Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (16 page)

In addition to the complex, often unsupportive attitude of the Ottoman state and Muslim religious sentiments, however, the Ottoman historian Roderic Davison attributed a much larger role for the failure of the early equality edicts to the Christians of the empire themselves. In his words, “the program of equality between Christian and Muslim in the empire remained largely unrealized not because of bad faith on the part of leading Ottoman statesmen but because many of the Christians wanted it to fail.”
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As he pointed out, non-Muslim religious leaders would have much to lose both financially and politically in a setting of actualized Ottomanism. In that context, Davison reported that after the 1839 reform decree was read to the assembled notables and then returned into its red satin pouch, the Greek Orthodox patriarch proclaimed,
“Inshallah
—God grant that it not be taken out of this bag again.”

In addition to the Greek Orthodox patriarch's resistance to Ottomanism, another major challenge involved the unwillingness of many of the empire's Christians and Jews to partake of the emancipation bargain—equal
rights in exchange for equal obligations, or in other words, Ottomanism instead of Capitulations. In fact, despite the 1869 Nationality Law—which in theory recognized Greek Orthodox with dual citizenship as being Greek when in the Hellenic kingdom but as being Ottoman while in the empire—nonetheless many Greek Orthodox dual citizens continued to wave their Greek passports in order to avoid taxation, at least until the 1897 Greek-Ottoman war abrogated Greek Capitulatory rights entirely.
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Truth be told, given their privileged state of affairs, what non-Muslim with foreign citizenship or protégé status in his right mind would willingly give it up?

In addition, by the mid-nineteenth century there were already nuclei of separatist nationalist movements in the southeastern European provinces of the empire and on the island of Crete. In Davison's view, the Ottomanist project emerged too late to forge any loyalty and patriotism in those parts of the empire. Indeed, those southeastern provinces were taken from the empire in the Treaty of Berlin, which was seen as evidence by some of the Young Ottomans of the ongoing inequality in Muslim-Christian and Ottoman-European relations. In other words, the possibilities of actual implemented Ottomanism as well as Ottomans' support of it shrank in direct relation to the intervention of Europe on behalf of Ottoman Christians.

Finally, despite the formal application of the term
Ottoman
to all citizens of the empire regardless of religion, ethnicity, or mother tongue, nonetheless there remained an assumption among some intellectuals that Ottoman meant “Muslim” and even “Turk.” Commanders of the Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad saw the “sons of the Turks” as the most reliable soldiering class even as compared to other Muslim ethnic groups.
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As well, despite the empire's historically famed equal-opportunity in government service where converts throughout the empire had risen to become grand vizier, thirty-four of the last thirty-nine grand viziers were Anatolian or Rumelian Muslims whose mother tongue was Turkish. In line with these state policies which increasingly revealed a preferential attitude toward Turks and Muslims, Osman Nuri Pasha, a former governor to the Hijaz and Yemen, likened the empire to a tree whose trunk of roots was made up of the Turks, whereas the boughs and branches were the other peoples of the empire.
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Liberal intellectuals were not immune to this sentiment, either; when asked on a train in Europe in 1889 if he was Jewish, the highly respected writer Ahmed Midhat Effendi responded: “No, sir. I am not Jewish, I am Ottoman. [In fact] I am the purest Ottoman, I am Turkish and Muslim.”
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Clearly Ottomanism still had a great deal of work left to do at the turn of the twentieth century.

THE THEATRICALITY OF REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERHOOD

With the 1908 revolution, this simmering issue of the empire's religious and ethnic diversity came to the fore in the most visceral and immediate way by means of the literal visibility of the empire's various religious and ethnic groups, creating a certain theatrical production of revolutionary brotherhood. Just as the revolutionary trope of “liberty” tapped into a longstanding critique of the Hamidian regime in particular as well as new ways of thinking about political legitimacy and rule more broadly, so too did the revolutionary slogans of “equality and brotherhood” reveal much about the Ottoman social reality on the eve of revolution, as much a criticism of the existing state of interreligious relations as an ideal for the future.

Four central themes emerged from contemporary reports of the revolutionary celebrations: the rhetoric of unanimous, consensual participation of all Ottomans; symbolic peace, reconciliation, and mutual regard between groups in the form of kissing, hugging, and shaking hands; the redrawing of spatial and territorial boundaries; and the promotion of a new language of kinship, solidarity, and affiliation—in other words, the emergence of a new discourse of the Ottoman nation.

The union being celebrated among Ottomans took place against the backdrop of former hostilities and conflicts, often cast as being products of the previous regime. “Everyone felt what freedom is, and how much they [had] suffered!” one Hebrew newspaper editorialized.
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A similar thought was expressed in an Arabic newspaper that declared “as we were equal in oppression, so we were equal in demanding equality and the constitution…the oppression of tyranny was on the head of the Muslim and Christian, on the Turk and Arab and Armenian and Kurd and Albanian and Greek.”
⁶⁴

Public figures such as Suleiman al-Bustani, the Christian parliamentary candidate in Beirut, explicitly blamed the Hamidian government for its politics of division and sectarianism (
siyāsat al-tafrīq)
, took to task tyrannical religious leaders for serving the government, and called on Muslims and non-Muslims alike to overcome their historic prejudices.
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In addition to general discussion of past mutual hostility and suspicion, the Armenian massacres of the 1890s took prominent place in the litany of examples of Hamidian-orchestrated sectarianism. At a general celebration held in honor of the constitution at an Armenian church in Cairo, where men and women of all religions were in attendance, Dr. Sharaf al-Din, a Muslim who had long been active in liberal secret societies,
blamed the old regime for the “calamitous events,” but also recalled the good relations that had previously existed between Muslims and their Armenian neighbors who would leave their children, wives, and belongings in the other's care when called away for military service or travel.
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Furthermore, the speaker claimed, one of the first acts carried out by the Young Turks after the revolution was a pilgrimage to the graves of those Armenians who had “fallen victims to the tyrants.”

In other words, past conflicts between Ottoman religious and ethnic groups were blamed on the sultan or other manipulating parties (the European powers, nationalist propagandists, religious extremists), rather than reflecting any essential or structural limitation afflicting the Ottoman nation. Instead, revolutionary discourse saw Ottomans of all stripes as displaying their true character and true commitments in the days of revolutionary euphoria. The ubiquitous phrase
irrespective of (‘ala ikhtilāf
, in Arabic) was used as a way of leveling participation among all Ottomans “irrespective of” religion, sect, ethnicity, or status, and reinforcing the idea of a united Ottoman people in all its diversity. “If you had seen them on the day of the constitution,” al-Bustani waxed lyrically, “the imam and the priest and the rabbi—all were united with tears of joy.”
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Symbolically, this reconciliation played itself out in spontaneous and ritualized physical expressions between members of historically antagonistic or alienated groups—hugs, kisses, and handshaking all represented the peaceful settling of old scores as well as the intimate commitment to the new era. This reconciliation took place at the highest levels, with the famous hug between the
şeyhülislam
and the Greek-Orthodox patriarch in Istanbul, and spread down through the common crowds in the empire's mixed towns and cities. Rashid Rida cited the
şeyhülislam's
behavior as the model for his own, after he hugged Armenian priests at a public event at an Armenian church in Cairo, to the applause of the crowd.
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Another article approvingly noted that “the Muslim shook hands with the Christian, and the Kurd reconciled with the Armenian, and the Turk hugged the Arab.”
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From Istanbul we have the following report from a Jewish correspondent:

The joy of the masses is quiet, celebratory. Not a drop of blood, not one tear. The joy is genuine, internal. There is not a single shadow of hatred or jealousy. And Armenian hugs Greek. Both of them hug the Bulgarian. And taking part are the Turk, citizen of Istanbul, and his brother the Jew, and they all dance out of joy…. And so it is in the houses of prayer and the mosques—we are all brothers: as Jews, as Turks, as Greeks we will live in peace and tranquility and we will work for our land and for our sultan!
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In Aleppo, it was reported that “Moslems, Christians and Jews mingled together, with brotherly feeling, and strong men of all sects wept with joy.”
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From Beirut, the American consul reported:

Perhaps the most significant feature of the general rejoicing has been and is the dropping of religious animosities and prejudices…. Hence, we now observe, in the streets of Beirut, the Maronite priest four times kiss the Moslem Sheikh and the Moslem Sheikh respond by four times kissing the Maronite priest. Moslems and Christians publicly embrace each other, protesting that henceforth they are brethren, that there are Christians, Moslems, Jews, Mitwalehs [Shi'ites] etc., no more, only loyal Ottoman subjects standing shoulder to shoulder prepared to fight for the liberties granted by the Sultan, long live the Sultan!
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This spirit of interpersonal reconciliation spread across physical space in the empire, as public displays of literally crossing communal boundaries were reported throughout the empire. A local consular official in Jerusalem observed:

Bands of Moslem young men went into the Greek quarter, where they were entertained, they then bringing back numbers of the Christian young men into the Moslem quarter, where they rejoiced together, the Moslems then escorting the Greeks through the sacred Mosque of Omar grounds, into which, hitherto, no Christian could enter except by official permission and accompanied by a soldier. The Christians also brought many Jews from their quarter and entertained them, and then took them through the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, to pass in front of which even was heretofore as much as a Jew's life would be worth.
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However, this emergent “brotherhood” of the revolution, while celebrated, was neither obvious nor unchallenged by the structural limitations of local relationships, which varied from region to city to neighborhood to household. In Hebron, a majority Muslim town with only a tiny Jewish community and no Christian community of which to speak, the newspaper correspondent Menashe Mani, the child of a Jewish family from Baghdad with deep roots in Hebron, reminds us that intercommunal relations were often a fragile thing.
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Just a few days earlier Jews were afraid to host Arabs in their courtyards, but now they are brothers and there is a feeling that something unites them. Some power lifted the wall that divides the people, and they are brothers, all sons of one land, all sons of one government. The public love of the Jews grew—Muslim youth danced in front of the Jews and honored them; Jews could not believe it. All was wonderful until a woman cried about her son being taken to the army—woman, be quiet and do not worry, and anyway is this not everyone's duty?
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Other reports from throughout Palestine and the empire highlighted joint celebrations and accounts of mutual hospitality. In coastal Jaffa,
which had a sizeable Christian and much smaller Jewish population, Shaykh Salim al-Ya'qubi, who had studied at the famed Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, gave a very emotional speech denouncing differences between Muslims, Jews, and Christians.
⁷⁶
The crowd responded enthusiastically, followed by emotional support from Christian and Jewish representatives. Later, a private citizen named Salim Salahi sponsored a three-day fete in Jaffa at his own expense, inviting all the notables from the three religions; he also placed an announcement in Hebrew on the doors of the synagogues inviting Jewish religious figures. In honor of the event, his home was decorated; tables covered with food were set up in the street; and lemonade, scented water, and cigarettes were freely distributed. There were also speeches in Arabic, Turkish, and French, and a band played to entertain the guests.
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In Jaffa, the Jewish community held a general celebration to which government officials and members of other religious communities were invited. In Jerusalem, the Greek Orthodox Christian Arab and the Armenian Christian communities also hosted celebrations at which they opened up the extensive gated grounds of the Patriarchate to the public and distributed free refreshments.
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These celebrations marked the community's first steps into the Ottoman public sphere as an equal of its neighbors; by hosting the entire city, the community honored the rest of the populace, while in turn, by attending, the rest of the population honored the host community.