"People are generally comfortable wearing multiple identities," says Ayesha Jalal, Pakistan’s acclaimed historian, sociologist, researcher, teacher and writer, "I'm quite comfortable being a woman, a Muslim, a Pakistani, an American."1
I happened to take a course with Ayesha Jalal when she came to teach at Lahore University of Management Sciences for a semester last year. She changed many of my perceptions about different historical facts and events.
During her lectures, a thought often came to my mind. I imagined meeting her for the first time on a busy road and not knowing who she was, imagined getting into a historical debate with her. She could sweep me off my feet with her factual arguments, just as she was doing right at that very moment as I listened to her in class. I would obviously have thought that I had met a very vociferous yet intelligent and eloquent pedestrian, one who knows how to argue her case. I would have wondered how she knew so much about history. Only her being Ayesha Jalal could have explained it all.
A short lady with a thin frame and a face increasingly getting lined due to age, you get a sense of her confidence when you hear her speak and see her body language. Ayesha Jalal does not give a perception of someone capable of attracting controversies, yet in recent years she has, both at home and abroad. She caused much controversy when she made public her research findings that the creation of Pakistan was a historical accident and that Jinnah had never meant to create Pakistan.2
Dr Jalal is a grand-niece of the famous and controversial Urdu novelist, Saadat Hasan Manto, her grandmother being the sister of Manto. She is the daughter of Manto’s favorite nephew, Hamid Jalal, Additional Secretary to the Prime Minister in Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s time. Her father worked in All India Radio before Partition in 1947 and later in Pakistan’s Information Ministry. Dr Jalal first came to the United States of America in 1970 at the age of 16 when her father was posted in the United Nations.
Dr Jalal says she was inspired to study history because of her uncle Manto. Her grandmother often used to read out Manto’s works to her.
“ ‘Toba Tek Singh ' planted questions in my head and made me question the Partition of India,” she says. She used to be amused in childhood at this Manto story of insane people trying to interpret Partition.
In 1971, while studying at Stuyvesant High School in New York, she was attracted to studying sciences, but the events of that year in Pakistan made her question her identity.1
"It really made me question some of my received perceptions of myself as a Pakistani," says Ayesha Jalal. She belonged to a very patriotic family, with family members being in the civil service, and had been brought up in Pakistan under prevailing notions of Pakistan’s history. Hence, witnessing the break up of her country was a “mental trauma” for her.1
“It was a very awkward time,” she speaks.1
Such questions eventually made her want to study history and find answers for herself. When she returned to Pakistan in 1972 with her family, she enrolled in a science school but did not find the quality of education up to scratch. She instead started to pursue the social sciences and never regretted it. Eventually, Ayesha Jalal completed her Bachelors in History and Political Science from Wellesley College in 1978, and went on to do a PhD in History from the Trinity College, University of Cambridge, in 1983 with a dissertation “Jinnah, the Muslim Leage and the Demand for Pakistan”.
Ayesha Jalal has led an enviable career. She has been a Leverhulme Fellow at the Center of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, DC and Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She has taught at Harvard University, Columbia University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently, she is Mary Richardson Professor of History and Director of the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies at Tufts University.
Dr Jalal maintains that she never sought to become a historian, but was "propelled to do so".1
"I felt that the methods of history really allowed me to question the things I was interested in," she says. "1971 was a very difficult time. The Pakistan army in the name of preserving national integrity massacred people in the eastern wing. That kind of discomfort can spark off anger and a quest to understand."1
When General Zia ul Haq came to power and began the Islamization of Pakistan under the notion that it was formed on the basis of Islam, Jalal began to question the way by which Pakistan was created. At that time also, the papers of the transfer of power at the time of Partition were released. Jalal used these papers during her PhD at Cambridge in those days and eventually used them to publish her first book on Jinnah in 1985.1
As an author, Ayesha Jalal has seven books to her credit, including Partisans of Allah and The Sole Spokesman. She is married to Sugata Bose, a Hindu from India and the grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and grandson of nationalist leader Sarat Chandra Bose. He is also her research partner. Together, they have written a book called Modern South Asia which is the first South Asian history book that has been written in joint collaboration between a Pakistani and an Indian.
During her time at Columbia as Associate Professor in the 1990s, she opposed the university for accepting funds from the Hinduja Group, who are nationalist Hindus, to establish a research center for Indic studies at Columbia. She was denied tenure and filed a case against the university for ethnic, gender and religious biases against her as she maintained that her fellow Indian Hindu faculty members "were uncomfortable with a Pakistani woman teaching Indian history" and had “blocked her tenure application”. New York District Court acquitted Columbia, stating that Dr Jalal’s accusations were “thin but suggestive”.2
Ayesha Jalal has received several awards during her career. In 1998, she won the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship of $ 265,000, and on Pakistan Day, 2010, she received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz from the Pakistani government during her tenure at LUMS.
In her teaching methods, Ayesha Jalal always tries to help her students make their own interpretations of different aspects of history and encourages them to reach their own conclusions about it, helping them find answers to their own questions in the light of facts.
"I cannot tell people what to think. I myself wrote against the grain of everything I was supposed to believe in," speaks Dr Ayesha Jalal. "I believe in helping people question, to think and really create a sense of awkwardness with some received wisdoms. That's where my own personal intellectual journey began."1
External works cited:
1. http://www.tufts.edu/home/feature/?p=jalal
2. http://rethinkingislam-sultanshahin.blogspot.com/2009/07/ayesha-jalal-interpreter-of-jihad.html
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople in 1453 C.E.
The year 1453 marks the conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II. What, according to you, is the significance of this victory? Does it mark an arbitrary change of territory from one ruling empire to another while leaving local customs and institutions largely unchanged? Alternatively, does the conquest of Constantinople mark a shift in power in which an “Islamic” Empire triumphs over a “Christian” one?
The capture of Constantinople by Ottomans in 1453 is an important event in history. It presents a paradox in many ways. On one level, it represents the battle between the Islamic and Christian civilizations, and on the other it shows that these two civilizations also linked in a harmonious manner.
Relations between the Muslim East and the Christian West were not as black and white as is perceived in the modern period. In 1384, Christians in the Balkans welcomed Ottoman occupation as it brought liberation from the oppressive rule of the feudal lords (Finkel, 40). The Ottomans and Christians intermarried, and marriages could be a useful, though feeble, means of forging alliances (Finkel, 22). For instance, Sultans Bayezid, Murad, and Mehmed all had Serbian wives (Finkel, 29, 42, 44, 78). Ibn Batuta mentions in his travels about his encounter with Khatun Bayalun, a Byzantine princess who converted to Islam on her marriage to an Ottoman ruler, but later switched to Christianity again after running away from her husband to Constantinople. She treated Ibn Batuta and his Muslim companions very graciously in Constantinople (Ibn Batuta, 152-164). There, Ibn Batuta also met King George who had abdicated from the Byzantine throne and preferred instead to live his life as a monk. George treated Ibn Batuta with reverence even though Ibn Batuta was a Muslim, because Ibn Batuta had visited the Christian holy cities in Palestine during his travels (Ibn Batuta, 163). It was customary for vassals, including Christians, to send their sons to the Ottoman court (Finkel, 36). Many members of the Ottoman royal family (many of them pretenders) took refuge at Christian courts during power struggles over the throne. A son of Sultan Bayezid called Yusuf converted to Christianity while taking refuge at the Byzantine court (Finkel, 30). Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (who loved to dress in Ottoman fashion) toured around his empire with ‘Bayezid Osman’ in 1473 (Finkel, 76). It was a sign of appreciation for the prestige of the Ottomans that the Byzantine and Catholic rulers alike took to protecting members of the Ottoman royal family (Finkel, 76). Ottomans came up with the practice of youth-levy, whereby Christian boys from the newly conquered lands were brought up by the Ottomans and trained to be valuable statesmen. Usually they converted to Islam and remained loyal to the Ottoman dynasty, such as Saruca Pasha and the commander Sihabeddin Sahin Pasha (Finkel, 45). Over time the nature of the Ottoman elite class became characterized by these Christian-born rather than Muslim-born Turkish officials (Finkel, 74-8). Many Byzantine and Serbian nobles converted to Islam and retained their offices under the Ottomans, such as Ahmed Pasha (Finkel, 61), George Amirutzes (Finkel, 62-3), and Has Murad Pasha (Finkel, 57). Mehmed’s 50,000 strong light cavalry included Christian soldiers too (Finkel, 69).
Mehmed did not want to cut Constantinople from its past entirely, but instead envisioned to take the city forward into a new era. For this reason, only six churches in the city were converted into mosques, including the Hagia Sophia – symbolic acts of control to drive home the message that a new Islamic dynasty had come to stay and the days of Christian Byzantium were now over (Finkel, 53). Even in the Hagia Sophia, many vestiges of the Byzantine past were not removed, such as the pictures of angels’ faces on some walls (Finkel, 53). Several monuments deliberately appeared on the cityscape to mark the Islamic era, such as the Fatih Mosque (Mosque of the Conquerer) which was built in honour of Mehmed, intended to rival the magnificance of the Hagia Sophia, and built after destructing the Church of the Holy Apostles on the site of the church (Finkel, 55). A mosque was also built at the tomb of Ayyub Ansari, a Companion of Prophet Muhammad (Finkel, 54). Topkapi Palace was built for Mehmed who now disappeared from public events, leading a life behind the ‘veil’. This new practice started by the Sultan, and followed by subsequent Ottoman rulers, created an air of mystery and power around the royal personage, inspiring awe and elevating the status of the ruler in the eyes of the masses (Finkel, 54-5). The news of Mehmed’s military genius were everywhere after 1453, yet Mehmed was nowhere to behold – a mysterious unseen presense in Constantinople, controlling the affairs of a vast empire. Mehmed called back the Greek residents of pre-1453 Constantinople who had fled the city, and encouraged Jews, Armenians, and people of all religions to settle in the city, bringing with them their wealth for the prosperity of Constantinople. He forced Muslims from other parts of the empire to relocate to Constantinople which was now called Istanbul (Finkel, 56). The city was also addressed with other titles such as “Islambol”, “Threshold of Felicity”, and “Abode of Felicity” (Finkel, 57). Conquered peoples were allowed to retain their faiths by the Ottomans (Finkel, 73), and in many instances, Muslims and non-Muslims alike had to pay the poll-tax which was supposed to be paid exclusively by the non-Muslims (Finkel, 66).
While for the Ottomans the capture of Constantinople may be The Conquest, for the dumbstruck Europe it was The Fall of Constantinople (Finkel, 49, 51). Europe was apprehensive about more vigorous attacks on its soil than the attacks in the past by the Ottomans following the events of 1453. The Pope tried to start crusades to reconquer the city for Christendom but these plans were unsuccessful due to dissensions amongst the Europeans (Finkel, 58). Depictions in Western art over the centuries show the events of 1453 as being diabolical, such as Benjamin Constant’s “The Entry of Mahomet II into Constantinople”, painted in 1876. This sudden upsurge of concern among Catholics for Constantinople and its importance to Christendom is in stark contrast to the earlier indifference shown by the Catholic West to the fate of ‘heretical’ Orthodox Constantinople, when the Catholic West largely ignored the pleas of the Byzantine Emperors for military assistance against the Ottomans (Finkel, 43).
Although the Byzantines were defending Constantinople against Muslim occupation, they also were not willing to be yoked to the Catholic Church in return for the Papal military aid. The rivalry between the two Orthodox and Catholic churches was such that when Emperor Constantine of Byzantium decided to unite with the Catholics in 1453 (a union which could be dispensed with when the threat from the Ottomans was over), he faced opposition from the Orthodox Byzantines, led by the monk George Scholarius; these people favored Muslim rule over having to substitute their religion for Catholicism even at this dangerous moment (Finkel, 50). Similar opposition had come up in earlier times as well. John VIII had also moved to a union with the Catholic Church in 1437 and had similarly provoked tremendous protest and an attack on Constantinople by his brother Demetrius of Mesembria (Finkel, 43). On the other hand, Catholic armies fighting on the side of the Byzantines in 1443-4, also decided it was in their better interest to make a truce with the Ottomans rather than support the Byzantines (Finkel, 44).
Despite all the instances of harmony between people belonging to the Islamic and Western civilizations, divisions also existed between the two. The vezir Bayezid Pasha refused to allow members of Ottoman royal family to be held hostage in Constantinople in the early 1400s, saying that “It is not good or consonant with the Prophet’s ordinances that the children of Muslims be nurtured by unbelievers” (Finkel, 37). Memories of the 1389 defeat of Christian Serbians by Muslim Ottomans in the Christian Serbian land fueled much violence in the twentieth century, and the Muslims were always viewed as foreigners by the Serbians even though these Muslims had lived in Serbia for six centuries (Finkel, 21). Constantine XI, the last Byzantine Emperor, is revered as a saint in the Greek Orthodox Church for his steadfast resistance of the Muslim invasion and various legends surround his death (Finkel, 52), such as the myth that he was turned into marble by a miracle in 1453 and will one day come back to life and liberate Constantinople from Muslim hands.1 Many legends also grew up in the Christian world around the incident of the fall of Constantinople, which depicted the event as being a sorrowful and tragic incident, such as the story of the ominous lunar eclipse before the city fell.2 Stories spread across Europe that the Turks were a savage people who were brutal to the Christian citizens in the Ottoman dominion, such as in Sir Thomas More’s “A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation” written in 1500s. Many of these stories were highly exaggerated but despite all the repulsion in Europe for the Turks, Europeans did not stop trading with them (More, 6).
Hence, the notion of the events of 1453 as being a clash between Muslim and Christian civilizations is a paradoxical one – it has no clear cut answer. We find that there were divisions within the Christian community and at times, many Christian factions preferred to side with the Muslim Ottomans rather than their fellow Christians. After the events of 1453, life continued peacefully for the people in many respects except for the change in the state religion and dynasty ruling at Constantinople. On the other hand, there are also instances where the two civilizations seem unable to adjust with one another and over the centuries the fall of Constantinople has been viewed with regret by the West. The notion of the capture of Constantinople by Ottomans as being a blow to Christendom at large is also questionable - importance of Constantinople for the various factions of the West varied greatly, depending on their interests at the time. There is no cut and dried answer to whether this historical event marks an arbitrary change of territory from one ruling empire to another or whether it marks a shift in power in which an “Islamic” Empire triumphs over a “Christian” one. It is, largely, a matter of opinion.
Bibliography
Readings used:
• Caroline Finkel, “First Among Equals”, “A Dynasty Divided”, and “An Imperial Vision”
• Selections from Ibn Batuta’s Travels
• Sir Thomas More, “The Savage Turk”
External sources used:
1. http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t207823-3/
2. http://mikecoe.blogspot.com/2010/08/fid-ottoman-sultan-mehmet-ii-conqueror.html
The capture of Constantinople by Ottomans in 1453 is an important event in history. It presents a paradox in many ways. On one level, it represents the battle between the Islamic and Christian civilizations, and on the other it shows that these two civilizations also linked in a harmonious manner.
Relations between the Muslim East and the Christian West were not as black and white as is perceived in the modern period. In 1384, Christians in the Balkans welcomed Ottoman occupation as it brought liberation from the oppressive rule of the feudal lords (Finkel, 40). The Ottomans and Christians intermarried, and marriages could be a useful, though feeble, means of forging alliances (Finkel, 22). For instance, Sultans Bayezid, Murad, and Mehmed all had Serbian wives (Finkel, 29, 42, 44, 78). Ibn Batuta mentions in his travels about his encounter with Khatun Bayalun, a Byzantine princess who converted to Islam on her marriage to an Ottoman ruler, but later switched to Christianity again after running away from her husband to Constantinople. She treated Ibn Batuta and his Muslim companions very graciously in Constantinople (Ibn Batuta, 152-164). There, Ibn Batuta also met King George who had abdicated from the Byzantine throne and preferred instead to live his life as a monk. George treated Ibn Batuta with reverence even though Ibn Batuta was a Muslim, because Ibn Batuta had visited the Christian holy cities in Palestine during his travels (Ibn Batuta, 163). It was customary for vassals, including Christians, to send their sons to the Ottoman court (Finkel, 36). Many members of the Ottoman royal family (many of them pretenders) took refuge at Christian courts during power struggles over the throne. A son of Sultan Bayezid called Yusuf converted to Christianity while taking refuge at the Byzantine court (Finkel, 30). Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (who loved to dress in Ottoman fashion) toured around his empire with ‘Bayezid Osman’ in 1473 (Finkel, 76). It was a sign of appreciation for the prestige of the Ottomans that the Byzantine and Catholic rulers alike took to protecting members of the Ottoman royal family (Finkel, 76). Ottomans came up with the practice of youth-levy, whereby Christian boys from the newly conquered lands were brought up by the Ottomans and trained to be valuable statesmen. Usually they converted to Islam and remained loyal to the Ottoman dynasty, such as Saruca Pasha and the commander Sihabeddin Sahin Pasha (Finkel, 45). Over time the nature of the Ottoman elite class became characterized by these Christian-born rather than Muslim-born Turkish officials (Finkel, 74-8). Many Byzantine and Serbian nobles converted to Islam and retained their offices under the Ottomans, such as Ahmed Pasha (Finkel, 61), George Amirutzes (Finkel, 62-3), and Has Murad Pasha (Finkel, 57). Mehmed’s 50,000 strong light cavalry included Christian soldiers too (Finkel, 69).
Mehmed did not want to cut Constantinople from its past entirely, but instead envisioned to take the city forward into a new era. For this reason, only six churches in the city were converted into mosques, including the Hagia Sophia – symbolic acts of control to drive home the message that a new Islamic dynasty had come to stay and the days of Christian Byzantium were now over (Finkel, 53). Even in the Hagia Sophia, many vestiges of the Byzantine past were not removed, such as the pictures of angels’ faces on some walls (Finkel, 53). Several monuments deliberately appeared on the cityscape to mark the Islamic era, such as the Fatih Mosque (Mosque of the Conquerer) which was built in honour of Mehmed, intended to rival the magnificance of the Hagia Sophia, and built after destructing the Church of the Holy Apostles on the site of the church (Finkel, 55). A mosque was also built at the tomb of Ayyub Ansari, a Companion of Prophet Muhammad (Finkel, 54). Topkapi Palace was built for Mehmed who now disappeared from public events, leading a life behind the ‘veil’. This new practice started by the Sultan, and followed by subsequent Ottoman rulers, created an air of mystery and power around the royal personage, inspiring awe and elevating the status of the ruler in the eyes of the masses (Finkel, 54-5). The news of Mehmed’s military genius were everywhere after 1453, yet Mehmed was nowhere to behold – a mysterious unseen presense in Constantinople, controlling the affairs of a vast empire. Mehmed called back the Greek residents of pre-1453 Constantinople who had fled the city, and encouraged Jews, Armenians, and people of all religions to settle in the city, bringing with them their wealth for the prosperity of Constantinople. He forced Muslims from other parts of the empire to relocate to Constantinople which was now called Istanbul (Finkel, 56). The city was also addressed with other titles such as “Islambol”, “Threshold of Felicity”, and “Abode of Felicity” (Finkel, 57). Conquered peoples were allowed to retain their faiths by the Ottomans (Finkel, 73), and in many instances, Muslims and non-Muslims alike had to pay the poll-tax which was supposed to be paid exclusively by the non-Muslims (Finkel, 66).
While for the Ottomans the capture of Constantinople may be The Conquest, for the dumbstruck Europe it was The Fall of Constantinople (Finkel, 49, 51). Europe was apprehensive about more vigorous attacks on its soil than the attacks in the past by the Ottomans following the events of 1453. The Pope tried to start crusades to reconquer the city for Christendom but these plans were unsuccessful due to dissensions amongst the Europeans (Finkel, 58). Depictions in Western art over the centuries show the events of 1453 as being diabolical, such as Benjamin Constant’s “The Entry of Mahomet II into Constantinople”, painted in 1876. This sudden upsurge of concern among Catholics for Constantinople and its importance to Christendom is in stark contrast to the earlier indifference shown by the Catholic West to the fate of ‘heretical’ Orthodox Constantinople, when the Catholic West largely ignored the pleas of the Byzantine Emperors for military assistance against the Ottomans (Finkel, 43).
Although the Byzantines were defending Constantinople against Muslim occupation, they also were not willing to be yoked to the Catholic Church in return for the Papal military aid. The rivalry between the two Orthodox and Catholic churches was such that when Emperor Constantine of Byzantium decided to unite with the Catholics in 1453 (a union which could be dispensed with when the threat from the Ottomans was over), he faced opposition from the Orthodox Byzantines, led by the monk George Scholarius; these people favored Muslim rule over having to substitute their religion for Catholicism even at this dangerous moment (Finkel, 50). Similar opposition had come up in earlier times as well. John VIII had also moved to a union with the Catholic Church in 1437 and had similarly provoked tremendous protest and an attack on Constantinople by his brother Demetrius of Mesembria (Finkel, 43). On the other hand, Catholic armies fighting on the side of the Byzantines in 1443-4, also decided it was in their better interest to make a truce with the Ottomans rather than support the Byzantines (Finkel, 44).
Despite all the instances of harmony between people belonging to the Islamic and Western civilizations, divisions also existed between the two. The vezir Bayezid Pasha refused to allow members of Ottoman royal family to be held hostage in Constantinople in the early 1400s, saying that “It is not good or consonant with the Prophet’s ordinances that the children of Muslims be nurtured by unbelievers” (Finkel, 37). Memories of the 1389 defeat of Christian Serbians by Muslim Ottomans in the Christian Serbian land fueled much violence in the twentieth century, and the Muslims were always viewed as foreigners by the Serbians even though these Muslims had lived in Serbia for six centuries (Finkel, 21). Constantine XI, the last Byzantine Emperor, is revered as a saint in the Greek Orthodox Church for his steadfast resistance of the Muslim invasion and various legends surround his death (Finkel, 52), such as the myth that he was turned into marble by a miracle in 1453 and will one day come back to life and liberate Constantinople from Muslim hands.1 Many legends also grew up in the Christian world around the incident of the fall of Constantinople, which depicted the event as being a sorrowful and tragic incident, such as the story of the ominous lunar eclipse before the city fell.2 Stories spread across Europe that the Turks were a savage people who were brutal to the Christian citizens in the Ottoman dominion, such as in Sir Thomas More’s “A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation” written in 1500s. Many of these stories were highly exaggerated but despite all the repulsion in Europe for the Turks, Europeans did not stop trading with them (More, 6).
Hence, the notion of the events of 1453 as being a clash between Muslim and Christian civilizations is a paradoxical one – it has no clear cut answer. We find that there were divisions within the Christian community and at times, many Christian factions preferred to side with the Muslim Ottomans rather than their fellow Christians. After the events of 1453, life continued peacefully for the people in many respects except for the change in the state religion and dynasty ruling at Constantinople. On the other hand, there are also instances where the two civilizations seem unable to adjust with one another and over the centuries the fall of Constantinople has been viewed with regret by the West. The notion of the capture of Constantinople by Ottomans as being a blow to Christendom at large is also questionable - importance of Constantinople for the various factions of the West varied greatly, depending on their interests at the time. There is no cut and dried answer to whether this historical event marks an arbitrary change of territory from one ruling empire to another or whether it marks a shift in power in which an “Islamic” Empire triumphs over a “Christian” one. It is, largely, a matter of opinion.
Bibliography
Readings used:
• Caroline Finkel, “First Among Equals”, “A Dynasty Divided”, and “An Imperial Vision”
• Selections from Ibn Batuta’s Travels
• Sir Thomas More, “The Savage Turk”
External sources used:
1. http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t207823-3/
2. http://mikecoe.blogspot.com/2010/08/fid-ottoman-sultan-mehmet-ii-conqueror.html
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