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‘The Little Brother of the Ottoman State’: Ottoman technocrats in Kabul and Afghanistan's development in the Ottoman imagination, 1908–23*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2016

MICHAEL B. O’SULLIVAN
MICHAEL B. O’SULLIVAN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, United States of America Email: mbosullivan@g.ucla.edu
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Abstract

By charting the activities of Ottoman experts in Afghanistan from 1908–23, this article demonstrates how their arrival precipitated a series of state-building practices rooted in the particular historical experience of Ottoman reform projects. The country thus became the object of an Ottoman mission civilisatrice and the beneficiary, in the eyes of certain figures within the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, of an avowedly Ottoman-Turkish modernity. Sharing this conviction were members of the Afghan royal family and its chief ministers, especially Maḥmūd Ṭarzī, who first invited the Ottoman advisers to Kabul. The provision of Ottoman technical assistance took a variety of forms, but is most evident in military, educational, and public health reforms enacted in Kabul in this period. Through the study of previously unexamined Ottoman, Afghan, and British sources, the aim here is to incorporate these events into discussions of Ottoman informal empire, Afghan developmentalism, and pan-Islam.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 6 , November 2016 , pp. 1846 - 1887
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to extend my gratitude to Professor Nile Green, Giuseppina Chiaramonte, Sohaib Baig, Marjan Wardaki, the participants in the ‘From Sufis to Taliban: Trajectories of Islam in Afghanistan’ conference held at UCLA in October 2014, and my two anonymous reviewers, whose comments substantially improved this article. I reserve special thanks for Mehmet Taha Ayar who, with great patience, helped me to read the many Ottoman texts cited in this article. Without his assistance, this article could not have been written.

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42 Afgānistān (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Ahmed İhsan, 1321 [1905]).

43 ‘Afgānistān’da Türkce’, Türk, 7, p. 1; quoted in Hanioǧlu, M. Şükrü, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 69 Google Scholar.

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53 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, pp. 4–5. Though Fażlı did not expose the identity of this man, Ludwig Adamec states that the Ottoman mission was brought to Afghanistan through the agency of the nephew of the naqib of Baghdad. This was Sayyid Hasan Jilani, an Ottoman subject and Qadiri Sufi who arrived in Afghanistan in 1905, cf. Adamec, Ludwig, Afghanistan, 1900–1923: A Diplomatic History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 81 Google Scholar; For more on Jilani, cf. Tarzi, Amin and Malikyar, Helena, ‘The Jilânî Family in Afghanistan’, Journal of the History of Sufism (Paris), 1–2 (2000), pp. 93–102 Google Scholar.

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57 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, pp. 4–5; ʿAlī Fehmī Beğ had earlier been the editor of the most important Young Turk newspaper in the Balkans, Muvazene (The Balance), but had been forced to flee to Geneva after the Ottoman representative in Varna had requested that the Bulgarian authorities deport him. As discussed below, during his time in Afghanistan he corresponded intermittently with Committee officials in İstanbul; M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, pp. 73–4.

58 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, p. 7. Naṣrullāh had earlier gone on a tour of Europe and the Ottoman Empire and had met the Ottoman consul-general in Bombay in 1895. McChesney, Robert and Khorrami, Mohammad Mehdi (eds), The History of Afghanistan: Fayż Muḥammad Kātib Hazārah's Sirāj al-tawārīkh, vol. 3 (Boston: Brill, 2012) pp. 1075–6, 1147–8Google Scholar. He was also featured in Nevsal-i Servet-i fünun. 3. sene (1896/97), p. 58.

59 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, p. 7.

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62 Ibid., p. 9.

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69 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, p. 10.

70 Ibid., p. 12.

71 Ibid., p. 14.

72 Ibid., p. 16.

73 Ibid., p. 20.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid., pp. 22–3.

76 Ibid., p. 24.

77 Ibid., p. 25.

78 Ibid., pp. 30–1.

79 Ibid., p. 33.

80 Ibid., p. 39.

81 On the creation of the Afghan–Persian border in the nineteenth century, see Hopkins, B. D., ‘The Bounds of Identity: The Goldsmid Mission and the Delineation of the Perso-Afghan Border in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Global History, 2:2 (2007), pp. 233–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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83 Ibid., pp. 42–3.

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88 Ibid., p. 46.

89 Ibid., p. 68.

90 Ibid., p. 70.

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95 Ibid., p. 90.

96 Ibid., p. 74.

97 Ibid., p. 51.

98 With the Ottoman mission's arrival in Kabul, The Times of India made much of the dissonance their presence created between the amir and his brother. For more details, see ‘Afghanistan: Dr. Winter Interviewed, Prince Nazrullah's Intrigues, Anglo-Russian Agreement’, The Times of India, 23 May 1908, p. 9.

99 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, p. 93.

100 Ibid., p. 94.

101 M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, p. 74.

102 ‘Afgānistān’dan bir ṣadā, Meclis-i Mebʿusân Müzâkeratî’, Taḳvīm-i Veḳāyiʿ, 75 (25 December 1908), pp. 1–2; and ‘Meclis-i Mebʿusânîn Dördüncü Ictimaʿî Müzâkerâtî: Afgānistān’dan bir ṣadā’, Şûra-yî ümmet (24 December 1908). These pieces are referenced in M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, p. 361, n. 269.

103 Bibliothèque nationale de France, La Jeune Turquie: Organe des intérêts généraux de l’Empire ottoman, 1911/05/17 (A2,N20).

104 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (The Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister's Office, Istanbul), MF. MKT 61/1138 (01/Ş /1327); BEO 3268/272077 (17/Ş /1327).

105 Schinasi, Afghanistan at the Beginning, pp. 67–8, 139.

106 Meḥmed Fażlı, ‘maʿlūmāt-i faniyya’, Sirāj al-Akhbār-i Afghāniye, yr. 1, no. 12, pp. 9–10.

107 Schinasi, Afghanistan at the Beginning, p. 139, n. 26.

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109 A year after the telegraph was read in the Ottoman parliament, The Times of India reported that the Ottoman government had vehemently denied receiving a petition from the amir requesting Ottoman army officers. Another report by The Times in 1912 related that the amir's troops in Kabul were being drilled by Ottoman instructors. ‘Officers for Afghan Army’, The Times of India, 31 December 1909, p. 9; ‘The Afghan Army’, The Times of India, 10 August 1912, p. 9.

110 On the Afghan army in the reign of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Khān, see Kakar, Government and Society.

111 Yanikdağ, Yücel, ‘Educating the Peasants: The Ottoman Army and Enlisted Men in Uniform’, Middle Eastern Studies, 40:6 (November 2004), pp. 92–108 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Sirāj al-Akhbār-i Afghāniye, yr. 2, no. 12, p. 7 one can find an image of troops in Jalalabad practicing gymnastics, the mainstay of training at the military academy from the time of Maḥmūd Sami, himself a gymnastics instructor.

112 Yanikdağ, ‘Educating the Peasants’, p. 105.

113 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, pp. 72–3.

114 Ibid., unnumbered page between pages 80 and 81.

115 Ibid., p. 73.

116 A full list of his works can be found at the Afghanistan Digital Library, New York University.

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119 Baiza, Yahia, Education in Afghanistan: Developments, Influences, and Legacies since 1901 (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 45 Google Scholar. For Nuristanis there was the Military School of the Newly Converted to Islam. Ibid., p. 51.

120 For more on the tribal school and Ottoman tribes more generally at the end of empire, see Kasaba, Resat, A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees (University of Washington Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Köksal, Yonca, ‘Coercion and Mediation: Centralization and Sedentarization of Tribes in the Ottoman Empire’, Middle Eastern Studies, 42:3 (May 2006), pp. 469–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deringil, Well-Protected Domains, pp. 101–4; Somel, Selçuk Akşin, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839–1908 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001), p. 207 Google Scholar.

121 Olesen, Asta, Islam and Politics in Afghanistan (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

122 Examples may have also been taken from the tribal policies of the Qajar government. Khazeni, Arash, Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

123 Adamec, Ludwig, Historical and Political Who's Who of Afghanistan (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1975), p. 159 Google Scholar. He was a dye manufacturer and a printer of stamps.

124 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, pp. 82–3.

125 Ibid., p. 74. Fażlı would later become head of the school.

126 Ibid., p. 78.

127 Ibid., p. 77.

128 Ibid., pp. 76–7.

129 Vartan Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880–1946 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 359–60Google Scholar.

130 Fażlı, Resimlī Afgān Seyāḥatı, pp. 81–2; Gregorian, Modern Afghanistan, p. 360.

131 Nawid, Senzil, Religious Response to Social Change in Afghanistan, 1919–29: King Aman-Allah and the Afghan ʿUlama (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1999), p. 75, n. 7Google Scholar; Adamec, Who's Who of Afghanistan, p. 203.

132 Adamec, Who's Who of Afghanistan, p. 110

133 Schinasi, Afghanistan at the Beginning, p. 145.

134 Sirāj al-Akhbār-i Afghāniye: yr. 4, no. 10, pp. 6, 11.

135 British Library, India Office Records/L/PS/11/62, P 3560/1913.

136 ʿĀlem-i Islām, vol. 2 (İstanbul: 1329–31), pp. 156–60.

137 Ibid., p. 159.

138 Ibid., p. 160.

139 As a representative example, the publication Sebilü’r-Reşad ran a piece detailing the activities of the Afghan ʿulama, who had made great contributions to Islamic thought, despite the fact that ‘In previous times the country was in a great state of ignorance and incredibly backward.’ Efendi, Zeydān, ‘Afgānistān’da ḥareket-i ‘ilmīyye’, Sebilü’r-Reşad, 20:509 (Ankara, 13 Temmuz 1338), pp. 172–4Google Scholar.

140 Lâklâk: Haftalık resimlī mizâh gazetesidir, nos. 4–14 (İstanbul, 1908–9).

141 Çeviker, Gelişim sürecinde, pp. 116–7; cf. Jewett, A. C., An American Engineer in Afghanistan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1948), p. 258 Google Scholar.

142 References to all these articles are too numerous to cover here. As a representative sample, see: ‘Afgānistān’da İntibah’, Sebīlü’r-Reşad [Sırat-ı Müstakim], 1–8, 8–190 (12 Nisan 1328), p. 147; Kale-i Sultaniyeli İbnürrahmi Ali Tayyar, ‘ʿĀlem-i İslam - Afgānlılar - Osmānlılar ve Amir Ḥabībullāh Meḥmed Han’, Beyānülhak, 6:144 (9 Kānunusāni 1327), pp. 2581–3.

143 Fuʾād, İsmāʿīl Suphi ve Meḥmed (eds), Sālnāme-i Servet-i Fünûn (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Ahmed İhsan, 1327 [1911]), pp. 175–6Google Scholar.

144 Nūrī, Celāl, 1327 senesinde Selânikʾte münʾakid Ittiḥad ve Teraḳḳī ḳongresine taḳdīm olunān muhṭıradır (İstanbul: Müşterek ül-Menfaa Osmanlı Şirketi Matbaası, 1327 [1911 or 1912]), p. 7 Google Scholar.

145 Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 105–6.

146 Ādem, Hābil [pseud.], Muḥārebeden ṣoñra: Hilāfet siyāsetī ve Türklük siyāsetī (İstanbul: İkbal Kütüphanesi, 1331 [1915]), p. 125 Google Scholar.

147 Landau, Jacob, Pan-Turkism: From Irredentism to Cooperation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 52 Google Scholar; Safi, Polat, ‘History in the Trench: The Ottoman Special Organization — Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa Literature’, Middle Eastern Studies, 48:1, pp. 89–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reference to Afghanistan on p. 93. Unfortunately, I have not had access to the Turkish Military Archives, which likely contains more information on these activities.

148 Landau, Pan-Turkism, pp. 50–2.

149 Adamec, Who's Who of Afghanistan, p. 116.

150 Ludwig Adamec, Afghanistan's Foreign Affairs to the Mid-Twentieth Century: Relations with the USSR, Germany, and Britain (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974), pp. 16, 21Google Scholar; Özalp, Ömer Hakan, Mehmed Ubeydullah Efendi’nin Malta, Afganistan ve İran hatıraları (İstanbul: Dergâh, 2002), pp. 204–23, 238–9Google Scholar.

151 Adamec, Afghanistan's Foreign Affairs, p. 31.

152 Ibid., p. 31; Adamec, Who's Who of Afghanistan, p. 176.

153 von Niedermayer, Oskar, Unter der glutsonne Irans; kriegserlebnisse der dentschen expedition nach Persien und Afganistan (Dachau: Einhornverlag, 1925), pp. 146, 148Google Scholar; Rybitschka, Emil, Im gottgegebenen Afghanistan als gäste des emirs (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1927), p. 42 Google Scholar.

154 Atabaki, Touraj, ‘Going East: The Ottomans’ Secret Service Activities in Iran’, in his (ed.), Iran and the First World War: Battleground of the Great Powers (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 38–9Google Scholar.

155 Adamec, Afghanistan's Foreign Affairs, pp. 58, 67–8.

156 British Library, India Office Records/L/PS/11/113, P 4687/1916.

157 British Library, India Office Records/L/PS/11/149, P 1304/1919.

158 Baha, Lal, ‘Activities of Turkish Agents in Khyber During World War 1’, Journal of Asiatic Society of Pakistan, XIV:2 (August 1969), p. 189 Google Scholar.

159 Olesen, Islam and Politics, pp. 103–4; Haroon, Sana, Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 105–6Google Scholar.

160 Wasti, Syed Tanvir, ‘The Political Aspiration of Indian Muslims and the Ottoman Nexus’, Middle Eastern Studies, 42:5 (September 2006), p. 712 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

161 British Library, India Office Records/L/PS/11/70, P 115/1914.

162 Muḥammad Naẓīf, Maṭbu ‘a-i (Kābul: Maṭbaʻah-ʼi ʻInāyat, 1336 [1917]); Qirāʼat asar-i Muḥammad Naẓīf (Kābul: Maṭbuʾa-i ʻInāyat, 1336 [1917]).

163 binbaşı, Nazmi, Ḳafḳāsya ve Āsya-yi vustā ve Türkistān vilāyetleri [ve] Buhārā ve Ḥiva hānlıḳları (İstanbul: Matbaa-i askeriye, 1334 [1916]), pp. 56–69 Google Scholar; İrāna dāʾir ʿaskerī raporlar (İstanbul: Matbaa-i âmire, 1332 [1915]).

164 Olcott, Martha B., ‘The Basmachi or Freemen's Revolt in Turkestan 1918–24’, Soviet Studies, 33:3 (July 1981), pp. 358–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

165 Adamec, Who's Who of Afghanistan, p. 176.

166 1919 Afgān-İngiliz harbi (Dersaâdet: Matbaa-i Askeri, 1341 [1925]).

167 Landau, Pan-Turkism, p. 55.

168 The original text of the treaty was published in Hakimet-i Millī in Ankara on 24 March 1921. A translation prepared by the British Foreign Office can be found in Bilâl N. Şimşir, Ingiliz belgelerinde Atatürk, 1919–1938, Ocak-Eylül 1921, vol. 3 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1979), pp. 293–4.

169 ‘Enclosure in No. 199’, in ibid., pp. 487–9. This is also based on an English translation of a Hakimet-i Millī article from 10 June 1921.

170 Kitāb-i alifbā-yi Turkī (Kābul: Maṭbuʿa-i Niẓārat-i Maʻārif, 1299 [1920]).

171 Türkiye-Afgānistān ittifaḳ muʻāhadenamesi (Moskovada 1 Mart 1338 tarihinde imza edilmiştir) (İstanbul: Hariciye Vekaleti, 1339 [1921]); Savād-i muʻāhadah-ʾi dawlatayn-i ʻalīyatayn Afghānistān va Turkīyah (Kabul?, s.n., 1301 [1922]).

172 Provence, Michael, ‘Ottoman Modernity, Colonialism, and Insurgency in the Interwar Arab East’, International Journal Middle East Studies, 43 (2011), pp. 205–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

173 Makdisi, ‘Rethinking Ottoman Imperialism’, p. 30.