Plague ‘Bulmuş provides a truly remarkable synthesis of medical history and the history of European–Ottoman relations. Scientific complexities are clearly explained in the contexts of the rise of modern science and modern European imperialism. Bulmuş , utilises a wide range of sources, including previously under-used Muslim sources, to Quarantines strengthen her analysis.’ John Voll, Professor of Islamic History and Associate Director, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding, Georgetown University A sweeping examination of Ottoman plague treatise writers and from the Black Death until 1923 Geopolitics Were you aware that many of the greatest and most colourful Ottoman statesmen and literary figures from the 15th to the early 20th century considered plague as a grave threat to their empire? Did you know that many Ottomans applauded the establishment of a quarantine against the disease in 1838 as a tool to resist British and French political and commercial penetration? Or that later Ottoman sanitation efforts in the to prevent urban outbreaks would help engender the Arab revolt against the empire in 1916? This book explores these facts in an engaging study of Ottoman plague treatise writers throughout their almost 600-year struggle with this epidemic disease. And it Ottoman Empire deals with the political, economic and social consequences of the methods they used to combat it. Key Features • Studies the premodern ways in which plague was viewed by Ottoman Plague, Islamic thinkers • Traces the eventual Ottoman acceptance of quarantines and other modern Quarantines medical reforms • Analyses international debates over plagues and quarantines as a struggle about and colonialism and national sovereignty Birsen Bulmuş Geopolitics Birsen Bulmuş is an Assistant Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Appalachian State University. in the ISBN 978-0-7486-4659-3 Ottoman Empire www.euppublishing.com Jacket image: The ‘Fortress of Silence’ near Bombay where the Persians left their dead © Servet-i Fünun Birsen (İstanbul), volume: 19, number: 482, 25 May 1316 (1898). Jacket design: Barrie Tullett Bulmuş PLAGUE, QUARANTINES AND GEOPOLITICS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd i 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd iiii 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 PLAGUE, QUARANTINES AND GEOPOLITICS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE . BIRSEN BULMUS¸ BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd iiiiii 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 For my mother, Beyaz Bulmuş and my late father, Ahmet Bulmuş © Birsen Bulmuş, 2012 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in JaghbUni Regular by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4659 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 4660 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 5547 2 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 5546 5 (Amazon ebook) The right of Birsen Bulmuş to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd iivv 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 Contents Acknowledgements vi Map showing the Ottoman Empire, 1914 viii 1. PRELIMINARY REMARKS 1 2. CONCEPTUALISING PLAGUE IN OTTOMAN ISLAMIC THOUGHT 15 3. PLAGUE AND OTTOMAN MEDICAL THOUGHT 39 4. MAGIC AND PLAGUE IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 68 5. HAMDAN BIN EL-MERHUM OSMAN AND THE OTTOMAN QUARANTINE REFORM 97 6. PLAGUE AND QUARANTINES IN THE COLONIAL ERA 130 7. PLAGUE, SANITARY ADMINISTRATION AND THE END OF EMPIRE 152 8. TOWARDS A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF PLAGUE AND QUARANTINES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE 177 Bibliography 181 Index 191 BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd v 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 Acknowledgements This book is the product of many years of labour, and evolved out of my PhD thesis, ‘Plague in the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1838’, which I completed at the Department of History, Georgetown University in May 2008. I would have not completed my work without the encouragement of my mentor, Dr Kathy Olesko, and that of the other members of my PhD dissertation committee, Dr John O. Voll and Dr Carol Benedict. I have also been guided by a wide range of scholars in Ottoman, Middle Eastern and European history, Turkish studies and historical sociology. These include: Dr Sandra Horvath-Peterson, Georgetown University; Dr Özkul Çobanoğlu, Hacettepe University; Dr Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles, Binghamton University; Dr Halil İnalcık, world-renowned scholar and my great MA mentor at Bilkent University; and Dr Ali Doğramacı, Rector of Bilkent University. I also feel an enormous debt of gratitude to Dr Farhan Ahmad Nizami, director at Centre for Islamic Studies and Dr Eugene L. Rogan, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, for their assistance following my visit to Oxford in the summer of 1996. I have also been the benefi ciary of support from a number of research insti- tutions, whose help was absolutely critical to the successful completion of my book. These include the Ankara University Faculty of Divinity Library, Atatürk Library, Devlet Library, Hacı Selim Ağa Rare Manuscript Library, Millet Rare Manuscript Library, National Library, Religious Affairs Library, Süleymaniye Library, T. C. Prime Ministry State Archives, Turkish Religious Foundation Centre for Islamic Studies (İSAM) and Turkish Historical Society Library, all in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey. I also benefi ted greatly from collections at the Georgetown University Library, Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries and New York Public vi BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd vvii 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 Acknowledgements vii Library. I would like to thank several librarians and related offi cials, particularly Servet Arıtürk, İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality; Salih Gülen, Editor and Chief of Hazine Yayınları; Ebubekir Kaya, İstanbul University Central Library; Erdem Selçuk, Beyazıt State Library; Perihan Sezen, İstanbul University Medical School Hulusi Behçet Library; and Mustafa Birol Ülker, Director of the Turkish Religious Foundation Centre for Islamic Studies. I am also very grateful to Crystal Smith and Karen Pitts from the National Library of Medicine, Washington, DC. I have also benefi ted recently from continuous feedback from my friends, especially my fellow colleagues in the Department of History at Appalachian State University, particularly Dr Lucinda McCray, who shares a common inter- est in the history of medicine, Dr James Goff, Dr Tim Silver and Dr Michael Wade. I also have gained much encouragement in recent months from Mehmet Ali Akat of Paterson, New Jersey and Orçun Temizkan of Charlotte, North Carolina. Mohamed Ben Yahia of Fairfax, Virginia has also been a great friend and has provided generous time in reading relevant Arabic texts related to my project. In addition, I would especially like to thank Dr York Norman of Buffalo State College for his generous support during all stages of this project, including his patient editing of my work and his translations of relevant materials from Bosnian and German to English. I am also very grateful to Dr Nancy Gallagher of the University of California- Santa Barbara and Dr Colin Imber of the University of Manchester for their reviews of my work. Nicola Ramsey, Senior Commissioning Editor, and her colleagues at Edinburgh University Press were ultimately also key to the successful completion of the book. BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd vviiii 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 Map showing the Ottoman Empire, 1914 (United States Military Academy) BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd vviiiiii 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd iixx 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd x 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 Chapter 1 Preliminary Remarks One day in the summer of 2004 I wandered down to the shores of Istanbul’s Golden Horn and saw a peculiar sight: a grand, yellow, nineteenth-century build- ing sitting directly on top of one of the district’s most famous mosques. Right next to it was an equally elegant red-brown offi ce, directly on the shores of the bay. International travellers to the city who come by boat have to go to these buildings even today in order to undergo medical inspection to see if they have contracted any epidemic disease. Certainly, most travellers to Istanbul before the mid-twentieth century would almost certainly have been familiar with the compound, as ships were the mode of overseas travel. After learning from the guards that the buildings were constructed in the mid- nineteenth century, I, as a student of the history of medicine in the Middle East, wondered why the Ottomans had waited so long. Travellers began to complain of plague spreading from the district’s docks to the surrounding city shortly after Sultan Mehmed II’s conquest of the city in 1453, and yet it took about 400 years for a quarantine to be built. I wondered, then, to what extent geopolitical and cultural infl uences explained this development. I remembered that the Ottomans essentially remained a premodern state until Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in 1798 forced the Sultanate to embark on modernising reform in order to save the empire from disintegration. Istanbul and the realm’s other major port cities had relatively few Muslim merchants and a comparatively weak navy, and relied on non-Muslims and foreigners to develop their overseas trade. The result was a lack of both a politically conscious Muslim middle class and a lively press culture that expressed interest in modernising reform and economic development. I had the impression from the Ottoman primary sources that I looked at 1 BBULMUSULMUS PPRINT.inddRINT.indd 1 006/03/20126/03/2012 116:346:34 2 Plague, Quarantines and Geopolitics in the Ottoman Empire over the next few months that the Istanbul quarantine facility was one of many innovations partially inspired by the Europeans.