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22 Artan

Chapter 2 Contemplation or Amusement? The Light Shed by Ruznames on an Ottoman Spectacle of 1740-1750

Tülay Artan

I have always felt uncomfortable, and if anything recently grown even more uncomfortable, with loose talk of “eighteenth-century Istanbul”. This is a rath- er big block of time in the history of the Ottoman capital that old and new generations of historians have addressed by trying to latch on to themes of administrative change, lifestyles, or the evolution of art and architecture. They have ended up by attributing to it a unified, uniform character which stands in contrast to, and therefore separates it from, the preceding or the following cen- turies. On the one hand there is the triumphant stability of the “classical” age, so-called, and on the other, the Tanzimat’s modernization reforms from the top down. In between, the Ottoman eighteenth century is taken as represent- ing “change”, which, moreover, is said to be especially evident and embodied in the imperial capital. Entertainment, whether in the form of courtly parades or wedding festivals, or the waterfront parties of the royal and sub-royal elite, or popular gatherings revolving around poets or storytellers in public places, plays a particularly strong role in this classification.1 From here the phrase “eighteenth-century Istanbul” takes off into a life of its own. It has, indeed, come to be vested with such authority that, as with any cliché, in many cases it is being used and overused as a substitute for real, em- pirical evidence. There are now too many sweeping generalizations about this

1 The depiction of the early eighteenth-century capital as the city of pleasures is largely built on new forms of sociability and entertainment attributed to the latter part of Ahmed III’s reign that came to be known as the Tulip Period (1718-30). See Ahmed Refik (Altınay), Lale Devri (Istanbul: Kitabhane-i Askeri, İbrahim Hilmi, 1331 [1915]); Özcan, Abdülkadir and İskender Pala, “Lâle Devri”, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. XXVII (2003), pp. 81-4 and 84-5. See also Melikoff, Irène, “Lāle Devri”, Encyclopédie de l’Islam, vol. V, pp. 645-8. For a critical assess- ment of the literature see Karahasanoğlu, Selim, “Osmanlı Tarih Yazımında ‘Lale Devri’: Eleştirel Bir Değerlendirme”, Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar, 7 (2008), 129-44; Karahasanoğlu, Selim, “İstanbul’un Lale Devri mi? Tarih ve Tarih Yazımı”, in Tarih İçinde İstanbul Uluslararası Sempozyumu Bildirileri, ed. Davut Hut, Zekeriya Kurşun and Ahmet Kavas (Istanbul: İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti Ajansı, 2011), pp. 427-63.

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Contemplation Or Amusement? 23

“eighteenth-century Istanbul” that lack substance.2 This is largely why I would like to confine myself to a period of only ten years, as well as a single specific form of courtly entertainment, more obscure than usual though it may be, the practice of watching passing ships and boats (known as temaşa-yı sefayin-i iyab u zehab or temaşa-yı zevrekan), while also smoking and drinking coffee, from coastal pavilions at the tip of the historical peninsula.3 Unlike other kinds of entertainment open to the public, usually narrated by European travellers as well as Ottoman poets or painters, it is to much more drily routine and bureaucratic ruznamecis that we owe our as yet limited knowledge of this practice. A ruzname is ordinarily a calendar, a journal or di- ary, or a book of daily receipts and expenditure. By the same token, ruznamecis are officials or clerks in charge of journal-keeping. But in this specific case, what they are recording are the daily activities of the sultan. Luckily for our purpose, an almost uninterrupted series of such journals is available for virtually the entire reign of Mahmud I (1730-54).4 The author of

2 For a criticism of the “Istanbul in the eighteenth century” cliché see Artan, Tülay, “I. Mahmud ve Boğaziçi, 1740-1750: Temâşâ, Tefekkür, Tevakkuf ve ‘Şehr-i Sefa’”, I. Mahmud Dönemi Sempozyumu, ed. Hatice Aynur (Istanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, forthcoming). For a typical example of such overreaching generalization see Hamadeh, Shirine, The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Seattle: Washington University Press, 2008). 3 For an extensive treatment of Mahmud I’s watching passing ships and boats see Artan, “I. Mahmud ve Boğaziçi, 1740-1750: Temâşâ, Tefekkür, Tevakkuf ve ‘Şehr-i Sefa’”. For a description of a zevrak see Raşid Mehmed Efendi, Çelebizade İsmail Asım Efendi, Tarih-i Râşid ve Zeyli, ed. Abdülkadir Özcan, Yunus Uğur, Baki Çakır and Ahmet Zeki İzgöer (Istanbul: Klasik, 2013), vol. II, p. 1322: “… şehzâde-i civân-bahtları Sultân Süleymân hazretlerinin süvâr oldukları zevrakçe-i hilâliyyü’ş-şekle nakl ü tahvîl ve…”. See also Turan, Selami, “Divân Şairlerinin ‘Zevrak’ Etrafında Oluşturdukları Benzetme Dünyası”, Turkish Studies, 4/2 (2009), 1039-71. 4 Several volumes of ruznames have been located and some are transcribed. A number of ruz- namecis (sır katibi) are identified in this period: Hıfzı Ağa (15 Rebiülevvel 1143-27 Safer 1144/28 September 1730-31 August 1731); Ahmed (18 Muharrem 1147-9 Cemaziülahır 1147/20 June-6 November 1734); (Has Odalı) Hıfzı Muhammed Ağa (1 Muharrem 1148-23 Safer 1151/24 May 1735-12 June 1738); [Salahaddin] Salahi (23 Safer 1151-25 Cemaziülevvel 1151/12 June 1738-10 September 1738); Ahmed Ömer Ağa (25 Cemaziülahır 1153-23 Rebiülahır 1163/17 September 1740-1 April 1750); Yenişehirli Mehmed and another Mehmed (15 Cemaziülahır 1165-28 Safer 1168/30 April 1752-14 December 1754). The ruzname of the last two is located by Selman Soydemir who is currently writing a Ph.D. dissertation on this corpus. For earlier studies see Çınar, Şükran, “Patrona Halil İsyanı’na ve I. Mahmud Devrine Ait Bir Tarihçe”, Graduation Thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1974; Uzun, Efkan, “Sultan I. Mahmud’a Ait Bir Rûznâme (H. 1147/M. 1734)”, Turkish Studies, 8/7, (2013), 687-703; Oral, Yavuz, “Kadı Ömer Efendi. Rûznâme-i Sultan Mahmud Han-ı Evvel (1153-1157/1740-1744)”, Graduation Thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1966; Özcan, Özcan, “Kadı Ömer Efendi. Rûznâme-i Sultan Mahmud Han-ı Evvel (1157-1160/1744-1747)”, Graduation Thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1965; Bayrak, Kamuran, “Kadı Ömer Efendi. Rûznâme-i Sultan Mahmud Han-ı Evvel (1160-1163/1747-1750)”, Graduation Thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi, 1972.