The Crescent and the Eagle

Ottoman Rule, Islam and the Albanians, 1874-1913

George W. Gawrych

• Éditeur: I.B. Tauris
• Année: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781786724441
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Middle Eastern History

"The Crescent and the Eagle" examines the awakening of Albanian national identity from the end of the 19th century to the outbreak of the First World War - a period of intense nationalism in the Balkans - from an Ottoman perspective. Drawing on Ottoman and European archival material, the book undermines the customary negative stereotypes of Ottoman rule, offering a more nuanced interpretation. Gawrych provides a critical but objective examination of the evolution of government policies toward Albanians, from attempts to mould them into an "iron barrier" to the establishment of a uniform system of administration. He argues that this was a result of a complicated set of conflicting allegiances and identities, rather than a simply adversarial struggle between government imposition of policy and Albanian resistance. The author also analyses the general problems of endemic violence and misadministration at the provincial level, and examines Albanian efforts to gain nationality rights and maintain local privileges and tribal autonomy.
Weaving his analysis of these events into a chronological framework, he concludes that Albanian independence resulted from a confluence of foreign and domestic developments rather than from the design and will of the Albanians themselves. This stimulating study offers many fresh insights into the dynamics of power within the Ottoman Empire and contributes a new perspective to the study of the development of Albanian nationalism.

1

RELIGION, STATE, AND MOTHERLAND

For a long time, I have dreamed of writing a literary piece in order to depict some customs and morals of the Arnavud kavmi [Albanian people], not because I am one of their members, but because I have witnessed [their] patriotic qualities which perhaps are suitable for [presentation on the] stage, such as love of the vatan [motherland], sacrifice, fidelity to oaths, and low regard for [one’s own] life.

—Şemseddin Sami, 1874¹

The region of Albania is extremely rugged and its people are wild [vahşi] and brave [cesur] . . . Tosks perform every kind of service whereas Gegs are animal herders.

—Ahmed Cevdet, ca 1889²

Albania in the last quarter of the nineteenth century mirrored, in its own unique ways, the cultural and religious diversity of the Ottoman Empire. A large majority of the population was ethnically Albanian. Albanians spoke two dialects of a common language and possessed, to varying degrees, an Albanian identity as members of a distinct “people” or kavim, a distinctness based on “ethnicity” or kavmiyet. But they also divided into two distinct regions, each with its own separate dialect, social structure, local demography, and level of integration into the Ottoman imperial system. Moreover, each region faced different internal and external pressures, with Gegalık (Northern Albania) being more tribal and Toskalık (Southern Albania) more urban and without tribes. Further complicating matters, Albanians also belonged to three different faith communities, officially designated by the Ottoman government as millets: 70 percent Muslim, 10 percent Latin Catholic, and 20 percent Rum Orthodox. Catholics concentrated in the North, Orthodox in the South, with Muslims distributed throughout Albania. In addition, most Albanians lived in ethnically and religiously diverse areas, alongside Turks, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Vlachs, and other ethnic peoples. Negotiating through this cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious labyrinth presented a major challenge to both Ottoman officials tasked with governing Albanian regions of the empire and to those Albanian leaders attempting to develop common action for agreed upon goals.

In the 1870s, the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic polity. Official ideology and popular idiom still spoke of din ve devlet or “the unity of the Islamic religion and the Ottoman state.” Muslims thus belonged to the privileged faith and dominated the high positions in the bureaucracy and maintained a monopoly of command positions in the army. Muslim Albanians, for their part, benefited from this preferential religious treatment and were thus well integrated into the imperial system. Yet as members of an ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse empire, Albanians, regardless of personal loyalties and identities, had to learn to live together and cooperate, or at least coexist with other ethnic and religious communities as citizens of the Ottoman state. Albania, indeed, possessed a complex society on the eve of the Albanian political awakening.

An Albanian Play

In 1874, Fraşerli Şemseddin Sami Bey (1850-1904), also known as Shemseddin Sami Bey Frashëri, wrote the play Besa yahud Ahde Vefa (Pledge of Honor or Loyalty to an Oath) about his fellow Albanians. The ideas expressed in this play, the manner of its presentation on stage, and the history of its performance reveal a great deal about the vitality of communal tolerance and cooperation in the late Ottoman Empire. In his introduction published in 1875, Şemseddin Sami clearly stated his reasons for writing the play. His written discourse opened a new chapter in the Ottoman theater for Albanians. As Şemseddin Sami said:

For a long time, I have dreamed of writing a literary piece in order to depict some customs and morals of the Arnavud kavmi [Albanian people], not because I am one of their members, but because I have witnessed [their] patriotic qualities which perhaps are suitable for [presentation] on stage, such as love of the vatan [motherland], sacrifice, fidelity to oaths, and low esteem for [one’s own] life. ³

Şemseddin Sami, an emerging Albanian intellectual, made clear that he sought through his play to give the public an appreciation of “the morals and customs of the Albanian people who constitute an integral part of the great Islamic nation and who are members of the Ottoman polity.”⁴

Şemseddin Sami expressed a second reason for writing Besa yahud Ahde Vefa. According to him, “foreign values and morals” had dominated the Ottoman theater to the detriment of the empire’s own “national values and morals” [ahlak-ı milliye].⁵ Besa yahud Ahde Vefa would correct this literary deficiency by relying upon native traditions and values for its subject matter. In addition to his two stated aims, the Albanian author had a hidden agenda as well. Through his play, he also wanted to inspire ethnic pride among fellow Albanians, which, no doubt, would encourage the development of Albanian national consciousness in an era of increasing nationalist sentiments in the Balkans.

Besa is an Albanian word meaning “pledge of honor.” The play’s plot went as follows: Zübeyir, a noble and proud Albanian highlander, and his wife Vahide had a daughter named Meruşe who fell in love with Recep, her first cousin. Upon discovering the mutual love of his “two children,” Zübeyir agreed to a marriage. A tragic turn of events, however, befell the couple on their wedding day when Selfo, an Albanian who lived in the nearby town of Borşi and who also loved Meruşe, kidnapped the girl. In the process, Selfo killed Zübeyir, when her father physically tried to stop him in his unconscionable deed. Before his death, however, Zübeyir managed to enjoin Vahide, his wife, to save Meruşe and to avenge his murder, reminding her that family honor was at stake.

While en route to carry out her redemptive mission, Vahide saved the life of an unknown man. This individual—Fettah Ağa—turned out to be Selfo’s father, who was returning home after having served in the Ottoman army for twenty years. Without mentioning any names, Vahide unloaded her sorrow to Fettah, who instantly made a besa to help Meruşe avenge Zübeyir’s murder, unaware that this meant killing his own son. Then, upon discovering the full implication of his promise, even though parental feeling argued against his fulfilling the pledge, Fettah reached the conclusion that he had no alternative but to sacrifice his son Selfo. After killing the young lad in his sleep, the bereaved father explained to Vahide, Meruşe, and Recep what he had done.

Then the tragedy entered another dimension. Fettah Ağa, the killer of his own son, took his own life in revenge for Selfo’s death. Before breathing his last words, Fettah managed to enjoin his mother, who conveniently arrived on the bloody stage, to accept Vahide as her own sister and Recep and Meruşe as her children. The play ended with this moving reconciliation of the two families because justice had been fully carried out according to Albanian tradition. ⁶

Şemseddin Sami presented besa as an institution highly representative of ideal Albanian values and morals, but without any political connotation. In his introduction to the play, the author clearly stated that Fettah Ağa was his hero. This Albanian, faithful to his word, took the proper action in killing his son. In this case, besa was more sacred than love in general and parental love in particular.⁷ Even the hero’s name underscored the author’s conviction that Fettah acted properly. Fettah is one of the ninety-nine names of God in Islam, and it denotes God as the Divine Being who opens doors and eliminates obstacles to help the believer overcome problems morally and ethically. Besa was a solemn agreement and vow tied closely to a strong sense of “honor” (namus), as made clear by Zübeyir in one scene:

My daughter, the time span of this world consists of two periods. Today we are alive in this world, but tomorrow we no longer will exist. It is honor that is permanent and that will be of use to us in both this world and the next, only honor . . . Property, wealth, goodness, everything are nothing when compared to honor. All these perish eventually. Only honor remains. It is a mistake—God forbid—calling someone a human being if he is without honor, because it is honor that makes human beings human. ⁸

This statement by Zübeyir in the early part of the play helped explain the reason for Fettah’s later decision to fulfill his pledge and kill Selfo despite his deep parental love. For him, it was a question of honor, being faithful to his word.

Şemseddin Sami made it clear throughout that his play was about Albanians. Regional costumes worn by the actors and actresses reinforced the geographical location. The word “Albanian,” however, appeared only three times in the story. In the first instance, when Selfo broke down and cried because he felt Meruşe was beyond his reach, Tepedelenli Demir Bey, a town notable, appealed to Selfo’s pride as a means of eliciting composure from him and pointedly reminded him, “You are an Albanian.”⁹ Two other instances concerned Valide’s imperative to act: (1) to seek blood compensation for her husband’s death and (2) to save her daughter from Selfo’s dishonorable designs. To shirk these two responsibilities would have left an indelible stain on the family’s name and permanent wound on her soul. Valide twice made clear in the play that an Albanian woman had to take revenge and free her daughter.¹⁰ Albanian tradition expected no less.

In his play, Şemsettin Sami also discussed, in highly emotive language, vatan or motherland as a patriotic concept. Traditionally, vatan meant the place of one’s birth, a localized place like a town or village. By the second half of the nineteenth century, however, the word acquired the meaning of motherland or partie, as the meaning is expressed in French. In this sense, there was an Ottoman vatan as well as an Albanian vatan, which carried with it sentiments of patriotic loyalty. Şemsettin Sami regarded both types as mutually supportive as evidenced by Fettah Ağa’s thoughts and emotions on the subject.

Twenty years! What a long time! It is [almost] a lifetime! Oh! Motherland, sacred motherland . . . How may times have I seen the motherland in my dreams . . . Now I am finally in my motherland. From this moment on, I will not leave my motherland. How strange a situation is it that a human being leaves the place where he was born and raised and goes to another area, a very distant one. But the heart cannot leave—it hasn’t the possibility. A person’s heart is always tied to his motherland. I spent these twenty years outside of my motherland, and wherever I found myself, that place was my motherland. Yes, Trablus is our motherland; the Danube is also our motherland. If they are not our motherland, we wouldn’t have spilled our blood defending those places! Nevertheless, man has another type of love to the place where he was born and raised and to those places where he spent his childhood and adolescence! . . . There is another charm on the horizon of the motherland. Whenever an individual looks at a minute particle of the motherland’s soil, an event of his childhood comes to mind! The memory of those beautiful days of his youth creates a cheerful feeling in his heart. ¹¹

This soliloquy claimed two distinct loyalties for the Albanian people—a patriotic devotion to the Ottoman Empire and an ethnic attachment to the land of Albania, the latter more implied than stated explicitly. Both loyalties, however, complemented each other, and Besa yahud Ahde Vefa gave no indication of a tension between the two. One could be both Ottoman and Albanian, two mutually supportive identities, yet each distinctly different from the other. Despite the linkage, the audience needed to appreciate the sacrifices borne by Albanians in defense of the empire.

Şemseddin Sami also made a political statement in the dramatic scene in which Demir Ağa tried to convince Zübeyir to give his daughter to Selfo in marriage. The notable rudely let the shepherd know that for Selfo such a marriage constituted a step down in social ranking. When Zübeyir refused to give into his demand, Demir Ağa underscored that a man of his low status had to follow the wishes of his superiors. Zübeyir, refusing to be humbled, reminded Demir that in the face of the “padişah’s law” there remained no difference between himself and the town notable.¹² When the town notable threatened the shepherd with imprisonment for his impudence, Zübeyir appealed to the new order present in the empire.

At one time you could do such things, but not today . . . This is the era of the Glorious Tanzimat. Today our padişah is one who takes great pains to protect our life [can], honor [ırz] and property [mal]. Those times that you [once] knew have passed, they have passed. ¹³

This plea for honoring the new order of the Tanzimat (1839-76) certainly gave Besa yahud Ahde Vefa a clear political dimension. Tanzimat reformers had committed the government to, among other principles, the equality of all subjects, regardless of origin, ethnicity, or religion.

No doubt, Besa yahud Ahde Vefa left some Ottomans with the impression of a fanatical and backward people living in Albania as Selfo’s and Fettah’s manner of death might have appeared extreme to them. As one scholar recently noted, “Through the overall suggestion of the play S. Frashëri confirms the myth of the besa as an unshakable all-national norm which one should obey irrespective of circumstances.”¹⁴ In response to an Ottoman critic who challenged both deaths, Şemseddin Sami justified Fettah’s killing of Selfo by citing the work of Alexandre Dumas (the younger) entitled Le Regent Mustel, in which a father had to kill his own son.¹⁵ In fact, his example was not outside the realm of possibility. Mary Edith Durham, who traveled ex...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Maps
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1. Religion, State, and Motherland
• 2. A Rude Awakening
• 3. Hamidism and Albanianism
• 4. Hamidian Rule in Albania
• 5. The Revolution
• 6. Road to Independence
• 7. Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Glossary