The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It - Course Information

176 ~ THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE WORLD AROUND IT ~
~ An eighteenth-century Istanbul xenophobe
For information on the criticisms that such especially sociable persons might
incur, we may consult an anonymous text from the eighteenth century, that
recently has been published under the title Risale-i garibe. 60 The extant manuscript
dates from the year 1720/1132–3. In this short text, the anonymous author
has listed instances of what he saw as the rude and impolite behaviour of his fellow
townsmen. While most of the cases mentioned seem to have taken place in
the capital, dialectal forms indicate that the author may originally have come
from western Anatolia. Present-day scholars have become interested in this text
because of its ‘ethnographic’ aspect, that is, the numerous references to customs
and expressions then current in non-elite Ottoman circles but now obsolete.
However, in the present context, we are only concerned with what the anonymous
author has to say about relationships with strangers.
Visibly the author had no love for any kind of outsiders to his own urban society.
For quite a few of his curses were directed against Anatolian peasants (Türk)
from the townlet of Gerede, who supposedly tried to hide their wretched poverty,
Bosnian provincials unable to conceal their ignorance of ‘civilization’ or Tatars
who, instead of killing the Cossacks they had captured, brought them to Istanbul,
presumably for sale as slaves. Other vicious invective was reserved for people
who had somehow entered the Islamic community, but whom the author suspected
of less than total allegiance: ‘Greeks who become Muslims for fear of the
poll tax but who will continue to speak their native language whenever they see a
fellow Greek’. 61 All these were of course Sunni Muslims of one kind or another,
and subjects of the sultan to boot; yet if these people were unable to win approval
in the author’s eyes, it is not surprising that real outsiders were treated to at least
equal invective. Thus Kalmuks – we are left to wonder where the writer had
encountered them – were cursed as ‘sons of dogs’, the Shi’ites who swore at the
first three caliphs were ‘damned’, the Moldavians ‘traitors’ and the Germans/
Austrians ‘robbers’. 62
It was not just the various outsiders themselves who were targeted by the
anonymous writer, but also insiders who seemed to be friendly with unbelievers.
Thus the author reserves various swearwords not only for the ‘irreligious persons’
who drank alcohol together with unbelievers, but also for those who
merely observed the social niceties when encountering such people. Among
other things, the author mentioned those who would speak ‘the language of the
unbelievers’ even though the addressee knew Turkish, used friendly words when
making purchases from an ‘infidel’, visited the homes of non-Muslims and made
polite responses to the greetings of same. 63 All these strictures could broadly be
based on sayings attributed to the Prophet or, more recently, on the legal opinions
of sixteenth-century jurisconsults such as the Şeyhülislam Ebusu’ud, for whom it
had been a major concern to keep Muslims and non-Muslims separate at all
times. 64 But if there had not been any people who did all the things our anony-