1.1 Aim of the Book
This book aims to shed light on the changing role of the Islamic waqf institution in Cyprus and the implications this had for the conservation of waqf heritage buildings, which are of Ottoman and Western origins. The beginning of the British colonial era in Cyprus saw major legislative and administrative changes to the originally autonomous Ottoman waqf institution, which had for centuries owned and managed many heritage buildings and had already been subject to reforms under the Ottoman regime. Under British rule, the development and dissemination of Western heritage concepts and modern architectural conservation discourses introduced what became the core conservation principles in Cyprus, which enabled the inscription of a selection of functional buildings as ancient monuments, in sharp contrast to the waqf system. This study expands on the argument that the earlier centralisation attempts during the Ottoman Tanzimat (1831â1876), and the procedural, technical and political reconfigurations during the British colonial era in Cyprus (1878â1960), were key factors of the transformation of the waqf institutionâs traditional building upkeep system. It is important to note that these imperial interventions, and the rise of nationalism, finally led to the erosion of waqf in Cyprus as a non-Western and sustainable form of building conservation.
These procedural and technical changes are approached in this book as practices that are discursively and ideologically charged, moulded by contested power/knowledge relations and heavily implicated in inter-communal, colonial, nationalist and inter-imperial political tensions.
It is important to note for context that the Ottoman waqf institution in Cyprus is representative of the larger world of the Islamic waqfs, which are widely spread over the Muslim world and have substantial portfolios of heritage buildings. By offering a new understanding regarding the key shifts and transitions of the Cypriot waqfsâ traditional building upkeep and maintenance system, and the dynamic tensions behind the shaping of its heritage practices, this empirically based investigation develops a new perspective by focussing on the fine details of the political struggles over the institutional practices of conservation.
As such, this research is an original contribution to the international literature, as it provides a new understanding of heritage practices in the non-Western world by detailing the waqf institutionâs traditional self-sustaining upkeep and maintenance system, which predates the modern conservation movement. This research also makes an original contribution to the waqf studies, which has research gaps in the transitions within traditional building upkeep systems and in the genesis and evolution of its institutional heritage practices. It also contributes to the architectural historiography of Cyprus, which has a research gap in heritage conservation discourse and practices during the period of British colonial rule.
By drawing on a substantial body of neglected documentary sources detailing decision-making about conservation of waqf buildings during Ottoman and British rule, this book offers a fine-grained analysis of the dissemination of what Smith (2006) has referred to as the âAuthorised Heritage Discourseâ (AHD). This largely Western approach to heritage conservation, with roots in the nineteenth century, became the dominant approach to heritage conservation in the twentieth century. By focussing on detailed studies of previously ignored archives of documents, this study reveals how this approach, the forms of expertise it privileges and pragmatic diversions from it for political purposes were useful in neutralising the legitimacy of local practices, except in cases where opportunistic ârecognitionâ of their utility played a role in inter-communal, colonial, nationalist and inter-imperial politics.
Cyprus is a fertile ground for research according to modern heritage scholars, as it has a historical legacy as a laboratory for Western conservation practice applied to a built heritage of startling cultural complexity (Emerick 2014; Basu and Damodaran 2015; Swenson 2015; Sabri 2016). This history is echoed in recent attempts in a divided Cyprus to use heritage as a tool for Europeanisation in the Republic of Cyprus (Welz 2015). However, there is an interesting historical backstory to the development of conservation and heritage policy in Cyprus, particularly during the period of British rule. Some themes emerging from recent heritage research offer a suite of insights into the complexities and politics of the history of Cypriot conservation policy.
- 1.The bookâs emphasis on the political mobilisation of conservation practice for political ends, and its exploration of documents detailing the minutiae of conservation policy, also allows a fine-grained account of the spread of what Smith calls the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD). Smith has stressed both the Western origins of the AHD and the extent to which it mobilises particular forms of and communities of expertise, notably architects, archaeologists, art historians and conservators, to provide technical and âscientificâ solutions to potentially uncomfortable social problems (2004, 2006). She also stresses that there are a variety of ways the AHD is sustained and spread, such as via cohorts of heritage and preservation of professional and international organisations and charters, and that national instances will adapt and interpret the AHD to suit particular national contexts. Although the gradual political âcrowding outâ of waqf institution in Cyprus had at various times different purposes, the growing influence of Western experts and international charters recognising those forms of expertise played a crucial part in marginalising local traditions.
- 2.Treating the institution of waqf in Cyprus seriously is an opportunity to move past the patronising and orientalising approach that has treated the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world as a byword for backwardness (Ansari 2011; Cohen 2018; Sabri 2017; Said 1993). By using the detailed archival material to give historical depth and texture to an Ottoman and Islamic institution this book is in tune with, and helps to advance, scholarship in waqf and Ottoman studies that deals with the complexities of Islamic institutions rather than a caricature of them. The complex history of Cyprus saw the Islamisation of the landscape and urban fabric of a previously Christian island and the subsequent nationalist and inter-communal tensions centuries later as the British administration, the Kemalist-Turkish community leaders and Greek population of Cyprus tried to downplay the islandâs Ottoman past. This is treated as an example of cross-cultural flows and interactions in a context of nationalism and imperial rivalries rather than as a movement from medieval Eastern backwardness to modernity (Sabri 2015).
- 3.This research also pays close attention to the workings of the state apparatus and the development of heritage policy and institutions in a colonial context. This is a rich field of research, as recent scholarship has stressed the extent to which European colonial powers saw the export of modern conservation policy and techniques as a marker of their status as modern states. Consequently, colonial territories became laboratories for heritage legislation which was, though grudgingly and often opportunistically, sensitive to local conditions but free from the interference of the vested interests which retarded conservation policy in the UK and Europe (Basu and Damodaran 2015; Betts and Ross 2015; Emerick 2003). Two issues arise from this. Firstly, Cyprus and the waqf institution nicely exemplify Thatcherâs (2018) tentative suggestions for mid-range theorising of the influences on the stateâs role in heritage policy. He suggests that four factors are important in explaining the stateâs role in using heritage for nationalistic purposes. The first is regime change, especially, though not exclusively, through revolution, which the assumption of government by the British is clearly an example of. This is followed by the legacy of institutional inheritance, the relations between state and non-state actors and internal and external threats t...