Tutorial1a

"Orientalism, Myth and Islam"

Of relevance to both Tutorials A and B: Early Ottoman Mosques and Calligraphy

In addition to the specific readings listed below (and available in the Reserve Reading Room, Rutherford North Library), the following are directly relevant for Tutorial I. [They too are available on Reserve.]

H Inalcik, "The Rise of the Ottoman Empire", in M A Cook (ed.) A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730, pp.10-53.

" " , Studies in Ottoman Social and Economic History, "The Question of the Emergence of the Ottoman State (1980)", pp.71-9.

S Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Vol.I, Pt. I "Rise of the Ottoman Empire, 1280-1566", pp.1-168

Usama ibn Munqih (1095-1188) "Memoirs", in The Islamic World (as below), pp.184-206.

H A Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire. A history of the Osmanlis up to the death of Bayezid I (1300-1403), (1916; reprint 1968). [Reserve reading pp.13-34; 44-53]

M Fuad Koprulu (trans., ed. Gary Leiser), The Origins of the Ottoman Empire (1933/4 original in French; trans. 1992)[Reserve reading pp.1-12]

al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad (in WH McNeill and Marilyn R Waldman, eds. The Islamic World (1973), "The New Mysticism: Theology -- 'From that which delivers from Error' ". [Reserve Reading pp.206,7; 218,19]

Edward W Said, Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient. (1978)[Reserve reading pp.1-28]

There is a great deal of overlap between Sections A and B this time, the difference being principally one of emphasis rather than distinct readings and questions. In this section, I want us to look at the role of myth in the history of the Ottomans, with particular attention to how historians have treated 'myth' as an historical source. And secondly at the nature of early Islam and how historians have viewed its role in the creation of the Empire. Finally, the issue of 'orientalism' as developed in the work of Edward Said: how does his analysis help us to re-focus our understanding of the historians' debates about myth and Islam?

In the textual excerpts below, I have occasionally inserted a question or commentary, or perhaps highlighted a sentence, to help direct your attention and facilitate discussion. New questions and issues will emerge from the discussion (in the conferencing mode).

H A Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire. A history of the Osmanlis up to the death of Bayezid I (1300-1403), (1916; reprint 1968). [Reserve reading pp.13-34; 44-53]

"Neshri [one of the first Ottoman historians from the end of the fifteenth century] now tells a story which is repeated by later Ottoman historians as a fact. Neshri says that he heard this story from a 'trustworthy' man, who had heard it from the stirrup-holder of Orkhan who, in turn, had heard it from his father and his grandfather. This is worthy of mention for it is one of the very few instances where an Oriental historian has taken the trouble to connect his facts with what might be termed an original source:

{What would Said say about this passage, remembering that Gibbons published this in 1916? And what would you say about the value of the information which is to follow?}

'As Ertogrul, with about four hundred men, was marching into Rum, Sultan Alaeddin was engaged in a fight with some of his enemies. As they came near, they found that the Tartars were on the point of beating Sultan Alaeddin. Now Ertogrul had several hundred excellent companions with him. He spoke to them :'Friends we come straight upon a battle. We carry swords at our side. To flee like women and resume our journey is not manly. We must help one of the two. Shall we aid those who are winning or those who are losing?' then they said unto him, 'It will be difficult to aid the losers. Our people are weak in number, and the victors are strong!' Ertogrul replied, 'This is not the speech of bold men. The many part is to aid the vanquished. The prophet says that he shall come to the helpless in time of need. Were man to make a thousand pilgrimages, he finds not the reward that comes to him when at the right moment he turns aside affliction from the helpless!'. Thereupon Ertogrul and his followers immediately grasped their swords and fell upon the Tartars .. and drove them in flight. When the Sultan saw this he came to meet Ertogrul, who dismounted, and kissed the Sultan's hand. Whereupon Alaeddin gave him a splendid robe of honor and many gifts for his companions. Then gave he to the people of Ertogrul a country by the name Sugut for winter and the mountain range of Dumanij for summer residence. From this decides one rightly that the champion of the faith, Osman was born at Sugut....

None of the Ottoman historians records any progress of conquest during the long years of Ertogrul's peaceable existence. When he died, in 1288, Osman was thirty years old. He gave to his son less than the Ottoman historians claim was his actual grant from Alaeddin I. If their own records of Osman's conquests after 1289 are correct, we must believe that his tribe possessed only Sugut and a portion of the mountain range lying directly west. When Ertogul died, they had no other village -- not even a small mountain castle.

After Ertogrul's death, there was an amazing change. Osman and his villagers began to attack their neighbors, extend their boundaries and form a state [a clue to this change lies in the following tradition...] Osman once passed the night in the home of a pious Moslem. Before he went to sleep his host entered the room, and placed on a shelf a book, of which Osman asked the title. 'It is the Koran' he responded. 'What is its object?' again asked Osman. 'The Koran', his host explained 'is the word of God, given to the world through his prophet Mohammed.' Osman took the book and began to read. He remained standing, and read all night. Towards morning he fell asleep exhausted. An angel appeared to him, and said, 'Since thou hast read my eternal word with so great respect, thy children and the children of thy children shall be honoured from generation to generation'.

In a village not far from Sugut, lived a Moslem cadi, who dispensed justice and legal advice to hose of his faith in that neighborhood. He had a daughter Malkhatun, whose hand was demanded in marriage by Osman. But the Sheik Edebali for a period of two years, persisted in refusing his consent to this union. Finally, Osman, when sleeping one night in the home of Edebali had a dream.

He saw himself lying beside the sheik. A moon arose out of the breast of Edebali, and, when it had become full, descended and hid itself in his breast. Then, from his own loins there began to arise a tree which, as it grew, became greener and more beautiful, and covered with the shadow of its branches the whole world. Beneath the tree he saw four mountain ranges, the Caucasus, the Atlas, the Taurus, and the Balkans. From the roots of the tree issued forth the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and the Danube, covered with vessels like the sea. The fields were full of harvests, and the mountains were crowned with thick forests. In the valleys everywhere were cities, whose golden domes were invariably surmounted by a crescent, and from whose countless minarets sounded forth the call to prayer, that mingled itself with the chattering of birds upon the branches of the tree. The leaves of the tree began to lengthen out into swordblades. Then came a wind that pointed the leaves towards the city of Constantinople, which 'situated at the junction of two seas and of two continents, seemed like a diamond mounted between two sapphires and two emeralds, and appeared thus to form the precious stone of the ring of a vast dominion which embraced the entire world.' As Osman was putting on the ring he awoke.

When this dream was told to Edebali, he interpreted t as a sign from God that he should give his daughter to Osman in order that these wonderful things might be brought about for the glory of the true faith. So the marriage was arranged.

That Osman and his people were good Moslems themselves and of Moslem ancestry is not questioned by the Ottoman and Byzantine writers and seems to have been accepted as a matter of fact by the European historians who have written upon the history of the Ottoman Empire. But it seems very clear that Osman and his tribe, when they settled at Sugut, must have been pagans.

{Think about why THIS tradition may have been important in the fifteenth century. What do you think the people who told and retold the traditions 'heard' at the time? In what ways may modern historians be 'hearing' something quite different (and why)?

The various Turkish tribes which entered Asia Minor at the same time as that of Osman, and had penetrated into the western part of the peninsula, soon found themselves in a Moslem atmosphere. They were few in number. Nothing was more natural for them than to adopt the faith of their Seljuk kinsmen. This they did, for exactly the same reason that the Bulgarians, although they had originally a tendency towards Islam, adopted Christianity. It was so natural that it passed without comment. These Turks were primarily warriors, indifferent to deep religious feeling and conviction. {Think about the assumption operative with this observation!}

So they could take on a new faith -- if we can say that they ever had a faith before -- without any trouble or without any noise being made over it. Between 800 and 1000 Seljuks changed their religion three times. At the sack of Mosul, in 1286 the Turks and turcomans made no distinction between Moslem and Christian, massacring the men and carrying off the women of both sects alike.

Of the village and castle chieftains with whom Osman at the beginning of his career lived on Friendly terms, almost every one was a Christian. His lot was cast with them. He was cut off from the decaying Seljuk dominion of Konia. He had practically no intercourse with the other Turkish emirs of Asia Minor. His only serious foes were the Mongol, pagans like himself, who had, at the very year of his birth, given what seemed a death-blow to Islam in destroying the Khalifate at Bagdad in 1258 and who were, when Osman began his active career, plotting with the Franks of the Holy Land to aid them against the Egyptian sultanate -- the last strong bulwark of Islam.

{Compare this with the interpretation in your Textbook, a much more recent one and think about the significance of the differences between them.}

We see then, the tremendous importance of these dreams of Osman, of his meeting with Edebali, and of his marriage with Malkhatun. We cannot regard these events in any other light than as recording, in a truly Oriental way, his conversion to Islam. The interpretation of the dream of the Holy Book strikes one immediately. Except in Seadeddin, the religious significance of the moon and tree dream is overshadowed by the romance of Osman and Malkhatun. Let us give to sheik Edebali his proper place in history as the great missionary of Islam, who found for his faith in its hour of dire need a race of swordbearers worthy of the task of reconstituting the Khalifate and of spreading once more the name of Mohammed in three continents.

It was the conversion of Osman and his tribe which gave birth to the Osmanli people, because it welded into one race the various elements living in the north western corner of Asia Minor. The new faith gave them a raison d'etre. This conversion, and not the disappearance of the Seljuks of Konia is the explanation of the activity of Osman after 1290 as in sharp contrast with the preceding fifty years of easy, slothful existence at Sugut.

M Fuad Koprulu (trans., ed. Gary Leiser), The Origins of the Ottoman Empire (1933/4 original in French; trans. 1992)[Reserve reading pp.1-12]

It is clear that he tried to explain the establishment of the Ottoman state only by religion, and believed that the newly adapted religion created a new race, an Ottoman race. Before criticizing his evidence, it is necessary to state that an attempt to explain such a great and important historical event solely by a religious factor, that is, "by a one-sided explanation", even it if does contain some degree of truth, is contrary to the complexity of historical reality and is always inadequate.'

{Do you agree that Gibbons' emphasis on the role of Islam is equivalent to explaining this great event 'solely by a religious factor'? If so, in what ways is it inadequate (as Koprulu suggests)? If not, in what ways is Koprulu misinterpreting the argument?}

Gibbons relies on two legends [as recounted in the Gibbons reading, above], found in the old Ottoman chronicles as his strongest evidence in this matter. He knew of course that these were legends, but believed that such legends could be used, albeit with care and caution, for periods for which the historical documents were lost, because he believed that they contained the reflections of certain historical events altered in the collective imagination. ...

As Giese [another contemporary German historian] stated when he criticized Gibbons, it would be extremely rash to attempt to reach any conclusions about "Osman's conversion" from these legends. At the very most, one could see in them "a desire to give a divine legitimacy to the Ottoman family for the establishment of hegemony over the other Turkish tribes in Asia Minor".

Although Giese's observation is undoubtedly correct, I would like to examine this question a little more closely and show the kind of mistaken deductions that can be reached in this respect if "internal criticism" of the old chronicles is neglected.

[The following is a bit lengthy but bear with it; by the end you will begin to see what he means by 'internal criticism']

In the tabaqat-i nasiri by the thirteenth century historian Juzjani, we find a tale which is similar to the legend according to which a tree sprang from Osman's navel in a dream and spread its shadow over the whole earth. Sebuk-Tegin, the father of Mahmud of Ghazna, the conqueror of India, had a dream an hour before the birth of his son. In this dream, a tree grew from a brazier in his house and cast its shadow over the entire world. An interpreter of dreams explained this to mean that "he would have a conqueror for a son".

We find another version of this legend of the tree which appears in a dream in the section containing the traditions of the Oghuz in the great work of Rashid al-Din, namely his Jami' al-tawarikh the first universal history, which he wrote at the beginning of the fourteenth century at the court of the Ilkhanids. Here a certain Toghril and his two brothers are mentioned among the legendary rulers of the Oghuz. Before they founded a state, their father had a dream in which three large trees sprang from his navel. The trees grew and grew. They cast a shadow in every direction and their tops reached to the sky. He described this dream to the tribal soothsayer and asked him to explain it. The soothsayer, who had already announced that a great ruler would appear from within the tribe, warned the man saying "your children will become rulers, but you must not reveal this secret to anyone". ...

One frequently comes across such dream stories in both ancient and medieval [European] chronicles, beginning with Herodotus. The prototype of Osman's dream is clearly seen in the above legends. The Oghuz tradition recorded by Rashid a-Din had either existed as an oral tale among the Anatolian Turks and then passed from this popular form to the Ottoman chronicles, or perhaps with greater likelihood because of the considerable importance given to Rashid al-Din's work at the Ottoman court in the fifteenth century, this tradition was taken directly from it and ascribed to the Ottoman family....

[Finally] Gibbons states that there was absolutely no historical record of the tribe to which Osman belonged -- and other tribes like it which fled before the Mongol invasion and came to Anatolia -- being Muslim. ... The small tribe to which Osman belonged had only given up its old paganism and adopted Islam after moving to the Muslim Turkish environment of western Anatolia. These opinions of Gibbons, who had no information at all on the religious conditions in Anatolia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are in numerous respects, as unfounded as his claims based on the aforesaid dream.

...But there is a more fundamental mistake here ... which must be clearly described in order to demonstrate in particular how indefensible is Gibbons' explanation of the establishment of the Ottoman state.

First it can by no means be considered as an historical axiom that the tribe to which Osman belonged was one of those which fled before the initial Mongol invasion and came to Anatolia in the thirteenth century and established itself there. The information given in this regard in the early Ottoman chronicles, the oldest of which has been shown to date from the last part of the fourteenth century, are totally unworthy of belief. And Gibbons, by the way, who was no Turkologist, had absolutely no knowledge of the oldest and most important of these chronicles. In the sources for the Seljuk period, there is no record whatsoever that such migrations to the western regions of Anatolia took place at that time. ... in light of our present knowledge, it is much easier to conclude that the tribe to which Osman belonged was one of those which had come to Anatolia during the very first Seljuk invasion. Gibbons' great error has been embedded for centuries in the old Ottoman chronicles and in the old European works based on them. It was usually accepted as a fact by all Eastern and Western authors who discussed Ottoman history... . It would there fore be unfair to attribute the responsibility for it to Gibbons. he saw no need, however, to criticize this tale, which had been created by the mentality of the medieval annalists, and wanted to use it to prove his own theory.

{There is much to comment on: how should we be using the 'tales' Gibbons used and Koprulu recounted? What do we learn about the writing of history from the Koprulu-Gibbons discussion? What do we learn about the Ottomans?}

Edward W Said, Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient. (1978)[Reserve reading pp.1-28]

[The full Reserve Room Reading will not be of interest to everyone; read sufficiently however, that you understand the basic premise of his argument. For those who are intrigued with this influential theory, 'orientalism', the chapter is a good -- if occasionally difficult -- introduction.]

It will be clear to the reader... that by Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient -- and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian or philologist -- either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. Compared with Oriental studies or area studies it is true that the term Orientalism is less preferred by specialists today, both because it is too vague and general and because it connotes the high-handed executive attitude of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century European colonialism.

{It is useful to remember that this course finishes in exactly this era, and that one of the readings for this Tutorial, Gibbons, dates to this epoch as well.}

... Here I come to the third meaning of Orientalism, which is something more historically and materially defined than either of the other two. Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient.

{We might usefully think both of Gibbons and Koprulu in these terms, as here he is talking about a timeless 'orientalism' which has, nonetheless its roots in the nineteenth, early twentieth century experience of colonialism.}

I have begun with the assumption that the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. We must take seriously Vico's great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have bade, and extent it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities -- to say nothing of historical entities -- such locales, regions, geographical sectors as "Orient" and "Occident" are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. The two geographical entities thus support and to an extent reflect each other.

Orientalism is never far from what Denys Hay has called the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying "us" Europeans as against all "those" non-Europeans, and indeed it can be argued that the major component in European culture is precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures.

{What do YOU think he means by these statements? Can you think of any contemporary examples to illustrate the ideas? Can you find any in the Tutorial readings?}

...as one surveys Orientalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the overriding impression is of Orientalism's insensitive schematization of the entire Orient.

How early this schematization began is clear from the examples I have given [not included here] of Western representations of the Orient in classical Greece. How strongly articulated were later representations building on the earlier ones... how dramatically effective their placing in Western imaginative geography, can be illustrated if we turn now to Dante's Inferno. [written c.1300-1310, contemporaneous with the rise of the Osmanlis of which we have been speaking]

What Dante the pilgrim sees as he walks through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso is a unique vision of judgment. ... "Maometto" -- Mohammed -- turns up in canto 28 of the Inferno. He is located in the eight of the nine circles of Hell, in the ninth of the ten Bolgias of Malebolge, a circle of gloomy ditches surrounding Satan's stronghold in Hell. Thus before Dante reaches Mohammed, he passes through circles containing people whose sins are of a lesser order: the lustful, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the heretics, the wrathful, the suicidal, the blasphemous. After Mohammed there are only the falsifiers and the treacherous (who include Judas, Brutus, and Cassius) before one arrives at the very bottom of Hell, which is where Satan himself is to be found....

Mohammed's punishment, which is also his eternal fate, is a peculiarly disgusting one: he is endlessly being cleft in two from his chin to his anus like, Dante says, a cask whose staves are ripped apart. Dante's verse at this point spares the reader non of the eschatological detail that so vivid a punishment entails: Mohammed entrails and his excrement are described with unflinching accuracy. Mohammed explains his punishment to Dante, pointing as well to Ali, who precedes him...

But this is not all that Dante has to say about Islam. Earlier in the Inferno a small group of Muslims turns up. Avicenna, Averroes, and Saladin are among those virtuous heathens who, along with Hector, Aeneas, Abraham, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, are confined to the first circle of the Inferno, there to suffer a minimal (and even honorable) punishment for not having had the benefit of Christian revelation. Dante, of course, admires their great virtues and accomplishments, but because they were not Christians, he must condemn them, however lightly to Hell. Eternity is a great leveler of distinctions... but the special anachronisms and anomalies of putting pre-Christian luminaries in the same category of "heathen" damnation with post-Christian Muslims does not trouble Dante. Even though the Koran specifies Jesus as a prophet, Dante chooses to consider the great Muslim philosophers and King as having been fundamentally ignorant of Christianity.

{Although we have no western texts in front of us from this epoch, it is instructive to consider to what extent Dante's view of Muhammad and Islam reflected/influenced more general ideas in Europe at the very moment the Ottoman 'race' was coming into being and the Ottoman 'state' was in the making. We certainly see traces of the ideas in later writings -- Said's point, of course.}