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Wittek and Köprülü

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

RUDI PAUL LINDNER
RUDI PAUL LINDNER*
Affiliation:
Ann Arbor, Michiganrpl@umich.edu
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Abstract

The friendship and enmity between Paul Wittek and Fuad Koprulu form one of the most interesting episodes in the development of Turcology. This contribution examines the ebb and flow of that relationship as well as some of the other victims who suffered on the sidelines.

Type
Part IV: Beyond the Empire
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , January 2016 , pp. 333 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

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References

1 Wittek, Paul, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1938), pp. 2–4 Google Scholar; Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire, Studies in the History of Turkey, Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries, (ed.) Colin Heywood (London, 2012), p. 35. Cf. Lindner, Rudi Paul, “Stimulus and justification in early Ottoman history”, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 27 (1982), pp. 207–224 Google Scholar. There is a Weak Wittek Thesis, admitting of additional factors; for its demolition see Imber, Colin, “What does Ghazi actually mean?”, in Balım-Harding, Çiğdem and Imber, Colin (eds.), The Balance of Truth, Essays in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Lewis (Istanbul, 2000), pp. 165–178 Google Scholar.

2 Wittek, Rise, p. 5; Wittek, Rise, (ed.) Heywood, p. 36.

3 Wittek, Rise, p. 9; Wittek, Rise, (ed.) Heywood, p. 39, and see Lindner, “Stimulus and justification”, p. 217.

4 Wittek, Rise, pp. 9–10; Wittek, Rise, (ed.) Heywood, p. 40.

5 Köprülü, Fuad, The Origins of the Ottoman Empire, translated by Gary Leiser (Albany, 1992)Google Scholar, especially pp. 108–117. Dr Leiser translated Origins from the Turkish edition of 1959, which I have checked against the French original, Les origines de l’Empire Ottoman (Paris, 1935).

6 Köprülü, Origins, p. 74, and cf. p. 129, n. 2; Origines, p. 85.

7 Köprülü, Origins, p. 75; Origines, p. 86.

8 Lindner, “Stimulus and justification”, p. 220, n. 7.

9 Köprülü, M. Fuad, “Osmanlı Imparatorluğu’nun Etnik Menşei Mes’eleleri”, Belleten 8 (1943), pp. 285 Google Scholar, n. 2, 286, 297–298, 302. Both Wittek's and Köprülü's use of such terms as ‘tribal’ and ‘ethnic’ followed the usage, now discarded, of their time.

10 Köprülü, “Etnik Mes’eleleri”, p. 285. As with so many of his worthwhile projects, he did not publish this one. Köprülü had the gift of recognising and asking an important question, and he had the difficulty of pursuing so many of them that he left a number of his promised writings incomplete.

11 Köprülü, “Etnik Mes’eleleri”, p. 286.

12 Köprülü, “Etnik Mes’eleleri”, p. 303. For his aversion to the notion that the Ottomans had entered Anatolia in the thirteenth century, and the cause of that position, see Lindner, Rudi Paul, Explorations in Ottoman Prehistory (Ann Arbor, 2007), pp. 24–26 Google Scholar.

13 Menzel, Theodor, “Die ältesten türkischen Mystiker”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 79 (1925), pp. 269–289 Google Scholar (at pp. 288–289). Cf. Heywood, Colin, “Wittek and the Austrian tradition”, JRAS (1988), no. 1, pp. 16–18 Google Scholar.

14 Wittek in Menzel, “Mystiker”, p. 289, referring to Köprülüzade, Mehmed Fuad, Türkiye Tarihi (Istanbul, 1923), pp. 81–82 Google Scholar.

15 Köprülüzade, Türkiye Tarihi, p. 81, lines 19–24.

16 Paul Wittek, “Koprulusade Mehmed Fuad”, Türkische Post (August 3, 1927), p. 2. The study became a bedroom when the American Research Institute in Turkey leased the Köprülü house on Akbıyık Caddesi in the 1960s. Former residents recall it as drafty and cold.

17 “Franz Babinger, Die Geschichtsschreiber der Osmanen und ihre Werke. Leipzig, 1927”, reviewed by Wittek, Paul, Der Islam 20 (1932), pp. 197–207 Google Scholar. This was one of the issue's “Kleine Mitteilungen und Anzeigen”. As it happened, the notice immediately preceding the review, on pp. 196–197, was H. A. R. Gibb's critical review of an article by Wittek.

18 Wittek, review of Babinger, p. 207.

19 For the history of the controversy and the text of the review see Köprülü, Mehmed Fuad, Islam in Anatolia after the Turkish Invasion (Prolegomena), translated by Gary Leiser (Salt Lake City, 1993)Google Scholar, pp. xiii-xviii.

20 I possess a bitter message by Giese to Franz Taeschner about Wittek's attitude and scholarship.

21 Babinger, Franz, “Jihad”, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, VIII (New York, 1935), pp. 401–403 Google Scholar.

22 Wittek also composed two further poems on Babinger. The last stanza of one goes:

Nicht eines Inschriftsteins

Bedarfs für dieses Grab;

Die Nase sagt es euch:

HIER LIEGT DER GROSSE BAB.

Professor Colin Heywood discovered these verses and I thank him for them. Serious questions remain about Babinger's activities during the Third Reich: Ellinger, Ekkehard, Deutsche Orientalistik zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus 1933–1945 (Eddingen, 2006), p. 463 Google Scholar. Babinger's dismissal from Berlin in 1935 may well have had little to do with opposition to the Nazis. For his claimed close ties to the SA leader Ernst Röhm in 1934, see Hanisch, Ludmila, “Akzentverschiebung – Zur Geschichte der Semitistik und Islamwissenschaft während des ‘Dritten Reiches’”, Beiträge zur Wissehschaftsgeschichte 18 (1995), p. 225 Google Scholar, n.29. On Babinger's later work, see Heywood, Colin, “Mehmed II and the historians: Babinger's Mehmed der Eroberer during fifty years (1953–2003)”, Turcica 40 (2008), pp. 295–344 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A former student of Wittek informed me in 1981 that he was urged to criticise Giese, Babinger and others in his dissertation, but at the dissertation defence Wittek attacked the student for his disrespectful treatment of German scholarship. Professor Bernard Lewis had to step in to save the day.

23 For a general appreciation of Ali Emiri Efendi and of the extraordinary richness of the Millet Kütüphanesi that he founded as a repository for his collections, see Işın, Ekrem et al., Ali Emiri Efendi ve Dünyası (Istanbul, 2007)Google Scholar, an exhibition catalogue. For a contemporary European view, see Flemming, Barbara and Schmidt, Jan, The Diary of Karl Süssheim (1878–1947) (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 52–56 Google Scholar.

24 For an introduction, see Sağlam's, Nuri helpful article, “Ali Emiri Efendi ile Mehmed Fuad Köprülü arasındaki Münakaşalar”, Ilmi Araştırmalar 10 (2000), pp. 113–134 Google Scholar, and 11 (2001), pp. 89–98. The language on both sides was far from gentlemanly.

25 Babinger, Geschichtsschreiber, p. 403. For Ali Emiri Efendi's skill as a genealogist, see Deny, Jean, “Ali Emiri Efendi”, Journal Asiatique 204 (1924), p. 377 Google Scholar, a moving appreciation.

26 Hartmann, Martin, Dichter der neuen Türkei (Berlin, 1919), p. 92 Google Scholar, n. 1.

27 For the family tree, see the very helpful article by Bouquet, Olivier, “ Onomasticon Ottomanicum III: Köprülü, un assez joli nom d’emprunt”, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 60 (2013), pp. 58–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (at p. 72).

28 Bouquet, “Onomasticon”, p. 81.

29 Bouquet, “Onomasticon”, pp. 83–85, frames these questions nicely in terms of present-day nostalgia.

30 Bittel, Kurt, Reisen und Ausgrabungen in Ägypten, Kleinasien, Bulgarien und Griechenland 1930–1934, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Jahrgang 1998:5 (Stuttgart, 1998), p. 123 Google Scholar. Bittel spent much time with Wittek in Istanbul, with many evenings at the Rejans restaurant. For an idiosyncratic assessment of the Rejans at this time, see Zia Bey, Mufty-Zade K. [Müftizade M.K. Yusuf Bey Danışman], Speaking of the Turks (New York, 1922), pp. 152–156 Google Scholar.

31 Bittel, Reisen, pp. 381–382.

32 Bittel, Reisen, pp. 382–383. In 1937 Schede joined the Nazi Party (as did Bittel).

33 Foss, Clive, “Kemal Atatürk: Giving a new nation a new history”, Middle Eastern Studies 50:4 (2014), pp. 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 It is not clear that Wittek had influence with the Heidelberg authorities in the 1920s; I suspect that Wittek was Bittel's source for this notion.

35 Two German-speaking Turkish specialists lived in Istanbul during the Nazi era, Andreas Tietze and Robert Anhegger. Neither received the opportunity to practice their specialty for a living.

36 Bittel, Reisen, pp. 437–438.

37 Telushkin, Joseph, Hillel: If Not Now, When? (New York, 2010)Google Scholar.