On the Sultan's Service

Douglas S. Brookes

Description

"When at last we were approaching the Harem, the Sultan, surely quite alarmed, said to me in a low voice (was that so the eunuch walking in front of us wouldn't hear, or because in this lonely and dark passageway he was frightened of his own voice?), Ne olacak? 'What is to become of things?'"

Translated into English for the first time, this memoir provides fascinating first-hand insight into the personalities, intrigues, and inner workings of the Ottoman palace in its final decades. Written by Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil, who was First Secretary to Sultan Mehmed V and would go on to be one of Turkey's most famous novelists, On the Sultan's Service makes available to English readers the remarkable account of life and work in the Ottoman palace chancery—the public, "business" side of the palace—in its final incarnation. We learn of the court's new role under this second-to-last Sultan in post-Revolution Turkey. No longer exercising political power, the palace negotiated the minefields between political factions, sought ways to unite the empire in the face of sharpening nationalist aspirations, and faced with a kind of shocked despondency the opening salvos of the wars that were to overwhelm the country. Uşaklıgil includes interviews with the Imperial family and descriptions of royal nuptials, the palaces and its visitors, and the crises that shook the court. He delivers an insightful and moving portrait of Mehmed V, the elderly gentleman who reigned over the Ottoman Empire through both Balkan Wars and World War I.

Foreword

Introduction

Maps

Timeline of Late Ottoman History

Family Tree

1. A New Court for a New Monarch

2. Redoing the Palaces

3. On Show

4. The Imperial Household

5. The Imperial Family

6. Wedding Vows and Dueling Heirs

7. Papers, Papers

8. Mysterious Yıldız, Daunting Topkapı

9. Coming to Call

10. Royal Guests

11. On Holiday

12. Maneuvering, Touring

13. No End to Crises

14. Caught in the Vise

15. Bringing Down the Curtain

16. The Man Who Would Be Sultan

Epilogue

Glossary of Names

Glossary of Terms and Places

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Turquía
• Modern history
• Turkish literature
• History of the Middle East
• Cold War
• Royalty
• Imperial
• General officer
• 20th century
• Middle East
• General
• Imperial (homonymie)
• Turkey
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 21 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253045522
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Frontis. The entrance into the mabeyin at Dolmabah e Palace, under the imperial standard of Sultan Mehmed V. ehbal , 14 October 1909 and 28 April 1912.

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Douglas Scott Brookes
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Names: U akl gil, Halit Ziya, 1869-1945, author. | Brookes, Douglas Scott, [date] translator, editor.
Title: On the sultan s service: Halid Ziya U akl gil s memoir of the Ottoman palace, 1909-1912 / translated and edited by Douglas Scott Brookes.
Other titles: Halid Ziya U akl gil s memoir of the Ottoman palace, 1909-1912
Description: Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019020820 (print) | ISBN 9780253045539 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253045508 (hardback: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253045515 (pbk.: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: U akl gil, Halit Ziya, 1869-1945. | Authors, Turkish-20th century-Biography. | Turkey-History-Mehmed V, 1909-1918. | Turkey-Court and courtiers.
Classification: LCC DR583 .U83 2019 (print) | LCC DR583 (ebook) | DDC 956/.02092 [B]-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020820
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019981141
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
To the most cultured of gentlemen,
Halid Ziya Bey
Kandilli temenna ile
They placed the nightingale in a cage of gold,
but still it cried, Oh my homeland, my homeland.
-Turkish proverb
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Maps
Timeline of Late Ottoman History
Family Tree

1. A New Court for a New Monarch
2. Redoing the Palaces
3. On Show
4. The Imperial Household
5. The Imperial Family
6. Wedding Vows and Dueling Heirs
7. Papers, Papers
8. Mysterious Y ld z, Daunting Topkap
9. Coming to Call
10. Royal Guests
11. On Holiday
12. Maneuvering, Touring
13. No End to Crises
14. Caught in the Vise
15. Bringing Down the Curtain
16. The Man Who Would Be Sultan
Epilogue
Glossary of Names
Glossary of Terms and Places
Bibliography
Index
Foreword

I am delighted to welcome this book, which, at long last, reveals to the world a work long known and treasured in Turkey: our famed novelist Halid Ziya U akl gil s wonderful memoir of his life in the service of the Ottoman sultanate during the heady days after the 1909 coup, which culminated in the Young Turks movement grasping power.
The events of the years 1909 to 1912 are of course a matter of historical record, but what makes Halid Ziya s memoir exceptional is his talent for painting a rich palette of emotion and detail that brings to life the people who lived and worked in the palace.
For Halid Ziya, Dolmabah e Palace was his workplace and a symbol of changing times as the Ottoman State negotiated the transition to constitutional monarchy, which only lasted for thirteen years. Nowadays it is one of Turkey s great museums, conserved by the Department of National Palaces, and one of the jewels of Istanbul for visitors from around the world.
However, for me, it is akin to a family home. My dear mother was born here in the reign of her grandfather, Sultan Mehmed V Re ad, during which time Halid Ziya served as first secretary, and here she spent the early years of her life. The sultan s youngest son, Prince mer Hilmi, whom Halid Ziya describes, was my grandfather, whom unfortunately I never knew because he passed away prematurely at the age of forty-nine. As for the other princes and princesses in the book, they are my uncles and aunts, whom I have known, or known of, throughout my life.
And so, with wishes for pleasant reading, I invite the reader to join Halid Ziya as he takes up his duties in the Palace Chancery, serving my great-grandfather during a short period of peace, followed by the Tripolitanian War and the Balkan Wars.
HIH Prince Osman Selaheddin Osmano lu
Istanbul, September 2019
Introduction
As the throngs of sightseers make their way through Istanbul s magnificent Dolmabah e Palace, typically they marvel at the famed crystal staircases, the opulent mirrors and carpets and drapes entirely at home in a Victorian villa, and the soaring heights of the State Hall, arguably the most spectacular room in any palace anywhere. Few will stop to think that this sumptuous seat of royalty, designed to dazzle and delight with the splendor of the Ottoman monarchy, was also an office.
That office was the Court Chancery, the southern wing of Dolmabah e Palace as one views it from the Bosphorus. This book tells the chancery s story. Or more precisely, and more interestingly, it tells the story of the men who staffed the Ottoman Imperial Chancery during three tumultuous years of its six-hundred-year history.
Palace of the Filled Garden
Commissioned in the 1840s by Sultan Abd lmecid, Dolmabah e ( Filled-in Garden, from its having been built on landfill along the Bosphorus) satisfied the need for a modern edifice to replace old-fashioned Topkap Palace as the primary seat of the Ottoman monarchy. Far and away the most famous work of Garabed Balian, the prolific Armenian architect in service to the Ottoman court in the nineteenth century, the building not only gave the sultan the new home he wanted, in its break with Topkap it also symbolically declared the monarchy s wholehearted embrace of the modernizing reforms introduced since the 1820s.
Mr. Balian s new building comprises three sections-chancery, State Hall, and harem-that met the threefold needs of the palace for offices, state rooms, and living quarters. The chancery wing was, and still is, Dolmabah e s front door, as everyone approaching the palace on state business would need the chancery, because it oversaw palace operations. The location of this wing, midway between the private world of the harem and the world at large outside the palace, gave it its Turkish name, mabeyin , from the Arabic term that means what lies in between. In this translation, mabeyin and its English equivalent, chancery, are used interchangeably.
In the middle of the building, the spectacular State Hall occupies the intermediary zone between the palace s public spaces (mabeyin) on one side and private spaces (harem) on the other. Conceived as an opulent stage for grand occasions, well-nigh overwhelming the visitor with crystal, marble, and one of the world s largest chandeliers, it too is a public space, although just for those invited to the ceremonies it hosted. Its Turkish name of Muayede Salonu , Holiday Greetings Hall, reflects its use for the grandest annual event in the royal calendar, the reception for high dignitaries on the holidays that follow the holy month of Ramadan.

Fig. 0.2. Sprawling Dolmabah e Palace along the Bosphorus. ehbal , 14 October 1909.
Adjoining the State Hall to the north, but separated from it by locking iron doors, the L-shaped Imperial Harem wing is double the size of the mabeyin and includes its own secluded garden behind towering walls. Here were the private apartments of the sultan, his mother if she were still alive (the mother of Sultan Re ad, monarch during the palace tenure of our memoirist, Halid Ziya, was not), his four consorts, his concubines, and his unmarried children, if any. As Halid Ziya tells us, the monarch lived in the harem but made his way over to the mabeyin each day to work in his office.
Completed in 1856, then virtually abandoned between 1878 and 1909 while Sultan Abd lhamid II resided at Y ld z Palace, and last used as a royal residence in 1924, the year the Imperial Family was exiled, altogether Dolmabah e Palace operated as the seat of the Ottoman monarchy for only some thirty-six years. It has already been a museum far longer than that.
Famed Novelist, First Secretary
Halid Ziya U akl gil (1865-1945) served as first secretary of the chancery from 1909 to 1912. Supported by two assistant secretaries, he oversaw the paperwork that flowed into and out of the palace. The other half of the chancery, the chamberlain s office, oversaw maintenance of the palace and matters of protocol, although at times the duties overlapped and the first secretary and first chamberlain could find themselves filling in for each other. But bureaucratic paperwork was just Halid Ziya s day job. His real love was literature.
Scion of the distinguished line of judges and professors of the U akizade family (turkified into U akl gil when Turkey adopted surnames in 1934), Halid Ziya was born in Istanbul but grew up in the Aegean port city of Izmir, where his education included mastering French language and literature. He began writing stories and poems, publishing in literary periodicals in the 1880s and 1890s, moving to Istanbul and making something of a name for himself among literati, but his breakthrough came with his period novel Mai ve Siyah (Blue and Black) in 1897, followed three years later by A k- Memnu (Forbidden Love). In style and theme, both broke new ground in Turkish letters and justifiably made his name among Turki