Tarih Dergisi Turkish Journal of History - İstanbul Üniversitesi
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
ISSN 1015-1818 | e-ISSN 2619-9505
2021 / 1
Sayı: 73
Tarih
Dergisi
Turkish Journal
of History
Tarih Kaynağı Olarak Seyahatler
Journeys as a Source of History
Kurucusu
Ord. Prof. M. Cavid Baysun
İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi yayınıdır
Official Journal of Istanbul University Faculty of LettersTarih Dergisi
Turkish Journal of History
ISSN 1015-1818 E-ISSN 2619-9505 Sayı/Issue 73, 2021/1
Tarih Dergisi
Web of Science-Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR-Dizin,
SCOPUS ve EBSCO Historical Abstracts tarafından indekslenmektedir.
Turkish Journal of History is currently indexed by
Web of Science-Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM TR-Dizin,
SCOPUS and EBSCO Historical Abstracts.
Kapak Resmi / Cover Photo
Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi, H. 2148, vr. 8a.Tarih Dergisi
Turkish Journal of History
ISSN 1015-1818 E-ISSN 2619-9505 Sayı/Issue 73, 2021/1
Sahibi / Owner
İstanbul Üniversitesi / Istanbul University
Yayın Sahibi Temsilcisi / Representative of Owner
Prof. Dr. Hayati DEVELİ
Istanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, İstanbul Türkiye /
Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul, Turkey
Sorumlu Müdür / Responsible Manager
Prof. Dr. Arzu TOZDUMAN TERZİ
Istanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, İstanbul Türkiye /
Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul, Turkey
Yazışma Adresi / Correspondence Address
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü
Ordu Cad. No: 6, Laleli, Fatih 34459, İstanbul, Türkiye
Telefon / Phone: +90 (212) 455 57 00 / 15882
E-mail: tjh@istanbul.edu.tr
https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/iutarih
Yayıncı / Publisher
İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınevi / Istanbul University Press
İstanbul Üniversitesi Merkez Kampüsü, 34452 Beyazıt,
Fatih / İstanbul, Türkiye
Telefon / Phone: +90 (212) 440 00 00
Baskı / Printed by
İlbey Matbaa Kağıt Reklam Org. Müc. San. Tic. Ltd. Şti.
2. Matbaacılar Sitesi 3NB 3 Topkapı / Zeytinburnu,
İstanbul, Türkiye
www.ilbeymatbaa.com.tr
Sertifika No: 17845
Dergide yer alan yazılardan ve aktarılan görüşlerden yazarlar sorumludur.
Statements and opinions expressed in papers published in this journal are the responsibility of the authors alone.
Yayın dili Türkçe ve İngilizce'dir.
The publication languages of the journal are Turkish and English.
Şubat, Haziran ve Ekim aylarında, yılda üç sayı olarak yayımlanan uluslararası, hakemli, açık erişimli ve bilimsel bir dergidir.
This is a scholarly, international, peer-reviewed and open-access journal published three times a year in February, June and October.
Yayın Türü / Publication Type: Yaygın Süreli / PeriodicalTarih Dergisi
Turkish Journal of History
ISSN 1015-1818 E-ISSN 2619-9505 Sayı/Issue 73, 2021/1
DERGİ YAZI KURULU / EDITORIAL MANAGEMENT BOARD
Baş Editör / Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Dr. Arzu TOZDUMAN TERZİ
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Osmanlı Müesseseleri ve Medeniyeti Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye
– terzi@istanbul.edu.tr
Misafir Editörler / Guest Editors
Prof. Gerald MACLEAN – Exeter Üniversitesi, Exeter, İngiltere – G.M.Maclean@exeter.ac.uk
Doç. Dr. Metin ÜNVER – İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye – munver@istanbul.edu.tr
Yardımcı Editör / Assistant Editor
Araş. Gör. Dr. Sinem SERİN
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Osmanlı Müesseseleri ve Medeniyeti Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye
– sinemser@istanbul.edu.tr.
YAYIN KURULU / EDITORIAL BOARD
Prof. Dr. Mahmut AK
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Yeniçağ Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye – mak@istanbul.edu.tr
Prof. Dr. Cezmi ERASLAN
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye – ceraslan@hotmail.com
Prof. Dr. İdris BOSTAN
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Yeniçağ Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye – idbos@istanbul.edu.tr
Prof. Dr. Mahir AYDIN
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesii Tarih Bölümü, Yakınçağ Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye – mahiraydin2023@gmail.com
Prof. Dr. Hamdi ŞAHİN
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Eskiçağ Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye – hcsahin@istanbul.edu.tr
Prof. Dr. İlyas TOPSAKAL
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Genel Türk Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye – topsakal@istanbul.edu.tr
Prof. Dr. Birsel KÜÇÜKSİPAHİOĞLU
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Ortaçağ Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye – ksipahi@istanbul.edu.tr
Prof. Dr. Sevtap İSHAKOĞLU-KADIOĞLU
İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Bilim Tarihi Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye – sevtapk@istanbul.edu.tr
ULUSLARARASI EDİTÖRYAL KURUL / INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL BOARD
Prof. Dr. Abdülkadir DONUK – Beykent Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Abdülkadir ÖZCAN – Fatih Sultan Mehmet Üniversitesi, Tarih Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Fahameddin BAŞAR – Fatih Sultan Mehmet Üniversitesi, Tarih Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Fahrettin TIZLAK – Akdeniz Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Antalya, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Feridun Mustafa EMECEN – İstanbul 29 Mayıs Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Géza DÁVİD – Eötvös Loránd Üniversitesi, Beşeri Bilimler Fakültesi, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Tarihi
Doktora Programı, Budapeşte, Macaristan
Doç. Dr. Giampiero BELLİNGERİ – Venedik Ca’ Foscari Üniversitesi, Asya, Akdeniz ve Afrika Araştırmaları Bölümü, Venedik, İtalya
Prof. Dr. Gregory C. MCINTOSH – Arader Galleries, San Francisco, ABD
Prof. Dr. Hayati DEVELİ – İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Dil Bilimi Bölümü, İstanbul, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Hikari EGAWA – Meiji Üniversitesi, Tarih Bölümü, Kyoto, Japonya
Doç. Dr. Kenneth WEİSBRODE – İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent Üniversitesi, Tarih Bölümü, Ankara, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Mustafa Hamdi SAYAR – İstanbul Üniversitesi, Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, Eskiçağ Tarihi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye
Prof. Dr. Oğuz TEKİN – Koç Üniversitesi Suna & İnan Kıraç Akdeniz Medeniyetleri Araştırma Merkezi Direktörü
Pál FODOR – Macaristan Bilim Akademisi, Beşeri Bilimler Araştırma Merkezi Genel Müdürü, Budapeşte, Macaristan
Doç. Dr. Philipp O. AMOUR – Sakarya Üniversitesi, Ortadoğu Enstitüsü, Sakarya, Türkiye
Dr. Rhoads MURPHEY – Birmingham Üniversitesi, Tarih Bölümü, Birmingham, İngiltere
Prof. Dr. Süleyman BEYOĞLU – Marmara Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi, Tarih Bölümü, İstanbul, TürkiyeTarih Dergisi
Turkish Journal of History
ISSN 1015-1818 E-ISSN 2619-9505 Sayı/Issue 73, 2021/1
İÇİNDEKİLER / CONTENTS
MİSAFİR EDİTÖRÜN SUNUŞU / GUEST EDITOR’S PREFACE
Prof. Gerald Maclean ........................................................................................................................ VII
Araştırma Makaleleri / Research Articles
Ortaçağ İslâm Dünyasında İlmî Seyahatler
The Travels in Search for Knowledge in the Medieval Islamic World
Nevzat Keleş ........................................................................................................................................1
Gezi Yazılarında Türk, Doğu ve İslam İmgesi
Turkish, Eastern, and Islamic Image in Travelogues
Onur Bilge Kula ..................................................................................................................................25
Reorienting Orientalism: Ottoman Historiography and the Representation of Seventeenth-
Century French Travelogues
Oryantalizme Yeniden Yön Vermek: Osmanlı Tarihyazımı ve On Yedinci Yüzyıl Fransız
Seyahatnamelerinin Tasvirleri
Andrea Duffy .....................................................................................................................................53
Eighteenth-Century European Medical Encounters with The Ottoman Levant
On Sekizinci Yüzyılda Avrupalıların Osmanlı Doğu Akdeniz’indeki Tıp Tecrübeleri
Mohammad Sakhnini .........................................................................................................................77
Nijniy Novgorodlu Tüccar Vasiliy Baranşikov'un Seyahatnamesinde 18. Yüzyılın Son Çeyreğinde
Osmanlı Toplumu
Ottoman Society in the Last Quarter of the 18th Century in the Travelogue of the Merchant Vasily
Baranshikov From Nizhny Novgorod
Cumhur Kaygusuz, Alim Abidulin, Nadejda Vershinina ..................................................................... 103
Urdu Dili ile Yazılan Seyahatnamelerde Cuma Selamlığı
The Ceremony of the Selamlik in the Travelogues Written in Urdu
Arzu Çiftsüren .................................................................................................................................. 117
Eastern Exoticism: Thackeray as Tourist and Anti-Tourist
Doğu Egzotizmi: Bir Turist ve Anti-Turist Olarak Thackeray
Valerie Kennedy .............................................................................................................................. 131
Bir İngiliz Oryantalistin Portresi: Edward William Lane (1801-1876)
Portrait of a British Orientalist: Edward William Lane (1801-1876)
Selda Güner Özden .......................................................................................................................... 149
An Imperial Traveler: Mark Sykes and His Impressions in the Middle East through His Article and
Notes in the Late 19th Century
Bir İmparatorluk Seyyahı: On Dokuzuncu Yüzyıl Sonlarına Ait Makaleleri ve Notları Işığında Mark
Sykes’ın Ortadoğu İzlenimleri
Özge Aslanmirza .............................................................................................................................. 173Tarih Dergisi
Turkish Journal of History
ISSN 1015-1818 E-ISSN 2619-9505 Sayı/Issue 73, 2021/1
İÇİNDEKİLER / CONTENTS
Araştırma Makaleleri / Research Articles
The Battle of Kars During the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) in V. P. Meshcherskiy's ‘Caucasian
Travel Diary’
V.P. Meshcherskiy'nin “Kafkas Seyahat Günlüğü”nde Rus-Türk Savaşı (1877-1878) sırasında Kars
Muharebesi
Aslı Yiğit Gülseven ........................................................................................................................... 195
Dünya “Görüş”ü Olarak Savaş: Birinci Dünya Savaşı Yıllarında Türkiye’ye ve Türkiye’den
“Seyahat”ler
War as World“View”: Travels to and from Turkey in the Years of World War I
Mustafa Göleç ................................................................................................................................. 215
Representations of the Turks in Twentieth Century British Travel Writing on Asia Minor
Yirminci Yüzyılda Anadolu'ya Dair Yazılan İngiliz Seyahat Edebiyatında Türk Temsilleri
Veysel İsçi ........................................................................................................................................ 249
Kitap Değerlendirmeleri / Book Reviews
Charles D. Sabatos, Frontier Orientalism and the Turkish Image in Central European Literature,
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020. pp. xx+184. ISBN 978-1793614872
C. Ceyhun Arslan .............................................................................................................................. 277
Henrietta Liston’s Travels: The Turkish Journals, 1812-1820, eds., Patrick Hart, Valerie Kennedy
and Dora Petherbridge, with F. Özden Mercan, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2020. pp.
ix-246, illustrated. ISBN 9781474467353
Donna Landry .................................................................................................................................. 283
Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century: Filling the Blank Spaces, ed. Tim Youngs, Anthem
Press, London & New York 2006. pp xv+250. ISBN 1843312182
Halil İbrahim Erol ............................................................................................................................. 285Gerald Maclean
GUEST EDITOR’S PREFACE
The relationship between history and travel has a long and distinguished heritage,
especially in the case of those regions of the world that, by the sixteenth century, had been
incorporated within the pax Ottomanica. As the essays collected here demonstrate, the links
between travel and history continue to reveal productive new approaches and insights that
improve our understanding of the social, cultural, and political developments of a vast region
encompassing Anatolia, North Africa, southwest Asia, the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean.
The great historians of classical antiquity, Herodotus and Xenophon, both travelled in search
of knowledge, and in this quest were succeeded by the influential Muslim historians of the
Middle Ages, Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun, together with the eminent
travelling scholars examined here in the initial essay by Nevzat Keleş.
Travelling historians, however, are not the same as travel writers, and it is widely
accepted that literary travel writing, as such, emerged principally in Europe during the late
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries associated with colonial and commercial adventuring and
the development of moveable print. For the Ottoman world, Evliya Ҫelebi’s ten-volume
Seyahatname, or ‘Book of Travels’ may provide an exception that proves the rule, but the
importance of European travel writing for understanding certain aspects of world history is
well established. In this sense, as the Ottoman historian Rhoades Murphey noted in 1990:
‘The travel literature produced in pre-modern Europe has, both because of its relative
accessibility as historical evidence and because, for some periods and regions at least, it is
nearly the only source of information, remained a subject of intense scholarly interest and
debate.’1 A decade later in her guide to undertaking research into Ottoman history, Suraiya
Faroqhi agreed, observing that ‘since many kinds of information that we urgently need have
been preserved only by these [European travellers], we will have to learn to use their work,
albeit with a great deal of caution’ because of ‘the inclination of many writers to copy their
predecessors.’2 She was thinking of the way that the seventeenth-century French traveller
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort copied descriptions from accounts by Jean Chardin and Jean-
Baptiste Tavernier as if they were his own. But Faroqhi also warned against the twin dangers
of nationalism – of the kind of proud Ottoman boasting we sometimes find in Evliya, for
example – and, following Edward Said, the tendency of many European writers ‘to define the
Islamic world as the eternal “other”.’3 At the same time, both Murphey and Faroqhi agree that
the ‘orientalizing’ tendency did not fully take hold until the later eighteenth century, as Said
1 Rhoades Murphey, ’Bigots or Informed Observers? A Periodization of Pre-colonial English and European
Writings on the Middle East,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110: 2 (Apr.-June 1990): 291-303, p.
291.
2 Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), pp. 16, 22.
3 Faroqhi, ibid. p. 15.
Tarih Dergisi - Turkish Journal of History, 73 (2021) VIIGUEST EDITOR’S PREFACE
himself argued, while a more general expression of ‘religious conviction or ethnic pride does
not necessarily harm the reliability of other aspects’ of travellers’ reports.4
From the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the essays collected here demonstrate
how the writings of different kinds of travellers have, through the centuries, charted the
changing patterns of social, religious, cultural and political life that have characterized the
history of the Ottoman lands. Nevzat Keleş provides a succinct and enlightening survey
of the first generations of travelling scholars who, in search of knowledge (talab al-‘ilm),
followed the Qur’anic injunction ‘to travel though the earth and see how Allah did originate
creation’ (Qur’an 29:20).5 As Keleş argues, these early scholars travelled to the holy sites
of Islam intent on collecting hadiths and other forms of scientific information from famous
transmitters, often with the aim of returning home with this knowledge. In their devout and
educational aims they were entirely distinct from their European contemporaries, as Onur
Bilge Kula informs us, who set out to capture the holy city of Jerusalem motivated as much
if not more by the desire for plunder and wealth as by religious piety. After examining an
account of the ‘first’ Crusade (1096-1099), Kula’s essay contrasts the fanatical hostility of the
crusading rhetoric with the later, more reasoned yet nevertheless critical descriptions of the
Ottoman Turks by the German captive, Johann Schiltberger (1380-c.1440) and the Russian
poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837).
Investigating the attitude of foreign travellers to the Ottoman domains continues to
stimulate new research more than four decades since the publication of Said’s Orientalism.
Using examples of seventeenth-century French travellers, Andrea Duffy argues that their
accounts of the Ottoman world have been both misunderstood and misused by scholars who
have allowed their own cultural biases to interfere with their understanding of the sources
they were studying. In an era of close commercial, diplomatic and scientific alliances
between the French and Ottoman governments, French travellers were considerably more
sophisticated and, indeed, sympathetic, than subsequent scholars have allowed, notions
of ‘oriental despotism’ and Ottoman ‘decline’ frequently distorting their interpretations.
Mohammed Sakhnini also finds eighteenth-century western travellers reporting favourably
of what they saw and learned about Ottoman and Islamic medical practices. Despite the
increasingly common belief of many in Europe that they were pioneering an era of progress
and enlightenment, Sakhnini shows how European physicians were learning about, and
importing, new medicines and procedures from encounters with medical practitioners in the
4 Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient [1978] (rpt. London: Penguin, 1995), p. 39;
Murphey ibid., p. 294. Faroqhi devotes an entire chapter to the usefulness and limitations of early modern
European travel writing for understanding Ottoman society of the era, indicating the invaluable contribution of
Stephane Yérasimos’ Les voyaguers dans l’empire ottoman (XIVe-XVIe siècles), Bibliographie, itineraries et
inventaire des lieux habités (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu), Faroqhi ibid, pp. 110-143.
5 ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an, Amana, Maryland 2003.
VIII Tarih Dergisi - Turkish Journal of History, 73 (2021)Gerald Maclean
Ottoman Levant. For Sakhnini, the evidence points to the Enlightenment being a product of
cross-cultural exchange, not simply European progress.
Of course not all early travellers to the Ottoman Empire were western Europeans. In their
detailed report on the travel diary of Vasili Baranikov, a merchant from the commercially
important Russian city of Nizny Novgorod, the authors Cumhur Kaygusuz, Alim Abidulin
and Nadejda Vershinina reveal how the author came to write a comprehensive account of life
in Istanbul towards the end of the eighteenth century. Although Baranikov arrived in Istanbul
as a captive, having been seized by Turkish pirates, his Unlucky Adventures, published in
1787, reveals how, despite his forcible conversion to Islam and homesickness, he overcame
any sense of prejudiced hostility towards the Ottomans and sought to explain their social,
judicial, educational and religious culture to his compatriots on his return. Baranikov’s
frequent admiration for many aspects of the Ottoman system as he saw it is striking since
he published his travelogue on the eve of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1787-1792, involving
an attempt by the Ottomans to recover territories lost to them in a previous war of 1768-
1774. Clearly nationalist prejudice was not part of Baranikov’s purpose in writing, but the
desire to explain the Ottomans to Russian readers. According to Arzu Çiftsüren, a similar
interest in discovering and describing life within the Ottoman world inspired travel writers
from the Asian subcontinent to visit Istanbul. During the final decades of the nineteenth
century, educators and legal scholars especially were drawn to visit the seat of the caliphate
in order to see for themselves and to report back how, and in what ways, their fellow Muslims
conducted their political, religious, and educational systems. Encouraged by the policy of
pan-Islamism being advocated by Abdul Hamid II, some were eager to promote ideological
harmony among Islamic countries.
The next three studies focus on nineteenth-century British travellers, each of them
profiling a distinctively different type of traveller who wrote for different reasons and in
characteristically different ways. Valerie Kennedy’s study shows the novelist William
Thackeray’s Notes on a Journey of 1846, written at the height of his productive talents,
turning a journey to Cairo into a sophisticated satire on British attitudes towards the east and
the contemporary vogue for oriental travel writing at a time of emergent mass tourism. The
recent appearance of John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in the Ionian Isles, Greece,
Turkey, Asia Minor, and Constantinople in 1840 marked a key moment in which travellers
were becoming tourists, giving rise to a whole host of new manners and attitudes by which
travellers and writers sought to distinguish themselves from these nouveau voyaguers.
Kennedy describes the novelist charting the literary grounds of this historical moment in
the history of travel writing. The subject of the next essay, Edward William Lane, was a
died-in-the-wool orientalist who was caught up in the vogue for all things Egyptian which
had been sweeping across British society since Napoleon’s invasion had threatened British
Tarih Dergisi - Turkish Journal of History, 73 (2021) IXGUEST EDITOR’S PREFACE
interests in the Mediterranean. In her account of Lane’s life and writings, Selda Güner Özden
explores his fascination with Egypt and the Arabic language, his adoption of local costume
and manners while living in Cairo, his ethnographic writings, translations and his efforts
as an engraver to capture the life of the great city as he witnessed it. In her study of Mark
Sykes, Özge Arslanmirza reminds us that the man most famous for the so-called ‘Sykes-Picot
Agreement’ of 1916 that eventually shaped the partition of the Ottoman Empire, had been a
keen eastern traveller since his early youth. With reference to his earliest travel writings, and
by contrasting the published versions with his notebooks, Arslanmirza traces the evolution of
Sykes’ long standing fascination with the Ottoman Middle East and its peoples alongside his
efforts to ingratiate himself with local leaders, especially during his years as an official of the
British Foreign Office. Sykes emerges from Arslanmirza’s account as both a proud British
nationalist and a Turcophile who was disillusioned when the Ottomans allied with Germany
in 1914. Taken together, these studies of three different British travellers remind us of the
need to hesitate before taking it for granted that travellers from the same country and general
background will have identical attitudes towards foreign lands and peoples.
The connections between war and travel writing have seldom been explored in detail,6 so
it is especially exciting to include two original essays on the topic. Aslı Gülseven’s study of
Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshcherskiy’s diary describes his journey to the battle of Kars
during the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78. Gülseven provides the first scholarly report of
this eye-witness account of the conduct and aftermath of a crucial siege that was instrumental
in the emergence of the independent state of Bulgaria following the Treaty of San Stefano.
Published shortly after the end of the war, Meshcherskiy’s Kavkazkiy Putevoy Dnevnik
(‘Caucasian Travel Diary’) not only provides a detailed day-by-day account of the siege
itself, but also includes analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the respective armies,
their tactics and strategies, while revealing Russian attitudes towards Armenians at the time.
On a broader scale, Mustafa Göleç examines a wide variety of different kinds of writing
which describe journeys through and across the Ottoman domains during the First World War
of 1914-1918. Accounts by soldiers and diplomats, as well as poets, journalists and painters,
Göleç demonstrates, produced new perspectives on, and understandings of, the natural and
built environment that made up the regions being devastated by conflict.
The final essay here, by Veysel İşçi, brings us to the second half of the twentieth century
and to accounts by British travellers responding to the modernization campaigns taking place
following the establishment of the secular Republic of Turkey in 1923. In his survey of
numerous works by a variety of writers, İşçi discerns a shift taking place from the 1950s.
Earlier in the century, he argues, writers continued to view Turkey as site of decayed empires
6 See, however, the forthcoming volume of essays edited by Jeanne Dubino, Orkun Kocabıyık, and Elisabetta
Marino, Travel and War, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle 2021.
X Tarih Dergisi - Turkish Journal of History, 73 (2021)Gerald Maclean
– Greco-Roman and Ottoman – a place of backwardness filled with the ruins of the past.
With the arrival of Marshall Plan funding and entry into NATO, however, the visible results
of Atatürk’s modernization programmes came into focus, and a more complex understanding
of Turkish people and culture comes to be represented in the works of new generations of
travel writers.
Taken together, these essays confirm the significant connections between travel and
history, especially for revealing how the civilization of the Ottoman era has been of central
importance in world history. For centuries, travellers coming from both east and west into
the Ottoman world have been fascinated and astonished by what they found. Even when their
reports were shaped by their own biases and cultural perspectives, they nevertheless felt the
need to record what they saw and learned, and thereby inform readers about the land and
people of the region at different stages of development.
I would like to end on a personal note in order to thank Professor Arzu Terzi and the
editorial board of Tarih Dergisi for inviting me to commission and edit this special issue,
an honour that I could not have anticipated. And I would like to thank Dr. Metin Ünver
especially for his unceasing good humour and energy during the often stressful process of
shuttling essays and readers’ reports back and forth through the DergiPark digital platform
amidst the Covid pandemic crisis that has interrupted all our lives in so many ways. Thanks
Metin.
Prof. Gerald Maclean
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Tarih Dergisi - Turkish Journal of History, 73 (2021) XIYou can also read
