“Muslims were not the first in the Near East to interpret dreams. This type of divination had a long history, and Muslims were not ignorant of that history.”Footnote 1 The interest of early Arab Islamic cultures in dreams can be proved by the vast literature on dreams and their interpretation as well as dream accounts written in diverse historical texts.Footnote 2 The Ottoman Empire was no different in that it also shared this culture of dream interpretation and narration. Unlike past scholarship that ignored the significance of dreams, the number of studies addressing the subject has increased in the recent decades, thanks to the growing tendency of scholars to see dreams as potential sources for cultural history. However, as Peter Burke has stated, scholars and historians in particular must bear in mind the fact that “they do not have access to the dream itself but at best to a written record, modified by the preconscious or conscious mind in the course of recollection and writing.”Footnote 3 Historians must be aware of the fact that dream accounts might be recorded by dreamers who recounted how they wanted to remember them. The “reality” of the dream, in a sense, may be distorted. However, dream accounts, distorted or not, can provide a ground for historical analysis because they may reveal the most intimate sentiments, aspirations, and anxieties of the dreamer. Such self-narratives can provide the historian with information necessary to map the mindset of a historical personage, because “such ‘secondary elaboration’ probably reveals the character and problems of the dreamer as clearly as the dream itself does.”Footnote 4 This paper focuses on a sampling of dreams related in an 18th-century Ottoman self-narrative to provide insight into the life and mind of an Ottoman governor. I will try to demonstrate how the author of the narrative made meaning of those dreams and revealed his aspirations.
When I began my research on Ottoman self-narratives, with a particular focus on dream narratives, one of the first catalogs that I looked at was Karatay's catalog of Ottoman Turkish manuscripts found in Topkapı Palace.Footnote 5 I came across a manuscript titled Düşnama (Book of Dreams).Footnote 6 This manuscript was the private notebook of an Ottoman governor who lived in the early 18th century. When I undertook further research on the manuscript, I realized that Cemal Kafadar had already introduced the manuscript in his seminal article, “Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth Century Istanbul and First-Person Narratives in Ottoman Literature.”Footnote 7 Kafadar compared it to late medieval Florentine account book-family memoirs, but I will refer to it as a dream diary, because it combines the literary features of dream accounts and diaries.Footnote 8 In fact, the manuscript displays many of the literary features of diaries such as spontaneity, immediacy, and day-to-day records.Footnote 9
The Author and His Family
On folio 28a, the author already has revealed his identity. He affixed his signature indicating that he was Mahmud Pasha, the governor of Avlonya (Vlorë in Albania).Footnote 10 He also wrote about the positions he held through years. He was appointed as the brigadier (mirliva) of Vlorë on 2 February 1716, and he became governor general a year later, on 1 February 1717. In December/January 1718–19, the benefits of Yanya (Janina) also were assigned to Mahmud Pasha in the form of allowance.Footnote 11 According to sources regarding the provincial administration, Mahmud Pasha seemed to be operating in the Rumelian part of the empire until his death in 1745. He was originally from Belgrade and his family name was Kulakzade.Footnote 12
According to the information given in the estate inventory of Mahmud Pasha, he died in Erzurum during a visit before June 1745.Footnote 13 The register contains some clues about his family. According to the information given, his father was Hüseyin Pasha and his grandfather was Murad Pasha. In the Düşnama, there is no record revealing the identity of the father or grandfather. However, because his father and grandfather had the title of pasha, we can safely assume that Mahmud Pasha belonged to a powerful provincial family. His wife, Rabia Hanım, was the daughter of İslam Agha. Mahmud Pasha had three daughters, Meryem, Ayşe, and Kadire. We do not have any further information about his daughters; they are not mentioned in the Düşnama at all. İsmail Pasha, Süleyman Beg, and Mehmed Beg were the names of his three sons. In one of the dream records in the Düşnama, Mahmud Pasha wrote that he saw his son Derviş.Footnote 14 In an archival document, I found this son referred to as Derviş İsmail Pasha. According to the document, Derviş İsmail Pasha was the former governor of Vlorë and his brother, Süleyman Beg, was living in Arnavud Belgradı (Albanian Belgrade).Footnote 15 This document confirms the information given in the estate inventory and in the Düşnama. The family seems to have governed the district of Vlorë for at least for three generations.
On the Manuscript
On folio 27a, Mahmud Pasha recorded some of his travels in 1731. He described the places that he reached and stayed in every day. Interestingly, he sometimes even gave the hours and minutes; for example, at one point he indicated the time they stopped as 11:35 at night.Footnote 16 On folio 1a, he kept a record of the zakat he distributed, specifying the identity of the people aided. He most often distributed zakat to dervishes and students of the Qur‘an. Betwen folios 1b and 26a, which he titled as Düşnama, he recorded his dreams.Footnote 17 Mahmud Pasha was very eager to record details that would be forgotten in the transience of everyday life. In this way the manuscript sheds light on the daily concerns of an Ottoman governor who had the tools to record them.Footnote 18
The manuscript contains some 170 separate dream records with varying detail. In the first part, the records are rather short and obscure, and there is no indication of time. The rather unstructured style he adopted at the start suggests that Mahmud Pasha might not have intended to compose a dream diary. He seems to have started to record some of his dreams about appointments. In time, it turned into a diary of dreams that foreshadowed his reappointment to Vlorë as he was going through a time of hope and anxiety regarding his official position. Indeed, Mahmud Pasha had a habit of recording trivial details regarding his official duties and personal life. This habit of recording served to create a dream diary.
As time passed, his dream records became more and more detailed and lengthy, and in contrast to the earlier records the date was indicated. The longest dream narratives appear in the last part of the manuscript. Mahmud Pasha also was interested in the dreams of acquaintances in which he appeared. He also gave importance to dates when recording other people's dreams. In addition to recording his dreams, he also sometimes explained how they came true. Hence, the dreams basically served as portents of future events. One of his first dreams was about Osman Pasha's having the seal of grand vizierate. As Topal Osman Pasha became the grand vizier on 10 September 1731, we can state that the first dream was recorded in 1731.Footnote 19 The last dream record is dated February/March 1735.Footnote 20
Mahmud Pasha's interest in adding the exact dates of his dreams in a sense blurs the boundary between the dream and reality. One might imagine one is reading about real events if Mahmud Pasha had not specified at the end of his record that he woke up. Also, his association of the dreaming experience with “sight” and “seeing” rather than specifying that he was actually experiencing a dream makes it difficult to separate the nocturnal visions from real waking experiences.Footnote 21 Some rather short and straightforward records strengthen this idea. “We fought a little bit with `Ali Bey of Ergiri.”Footnote 22 “Ahmed Solak wants to kill me. I said to my men, ‘Kill this [man].’”Footnote 23 These dreams were narrated as if they were objective realities. There is no clue about whether they were experienced in the dream world or the real one.
Another important detail to highlight is Mahmud Pasha's insistence on using the sign of sah (صح). The word sah means “true.” Redhouse's A Turkish and English Lexicon defines it as “the paraph or official mark written on a document when it has been examined.”Footnote 24 This sign was mostly used on official documents as well as manuscripts as an indication of reliability and accuracy. Footnote 25 Many of the dream records in the Düşnama end with the sign of sah. So why did Mahmud Pasha use this sign at the end of dream accounts, as if one can test each dream's accuracy? Did he want to emphasize the precision of the dreams that he related? What about the boundary between reality and the dream? Did Mahmud Pasha have such a boundary in his mind? The most intriguing question is whether or not they were actual dreams. Was Mahmud Pasha using the dream plot as a literary device to record his innermost feelings, experiences, and aspirations?
My goal here is not to ask if Mahmud Pasha really had these dreams, but to scrutinize the intensive use of dreams by an Ottoman official to present the most intimate account of his life. I am interested in how he conceptualized the world around himself, how he interpreted his environment, and how he responded to problems. The Düşnama helps us understand how and why a provincial governor used dream narratives in his dream log–cum-diary.
Dreams and Portents: Hope and Anxiety as Reflected in the Dreams of Mahmud Pasha
One must bear in mind the nature of the relationship between anxiety and dreams, which is helpful in contextualizing dreams and placing them in their own historical circumstances.Footnote 26 Dwight Reynolds notes that dream narratives play a prominent role in autobiographies and that they appear primarily at critical junctions in the author's life.Footnote 27 Dreams are valued because they make it possible to understand the reality beyond objective knowledge of the person, offering believers, to use John C. Lamoreaux's words, “a royal road that led not inward, but outward, providing insight not into the dreamer's psyche but into the hidden affairs of the world.” Footnote 28 Mahmud Pasha was not an exception in this sense. This period was a brittle point in his life, therefore everyday concerns about acquiring a desired post occupied his dream narratives. Dreams helped him make sense of his personal life struggle.
The years between 1731 and 1735 were evidently a time of hope and anxiety, because all the dreams were experienced and recorded between these dates. Mahmud Pasha began to keep his dream diary when he was appointed to some other minor positions rather than the desired reappointment as governor general of Vlorë.Footnote 29 Mahmud Pasha, and other provincial governors as well, lived in some uncertainty, because appointments and dismissals were frequently renewed, and the duration of office was very short.Footnote 30 Governors who failed to attain a position must have reacted with anxiety and disappointment. Indeed, the dream diary of Mahmud Pasha is full of narratives that reveal his emotional status, which fluctuated from fear to certainty, from hope to anxiety.
The 30th of Ramadan. I saw that we were . . . in Belgrade. Five or six hundred people were praying, and they expressed their gratitude. I said, “Who are these?” They replied, “These are the men to whom you distributed alms during Ramadan.” “Why are they grateful?” “[They are grateful] because you have been appointed to Vlorë.” I said to `Abdi Bey, “Vlorë was not given to me. Why did you lie?” [`Abdi Bey] said, “I do not know.”Footnote 31
In the recorded dreams, he habitually saw official papers coming from Istanbul, which were usually long and written in beautiful calligraphy. Those papers were obviously edicts, harbingers of his prospective appointment. The news of the desired appointment first arrived in dreams.
On the 13th of Muharram, the Shaykh of Niş [Nis] once saw in a lucid dream that they performed the Friday prayer. They brought him two horses. He tied the horses and they fired three artillery shots. In another dream, they said to him that three papers will come from Istanbul addressed to Mahmud Pasha. He saw one of them in my hand. The other two papers will also come.Footnote 32
The 15th of Ramadan, I saw that I planted cotton and it grew. I was having a conversation with Mustafa Agha of Delvine. They brought me something in an envelope [sent] by Fatma Sultan. And, a man of mine came from the capital city and said, “We obtained Vlorë, soon they will come with an edict.”Footnote 33
The 18th of Zilkada, while I was sitting in the mansion, İsa arrived and rushed in. He gave me an edict. I thought that it was the edict of Vlorë. When I read it, I saw that it was the charter of Janina. May Allah make it auspicious.Footnote 34
Certain objects seen in previous dreams at important instances enabled the dreamer to interpret some of his more recent dreams. Horses were the animals that appeared most commonly in Mahmud Pasha's dream accounts. In one series of dreams, he saw the same horse twice. In the prior dream, the horse ran away from him, and this resulted in his dismissal from Vlorë. In the next dream, on the contrary, the horse advanced toward him rapidly. The shared elements of these two dreams enabled Mahmud Pasha to interpret the rapid advance toward him of the same horse as a probable augury of his reappointment to Vlorë. It seems that dreams could clarify the past, present, and future, and that they continued to be relevant.
Again, I saw that we were on the top of a mountain. We were proceeding on foot, but the horses were ready. We wanted to ride our horses. I said bring the horses. . . . They first brought Bayram's horse. The horse was limping. Following it, my horse was coming. They brought it very fast. . . . And this horse was the same horse that escaped in my dream when I was dismissed from Vlorë.Footnote 35
Robert Dankoff notes that there was a culture of dream narration and dream interpretation among Ottoman elites.Footnote 36 The Düşnama illustrates this point and further shows that dreams were an integral part of the public domain: Mahmud Pasha incorporated others’ dreams ino his personal notebook. It is evidence that people not only related their dreams to each other, but also preserved other's dreams in writing. They created, in a sense, a network of dreams that interconnected people's waking and visionary activities.Footnote 37
Mahmud Pasha's Düşnama is, to use Katz's words, “illustrative of how an individual's [very intimate] experience enters the public domain and finds a resonance.”Footnote 38 Mahmud Pasha included dreams of shaykhs and acquaintances in which he himself appeared. These dreams were mainly about his appointment to Vlorë:
The 19th of Muharram, Wednesday. The Shaykh of Nis saw that Mehmed Pasha built a new mosque. I also went to [the mosque]. In came the imam and we prayed in congregation. One man came with a paper. [The shaykh] asked, “What is this?” He said that they gave [the governorship of] Vlorë to Mahmud Pasha.Footnote 39
During the month of Ramadan, the sheikh of Leskovik [Korçë county,Albania] came and said to me, “Do not doubt, Vlorë will be given to you.”Footnote 40
In this roundtable paper, my aim has been to introduce a new source of Ottoman self-narratives and provide insight into the inner self of an Ottoman governor. The textual evidence shows that Mahmud Pasha interpreted dreams as messages from the spiritual realm that acted as portents of his future appointment. The frequency of the dream records foretelling his desired appointment reveals that dreams served to ease the difficulty the dreamer was experiencing.
Acknowledgments
My ongoing PhD studies at Istanbul Medeniyet University formed the basis for this article. The current title of my dissertation is, “A Methodological Approach to Early Modern Self-Narratives: Representations of the Self in the Ottoman Context (1720s–1820s).” A short version of the text was presented at the Workshop on Ottoman Ego-Documents, Istanbul Medeniyet University, 11–13 March 2020. I am indebted to Selim Karahasanoğlu for his insightful comments and suggestions. Finally, I would like to thank IJMES editor Joel Gordon for his detailed review and suggestions.
