Reading Clocks, Alla Turca

Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire

Avner Wishnitzer

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780226257860
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the way Ottomans used their clocks conformed to the inner logic of their own temporal culture. However, this began to change rather dramatically during the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly assimilated into the European-dominated global economy and the project of modern state building began to gather momentum. In Reading Clocks, Alla Turca, Avner Wishnitzer unravels the complexity of Ottoman temporal culture and for the first time tells the story of its transformation. He explains that in their attempt to attain better surveillance capabilities and higher levels of regularity and efficiency, various organs of the reforming Ottoman state developed elaborate temporal constructs in which clocks played an increasingly important role. As the reform movement spread beyond the government apparatus, emerging groups of officers, bureaucrats, and urban professionals incorporated novel time-related ideas, values, and behaviors into their self-consciously "modern" outlook and lifestyle. Acculturated in the highly regimented environment of schools and barracks, they came to identify efficiency and temporal regularity with progress and the former temporal patterns with the old political order.Drawing on a wealth of archival and literary sources, Wishnitzer's original and highly important work presents the shifting culture of time as an arena in which Ottoman social groups competed for legitimacy and a medium through which the very concept of modernity was defined. Reading Clocks, Alla Turca breaks new ground in the study of the Middle East and presents us with a new understanding of the relationship between time and modernity.

1 } Reading Clocks, Alaturka

That clockmaker’s boy stole his lovers’ reason.

The wound of his scorpion-hand curl works its way from the case of the skin inwards.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Would it be too much if the dancer-sphere, with affection for that sun,

Should dance all night and make the bell of heaven’s wheel ring?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When the sun of his beauty is in the Scorpio of his lovelock, everyone in the world is a customer.

The demand [and] profit of union with him increases by the hour.

With a cadence he bound me to the chain of his lovelock.

My plaint and sigh broke out every second because of him.

If I say “the tears in my eyes are a flood,” he [just] polishes a watch coquettishly.

He does not make it difficult for his lovers to mount and dismount.

I said: “[How about] a repeating clock? He said: “Why not a Prior [watch]?”

I’ll wait and perhaps he’ll pass on a road in the Vefa [faithfulness] neighborhood.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

To the ocean-hearted lover he acts [as if it were] all buying and selling,

With the young men he sets [the time] playfully with his sandglass.

If he should make it ring at a cadence of every quarter hour, I’d still play Refi (high)

The elevation of the summit of his beauty is so very great Kalayi.1

Apparently addressed to an attractive apprentice in one of the clock shops in Istanbul, this gazel by Refi-i Kalayi (d. 1822) can be read as a poem about time and time-measuring devices, but also as a highly erotic love poem written for the seller of such devices. Intentionally condensed and multilayered, Kalayi’s gazel is emblematic of Ottoman temporal culture during the eighteenth century. In what follows I demonstrate the complexity and inner logic of this culture, which bound together heaven and earth, society and nature, and the fate of humans with the course of planets. Yet despite first appearances, eighteenth-century temporal culture was far from “natural.” In fact, my main argument here is that by claiming correlation with divine rhythms, hegemonic temporal culture served to legitimize and reaffirm the very mundane social order presided over by the Ottomans. Mechanical clocks did not conflict with this system but were subject to it, conforming to its norms rather than upsetting them. It is my hope that as we progress in exploring this system, Kalayi’s verses and the world which they evoked will become somewhat more intelligible.

Condensed Calendars

The yearly cycle of the earth around the sun and its partition into seasons is fundamental for any human society, and it was even more so in the largely agricultural societies of the early modern world. Fernand Braudel drew attention to the way the seasons dictated economic and social patterns in different areas of the Mediterranean. In general, the winter was a season of decreased agricultural activity, of reduced levels of maritime commerce, lower volumes of traffic on the roads, and limited warfare. Summer accelerated the tempo in all these realms: agricultural work peaked, and fishermen and sailors took to the sea; merchant caravans once again pumped life into the land arteries, and newly assembled armies moved to the front for another round of summer hostilities. Along with the increased traffic, and the heat, came summer epidemics and the ensuing havoc in urban centers across the region.2

These patterns were clearly characteristic of most of the Mediterranean world. It was the mechanisms that organized time and regulated social life according to it that distinguished the temporal culture of the Ottomans from that of their neighbors. Calendars were one such device.3 Ottoman calendars translated a world of cosmological, religious, and political concepts into practical data that not only structured and coordinated different annual cycles but also gave these cycles meaning. They placed human society within a divinely sanctioned cosmic order, thus serving to legitimize authority and social hierarchies.

The Ottomans used the Islamic calendar for determining their religious festivals and dating their official documents. Since the Islamic calendar counts the years from the hijra (Turkish: hicret), or the migration of the Prophet from Mecca to al-Madina, it is usually referred to as the Hijri (or Hicri in Turkish) calendar. This calendar, which was devised in the early years of Islam, is a pure lunar calendar without any intercalation mechanism to compensate for the gap between the lunar and the solar years. As the lunar year is eleven days shorter than the solar one, the Muslim months shift each year relative to the seasons, cycling over a period of about thirty years to get back to the same point.4 That is why, for most social purposes, solar calendars were far more important than the Hijri one.

Agriculturalists, by far the largest segment of Ottoman societies, kept various calendars which maintained a correlation between the months and the seasons, a correlation that was obviously crucial for the performance of all agricultural works on time. Planting, for example, must be done by calendar, anticipating the change of seasons, rather than reacting to them. Since commerce, warfare, and tax collection were similarly dependent on the seasons, a pure lunar calendar was inappropriate for the needs of the state as well.5 Like earlier Muslim states, then, the Ottomans were forced to employ a solar calendar for regulating tax collection and other fiscal matters. The mali (financial, fiscal) calendar, as it came to be known, relied on the solar Julian calendar, but the years were counted from the hicret, as in the Islamic lunar calendar. It is important to bear in mind that beside these two official calendars and the agricultural calendars, religious minorities and communities of foreigners lived by their own calendars.6

The official calendars produced at court allowed for the correlation of the Hijri year with the solar one. However, far from being mere calibration devices, these calendars tied the yearly cycles of social life to imperial culture and stamped them with the authority of the sultan.7 The production of those calendars was the responsibility of the müneccimbaşı, the chief astrologer/astronomer of the palace. Every year, on the 21st of March, the müneccimbaşı would submit to the sultan the calendar for the upcoming year.8

The date was not incidental. The Nevruz (lit. “New Year” in Persian), as that day was known, was the date of the vernal equinox which marked the entrance of the sun to the zodiacal sign Aries, the commencement of the new solar year, and the beginning of spring. The Nevruz was celebrated across the Ottoman Middle East and beyond, and was commonly associated with blossom, growth, and regeneration. As the herald of spring, the Nevruz also marked the beginning of many seasonal sociocultural practices. For example, in eighteenth-century Istanbul people would start moving to their summer houses along the Golden Horn and the Bosporus following the Nevruz. This trend was led by the palace but was not limited to the elites. The very same seasonal patterns would still be intact in the early twentieth century, affecting working and commuting routines.9 The spring was also the season of the nocturnal meclis, a convivial gathering of friends that usually took place in the private gardens or courtyards. This form of night-time recreation replaced the helva söhbetleri (lit., halvah conversations), an indoor form of nocturnal socialization that was associated with the long and cold nights of the winter.10 Being the synchronous beginning and end of the astronomical, astrological, seasonal, agricultural, recreational, and fiscal yearly cycles, the Nevruz is but one example of the multilayered nature of Ottoman temporal culture.

The official calendars produced by the münecimbaşı traditionally included a section which specified the months and days of both the Hijri and the solar year (rakam takvimi) and a section that included the astrological predictions of the müneccimbaşı for the different days of the new year (ahkâm takvimi). Usually rather vague in their formulation, these predictions allowed the selection of auspicious days for important events, such as the accession of a new sultan to the throne, the nomination ceremony of a new grand vizier, or the launching of a military campaign. When such events were nearing, the müneccimbaşı would normally calculate not only the appropriate date, but the most auspicious time of the day.

The calculation of auspicious (and inauspicious) hours was based on a scheme that divided each day of the week into cycles of seven hours. Each hour was believed to be governed by a different celestial body, and the controlling luminary of the first hour of the day was also thought to exert its influence over the entire day. Thus, every single moment in the life of an individual was thought to be affected by the controlling luminaries of both the hour and the day.11

These astrological notions relied on the geocentric model of Ptolemaic astronomy which was the basis of Ottoman cosmology down to the nineteenth century. According to this model, the earth is surrounded by nine spheres that are constantly revolving. Each of the first seven spheres holds a different planetary body (including the sun and the moon), and the outer-most spheres hold the stationary stars and the zodiacal signs (çarh-ı atlas).12 In Ottoman literature, the revolution of the zodiac, the spheres, and the planets is often hard to distinguish from the time they measure, and from its supposedly auspicious or inauspicious nature. These circular movements therefore do not exert influence over time; their effect is understood as integral to time itself. This is evident in the multiple meanings of many of the words that relate to the cosmos. For example, the word sipihr means a sphere, but also time and fate. The word felek similarly denotes both a sphere and destiny. Taliʿ is an ascending heavenly body and also the good fortune of an individual (which allows him to rise). The word devr denotes the revolution of celestial bodies, the time measured by this revolution (as in devr-i zaman), and also a reign or epoch of dynastic rule (which is affected by this revolution). All these words convey the prevalent notion that the turning of spheres and celestial bodies, time, and the fate of humans are inseparable.13

Such cosmological beliefs are reflected in Kalayi’s poem. “When the sun of his beauty is in the Scorpio of his lovelock, everyone in the world is a customer (müşteri) / The demand and profit of union with him increases by the hour.” The beauty of the boy shines like the sun, and the many patrons flock to the clock shop not for the clocks but for their young seller. Hence the rise in demand and profit. But his beauty also carries the danger of heartbreak for the poet. The boy’s lovelock, a common trope for the beauty of the beloved in Ottoman poetry, is here described as the dangerous tail of the scorpion (akreb in Turkish), which is also the word used to designate the hour hand of the mechanical clock. The clock’s arm measures mundane time, but that in turn is affected by the constellations of celestial bodies. The word for a customer, müşteri, also signifies the planet Jupiter, to which the conventions of Ottoman poetry assign the role of a justice in the court of the heavens. The sultan of that court is the sun.14 According to Ottoman astrology, the time when the sun is in the House of Scorpio is inauspicious.15 As “customers” of the beauty of the boy flock to the shop, the poet’s chances of winning his heart decrease. The court of the heavens has sentenced the poet to heartbreak and devastation.

Not everybody believed the stars. Some sultans are known to have ignored the recommendations of their court astrologers. At times, even astrologers lost their faith in their own trade. Skeptics aside, it is clear that belief in power of the stars to affect human life was widespread and was certainly not limited to the palace or even to the elites. Consulting astrologers about various daily decisions seems to have been widespread across the Ottoman social spectrum into the nineteenth century.16

The belief in auspicious dates and hours reflected a qualitative differentiation between intervals, quite similar to the perceived qualitative difference between the Nevruz and other days, or be...