The Ottoman Twilight In The Arab Lands (turkish Testimonies And Memories Of The Great War)

Edited by Deringil Selim
Short description/annotation
The Great War is still seen as a mostly European war. The Middle Eastern theatre is, at best, considered a sideshow written from the western perspective. This book fills a gap in the literature by giving an insight through annotated translations from Ottoman memoirs of actors who witnessed the last few years of Turkish presence in the Arab lands.
Description
The Great War is still seen as a mostly European war. The Middle Eastern theater is, at best, considered a sideshow written from the western perspective. This book fills an important gap in the literature by giving an insight through annotated translations from five Ottoman memoirs, previously not available in English, of actors who witnessed the last few years of Turkish presence in the Arab lands. It provides the historical background to many of the crises in the Middle East today, such as the Arab–Israeli confrontation, the conflict-ridden emergence of Syria and Lebanon, the struggle over the holy places of Islam in the Hejaz, and the mutual prejudices of Arabs and Turks about each other.
Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Aspects of the Ottoman Twilight
• Chapter 1. Falih Rıfkı Atay
• Chapter 2. Hüseyin Kazım Kadrí
• Chapter 3. Ali Fuad Erden
• Chapter 4. Münevver Ayaşlı
• Chapter 5. Naci Kaşif Kıcıman
• Conclusion. The Atrak and the Arabs
• Bibliography

Review quote
"The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands presents five interesting memoirs of exceptional characters and comes in a perfect time where academia and research has been interested more often in the contemporary of Arab-Turkish relation and history." - Bosphorus Review of Books
Biographical note

Currently at the Lebanese American University, Selim Deringil was a professor at the Bosphorus University and a visiting professor in the United States, France, Japan and Hungary. His numerous publications include The Well Protected Domains and Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire, both of which won the Turkish Studies Association Koprulu Prize.

Endorsement

“Selim Deringil has long been recognized as one of the foremost historians of Hamidian Turkey and his new book makes a signal contribution to the history of World War I in the Middle East. Too many histories of the twilight of Ottoman rule are written from a Western perspective that treats the Arab theatres of the Great War as a sideshow. Featuring a lucid introduction and extensively edited translations from five hitherto untranslated Turkish memoirs, his book opens a window into the Ottomans’ view of themselves as their world crumbled around them and four centuries of Istanbul’s rule in the Arab East came to an end.”

—Tariq Tell, Assistant Professor of Political Studies and Public Administration, American University of Beirut

Endorsement

“After the Great War, the legacy of 400 years of Ottoman rule in the Arab lands was reduced to a bitter feud between Arab and Turkish nationalisms. In both the new Arab nation-states and the Republic of Turkey, post-Ottoman memoirs aimed not at providing earnest accounts of the past but instead at bolstering the official nationalist ideologies of the new regimes. Through close examination of five prominent memoirs penned in Kemalist Turkey, Deringil reveals the true nature of these works and shows how nationalists used them to build the new Turkish state.”

—M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs and Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

Endorsement

“In The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands, Selim Deringil explores the fate of the very provinces that had been one of the main concerns of the Ottoman