“Our Mission in Oriental Studies”

Chapter 4 “Our Mission in Oriental Studies” Those [Orientalists] who never get to the Orient or who – upon returning – publish their observations in print must begin the task of systematically creating Czech Orientalist literature. We owe this to our nation, [and] to our students … If it wants to profit the state must invest. Built this way Oriental studies will secure us lasting success in the Orient and will per- haps serve as a model for other Slavic states. alois musil, 19201 In 1920, the year that according to some marks the end of the first phase in the development of Czech Oriental studies,2 the anthropologist, geographer, and Middle Eastern scholar Alois Musil (1868–1944)3 wrote an article titled “Our Mission in Oriental Studies and in the Orient.”4 The field of scholarship de- voted to the languages, cultures, and history of “the Orient” was still relatively young in Czech (and from 1918 Czechoslovak) academia, and only a handful of scholars dealt with the Turkish language and the Turks in their research and teaching. Each of these scholars (all of whom were men) was a personality in his own right, and not everything that Musil wrote in this text about the tasks 1 Alois Musil, Naše úkoly v orientalistice a v Orientě (Prague: Edvard Leschinger, 1920), 19–20. 2 Rudolf Růžička, “Prof. Dr. Rudolf Dvořák: Posmrtné vzpomínky o zemřelých členech Akademie,” in Almanach České akademie věd a umění, vol. 31–32 (Prague: Nákladem České akademie věd a umění, 1922), 82. 3 Musil’s education, research interests, international fame, and adventurous life set him apart from his Czech colleagues. He discovered early Islamic portraits at a time when it was gener- ally believed that Islam did not allow the depiction of human beings, he became a “blood brother” of a Bedouin chief and even a Sheikh himself, while at the same time he had close ties to the Habsburg family and was involved in high politics. On Musil see Erich Feigl, Musil von Arabien: Vorkämpfer der islamischen Welt (Vienna: Amalthea-Verlag, 1985); Ernest Gell- ner, “Lawrence of Moravia: Alois Musil, Monotheism and the Hapsburg Empire,” The Times Literary Supplement, August 19, 1994, 12–14. See also Karl Johannes Bauer, Alois Musil: Wahr heitssucher in der Wüste (Vienna: Böhlau, 1989); Udo Worschech, Alois Musil: Ein Orientalist und Priester in geheimer Mission in Arabien 1914–1915 (Kamen: Verlag Hartmut Spenner, 2009). Among Czech works, see, e.g., Oldřich Klobas, Alois Musil zvaný Músa ar Rueili (Brno: cerm, 2003); Jaroslav Franc, Kněz a teolog Alois Musil: Příspěvek k dějinám mezináboženských vztahů a výbor z pozůstalosti (Olomouc: Nakladatelství Centra Aletti Refugium Velehrad- Roma, 2015). 4 Musil, Naše úkoly. © JITKA MALEČKOVÁ AND CHARLES UNIVERSITY, FACULTY OF ARTS, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440791_006 Jitka Malečková - 9789004440791 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-NDDownloaded 4.0 license. from Brill.com09/30/2021 05:44:47AM via free access <UN> 160 Chapter 4 of Oriental studies can be taken to represent what his fellow academics would also have believed. Yet, Musil’s article raises a more general question: how did the first generation of Czech scholars with a professional focus on the Middle East, and specifically the Turkish language, literature, and history, see the pur- pose of their work and their mission? The emergence of the modern disciplines that make up Oriental studies co- incided in the West with the height of the imperialist age and, as R. Stephen Humphreys notes, imperialism led to a sense of European material and intel- lectual superiority. Orientalists were also influenced by this feeling and conse- quently looked down on Orientals and regarded them as mere objects of study: “One could admire or sympathize with them, but in the end they were speci- mens under a microscope.”5 Certainly not every example of the work of Orien- talists supported the colonial enterprise. Scholars held different views on the people they were studying and used different theoretical frameworks to ana- lyze them. Zachary Lockman warns against conflating examples of prejudice, stereotyping, and racism in scholarship on the Middle East with the theories and interpretative paradigms that academics used and points out that even those scholars who respected Islam and looked favorably on Muslims worked with what are today considered questionable interpretative frameworks.6 Yet, it is broadly accepted that in the 19th century, in Lockman’s words, “the ways in which European scholars, writers and artists analyzed, imagined and depicted the Orient were often intertwined, in complex ways, with the reality of growing European power over those peoples and lands.”7 The special relationship that exists between knowledge and power has been highlighted in analyses of the colonial powers’ “Orientalism.” For a long time, the model of European scholarship on the Orient was taken to be the work of the British and French scholars. Now, in the 21st century, 19th-century German Orientalism, which at that time was very influential throughout Europe and even more so in Central Europe, is attracting renewed attention and is being interpreted in various ways: it is described as a subspecies of the Anglo-French (and especially the French, via de Sacy) “colonialist” model; or it is considered to have had little to do with pragmatic political issues and imperialist objec- tives – in other words, it is deemed to have been preoccupied with the pursuit of “pure knowledge”; or it is even regarded as having formed its own breed of 5 Humphreys, “The Historiography of the Modern Middle East,” 22. 6 Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Oriental ism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3–4 and 74. 7 Ibid., 73–74. Jitka Malečková - 9789004440791 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 05:44:47AM via free access <UN> “Our Mission in Oriental Studies” 161 scholarship, a kind of “third way.”8 Suzanne Marchand, for instance, has argued that, at the turn of the century, German-language Orientalists systematically criticized Eurocentric interpretations of Eastern cultures and their history.9 Turks and the Turkish language often occupy a marginal position in analyses of the history of Oriental studies,10 except in Austria and Russia, where Oriental studies actually referred particularly to the study of the Turks and the Turkish language.11 Russia is an interesting example of a country that was both “Orientalized” by the West and itself exercised imperial power over Oriental territories.12 Russian scholarship on the East is associated with the German school; it was influenced by German academia, and also its diametric evalua- tions resemble those of German Orientalism. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye claims that Russian scholars focusing on Islam and the Turkic lands occupied by Russia “were sympathetic and respectful of the nations they stud- ied” and there was “no inherent link between knowledge and power as far as the Orient was concerned.”13 Kalpana Sahni extends Said’s critique of Western Orientalism to apply to the Russian colonization of the Caucasus and Central Asia,14 while Vera Tolz portrays Russian “Orientologists” as “empire-savers,” deeply convinced of the power of their knowledge to substantially transform 8 Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Schol arship (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 2010), xxii. For an overview of various positions on German Orientalism see Ursula Wokoeck, German Orientalism: The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945 (London: Routledge, 2009), 9–18. 9 Marchand, German Orientalism, 496. 10 Compared to Arabic, Turkish was a minor topic; nevertheless, the extent to which it is overlooked is surprising. Marchand (German Orientalism, xxx) mentions among the sub- fields of Oriental studies covered in her comprehensive work Assyriology, Egyptology, biblical criticism, Indology, Persian studies, Arab linguistics, Islamic studies, Sinology, and Japanology, but not Turkish studies. Also Wokoeck (German Orientalism), Lockman (Con tending Visions), and Irwin (Dangerous Knowledge) pay limited attention to Turkish spe- cialists and topics. 11 See, e.g., Oliver Rathkolb, ed., 250 Jahre – von der Orientalischen zur Diplomatischen Aka demie in Wien / 250 years – from the Oriental to the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna / 250 années – de l’Académie Orientale à l’Académie Diplomatique à Vienne (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2004). 12 Not only imperial powers like Russia, but even societies that depended on imperial powers sometimes related to the Orient in contradictory ways, as a center to a periphery and as a part of the periphery themselves. See Joseph Lennon, “Irish Orientalism: An Overview,” in Ireland and Postcolonial Theory, ed. Clare Carroll and Patricia King (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 130 and 156. 13 David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Heaven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 8. 14 See Sahni, Crucifying the Orient (with the characteristic subtitle “Russian Orientalism and the Colonization of Caucasus and Central Asia”). Jitka Malečková - 9789004440791 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 05:44:47AM via free access <UN> 162 Chapter 4 Oriental societies, but at the same time, as the forerunners to 20th-century postcolonial scholarship, critical of the East–West dichotomy.15 In Central European countries, the different schools of Oriental studies that emerged drew inspiration from various sources and did not fit neatly into any one model.16 Polish scholarship on the Orient was affected by the partition of Poland and its development was brought to a halt when the Russian authorities closed the University of Wilno.17 After that, Polish Orientalists often joined the Russian imperial service as experts on the Orient and sometimes acted as intermediaries between the Russian authorities and the Turks.

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