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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2021
“Muslims were not the first in the Near East to interpret dreams. This type of divination had a long history, and Muslims were not ignorant of that history.” The interest of early Arab Islamic cultures in dreams can be proved by the vast literature on dreams and their interpretation as well as dream accounts written in diverse historical texts. The Ottoman Empire was no different in that it also shared this culture of dream interpretation and narration. Unlike past scholarship that ignored the significance of dreams, the number of studies addressing the subject has increased in the recent decades, thanks to the growing tendency of scholars to see dreams as potential sources for cultural history. However, as Peter Burke has stated, scholars and historians in particular must bear in mind the fact that “they do not have access to the dream itself but at best to a written record, modified by the preconscious or conscious mind in the course of recollection and writing.” Historians must be aware of the fact that dream accounts might be recorded by dreamers who recounted how they wanted to remember them. The “reality” of the dream, in a sense, may be distorted. However, dream accounts, distorted or not, can provide a ground for historical analysis because they may reveal the most intimate sentiments, aspirations, and anxieties of the dreamer. Such self-narratives can provide the historian with information necessary to map the mindset of a historical personage, because “such ‘secondary elaboration’ probably reveals the character and problems of the dreamer as clearly as the dream itself does.” This paper focuses on a sampling of dreams related in an 18th-century Ottoman self-narrative to provide insight into the life and mind of an Ottoman governor. I will try to demonstrate how the author of the narrative made meaning of those dreams and revealed his aspirations.
1 Lamoreaux, John C., The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), 7Google Scholar.
2 Reynolds, Dwight F., “Symbolic Narratives of Self: Dreams in Medieval Arabic Autobiographies,” in On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, ed. Kennedy, Philip F. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005), 263Google Scholar.
3 Burke, Peter, Varieties of Cultural History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 28Google Scholar.
4 Ibid.
5 Fehmi Ethem Karatay, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi Türkçe Yazmalar Kataloğu: Din, Tarih, Bilimler, Filoloji, Edebiyat, Mecmualar (Istanbul: Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Yayınları, 1961).
6 Düşnama, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Kütüphanesi (Library of the Topkapı Palace Museum), MS Hazine, Istanbul, 1766.
7 Cemal Kafadar, “Self and Others: The Diary of a Dervish in Seventeenth Century Istanbul and First-Person Narratives in Ottoman Literature,” Studia Islamica 69 (1989), 129–30. Kafadar briefly mentioned the manuscript without giving many details. The identity of the author is first revealed by the author of this roundtable article.
8 Ibid., 129.
9 Steven Rendall, “On Diaries,” Diacritics 16, no. 3 (1986): 57–65. Used by Terzioğlu in the same way; see Derin Terzioğlu, “Man in the Image of God in the Image of the Times: Sufi Self-Narratives and the Diary of Niyazi-i Mısri (1618–94),” Studia Islamica 94 (2002): 152.
10 Düşnama, 28a. The signature read as Mahmud Paşa mutasarrıf-ı Avlonya (Mahmud Pasha the governor of Vlorë). The signature was the first record written in the notebook, dated 3 January 1718, but it appears on folio 28a. It is probably because the binding was made later, after the creation of the text. After folio 28a, where the author affixed his signature, there are nineteen more blank folios.
11 Ibid. The folios of the manuscript were numbered later, probably by different catalogers, so there are breaks between sequential pages. For the sake of simplicity, I have used my own version. I numbered the first folio on which dream narratives were recorded as 1b.
12 T. C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı, Devlet Arşivleri Başkanlığı, Osmanlı Arşivi (Turkish Presidency State Archives of the Republic of Turkey), Ottoman Archives (hereafter BOA), AE. SHMD. I. 185/14366, 29 June 1745; Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmani, vol. 3 (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996), 927; Fahameddin Başar, Osmanlı Eyalet Tevcihatı 1717–1730 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1997), 38–43.
13 BOA, AE. SHMD. I. 185/14366, 29 June 1745.
14 Düşnama, 12b.
15 BOA, AE. SHMD. I. 165/12515, 20 November 1745.
16 Düşnama, 27a.
17 Kafadar also provided this brief information about the content of the manuscript (“Self and Others,” 129–30).
18 For Fleischer's similar observations about an Ottoman scribe's dreams and his access to means of writing, see Cornell H. Fleischer, “Secretaries’ Dreams: Augury and Angst in Ottoman Scribal Service,” in Armagan: Festschrift für Andreas Tietze, ed. Ingeborg Baldauf, Suraiya Faroqhi, and Rudolf Vesely (Prague: Enigma Corporation, 1994), 85. I express my thanks to Bilgin Aydın for drawing my attention to the Ottoman institution of Kağıt Eminliği, which provided Ottoman officials with paper. Mahmud Pasha had easy access to the means of writing, which in turn must have facilitated the production of his dream diary. He seems to have used paper provided by Kağıt Eminliği to record his dreams.
19 Abdülkadir Özcan, “Topal Osman Paşa,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 41, 244–46.
20 Düşnama, 25a.
21 Mahmud Pasha preferred to say gördüm (I saw) or bir adam gördü ki (a man saw) rather than rüyamda gördüm (I saw in my dream) or bir adam rüyasında gördü ki (a man saw in his dream).
22 Düşnama, 7b.
23 Ibid., 23a.
24 James W. Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon (Constantinople: A. H. Boyajian, 1890), 1168.
25 For further information, see Mehmet İpşirli, “Sah,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35, 490–91.
26 For other examples of Ottoman dreams, see Fleischer, “Secretaries’ Dreams”; Dankoff, Robert, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Çelebi (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 205–13Google Scholar; and Niyazioglu, Aslı, “On Altıncı Yüzyıl Sonunda Osmanlı’da Kadılık Kabusu ve Nihani'nin Rüyası,” Journal of Turkish Studies 31, no. 2 (2007): 133–43Google Scholar.
27 Reynolds, “Symbolic Narratives,” 262.
28 Lamoreaux, Dream Interpretation, 4.
29 BOA, C. DH. 290/14484, 26 May 1731. According to the document, the governorship of Ilbasan was given to Mahmud Pasha in May 1731 in return for his services under Osman Pasha.
30 Kunt, I. Metin, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government 1550–1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 70–72Google Scholar. For governor appointments to Vlorë and durations of office during Mahmud Pasha's time, see Başar, Osmanlı Eyalet Tevcihatı, 42–43.
31 Düşnama, 10b.
32 Ibid., 13a.
33 Ibid., 10b.
34 Ibid., 11a.
35 Ibid., 26a.
36 Dankoff, Ottoman Mentality, 206.
37 The notion of dreams being linked to one another is also noted by Fleischer (“Secretaries’ Dreams,” 87).
38 Katz, Jonathan G., “Shaykh Ahmad's Dream: A 19th-Century Eschatological Vision,” Studia Islamica 79 (1994): 180Google Scholar.
39 Düşnama, 14b.
40 Ibid., 11a.