Caucasian Refugees, Civilization, and Settlement on the Ottoman Frontier, 1866-1918
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO To the Edge of the Desert: Caucasian Refugees, Civilization, and Settlement on the Ottoman Frontier, 1866-1918 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Patrick John Adamiak Committee in Charge: Professor Hasan Kayalı, Chair Professor Michael Provence, Co-Chair Professor Gary Fields Professor Tom Gallant Professor Jeremy Prestholdt 2018 Copyright Patrick John Adamiak, 2018 All rights Reserved The Dissertation of Patrick John Adamiak is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Co-chair _____________________________________________________________ Chair University of California San Diego 2018 iii DEDICATION To Jessica iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………………………...…….iii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………..….iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………….v Note on Translation and Transliteration…………………………..………..…………………….vi List of Abbreviations.……………………………………………………………………...…….vii Acknowledgements……………………………………...…………………………………..….viii Vita…………………………………………………………………………………………...……x Abstract of the Dissertation……………………………………………………...……………….xi Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………..…………………..1 Chapter 2: The Ottoman Civilizing Attitude and the Internal Frontier……………………....….17 Chapter 3: A Second Egypt? The Failure of Settlement Plans in Benghazi, 1880-1895………...62 Chapter 4: The Ottoman Settlement of the Golan Heights, 1860-1888…………………….........89 Chapter 5: The Circassians of Quneitra and the End of a Regime of Exception in Southern Syria, 1890-1908………………………………………………………………………………………133 Chapter 6: “The Sheep Dogs Had Been Worse than the Wolves:” The Chechen Settlement at Resülayn, 1866-1908…….……………………………………………….…………….………177 Chapter 7: Epilogue and Conclusion………….…………………………………………….….224 Appendix: Maps………………………………………………………………………………...241 Bibliography……………………………………………………………..……..………………246 v NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION I have chosen to render Arabic and Turkish words that are familiar to an English- speaking audience in their common anglicized form whenever possible, such as pasha and sheikh. For transliteration of Ottoman Turkish, I have followed the guidelines set down by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Transliterating place names has been tricky, as this dissertation covers an era when Ottoman planners could legitimately worry that passengers on the Berlin-Baghdad railroad might get confused by having a stop named Pınarbaşı and Resülayn, meaning “head of the spring” in Turkish and Arabic respectively, on the same line. I tried to use the most common current spelling of a place if possible, and for more obscure locations discussed in Ottoman documents, I deferred to the transliteration system for Ottoman Turkish. For personal names of Caucasian settlers I preferred Turkish transliterations, as contemporary British travelers and Consuls sometimes transliterated a name into English, and it is clear from this that many Caucasians of that generation used the Turkish pronounciation of the name (for example, the head of the Damascene gendarmerie in the 1890s went by Hüsrev and not Khosrow). vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BOA Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi PRO Public Records Office vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The help and encouragement of a great number of people made this dissertation possible. I am indebted to Hasan Kayalı and Michael Provence, who have shaped me both as a scholar and a person through my years under their guidance. It is difficult to imagine better mentors. Baki Tezcan, Erik-Jan Zürcher, Hans Theunissen, Tom Gallant, Gary Fields, and Jeremy Prestholdt have also provided invaluable support to me over the years. I have been honored to receive a great deal of financial and institutional support. I would like to thank the Fulbright Program; the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman; the Institute of Turkish Studies; and the University of California, San Diego for the funding that made the research and writing of this dissertation possible. I am also grateful for the assistance of the staffs of the Başbakanlık Archive in Istanbul; the National Archives in London; and the Center for Documents, Manuscripts and Bilad al-Sham Studies in Amman. My work would not be what it is without the help of those who have commented upon my writing, argued a point with me, joined me in pondering the imponderables of Ottoman Turkish, or given me valuable advice. I would like to thank Emre Erol, Mehmet Kuru, David Stenner, Einar Wigen, Oscar Aguirre Mandujano, Timur Hammond, Michael Ben Sims, Lisel Hintz, Sinan Ciddi, Michael Christopher Lowe, Jeffery Dyer, Jim Ryan, Chris Gratien, Nir Shafir, Nick Danforth, Alex Brey, David and Linda Graf, Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Ella Fratantuono, Efe Murad, James Shepard, and Çağdaş Sumer. The vibrant and supportive community in La Jolla I have been fortunate enough to enjoy over the years also deserves a great deal of thanks. Leonidas Mylonakis, David Henderson, Foster Chamberlain, Kate Thompson, Matt Davidson, Ted Falk, Robert Terrell, Kiri Hagerman, Reuben Silverman, Mirna Wasef, viii Semih Gökaltay, Dimitris Stergiopoulos, Emre Sunu, David Idol, and Joel Palhegyi have all made my time at UC San Diego a wonderful experience. I would like to specially thank Johanna Peterson, Barış Taşyakan, and Ben Smuin for their gracious comments and assistance in helping me complete my dissertation. Any mistakes remaining in the dissertation are my own and do not reflect the quality of their assistance. There is no way this work could have been completed without my loving family. It is not possible to thank my parents for how much support and inspiration they have supplied to me over the years. My brother and sister have always been there for me, no matter the circumstances. Above all I want to thank my wife Jessica who has been, and always shall be my partner. ix VITA 2006 Bachelor of Arts, University of California, Davis 2009 Master of Arts, Leiden University 2018 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego x ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION To the Edge of the Desert: Caucasian Refugees, Civilization, and Settlement on the Ottoman Frontier, 1866-1918 by Patrick John Adamiak Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California San Diego, 2018 Professor Hasan Kayalı, Chair Professor Michael Provence, Co-Chair This dissertation investigates the Ottoman Empire’s settlement of refugees fleeing Russian persecution along the empire’s desert frontiers between 1866 and 1918. I contend that Muslim refugees from the Caucasus and the state officials who planned their settlement developed the internal frontiers of the Ottoman Empire to transform these regions’ societies, politics, and environments well into the twentieth century. The dissertation is thus an xi intervention in the histories of population mobility, the environment, and the project of modernity in the Ottoman Empire. It investigates the implications of Istanbul’s policies, driven by what I refer to as a “civilizing attitude,” for the refugee settlers, administrators, local populations, and the environments of the Middle East. The Ottoman state enacted a program of creating model agricultural settlements populated by refugees to sedentarize nomads, whom officials viewed as backwards. The dissertation argues for the agency of the refugees, who adapted to challenging circumstances and ultimately influenced the drawing of borders in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The analysis takes as its case studies settlement schemes in Benghazi, eastern Libya; Quneitra, southern Syria; and Resülayn, northern Mesopotamia to conclude that small communities of refugees at the far edges of empire altered historical trajectories on the regional, imperial, and global levels. xii Chapter 1: Introduction In February of 1878, tens of thousands of Muslim refugees began to arrive in the ports of Syria. The wretched refugees carried what little remained of their worldly possessions along with small pox, typhus, and a host of other diseases. They were destined for a dying settlement at the edge of the semi-arid steppe that fringes southern Syria. For many of the refugees, their arrival in Syria was not their first experience of arriving destitute in a new land. Many of the older refugees had been born in the Caucasus Mountains before the 1860s, when a Russian campaign of extermination had reduced a population of over 2,500,000 Muslim Circassians to 1,500,000 refugees that sought protection in the Ottoman Empire between 1864 and 1877. Hundreds of thousands tried to build new lives in the Balkans. When the Ottoman Empire lost the 1877-8 Russo-Ottoman War, however, the victorious powers forced the Circassians from their homes again. The refugees who settled in Syria in the late nineteenth century reshaped the society and politics of their new homes, and ultimately had important effects on the formation of national identities and borders following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The Ottoman state established an Immigrant Commission (Muhacirin Komisyonu) in 1860 to oversee the needs of immigrants and their settlement.1 While the Immigrant Commission initially