The Alawis’ Turn

Troubles across the world throughout my life have served to make me aware of the details of history. There was a single exception. I learned about Korea at my boarding school in Rastatt, Germany, long before the Korean War broke out. At Konvikt Sankt Bernhard we had a reading at the beginning of our midday meal, and one of the books read out loud had been about some missionary activity in Korea; the name took root.

A rather large number of these troubles had their deeper origins in the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, one of the most successful and also odd empires of humanity (1299-1919). The Osmanli clan, named after its preeminent ancestor, Osman Gazi, were herders. In Arnold Toynbee’s view, this characteristic of theirs (all cattle is useful for the herder), caused them to make stringent efforts to suppress all ethnic clashes within—although they were always at war at—their borders.

Enlarge.

When the Great War terminated this hegemonic rule, the mingled ethnicities within that realm began to cause trouble—and do so to this day. The most recent such development is the Syrian Civil War. (Why no one actually calls it that is a great puzzlement for me.) At the root of this conflict is the rule of a minority, the Alawis, originally concentrated in the West but also present in the major cities of Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus. They are mountain people—and such tend to be independent and fractious. The An-Nusayriya mountain range runs north-south through the region shown on the inserted map (link). The Alawis representing about 12 percent of the Syrian population hold most of the power. The population of Syria is predominantly Sunni. The Alawis are a small grouping within the Twelver branch of Shi’ite Islam—but not uniformly accepted as orthodox by that, the largest, Shi’ite faith; evidently the Alawis flirt with aspects of Christianity.

Interesting, this. The Ottomans had problems with the Alawis too—not just the current Syrian majority. It strikes me as meaningful that in Iraq, under Saddam Hussein’s rule, the minority Sunnis in that realm (about 35% of the population) ruled a much larger Shi’ite majority. Not what you might call ideal conditions for peace—unless the ruler is an Ottoman Sultan who knows how to keep order in the highly diverse flock. Sunni and Shi’ite conflicts? No problem. To the Ottomans’ herding tradition was added a degree of religious tolerance by Mohammed himself, who taught his followers to “respect the people of the Book.”

As in ordinary life, so in religion, diversity is the rule. The Twelvers, known as the Imami, believe in twelve divinely appointed leaders (imams). The second branch of the Shia, the Ismaili, take their name from Isma’il ibn Ja’far, who was that faith’s seventh imam. They are known as the Seveners although some sects within them acknowledge a larger number. Shia simply means “follower” or “followers.”

Human nature seems unable to separate the inward striving of the soul from the outward striving for social dominance. Religious or secular ideology serves as an excellent glue for communities—which then go to war to achieve prominence. — Hey! Welcome to the valley.

Turk Louis

Herewith an extract from a family history I wrote in the 1990s — with the reason for my quoting it revealed only at the very end:

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The city of Rastatt became for us, during this time, a sort of secondary center—and ultimately a point of departure [for America]…
     We were then all living in what had, until the end of World War I, been an independent country, the Grand Duchy of Baden, in the old days governed from what was now the city of Baden-Baden. The country had become divided in 1535 into two halves, Baden-Durlach to the south, an area that encompassed all of the Black Forest, and Baden-Baden to the north, where we were.
     The German states were all loosely stitched together then into what is now remembered as the Holy Roman Empire and, most recently, as The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, ruled by an elected monarch, the Kaiser. Nine of the greatest duchies of the realm elected the Kaiser, and their rulers were therefore known as “electors.”
     The Holy Roman Empire had initially been formed by the conquests of Charlemagne and had extended all the way from Italy to what is now Poland to the north.
     The Reformation first (16th) and then the Thirty Years War (early 17th century) had weakened this ancient structure over time. After World War I our part of the Duchy of Baden had become one of the Länder of the Weimar Republic (1919).
     How does Rastatt fit in? Well, one of the margraves of Baden-Baden, Louis William, born in Paris but the 21st descendant of the ruling family of Baden, the house of Zähringen, took office in 1677 and ruled until his death in 1707. He was the most distinguished of the margraves of Baden, having been a hero in the Austro-Turkish war of 1683-1699. He liked Rastatt and built a showy, ostentatious baroque palace there, known as the Schloss.
     The Schloss was an immensely long, multi-story building with statues of distinguished ancestors at regular intervals. They stood in the low spots between the palace’s many small towers. Dark, brown sandstone. In front of this structure extended a vast parade ground. A wall surrounded all this. A square stood outside and traffic ran along the wall. On the wall itself were yet more, almost countless, statues of princes and dukes and bishops and such.

The title, margrave, used to mean “count of the border.” This was a military title borne by a figure assigned to guard frontiers.
     The Germans call Louis William Ludwig Wilhelm, but in his times he was known as Louis and became famous as “Turk Louis.”
     He rose in rank from a regimental command in the Empire to become the supreme commander of the imperial army that fought in Hungary, Serbia, and Bosnia in the Turkish war. This war began when the French colluded with the Ottomans, and janissaries surrounded Vienna with an army of 300,000—an unprecedented number in those times. In 1683 a combined German, Austrian, and Polish army, under the command of Johan III Sobieski, the King of Poland, defeated the Turks and lifted the siege. Louis continued on, drove the Turks out of Hungary, and defeated them near Slankamen in Vojvodina, south of Subotica in 1691. With this action he freed Hungary of 160 years of Turkish rule.
     Not surprisingly, neither Hungarian nor Serb nor Bosnian history have much to say about “Türkenlouis,” preferring to applaud instead the local commanders who helped him.
     Perhaps an impulse of fairness moved the spirit that guides Hungarians to send us—alas unconsciously—to pay our last respects to Turk Louis on our way out of Europe.
     Louis’ wife came from Czechoslovakia. She was Sibylle August. She had nine children. Louis died at 52 weakened by the countless injuries he had collected in a life of active command.
     After his time Rastatt was Baden’s administrative center.
     Now we know.


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And now for the reason for this quotation. I learned from Siris today (here) that the famous battle signalling the  ultimate retreat of the Ottomans took place on, ah, 9/11/1683. Didn’t know that. But the revelation certainly reverberated…

The Turkish Context

I got to musing about the Ottomans yesterday—but in a modern context. We were discussing recent events in Iraq—and the ethnic patchwork that Iraq happens to be—and the power that once effectively governed it—the Ottomans for a long time, the “little sultan” Saddam Hussein more recently. The question arose: What does it take to stabilize such patchwork-quilts of hostile ethnicities? And the Ottoman techniques came to mind—namely an armed force and administrative apparatus which was, for centuries, an artificial culture-within-a-culture, above the ethnicities, disdainful of them but holding the sword.

The past in some ways is the present. We can see that if we suspend our faith in Progress. Change is certain, but what goes around comes around. The troubles in the Balkans had something to do with the USSR’s collapse. World War I began with a declaration of war by Austria against Serbia, one of the breakaway parts of the Ottoman realm. In the background were a series of earlier wars (Greek War of Independence, the Russo-Turkish War, the Bosnian Crisis, the First Balkan War) all of which were the consequence of a weakening Ottoman Empire. After World War I the Arab portions of the Ottoman domain became unstable—but had been in partial revolt earlier too. In the Middle East the Ottoman breakup has been followed by a century of frequently violent disorders—and no let-up in sight. Most recently the U.S. invasion has managed to destabilize Iraq. It remains to be seen if the American Way, not least its faith in democracy and money, will manage to subdue what hitherto could only be governed by force.

The Devşirme, a Marvel of History

The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1299 to 1922, thus for 623 years. It was on the wrong side in World War I and dismembered in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920)—the consequences of which still linger, not least in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and elsewhere. The United States was not one of the signatories; we get a pass there. The Ottomans had already lost the Balkan states in the nineteenth century—also leaving troublesome ethnic problems behind; these still also linger.

In my readings of history, the comments of one historian, either Toynbee or Spengler, remained imprinted on my mind. The statement was to the effect that the Osmanli (named in Turkish after their founder), were a herding people and treated their subjects as herders treat livestock—as valuable resources kept healthy for exploitation. Thus they suppressed ethnic conflicts but also avoided absorbing these populations into a common “national” pool. The notion of nationality hadn’t been born yet. One of the more interesting Ottoman institutions was the formation, from Christian populations, of a standing army by a method of forcible recruitment of young boys. The boys were renamed, raised as Muslims, and forgot where they had come from. They were employed as palace servants and functionaries, as religious, scribes, and, most importantly as soldiers. The institution was known as devşirme (“gathering”), often rendered as devshirme. The herders also, as it were, raised herding dogs and gave them special training.

The “gathering” began during the reign of Murad I (r. 1362-1389) and ended in 1648 when the special Janissary formations made up of such boys were finally dissolved. If we assume that the institution began with Murad’s reign, it lasted some 286 years. The boys were levied at four to five year intervals from rural families in the Balkans. Children of craftsmen were spared; taking them might harm local economies. The system originated in the desire of the sultan to raise an armed force loyal to his own person. The young recruits were technically slaves, but life has its ironies. In later times military leaders and rulers of provinces were drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of Janissaries and royal functionaries—so that the nobility later strained every fiber to cause its own sons to be accepted into the ranks of these titular “slaves.” The last had become the first, the slaves an elite. To be “gathered” by the sultan, once known as the “blood tax,” had become a road to fame and fortune as this institution evolved. And precisely this evolution also caused its ultimate demise.

The Ottoman Empire? Here is what it covered in 1683 (map courtesy of Wikipedia):

That Peculiar Relationship

As I reached maturity, my thinking about international relations was much influenced by George F. Kennan, a one-time ambassador to Moscow, a sober and rational diplomat, later a marginalized factor in government but an influential academic. He advocated a kind of self-evident doctrine of the spheres of influence. Nations have interests, and they defend these the more important they are to their survival. Defense of territories, their own or adjacent, and defense of resources (access to oil, grain, or the freedom of the seas) being primary interests. Kennan therefore frowned on the pursuit of so-called idealistic ventures like the promotion of freedom and democracy abroad. President Wilson was not one of his heroes. This view pleased me. It was realistic, rational, and marked by a kind of sane humility. Such a doctrine was at the core of George Washington’s foreign policies as well.

Later, over the years, I realized that this straight-forward doctrine based on national interest is deformed not only by idealistic crusades and dangerous temptations of empire (e.g., globalism); no; it is also deformed by a powerful cultural tendency present in international affairs based on collective memory, heritage, and so-called values. This element is what produces irrational, “special,” and “peculiar” relationships—like the relationship between the United States and Israel.

Its roots ultimately go back to the clash between Christianity and Islam, the Crusades. I don’t for a minute blame the Muslims for harking back to it. That peculiar relationship with Israel is a secularized modern version of a clash of cultures that continues still—but disguised by new phrases like…well, like freedom and democracy.

Israel began by waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine; the earlier waves took place under the still prevailing Ottoman empire. Pogroms and persecution in Europe drove Jews to Palestine—and under an umbrella that was at least mildly accepting of all “People of the Book.” The Ottomans were still in charge when Theodor Herzl published his book, The State of the Jews, in 1896. The British occupied Palestine aided by battalions of Zionist volunteers during World War I. In 1917 came the Balfour declaration—projecting, without calling it a state, what Herzl had imagined:

His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

In such a declaration, I would suggest, the Muslim majority residing in Palestine was viewed roughly in the same way by the British as the American Indians were viewed by the immigrants who had “discovered” America. Under the British Mandate (1920), officially a grant of power by the League of Nations, violent clashes developed between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine. A minority (the Jews had 11% of the population in 1922) of largely European background—but, itself marginalized in Europe—was aiming to consolidate its power over a population that seemed not to register on any international scale to have any weight at all. Later, after World War II, and another rather massive upheaval of antisemitism in Europe, Truman’s support of Israeli statehood, crucial in the U.N., imposed a state on a region the people of which had not been consulted to vote in any plebiscite. So much for freedom and democracy.

The “special” relationship—thus between England and America—helped produce the “peculiar” relationship between America and Israel. I detect nothing resembling “national interest” here. Israel is neither strategically nor tactically important; and most of it, alas, is desert. But what there is, and plenty of it, is a cultural feeling and centuries of lingering enmity. Israel therefore is a modern, secular footprint inside the borders of the Muslim world, a beachhead, as it were, reminiscent of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in crusader days, which lasted from 1099 to 1291. Our being there lacks rhyme and reason, at least as George Kennan might have seen the matter. But then we aren’t rational, are we? So the chaos will keep churning on, the strange dance will continue. We are the big and successful boy of Britain, grown up and mighty. And we have this nasty but willful problem child we tolerate and fund, to the tune of $3 billion a year—much as Saddam Hussein once tolerated and forgave his nasty son Uday.