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The Emotional Universe of Insecure Scholars in the Early Modern Ottoman Hierarchy of Learning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2021
Extract
Life is tough for many in the increasing precarity of today's academy. Despite all the degrees received, courses taught, grants awarded, conferences attended, articles published, resumes polished, and networks established, many people aspiring to a thriving academic career are now denied the opportunity to prosper in a stable position and to secure a settled life. Given the shrinking academic job market worldwide, especially for humanities and social science disciplines, it is no wonder that over the last two decades quit-lit written by disillusioned members of the academy has grown to such an extent that it now comprises a particular genre. From personal social media accounts to newspapers and websites circulating recent news about academics’ life across and beyond the United States, a wide array of platforms daily reveals the gloomy perspectives and emotional reactions of nontenured academic laborers overwhelmed by the uncertainties and insecurities that mark their professional and private lives.
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References
1 Grant Shreve, “‘Quit Lit’ Then and Now,” Inside Higher Ed, 4 April 2018, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/04/04/comparison-quit-lit-1970s-and-today-opinion.
2 See for instance Burke, Peter, “Is There a Cultural History of the Emotions?” in Representing Emotions, ed. Gouk, Penelope and Hills, Helen (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 35–48Google Scholar; Plamper, Jan, The History of Emotions: An Introduction, trans. Tribe, Keith (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; and Boddice, Rob, The History of Emotions (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.
3 Febvre, Lucien, “La Sensibilité et l'histoire: Comment reconstituer la vie affective d'autrefois?” Annales d'histoire sociale 3, no. 1–2 (1941): 5–20Google Scholar. The article was translated into English by K. Folca and published as “Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute the Emotional Life of the Past,” in A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Febvre, ed. Peter Burke (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 12–26.
4 Dissatisfied with assumptions about the immutable nature of emotions, William Reddy coined the term “emotives” to emphasize the performative and communicative nature of emotions that individuals enact in first-person speech. These enactments or “utterances” of emotions, which Reddy thinks are socially determined, reflect and embody the “emotional regimes” that are by nature subject to change across time and geography. See William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Echoing Reddy's notion, Barbara Rosenwein created a new category, “emotional communities,” suggesting adoption of a more “micro” perspective than emotional regimes, which allow one to explore how specific groups in a society set and follow their norms and rules to feel and express a diverse range of emotions; Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
5 For a recent brief overview of the field in Middle East and Ottoman studies, see Julia Bray, “Toward an Abbasid History of Emotions: The Case of Slavery,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 49, no. 1 (2017): 143–47; and Nil Tekgül, “Early Modern Ottoman Politics of Emotion: What Has Love Got to Do with It?” Turkish Historical Review 10, no. 2–3 (2019): 132–54. Although the emotional turn in history writing sparked an interest among contemporary Ottoman historians after the 2010s, it would be a grave mistake to not acknowledge the efforts of earlier generations, from Halil İnalcık, Cornell Fleischer, and Cemal Kafadar to Madeline Zilfi, Christine Woodhead, Derin Terzioğlu, and Aslı Niyazioğlu, all of whom demonstrated in their studies how narrative sources and autobiographical accounts are important for conveying the emotions of individuals, specifically the literati, scholars, and Sufis. These studies can even be stretched back to Fuad Köprülü, who suggested in an influential article on methods in Turkish literary history in 1913 that literary history “would bring to life systematically the intellectual and sensory development (fikri ve hissi tekamül)” of past people (author's emphasis). See M. Fuad Köprülü, “Türk Edebiyat Tarihinde Usul,” Bilgi Mecmuası 1 (1913): 3–52; translated into English by Gary Leiser as “Method in Turkish Literary History,” Middle Eastern Literatures 11, no. 1 (2008): 55–84.
6 The notion of “exceptionally normal” (eccezionalmente normale) was first introduced by Edoardo Grendi in “Micro-analisi e storia sociale,” Quaderni storici 35 (1977): 506–20.
7 For the most recent critical edition of Zaʿifi's autobiography (Sergüzeştname), reconstructed on the basis of the four extant manuscripts of the text, see Vildan Serdaroğlu Coşkun, Zaʿifi'nin Sergüzeştname'si: “Sergüzeştüm Güzel Hikayetdür” (Istanbul: İSAM Yayınları, 2013). For the earlier studies and transcriptions of the text, see Robert Anhegger, “16. Asır Şairlerinden Zaʿifi,” Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi 4, no. 1–2 (1950): 133–66; and Mehmet Ali Üzümcü, “Kitab-ı Sergüzeşt-i Zaʿifi” (MA thesis, Kocaeli University, 2008).
8 Coşkun, Zaʿifi'nin Sergüzeştname'si, 129.
9 The discussion in this paragraph is based on the following studies: İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilatı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1965); R. C. Repp, The Müfti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London: Ithaca Press for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, 1986); and Abdurrahman Atçıl, Scholars and Sultans in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
10 Aslı Niyazioğlu, “On Altıncı Yüzyıl Sonunda Osmanlı’da Kadılık Kabusu ve Nihani'nin Rüyası,” Journal of Turkish Studies/Türklük Bilgisi Araştırmaları 31, no. 2 (2007): 133–43.
11 For instance, the relatively better-known story of Molla Lutfi (d. 1495), a Sahn professor executed on the charge of disbelief and apostasy, was couched by 16th-century sources in the framework of stiff scholarly competition over prestige and highest-ranking teaching positions; this apparently unleashed the envy (ḥased-i aḳrān) of Lutfi's peers. See İbrahim Maraş, “Tokatlı Molla Lütfi: Hayatı, Eserleri ve Felsefesi,” Divan İlmi Araştırmalar 14 (2003): 119–36.
12 See, for instance, Denley, Peter, “Career, Springboard, or Sinecure? University Teaching in Fifteenth-Century Italy,” Medieval Prosopography 12, no. 2 (1991): 95–114Google Scholar; and Broadbridge, Anne F., “Academic Rivalry and the Patronage System in Fifteenth-Century Egypt: Al-ʿAyni, al-Maqrizi, and Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani,” Mamluk Studies Review 3 (1999): 85–107Google Scholar.
13 One of the most straightforward critiques came from the poet Nabi (d. 1712), who enumerates all the possible troubles of a career in the learned hierarchy; Hayriyye-i Nabi: İnceleme-Metin, ed. Mehmet Kaplan (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1995), 287–91. For a more detailed treatment of Nabi's text from the perspective of the sociology of science, see Küçük, Harun, Science without Leisure: Practical Naturalism in Istanbul, 1660–1732 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020)Google Scholar.
14 In his advice manual, the grand vizier Lutfi Paşa (d. 1563) says explicitly that scholars act upon the sense of envy (“müderrisīn ve ʿulemā ṭāʾifesi birbirine ḥased üzeredir”). See Asafname, ed. Ahmet Uğur (Istanbul: Büyüyen Ay Yayınları, 2017), 63. Among sharp observations on his time and society, the late 16th-century Ottoman litterateur Mustafa ʿAli (d. 1600) noted that Mehmed II introduced his bureaucratic scheme with the good intention of tracking scholars’ progress through their accomplishments but did not foresee how teachers more in love with possessions and prestige would eventually reign supreme. See Tables of Delicacies Concerning the Rules of Social Gatherings, trans. Douglas S. Brookes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Deprartment of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 2003), 68.
15 For the catalog information of the works he composed and the extant manuscripts housing all or some of these titles, see Fatma Büyükkarcı Yılmaz, “Zaʿifi'nin Manzum Gülistan Tercümesi: Kitab-ı Nigaristan-ı Şehristan-ı Dırahtistant-ı Sebzistan” (PhD diss., Marmara University, 2001).
16 Taşköprizade frequently uses these two phrases to praise the noble characteristics of the scholar in question: mushtaghilan bi-nafsihi (busy with his own issues) and ghayr multafit ilā aḥwāl ghayrihi (not giving attention to how others are doing). See Taşköprülüzade Ahmed Efendi, eş-Şaka'iku’n-nu'maniyye fi ulemai'd-Devleti'l-Osmaniyye (Istanbul: Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı, 2019).
17 Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BnF), Suppl. turc 572, 321a–322b.
18 Yılmaz, “Zaʿifi'nin Manzum Gülistan Tercümesi,” 561.
19 BnF, Suppl. turc 572, 4a.
20 Ibid, 299b–302b.
21 Ibid., 327b–28b.
22 Boğaziçi University Kandilli Observatory Library, Ms. 123, 2a.
23 The remainder in his own calculation was three, which he interpreted as a sign that he would eventually attain his request from Rüstem after some suffering (3 bākī kaldı ḥāceti zaḥmetle devā olur diriz).