Volume 2 / Athens 2000 by Antonis Anastasopoulos Review of Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1995 Kafadar's book deals with the formative decades of the Ottoman state and their interpretation by modern historiography. Even though it is admittedly much more complex than that, it is not wrong to say that the book revolves around a notion, an author and a set of sources. The notion is gaza, commonly known in Western literature as Holy War for the propagation of the Muslim faith and the expansion of the territory of Islam. The author is Paul Wittek who put forward the theory that the early Ottomans were bound together not by race, but by ideology, namely the gaza. The set of sources is the surviving Ottoman histories and chronicles of the latter half of the fifteenth century and beyond, which narrate the early history of the House of Osman. Both Wittek and the Ottoman sources have been the subjects of criticism and controversy during the last twenty years, and Kafadar sees fit to come to their defense and contribute his vision of early Ottoman history. The book consists of an introduction where Kafadar discusses the background to and the aim of his book as well as his methodology, a chronology, three chapters, a short epilogue, a rather exhaustive bibliographical list and an index. The author discusses the theories of twentieth-century historians about the early Ottomans in chapter 1, and examines the Ottoman sources in chapter 2 before proceeding to his narrative of the rise and establishment of the Ottoman state in chapter 3. Prospective readers should be warned about a few important points before reading the book. Kafadar does not seek to innovate and put forward a new theory or bring new sources to light, but rather to draw attention to particular aspects of the discussion as this has developed in the course of the past decades in order to promote what he perceives as a better understanding of early Ottoman history. Therefore, his book should not be read with the expectation of finding either extensive summaries of the theories of earlier Ottomanists or an exhaustive scrutiny of Ottoman texts. Even though a large section of the book is dedicated to revitalizing Wittek's "gaza thesis," the author's basic aim is to demonstrate that the Ottoman state rose in a fluid and flexible environment which can be understood only if the specific conditions are carefuIIy studied through the application of literary criticism on Ottoman sources. The author focuses on four modern contributions. Herbert A. Gibbons was the first who questioned seriously the generally accepted view of the Ottoman origins as it had been recorded in Ottoman historiography, and suggested in 1916 that Ottoman success could not be attributed to "Asiatics," but was the result of the participation of Islamized "European" (Byzantine) elements in the Ottoman polity. M. Fuat Köprulu and Paul Wittek introduced two highly influential theories some twenty years later. Both insisted that Ottoman success should not be examined as an isolated phenomenon, but as the culmination of a long political and cultural process in Anatolia. The emphasis was different, though: Köprulu maintained that the early Ottomans were ethnic Turks, and thus became an icon for the Turkish nationalist historiography, while Wittek claimed that what was significant was not ethnic origins but that the Ottomans were gazis, warriors of faith. Wittek's thesis became the single most influential explanation of Ottoman expansion, but was criticized in the 1980s for the alleged incongruity between the religious intolerance expected of gazis and the attested moderation of the Ottomans towards their non-Muslim neighbors and subjects. Rudi Paul Lindner introduced anthropology to the discussion in 1983 and put forward a theory according to which Ottoman society was not a "gazi" but a "tribal" one. Tribal societies are "inclusive" and, therefore, open to outsiders as opposed to the "exclusive" ethos of the gazis. Kafadar shares the anxiety of other contemporary Ottoman historians, especially those in North America, to demonstrate that Ottoman historiography is not cut off from developments and currents in other historiographical fields. Even though he admits that Ottomanists have been on the whole "reluctant to directly engage in theoretical discourse" and have, generally speaking, been "belated followers rather than innovators or immediate participants" in developments in world historiography (pp. xii- xiii), he associates the decline of the topic of the origins of the Ottomans until the 1980s with the universal popularity of quantitative approaches, and its revival with the return of interest in narrative sources, literary criticism, genealogies and "origins." The author also insists on the impact of modern ideology and nationalism on the formulation of views of the past. Actually, the last section of the Introduction is an essay about the part that modern nationalist and ideological agendas have played in the writings about Ottoman history. One of the important points that Kafadar makes is that the historiography of other areas, which are considered less "sensitive" than the eastern Mediterranean (e.g. Iberia), has been subjected to the same kind of pressure. In the same vein, he relates each of the twentieth-century historiographical views about the origins of the Ottomans to its particular ideological and historical background. Thus, Gibbons' approach is explained by the conditions of the First World War and the expected dissolution of the Ottoman state, Köprulu's by the nationalism of the young Turkish republic, and the opposition of the historians of the 1980s to the "gaza thesis" by the harsh Vietnam-war experience. Coming to the subject of the book, Kafadar's main point is that Wittek has been misinterpreted. He accuses the historians of the 1980s of having been trapped in a misleading dilemma according to which Ottomans have to be either Turkish nomadic plunderers or orthodox warriors of the Islamic faith. The reason for this misconception is that - unlike Wittek - these historians adopted an ahistorical "canonical" definition of the gazi instead of a "historical" one. Gaza came to be identified with militant religious fanaticism, even though Wittek recognized many more nuances in its meaning. The result was that Wittek's theory was eventuaIIy reduced to a "caricature of itself" (p. 49) through repetition and popularization. Kafadar defines his contribution to the discussion as something that "no one ... has yet attempted" to do, that is to "investigate the nature of that [gazi] ethos as a historical phenomenon on the basis of a close analysis of the sources narrating the deeds of the gazis" (p. 57). His conclusion is that there was no contradiction between the gaza ethos and Ottoman attitudes. He suggests that frontier societies were experiencing "'metadoxy" a state of being beyond doxies" (p. 76), so that the dogmatic correctness and orthodoxy of every single practice and action was not an issue. Therefore, the gazi society was not "exclusive'" but "inclusive" and flexible. Converts were accepted in the gazi ranks, and war could coexist with religious tolerance and syncretism without causing any identity crisis. Furthermore, Kafadar claims that jihad and gaza were two distinct terms and practices both from a theological and a practical point of view,[1] and rejects the depiction of jihad as incessant expansionary war for the faith. In Kafadar's view, the gazi environment was above all an ideological and political battleground where increasingly the real issue was the struggle between centralizing and centrifugal tendencies. The gazis belonged to the second camp, which eventually succumbed to sultanic centralization. The sultan's triumph was sealed with the conquest of Constantinople. Irrespective of one's agreement or disagreement with aspects of Kafadar's views and method (the lack of conclusive evidence requires a fair amount of assumption and renders all interpretations of early Ottoman history vulnerable to criticism), there is no doubt that this is a clearly written book that has a point to make. It is certainly a welcome contribution to the ongoing discussion about the early Ottoman society and state. 1. Colin Imber disagrees strongly with this claim (cf. his review of Kafadar's book in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 60 (1997), 211-212). Return to Top