Mapping the Arabian Nights: a collaborative research project

In generations past, Orientalists would retire to their studies to peruse lavishly illustrated volumes from their multi-lingual collections of The Arabian Nights. My own collection takes up half a shelf in a closet next to my bathroom. But as I was perusing it the other day, or at least looking at the pictures I did notice something interesting: the drawings in the 19th century British edition I have are clearly based on Egyptian architecture and street scenes, while the drawings in a German edition from the same period look like Istanbul. Meanwhile, in the one early 20th century Turkish version I've looked at, the setting appears vaguely Far Eastern, kind of a French art nouveau version of Japan.

I have no idea how representative these books are, but it would certainly be interesting, and not entirely surprising, if Western Europeans tended to illustrate the Arabian Nights according to their country's colonial possessions (or aspirations) in the Near East, while countries close to the region where  Europeans set their Arabian Nights had to further exoticize the stories by setting them even further east, and perhaps further removing themselves from the scene by using European styles to do so.

There's an excellent book about the history of illustrating the Arabian Nights in English, but it would be fun to see a comparative look both at how it was illustrated in other places, be they colonial powers or Middle Eastern states. In some cases the settings of the stories themselves almost certainly shaped artists' decisions but in other cases contemporary cultural factors must have done far more to inform their fantasies.

Anyways, if anyone has a copy of the Arabian Nights whose illustrations they think they can connect to a particular place, please send us in a picture or two and we can try to compile a collection. If we get enough responses we can do a completely unscientific map of where the Arabian Nights took place in different places over the past two centuries.

The Turkish Empire in Europe, Asia and Africa

Thanks go to Chris Trapani for alerting me to the great descriptions that appear on this mid-eighteenth century map prepared "according to the newest and most exact observations by H. Moll, Geographer." The full title of the image, which can be found here, is The Turkish Empire in Europe, Asia and Africa, dividid into all its governments, together with the other territories that are tributary to it, as also the dominions of ye Emperor of Marocco.

Century Old US Map Envisions United Kurdistan... Under Russian Control

European Territorial Claims on Turkey from Europe at Turkey's Door, The Geographical Review, 1916

As the French and British were hammering out the Sykes Picot agreement in the spring of 1916, an American geographer named Leon Dominan prepared a map showing the possible European spheres of influence that might be carved out of the Ottoman Empire after its defeat. His accompanying article discusses the historical, economic and political background to each power's claim in the region, but does not give any specific details on how we came up with this particular division. His predictions seem to have erred rather consistently in France's favor, not only granting them Palestine but the Karadeniz too. The map also imagines Russia's sphere of influence extending from Iran into much of Eastern Anatolia and what is now Northern Iraq, which even before the revolution was more than the British and French seemed willing to offer.

Anyways, for more on how this map fits into contemporary political debates, check out our other blog post on the subject!

Up and Down Again

Part of a portolan chart from the 1547 Vallard Atlas, which can be seen in its entirety here. It shows Europe and the Mediterranean during that strange period where North appeared prominently marked on the compass rose but wasn't necessarily up. In fact, looking closely at this map, its hard to tell if it even has an up.

Bond's World

The map above features offensive quotes about the world's diverse people and places compiled from the various James Bond books. The article below originally appeared in Al Jazeera on Nov 22, 2015.

With its most recent installment, “Spectre,” the James Bond franchise has at last abandoned Ian Fleming’s book series as even a nominal source of movie plots. Fortunately, the franchise has largely abandoned another aspect of Fleming’s writing: his persistent, overt racism. A quick look at this map, compiled from quotes found in Fleming’s books, shows how heavily the author relied on racial, national and ethnic stereotypes in crafting Bond’s semifictional world.

This aspect of Bond’s history should be well known by now, having been addressed in scholarly works, “Saturday Night Live” skits and many recent articles about whether actor Idris Elba could be the first black Bond. But the enduring popularity of the franchise can also serve as an opportunity to remember the many ways in which racism was as prominent in Anglo-American Cold War foreign policy as in Ian Fleming’s spy novels.

So these dark, ugly, neat little officials were the modern Turks … Bond didn’t take to them. “From Russia With Love”

Set in Istanbul, the novel “From Russia With Love” quickly establishes that Fleming really didn’t take to the Turks. The Turkish language, with its “broad vowels, quiet sibilants and modified u-sounds” was pleasant enough, but the Turks’ eyes were another story entirely. Variously described as “angry,” “cruel,” “untrusting” and “jealous,” these were eyes “that kept the knife-hand in sight without seeming to,” eyes “that had only lately come down from the mountains,” where they had been “trained for centuries to watch over sheep.”

Fleming’s obsession with Turkish eyes may be unique, but his descriptions (which seem to have disappeared from the Turkish translation of the novel) are uncomfortably close to those that occasionally turn up in British and American diplomatic correspondence from the same period. According to various cables, the Turk was “a proud man” and “a realistic soul,” “Oriental enough to enjoy standing on [his] honour against sordid economic considerations.” Even though U.S. officials usually took to the Turks quite enthusiastically, they still couched their political assessments, both positive and negative, in equally essentialist terms.

Evaluating Turkey’s potential contribution to NATO, for example, one diplomat noted that Turks were “a simple peasant folk” who took “satanic pleasure” in killing Russians. To understand the risk of a coup in Turkey, another wrote, it was important to recognize that “the stolid Turk very seldom blows up, but when he does, there is a major explosion.” 

It’s like in the new African states where they pretend the cannibal stewpot in the chief’s hut was for cooking yams for the hungry children. “You Only Live Twice”

A growing body of literature has begun to explore how the racism of British and American statesmen shaped the postwar world they worked together to build in the 1950s. As the Bond books show, Cold War geopolitics often led U.S. policymakers to support European imperialism in the hopes of forestalling Soviet expansion in the third world.

Populism, Nationalism and the Politics of Ottoman History

This article first appeared in Politico Europe on December 29th, 2015

When President Erdoğan’s party won an unexpected and decisive victory in Turkey’s November 1 election, many surprised observers concluded that the Turkish people had voted for stability. A month later, following the downing of a Russian jet and continued killing in the country’s southeast, stability seems more elusive than ever. Yet as Erdoğan leads Turkey into turbulent waters, polls suggest that his popularity has only risen along with domestic and international tensions.

People continuing to search for the secret of Erdogan’s popularity might do well to consider the success of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — particularly the powerful tradition of populist nationalism and aggrieved egalitarianism that Erdoğan inherited from him.

Erdoğan and Ataturk are often seen as opposing figures. For Ataturk’s supporters it is a contrast between the modernizer and the reactionary, the pro-Western secularist and the anti-Western Islamist.

Shortly before November’s elections, Erdoğan presented the contrast somewhat differently.

Welcoming guests to his new thousand-room presidential palace to celebrate the founding of the Turkish Republic, Erdoğan reminded them that the country’s founders had once celebrated the occasion in Ataturk’s palace “with frocks, waltzes and champagne” while a “half-starved nation, struggling to survive without shoes on their feet or jackets on their backs, looked on from outside the gates in shock.” Today, he went on, “after a long struggle we have eliminated this division between the public and the Republic.”

Erdoğan told the assembled crowd that their presence inside his new residence symbolized the fact that the building now belonged to the people and to the nation.

In part, Turkey’s recent election hinged on whether the citizens believed him. Did they think Erdogan’s palace truly belonged to them or instead, as critics claimed, to an increasingly powerful and out-of-touch autocrat? Most sided with Erdoğan, just as almost a century earlier most had sided with Ataturk.

Ironically, Erdoğan’s attacks on Ataturk’s regime bear an uncanny resemblance to Ataturk’s own attacks on the Ottoman sultans he overthrew in creating modern Turkey. Erdoğan’s comments sought to depict his predecessors as an alien elite whose European affectations marked them as indifferent to the needs and culture of the masses. Ataturk worked to paint the late Ottoman dynasty in the same light, saying the Sultans who presided over the Empire’s dissolution were “foreign usurpers,” “madmen and spendthrifts,” whose depravity endangered the Turkish nation.

In place of waltzes and champagne, popular history from Ataturk’s era offered the Mad Sultan Ibrahim, “taking amber as an aphrodisiac” to “better busy himself with women” while Turkish soldiers fought and died. To muster popular support for abolishing first the Ottoman Empire and then the Caliphate, Ataturk accused the Ottoman Sultans of further betraying the nation by seeking British support to sustain their corrupt rule. With undoubted delight, Ataturk noted that the last Ottoman Sultan, “in his capacity as Caliph of all the Mohamedans,” had “appealed for English protection” and was conducted out of Istanbul on an English man-of-war.

Building on this critique, Ataturk’s rhetoric centered on his regime’s commitment to the values and well being of the Turkish people. Slogans like “Turkey belongs to the Turks,” or “the villagers are the masters of the nation” sought to give ordinary citizens a sense of ownership over their new nation-state. Ataturk’s government claimed to celebrate the people and their culture, speaking the plain Turkish of Anatolian villagers, not the incomprehensible mix of Arabic and Persian used by the Ottoman court. In place of royal palaces it promised museums to display the villagers’ costumes and carpets with pride, and schools to prepare them to take their place among the country’s governing elite.

In time, of course, Ataturk’s regime did create its own elite, but most villagers remained conscious of their place outside it. The regime’s authoritarian approach failed to live up to its promises, bringing rural Turkish voters economic stagnation and one-party rule instead of empowerment.

Erdoğan’s regime may well do the same, and in time be remembered in a similar fashion. But its initial promise and methods are not that different from Ataturk’s. After November’s election a pro-government columnist wrote that the people who voted for Erdoğan demanded their rightful place in “the media, the academy, the arts and the neighborhoods of the elite.” Now, she declared, with the advent of democracy, “all these bastions of the great nation will be conquered.” In short, the villagers were still waiting to become masters of their country, and they expected Erdoğan to deliver where Ataturk had failed.

The World War and Its Relation to the Eastern Question and Armaggedon

I haven't had a chance to read this book yet, but judging entirely by the cover I feel confident I should. The full text is available here. If anyone who reads it wants to share some highlights let me know. And thanks to Muaz Selim for bringing this to my attention.