Intermediaries and Local Knowledge in a Changing Political Environment: Complaints from Libya at the Turn of the 20th Century
In: Die Welt des IslamsAs historiography on Ottoman Tripolitania and Benghazi focuses mainly on the Italian invasion and on the Sanūsiyya and pays little attention to Ottoman records, studies on political practice and change in that period are rare. However, the special circumstances of that remote and sparsely populated part of the empire enable us to focus on the role of intermediaries and complaints within the imperial framework. Complaints and related correspondence were crucial in the negotiation of order, both from the government’s and from the subjects’ point of view. With the 19th-century reforms, new notions of order emerged, and old notions were modified. The new mode of politics did not, however, consist of immutable prescriptions but could acquire new layers of meaning in a process of translation into the vernacular politics of the Libyan provinces and vice versa. Imperial notions of order were thus read and utilised in various ways. The key interpreters and translators in this process were intermediaries between imperial, provincial and local levels. This contribution suggests to study political communication within the imperial framework by focussing on these intermediaries.
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15
Christoph Antweiler, “Local Knowledge and Local Knowing: An Anthropological Analysis of Contested ‘Cultural Products’ in the Context of Development”, Anthropos 93 (1998), 469–94, esp. 469–70 and 473ff.
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17
See James E. Baldwin, “Petitioning the Sultan in Ottoman Egypt”, BSOAS 75 (2012), 1–26. Only in very important cases did the government send a special agent (mübāşir) to look into the issue. Such important cases were duly entered into the Mühimme registers.
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28
Reinkowski, Dinge, 283–7. For similar efforts in two other remote provinces, cf. Kühn, Empire,and Herzog, Herrschaft.
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33
Yuval Ben-Bassat, “In Search of Justice: Petitions Sent from Palestine to Istanbul from the 1870’s Onwards”, Turcica 41 (2009), 89–114. For intensified communication by telegraph, see Eugene Rogan, “Instant Communication: The Impact of the Telegraph in Ottoman Syria”, in: Thomas Philipp and Birgit Schäbler (eds.), The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation. Bilād al-Shām from the 18th to the 20th Century, Stuttgart 1998; cf. Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, München 2009, 1012–29.
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38
Sarıyıldız, Sokak Yazıcıları, 101–25. Cf. Yuval Ben-Bassat, “Rural Reactions to Zionist Activity in Palestine before and after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 as Reflected in Petitions to Istanbul”, MES 49 (2013), 349–63, quote 352.
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44
Darling, History, 5. Cf. the concepts of justice and grace in western and central Europe in Wolfgang Reinhard, Geschichte der Staatsgewalt: Eine vergleichende Verfassungsgeschichte Europas von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Munich 2002, 127. The philosophical dimension of justice is beyond the scope of this contribution.
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46
Faroqhi, “Political Activity”, 5f.; cf. Hakan Karateke, “Osmanlı Devleti‘nde ‘Adet-i Kadime’ Üstüne”, Journal of Turkish Studies 23 (1999), 117–34.
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57
Cf. Faroqhi, “Political Activity”, 13–6. Before the 19th century, the suspected personnel consisted less of officials in the strict sense of the word than of governors, or tax farmers, and their agents (ehl-i ʿörf). However, complaints about other groups did occur as well, including qāḍīs or fellow subjects (Faroqhi, “Political Activity”, 17–27), but most complaints were directed against ehl-i ʿörf (41% in the 1649–53 sample of Saliha Okur Gümrükçüoğlu, “Şikâyet defterlerine göre Osmanlı teb’asının şikâyetleri”, Ankara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi 61 (2012), 175–206, esp. 185ff.).
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88
Ahmida, The Making, 51–4. Rohlfs estimated that Sawkna had around 1,500 inhabitants and Hūn about 2,000 (Rohlfs, Kufra, 173 and 176).
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134
Hasan Taner Kerimoğlu, “Meşrutiyet Üzerinde İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti’ne Karşı Hak Arama Mücadelesi: Fedakâran-ı Millet Cemiyeti”, Toplumsal Tarih 23/137 (2005), 40–5, and idem, “II. Meşrutiyet Döneminde Genel Haklar Savunusu Yapan Bir Gazete: Hukuk-ı Umumiye”, Çağdaş Türkiye Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi 8/18–19 (2009), 21–38. Necīb Nādir was appointed to Derna on 20 Eylūl 1324/3 October 1908 (DH.MKT 2634: ministry of the interior to finance ministry, 6 Şubāṭ 1324/19 February 1909).
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Intermediaries and Local Knowledge in a Changing Political Environment: Complaints from Libya at the Turn of the 20th Century
In: Die Welt des IslamsAs historiography on Ottoman Tripolitania and Benghazi focuses mainly on the Italian invasion and on the Sanūsiyya and pays little attention to Ottoman records, studies on political practice and change in that period are rare. However, the special circumstances of that remote and sparsely populated part of the empire enable us to focus on the role of intermediaries and complaints within the imperial framework. Complaints and related correspondence were crucial in the negotiation of order, both from the government’s and from the subjects’ point of view. With the 19th-century reforms, new notions of order emerged, and old notions were modified. The new mode of politics did not, however, consist of immutable prescriptions but could acquire new layers of meaning in a process of translation into the vernacular politics of the Libyan provinces and vice versa. Imperial notions of order were thus read and utilised in various ways. The key interpreters and translators in this process were intermediaries between imperial, provincial and local levels. This contribution suggests to study political communication within the imperial framework by focussing on these intermediaries.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 124 | 36 | 0 |
| Full Text Views | 43 | 6 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 42 | 14 | 0 |