TOWN AND TRIBE: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN AŞİRET (TRIBE) AND EŞRAF (NOBILITY) IN OTTOMAN DİYARBEKİR (1891-1909)

Abstract

Right from the start I should indicate that this article is part of a series of urban history studies that approaches critically the classical historiography on towns in Turkey. Therefore it contains in itself a hidden criticism of this historiography. This criticism targets “uniform” or “centralist” approaches to the concept of “Islamic Town” and its corollary “Ottoman Town”, which result in rigid categorisations. Scholarship about the developments that led to the disintegration of the Ottoman State and the foundation of the Republic has been domi nated by approaches that often put the centre in the foreground and neglect the provinces. In this context many features characteristic of the provinces were either missed or linked back to the centre and thus deprived of their provincial element. The disintegration of the Ottoman State itself happened right after a period that had substituted extremely central ist methods for much less centralist methods of long standing. The Republic that was then founded was built on a paradigm that linked everything back to the centre and sought to make it uniform. For the nationalism of the Republic, which rested on homogeneity, retreat from the centre as well as increase in diversity posed a vital risk. Perception of this risk nec essarily led to contempt of all that was related to the provinces, despite all populist talk, and to the notion that history was predominantly made from the administrative core. This situ ation determined for a long time the basic starting point for historical study: “the centre”