As a framework of analysis for both Bedri Paşa’s career and the network strategies he relied on, the space of Ottoman Syria plays a crucial role.
Over the late 19th century, the province of Syria emerged as a space with both political and economic importance for the Bedirhani family. Second only to Istanbul, it was the center and meeting point of the family in exile. It is interesting to note that the close relationship to the Syrian lands, which was in no small part established by the politics of Bedri Paşa Bedirhan in the late Ottoman period, was to continue on well into the 20th century: The brothers Celadet and Kamuran Bedirhan, along with other, less prominent family members, found refuge in the French mandate territories of Syria and Lebanon in the late 1920s and came to rely on existing networks and connections of the family there, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter. Until recently, the family also owned property in Syria, notably in the coastal area of Banyas, near Latakia.490
Ottoman Syria, referred to as Bilad aş-Şam in contemporary Ottoman sources, refers to an Ottoman administrative unit comprising a territory
490 Banyas, also known as Marḳab, was part of the district of Latakia and the province of Beirut in Ottoman times. In the 20th century, the otherwise small and insignificant town of Banyas gained some import as the terminal of the British Iraqi Petroleum Company Line, where oil tankers were filled with petrol to be transported to Europe. A separate area within Banyas was developed to house British personnel and their families during that time. See Nedko S. Etinoff, Thirty Years in Lebanon and the Middle East (Beirut: self-published, 1969), pp. 99-100.
which not congruent with the modern 20th-century Syrian national state.491 Around the turn of the century, Ottoman Syria consisted of the province (vilayet) of Syria with the capital Damascus, the separate provinces of Beirut and Aleppo, and finally the district (sancak) of Jerusalem. The history of Ottoman Syria cannot be read as a teleological prelude to the history of the Syrian nation state.492 Much to the contrary, the empire-wide fields of interaction and far-reaching network structures of individuals like Bedri Paşa Bedirhan emphasize the multiple entanglements between Ottoman Syria and other Ottoman provinces and the imperial capital. During the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, the provinces of Ottoman Syria were counted among the more important regions of the empire and efforts were made to further their development. The sultan himself was particularly interested and favorably inclined towards Ottoman Syria, surrounding himself with Syrian advisers and investing in settlement and railway development projects in the region.493 Ottoman Syria in the late 19th century was not on the fringes but, at least politically, at the very center of the Ottoman imperial system – and so were the Bedirhanis. Not only Bedri Paşa Bedirhan, but also several of his brothers, among them Ali, Mustafa and Halid Bey held appointments in the civil and military administration of Ottoman Syria over the late 19th century.494 Hüseyin Bey Bedirhan was also active in Greater Syria, when he was dispatched to Jerusalem in 1882/83.495
491 For one late 19th-century definition of Syria, albeit from a European-Orientalist perspective, see Max von Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf, 2 vols. (Berlin:
Dietrich Reimer, 1899), vol. 1, p. 9: „Unter der Bezeichnung »Syrien« wird im allgemeinen die Gegend verstanden, die im Westen vom Mittelmeer, im Norden vom Taurus, im Osten von Nordmesopotamien bezw. der arabischen Wüste begrenzt wird, und zwar vielfach mit Einschluss von Palästina.”
492 James A. Reilly, “Ottoman Syria: Social Historiography Through an Urban Lens.” In:
History Compass 10.1 (2012), pp. 70-71.
493 Stephen H. Longrigg, Syria and Lebanon under the French Mandate (New York: Octagon Books, 1972), p. 16.
494 Lütfi, Emir Bedirhan, p. 42.
495 Lütfi, Emir Bedirhan, p. 42.
The center of the activities of the Bedirhani family in Ottoman Syria was the provincial capital, Damascus.496 Over the second half of the 19th century, the city of Damascus witnessed a period of profound transformation, as economy and infrastructure – and with it, the city’s links to the wider world – changed, along with the outlook of its built environment and not at least local social structures and mentalities.497 After a period of inter-communal violence which had culminated in the killing of thousands of Christian residents of the city in 1860 by Muslim and Druze gangs, the Ottoman central state intervened, turning Damascus into a “canvas on which to test and prove [its, BH] reform (Tanzimat) philosophy,”498 and a testing-ground for state centralization politics. In the aftermath of the intercommunal violence and massacres, the established local balance of power which had greatly favored Muslim notable families was shattered. Particularly during the reign of the reformer Midhat Paşa as governor of Damascus between 1878 and 1880, Ottoman centralization efforts and urban modernization took up speed, beginning to change the face of the city with building projects and large-scale remodeling of the city’s infrastructure.499 In the years after 1860, the Damascene elite was in disarray – which allowed newcomers to carve out spaces for themselves and accumulate power and influence as a new framework of local power politics emerged. The already-mentioned sheikh Abu’l-Huda as-Sayyadi was among the better-known successful newcomers to Damascus from that period. The Bedirhani family, which arrived in Damascus from Crete in 1868, was also able to turn the vacuum of power to their advantage, finding a place for themselves within the networks of the Damascene elite and cooperating with other newcomers to the scene, notably sheikh Abu’l-Huda and his supporters.
496 It would have been very interesting to trace family members and their history in the city and notably in the local archives of Damascus, but due to the current situation in Syria, this kind of fieldwork – although highly desirable – is impossible at the moment.
497 For a documentation of the changes over the second half of the 19th century, see Hudson, Transforming Damascus, pp. 2-13.
498 Hudson, Transforming Damascus, p. 15.
499 Nur ad-Din Elisséeff, “Dimashḳ,” in: EI², vol. II, pp. 277-291.
Governors and other high-ranking Ottoman bureaucrats sent to Ottoman Syria from Istanbul were caught in a dilemma: They had to keep local power holders and strongmen in check, but at the same time relied on the locals’ resources, prestige and following to back up their own power. Individuals like Bedri Paşa Bedirhan, who by means of his family origins could claim to wield some influence over the sizeable Kurdish part of the population of Damascus and its immediate surroundings, emerged as crucial brokers and middlemen for the Ottoman administrative elite in this context. The trajectory of the Bedirhani family in the city of Damascus was profoundly impacted by the changes the city went through over the second half of the 19th century. Members of the family were integral parts of the local economy and political scene throughout the 19th century (and even way beyond, as a following chapter will argue), and their writings about themselves can be read as attempts to make sense of the changing Ottoman Syrian world around them. While too often, the story of the Bedirhani family is rendered as a tale about the Kurdish regions of Eastern Anatolia only, individuals like Bedri Paşa Bedirhan were at the same time shaping and also being shaped by the developments in the city of Damascus.
In the 1880s, at the heyday of Bedri Paşa’s influence, Damascus was home to about 120.000500 to 150.000501 people, the majority of them Sunni Muslims.502 While the exact population figures cannot be determined, it seems clear that the period from the 1870s up until the eve of the First World War was marked by a considerable population
500 Till Grallert, “To Whom Belong the Streets? Investment in Public Space and Popular Contentions in Late Ottoman Damascus.” In: Bulletin d’études orientales LXI (Dec. 2012), p.
329
501 Nur ad-Din Elisséeff, “Dimashḳ,” in: EI², vol. II, pp. 277-291.
502 Grallert, “To Whom Belong the Streets?” p. 329. Population statistics prior to the first comprehensive census of the 1930s are estimations, based either on European travelogues, contemporary consular reports or Ottoman administrative sources, see Jean-Luc Arnaud,
“La population de Damas à la fin de la période ottomane.” In: Annales de Démographie Historique 1 (2001), p. 177.
growth.503 While Damascus was at no point completely segregated along religious or ethnic lines, the suburb of as-Salihiye, situated on the slopes of Mount Qasiyun, was recognized and regularly referred to as the Kurdish quarter of the city.504 Like the Bedirhani family, many members of the Kurdish community in Damascus had come (or been forcefully resettled) to Syria from other parts of the empire in the 19th century.505 In 1877, the number of Kurdish inhabitants of Damascus was estimated to be around 25.000 individuals. Their support and military strength were assets which Ottoman officials in Syria relied on and actively cultivated.506 The late 19th century already foreshadowed a period of waning political and, more importantly, economic influence for Damascus. The landlocked provincial capital lost much of its former importance to the neighboring port city of Beirut.507
Economically, the city of Damascus relied on its fertile hinterland, notably the Hawran region, located to the south of the city. When the Hawran was hit by uprisings of the local Druze population repeatedly throughout the late 19th century, the inhabitants of Damascus felt the immediate consequences in the form of rising grain prices, food shortages and, in the poorer neighborhoods of the city, bouts of famine.508 Infrastructural changes, notably the opening of a new carriage road between Damascus and the thriving Mediterranean seaport Beirut in 1863, as well as the investment in an extensive railroad
503 Hudson, Transforming Damascus, p. 40, quoting estimates of 150.000 inhabitants for the 1880s compared to 350.000 for the year 1914. Her own research samples from the muhallefat (inheritance inventories) of Damascus showed that the population of the suburb of as-Salihiye, where members of the Bedirhani family lived at the time, doubled between 1880 and 1914.
504 Grallert, “To Whom Belong the Streets?” p. 330.
505 Nur ad-Din Elisséeff, “Dimashḳ,” in: EI², vol. II, pp. 277-291.
506 MAE-Paris, CPC Consulat Damas, vol. 11, report dated May 2, 1877. The population estimate has to be taken with a grain of salt: The Kurdish quarter of as-Salihiye was not always counted as part of Damascus intra muros, and it would thus not be accurate to say that more than 10% of the 120.000 to 150.000 inhabitants of the city were Kurdish.
507 Grallert, “To Whom Belong the Streets?” p. 329.
508 Grallert, “To Whom Belong the Streets?” p. 329.
network, connected Damascus and its hinterlands to a global market and facilitated a reshaping of the local economy, notably a commercialization of agriculture.509 Bedri Paşa Bedirhan’s investments in agriculture are to be understood in this particular context, and his actions were part of a larger trend among urban notables from Damascus seeking control over agricultural production, particularly in the Hawran. Grain prices, however, were instable throughout the 1880s in particular, making these investments anything but a safe bet.510 Other important links, both economically and symbolically, tied Damascus as an hub for pilgrims and starting point of the Ottoman imperial pilgrimage caravan to the holy cities of Islam in the Hicaz.