The Ottoman’s Burden: Orientalist Influences on Cenap Şahabettin’s Travelogues
This paper is
about the depiction of the “East” and the representations of the “Easterners”
in the works by Ottoman author Cenap Şahabettin. Cenap was not only an intellectual but also a representative of
the state bureaucracy. After finishing his education in Istanbul and Paris, Cenap
became a dermatologist, and was appointed public health officer in Egypt, and
consequently in Iraq. Cenap’s works on the Arab lands were published when the
Ottomans were trying to adapt a modernist colonial approach towards their
provinces, as opposed to their older governing practice. Paradoxically,
although the Ottoman Empire placed itself among European states, it fell into a
dichotomy by conceding the prejudices many European intellectuals had towards the “East”. The Ottomans overcame the
paradox of seeing themselves both as hard-working , powerful, constitutionalist
“Westerners”, and lazy, weak, despotic “Easterners”, by projecting the second
set of adjectives onto their provinces. Cenap wrote that people of the “East”
deserved despotic rulers, since they lacked the ability to reason freely.
Besides using the discussion of Eastern despotism to legitimize the Ottoman
presence in the area, he also mentioned the economic backwardness of the Easterners,
and concluded that they needed to be modernized, but lacked the means to do so.
Cenap asserted that western countries were not good candidates for modernizing the
region. He cleverly notes down the developments brought by the Ottomans and emphasizes
that Ottomans were not only the sole proper candidate for modernizing them, but
also a good one. Nourished by the works of Edward Said, Ussama Makdisi and Jale
Parla, the paper takes a semiotic approach in evaluating Cenap’s works, and compares
Cenap›s attitude with that of the western travelers, attempting to provide a broader
picture.
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Anouar Abdel Malek, “L’Orientalisme en crise”, Diogène, 1963, 44 (4), 109-142.
Bâki Asiltürk, “Cenap Şahabettin’in Suriye Mektupları” [“Cenap Şahabettin’s Letters from Syria”], U’npublished MA thesis, (İstanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü 1991).
Cenap Şahabettin, Âfâk-ı Irak: Kızıldeniz’den Bağdat’a Hatıralar [The Horizons of Iraq: Memories from the Red Sea to Baghdad], Ed.Bülent Yorulmaz, (İstanbul: Dergah 2002).