ABDULHAMID II’ S SCHOOL FOR TRIBES

By order of Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876- 1909) a new school was opened in Istanbul in Oct. 1892 to provide an Ottoman education for the sons of leading tribal notables. The Asiret Mekteb-I Humayun , or Imperial School of Tribes , was a five year boarding school that admitted boys between twelve or sixteen years old. The school has been rightly interpreted as part of a broader policy pursued by Abdulhamid II of integrating the Arab provinces more closely to the imperial center. However , the school, which reached beyond the Arab provinces to recruit eastern Anatolian Kurds, was essentially an experiment in social engineering which sought to foster an allegiance to the Ottoman state within one of the most alienated segments of its society: the empire’s tribes. On the precedent of urban notables whose sons were educated in Istanbul, obtained government offices , and became ottoman loyalists. Abdulhamid II and his advisers aimed to create a similar body of intermediaries between the state and its tribes. The experiment ran for 15 years before the Asiret M. was closed in 1907; yet in that time the school sent waves of graduates on to higher education in special sections of the civil and military academies and thence to government office in provinces. In all , the tribal education system represents one of the most ambitious Ottoman initiatives to integrate its tribal communities into the political life of the state.

The ottoman state’s interest in its Kurdish and Arab subjects was acute at this time. The experience of the Balkan crises and the treaty of Berlin (1875-78) , in which the ottoman empire lost some two-fifth of its population, clearly had persuaded Abdulhamid II of the threat which separatist national movements posed to the empire’s survival. The state sought to prevent further defections of ethnic groups through the imposition of identities from above. The Tanzimat notion of Ottoman patriotism, or Ottomanism , and the Hamidian promotion of a Pan-Islamic bond were two such identities. These supranational ideologies would not have been attractive to tribesmen who conceived of community in far more discrete terms. The tribal school experiment can thus be seen as an instrument to advance the state –sanctioned supranational identities of Ottomanism and Pan-Islamism among marginal communities inhabiting the frontier of its Arab and Anatolian provinces. The case is of particular interest given the subsequent history of the rise of Arab-specific loyalties in the first decade of 20th century and the role that tribesmen would come to play in the Arab revolt during World War I.

EUGENE L. ROYAN...