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The Ottoman Empire, Islam and the emergence of German national identity, 1789–1815
Lela Gibson
The first translation of the Quran from Arabic into German, published by theologian David Megerlin in 1772, depicts Islam in apocalyptic terms. Megerlin (1772, p. 25) describes Muhammad as “the false prophet and greatest Antichrist” (der falsche Prophet, und gröste Antichrist).1 The Muslim declaration of faith, Megerlin (1772, p. 25) writes, calculates “exactly to 666 … the name and the mark of the beast.” The purpose of conducting such a translation is to “convince about its falsehood” (p. 26). New voices, however, emerged in the German-speaking world towards the end of the eighteenth century. They recast the Quran as a poetic masterpiece and Muhammad as a visionary. Leading this group was a former diplomat to the Ottoman Empire, Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer (later Hammer-Purgstall).2 He would describe the Quran in 1811 as “a masterpiece of Arabic poetry” (Meisterwerk arabischer Dichtkunst) (Hammer, 1811, p. 25). How did the Quran go from “mark of the beast” to poetic “masterpiece” in the German-speaking world during the late eighteenth century?
The answer lies in two parallel processes that are connected through the life of Hammer. The first is the changing relationship between the German-speaking world and the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. As the Ottoman state went from a feared rival to a potential ally, German-speaking diplomats-turned-orientalists took a more positive approach to Islam. Hammer gathered the “raw materials” (manuscripts and knowledge) for this approach while in diplomatic service in Istanbul. At the same time, the emergence of German nationalism caused writers to think about language and nations in a way that allowed some to view the Quran as a literary document tied to the rise of a nation. This new perspective is seen most clearly in Hammer’s translation of the Quran. Other German-speaking authors also engaged with this approach, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Rückert, Heinrich Heine and Karoline von Günderrode. This chapter examines writings from the the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to suggest that a combination of increased contact with the Ottoman Empire, literary Romanticism, and early thought about national identity resulted in a new approach to Islam in the German-speaking world during the era of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.
Competing views of Islam
Megerlin’s translation can be placed within the tradition of polemic literature about Islam. During the medieval period, polemics utilized apocalyptic metaphors to explain the rise of Islam. The historian William Montgomery Watt (1972, p. 73) identifies four main arguments in the polemics that differ from modern scholarship about Islam: “(a) the Islamic religion is a falsehood and a deliberate perversion of the truth; (b) it is a religion of violence and the sword; (c) it is a religion of self-indulgence; and (d) Muhammad is the Antichrist.” These arguments were part of a “deformed” image of Islam in medieval Europe (Daniel, 1993, p. 24). They also served a political purpose, mobilizing populations against Muslims in the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula (ending in 1492) and the Crusades (1095–1291). This view continued, and it can also be found in writings about Turks with the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
A second way of seeing Islam emerged in the early modern era, rooted in the religious wars, the rise of European travel and exploration, and the Enlightenment. This view perceived Islam as one of many world religions, rather than the direct antithesis to Christianity. With the rise of European travel and exploration, Islam began to also be seen in its cultural context as travelers observed the varied practices of Islam in India, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire. Books such as Bernard Picart’s Religious Ceremonies of the World took what we would now term a comparative approach to world religions (Hunt et al., 2010). In addition, as the Enlightenment brought issues of religious toleration to the forefront (in the wake of religious wars in Europe), Islam came to be seen as a religion that could also be tolerated. Frederick the Great wrote on the topic of religious toleration, “All religions are equal and good, if only those people who profess them are honest people; and if Turks and heathens came and wanted to populate the country, we would build them mosques and churches” (cited in Gay, 1995, p. 348). Islam was also, however, used as an Enlightenment critique of religion. For example, Voltaire’s play Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet (Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophete), attacks religious fanaticism under the guise of criticizing Islam. To be sure, the medieval view of Islam also carried on as well; especially as the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires competed for territory in the Balkans.
The Enlightenment also brought a new form of Biblical criticism that was especially prominent in the German-speaking world. This approach to the Bible viewed it as an historical document rather than divine revelation. Scholars began to draw from Arabic sources, including the Quran, for information about Biblical peoples, places, and events. Although it employed Arabic sources, this perspective still assumed the superiority of the Bible over other texts. The theologian Johann David Michaelis (1717–91), who was central to the critical approach, wrote,
I will here quote what Mahomet directs the Arabs to do, but without meaning to impute any such thing to Moses. It would indeed be an injury to Moses to ascribe to him a law so rude and barbarous, as that which the illiterate Mahomet gave to his savage countrymen…
(Michaelis, 1814, p. 432)
The Enlightenment view set the stage for a third way of seeing Islam that emerged in the German-speaking world during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. I term this the Romantic view of Islam, as it emerged out of a combination of literary Romanticism and German nationalism. This view approached the Quran as a literary text and understood the rise of Islam as an example of how a language (Arabic in the Quran) united a nation (the early Muslim community). Romanticism is a difficult concept to define, and, as Frederick Beiser (2003, p. 6) notes, one should continue to follow the advice of Arthur Lovejoy in 1923 and distinguish between multiple “romanticisms” rather than a single “romanticism.” Here I do not approach Romanticism as a unified movement, but rather as a way of describing the various literary, philosophical and political currents within the German-speaking world towards the turn of the nineteenth century that were interested in the questions of aesthetics, peoples, languages, and poetry. The Romantic view of Islam was the result of a combination of two late eighteenth-century historical processes. First, alliance and increased diplomatic contact with the Ottoman Empire provided the “raw materials” (in terms of manuscripts and knowledge) for German-speaking diplomats who became orientalists. Second, as German nationalism intensified during French invasions of the German-speaking world, nationalist notions of peoples and languages were applied to the rise of Islam.
Historical sources of the Romantic view of Islam
Since Germany did not exist as a state until 1871, a word about the German-speaking world in the late eighteenth century is in order. The German-speaking world consisted of Prussia, the Habsburg Empire and smaller, central European states loosely held together by the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was a headed by the Habsburg (Austrian) emperor and was engaged with Prussia in a rivalry, known as German dualism, for control over central Europe. Despite the political fragmentation of the German-speaking world, the notion of a German people existed. As James Sheehan (1989, p. 373) notes, the idea of a German nation was not necessarily tied to the need to create a nation-state in the late eighteenth century. It would only be with the Napoleonic wars (1803–15) that the idea of a German political unit would be brought to the forefront. During the late eighteenth century, the discussion of a German people (Volk) encompassed the entire German-speaking world, including Austria.
By the late eighteenth century, European states began to perceive a wane in once-feared Ottoman military might. Indeed, to some observers at the time, it looked like the Ottoman Empire would collapse. The turning point was the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, signed after Russian victory in a war against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman state ceded the Crimea under the treaty, and Russia annexed it in 1783. Catherine the Great envisioned a “Greek project,” which was a plan to dismantle the Ottoman Empire and carve up its territory. She allied with the Habsburg emperor Joseph II in 1781, and war began between Austria and Russia against the Ottoman Empire in 1787. Prussia and Britain saw Russia as a greater threat than the Ottoman Empire and worked to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman state. Prussia and the Ottoman Empire entered into an alliance in 1791.
The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars set aside the Eastern Question and brought the Ottoman state further into alliance with the German-speaking world. France had long been an ally of the Ottoman Empire, and it provided military and technical advisors to the Sublime Porte throughout the eighteenth century. Several of the sultans’ mothers were even rumored to be French, although these stories are probably untrue (Isom-Verhaaren, 2006). The French invasion of Egypt (an Ottoman province) in 1798 caused the Ottoman Empire to join former enemies Austria and Russia against France in the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802).
Ottoman sultan Selim III ascended the throne the same year as the French Revolution, 1789, and introduced a series of reforms to strengthen Ottoman military, administrative, and foreign affairs known as the Nizam-ı Cedid (New Order). Ottoman diplomacy had previously been conducted on an ad hoc basis; instead of maintaining permanent embassies in Europe, the Ottoman state sent ambassadors to European capitals as required. As the Ottoman state increased formal participation in the European diplomatic system, including the establishment of Ottoman embassies in Europe, more Ottoman ambassadors went to Europe.3 They participated in the social events of European courts, such as plays, balls, dinners, etc., and it is possible that their more frequent participation in court society in the late eighteenth century also played a role in changing perceptions of the Ottoman Empire.
In addition to increased contact with the Ottoman Empire, the rise of German nationalism was important for the emergence of a new way of seeing Islam in the German-speaking world. One of the most influential thinkers for the formation of this view is Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803). His four-part Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784–91) describes the development of humankind in terms of nations. As Frederick Beiser (1992, p. 212) notes, Herder’s view of nationalism differed from the modern view in that he “intended the nation to replace rather than to justify the centralized, bureaucratic state.” Ian Almond (2010, p. 65) writes, “the rise of Islam contained for Herder a number of important lessons for the formation of a Volk, particularly concerning the essential role of poetry and language in this process.” The authors in this study also held a similar view.
The Quran: from mark of the beast to poetic masterpiece
The same year it was published, Megerlin’s translation was criticized in a review in the Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen. The writer, most likely Goethe, criticizes it as a “wretched production” (elende Produktion) (cited in Mommsen, 2001, p. 31). He writes, “we wish that someday another [translation] would be made under an oriental sky, by a German who read the Quran in his tent with a feeling for poetry and prophecy and had sense enough to bring it all together. For where is our Sale?” (cited in Mommsen, 2001, p. 31).4
Goethe’s call for a German George Sale would be answered in a curious way. After returning from Istanbul, the Austrian diplomat Joseph von Hammer (1774–1856) undertook a translation of the Quran into rhymed German prose. Hammer was originally from Graz, and he entered the Academy of Oriental Languages in Vienna (k.k. Akademie für Orientalische Sprachen) at age fourteen. The Oriental Academy trained so-called Sprachknaben for diplomatic service to the Habsburg Empire. There, Hammer learned Turkish, Persian and Arabic and met several Ottoman captives and diplomats living in Vienna. He worked for the Habsburg embassy in Istanbul from 1799–1806, making two trips to the Ottoman Empire. Upon his return to Vienna, Hammer devoted the rest of his life to translating Persian, Turkish, and Arabic manuscripts (in addition to other languages) and writing the ten-volume History of the Ottoman Empire (Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches). Hammer was never employed at a university, and his position as a diplomat-turned-orientalist gave him a unique perspective.
Hammer’s Quran translation was published in the journal Fundgruben des Orients (“Treasures of the Orient”), which he edited. The journal was published in Vienna from 1809–18. It is a self-proclaimed journal for “enthusiasts” (Liebhaber), and it included translations of Persian, Arabic and Turkish texts as well as explanatory essays about religions, geography, and languages of the Middle East. The motto of the journal was part of a translated verse from the Quran: “Say: To God belongs the Orient, and to God belongs the Occident. He guides whom he wills to the true path.”5 The mission of the journal was described by Hammer (1809, p. iii) as follows: “We feel called to follow the true path towards the perfection of Oriental studies, therefore we apply the meaning of our motto to our endeavor.” The journal’s authors included former diplomats, poets, and university professors, although many of the articles were written by Hammer himself. Hammer’s Quran translation is published in several pieces, and it spans over multiple volumes of the journal from 1811–14.6 Many of the translations are excerpts of full verses.
The goal of Hammer’s translation was to capture the original poetry of the Quran. Islamic tradition holds that the language of the Quran is considered evidence of divine authorship, and the Quran states that a human author is incapable of producing such a work.7 Hammer would have been familiar with this concept from his training at the Oriental Academy, and he carried the idea of the Quran as a poetic masterpiece over in his translation. Hammer (1811, p. 25) writes, “the Quran is not only Islam’s code of law, but also a masterpiece of Arabic poetry.” Hammer explains that the beauty of the poetry is believed to be evidence of its divine authorship. Hammer (1811, p. 25) writes, “The living word, that left the seven divine poems hanging on the Kaaba far behind, could not be the fruit of human zeal, it must have been spoken in heaven and written since eternity. Hence, the Quran is God’s word.” Hammer’s reference to the Quran as a “masterpiece of Arabic poetry,” when it had only shortly before been termed the “mark of the beast,” underscores the emergence of a new way of seeing the Quran in the German-speaking world.
Hammer’s poetic approach to the Quran was a confluence of two main factors. First, it was informed by emerging German nationalist approaches to language. Second, and what set Hammer apart from other German-speaking orientalists, was his experience in the Ottoman Empire. Hammer’s experience allowed him to view the Quran as a living document that was displayed and recited, in contrast to academics in the German lands who studied the Quran but did not travel to the Middle East. In his memoirs, Hammer recounts hearing the Quran recited by students who swayed to its cadence.8 Hammer also heard parts of the Quran recited as prayers, with which he displayed an intimate familiarity (Hammer, 1811, p. 336). This first-hand experience, coupled with German thought about national identity, poetry and language, explains his different approach to the Quran, whi...
