Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian

Muslims and the Late Ottoman State 1st

Edition Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/empire-of-refugees-north-caucasian-muslims-and-the
-late-ottoman-state-1st-edition-vladimir-hamed-troyansky/
Empire of Refugees
This page intentionally left blank
E MPIR E OF R EFUGE E S
North Caucasian Muslims
and the Late Ottoman State

Vladimir Hamed-­Troyansky

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2024 by Vladimir Hamed-­Troyansky. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission
of Stanford University Press.
Studies of the Harriman Institute
Publication of this book is supported in part by the Harriman Institute at
Columbia University.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free, archival-­quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hamed-Troyansky, Vladimir, author.
Title: Empire of refugees : North Caucasian Muslims and the late Ottoman
state / Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2024. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023018074 (print) | LCCN 2023018075 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781503636965 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781503637740 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781503637757 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Refugees—Government policy—Turkey—History.
| Refugees—Russia (Federation)—Caucasus, Northern—History. |
Muslims—Russia (Federation)—Caucasus, Northern—History. | Caucasus,
Northern (Russia)—Emigration and immigration—History. | Turkey—
Emigration and immigration—History. | Turkey—History—Ottoman
Empire, 1288-1918.
Classification: LCC HV640.4.T9 H36 2024 (print) | LCC HV640.4.T9
(ebook) | DDC 305.9/0691409561—dc23/eng/20230921
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023018074
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023018075
Cover design: Gabriele Wilson
Cover art: Zaina F. El-­Said, Family Tree, 2022, collage, 42 x 60 cm A2, Amman,
Jordan
For Ronny
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

Illustrations and Tables ix

Notes for the Reader xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

PA RT I
Refugee Migration

1 Muslim Migrations from the North Caucasus 23

2 Ottoman Refugee Regime 56

PA RT I I
Refugee Resettlement

3 Inequality and Sectarian Violence in the Balkans 89

4 Real Estate and Nomadic Frontier in the Levant 117

5 Building the Caucasus in Anatolia 151

viii Contents

PA RT I I I
Diaspora and Return

6 Making the North Caucasian Diaspora 187

7 Return Migration to Russia 215

Conclusion 243

Notes 251

Bibliography 297

Index 329
 I L LUS T R AT IONS A N D TA BL E S

MAPS
1 Ottoman Empire and the Caucasus, 1864 xx
2 Ethnic groups in the Caucasus, c. 1850 13
3 North Caucasian villages in Anatolia, the Levant, and Iraq 73
4 Danube Province, 1867 92
5 Ottoman Transjordan, 1914 123
6 Ottoman Uzunyayla, 1914 160
7 Khutats’ correspondence, 1890–­1905 177
8 Caucasus Viceroyalty, 1878 217

FIGUR ES
1 Circassians in Istanbul 15
2 Circassian displacement in Russian art 31
3 Ottoman Amman 126
4 Şerife, Hanife, and Cevat Khutat 155
5 Fuat Khutat 156
6 Ottoman Aziziye 162
7 Şerife, Fuat, and Şefika Khutat 179
8 Cevat Khutat 180
9 Blueprint of a mosque for refugees 193

ix
x Illustr ations and Tables

TA BL E S
1 North Caucasian refugees, 1858–­1914 49
2 Taxes in Babadağ District, 1873–­77 108
3 Property in the town of Babadağ, 1877 108
4 Household economy in Berkofça District, 1873 109
5 Shops purchased in Amman, 1891–­1912 132
6 Houses purchased in Amman, 1889–­1912 132
7 Inventory of Hajj Islam’s inheritance, 1901 137
8 Land prices in Circassian villages in Transjordan, 1891–­1912 149
9 Chechen returnees to Russia, 1867–­71 231
10 North Caucasian petitions to return to Russia 231
11 Returnees to the Caucasus, 1860–­1914 238
 NOTE S FOR T HE R E A DER

T R A NSL I T ER AT IONS
This book relies on many sources in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Russian, and
Bulgarian. I transliterate Ottoman Turkish using Modern Turkish orthog-
raphy, without diacritics. For Arabic, I adopt the transliteration system of
the International Journal of Middle East Studies, marking ʿayn as ʿ and hamza
as ʾ. For Russian and Bulgarian, I use the Library of Congress transliteration
systems. Transliterations from Circassian (both Adyghe and Kabardian) are
based on the romanization system adopted by the United States Board on
Geographic Names and the (British) Permanent Committee on Geographical
Names.
The names of less-­k nown geographic localities are transliterated according
to the rules outlined for modern Turkish, Arabic, and Russian: respectively,
Pınarbaşı, Naʿur, and Temir-­K han-­Shura. For the names of well-­k nown lo-
cations, I use standard English spellings: for example, Istanbul not İstanbul,
Amman not ʿAmman, Nalchik not Nal’chik.

ME ASUR EMENTS A ND CUR R ENCY

Land Area
1 dönüm = 1,600 arşın
1 dönüm = 939.9 square meters = 10,117 square feet
1 acre = 4.31 dönüm
1 hectare = 10.64 dönüm
xi
xii Notes for the Reader

Volume and Weight (in wheat)

1 kile = 20 okka
1 kile = 25.66 kilograms = 56.6 pounds
1 okka = 1.28 kilograms = 2.8 pounds
1 ṣāʿ = 5.2–­6.0 kilograms = 11.5–­13.2 pounds

Currency
1 Ottoman lira = 100 kuruş
1 kuruş = 40 para
1 Russian ruble = 100 kopeks
 AC K NOW L E D G M E N T S

It takes a village to write a book, as the academic iteration of that saying goes.
My village is approaching the size of a small town, and I am ever so grateful
for that support.
This book is based on research in multiple places, learning different ways
of record keeping, and speaking with many people, to whom this history
is personal, raw, precious. My transnational fieldwork has only ever been
possible thanks to the generosity of others. Many in the North Caucasian
diaspora took a chance and shared with me, a stranger, their expertise, mem-
ories, and documents. In Jordan, I am indebted to Merissa Khurma and
Yanal Ansouqa for welcoming me to their worlds and facilitating my inter-
views. Salim Khutat generously allowed me to use his family’s letters and
photographs to tell the incredible Ottoman history of the Khutat family in
chapter 5. In Zarqaʾ, Farid F. Sultan shared his Chechen community’s letters
and memoirs, and Adnan Younes Bazadugh welcomed me to his Circassian
home–­museum–­research center. Isam Bino introduced me to the Chechen
history of Sweileh, and Musa ʿAli Janib to the Circassian origins of Wadi
al-­Sir; and Faisal Habtoosh Khot and other Circassian elders sat down with
me to share their families’ recollections of founding Naʿur. I also thank Deeb
Bashir Arslan; Mohammad Azoka; Majida Mufti Hilmi; Jamil Ishaqat;
Amjad, Khaled, and Feridon Jaimoukha; Kamal Jalouqa; ʿOmran Khamash;
ʿAwn Shawkat and Dina Janbek al-­K hasawneh; Muhammad Khair Mamsir;
xiii
xiv Acknowledgments

Mohydeen Quandour; Mohammad Kheir and Nart Pshegubj; Janset Berkok

Shami; Dasi Amin Shamseddin; Nawriz Shapsough; Akram Qursha; and the
Asendar, Janbek, Khurma, Mufti, and Qursha families.
In Turkey, Murat Papşu and Zeynel Abidin Besleney shared their vast
knowledge of the Circassian diaspora’s history and politics. For their friend-
ship and guidance, I thank Elbruz Aksoy in Istanbul, Bislan Jalouqa in
Ankara, Neslihan Kaplan in Kayseri, and Abidin İnci and his family, who
hosted me in the magnificent mountain valley of Uzunyayla. Muhittin Ünal,
Tsey Rengin Yurdakul, and Ebubekir Kızık facilitated my research in, respec-
tively, Kafkas Araştırma Kültür ve Dayanışma Vakfı, Şamil Eğitim ve Kültür
Vakfı, and Kafkas Vakfı. I also learned from Sevda Alankuş, Nihat Berzeg,
Sefer Berzeg, Jade Cemre Erciyes, Erol Karayel, Kuban Kural, Ömer Aytek
Kurmel, Ergün Özgür, Nefin Şakarcan, Metin Sönmez, and Rahmi Tuna.
In Russia, Vladimir Bobrovnikov warmly welcomed me at the Institute
of Oriental Studies in Moscow. I also thank Alikber Alikberov, Yuri Anch-
abadze, Fasikh Baderkhan, Anastasia Ganich, Zaira Ibragimova, Madina
Pashtova, Jamal Rakhaev, Mikhail Roshchin, Aleksandr Vasil’ev, and Ilya
Zaytsev. In the North Caucasus, I had the good fortune of receiving advice
from Anzor Kushkhabiev, Adam Gutov, and Murat Tabishev in Nalchik;
Georgy Chochiev in Vladikavkaz; and Makhach Musaev, Shamil Shikhaliev,
Amir Navruzov, Madina Abdulaeva, Amirkhan Magomeddadaev, and Mag-
omedkhan Magomedkhanov in Makhachkala.
In Bulgaria, Margarita Dobreva patiently helped me to find my way
through the largest Ottoman archive in the Balkans. Grigor Boykov, Petar
Dobrev, Gergana Georgieva, Rossitsa Gradeva, Stoyanka Kenderova, and
Ventsislav Muchinov generously gave their advice and expertise. I further
extend my gratitude to every archivist and librarian, in every location during
my research, who endured my queries, shared their knowledge, and brought
out unending piles of documents. Without your work, this one would never
exist.
For over a decade, Joel Beinin has been a wonderful friend and source
of inspiration. He read many drafts and struck a beautiful balance between
providing steady guidance and total freedom to explore, think, and craft.
I now get to do daily what I love the most, and this is possible thanks to
you, Joel. Ali Yaycıoğlu expanded my vision of the Ottoman world and its
Acknowledgments xv

awe-­inspiring mobility. He enthusiastically encouraged every archival adven-

ture. Robert Crews reintroduced me to the Russian Empire, an empire that
seemed equally familiar and foreign when looking at its southern border-
lands. Norman Naimark made me think harder about how we write and
what is at stake. Shahzad Bashir, Paula Findlen, Burcu Karahan, Nancy
Kollmann, Martin Lewis, Khalid Obeid, Aron Rodrigue, Kären Wigen, and
many others at Stanford University enriched this book in various ways.
Beautiful places and brilliant people helped to shape this work. This book
was conceived in three magnificent cities: Istanbul, Amman, and Tbilisi. I
first put the stories of remarkable individuals of this book on paper while
living in northern California and doing regular Amtrak commutes between
the Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley. Suad Joseph welcomed me to a
vibrant community of Middle East scholars at the University of California,
Davis, which I will always cherish. Baki Tezcan, Keith Watenpaugh, and
Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh provided great camaraderie. While on a re-
search fellowship at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, I embarked
on writing a transimperial history of migration, bridging scholarship on the
Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Russia, further buoyed by spar-
kling conversations with Catherine Evtuhov, Jane Burbank, Rashid Khalidi,
Zachary Lockman, Mark Mazower, Elidor Mëhilli, and Larry Wolff. Writing
continued in the Deep South, as I moved to Furman University in Greenville,
South Carolina. There, in the stunning foothills of the Blue Ridge Moun-
tains, I realized that my book captures the making of the Ottoman refugee
regime. The manuscript took its final shape at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. I am grateful for Sherene Seikaly, Adrienne Edgar, Anshu
Malhotra, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Paul Amar, Charmaine Chua, Stephan Mi-
escher, Dwight Reynolds, Shiva Balaghi, and other colleagues, with whom
we are building vibrant Middle Eastern, migration, and global studies com-
munities in an idyllic place between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pa-
cific Ocean.
At UC Santa Barbara, with support from the UC Humanities Research
Institute, I hosted a manuscript workshop. I am deeply grateful to Adrienne
Edgar, Stacy Fahrenthold, Reşat Kasaba, and Michael Provence for their in-
sightful feedback and for pushing me to redraft, deepen, and clarify. Sherene
Seikaly provided invaluable suggestions and continues to model what intel-
xvi Acknowledgments

lectual generosity looks like. I benefited from feedback by Kristen Alff, Cath-
erine Baylin Duryea, Basma Fahoum, and Rebecca Gruskin, my brilliant and
beloved academic siblings, who witnessed every stage of this project; Rhian-
non Dowling and Nana Osei-­Opare, my daily writing partners through the
pandemic; and Jacob Daniels, Jennifer Derr, Samuel Dolbee, Koji Hirata,
and Michelle Lynn Kahn.
I thank Stanford University Press for turning this manuscript into a
beautiful book. It has been a privilege working with Kate Wahl, Gigi Mark,
Cat Ng Pavel, Athena Lakri, and the rest of the team. I owe a debt of grati-
tude to the peer reviewers. Bill Nelson produced beautiful maps. Zaina El-­
Said, whose art is inspired by Circassian heritage and whose family I met in
Amman, kindly allowed her breathtaking work to be featured on the book
cover.
Many scholars shared their advice, feedback, and friendship over the
years. I thank Myriam Ababsa, Raouf Saʿd Abujaber, Patrick Adamiak, James
Altman, Leyla Amzi-­Erdoğdular, Alexander Balistreri, Nora Barakat, Tim-
othy Blauvelt, Olga Borovaya, Fırat Bozçalı, Lâle Can, Dawn Chatty, John
Colarusso, Camille Cole, Nazan Çiçek, Markian Dobczansky, Julia E ­ lyachar,
Tolga Esmer, Heather Ferguson, Sarah Fischer, Ella Fratantuono, Ryan
Gingeras, Krista Goff, Chris Gratien, James Grehan, Zoe Griffith, David
Gutman, Marwan Hanania, Peter Hill, Peter Holquist, Yasemin İpek, Aaron
Jakes, Toby Jones, Eileen Kane, Cynthia Kaplan, Ceyda Karamürsel, Kemal
Karpat, K. Mehmet Kentel, Akram Khater, Ilham Khuri-­Makdisi, Masha
Kirasirova, Hakan Kırımlı, Abdulhamit Kırmızı, Sandrine Kott, Selim
Kuru, Jean-­Michel Landry, Margaret Litvin, Anaïs Massot, Adam Mestyan,
James Meyer, Eiji Miyazawa, Leslie Page Moch, Oktay Özel, Ramazan
Hakkı Öztan, Uğur Zekeriya Peçe, Eda Pepi, Victor Petrov, Michael Reyn-
olds, Laura Robson, Eugene Rogan, Sergey Salushchev, Cyrus Schayegh, Nir
Shafir, Seteney Shami, Hind Abu al-­Shaʿr, Lewis Siegelbaum, Will Smiley,
Ulaş Sunata, Ronald Grigor Suny, Şölen Şanlı Vasquez, Tunç Şen, Philipp
Ther, Ehud Toledano, Alexandre Toumarkine, Max Weiss, Amanda Wetsel,
Benjamin Thomas White, Anna Whittington, and Sufian Zhemukhov.
The research and writing of this book were supported by the Social Sci-
ence Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship, the
American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation Disser-
Acknowledgments xvii

tation Completion Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Hu-
manities Summer Stipend. I further benefited from residential fellowships
at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman and the American
Research Center in Sofia, and grants from the American Historical Associa-
tion and the American Philosophical Society. Other financial support came
from Stanford University’s Department of History, Abbasi Program in Is-
lamic Studies, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and
Europe Center; Columbia University’s Harriman Institute; and UC Santa
Barbara’s Academic Senate and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
My family and friends sustained me through the long years. My parents,
with humor and a lot of heart, raised me through the Soviet collapse, the
astonishingly difficult 1990s, and statelessness. My friends get all of the credit
for getting me away from my desk to experience the world outside. This book
is for Ronny, whose love and kindness are the greatest gifts.
This page intentionally left blank
Empire of Refugees
Map 1. Ottoman Empire and the Caucasus, 1864.
 I N T RO D U C T I O N

O n a s c o r c h i n g d a y in the late summer of 1863, fishermen in the

Ottoman port of Trabzon, in the southeastern corner of the Black Sea, no-
ticed several boats on the horizon. The boats carried Muslim refugees fleeing
the Russian conquest of their lands in the Caucasus. Dehydrated and dis-
oriented, Circassian families disembarked in the port. The next day, more
boats sailed into the harbor. Dozens of boats kept arriving daily not only in
Trabzon but also in Samsun and Sinop. By the end of autumn, Circassian ref-
ugees exceeded the resident population in Ottoman port cities on the Black
Sea. Inns, schools, and mosques were filled to the brink, and refugees slept
in covered bazaars, stables, and the streets. Deadly epidemics of typhus and
smallpox broke out, devastating refugee communities. The ports in north-
ern Anatolia started redirecting boats with refugees to Istanbul, Burgas and
Varna (in Bulgaria), and Köstence (in Romania). The onset of winter did
not stop the arrival of refugees, and the following year even more refugees
disembarked on Ottoman shores. Between 1863 and 1865, up to half a million
Circassians fled the Caucasus for the Ottoman Empire.1 It was the largest
refugee crisis that the Ottomans had experienced by then.
Migration from the Caucasus continued for the next half century. Abkha-
zians, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Ossetians, Avars, Lezgins, and
other Muslim communities left their native mountains. One constant in late
Ottoman history was the continuous arrival of Muslim refugees from Russia.
1
2 Introduction

While the earlier groups of refugees had fled an ethnic cleansing perpetrated
by the Russian military in the North Caucasus, the latter parties were pushed
out by Russia’s new civil reforms and settler colonial policies. Between the
1850s and World War I, approximately a million North Caucasian Muslims
had left the tsardom in what was one of the greatest displacements in Russian
imperial history.
The Ottoman government maintained an open-­door policy for North
Caucasian refugees. They arrived when the Ottoman Empire was steadily
losing territory and population in the Balkans and North Africa. Muslim ref-
ugees fit neatly into the Ottoman government’s agenda to stem demographic
decline, revitalize the economy, and solidify the imperial hold on far-­flung
provinces. Within two generations, North Caucasian refugees were resettled
throughout the Ottoman Empire in the following fourteen countries today:
Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania,
Serbia, Kosovo, Greece, Cyprus, and North Macedonia. The Ottomans con-
sidered settling Circassian refugees also in Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, and
Libya.2 Temporary refugee camps existed in Palestine, and some North Cau-
casians moved, without Ottoman support, to Egypt.
The successive Muslim migrations turned the Ottoman state into an
empire of refugees. In addition to North Caucasians, hundreds of thousands
of Muslims from Crimea, the Balkans, the South Caucasus, and Crete, as
well as smaller groups from North Africa, Central Asia, and Afghanistan,
arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees. Many parts of the empire became
a refugee country, where one was more likely to hear Circassian or Abkhazian
than Turkish, Arabic, or Greek. The Ottoman Empire fashioned itself as a
refuge for Muslims displaced in the age of European imperial conquest and
colonialism. Meanwhile, the resettlement of Muslim refugees changed the
empire from within and was a harbinger of population transfers and forced
homogenization that befell the Middle East and the Balkans in the twentieth
century.

EMPIR E A ND R EFUGEE R ESET T LEMENT

Empire of Refugees is a history of migration that examines how North Cauca-
sian refugees transformed the late Ottoman Empire and how the Ottomans
managed Muslim refugee resettlement. This book advances several argu-
Introduction 3

ments. First, between 1860 and World War I, the Ottoman government had
constructed a refugee regime, which coexisted with, but was distinct from,
the Ottoman immigration system. The Ottoman Refugee Commission (Ott.
Tur., Muhacirin Komisyonu), founded in 1860, implemented the refugee
regime. The Commission was responsible for settling Muslim refugees from
Russia, arriving in the aftermath of the Crimean War of 1853–­56 and the Cau-
casus War of 1817–­64, and Ottoman Muslims displaced during the Russo-­
Ottoman War of 1877–­78, the Balkan Wars of 1912–­13, and World War I.
Having settled between three and five million Muslim refugees in total, the
Commission presided over the demographic, economic, and social transfor-
mation of the remaining Ottoman territories, especially Anatolia. The Otto-
man refugee regime built on the Ottoman Immigration Law of 1857, which
had set the terms for immigration into the empire for anyone, irrespective of
their faith, and the Land Code of 1858, governing land ownership and tenure.
After the 1860s, the vast majority of immigrants in the Ottoman Empire were
Muslim refugees. The Commission developed a set of additional policies and
subsidies specific to refugee needs, inaugurating a regime of expectations—­of
protection and settlement by Muslim refugees and of obligations and loyalty
by the Ottoman government.
The Ottoman refugee regime preceded and has a distinct genealogy from
the contemporary international refugee regime. The modern refugee regime
is a product of the United Nations and is anchored by the Convention Re-
lating to the Status of Refugees, better known as the Refugee Convention
of 1951. It has roots in the interwar era, when the League of Nations imple-
mented ad hoc procedures to resolve refugee crises, arising out of the collapse
of the Ottoman and Russian empires.3 The legal status of a modern refugee
is derived from one’s citizenship in a nation-­state. In recent years, historians
demonstrated that the ideology of modern humanitarianism and such prac-
tices as population exchange, refugee transfer, and territorial partition, which
were central to the interwar refugee regime, had roots in the Middle East.4
Humanitarian crises in the post-­Ottoman world defined global conversations
about protecting refugees. This book suggests a further historiographical cor-
rective. The nineteenth-­century Ottoman Empire, struggling mightily with
European annexations, created its own nonwestern and nonsecular system
of categorizing, sheltering, and resettling refugees. The status of refugee, or
4 Introduction

muhajir, was based not on one’s subjecthood or citizenship but on facing

religious persecution and seeking refuge in the sultan-­caliph’s domains. A
refugee being Muslim, while not a codified requirement, was an expectation
and raison d’être of the Ottoman refugee regime.
Second, refugee resettlement accelerated the collapse of the empire in the
Balkans and fortified Ottoman rule in the outlying regions of the Levant
and Anatolia. Historians explain the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
by geopolitics, including European annexations throughout the nineteenth
century and the empire’s defeat in the Balkan Wars of 1912–­13 and World War
I, and by cultural forces, especially the sectarianism and nationalism that tore
through the empire’s social fabric.5 By revisiting late Ottoman history through
the prism of migration and political economy, I show that Muslim refugee
resettlement had a profound impact on both the survival and the demise
of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman refugee resettlement was an ambitious
project of the Azizian (1861–­76) and Hamidian (1876–­1908/9) governments.
The Ottoman government expected Muslim refugees to become productive
farmers. It happened for some but not all. The economic well-­being of refugee
communities depended on Ottoman support. That support could come in
different forms: favorable legislation, free land, financial aid, roadway con-
struction, and military backing. How much help the government provided
and whether refugees could use it explain why refugee resettlement had vastly
different outcomes throughout the empire.
This book examines refugee resettlement in three core parts of the Ot-
toman Empire: the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Levant. In the northern Bal-
kans, the Ottoman government’s settlement of Muslim refugees from Russia
stoked anti-­Ottoman sentiments among Balkan Christians. The lack of state
funding for refugee households undermined the efficacy of the resettlement
program and pushed some refugees toward banditry. The ensuing violence
of Circassian gangs, especially against Christians, inflamed social tensions,
leading up to the Bulgarian uprising of 1876 and the Russo-­Ottoman War
of 1877–­78. The war ejected the Ottomans from half of their European ter-
ritories, which they had held for over five centuries. Meanwhile in central
Anatolia, Ottoman financial support for refugees was equally limited, but the
government backed North Caucasians in their conflict over land with Turkic
nomads. Refugee villages survived, well hidden among the mountains, yet
Introduction 5

their economies stagnated because of a lack of Ottoman infrastructure. In

contrast, North Caucasian refugees in the Levant took advantage of Otto-
man land reforms and the state-­sponsored Hejaz Railway and built thriving
villages on the edge of the desert. North Caucasian refugees founded three of
the four largest cities in modern Jordan, including its capital city of Amman.
The Ottoman government favored refugee farmers, and, through their set-
tlements in the Levant and central Anatolia, it expanded authority into the
sparsely settled parts of the empire.
The resettlement of Muslim refugees was key to the disintegration of the
Ottoman Empire in several ways. Resettling Muslims from Russia strained
Ottoman imperial and provincial budgets at a time of fiscal emergency. The
Ottomans took out their first international loans during the Crimean War
of 1853–­56 and kept borrowing from European banks, in part to pay for the
settlement of Muslim refugees. In 1875, the Ottoman state defaulted on its
debts, which ushered in the European-­controlled Ottoman Public Debt
Administration, shrinking Ottoman sovereignty and fiscal control. Yet bor-
rowing for refugee resettlement continued. Furthermore, the resettlement
of Muslim refugees intensified intercommunal strife. In almost every place
of settlement, refugees came into conflict with local populations over land.
Those conflicts soured relations between North Caucasians and their settled
and nomadic neighbors, whether Christian, Muslim, or Druze, while helping
the Ottoman government to entrench a new land regime in its reformist drive
to centralize the empire. Finally, after 1878, the resettlement of Muslim ref-
ugees went hand in hand with displacing and dispossessing Ottoman Chris-
tians. The Hamidian government altered demographic ratios on the margins
of the empire to forestall further loss of territory. While the policies were not
consistent and varied from region to region, the general message was clear.
The government welcomed foreign Muslims and trusted them to become
loyal subjects of the sultan at a time when it viewed its Christian subjects
with suspicion. The resettlement of Muslim refugees lay at the heart of the
Ottoman government’s ambition to preserve the imperial project.
Third, Russia attempted to control Muslim migration to consolidate its
authority over the Caucasus. Russia’s migration policies in the Caucasus
helped to manage its “Muslim empire,” which stretched from Crimea and
the Caucasus to the Volga region, through the Ural Mountains and into the
6 Introduction

Kazakh steppe, Central Asia, and Siberia.6 Muslims had long been Russia’s
second-­largest religious community after Orthodox Christians. By World
War I, the Russian tsar counted more Muslim subjects than the Ottoman
sultan did. Russia’s migration policies underwent a transformation. During
the Caucasus War, the Russian government abetted, promoted, and spon-
sored Muslim emigration. Between 1862 and 1864, the tsarist military per-
petrated ethnic cleansing, expelling western Circassians into the Ottoman
Empire. After 1867, however, tsarist authorities changed course to discourage
and restrict emigration as a way to keep their new Muslim subjects inside
Russia. Simultaneously, after 1861, Russia vigorously opposed the return of
North Caucasian refugees from the Ottoman Empire. Within the Cauca-
sus, Russia pursued the policies of forced relocation of North Caucasians
from highlands to lowlands and colonization of their territories by Cossacks
and Christian peasants. Tsarist migration policies redrew the demographics
of the North Caucasus and solidified Russia’s control over its newest region
near the borders of the Ottoman Empire and Iran. The North Caucasus is
the tsarist empire’s last major acquisition remaining within today’s Russian
Federation, unlike other non-­Russian regions that had been annexed in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and have since become independent, in-
cluding Poland, Finland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, the South Caucasus, and
Central Asia.
Ottoman and Russian migration policies toward North Caucasian Mus-
lims were starkly different, yet they pursued the same goal of consolidat-
ing imperial authority. The Ottoman policy was inclusive toward foreign
Muslims because it benefited the Ottoman state. The government used ref-
ugees to increase the population of a shrinking empire, to bring unused land
into cultivation, to rein in nomads, and to strengthen the empire’s hold on
Christian-­majority frontier regions. The Russian government excluded those
North Caucasian Muslims whom it perceived as opponents of Russian rule
during and after the Caucasus War. Both empires developed a sectarian logic,
equating one’s religious identity with their loyalty to a co-­religionist state.
The Russians, who had a hard time conquering and suppressing rebellions in
the North Caucasus, assumed that indigenous Muslims, especially those who
had already left, would be loyal only to the sultan, not the tsar.
This transimperial history of migration explores how the Ottoman and
Introduction 7

Russian governments tried to control mass movements of people and also

how Muslim refugees responded to policies designed to limit their mobility.
Refugees were not mere pawns, expelled and resettled at governments’ will,
but active agents of history. Most North Caucasians became farmers, trans-
forming economies and landscapes of entire regions and shaping local forms
of capital accumulation. Some refused to settle where the Ottoman govern-
ment had sent them or abandoned their refugee villages. Many petitioned
the government and litigated in courts, or joined the army or militias. North
Caucasian refugees were transimperial subjects—­not solely because they
crossed borders but also because of the decisions they made in navigating
their displacement and resettlement, negotiating with Russian or Ottoman
authorities, and articulating their North Caucasian identity in exile.7 They
and their descendants helped to shape the history of the modern Middle East.
Today, the Circassian diaspora in Turkey is estimated at between two and
three million people and is the country’s second largest non-­Turkish minority
after the Kurds. Up to 100,000 descendants of North Caucasian refugees live
in Syria, 30,000 in Jordan, over 10,000 in Iraq, and 4,000 in Israel.8

MUSLIM R EFUGEES W ITHIN GLOBA L

M IGR AT ION HIS TORY
The migration and resettlement of North Caucasian Muslims were part of
what is often called the first wave of globalization, between 1870 and 1914.
Enabled by improvements in transoceanic transportation, migration in this
period conjures images of mass voluntary immigration of Europeans to over-
seas colonies and nation-­states. The proliferation of new forms of capitalism,
agricultural expansion, and commodification of land accelerated the frontier
settlement, mostly by white immigrants, in the Americas, southern Africa,
and the Pacific region.9 An inextricable, yet frequently omitted, part of this
globalization was another migration—­global displacement of indigenous
communities, complete with the destruction of their landscapes, legal dis-
possession, and forced labor.10 The late imperial era unleashed mass forced
migration. The North Caucasians’ migration was both of these stories. The
Russian army displaced this Muslim community from its homeland, and
Christian settlers took over its lands. Meanwhile, having arrived as refugees
in the Ottoman Empire, North Caucasians soon became settlers themselves,
8 Introduction

occupying and working the land that had been claimed by other communi-
ties. North Caucasian refugees were victims of the expansion of the Russian
imperial frontier southward, through conquest and settlement, and then also
helped the Ottoman state to push its internal frontier into territories of no-
madic communities on the empire’s margins.11
The term that North Caucasian refugees used to describe themselves was
muhajir (Ar., muhājir, pl. muhājirūn; Ott. Tur., muhacir, pl. muhacirler).
The Arabic term muhājir is derived from hijra, which denotes the journey of
the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina) in 622 CE. The
Prophet Muhammad’s companions who undertook this journey to preserve
their nascent religious movement were the first muhajirs. Throughout Islamic
history, Muslim communities that had left, or been expelled from, their
homelands used this term in emulation of the Prophet’s companions. By the
nineteenth century, the term acquired anticolonial and anti-­imperialist senti-
ments, as many regions across the Muslim world were occupied by the Euro-
pean empires. The flight of Muslims for refuge in the Ottoman Empire, the
world’s strongest sovereign Muslim state and the seat of the caliph, acutely re-
verberated throughout the Caucasus, the Balkans, North Africa, and beyond.
The present-­day translations of refugee in Turkish, Arabic, and Russian are,
respectively, mülteci, lājiʾ, and bezhenets. None of these terms were commonly
used to refer to North Caucasians between the 1850s and World War I. I will
use muhajir throughout the book as well as the terms refugee, immigrant, and
emigrant, which all capture different aspects of what being a muhajir entailed,
when discussing relevant stages of muhajirs’ experiences.
The English-­language term refugee came into popular usage in the after-
math of the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian empires. Previously used to
refer to religious and political exiles, it then described Armenian survivors of
the genocide and refugees of the Russian civil war who were stranded away
from their homeland, stateless, and increasingly seen as a global responsi-
bility.12 It was defined in the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 as
someone who, “owing to well-­founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of
race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political
opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to
such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country” or
“unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”13
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 SALAD OF MIXED SUMMER FRUITS.

Heap a rice-crust-dish quite high with alternate layers of fine fresh

strawberries stripped from the stalks, white and red currants, and
white or red raspberries; strew each layer plentifully with sifted sugar,
and just before the dish is sent to table, pour equally over the top two
wineglassesful of sherry, Madeira, or any other good white wine.
Very thick Devonshire cream may be laid entirely over the fruit,
instead of the wine being mingled with it. Currants by themselves are
excellent prepared in this way, and strawberries also. The fruit
should be gently stirred with a spoon when it is served. Each variety
must be picked with great nicety from the stalks.
 PEACH SALAD.

Pare and slice half a dozen fine ripe peaches, arrange them in a
dish, strew them with pounded sugar, and pour over them two or
three glasses of champagne: other wine may be used, but this is
best. Persons who prefer brandy can substitute it for wine. The
quantity of sugar must be proportioned to the sweetness of the fruit.
 ORANGE SALAD.

Take off the outer rinds, and then strip away entirely the white
inside skin from some fine China oranges; slice them thin, and
remove the seeds, and thick skin of the cores, as this is done; strew
over them plenty of white sifted sugar, and pour on them a glass or
more of brandy: when the sugar is dissolved serve the oranges. In
France ripe pears of superior quality are sometimes sliced up with
the oranges. Powdered sugar-candy used instead of sugar, is an
improvement to this salad; and the substitution of port, sherry, or
Madeira, for the brandy is often considered so. The fruit may be
used without being pared, and a little curaçao or any other liqueur
may be added to the brandy; or this last, when unmixed, may be
burned after it is poured on the oranges.
 TANGERINE ORANGES.

These beautiful little oranges, of which the rinds have a most

peculiar, and to many tastes not a very agreeable flavour, are
remarkably sweet and delicate when in their perfection; but they
come later into the market than the more common varieties of the
orange, and disappear from them sooner. They make a very refined
salad, and also an ornamental rice-crust dish: their cost is somewhat
higher than that of the Malta and St. Michael oranges. There is
another species of this fruit known commonly as the blood-orange
which has many admirers, but it is not we should say greatly superior
to the more abundant kinds usually served at our tables.
 PEACHES IN BRANDY.

(Rotterdam Receipt.)

Prepare and stew some fine full-flavoured peaches by the receipt

of page 459, but with two ounces more of sugar to the half pint of
water; when they are tender put them, with their syrup, into glass or
new stone jars, which they should only half fill; and when they are
quite cold pour in white, or very pale, French brandy to within an inch
and a half of the brims: a few peach or apricot kernels can be added
to them. The jars must be corked down.
 BRANDIED MORELLA CHERRIES.

Let the cherries be ripe, freshly gathered, and the finest that can
be had; cut off half the length of the stalks, and drop them gently into
clean dry quart bottles with wide necks; leave in each sufficient
space for four ounces of pounded white sugar-candy (or of brown, if
better liked); fill them up entirely with the best French brandy, and
cork them closely: the fruit will not shrivel if thus prepared. A few
cherry, or apricot kernels, or a small portion of cinnamon, can be
added when they are considered an improvement.
 BAKED COMPÔTE OF APPLES.

(Our little lady’s receipt.)

Put into a wide Nottingham jar, with a cover, two quarts of golden
pippins, or of the small apple which resembles them in appearance,
called the orange pippin (this is very plentiful in the county of Kent),
pared and cored, but without being divided; strew amongst them
some small strips of very thin fresh lemon-rind, throw on them,
nearly at the top, half a pound of good Lisbon sugar, and set the jar,
with the cover tied on, for some hours, or for a night, into a very slow
oven. The apples will be extremely good, if not too quickly baked:
they should remain entire, but be perfectly tender, and clear in
appearance. Add a little lemon-juice when the season is far
advanced.
Apples, 2 quarts; rind, quite small lemon; sugar, 1/2 lb.: 1 night in
slow oven; or some hours baking in a very gentle one.
Obs.—These apples may be served hot as a second course dish;
or cold, with a boiled custard poured round or over them. They will
likewise answer admirably to fill Gabrielle’s pudding, or a vol-au-vent
à la crême.
 DRIED NORFOLK BIFFINS.

The Norfolk biffin is a hard and very red apple, the flesh of the true
kind being partially red as well as the skin. It is most excellent when
carefully dried; and much finer we should say when left more juicy
and but partly flattened, than it is when prepared for sale. Wipe the
apples, arrange them an inch or two apart, and place them in a very
gentle oven until they become so much softened as to yield easily to
sufficient pressure to give them the form of small cakes of less than
an inch thick. They must be set several times into the oven to
produce this effect, as they must be gradually flattened, and must
not be allowed to burst: a cool brick oven is best suited to them.
 NORMANDY PIPPINS.

To one pound of the apples, put one quart of water and six ounces
of sugar; let them simmer gently for three hours, or more should they
not be perfectly tender. A few strips of fresh lemon-peel and a very
few cloves are by some persons considered agreeable additions to
the syrup.
Dried Normandy pippins, 1 lb.; water, 1 quart; sugar, 6 oz.; 3 to 4
hours.
Obs.—These pippins, if stewed with care, will be converted into a
rich confection: but they will be very good and more refreshing with
less sugar. They are now exceedingly cheap, and may be converted
into excellent second course dishes at small expense. Half a pound,
as they are light and swell much in the stewing, will be sufficient to
serve at once. Rinse them quickly with cold water, and then soak
them for an hour in the pan in which they are to be stewed, in a quart
of fresh water; place them by the side of the stove to heat gradually,
and when they begin to soften add as much sugar as will sweeten
them to the taste: they require but a small portion. Lemon-rind can
be added to them at pleasure. We have many receipts for other
ways of preparing them, to which we cannot now give place here. It
answers well to bake them slowly in a covered jar. They may be
served hot in a border of rice.
 STEWED PRUNEAUX DE TOURS, OR TOURS DRIED PLUMS.

These plums, which resemble in form small dried Norfolk biffins,

make a delicious compôte: they are also excellent served dry. In
France they are stewed until tender in equal parts of water, and of
the light red wine of the country, with about four ounces of sugar to
the pound of fruit: when port wine is used for them a smaller
proportion of it will suffice. The sugar should not be added in stewing
any dried fruits until they are at least half-done, as they will not
soften by any means so easily in syrup as in unsweetened liquid.
Dried plums, 1 lb.; water, 1/2 pint, and light claret, 1/2 pint, or
water, 1/4 pint, and port wine, 1/4 pint: 1-1/2 hour. Sugar, 4 oz.: 2
hours, or more.
Obs.—Common French plums are stewed in the same way with or
without wine. A little experience will teach the cook the exact quantity
of liquid and of sugar which they require.
 TO BAKE PEARS.

Wipe some large sound iron pears, arrange them on a dish with
the stalk end upwards, put them into the oven after the bread is
withdrawn, and let them remain all night. If well baked, they will be
excellent, very sweet, and juicy, and much finer in flavour than those
which are stewed or baked with sugar: the bon chrétien pear also is
delicious baked thus.
 STEWED PEARS.

Pare, cut in halves, and core a dozen fine pears, put them into a
close shutting stewpan with some thin strips of lemon-rind, half a
pound of sugar in lumps, as much water as will nearly cover them,
and should a very bright colour be desired, a dozen grains of
cochineal, bruised, and tied in a muslin; stew the fruit as gently as
possible, four or five hours, or longer should it not be perfectly
tender. Wine is sometimes added both to stewed pears and to baked
ones. If put into a covered jar, well tied down and baked for some
hours, with a proper quantity of liquid and sugar, they will be very
good.
 BOILED CHESTNUTS.

Make a slight incision in the outer skin only, of each chestnut, to

prevent its bursting, and when all are done, throw them into plenty of
boiling water, with about a dessertspoonful of salt to the half gallon.
Some chestnuts will require to be boiled nearly or quite an hour,
others little more than half the time: the cook should try them
occasionally, and as soon as they are soft through, drain them, wipe
them in a coarse cloth, and send them to table quickly in a hot
napkin.
Obs.—The best chestnuts are those which have no internal
divisions: the finest kinds are quite entire when shelled.
 ROASTED CHESTNUTS.

The best mode of preparing these is to roast them, as in Spain, in

a coffee-roaster, after having first boiled them from seven to ten
minutes, and wiped them dry. They should not be allowed to cool,
and will require but from ten to fifteen minutes’ roasting. They may,
when more convenient, be finished over the fire as usual, or in a
Dutch or common oven, but in all cases the previous boiling will be
found an improvement. Never omit to cut the rind of each nut slightly
before it is cooked. Serve the chestnuts very hot in a napkin, and
send salt to table with them.
 ALMOND SHAMROCKS.

(Very good, and very pretty.)

Whisk the white of a very fresh egg to a froth sufficiently solid to
remain standing in high points when dropped from the whisk; work
into it from half to three-quarters of a pound of very fine dry sifted
sugar, or more should it be needed, to bring the mixture to a
consistency in which it can be worked with the fingers. Have ready
some fine Jordan almonds which have been blanched, and
thoroughly dried at the mouth of the oven; roll each of these in a
small portion of the icing until it is equally covered, and of good form;
then lay them on sheets of thick writing paper, placing three together
in the form of the shamrock, or trefoil, with a small bit of sugar
twisted from the centre almond to form the stalk. When all are ready,
set them into a very slow oven for twenty minutes or longer: they
should become quite firm without taking any colour. They make an
excellent and very ornamental dish. To give them flavour and variety,
use for them sugar which has been rasped on the rinds of some
sound lemons, or Seville oranges, or upon citron, and dried before it
is reduced to powder; or add to the mixture a drop of essence of
roses, and a slight colouring of prepared cochineal. A little spinach-
juice will give a beautiful green tint, but its flavour is not very
agreeable. Filbert or pistachio nuts will answer as well as almonds,
iced in this way.
 SMALL SUGAR SOUFFLÉS.

These are made with the same preparation of egg and sugar as
the almond-shamrocks, and may be flavoured and coloured in the
same way. The icing must be sufficiently firm to roll into balls
scarcely larger than a nut: a little sifted sugar should be dusted on
the fingers in making them, but it must not remain on the surface of
the soufflés. They are baked usually in very small round paper
cases, plaited with the edge of a knife, and to give them brilliancy,
the tops are slightly moistened before they are set into the oven, by
passing the finger, or a paste-brush, just dipped in cold water, lightly
over them. Look at them in about a quarter of an hour, and should
they be quite firm to the touch in every part, draw them out; but if not
let them remain longer. They may be baked on sheets of paper, but
will not preserve their form so well.
For 1 white of egg, whisked to a very firm froth, 8 to 10 oz. of sifted
sugar, or more: soufflés, baked in extremely gentle oven, 16 to 30
minutes, or longer if needful.
Obs.—We have confined our receipts here to the most simple
preparations suited to desserts. All the confectionary of the
preceding chapter being appropriate to them (with the exception of
the toffie), as well as various compôtes, clear jellies, and gateaux of
fruit turned from the moulds; and we have already enumerated the
many other dishes of which they may be composed.
 ICES.

There is no real difficulty in making ices

for the table; but for want of the proper
means of freezing them, and of preventing
their being acted on by a too warm
atmosphere afterwards, in many houses it
cannot very easily be accomplished unless
the weather be extremely cold.
A vessel called a freezing-pot, an ice-pail,
a strong wooden mallet, and a copper
spatula, or an ice-spoon, are all that is Ice Pail and Freezer.
positively required for this branch of
confectionary. Suitable moulds for iced
puddings, and imitations of fruit, must be had in addition when
needed.
When the composition which is to be frozen is ready, the rough ice
must be beaten quite small with the mallet, and either mingled
quickly with two or three handsful of powdered saltpetre, or used
with a much larger quantity of salt. The freezing-pot must then be
firmly placed in the centre of the ice, which must be pressed closely
into the vacant space around it until it reaches the top. The cover of
the ice-pot, or freezer, may then be removed, and the preparation to
be iced poured into it. It should then be turned by means of the
handle at the top, quickly backwards and forwards for eight or ten
minutes; then the portion which will have frozen to the inside must be
scraped well from it with the ice-spoon and mingled with the
remainder: without this the mass would be full of lumps instead of
being perfectly smooth as it ought to be. The same process must be
continued until the whole of its contents are uniformly frozen.
The water-ices which are made in such perfection on the
continent, are incomparably superior to the ice-creams, and other
sweet compositions which are usually served in preference to them
here. One or two receipts which we append will serve as guides for
many others, which may easily be compounded with any variety of
fresh summer fruit.[179]
179. The ices for desserts should be moulded in the form of fruit or other shapes
adapted to the purpose; the natural flavour and colouring are then given to
the former, but it is only experienced cooks or confectioners generally who
understand this branch of ice-making, and it is better left to them. All the
necessary moulds may be procured at any good ironmongers, where the
manner of using them would be explained: we can give no more space to the
subject.
Red Currant Ice.—Strip from the stalks and take two pounds
weight of fine ripe currants and half a pound of raspberries; rub them
through a fine sieve, and mingle thoroughly with them sufficient cold
syrup to render the mixture agreeably sweet, and,—unless the pure
flavour of the fruit be altogether preferred,—add the strained juice of
one large or of two small lemons, and proceed at once to freeze the
mixture as above. Currants, 2 lbs.; raspberries, 1/2 lb.; sugar, 3/4 to
1 lb.; boiled for 6 or 8 minutes in 1/2 pint of water and left till quite
cold. (Juice of lemon or lemons at pleasure.)
Strawberry and raspberry water-ices are made in precisely the
same manner.
To convert any of these into English ice-creams, merely mingle the
juice and pulp of the fruit with sufficient pounded sugar to sweeten
them, or with the syrup as above, and then blend with them gradually
from a pint and a half to a quart of fresh sweet cream, and the
lemon-juice or not at choice. The Queen’s Custard, the Currant, and
the Quince or Apple Custard of pages 481 and 482 may all be
converted into good ices with a little addition of cream and sugar;
and so likewise may the Countess Cream of page 472, and the
Bavarian Cream of page 477, by omitting the isinglass from either of
them.
 CHAPTER XXIX.

Syrups, Liqueurs, &c.

Antique Wine Vase.