Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T12:24:56.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

UNDER THE INFLUENCE? TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSGRESSIONS IN LATE OTTOMAN IMPERIAL THOUGHT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2013

ANDREW ARSAN
ANDREW ARSAN*
Affiliation:
Faculty of History, University of Cambridge E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay focuses upon a single speech by the Ottoman man of religion Shaykh Ahmad Tabbarah. Though short, it allows us to reconsider the ways in which we have framed intellectual production beyond Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For even as scholars have queried the diffusionist sweep of earlier narratives, asserting the intellectual agency of non-Western thinkers, they have continued to lay the emphasis on the ways the latter customized European thought to local exigencies. Tabbarah, however, engaged in two-way translations and transgressions. Arraying French sources into a Khaldunian narrative even as he slotted statistics into conventional rhetorical forms, he imbued the secular with the religious, and the religious with the secular. Resolutely refusing to choose between these various elements, he laced them together into a compound creation, which drew its strength from the confluence of two seemingly incommensurable bodies of thought.

Type
Forum: A World of Ideas: New Pathways in Global Intellectual History, c.1880–1930
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , August 2013 , pp. 375 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Anthony Acciavatti, Michael Cook, Cathrine Evans, Stefanie Gänger, Shruti Kapila, Su Lin Lewis, Sam Moyn, and an anonymous reader for their judicious and helpful comments on this piece.

References

1 Calvino, Italo, “Multiplicity”, in Calvino, , Six Memos for the Next Millennium, trans. Patrick Creagh (New York, 1988), 81–124, 124Google Scholar.

2 al-Tabbarah, Ahmad, “Al-Hijra min Suriya wa ila Suriya”, in al-'Uthmani, Hizb al-Lamarkaziyya al-Idariyya, Al-Mu'tamar al-‘Arabi al-Awwal (Cairo, 1913), 83–93 (henceforth AH)Google Scholar.

3 Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004), 295Google Scholar.

4 Kapila, Shruti, ed., An Intellectual History for India (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar; Moyn, Samuel and Sartori, Andrew, “Approaches to Global Intellectual History”, in Moyn, and Sartori, , eds., Global Intellectual History (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I thank Sam Moyn for kindly sharing this piece.

5 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 28Google Scholar.

6 Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal, 1964), 3Google Scholar.

7 Khadduri, Majid, Political Trends in the Arab World: The Role of Ideas and Ideologies in Politics (Westport, CT, 1970), 5Google Scholar.

8 Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford, 1961), 2Google Scholar.

9 Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge, 1983), 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 von Grunebaum, G. E., Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity (Berkeley, CA, 1962), 137Google Scholar.

11 Gibb, H. A. R., Modern Trends in Islam (London, 1947), 51–2, 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Sharabi, Hisham, Arab Intellectuals and the West: The Formative Years, 1875–1914 (Baltimore, MD, 1970), ixGoogle Scholar.

13 Grunebaum, Modern Islam, 129, 13.

14 Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (London, 1958)Google Scholar.

15 Cachia, Pierre, “The Arab World”, in Ostle, Robin, ed., Modern Literature in the Near and Middle East, 1850–1970 (London, 1991), 33–44, 41Google Scholar.

16 Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London, 1994), 3Google Scholar.

17 Moyn and Sartori, “Approaches”, 15–16.

18 Schaffer, Simonet al., eds., The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770–1820 (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2009)Google Scholar.

19 Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley, CA, 2010), 3, 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Marwa Elshakry, “Darwin's Legacy in the Arab East: Science, Religion and Politics, 1870–1914”, unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2003, 7.

21 Ibid., 7.

22 El Shakry, Omnia, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Stanford, CA, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Poovey, Mary, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society (Chicago, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rabinow, Paul, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA, 1989)Google Scholar.

23 Sage, Elizabeth, A Dubious Science: Political Economy and the Social Question in Nineteenth-Century France (New York, 2009)Google Scholar.

24 Macintyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London, 1988), 12Google Scholar.

25 Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA, 2003), 222Google Scholar. See also Haj, Samira, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality and Modernity (Stanford, CA, 2009)Google Scholar; and Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton, NJ, 2002)Google Scholar.

26 Macintyre, Whose Justice?, 12–13, 364–5.

27 Tauber, Eliezer, The Emergence of the Arab Movements (London, 1993), 261, 1Google Scholar.

28 Zachs, Fruma, The Making of a Syrian Identity: Intellectuals and Merchants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Leiden, 2005), 215, 217Google Scholar.

29 Gualtieri, Sarah, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley, CA, 2009), 90Google Scholar.

30 Ahmad, Feroz, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics, 1908–1914 (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar; Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (London, 1938)Google Scholar; Ramsaur, E. E., The Young Turks: Prelude to the Revolution of 1908 (Princeton, NJ, 1957)Google Scholar; Zeine, Z. N., Arab–Turkish Relations and the Emergence of Arab Nationalism (Beirut, 1958)Google Scholar.

31 Kayalı, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA, 1997)Google Scholar; Campos, Michelle, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Berkeley, CA, 2011)Google Scholar; Khalidi, Rashid, “Ottomanism and Arabism in Syria before 1914: A Reassessment”, in Khalidi, et al., eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York, NY, 1991), 50–69Google Scholar.

32 Hizb al-Lamarkaziyya al-Idariyya al-'Uthmani, Al-Mu'tamar, 7.

33 de Tarrazi, Philippe, Tarikh al-Sahafa al-‘Arabiyya, vol. 4 (Beirut, 1929), 10 n. 1Google Scholar.

34 al-Hakim, Yusuf, Bayrut wa Lubnan fi ‘Ahd Al-‘Uthman (Beirut, 1964), 37, 39Google Scholar; Hanssen, Jens, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford, 2005), 73–9Google Scholar; Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, 116–43.

35 Khalidi, “Ottomanism and Arabism”, 63.

36 Tarrazi, Tarikh, 10, 14.

37 Ibid.

38 AH, 90.

39 Skinner, Quentin, “Surveying the Foundations: A Retrospective and Reassessment”, in Brett, Annabelet al., eds., Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 2006), 242–3Google Scholar.

40 Kamil Da'uq, Ulama'una (Beirut, n.d.), 162.

41 Allah, ‘Ali Zadeh Fayd, Fath al-Rahman li-Talib al-Qur'an (Beirut, 1904)Google Scholar.

42 Tabbarah, Ahmad, ed., Kalila wa Dimna, 3rd edn (Beirut, 1926)Google Scholar.

43 Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut, 181–2, 186.

44 Al-Mufid, 21 March 1911.

45 AH, 85–6.

46 Khalidi, Rashid, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; Meyer, James, “Immigration, Return, and the Politics of Citizenship: Russian Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, 1860–1914”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2007), 15–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 AH, 92–3.

48 Karpat, Kemal, “The Ottoman Emigration to America, 1860–1914”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 17 (1985), 175–209, 184Google Scholar.

49 AH, 87, 86.

50 AH, 93, 83, 90, 87, 91–2, 93.

51 AH, 86. Yanovski, Jean and David, Jules, Syrie ancienne et moderne (Paris, 1848)Google Scholar.

52 AH, 89. Lortet, Louis, La Syrie d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1884)Google Scholar.

53 Atabaki, Touraj and Zürcher, Erich, eds., Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (London, 2004)Google Scholar.

54 AH, 91.

55 AH, 83, 86.

56 AH, 82–3.

57 AH, 90.

58 Larkin, Margaret, The Theology of Meaning: ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jurjani's Theory of Discourse (New Haven, CT, 1995)Google Scholar.

59 Deeb, Kamal Abu, Al-Jurjani's Theory of Poetic Imaginary (Warminster, 1979), 24Google Scholar; Ritter, Helmut, “Introduction”, in al-Jurjani, 'Abd al-Qahir ibn 'Abd al-Rahman, Arar al-Balagha, ed. Helmut Ritter (Istanbul, 1954), 6Google Scholar.

60 Smyth, William, “Rhetoric and ‘Ilm al-Balagha: Christianity and Islam”, Muslim World 23/3–4 (1992), 242–55, 254Google Scholar.

61 Abu Deeb, Al-Jurjani's Theory, 26–7.

62 ‘Abduh, Muhammad, ed., Dala'il al-I'jaz (Cairo, 1903), 7Google Scholar.

63 Al-Ittihad al-‘Uthmani, 8 February 1913.

64 Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut, 182–3.

65 The National Archives, Kew, Foreign Office 424/237, Beirut, 28 Jan. 1913; Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, 129.

66 Asad, Formations, 208–9.

67 Masud, Muhammad Khalid, “The Obligation to Migrate: The Doctrine of Hijra in Islamic Law”, in Eickelman, Dale and Piscatori, James, eds., Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration and the Religious Imagination (London, 1990), 29–49, 32Google Scholar; Peters, Rudolph, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (The Hague, 1979), 41–2Google Scholar.

68 al-‘Arabi, Ibn, Ahkam al-Qur'an, vol. 1 (Beirut, 1987), 484–5Google Scholar.

69 Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago, 1986), 107Google Scholar.

70 Asad, Formations, 25–6.

71 Messick, Brinkley, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley, CA, 1993), 23–5Google Scholar; and Gilsenan, Michael, Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern Middle East (London, 2006), 9Google Scholar.

72 Le Bon, Gustave, La civilisation des Arabes (Paris, 1884), 137–8Google Scholar.

73 AH, 86.

74 Al-Muqaddima li-l-‘allama Ibn Khaldun (Cairo, 1320 AH [1902–3]), 272.

75 Ibid.

76 AH, 87.

77 Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti, L'ami des hommes ou traité de la population, vol. 3 (Avignon, 1756), 182Google Scholar.

78 Hizb al-Lamarkaziyya al-Idariyya al-'Uthmani, Al-Mu'tamar, 3–4.

79 Devji, Faisal, “Apologetic Modernity”, MIH 4/1 (2007), 61–76, 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 AH, 90–91.

81 Elena, Alberto, The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, trans. Belinda Coombes (London, 2005), 184Google Scholar.