Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee by Dana Sajdi

Author:Dana Sajdi [Sajdi, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857731807
Publisher: I.B.Tauris

Hershatter’s point is that the subaltern can speak and that the historian can hear him. Whether she does or not though is another question entirely.

One of the most notable recent attempts to hear subaltern voices is the work of Cengiz Kırlı on Istanbul coffee houses. Through his impressive study of nineteenth-century Ottoman spy reports – jurnals as they were known – Kırlı seeks to hear the everyday voices of café men to learn about their experiences, their concerns, and ultimately about the world in which they lived.110 Kırlı is, in the final analysis though, unable to hear men’s voices because he is listening to them with the ears of the state. Apart from one example of a conversation between two men about the relative merits of bathing and cleanliness, all of the coffee house conversations cited by Kırlı are about what we might crudely term political history.111

For example, one of the most important topics of the day for the Ottoman state was Muḥammad āAlī’s invasion of Syria and Anatolia, and much of the space in the jurnals at this time was devoted to this topic. Other issues covered by these reports were taxation, state appointments and Ottoman state relations with Greek and Armenian communities in the face of conversions and European machinations. After a reading of these reports then, we come away with the sense that nearly all men’s talk in coffee houses was about politics and the economy.112 Of course, as Kırlı notes, these were reports by government bureaucrats hired by the state to get a sense of the political mood of its subject citizens, and it should therefore be no surprise that most of what we get from these jurnals is about the politics of the Ottoman state.113

The problem of hearing and of hearing Ottoman coffee house men, though, is not simply one of sources.114 While historians are of course limited by their source material, it is instructive here to remember that gossip is not rumour. While both are talk about others or events not immediately present in one’s field of vision, rumour is usually considered to be talk that matters to a political entity – idle chatter’s version of realpolitik. Rumour is about the world of state politics – a realm in which important men make important decisions about war, taxation and so forth. Rumour is critical of the establishment, can lead to rebellion and is therefore of concern to those with a vested interest in upholding the existing social structure.115

Al-Jabartī refers to rumour at one point as curiosity, talk and clamour (al-fuḍūl wa al-kalām wa al-laghṭ) that stirs up feelings of enmity (mimmā yuhīju al-āadāwa).116 In the Ottoman empire, this type of talk was known as devlet sohbeti (state talk) and it became an issue worthy of state attention, thus motivating the spy reports of the nineteenth century.117 Gossip, on the other hand, was for the state far more benign.118 It did not lead to rebellions, regicide or strikes. It was talk of the neighbourhood, politically meaningless stories about one’s neighbours, or simply the idle babble of the masses.

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