H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [email protected] (July 2008)
Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh. _The Image of an Ottoman City:
Imperial Architecture and Urban Experience in Aleppo in the 16th and 17th
Centuries_. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. xxi + 278 pp.
Glossary, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $164.00
(cloth), ISBN 90-04-12454-3.
Reviewed for H-Levant by May Farhat,
Department of Fine Arts and Art History,
American University of Beirut
A City Reshaped Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh’s _The Image of an Ottoman
City_ is an important contribution to the literature on the
"non-western city."[1] It explores the impact of Ottoman rule on the
architectural and urban space of Aleppo over the course of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The study’s overarching concern
is with patterns of "Ottomanization," that is, the processes by which
Ottoman imperial power appropriated, transformed, reshaped, and
represented Aleppo’s historically multilayered urban environment,
imprinting it with a distinctively Ottoman signature.
In chapter 1, Watenpaugh positions herself within the disciplinary
practices that have shaped the study of Ottoman cities. Eschewing the
disciplinary divisions that placed Aleppo and Istanbul in separate
fields of inquiry, circumscribed by national boundaries and
nationalist ideologies (Arab vs. Turkish), her goal is to frame
"Aleppo as an Ottoman city," by placing it in its premodern Ottoman
context (p. 5). Central to the author’s thesis is the "metaphor of
encounter," or "interconnection," which allows her to reconceive the
relationship between the imperial center and provincial city, and to
read architectural and urban production as a visual embodiment of that
relationship (p. 8). Watenpaugh argues that the need to "Ottomanize"
the former Mamluk territories must have compelled the architectural
production of standardized forms that "would index Ottoman rule"
(p. 9). She draws widely and expertly on local and imperial archival
sources, and confidently builds on the work of the French school of
research (Jean Sauvaget, Andre Raymond, and Jean-Claude David),
Ottoman architectural and urban studies, (Ulku Bates, Cigdem
Kafescioglu, Gulru Necipoglu, and Irene Bierman), and urban historians
(Spiro Kostof, Henri Lefebvre, and Michel de Certeau).
Chapter 2 sets the scene by exploring Aleppo’s pre-Ottoman urban
context. The author establishes that the pattern of patronage under
the Mamluks changed markedly under the Ottomans. While wealthy local
merchants joined Mamluk amirs and governors to participate in the
process of shaping urban space, the patronage of powerful,
Istanbul-appointed officials was most instrumental in the
transformation of the city’s urban landscape during the first two
centuries of Ottoman rule. Cognizant of Aleppo’s emerging preeminence
as a hub for long distance trade in the empire, Ottoman officials
invested heavily in Aleppo’s commercial infrastructure, radically
changing the orientation of the city and creating a new urban center
at the heart of the intra-mural city.
The Ottomans projected their influence into the former Mamluk cities
by means of large endowed foundations (_awqaf_) that had an impact on
urban, socioeconomic, political, and religious networks. In chapter 3,
Watenpaugh exhaustively analyzes the patronage of the powerful Ottoman
officials who reshaped Aleppo’s urban space into an Ottoman city
during the sixteenth century. Between 1546 and 1580, successive
governor-generals of Aleppo established four major endowments
(_awqaf_). These were located along the old Roman east-west axis of
the city, stretching between the Great Mosque and the Antioch Gate.
The religious institutions at the center of these complexes introduced
a distinctly Ottoman signature ("rumi" aesthetic), characterized by
the domed prayer hall, pencil thin minarets, and spatial
configurations that emphasized visibility (p. 73). These standardized
forms, devised in the office of imperial architects in Istanbul,
"shouldered the articulation of Ottoman hegemony" and permanently
changed the skyline of the city (p. 120).
Watenpaugh argues that a different stylistic choice dictated the
design of commercial structures (_khÄ=81ns_), which were configured
according to Mamluk models. Watenpaugh eschews the conventional view
of two dichotomous styles, an imperial style introduced from Istanbul
and a persistent local "tradition." Instead, she argues that in these
commercial structures, less symbolically charged than the mosque, an
appropriation and Ottomanization of Mamluk forms took place, a point
that she develops further in chapter 5. Contra to Sauvaget, who saw no
evidence of concerted planning in the growth of the Ottoman city,
Watenpaugh argues that the cumulative acts of patronage that
contributed to the architecturally cohesive space of Aleppo’s urban
center constituted a form of urban planning. One wishes, however, that
the author had presented a more detailed analysis of the interplay
between Mamluk typology, local building practices, and Ottoman visual
idioms that contributed to the formation of that distinctive Aleppine
urban language.
In chapters 4 and 5, Watenpaugh extends her examination of patterns of
Ottomanization into the seventeenth century. Political instability at
the turn of the sixteenth century, in conjunction with the slowing
down of international commerce, introduced a rupture in the pattern of
Ottoman patronage. The author briefly alludes to the political and
social developments leading to this rupture. However, a more
comprehensive exploration of the balance of power between the city and
the imperial center would have done much to foreground her analysis of
urban transformation. According to Watenpaugh, the shift from the
patronage of large commercial complexes to the patronage of smaller
religious establishments like Sufi lodges (_takiyyas_) underscored
Ottoman officials’ attempts to co-opt the antinomian movements that
were expanding and proliferating during this period. Visually, the
_takiyyas_ are a disparate, architecturally hybrid group, and do not
project a strong urban presence. While the author brings much needed
attention to these religious institutions, her discussion of their
architectural idioms remains inconclusive. The dearth of new
commercial foundations during the seventeenth century is offset by the
extra-muros commercial complex of Ipshir Pasha, which is distinguished
by its incorporation of a magnificent coffee house. Although Ipshir
Pasha was a notorious rebel, and thus one who may not be perceived as
a willing agent of
Ottomanization, Watenpaugh forcefully argues that by virtue of its
endowment, established to support Islamic institutions and the
protection of the _hajj_, Ipshir Pasha’s foundation remains–very much
like the sixteenth-century foundations–a significant "artifact of
empire" (p. 169).
In chapter 5, Watenpaugh moves the discussion to Ottoman renovation
efforts, specifically the refurbishing of two of Aleppo’s oldest
religious institutions–the Great Mosque and the Madrasa HallÄ=81wiya.
Subtle changes to the façades of these buildings are seen as a
strategy to appropriate and Ottomanize the city’s past, a process that
culminates in the façade of Khan al-Wazir, a commercial structure
built within the city in the late seventeenth century. In her
interpretation of two feline emblems that frame the gate of the
_khÄ=81n_, Watenpaugh deploys a compelling argument that a new visual
idiom was created in the process of appropriating and
recontextualizing Mamluk forms.
In her final chapter, Watenpaugh shifts her focus from the realm of
architecture to that of book publishing, analyzing texts about cities
that were produced in both Istanbul and Aleppo. Locally, the continued
production of biographical dictionaries of Aleppine scholars
underscores the presence of a strong urban identity. These texts, as
the author observes, lack an "aesthetic awareness," and do not
explicitly expound on the spatial and formal qualities of the city’s
architecture (p. 212). In contrast, texts produced by
Turkish-speaking Ottomans at the imperial center, like Matrakci
Nassuh’s portrait of Aleppo and Evliya Celebi’s travelogue, represent
Aleppo from the perspective of the imperial center, and thus reveal
imperialist concerns and attitudes. In Nasuh’s painting, completed
before the Ottoman transformation of the city in the sixteenth
century, Aleppo’s cityscape is punctuated with recognizably Ottoman
minarets featuring pencil-shaped tops and double balconies. As
Watenpaugh suggests, Aleppo is not depicted as it is but how it ought
to be. Celebi’s account displays a keen awareness of the city’s
historical layering, one that privileges the Ottoman layer and
highlights its Rumi style. By the end of the seventeenth century,
Aleppo has been shaped in the image of an Ottoman city, as prefigured
in Nasuh’s portrait.
Finally, Watenpaugh’s publisher, Brill, deserves criticism. The
location of the figures and photographs at the end of the volume makes
for an awkward reading experience; and the poor quality of the
monochromatic photographs often fails to serve the author’s bold
visual analysis. Nevertheless, Watenpaugh’s sweeping account of
Aleppo’s reshaping under Ottoman rule is thought provoking and
groundbreaking. It offers insights into the working of imperial power
in the production of urban space and the staging of public
architecture in a provincial center. It is indispensable reading for
all those concerned with Ottoman and Mediterranean urban history in
the early modern period.
Note
[1]. See Zeyneb Celik, "New Approaches to the ‘Non-Western’ City,"
_Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians_ 58 (September
1999), 374-381.
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