Historical writing in the late Ottoman Empire: Global encounters and historical experiments of Hayrullah Efendi

Abstract

This dissertation, drawing on a narrative analysis of a mid-nineteenth century Ottoman historical work written by Hayrullah Efendi (1817-1866), attempts at broadening our perspectives on late Ottoman historical writing. By treating this historical text as a literary product, my aim is to delineate the ways which Hayrullah encountered and experimented with global historical discourses of the long nineteenth century that began to be increasingly shaped by new temporalities and methodologies, political concerns over public opinion, and colonial and national anxieties. This dissertation includes three main axes. The first one reveals the ways which Hayrullah established the relations among three temporalities of the past, present and future by concentrating on the notions of historical distance, truth, admonition, and construction. The second one covers Hayrullah’s discussions of local, national and global identities, political and economic regimes, and civilizational discourses by concentrating on his notions of nation and civilization. The third one by focusing on Hayrullah’s conceptions of historical agency, causality and change deals with his frameworks for constructing the relations between and within the state and society. The dissertation aims to demonstrate that neither a single concern nor a hegemonic state or class perspective dominates the text; on the contrary this narrative is a multiplicity and relativity of perspectives and contains several parts with incoherent, hesitant, ambiguous, and uncertain argumentations as well as sections with more coherent, absolute, certain and unified discussions.