Post by meltdown711 on Nov 5, 2007 12:17:17 GMT -5
An article that might interest Janni. Maybe a lil hard to read cosidering the format
Tolerant Dimensions of Cultural Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire: The Albanian
Community, 1800-1912
George W. Gawrych
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4. (Nov., 1983), pp. 519-536.
Stable URL:
links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-7438%28198311%2915%3A4%3C519%3ATDOCPI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X
International Journal of Middle East Studies is currently published by Cambridge University Press.
Your
George W. Gawrych
TOLERANT DIMENSIONS OF CULTURAL
PLURALISM IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE:
THE ALBANIAN COMMUNITY, 1800-1912
Scholars who have conducted research on the different peoples of the Ottoman
Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have, as a general rule, focused
their studies on the process by which the various national minorities gained their
independence from "Turkish" rule. To study this complex problem, historians of
the Balkans and of Middle Eastern countries other than Turkey have selected a
methodological framework which seeks to analyze the nature of the struggles
that led to the eventual emergence of nation-states such as Albania, Greece,
Bulgaria, and Syria. Framing studies with this approach has encouraged scholars
to eschew those sources of information which present a harmonious dimension
to the relations among the different national and religious minorities. For their
part, Ottoman and Turkish specialists have tended to exhibit a similar penchant
for an ethnocentric perspective on Ottoman history; they have been concerned
mainly with the rise of Turkish nationalism and with the evolution of the Ottoman
Empire into the Republic of Turkey. Though publications of this predilection
have contributed to a general understanding of certain aspects of Ottoman history,
they have also left for the historical profession a distorted picture of a
politically polarized and culturally exhausted Ottoman society. This society
appears as a nebulous entity composed of many disparate and estranged cultures
which received their separate cultural nourishment and ossification through the
existence of seemingly hermetic communities defined by national and religious
criteria.
While tensions, and even armed conflicts, along communal lines existed in
Ottoman society, there was also a substantial degree of harmonious social interaction
between individuals which transcended any religious and national boundaries.
In this paper, 1 will focus on one minority-the Albanians-in order to
demonstrate that in the last century of Ottoman history there were Ottomans
who championed a modern notion of cultural pluralism in both theory and
practice. The main thrust here is to analyze those forces of integration that
brought Albanians who possessed a national consciousness or sentiment into an
identification with and a strong commitment to the larger Ottoman society. This
study deals with those Albanians who lived in Istanbul and in what is today
Albania, the Janina area of northwestern Greece, western Macedonia, and the
@ 1983 Cambridge Universir,. Press 0020- 7438/83/0405 19- 18 $2.50
520 George W. Gawrych
Kosovo in Yugoslavia, an area which 1 shall designate as the western Balkans in
this paper.
MULTILINGUALISM
It is virtually impossible to reach any scholarly consensus on the number of
Albanians who lived in the Empire over the years 1800-1912. Ottoman census
records during this period, the first appearing in 1831, listed religious affiliation
but ignored ethnic or national identification. This omission presents modern
scholars with an insurmountable obstacle in determining the exact number of
individuals whose primary national identity would have been Albanian. In the
western Balkans, Albanians belonged to Muslim, Greek Orthodox, and Catholic
religious communities which included members from other minorities, and this
fact compounds the problem of formulating a method to arrive at a reasonably
accurate count of them. Various estimates for these years place Albanians as
constituting anywhere from over one to approximately three million inhabitants;
with Muslims, Greek Orthodox, and Catholics representing 70, 20, and 10 percent
of the total respectively.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, despite the imperial government's
official policy of recognizing religious rather than national groups, many Albanians
harbored their own national sentiments. J. C. Hobhouse Broughton, an
Englishman who, along with Lord Byron, visited southern Albania in 1809-
1810, has left some valuable information on Albanian society. Throughout the
regions around Janina, Berat, and Tepedelen, he could easily distinguish Albanians
from Turks by the former's distinct dress, manners, and language.'
Much to his amazement, these individuals readily identified themselves to him as
Albanians, whereas the members of other minorities tended to refer to themselves
as either Turks or ~ h r i s t i a n s .M~o st local Muslims with whom he had some
conversation, and here he probably meant both Turks and Albanians, could
speak Greek.' Furthermore, many Albanians could even read and write in that
language.4 One outstanding example for this period of this regional multilingualism
in the western Balkans was Ali P a ~ a(d . 1822), a Muslim Albanian who
was attempting to carve out for himself a petty state centered at Tepedelen. Ali
Pava, who personally met with Hobhouse and Lord Byron, knew Albanian and
Turkish and could speak Greek fluently.5 Among the Greek attendants at his
court was a at one time, the small circle of intimate friends and
advisors had included a Greek beauty (and Ali Pava's mistress), a woman named
Zofreni, who apparently lost her life because of infidelity to her Albanian lord.'
In addition to recording the presence of Albanian national sentiments, not yet
developed into a political ideology, Hobhouse portrayed a degree of harmonious
relations between Christians and Muslims as well as between Albanians and
Greeks which fostered the cultural phenomenon of multilingualism in the western
Balkans.
This regional multilingual dimension of society in the western Balkans was not
a feature unique to the early part of the nineteenth century, but it remained a
significant force for fostering an atmosphere of tolerance toward both religious
Cultural Pluralism and Ottoman Albanians. 1800-1912 521
and cultural diversity into the twentieth century. Within the last few years,
Turkish authorities in the Prime Minister's Archives of Istanbul have made
available to foreign scholars an invaluable source on the Ottoman bureaucracy.
Sicill-i Umumi (the General Register) is a collection of 190 volumes of biographical
material on over fifty thousand government officials-from a prime minister
to a lower-level secretary in the provinces-whose lives spanned the last hundred
years of the Empire. Limited by time, I was able to look at only three randomly
selected volumes, and obtained information on the fifty-six officials who had
been born in the western Balkans. A vast majority of these individuals later
served in various capacities in the region of their birth. The earliest date of birth
was 1239 H/ 1823 A.D.; some officials, born much later, served into the Second
Constitutional Period (1908-1920). The formative period in their upbringing,
ranging from age three to ten, included the years 1825-1878.
Because my concern here is to study the dynamics of pluralism in Ottoman
society and culture, I shall use Sirill-i Umumi to quantify the language competence
of these fifty-six officials. In the western Balkans, local Christians spoke
(probably with few exceptions) Greek, Albanian, or a Slavic language (Serbo-
Croatian, Bulgarian, or Macedonian) as their native tongue, whereas Muslims
used either Turkish or Albanian in the home. Those who were to some extent
competent in Turkish and either Greek or a Slavic language had crossed-in
addition to national-religious boundaries to carry on regular dialogue with their
neighbors. Unfortunately, Sicill-i Umumi failed to provide the religious affiliation
of individuals. From the names and biographical data, it appears that five officials
were Christians, the remainder Muslims. The breakdown of language competence
is given in Table 1. From the data in Table 1, it is evident that forty-two out of
fifty-six officials (75 percent) overcame local religious differences to learn the
language of an individual from another religion. Though the number of officials
under consideration here represents too small a sample to reach any definitive
conclusions concerning the scope and extent of regional multilingualism in the
western Balkans, these data point to the existence of cultural exchange among
educated members of different religious and national minorities. To learn the
language of one's neighbor certainly required a steady and continuous social
interaction in which some borrowing of customs and values took place wittingly
or unconsciously. This in turn reflected a degree of both religious and cultural
tolerance.
THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL PLURALISM
Ottoman reforms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by seeking
both to increase central authority in the provinces and to further political integration
of all peoples, made imperative the need to affirm, define, and foster this
tolerant feature of the cultural pluralism in the Empire. First came the political
and then the cultural aspects of the imperial doctrine to create a new order. In
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Sultan Mahmud 11 (1808-1839)
developed the seminal idea of Ottomanism (Osmanlilik)which evolved into official
government policy in the Tanzimat period (1 839- 1876). The Royal Rescript
--
522 George W. Gawrych
TABLE 1 Language competence of western Balkan officials
Number of
Officials Percent
Conipetence in the main spoken ianguages in the region
Turkish
Albanian
Greek
Slavic (listed as Slavic, Serbian. Bulgarian, or Bosnian)
Competence accorcling to a cornhination ~floculla nguages
Turkish only
Albanian only
3-urkish and Albanian
Turkish, Albanian, and Greek
Turkish, Albanian, and Slavic
Turkish. Albanian. Greek, and Slavic
Turkish and Greek
Turkish, Greek, and Slavic
Turkish and Slavic
Source: Ba~bakanltkA ~ ~ I SvZIC, I//U-im umr. Vols. 1 , 4, and 45
of the Rose Chamber, promulgated immediately by Mahmud's successor in 1839,
placed the imperial government officially on record as committed to the concept
of equality, a commitment which the Imperial Rescript of 1856 restated in even
more forceful language. As a political ideology, Ottomanism came to mean that
all subjects of the Empire, regardless of origin and religion, were Ottomans
(Osmanlilar), united by their equality before the law and by their common
citizenship. This state ideology reflected the government's attempt to inculcate
in every subject Ottoman patriotism directed toward the Empire and its ruling
dynasty. To foster the development of Ottoman patriotism among the various
minorities, the government opened new state schools with the expressed intention
of attracting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish students; it also sought to include
increasing numbers of Christians and Jews in the emerging modern bureaucracy.
Despite these efforts aimed at downplaying religious differences in order to
cement various minorities under the umbrella of Ottomanism, Ottoman statesmen
remained committed to religious tolerance, and they continued to give special
legal status to select Christian and Jewish communities in the famous millet
system. Islamic tenets and Ottoman tradition demanded maintenance of this
communal policy toward these subjugated People of the Book. However, concepts
of nationality, equality, and fraternity without distinction of religious affiliation
did weaken the place of religion in the formulation of government directives and
programs. This secular orientation in turn demanded a reevaluation of the nature
of Ottoman society and culture. By mid-century, Ottoman Muslim writers began
to sacramentalize cultural as well as religious pluralism as a salient feature of the
Cultural Pluralism and Ottoman Albanians, 1800-1912 523
imperial system. This shift thus represented a natural extension from religious to
cultural tolerance as a doctrine, given the government's drive to integrate politically
all subjects under the principle of Ottomanism.
In the first volume of his twelve-volume study of the Empire from 1774 to
1826 which he published in 1854, Ahmet Cevdet Paga (1822-1895), the great
historian and Islamic jurist of Turkish origin, presented the argument that the
strength of the Ottoman state lay in its diverse cultural heritage. For him, the
"Ottoman nation" (Osmanli milleti) was a great society because its people spoke
many languages and because it selected the best talents, customs, and manners
from among its "various nations" (milel-i mutenevvi'e). This powerful chemistry
had regenerated the Islamic nation at a point in time when it had fallen into
decay, and the Turks had played the crucial role in this regeneratiom8 His
analysis of Ottoman history and society, although mainly concerned with Islam,
ascribed to cultural diversity a positive and creative function, and hence it gave
to Christians and Jews a positive role in the development of Ottoman culture.
Other Ottomans began to explore the contributions of minorities to the imperial
culture, and a number of Ottoman Albanians, for their part, were deeply involved
in a cogent discussion of this issue by the early 1870s.
$emsettin Sami Bey Frasheri (1850-1904) was one such Albanian who devoted
his life to encouraging cultural tolerance and diversity in the Ottoman Empire.
Born of an Albanian Muslim landowning family from Frasher in southern Albania,
Sami Bey studied at the Greek gymnasium, Zossimea, in Janina, a town
located today in northwestern Greece. His attendance at this Christian school
was not an aberration for the time; several wealthy Muslim families in Berat and
Janina also sent their children to Zossimea, for they considered this institution of
higher learning the best in the region. Among the prominent Muslim Albanians
who attended Zossimea were Naim ~ r a s h e r iS, ~am i Bey's older brother; Ismail
Kemal, who became the first President of an independent Albania in 1912;" and
Mehmed Ferid Paga, who served as Grand Vezir from 1903 to 1908." $emsettin
Sami, reported1.y a brilliant student, finished the eight-year school in seven years,
learning ancient and modern Greek, French, and Italian to complement his
fluency in Turkish and Albanian. Maintaining contacts with Ottoman Greeks
upon his arrival in Istanbul, where he initially worked for a brief period as a
scribe in the government, $emsettin Sami joined forces with a wealthy Greek
merchant named Papadopoulis to found the newspaper Sabah (Morning), the
longest-lived daily of the Empire (1876-1914), and, it must be noted, one of the
most supportive of cultural diversity. After eleven months with this paper, Sami
Bey returned to government service, a profession which provided him with a
steady income to support his prodigi.ous research on Turkish and Albanian
studies.''
In the field of Albanology, Sami Bey created an alphabet (1886) for the newly
developing literature, wrote a grammar of the Albanian language (1900), published
material in Turkish on Albanian culture and customs, and even wrote
under a pseudonym a political treatise in which he put forward his vision that
Albania would one day be an independent nation. During the years 1877-1881,
524 George W. Gawryc-h
he actively participated in Albanian cultural clubs that he had helped form with
a number of other Albanians for the purpose of raising the national consciousness
of his compatriots through the publication of newspapers and literary works
in the Albanian language. While Sami Bey's activity in this area has earned
for him a prominent place in Albanian national historiography, his studies on
Turkic languages and history have directly contributed to the development of
Turkish nationalism. Among his most famous publications in Turcology were
a two-volume Turkish dictionary, a treatise encouraging the simplification of the
Ottoman language into the Turkish dialect spoken by most Turks, and articles
on pre-Ottoman Turkish culture and language.
This dual avenue of research and publication-which contributed to the
national awakening of both Turks and Albanians-may appear on the surface
inconsistent, paradoxical, and schizophrenic, but in actuality it represented the
normal rhythm of life in the multinational Ottoman Empire with its multiple
layers of self-consciousness, identity, and loyalty. In a newspaper article published
in 1878, Semsettin Sami delineated two abiding national loyalties in his personal
life-one to the Ottoman Empire, his "general homeland" (vatan-i umumi), and
the other to Albania, his "special homeland" (vatan-i hususi)." This multiple
identity represented a form of pluralism on a personal level, while Sami Bey's
literary and scholarly output constituted a cultural and intellectual expression of
the tolerant pluralistic dimension of Ottoman society and culture. In his play
Besa yahud Ahde Vefa (Pledge of Honor or Loyalty to an Oath), $emsettin
Sami attempted to deal directly with the complex issue of cultural pluralism
from an Ottoman Albanian perspective. The ideas expressed in this play, the
manner of its presentation on stage, and the history of its performances reveal a
great deal about the vitality of communal tolerance and cooperation in the late
Ottoman Empire.
In 1875, a year after the first performance of Besa in Istanbul, Sami Bey
published an introduction to it in which he clearly stated his reasons for writing
the play:
For a long time, I have dreamed of writing a literary piece in order to depict some
customs and morals of the Albanian people (Arnavut kavmi), not because I am one of
their members, but because I have witnessed [their] patriotic qualities which perhaps are
suitable for [presentation] on stage, such as patriotism, sacrifice, fidelity to oaths, and low
esteem for [one's own] life.l4
This desire to introduce the general public to Albanian culture and values carried
with it for Sami Bey a keenly felt responsibility to strengthen Ottoman society as
a whole. According to him, "foreign values and morals" (ahlak-i ecnebiye) had
dominated Ottoman theater to the detriment of the Empire's "national values
and morals" (ahlak-i milli,ve). Besa, by implication, was intended to fill this
cultural void, for it presented "the morals and customs of the Albanian people
who constitute an integral part of the great Islamic nation and who are members
of the Ottoman polity."1s Writing his play exactly twenty years after the publication
of the first volume of Ahmed Cevdet Paga's history, Semsettin Sami directly
addressed the complex issue of cultural pluralism by presenting, as an Ottoman
Albanian, those qualities of his own people which he felt could contribute to the
Cultural Pluralism and Ottoman Albanians. 1800-1912 525
regeneration of Ottoman society and culture. Let us look at the play in detail
and see the major themes which Sami Bey developed for his Ottoman audience.
The bare outline of Besa, an Albanian word meaning "pledge of honor," was
as follows: Zubeyir, a noble and proud Albanian highlander, and his wife Vahide
had a daughter named Meru~e who was in love with Recep, her first cousin.
After discovering the mutual love of his "two children," Zubeyir agreed to a
marriage. Tragedy, however, hit the family before the marriage could take place.
On the wedding day, Selfo, an Albanian who lived in the nearby town of Borshi
and who also loved Meruge, kidnapped the girl, for he knew her father would
oppose their marriage. In the process, he killed Zubeyir because the father physically
tried to stop him in this dishonorable act. Before his death, Zubeyir enjoined
Vahide to save Meruge and avenge his killing, reminding her that family honor
was at stake in this matter.
While on her way to carry out this redemptive mission, Vahide saved the life
of an individual unknown to her. This Albanian-Fettah Aga-turned out to be
Selfo's father who was returning home after having fought in the Ottoman army
for twenty years. Without mentioning any names, Vahide unloaded her sorrow
to Fettah Aga, who quickly made a besa to save Meruge and avenge Ziibeyir's
murder, not knowing this meant killing his own son. Upon finding out later the
full implication of his besa, even though many parental feelings argued against
fulfilling this promise, Fettah Aga reached the tragic conclusion that he had no
real alternative but to kill Selfo. After killing the young lad in his sleep, Fettah
Aga explained to Vahide, Meruge, and Recep what he had done. The tragedy
now entered another dimension-Fettah Aga, being the killer of his son, took
his own life in revenge for Selfo's death. Before his own death, Fettah Aga
managed to enjoin his own mother, who conveniently arrived on the bloody
stage, to accept Vahide as her own sister and Recep and Meruge as her own
children. The play ended with this moving reconciliation of the two families
because Albanian justice had been carried out.16
$emsettin Sami considered besa as an institution highly representative of ideal
Albanian values and morals. In his introduction to Besa, the author clearly
stated that Fettah Aga was the hero of the play. This Albanian, faithful to his
word, took the proper action in killing his son. Besa was an object more sacred
than compassion in general and parental love in particular." The hero's name
shows the author's conviction that Fettah acted properly when he killed Selfo.
Fettah is one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam, and it denotes His moral
excellence. Besa, a solemn agreement tied closely to a strong sense of honor and
faithfulness, transcended the social differences in Albanian society as represented
in the person of Fettah Aga, a townsman, and Zubeyir, a mountaineer. In one
scene, Zubeyir made clear to Meruge the vital importance of honor (namus)to a
highlander:
My daughter. The time span of this world consists of two periods. Today we are alive in
this world, but tomorrow we no longer will exist. It is honor which is permanent and
which will be of use to us in both this world and the next, only honor. . . Property,
wealth, goodness, everything, is nothing when compared to honor. All these perish eventually.
Only honor remains. It is a mistake-God forbid-to call someone a human being
if he is without honor because it is honor that makes human beings human."
526 George W. Gawrych
This statement made by Zubeyir in the early part of the play helped explain the
reason for Fettah's later decision to fulfill his besa and kill Selfo despite his deep
parental love. For him, it was a question of honor, being faithful to his word.
$emsettin Sami made clear throughout his play, often through subtle means,
that the high sense of morality and integrity exhibited by the main characters
was a reflection of the best in Albanian national character. Regional costumes
worn by the actors and actresses reinforced the salient message that this play was
about Albanians-their exemplary morals and values. The word "Albanian"
appeared three times in the story. In the first instance, when Selfo broke down to
cry because he felt Meru~ew as beyond reach, Tepedelenli Demir Bey, the local
land magnate in the town of Borshi, appealed to Selfo's national pride as a
means of eliciting composure from him; he pointedly reminded him that "You
are an ~ l b a n i a n . " 'T~h e other two instances concerned Vahide's imperative need
to seek compensation in blood for the death of her husband and to save her
daughter from Selfo as well. To shirk these two responsibilities would have left
an indelible stain on the family name and an unhealable wound on her own soul.
Vahide made clear twice in the play that as an "Albanian woman" (Arnavut
karisi) she had to take revenge and free her daughter.*' The message of the play
was clear-characters with moral integrity and probity acted out of commitment
to their homeland, i.e., Albania, and its noble traditions.
Cementing one's heart and soul to the homeland, however, involved for Albanians
a continued loyalty to the multinational Ottoman Empire. Sami Bey
made this point very clear from Fettah Aga's own thoughts and emotions which
juxtaposed two distinct but for him inseparable homelands (vatan).
Twenty years! What a long time! It is [almost] a lifetime! Oh! Homeland, sacred homeland!
. . . How many times have I seen the homeland in my dreams. . . . Now I am finally
in my homeland. From this moment on, 1 will not leave my homeland; let my bones
remain in my homeland. How strange a situation it is that a human being leaves the place
where he was born and raised and goes to another area, a very distant one. But the heart
cannot leave-it hasn't the possibility. A person's heart is always tied to his homeland. I
spent these twenty years outside of my homeland, and wherever I found myself, that place
was my homeland. Yes, Trablus is our homeland; the Danube is also our homeland. If it
hadn't been our homeland, we wouldn't have spilt blood defending those places! Nevertheless,
man has another type of love to the place where he was born and raised and to those
places where he spent his childhood and adolescence! . . . There is another charm on the
horizon of the homeland.
Tolerant Dimensions of Cultural Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire: The Albanian
Community, 1800-1912
George W. Gawrych
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4. (Nov., 1983), pp. 519-536.
Stable URL:
links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0020-7438%28198311%2915%3A4%3C519%3ATDOCPI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X
International Journal of Middle East Studies is currently published by Cambridge University Press.
Your
George W. Gawrych
TOLERANT DIMENSIONS OF CULTURAL
PLURALISM IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE:
THE ALBANIAN COMMUNITY, 1800-1912
Scholars who have conducted research on the different peoples of the Ottoman
Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have, as a general rule, focused
their studies on the process by which the various national minorities gained their
independence from "Turkish" rule. To study this complex problem, historians of
the Balkans and of Middle Eastern countries other than Turkey have selected a
methodological framework which seeks to analyze the nature of the struggles
that led to the eventual emergence of nation-states such as Albania, Greece,
Bulgaria, and Syria. Framing studies with this approach has encouraged scholars
to eschew those sources of information which present a harmonious dimension
to the relations among the different national and religious minorities. For their
part, Ottoman and Turkish specialists have tended to exhibit a similar penchant
for an ethnocentric perspective on Ottoman history; they have been concerned
mainly with the rise of Turkish nationalism and with the evolution of the Ottoman
Empire into the Republic of Turkey. Though publications of this predilection
have contributed to a general understanding of certain aspects of Ottoman history,
they have also left for the historical profession a distorted picture of a
politically polarized and culturally exhausted Ottoman society. This society
appears as a nebulous entity composed of many disparate and estranged cultures
which received their separate cultural nourishment and ossification through the
existence of seemingly hermetic communities defined by national and religious
criteria.
While tensions, and even armed conflicts, along communal lines existed in
Ottoman society, there was also a substantial degree of harmonious social interaction
between individuals which transcended any religious and national boundaries.
In this paper, 1 will focus on one minority-the Albanians-in order to
demonstrate that in the last century of Ottoman history there were Ottomans
who championed a modern notion of cultural pluralism in both theory and
practice. The main thrust here is to analyze those forces of integration that
brought Albanians who possessed a national consciousness or sentiment into an
identification with and a strong commitment to the larger Ottoman society. This
study deals with those Albanians who lived in Istanbul and in what is today
Albania, the Janina area of northwestern Greece, western Macedonia, and the
@ 1983 Cambridge Universir,. Press 0020- 7438/83/0405 19- 18 $2.50
520 George W. Gawrych
Kosovo in Yugoslavia, an area which 1 shall designate as the western Balkans in
this paper.
MULTILINGUALISM
It is virtually impossible to reach any scholarly consensus on the number of
Albanians who lived in the Empire over the years 1800-1912. Ottoman census
records during this period, the first appearing in 1831, listed religious affiliation
but ignored ethnic or national identification. This omission presents modern
scholars with an insurmountable obstacle in determining the exact number of
individuals whose primary national identity would have been Albanian. In the
western Balkans, Albanians belonged to Muslim, Greek Orthodox, and Catholic
religious communities which included members from other minorities, and this
fact compounds the problem of formulating a method to arrive at a reasonably
accurate count of them. Various estimates for these years place Albanians as
constituting anywhere from over one to approximately three million inhabitants;
with Muslims, Greek Orthodox, and Catholics representing 70, 20, and 10 percent
of the total respectively.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, despite the imperial government's
official policy of recognizing religious rather than national groups, many Albanians
harbored their own national sentiments. J. C. Hobhouse Broughton, an
Englishman who, along with Lord Byron, visited southern Albania in 1809-
1810, has left some valuable information on Albanian society. Throughout the
regions around Janina, Berat, and Tepedelen, he could easily distinguish Albanians
from Turks by the former's distinct dress, manners, and language.'
Much to his amazement, these individuals readily identified themselves to him as
Albanians, whereas the members of other minorities tended to refer to themselves
as either Turks or ~ h r i s t i a n s .M~o st local Muslims with whom he had some
conversation, and here he probably meant both Turks and Albanians, could
speak Greek.' Furthermore, many Albanians could even read and write in that
language.4 One outstanding example for this period of this regional multilingualism
in the western Balkans was Ali P a ~ a(d . 1822), a Muslim Albanian who
was attempting to carve out for himself a petty state centered at Tepedelen. Ali
Pava, who personally met with Hobhouse and Lord Byron, knew Albanian and
Turkish and could speak Greek fluently.5 Among the Greek attendants at his
court was a at one time, the small circle of intimate friends and
advisors had included a Greek beauty (and Ali Pava's mistress), a woman named
Zofreni, who apparently lost her life because of infidelity to her Albanian lord.'
In addition to recording the presence of Albanian national sentiments, not yet
developed into a political ideology, Hobhouse portrayed a degree of harmonious
relations between Christians and Muslims as well as between Albanians and
Greeks which fostered the cultural phenomenon of multilingualism in the western
Balkans.
This regional multilingual dimension of society in the western Balkans was not
a feature unique to the early part of the nineteenth century, but it remained a
significant force for fostering an atmosphere of tolerance toward both religious
Cultural Pluralism and Ottoman Albanians. 1800-1912 521
and cultural diversity into the twentieth century. Within the last few years,
Turkish authorities in the Prime Minister's Archives of Istanbul have made
available to foreign scholars an invaluable source on the Ottoman bureaucracy.
Sicill-i Umumi (the General Register) is a collection of 190 volumes of biographical
material on over fifty thousand government officials-from a prime minister
to a lower-level secretary in the provinces-whose lives spanned the last hundred
years of the Empire. Limited by time, I was able to look at only three randomly
selected volumes, and obtained information on the fifty-six officials who had
been born in the western Balkans. A vast majority of these individuals later
served in various capacities in the region of their birth. The earliest date of birth
was 1239 H/ 1823 A.D.; some officials, born much later, served into the Second
Constitutional Period (1908-1920). The formative period in their upbringing,
ranging from age three to ten, included the years 1825-1878.
Because my concern here is to study the dynamics of pluralism in Ottoman
society and culture, I shall use Sirill-i Umumi to quantify the language competence
of these fifty-six officials. In the western Balkans, local Christians spoke
(probably with few exceptions) Greek, Albanian, or a Slavic language (Serbo-
Croatian, Bulgarian, or Macedonian) as their native tongue, whereas Muslims
used either Turkish or Albanian in the home. Those who were to some extent
competent in Turkish and either Greek or a Slavic language had crossed-in
addition to national-religious boundaries to carry on regular dialogue with their
neighbors. Unfortunately, Sicill-i Umumi failed to provide the religious affiliation
of individuals. From the names and biographical data, it appears that five officials
were Christians, the remainder Muslims. The breakdown of language competence
is given in Table 1. From the data in Table 1, it is evident that forty-two out of
fifty-six officials (75 percent) overcame local religious differences to learn the
language of an individual from another religion. Though the number of officials
under consideration here represents too small a sample to reach any definitive
conclusions concerning the scope and extent of regional multilingualism in the
western Balkans, these data point to the existence of cultural exchange among
educated members of different religious and national minorities. To learn the
language of one's neighbor certainly required a steady and continuous social
interaction in which some borrowing of customs and values took place wittingly
or unconsciously. This in turn reflected a degree of both religious and cultural
tolerance.
THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL PLURALISM
Ottoman reforms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by seeking
both to increase central authority in the provinces and to further political integration
of all peoples, made imperative the need to affirm, define, and foster this
tolerant feature of the cultural pluralism in the Empire. First came the political
and then the cultural aspects of the imperial doctrine to create a new order. In
the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Sultan Mahmud 11 (1808-1839)
developed the seminal idea of Ottomanism (Osmanlilik)which evolved into official
government policy in the Tanzimat period (1 839- 1876). The Royal Rescript
--
522 George W. Gawrych
TABLE 1 Language competence of western Balkan officials
Number of
Officials Percent
Conipetence in the main spoken ianguages in the region
Turkish
Albanian
Greek
Slavic (listed as Slavic, Serbian. Bulgarian, or Bosnian)
Competence accorcling to a cornhination ~floculla nguages
Turkish only
Albanian only
3-urkish and Albanian
Turkish, Albanian, and Greek
Turkish, Albanian, and Slavic
Turkish. Albanian. Greek, and Slavic
Turkish and Greek
Turkish, Greek, and Slavic
Turkish and Slavic
Source: Ba~bakanltkA ~ ~ I SvZIC, I//U-im umr. Vols. 1 , 4, and 45
of the Rose Chamber, promulgated immediately by Mahmud's successor in 1839,
placed the imperial government officially on record as committed to the concept
of equality, a commitment which the Imperial Rescript of 1856 restated in even
more forceful language. As a political ideology, Ottomanism came to mean that
all subjects of the Empire, regardless of origin and religion, were Ottomans
(Osmanlilar), united by their equality before the law and by their common
citizenship. This state ideology reflected the government's attempt to inculcate
in every subject Ottoman patriotism directed toward the Empire and its ruling
dynasty. To foster the development of Ottoman patriotism among the various
minorities, the government opened new state schools with the expressed intention
of attracting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish students; it also sought to include
increasing numbers of Christians and Jews in the emerging modern bureaucracy.
Despite these efforts aimed at downplaying religious differences in order to
cement various minorities under the umbrella of Ottomanism, Ottoman statesmen
remained committed to religious tolerance, and they continued to give special
legal status to select Christian and Jewish communities in the famous millet
system. Islamic tenets and Ottoman tradition demanded maintenance of this
communal policy toward these subjugated People of the Book. However, concepts
of nationality, equality, and fraternity without distinction of religious affiliation
did weaken the place of religion in the formulation of government directives and
programs. This secular orientation in turn demanded a reevaluation of the nature
of Ottoman society and culture. By mid-century, Ottoman Muslim writers began
to sacramentalize cultural as well as religious pluralism as a salient feature of the
Cultural Pluralism and Ottoman Albanians, 1800-1912 523
imperial system. This shift thus represented a natural extension from religious to
cultural tolerance as a doctrine, given the government's drive to integrate politically
all subjects under the principle of Ottomanism.
In the first volume of his twelve-volume study of the Empire from 1774 to
1826 which he published in 1854, Ahmet Cevdet Paga (1822-1895), the great
historian and Islamic jurist of Turkish origin, presented the argument that the
strength of the Ottoman state lay in its diverse cultural heritage. For him, the
"Ottoman nation" (Osmanli milleti) was a great society because its people spoke
many languages and because it selected the best talents, customs, and manners
from among its "various nations" (milel-i mutenevvi'e). This powerful chemistry
had regenerated the Islamic nation at a point in time when it had fallen into
decay, and the Turks had played the crucial role in this regeneratiom8 His
analysis of Ottoman history and society, although mainly concerned with Islam,
ascribed to cultural diversity a positive and creative function, and hence it gave
to Christians and Jews a positive role in the development of Ottoman culture.
Other Ottomans began to explore the contributions of minorities to the imperial
culture, and a number of Ottoman Albanians, for their part, were deeply involved
in a cogent discussion of this issue by the early 1870s.
$emsettin Sami Bey Frasheri (1850-1904) was one such Albanian who devoted
his life to encouraging cultural tolerance and diversity in the Ottoman Empire.
Born of an Albanian Muslim landowning family from Frasher in southern Albania,
Sami Bey studied at the Greek gymnasium, Zossimea, in Janina, a town
located today in northwestern Greece. His attendance at this Christian school
was not an aberration for the time; several wealthy Muslim families in Berat and
Janina also sent their children to Zossimea, for they considered this institution of
higher learning the best in the region. Among the prominent Muslim Albanians
who attended Zossimea were Naim ~ r a s h e r iS, ~am i Bey's older brother; Ismail
Kemal, who became the first President of an independent Albania in 1912;" and
Mehmed Ferid Paga, who served as Grand Vezir from 1903 to 1908." $emsettin
Sami, reported1.y a brilliant student, finished the eight-year school in seven years,
learning ancient and modern Greek, French, and Italian to complement his
fluency in Turkish and Albanian. Maintaining contacts with Ottoman Greeks
upon his arrival in Istanbul, where he initially worked for a brief period as a
scribe in the government, $emsettin Sami joined forces with a wealthy Greek
merchant named Papadopoulis to found the newspaper Sabah (Morning), the
longest-lived daily of the Empire (1876-1914), and, it must be noted, one of the
most supportive of cultural diversity. After eleven months with this paper, Sami
Bey returned to government service, a profession which provided him with a
steady income to support his prodigi.ous research on Turkish and Albanian
studies.''
In the field of Albanology, Sami Bey created an alphabet (1886) for the newly
developing literature, wrote a grammar of the Albanian language (1900), published
material in Turkish on Albanian culture and customs, and even wrote
under a pseudonym a political treatise in which he put forward his vision that
Albania would one day be an independent nation. During the years 1877-1881,
524 George W. Gawryc-h
he actively participated in Albanian cultural clubs that he had helped form with
a number of other Albanians for the purpose of raising the national consciousness
of his compatriots through the publication of newspapers and literary works
in the Albanian language. While Sami Bey's activity in this area has earned
for him a prominent place in Albanian national historiography, his studies on
Turkic languages and history have directly contributed to the development of
Turkish nationalism. Among his most famous publications in Turcology were
a two-volume Turkish dictionary, a treatise encouraging the simplification of the
Ottoman language into the Turkish dialect spoken by most Turks, and articles
on pre-Ottoman Turkish culture and language.
This dual avenue of research and publication-which contributed to the
national awakening of both Turks and Albanians-may appear on the surface
inconsistent, paradoxical, and schizophrenic, but in actuality it represented the
normal rhythm of life in the multinational Ottoman Empire with its multiple
layers of self-consciousness, identity, and loyalty. In a newspaper article published
in 1878, Semsettin Sami delineated two abiding national loyalties in his personal
life-one to the Ottoman Empire, his "general homeland" (vatan-i umumi), and
the other to Albania, his "special homeland" (vatan-i hususi)." This multiple
identity represented a form of pluralism on a personal level, while Sami Bey's
literary and scholarly output constituted a cultural and intellectual expression of
the tolerant pluralistic dimension of Ottoman society and culture. In his play
Besa yahud Ahde Vefa (Pledge of Honor or Loyalty to an Oath), $emsettin
Sami attempted to deal directly with the complex issue of cultural pluralism
from an Ottoman Albanian perspective. The ideas expressed in this play, the
manner of its presentation on stage, and the history of its performances reveal a
great deal about the vitality of communal tolerance and cooperation in the late
Ottoman Empire.
In 1875, a year after the first performance of Besa in Istanbul, Sami Bey
published an introduction to it in which he clearly stated his reasons for writing
the play:
For a long time, I have dreamed of writing a literary piece in order to depict some
customs and morals of the Albanian people (Arnavut kavmi), not because I am one of
their members, but because I have witnessed [their] patriotic qualities which perhaps are
suitable for [presentation] on stage, such as patriotism, sacrifice, fidelity to oaths, and low
esteem for [one's own] life.l4
This desire to introduce the general public to Albanian culture and values carried
with it for Sami Bey a keenly felt responsibility to strengthen Ottoman society as
a whole. According to him, "foreign values and morals" (ahlak-i ecnebiye) had
dominated Ottoman theater to the detriment of the Empire's "national values
and morals" (ahlak-i milli,ve). Besa, by implication, was intended to fill this
cultural void, for it presented "the morals and customs of the Albanian people
who constitute an integral part of the great Islamic nation and who are members
of the Ottoman polity."1s Writing his play exactly twenty years after the publication
of the first volume of Ahmed Cevdet Paga's history, Semsettin Sami directly
addressed the complex issue of cultural pluralism by presenting, as an Ottoman
Albanian, those qualities of his own people which he felt could contribute to the
Cultural Pluralism and Ottoman Albanians. 1800-1912 525
regeneration of Ottoman society and culture. Let us look at the play in detail
and see the major themes which Sami Bey developed for his Ottoman audience.
The bare outline of Besa, an Albanian word meaning "pledge of honor," was
as follows: Zubeyir, a noble and proud Albanian highlander, and his wife Vahide
had a daughter named Meru~e who was in love with Recep, her first cousin.
After discovering the mutual love of his "two children," Zubeyir agreed to a
marriage. Tragedy, however, hit the family before the marriage could take place.
On the wedding day, Selfo, an Albanian who lived in the nearby town of Borshi
and who also loved Meruge, kidnapped the girl, for he knew her father would
oppose their marriage. In the process, he killed Zubeyir because the father physically
tried to stop him in this dishonorable act. Before his death, Zubeyir enjoined
Vahide to save Meruge and avenge his killing, reminding her that family honor
was at stake in this matter.
While on her way to carry out this redemptive mission, Vahide saved the life
of an individual unknown to her. This Albanian-Fettah Aga-turned out to be
Selfo's father who was returning home after having fought in the Ottoman army
for twenty years. Without mentioning any names, Vahide unloaded her sorrow
to Fettah Aga, who quickly made a besa to save Meruge and avenge Ziibeyir's
murder, not knowing this meant killing his own son. Upon finding out later the
full implication of his besa, even though many parental feelings argued against
fulfilling this promise, Fettah Aga reached the tragic conclusion that he had no
real alternative but to kill Selfo. After killing the young lad in his sleep, Fettah
Aga explained to Vahide, Meruge, and Recep what he had done. The tragedy
now entered another dimension-Fettah Aga, being the killer of his son, took
his own life in revenge for Selfo's death. Before his own death, Fettah Aga
managed to enjoin his own mother, who conveniently arrived on the bloody
stage, to accept Vahide as her own sister and Recep and Meruge as her own
children. The play ended with this moving reconciliation of the two families
because Albanian justice had been carried out.16
$emsettin Sami considered besa as an institution highly representative of ideal
Albanian values and morals. In his introduction to Besa, the author clearly
stated that Fettah Aga was the hero of the play. This Albanian, faithful to his
word, took the proper action in killing his son. Besa was an object more sacred
than compassion in general and parental love in particular." The hero's name
shows the author's conviction that Fettah acted properly when he killed Selfo.
Fettah is one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam, and it denotes His moral
excellence. Besa, a solemn agreement tied closely to a strong sense of honor and
faithfulness, transcended the social differences in Albanian society as represented
in the person of Fettah Aga, a townsman, and Zubeyir, a mountaineer. In one
scene, Zubeyir made clear to Meruge the vital importance of honor (namus)to a
highlander:
My daughter. The time span of this world consists of two periods. Today we are alive in
this world, but tomorrow we no longer will exist. It is honor which is permanent and
which will be of use to us in both this world and the next, only honor. . . Property,
wealth, goodness, everything, is nothing when compared to honor. All these perish eventually.
Only honor remains. It is a mistake-God forbid-to call someone a human being
if he is without honor because it is honor that makes human beings human."
526 George W. Gawrych
This statement made by Zubeyir in the early part of the play helped explain the
reason for Fettah's later decision to fulfill his besa and kill Selfo despite his deep
parental love. For him, it was a question of honor, being faithful to his word.
$emsettin Sami made clear throughout his play, often through subtle means,
that the high sense of morality and integrity exhibited by the main characters
was a reflection of the best in Albanian national character. Regional costumes
worn by the actors and actresses reinforced the salient message that this play was
about Albanians-their exemplary morals and values. The word "Albanian"
appeared three times in the story. In the first instance, when Selfo broke down to
cry because he felt Meru~ew as beyond reach, Tepedelenli Demir Bey, the local
land magnate in the town of Borshi, appealed to Selfo's national pride as a
means of eliciting composure from him; he pointedly reminded him that "You
are an ~ l b a n i a n . " 'T~h e other two instances concerned Vahide's imperative need
to seek compensation in blood for the death of her husband and to save her
daughter from Selfo as well. To shirk these two responsibilities would have left
an indelible stain on the family name and an unhealable wound on her own soul.
Vahide made clear twice in the play that as an "Albanian woman" (Arnavut
karisi) she had to take revenge and free her daughter.*' The message of the play
was clear-characters with moral integrity and probity acted out of commitment
to their homeland, i.e., Albania, and its noble traditions.
Cementing one's heart and soul to the homeland, however, involved for Albanians
a continued loyalty to the multinational Ottoman Empire. Sami Bey
made this point very clear from Fettah Aga's own thoughts and emotions which
juxtaposed two distinct but for him inseparable homelands (vatan).
Twenty years! What a long time! It is [almost] a lifetime! Oh! Homeland, sacred homeland!
. . . How many times have I seen the homeland in my dreams. . . . Now I am finally
in my homeland. From this moment on, 1 will not leave my homeland; let my bones
remain in my homeland. How strange a situation it is that a human being leaves the place
where he was born and raised and goes to another area, a very distant one. But the heart
cannot leave-it hasn't the possibility. A person's heart is always tied to his homeland. I
spent these twenty years outside of my homeland, and wherever I found myself, that place
was my homeland. Yes, Trablus is our homeland; the Danube is also our homeland. If it
hadn't been our homeland, we wouldn't have spilt blood defending those places! Nevertheless,
man has another type of love to the place where he was born and raised and to those
places where he spent his childhood and adolescence! . . . There is another charm on the
horizon of the homeland.