London Ottoman PhD Students’ Workshop

Turkish Section, NME, SOAS Centre for Ottoman Studies, SOAS LMEI

Monday, 6 June 2016

MBI Jaber Seminar Room, LMEI

21 Russel Square

PROGRAMME, ABSTRACTS AND BIODATA

Programme

09:00-09:15 Welcome and introductions

09:15-10:45 Panel 1 Chair: Michael Talbot (University of

Greenwich)

Gemma Masson

(University of Birmingham) Who made the janissaries frown?: Trends in modern scholarship

Yasin Arslantaş

(LSE)

Political economy of confiscation: An institutional analysis of

Ottoman müsadere, 1700s-1839

10:45-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-13:30 Panel 2 Chair: William Clarence Smith (SOAS)

Kerem Tınaz

(University of Oxford)

A Comparative examination of the identity shifts among Ottoman

intellectuals, 1894-1928

Yakoob Ahmed

(SOAS)

Ottoman Sunni Ulema conceptions of constitutional theory during

the advent of the Young Turk Revolution

12:30-12:45 Coffee break

Sue Kentish

(Birkbeck College)

Revolutionary impressions of the other: Islamic perceptions,

portraits and protocol during the residence of the first Ottoman

ambassador to Christian London, 1793-95

13:30-14:45 Sandwich lunch and … SOAS capsule burial

14:45-16:15 Panel 3 Chair: Gagan Sood (LSE)

Caner Yelbaşı

(SOAS)

From the empire to the nation-state: Circassians in Turkey (1919-

1938)

Ebru Akçasu

(SOAS) Muslim migration to the well-protected domains, 1876 – 1909

16:15-16:30 Coffee break

16:30-17:15 Panel 4 Chair: Yorgos Dedes (SOAS)

Jacob Olley

(Kings' College London)

Orality, literacy and the social contexts of musical transmission: on

the use of Armenian church notation in Ottoman Music

17:15-17:30 Coffee break

17:30-18:30 Roundtable discussion and evaluation

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Speakers’ abstracts and bios (in order of appearance)

Gemma Masson University of Birmingham

Who made the janissaries frown?: Trends in modern scholarship

The position of the janissaries in Ottoman history has always been contentious and

traditional narratives have seen their alleged "corruption" playing a significant role in

the "decline and fall" of the Empire. They have long been portrayed as a

homogeneous political and social interest group which wielded and abused significant

influence and power. In recent works several scholars have begun to acknowledge

that it is not always so simple. This paper intends to analyse and assess these new

trends and juxtapose them against more traditional narratives as well as suggest future

directions for janissary studies. Much recent scholarship has a significant focus on

either the earlier centuries with the eighteenth century being incorporated as part of a

long Seventeenth Century or the Nineteenth Century with the Eighteenth Century

being pulled in to explain context. Focusing on the somewhat understudied period of

the Eighteenth Century as a period of global transition and by viewing Istanbul as a

regional case study rather than indicative of the whole Empire the aim of my research

is to fill this lacuna in Ottoman scholarship by writing the history of the janissaries in

Eighteenth Century Istanbul and placing it into the wider narrative of Ottoman history.

Biodata

Gemma has a BA in History and an MA in the History of War, Culture and Society

from the University of Portsmouth. After becoming interested in Ottoman history

during her MA year she produced an Independent Study and MA Thesis on the

subject before deciding she wanted to pursue this field further and subsequently

applied to Birmingham's Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek studies

for a PhD. Originally studying under Dr Rhoads Murphey she is now supervised by

Dr Marios Hadjianastasis and Dr Arezou Azad and spent last academic year on

placement in Istanbul with an international research scholarship from Tübitak. Having

always been interested in the eighteenth century as a period of transition and change

she focuses her thesis research upon this century looking at allegations of janissary

corruption in Istanbul with a view to treating the imperial capital as a regional case

study instead of indicative of the whole empire. I am also trained in global/world

history and my key research interests are the Ottoman Empire circa. 1453-1826,

eighteenth-century history generally, imperial and global history, history in popular

culture, languages, historical linguistics and Dracula history.

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Yasin Arslantas Department of Economic History, LSE

Political economy of confiscation: An institutional analysis of Ottoman müsadere, 1700s-1839

Müsadere, a long-lived institutionalised system of wealth confiscation practised by

the Ottoman rulers (1453-1839), is one of the most referenced yet seldom researched

topics of Ottoman historiography. Despite the lack of analytic studies on it, many

scholars have argued that state predation, mainly referring to müsadere, was one of

the culprits of underdevelopment. This dissertation is the first attempt to study

müsadere from an institutional and political economy perspective. Its main research

question is what (how and to what extent) guided, enabled, and motivated the ruler to

confiscate the wealth of upper classes.

The dissertation has four main chapters. The third chapter is a conceptual, legal and

comparative history of müsadere from the early Islamic period to 1839. It analyses

how müsadere, as a concept and institution, emerged, was institutionalised, and

evolved through its history and across the pre-modern Islamic states. The fourth

chapter is a statistical analysis of müsadere with a particular reference to the late 18th

and early 19th century. This chapter aims to shed light on if and how transaction costs

affected the ruler’s decision to confiscate. In the fifth chapter, by using game

theoretical insights, I look at the behavioural aspects of müsadere with a special

attention to explaining its persistence and abolition. Finally, the sixth chapter is a

microhistory of the Çapanogulları ayan family of central Anatolia. In this chapter, I

look at the threat of müsadere from the perspective of potential victims by analysing

their long-term wealth-protection strategies.

Biodata

Yasin Arslantaş is a PhD student in Economic History at London School of

Economics. Previously he received a BSc in Economics (TOBB University of

Economics and Technology) and MA in Ottoman History (Bilkent University). He is

currently writing a dissertation on the political economy of state confiscations in the

Ottoman Empire during the long eighteenth century. His wider interests include

Ottoman economic history (especially institutions and political economy), modern

state formation, institutional economics, game theory, philosophy of history and

creative writing.

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Kerem Tınaz St Antony's College, University of Oxford

A comparative examination of the identity shifts among Ottoman intellectuals, 1894-1928

Tunalı Hilmi (1871-1928), Abraham Galante (1873-1961) and Mustafa Satı (Sati al-

Husri) (1880-1968) were three intellectuals who witnessed the political shift from the

Ottoman Empire to post-Ottoman successor states. During this period of transition,

they first stood out as Ottomanists in the Late Ottoman Empire and then nationalists

in the post-Ottoman period. My thesis examines both their Ottomanist and their

nationalist ideas between 1894 and 1928. It seeks to answer the question ‘to what

extent is the nationalism of Tunalı Hilmi, Abraham Galante and Mustafa Satı an heir

to their Ottomanism?’ using a framework that analyses the ideological continuities

and ruptures between the Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman states. To better explore

this question, the thesis focuses particularly on the three intellectuals’ ideas on

education and language in order to reveal how these subjects shaped their

understanding of Ottomanism and nationalism. The thesis addresses the significance

of the Ottomanist legacy in understanding the political and intellectual milieu of post-

Ottoman period and argues that the three figures’ Ottomanist and nationalist years

represent strong ideological and intellectual continuities. This presentation will, first,

provide the basic premises of the thesis along with its structural aspects and, then, will

discuss its contributions to the current literature.

Biodata

Kerem Tinaz is a 4th year DPhil student at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University

of Oxford. He received his MPhil degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the

University of Oxford. His MPhil dissertation is titled “An Inclusive Voice in an

Exclusive Era: Satı Bey and His Ottomanist Pursuit”. His current research interests

are intellectual history, cultural history, and history of Ottoman Jewry. His current

DPhil thesis focuses on identity shifts among intellectuals and bureaucrats whose

intellectual path started as Ottomanists in the Late Ottoman Empire and ended up as a

nationalists in different geographies of post-Ottoman Middle East.

His doctoral thesis submission deadline is October 2016.

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Yakoob Ahmed NME Department, SOAS

Ottoman Sunni ulema conceptions of constitutional theory during the advent of the Young Turk Revolution

Contemporary works on the compatibility of Islam with constitutional discourse

continue to be viewed as an idealistic abstraction whose reality is yet to be explored

outside the realm of the normative theories of the Muslim nation states. On closer

inspection, although the Ottoman experience has been acknowledged, often ignored

are the contributions of the Ottoman Sunni ulema towards Islamic-constitutional

discourse from 1908 onwards. Although the idea of government limited by law is

supported in Islamic tradition, however, discussion of limiting government to the rule

of law mainly took expression after 1908.

Possible potentialities during a formative period of Islamic-constitutional discourse

are overlooked as discussions of a discursive process towards secular political

statecraft are emphasised. However, comparison between the ‘positivist’ inclinations

of the CUP with the Islamic notion of ‘justice’ and ‘consultation’ which became a

mainstay within ulema political thought from the Gulhane onwards requires attention

as reconciliation between the ideals of positivism, enlightenment ideals, revolutionary

ideas, modernization debates on the one hand, and Islamic justice and consultation on

the other seem at time conflicting.

This presentation is the study of the role played by the Ottoman Sunni ulema (Islamic

religious scholars/doctors) in the advent of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 up

until 1910. Thirty years of Hamidian rule had rendered Islam as a policy and identity

of the Empire. The ulema were perceived as ‘guardians of the faith’ and when the

Young Turks decided to initiate a struggle to re-instate the Constitution of 1876, this

in turn upset the balance of rhetoric, style of governance and Islam.

It is my view to study the degree to which ulema members from a variety of ethnic,

regional, political, educational, status and ideological backgrounds managed to

participate in the turbulent narrative of Ottoman political discourse between 1908 and

1910 and more importantly why. The plurality of ulema attitudes and actions further

endorses the complexity of ‘Ottoman Islam’ during the turn of the twentieth century. I

stress that for the Ottoman political and religious elite, political reform and

transformation was indeed both political and religious and as a result the ulema felt

invested in the process to safeguard state and more importantly religion as inseparable.

Biodata

Yakoob is a PhD student in the NME Department at SOAS. His dissertation ‘The

Role of the Ottoman Ulema During the Second Constitutional Period in the

Parliamentary Elections of 1908-1912’ examines how the official state ulema

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participated in the Ottoman parliamentary elections and what the driving factors were

throughout the whole of the Ottoman Empire.

His current research speciality is on Late Ottoman intellectual history from the 18th-

20th century. He is currently looking at the ulema in Ottoman politics throughout the

Ottoman Empire during these years. He hopes to discover how the ulema during this

period attempted to evolve and survive in an environment perceived by some

academics as being hostile. He is also investigating how both external threats and

internal conflicts impacted upon their position and ideology – Islam. Although recent

publications have started to shed more light on the role of the ulema in this period,

nevertheless it is my view that the narrative of the ulema in this period is still under

developed. His future plans are to develop on Muslim intellectual thought both in the

Empire and outside. The study on the Ottoman ulema and intellectuals is an attempt to

bridge the gap that exists regarding the role of the ulema throughout the Ottoman

Empire in the political, social, cultural and ideological space.

Sue Kentish Birkbeck College

Revolutionary impressions of the other: Islamic perceptions, portraits and protocol during the residence of the first Ottoman ambassador to Christian London, 1793-95

In 1793 a turning-point was reached in Ottoman-western relations with a proposal by

Sultan Selim III to send his first permanent ambassador to a Christian country. The

country he chose was Britain. The story of how this came about can be read in the

correspondence of the British ambassador to Istanbul.

Sir Robert Ainslie was a relatively small fish in the diplomatic pool but due to French

revolutionary events he became more important when the sultan temporarily set aside

traditional friendship with France and turned to the British. Ainslie was asked to

advise the Grand Vizer and the Sheikh-ul-Islam, the leading political and religious

leaders, on the diplomatic protocols concerning sending an ambassador abroad. He

also made exhaustive arrangements for the journey across land of the first ambassador,

Yusuf Aga Efendi, and his entourage to Vienna in the winter of 1793, and arranged

for the British diplomatic courier service to carry Ottoman diplomatic correspondence

as well as his own. At his suggestion, Yusuf was ennobled by the sultan in order to

equal Ainslie’s status.

The new ambassador and his first secretary Mahmud Raif wrote accounts of their

impressions of England and, uniquely, placed an order for dozens of prints of the

sultan to be made in London from a portrait. Raif was strongly influenced by English

ways, becoming known as 'Ingilitz'. His bid in 1807 to get the military in Istanbul to

wear western uniforms sparked the revolt which led to the overthrow and death of the

sultan.

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Biodata

Research student at Birkbeck College, University of London, supervisor Dr Fred

Anscombe. My research is about Ottoman-Anglo relations during the pre-Tanzimat

period, 1789-1839. Using mainly diplomatic records, I am interested in exploring the

extent of British influence on Ottoman affairs during the period leading up to the

announcement of the first modernising programme in 1839 and considering whether

or not it was as superficial as nationalist historians have maintained. I hope to

complete my doctorate in the coming months.

Caner Yelbaşı History Department, SOAS

Civil war at the end of the Empire: Circassian opposition to the Nationalists of Ankara from 1919 to 1938

In the post-World War I (1918) Turkey, violence and chaos were widespread in

Anatolia. The long lasting war had created economic and social difficulties which in

turn led to conflicts. The Sultan and Porte were in favour of reaching a peace

agreement with the Allies without having another war. However, the occupation of

Izmir by the Greek Forces in May 1919, led to a rise of pre-planned resistance

movement which became later on the nationalist movement ‘Kuva-yı Milliye’, in

Anatolia. The disagreement between Istanbul and Ankara governments caused a Civil

War between the two. The north western part of Anatolia, Düzce -Adapazarı region

where mainly populated by Circassians, became the centre of the conflict between

Istanbul and Ankara in May 1920. The Circassians rose against Ankara due to the

impact of Ankara’s policy of establishing hegemony in the region. They remained as

loyal followers of the Sultan/Caliph joint to pro-Istanbul side of the Civil War. Group

of people from the opposition movement collaborated with the occupation forces to

set up an uprising in the western Anatolia in 1922. Their unsuccessful attempt led to

increasing aggression from the Kemalists. With the defeat of the Greek forces ,

Ankara took the control of the region. Those Circassians were dropped from Turkish

citizenship and exiled from Turkey.

This paper will attempt to shed light on the Circassian opposition to the nationalist

movement of Ankara from 1919 to 1938. It will also argue that the roles of

Circassians which were played in the both side of the Civil War were neglected in the

main stream historiography of Turkey. By using the British National Archive, the

Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive, and the military archive of Turkish General Staff,

this paper will demonstrate that how the Circassian mobilisation in the western

Anatolia posed a threat to the nationalist movement from its infancy early 1920s to

the 1940s.

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Biodata

Caner Yelbaşı is a final-year PhD student at the Department of History in SOAS,

University of London. His research interests are Circassian Studies, Late Ottoman

Period, Nation and Nation State ideology, Para-militarism, and Early Turkish

Republican Period. He focuses on the political and paramilitary activities of

Circassian community in Turkey in the very late Ottoman and early Republican

periods. The activities of the Circassian community have been neglected in both in

late Ottoman and Early Republican periods by the historians. Although they played an

important role in the transformation period of Turkey from a multi-cultural empire to

a nation state, and Civil War of Anatolia between the Istanbul and Ankara

governments in 1919 - 1922, their activities have not been paid sufficient attention in

the historiography. It is aimed that the thesis will fill a gap in the academic field on

the activities of the Circassians and the impact of creation of Turkish Nation State on

them in the Early Republican Period. The proposed title of his thesis is: “From

Empire to Nation State; Civil War, Violence and Ethnicity: Circassians in Turkey

1918 – 1938.”

Caner Yelbaşı also completed his MA on the Near and Middle Eastern Studies in the

same university in 2012. In his master thesis, he compared treatments of a non-

Turkish Muslim group, namely the Circassians, in the Late Ottoman and Early

Republican Period by the state authority in 1908-1950 periods.

Ebru Akçasu NME Department, SOAS

Muslim migration to the well-protected domains, 1876 – 1909

The last Ottoman century witnessed increased and varying efforts on the part of the

state to crystalize its proto-national image. In this context, trends of migration proved

to be processes that provided the host state an opportunity to other the sending state

and to define itself. The foreigner who migrated to the Ottoman dominions and was a

potential citizen nuanced the formulaic “official” nationalism engineered to be

consumed by an “Ottoman citizenry” in order to ensure the loyalty of those living

within its borders, while convincing those who lay beyond it of its essential truth and

right to rule.

This paper focuses on foreigners migrating to the Ottoman capital over the course of

the Hamidian years (1876-1909) who do not conform to the traditional representation

of who constituted a foreigner, i.e. Great Power subjects living above Ottoman law

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and exploiting capitulary privileges. Specifically, it evaluates the process under which

non-refugee Muslims from diverse origins became Ottoman citizens.

Amidst historiography that interprets the Hamidian regime as either being pan-

Islamist or exclusivist in favour of Sunni Muslims, this paper aims to reveal the

discrepancies between how the state defined “who is a citizen?” through official

memoranda (whether through government ministries or alternative organs, e.g. state

schools) and who it chose to naturalize and/or provide the benefits of a naturalized

citizen to (as revealed through case studies gathered from the Ottoman Archives).

This paper thus illuminates the significance of the experiences of those individuals,

hitherto neglected by history, whose loyalty and citizenship was contested over by the

Ottoman state and readily incorporated into the self-perception of its identity.

Biodata

Ayşe Ebru Akcasu is a final-year PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Yorgos

Dedes in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS, University of

London. Her research concerns non-refugee migration to the Ottoman capital,

Istanbul. The case studies that inform Ms. Akcasu’s research range from political

exiles whose choice of the Ottoman capital as destination for respite from persecution

provided fortunes to the degree of their names being inked in the Sicill-i Osmani

to others who would have remained anonymous, had it not been for the sentence or

two that detailed their encounters with petty crimes in public records. Engaging with

the scholarship put forth by various Ottomanists in the last two decades regarding the

state’s construction of its own 'image', her thesis seeks to locate the

immigrant/potential-national in the Hamidian state's formulaic 'official nationalism'.

Jacob Olley King’s College London/Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)

Orality, literacy and the social contexts of musical transmission: on the use of Armenian church notation in Ottoman music

Around 1812, a group of Catholic Armenians in Istanbul developed a new system of

musical notation as part of the Mkhit‘arist cultural revival sometimes referred to as

the ‘Armenian Renaissance’. Although it was originally intended for use amongst

Armenian cantors, during the mid to late nineteenth century it was also adopted by

Muslim musicians, and became the first Ottoman notation system to be employed on a

relatively widespread basis before the spread of Western staff notation. This paper

situates this development in the context of wider debates about orality and literacy,

which in recent years have moved away from evolutionary models towards an

awareness of the diverse uses of literacy and its continued interaction with oral modes

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of communication. A consideration of the role of (music) writing in the late Ottoman

Empire highlights the Eurocentrism that underpins assumptions about the relationship

between literacy and social progress, which are particularly evident in the perception

of musical notation as a marker of European cultural superiority. While Hampartsum

notation has been variously perceived as a sign of the technologically advanced nature

of ‘Turkish’ music or as a Westernising innovation in a declining empire, there has

been little attempt to understand the social conditions in which it was adopted by

Ottoman musicians. A study of nineteenth-century collections of Hampartsum

notation and contemporary sources in Armenian and Turkish reveals some of the

complexities inherent in the use of (music) writing in a linguistically and culturally

diverse society, suggesting parallels with recent research on Armeno-Turkish

literature.

Biodata

I am currently completing my PhD, which is funded by the Arts and Humanities

Research Council (AHRC), in the music department of King’s College London. My

thesis is entitled “Writing Music in Early Nineteenth-Century Istanbul: Ottoman

Armenians and the Invention of Hampartsum Notation”, and engages with both

(ethno)musicology and Ottoman cultural history. Since October 2015 I have been a

research associate on the long-term project “Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae: Critical

Editions of Near Eastern Music Manuscripts”, funded by the German Research

Foundation (DFG) and based at the University of Münster.