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Mustafa Ali and the Politics of Cultural Despair

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Rhoads Murphey
Rhoads Murphey
Affiliation:
Department of Middle East Languages and Cultures Columbia University
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Extract

In recent decades, most historians have begun to shy away from the once predominant idea of post-16th-century decrepitude in the Ottoman Empire1 and come to recognize the remarkable resilience and recuperative ability of the Ottoman imperial structure even into its final century.2 Against the gathering momentum of this trend of reinterpretation, it is, ironically, chiefly the Ottomanist specialists themselves who have shown the greatest resistance. The “experts,” as a consequence of their quite proper immersion in indigenous sources, are better exposed to and, hence, more likely to become ecmeshed in the culturally determined value system of the subject of their study. This article is an attempt to identify some of the sources that contributed to the formulation of the decline topos and related topoi.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , May 1989 , pp. 243 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

NOTES

1 One of the principal proponents of the view of Ottoman civilization as increasingly decadent in the period after their defeat at the battle of Lepanto was the influential historian Arnold Toynbee who used the term “arrested civilization,” with specific reference to the Ottoman Empire of the “post classical” age. See Toynbee, A., A Study of History (London, 1947), Pt. iii, ch. 9, pp. 171–78.Google Scholar

2 Two examples from a veritable chorus of reevaluation of Ottoman weakness and decline after the 16th century are sufficient to demonstrate this trend. Palmer, R. R. and Cotton's, J. now classic work A History of the Modern World, 3rd ed. (New York, 1965)Google Scholar speaks of the significance of the Ottoman naval defeat in 1570 in the following terms (p. 107): “The Turkish power was not seriously damaged at Lepanto. In fact the Turks took Tunis from Philip two years later.” Braudel, F., Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, 3 vols. (New York, 1981–1984), III, 482, berates the area specialists for their excessive use of the word decadence to describe conditions in the Ottoman Empire during the final three centuries of its existence.Google Scholar

3 Without going into great detail about the context of their debate, it is sufficient for our purposes to note that the mere existence of a difference of opinion among Europeanists between proponents and critics of Hobsbawm's thesis of the “general crisis” in 17th-century Europe indicates the healthier intellectual state of their field of study as compared with Ottoman studies. The crisis designation had become a nearly obligatory catechism for all students of 17th-century European history until scholars such as Rabb and Zagorin began to question its main tenets. For an account of the views of the critics of the crisis designation, see Rabb, T., The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1975), pp. 17–28;Google Scholar and Zagorin, P., Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1982), I, 122–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar These scholars have made explicit what was already suspected by specialists working on specific regions of Europe such as J. H. Elliot, who already spoke in the early 1960s of the need to “break free from the traditional assumptions about the decline of Spain.” See Aston, Trevor, ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (London, 1965), p. 172.Google Scholar See also, Elliot, J., “Yet Another Crisis?” in Clark, P., ed., The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History (London, 1985), pp. 301–12.Google Scholar

4 See the article “Dawla,” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (hereafter El2), II, 177–78.

5 On the instructional purpose of history writing, see Inalcik, H. and Murphey, R., eds., Tursun Bey's History of Mehmed the Conqueror (Chicago and Minneapolis, 1978), p. 24.Google Scholar

6 See El2, IV, 1020–22.

7 See Becker, Carl L., The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932, repr. 1980), pp. 1–31.Google Scholar

8 Fleischer, Cornell H., Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali. 1541–1600 (Princeton, 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 191.

10 Ibid., p. 203.

11 Ibid., p. 225.

12 Ibid., p. 243.

13 See the entry “Şirvan” in Sami, Şemseddin, Kamus ül ''Alem, 6 vols. (Istanbul, 1306–1316), IV, 2853. Bekir Kütükoğlu's still unsurpassed study of the eastern policy of the Ottomans during the sultanate of Murad III (Osmanli-Iran siyasī münasebetleri, 1578–1590 [Istanbul, 1962], pp. 63–64) indicates that the territory of Shirvan was actually divided into two separate Beylerbeyliks, one comprised of 16 sanjaks and the other of 6. Annual tax receipts from Shirvan were estimated at the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1578 at a figure approaching 25 million akçes (Kütükoğlu, p. 62: vergi haslati 247.5 yük akçe).Google Scholar

14 On the desirability of keeping political, economic, demographic, and ecological crises as separate fields of investigation, see Ladurie, E. Leroy, “The Crisis and the Historian” Cf. the English version in Ladurie, E. L., The Mind and Method of the Historian (Chicago, 1981), pp. 270–89.Google Scholar In this essay Ladurie develops the idea of “crisis which performed a creative function.” See Ibid., p. 275. For a rejection of the notion of interlocking spheres of crisis, see Zagorin, , Rebels and Rulers, 1, 137.Google Scholar

15 For the opposition of “youth” and “middle age,” see the list of 18 quotations on p. 245. See in particular quotations 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, and 17. It is not entirely clear whether these opinions are Ali's, Fleischer's, or a conflation of the two.

16 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, p. 247.

17 Repp, R. C., The Mufti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London, 1986), p. 72.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., pp. 303–4. Emphasis is mine. Repp pointedly declines to characterize the period at the end of the 16th century when these changes began to become apparent as a period of either “decline” or “institutional crisis.” He remarks only that there existed some differences without placing a value either positive or negative on those differences. The word “development” in the title to his book is also, apparently, carefully chosen.

19 Fleischer cites as evidence for the “politicization” of the Ottoman ulama in the late 16th century (cf. Bureaucrat and Intellectual, pp. 267 ff. and footnotes 25–29) only secondary sources. His case for a growing “professionalization” in the Ottoman financial bureaucracy rests on a sample of fifteen appointments to the top position in that branch of government service (Ibid., p. 218, para. 2, sources not divulged). Without denigrating Fleischer's own methodology, which rests on a presumption of the equal importance of “soft” and “hard” evidence (see Fleischer's intro., Ibid., p. 4), there seems little justification for drawing generalized conclusions from such top-heavy analysis.

20 Ibid., p. 249.

21 Ibid., pp. ix–x (list of illustrations) and p. 110.

22 See note 13.

23 Adivar, Adnan, La science chez les Ottomans (Paris, 1939), pp. 82–90, lists a number of the less celebrated (and one might add controversial) researchers who followed in Taki al-Din's footsteps and notes as evidence of Murad's patronage of educational institutions the increase in medrese enrollments throughout the empire. During Murad's reign, students pursuing higher education reached 9,000 distributed between 120 institutions. As is often the case during periods of institutional expansion, there was talk of a lowering of standards in admissions requirements and levels of instruction, but there is no evidence to support the view that these growing pains left any permanent mark on the educational system.Google Scholar

24 Ahmed's mosque was built in seven years, but work on the complex of buildings associated with it was not completed during the sultan's lifetime. Construction at this commanding site close to the imperial palace was continuous throughout the period 1609–1620. See Nayir, Z., Osmanli mimarliginda Sultan Ahmed küliyyesi ve sonrast (Istanbul, 1975), pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

25 On the fierce competition for the public's recognition between several Ottoman poets and contemporaries of Ali, see Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, p. 142.

26 Atil, Esin in her chapter “The Art of the Book,” Turkish Art (Washington, D.C., and New York, 1980), pp. 195–212, holds that the collective production of the Istanbul nakkşhane in the late 16th century achieved so consistent a standard of excellence as to justify its later recognition as the “classical age” of the Turkish art of the book.Google Scholar

27 For Katib Çelebi's own account of his education in classes conducted by the leading Istanbul scholars of his day, see Çelebi, Katib, Mizan al-hakk fi ihtiyar al-ahak (Istanbul, 1280), PP. 129–36.Google Scholar

28 Fleischer, speaking of the “older” ideal of the alim (i.e., the type Au imagined had once existed during the reign of Sultan Süleyman and his predecessors), calls him “a figure representing and embodying disinterested learning and morality” (Bureaucrat and intellectual, p. 266). Ali firmly believed that such individuals, once commonplace, had all but disappeared by the time of Murad III (1574–1595). On Ali's idealized perception of the ilmiye institution of the past, which Fleischer describes as “his beloved ilmiye, the last bastion of moral authority,” see Ibid., p. 160. The applicability of Ali's vision, which welled forth from his fertile imagination and penchant for nostalgic fantasizing, needs to be weighed by comparison with the perhaps more realistic assessment of the scholars of Süleyman's age presented by Lutfi Pasha. See the passage quoted in note 29.

29 The text in Turkish from the Asafname (Istanbul, 1326), p. 15 reads: Müderrisin ve ''ulema ve kuzat ta''ifesi ekserisi bir birine hased üzeredir. Onlarin bir birinin hakkinda söyiedikierine inanmayip, re''is-i ''ulema olanlar lie müşavere ve taharri edip. menasib-i ''ulema''da gayer yoklamak gerek. Cf Tschudi, R., ed., Das Asafname des Luifi Pascha (Berlin, 1910), pp. 16–17. For a discussion of some parallels in the sentiments voiced by the two authors see note 33.Google Scholar

30 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and intellectual, p. 250.

31 Ibid., PP. 294–300, a summary of Ali's 38 “events.”

32 Ibid., P. 304.

33 One of the most commonly emphasized and repeated themes found in the nasihatname genre concerns the inappropriateness of permitting nonspecialists, in particular palace favorites and other extraneous courtiers, to interfere in affairs of state. The objection of these authors to such interference, while explained chiefly in terms of the threat it posed to the sultan's sovereignty, had an element of self-justification as well since the bureaucrats who wrote such literature were naturally anxious to retain their own monopoly on the dispensing of advice. Compare Lutfi Pasha's opinion of the nedims and musahibs or courtier class expressed in the Asafname (Istanbul edition, p. 10): Padişah nedimieri lie çokluk musahabet ve ihtilāt etmemek gerekrir. Mülūk nedimsiz olmaz. Aninia nedim ve musahib… mesalih-i halka karişmamak gerektir.

34 The limited vision of these authors is emphasized in Halil Inalcik's article that treats Ottoman history during the so-called “Kargaalik Devri” of the late 16th and early 17th century; see, Islam ansiklopedisi, Vol. 13 [fasc. 130] (Istanbul, 1984), Pp. 305 ff. The following passage (translation is mine) effectively summarizes his conclusions: They [the writers of literature of advice] associated the ills of the empire with failure to observe [ancient] laws and regulations. [Their analysis] did not take into account the changes in economic and political life nor the developments in Europe which were fundamental causes of the corruption of [classical] institutions. All change was characterized by these authors as tagayyür vefesad, mutation and disorder, and the main purpose of their eloquent prose was to effect a restoration of the harmonious order (nizām) of the past.

35 The first line of defense was incorporated in the tenet that the sovereign alone possessed authoritative knowledge for correct decision. This notion, somewhat akin to the concept of papal infallibility, had been a cardinal principle of political theory in the East since the Middle Ages (Inalcik, H., “Kutadgu bilig'de Turk ye Iran siyaset nazariye ye gelenekieri,” Reşcid Rahmeti arar için armagan [Ankara, 1966], pp. 259–71;Google Scholar and his introduction [pp. 49–52] to “Adaletnameler,” Belgeler, 2 [1965], 49–145).Google Scholar Ottoman political theorists both before and after Ali gave particularly strong emphasis to this notion. One of Ail's most distinguished predecessors, Tursun Bey, credits the sovereign with perfect knowledge of all things (tasarruf-i juz'iyār). The passage is also cited by Fleischer (p. 292, n. 38) but its full implication, indicating a belief in sultanic omniscience, is not made explicit. On the generic as well as specific meanings of juz'iyāt, see Redhouse, J. W., A Turkish and English Lexicon (Istanbul, 1890), p. 661, esp. definition no. 3.Google Scholar

36 On the element of apologia in Tursun Bey's history and the paradigmatic approach in the Ottoman historiographic tradition in general, see Inalcik and Murphey, Tursun Bey's History, Introduction, pp. 20–24.

37 See Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, pp. 183–87.

38 See Wakeman, F., “The Price of Autonomy: Intellectuals in Ming and Ch'ing Politics,” Daedalus, 101 (Spring 1972), 35–70.Google Scholar

39 Pickthall, Mohammed Marmaduke, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (Tenth Printing, New York, 1963), p. 70 (Surah iii, verse 103).Google ScholarCf Flügel, G., Corani Textus Arabicus (Leipzig, 1883), Surah iii, verses 98–99.Google Scholar

40 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, pp. 216–19.

41 Ibid., pp. 220 ff.

42 Ibid., p. 168.

43 Concerning the limits of generalization, see Arthur Wright's essay in Gottschalk, L., ed., Generalization in the Writing of History (Chicago, 1963, repr. 1980), pp. 316–58.Google Scholar

44 On the need to resist the temptation to interpret literally or attach universal significance to the utterances of memorialists addressing the sovereign, see Wright, Arthur F., “The Study of Chinese Civilization,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 21 (1960), 235–55, in particular his closing remarks on p. 255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Stern, G., Meaning and Change of Meaning (Bloomington, md., 1931),Google Scholar cited in Sahlins, M., Islands of History (Chicago, 1985), introduction, p. x.Google Scholar

45 Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, p. 4: “our knowledge … lacks an understanding of the human and intellectual flesh that gives meaning to the institutional skeleton.”

46 See Tilly, C., “Peeping Through the Windows of the Wealthy,” Journal of Urban History, 3 (1976), 131–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 On the pitfalls associated with top-heavy analysis, see note 19.

48 See Geyl's, P. essay in defense of caution and tentativeness when drawing conclusions about the historical past, in Use and Abuse of History (New Haven, 1955).Google Scholar See in particular Geyl's remarks on Toynbee's historical methods, Ibid., pp. 59–66.

49 Murphey, R., Regional Structure in the Ottoman Economy (Wiesbaden, 1987), Introduction, pp. ix ff.Google Scholar