020). 22. Bruno Barrillot, Les irradiés de la république: Les victimes des essais nucléaires français prennent la parole (Bruxelles: Éditions GRIP, 2003), 19–20; ‘Rapport sur les essais nucléaires français 1960–1996, tome 1 : La genèse de l’organisation et les expérimentations au Sahara CSEM et CEMO’ [n. d.], 57–71, http://www.obsarm.org/essaisnucleaires.pdf (accessed 12 January 2021). 23. ‘Rapport sur les essais nucléaires français’, 46–47. 24. Ibid., 58–60. 25. The Observatoire des armements (Armaments Observatory) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2017. For the report, see http://www.obsarm.org/essais-nucleaires.pdf 26. ‘Le chantier de Reggane permet à la Direction des Travaux Spéciaux du Génie de mettre au point et d’expérimenter deux procédés de construction, adaptés au climat du pays.

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Toxifying the Sahara Les pavillons dits “sahariens” à simple Rez-de-chaussée et les immeubles métalliques préfabriqués à trois étages. Ces deux types de construction qui dérivent en fait du même principe, à savoir l’utilisation de murs creux à circulation d’air ont dès l’origine été étudié en fonction de leur climatisation’; ‘Rapport sur les essais nucléaires français’, 61. 27. Ibid., 62. 28. Barrillot, Les irradiés de la république, 19. 29. ‘Rapport sur les essais nucléaires français’, 63. 30. Ibid., 65–68. 31. Barrillot, Les irradiés de la république, 20. 32. Ailleret, L’aventure atomique française, 382. 33. On the impact of the French war in Algeria on Algeria’s northern territories and spaces, see, for example, Henni, Architecture of Counterrevolution. 34. ‘A 7 h 4 exactement, au moment où le haut-parleur annonçait zéro, un point d’une extraordinaire brillance, même à travers des lunettes qui laissaient à peine apercevoir le soleil en plein jour, apparu là où était le sommet de la tour. Puis instantanément ce fut l’immense boule de feu qui dura entre deux ou trois secondes, montant à toute vitesse dans l’espace. Enfin le nuage que l’on vit se former dans le ciel qui, alors que la terre était encore dans l’obscurité, commençait à présenter la clarté de l’aube’; Ailleret, L’aventure atomique française, 378. 35. Christine Chanton, Les vétérans des essais nucléaires français au Sahara, 1960–1966 (Paris: Harmattan, 2006), 40. 36. André Bendjebbar, Histoire secrète de la bombe atomique française (Paris: Le cherche midi éditeur, 2000), 326–27. 37. On diplomatic tensions and African protests, see, for example, Roxanne Panchasi, ‘“No Hiroshima in Africa”: The Algerian War and the Question of French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara’, Journal History of the Present 9, no. 1 (2019): 84–112. 38. ‘Rapport sur les essais nucléaires français’, 120–21. 39. Chanton, Les vétérans des essais nucléaires français au Sahara, 58. 40. ‘Rapport sur les essais nucléaires français’, 129–38. 41. Chanton, Les vétérans des essais nucléaires français au Sahara, 58. 42. Christian Bataille and Henri Revol, ‘Les incidences environnementales et sanitaires des essais nucleaires effectues par la france entre 1960 et 1996 et elements de comparaison avec les essais des autres puissances nucleaires’ (Paris: Office parlementaire d’évaluation des choix scientifiques et technologiques, 2001), 34. 43. Barrillot, Les irradiés de la république, 55. 44. Ibid. 45. Louis Bulidon, Les irradiés de Béryl: L’essai nucléaire français non contrôlé (Paris: Éditions Thaddée, 2011), 17. 46. On the text of the law, see https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT 000021625586/ 47. Barrillot, Les irradiés de la république, 43–44. 48. ‘Après le départ des Français, beaucoup de gens du pays sont allés récupérer du matériel dasn les locaux et installations, malgré les interdictions [ . . . ] Il n’y a pas eu de suivi médical particulier de la population autour de Reggane’; ibid. 49. ‘Radiological Conditions at the Former French Nuclear Test Sites in Algeria: Preliminary Assessment and Recommendations: Radiological Assessment Reports’ (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2005).

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Samia Henni 50. Ibid., 1. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Bruno Barrillot, ‘Note sur les documents déclassifiés le 21 mars 2013: Essais nucléaires français: À quand une véritable transparence?’ Obsarm (February 2014), 1, http:// obsarm.org/spip.php?article226 (accessed 10 December 2020). 54. Ibid., 2. 55. Le Parisien (13 February 2010); Damoclès 128–29 (February 2010). 56. ‘Il est certain que les services de contrôle radiologiques et biologiques et autres ont élaboré des rapports plus circonstanciés mais ils ne font pas partie des documents déclassifiés en mars 2013. On ne dispose donc que d’informations partielles, voire tronquées et difficilement exploitables’; see Barrillot, ‘Note sur les documents déclassifiés le 21 mars 2013,’ 2. Barrillot is referring, particularly, to the 129 official reports on the French tests in the Sahara quoted in the confidential defence report ‘La genèse de l’organisation et les expérimentations au Sahara (CSEM et CEMO)’ of 1995, which have not been declassified as of March 2013. 57. International Atomic Energy Agency, ‘Radiological Conditions’, 32. 58. ‘Le temps n’est-il pas alors venu pour le gouvernement français de faire toute la transparence et d’entamer des négociations avec le gouvernement algérien sur cette page douloureuse de l’histoire des relations franco-algériennes, afin d’engager d’un commun accord des actions concrètes de “rehabilitation” et de “réparation”?’; Bruno Barrillot, ‘Visite du site d’essais français de Reggane au Sahara algérien – Observatoire des armements,’ Damoclès (2007), http://obsarm.org/spip.php?article65 (accessed on 16 February 2021).

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Index Note: italic indicates figures urban histories, 107, 109–10, 116, 124–6 Alfonso X of Castile, Leon and Galicia Cantiga 169, 57, 58–9, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63–4, 63 governance of Murcia, 50, 52–6, 60, 61, 62, 64 Siete Partidas, 64–5 see also Cantigas de Santa María Algerian nationalists exclusion from commemoration at Montluc prison, 275, 277–8 historical memory and the policing of, 268–9, 270, 271–2, 273–4, 275–6 in Montluc prison, 260, 261, 270–5, 277, 278 Algerian Sahara Centre d’expérimentations militaires des oasis (CEMO), 284, 289, 294–5, 296, 296, 298–9 Centre saharien d’expérimentations militaires (CSEM), 284, 288–91, 290, 292, 294, 298–9 French atomic detonations and testing in, 283–4, 291–3, 295 IAEA inspection of former testing sites, 297–8, 299 testing site selection processes, 287–8, 293–4 toxic remains of nuclear testing, 296–9

Abdülmecid II autocracy of, 214, 217 gifts of photograph albums, 212 Haremde Goethe painting, 3–4 jubilee celebrations and the Clock Tower, 7, 11, 12, 14 psychiatric care during the reign of, 245 Roland’s Forty French Pilgrim-Singers at the court of, 167, 182–3, 188–90 taste in music, 167, 178, 190 aesthetics Arts and Crafts movement, 13, 24, 221 Ashbee’s vision for Jerusalem, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18–22, 20, 21, 22, 25–6 Ailleret, Charles, 287, 291 Ahmed Midhat, 203 Aleppo Armenian Genocide survivors in, 108, 115, 121–2, 124 during the early nineteenth-century, 107–9, 114, 115 during the French Mandate, 109, 114, 117 as al-Ghazzi’s Islamic city, 107, 109, 110–16 multi-ethnicity of, 108–9 as Sauvaget’s colonial city, 107, 109, 116–20 as Surmeyan’s Refugee City, 107, 109, 120–4

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Index Virgin of la Arrixaca, 57, 58–9 the Virgin’s authority in, 66–7, 68–9 Capgras, Jean-Marie-Joseph, 248, 249 Çelik, Zeynep academic career and research, 2–3, 77, 79, 198 Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal for Excellence in Islamic Studies, 1, 3, 7 Cemal Pasha (Ahmed Djemal), 18, 22, 24, 31, 40, 41, 42, 115 Christianity crusade discourses, 49–51 Reconquista ideology and, 52 Chronicle (Ibn Yusuf) afterlife of, 78, 91–4, 98 eye-witness accounts, 78, 80, 85, 87, 90 the ‘ghost ship’, 79, 80–4, 86 the Mahdia wreck, 79, 85–7 the narrator/chronicler, 78, 79, 86, 88–91, 94, 95 translation into French, 90–1, 92–4 writing of, 90 Clavel, Jean, 268 Clock Tower, Jerusalem Abdulhamid’s twenty-fifth anniversary, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14 General Allenby’s entrance through, 11 on the Jaffa Gate, 10–11, 11, 13, 14 relocation of, 7, 12 as a symbol of Ottoman modernity, 7, 11, 13, 14, 17 clothing clothing–costume differences, 198, 199 cosmopolitanism of Constantinople, 187–8 Le Costume historique (Racinet), 219–20, 220 Museum of Ancient Costume, 199, 200

Algerian War of Independence, 259, 260, 262, 268–74, 283, 284, 285, 288, 293, 295–6 Ali ibn Husayn, 82–3, 84, 86, 89, 90, 91 Allenby, General Edmund, 11–13, 42 Andrews, Walter, 136 Armand-Dumaresq, Édouard, 199 Arts and Crafts movement, 13, 24, 221 Ashbee, Charles Robert aesthetic vision for Jerusalem, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18–22, 20, 21, 22, 25–6 on the Clock Tower, 12 ‘Jerusalem Park System’, 22–4, 23–4, 25 vision for the museum, 32, 34 Barbie, Klaus, 262, 265, 275–6 Barrillot, Bruno, 289, 296–7, 298 Benoit, Lucien, 264–5 Bireche, Amar, 272 Bliss, Frederick Jones, 30–1, 32 Boudina, Mostefa, 277 Boukhalfa, Lamri, 272 Bresson, Robert, 267–8 Brindesi, Jean, 199, 200 Burns, Robert, 50, 51 Cantigas de Santa María Alfonso’s rule in Murcia, 60, 62–4, 63 attempted destruction of the church of La Arrixaca, 68–70, 70 cult images of the Virgin Mary, 59 depictions of Muslim subjects in the Cantigas, 61, 62–3, 62, 63, 64, 65–6, 66 El Puerto de Santa Maria, 68–9 musicians from the Cantigas, 53–4, 53 the Muslim king before his subjects, 65–7, 66 Muslim-Christian relations, 67–8

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Index see also Hûbân-nâme (The Book of Beautiful Young Men) (Fâzıl); Zenân-nâme (The Book of Women) (Fâzıl)

Ottoman costume at the 1867 Paris Exposition, 198–9 Ottoman section at the Vienna World Exposition, 210 Stamboul (Preziosi), 200 see also Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 colonialism anti-colonial activism, 259, 263–4 cult images of the Virgin Mary, 59–60, 65, 66 cultural imperialism, 53–4 of the Maghrib by the French, 91–4 Medieval Iberian colonialism, 50, 52 Reconquista ideology and, 52 see also Algerian nationalists; Algerian War of Independence

Ferdinand III of Castille and Leon, 50, 52, 55, 59 fortifications, Jerusalem Allenby’s speech from, 11–12, 42 British preservation and restoration of, 7, 15–17, 16, 18–26, 27 Damascus Gate, 19, 21–2 the Kaiser’s breach, 14, 17, 18–19, 19 Ottoman preservation of, 17–18, 22, 24 in Western art, 14 Foucault, Michel, 237–9 François I, 167–9 Garstang, John, 32, 33–4 Gaulle, General Charles de, 283, 284, 285, 295 Geddes, Patrick, 10, 17 al-Ghazzi, Kamil afterlife of Nahr al-dhahab, 115 diagram of the ramparts of Aleppo, 113 interest in modern Aleppo, 113–14 life and works, 110–11, 124–5 on Ottoman policies, 115 traditional Arabic-language historiography, 107, 109, 110, 111–13, 114, 125, 126 Gibb, Elias John Wilkinson, 147, 151–2 A History of Ottoman Poetry, 152–5 Grunebaum, Gustave E. Von, 1, 2

Dallam, Thomas, 170–2 Dehil, Salah, 274 Delbo, Charlotte, 259, 260, 261 Deleuze, Gilles, 260, 261 Delval, Jules, 266 Devigny, André, 267–8 Donizetti, Giuseppe, 166, 174, 176–7, 178, 180, 188, 189 Duhamel, Claudie, 272 Edhem Pasha, 202, 203 Elizabeth I, 170 Enderunlu Fâzıl, authorial intentions, 136 biography, 136–7 as a classical Turkish poet, 135, 137–8, 153 exceptionalist worldview, 135, 136, 137, 138 in Gibb’s A History of Ottoman Poetry, 147, 152, 153–5 nineteenth-century criticism, 147, 151–2 works of, 137–8, 141

Holliday, Clifford, 12 Hûbân-nâme (The Book of Beautiful Young Men) (Fâzıl) authorial intentions, 145–6, 147–9, 150, 155

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Index later The ‘Way House’ Museum, 35, 37 later the Rockefeller Museum, 30, 34, 37, 38 Ottoman antiquities laws and, 26–9, 31 Ottoman-British relations and, 30–1 proposed citadel site for, 31, 32–3, 33, 34, 36 ‘Insane Asylums of the Orient’ (Libert) asylum visits and accounts, 246–8, 249–52 Bursa asylum, 251–2 Edirne asylum, 249–51, 250 Greece, 239–40, 252 itinerary and travel arrangements, 238, 240, 241, 252 overview of, 236–7 Toptaşı Asylum, 235, 245–6 Üsküdar asylum, 246–7, 246 see also Libert, Lucien; psychiatry International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 297–8, 299 İsmail Bey, 30, 32

Hûbân-nâme (cont.) compositional principles, 135–6 in Gibb’s A History of Ottoman Poetry, 153–5 manuscript copies of, 141, 142–5, 142 narrative form, 135, 145, 146–50, 155 place-based theories of human difference, 136, 138, 140, 141, 143–4, 147, 149–50, 155 scholarship on, 139–40 sexuality and gender in, 138, 141, 154 verse titles, 156–7 al-Husseini, Ahmed Arif, 18 Iberian Peninsula crusade discourses, 50–1 Iberian Islamic identity, 50 Medieval Iberian colonialism, 50–1, 52 North African threat, 49–50 Reconquista ideology and, 52 relationships between Muslim and Christian rulers, 49–50, 51 Taifa kingdoms, 49 see also Alfonso X of Castile, Leon and Galicia; Murcia Ibn Diyaf (Ahmad ibn Abi al-Diyaf), 84 Ibn Yusuf (al-Saghir/al-Sughayyar, Muhammad) accounts of shipwrecks, 77 life and works, 77, 78, 88–91 see also Chronicle (Ibn Yusuf) Imperial Museum of Antiquities, Jerusalem Ashbee’s vision for, 32, 34 British appropriation of antiquities, 33 collections, 31–2 creation of, 30, 30, 31 later the British Museum of Antiquities, 30, 34–5

Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem, 10–11, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18–19, 20 James I of Aragon, 50, 52, 54–6, 63 Jerusalem al-Aqsa Mosque, 42 under the British Mandate, 9–10, 11, 33, 38–42, 39, 44 Fountain, 13–14, 14, 17 imperial urban planning agenda, 9–10, 12, 15, 17, 19–22 Jaffa Gate, 10–11, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18–19, 20 ‘Jerusalem Park System’, 22–4, 23–4, 25 in Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873, 212, 213 Ottoman perspectives of the British Mandate, 37–42

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Index stock at the Imperial Museum, 222 title page, frontispiece and illustrated plates, 197 unacceptable depictions of Muslim women, 214, 215–17, 216, 222 the Vienna Exposition and, 196, 201, 203, 209–11, 210 western audience for, 202, 211, 212–14, 219, 222–3 Levi Della Vida, Giorgio, 1–2 Libert, Lucien culture of institutional visits, 244, 245 death of, 253–4, 254 epidemic experiences, 236, 240, 253 history of psychiatry, 237–9 Mediterranean Sea routes, 240, 241, 252 at the Pas-de-Calais Asylum, 252 perceptions of the Orient, 239, 251, 254–5 studies of delusional states, 248–9 study of mental health facilities, 236–9 training and career, 236, 242, 248–9, 252 visit to Toptaşı Asylum, 235, 245–6 World War I service, 252–3 see also ‘Insane Asylums of the Orient’ (Libert) literature, Ottoman discourses on love versus sexuality, 136 A History of Ottoman Poetry (Gibb), 147, 152–5 literary criticism, 135–6 the Ottoman elite and, 136 popular works in high-register Ottoman Turkish, 140–1 production of difference in, 135, 138 role in the modernising Ottoman Empire, 152 şehrengiz genre, 141

under the Ottomans, 37–8, 43–4 Pro-Jerusalem Society, 12, 15, 17 Roland’s Forty French PilgrimSingers in, 186, 187 scholarship on, 10 as a site of religious pluralism, 10, 12, 13, 15, 24, 33, 38, 42–3 see also Clock Tower, Jerusalem; fortifications, Jerusalem; Imperial Museum of Antiquities, Jerusalem Khalef, Salah, 271–3 Lakhlifi, Abderrahmane, 273 L’Architecture ottomane, 202, 203, 205, 211–12, 214, 215, 222 Lasram, Mohamed, 91, 92–4, 98 Launay, Marie de, 196, 200–1, 202–3, 205 Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 adaptation for the exhibition of the Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués, 220–1, 220 afterlife of, 214–21 antecedents, 198–200 authorship and intent, 196, 200–3 depictions of armed Muslims, 217, 218 geographic distribution of the costumes, 196, 197 in Le Costume historique (Racinet), 219–20, 220 models for the costumes, 203–5, 204, 209 neutral ethnography of, 198, 205–6, 209–11 Orientalist imagery, 206, 209 Osman Hamdi’s text, 196, 201, 202–3 photographs, 205–9, 207–8 print copies, 212 scholarship on, 198, 222–3

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Index of Nazi occupation and the Shoah in France, 261, 268–9, 270, 271–2, 273–4, 276 and the politics of commemoration, 260, 262 transversal transmission of memories, 260–1, 264–5, 268, 271–3, 278 Merzoug-Belhadj, Mostefa, 270 Millet, General René, 93, 94, 98 Moaz, Khaled, 117 Montluc prison, Lyon Algerian nationalists in, 260, 261, 262, 270–5, 277, 278 anti-colonial activists in, 260, 261, 262, 272 commemoration and exclusion of Algerian prisoners, 275, 277–8 executions at, 259, 260, 272, 273, 274 French anti-colonial activists in, 263–8 the French colonial regime and, 260 German war criminals in, 260, 261, 262, 265–6, 267, 270 Klaus Barbie and, 262, 265, 275–6 logic of memory transmission, 260, 266–7 A Man Escaped (Bresson) film, 267–8 physical environment, 262–3, 271 prisoner graffiti, 268, 272 Resistance members in, 260, 261, 262, 264, 267–8, 272–3, 275, 278 as a site of commemoration, 262, 274–9 transversal transmission of memories, 260–1, 264–5, 268, 271–3, 278 tribunal function, 262, 263, 271, 272 Moulin, Jean, 272, 275, 276 Murcia under Alfonso X, 52–4, 56, 60 control of material and aural signifiers of faith, 55–6, 63, 64–6, 68 Muslim uprising of 1264, 54, 63, 65

literature, Ottoman (cont.) sexuality and gender in, 138, 139, 140 shift away form imperial literary forms, 138–9 see also Hûbân-nâme (The Book of Beautiful Young Men) (Fâzıl); Zenân-nâme (The Book of Women) (Fâzıl) MacAlister, R. A. S., 31, 32 McLean, W. H. M., 15, 16 Maghrib cabotage trade, 82, 97 French colonialism of, 91–4 maritime scavenger economy, 95, 96–7, 98 maritime trade, 96–8 occupation of Tabarka, 89–90 periodisation in modern Mediterranean history, 77–9, 88, 95, 98 rule of Ali ibn Husayn, 82–3 scavenging micro-economies, 81–2, 87 slave trade, 82 see also Chronicle (Ibn Yusuf); Tunisia Mahmud II, 167, 174–81 Makdisi, Ussama, 136 Mehmed III, 170 memory dynamic memory interactions, 260, 261 historical memory and the policing of Algerian nationalists, 268–9, 270, 271–2, 273–4, 275–6 logic of memory transmission, 260, 266–7 mobilisation of traumatic memories, 259–60 multi-directional mobilisation of, 259, 260–1

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Index western/non-western conceptions of, 165–6 see also Cantigas de Santa María Mustafa Kemal, 41

Siete Partidas, 64–5 territorial controls, 54–5, 56, 63–4, 65 Virgin of la Arrixaca, 57, 59–60, 59, 60, 66, 69–70, 70 see also Alfonso X of Castile, Leon and Galicia; Cantigas de Santa María museums British appropriation of antiquities, 33–4 Museum of Ancient Costume, 199, 200 National Museum of Palestine, 33–4 Ottoman antiquities laws and, 26–9, 32 regional branches of the Imperial Museum, 28–30, 29 see also Imperial Museum of Antiquities, Jerusalem music alla franca in Constantinople, 166, 172–3 composition styles, 165–6 concerts, 165–6 during the Franco-Ottoman alliance, 167–9 keyboard diplomacy, 169–72 musicians at the Ottoman Court, 166, 171–2 non-western conceptions of, 165 organs, 169–72, 173 performed in the streets and embassies, 172–3 power of and the human soul, 168 Roland’s Forty French PilgrimSingers, 183–90 salon recitals, 166 scholarship on in the Ottoman, 165 Syntagma Musicum, 167, 168 Theatrum vitae humanum, 167, 168

Namık Kemal, 152 nuclear weapons International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 297–8, 299 militarisation of France’s nuclear programme, 284–7 testing and detonations in Algeria, 283–4 testing and detonations in Polynesia, 284 see also Algerian Sahara Osman Hamdi Abdülmecid II’s study under, 4 as commissioner to the Vienna Exposition, 196, 201 Imperial Museum of Antiquities, 30, 31 Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873, 196, 201, 202–3 in Oriental garb, 204, 205 Ottoman Court Donizetti as Director of Imperial Music, 166, 174, 176–7, 178, 180, 188, 189 Elizabeth I’s gift of an organ, 170–1 gifts of musical instruments at the Court, 169, 170–1, 173, 178 imperial visits and instruments, 173–4 keyboard diplomacy, 169–72 Mahmud II’s compositions, 177–8 music during the Franco-Ottoman alliance, 167–9 musical performances at the Topkapı Palace, 170–2, 173 opera in Constantinople, 180

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Index

Racinet, Albert, 219–20 Renoux, Pierre, 265–6 Roland, Alfred, 183–6 Rothberg, Michael, 259–60, 261

Sauvaget, Jean academic works, 116, 125 afterlife of Alep, 116, 125 Aleppo as colonial city, 107, 109, 116–20 colonial language, 118 coverage of modern Aleppo, 120 inventory of Islamic monuments, 116, 117, 126 language of, 125 narrative of decline, 116, 118, 119, 119, 120 on Ottoman architecture, 118–19 Sébah, Pascal, 196, 202–3, 205–9, 211–12, 214, 219 Şehsuvar Hanım, 4 Selaheddin Eyyubi Külliye-i İslamiyesi, 40–1, 41 Selim II, 170 Selim III, 137, 144, 148, 173, 174, 175 Sérieux, Paul, 237–9, 248, 249, 253–4 Serres, Victor, 91, 92–4, 98 Seyve, Louis, 266–7 Seyyid İhya, 142, 144 Slade, Sir Adolphus, 174, 175–6 Storrs, Ronald, 9, 12, 17, 26 Süleyman Fethi, 38–9 Süleyman the Magnificent, 167–9 Surmeyan, Ardavazt as an Armenian in Aleppo, 107, 109, 120–3 coverage of modern Aleppo, 122, 123 The History of the Armenians of Aleppo, 123–4 intellectual background, 120, 122, 124–5 language of, 125 research, 122, 123 urban history of Aleppo, 120–1

al-Saghir/al-Sughayyar, Muhammad (Ibn Yusuf) ; see also Chronicle (Ibn Yusuf) Salan, General Raoul, 286, 293

Toptaşı Asylum cholera outbreaks, 240 Libert’s visit to, 235, 245–6

Ottoman Court (cont.) organs, 178 Roland’s Forty French Pilgrim-Singers, 183–90 tours of European musicians to Constantinople, 167, 181–90 western musical practices during the Tanzimat, 166–7, 183–90 western music/musicians at, 165, 171–2, 173 westernisation of music under Mahmud II, 174–81 Papon, Maurice, 275 Praetorius, Michael, 167 Preziosi, Count Amadeo, 200 prisons see Montluc prison, Lyon psychiatry asylum architecture, 243 culture of institutional visits, 242–4, 245 history of, 237–9 Oriental psychiatry, 243 post-Young Turk Revolution, 244–5 psychosis, 248–9 studies of delusional states, 248–9 study of mental illnesses in the Orient, 243–4 see also ‘Insane Asylums of the Orient’ (Libert); Libert, Lucien; Toptaşı Asylum

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Index in Spanish Medieval lyric verse, 57 Virgin of la Arrixaca, 57, 59–60, 59, 60, 66, 69–70, 70

men’s ward, 247 post-Young Turk Revolution, 245 Tunisia de-turkification of the armed forces, 88 naval fleet, 84–5 records of maritime trade, 78 shipwrecks of 1762, 77–8, 79–84, 85–8, 90, 91, 95 swimmers, 79, 80–1, 83–4, 85, 86 see also Chronicle (Ibn Yusuf)

Wilhelm II, 17 Young Turk Revolution, 244 Zenân-nâme (The Book of Women) (Fâzıl) authorial intentions, 145–6, 150–1, 155 in Gibb’s A History of Ottoman Poetry, 153–5 manuscript copies of, 141, 142–5, 143, 148 narrative form, 135–6, 145, 146–7, 155 place-based theories of human difference, 138, 140, 141, 143–4, 147, 155 scholarship on, 139–40 sexuality and gender in, 138, 141, 150–1, 154 verse titles, 157–9 Ziya Pasha, 152 Zürcher, Maximilian, 18 Zwinger, Theodor, 167

urban planning British imperial agenda in Jerusalem, 9–10, 12, 15, 19–22 political contexts and, 9, 15, 17, 19 Valentin Magnan, Jacques-Joseph, 248 Vergès, Jacques, 276 Vernet, Claude-Joseph, The Shipwreck, 76 Virgin Mary authority of in the Cantigas, 66–7, 68–9 Cantiga 169, 57, 58–9, 59, 60 cantigas of El Puerto de Santa Maria, 68–9 cult images of and colonial conquests, 59–60, 65, 66

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