INTRODUCTION Around 1911, Maḥmūd Nedīm Bey, from 1913 The

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Around 1911, Maḥmūd Nedīm Bey, from 1913 the last Ottoman governor-general of Yemen, met in Cairo with Horatio Herbert Kitchener, then Britain’s pro-consul in Egypt.1 When the conversation turned to the difficulties of the Ottoman central government with ending oppo- sition to its rule over this southernmost province of the Ottoman Empire, Kitchener offered this advice: “In the Red Sea region, there are French, Italian, and English colonies. If you were to study these colonies . . . and see what has been done and what is being done there, your job would be rendered much easier.” Then he drove his point home

1 In his memoirs, Maḥmūd Nedīm does not specify when exactly this conversation took place. It must have occurred between 1911 when Kitchener took up his post as British consul-general and agent in Egypt and the summer of 1914 when he became secretary of state for war. Maḥmūd Nedīm (1865–1940) was born in Damascus in AMal 1281 (beginning 13 March 1865), the son of a provincial administrator. He was educated at a rüşdīye school (advanced primary school) in Tripoli (Ṭrāblusşām) and entered provincial officialdom at age twelve, as an apprentice clerk. From 1880 to 1894, Maḥmūd Nedīm held positions in the provincial judiciary, in the Hijaz and in Yemen, including as president of the commercial court of Ḥudayda (August 1886–Decem- ber 1887 and April 1888–January 1889) and of Jidda (January 1889–March 1892 and December 1892–September 1894). Starting with two short terms as deputy district governor (ḳāymaḳām vekīli) of Jidda (July–October 1892 and May–October 1893) he continued to work as a provincial administrator for the rest of his professional life. From 1894 to 1904 he served as district governor (ḳāymaḳām) in Anatolia, Benghazi, and Yemen (ḳāymaḳām of Zabīd, May 1895–March 1897). Maḥmūd Nedīm returned to Yemen as deputy governor-general in the fall of 1904 and remained in this position till May 1907. His connection with the empire’s southernmost province continued during the Second Constitutional Period (1908–18). From February 1910 to December 1911 he represented Ḥ udayda in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies (Meclis-i Mebʿūsān). Maḥmūd Nedīm again served as deputy governor-general of Yemen from December 1911 to February 1913, when he was appointed governor-general (vālī) of that province, and, as it turned out, the last Ottoman official to hold this position. In early 1919, Otto- man military forces withdrew from Yemen in compliance with the armistice of Mudros (31 October 1918). And yet, until 1923 Maḥmūd Nedīm stayed on as an adviser to the Zaydī imām al-Mutawakkil ʿalāʾllāh Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad Ḥ amīd al-Dīn (d. 1948) and formally, at least, continued to hold his position as governor-general until the start of his retirement in August of that year. He spent his retirement years in Adana and, from 1926, in Istanbul where he died on 11 March 1940; see Ali Birinci, “Mahmut Nedim Bey Osmanlı devleti’nin son Yemen valisi,” in Mahmud Nedim Bey, Arabistan’da bir ömür. Son Yemen valisinin hatıraları veya Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Arabistan’da nasıl yıkıldı? ed., Ali Birinci (Istanbul: İsis, 2001), vii–ix. 2 chapter one even more directly: “Do remember this: Yemen in particular you have to administer as a colony. That’s your only choice.” When Maḥmūd Nedīm later mentioned this conversation to Enver Paşa, one of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (İttiḥād ve Teraḳḳī Cemʿīyeti), the most powerful political party in the Ottoman Empire at the time, Enver responded: “If we were to administer Yemen as a colony, wouldn’t we cause the [local] people to rebel against us?”2 Yet in 1938, Taḥsīn Paşa, from 1894 to 1908 first secretary ser-( kātib-i şehriyārī) of Sultan ʿAbdülḥamīd II (r. 1876–1909), claimed, There was a special policy that Sultan Hamid pursued toward distant regions [of the empire], such as Iraq and Yemen, and that one could term a colonial policy. Sultan Hamid, who fully understood that the people of these areas could not be administered like those living in other parts of the empire and according to the same laws and modes [of gov- ernance], had accepted an administrative system that was in accordance with the capabilities of the local population.3 This book is a history of the concepts and practices of Ottoman imperial rule over large parts of present-day Yemen from 1872 to the end of World War I. Maḥmūd Nedīm’s conversations with Kitchener and Enver and the observations of Taḥsīn Paşa highlight three points that I focus on in this study. One focus concerns the disagreement among these bureaucrats as to whether there was, in fact, an Ottoman colo- nialism in Yemen, when it began, and what it entailed; in this, we see a reflection of the ambiguous nature of Ottoman imperial rule in south- west Arabia. As I demonstrate, Ottoman imperial rule over this part of the Arabian Peninsula was a peculiar hybrid that I term colonial Otto- manism: a combination of elements of colonial domination being its most prominent feature, with efforts at building a more homogeneous and centralized empire under the banner of Ottomanism (a form of imperial patriotism) also key. Further, this hybrid form of imperial rule emerged in a context marked by the Ottoman Empire’s connection to, and conflict with, rival imperial powers, Britain being the foremost among them. European territorial expansion into Ottoman lands and European attempts to gain economic and political influence

2 See Mahmud Nedim, Arabistan’da bir ömür, 107–8. 3 See Ali Ergenekon, ed., Sultan Abdülhamid. Tahsin Paşa’nın Yıldız hatıraları (Istanbul: Boğaziçi Yayınları, 1990), 205. For Taḥsīn Paşa’s term of office, see Sinan Kuneralp, Son dönem Osmanlı erkân ve ricali (1839–1922). Prosopografik rehber (Istanbul: İsis, 2003), 13.