D. Sajdi (Hrsg.): Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee 2010-2-068

Sajdi, Dana (Hrsg.): Ottoman Tulips, Otto-man Coffee. Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eigh-teenth Century. London: I.B. Tauris 2008. ISBN:1-84511-570-8; 262 S.

Rezensiert von: Astrid Meier, HistorischesSeminar, Universität Zürich

Tulips and coffee, leisure and lifestyle in anOttoman perspective. Title and subtitle of thiscollection of articles raise expectations whichthe volume itself can meet only partially. Itcontains six papers presented by a group ofyoung scholars at a larger conference enti-tled „Rethinking culture in the Ottoman eigh-teenth century“ that took place in Princetonin 2005. The articles, however, are connectedmore by their revisionist stand than by explor-ing the potentials of a culturalist approach toOttoman history. It is symptomatic that theeditor chooses to address, „by way of intro-duction“, the paradigm of decline and its his-tory in Ottoman studies rather than to outlinethe characteristics of what is called here „thenew field of Ottoman cultural history“ (p. 2).

In a detailed overview, Dana Sajdi revisitsthe discursive construction and deconstruc-tion of the notion of decline in the historiogra-phy of the Ottoman empire which is still verymuch in evidence outside the narrow circlesof specialists. For the latter, the usefulness ofthis exercise is probably limited, but one canhope that the former might take notice, moreso now than in 1999 when Amy Singer stated„those who persist ... do so out of sheer lazi-ness“ (p. 1).

Can Erimtan’s article opens the volumewith an appeal to rethink the characteriza-tion of the so-called Tulip Age (1718–1730) as„a short-lived but highly productive era ofWesternization during Damad Ibrahim Pasa’stenure as ... grand vizier“ (pp. 42–43). Er-imtan explores the contested perceptions ofthe Saadabad summer palace, situated out-side the city walls of Istanbul, a buildingwhich has long vanished without leaving atrace. The void can be filled with descriptionsfrom various perspectives. Erimtan positsthat whereas former scholarship saw the con-struction as influenced by recent views of Ver-sailles and Fontainebleau, „the Ottoman em-pire had at the time not necessarily been look-

ing westward for inspiration“ (p. 43), that, onthe contrary, the palace is following modelsfrom Safavid Iran, Mughal India or other re-gions of the Islamic world. A meticulous in-vestigation of the meta-narratives of writingOttoman history leads to the not altogethersurprising result that early 18th-century Is-tanbul presents a much more complex cul-turescape than the simplistic notion of West-ernization implies. In replacing one exclu-sivist way of thinking by another, however,Erimtan exposes himself to the question ofwhat we gain by describing modes and artic-ulations of cultural life in the Ottoman cap-ital in terms of an either/or of Western vs.Safavid/Islamic influences instead of a lieu ofencounters of various kinds and directions.

This point is illustrated by the article of Or-lin Sabev (Orhan Salih) in the same volume.It aims at challenging the common percep-tion of the introduction of the printing pressin 18th-century Istanbul as a failure („Theydid not read what I printed,“ Ibrahim Müte-ferrika utters as fictive last words in a recentplay, p. 63). Sabev collects, from a variety ofsources, among them the probate inventoryof the printer, the numbers of books printedand books sold in order to prove the com-mercial success of the enterprise. By special-ising on dictionaries and non-religious liter-ature like history and geography, the print-ing press had catered primarily for those in-volved in government and thus on a utilitar-ian programme of publishing (p. 78). In sell-ing seventy percent of its production in Müte-ferrika’s lifetime, it was more successful thansome of its early-modern European counter-parts. Sabev emphasises that the impact ofthe printing press was not a sudden revolu-tion, but a long-term process of acculturationwhich holds true for the „Europe“ of Guten-berg as well as the Istanbul of Müteferrika.

In his article, Babak Rahimi addresses im-perial circumcision rituals as a way to un-derstand the changing relationships betweenstate and society. Building on the growing lit-erature of Ottoman state organisation in the18th century, he describes the importance ofthe rituals for the developing „theatre state“(Clifford Geertz) of the Ottomans. The focalpoint is the role of the „nahil“, a wooden polefilled with flowers, fruit or sweets given to

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the princes. Whereas it is easy to understandthe public performance of such rituals andtheir symbolic use for the display of imperialpower, it seems more difficult to link themdirectly and convincingly to socio-economictransformations as Brahimi suggests (p. 92)but does not prove.

The two remaining contributions are re-lated more closely insofar as they both con-cern coffeehouses. In a short review of theexisting literature, Ali Çaksu makes a casefor a more thorough investigation of the roleof Janissary coffeehouses in the urban fabricwhere, for instance in Istanbul, coffeehousesfunctioned as „headquarters of the Janissarypolitical and criminal activities“ (p. 120), cen-tres of „Bektashism“ (p. 125) as well as busi-ness ventures up to 1826.

Alan Mikhail promises a visit to Ottomancoffeehouses while exploring questions re-lated to gender and urban space. The articlestarts with a critique of the gendered notionsof public and private in Ottoman contexts,which reiterates arguments against a simpletransfer of the Habermasian concepts into theOttoman sphere. Passing fleetingly by Fou-cault’s notion of heterotopias, Mikhail con-cludes by summarising his theoretical stancein the following terms: “ ... various ideasof space within the Ottoman world existedin concert with one another, and to suggesta rigid conceptualization of space within theOttoman empire would in all likelihood proveineffective in describing the vast multiplicityof spaces that made up the Ottoman world“(p. 134). He then explores in a rather unevenargument various aspects of the social usesof neighborhood coffeehouses, as extension ofhome for male customers, as places of gossipand political discussion, but also as genderedloci of poetical imaginings.

Referring to cases from Istanbul, Cairo,Aleppo, Damascus and Jerusalem, Mikhail’sarticle in particular, implicitly also the volumeas a whole, raises the old question of what wemean by the label „Ottoman“. While I eas-ily concede that „no single dichotomizationof space could accurately reflect Ottoman ur-ban realities“ (p. 134), I wonder whether theuse of „Ottoman“ as a category of space, ur-ban space and coffeehouses in particular, willcontribute to a fruitful discussion along these

lines, without a reference to more locally de-fined cultural contexts. Though being the cap-ital, Istanbul does not represent the Ottomanempire as whole, not even in cultural terms.Generalizations of this type do not strike meas a promising way to contribute to the dis-cussions and debates that are already well un-derway in the field of Ottoman cultural his-tory.

All in all, this collective undertaking raisesimportant questions for future discussions. Inthe articles, they sometimes seem to becomeof secondary importance behind the revision-ist impetus to challenge previous scholarship.This makes the volume of limited interest to ageneral public beyond a rather circumscribedcircle of specialists, though this is probablyalso the consequence of the rather excessiveprice of the well-produced book.

HistLit 2010-2-068 / Astrid Meier über Sajdi,Dana (Hrsg.): Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee.Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century.London 2008, in: H-Soz-Kult 23.04.2010.

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