Into the wild: Ottoman photographic excursions to Libya at the turn of the twentieth century

Abstract

This study investigates the Ottoman center’s conceptions and representations of the periphery, at the turn of the twentieth century as reflected in the representation of Libyan provinces of the empire. The main sources used in this study are the illustrated travelogues of two Ottoman officers posted to Libyan provinces. The first of these is Azmzâde Sadık El- Müeyyed’s travelogue, published in 1896 and entitled “Travel in the Great Desert of Sahara,” , about his travels in 1895. The second is Cami Baykurt’s, “From Tripoli to the Great Desert of Sahara”, which was published in 1910 and detailed his travels in 1906-1907. The theoretical framework of the study is orientalism and the Ottoman Empire’s appropriation of orientalist discourse and practices. In its effort to be rigorously historical and contextual this study is based on a number of comparisons. Starting with comparing European colonial policies, concepts with Ottoman Empire’s colonialist inspired policies and concepts adopted by the state in Libyan provinces and in the light of these comparisons the Ottoman officers’ representations are compared with European orientalist discourse and representational conventions. The authors’ renditions of Libya were related to the social and political context of the Libyan provinces in particular and the Ottoman Empire in general, thus their accounts give insights about these. The representations of the authors are also compared with each other, for their conceptions and representations do not monolithically reinforce the official imperial view, but also complicate it. The main argument of this study is that the representation of the Libyan provinces by these authors was inscribed in the orientalist discourse. Rather than challenging and opposing European orientalist constructs, the Ottoman authors ideological constructs about Libyan and peripheral subjects of the provinces were much more parallel to the former. However this does not mean that the Ottoman actors’ representations were mere copies of European constructs. The Ottomans used the discursive and visual frameworks of orientalist representation, which was effective in the establishment of European colonial hegemony over the Orient, for their own purposes and agendas. In this way the Ottomans representations constitute an example of the complex process of the appropriation and multiplication of the orientalism in different contexts. The methodological discussions about the usefulness of photographs in further fracturing and complicating the eurocentric discourse of orientalism is central to the study.