German heralds of holy war: Orientalists and applied oriental studies

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 145-162

  Hagen, Gottfried ^a  

^a NONE

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ORIENTALISM;

EID: 17444384224     PISSN: 1089201X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/1089201X-24-2-145     Document Type: Review

References (164)

1. On the events leading the empire into the war see Gotthard Jäschke, "Zum Eintritt der Türkei in den Weltkrieg," Welt des Islams 19 (1979). I do not intend to reopen the discussion of whether the empire as a whole or members of the government were tricked into war by the Germans or their collaborators in the Young Turk government.
2. On the military and diplomatic aspects of the German-Turkish alliance see Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968);
3. Frank G. Weber, Eagles on the Crescent: Germany, Austria, and the Diplomacy of the Turkish Alliance, 1914-1918 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, [1970]);
4. Veli Yilmaz, 1 nci Dünya Harbi'nde Türk-Alman Ittifaki Ve Askeri Yardimlar (Istanbul: Veli Yilmaz, 1993).
5. The fatwas are published in Geoffrey Lewis, "The Ottoman Proclamation of Jihad in 1914," Islamic Quarterly 19 (1975): 157-63;
6. Gottfried Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg: Flugblätter und Flugschriften in arabiscber, persischer und osmanisch-türkischer Sprache aus einer Sammlung der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg eingeleitet, übersetzt und kommentiert, Heidelberger Orientalistische Studien 15 (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1990), 67-9.
7. For a contemporary publication for the German public, see Welt des Islams 3 (1915): 10-18.
8. For a photograph see Gerhard Höpp, Muslime in der Mark: Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen, 1914-1924 (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1997), 167.
9. One of the rare photographs of the event known to me shows the crowd in front of the Ministry of War: Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 259.
10. On the visit to the grand vizierate see C. Snouck Hurgronje, The Holy War "Made in Germany," with a World of Introduction by Richard J. H. Gottheil (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915), 49.
11. Gerhard Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 32, quoting Schabinger von Schowingen.
12. This outline of events is mostly based on Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 118, and Snouck Hurgronje, Holy War "Made in Germany," 48ff. Edgar Stern-Rubarth, a participant in the journey, indicates that the ceremony at the Fatih mosque took place after the reception at the German embassy, but this is less likely (quoted in Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 36).
13. Mary Mills Patrick, Under Five Sultans (London: Williams and Norgate, 1930), 289f.
14. Anna Grosser-Rilke, Nieverwebte Klänge (Leipzig: Otto Beyer, 1937), 236. Grosser-Rilke, originally a pianist and a student of Franz Liszt, was the head of the Agence de Constantinople, the local partner of the Wolffsche Telegraphenbüro.
15. On this see Irmgard Farah, Die deutsche Pressepolitik und Propagandatätigkeit im Osmanischen Reich von 1908-1918 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des "Osmanischen Lloyd," Beiruter Texte und Studien 50 (Beirut: In Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1993).
16. Herbert Landolin Müller, Islam, Gihad ("Heiliger Krieg") und Deutsches Reich: Ein Nachspiel ζur Wilhelminischen Weltpolitik im Maghreb, 1914-1918, Europäische Hochschulschriften, reihe 3, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 506 (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1991), 228, quoting Stern-Rubarth.
17. Patrick, Under Five Sultans, 290. "A la franga," as opposed to "alla turka," was the common expression for all kinds of cultural import from Europe. A more partisan observer, the American Henry Morgenthau, put the blame for the ensuing anti-Christian violence squarely on the German ambassador.
18. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1918).
19. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 2-3.
20. George Steinmetz, "'The Devil's Handwriting': Precolonial Discourse, Ethnographic Acuity, and Cross-ldentification in German Colonialism," Comparative Studies in Society and History 45:1 (2003): 41-95.
21. Ussama Makdisi, "Ottoman Orientalism," American Historical Review 107:3 (2002): 768-96;
22. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography (New York: Palgrave, 2001);
23. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998).
24. The only Austrian marginally involved, Alois Musil, coordinated his expedition to the Arab tribes in 1914 with the German military, and sent his reports to the German Foreign Office. See Georg Sauer, "Alois Musil's Reisen nach Arabien im Ersten Weltkrieg. Ein Beitrag zu seinem Lebensbild aus Anlaß seines 100. Geburtstages am 30. Juni 1968," Archiv Orientální 37 (1969): 243-63.
25. Johann Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1955), 21.
26. On Johann David Michaelis, the well-known theologian-Orientalist, who, among other things, provided the questionnaire for the famous Arabian expedition of Carsten Niebuhr and his companions, see Ulrich Hübner, "Johann David Michaelis und die Arabien-Expedition 1761-1781," in Carsten Niebuhr (1733-1815) und seine Zeit. Beiträge eines interdisziplinären Symposiums vom 7.-10. Oktober 1999 in Eutin, ed. Josef Wiesehöfer and Stephan Conermann, Oriens et Occidens 5 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002), 363-402.
27. Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, 108ff. On Reiske's teacher Schultens and his theological background see pp. 105-7.
28. The collection of Heinrich von Diez, former minister at the Prussian representation in Constantinople (Franz Babinger, "Die türkischen Studien in Europa bis zum Auftreten Josef von Hammer-Purgstalls," Welt des Islams 7:3-4 [1919]: 129) is now in the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; that of Count Wenzeslaus Rzewusky, the sponsor of Hammer-Purgstall's Fundgruben des Orients, is in Vienna's Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. While these were private enterprises, collecting manuscripts was an official part of the Niebuhr expedition. See, e.g., Gottfried Hagen, "Unter den 'Tyrannen seiner Araber' - Carsten Niebuhr über Konstantinopel, Türken und Osmanisches Reich," in Wiesehöfer and Conermann, Carsten Niebuhr, 302. It was most successfully accomplished by Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, who sent about 3,500 manuscripts to the duke in Gotha before he was assassinated in Yemen in 1811. See Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (1767-1811): Leben und Werk. Die arabischen Länder und die Nahostforschung im Napoleonischen Zeitalter (Gotha: Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek, 1995).
29. On all of them see Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, and the obituaries by Carl Heinrich Becker assembled in vol. 2 of Carl Heinrich Becker, Islamstudien. Vom Werden und Wesen der Islamischen Welt (Leipzig: Quelle and Meyer, 1924-32). On Goldziher see also Jean Jacques Waardenburg, L'islam dans le miroir de l'occident; comment quelques orientalistes occidentaux se sont penchés sur l'islam et se sont formé une image de cette religion: I. Goldziher, C. Snouck Hurgronje, C. H. Becker, D. B. Macdonald, Louis Massignon, (Paris: Mouton, 1963).
30. Babinger, "Die türkischen Studien in Europa."
31. See also Asli Çirakman, From the "Terror of the World" to the "Sick Man of Europe": European Images of Ottoman Empire and Society from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth, Studies in Modern European History 43 (New York: P. Lang, 2002).
32. Helga Fischer, "Das Osmanische Reich in Reisebeschreibungen und Berichten des 18. Jahrhunderts," in Das Osmanische Reich und Europa 1683-1789: Konflikt, Entspannung und Austausch, ed. Gernot Heiss and Grete Klingenstein (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1983).
33. Instructive are the collective reviews published in Christoph Wilhelm Lüdeke, Beschreibung des türkischen Reiches nach seiner Religions- und Staatsverfassung in der letzten Hälfte des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1771-89).
34. Klaus Kreiser, "Unfeierliche Beiträge zu 100 Jahren Orientalistik in Deutschland," in Türkische Studien in Europa, Analecta Isisiana 31 (Istanbul: Isis Verlag, 1998), 87. Cf Babinger, "Die türkischen Studien in Europa," 125.
35. For a convenient overview see Klaus Kreiser, ed., Germano-Turcica. Zur Geschichte des Türkisch-Lernens in den deutschsprachigen Ländern. Ausstellung des Lehrstuhls für türkische Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der Universität Bamberg in Zusammenarbeit mit der Universitätsbibliothek Bamberg, in Türkische Studien in Europa, 65-84.
36. Babinger, "Die türkischen Studien in Europa," 114-15. Meninski's Thesaurus is still considered useful, so much so that it was reprinted in Istanbul in 2000 (Simurg).
37. Fück, Die arabisehen Studien in Europa, 158-66, reproduces the academic contempt for the non-academic scholar in dismissing Hammer's efforts in Arabic and Persian. In fact, Hammer was not a philologist. But his monumental history of the Ottoman Empire until 1774 still holds a place of pride among the great narratives of Ottoman history in Western languages, and his information on Ottoman administration may still be useful.
38. See Klaus Kreiser, Der Osmanische Staat 1300-1922 Oldenbourg Grundriss der Geschichte 30 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2001), index, s.v. "Hammer-Purgstall."
39. Klaus Kreiser, "Haben die Türken Verstand? Zur europäischen Orient-Debatte im Napoleonischen Zeitalter," in Ulrich Jasper Seetzen. Fleischer's preface to Behrnauer's translation of the Tales of the Forty Viziers states that comprehensive study of the Middle East's daily and intellectual life is not possible without knowledge of Turkish, but this has to be taken with a grain of salt (quoted in Kreiser, Türkische Studien in Europa, 68).
40. See Klaus Kreiser, "Hermann Bamberger und die Turkologie," in Türkische Studien in Europa, 111. The lectureship had been established in 1850, but had been vacant since 1855.
41. Klaus Kreiser, "Hermann Bamberger und die Turkologie," 115.
42. Lory Alder and Richard Dalby, The Dervish of Windsor Castle: The Life of Arminius Vambery (London: Bachman and Turner, 1979);
43. Kreiser, "Hermann Bamberger und die Turkologie."
44. Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, 320.
45. Jehuda Lothar Wallach, Anatomie einer Militärhilfe: Die preussisch-deutschen Militärmissionen in der Türkei 1835-1919, Schriftenreihe des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte, Universität Tel Aviv 1 (Düsseldorf. Droste, 1976), 121-35.
46. Gregor Schöllgen, Imperialismus und Gleichgewicht: Deutschland, England und die orientalische Frage 1871-1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1984), 38-49. As a matter of fact German investment in the Baghdad Railroad took a long time to catch on, since its risks seemed disproportionately high compared to other railroad projects at the time.
47. The dilemma is found in a nutshell in a note by the secretary of the German Foreign Office stating that Germany was not bound by any political interests in the Middle East, to which the head of the Oriental section, Zimmermann, added, "although we have to take our economic interests into account." Quoted in Wilhelm van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik in der Zeit Wilhelms II." (PhD diss., University of Kiel, 1968), 28.
48. Jan Stefan Richter, Die Orientreise Kaiser Wilhelms II. 1898: Eine Studie zur deutschen Aussenpolitik an der Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert, Studien zur Geschichtsforschung der Neuzeit 9 (Hamburg: Kovac, 1997), 99-105.
49. van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 170.
50. van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 160.
51. Hans Barth, Türke wehre Dich, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Rengersche Buchhandlung, 1898). Many thanks to my colleague Rudi Lindner for providing me with a modern Turkish reprint of this lengthy pamphlet.
52. I am grateful to Klaus Kreiser for referring me to this claim.
53. Welt am Montag, Nov. 21, 1898, quoted in van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 149. This is one of the very rare instances when an openly sexualized vocabulary is used in regard to Turkey.
54. The Deutsches Vorderasien-Komitee was founded by geographer Hugo Grothe, but never found enough financial support to extend its activities beyond minor publications for a German audience. Jürgen Kloosterhuis, Friedliche Imperialisten: Deutsche Auslandsvereine und auswärtige Kulturpolitik, 1906-1918, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 3, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften 588 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1994), 573-9.
55. The Deutsch-Türkische Vereinigung originated from a committee for the establishment of a German university in Konya. Its spiritus rector was journalist Ernst Jäckh, who had landed his first success in Oriental politics when he organized a study tour for Turkish politicians and journalists through Germany in 1911 - hence his nickname Türken-Jäckh. Ibid., 589-93, 579-84; Klaus Kreiser, "Damenbäder und Kanonengiessereien. Zur Osmanischen Studienreise nach Deutschland (Juni/Juli 1911)," in Das Osmanische Reich in seinen Archivalien und Chroniken. Nejat Göyünç zu Ehren, ed. Klaus Kreiser and Christoph K. Neumann, Beiruter Texte und Studien 65, Türkische Welten 1 (Beirut: Franz Steiner in Kommission, 1997): 85-112. Its roster reads like a who's-who of German banking (Kloosterhuis, Friedliche Imperialisten, 595-657). Its primary project was a privately funded German school in Anatolia, but plans for cultural activities reached much farther. The greatest of them, a House of Friendship in Istanbul (Dostluk Yurdu, or Haus der Freundschaf) was never realized. German politics in Qingdao had provided an important example. Jäckh's excellent contacts with high-ranking Turkish politicians (established after 1908; see van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 285) guaranteed the continuing interest of the Foreign Office. Jäckh became professor of Turkish history in Berlin in 1916 (another indication of the peculiar status of Turkish studies in German academia), and emigrated to the United States after 1933.
56. Kreiser, "Unfeierliche Beiträge," 89-90. The success of the SOS is illustrated by the fact that several important administrators of German colonies in the Far East were trained there. Steinmetz, "The Devil's Handwriting," 83.
57. Hartmann's contempt for Islam as a religion is documented in his letters to Ignaz Goldziher. See Ludmila Hanisch, "Machen Sie doch unseren Islam nicht gar zu schlecht". Der Briefwechsel der Islamwissenschaftler Ignaz Goldziher und Martin Hartmann 1894-1914, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, Veröffentlichungen der Orientalischen Kommission 45 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000).
58. On Hartmann see Martin Kramer, "Arabistik and Arabism: The Passions of Martin Hartmann," Middle Eastern Studies 25:3 (1989): 283-300, with further literature. Hartmann's antipathy for political Islam later manifested itself when he ve hemently opposed plans by his "colleague" in propaganda, Salih ash-Sharif, for an Islamic institution of higher education in Germany. Müller, Islam, Gibad, 276.
59. Kloosterhuis, Friedliche Imperialisten, 571-2.
60. On cross-identification see Steinmetz, who points out that several colonial administrators who identified in this way with their subjects had been trained at the SOS (Steinmetz, "The Devil's Handwriting," 83). For Becker's criticism of Hartmann see Ludmila Hanisch, "Gelehrtenselbstverständnis, wissenschaftliche Rationalität und politische Emotionen," Welt des Islams 32 (1992): 107-23, at 116,and Becker's necrology for Hartmann in Becker, Islamstudien, vol. 2. In 1926 Kampffmeyer was accused of having more contact with "Orientals living here [in Berlin] or coming through" than was appropriate.
61. Gerhard Höpp, "Orientalist mit Konsequenz: Georg Kampffmeyer und die Muslime," in Religionswissenschaft in Konsequenz. Beiträge im Anschluss an Impulse von Kurt Rudolph, ed. R. Flasche, F. Heinrich, and C. Koch (Hamburg: 2000), 38.
62. Sachau worked on al-Biruni and on Syriac. On the faculty, Friedrich Giese, for example, was mainly occupied with early Ottoman chronicles.
63. Peter Heine, "Wiederentdeckte Gemeinsamkeiten," Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 95:4-5 (2000): 371-3.
64. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 32; Kreiser, "Unfeierliche Beiträge," 88-9. Schabinger's memoirs, distributed in 1967 in a few private copies, were not accessible to me during the preparation of this article. His translation of Nizamu 1-Mulk's famous eleventh-century treatise on statecraft, the Siyasatname, is still available.
65. Becker is briefly mentioned in Said, Orientalism, 209, but based on a highly tendential rendering from Waardenburg, L'islam. The same is true for Said's assessment of the other scholars studied by Waardenburg, such as Goldziher, Snouck Hurgronje, Massignon, and MacDonald.
66. Criticizing Heine's notion of "applied Oriental studies," Hanisch insists that Orientalism is never detached from political significance. It is clear, however, that the intentional involvement in "real life" marks a qualitative change. Hanisch, "Gelehrtenselbstverständnis," 110ff.
67. Kramer, "Arabistik and Arabism," 286ff.
68. Waardenburg, L'islam, 121 and passim.
69. Peter Heine, "Die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Islamkunde," in Islamstudien ohne Ende. Festschrift für Werner Ende zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rainer Brunner, Monika Gronke, Jens Peter Laut, Ulrich Rebstock (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft; Würzburg: Ergon, 2002), 175-81. See also Kloosterhuis, Friedlicbe Imperialisten 584ff These three journals continue to constitute the major forum of German Oriental studies. Becker's programmatic article "Der Islam als Problem" in the first issue of Der Islam has been celebrated as a founding document of modern Islamic studies by Mark Batunsky, "Carl Heinrich Becker: From Old to New Islamology - Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of 'Der Islam als Problem,'" International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 (1981): 287-310. It is difficult, however, to agree with several important points of Batunsky's apologetic, e.g., his denial of racism in Becker's thought.
70. See Kloosterhuis, Friedliche Imperialisten, 584-9.
71. Cf, Jacob M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 2.
72. Kemal Karpat's recent attempt to play down this political dimension and to reduce Abdülhamid's pan-Islamist policies to acts of Islamic solidarity is not convincing, and contradicted by Karpat's own findings. Kemal H. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State, Studies in Middle Eastern History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 233.
73. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 47;
74. cf. Richter, Die Orientreise Kaiser Wilbelms II., 86-92.
75. Quoted in Stephen Casewit, "Background to the Holy War 1914. Towards an Understanding," Islamic Quarterly 29:4 (1985): 220.
76. For similar statements from Wilhelm II as early as 1896, see van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 58.
77. Heine, "C. Snouck Hurgronje versus C. H. Becker," 380. On Hartmann's change of mind after the beginning of the war, see Kramer, A. "Arabistik and Arabism," 296ff.
78. Throughout, Becker employed a notion of a hierarchy of civilizations, tainted with racism. For a blatant example see Becker, Islamstudien vol. 2, 188-9.
79. Becker, "Ist der Islam eine Gefahr für unsere Kolonien?" (1909), in Islamstudien, vol. 2, 156ff.
80. Makdisi, "Ottoman Orientalism," 2ff, following suggestions by Deringil, Well-Protected Domains.
81. It may be pointed out that hardly any part of the Ottoman Empire came as close to de facto colony status as Tripolitania. For an analysis of Ottoman rule in Yemen in similar terms see Thomas Kühn, "An Imperial Borderland as Colony: Knowledge Production and the Elaboration of Difference in Ottoman Yemen, 1872-94," Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (2003): 5-17;
82. and Selim Deringil, "'They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery': The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate," Comparative Studies in Society and History 45:2 (2003): 311-42. Salih ash-Sharif at-Tunisi, to whom we will return below, a cleric from Tunis and since the Tripolitanian campaign a close ally of Enver, the Young Turkish minister of war, is said to have issued the fatwa that declared the jihad.
83. Peter Heine, "Salih as-Sarif at-Tunisi, a North African Nationalist in Berlin during the First World War," Revue de l'Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée 33 (1982): 89-95.
84. Fritz Fischer claims that a memo from Oppenheim inspired the emperor's infamous Damascus speech, in Griff nach der Weltmacht. Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/18, special ed. (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1967; reprint, 1977), 109, but this is rejected by van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 10, who points out that similar ideas circulated in Germany anyway. Unfortunately Richter, Die Orientreise Kaiser Wilhelms II., analyzes Wilhelm II's trip to the Middle East only from the perspective of short-term political effects within the European balance of power, while the Ottoman Empire at no point is considered a political player in its own right. On the political aspects of the visit, in particular the idea of an alliance of Germany and the Ottoman Empire, which was voiced in the Arab press at the time, see the contributions by Abderrauf Sinno and Thomas Scheffler in Hélène S. Sader, Thomas Scheffler, and Angelika Neuwirth, eds., Baalbek: Image and Monument, 1898-1998, Beiruter Texte und Studien 69 (Beirut: In Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1998).
85. Examples of this theme in published documents are in Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Veltkrieg, 31ff; see also van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 74ff A study of the emperor's attitude towards Islam, in relation to his religious ideas and as a factor in German foreign politics, remains a desideratum in the vast literature on Wilhelm II.
86. "Die ganze muhammedanische Welt in wildem Aufstand zu entflammen," quoted in Müller, Islam, Gihad, 239, follow ing Karl Kautsky.
87. The text has been published by Tim Epkenhans, "Geld darf keine Rolle spielen," parts 1 and 2, Archivum Ottomanicum 18 (2000): 247-50; 19 (2001): 121-63.
88. Werner Ende, "Iraq in World War I: The Turks, the Germans, and the Shi'ite Mujtahids' Call for Jihad," in Proceedings of the 9th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisant et Islamisants, Amsterdam 1.-7.9.1978, ed. Rudolph Peters (Leiden, Brill: 1981), argues that the Shiite scholars were cautious enough not to see their most prominent men involved, while Nasrollah Salehi, "Les fatwas des ulémas persans de Najaf et Kerbala," in La Perse et la grande guerre, ed. Oliver Bast, Bibliothèque Iranienne 52 (Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 2002), 157-76, unaware of the presence of German envoys in the holy cities, strongly argues that the call for jihad was in no way exceptional to Shiite religious politics of the time.
89. "Gegen Aden wären die Leute des Imam Jehia und andere Stämme von Yemen loszulassen." Oppenheim quoted in Epkenhans, "Geld darf keine Rolle spielen," part 2, 135.
90. Quoted in Epkenhans, "Geld darf keine Rolle spielen," part 2, 136-7, 34.
91. For ethnic stereotypes regarding Turks and Oriental Christians in the work of the famous traveler of the Enlightenment, Carsten Niebuhr, see Hagen, "Unter den 'Tyrannen seiner Araber.'" On the stereotypes in Karl May, see Nina Berman, "Orientalism, Imperialism, and Nationalism: Karl May's Orientzyklus," in The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy, ed. Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), 51-67.
92. On the other hand, Oppenheim's views could equally well have directed him to the diplomatic career. A class distinction, like that found by Steinmetz among colonial administrators in China and Samoa, is not supported by the information available to me.
93. On the organization of the NfO, and its partners and supporters in the Foreign Office and the military administration, see Müller, Islam, Gihad, and more comprehensively, Höpp, Muslime in der Mark. Immediately after the outbreak of the war the Foreign Office had turned down suggestions for propaganda among the Arabs submitted by two Orientalists, Enno Littmann and Eugen Mittwoch. While Mittwoch is well attested later as a member of the NfO, I don't have further information about Littmann. Sauer, "Alois Musil's Reisen," 244.
94. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 22. The leader of the political section of the Foreign Office, Nadolny, worked closely with the NfO. Ibid.; Müller, Islam, Gihad, passim.
95. The question of to what extent this operation served diplomatic ends, whether to indicate to the Turkish government that Germany was counting on the Holy War or to boost pan-Islamic support for Turkey's entry into the war, will not be discussed here.
96. Müller, Islam, Gihad, 204. A list of the early staff is on p. 207. Internal quibbles, insufficient funding, and a considerable amount of amateurism were permanent features of NfO activities.
97. On Stumme see S. Brauner, "Die Entwicklung der Afrikanistik an der Universität Leipzig (zum Wirken von Hans Stumme und August Klingenheben)," Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig 28 (1979): 131-44. On Jäschke see Klaus Kreiser, "Gotthard Jäschke (1894-1983): Zur Entstehung der türkischen Zeitgeschichtsforschung," in Türkiscbe Studien in Europa. A 1915 leaflet by Tschudi is mentioned by Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 30. On Kampffmeyer see Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, passim, and Höpp, "Orientalist mit Konsequenz: Georg Kampffmeyer und die Muslime." Hartmann was not allowed to join officially since "he could be exploited in the future as well without closer association" (quoted in Müller, Islam, Gihad, 205). Several of these men were in the early steps of their careers, and probably simply seeking a job opportunity. This is certainly true for Jäschke.
98. Müller, Islam, Gihad, 207. For collaborators working with Muslim POWs in Camp Crescent, see Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 71.
99. The military aspect of the "deutsche Expeditionsmanie" (Hans von Seeckt, quoted in Wallach, Anatomie einer Militärhilfe, 168) shall not be dealt with here. A good overview with further literature is given by Martin Kröger, "Revolution als Programm. Ziele und Realität deutscher Orientpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg," in Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Anaylse, ed. Wolfgang Michalka (Munich: Piper, 1994), 366-91.
100. It would be a worthwhile project for the student of Orientalism to analyze the dozens of memoirs of participants in these expeditions, and their legacy in books like Peter Hopkirk, On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire (London: Murray, 1994), with regard to Orientalist discourse in the wake of Karl May. For example, an interesting mixture of literary Orientalism, scholarship, and economic penetration is found in a brochure distributed by a manufacturer of trucks, H. Büssing in Braunschweig, to its customers in 1914 or shortly later, with contributions by all the usual suspects (Jäckh, Hartmann, Becker), and a highly Orientalizing short story by journalist Edgar Stern-Rubarth. He had been part of the group that escorted the first POWs to Istanbul in fall 1914, and later part of the expedition to Najaf to obtain a jihad fatwa from the Shiite mujtabids. Georg Krotkoff, "Büssing, Burchard und Bagdad," in Islamstudien ohne Ende, 261-6.
101. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark;
102. Margot Kahleyss, Muslime in Brandenburg - Kriegsene im 1. Weltkrieg. Ansichten und Absichten (Berlin: Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 1998).
103. In particular, the education in Islamic values and beliefs corresponds closely to the goal of "native policy" as producing a stable "other." Steinmetz, "The Devil's Handwriting," 47.
104. POWS who were actually sent to Turkey were often treated so badly that diplomats had to interfere with the Turkish authorities. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 78-90;
105. Kahleyss, Muslime in Brandenburg, 26-30.
106. Anthropological work with POWs is described, without specific reference to Camp Crescent, in Andrew D. Evans, "Anthropology at War: Racial Studies of POWs during World War I," in Worldly Provincialism: German Anthropology in the Age of Empire, ed. H. Glenn Penny and Matti Bunzl, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 198-229.
107. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 56f.
108. On Frobenius as secret agent,see Peter Heine, "Leo Frobenius als politischer Agent," Paideuma 26 (1980): 1-5.
109. Kahleyss, Muslime in Brandenburg, 33-41.
110. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 57, mentions Indologists H. Lüders and W Schulze, Arabist Gotthold Weil, and Ottomanist Oskar Rescher. The last was mainly employed as censor for the correspondence of the prisoners.
111. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 57, 67. Kahleyss hesitates to take the images out of the personal context in which they were made. However, this context is not evident to any recipient in the public realm, and thus mostly irrelevant to the historian. Kahleyss, Muslime in Brandenburg 57.
112. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 56.
113. Farah, Die Deutsche Pressepolitik, passim.
114. Oppenheim did not succeed in having the paper distributed at the front and in Muslim countries, because the military was very concerned to keep it secret as long as possible. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 101.
115. See also Peter Heine, "Al-Gihad - Eine deutsche Propagandazeitung im 1. Weltkrieg," Welt des Islams 20:3-4 (1980): 197-9.
116. Some examples are preserved in the archive of the German Foreign Office, and have been utilized by Müller, Islam, Gihad. Müller and Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, also deal with discussions in the NfO. The following analysis is based on a collection in the university library in Heidelberg, entitled Die Türkei im Weltkriege (henceforth cited as TW, with folder and document numbers), partly edited and translated in Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg. This collection comes from a former member of the NfO. Due to the limited sample, quantitative statements about the use of arguments have to be made with great caution. The collection also includes specimens of allied propaganda, such as TW 12.11.
117. See TW 8.4 or Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 55-9, for an Arabic version, and Kahleyss, Muslime in Brandenburg, 14, for a Persian version, both printed by the Turkish National Defense Association and obviously sent to Berlin. The official character of the National Defense Association is evident from Snouck Hurgronje's protest against one of its publications: C. Snouck Hurgronje, "Een belangrijk document betreffende von den Heiligen Oorlog von den islam (1914) en eene officieel correctie," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde ran Nederlandsch-Indië 73 (1917), 255-84.
118. Ende, "Iraq in World War I"; Salehi, "Les fatwas des ulémas persans."
119. Rudolph Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History, Religion and Society 20 (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 94.
120. William L. Cleveland, "The Role of Islam as Political Ideology in the First World War," in National and International Politics in the Middle East: Essays in Honour of Elie Kedourie, ed. Edward Ingram (London: F. Cass, 1986), 84-101, points out that Husayn's campaign originated from the same pan-Islamist ideology.
121. Müller, Islam, Gihad, 358. Salih ash-Sharif wrote - among many other things - a leaflet in which he refuted Lloyd George's dismissal of the legitimacy of the Ottoman caliphate. Farah, Die Deutsche Pressepolitik, 258-9; TW 8.30; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 105, 214 (text in Tatar). Largely legalistic is the argument in Salih ash-Sharif's treatise The Truth about the Holy War The book was published in German, Arabic, French, and Italian, and possibly other languages; I am using the French edition, Schaich Salih Aschscharif Attunisi, La vérité au sujet de la guerre sainte (Berne: Ferd. Wyss, 1916). This book also has a function in the Snouck Hurgronje-Becker controversy, discussed below.
122. When the Turkish side planned to settle volunteers from among the Muslim prisoners in Anatolia, the War Ministry outright rejected the proposal because it did not speak about the jihad. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 81.
123. Even in hindsight the responsible officer in the Foreign Office, Nadolny, explained the failure to himself as follows: "We were not very lucky in propagating Holy War. The Islamic people did not care although it had been declared by the Turkish sultan." Quoted in Kahleyss, Muslime in Brandenburg, 30.
124. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 70ff.
125. See for instance TW 8.1, 8.28, 8.31, 8.48; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg 51ff., 100f, 106ff, 138ff.
126. For example, a brochure by Salih ash-Sharif shows a photograph of severed heads of Moroccan Muslims (TW 8.62). A booklet of photographs shows the executions after the so-called Denshawai incident in Egypt in 1906 (TW 11.7 in Arabic, Turkish, and Urdu; the incident is also mentioned in TW 8.29(b); Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 212). In Denshawai, a small town in the Nile delta, villagers had attacked British soldiers on a shooting party, without harming anybody. Still the British reacted with massive repression, including execution of four men, prison sentences, and public flogging. The incident later served as a catalyst for the national movement in Egypt. One attempt to improve the efficiency of the POW paper al-Jihad as a propaganda tool was to include more images (Müller, Islam, Gihad, 222). I don't know whether the previous lack of images was due to practical reasons or (less likely) adherence to Islamic prohibition of images.
127. On the French, see TW 9.8; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg 255. On the British, see TW 11.8, TW 8.29(b); Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 210ff On the author of the latter, an Indian-born journalist in Istanbul, see Höpp, Muslime in der Mark 113.
128. TW 8.62, Persian version TW 10.12. See also TW 8.31 and 8.32
129. Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 106-13.
130. On Morocco, see TW 8.24. On Tripolitania, see TW 8.26; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 87ff., 200ff; Müller, Islam, Gihad, 356, identifies the author of the latter work as Muhammad al-Khidr.
131. TW 8.27.
132. TW 12.3. This act had provided ample material for allied propaganda that was hard to reject. In this way, this text is addressing German concerns rather than Muslim ones.
133. Often the promise of freedom is expressed in rather cryptic terms, and very rarely spelled out explicitly. See TW 8.1, 8.31; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 51-4, 106-10.
134. TW 8.32; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 220.
135. TW 8.33, 8.46, Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 114ff., 26ff.; Müller, Islam, Gihad, 363. Müller mentions one more issue in the Foreign Office archives.
136. See TW 12.6 or 12.7, leading up to 31 July 1915 (in Ta tar; Ottoman version entitled Harbin bidayetindenberi geçen mühimm vekayi-i harhiye, n.p., n.d., in my collection).
137. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 103.
138. Harbin bidayetindenberi gecen mühimm vekayi-i harbiye, 20, 41.
139. Müller, Islam, Gihad, 363.
140. Album de la Grande Guerre, Édition pour l'Orient (Berlin W: Deutscher Überseedienst Transocean, G.m.b.H., and Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient). TW 13.4-7 has issues 17, 10, 21, and 5. The design is the same as that of the brochure on Denshawai (TW 11.7) and an album of ships destroyed at the Dardanelles (TM 12.8).
141. TW 9.1. The author is named only in Arabic characters, which can be transcribed as "Paul Kreuzinger," and denoted a retired lieutenant colonel. Maybe he is Paul Creuzinger, author of an unfinished multivolume work, Die Probleme des Krieges (vol. 1-3.1 Leipzig, 1906-10; not available to me). This brochure is not a direct product of the NfO. It was published in Constantinople by Ali Ihsan, a close friend of the "Türken-Jäckh."
142. Farah, Die Deutsche Pressepolitik, 273, 83.
143. See the internal discussion in Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 59f. Undoubtedly, the final result is TW 8.45. Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 120-5.
144. TW 8.48; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 138ff.
145. TW 8.58-60; Hagen, Die Türkei im Ersten Weltkrieg, 147-61. At the same time in Iran, traditional epic forms were used by poets to celebrate German heroes; see Ali Mir-Ansari, "La grande guerre dans la poésie épique persane," in La perse et la grande guerre, ed. Oliver Bast (Tehran: Institut Français de Recherches en Iran, 2002), 237-59.
146. See the famous "Sylvesterbrief" of 1905, discussed in van Kampen, "Studien zur deutschen Türkeipolitik," 66. Another famous example is a statement by British prime minister Grey, which caused a sharp response by Ottoman grand vizier Said Halim (Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam, 28). Cf, also American ambassador Henry Morgenthau's account of the outbreak of war (Morgenthau, Ambassador Mogenthau's Story).
147. C. Snouck Hurgronje, "Deutschland und der Heilige Krieg," Internationale Monatsschrift 9 (1915): 290;
148. Snouck Hurgronje, Holy War "Made in Germany," 75.
149. From the diary of Kronprinz Rupprecht von Bayern, quoted in Müller, Islam, Gihad, 274.
150. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 73.
151. Müller, Islam, Gihad, 225.
152. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 82; allegedly the Tatar agents in particular were quite successful.
153. Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 103f.
154. Müller, Islam, Gihad, 214ff.
155. See the list of titles in Höpp, Muslime in der Mark, 29.
156. Becker left academia for a political career in 1916, and became minister of culture in 1921, and again from 1925 to 1930. He never joined a political party. He died a few days after Hitler had come to power, a development he considered "finis Germaniae." Waardenburg, L'islam 29f,
157. Carl Heinrich Becker, Deutshland und der Islam (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1914); C. Snouck Hurgronje, "Deutschland und der Heilige Krieg," Internationale Monatsschrift 9 (1915), 1025-34. Becker's responses to Snouck are reprinted in Becker, Islamstudien, vol. 2. Becker had hoped to skip this episode when editing his collected papers, but since Snouck had included his in his collected writings, he could not do this. See C. Snouck Hurgronje and A. J. Wensinck, Verspreide Geschriften van C. Snouck Hurgronje, Bibliographie en Registers door Dr. A. J. Wensinck (Bonn and Leipzig: K. Schroeder, 1923-7). The writings on Germany and the Holy War are in vol. 3.
158. Hanisch, "Gelehrtenselbstverständnis," 111, notes the resentment against officials-turned-professors in German academia.
159. See Hanisch, "Gelehrtenselbstverständnis," 114, who also sees the Engclopedia of Islam as an expression of European feelings of superiority over the peoples of the contemporary Middle East.
160. See Heine, "C. Snouck Hurgronje versus C. H. Becker."
161. Hanisch, "Gelehrtenselbstverständnis."
162. Thomas Scheffler, "Orientalisten und Orientkenner als Väter der deutschen Potitikwissenschaft?" in Annäherung an das Fremde. XXVI. Deutscher Orientalistentag, ed. Holger Preissler and Heidi Stein (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1998), 63-70. The notion of partnership had been strongly argued by Becker.
163. Friedrich Rosen, Aus einem diplomatischen Wanderleben. Vol. 3-4. Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Herbert Müller-Werth (Wiesbaden: Limes Verlag, 1959), vol. 3, 50f.
164. Said, Orientalism, 15.