The Ottoman Empire: a Historical Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]
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Turkish writer and novelist Halide Edib, ca. 1920s. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
In 1925 Halide Edib left Turkey. She traveled to India, France, England, and the United States. She returned to Turkey in 1939 after the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Upon her return to Turkey, Halide Edib was appointed professor of English literature at Istanbul University. She also was elected to the Turkish parliament, where she served as a deputy from 1950 to 1954. Halide Edib Adivar died in Istanbul in 1964. Among her best known works are The Shirt of Flame, Memoirs of Halide Edib, Zeyno’s Son, Turkey Faces West, Conflict of East and West in Turkey, and Handan.
See also: Empire and Administration: Atatürk, Kemal; Rebels: Young Turks; Sultans: Abdülhamid II
Further Reading
Calislar, Ipek. Halide Edib—Biyografisine Sigmayan Kadin. Istanbul: Everest Yayinlari, 2010.
Edib, Halidé. Memoirs of Halidé Edib. New York: Gorgias Press, 2004.
Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (Ahmed Jevdet Pasha)
(1823–1895)
Ottoman statesman, scholar, author, historian, and jurist, who advocated governmental reforms and modernization within the framework of the existing institutions of the Ottoman state. Ahmed Cevdet was born in Lofça (modern-day Lovecha) in present-day north central Bulgaria. His birth name was Ahmed. The name Cevdet (Jevdet) was given to him in 1843 by his tutor, Süleyman Fehim Effendi. He attended primary school in his birthplace, Lofça, before moving to Istanbul in 1839. In Istanbul he studied Arabic, Persian, theology, Islamic mysticism, mathematics, and astronomy. Aside from Turkish, Cevdet Pasha spoke Arabic, Persian, Bulgarian, and French.
Ahmed Cevdet began his career as a kādi (judge) in 1846. He also was recruited to teach the children of Mustafa Reşid (Reshid) Pasha (1800–1858). Mustafa Reşid Pasha served several times as the grand vizier and foreign minister of the Ottoman Empire and was the principal architect of the reform measures known as Tanzimat (reorganization). Under the patronage of Mustafa Reşid Pasha, Cevdet entered the higher echelons of Ottoman government service. In 1851 he was “appointed as a member of the Council of the Ottoman Academy of Sciences” (Çelik: 26). In 1855 Cevdet Pasha was appointed to the prestigious position of the official historian of the Ottoman government. He also played an important role in drafting the Ottoman Civil Code.
Cevdet Pasha was appointed to several high government positions. He served for a time as the governor of Aleppo in present-day Syria. He then moved to the position of minister of justice. As the minister of justice he introduced a program to modernize the Ottoman court system. He also made a major contribution to the establishment of a new Ottoman legal system and to the publication of the Ottoman law book. After leaving the ministry of justice he served as the minister of education and minister of pious foundations. As he had done at the ministry of justice, at the ministry of education Cevdet Pasha introduced a plan for modernizing the Ottoman educational system based on a new curriculum (Çelik: 26). Cevdet Pasha also served as minister of the interior and minister of trade (Somel: 10). In 1880 Cevdet Pasha established a School of Law, where he also taught (Çelik: 26).
Cevdet Pasha was a prolific writer and a brilliant scholar. He wrote more than 20 books on law, history, grammar, linguistics, logic, and astronomy. One of his most important works was Tarih-i Cevdet (History of Cevdet). He also wrote a book on the history of Crimea and the Caucasus. In 1851 Ahmed Cevdet Pasha collaborated with another statesman of the Tanzimat period, Fuad Pasha, in writing Kavaid-i Osmaniye (The Rules of Ottoman Turkish), a landmark in the reform of the Ottoman Turkish language. Ahmed Cevdet Pasha died in Istanbul on May 26, 1895.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Fuad Pasha; Mustafa Reşid Pasha; Empire and Administration: Tanzimat; Sultans: Abdülmecid
Further Reading
Ahmed Cevdet Pasha. Tarih-i Cevdet 12 vols. Istanbul, 1891–1892.
Çelik, Yüksel. “Ahmed Cevdet Pasha.” In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 26–27. New York: Facts On File, 2009,.
Özgüdenli, Osman G. “Jevdet Pasha.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica. 2009. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jevdet-pasha. Accessed September 19, 2016.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Ahmed Vefik Pasha (1823–1891)
Ottoman statesman, diplomat, and scholar, who was elected as the president of the first Ottoman parliament in 1877. He was also an outstanding scholar whose works contributed immensely to the advancement of Turkish cultural studies.
Ahmed Vefik Pasha was born on July 6, 1823, in Istanbul. He hailed from a family of government officials and diplomats. He received his education in Istanbul and Paris. In 1847 he edited the first Salnāme (yearbook) of the Ottoman Empire. In 1849 Ahmed Vefik was appointed imperial commissioner for the Danubian principalities. He went on to serve as the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire to Iran. In 1860 he was appointed the Ottoman ambassador to France. In 1870 he wrote “the first textbook of Ottoman history and made numerous literary translations from French authors,” including Fénélon, Hugo, Le Sage, Molière, and Voltaire, “into a simple form of Ottoman Turkish” (Somel: 12). In 1876 he published Language of the Ottomans, a concise dictionary that emphasized simple and pure Turkish free from Arabic and Persian loan words. This work constituted the foundation for the scholarly works of future Turkish authors who were determined to introduce a Turkish that was simple and accessible to the masses.
In the early hours of Tuesday, May 30, 1876, the reform-minded Ottoman statesman Midhat Pasha and a small group of government officials and army commanders carried out a coup. The coup leaders deposed the reigning sultan, Abdülaziz (r. 1861–1876), and replaced him with Murad V. After Murad V suffered a nervous breakdown, Midhat Pasha and his supporters deposed Murad V in favor of his brother, who ascended the Ottoman throne on August 31 as Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909). Midhat was appointed grand vizier on December 19, and four days later the first Ottoman constitution was introduced by the new grand vizier. When the first Ottoman parliament was convened, Ahmed Vefik Pasha was elected as its president. In 1878 Ahmed Vefik Pasha was appointed grand vizier, but his tenure as the prime minister of Abdülhamid II was short. In 1879 Ahmed Vekif Pasha was appointed governor of Bursa, which had served as the first Ottoman capital. There he introduced significant modernization projects, improving the city’s sanitation and educational systems. He also created the first Ottoman theater. In 1882 he was appointed grand vizier for the second time. Once again he was dismissed from his post after a short time. Shortly after he was dismissed Ahmed Vefik Pasha was put under house arrest by the order of Abdülhamid II. Ahmed Vekif Pasha died in Istanbul on April 2, 1891.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Midhat Pasha; Empire and Administration: Tanzimat; Historians: Ibrahim Şinasi; Sultans: Abdülhamid II
Further Reading
Davison, Roderic H. Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876. New York: Gordian Press, 1973.
Davison, Roderic H. Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History 1744–1923: The Impact of the West. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Davison, Roderic H. Nineteenth Century Ottoman Diplomacy and Reforms. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1999.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Mardin, Şerif. The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Zürcher,
Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
al-Jabarti, Abd al-Rahman ibn Hassan
(1753/1754–1825)
Egyptian historian and chronicler who wrote two important works on the French occupation of Egypt in 1798 and its impact on Egyptian society. Al-Jabarti was born in 1753 or 1754 into an affluent family from al-Jabart, a village near the port of Zayla on the Red Sea. His father, Hassan, was a wealthy businessman who had studied mathematics and astronomy, as well as Turkish and Persian. He also enjoyed a close friendship with the Ottoman authorities and the ruling Mamluk families of the country. Al-Jabarti wrote two important works: Mazhar al-Taqdis bi zawal dawlat al-Fransis (The appearance of piety in the demise of French rule) and Aja’ib al-Athar fi’l Tarajim wa’l-Akhbar (The marvelous compositions of biographies and chronicles). In his first work, Mazhar al-Taqdis, al-Jabarti described the most important historical events that occurred during the French occupation of Egypt from 1798 to 1801. Adopting an anti-French attitude, the author denounced Napoleon Bonaparte and his French army as uncivilized atheists and drunkards who had insulted Islamic values, customs, and traditions. In his second work, Aja’ib al-Athar, however, Jabarti radically changed his evaluation of the French and praised them for their system of justice and scientific advances. Ajai’b is generally considered one of the most important sources for studying the history and the impact of the French occupation of Egypt. The multivolume chronicle is the single most important primary source for the history of Egypt over nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule, which began in 1517 and ended with the British occupation of the country in 1882. The book offers a detailed description of Egyptian society and politics beginning in the 17th century, with a particular emphasis on important historical events that took place between 1776 and 1825. Al-Jabarti focused on power struggles within the Mamluk dynasty, the French occupation of Egypt from 1798 to 1801, the reoccupation of Egypt by Ottoman forces, the rise of Mehmed Ali (Muhammad Ali) as the new ruler of Egypt, and Mehmed Ali’s struggle against the old Mamluk elite to impose his control over the country in 1805.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Mehmed Ali; Sultans: Mahmud II; Selim III
Further Reading
Al-Jabarti. Aja’ib al-Athar fi’l Tarajim wa’l-Akhbar. 4 vols. Cairo: Bulaq Press, 1879.
Al-Jabarti. Mazhar al-Taqdis bi zawal dawlat al-Fransis. Cairo: al-Hayah al-Ammah li-Shuun al-Matabi al-Amiriyah, 1961.
Bonaparte’s Proclamations as Recorded by Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti. Translated by Martin Hinds. Cairo: Al-Arab Bookshop, 1971.
Hathaway, Jane, ed. Al-Jabarti’s History of Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009.
Āşikpāşāzāde (Āshik Pāshāzāde)
(1400–ca. 1484)
Fifteenth-century Ottoman historian and chronicler, who wrote Tevāriḫ-i Āl-i Osmān (Histories of the house of Osman), which covers the history of the Ottoman dynasty from its founding in the late 13th century to the second half of the 15th century. Āșikpāșāzāde’s name was Dervish Ahmed. He was the great-grandson of the Sufi poet Aşık Pasha (1272–1333). Some sources claim that Āșikpāșāzāde was born in Amasya in northern Anatolia (present-day northern Turkey). He received a traditional education and traveled throughout the territory of the Ottoman state and beyond. He performed the hajj or the annual Muslim pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. He then traveled to Egypt, where he stayed for a time before returning home and entering government service. He participated in several important military campaigns, including the Second Battle of Kosovo, which was fought between the armies of the Ottoman sultan, Murad II (r. 1421–1444, 1446–1451), and a Hungarian-Wallachian coalition led by the commander János (John) Hunyadi, at Kosovo between October 17 and October 20, 1448. He was also present at the siege of Constantinople and the fall of the Byzantine capital in May 1453. Āșikpāșāzāde began to write his history late in his life.
Writing between 1476 and 1502, Āșikpāșāzāde provided valuable information on the origins of the Ottoman dynasty; the various social groups that played an important role in forming the Ottoman state; the raiding gāzi tradition of the early Ottoman rulers; and some of the major events and accomplishments of the Ottoman sultans, including the victories of Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481), the conqueror of Constantinople. Āșikpāșāzāde’s Tevarih has been identified as one of the most important sources for the study of the Ottoman state in its formative centuries, though some of its content has been criticized for its inaccuracy and polemical language and the unreliability of its claims. For example, in writing about Orhan, the second Ottoman sultan, Āșikpāșāzāde claimed that he was relying “in part on a source whose author lived in Orhan’s time, but no other exemplar of this source has surfaced” (Lindner: 117). One of the strengths of Āșikpāșāzāde’s book is that the author possessed firsthand knowledge of the events recounted, because he himself had participated in them, including some of the most critical events of 15th-century Ottoman history, such as the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Āșikpāșāzāde’s narrative also was “written in plain Turkish for plain men,” “close to the views of the Turkish gazis or frontier fighters” (Lewis: 8). For example, in describing the conquest of Constantinople the Ottoman chronicler wrote:
For fifty days the battle went on by day and night. On the fifty-first day the Sultan ordered free plunder. They attacked. On the fifty-first day, a Tuesday, the fortress was captured. There was good booty and plunder. Gold and silver and jewels and fine stuffs were brought and stacked in the camp market. They began to sell them. They made the people of the city slaves and killed their emperor, and the gazis embraced their pretty girls…. On the first Friday after the conquest they recited the communal prayer in Aya Sofya, and the Islamic invocation was read in the name of Sultan Mehmmed Khan Gazi. (Quoted in Lewis: 8)
Āșikpāșāzāde’s description of some of his own personal accomplishments also reveals a great deal about Ottoman military traditions and practices, including the enslavement of conquered people in the Balkans. He wrote that he had served as a raider at Skopje (present-day capital of the Republic of Macedonia) in the 1430s and 1440s. In the description of one of the attacks carried out by the Ottomans, he wrote that after a raid across the Sava River, which discharges into the Danube in Belgrade, he had “bought a fine lad of six or seven years” and he had “acquired seven slaves and slave girls from the Raiders” (Imber: 261). He also stated that the number of prisoners enslaved by the Turkish raiders was “more numerous” than the Ottoman troops (Imber: 261). Āșikpāșāzāde did not shy away from adopting a critical tone even when he covered the lives and careers of Ottoman sultans. For example, in writing about the humiliating defeat suffered by the Ottomans at the hands of the Turkic conqueror, Timur, at the Battle of Ankara on July 20, 1402, the author put the blame squarely on the Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402), “branding him a debauchee” and attacking the sultan’s Serbian wife for encouraging him to drink (Finkel: 29).
See also: Historians: Kemal Pașazade; Sultans: Bayezid I; Mehmed II; Murad II
Further Reading
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Inalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Translated by Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973.
Lewis, Bernard. Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.
Lindner, Rudi Paul. “Anatolia, 1300–1451.” In The Cambridge History of Turkey, edited by Kate Fleet, 1:102–137. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
B
āki (Bāqi) (1526–1600)
One of the greatest Ottoman lyric poets of the 16th century, who lived from 1526 to 1600. Bāki enjoyed a close association with three Ottoman sultans: Süleyman I (r. 1520–1566), Selim II (r. 1566–1574), and Murad III (r. 1574–1595). These Ottoman monarchs rewarded Bāki handsomely for his poetical and literary genius.
Bāki came from humble origins. As a young boy he received a traditional education. He eventually became a teacher, but his reputation as a brilliant poet brought him to the attention of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman I, who invited Bāki to join his literary circle. As a multitalented poet and scholar, Bāki also was appointed to the offices of “the two kadiaskerliks, which were the highest positions possible for the ilmiyye class” (Somel: 30). In sharp contrast to the majority of Ottoman poets, who were influenced by Sufism or Islamic mysticism, Bāki’s poetry, which was written during the zenith of the empire’s power and prosperity, is filled with the joy of living and loving, as well as with a genuine adoration of the magnificent and awe-inspiring natural world.
See also: Sultans: Murad III; Selim II; Süleyman I
Further Reading
Gibb, E. J. W. A History of Ottoman Poetry. 6 vols. Edited by Edward G. Browne. London: Luzac and Company, 1965.
Clot, André. Süleiman the Magnificent. London: Saqi Books, 2005.
Kunt, Metin, and Christine Woodhead, eds. Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age. London: Longman House, 1995.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Somel, Selçuk Akșin. Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003.
Evliya Çelebi (Evliya Chelebi) (1608/1609/