Ottoman Syria/Bilad al-Sham

This essay is based on a close reading of a seventeenth-century travelogue with an eye to making some suggestions about the place of Lebanon, and of the Biqaʿ Valley in particular, within the broader expanse of geographical Syria. The specific text is the record of a trip the Damascene scholar and traveler ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi (d. 1731 CE ) took to this region in 1689 CE . Along the way, we discover that al-Nabulsi’s observations illuminate more than the land itself. Though conceived of as a pilgrimage to sacred sites, the travelogue reveals much more. For one, it demonstrates a surprising degree of engagement between, on the one hand, the bookish knowledge that was his way of life and, on the other, the insights and experience of his commoner interlocutors. For one whose impetus was spiritual, al-Nabulsi’s meticulous attention to describing the ruins at Baalbek suggests a habit of mind that was as empirically inclined as it was oriented to more “hidden” forms of understanding. Finally, the explicitly sensual delight he takes in the natural beauty of the Lebanese landscape further enriches (and complicates) the profile of a man who exercised as many of his human faculties as one can imagine.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE 18th С. ALEPPO’S ARMENIAN COMMUNITY IN ALEXANDER RUSSELL’S “THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALEPPO”
Keywords- Syria, Ottoman Empire, religion, Turks, Chrisians, Muslims, Jews, Europeans, tradition, plague
The book "Natural History of Aleppo", by Alexander Russell, is an important source about the history of Armenian community in Aleppo during the Ottoman period.
Al. Russell was a Scottish physician and naturalist delegated to Aleppo in 1740. Having been appointed as a physician to the English factory there, and, gaining the confidence of the local Pasha, he became the chief medical practitioner of the city. In 1754, he returned to England and, two years later, published his Natural History of Aleppo. In 1794, Patrick Russell, his half-brother, assumed the second edition, revising and expanding the text. Later, the book was translated into different languages.
The title of the book implies that the research refers to fauna and flora of Aleppo, and also the climatic conditions of the city and its surroundings. Moreover, Al. Russell’s book contains significant information about Non-Muslim communities of Aleppo (Greek, Assyrian, Maronite and Armenian), such as the number of the population of each community, the relationship between them and with Muslims, in particular, with Turks living in Aleppo.
The study of above-mentioned issues allows us to clarify and to present the actual status of Armenians living in Aleppo in the first half of the 18th century, which mostly depended on the policy pursued by the local authorities.

As a leading Muslim thinker, 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi of Damascus creatively engaged with the social, religious, and intellectual challenges that emerged during the early modern period in which he lived. Yet, at a time of high anti-mystical fervour, his Sufi-inspired views faced strong local antipathy. Through extensive correspondence, presented here for the first time, 'Abd al-Ghani projected his ideas and teachings beyond the parochial boundaries of Damascus, and was thus able to assert his authority at a wider regional level. The letters he himself selected, compiled, and titled shed fresh light on the religious and intellectual exchanges among scholars in the eastern Ottoman provinces, revealing a dynamic and rigorous image of Islam, one that is profoundly inspired by humility, tolerance, and love.

This essay focuses on the month of Ramadan and its end celebration, ‘Id al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the Fast, in the Ottoman Arab provinces in the second half of the nineteenth century. What was the effect
of new technologies and urbanization on these Muslim practices in their relationship to politics and the new public spaces? Building on recent scholarship, Mestyan argues that these were reconstituted as
part of symbolic politics and served as a test period for using new technologies to synchronize collective action. He explores this process by historicizing the relationship between power and sound during
Ramadan.

This paper is the text of a conference I gave in Dublin in 2010. My first paper dedicated to the find of the Qubbat al-khazna was published, with my late colleague prof. Paolo Radiciotti (02.10.1961-02.04.2012), as early as 2008 (see "Nea Rhome" 5). I was pleased to see how inspiring our 2008 article has been: some colleagues used it extensively in 2011.

In the year 1900, inside the Qubbat al-khazna (the Umayyad Great Mosque courtyard), an important discovery was made: there were found documents related to the very same mosque, certificates of pilgrimage to Mecca, Qur’anic fragments, Arabic and Turkish literary texts, parchment fragments in Latin language and script, as well as Latin fragments in Greek script, fragments in old French, Hebrew (also Samaritan texts), Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, as well as in Greek – attested both in Greek language and script and in Arabic language and Greek script. The entire ensemble of manuscripts dates back to the period spanning from the Late Antiquity to Modern times."

Cenap  Şahabettin  (1871-1934)  is  generally accepted as a part of the Servet-i Fünûn literary movement  which  was  popular  between  1896 and  1901  in  the  Ottoman  Empire.  He  is  well-known  as  a  poet  but  he  had  written  prose  as well. He worked for the Ottoman government as a high ranking executive in Arabic countries and wrote several books during his mission and ensuing  travels. Hac  Yolunda(On  the  way  to Mecca), Âfâk-ı Irak (Horizonsof  Iraq)  are  his travel  books.  He  also  published  two  travel notes under the titles of “Suriye Mektupları” (Letters from Syria) and Beyrut, Filistin ve Nablus İzlenimleri  1918 (Impressions  from  Beirut, Palestine and Nablus 1918). This article focuses mainly  on  the  abovementioned  works  of  the writer.  All  the  works  were  written  between 1896  and  1918,  and  this  period  in  the  history was quite an important one for the Middle East and  the  Ottoman  Empire  where  significant historical events occurred.    The    Ottoman Empire was coming to an end, the World War I was effecting every aspect of life and Middle East was taking a new shape. Subject matter of this  work,  as  a  result  of  the  period,  bound  to mention    modernity,    identity    policies,    and nation building discourses and practices. These works are important since they provide enough information  to  find  out  the  writer’s  attitude towards  the  local  Arabs,  his  approach  to  the common, conventional prejudices, and his own newly      created      biases.      Edward      Said’s Orientalism,  Ussama  Makdisi’s “Rethinking Ottoman  Imperialism:  Modernity,  Violence and the Cultural Logic of Ottoman Reform” and  “Ottoman  Orientalism”  and  Selim Deringil’s The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the  Legitimation  of  Power  in  the  Ottoman  Empire 1876-1909 are  the  main  works  that  used  to examine the texts in hand in details.

SAMER AKKACH ED., Letters of a SufiScholar: The Correspondence of 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1641-1731) Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 74 (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2009). Pp. 560 (Arabic and English). $ 211.00 cloth.The monograph under review contains a critical edition of seventy-two letters received and written by the famous Damascene Sufiand polymath 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1641-1731). In the introduction, editor Samer Akkach describes al-Nabulusi's correspondents as "Arab and Turkish friends, colleagues, mystics, highranking officials, and individuals unknown to him, all residing outside Damascus in various cities of the region" (p. 1). The letters deal with a wide variety of issues, from the finer points of the Muslim creed, to God's role as the ultimate cause of natural causes and human actions, to the unitive/monistic metaphysics of Ibn [al-]'Arabi (d. 1240) and his school of thought, to holy war, to religious ethics, to the permissibility of certain substances (e.g., tobacco and coffee), and so on. To help the reader to locate al-Nabulusi's correspondents geographically, the editor provides a map and a list of "Places, Towns, and Correspondents" (pp. 75-78). The book is divided into the English text that contains the editor's introduction and summary of some of the letters and the Arabic part that features an Arabic version of the English introduction and a critical edition of the Arabic text of al-Nabulusi's letters. In what follows I will be quoting passages from the editor's English introduction to the book.One should point out that the letters were carefully assembled by the author himself under the title Wasa'il al-ta?qiq wa rasa'il al-tawfiq, which the editor translates as "The Means of Truth-Seeking and the Letters of Providential Guidance" (p. 1). This fact indicates that al-Nabulusi valued these letters enough to take the trouble of copying each one of them (either by his own hand or by hiring a scribe) and collecting them under one cover. The editor provides a helpful account of possible reasons for al-Nabulusi's concern for the preservation of the letters for his posterity as well as the culture of private correspondence in his age in general (pp. 21-31). He also describes the author's intellectual milieu and personal religious and philosophical predilections (pp. 32-34).For those familiar with Akkach's earlier works, especially his 'Abd al-Ghani a-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), this collection will serve as a documentary sequel of sorts. Its purpose, as I perceive it, is to marshal textual evidence in support of Akkach's understanding of the beginnings of an Islamic "enlightenment" and intellectual emancipation that he has detected in the intellectual legacy of some Muslim thinkers of the late Ottoman epoch ('Abd al-Ghani a-Nabulusi, pp. 69-75), including al-Nabulusi, Hajji Khalifa (1609-1657), Evliya Celebi (1614-1682), Ibrahim Muteferriqa (d. 1745), Ibrahim Haqqi (d. 1780), and 'Abd al-Mannan (d. after 1779). Akkach's musings about the Islamic variant of the European Enlightenment are not the primary subject of the present volume, but, it is worth mentioning here that Akkach has discovered signs of al-Nabulusi's broadmindedness and tolerance (conceivably, an intellectual attitude indicative of "enlightenment") in his advocacy of Ibn [al-]'Arabi's doctrine of the unity of being (wa?dat al-wujud), his defense of human free will versus divine predetermination of all events, as well as, somewhat more controversially, in his approval of the public consumption of tobacco and coffee. In regard to wa?dat al-wujud, Akkach seeks to demonstrate the subtlety of al-Nabulusi's interpretation of this doctrine as opposed to what he considers to be a much cruder and confrontational approach to it taken by Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). As someone who has written at length about Ibn Taymiyya's criticism of Ibn [al-] 'Arabi's monism and its impact on the subsequent polemic over his intellectual legacy in my Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, (Albany, Suny Press, NY: 1999), chap. …

يتناول ھذا البحث اختلاف طرق تذوق المكان في كل من الغرب والعالم العربي وتنوع أساليب التعبير اللغوي والفني عن ھذا التذوق. ويركز البحث على فترة ما يسمى بالحداثة المبكرة في القرنين السابع عشر والثامن عشر، حيث ظھرت فيھا بدايات السياحة الجمالية في أوروبا، وما نتج عنھا من أساليب التعبير بالمقابل في .(Picturisque) التي ركزت على تمثيل المشھد الطبيعي المثالي، إما بالصورة أو بالشعر، ضمن النتاج الفني والأدبي لرواد حركة البكتشريسك العالم العربي نجد في ھذه الفترة استمرار اً للسياحة الدينية والترفيھية وللرحلات الاستكشافيه، ترافق مع ظھور شاعرية جديدة لتذوق المكان وأساليب جديدة في التعبير الأدبي، كما في مذكرات رحلات الشيخ عبد الغني النابلسي، إلا أننا لانجد انتشاراً للسياحية الجمالية أو الرحلات العلمية على الطريقة الأوروبية.
ومن خلال التركيز على مفھوم المكان وأساليب التصوير النصي في أدب الرحلة بشكل عام، ونص الرحلة الأولى لعبد الغني النابلسي بشكل خاص، تقدم ھذه الدراسة عرضاً للمعاني ومناھج التصوير، والفرق بين الصورة المرسومة والصورة المكتوبة، بالاضافة إلى استقصاء لغوي لتطور مفھوم المكان الطبيعي ضمن إطار تعبيري مقارن، يتم فيه مناقشة مصطلحات اللغة العربية مع مقابلاتھا الانكليزية.

Çevirmen notu:
"J. Theodore Bent’in 1890’daki Anadolu (Asia Minor/Küçük Asya) seyahatlerine dayanarak Osmanlı Akdenizi’nin Çukurova (Kilikya) bölgesine denk düşen sâhada yaşam süren Alevî-odak aşîretler hakkında bilgi verdiğini, bir önceki çeviri çalışmamızda Tahtacı Alevîleri üzerinden nakletmiştik (Bent, 2021: 241-246). Bu tercümede, Kızılbaş-Alevî nitelikli Tahtacı Türkmenler (Yörükân/Yörükler) hakkındaki makalesini/gezi notunu takviye eden, Çukurova Nusayrîleri için ürettiği verileri çevirdik. Ardından, çeviri metnin sonunda “Bent’in Nusayrîler kapsamındaki somut bilgi ve değerlendirmelerini 19. yüzyıl Osmanlı sosyo-politik konjonktürüne nasıl bağlayabiliriz, ne denli uzam/anlam bağıntıları üretebilir, bunu dinî/politik Osmanlı sosyal târîhine yedirebiliriz?” soruları etrafında ortaya konan bilgileri değerlendirmeye çalıştık."

The Reşwan were one of the most important tribal confederations in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. Yet their history remains almost completely ignored, while the few contemporary authors who refer them almost invariably fail to mention that they were Kurds. This article seeks to retrace the history of the Reşwan confederation and particularly their place in the Ottoman imperial tribal settlement (iskan) scheme of the eighteenth century. Drawing on both Ottoman chancery documents and local şeriat archives, it seeks to show that the Reşwan enjoyed relatively good relations with the Ottoman authorities and a high degree of integration with other groups in northern Syria and Mesopotamia, with individual members attaining high offfijice in the region. While the Reşwan name has virtually disappeared, members of the confederation in Turkey today still trace their origins to the Syrian settlement initiative.

Aleppo is the second largest and oldest prelacy of the Catholicosate of Cilicia, wich has its seat in Sis. Between 1660 nd the 1920s Aleppo became the administrative and religious centre of Catholicosate, with its prelacy located at the Holy Forty Martyrs Church.
In the 17th century a new wave of unrests started in the Catholicosate due to internal disagreements, as well as spreading of Catholicism. These developments eventually led to the emergence of a rival seat of Cilicia in the prelacy of Aleppo.
The first alternative Catholicos was Petros Karkaretsi, who challenged the office of Hovannes IV Ayntaptsi, the Catholicos of Sis (1601-1621). The challenge was repeated by David Beriatsi during the Catholicosate of Khachatur Gaghatantsi (Sebastatsi) (1657-1674). No clear information is available about the dates of Sahak Meykhanedji, Catholicos of Cilicia and his rival, Azaria Karkaretsi (1677-1683). 
Basing her statement on the Aleppo Sharia court’s Arabic document preserved in the Mashtots Matenadaran, and with further proof from adjunct-Catholicos Babken A.. Kyuleserian’s, Fr. Mikayel Chamchian’s and Archb. Malakia Ormanian’s studies, the author resolves the existing discrepancy regarding their datesin office.

Several theses and dissertations have been written about the religious, political and cultural effects of the American missionary enterprise in the Middle East. This study lists the theses and dissertations which examine the missionary activities of the several American denominations and organizations including Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Mormons, Quakers and Methodists in the Middle East throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Nous savons désormais qu'une frontière, au sens concret comme au sens figuré, n'est pas un fait donné une fois pour toute, mais un instrument employé à construire et à remodeler des identités. C'est le lieu du conflit, mais aussi de l'échange, où se transforme et s'aménage constamment la définition d'un groupe par rapport à un autre. Il est donc vain, comme cela a été longtemps le cas, et comme cela se pratique encore, notamment à propos des chrétiens orientaux, de partir à la recherche de la nature essentielle et atemporelle de chaque groupe. La place des chrétiens dans l'Islam n'est pas donnée une fois pour toute, à travers un certain nombre de prescriptions. Elle est amenée au contraire à se déplacer au gré du contexte. D'autre part, elle n'est pas seulement déterminée par un face à face entre chrétiens et musulmans : la posture des membres d'une confession chrétienne par rapport à une autre est souvent plus déterminante dans la définition discursive d'une identité que celle qu'ils adoptent face aux autorités islamiques ou au groupe musulman majoritaire.

In October 1850 an uprising took place in Aleppo that was in certain aspects noticeably different from previous episodes of urban violence in the city’s history and past routines in contentious politics given that it unfolded along confessional lines: parts of the city primarily inhabited by Christians were attacked by a crowd of Muslim rioters from the Eastern quarters of the city. With this episode that overshadowed Muslim-Christian relations for decades and beyond, sectarianism made a powerful entrance on the political stage in Aleppo. Contemporaries were quick to deplore the “fanatical spirit” of the Muslims and even in modern historical research the idea that the event was an “outburst of religious fanaticism” lingers, despite recent scholarship dismantling essentialist historical diagnoses.
This study approaches the 1850 uprising by dismantling such interpretations through a microhistorical analysis that takes into consideration the spatial dimensions of the events. Building on close readings of previously unknown eyewitness reports and letters from church archives in Aleppo and Damascus, offered here in Arabic and German translation, the analysis delves into what stands between the lines. If not with their words, the rioters spoke through their movements in Aleppo’s urban space. Spatial analysis can thus shed light on a complex conflict that began when conscription and a new tax law were enforced by Ottoman officials in the framework of the project of the tanzimat reforms. These reforms were having a very different impact on various social groups from among Aleppo’s inhabitants. The production of urban space in daily life and during the uprising by both those advantaged and those disaffected in the reform process points to growing political, economic and administrative rifts tearing apart the social fabric – rifts that lie frequently hidden in an emerging sectarian rhetoric.

This article traces the career of the Hammud family of Sayda (Lebanon) as Ottoman functionaries in the eighteenth century. Beginning with the myth of their Maghrebi origins and migration to south-western Syria, it examines, on the basis of Ottoman administrative documents from Istanbul, Sayda, Tripoli and Damascus, their adoption of the “agha” title and induction into the ayan class of provincial notables. It focuses primarily on their ties to the rural hinterland and monopolisation of the local cotton trade, but also on their control of the Sayda customs house and credit ties with French merchants. Arguing that their heavy indebtedness in the middle of the eighteenth century actually marked them as one of the most important notable households in the region, it furthermore explores their ties to various Ottoman figures and institutions in Istanbul, then analyzes their progressive “civilianization” as they become increasingly identified with the newly-created fiscal office of “Arabi Katibi” (Arab secretary) in the second half of the century. Ending with their eviction from Sayda in the wake of the Shiite occupation of the city in 1771, it suggests that their rise and fall as local aghas is illustrative of the evolving rapport between Ottoman provincial society and the central state at the cusp of the modern era.

The aim of this article is to analyze the development of the relationship between the Melkite and the Latin Patriarchates within the Holy Land between the second half of the 19th century and the third decade of the XX century as a part of a wider dynamic of confrontation and interaction between the West and the East. The purpose is to underline the consequences of Latin-Melkite relations in the land of Transjordan with regard to the development and stratification processes in local society during the Tanzimat era and the first decades of the Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan. The rebirth of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (1847) and enactment of the encyclical In Suprema Petri by Pius IX (1848) gave new strength to the Uniate programme, opening another phase in the ecumenical dialogue between the Vatican and Eastern rite churches. Uniatism implied two different issues. On the one hand, it characterized official relations between the Vatican and the Apostolic See of the East. On the other, regarding the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, it influenced the rebirth of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, inspiring the Latin missionary programme within these lands that triggered a reaction from the Melkite Church, which considered Uniatism a form of Latinization and not ecumenism.

OPEN ACCESS: https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2021.2020616

In seventeenth-century Damascus and other Ottoman cities, a number of Arabic poets wrote about tobacco smoking, suggesting that this relatively new habit was not only a question of law and social mores for scholarly communities but also pleasure and connoisseurship. Focussing on The Wafting Scent of Fragrant Herbs and a Splash of Liquor in the Tavern, an anthology by the Damascene Muḥammad al-Muḥibbī (d. 1699 CE), this article examines how these poets incorporated tobacco into their poetic world through intertextuality, drawing analogies with other desirable sensory experiences such as wine drinking, and putting tobacco pipes center stage in poetic scenes of homoerotic love. More broadly, it argues that multisensorial perception provided metaphors for literary connoisseurship and sociability in the Ottoman period. This “sensory connoisseurship” – and the incorporation of tobacco as an object of its attention – contributed to articulations of masculinity among poets and audiences who shared poetic and sensory pleasures.

This article provides a summary history of Ḥiṣn al-Akrād (the crusader-era “Crac des Chevaliers”) and its region under Ottoman rule. After a brief résumé of its situation in the Mamluk period, it draws on Ottoman tax (tapu-tahrir) records, executive decrees (mühimme and şikayet registers), financial records (maliyeden müdevver and ahkam registers), Tripoli court registers and other administrative documents to trace the district’s evolution from the sixteenth through the early twentieth centuries. In doing so, it highlights the role played by Turkmen, Kurdish and bedouin settlers in the area, the importance of both Sunni Muslim and Christian local notables, the influence of the Dandashlī family beginning in the eighteenth century and the administrative reforms affecting the district in the nineteenth.

Cornelius Van Alan Van Dyck (1818-1895) was one of the most prominent American missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to their mission in Ottoman Syria in the nineteenth century. In studies on Syria’s cultural awakening in the second half of the nineteenth century, the nahḍa, Van Dyck, or al-ḥakīm (the wise) as he was often called, is well remembered as a polymath, who contributed modern textbooks on different subjects to Syria’s new educational institutions. Above all he is known for completing the translation of the Bible into Arabic with its first edition published in 1865. Van Dyck’s remarkable achievements often overshadow the fact that he actually began as a missionary doctor in Syria, preaching the Gospel while curing the people’s diseases. This article will focus on his first thirty years in Syria, which can be marked as a period of transformation and change in his life. Van Dyck slowly distanced himself from the Syria Mission by embracing more liberal views and discovering his love for science and the Arabic language. ...

The Ottoman fiscal survey registers (tahrir defterleri) are indispensable sources for studies on the Ottoman demographic history. It is not possible to have correct interpretation of the population movements in Ottoman history without looking at these registers for the areas where the surveys carried out. This short paper depicts the Ottoman sources related to demography of the modern day Palestine in the sixteenth century and anaylses the current state of scholarship on the subject.
Although it is hard to determine the geographical boundaries of Palestine in the early modern period, the evidence at our disposal indicates that the boundaries of Palestine encompasses the territories of Ajlun, Nablus, Lajjun, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Safad sanjaks in the sixteenth century.
After the Battle of Marj Dabiq in 1516 where they defeated the Mamluks, the Ottomans became the new rulers of the Bilad al-Sham. The first land survey (tahrir) of the region, which has not survived to our day, was carried out during the reign of Sultan Selim I (1512-20). The existing mufassal (detailed) tahrirs date back to the reign of Sultan Suleyman I (1520-1566). The land surveys that were completed during the reigns of Selim II (1566-1574), Murad III (1574-1595) and Mehmed III (1595-1603) are also available today.
The detailed land surveys that were kept in Istanbul (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi) and in Ankara (Kuyud-u Kadîme Arşivi) are essential sources to understand the demographic composition of Palestine and its change throughout the sixteenth century. Their pitfalls and limitations arising from their physical as well as contextual defects such as the lack of kanunnames, dates, and missing pages, however, do not diminish their values as primary sources for the population of Palestine in the given period.
Furthermore in this short paper it was demonstrated that new tahrir registers (MAD 18054, 546 KKTD) related to demography of the modern day Palestine in the sixteenth century which are not known for current scholarship. The new tahrir registers will enrich our knowledge and make valuable contribution to this field.

Recent research has shown that book collecting by private individuals and institutions was a widespread phenomenon in Bilād al-Shām. At least from the Ayyubid period onwards, countless volumes were produced, changed hands in the book market, and lay around in libraries. To this day, Damascus occupies a central position in our knowledge about libraries and book culture in general, while other cities and regions lag behind. In this article, the inventory of an Aleppine book collector is used to take a glimpse at the book culture of Aleppo in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Although most probably not reflecting the sum total of his library, the inventory still allows to ascertain the specific taste of its compiler, an otherwise unknown Aleppine bibliophile. The inventory also provides evidence for the early distribution of Arabic print and pushes the door open for investigating the role of local agents in the early days of attempts by Orientalists to acquire Arabic manuscripts for European libraries.

Throughout the nineteenth century several Western officers joined the Ottoman Army. Not a few adopted Ottoman citizenship, commanded troops, fought in major wars, and rose to the highest echelons of the military. For these men the Ottoman Empire represented a formidable military power, notwithstanding contemporary discourses about its supposed decline. Asking what prompted these military men to emigrate, this article elucidates how they reconciled, for themselves, some of the putative contradictions of their positions as (former) Christian men in the military body of an Empire that drew on Islam as its main source of legitimacy. How did they try to make sense of what they were doing and how did they later remember and represent their Ottoman travails to those they left behind? This article answers these questions through a close reading of the career and memoirs of the Belgian baron Charles de Schwartzenberg a.k.a. Emin Pasha (d. 1878), who was employed in the Ottoman Army for nearly two decades, fighting in the Crimean War before serving in Syria. Typical for the mercenary-like European officers who chose to venture abroad, his biography illuminates the kind of mobility that was possible in, and integral to, the late Ottoman military structure.

Part of the Special Issue “Foreign Fighters and Multinational Armies from Civil Conflicts to Coalition War, 1848-1999,” edited by Steven O'Connor and Guillaume Piketty.

Little is known about the role of surgery in pre-modern medical practice in general, and in the lands under Muslim dominance in particular. There is an acknowledged gap between theoretical knowledge and medical practice, but evidence of the latter is difficult to find. Many fundamental questions therefore remain unanswered. For example, was there a division of labour between surgeons and physicians? We are also mostly ignorant about who practiced surgery, the legal context surrounding this practice, and its financial aspects. This article offers an analytical edition of two documents from the Syrian town Hamah dating from 1212/1798, which can help answer some of these questions. They concern a respected and learned physician who also personally performed the removal of bladder stones and was paid well for his services.

Die Bilād-aš-Šām-Serie fortsetzend umfasst Band IVe2 der renommierten SNAT-Reihe sämtliche Münzen der Tübinger Universitätssammlung, welche unter mamlūkischer (13.–16. Jh.) und osmanischer Herrschaft (16.–19. Jh.) in Aleppo geprägt wurden. Im späten Mittelalter war Aleppo das wichtigste Wirtschaftszentrum des ostmediterranen Raums. In der mamlūkischen Münzprägung der Stadt spiegelt sich deutlich deren langsame, aber stetige Erholung seit der Mongolenkatastrophe um 1260, welche nicht nur Teile Aleppos zerstört, sondern auch das wirtschaftliche Hinterland entvölkert und in eine Grenzlage gebracht hatte. Während die Kupfermünzausgaben in erster Linie die fiskalischen Bedürfnisse der Herrschaft aufzeigen, lässt sich in der Edelmetallvermünzung, insbesondere beim Gold, ein wirtschaftlicher Aufschwung während des 14. Jh. und die Gewinnung einer Vormachtstellung gegenüber Damaskus im 15. Jh. nachvollziehen, wobei sogar eine größere Währungsstabilität im Vergleich zu Kairo erkennbar ist. In der bisherigen Literatur war die Münzprägung Aleppos nur lückenhaft erfasst worden. Dazu führten oft undatierte Münztypen zu Zuordnungsproblemen. In der FINT-Sammlung stellt die Münzprägung Nordsyriens mit über 1000 Münzen allein aus dem mamlūkischen und osmanischen Aleppo einen Schwerpunkt dar. Gefördert von der Pelling-Zarnitz-Stiftung wird dieses von Dr. Alaa Aldin Al Chomari bearbeitete Material nun in chronologischer Ordnung und erstmals in (bislang) vollständiger typologischer Übersicht dargestellt. Alle SNAT-Bände sind im Onlineshop des Wasmuth & Zohlen Verlags erhältlich: https://wasmuth-verlag.de/shop/archaeologie-alte-kulturen/archaeologie-allgemein/die-muenzstaette-aleppo-in-mamluekischer-und-osmanischer-zeit-ca-1260-1760/

ENGLISH:  This Sylloge volume comprises all coins of the Tübingen University collection minted in Mamlūk and Ottoman Aleppo. During the later middle ages and the early modern period, this Syrian city was one of the most important commercial centers of the Eastern Mediterranean, following a collapse resulting from the Mongol devastations of its hinterland around 1260. The Mamlūk coinage of Aleppo demonstrates the slow but steady return of the city to its former position during the 14th century and the takeover of the economically lead for the Syrian lands in the 15th century, which was never lost during the Ottoman period. While underrepresented in earlier publications, the Islamic coinage of Aleppo is among the strongest areas within the Tübingen collection with more than a thousand coins struck between 1260 and 1740, which this volume presents in chronological and typological order with solutions to attribution problems of undated coin types.

1 This paper draws on research conducted for the project Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern World, which is supported by funding from the European Research Council (erc) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 638578). 2 Anonymous, Ḥawādith mā tawaqqʿa min al-ghawāyil bi-maḥrūsat Ḥalab al-shahīra fī l-yawm al-sādis ʿashar min shahr tishrīn awwal gharbī sanat 1850, ed.

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