Economics and Capitalism in the Ottoman Empire by Kilinçoglu Deniz T

Author:Kilinçoglu, Deniz T. [Deniz T. Kılınçoğlu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317524939
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Ahmed Midhat’s impact on social change

Ahmed Midhat’s work both reflected and influenced his age to a great extent. His articles on various subjects were carefully read and discussed among Ottomans of different generations. Moreover, his ideas had a significant impact on the intellectual development of intellectuals and statesmen of subsequent generations. As of the early 1880s Ahmed Midhat had been “busy with [writing and] publishing in arts and sciences for over fifteen years, and he was the teacher of everybody who came of age in this time period.”154 His popularity declined in the 1890s, never to be restored, due to both the increasing anti-Hamidian political reformism and the development of new literary styles and tastes, which his works could not keep up with in terms of quality. In other words, the literary tastes and political awareness of his students went beyond what Ahmed Midhat as an author could provide. However, his impact as the first teacher remained in the hearts and minds of the Young Turk generation who shaped the intellectual and political institutions in the twentieth-century Middle East.

One such example, Ali Kemal Bey, an influential liberal intellectual and Young Turk politician of the post-1908 period,155 notes in his memoirs that when he was a student at the Mekteb-i Mülkiye, he and his friends followed Ahmed Midhat and his newspaper, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, so carefully that they almost memorized his every single word.156 Ali Kemal Bey’s remarks on the impact of Ahmed Midhat is not limited to his memoirs. Even as a more interesting example, which suggests Ahmed Midhat’s influence on women, we see the female protagonist of Ali Kemal’s novella, Çölde Bir Sergüzeşt (An Adventure in the Desert, 1898), Seher. Seher follows popular periodicals and writers, but she is a particularly keen follower of Ahmed Midhat’s Tercüman-ı Hakikat and Müntahabat-ı Tercüman-ı Hakikat, just like Ali Kemal himself.157

The last official chronicler of the Ottoman Empire, Abdurrahman Şeref—who describes Ahmed Midhat as a “publicist” and a “vulgarisateur”—notes that his popular works on scientific issues were selling like hot cakes to those who “were thirsty for reading.”158 According to a well-known publisher of the age, Karabet Bey, Ahmed Midhat’s immense popularity was primarily a result of his writing style. Karabet Bey stated in 1895 in a Spanish cultural review, that “[Ahmed Midhat’s] prose, like that of the eighteenth-century French, has an incomparable clarity and simplicity.”159

In Hallü’l-ʿUkad (1890), Ahmed Midhat writes that the Ottoman dignitary to whom he dedicated the book wrote in a letter, “A book is one’s best friend; and your Tercüman [Ahmed Midhat’s newspaper] is such a great friend for fruitful conversations in these long nights.”160 In the same vein, Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar notes that Ahmed Midhat changed Ottoman family life and gave a new meaning to nights at home. Tanpınar recounts that all members of the family gathered around the literate one to listen to Ahmed Midhat’s works, and they then discussed new things that they had learned from him.161 Another well-known Turkish intellectual of a later generation, Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın (1875–1957), also describes such family gatherings in his memoirs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.