An Ottoman Historian in an Age of Reform: Ahmed Vasif Efendi (ca. 1730-1806).

[摘要] In the late eighteenth century the Ottoman Empire experienced a time of profound crisis, political as well as intellectual, moral, and ideological. This dissertation explores the mental and moral climate of the period through the work of Ahmed Vasif Efendi, a statesman, ambassador, intellectual, and author of one of the century’s largest histories, and also through his personal development as a reformer. Divided into five chapters, each treating a distinct aspect of Vasif’s thought, this dissertation argues that Ottoman elites after 1774 responded to growing foreign and domestic challenges with not only military reform but a broad re-evaluation of subjects like war, peacemaking, moral rule, and human agency in history. It suggests these debates, including a basic disagreement over the legitimate place of human reason and action across life’s many spheres, indicate a vital if fractured response to the crisis, and an incipient breakdown in certain storied intellectual frameworks. In Chapter One I provide a short biography of the author in addition to a discussion of the structure and content of his history, his epistemology, and his understanding of historiography as a field of knowledge. In Chapter Two I more closely examine Vasif’s philosophy of history in relation to contemporary debates in the empire over human agency, reform, and theodicy, concluding that his approach might be called reformist. Chapter Three introduces the reader to ongoing discussions among Ottoman elites over the merits of peace and peacemaking, and shows through Vasif a distinct shift in rhetoric by the turn of the nineteenth century. Chapter Four attempts to convey a sense of Vasif’s moral universe, including his understanding of justice, ideal social order, and proper rule, all treated through the Aristotelian tradition of practical philosophy. Lastly, in Chapter Five, I seek to understand how Vasif and his peers conceptualized political reform, especially in terms Chapter Four’s universal moral order.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Middle Eastern History

[关键词] Ottoman Turkish History;Middle Eastern History;Sultan Selim III;Middle Eastern Reform;Intellectual History;History (General);Humanities (General);Middle Eastern;Near Eastern and North African Studies;Philosophy;Humanities;Near Eastern Studies