UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Homer, Troy and the Turks: Heritage & identity in the Late Ottoman Empire 1870-1915 Uslu, G. Publication date 2015 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Uslu, G. (2015). Homer, Troy and the Turks: Heritage & identity in the Late Ottoman Empire 1870-1915. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:07 Oct 2021 Homer, Troy and the Turks Heritage & Identity in the Late Ottoman Empire 1870-1915 Günay Uslu Na’im Fraşeri, Ilyada. Eser-i Homer, Istanbul 1303 (1885-1886) Amsterdam, June 2015 Homer, Troy and the Turks Heritage & Identity in the Late Ottoman Empire 1870-1915 ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT Ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit op vrijdag 13 november 2015, te 13.00 uur door Günay Uslu geboren te Haarlem 1 Promotores: Prof. dr. W. den Boer Prof. dr. F.P.I.M. van Vree Overige leden: Prof. dr. E. Eldem Prof. dr. I.J.F. de Jong Prof. dr. B. Kempers Prof. dr. E.M. Moormann dr. G.J.M. van Wijngaarden Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen This work is part of the Mosaic research programme, which is financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). 2 Troy was situated near Çanakkale. Although in the past Troy and both its siege and the war were considered to exist only in the imagination, the excavations in the surroundings have confirmed and strengthened the contents of the Iliad. Na’im Fraşeri, Ilyada. Eser-i Homer (Istanbul 1303/1885-1886) preface, 7, translated from Ottoman. 3 Contents Preface & Acknowledgments 7 Introduction 13 I The Discovery of Troy: Schliemann and the Ottomans in the 1870s 36 1. The Question of ‘ubi Troia fuit’ 38 2. Heinrich Schliemann in the Troad 42 3. Schliemann’s Confrontation with Ottoman Authorities 47 4. Ottomans Claiming Trojan Artefacts 57 5. Troy: A Protected Zone 63 6. Excavating in the Shadow of War 75 II Classical Antiquities and Ottoman Patrimony: Muslim Elite and their Involvement with Classical Civilization 97 1. Antiquities and Museum: Interests and Conflicts 99 2. Zealous for Civilization: Enlightened Ideas and Ideals in the Empire 107 3. The Cosmopolitan Muslim Elite of a Multifarious Empire 118 4. Osman Hamdi Bey: A New Era in Ottoman Archaeology and Museology 123 III A Closer Watch On Schliemann (1882-1885) 136 1. Profitable Political Conditions 138 2. The Excavations 140 3. The Ottoman Elite’s Discomfort at the Ineffective Antiquities Regulation 156 4. New Antiquities Legislation (1884): Ottoman Claim to Ancient Heritage 160 4 IV Homer and Troy in Ottoman Literature: an Overview 166 1. Early Ottoman-Turkish Interest in Homeric Epics 169 2. New Ottoman Literature: Educating the Public and Changing Perceptions 175 3. Mythology and Homer: Ottoman Reticence 181 4. Homer and Troy in Ottoman Essays, Books, Theatre Plays & the First Translations (1884-1908) 187 5. Admiration for the ‘Lord of Poets’ 193 6. Izmir (Smyrna): Homer’s Hometown 197 V Homer and Troy During the Final Years of the Empire 205 1. Controlling Heritage and the Development of the Ottoman Museum 207 2. Schliemann’s Reputation under Fire 210 3. The Final Encounter of Schliemann and the Ottomans in Troy 212 4. Finding Troy Once More: Dörpfeld’s Excavations in 1893 and 1894 221 5. Overseeing Troy at the Turn of the Century 225 Epilogue of an Empire 237 Manuscript Sources 249 Bibliography 251 Summary 260 Samenvatting 265 5 Historical map of the Ottoman Empire in Europe 1792-1870 (Cambridge Modern History Atlas, 1912). 6 Preface & Acknowledgements The motive for this study arose during an excursion to Istanbul and Troy with students of the Master Heritage Studies at the University of Amsterdam in 2006. The goal of the excursion was to investigate the function of heritage in Turkey and what contribution this heritage could make to the debate on the EU- accession negotiations. Although we expected to see many foreign tourists at the world heritage site of Troy, the bulk of the visitors were Turkish. It became more confusing when some of the Turkish visitors informed us about the Trojan origins of the Turks and the heroic deeds of the Turks in ‘the Last Trojan War’ in 1915 (Battle of Gallipoli). These statements suggested that Homer and Troy, the first lieux de mémoire for ancient Greek civilization and a fundamental part of the collective identity of European nations, were also part of the Turkish cultural memory. The Turks have been present in Europe since the Middle Ages, but they are for the greater part excluded from most European cultural histories, in which Homeric epics have an exceptional position. Obviously, Homeric heritage did not only inspire European imagination but Turkish cultural traditions as well. A strong curiosity about the role of Homer and Troy in Turkey, his reputed homeland and the place where Troy is situated, was certainly awakened during the excursion to Troy. During various precious sparring sessions with professor Pim den Boer, this curiosity developed into ambitious research questions with the aim to explore the function of Homeric heritage in Europe by including the perspective of the Ottoman Empire. The Mosaic grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) provided the essential stimulus for this project and enabled me to conduct research. I am extremely grateful to my supervisor professor Pim den Boer for his contagious enthusiasm, ground- breaking views and sharp guidance. I wish to express my gratitude to my second supervisor professor Frank van Vree who gave me new insights and has been generously helpful in the complicated final stage of this research project. Without the generous support of my supervisors this research could not have 7 been realized. This study relies for a large part on Ottoman documents found in the Ottoman State Archives and the library and archives of the Museum of Archaeology in Istanbul. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the librarian Havva Koç and the director Zeynep Kızıltan of this museum, for their support and assistance in finding and exploring of these valuable documents. Deciphering Ottoman Turkish manuscripts and literature was a great challenge. I am very grateful to my instructor Ottoman-Turkish, Mustafa Küçük, for his remarkable patience and enthusiasm during my process of learning to read and interpret nineteenth- century Ottoman-Turkish texts. I am grateful too to the librarian (ISAM Library) Selahattin Öztürk, who helped me in searching Ottoman-Turkish publications and articles related to Troy and Homer in periodicals and newspapers in various libraries in Istanbul, such as the Atatürk Library, Beyazit State Library and ISAM Library in Istanbul. I am grateful to Őmer Faruk Şerifoğlu for his invaluable support finding precious sources, for connecting me to the right persons and institutions in Turkey, but above all for the cooperation in organizing a symposium, an exhibition and accompanying publications on the subject of this survey. In this context, a publication Troy. City, Homer and Turkey (2012) accompanied the exhibition of the same name – with exceptional loans from Turkish collections – in the Archaeology Museum of the University of Amsterdam (Allard Pierson Museum) between December 2012 and May 2013. The function of senior editor of the publication and member of the board of curators of the exhibition provided me with a brilliant insight and experience in making the subject of this PhD study appealing to the broader public. As a member of the organization committee of the symposium ‘New Perspectives on Archaeology and Cultural Heritage in Turkey’ at the Allard Pierson Museum in 2013, I was able to immerse myself in the topic even more and had the chance to meet and work with leading scholars in the field of heritage related to the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, among them Edhem Eldem, Zeynep Çelik, Wendy M.K. Shaw and 8 Murat Belge. Within the framework of the symposium, the exhibition and the publications, I would like to thank all people with whom it was a great pleasure to work with: Wim Hupperetz, Vladimir Stissi, Jorrit Kelder, Gert Jan van Wijngaarden, René van Beek, Floris van den Eijnde, Őmer Faruk Şerifoğlu, Paulien Retèl, Marian Schilder, Steph Scholten, Gökçe Ağaoğlu, Rüstem Aslan, Mithat Atabay, Cem Utkan, M. Hakan Cengiz, Enis Tataroğlu (Director of the Turkish Tourist Office in the Netherlands), Uğur Doğan (Turkish Ambassador in the Netherlands), and the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey, Özgür Özaslan. I would thank the staff of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens for granting me permission to explore the Schliemann Archive.