«The role of Islam in the emergence of the Christian Humanism and the enlightenment was largely omitted and forgotten : Islamic theology could not take place in Christian Europe as no Muslims had been allowed to survive...»
Hans-Peter Geissen lives in Koblenz (Germany), at the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers. Interested in all what concerns faunistics (data about animal species) of the Midrhine region, he is the author of many scientific publications on these issues. He bent on the Turkish issue with a very specific approach so as “to prevent a self-definition of Europe on the grounds of historical or religious mythologies.”
Enlightenment
Christian Humanism and Enlightenment, in one way or another, redirected the view on humans and society from a theological determination –however theoretic- to a variety of reasoning and imagination. An increasing spectrum of philosophies, arts, sciences and practices emerged, in which theology was but one of many disciplines. Again, there can be only a rough overview with a special focus.
The role of Islam in the emergence of this was largely omitted and forgotten, Islamic theology could not take place in Christian Europe as no Muslims had been allowed to survive. A Jewish one survived in some niches mainly in Eastern Europe (especially Poland-Lithuania). Both took place in the Ottoman realm. However, the Islamic “Counter-Enlightenment” had largely ended the development of sciences, while a quite efficient state centralism inhibited the development of alternatives.
Nonetheless, as far as religious tolerance and pluralism was concerned, European thinkers had to point to the Ottoman sphere, wether Rousseau or Voltaire, Lessing or Goethe, or the English Deists. There the example was given that it was possible. Secularism in the meaning of respecting different beliefs and an autonomous sphere of theologies did not emerge directly from Islam, but was hardly thinkable without.
The other side of the coin was autonomy of state and law from religion. Quite necessarily, it had to act anticlerical. Insofar, there was no room for Islamic rule, too. With respect to the state, it tended to support absolutism. As to society, the language was detected as a unifying factor defining political bodies, leading to nationalisms. This, together with liberalism, became the ideology of the emerging bourgeoisies.
The Ottoman system
The Ottoman system had already an absolutism of sort, expressed in a sultanic prerogative and law. As well as Christian absolutisms, however, they remained allied with religion as the major source of law and conduct. Due to special circumstances, the sultanic prerogative about the lifes and properties of his servants inhibited the emergence of a Muslim, but not of a Christian and Jewish bourgeoisy. Growing predominance of West European economies further enhanced Christian economic dominance in the Ottoman Empire, all the more as any activity of Muslims in the West was nearly impossible; European antiislamism had remained largely intact in practice since the Middle Ages, despite Enlighteners and a few exceptions, like Venice.
Quite the contrary: Humanism and Enlightenment, by rediscovering the heritage af the Antique, were deploring the “loss” of the “Greek World” to Muslim rule and in consequence a secular crusader movement under the flag of “Philhellenism” emerged. It wouldn’t be impossible to imagine Valerie Giscard d’Estaing as one of its most prominent stakeholders today.
A major handicap of the Ottomans in dealing with the problem was certainly the predominance of Islam in state law and bureaucracy, reinforced at times by a respective Islamic populism. Especially in its populist form, the “No novelties!” paradigm of Sunnitic conservatism was certainly a strong factor slowing down necessary adaptations.
Whereas the Ottomans in fact accomodated to the major developments, including equality of their subjects, constitutional monarchy, industrialization, public education a.s.o., they finally succumbed to the emerging nationalisms supported by Western movements and Russia. In fact, conservative and even many liberal governments supported the OE in order to prevent Russian expansion to the Mediterranean, both Christian and “Enlightened” neo-crusaders in effect supported Russia. The latter proceeded by several ideologies, first pan-Orthodoxy, then pan-Slawism, some pan-Christianism (regarding especially Armenians and Georgians), and finally Marxism-Leninism – and, of course, military aggression.
Nationalisms and Russian expansion
In the larger West, those with an idea of geopolitics opposed the Russian expansion and, up to now, succeeded repeatedly, if only by a hair’s breadth. Many of those with no idea of geopolitics in effect supported Russian advance and continue to do so. And their unifying ideology is still antiislamism.
Ironically, it were “nationalisms” that succeeded the Ottoman Empire by means of Russian military victories and with support from Western sources. None of these nationalisms is known to have been supported by a majority of the respective “nations” prior to the establishment of an independent state by foreign powers. While expanding, each new territory had to be ethnically cleansed in order to make the attempted nation reasonably apparent; then, languages, architecture, and history were cleansed as well. Lastly Titoism, which L. Carl Brown, in 1996, proposed to understand as a neo-Ottoman pluralism rather than Communism, failed, crushed under nationalism and antiislamism while all the Europeans stood by and looked at and shackled their heads about: Nay, those Balkan barbarians! And indeed, how could they, who never had looked into a mirror, recognize their own heritage, or rather their identity?
A heritage we can hardly be happy with.
Still, we cannot draw the geographical borders of Enlightenment, Humanism, or “Jewo”-Christianity. Obviously, they cross through countries, they even cross individual brains. The only way to draw reasonable geographical borders is by geographical methods. Otherwise, we sort people, not space. Necessarily, we’ll come back to that issue.
The end
Some stuff for further reading :
ADANIR, Fikret (1998): The Ottoman peasantries, c. 1360 – c. 1860. – 269-310 in: SCOTT, T. (ed.): The peasantries of Europe. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. – 416 S., London (Longman)
ADANIR, F. (2001): Das Osmanische Reich als orientalische Despotie in der Wahrnehmung des Westens. – 83-121 in: KÜRSAT-AHLERS, E., TAN, D. & H.-P. WALDHOFF (Hrsg.): Türkei und Europa. Facetten einer Beziehung in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. – 235 S., Frankfurt am Main (IKO-Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation)
ADANIR, Fikret (2003): Religious communities and ethnic groups under imperial sway: Ottoman and Habsburg lands in comparison. – 54-886 in: HOERDER, D., HARZIG, C. & A. SHUBERT (eds.): The historical practice of diversity. – 278 S., Oxfort, New York (Berghahn)
AKSAN, Virginia H. (1999): Locating the Ottomans among early modern empires. – Journal of Early Modern History 3 (2): 103-134. Leiden.
AYDIN, Mahmut (2001): Religious pluralism: A challenge for Muslims – A theological evaluation. – Journal of Ecumenical Studies 38: 330-352. Philadelphia, Pa.
CIRAKMAN, Asli (2001): From tyranny to despotism: The Enlightenment’s unenlightened image of the Turks. – International Journal of Middle East Studies 33: 49-68. Cambridge.
DARLING, Linda T. (2002): Another look at periodization in Ottoman history. – The Turkish Studies Association Journal 26 (2): 19-28. Bloomington, Indiana.
DAVID, G. (2001): Limitations of conversion: Muslims and Christians in the Balkans in the sixteenth century. - 149-156 in: ANDOR, E. & I.G. TOTH (eds.): Frontiers of faith. Religious exchange and the constitution of religious identities 1400-1750. – 295 S., Budapest (Central European University/European Science Foundation)
FAROQHI, Suraiya (1978): The early history of the Balkan fairs. – Südost-Forschungen 37: 50-68. München.
FAROQHI, Suraiya (1997): Vom Sklavenmädchen zur Mekkapilgerin. Lebensläufe Bursaer Frauen im späten fünfzehnten Jahrhundert. – 7-29 in: KREISER, K. & C.K. NEUMANN (Hrsg.): Das Osmanische Reich in seinen Archivalien und Chroniken. Neyat Göyünc zu Ehren. – 327 S., Istanbul, Stuttgart (Franz Steiner Verlag)
FISCHER-GALATI, Stephen A. (1959): Ottoman imperialism and German protestantism 1521-1555. – 140 S., Cambridge, Massachusetts (Harvard University Press), London (Oxford University Press)
FODOR, P. (2001): The Ottomans and their Christians in Hungary. – 137-147 in: ANDOR, E. & I.G. TOTH (eds.): Frontiers of faith. Religious exchange and the constitution of religious identities 1400-1750. – 295 S., Budapest (Central European University/European Science Foundation)
GÖCEK, Fatma Müge (1996): Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire. – 220 S., New York, N.Y. (Oxford University Press)
GÖCEK, Fatma Müge (2002): Decline of the Ottoman empire and the emergence of Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Arab nationalism. – 15-83 in: GÖCEK, F.M. (ed.): Social constructions of nationalism in the Middle East. – 279 S., Albany (State University of New York press)
GOFFMAN, Daniel (2002): The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe. – 273 S.. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press; New approaches to Europen History 24)
GROTHUSEN, Klaus-Detlev (1979): Die Orientalische Frage als Problem der europäischen Geschichte: 79-96 in: GROTHUSEN, Klaus-Detlev (Hrsg.): Die Türkei in Europa. - 271 S, Göttingen (.Vandenhoek & Ruprecht)
GROTHAUS, Maximilian (2002): Vom Erbfeind zum Exoten: Kollektive Mentalitäten über die Türken in der Habsburger Monarchie der frühen Neuzeit: 99-113 in: FEIGL, Inanc, HEUBERGER, Valeria, PITTIONI, Manfred & Kerstin TOMENENDAL (Hrsg.): Auf den Spuren der Osmanen in der österreichischen Geschichte. 179 S., Frankfurt am Main u.a. (Peter Lang, Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften)
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KIEL, Machiel (1983): The oldest monuments of Ottoman-Turkish architecture in the Balkans: the imaret and the mosque of Ghazi Evrenos Bey in Gümülcine (Komotini) and the Evrenos Bey Khan in the village of Ilica/Loutra in Greek Thrace (1370-1390). – Sanat Tarihi Yiligi – Kunsthistorische Forschungen 12: 117-138. Istanbul.
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