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Ottoman Political Parties

January 28, 2014, 1:57 pm
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Mavi Boncuk |
Ottoman Political Parties

FEDAİLER CEMİYETİ  1859, İstanbul
Leader: Süleymaniyeli Şeyh Ahmet
General Secretary: Didon Arif Bey,
Members:Hüseyin Daim Paşa, Binbaşı Rasim Bey, Cafer Dem Paşa, Tophane Müftüsü Bekir Efendi, Kütahyalı Şeyh İsmail, Hoca Nasuh Efendi, Tophane Mızıka Başçavuşu Erzurumlu Mehmed, Hezergradlı Şeyh Feyzullah Efendi, Kütahyalı Şeyh İsmail
  
YENİ OSMANLILAR CEMİYETİ 1865, İstanbul
Leader: Mustafa Fazıl Paşa
Founders: Namık Kemal, Kayazade Reşat, Menapirzade Nuri, Sagır Ahmet Beyzade Mehmet, Mir’at Mecmuası sahibi Refik, Suphi Paşazade Ayetullah
Other Members:Ziya Paşa, Ali Suavi, Agah Efendi, Ebüzziya Tevfik...
  
ALİ SUAVİ (ÜSKÜDAR) KOMİTESİ 1878, İstanbul
Founders: Ali Suavi, Süleyman Asaf Sopasalan, Hafız Nuri, Hasköylü Hacı Ahmet, Mehmet İzzet Paşazade Süleyman, Bağdatlı Süleyman, Üsküdarlı Nuri, Filibeli Ahmet Paşa, Arnavut Salih, Hacı Ahmet, Molla Mustafa
  
KLEANTİ SKALYERİAZİZ BEY KOMİTESİ 1878, İstanbul
Leader: Kleanti Skalyeri
Members: Nakşibend kalfa, Aziz Bey, Ali Şefkari Bey, Tabib Agah Bey
  
OSMANLI İTTİHAD VE TERAKKİ CEMİYETİ 1889, İstanbul 1918 İstanbul. 
General Director Ali Rüştü
Founding Members:İbrahim Temo, Abdullah Cevdet, İshak Sükuti, Mehmed Reşid, Hüseyinzade Ali

Paris Branch (1889)
General Director Ahmet Dıza Bey,
Directors: Mehmet Ali Paşa, Recep Fuat, Nihat, Dr.Nazım, Bahaddin Şakir, Sami Paşazade Sezai, Alber Fua

Cenevre Branch (1897)
Founders: Dr.İshak Sükuti, Abdullah Cevdet, Ethem Ruhi (Balkan), Tıbbiyeli Mustafa Ragıp, Esat, Mithat Şükrü (Bleda), Ahmet, Mizancı Murat, Tunalı Hilmi, Seraceddin, Dr. Hasan, Lütfi, Dr. Akil Muhtar (Özden), Nuri Ahmet, Reşit Beyler

Kahire Branch (1897)
Founders: İshak Sükuti, Tunalı Hilmi, Hoca Kadri, Salih Cemal, Ali Ziya, Ferit (Tek)

Selanik Branch (1908)
General Director Talat Bey (Paşa)
Directors: Hüseyin Kadri, Mithat Şükrü (Bleda), Hayri, Ahmet Rıza, Enver (Paşa), Habib, İpekli Hafız İbrahim Beyler

İTTİHADI OSMANİ CEMİYETİ 1889

TEŞEBBÜSİ ŞAHSİ VE ADEMİ MERKEZİYET CEMİYETİ 1902, Paris
General Director Prens Sabahattin
Founders and Members:Ahmet Fazlı (Genel Sekreter), İsmail Kemal, Dr. Nihat Reşat (Belger), Dr. Rıfat, Miralay Zeki, Dr. Sabri, Hüseyin Tosun, Milaslı Asker Murat, Şair Hüseyin Siret.

OSMANLI İTTİHAD VE İNKILAP CEMİYETİ 1904, Cenevre
Founders: Ethem Ruhi Balkan, Dr. Abdullah Cevdet, Varnalı Kamil, Tarsusizade Münir, Mehmet Cemil

CEMİYETİ İNKILABİYE 1904
Founders: Hamid, Satvet Lütfi (Tozan), Namık Zeki, Ferit Necdet Mübin, Dr. Mahmud, Köprülü Hamdi, Mustafa Asım, Nafi Atuf (Kansu), Vehbi Semuh

OSMANLI HÜRRİYET CEMİYETİ 1906 Selanik
Founders: İsmail Canbulat, Mithat Şükrü, Bursalı Tahir, Yüzbaşı Naki, Talat Bey, Rahmi , Ömer Naci, Kazım Nami, İsmail Hakkı, Süleyman Fehmi

VATAN VE HÜRRİYET CEMİYETİ 1906 Şam
Founders: Dr. Mustafa Cantekin, Binbaşı Lütfi, Mustafa Kemal, Lütfi Müfit Özdeş

Islahatı Esâsîyei Osmaniye Fırkası (1909)
Osmanlı Demokrat Fırkası Fırkayı İbad (16 Şubat 1909)
İttihadı Muhammedi Fırkası” (5 Nisan 1909)
Mutedil Hürriyet perveran Fırkası (Kasım 1909)
Ahali Fırkası” (21 Şubat 1910) 
Osmanlı Sosyalist Fırkası” (1910)

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Take This Empfängt and...

January 29, 2014, 8:06 am
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Dear Angela

The Chancellor of Germany does not think that this meeting is between equals.  

First Press Release from German Embassy in Ankara used the Turkish word 'kabul' and later corrected it to 'görüşme', yet kept the German word unchanged. 

At this moment we can turn a blind eye to the transitive or intransitive biological use of  Empfängt as to conceive; to become pregnant (with). 

Take This  Empfängt and... belittle Turkish PM if you choose to do so.  

Mavi Boncuk |

Pressemitteilung Nr. 3 vom 29.01.2014
Bundeskanzlerin Merkel empfängt den türkischen Ministerpräsidenten Erdogan
Der Sprecher der Bundesregierung, Steffen Seibert, teilt mit:
Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel empfängt den türkischen Ministerpräsidenten Recep Tayyip Erdogan am 4. Februar 2014, 12:00 Uhr, zu einem Meinungsaustausch im Bundeskanzleramt.[1]
Im Mittelpunkt des gemeinsamen Gesprächs stehen die bilateralen Beziehungen sowie aktuelle internationale Fragen.

Almanya Büyükelçiliği'nin 3 No'lu ve 29.01.2014 tarihli basın bildirisi
Başbakan Merkel, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Başbakanı Sayın Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ile görüşecektir
Federal Hükümet Sözcüsü Steffen Seibert ilgili basın mensuplarına şu bilgiyi aktarmıştır:
Başbakan Angela Merkel, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Başbakanı Sayın Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ile 4 Şubat 2014 tarihinde, saat 12.00´de, Başbakanlık binasında fikir alışverişinde bulunmak üzere görüşecektir[2].

Görüşmenin ana gündemi Türkiye ve Almanya arasındaki ikili ilişkiler ve güncel uluslararası konular olacaktır.

[1] German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomes the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 4 February 2014, 12:00 clock, to exchange views at the Federal Chancellery.

Kabul / Empfängt: to receive a visitor. emp- +‎ fangen Old High German intfahan, from Germanic. Cognate with obsolete English onfang.

[2] Görüşme-noun
Begegnung: rastlama, karşılaşma, karşılama, davranış, maç, görüşme
Treffen: görüşme, buluşma, karşılaşma
Zusammenkunft: toplantı, görüşme
Audienz: huzura kabul, görüşme
Zulauf: kalabalık, görüşme, izdiham
Erörterung: görüşme, konuşma
Gespräch: görüşme, diyalog
Debatte: konuşma, görüşme
Diskussion: tartışma, görüşme
Beratung: görüşme, danışma, konsültasyon
Besprechung: danışma, konuşma, görüşme, tanıtma yazısı
Verhandlung: görüşme
Unterhandlung: görüşme
Unterredung: görüşme

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In Memoriam | Ayşe Nana (1936-2014)

January 30, 2014, 7:34 am
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Ayse Nana shook Istanbul in the end of the 50's by adding striptease to her dance. Sema Yildiz and Inci Birol were legendary throughout the Middle East and were the stars of the 60's and 70's. Sema retired in 1991 with many accolades. Other dancers who hit Turkish fame during this time were Ozcan Tekgul, Leyla Sayar, Birsen Ayda, Aysel Tanju, Necla Ateş, and Zennube. They starred in movies and had songs dedicated to them. [*]

"Nana gitti Parise / Kaldık Semiramis’e / Semiramis yine hamile / Düştük Türkan Şamil’e | nana went to paris. We are left with Semiramis. Semiramis is pregnant again. We down graded to Türkan Şamil " 

[*]Top Turkish Talent by Jasmin Jahal, January 200

Mavi Boncuk |

Ayşe Nana (78) had been battling with cancer in Rome for the past months. Originally an Istanbulite Armenian, Ayşe Nana followed a career as oriental dancer from 1950s to 1980s in Istanbul, Roma and Paris. Later in the 1980s, she opened up theater and dance schools. 

On November 5, 1958, she stirred controversy both in Italy and Turkey with her dance performance in Rome’s Rugantino Night Club.  L'Espresso published her nude topless photos by Tazio Secchiaroli[1] at party, a photo shoot that caused criticism amid Italy’s Catholics. Following that, she was detained for “undocumented labor” and “performing obscene shows”. An undisclosed millionaire reportedly bailed her out, saving her from deportation. 

The event inspired Fellini for his masterpiece La Dolce Vita and Nadia Grey re created Nana's performance. 

Ayşe Nana was once engaged to Saro Balsamo[2].


Pictured 'La Dolce Vita'





[1]Tazio Secchiaroli (1925 - 24 July 1998) was an Italian photographer known as one of the original paparazzi. He founded the agency Roma Press Photo in 1955.
Secchiaroli was the inspiration for the Paparazzo character in Fellini's film La Dolce Vita. Much of Fellini's research into the profession of tabloid journalism was simply buying dinner for Secchiaroli and his friends, and listening to their exploits.

Mr. Secchiaroli was a paparazzo in all but name when Fellini spotted him in the late 1950's. He and his fellow photographers, Sergio Spinelli, Velio Cioni and Elio Sorci, would chase celebrities on their Vespas and try to photograph them unawares.

Ironically, by the time the term 'paparazzi' was coined, Secchiaroli had become more of an insider in the Italian film industry and had left the paparazzi-style attack photography behind. He became well known for informal candid portraits of film stars, both at the studio and at their homes.

There are a number of theories about the name Paparazzo. Some say it is a contraction of the Italian words papagallo (parrot) and ragazzo (guy). Fellini was quoted as saying he chose it because it was the name of a childhood friend of his ''who liked to imitate the buzzing sounds of pesky insects.'' In any case, from that name an infamous word was born.

[2] In 1966, the Italian publisher Saro Balsamo launched the magazine Men, which showed women in bikinis. Other two magazines published by Balsamo, "Relax" and "Le Ore", were also mainly for adult male readers. "Cronaca italiana" was directed: to whoever is interested to chronicle  Italy in all its aspects, with a massive use of photos. His wife Adelina Tattilo is acknowledged to be a pioneer in the Italian erotic magazine publishing sector, who contributed to change the social customs Italy from the second half the 1960s. By launching Playmen, Tattilo engaged publishers like Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt in an ideological battle to liberate sexual attitudes and free them from bigotry and false moralisms. In the 1960s, Tattilo launched Menelik, a successful weekly magazine of erotic comic strips, featuring the character 'Bernarda'. In 1965 Tattilio and her husband, later separated, broke into publishing with a weekly called Big, a magazine for teenage boys. Playmen was founded in 1967, and looked similar to Playboy, which was then banned in Italy. She died after a brief illness in Rome, February 1, 2007 at the age of 78.
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Rakkas Culture and Rabbit Boys

January 30, 2014, 9:54 am
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Mavi Boncuk |

The male dancers had more freedom when Compared with rakkase. They could be either Muslim or non-Muslim. Historians say that there were two different types of rakkas: kocek and tavsan oglan. Koceks had long and curly hair which was seen as a sign of beauty during that period. Koceks did not wear hats or headscarves but wore women's dresses. The tavsan oglan (rabbit boy) wore a charming little hat and tight pants. Historians believe the majority of tavsan oglans originated from non-Muslim societies living on islands in the Aegean and Marmara regions. Reports suggest that koceks and tavsan oglans performed mainly during Ramadan. At other times these men would work as "Sakis" (bartenders) in the meyhanes (special restaurants serving meze, raki or wine) or dance at special occasions such as weddings. 

Male Belly Dance in Turkey by Jasmin Jahal, February 2002

In February 2000, the Associated Press released an article about how the Turkish police rescued a 19-year-old male whose father had chained him to a bed for three days. The stated reason for this abuse? The father disapproved of his son's performances as a belly dancer!

It has become all the rage in Istanbul for nightclubs to feature young, handsome male belly dancers. They are called rakkas from the word raks, which means dance. They dress in sparkling costumes and perform nearly every night of the week. While conservatives object to male belly dancing, the practice actually ha a very long history, particularly in Turkey.

The Ottoman Empire was an era that was named for a Muslim prince called Osman I. The golden age of the Empire was during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-66). Throughout the reigns of several sultans, the Ottoman Empire lasted from 1345 until 1922, when the sultanate was abolished and Turkey became a republic.

The center of the Empire was always the royal palace of the Sultan, the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. Should you visit Istanbul today, you can still visit the buildings of the Palace, now presented as a tourist attraction and a museum of great historical value. The Palace was at its greatness a collection of buildings around a series of courtyards and included beautiful gardens and the Sultan's harem.

In Muslim countries, the harem was that part of a house set apart for the women of the family. It was a place in which non-family males were not allowed. Eunuchs guarded the Sultans' harems, which were quite large, including several hundred women who were wives and concubines. There, female dancers and musicians entertained the women living in the harem. Belly dance was performed by women for women. The rakkase is the female dancer of the Ottoman era. Becoming a rakkase or a singer was strictly forbidden for Muslim women. Even non-Muslim rakkase had to wear headscarves and very conservative dresses. Although forbidden by religion, the government tolerated music and dancing. Yet, female dancers hardly ever appeared in public.

With the absence of females in social and entertainment life, Ottoman men would watch male belly dancers, generally known as rakkas, to satisfy their need to see something aesthetic. The male dancers had more freedom when compared with rakkase. They could be either Muslim or non-Muslim. Historians say that there were two different kinds of rakkas: kocek and tavsan oglan.

The tavsan oglan (which means "rabbit boy") wore a charming hat and tight pants. The koceks often wore women's clothes and allowed their long, curly hair to flow freely. Koceks and tavsan oglans performed for wedding celebrations (the custom included men and women to celebrate separately), feasts, festivals, and also in the presence of the sultans.

The tradition of rakkas is a reflection of the solitary existence of the Ottoman male. The dancing boys were organized into different companies of entertainers called kol. By the mid 1600's, they were said to be about 3000 of these dancers in twelve companies. They were young boys who were sensuous, attractive, effeminate, and carefully trained in music and dance. Their dancing was sexually provocative and impersonated female dancers. It incorporated ladylike walking, finger snapping (a special two-handed finger snap), slow belly movements, suggestive gestures, acrobatics, and playing wooden clappers called calpara or, in later times, metal cymbals called zils. The boys danced as long as they stayed good looking and could hide their beards. The dancing boys were an acceptable substitute for the prohibited women dancers. Some audience members were so enamored with the koceks that they would write poetry about the male dancers.  Many times audiences lost control, shattering glasses, and even shouting and attacking the dancers.

The koceks profession went out of style in the 1800's during the era of Mahmut II. It was officially banned in 1856, forcing many of the koceks to emigrate to other countries such as Egypt.

Today, male dancers dressed as women still perform in some areas of Turkey. They often entertain for weddings and special celebrations. No longer are the male dancers organized into the twelve companies that existed during the Ottoman era. The sensuality of their performances has faded and is usually considered nothing more than a folkloric show. Yet the effect of the rakkas history is still felt amongst the new millennium's fad to hire male belly dancers. They are as sexual and popular as any of the best Turkish female belly dancers.

The very concept of men performing belly dance can stir a controversy. There certainly exists a place in Middle Eastern dance for men. However, it is most often best accepted if done in a folkloric sense and with traditional garb. A great many Middle Eastern men are offended by a male dancer who moves his body the way a female dancer would. Yet, there are some wonderfully talented male belly dancers in the oriental dance world today. The history of belly dance in Turkey proves that the performance arena of oriental dance has incorporated male dancers for centuries. Then as now, the audience found enjoyment, beauty, talent and excitement.
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Turkish Tobacco and Cigarettes in US

January 30, 2014, 11:42 am
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Mavi Boncuk | The popularity of Turkish and Egyptian cigarettes had peaked by World War One. However, before volume leaders Murad, Helmar and Fatima gave way to the newer 'American Blend' cigarette, a colorful marketing war was fought. Magazine advertising was used to produce striking imagery of the romantic Orient, or "wherever America's social life centers."

"HELMAR, THE QUEEN OF TURKISH CIGARETTES" August 1907---ca. 1966
Helmar wasn't an Egyptian deity, just Ramleh spelled backwards. The Egyptian Ideal Cigarette and Tobacco Works began manufacturing Ramleh in 1902. By 1907 the all-Turkish tobacco [1] cigarette was being made by S. Anargyros [2], a branch of The American Tobacco Company. ATCo management decided to change the Ramleh name, but keep the colorful Egyptian graphics, to avoid confusion with Ramly Cigarettes. Ramly was an Egyptian style smoke made by the Mentor Co. in Boston, and ATCo felt the cigarette misrepresented their Ramleh. Newspaper ads were used to alert customers to the name change. 

The cork tipped Helmar pictured top right in the 'cup' soft pack of twenty, was considered innovative when test marketed in Boston beginning February 1928. Priced 20 cents a pack, a spokesman for Lorillard felt that "A round cigarette made of Turkish tobacco will appeal to many patrons who like a Turkish cigarette but prefer the round shape. It's freer burn, lighter weight and other features is expected to open up a new market for Turkish cigarettes which has large possibilities." Pictured below is a tin Helmar flat 50, and Helmar Filter Cigarettes. Helmar Filters in a flip-top box were test marketed in California by the Lorillard Tobacco Company ca. 1966. The original straight-Turkish tobacco Helmar continued to be made long enough to have a health warning stamped on the side of the flat clam-shell box. Helmar was withdrawn about 1966.

PLAY BALL! 1916 | Helmar was the volume leader among the least expensive of the all-Turkish tobacco brands. Advertising targeted gentlemen who enjoyed a good cigarette, but didn't care to pay the premium price asked for Pall Mall, Egyptian Deites, Mogul or Murad. The Helmar advertising used to catch a smoker's attention included those ads published in newspapers and magazines, porcelain, tin, and wood framed signs, plus the always popular and free insert cards. The 'boys of summer' who played ball during the years just before the beginning of the First World War included: Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and Reuben Oldring.

A ROMP ON THE WILD SIDE 1917-1918
Bigger than life cigarette boxes provided a platform for fantasy women to romp in a man's imagination. However sinful it might be for the girl next door to light up, morals of the day did allow for a slight fading of innocence for the sake of advertising.

MEDITERRANEAN PLEASURES 1900-1920 

A RECOGNIZABLE SYMBOL OF ISLAM 1890---1911 | Slim and elegant, the minarets in the Muslim world are used to call the faithful to prayer. Minaret Cigarettes were introduced to American smokers by tobacconist Sotirios Anargyros in 1890. 

[1] Not all Turkish tobacco is a high quality leaf. The tobacco grown in the districts of Sinopi, Inepoli, Zoun Goaldak, and part of the Valley of Kastamonis is considered inferior to the excellent leaves produced in Bafra and Samsoun. Tobacco plants need a sandy soil under laid with clay. The clay holds moisture in, helping to protect from drought. The color and depth of the soil, the distance from the Mediterranean or Black Sea's salt air, and the amount of rainfall, all contribute to the quality of the aromatic smoking tobaccos grown there. Tobacco buyers representing American, European, and Egyptian cigarette manufacturers avoided those districts that didn't have a reputation for growing a superior leaf.

[2]Anargyros was an immigrant from Greece who made his high quality, Egyptian style, straight-Turkish tobacco cigarettes in New York City. Pack graphics were a combination of Greek antiquity in a North African setting. James Duke's American Tobacco Company trust bought the S. Anargyros company in 1900. ATCo continued to make Minaret until dropped in 1911 when the trust was dissolved.

Source Jim's Burnt Offerings
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The Orient Express Goes Down...Yet

January 30, 2014, 12:11 pm
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SNCF, which has owned the brand since 1977, has ambitious plans for the Orient Express name[1] – not least of which is the return of trains to Istanbul. A new Orient Express company will be launched in April, which will emphasize the high-end side of the trademark with a range of haute-couture luggage. Initially, the new train service will retrace the abridged route from Paris to Vienna, but will eventually cover the full odyssey down through the Balkans to Istanbul. Travellers should not confuse the resurrected train with the existing Venice Simplon-Orient-Express – a separate, private service specializing in luxury rail journeys.

Mavi Boncuk | The Orient Express has run in various guises for 126 years, with occasional interruptions for wars. But Europe's new railway schedule, which comes into effect shortly before Christmas, has no room for the train that connected East with West and injected intrigue into international travel.

The much-truncated international service presently shuttled each night between the Austrian capital, Vienna, and Strasbourg in eastern France. The end finally came on 14 December 2009, when the last of these trains departed.

In the early-1880's, Georges Nagelmackers, a young Belgian railway enthusiast, followed the example of George Mortimer Pullman in Britain, and began building luxury railway carriages for travel across continental Europe. In 1881, Nagelmackers introduced the first restaurant car aboard a continental train. On October 4, 1883, the first Orient-Express train service was inaugurated. The initial route ran from Paris to Giurgi (on the Danube in Romania), via Strasbourg, Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest. The Simplon Tunnel -- at 12½ miles, the world's longest -- was built in 1906, cutting the trip from Paris to Venice significantly, After the First World War the Allies insisted on a new routing and by 1921 the Orient-Express was running an extended Simplon-Orient-Express route through Switzerland and the specially constructed Simplon Tunnel to Milan, Trieste, Zagreb, and Istanbul. 

[1] The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express uses antique carriages from the Twenties and Thirties to recreate the classic era of rail travel – when the Orient Express was so famous that it was the setting for Agatha Christie’s 1934 mystery Murder On The Orient Express. Along with Venice, it runs to destinations including Vienna, Prague and Budapest – as well, crucially, as Istanbul, meaning that, somewhat confusingly, two versions of the Orient Express could compete to take passengers to Turkey when the SNCF train appears. SNCF’s Orient Express is likely to splice old and new, with antique touches that tie in with the brand’s image – but also modern rolling stock to offer a speedy journey. 

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1900 | Baker Magazasi

February 2, 2014, 10:27 am
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See Mavi Boncuk Article G and A Baker

Mavi Boncuk | Beyoğlu'nda Doğru Yol'da Fransız Sefarethanesi karşısında Meşhur Baker'in Yeni Mağazası Oda döşetmek istiyorsanız Baker Mağazaları’na yeni varit olan muhtelif nevi ve şekilde keten ve yünlü döşemeleri bir defa görmelisiniz. Her nevi mobilya ve tefrişat için Baker Mağazaları taahhüdat kabul ederek gelin odalarını, haneleri mükemmelen ve mutedil surette tefriş eylemektedir. Yolculuk etmek niyetiniz var ise Baker Mağazası’na yeni varit olan çanta, sandık, bavul vesaire malzeme-i Seferiye yi bir defa müşahide etmelisiniz. Baker Mağazası’na bu defa yazıhane ve yemek odası ve devair odalarına mahsus a'la ve nefis marokenler varit olmuştur (ulaşmıştır). Erkek çocuklara mahsus latif ve bahriye biçiminde sağlam esvap ile gayet dayanaklı zarif çocuk kunduraları lazım ise Baker Mağazası’na müracaat etmelisiniz. Terzilere elbise ısmarlamadan Baker Mağazaları’nın yeni ve zarif İngiliz kumaşlarını bir defa muayene eyleyiniz. Potinlerinize lastik almadan bir defa Baker Mağazası’nın halis İngiliz mamulâtı lastik kunduralarını görmelisiniz. Fanila- çorap-mendil en birinci İngiliz mamulâtından. Yataklara mahsus en zarif ve kalın battaniye ve yorganlar ve çarşaflar. Kadın ve erkeklere mahsus gayet metin ve zarif İngiliz mamulâtından ayakkabılar. Servet-i Fünun, ( January 4th) 4 Ocak 1900
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Article | Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul

February 3, 2014, 1:32 pm
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Mr. Pamuk in the Balat neighborhood of Istanbul. Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

Mavi Boncuk |

TRAVEL

Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul
By JOSHUA HAMMER JAN. 31, 2014

On a windswept afternoon in mid-December, the writer Orhan Pamuk stood in a leafy square around the corner from Istanbul University, absorbed in a 40-year-old memory. He walked past parked motorcycles, sturdy oaks and a stone fountain, browsing through secondhand books in front of cluttered shops occupying the bottom floors of a quadrangle of pale yellow buildings. Sahaflar Carsisi, Istanbul’s used-book bazaar, has been a magnet for literary types since the Byzantine era.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Pamuk, then an architecture student and aspiring painter with a love for Western literature, would drive from his home across the Golden Horn to shop for Turkish translations of Thomas Mann, André Gide and other European authors. “My father was nice in giving me money, and I would come here on Saturday mornings in his car and fill the trunk with books,” the Nobel Laureate remembered, standing beside a bust of Ybrahim Muteferrika, who printed one of the first books in Turkey — an Arabic-Turkish language dictionary — in 1732.

Mr. Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and has lived in the city for most of his life. Monique Jaques for The New York Times
“Nobody else would be here on Saturdays. I’d be haggling, talking, chatting. I would know every clerk, but it’s all changed now,” he said, referring to the somewhat touristy atmosphere and the disappearance of characters he’d come to know, such as a manuscript seller who doubled as a Sufi preacher. These days, he said, “I come only once a year.”

Mr. Pamuk was born about three and a half miles from the market, in the prosperous Nisantasi neighborhood in 1952, the son of a businessman who frittered away much of his fortune through a series of bad investments. Mr. Pamuk grew up surrounded by relatives and servants, but quarrels between his mother and father, and the ever-present sense of a family unraveling, cast his youth into uncertainty and periodic sadness.

For most of the six decades since, Mr. Pamuk has lived in Istanbul, both in Nisantasi and nearby Cihangir, alongside the Bosporus. His work is as grounded in the city as Dickens’s was in London and Naguib Mahfouz’s was in Cairo. Novels such as “The Museum of Innocence” and “The Black Book” and the autobiographical “Istanbul: Memories and the City” evoke both a magical city and a melancholy one, reeling from the loss of empire, torn by the clash between secularism and political Islam and seduced by the West. Most of Mr. Pamuk’s characters are members of the secular elite, whose love affairs, feuds and obsessions play out in the cafes and bedrooms of a few neighborhoods.

Leafing through a book at Sahaflar Carsisi, a used-book bazaar in Istanbul. In the early 1970s, Mr. Pamuk would fill the trunk of his father's car with books from the bazaar. Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times
“I did my first foreign travel in 1959, when I went to Geneva for the summer with my father, and I didn’t leave Istanbul again until 1982,” Mr. Pamuk told me. “I belong to this city.”

Last fall, I emailed Mr. Pamuk and asked him if he would take me on a tour of the neighborhoods that shaped his upbringing and his development as a writer. After many visits, I wanted to get beyond the tourist sights and observe the city as he sees it — a place of epic history and deep personal associations. Mr. Pamuk readily agreed, and two months later I met him at his apartment in the affluent Cihangir quarter, overlooking the Cihangir Mosque, a 16th-century monolith flanked by minarets, and, beyond it, the Bosporus, the strait that forms the boundary between Europe and Asia.

It seemed appropriate that I was visiting Mr. Pamuk during the off-season, given his focus in books like “Snow” and “Istanbul” on winter, grayness and melancholy. The air was crisp, the light was muted, and although the sun occasionally burst through the clouds, the city seemed largely drained of color. “I have always preferred the winter to the summer in Istanbul,” Mr. Pamuk wrote in “Istanbul.” “I love the early evenings when autumn is slipping into winter, when the leafless trees are trembling in the north wind, and people in black coats and jackets are rushing home through the darkening streets.” From the balcony of his apartment, he looked approvingly at the sun shining weakly through the cloud cover and pronounced it an optimal day for a walk. “If this was a hugely sunny day I would be upset,” he said. “I like the black and white city as I wrote in ‘Istanbul.’ ”

I had caught up with him during the last stages of polishing his new novel, “A Strangeness in My Mind,” to be published in English in 2015, chronicling the life of an Istanbul street vendor from the 1970s to the present. He told me that he was grateful for a break. “I am an obsessive about my work, but I love it,” he said. He put on a trench coat and pulled a black baseball cap over his brow, a halfhearted effort to render himself a little less recognizable.

In 2005, Mr. Pamuk responded to an interviewer’s question about a crackdown on freedom of expression in Turkey by asserting that “a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in this country and I’m the only one who dares to talk about it.” The offhand remark, published in a Swiss newspaper, resulted in death threats, vilification in the Turkish press and charges by an Istanbul public prosecutor of the “public denigration of Turkish identity.” Mr. Pamuk was forced to flee the country for nearly a year — his longest time out of Turkey. The charges were abandoned in January 2006 amid an international outcry, and the threats have subsided. Though Mr. Pamuk sometimes travels with bodyguards, especially during his nocturnal rambles, he now feels relatively safe.

On this cloudy afternoon we followed a zigzag route that roughly paralleled the Bosporus and took us through the heart of Cihangir, once a predominantly Greek neighborhood. In the 1960s, when Mr. Pamuk was a student at the elite Robert College prep school farther up the Bosporus, rising nationalistic fervor over a looming conflict in Cyprus came to a climax in the government’s eviction of the neighborhood’s Greek population. Deprived of its commercial class, Cihangir became the city’s red-light district.

“I wrote an early novel here in the 1970s, in my grandfather’s apartment,” Mr. Pamuk said. “Every night, I used to wake up to women and their bodyguards — their macho protectors — and their clients, bargaining, throwing belts out the window.”

One engine of Cihangir’s revitalization is Mr. Pamuk’s own creation: the Museum of Innocence, which opened in 2012 in a burgundy building on a steep road leading down to the curving Golden Horn, which connects the Bosporus to the Sea of Marmara. The museum is a meticulously rendered time capsule of 1970s Istanbul, and a tribute to the power of obsession. It was inspired by Mr. Pamuk’s 2008 novel “The Museum of Innocence,” about an affluent Istanbul businessman, Kemal Basmaci, who falls in love with a poor shopgirl, Fusun, and becomes so consumed that he assembles a collection of every trace of contact with her.

Mr. Pamuk found the building himself, designed the exhibits and assembled his character’s fictional collection from flea markets and his own family heirlooms. Glass cases on the walls in darkened rooms are arranged chapter by chapter, filled with these supposed tokens of his character’s mostly unrequited love: crystal bottles of cologne, porcelain dogs, Istanbul postcards and 4,213 of Fusun’s cigarette butts, each one encased behind its own tiny window. “I didn’t publish a novel for years, but I have excuses,” Mr. Pamuk told me. “I did a museum in between.”

Karakoy Square, farther down the hill, is a waterfront plaza radiating outward into avenues lined with modern and Ottoman-era office buildings, food bazaars and appliance shops. Street vendors sell pomegranate juice and simit, the wheel-like bread otherwise known as a Turkish bagel.

Tucked off one steep avenue is an alley of government-sanctioned brothels guarded by the police. The Karakoy area conjures vivid memories for Mr. Pamuk of his childhood. He pointed out a row of bicycle shops, where his father bought him his first two-wheeler. A bit farther on is a passageway leading to the Tunel, one of the world’s oldest subterranean transit lines. The two-stop subway, built by French engineers, began in 1875 and still links Karakoy Square with the embassy district in the central Beyoglu district. In its early incarnation the train consisted of a steam engine that pulled two wooden cars, with separate compartments for men and women. “The empire fell apart, and there was no other subway line in Turkey for 120 more years,” said Mr. Pamuk, who loved riding the trains with his parents as a child.

We stopped for lunch in the shadow of the Galata Bridge, a double-decker concrete-and-steel span, opened in 1994, with walkways, three lanes of traffic in each direction and tram tracks. Plastic tables and chairs stood haphazardly on a muddy patch near the water, flanked by portable grills selling fish fillets on baguettes, garnished with paprika, chile powder and chopped vegetables. A stray dog, his ear tagged as proof of his government-issued rabies shot, lay in the dirt. “He’s a local monument,” said Mr. Pamuk, who was bitten by a street dog during an evening walk 13 years ago and had to undergo a painful series of rabies shots.

Across the inlet, in stunning contrast to the scruffy surroundings, rose the silver dome of Hagia Sophia, wreathed in limestone and sandstone minarets. Built as a Greek Orthodox basilica and opened in A.D. 537 and converted into a mosque after the 1453 Islamic conquest of Constantinople, it was secularized by Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder, and turned into a museum in 1935.

“I had little interest in Byzantium as a child,” Mr. Pamuk wrote in “Istanbul.” “I associated the word with spooky, bearded, black-robed Greek Orthodox priests, with the aqueducts that still ran through the city, with Hagia Sophia and the red-brick walls of old churches.” Legal disputes have kept this patch of waterfront property, where we were eating lunch, in limbo, resulting in a rare zone of neglect in the heart of the city. It’s one of Mr. Pamuk’s favorite places. “All my childhood was like this, but will it be like this in 20 years? No way,” he told me, as we savored the maritime smells. He is all but certain that the rapid gentrification of surrounding neighborhoods will eventually overtake this forgotten field.

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A vendor selling simit, the wheel-like bread otherwise known as a Turkish bagel. Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times
We continued across the Galata Bridge, the historic epicenter of Istanbul, stopping midway to admire the scene: tourist boats and pleasure craft floated down the Golden Horn, past the mosques of Sultan Ahmet on one side and the steep hills of Cihangir on the other. “This was originally a wooden bridge, and when I was growing up you had to pay to cross it,” he said, “but you could also hire row boats. I remember my mother taking me across by boat in the 1950s.”

Half a mile down the Golden Horn a new bridge has just opened, a sleek white span that partly blocks views of some of Istanbul’s grandest mosques. Like Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aborted plan to raze Gezi Park in Taksim Square and put up a shopping mall in the style of an Ottoman military barracks, the bridge project has divided the city largely along socioeconomic lines: The city’s liberal elite has strongly backed the preservation of its Ottoman-era core, while the mostly poorer Islamists have tended to welcome this sweeping away of the past.

A century ago, “all the boats that came from the Sea of Marmara, from the Mediterranean, ended up here,” Mr. Pamuk told me. As he relates in “Istanbul,” Gustave Flaubert arrived here in October 1850 for a six-month stay, stricken with a case of syphilis picked up in Beirut. He still managed to frequent the city’s brothels and wrote about the “cemetery whores” who serviced soldiers by night. Another celebrated visitor of that era, the French writer and politician Alphonse de Lamartine, “described boys on the bridge shouting to the tourists, ‘Sir, give me a penny,’ ” Mr. Pamuk went on. “Tourists would throw the money into the sea, and they would jump from the bridge and dive in and the money would be theirs.”

On the south side of the Golden Horn, we pushed past crowds in the Baharat spice bazaar, and emerged on a busy street in the Eminonu neighborhood. In his childhood, Mr. Pamuk was fascinated by stories about the Ottoman sultans and pashas who ruled from this quarter of Istanbul, the site of rebellions, coups and secret jails where fearsome punishments were meted out. “One place in Eminonu was especially constructed for what was known as the Hook,” Mr. Pamuk wrote in “Istanbul.” “Wearing nothing but the suit in which he emerged from his mother’s womb, the condemned was winched up with pulleys, skewered with a sharp hook, and, as the cord was released, left to drop.”

In “Istanbul,” Mr. Pamuk captured the melancholy, or huzun, that infused the metropolis during his boyhood, when it was still suffering a long decline after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He described “the old Bosporus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter ... the old booksellers who lurch from one financial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to return.”Within these few square blocks, the Ottoman rulers commissioned grandiose palaces and other buildings that proclaimed the durability of their empire. “The whole bureaucracy was here,” he said, pointing out the Sirkeci train station, a classic example of European Orientalist architecture, with colored tiles, Moorish-style archways and twin clock towers, which opened in 1890 and served as the final destination of the fabled Orient Express. The age of grandiosity didn’t last long. When Vladimir Nabokov alighted here in 1919, he found “a city in ruins,” Mr. Pamuk said. “There was no physical destruction, but this place used to get the riches of all the Middle East and the Balkans, and then it all vanished, and it was reduced to poverty.”

The autobiography, published in 2001, brought Mr. Pamuk’s life story up to his decision to become a writer in 1973 and captured a very different time in the city’s history. “The city was poor, it wasn’t Europe, and I wanted to be a writer, and I wondered, ‘Can I be happy and live in this city and realize my ambition?’ These were the dilemmas I was facing,” he told me. “When I published it the younger generation told me, ‘Our Istanbul is not that black and white, we are happier here.’ They didn’t want to know about the melancholy, my kind of dirty history of the city.”

Not far away was another symbol of Ottoman hubris: the monumental central post office, opened in 1909, shortly after a military cabal of Young Turks seized power. “Now it’s just a local branch,” he said with an ironic laugh, sizing up the arched entryway and the cavernous, nearly empty atrium. It has deep associations for Mr. Pamuk. In 1973, at 21, he had just dropped out of architecture school to devote himself to writing. Afflicted by self-doubt and parental skepticism, he decided to test his abilities by entering a short story in a local magazine competition. The tale was a historical romance set in 15th-century Anatolia, the vast hinterland east of Istanbul. His friends frantically typed sections of the story, and Mr. Pamuk raced to this post office and handed the manuscript to a woman behind the counter just hours before the deadline. “The next day I received a note from her, telling me, ‘You paid me too little,’ ” he said, gazing at the main, gazebo-like kiosk beneath the atrium’s soaring central dome, where the moment played out. “But she’d understood that I was ambitious, submitting a literary work, and she paid the postage on her own.” One month later he learned that he had won the contest. “So I love this place just because of that,” he said.

Beyazit Square, a windswept plaza behind the book bazaar, abuts Istanbul University, formerly the Ottoman Ministry of Defense compound: a sprawling campus of brick-and-stone buildings and newer, slapdash structures behind a monumental entrance gate. The plaza seethed with protests, riots and army killings during the 1960s and 1970s. Mr. Pamuk was enrolled at the journalism school during one of the most turbulent periods, but while his friends were risking their lives facing down soldiers, he spent most days reading at home in Nisantasi. “I was an ambitious, brainy guy, and university seemed like a waste of time to me.”

A few steps away we ducked into Vefa Bozacisi, another of his favorite places. Founded in 1876, the shop, a cozy establishment with leather banquettes and antique mirrors, specializes in boza, a fermented wheat drink that originated in southern Russia. Mixed with water and sugar and sprinkled with cinnamon, the creamy, butterscotch-colored concoction is served in glasses that were lined up by the dozens on polished wooden counters. Beside shelves of pomegranate vinegar, a case reverently displayed the shop’s most valuable heirloom: a silver boza cup used here in 1927 by Kemal Ataturk.

We entered the grounds of the Fatih Mosque, built on the orders of Fatih Sultan Mehmed, the conqueror of Constantinople, starting in 1463. It was rebuilt in 1771 after an earthquake destroyed it.

In a marble courtyard beside the massive pink sandstone mosque, considered one of the most graceful in the Islamic world, a wall poster caught Mr. Pamuk’s eye. It demanded freedom for Salih Mirzabeyogluna, a radical Islamist and author of incendiary political tracts, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison on a terrorism conviction. Mr. Pamuk — fascinated and disturbed by the rise of political Islam in Turkey and the Middle East — based one of his most memorable characters, the terrorist leader Blue in his novel “Snow,” partly upon Mr. Mirzabeyogluna. Blue is an ambiguous figure: a charismatic intellectual who espouses a violent message, while avoiding direct entanglements in acts of terror. The cases of Mirzabeyogluna and Blue were similar, Mr. Pamuk said. “Some Islamists kill, but he didn’t, but he’s been locked up for a very long time.”

He seemed to tense up slightly as we left the mosque and wandered into one of Istanbul’s hard-core Sunni neighborhoods. “We could be in a different country,” he said in a soft voice. Salafist men with long beards and skullcaps sat on benches in tidy plazas; women in black abayas walked with their children down a cobblestone street past a madrassa, an Islamic school.

The sun had begun to set on this wintry afternoon, bathing the Golden Horn in shadow. We stood in the terraced garden of a mosque, gazing over the landmarks of Istanbul — the red roofs of Cihangir, the 13th-century Galata Tower, one of the few surviving traces of Byzantium. We had been walking for more than four hours, across half a dozen neighborhoods, peeling away Istanbul’s tourist-friendly facade to expose the complex fabric beneath it.

“That’s the beauty of living here,” Mr. Pamuk told me. Then we descended along steep cobblestone alleys leading to the Ataturk Bridge, beginning the long journey home.

Joshua Hammer is a frequent contributor to Travel. His next book, “Taking Timbuktu,” will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2015. DETAILS

Vefa Bozacisi (Katip Celebi Caddesi 104/1, Sultanahmet; 90-212-519-4922;vefa.com.tr/english) is a cafe tucked in the shadow of the Fatih mosque that specializes in boza by the glass. Boza, which is made of millet, semolina, water and sugar, was first brewed in medieval times in Anatolia and southern Russia. The tangy drink contains just a fraction of the alcoholic content of beer. The shop opened in 1876 and was patronized in its heyday by Kemal Ataturk, whose silver chalice is prominently displayed. Available to go are bottles of home-produced lemon sauce, pomegranate sauce and balsamic vinegar.


The Museum of Innocence (Cukurcuma Caddesi, Dalgic Cikmazi 2, Beyoglu; 90-212-252-9738; masumiyetmuzesi.org)  occupies a four story, wine-red building in a lively neighborhood of antiques shops and flea markets high above the Bosporus. Featuring 83 display cases crammed with items drawn from Orhan Pamuk’s novel “The Museum of Innocence,” the museum offers free entry to anyone who brings a copy of the book (the ticket is printed on the last pages). For those who come empty handed, admission is 25 Turkish lira, or about $11.50 at 2.2 lira to the dollar.
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First Queen for Greece | Amalia of Oldenburg

February 4, 2014, 10:43 am
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Mavi Boncuk |Amalia of Oldenburg (Greek: Αμαλία; 21 December 1818 – 20 May 1875) was queen consort of Greece from 1836 to 1862 as the spouse of King Otto (1815–1867).


As the daughter of Duke Paul Frederick Augustus of Oldenburg (later Grand Duke of Oldenburg), she was born a duchess of Oldenburg, though that title was never used in Greece.

When she arrived in Greece in 1837, she at first won the hearts of the Greeks with her refreshing beauty. 

When she arrived in Greece as a queen in 1837, she had an immediate impact on social life and fashion. She realized that her attire ought to emulate that of her new people, and so she created a romantic folksy court dress, which became a national Greek costume still known as the Amalía dress. It follows the Biedermeier style, with a loose-fitting, white cotton or silk shirt, often decorated with lace at the neck and handcuffs, over which a richly embroidered jacket or vest is worn, usually of dark blue or claret velvet. The skirt was ankle-length, unpressed-pleated silk, the color usually azure. It was completed with a soft cap or fez with a single, long, golden silk tassel, traditionally worn by married women, or with the kalpaki (a toque) of the unmarried woman, and sometimes with a black veil for church. This dress became the usual attire of all Christian townswomen in both Ottoman Empire-occupied and liberated Balkan lands as far north as Belgrade

As King Otto and his Bavarian advisers became more enmeshed in political struggles with Greek political forces, the Queen became more politically involved, also. She became the target of harsh attacks when she became involved in politics - and her image suffered further as she proved unable to provide an heir. She also remained a Protestant in an almost universally Orthodox country, throughout her husband's reign. Just over a year later, an uprising took place in Athens while the royal couple were on a visit to the Peloponnese. The Great Powers, who had supported Otto urged them not resist and Otto's reign was at an end. They left Greece aboard a British warship, with the Greek royal regalia that they had brought with them.

King Otto and Queen Amalia of Greece whilst on a ride through Athens 1854 

After the Queen became more politically involved, however, she became the target of harsh attacks — and her image suffered further as she proved unable to provide an heir. She and her husband were expelled from Greece in 1862, after an uprising. She spent the rest of her years in exile in Bavaria.
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Six Turkish Olympians in Sochi 2014

February 7, 2014, 9:46 am
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Six Turkish Olympians in Sochi 2014 
Mavi Boncuk |
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Article | The call of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani

February 11, 2014, 1:00 pm
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Mavi Boncuk |  The call of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani for Muslim solidarity influenced Egypt's nationalist movement, Turkey's Tanzimat reforms, as well as Iran's constitutional and Islamic revolutions.

Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī  also known as Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn Asadābādī (Persian), and commonly known as Al-Afghani (1838/1839 – March 9, 1897), was a political activist and Islamic ideologist in the Muslim world during the late 19th century, particularly in the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. One of the founders of Islamic Modernism and an advocate of Pan-Islamic unity,[6] he has been described as "less interested in theology than he was in organizing a Muslim response to Western pressure." 

Born in to Shia Islam, he later claimed to be born as a Sunni.

Article | Jamal al-Din al-Afghani by Iraj Bashiri

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani was born in Asadabad, Iran, in 1838; he died in Istanbul, Turkey, on March 9, 1897. A philosopher and politician, he promoted the concept of unity of all Muslims against British rule in particular and against global western interests in general. His call for Muslim solidarity influenced Egypt's nationalist movement, Turkey's Tanzimat reforms, as well as Iran's constitutional and Islamic revolutions.

It is commonly agreed that Al-Afghani was born into a family of sayyids of Asadabad, Hamadan. Al-Afghani himself, however, claimed that he was born in the village of As'adabad, near Kabul, Afghanistan. Neither claim can be verified; the account of Afghani's childhood pieced together from the information provided by his biographer, Mirza Lutfullah Asadabadi, is sketchy at best. Later events in his life, however, indicate that he was educated at home until the age of ten. Thereafter he attended school in Qazvin and Tehran. During his teens, he studied theology and Islamic philosophy in Karbala and Najaf, centers of Shi'ite learning in Iraq.

In 1855, around the age of seventeen, al-Afghani traveled to India via the port of Brushehr, on the Persian Gulf. In India, he became acquainted with British imperialism and observed how Muslims were systematically discriminated against in receiving government appointments as well as in participating fully in religious and educational institutions. Indeed, the Muslims' struggle against British tyranny left an indelible impression on young al-Afghani. And increasingly he came to agree with the Indians who claimed that the British intended to undermine and discredit Islam. From India, al-Afghani traveled to Mecca before returning to Karbala and Najaf, centers at which he had studied earlier. He remained in Iraq until 1865, when he traveled to Iran and, the following year, to Afghanistan.

Documented reports of al-Afghani's residence in Afghanistan date to 1866, when he was part of the entourage of Muhammad A'zam Khan, the military ruler of Qandahar under Dost Muhammad Khan. When Dost Muhammad died in 1863, his three sons fought among themselves for the rulership. Amir Shir 'Ali Khan, Dost Muhammad's third son, assumed power in Kabul, pledging to modernize the nation. Shir 'Ali's brothers, however, rebelled in Qandahar and ousted him in 1866. A'zam became king, and al-Afghani became his close confidant. As part of his duties, al-Afghani reportedly drew up a national recovery plan for Afghanistan that included provisions for a network of schools, establishment of centralized government, institution of a national newspaper, and a well-regulated communication system. In politics, he advised the king to ally himself with Russia to prevent the steady northward movement of the British accross the Pujab. A'zam's rule, however, was short-lived. Shir 'Ali returned in 1868, deposed Muhammad A'zam and expelled al-Afghani--a foreigner who spoke dari with a farsi accent. He retained al-Afghani's modernizing reforms, however.

Al-Afghani was a clergyman with a strong constitution. He is reported to have had a magnetic personality and a dogged determination, both of which he used competently to penetrate exclusive circles in which he could promote his cause. And he cherished secrecy at the expense of social norms. He wore a white turban while calling himself a sayyid, and adamantly refused any association with women. He was quick-tempered, quick of action, and quick to envisage a British plot at every turn.

Afghanistan afforded al-Afghani a worthy education by supplementing his understanding of the dynamics of struggle against imperialism with a possible response. He came to realize that the Shi'i and Persian rational philosophy that had inspired him in India could be used to rid the Muslim masses of ignorance and poverty, especially if they were enhanced with armed struggle and savage confrontation. If Afghans with their bare hands could defeat the forces of Britain in the First Afghan War, he posed the question, what impact would the force of the total Muslim community under a charismatic ruler have on the West! Al-Afghani then made a point of injecting himself into the growing confrontation between the Muslim East and the Christian West.

The Muslim ruler charismatic enough to realize al-Afghani's secret aspiration was Abdulaziz, the Ottoman sultan. Forming a master plan, al-Afghani befriended the Ottoman Sultan from afar and, in 1869, traveled to Istanbul expecting to be named the Sultan's confidant. Turkish officials, steeped in the Tanzimat reforms, however, did not pay him the attention that he felt he deserved; they appointed him to a lesser position on the Council of Education. An opportunist, al-Afghani used the Council as a forum for the promotion of his ideas and delivered a series of inspiring lectures on reform. The contents of the lectures--anti-imperialism, need to modernize Islamic society, and Shi'ite rationalist philosophy--raised the ire of Istanbul's Sunni holy men. al-Afghani was denounced as a heretic, especially when he compared the Sunni holy men's understanding of God with an ordinary man's knowledge of a craft. Before long, the confrontation between the ulema and al-Afghani became too volatile for Abdulaziz to support. al-Afghani was expelled from Turkey.

With his hopes dashed, al-Afghani returned to Egypt in 1871 to pursue his teaching as well as his dream of creating a Pan-Islamic nation free from imperialist domination. While thus engaged, in a series of lectures on reform, he grafted the example of Egypt's economic strangulation by European banks to medieval Islamic philosophy concluding that the situation would not have obtained if Western exploitation was not operating in the region. He also formed and led a Masonic lodge in Cairo, among whose members were counted such promising young leaders as Muhammad 'Abduh, a future leader of the Pan-Islamic movement.

al-Afghani's activities in Egypt brought him in direct confrontation with Khedive Isma'il and his suzerain, Sultan Abdulhamid II, as well as with European, especially British, powers. al-Afghani had placed Khedive Isma'il in a difficult position by openly condemning his financial mismanagement as the cause of Egypt's capitulation to European bankers. To ward off al-Afghani's allegations, Isma'il blamed the foreign bankers who, in turn, pressured the Sultan to depose the Khedive. In 1879, when he ran out of alternatives, the Sultan dismissed the Khedive.

Muhammad Tawfiq Pasha, Isma'l's son, expelled al-Afghani from Egypt that same year. From Egypt, al-Afghani traveled to Hyderabad, south of India where, for two years, he offered seminars, gave public lectures, and wrote. "The Refutation of the Materialists" (1881) was written at this time. This essay affords a glimpse of al-Afghani's growing interest in social consciousness, modernism, and rational thinking.

Writing within the Utopian tradition, al-Afghani described his vision of the "Virtuous City," as a hierarchically structured society that functions on the principles of shame, trustworthiness, and truthfulness, and aspires to the ideals of intelligence, pride, and justice. Higher intelligence, al-Afghani argued, leads to new capabilities and advanced civilizations; pride leads to competition and progress; and justice leads to global peace and harmony among nations. Naturalists (neicheris), al-Afghani argued, intended to destroy the solidarity of the Virtuous City through division and sectarianism.

From Hyderabad, al-Afghani traveled to London and, shortly thereafter to Paris, where he engaged the French philosopher Ernest Renan in a debate on the position of scientific discovery in Islam. Then, in the 1870s, al-Afghani accomplished his most consequential activity--his collaboration with Muhammad 'Abduh on editing a revolutionary journal in Arabic called al-'Urwat al-Wuthqa (the firmest bond). This publication established al-Afghani as the champion of Pan-Islamism, the movement blamed as the chief cause of Abdulhamid's 1877 defeat in the Russo-Turkish War--whereby the Tanzimat reforms had been proved ineffective--and in the 1882 occupation of Egypt by Great Britain. Al-'Urwat al-Wuthqa published articles by al-Afghani and 'Abduh on diverse topics. The Sultan was not impressed. Disappointed, al-Afghani left for Russia. Waiting at the port of Bushehr to collect his books, he received an invitation from Nasir al-Din Shah, the sovereign in Tehran, who had read a translation of an essay from al-'Urwat al-Wuthqa. When this brief interview did not go well, al-Afghani resumed his trip.

In Russia, al-Afghani continued his anti-British activities. He argued that, with his mobilization of Indian and Central Asian Muslims, Russians could easily drive the British out of the subcontinent. The Russians humored him, delaying his departure to irk the British. al-Afghani's two-year visit in Russia gained for him a second royal invitation to Tehran. Iran of the 1890's was much like Egypt of the 1870's. It was plagued with financial mismanagement and hounded by foreign investors, who sought concessions on every resource. The shah, however, unlike the Khedive, ruled under the protection of divine right. He could sell Iran to whomever he pleased.

al-Afghani arrived in Iran from St. Petersburg at a time when Iranians were growing increasingly alarmed by Nasir al-Din Shah's doling out their country's resources. al-Afghani himself had distributed leaflets condemning these concessions. Needless to say that al-Afghani was not received by his host, who also denied al-Afghani's claim that he had been commissioned in Munich to go to St. Petersburg and make amends on lran's behalf. Worse yet, al-Afghani was clandestinely informed of orders for his arrest. To save himself from the shah's wrath, he took sanctuary (bast) in the shrine of Shah Abdul 'Azim. south of Tehran. From there, using clandestine methods and superb oratorical techniques, al-Afghani attracted Iranians in droves to listen to his fiery attacks on the shah and his anti-reformist actions, especially the murder of Mirza Taqi Khan, Amir-i Kabir.

al-Afghani predicted that Iran would soon capitulate to British might, as Egypt had in 1882. He demanded that Iranian revenues be spent on the construction of a railroad, on education and hospitals, and on a viable army to thwart imperialism, rather than on the shah's pleasure trips to Europe. Iranians, he said, must be given the right to express their opinions in publications independent of the government. Iran must have a constitution, a parliament, and a house of justice. Above all, he emphasized, Iranians deserved a just king.

Nasir al-Din Shah was approaching his fiftieth year of rule. Since al-Afghani had been instrumental in his own recent humiliation to become the first shah to revoke his own writ--the tobacco concession--and since this action had precipitated Iran's first foreign debt, the shah ordered the unruly mullah to be expelled. Ignoring the rules of sanctuary, the shah's guards invaded the holy shrine in 1892, placed al-Afghani, half naked and in the middle of winter, on the bare back of a mule, and deported him. al-Afghani went to London, where he reestablished ties with his lodge members and then traveled to Turkey at the invitation of the sultan. Rather than becoming the sultan's confidant and Pan-Islamist consultant as al-Afghani had hoped, he became the sultan's prisoner.

From Turkey, al-Afghani continued to foment revolt in Iran, using his devotees to carry out his behest. One such devotee was Mirza Reza Kermani who, in 1896, was commissioned to assassinate Nasir al-Din Shah. Mirza Reza carried out his mission on the anniversary of the shah's fiftieth year of reign in the very sanctuary in which al-Afghani had been humiliated a few years before.

al-Afghani died of cancer of the chin at the age of about sixty and was buried in a secret grave. In 1944, the government of Afghanistan claimed him as a citizen; his supposed remains were transferred to and buried on the grounds of the University of Kabul under a respectful shrine.

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani was an Iranian by birth. His activities and the corpus of his writings reflect that. When visiting Europe, he affiliated himself with Afghanistan; when in Afghanistan, he associated himself with Ottoman Turkey and called himself "Istanbuli." This was, perhaps, necessary under his circumstances to gain the confidence of Sunni rulers while evading Iranian officials. There are several reasons for al-Afghani's inability to materialize his dream. First, he put too much trust in the goodwill of Muslim rulers and too little in the people of the Middle East. In ignoring the grass roots support for his Pan-Islamism, he violated the rules of his own Virtuous City, a violation that he regretfully acknowledged in a letter he wrote from prison before his death. Second, he used religion to achieve political aims and, assuming that world rulers acted independently of one another, secretly groomed all for the same office--that of caliph. This policy backfired on him many times, finally costing him his life. Third, he annoyed rulers by lecturing them. Nasir al-Din Shah dismissed him when al-Afghani blatantly offered himself as a sword with which the shah could cripple the imperialists. Perhaps the shah was more gracious than the sultan. Finally, al-Afghani failed to distinguish between policy and personal dispositions. He sought Queen Victoria's assistance against Nasir al-Din Shah within a short time of the tobacco boycott against British interests in Iran, a boycott that he himself had helped bring to fruition.

Selected Bibliography


Ahmad, Aziz. "Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muslim India." Studia Islamica 13 (1960): 55-78. Algar, Hamid. Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.

Hodgson, Marshall G. The Venture of Islam. Vol. 3, The Gunpowder Empire and Modern Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

Keddie, Nikki R. An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din "al-Afghani. " Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

Kedourie, Elie. Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam, Frank Cass, 1966.

Kramer, Martin. Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses, Columbia University Press, 1985.

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Opium Poppies | Tears of Aphrodite

February 11, 2014, 1:14 pm
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Mavi Boncuk |

According to one tradition, opium[1] poppies sprung from the tears of Aphrodite[2] when she mourned for her beloved Adonis. The ancient Greeks believed that the wood anemone was a gift from the god of the east wind, Eurus. The gods in charge of the four winds were collectively known as the Anemoi, and this is where the name ‘anemone’ comes from. In another legend, where her tears fell, windflowers sprang up.

[1] In ancient Greece, opium (the plant's milky latex) was called 'tears of Aphrodite' (the name 'opium' comes from the Greek 'Opos', which means plant sap). 

[2] Regarded as the nourishment of divining dragons and as a sleeping and dreaming agent, the Minoan culture used opium to induce ecstatic states for religious ceremonies. The shaman would give oracles and divine the future while under the influence of opium. According to Theocritus, the poppy grew from the tears that Aphrodite shed as she mourned her youthful lover Adonis, hence another of its earliest names “tears of Aphrodite.” 

 Papaver somniferum was considered sacred to the Germanic god Lollus. The name Lollus suggests the German word lallen (“slur”). It is surmised that Lollus, who was an oracular god known to “speak in tongues,” could have actually been slurring from being inebriated on opium. Speaking in tongues, also known as glossalalia, is a type of unconscious flow of speech that has been known since ancient times and appears both in shamanic rituals and religious cults. 


 The Great Mother goddess Cybele was depicted holding poppy capsules in her hand, as was Hypnos, the god of sleep and the “resolver of cares.” Hermes (or Mercury) carried the plant in his left hand. Thanatos, or Death, was decorated with garlands of poppies, while Nyx, the goddess of the night, was portrayed with poppies wrapped around her temples. Poppy seeds were an important ritual smoke offering to Hypnos, the god of sleep, at the Orphic mysteries, a cult of Dionysus. Cybele.

This large statue of a seated woman portrays Cybele, the mother goddess, with many of her attributes, each signifying a different role. She wears a crown in the form of a towered wall, a symbol of her role as protectress of cities. Her right hand holds a bunch of wheat and poppy heads, a symbol of her role as a goddess of agriculture. Her most famous attribute, the lion, sits at her feet, symbolizing her power over wild animals. Under her left arm she holds additional symbols: the rudder and the cornucopia. 

Cybele's cult was introduced to Rome in 204 B.C. from its home in the Near East. Worship in the cult included ritual flagellation and castration; it was initially discouraged for Roman citizens. By the time this portrait was created, however, many of the cult's wilder aspects had been tamed or eliminated. 
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Venetian Exodus

February 11, 2014, 1:25 pm
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Mavi Boncuk |

At first they were merely salt-boilers and fishermen, and were dependent on the mainland for the materials of life. There was no seaport in the neighbourhood to send its vessels for the salt which they prepared: they were forced to fetch everything that they required for themselves. They became seamen by necessity: they almost lived upon the water. As their means improved, and as their wants expanded, they bought fields and pastures on the mainland; they extended their commerce, and made long voyages. They learnt in the dock-yards of Constantinople the art of building tall ships; they conquered the pirates of the Adriatic Sea. The princes of Syria, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain were all of them merchants, for commerce is an aristocratic occupation in the East. With them the Venetians opened up a trade. At first they had only timber and slaves to offer in exchange for the wondrous fabrics and rare spices of the East. In raw produce Europe is no match for Asia. The Venetians, therefore, were driven to invent; they manufactured furniture and woollen cloth, armour, and glass. It is evident, from the old names of the streets, that Venice formerly was one great workshop; it was also a great market city. The crowds of pilgrims resorting to Rome to visit the tombs of the martyrs, and to kiss the Pope's toe, had suggested to the Government the idea of Fairs which were held within the city at stated times. The Venetians established a rival fair in honour of St. Mark, whose remains, revered even by the Moslems, had been smuggled out of Alexandria in a basket of pork. They took their materials, like Molière, wherever they could find them--stole the corpse of a patriarch from Constantinople, and the bones of a saint from Milan. They made religion subservient to commerce: they declined to make commerce subservient to religion. The Pope forbade them to trade with infidels: but the infidel, trade was their life. Siamo Veneziani poi Cristiani, they replied. The Papal nuncios arrived in Venice, and excommunicated two hundred of the leading men. In return they were ordered to leave the town. The fleets of the Venetians, like the Phoenicians of old, sailed in all the European waters, from the wheat fields of the Crimea to the ice-creeks of the Baltic. In that sea the pirates were at length extinct; a number of cities along its shores were united in a league. Bruges in Flanders was the emporium of the Northern trade, and was supplied by Venetian vessels with the commodities of the South. The Venetians also travelled over Europe, and established their financial colonies in all great towns. The cash of Europe was in their hands; and the sign of three golden balls declared that Lombards lent money within.

During the period of the Crusades, their trade with the East was interrupted but it was exchanged for a commerce more profitable still. The Venetians in their galleys conveyed the armies to the Holy Land, and also supplied them with provisions. Besides the heavy sums which they exacted for such services, they made other stipulations. Whenever a town was taken by the Crusaders, a suburb or street was assigned to the Venetians; and when the Christians were expelled, the Moslems consented to continue the arrangement. In all the great Eastern cities, there was a Venetian quarter containing a chapel, a bath-house, and a factory ruled over by a magistrate or consul.

Constantinople, during the Crusades, had been taken by the Latins, with the assistance of the Venetians, and had been recovered by the Greeks, with the assistance of the Genoese. The Venetians were expelled from the Black Sea, but obtained the Alexandria trade. In the fifteenth century the Black Sea was ruined, for its caravan routes were stopped by the Turkish wars. Egypt, which was supplied by sea, monopolised the India trade, and the Venetians monopolised the trade of Egypt. Venice became the nutmeg and pepper shop of Europe: not a single dish could be seasoned, not a tankard of ale could be spiced, without adding to its gains. The wealth of that city soon became enormous; its power, south of the Alps, supreme.
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Word Origin | Müdür, İdare, Daire

February 11, 2014, 1:58 pm
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Mavi Boncuk |

Müdür: from Arabic mudīr مدير  çeviretr, one who menages (run, turn thins around)EN from 

İdare:  from Arabic  idāra  إدارة çevirme, döndürme TR, to run,manage (turn around) EN. 

Daire: TR, circle En comes from this meaning. Hence Devlet Dairesi, Governement Office

1. “Yazı işleri müdürleri böyle öyküler istiyorlar.” -N. Cumalı. director, editor at a newspaper.

2. “Bu koskoca binanın, pasajın arka tarafında bir kısım daireleri ayrıca kiraya verilmiş.” -H. F. Ozansoy. apartment

3. “Eskiden hem bir dairede beraber bulunmuşlar hem de silah arkadaşlığı etmişlerdi.” office.

4. “Yemeği, selamlık dairesinin üst katındaki yemek salonunda yediler.” -M. Ş. Esendal. an area dedicated to a special use. Selamlik: men's quarters.

5. “Serkeşliklerden vazgeçerek edep ve itaat dairesine dönünüz!” -N. F. Kısakürek. meaning coming to senses.

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Fete du Tapis Sacre | Sürre Alayı

February 11, 2014, 2:16 pm
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The women in the Ottoman harem were responsible every year for sewing and embroidering the silk cloth (kiswa) [1] that would cover the Kaaba. Traditionally its color was black and the embroidery on it was gold thread. The writing was, and still is, chosen from verses in the Quran. Once completed, it would be placed in a decorated carrying case and loaded on a camel that had been especially chosen for the honor of taking the cloth to Mecca. Pilgrims traveling from İzmir, the European side of the empire and Uzbeks from Central Asia would join the pilgrimage in Istanbul. This great caravan would leave from Üsküdar with a heavy escort but not before a magnificent ceremony was held at Topkapı Palace. Another caravan, coming from the East, would join the one from Istanbul at Damascus. Suraiya Faroqhi writes in “Pilgrims and Sultans” that at the end of the 16th century, 60 camels were set aside for pilgrims who were poor and of these 20 would carry food. Camels were also provided to carry water barrels just in case water couldn’t be found on the road. In addition, in the 17th century we learn that at least 349 camels were set aside for the use of influential people. This must have been a truly impressive sight. 



Mavi Boncuk | Constantinople/Constantinople Tapis Sacre[1] Sürre Alayı

Constantinople/Constantinople Scene de rue
Chusseau-Flaviens, Ch.[2] French (active 1890s-1910s)|ca. 1900-1919 | negative, gelatin on glass

Fete du Tapis Sacre." (Lichtenstern & Harari)

[1] Kiswah (Arabic: كسوة الكعبة‎, kiswat al-ka'bah) is the cloth that covers the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is draped annually on the 9th day of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, the day pilgrims leave for the plains of Mount Arafat during the Hajj.[1] The term kiswah is Arabic for 'pall', the cloth draped over a casket, and is a cognate of the Hebrew word kisui. From the time of the Ayubids, precisely during the reign of the As-Salih Ayyub, the kiswa was manufactured in Egypt. It was sent in a huge annual parade before the hajj season. Material for the kiswah was brought from Sudan, India, Egypt and Iraq. The tradition continued until 1927, when its manufacture was moved to Saudi Arabia.  

[2] Charles Chusseau-Flaviens was a French independent photojournalist of the ca. 1890s to 1910s. His distribution of other photographer's work for publication created one of the first photo press agencies, located at 46 Rue Bayen, Paris.Chusseau-Flaviens' by-line appeared on numerous photographs from every European country as well as from Africa, the Middle East, the Orient and the United States. According to researchers, no biographical information about Chusseau-Flaviens is known.

A substantial portion of his photographic collection, represented by nearly 11,000 glass negatives, was donated by Kodak Pathé to the George Eastman House (GEH) International Museum of Photography and Film in 1974. Due to the relative lack of photographs representing France, it has been speculated that a large collection of Chusseau-Flaviens' work remains undiscovered. Journals in which Chusseau-Flaviens images appeared include Ilustracāo Portugueza, L'Illustration, The Illustrated London News,Le Monde and The Graphic. As a syndicate, the agency acquired photographs from working (mostly commercial) photographers all around the world. At least 160 photographers spanning five continents contributed to this collection. Based on the material it appears the agency ceased operations during the first world war.
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Orientalism | Steafano Ussi (1822-1901)

February 11, 2014, 2:29 pm
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Mavi Boncuk |
Sürre Alayı | Carovana nei pressi del Cairo, 1874 Stefano Ussi [1]
Oil on Canvas Size 17.7 x 32.3 in. /45 x 82 cm.

[1] Stefano Ussi  (b Florence, 3 Sept 1822; d Florence, 11 July 1901). Italian painter. He received his formal training at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence (1837–50, expelled 1838–40) under Tommaso Gazzarini (1790–1853), Pietro Benvenuti and Giuseppe Bezzuoli. In 1854 he won a scholarship to study in Rome. In December 1860 Ussi was appointed professor at the Accademia. He favoured historical and literary themes, executed with a realistic academic vocabulary, and portraits. His more private works, such as the portrait of his wife Linda Ussi in the garden (c. 1858–9; Florence, Pitti), display in their loose brushwork the freshness and luminosity of the style practised by the Macchiaioli, with whom he was acquainted.
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Word Origin | Gypsy Loan Words in Turkish

February 11, 2014, 3:36 pm
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Romany [1] Gypsy Loan Words in Turkish and more.
Mavi Boncuk |

dikiz: to look
1889 bakış, özellikle belli etmeden bakma (argo) A. Fikri, Lugat-ı Garibe [1889], ed. Arslan, 2004.~ Çing dikés bak! < Çing dikáva bakmak
Benzer sözcükler: dikiz aynası, dikizle-

abaza: masturbation
1892 abāza elle tatmin, mastürbasyon
1929 abazan aç, özellikle cinsel açlık çeken ~? Çing χabezan aç? < Çing χabe yemek → haybe
● Yaygın kanıya göre Çingeneceden alıntı olmakla birlikte T&S 1892'de kaydedilen "mastürbasyon" anlamını bu şekilde açıklamaya imkân yoktur. Ayrıca Çingenece inisyal /χ/ sesinin Türkçede kaybolması açıklanmaya muhtaçtır.

denyo: idiot
1899 orta oyununda aptal çocuk karakteri
1932 zıpır, kaçık, dejenere, serseri (argot)

gacı: non gypsy women

gaco: women (argot) informal for boyfriend/girlfriend.
1876 kadın informal for boyfriend/girlfriend.

gaco/gadzho (Masc.) and gace/gadzhe (Fem.) are both used for "every person who isn't romani". This word (in Feminine) has been loaned into Bulgarian after a semantic shift. 

haybe: free food
1929 habe yemek (argo)
1929 habeden bedavadan, parasız (argot)  habe yemek

kanka:  friend
1991 kanka arkadaş, yoldaş

laço: active homosexual
1981 aktif eşcinsel (argot)  laço iyi, emin safr, good EN

nanay: not there, gone, does not exist
1889 Çingenecede "yok" (argo) nan+ay, şinanay crazy EN  | Latin non est 

nanik: oriental hand gesture
1945 baş parmağı buruna değdirerek yapılan alay hareketi 
Çing naya (finger) ve nak (nose).

roman: Gypsy
1998 Çingene rom çingene (male gypsy)
 ḍomba डोम्ब aşağı kasttan çalgıcılara verilen bir isimTR, Indian lower cast musician

şinanay : no nothing

şopar : kid, child
1932 çocuk (argot)

şorolo: cross dresser
1914 
1981 travesti TR

tüy[mek]: to run away
1889 tığmak/tüymek savuşmak, kaçmak (argot)

Loan Words in Slovak:
gadžo = an ill-bred, uncouth, rude person
love = money
dilino = fool, dunce, blockhead
čaja = girl (the diminutive čajočka is fairly common, too)
chalovať = to eat

Loan Words in  Czech  ( rather argot words):
čokl (pejorative for dog).
čorka (theft) 
love (money) 

[1] Gypsies, often called Romani or Domari, are made up of two groups: the Ghorbati and the Nawari. Both groups speak a dialect of the Gypsy language called Romany, which is related to the North Indo-Aryan language of India. Their dialect, Domari, contains many Arabic words.

Gypsies call themselves Rom, which in their language means "men." Rom is derived from the Indian word Dom, meaning "a man of low caste who gains his livelihood by singing and dancing." The Ghorbati are named from the Arabic word, gurbet, which means "stranger." In the Arab world, Gypsies are called Nauar, hence the Nawari Gypsies.

The Roma (Turkish: Roman/Çingene) are an ethnic minority of Turkey. They descend from the times of the Byzantine Empire. Records about their presence in 9th century Asia Minor exist, where they arrived from Persia. With the expanse of the Ottoman Empire Turkish Roma settled also in Rumelia (Southern Europe under the Ottoman rule). Sulukule is the oldest Roma settlement in Europe. The descendants of the Ottoman Roma today are known as Xoraxane Roma and are of the Islamic faith. In modern Turkey Xoraxane Roma do not have a legal status of ethnic minority. This goes as far back as the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), in which Section III "Protection of Minorities" put an emphasis on non-Muslim minorities . There are officially about 500,000 Roma in Turkey. By different Turkish and Non-Turkish estimates the number of Roma is up to 5,000,000, while according to a Turkish source, they are only 0.05% of Turkey's population (or roughly 35,000 persons).

Domari is an Indo-Aryan language, spoken by older Dom people scattered across the Middle East. The language is reported to be spoken as far north as Azerbaijan and as far south as central Sudan, in Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.Based on the systematicity of sound changes, we know with a fair degree of certainty that the names Domari and Romani derive from the Indian word ḍom.

Domari is also known as "Middle Eastern Romani", "Tsigene", "Luti", or "Mehtar". There is no standard written form. In the Arab world, it is occasionally written using the Arabic script and has many Arabicand Persian loanwords. Descriptive work was done by Yaron Matras (1996) who published a comprehensive grammar of the language along with an historical and dialectological evaluation of secondary sources (Matras 2012).

Romani is an Indo-Aryan language with strong Balkan, and especially Greek, influence. It is the only New-Indo-Aryan language spoken exclusively outside of the Indian subcontinent.

Speakers of the Romani language usually refer to the language as řomani čhib "the Romani language" or řomanes "in a Rom way." This derives from the Romani word řom, meaning either "a member of the (Romani) group" or "husband". This is also where the term "Roma" derives in English

After exiting the Indian subcontinent, Romani was heavily affected by European contact languages. The most significant of these was Byzantine Greek, which contributed lexically, phonemically, and grammatically to Early Romani (10th-13th centuries CE). This includes inflectional affixes for nouns, and verbs that are still productive with borrowed vocabulary, the shift to VO word order, and the adoption of a preposed definite article. Early Romani also borrowed from Armenian and Iranian languages.

"Adsincani" seems to be the Georgian version of the Greek name "Athinganoi"; and the Athinganoi were a sect of heretics who had been stamped out a couple of centuries earlier. So it seems the Byzantines nicknamed these people after an earlier group who may have had a similar reputation for sorcery. The Greek word for the Gypsies came to be Atsinganoi; from which later came many of the names used in other languages: Tsigan in Romanian, Ciganyok in Hungarian, Zigeuner in German, Zingari in Italian, Tsiganes in French.


In other versions, they had been condemned for failing to help the Holy Family during its flight into Egypt; or because a Gypsy smith had forged the fourth of the nails with which Christ was crucified. It was from these stories that they got to be called "Egyptians", from which comes another set of the names by which they are known: Gyphtoi in Greek, Gitanos in Spanish, Gitans in French, Gypsies in English.
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Köçek and Gypsy Dances

February 12, 2014, 12:43 pm
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Mavi Boncuk | Roma adopted the hosts’ music and arts, often becoming so proficient in them, that they were predominantly hired to play  and dance at celebrations and weddings. In doing so, many of the dances, which would have remained hidden in the female sphere ( as in the case of Muslim households across various Muslim Empires: Ottoman et al ) were revealed; people were able to see and record these dances. The Turkish Roma and the Ghawazee (Female Egyptian Roma) were able to pass on their dance knowledge to others. The Turkish Roma, were instrumental in defining Turkish Oriental dance, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, while Badia Masabny, ( of Syria) owner of the Casino Opera  ( during the 1920′s onwards) in British ruled Egypt, brought cabaret dance and performance there( using many elements of Ghawazee dance)  with many of her students: Samia Gamal, Tahia Carioca and others, the now famous  (bellydance) Stars of Egypt. Ghawazee dances form the basis for the Egyptian bellydance art we know today.

Kathak dance( which is  a dance that has existed in India, for around 3,000 years,)  and Flamenco,  and how elements of Kathak perhaps exists in many other of the diverse Roma dances in various cultures (since the Indian migrants brought their dance memories with them, and adapted them with their hosts’ art forms.)

Serbian Chochek (Cocek|Kocek) dance : Turkish, yet not Turkish.

Roma adapted dance and music and played in celebrations and weddings. The dance is called Chochek (also spelt cocek, and pronounced with a “ch” sound, whenever you see the “c”.)  This dance originated in Serbia, during the Ottoman empire ( and it is still danced in Serbia, to this day) when the Roma, who where originally from  mainland Turkey (but  now second, third, fourth or even fifth generation) took their dance movements and the 9/8 Karsilama rhythm  with them, to play at Serbian Christian weddings, then often went back to play and dance at Turkish weddings. The Turkish Roma moves became modified for the Serbian audiences: Turkish Roma dance uses hops and jumps, and hand gestures  that hit hips and stomach,  wrists, elbows and shoulders; there are pelvic tilts, dynamic travelling steps, as well as fast footwork and of course zill playing. Although, tambourines are often seen as stereotypical “Gypsy”, in this case, it is an authentic instrument, used in chochek dance – also known as: “dayereh” ( variant spellings include: “doyra”/”dayre” /”dojra”/”doyra”/”doire”/”daire”, a medium-sized drum with jingles, played in Iran, the Balkans and Central Asia/Tajikistan/Afghanistan and Uzbekistan . 

[1] Köçek: from Persian kūçak كوچك küçük, çocuk, uşak, ufaklık ; küçük TR, kid, child, boy servant, small EN. 

The köçek phenomenon (plural köçekler) is one of the interesting features of Ottoman culture according to Europeans. The köçek was typically a very handsome young male rakkas, "dancer", usually cross-dressed in feminine attire, employed as an entertainer. Pictured Ottoman köçek dancer "Danseuse Arabe".
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Mongol DNA IN Turks

February 15, 2014, 3:06 pm
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Mavi Boncuk |The genetic atlas of human mixing events was published on Thursday in the journal Science by a team led by Simon Myers of Oxford University, Garrett Hellenthal of University College London and Daniel Falush of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Having sampled genomes from around the world, they found they could detect about 95 distinguishable populations.

"Modern genetic data combined with appropriate statistical methods have the potential to contribute substantially to our understanding of human history. We have developed an approach that exploits the genomic structure of admixed populations to date and characterize historical mixture events at fine scales. We used this to produce an atlas of worldwide human admixture history, constructed by using genetic data alone and encompassing over 100 events occurring over the past 4000 years. We identified events whose dates and participants suggest they describe genetic impacts of the Mongol empire, Arab slave trade, Bantu expansion, first millennium CE migrations in Eastern Europe, and European colonialism, as well as unrecorded events, revealing admixture to be an almost universal force shaping human populations."

The in-Laws Through History

Admixture, the result of previously distant populations meeting and breeding, leaves a genetic signal within the descendants' genomes. However, over time the signal decays and can be hard to trace. Hellenthal et al. (p. 747) describe a method, using a technique called chromosome painting, to follow the genetic traces of admixture back to the nearest extant population. The approach revealed details of worldwide human admixture history over the past 4000 years. Some of the hundred or so major mixing events they describe have plausible historical explanations, while many others remain to be accounted for. For instance, many populations of the southern Mediterranean and Middle East have segments of African origin in their genomes that were inserted at times between A.D. 650 and 1900, according to the geneticists’ calculations. This could reflect the activity of the Arab slave trade, which originated in the seventh century, and the absorption of slaves into their host populations. One of the most widespread events his group has detected is the injection of Mongol ancestry into populations within the Mongol empire, such as the Hazara of Afghanistan and the Uighur Turks of Central Asia. The event occurred 22 generations ago, according to genetic dating, which corresponds to the beginning of the 14th century, fitting well with the period of the Mongol empire. Dr. Myers and his colleagues have detected European ancestry that entered the Tu people of central China between the 11th and 14th centuries; this, they surmise, could be from traders traveling the Silk Road. They find among Northern Italians an insertion of Middle Eastern DNA that occurred between 776 B.C. and A.D. 550, and may represent the Etruscans, a mysterious people said by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus to have emigrated from Lydia in Turkey.

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Syncretic Alevism and Catharism

February 17, 2014, 5:17 am
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Ishikism (Turkish: Işıkçılık or Işık Aleviliği), also known as Chinarism or Ishik Alevism, refers to the movement among some Alevis who have developed an alternative understanding of Alevism and its history. These alternative interpretations and beliefs were organized by writer Erdoğan Çınar, with the publication of his book Aleviliğin Gizli Tarihi (The Secret History of Alevism) in 2004. The Ishik movement claim that the term "Alevi" is derived from the old Anatolian Luvians (Luwian) people, claiming that the word "Luvi" means "people of light" in the Hittite language, while the term "Alevi" in traditional Alevism is believed to have derived from Ali, as in the Arabic word ‘Alawī (علوي). Some Ottoman documents from the 16th century refer to the ancestors of today's Alevis as "Işık Taifesi", meaning "People of Light". This is, according to Ishikis, a proof of the connection between the Luvians and Alevis.

In the area around the Southern Pyrenees a form of heterodox mysticism took hold, a mysticism that had historical and archetypal roots in the Gnosis and Gnosticism of late antiquity. At precisely this time, and in the same area of Southern France, there came the first flowering of the Troubadour traditions and of the Jewish Gnosticism of Kabbalah. To the south in Spain, the mystical tradition that gave root to a Gnostic school in Islam took form – exemplified by Ibn 'Arabī (1165–1240), the seminal figure in Turkish, Persian and Sufi Gnostic traditions. St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226) was also deeply influenced by the spirit of this time and this Cathar land. 

Though the term "Cathar" has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether the movement identified itself with this name is debatable. In Cathar texts, the terms "Good Men" (Bons Hommes) or "Good Christians" are the common terms of self-identification. 

Mavi Boncuk |

The Ishikis also claim that the religious ceremonies practiced by Alevis were practiced as early as by the Hittites and even by the Sumerians. According to Ishikis, medieval Christian sects as Paulicianism, Bogomilism etc. were also Alevis. A good example of this belief can be found in the translation of the book The Cathars: The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages (2005) by Sean Martins. Even though the original English version does not contain the word "Alevi", the Turkish translator has translated the title of the book as Ortaçağ'da Avrupa'da Alevi Hareketi - Katharlar (An Alevi Movement in The Middle Ages - The Cathars). 

Compared to traditional Alevism, the most striking differences of the Ishik movement are their interpretation of history. The Ishik movement claims that Alevis have changed their apparent identity several times in history in order to survive. According to Ishiki belief, heretic sects like the Paulicians and Bogomils were actually Alevis compelled to appear as Christians because of the Byzantine oppression. 

Likewise the modern Alevis have gained an Islamic appearance because of the Ottoman oppression. Ishiki thought is convinced that most heterodox groups are inventions as a result of oppression, meaning that groups like the Ghulat, Ahl-e Haqq, Ismā'īlī, Nusayrî Alawism and Bektashism are in reality separate from real Islam. 

Catharism (from Greek: καθαρός, katharos, pure) [1] was a name given to a Christian religious movement with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. The movement was extinguished in the early decades of the thirteenth century, when the Cathars were persecuted and massacred under the Inquisition. Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and the Bogomils of Bulgaria which took influences from the Paulicians. 

Paulicians (Armenian: Պաւլիկեաններ, also remembered as Pavlikians or Paulikianoi were a Christian Adoptionist sect and militarized revolt movement, also accused by medieval sources as Gnostic and quasi Manichaean Christian. They flourished between 650 and 872 in Armenia and the Eastern Themes of the Byzantine Empire.

See Also: 
Syncretismes Et Heresies Dans L'orient Seldjoukide Et Ottoman: XIV- XVIII Siecle Gilles Veinstein Peeters Publishers, Jan 1, 2005, 428 pages 

The Cathars, Fraticelli and Turks, a new interpretation of Berkludje Mustafa's uprising in Anatolia. 1415  by  Konstantine A. Zhukov pages 188-95. 

"The study on the rebellion and execution of the above-mentioned preacher  of poverty Börklüce Mustafa by Konstantin Zhukov (“Börklüce Mustafa, was he another Mazdak?”, pp. 119-27), brings to light the diff erent perceptions of 
the heresy and, consequently, our difficulty in combining information in  Islamic and Christian sources on the ways used by diff erent powers to crush syncretist trends." REVIEW

Proceedings of an international conference held at the College de France in 2001, the book is a set of 27 contributions in English and in French of wellknown experts both in Turkish and Middle Eastern history (11th-18the c.) and in the history of Religions. The aim was to draw a large picture of the religious richness and complexity of the Seljuk and Ottoman worlds and to comment on the consequences in terms of heresies and syncretisms, two concepts which are currently revisited by the same token. The influence of the dualistic doctrinal legacy is particularly put in light. Simultaneously the effects of the religious context upon Ottoman society and politics are discussed extensively. 

[1] For those interested in the question of the name Cathar and its connection with the Greek word Katharos (pure), it is an extraordinary fact that in the early third century AD the father of Mani above) had belonged to a Judaeo-Christian sect known as katharioi [Stoyanov, The Other God, p 102].  

Mani, of course, was the founder of Manichaeism[*], a Dualist system of belief which seems to have developed into Bogomilism and thence Catharism. 

The name Cathari had also been used by Novation sects of Anatolia in the fourth century - see for example Epiphanius, Adversus Haereses, (edited by Oehler, Berlin 1859) p 505. Significantly, perhaps, the Novations, well known Gnostic Dualists, were condemned by the victorious party that we call "orthodox" at the Council of Nicea in 325 (Cannon 8 " Concerning those who have given themselves the name of Novations...."). In other words, it seems that self professed Cathars, with fully developed Gnostic Dualist ideas, were already in existence when the first "Orthodox" Church Council met to start the long process of hammering out its own version of orthodoxy.

Cathar Texts and Rituals

[*] Manichaeans: a reference to an ancient Dualist synthetic religion founded by Mani in the fourth century. Aurelius Augustinus, later Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) had been a Manichaean but he left when he realised that he was not going to advance in the hierarchy. He therefore transferred to the branch of the Christian Church that developed into the Roman Catholic Church - bringing some Manichaean ideas with him, but leaving detailed denunciations of others in his writings. When later scholars read his works and compared Manichaean beliefs with contemporary Cathar beliefs they deduced that Cathars were Manichaeans, and adopted the term to describe them.
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