1

Ottoman Empire in Indian Literary Imagination:

Charting Shibli Numani and Nazli Fyzee’s Journeys into Turkey

“…And just like Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali, not adhering to set rules, breathed fresh
air into Urdu literature, breaking its obsession with love and beauty, for the past forty
years Turkish literature has also faced a revolutionary turn (inqalab-e azeem). They have
accepted realism, discarding archaic thoughts and misconceptions (Purani khayaali aur
vehmi baton ko tark karke)…Hajira is a piece of work, whose reformative substance can
hold its ground against any European novel. And indeed this is how a novel should be.”
Muhammad Hassan Khan, 1911

Late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey loomed large in Indian imagination in the late-

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whether it was the Russo-Turkish War of 1876-78, or the

movement to stop the dissolution of the Caliphate in the aftermath of World War I, or the new

Turkish Republic declared in 1922, Indian Muslims debated Turkish affairs with concern and later

with admiration. When the Timurids left, Turkish saw its movement from the language of the

durbar, divan, and diplomatic correspondence between Mughal India, Ottoman Empire and Russia,

to a register of literary, cultural and social reform.

Urdu literary figures were constantly looking at Eastern models to emulate and sound a

wake up calls for Indian Muslims; consequently Turkey and its literature presented themselves as

firm example of social and literary modernity that had been ushered into Urdu by the likes of Hali.

The section quoted above is taken from the preface of Adalat Khanum’s novel Hajira, a reformative

novel translated into Urdu by Muhammad Hassan Khan in 1911. He had chanced upon its review in

an English newspaper and found it imperative to illustrate to Indian Muslims what their umma was

doing in other Muslim countries in order to promote women’s education—without which they

wouldn’t be counted among great civilisations (muhazzib qaumon) of the world. Conspicuously, the

discussion was a combination of Turkish social reform, and its literature’s value against

disreputable GW Reynolds’ Mysteries or detective romances that were being constantly translated

into Urdu, often as some sort of a Scottish nautanki, insofar even Munshi Premchand dedicates his
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first book Asrar-e Ma’abid (Mysteries of Places of Worship) to Reynolds.1 Akif Pasha, Rashid

Pasha, Ahmet Afandi and Akram, Hamid and Kamal Bey were a few names listed, who had freed

Turkish literature from praising beloved’s ensnaring locks (baar-e zulf), her pearly teeth (dur-e

dandaan), devotion to her beauty (chaah zankhandaan), and her slender waist (kamar-mashooq ki

tareef). Hajira, a woman’s work critiquing socio-cultural norms that value social standing above

virtues and moral tahzib-ul akhlaq, written in a realistic, conversational Urdu, and stemming from a

modernising Eastern context, was to be a torch-bearer for the coming of age of Urdu novel—vaqayi

novel aisa he hona chahiye. Clearly there was a need to determine literary tastes that could be

allowed to circulate in the world of Indian Muslims and Urdu, and Turkey as a ‘guest language’ was

being put at the forefront for Indian ‘host culture.’2

Literary exchanges within the Indian Ocean rim were not saddled by the extreme asymmetry

of East-West relations, that are characterised by world system of cores ‘diffusing’ and peripheries

‘receiving.’3 In such superficial, generic and universalist categories of ‘global’ and ‘world,’ South-

South literary relations when looked at from Atlantic shores seem to fallen off Moretti's ‘One but

unequal’ map of world literature. World is instead ‘one among many locally produced concepts,’

grounding virtual and real geographies in a sense of positionality, wherein the late modern Urdu

readership chose to inhabit Istanbul.4 Cosmopolitan voices in Urdu travelogues, novels, drama were

constantly addressing vernacular contexts, locally revenant concerns, blurring differenced between

’local’ and ‘distant geographies.’ The conceptual limitations of looking at transregional,

transnational or cosmopolitan and global networks predicated on European ‘centres’ need to give

way to heterogenous pasts from intra-Asian regions of the world that ‘defy easy classification as

1 Naim, CM. “The “Magic-making” Mr. Reynolds”Dawn, Karachi. July 17, 2015. http://cmnaim.com/tag/gwm-reynolds/

2 Liu, Lydia H. Translingual practice: literature national culture and translated modernity, China, 1900–1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1995.

3 Moretti, 54-68

4 Laachir, K., Marzagora, S. and Orsini, F. 5

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either all-inclusive or narrow, either assimilationist-universal or parochial.’5 The concept of

‘significant geographies’ in this regard is a viable concept to investigate ‘geographical imaginations

in multilingual locals,’ referring to ‘a wider conceptual, imaginative and real geographies that texts,

authors and language communities inhabit, produce and reach out to.’6

Turki topi humein mubarak ho, ham to hargiz kharal na odhenge

Although Turkey was more important for Indian Muslim writers, and not so much for Hindi

and Hindu, these literary actors and fields were not in a close-knit hierarchical power relation that

underpin East-West contacts. Turkish cultural, literary and structural reforms were eagerly discussed

and deterritorialised in multilingual Indian qasbas cities like Aligarh, Lahore, Calcutta, as ‘Indian

émigrés’—in other words, writers, imperial officials, nobles, reformist bureaucrats, and moderate

ulema (scholars)—reporting, translating and transcreating from Turkish to Urdu. Steam, railways

and print had made travel easy, and quite often there was a triangulation between Turkey, India, and

the West implicit in fictional and non-fictional writings by Indian authors. Turkish servet-e funun

(Wealth of Sciences, 1896-1901) translated and adapted fin de siècle French works, perhaps then,

these Turkish works provided a mediating model of literary modernity for Urdu readers and writers

much in the same way that Russian authors did for Marathi ones, or Bengali authors for Hindi.

Being ‘modern’ and ‘Eastern’ was being constantly reformed and re-articulated using the

reforming ‘Eastern’ landscape of Turkey, while also being in conversation with European

representations of the land that had chosen to paint it with a harsh stroke. Simultaneously these

safarnamahs were recording combined journeys into the Western parts of Asia and Europe moving

through Anatolia, Istanbul, Smyrna, Egypt, Lebanon, Bombay and illustrating comparisons of

Muslims, their economic status, their educational institutions, and status of women across these

lands. Quite often they were being published as serialised letters in journals and newspapers

5 Conrad 207

6 Laachir, K., Marzagora, S. and Orsini, F. 5

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contemporaneously with the events, so they could coexist and convey conceptualisations of these

places to their readers.7

Section I:

“The readers who are seeking to read this as a typical ‘travelogue’ will not be able to
enjoy it. But readers who are interested in knowing about day-to-day matters of Muslim
nations will find my descriptions useful.”
Shibli Numani

In 1892, prominent Islamic scholar and religious reformer Shibli Numani (1857-1914)

decided to write a safarnamah that he himself did not consider true to its genre, about his journey

sailing through the port cities of Aden, Cyprus, Beirut, Port Said, and Izmir. Although this was not

the first time he had undertaken a journey beyond Indian shores, having previously traveled to

Mecca for Hajj, the 1892 voyage was his first extensive trip to the wider Muslim world. He wanted

Safarnamah-e Rum-o Misr-o Sham to be a clarion call for spiritual, intellectual and educational

awakening back home as ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of knowledge clashed in guises of Dar-ul Ulum

Deoband and Aligarh Muslim University. The opportunity had risen quite spontaneously, when his

friend and mentor, British orientalist Thomas Arnold had told him about travelling to Istanbul.

Shibli had had no time to even procure a passport, an obstacle that will feature almost forty years

later in his disciple Sulaiman Nadvi’s Sair-e Afghanistan as he moves from British controlled

Lahore to Jalalabad and beyond.

Shibli had no intention to write a travelogue. He was compelled by the thought of his close

friends and family’s eagerness to perforate colonial barriers, and learn about social lives and state of

Muslims outside India; his primary objective thus was not to present to his readers with vast

itineraries of historical sights, comely gardens, and hotel reviews. Much like Hajira’s translator

Hassan Khan, he too was perturbed by how limited Indian Muslims knowledge about the

intellectual and imperialistic achievements of their community. Their understanding was more often

7 Lambert-Hurley, 162
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based on European stereotypes—considering themselves dull bejaan, corrupt ayuub and uneducated

jahil. Hassan while lamenting Indian Muslims’ ignorance (la-ilmi) in his preface, ‘What will they

know of the past when they are unaware of Muslims and their activities, achievements outside India

in the present (jab haal sa vaqif nahi to maazi se unhe kya aagaahi hogi).’ There was a consensus

on the need for usefulness of literature, for it to be purposeful, uplifting and inspire a sense of

dignity and reform in the context of Muslim politics of late nineteenth and early twentieth century

with religious and cultural symbols.

Numani works along the same vein, treating travel-writing as a form of history writing— a

practice, he realised after looking at European scholars’ orientalist accounts, that was not free of its

own biases. He pushes the genre’s contours, choosing to tour major educational institution and

surveying pedagogical systems along his route, with ‘entire pages given over to charts and figures

detailing syllabi, enrolment and funding.’8

‘Travelogues usually tell its readers about the country’s administration, system of trade and

law and order, architecture, but I have included no such features. But the state of society’s education

has been recorded, though the analysis could have been more thorough.’9 Early on in the travelogue,

Numani recalls the increase in number of schools in Turkey from 94 to 405, wondering why

European writers chose to ignore such developments. His three months in Turkey before her moved

to Beirut conceded with a period of rapid modernisation—expansion of railways, and banking

systems, strengthening military, educational and constitutional reforms. He covers sections on his

encounters with Turkish women, details of Indians living in Istanbul, desolation of fellow Muslims

across his journeys in comparison with Christians and Jews; all interspersed with personal

anecdotes. Traversing business, hygiene, technology, printing, he notes how Muslims fare in each

sector, mindful that his ‘depiction of the entire umma as impoverished is a rhetorical device meant

8 Majcrowicz 200

9 Numani 1
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to inspire Indian Muslims into action.’10 He constantly drew parallels with India, insisting that

Muslims of Turkey mirrored the state of Muslims in Hindustan. On looking beyond the nobility

(Sultanate), the state of common Muslims was in no way better in Turkey. They had no truck with

industrial growth, and held a very small share in trade, even ordinary shopkeepers are either Jewish

or Christian. Traditional education was below standard, and modern education faced the same

obstructions that it did in India. And old culture and new value systems opposed each other in the

very same way, no middle-ground had been found. Traditional thinkers continue to be unaware of

the pulsating rhythm of the new age, and the modernists (reformers) speak plenty but do little.

Instead of courage, dignity, strength, the whole qaum (community) was engulfed with hopelessness,

and there was no mobility in society.11

His decision to pen a ilmi safar and give special attention to education institutions, came

from a point of evaluation. His journey very shortly preceded the establishment of Nadvat-ul Ulama

Madrasa in Lucknow in 1894, where he hoped to implement a pedagogical approach that would

provide a middle ground combining the modernising drive of Aligarh Muslim University and the

traditional Islamic scholarship of Dar-ul Ulum. A modern British education would help one secure

administrative position in colonial bureaucracy but lacked mazhab and qaumiyat. And a traditional

system of education where training involves only rote-learning of classical texts would destroy

every acumen in its pupil—what he notes to be the case in Al-Azhar Madrasa where he felt futures

of the twelve thousand students from all over the world were being destroyed.

In addition to this, if someone writes in opposition to these beliefs, it is akin to a bird’s

weak voice in Europe’s Naqqār Khānā (drum house/concert)
Shibli Numani

Shibli felt that in the face of colonial restrictions of travel that came with an imposed British

nationality, and deprived of a balanced narrative of the Islamic heartlands, Indian Muslims had

10 Majchrowicz, 202

11 Shibli 4-5
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resorted to reading novels, short-stories, and poetry that presented the images of ‘lascivious’ turks

as ‘historical’ facts. This mis-education was spread by impatient (be-sabr) Europeans who were

keen on establishing an incomplete whole with half baked truth (juziyat se kulliyat qaim karna).12

So a reader’s prejudice about Turkey is imperative, like ‘sleeping after consuming sedatives.’13 He

compares it to European travellers’ and commentators’ analysis of India, insisting that lapses of

judgements about a civilisation and its peoples are more among them. On spending a few weeks in

Hindustan they manage to extensively publish on it, as if civilisational knowledge has miraculously

and instantaneously dawned on them.14

Shibli’s safarnamah worked with a triangulation, that constantly critiqued the state of Indian

Muslims through his commentary on those of Turkey, while highlighting how Europe had

contributed to a hindering or rather marring of contacts with prejudice. Anchored on Turkey as a

‘significant geography’ he embeds Turkish horizons into the multilingual local cultural matrix of

Urdu readership. His text was at once a literary, pedagogical and historical ‘corrective’ native.

Section II

“There’s a strange mixture of old and new hear, that is beyond the bounds of understanding//

Yahan ajeeb magma purine aur naye khayal ka hai, jo hamari naqis aqlon mein samata

nahi”15

Begum Nazli Rafia Sultana Hassanally (1874-1968) traveled to Istanbul and Anatolia with

her husband, Nawab of Janjira, Sidi Ahmad Khan and her siblings, in the year 1908 when the Young

Turk Movement had successfully restored the Ottoman Constitution of 1876. It had been one of her

last stops while leaving Europe, moving through London, Paris, Austria, Hungary and Switzerland.

She wrote her observations as letters to her sister Zehra Fyzee, with the intention of getting them

12 Numani 3

13 Numani 2

14 Numani 3

15 Fyzee, 258
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published in a woman’s journal for a reform oriented Urdu readership. It was later compiled as a life

narrative called Sair-e Yurope for her ‘muslim brothers and sisters’ as something to ‘think about.’16

It is one of the earliest accounts to be written by a women in Urdu, and covers Istanbul’s hospitality,

cuisines, architecture and especially treatment of women.

‘There is nether eloquence (ibarat arayi) nor rhythm (qafiya peymayi) in this.’17 Moving

beyond a traditional safarnama, Nazli’s epistolary travelogue covers community life, progress

(tadbir-ul manazil), political affairs, trade, artistic endeavours, culture, education et al. And she too

begins her narrative with bemoaning about a lulling ignorance among Indian Muslims about their

esteemed writers, intellectuals—and here too, only solution in sight is women’s education.18 Hers is

a critical gaze that insists on wanting to meet Turkish ladies finds it too difficult owing to strict

Turkish customs, expressing wonder at their strange dual life that was at once more liberated than

Indian Muslim women’s and also worse. She takes Turkish society to account over its archaic

reservations against women’s mobility,19 prohibitions restricting their entry into hotels, lack of

etiquette of receiving people in large gathering because women had been confined to private

quarters for far too long, and the francophone sections obsession with European fashion and the

french language, but no care for knowledge of the world. ‘We have transformed her attires

according to our time’s need, if it were in Turkish women’s hands they would assume their

traditional attires with necessary changes, but that’s impossible here because authentic Turkish

attires have been lost forever.’20 She searches for Islamic intimacy and affection in every

interaction, while remarking on their emulation of European clothes, house decor, hairstyles and

jewellery. There is less talk of Indian ‘backwardness’ and more of the new constitutional

16 Fyzee, 1

17 Fyzee, 1

18 Fyzee, 1

19 Fyzee, 251. She notes that before the Constitutional government, women were not allowed out of their carriages in Dolma Garden,

20 Fyzee, 260
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governments’ efforts to make women’s assemblies, open up avenues for their interaction with

politics, a sense of purpose and camaraderie.21 The impacts of westernisation on the Turkish society

are discussed throughout, while also highlighting whether the liberated men of Turkey were willing

to accept women's rise in the public sphere. Conspicuously missing is any mention of women as

ideals of Islamic purity.

Nazli and Atiya Fyzee were ‘one of the first elite Muslim women in India to appear in public

unveiled—a social positioning that allowed them not only to circulate in mixed society but also to

write for it,’ and ‘this awareness of writing for men as well as women—whether Muslim, Hindu, or

British—impacted what they considered appropriate for autobiographical revelation.’22 Nazli’s

account is consequently filled with details of her husband’s private and public interactions with

Turkish ministers, the Ottoman Grand Vizier, British Ambassador Gerald Lowther, the Chief

Dragoman of the British Embassy Gerarld Fitzmaurice. Unlike her male counterparts, she is not

busy decrying what Europe has thought and declared of Turkish women, and how exalted they are

in comparison. Rather she chooses to present the difficulty of knowing when segregation and male-

oriented and religiously motivated segregations are to an extreme, disallowing women to voice

themselves and form an opinion. No where is the mention of women’s education as a necessity for

becoming comely wives, or their responsibilities as mothers—but a tussle between old and new,

between freedom and appropriate freedom, that plays out in her depiction of their mobility, outward

appearance, and visibility in the public world.

Conclusion

The aim of these travelogues and the characterisation of Turkey as a ‘significant geography’

is not to replace Europe with a nation from the Islamic heartland. Industrial revolution remoulded

these westward journeys, that had already been a part of Muslim imagination of themselves in the

21 Fyzee, 261

22 Lambert-Hurley, 162
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Subcontinent and beyond. Steam and railways facilitated rapid travels, and print and post made

these experiences available for a vast audience in an almost ‘real-time’ format, since these are not

end-of-life autobiographical accounts that representative of swift communication of

conceptualisations of journeys to the Muslim public. Muslim ideations of history, geography, time

and space changed as they confronted a Muslim past and a European present, hovering around new

concepts of progress (taraqqi) and the Muslim world (al-alam al-Islami).23 Numani and Fyzee’s

travelogues refashioned Turkey as a space of debating Indian Muslims, and not a mere ideal to be

passively emulated. Deracinating Turkey was necessary to expand Muslim print sphere’s world,

mediated through a learned gaze and produced for its audience as a politicised expression of

change. ‘And it was in the age of industrialised communications that the Muslim world was

made.’24

Works Cited

Conrad, Sebastian. What Is Global History? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016.

Fyzee, Nazli Rafia. Sair-e-Yurop: Safar-e Yurop ka Ruznamcha. Lahore: Union Steam Press.
1908. Print.

Green, Nile. “Spacetime and the Muslim Journey West: Industrial Communications in the Making of
the ‘Muslim World.’ The American Historical Review. 118.2. 3013: 401-29.

Khanum, Adalat. Hajira. Tr. Muhammad Hassan Khan. Agra: Mufid-e Aam. 1911. Print.

Laachir, Karima, Sara Marzagora and Francesca Orsini. “Multilingual Locals and Significant
Geographies: For a Ground-up and Located Approach to World Literature”. Modern Languages
Open. 2018 (1): 19, pp. 1–8. Web. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.190.

Lambert-Hurley, Siobhan. “To Write of the Conjugal Act: Intimacy and Sexuality in Muslim Women’s
Autobiographical Writing in South Asia”. Journal of the History of Sexuality. 2014 (23): 2. pp.
155-181. Web. DOI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/542473.

Majchrowicz, Daniel. “Travelling for Reform: Shibli Numani’s Journey to Constantinople”. Ed. S.
Mandal. Journeys: Indian Travel Writing. New Delhi: Creative Books. 2013. Print.

Moretti, Franco. “Conjectures on World Literature”. New Left Review 1, January- February 2000:
54-68

23 Green, 403

24 Green, 429
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Numani, Muhammad Shibli. Safarnamah-e Rum-o Misr-o Sham. Azamgarh: Ma’arif Press, Shibli
Akademi. 2008. Print.