Though he held a variety of public posts throughout his adult life, he was quite unlike many littérateurs of his day, who were men of means publishing in order to express their views; Ahmet Midhat always combined his sense of mission as a publisher and author with a concern for making a living from those activities. The volume and scope of his publications (more than 200) and activities (also considerable) was prodigious; he was intensely interested in both learning and disseminating knowledge on a wide array of topics. The beneficiary of formal education in both “traditional” Ottoman and “modern” subjects, he was later able to write widely on a variety of matters and to translate works from French. As an author and publisher, he worked so hard and wrote so copiously that he labeled himself a writing machine and his contemporaries agreed. Among the many topics he took an interest in was language reform, and he was a champion of simplifying the Ottoman literary language and style in a way that would make the world of letters more available to more people. This is visible in novels like Felâtun Bey and Râkım Efendi. While descriptive sections of the novel retain a more ornamental style with relatively heavier use of Persian and Arabic-based vocabulary and structures, the sections where there is dialogue or where the author is directly addressing the reader employ a language patterned on the natural speech of ordinary people. As late as 1964, thirty years into the Turkish Republic’s radical reform of modern Turkish, Niyazi Berkes could observe “His [Ahmet Midhat’s] Turkish is comprehensible to a high school boy even today.”5 But beyond the question of language, the style also helped make the work accessible. The deep vein of humor that permeates the novel prevents it from becoming a turgid morality tale. Incidents such as the mayonnaise episode at the Ziklas’s luncheon leaven the narrative, and the author’s commentary is characterized by an ironically humorous tone.
Among his many nonfiction publications, Ahmet Midhat wrote two works on recent history at the behest of Sultan Abdülhamid II: Üss-ü İnkilap (Basis of Reform) (1877–78), and Zübdet’ül-hakaik (Quintessential Truths) (1878). These works were seen as apologias for the new Sultan and contained criticisms of his former Young Ottoman associate, Namık Kemal, and his former patron, Midhat Pasha. This earned him the favor of the autocratic Sultan, and indeed Ahmet Midhat held a number of official posts and sinecures throughout his reign. These facts, together with Ahmet Midhat’s several spirited defenses of Islam, led to his being characterized as a reactionary by historians and literary critics in the new Republic of Turkey, in line with a new regime that both was aggressively secular and tended to cast the Young Ottoman opposition to Abdülhamid II as its political and intellectual precursor. As a result, for much of the post–World War I twentieth century, Ahmet Midhat’s contribution was underestimated in mainstream accounts of the history of Ottoman and Turkish ideas and letters. It is only recently that he has begun to receive some of the attention by scholars that his historical importance surely demands.
1. Türk Edebiyatı Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi, n.d.), 495.
2. David Patterson, Exile (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), 2.
3. Ehud Toledano has discussed this apologetic attitude toward Ottoman/Islamic slavery by the Ottomans themselves and by some later commentators in his impressive As if Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2007), 15–23. The slave trade in the Ottoman Empire was suppressed through a gradual and complex process in the nineteenth century. Thus, slave trade in the Persian Gulf was banned in 1847, the African slave trade was prohibited in 1857, and the Anglo-Ottoman convention for the suppression of the slave trade was signed in 1880. However, the case of Circassians fell outside these acts. Somewhere from a half a million to a million Circassians fled Russia for the Ottoman Empire at mid-century. A certain number of these belonged to an enserfed or enslaved caste, property of their higher caste brethren. The question of their status was a complex policy problem for Ottoman statesmen. Moreover, Circassian and Transcaucasian women continued to be prized additions to Ottoman harems. Finally, suppression of the slave trade was not the same thing as the abolition of slavery. Slavery, especially household slavery of women, continued to exist in the Ottoman Empire, albeit on a reduced scale, right into the twentieth century. The question of slavery and suppression of the slave trade in the Ottoman Empire has been treated in a number of works, among which we may mention, in addition to the work cited above, the following: Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Ehud Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1998) and The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840–1890 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982); and Madeline Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Design of Difference (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).
4. There are a number of publications that give accounts of Ahmet Midhat Efendi’s life. Among the most detailed, to which the present account is indebted, are the following: Mustafa Nihat Özön, Türkçede Roman Hakkında bir Deneme (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, n.d.), and İhsan Sungu, “Ahmet Midhat Efendi’nin Hayatı Üzerine,” in İdeal Gazeteci Efendi Babamız Ahmet Midhat, ed. Münir Süleyman Çapanoğlu (Istanbul: Gazeteci Cemiyeti Yayınları, 1964).
5. Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (New York: Routledge, 1998), 282.
Index
Italic page number denotes illustration.
Abdülaziz I (Sultan), xx, xxi, 157
Abdülhamid II (Sultan), xxi, xxii, 157, 158, 159
Abdülmecid I (Sultan), xix
actresses. See Pauline (actress)
advice, 97–98
Ahmet Midhat Efendi: Avrupa’da bir Cevelan (A Tour in Europe), 153; “Duvardan Bir Seda” (A Voice from Behind the Wall), 157; Esaret (Slavery), 154; Felsefe-i Zenan (The Philosophy of Women), xx; Hace-i Evvel (First Teacher), 156; Hayal ve Hakikat (Dream and Truth), xxii; Henüz On Yedi Yasinda (Only Seventeen), xxi; Letâif-i Rivâyat (Amusing Tales), 156; life and career of, xix, xx–xxii, 155–59, 155n4; marriage by, xx, xxi, 156; Paris’te bir türk (A Turk in Paris), xxi; Tarik, vii; Üss-ü Inkilap (Basis of Reform), xxi, 159; Zübdet’ül-hakaik (Quintessential Truths), 159. See also Felâtun Bey and Râkım Efendi (Ahmet Midhat) (1875 edition)
Ahmet Rasim, 158
alafranga lifestyle: alaturka meal and, 105, 109; conversation with actress and, 70; dandy character type and, 149, 150, 151; definition of, xv; demeanor and, 5; Felâtun Bey on, 68, 72–73; Felâtun Bey’s work ethic and, 4; love and, 96; Mihriban Hanım and, 6–7; Mustafa Meraki and, 2, 6; nightclothes and, 86–87; Râkım and, 42, 68; split pants incident and, 46
alafranga songs, 36–37, 94–95, 108
alaturka songs, 25, 94–95, 108
alaturka world: alafranga lifestyle and, 72–73; definition of, xv; Josephine on, 87–88; Kağıthane outing and, 77; meals in, 103–9
Ali Pasha, xx
alphabet, Turkish, 22–24
Always in Love (Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar), 149
amorous feelings: Janan and, 80, 99; for Josephine, 42, 53, 55–56, 58, 60; poetry and, 57; Ziklas girls and, 57, 58, 61–62, 122, 126. See also love
Amusing Tales (Letâif-i Rivâyat) (Ahmet Midhat), 156
Ancel, Mathieu, 25–26
Arab female slaves, 9, 13, 103. See also Fedayi (Arab slave)
aristocrats, Ziklas family as, 16, 19
As if Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (Toledano), 154n3
Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, xxii
authorial voice, xiii
Avrupáda bir Cevelan (A Tour in Europe) (Ahmet Midhat), 153
Baghad (Zevra) (newspaper), 156
Basiret Gazetesi (Discernment), 156
Basis of Reform (Üss-ü Inkilap) (Ahmet Midhat), xxi, 159
bedrooms, 27, 28–29, 106
beloved, the, union with and separation from, 65–66. See also amorous feelings; love
Berkes, Niyazi, 159
Beyoğlu, map of, xxiv
blonde (blond) translation, xiv, 44–45
boat trips, 31–33, 88–89, 141–43
books, 4–5, 10, 11, 13. See also writing career
Calendar of Events, The (Takvim-i Vekayi) (newspaper), xxi, 157
Ceride-i Askeriye (Military Register) (journal), 156, 157
character and character types, 149–50; dandy character type, 149, 150, 151; Europeanization and, vii; Fedayi and, 9; Felâtun Bey and, 3–5, 6; Râkım and, 10–17; Superfluous Man, 149–50, 153
childhood experiences, 1, 2–3, 9, 155
Circassian slaves, 13, 154n3. See also Janan (Circassian female slave)
coach travel, 20
coffeehouse man, 46–47, 52
concubines, 53–55, 63, 64, 107, 140, 152
cook (Ziklas family), 35–36, 43, 44, 51, 52
cup-bearing, 83–84
dancing, 45–46
dandy character type, 149, 150, 151
Darülfünun school, xix
debt, 15, 16, 142
Diary of a Superfluous Man (Turgenev), 149–50
dinner and dinner invitations: Josephine and, 84, 133–34; mayonnaise sauce incident and, 34–36, 37, 38, 43, 44, 52; Ziklas family residence dinners, 43–47; Ziklas family’s alaturka meal at Râkım’s house, 103–9; Ziklas girls on, 38, 57
Discernment (Basiret Gazetesi), 157
Dream and Truth (Hayal ve Hakikat) (Ahmet Midhat), xxii
drinking gatherings, 70, 72, 83–84, 129
“Duvardan Bir Seda” (A Voice from Behind the Wall) (Ahmet Midhat), 157
Ebüzziya Tevfik, 157
education: of Ahmet Midhat, 155, 158; alafranga, 7; European-inspired, xix; of Felâtun Bey, 3; of Janan, 18, 21, 30, 152; of Râkım, 9, 10–11
Efruz Bey (Ömer Seyfettin), 149
Eighth Congress of Orientalists (1889), xxi
English family. See Ziklas family
English girls. See Ziklas girls
Esaret (Slavery) (Ahmet Midhat), 154
European fashions, 6, 46, 150
Europeanization and European lifestyles, vii, 87–88, 150–51. See also alafranga lifestyle
Europeans: evil, 131; fake, 152; friendship with, 13; individualism of, 153; love for, 96. See also Josephine (piano teacher); Pauline (actress); Ziklas family
excursions. See outings
family dynamics, 7–8
fashions, European, 6, 46, 150
Fatma Aliye, xxii, 153
Fedayi (Arab slave): bedroom for, 28–29; character of, 9; helpmate for, 13–15, 18–19; Janan’s relationship with, 15, 17, 20–21, 30–31, 78, 82, 111; Josephine’s overnight visit and, 132, 137–40; Kağıthane outing and, 78–79, 84, 92; loyalty of, 10, 13; on money, 12; on outings, 77–78; on piano lessons, 24–25; Ziklas family alaturka meal and, 103, 106, 108–9
Felâtun Bey: animosity toward, 126–27; background of, 2–3, 7–8, 150; character of, 3–5, 6; father of, 1, 2–3; ferry meeting with, 141–42; income of, 74, 75; loss of his fortune, 95–96, 112, 127–28, 130–31, 142; mayonnaise sauce incident and, 34–36, 37, 38, 43, 44, 51, 52; morality of, 42–47; physical description of, 6; work ethic of, 3–4, 142, 150; Ziklas girls on, 38, 46–47, 51–52. See also Pauline (actress)
Felâtun Bey and Râkım Efendi (Ahmet Midhat) (1875 edition), xxv, 45, 71; language reforms and, 159; publication of, xxi, 157; translation of, xiii–xv
Felsefe-i Zenan (The Philosophy of Women) (Ahmet Midhat), xx
ferry meeting (Felâtun Bey and Râkım), 141–42
Finn, Robert, 152
First Teacher (Hace-i Evvel) (Ahmet Midhat), 156
flightiness, 97–98
freedom, 14, 55, 73, 153
French language, xiv, 6, 10, 11, 39–40
friendship, 13, 53, 66–67, 130–32, 140
Fuat Pasha, xix
gambling, 74, 95–96
gender roles and equality, xxii, 153–54
Gülnar, Madame (Olga de Lebedef), xxi
Hace-i Evvel (First Teacher) (Ahmet Midhat), 156
Hafez (poet), xiv, 58–59, 61, 100–102, 126
handwriting, 22, 23
happiness: the beloved and, 65; of fathers, 1; human need for, 93; Janan and, 21, 79–80, 111, 120; Josephine on, 56, 66, 88; poetry and, 59; Râkım’s first earnings and, 11, 12; sense of responsibility and, 151; from showing off, 93–94; Ziklas girls and, 58, 115, 120, 145
Hatt-i Hümayün (Ottoman Reform Edict), xx
Hayal ve Hakikat (Dream and Truth) (Ahmet Midhat), xxii
Henüz On Yedi Yasinda (Only Seventeen) (Ahmet Midhat), xxi
house layout, 27–29, 60
humor, 149, 159
Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar, 149, 158
Imperial Edict of Gülhane (1939), xix
individualism, 153
Interpreter of Truth, The (Tercüman-i Hakikat) (newspaper), xxi, 158
Islam, conversion to, 119
Istanbul, map of, xxiii
Janan (Circassian female slave): bedroom for, 28, 106; cup-bearing by, 83–84; education and refinement of, 18, 21, 30, 152; evolution of Râkım’s feelings for, 151–52; Fedayi’s relationship with, 17, 30–31, 78, 82; French language lessons for, 39–40; greeting by, 20–21; happiness and, 21, 79–80, 111, 120; illness of, 18–19; jealousy and, 31, 117, 136; jewelry and money for, 50, 63, 107; Josephine and, 30, 40, 48, 49, 132–36, 137–40; Kağıthane outing and, 78–79, 86–92; marriage of, 140, 152; offer to purchase, 53–55, 56, 61–65, 67; on outings, 49, 77–78; piano lessons for, 24–27, 29–30; pregnancy of, 145; purchase of, 13–15; Râkım’s love for, 48–49, 80–82, 85, 111, 119–20, 121, 124, 153; secrets of, 134–37; sisterly love for, 30, 48, 64–65, 80, 85, 134–35, 136; slaves as, 14, 40, 63, 65, 80; Turkish language tutoring for, 21, 40; on undressing behavior, 84–85; Ziklas family alaturka meal and, 104–8; Ziklas girls and, 104–8, 110, 111–12, 117, 141
jealousy: Felâtun Bey on, 75, 98; Janan and, 31, 117, 136; Ziklas girls and, 107–8, 109, 117
jewelry, for Janan, 50, 63, 107
Josephine (piano teacher): amorous feelings and, 42, 53, 55–56, 58, 60; French language lessons by, 39–40; on friendship, 53, 66–67, 130–32, 140; on happiness, 56, 66, 88; Janan’s relationship with, 30, 40, 48, 49, 132–36, 137–40; Kağıthane outing and, 76–77, 79, 82–92; on love, 42, 55–56, 61; on offer to purchase Janan, 53–55, 56, 67; overnight visit by, 132–36; piano lessons by, 25–27, 29–30; on Râkım’s house, 29; on undressing behavior, 84–85; on visits by Râkım, 38–39, 40–42; Jan Ziklas’ illness and, 129–30
Kağıthane outing (Felâtun Bey), 94–95, 97, 98
Kağıthane outing (Râkım), 82–92; alaturka world and, 77; boat ride to, 88–89; overnight stay at Râkım’s house, 82–86; planning for, 76–77, 78–79; purpose of, 93; sheep dairy visit, 89–90
Kırk Anbar Press, 157
language reforms and, 158–59
legal reforms, xix
Letâif-i Rivâyat (Amusing Tales) (Ahmet Midhat), 156
Lewis, Franklin, xiv
life’s lessons, 98–99
love: alafranga lifestyle and, 96; aroused by wine, 70, 72; vs. individualism, 153; for Janan, 48–49, 80–82, 85, 111, 119–20, 121, 124, 153; Josephine and, 42, 55–56, 61; passion and, 65–66. See also sisterly love
Love of Carriages, The (Recaizade), 149
lovesickness, 115, 118, 121–22, 127
maps, xxiii, xxiv
marriage: of Ahmet Midhat, xx, xxi, 156; companionate, 152; of Felâtun Bey’s parents, 1–2; with Janan, 140, 152; Mihriban Hanım and, 7, 97; of Ziklas girls, 145
marriage proposal, for Jan Ziklas and Râkım, 115–17, 118–20, 122–23
Matbaa-i Amire (imperial press), 158
mayonnaise sauce incident, 34–36, 37, 38, 43, 44, 52
meals, alaturka style, 103–9. See also dinner and dinner invitations
Mehmed V (Sultan), xxii
Mehmet (servant), 5–6
Mehmet Cevdet, 157
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nbsp; Mehmet Emin Ali Pasha, xix
Midhat Pasha, xix, xx, 155, 156, 159
Mihriban Hanım (sister of Felâtun Bey): alafranga lifestyle of, 6–7; childhood experiences of, 1, 2, 3; marriage of, 97; as orphan, 50
Military Register (Ceride-i Askeriye) (journal), 156, 157
mistresses. See Pauline (actress)
modernity and modernization, 151–52, 153
modern man, 151, 152
moralizing tales, 149, 150
morals and morality: piano lessons and, 26; Râkım’s reputation and, 42, 51, 82, 120, 151; two kinds of, 42–47; Ziklas girls and, 58
mourning, 67–68
Mustafa Meraki Efendi (father of Felâtun Bey): death of, 50; family of, 1–3, 7–8; income of, 3–4, 50; marriage of, 2–3; mourning for, 67–68; name of, 3; servant of, 5–6; traditional role of, 153
mysticism, poems of Hafez and, 100
Namık Kemal, xx, xxi, 159
nanny. See Fedayi (Arab slave)
newspapers, xxi, 157, 158
nightclothes, 86–87
Nikogos (composer), 37
odalisques, 107
Old Osman (rower), 86, 88, 89–90
Ömer Seyfettin, 149
“O morning breeze, do not blow, my darling is asleep” (song), 37, 44–45
Only Seventeen (Henüz On Yedi Yasinda) (Ahmet Midhat), xxi
Osman Hamdi Bey, xx
Ottoman Constitution, xxi, xxii
Ottoman Reform Edict (Hatt-i Hümayün), xx
Ottoman society: vs. European lifestyles, 150–51; modern man of, 152; slave trade and, 154, 154n3; Tanzimat reforms and, xix–xxii, 150. See also alaturka world
outings, 49, 77–78, 93–94. See also Kağıthane outing (Felâtun Bey)
Paris’te bir türk (A Turk in Paris) (Ahmet Midhat), xxi
parlor gentlemen, 46–47, 51–52
passion: awakening of, 42, 49; for Janan, 81; love and, 65–66; poetry and, 58, 102, 126. See also love
Pauline (actress): advice about, 97–98; Felâtun Bey’s breakup with, 127–28; gambling incident and, 95–96; house in Büyükdere for, 112; introduction to, 67–73; reconciliation with, 96–97; theft of Felâtun Bey’s money by, 127, 130–31