An Ottoman historian‘s burden: Ziver History of Cyprus

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to analyse the development of late Ottoman historiography in a three-layered contextualisation with regard to its own historiographical legacy, its organic dialogue with European intellectual productions and, lastly, its relation to the legitimisation and representation of the Ottoman state. Accordingly, it problematizes Ziver‘s History of Cyprus based upon a critical perspective which is discussed at length in the first chapter. In order to serve as a foundation, the second chapter rests upon a sizable number of Ottoman historical accounts from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and delineates the early modern Ottoman approach(es) to the conquest of Cyprus in an analytical framework which seeks to retain their plurality. After introducing Ziver and his work, the third chapter focuses on a comparison between Ziver‘s narrative and earlier historical accounts and explicates the former‘s detachment from the legacy regarding Ottoman modernisation and changing state-society relations. In the fourth chapter, in an attempt to contextualise Ziver‘s polemical attitude against Western historians about the history of Cyprus, the complex relationship between the late Ottoman and European historiographies is debated. Finally, Ziver‘s discourse of civilisation and progress based on his reconfiguration of the Ottoman past and its representation and legitimisation of the Ottoman state against the British colonial rule on the island, will be discussed.