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'slam Ass eThe Advent of t h e4 11 1 1 1 1 '

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MARTIN KRAMER

ISLAMASSEMBLED

The Advent of the Muslim Congresses

MARTIN KRAMER

New York Columbia University Press 1 9 8 6

O N E

THE COSMOPOLITAN MILIEUPan-Islamic Ideals

HE EXPANSION of the West into Mus lim lands redefined forTMuslim peoples the meaning of universal community. Before moderntimes, those conflicts which separated Muslims, whether on sectarianor political grounds, were waged by all sides with the confidence andintolerance of total conviction. The most enduring of these struggles, acontest which loomed nearly as large in Muslim historical consciousnessas that between Muslim and Christian, divided Sunni and Shici. Fromthe sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, Ottoman and Crimean armieswaged periodic wars against the Safavids and their successors which,for sheer ferocity, rivaled any contemporary Ottoman engagement withthe Christian foe in Europe. Dur ing these confrontations, Ottomanulama went so far as to declare that Saf avid domains were not Muslim,and were legally indistinguishable from the territories of hostile Chris-tendom. O n their part, Safavid rulers actively sought alliances withChristian powers against their common Ottoman adversary. The sup-posed waste represented by this confl ict held a great attraction fornineteenth-century Muslim moralists, familiar with a far more dynamicbrand of Western military, commercial, and cultural activity. In 1881,the Young Ottoman journalist and novelist Namik Kemal ( 1 8 4 0-1 8 8 8 )published a historical novel entitled Cezmi, set in the morass of late-sixteenth-century conflict between Saf avid Iran and the Ottoman-Cri-mean league. The author has the brother of the Crimean Khan MehmedGiray II fall in love with the daughter of Shah Tahmasp. Together theydiscuss the unity of Islam, and the joining of the three great neighboringpolities against their shared Christian foe. The story reaches a climaxof jealousy and murder, in the romantic style which so influenced Ke-mal's literary productions.1 The same retrospective fascination was evoked by the attempt toenforce an exchange between Sunni and Shici in 1743, at the insistenceof Nadir Shah. In the midst of his military campaign against the Ot-tomans in Iraq, the Shah summoned the Sunni scholar cAbdallah ibnHusayn al-Suwaydi of Baghdad, and lamented that accusations of unbe-

2 T H E COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU

lief (kulr) were exchanged among the Muslims of his kingdom. Theulama were to offer proofs for their mutual vilifications in an openforum. cAbdallah relates that he presided at Najaf over a two-day gath-ering of Shici and Sunni ulama from throughout Nadir Shah's realm.2About seventy participants were from Iran; among the Sunnis, appar-ently all Hanafis, were eight Afghans and seven Uzbeks. The Iranianulama finally signed a document in which they agreed to abandon thecursing of the first three caliphs in their Friday sermon (Ichutba), andthe Afghan and Uzbek ulama affirmed in writing that they recognizedthe Shicis as Muslims constituting one of the sects (fira(?) of Islam. Subtlecoercion was involved in the extraction of this brief reconciliation. WhencAbdallah went to a mosque in Kuf a on Friday to hear the blessing ofthe caliphs in the Shici sermon, he was certain that the sermonizer meantan insult to the caliph cUmar by vowelling a letter of his name incor-rectly.3 B u t t hi s did not dampen the nineteenth-century Muslim impulse

to romanticize the conciliatory efforts of Nadir Shah.The modem Muslim interest in this and other attempts to moderate

sectarian conflict was prompted by the continued animosity betweenSunni and Shici. The orientalist E. G. Browne gave anecdotal expressionto the durability of this hostility:

The antipathy between Tuac and Persian is profound, and, in my opinion,indestmctable, and is both national and religious. A dervish at Khuy, inNorth-West Persia, boasted to me that he and some of his fellow-dervisheshad accompanied the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish War, andaided the Russian arms by their prayers. I need not say that I do notascribe the victory of the Russians entirely to this cause; and I daresaythat the whole story was a figment of the dervish's fertile imagination,and that he was never near the seat of war at all; but that is neither herenor there: I merely refer to the incident as indicating how little sympathyexists between the Persians and the Turks on religious grounds.4It was only the acceleration of Russian expansion at both Ottoman

and Iranian expense that diminished this rooted hostility. During Iran'sconstitutional revolution, a period marked by Russian encroachmentson Iranian territory, the Shici religious authorities resident in Iraq forgedan alliance with Ottoman authorities against Muhammad 'Ali Shah andRussian expansion. A number of the most esteemed Iranian Shici ulamamet in Baghdad where they issued a proclamation calling for closecooperation between the Ottoman and Iranian states. "The completeunion of Muslims, the preservation of the seed of Islam, the preservationof Islamic nations, Ottoman and Persian, against the enterprises of for-eign nations and attacks of outside powers—on all these points, we arein accord. W e announce to the entire Persian nation that it is anobligation to have confidence in the Ottoman nation, and to offer it

THE COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU 3

aid, so that it may conserve its independence, protect its territory, andpreserve its frontiers from invasion by foreigners."5 E v e n E . G . B r o w n eno longer thought the old antipathy insurmountable, and chastised thosewho did: "Even those who think they know about the East cannot orwill not believe that an entente between Sunnis-Shicas is possible, whereasit is now practically a fait accompli, since the formal joint manifesto issuedby the ulama of both parties at Baghdad. I know this not only fromthe Persian papers but from private letters from well-informed quartersin Kerbala too."6 This reconciliation, short-lived though it proved to be, representedthe most striking example of the unifying potential of reaction to West-ern expansion. Divisions between Muslims diminished, however briefly,before the greater challenge of foreign encroachment, as the great Mus-lim empires lost influence, then territory, to an ascendant West. By thelate nineteenth century, reformers could posit the existence of an almostuniversal Muslim predicament, one of subjugation to the West, andthey held that discord within the community of believers was partlyto blame for their own tribulations. The affective affi nity of Muslimson the plane of theory was not sufficient. What was required now waseffective solidarity.

The Muslim congress responded to the disorientation caused by thenineteenth-century expansion o f the West into Mus lim lands. Thesearch for a remedy in the technique o f assembly tapped the self-indicting conviction that Muslims had invited Western conquest andinfluence by their own discord, and had squandered their resources ininternecine warfare while Christendom waxed.7 B u t t h e c o n g r e s s w a s

only one of several techniques that competed for the attention of thoseseeking to defend Muslims against the consequences of their own di-visions. And the reception of this technique was affected by anotherresponse to the impact of the West: intensified attachment to the in-stitution of the Ottoman caliphate and the person o f the Ottomansultan-caliph.

From a narrowly academic point of view, the Ottoman claim to theuniversal caliphate was not impeccable, and was vulnerable on the pointof Qurashi descent. But the failure of the Ottomans to meet this re-quirement led even rigorous jurists not to a rejection of the Ottomanclaim, but to suspension of the requirement, particularly within theOttoman Empire. There, Muslim jurists and theologians, not to excludethe Arabic-speakers among them, withheld criticism and maintained thelegitimacy of the Ottoman claims Dissenting voices were nearly in-audible, and were confined to a few remote provinces. The theory ofthe caliphate as circulated in the Ottoman Empire contained hardly anallusion to Qurashi descent and election, and substituted the enforce-

4 THE COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU

ment of the holy law and the militant defense of Islam as valid criteriafor measurement of any claim to the Muslim caliphate The Ottomansfulfi lled both of these obligations to the satisfaction of many juristsamong their subjects, for whom the Ottoman state and dynasty con-stituted the only fi rm bulwark against total subjugation to the rule offoreigners.

A different question was whether that caliphate was universal,whether the Ottoman caliph was the suzerain of Muslims over whomhe was not sovereign. The case for the universal validity of the Ottomancaliphate was not wholly contrived, and had circulated some threehundred years before its reassertion in the nineteenth century. The greatMuslim prestige enjoyed by the Ottoman state as early as the sixteenthcentury was a consequence of the Ottoman role as diffusor of firearmsand technologies current in Europe to Muslim peoples threatened byPortuguese, Russian, or Iranian expansion." This is in clearest evidencein the example of sixteenth-century Ottoman military aid to the Mus-lims of Atjeh, then under Portuguese pressure. Accounts in Indonesian,Turkish, and Portuguese sources establish that the Ottomans were pur-suing broad recognition of their caliphate even at this early date. Fromthese sources, it appears that Atjehnese Muslims were prepared to acceptnominal Ottoman suzerainty and accord the title of universal caliph(Ichalifat allah fiD1-ard) to the Ottoman sultan, in exchange for materialaid."

The Ottoman admiral Seydi A l i Reis also advanced the universalclaims of his sovereign at the Mughal court of Humayun, then alsounder Portuguese naval pressure, and these claims were received fa-vorably. Humayun's successor Akbar also employed the title of universalcaliph in addressing the Ottoman sultan." A third sixteenth-centuryexample survives in Ottoman correspondence with Malik Idris of Bornu,in which a letter to Idris from the Ottoman sultan again advanced auniversal claim, along with an implic it promise of firearms." Sixteenth-century recognition of this early Ottoman pretension was the conse-quence of a desire among Muslims elsewhere to share or benefit fromsuperior Ottoman military technology and power. The claim to generalsuzerainty of the Ottoman caliphs over Muslims beyond the OttomanEmpire dates from that earlier century of crisis.

The reassertion of the Ottoman claim in the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth century, and its recognition by Muslims beyond the empire,thus rested upon assumptions that were not wholly of modern man-ufacture." What initially appeared to Muslims as a repetition of thatsixteenth-century challenge evoked a response patterned along earlierprecedent. Once again, Muslims in Central Asia, Sumatra, and Indiaembraced the Ottoman sultan as their caliph. In the nineteenth century,

THE COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU 5

as in the sixteenth, the Ottoman state remained the strongest Muslimpower; as in the sixteenth century, Muslims threatened by an expandingWest were anxious to exchange professions of allegiance for whatevermilitary, diplomatic, or moral aid the Ottomans could spare them.

Sultan Abdillaziz (r.1861-1876) reasserted the Ottoman claim to thecaliphate as a response to the entreaties of these besieged Muslims. Theprincipal figures in this awakening were not Ottoman emissaries abroad,but Mus lim political refugees who crossed Ottoman borders bearingtheir grievances. The impact was first felt shortly after the French con-quest of Algiers, w ith the departure of a small number of AlgerianMuslims for Syria. For the next eighty years, Algerian refugees contin-ued to make their way east to Ottoman territories.15 A s e a r l y a s 1 8 4 5 ,during the Samil uprising in Daghistan, Mus lim refugees were issuingappeals within the Ottoman Empire for aid against Russia.16 I n 1 8 5 2 ,Mappilla disturbances led the English to expel from Malabar the Tannalof Mambram, Sayyid Fadl ibn cAlawi (1830-1900), who later becamean intimate advisor to Abdillhamid II, and was responsible for an attemptto assert an Ottoman claim, long in abeyance, to Dhufar .17 F r o m 1 8 5 4 ,in the wake of the Crimean War, a large wave of Crimean Mus limrefugees swept into Istanbul and Anatolian coastal towns, leaving anindelible impression on those who witnessed the infl ux .18 C i r c a s s i a nMuslims also began to arrive in large numbers after the Crimean Warand the consequent Russian policy of consolidation in the Caucasus.The refugees, who arrived in a series of waves over the next half acentury, were resettled in the Balkans and Syr ia.19 T h e s u p p r e s s i o n o fthe Great Mutiny and the Mughal dynasty in India in 1857 also broughtmany refugees to Ottoman territories. One, Rahmat Allah Kairanawi(1818-1890), endorsed the jihad against English rule and escaped toMecca with a price on his head following the collapse of the Mutiny.Under the sultan-caliph's benevolent patronage, he wrote a major andenduring anti-Christian polemic.2° L a t e r b e g a n a s t r e a m o f r e f u g ee s a n d

emissaries from Central Asia to the Ottoman capital itself, with pro-found effect. In the case of these territories, under growing Russian andChinese pressure in the 1860s, the initiatives came from the endangeredkhanates themselves.21 F r o m 1 8 7 3 , t h e s u l t a na t e o f A t je h f ou nd i ts el f

at war with Holland, and turned expectantly to the sultan-caliph. TheOttomans had all but forgotten their claim to the territory, and it wasthe notion of a Hadrami sayyid in Atjehnese service, Habib cAbd al-Rahman a l-Z a h i r ( 1 8 33 - 1 89 6 ) , to a pp ea r in I st an bu l and d ra ma ti ca ll y

remind the Ottomans of alleged obligations incurred by their suzerainstatus.22 O ne of the last impor tant waves of refugees comprised Tu-

nisians fleeing French rule, who played a major role in Istanbul's Muslimemigre community .23 T o a c c o m mo d a t e t h is i n flu x of r e fu g ee s , the Ot-

6 T H E COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU

toman government in 1860 established a special commission for Muslimimmigration. This body continued to function for over four decades, invarious forms and under various names, whenever the need arose. Re-newed interest in the Ottoman caliphate began beyond the OttomanEmpire, among these besieged Muslims who thus hoped to gain Ot-toman military, financial, and moral support. Its purpose was quitedifferent from the later policy launched from Istanbul during the reignof Abdillhamid II, a policy which instead cast the Ottomans themselvesas the recipients of Muslim material and moral assistance.

Abdillhamid II (r.1876--1.909) continued the policy of resettling ref-ugees and receiving delegations from territories under Western pressure,but he also sought to generate Muslim support for his caliphate in placeswhere such support had yet to emerge spontaneously. Unable to defendhis own frontiers effectively, and even less able or prepared to liberatefragments of other Muslim empires already under Western rule, he wasdrawn to claim a spiritual authority no longer dependent upon posses-sion of the sinews of power. His was a policy intended to concealweakness, to create an illusion of latent strength. The emissary, diffusingthe message of the Ottoman sultan-caliph at the periphery of the empireand beyond, was the conspicuous figure in this policy of active self-assertion. In this role, he supplanted the refugee as the stimulant ofsolidarity.

In the doctrine associated with Abdillhamid, authority was person-ified in the radiant Ottoman sultan-caliph, and amplified by his pos-session of Mecca and Madina; around his person and his sacred pos-sessions in Arabia revolved all Muslims. But not all were in close orbit.Most simply faced the sultan-caliph's territories in prayer; fewer citedhim in their prayers; s till fewer visited or resided in his domains; yetfewer bore arms in his cause. It was the task of Abdillhamid's emissariesto make Muslims aware of the •sultan-caliph's prerogatives, and to askmore of those Muslims who already had acknowledged Ottoman pri-macy. Those emissaries gifted in speech traveled widely in the OttomanEmpire and abroad, while those prolific in the written word were main-tained in Istanbul at the expense of the treasury. Together they formeda chain of transmission for the message of Ottoman primacy which, byspoken or printed word, was intended to reach the most distant Muslimenclaves.

Abdillhamid fi rst assembled a number of Muslims from his ownArabic-speaking provinces, and in Istanbul they published works ex-tolling the Ottoman sultan-caliph and insisting upon the absolute natureof his authority .24 T h e m o s t p r o l ifi c o f t h es e a u th o rs was Abu a l-H ud a

al-Sayyadi (1850-1909), a Rifaci shaykh from the v ic inity of Aleppowho enjoyed the full confidence of Abdillhamid and spent his creative

THE CO S MO P O L I TA N MI L I EU 7

years writing, publishing, and intriguing in Istanbul. His most significantwork, published for Arabic- and Turkish-reading audiences, argued thatabsolute and unqualified obedience to the Ottoman caliph was a dutyincumbent upon all Mus lims .25 A b u a l -H u d a a l -S a y y a d i w a s o n e o f

several figures at the court who disseminated a similar message in asimilar manner. Alongside him served Muhammad Zafi r al-Madani( 1 8 2 8-1 9 0 6 ) o f M is ur at a in Libya. A shaykh of the Madaniyya sub-

order of the predominantly North African Shadhiliyya order, he settledin Istanbul in 1875 and remained there for thir ty years, enjoying aninfluence over Abdulhamid second only to that of Sayyid Abu al-Huda.His special sphere of activity extended to Morocco, where he soughtto disseminate the message of Ottoman primacy by organizing Ottomanmilitary missions to Mawlay Hasan and an Ottoman legation at Fez.Neither effort succeeded.26 A l s o i n I s t a n b u l w a s H u s ay n a l -J i s r ( 1 84 5-

1909), an Azhar-educated shaykh from Syrian Tripoli who titled twoof his famous works in honor of Abchilhamid, although he was on theedge of that closed Arabic-speaking circle which Abdillhamid had as-sembled around himself.27 A n o t h e r fi g u r e i n A b d t i l ha m i d ' s s e r vi c e wa s

the aforementioned Shaykh Fadl ibn cAlawi, who had arrived as a ref-ugee from Malabar in 1852 and whose task as an emissary was toreconcile dissident sentiment in Arabia. His most accomplished studentin Istanbul was the Ottoman link to the Muslims of the East Africanlittoral. Ahmad ibn Sumayt ( 1 8 6 1-1 9 2 5 ) , a C o m o r i a n a l s o o f H a d r a mi

descent, had been a religious court judge in Zanzibar before fleeing toIstanbul in 1886. There he remained for two years as a guest, andreturned to Zanzibar where he became an advocate of greater attachmentto the Ottoman sultan-caliph.28 T h a t t h e s e A r a b i c -s p e a k i n g e m i s s ar i e s

of the Ottoman word were sorely divided by personal rivalries wasestablished by a contemporary observer, but their work was not withouteffect among Arabic-speakers in the provinces and beyond.29To bring the Ottoman message to Shici Muslims, the court relied inpart upon Jamal al-Din al-Afghani/Asadabadi ( 1 8 3 8-1 8 9 7 ) , a n I r a n i a n - -born cosmopolitan who traveled widely in the Muslim world, teachingadvanced ideas of religious reform, and jostling for a position of infl u-ence. Although his early teachings were void of pan-Islamic references,Afghani later pressed Abdiilhamid to enlist him, as a roving Ottomanemissary or as an Istanbul consultant.3° O n l y i n 1 8 9 2 , a f t e r A f g h a n i ' s

expulsion from Iran, did Abdillhamid decide to employ him, probablyto exploit his intensified hostility toward Nasir al-Din Shah. An ar-rangement similar to that enjoyed by Abu al-Huda al-Sayyadi wasaccepted by Afghani, who was given a residence and allowance in Istan-bul. In return, Afghani organized a small circle of Iranians in Istanbul,who launched a letter-writing campaign directed to Shici ulama and

8 T H E COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU

dignitaries in Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, and India, "about the kindnessand benevolence of the great Islamic Sultan toward all Muslims ofwhatever opinion and group they might be."" A short time later, how-ever, Afghani clashed with Sayyid Abu al-Huda, fell out of favor, anddied a virtual captive in 1897. The campaign to win the sympathies ofShici ulama fell in part to the Ottoman ambassador in Teheran. Ac-cording to a British diplomat,

He belonged to a secret confraternity of dervishes, I think the Bektashis,cultivated a fairly long beard, and was profoundly interested in the me-taphysical theology of Islam, which he used to explain and discuss withme at considerable length. He was himself, really, I think, a Sufi[which] facilitated his intercourse with the more learned members of thePersian clergy, some of whom I often met and talked with at his house.I imagine, indeed, that he was chosen for this very purpose by SultanAbdul Hamid.

The efforts of this Ottoman diplomat, continued Sir Arthur Hardinge,were not without effect: " I remember myself going with the TurkishAmbassador to hear a great Tehran Mullah preach during Moharramand being surprised at the fulsome eulogies which he heaped upon theSultan of Turkey and on the sacred character of the latter as 'Lord ofthe two Continents and Seas' ('el barrein wa el bahrein') ."32To carry his message to points further east, the sultan-caliph reliedupon other emissaries in the formal guise of diplomatic envoys andconsular officials. One of the earliest of these was kazasker Ahmed HuIasiEfendi, who in 1877 led an Ottoman mission to Kabul. There he a t-tempted to erect a Mus lim alliance against Russia by persuading theAfghan amir, Shir cAli, of his obligations toward the Ottoman sultan-caliph. The emissary even bore a letter from the Ottoman seyhillislam,who threatened to "issue a kind of excommunication" against Shir cAll'sfollowers i f they did not turn away from Russia.33 A n t i - R u s s i a n p r o -pagandists were always welcome in Istanbul, and the more eloquentrefugees from Russian rule were encouraged to publish books and tractsagainst what was regarded as the perpetual enemy of the Muslims.Abdurresid Ibrahim[ov] (1857-1944), a Siberian-born Volga Tatar whostudied and traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire, published a v i-olently anti-Russian polemic in Istanbul, and later continued this workwithin Russia and back in Istanbul under the Young Turks.34In India, the Ottomans operated a consular service, and it was to theconsuls that expressions of allegiance to the Ottoman sultan-caliph weredirected. These expressions were generated by that acute sense of lossevoked by the collapse of Mughal rule. Activ ity intensified during theRusso-Turkish war (1876-77), and centered around the Ottoman consul-

THE COSMOPOLITAN MILIEU 9

general in Bombay, who channeled funds collected by Indian Muslimsto Istanbul, and distributed Ottoman decorations in return. Back in theOttoman capital, a circle of Indian Muslims operated alongside the Araband Iranian circles. They edited and published a virulently anti-Britishnewspaper in Urdu, done on the imperial press and with heavy sub-ventions. The newspaper, Payk-i Islam, was later closed at British in-sistence, but its editor continued to carry on his campaign both inIstanbul and London.35

The techniques employed in pursuit of this policy were thoroughlytraditional, and were reminiscent of those medieval methods to whichMuslim emissaries had resorted at earlier times, for similar purposes.The parallel which suggests itself most insistently is Fatimid propaganda,the tools of which were s imilar ,36 a l t h o u g h O t t o m a n p r o p a g a nd a c e r-

tainly differed in its reliance upon some modern instruments. Amongthese were the printing press, the cover provided by permanent diplo-macy, and the mobility afforded by the steamer and railroad. The steam-er in particular figured prominently in the movements of emissaries,their printed tracts, and their correspondence. It afforded safe and speedytransport, facilitated commercial, political, and intellectual exchangeamong Muslims, and presented a challenge to those Western statesanxious to regulate that exchange.37 T h e c r e a t i o n o f a r a i l n e t w o r k h a d

a similar effect, most notably in the Hijaz. The construction of thisrailway, accomplished with Muslim financial assistance from beyondthe Ottoman Empire, rendered the pilgrimage safer and cheaper.38 T h e s eimprovements certainly made the task of the emissary easier, and helpedto create that cosmopolitan climate in which his message flourished.

But the aim of the emissary, despite his employment of modernmethods for the speedy spread of ideas, ultimately remained as con-servative as the doctrine which he was employed to propagate. For theOttoman emissary pursued not an exchange of ideas, but the propa-gation o f a set o f fixed principles about the nature of political andreligious authority in Islam. The congress idea emerged as another an-swer to the same challenge of Western expansion which the emissaryattempted to answer, and as another response to the same technologicaladvances from which the emissary benefited. But it drew upon tworadically different assumptions: the diffusion among scattered Muslimcommunities of that religious and political authority claimed by thesultan-caliph, and the supremacy of a consensus of these communitiesto any rival source of authority. The congress idea thus surfaced beyondthe wide alliance of sentiment which Ottoman emissaries were building,and often in close association with political and intellectual innovators.

NOTES

IN TR OD U C TION

1. Louis Massignon, "L' entente islamique internationale et les deux congres musulmansde 1926"; H. A. R. Gibb, Whither Islam? 354-64; Richard Har tmann, "Zum Gedanken des'Kongresses' i n den Reformbestrebungen des islamischen Or ients."

1. T H E C OSM OPOLIT AN M I LI EU

1. The novel went thr ough many editions. I t is summarized by F. A. Tansel, ed. NamikKemalin mektuplan, 2: 177-79. For more detai ls on the publ ication of the book, see OmerFamk Ak an, " N am i k Kem al ' i n Ki tap Hal i ndeki Eser ler inin I l k Nesir ler i ." For N am i kKemal's appeal for Musl im sol idar i ty i n his ow n era, see M ustafa Ozon, Namdc Kemal veIbret Gazetesi, 74-78.

2. The gather ing was called a majlis; the dialogue, muhawara.3. 'Abdallah Efendi ibn Husayn al-Suwaydi, al-Hunaj al-qat 'iyya li-ittilaq al-firaq al-islamiyya,

2 2-2 7. Cf. L. Lockhart, Nadir Shah, 233; and Hamid Algar, "Shi'ism and Iran in the

Eighteenth Centur y," 294-96.4. E. G. Browne, "Pan- Islamism," 323.5. Text of proclamation i n Revue du monde musulman ( 1914 13: 385-86. Detai ls on the

atti tudes of Iraq's Shl ' i scholars to the Ottom an state are provided by Abdul - H adi Hair i ,Ski 'ism and Constitutionalism in Iran.

6. E. G. Br owne (Cambridge) to W i l fr i d Scawen Blunt, February 16,1911, i n Bl unt-Chichester, fi le 9, "Edward G. Br owne."

7. On the or igins of this cur rent of thought, see D w i ght E. Lee, "The Or igins of Pan-Islamism," and N i kk i R. Keddie, "Pan- Islam as Proto-National ism."

8. H. A. R. Gibb, " Lutfi Pasa on the Ottom an Cal iphate," and Fritz Steppat, "Khal i fat,Dar al-Istam und die loyal i tat der Araber zum osmanischen Reich bei Hanafi tischen Juristendes 19. Jahrhunder ts."

9. See Gibb, Studies on the Civilization of Islam, 1 4 1-5 0 .10. Hal i l inalcik, "The Socio-Political Effects of the D i ffusion of Fire-arms in the M iddle

Eas t," 2 0 2-1 0 .

11. Anthony Reid, "Sixteenth Century Turkish Infl uence in Western Indonesia"; Sel jukAffan, "Relations Between the Ottom an Empire and the Musl im Kingdoms in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago" ; and documents publ i shed by Razaulhak Sah, " Ac i PadisahiSultan Alaeddin' in KanunI Sul tan Sil leyman'a M ektubu."

12. Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, 27-28.13. B. G. M ar ti n, " M ai Idris of Bor nu and the Ottom an Turks, 1576- 78," 478-79. A

more complete set o f documents was publ i shed by Cengiz Or honl u, "Osm anl i - Bor numiinasebetine aid belgeler ."

14. Thi s reassertion i s descr ibed by Bernard Lewis, " Ot tom an Empi re i n the M i d-Nineteenth Century: A Review," 2 9 0-9 4 .

15. For Alger ian immigration see Char les-Robert Ageron, Les Algfriens musulmans et laFrance ( 1 8 7 1-1 9 1 9 ) , 2 : 1 0 7 9- 9 2 ; s ee a ls o J. D es p ar me t , "La t ur co ph il ie en Algerie," citing

198 T H E CO S MO P O L I TA N MI L I EU

extensively from folklore and poems. On the emigres, see Pierre Bardin, Algeriens et Tunisiensdans lEmpire Ottoman de 1848 a 1914.

16. Per tev Boratav, " La Russie dans les Archives ottomanes. U n dossier ottom an surChamil ."

17. On the events which led to his expulsion, and the prestige which he continued toenjoy i n Malabar , see Stephen F. Dale, " T he M appi l l a Outbreaks: Ideology and SocialConfl ict i n N ineteenth- Centur y Kerala," 90- 93; and hi s Islamic Society on the South AsianFrontier, 113- 18,127- 37,164- 69. For Sayyid Fadl's activities i n Dhofar , see J. G. Lor imer,Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman, and Central Arabia, 1: 5 9 1-9 2 , 5 9 5-9 7 , 5 9 9 ; a n d J . B . K e l l y ,

Britain and the Persian Gulf, 772-75.18. M ar c Pinson, "Russian Pol icy and the Emigration o f the Cr imean Tatars to the

Ottom an Empire, 1854-1862."19. Marc Pinson, "Ottom an Colonization of the Circassians in Rumil i After the Crimean

War," and Kemal H. Karpat, "The Status of the Musl im under European Rule: The Evictionand Settlement of the Cerkes."

20. A. A. Powel l , "M aulana Rahmat Al l ah Kai ranawi and Musl im-Chr istian Contro-versy i n Indi a i n the M i d- 19th Centur y." T he polemic, enti tl ed lzhar al-haqq, has seenmany translations and editions, and in the past decade has enjoyed a renewed popular i ty,i f one is to judge fr om the appearance of several new edi tions i n Arabic and Urdu.

21. Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876, 2 7 2 - 7 4: •F o r a n a p p r o a c h

that m ight yield much on this subject, see Grace M ar ti n Smith, " The Ozbek Tekkes ofIstanbul ."

22. See the fol l ow i ng wor ks by Anthony Reid: " N i neteenth Centur y Pan- Islam i nIndonesia and Malaysia"; " Indonesian Diplomacy. A Documentary Study of AtjehneseForeign Pol icy i n the Reign o f Sul tan M ahm ud, 1870- 4" ; " H abi b Abdur - Rahm an az-Zahir (1833-1896)"; and The Contest for North Sumatra: Aljeh, the Netherlands, and Britain, 1858-'898, 8 1-8 5 , 1 19-2 9 , 1 45-4 6 .

23. ' Al i al -Shanufi , "Fasl m in al- r ihla al-hi jaziyya l i -Muhammad al-Sanusi." On M u-hammad al-Sanusi, see Ali Chenoufi, lin savant tunisien du XI X1" s i e c l e : M u h a m m a d a s -S a n u s i ,

sa vie et son oeuvre.24. This circle was fi rst described by C. Snouck Hurgronje, "Eenige Arabische strijdsch-

r i ften besproken" (or iginal ly publ ished i n 1897), and i n summarized for m i n his reviewenti tled "Les confreries religieuses, la Mecque, et le Panislamisme" (or iginal ly wr i tten i n1900).

25. O n thi s fi gure, see the bibl iographical ar ticle by W erner Ende, "Sayyid Abu al -Huda, ei n Ver tr auter Abdi l l ham id' s I I . Notwendigkei t und Probleme einer kr i tischenBiographie," and B. Abu- M anneh, "Sul tan Abdul ham i d I I and Shai kh Abul huda Al -Sayyadi."

26. O n Shaykh Zafi r , see A. Le Chatel ier , Les Confreries musulmanes du Hedjaz, 112- 24;Jean-Louis Miege, Le Maroc et lEurope, 4: 173-79; and W al i al -D in Yakan, al-Melummajhul, 100- 101,169- 77. Real Ottom an progress was made i n Morocco onl y at the endof Abdi l lhamid' s reign, and under the Young Tur k regime. See Jean Deny, "Instructeursmilitaires turcs au Maroc sous M oul ay H afi dh," and Edm und Burke, "Pan- Islam andMoroccan Resistance to French Colonial Penetration, 1900-1912."

27. On his l i fe, see the biographical preface by his son to an edi tion of his tract enti tledal-Risala al-hamidiyya; and Ahmad al-Sharabasi, Rashid Rida, sahib al-Manar, 231-46 (Husaynal-Jisr was Rashid Rida's teacher).

28. On Ahm ad ibn Sumayt, see B. G. Mar tin, "Notes on Some Members of the LearnedClasses of Zanzibar and East Afr i ca i n the N ineteenth Centur y," 5 4 1-4 5 ; R a n d a l l L e ePouwels, " Islam and Islamic Leadership i n the Coastal Communities of Eastern Afr ica,1700 to 1914," 4 9 2-5 0 1 ; a n d t h e i r s o u r ce s . O n t he g r ow t h of p r o-O t to m an s ym pa th ie s

A CHALLENGE TO AUTHORITY

among the Musl ims of East Afr ica, see K. Axenfeld, "Geistige Kam pfe i n der Eingebor-enenbevolkerung an der Ki iste Ostafr ikas," especially 654f.

29, I t was the thesis of Hurgronje, i n his "Eenige Arabische str i jdschr i ften besproken,"that this circle was too tor n by rivalr ies to consti tute an effi cient bureau of propaganda.

30. For his approach of 1879, see N i kk i R. Keddie, Sayyid !amid ad-Din ' al-Afghani": APolitical Biography, 129-42, translating and analyzing the appeal i n Iraj Afshar and AsgharMandavi , Majmu'a-yi asnad ve-madarik-i chap nashuda dar bara-yi Sayyid lama' al-Din mashhurAfghani, pho tos 2 6-2 7 . F o r h i s a p p r oa c h o f 1 8 85 , s ee K ed d ie , 2 4 6-6 8 . For A fg ha ni 's last

appeal, of 1892, see Jacob M . Landau, "Al - Afghani ' s Pan-Islamic Project."31. Keddie, Sayyid lama 1 ad-Din, 380-81.32. Ar thur H. Hardinge, A Diplomatist in the East, 273-74.33. Ther e are at least three studies o f thi s mission. See D w i ght E. Lee, " A Turkish

Mission to Afghanistan, 1877"; D. P. Singhal, " A Turkish Mission to K abu l - A ForgottenChapter o f H istor y" ; and M . C av i d Baysun, "Sirvani-zade Ahm ed H ul us i Efendi ' ni nEfganistan elci l igine aid vesikalar ," where the diary of the mission is publ ished.

34. O n this figure, see Esref Edib, "M eshur Islam seyyalm Abdi i r resid Ibrahim Efendi " ;Azade-Ayse Rorlich, "Transi tion into the Twentieth Century: Reform and Secular izationamong the Volga Tatars," 233-35,267-68; and Edward J. Lazzerini, "Abdur resid Ibragimov(Ibrahimov)."

35. O n nineteenth-century Indian Musl im attachment to the Ottom an Empire, see R.M. Shukla, Britain, India and the Turkish Empire 1853-1882, 94- 120; Y. B. M athur , Muslimsand Changing India, 1 2 0-3 4 ; a n d A . H a l i m , " R u s s o-T u r k i sh Wa r of 1 8 76-7 7 and the M us li ms

of Bengal ." The activities of the Indian Musl im circle in Istanbul are detai led by Shukla,1 5 5-8 5 .36. Compare the Ottom an campaign to that described by M . Canard, "L' Imper ial ismedes Fatimides et leur propagande," and W . Ivanow, " T he Organisation of the Fatim idPropaganda."

37. For one example o f a reaction to thi s problem, as i t arose i n Alger ia, see PierreBoyer, "L' Administration francaise et la reglementation du pelerinage a la Mecque (1830-1894)."

38. See Wil l iam Ochsenwald, The Hijaz Railroad; and Jacob M . Landau, The Hejaz Railwayand the Muslim Pilgrimage: A Case of Ottoman Political Propaganda.

2. A C H ALLEN GE T O AU T H OR IT Y

199

1. On Blunt, see Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt;Alber t Hourani, "W i l fr id Scawen Blunt and the Revival of the East"; and Kathr yn Tidr ick,Heart-beguiling Araby, 1 0 7-3 5 .

2. "Alm s to Obl i v i on," par t 4, chapter 5, i n Blunt-Fi tzwi l l iam, MS. 323-1975.3. W i l fr i d Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt, 66.4. Ham id Algar , Mfrza Malkum Khan. A Study in the History of Iranian Nationalism.5. Qanun, no. 17 (issue not dated) .6. Qanun, no. 18 (issue not dated) .7. On Sabunji ' s English per iod, see L. Zolondek, "Sabunj i in England 1876-91: His Role

in Arabic Journalism."8. Phi l ippe de Tarrazi, Ta'rikh al-sahafa al-'arabiyya, 2: 251-52. The newspaper i tsel f does

not appear to have survived.9. Tarrazi, Ta'rikh al-sahafa, 2:94, where his salary and posi tion are described.10. W i l fr i d Scawen Blunt, M y Diaries, 2: 260.11. Blunt, Secret History, 67.