A workshop entitled “Ottoman Ego-Documents” was held at Istanbul Medeniyet University on March 11–13, 2020. The workshop was organized by Istanbul Medeniyet University's Faculty of Letters in collaboration with the Center for Ego-Document Studies and supported by the Turkish Historical Society and the Foundation for Science, Art, History and Literature (İSTEV). It was attended by specialists in history, literature, law, and theology. This event marked the first time in Turkey that this topic was discussed with a large scope. The only previous organized discussion in Turkey on “ego-documents” seems to have been “Autobiographical Themes in Turkish Literature: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives,” held jointly by Boğaziçi University and the Orient-Institut der DMG in 2003. This discussion was mostly theoretical and the material covered belonged mainly to the post-Tanzimat era. A volume edited by Olcay Akyıldız, Halim Kara, and Börte Sagaster, the organizers of that event, was subsequently published by Ergon.
In an opening speech for the program on March 11, Selim Karahasanoğlu stated that the main aim of the workshop was to create a framework for the study of Ottoman ego-documents, explaining that the workshop was set up to discuss the concept and scope of ego-documents in an Ottoman context.
The panel on March 11 was composed of European specialists. The intention was to benefit from the experiences of group leaders from several European countries in researching their own native ego-documents. One of the speakers was Rudolf Dekker, who is a pioneer of ego-document studies in the Netherlands and a successor to Dutch historian Jasques Presser, the inventor of the term “ego-document.” Dekker also heads the Netherlands-based Center for the Study of Egodocuments and History. He cancelled his flight due to the coronavirus, but fortunately was able to deliver his presentation via Skype and to participate in a Q&A session. Dekker described the historiographical tendencies in the Netherlands at the time Presser was encouraging the study of autobiographical sources. He explained that ego-documents formed a group of neglected and questionable material at that time and that research in governmental archives was still the norm. He listed the questions and problems that he had considered when starting the research, all of which are also valid in the case of Ottoman studies. The list ran as follows:
a. Which archives and libraries should be visited?
b. What would be a proper definition of ego-documents?
c. Who would be considered Dutch authors?
d. Which languages would be included?
e. How would the findings be presented?
Dekker gave a detailed explanation of his research. He mentioned how difficult it was at the beginning to discover new material since this was to be found mostly in family archives or manuscript collections. He noted how unexpectedly rich the newly discovered material was. He shared in the discussions the threshold at which he considers source material as an ego-document. Another problem Dekker mentioned was which libraries to include or exclude (e.g., private libraries) when conducting research. The Dutch team considered some travelers’ accounts as ego-documents, but not others that were more official and less personal.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, James A. Amelang, an authority on Spanish ego-documents, also cancelled his flight and gave his talk on Skype instead. He pointed out that there is no inventory of Spanish ego-documents. However, he evaluated the bibliographic situation in the field and referred to his own list in the appendix (Popular Autobiographical Writing: A Checklist) of his well-known book, The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe. He added that studying the life experiences of historical persons through ego-documents is helpful as a means of learning from past mistakes and living a better life. He himself, as a historian, had benefited in this sense from the material he had worked on. Amelang's enthusiasm for his field of research was impressive enough to inspire the title of this workshop report. Specifying that Spanish ego-documents can be considered under the umbrella of European studies, Amelang observed that they still have some special characteristics. In the abstract he submitted, he underlined the specific and important qualities of the Spanish material:
a. Strong Spanish protagonism in the production of spiritual autobiographical writing;
b. A marked imbalance in secular autobiographical texts among different regions in Spain, thanks largely to a clear preponderance of first-person lay-writing in Eastern Spain (especially Catalonia and Valencia); and
c. An unusual richness in what could be terms “mandated” and/or bureaucratic memoirs, i.e., personal texts which were required both of candidates for public employment as well as suspects of heresy being tried by the Inquisition.
The representative from Switzerland was Sylvie Moret Petrini, a student of Danièle Tosato-Rigo. Moret Petrini gave all the details of the inventory that had been created for the French and Italian-speaking cantons of Switzerland. The very effective and practical website https://wp.unil.ch/egodocuments/en/, created by the Lausanne group, may be considered the best worldwide ego-document website. The diaries written by the children mentioned by Moret Petrini were astonishing. Malte Griesse from Konstanz, who is currently in Berlin leading a research project on ego-documents called “Life-Stories in Motion: Subaltern Autobiographical Practices in Global Perspective (with a particular focus on Imperial Russia, 18th-19th centuries),” gave a talk on her research into Russian material. Griesse not only provided a fruitful discussion on the Russian historiography of autobiographical material but also showed samples from several lower-status Russian ego-documents. Griesse investigated the “generators of autobiography” in the Russian Empire, a practice that should also be followed in other fields. It is important to do research on previous genres in autobiography and on genres created by the conditions of the time. Griesse cited История дореволюционной России в дневниках и воспоминаниях (Russian pre-revolutionary history in memoirs and diaries), an enormous annotated bibliography of 13 volumes edited by Petr Zaionchkovskii and published between 1976 and 1989.
Ego-document research in Switzerland is certainly not limited to French and Italian material. The Tosato-Rigo group started its research in 2010; much earlier research on German material in Basel had started under the leadership of Kaspar von Greyerz. Unfortunately, von Greyerz could not attend this workshop due to a previously planned library research trip in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. The leader of the Berlin group, Claudia Ulbrich, could not attend the workshop and neither could François-Joseph Ruggiu, the leader of the French group, due to a previously planned meeting in Canada.
March 12, the second day of the workshop, started with a talk by İhsan Fazlıoğlu, a renowned expert on Ottoman and Islamic manuscript heritage. Fazlıoğlu gave his views on the basis for understanding the study of Islamic and Ottoman ego-documents. Being a philosopher himself, Fazlıoğlu analyzed the philosophical and historical dimensions of the issues involved. He gave special emphasis to the intellectual background that influenced the production of such material. For that, he went back to the textbooks used in madrasas, stating that they were based on the precept that “knowledge of existence is a continuation of knowledge of one's self.” He quoted a sentence from Yunus Emre (d. 1320 [?]): “A person who has no concept of his/her self is at the same level as an animal.” Fazlıoğlu said that the same idea may be seen in Ahmed Yesevi's (d. 1166) writings and similarly in the writings of Aşık Paşa (d. 1332).
In the first panel, Karahasanoğlu described the state of the art in Ottoman studies. Notice was taken of how world-wide debates were triggered because of a vague definition of the word “ego-document.” Karahasanoğlu stressed the need to focus on certain forms of ego-documents and to put less effort into collecting material, such as notes in the margins of a manuscript. He stated that otherwise, it is possible to find glimpses of the author's self in any text, even in a chronicler's account. This was thought by Suraiya Faroqhi to be too rigid, a narrowing-down of the material.
İlker Evrim Binbaş talked about two Persian texts: Nafsatu'l-masdûr-i Avval and Nafsatu'l-masdûr-i Dovvom, in which Sa'ineddin Turka (d. 1432), an Isfahani scholar, talks mainly about himself. Binbaş claimed that these two texts could be read as the scholar's defense against several accusations by his contemporaries. Binbaş successfully contextualized these two texts, emphasizing that the release of the first work took place right after Sa'ineddin Turka had been interrogated in Herat. He mentioned the witch-hunt milieu and talked about the risks faced by scholars in the science of letters. Binbaş pointed out that Turka also mentions in these texts the places he visited and details of his life. He stated that he could not think of the Ottoman world as separate from the Timurid one. Turka himself had travelled in Ottoman lands and had become acquainted with Şeyh Bedreddin (d. 1420). Binbaş said that the Istanbul manuscript libraries contain very valuable copies of Turka's accounts and that Ottoman scholars were familiar with his works. He pointed out that the most valuable copies of Turka's works are housed in Istanbul, not in Iran.
The Timurid-Ottoman intellectual Musannifek (d. 1470) was the subject of Ümit Karaver's talk. Karaver said that Musannifek enjoyed talking about himself in his works, which numbered more than eighty. He noted that Musannifek talks about his life in the three folios of his Tuhfetü’l-vüzera. The work of Karaver shows that Musannifek did not write a designated autobiography. It is clear, however, that Musannifek loved to write about himself in all his works, so these constitute a mine of information for ego-document research.
The final speaker in this panel, Ali Benli, focused on a particular genre, fahrasa, which is not commonly seen among Ottoman writings but is well known in the Islamic world from al-Andalus to Transoxiana. Fahrasas are described as a scholarly alphabetical listing or catalogue of books that are read under the direction of a teacher. Benli's contribution showed that, while talking about books, scholars provided much detail about their personal lives. Benli described the format of these sources, which are not always alphabetically classified but sometimes have another format and gave information on the origin of the genre. He noted two examples of fahrasa-type works, the first being Sebet by Abdurahman el-Küzberî (d. 1846) and the other his disciple's disciple Abdülkadir Sadreddin Efendi's (d. 1931) voluminous Miftâhu Kunûzi'l-İslâm. Benli emphasized that Sadreddin's type of account is rare among Istanbul scholars and explained his affiliation with Arab scholars as the reason for his production of such an account.
The next panel focused on genres. The speakers dwelt on several manuscripts which might be classified either as a traveler's account, a diary, or a memoir. This panel aimed to analyze the transitions and/or convergences between different genres. Şükran Fazlıoğlu focused on examining travelers’ accounts from an ego-document perspective. In her opinion, some travelers’ accounts should certainly be treated as ego-documents. Semih Ceyhan analyzed the Vâkıât-ı Üftâde of Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi (d. 1628), a diary format in which the mystic talks about his three-year spiritual wayfaring (sülûk). Ceyhan compared this with similar sufi self-narratives. Both Mehmet Yaşar Ertaş and Ömer Koçyiğit anaylzed texts about cities in which the authors started to talk about themselves instead of the cities.
The last panel on March 12 focused on literature. Kerima Filan from Sarajevo talked about Molla Mustafa Başeski's (d. 1809 [?]) mejmua on which she prepared her doctoral dissertation and later extensively published about. In this workshop she analyzed this source from an ego-document perspective. Sadık Yazar, Vildan Serdaroğlu Coşkun, and Gülşah Taşkın informed the group that self-narratives written in verse are numerous. In her presentation Taşkın gave a long list of these.
The day ended with Barbara Kellner-Heinkele's keynote address: “The Pearl in the Shell: Sheykh Mehmed Emin Tokadi's (d. 1745) Self-vita as Scripted by Sheykh Seyyid Hasib Üsküdari.” This text was not written by Mehmed Emin Tokadi himself, but in presenting it, Kellner-Heinkele in her abstract postulated a wider definition of the term “ego-document” as follows:
The limits of the genre should be drawn generously in order to allow for more texts to be included, texts that have come to light in the last thirty years – often quite unexpectedly – and were sometimes quite difficult to assess. With this in mind, I will analyze a short treatise (risale) that displays a particular constellation of several first-person narratives interlaced with third-person passages. The “Menakib-i Sheykh Mehmed Emin Tokadi” (Vita of Sheykh Mehmed Emin Tokadi) reflects the life and thought of Sheykh Mehmed Emin Tokadi (1664–1745), one of the more influential sheykhs of the 18th century Nakshbandiyya order of dervishes. One of his disciples, Seyyid Yahya Efendi (1711–1784), wrote down Mehmed Emin's pronouncements – in first person singular – but was not able to finish the work. One of his disciples, Seyyid Hasib Üsküdari (d. 1785–86), took over and wrote down the entire Vita.
The first panel on Friday, March 13, started with a speech by Ahmet Tunç Şen, presented via Skype. He focused on Zaifi (d. 1557) and analyzed his works from the perspective of a history of emotions. While on Thursday Vildan Coşkun had focused on Zaifi's Sergüzeştname, Şen talked about almost everything that Zaifi had written, including his Münşeat and Risâle-i İmtihâniyye.
Özgen Felek is well known for her work on the dreams of Murad III (r. 1574–1595). She presented the essence of her work at the workshop. Felek described the dream-book of Murad III as a diary, stating that it is quite possible to place the Sultan within his network by reading the dream letters. Felek sees these narratives as supporting the image of himself the Sultan had created.
Among ego-documents, the source we know least about is letters. Mehmet Arıkan discovered and presented in his talk the letter-copies of Muslihuddin Mustafa Efendi (d. 1529), father of Taşköprizade Ahmed Efendi (d. 1561). Semra Çörekçi talked in the same manner of her discovery of a previously unknown manuscript, the dream-diary of Kulakzade Mahmud Pasha (d. 1745), chief administrative official (mutasarrıf) for Awlonya (Vlorë), from the Topkapı Palace Museum Library.
In the second panel on Friday, presentations were given on material from the post-Tanzimat era, a period consciously chosen to not be widely represented at the workshop. Mehmet Beşikçi recently published an excellent book on the memoirs of Ottoman soldiers in World War I. As his book includes a very strong theoretical debate on ego-documents as a source material he was invited to attend the workshop along with Emre Eken, who did important research on the memoir Safahat-ı Hayat of Eyübzade Mehmed Hamdi (d. 1936), grandfather of renowned painter and poet Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu (d. 1975). The Eyübzade family was the notable family (ayan) of the Maçka district in the province of Trabzon. This memoir, obtained courtesy of Hughette Eyüboğlu, the Canadian bride of Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, was presented for the first time in Eken's master's thesis. It is valuable in that it is a sample memoir of an Ottoman trial attorney (dava vekili) that covers the years 1852–1909 and contains a first-hand account of a tithe-collector.
This panel contained two more presentations. Abdullah Uğur talked about the verse of Ömer Derya Bey (d. after 1605) on Estregom, the unique copy of which was found in the Leipzig library. Uğur described it as a diary in verse and dealt with the part of the manuscript in which the writer talks about himself. Lastly, Ekin Öyken gave a presentation on the Kitâb-ı tesviyetü’t-teveccüh ilâ’l-hakk of Murad bin Abdullah (Balázs Somlyai) (d. 1586 [?]) to be found in the British Library. This manuscript was previously studied by historian Tijana Krstić; however, Öyken contributed to our understanding of this as a specialist in the Latin language. The text is a conversion narrative in which the Ottoman Turkish text shares the page with a Latin translation. Öyken announced that this will be published with a colleague as a comparative text in Turkish and Latin.
The third panel on Friday comprised a discussion on captivity memoirs, a major component of ego-document research. In manuscript libraries abroad especially, there must be more captivity memoirs written by Ottomans than are known today. Two presentations were given on the well-known captivity memoir of Temeşvarlı Osman Ağa (d. 1725 [?]), to be found in the British Museum. İbrahim Şirin included some introductory remarks on the text in his talk and stated that the genre is not important; what is important is that the text reveals something about the human being. Şirin stated that the text has nothing to say about Vienna but says a lot about the author himself. R. Aslıhan Aksoy-Sheridan approached the text from the perspective of the history of emotions. She said she was surprised there is still no published edition of this captivity memoir.
Güneş Işıksel gave his presentation on manuscript Supplément turc 221 (Favaïd el-moulouk) from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, a text that Cemal Kafadar popularized. Kafadar first made mention of this manuscript in his oft-cited 1989 article “Self and Others,” introducing it as the memoir of an Egyptian janissary in French captivity at the end of the 17th century. Işıksel was skeptical that this text was written by a janissary. In fact, he shared a similar skepticism for the memoir of Temeşvarlı. He thinks that Suppl. turc 221 was produced in Istanbul and the person in charge of preparing this text was Benoît de Maillet, French consul in Cairo. Işıksel pointed out that de Maillet himself had written the text in Cairo, first in French or Italian, and then had it translated into Ottoman Turkish in Istanbul and sent to Paris for authentication. A major piece of evidence for Işıksel was that Ottoman place-names such as Uyvar and Ayn Şems are recorded using their European equivalents, showing that this text was not written by an Ottoman. Işıksel noted that not only place-names but also other expressions used were not found in Ottoman vocabulary of the time, e.g., baş şehir (capital) when referring to Paris. Işıksel sees this as a text to be read in public in Egypt as a propaganda tool providing justification for colonization. A careful reading of Kafadar shows that he cautiously does not accept any captivity memoir as portraying reality without considering the possibility of its being fictional. Whether the text is fact or fiction, that is, used as a literary device, is not the crux of the matter. The point is that these texts are all nurtured by a certain lifestyle. Even if the text is not autobiographical it portrays real life in an imaginary way or in some way provides an oral or written account of the cumulative experiences of life in captivity.
The last panel presentation, given by Göker İnan, was on a voluminous manuscript that he himself transcribed as a doctoral dissertation: Mi'yârü’d-Düvel ve Misbârü’l-Milel by Hasan Esiri (d. after 1731) who was captured by the Austrians during the Holy War after the siege of Vienna when he was 33 or 34 years old. The book on geography and history is not wholly a captivity narrative but contains personal details in 10 to 15 pages of the text. İnan raised the question as to what the captives busied themselves with in captivity. Esiri stayed captive for two years, learning languages and observing the Austro-Hungarian Empire from close at hand. According to İnan, Esiri was comfortable in captivity.
The last event on Friday was a round-table discussion participated in by Cornell H. Fleischer, Noah D. Gardiner, İlker Evrim Binbaş and Veysel Kaya. Abdurrahman Atçıl successfully led this bilingual discussion in Turkish and English. The focus was on the famous 15th-century scholar Abdurrahman Bistami's (d. 1454) Durrat taj al-rasa'il. The speakers agreed that the al-Fawa'ih al-miskiyyah fi al-fawatih al-Makkiyah should be included in the discussion. So, another work of Bistami can be classified under the category of ego-documents. The comments of İhsan Fazlıoğlu, who has written several articles touching on Durrat, contributed a lot to the round-table discussion. From the beginning Fleischer had said he would not be able to come in person but at the last minute it was learned that Gardiner also could not attend due to coronavirus precautions. However, both successfully gave their short presentations and took part in the discussions via Skype.
The closing session was comprised of speeches by Hatice Aynur, Tülay Artan, Selçuk Akşin Somel, and Suraiya Faroqhi. They pointed out that one has to think about who an “Ottoman” is. They warned of the problems inherent in defining the scope of the term in a limited manner and suggested that more space was needed for samples of non-Muslim ego-documents and of those written by women. Faroqhi proposed quantitative criteria should be established, which should either be announced online or published as an academic article. People should be invited openly to contribute to the aim of creating an inventory of Ottoman ego-documents. She made the rather generous suggestion that if a text of 100 pages included 5 to 7 pages containing autobiographical details then it might be included in the inventory.
In closing, the workshop convenor announced that, as a continuation of the workshop, a symposium entitled “Ottoman Ego-Documents” would be held from April 7–9, 2021, at Istanbul Medeniyet University.
