Out of 600 years of Ottoman history, half happened in darkness. This darkness, however, had its own life, as evidenced in the following anecdote. On the night of 8 September 1790, a group of European sailors went for a joyride on the Bosporus. There was nothing unusual in such a summer nighttime cruise.Footnote 1 The only problem in this case was that the sailors were too loud and too close to the imperial palace, where Sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1807) was trying to sleep. The next day, the irritated monarch issued an order to one of his highest ranking officials:
Last night, toward the morning, Frenk sailors went with a boat back and forth several times in front of the palace while singing songs [türkü çağırarak]. Order the Chief Scribe to warn all ambassadors and Europeans never to perform this shameless act [again]. I will mercilessly kill who ever does it [bila aman katlederim]. . . . Let him [the Chief Scribe] issue a stern warning.Footnote 2
Although this “stern warning” was formulated to impress its addressees with the wrath of an omnipotent monarch who can kill when he so desires, it was dispatched only after the event was over and the sultan's sleep ruined. More than the warning testifies to the power of the sultan, then, it demonstrates the limitations nighttime posed to his authority and reflects something of the life that flourished in the dark, concealed from his eyes and beyond his reach.
While the Ottoman everyday was shaped by political, economic, and religious institutions, the everynight was shaped by their retreat. It is as if the tide of daily life receded around sunset, exposing distinctive forms of socialization that were unique to the dark hours. Examining nocturnal Istanbul in the 18th century, I seek to map these forms and explain their importance for social, political, and cultural life. The palace, I argue, used the night to demonstrate its power in spectacles of light and to cultivate personal relations within the elite, both of which were crucial for a patrimonial form of governance based on face-to-face interaction. Yet, it was exactly the reliance on such interaction that marked the limits of the palace's hold of the night. Beyond the confines of the illuminated garden, darkness crippled diurnal mechanisms of control, and nocturnal traffic was not effectively regulated. Far from being a mere dark corridor between days, then, the night is shown to be fundamental in shaping social and political processes in the early modern Middle East.
RECONSIDERING DARKNESS
Street lighting arrived in the Middle East during the second half of the 19th century, accompanied by a discourse of “enlightenment” (Turkish aydınlatma, Arabic tanwīr, Perisan rushangarī), which stressed the need to spread real and metaphoric light in order to dispel real and metaphoric darkness, all in the name of “order and progress.”Footnote 3 While the darker, totalitarian sides of the enlightenment project have been discussed by scholars for several decades now, it is only in recent years that lighting itself has begun to draw more critical attention. Several factors have contributed to this trend: most notably, enhanced awareness of the economic costs of outdoor illumination, the immense amounts of carbon emission it involves, and its negative impacts on humans and nonhumans alike. Scientists working in different fields are investigating the effect of “light pollution” on public health, on the well-being of city dwellers, on local ecosystems, and on stellar visibility. Governmental and nongovernmental organizations are working to educate the public and promote stricter regulation of outdoor illumination.Footnote 4 Darkness, which for generations has been associated with danger and evil, and therefore as a sphere to be conquered and subdued, re-emerges as an important interval that needs to be preserved. It now appears that a brighter future for humanity may in fact be a darker one.Footnote 5
Critical approaches to over-lighting contribute to a renewed interest in histories of the night, the first of which were published in the late 1980s.Footnote 6 This research has enhanced our understanding of the emergence of the modern night. Yet most of it has focused on gas and electric lighting, almost exclusively in various parts of Europe and North America. Far less is known about the realities, perceptions, and experiences of night and darkness in these regions before that time and almost nothing is known about the wider world.Footnote 7 Within the field of Middle East studies, there is almost no research on night-related issues and the little that has been published focuses almost exclusively on the late 19th century.Footnote 8 As a consequence, within Middle East studies a whole range of human activity remains, quite literally, in the dark. The poverty of research on the nocturnal in the Middle East also precludes the consideration of the region's heritage of nocturnal social life within current discussions of “the future of the night.”
This study is a step toward a better understanding of night in the Middle East. It focuses on Istanbul and begins in the early 18th century, following the return of the Ottoman court from Edirne to Istanbul. It ends around the middle of the 19th century, when a rapidly changing political, social, and cultural setting reshaped Ottoman nocturnal realities. In terms of sources, early-modern nights present a unique challenge. Being only loosely regulated by formal institutions, the night is poorly documented. Especially when compared with daytime or with the late 19th century, our knowledge of the dark hours seems extremely limited. Fortunately, what is often hard to find in prosaic archives abounds in poetic ones. Poetry, however, is more than a record, or a trail leading to loci of nocturnal sociability. Serving much like a reservoir of images and conventions that were shared by the elites of the empire, poetry was fundamental in assigning meaning to a wide range of phenomena and scripting social behaviors.Footnote 9 This was of particular importance at night, when diurnal, normative, and orthodox protocols of behavior lost much of their power. Poetry is therefore drawn upon here at length, alongside chronicles, contemporary poets’ biographies (tezkire), accounts written by local and foreign observers, and archival documents.
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF 18TH-CENTURY ISTANBUL: EXTRAVAGANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL
References to nocturnal socialization in Istanbul during the 18th century occur most commonly within two interrelated discussions: one that focuses on the extravagance and conspicuous consumption of the elite and another that addresses questions of urban order and social harmony.
When Ottoman historiography was dominated by the “decline” theory, the 18th century was generally perceived as the later part of a rather dark period between the “golden age” of the 16th century and the “Westernization” of the 19th century. At the heart of this darkness, however, there shone an alleged “Tulip Age” (lale devri), a period commonly associated with the grand vizierate of Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Pasha (1718–30). The notion that this was a distinct period that marked a break with the past and signaled the beginning of progressive “Westernization” was first expressed by the poet Yahya Kemal (d. 1958). It was later developed and popularized by the historian Ahmed Refik (d. 1937).Footnote 10 According to Refik, Damad İbrahim's vizierate was characterized by a new policy that sought peace on the European front, through the increasing circulation of European tastes and ideas and through the indulgence of the elite in a culture of pleasure and extravagance, symbolized by the craze for tulips.Footnote 11
Over the last two decades, the notion of a distinct “tulip era” has been questioned, and its uniqueness has been downplayed. Recent studies tend to stress long-term processes that began before İbrahim's rise to power and continued long after his downfall. Among these processes, scholars point to a certain blurring of social and spatial boundaries, and the indulgence of both elites and nonelites in a new culture of urban leisure.Footnote 12 Still, scholars generally agree on the extravagant nature of elite leisure culture during the early 18th century. It is within this framework that some references are made to the night parties held in court circles, especially during the vizierate of Damad İbrahim Pasha.Footnote 13 Yet, to date, the ways these parties were perceived by those who partook in them and their social and political functions have not been systematically analyzed.
While elite leisure is framed by historians mostly in terms of extravagance, popular leisure is most often discussed in terms of the threat it posed to public order and social hierarchies.Footnote 14 Indeed, places of popular socialization such as coffee-houses, taverns, brothels, and bathhouses were often sources of concern for the authorities. Since the discussion has been ultimately concerned with social harmony and public order, little attention has been paid to the social interaction that took place in these places at night, and its relation to elite modes of nocturnal socialization.Footnote 15
The following analysis shows that the palace used not only the day but also the night to assert its power vis-à-vis the city and to demonstrate its difference from the crowds who populated it. During the day, the elite displayed its dominance through monumental buildings, processions, and similar devices, while at night power was manifested in light. Yet, the very circumstances that turned the night into a stage for spectacles of power also made it an arena of challenge to authority. Beyond the reach of the palace, commoners too engaged in various modes of nocturnal sociability, which shared much in common with their elite equivalents. With social boundaries somewhat blurred and in the absence of street-lighting and centralized policing, the government's hold over the city at night remained loose, and the palace vulnerable.
I begin with the limitations darkness posed to Ottoman mechanisms of urban order and move on to show how individuals used it to “slip through the cracks” and engage in illicit and stigmatized activities. I then examine elite and popular modes of nighttime sociability, their particular uses of light, and the ways these uses related to sociopolitical hierarchies.
BLINDFOLDED: THE NEIGHBORHOOD GAZE AND NOCTURNAL ORDER
Deep into the 19th century, life in the Ottoman Empire generally followed a “dawn-to-dusk” rhythm. Sunset marked the termination of the daily cycle of religious worship, the end of another round of clock hours (which were commonly counted from sunset to sunset), and the conclusion of the calendar day.Footnote 16 These formulas for marking and keeping time reflected the lived routines and the daily cycle of social life. Walled cities all over the empire locked their gates at nightfall, and kept them closed and guarded until daybreak. The gates of roofed bazaars, quarters, neighborhoods, courtyards, religious colleges, and bachelor inns were shut down at the same time.Footnote 17 The urban fabric was thus compartmentalized by countless barriers and after the night prayer the streets were abandoned.Footnote 18 As Wolfgang Schivelbusch wrote of early modern European cities, every evening the urban community “prepared itself for darkness like a ship's crew preparing to face a gathering storm.”Footnote 19
These realities were grounded in early modern Ottoman mechanisms of urban order. The basic unit of Ottoman towns was the neighborhood (Turkish mahalle, Arabic maḥalla or ḥāra). On the administrative level, the neighborhood was collectively responsible for maintaining order and upholding public morality. Such collective responsibility encouraged residents to keep a watchful eye over the personal conduct of their neighbors at all times. By intruding and exerting group pressure, neighborhoods collectively policed the behavior of their residents.Footnote 20 The neighborhood was thus an important, if informal, link in the network of urban order.
The spatial organization of the mahalle, and various legal mechanisms that bound its inhabitants to one another (such as the kefalet, or personal surety) turned it into a tightly knit social unit that served to protect the neighborhood people against threats of various kinds.Footnote 21 In this way, huge cities were divided into village-like units where everybody knew everybody else. As Ehud Toledano observes with regard to Cairo, the people “appear to have willingly cooperated with a system that favored the known, the familiar, the traceable faces.”Footnote 22 For its inhabitants, the mahalle was the immediate physical and social environment, a cohesive and protective unit that figured prominently in their personal and collective identity.Footnote 23
In this context, anonymity, which is often regarded in modern times as one of the liberating aspects of city life, was a liability.Footnote 24 The scholarship on 18th-century Ottoman court records (sicil) is rich with discussions of allegations made against individuals who hosted in their houses “unrelated” people (ecnebi, or ajnabī in Arabic), or people of “unknown status” (mechulü-l ahval).Footnote 25 While the meaning of such allegations is still debated, their formulation shows that the very anonymity of individuals who could not be accounted for by any upright member of the community was recognized as a threat to personal security and public order. The capacity of the neighborhood system to maintain order and security was dependent on the ability to see, to recognize, and to know an individual with some certainty. The state, it may be said, monitored individuals through the eyes of its subjects. Darkness allowed facelessness and facelessness crippled the efficiency of the neighborhood as a mechanism of security. Traffic at night thus had to be reduced to a minimal, controllable level, which explains the spatial compartmentalization of cities into nearly isolated cells and the withdrawal of most people into the safety of the home.
According to some contemporary accounts this system was very effective and criminal activity was minimal.Footnote 26 However, Fariba Zarinebaf's recent work on crime in 18th-century Istanbul demonstrates that crime, and particularly nocturnal crime, was a significant problem, which the authorities dealt with using a variety of measures.Footnote 27 Systematic illumination was not one of them.Footnote 28 Rather than dispelling darkness, early modern Ottomans accepted it as a given. After dark, authority was largely limited to strongholds, or islands of power and light. Like the gates of cities, bazaars, and neighborhoods, those of imperial castles were shut at sunset and not opened until daybreak.Footnote 29 Some of these castles—for example, those overlooking the waterways in Istanbul—were supplied with flares that allowed sentries to see at night.Footnote 30 Imperial facilities such as gunpowder depots were guarded with extra care.Footnote 31
Beyond these nodes of the power network, the ability of the government to directly control the streets at night was limited. Policing was not organized under a centralized command but rather assigned to different units that operated under the responsibility of palace officials and patrolled designated parts of the city. In addition, guards were collectively hired by neighborhood inhabitants to watch over residential areas.Footnote 32 Anybody who wandered outside after dark was required by law to carry a lantern. The lantern enabled one to see in the darkness, but what was equally important was that it allowed one to be seen. The lantern signified that a person was willingly exposing himself to the gaze of the patrolling guards, and therefore that he was a decent member of the community with nothing to hide.Footnote 33
It is important to stress that socializing after dark was not strictly forbidden or necessarily stigmatized. As noted below, some forms of nocturnal socialization seem to have been socially acceptable. The problem was that darkness undermined the ability to distinguish legitimate gatherings from drinking parties, and to tell “respectable” people (ehl-i ırz) from “malicious” ones (ehl-i fesad/edepsiz/su-ı niyet), to employ official Ottoman terminology. The use of light was thus geared toward making this distinction, and well into the 19th century anyone caught in the street without a lantern was automatically arrested.Footnote 34
The powerful norms of public morality and the constant gaze of the neighborhood community shaped nocturnal life in different ways for different people: there were those who did not venture beyond the accepted, or further from the neighborhood coffee-house. Others tried to use darkness to evade the sensitive threads of the community network at night while leading a respectable life during the day. Still others, who were socially marginal and fell below the standards of public morality anyway, engaged more openly in social drinking and other stigmatized behaviors. Finally, there were those who were powerful enough to disregard the social norms of the mahalle. For all of these groups, darkness carried benefits that daytime could not offer.
DARKNESS AS HAVEN
In a pioneering study, Walter Andrews has argued that the Ottoman “ecology of emotions” can be conceptualized as an axis between two poles: union on the one side and separation on the other. Light, commonly associated with the former, was identified with happiness, and darkness was linked to the despair, grief, and madness of separation.Footnote 35 Indeed, in Ottoman literature, night often offers the setting for scenes of desperate love that cannot be realized. In many poems and anecdotes, the afflicted lover is depicted walking the dark and silent streets of his beloved's neighborhood or trying to catch some sleep on his/her doorstep. The agonized wakefulness of the lover is contrasted with the sleep of those around him, demonstrating that he is being consumed by love. In this context, Ottoman poets often made reference to Mecnun (Arabic Majnun, lit. madman), the protagonist of the classical Arabic story whose love for Leyla (Arabic Layla) maddened and ultimately killed him. Since Leyla's family disapproved of the relations between the two, Mecnun would secretly visit her at night and recite his love poetry to her.Footnote 36 Ottoman poets adopted the notion that the night belonged to lovers, mostly of the suffering type. Here is one example, by Şeyh Galip (d. 1799): “The dark of night, the amorous glance, the grief of black passion / I often remembered the condition of Mecnun of black days, tonight.”Footnote 37
Yet, the highbrow similes of poetic darkness cover up the more prosaic aspects of the night. As already noted, away from the illuminated gardens of the elite, darkness actually allowed what daytime forbade. Khaled el-Rouayheb writes that certain social environments in the early modern Middle East were suitable for pederasty because they allowed for the mixing of men and boys, “hidden from the public eye.”Footnote 38 The night, it may be argued, was one big hideout. Nighttime was therefore the time for illicit relations and, in particular, for prostitution in brothels, public bathhouses, private houses, and throughout the city.Footnote 39 In real terms, then, the night was not necessarily an interval of separation and despair but a time of union and affection, out of sight and unbridled by social conventions. These realities seeped into contemporary poetry, which indicates that on the metaphoric level, too, the night did not necessarily mean grief. Consider, for example, the following couplet by Enderunlu Hasan Yaver (d. 1798): “Since your beard sprouted, you haven't, for a moment, unbound your breast. / Look here, it's evening, now won't you be setting your watch?”Footnote 40 The poet here complains that his young beloved has grown indifferent of him and plays on the practice of setting clocks at sunset to express his expectation that things would be different at night. Taking the clock out of the pocket would force the beloved to unbutton his coat and finally make himself available. A comparable play is found in a poem by Sabit (d. 1712), who similarly identifies the night as the time of love: “Every night, at the time of union it wakes up the lover / Who is sleeping a heedless sleep and admonishes him, the clock.”Footnote 41
As is common in Ottoman poetry, in both these couplets the emotional layer is laden with an additional, Sufi layer of meaning.Footnote 42 Ottoman emotional ecology was heavily influenced by neo-platonic mysticism and mundane love was often seen as a reflection of, or a corridor to, divine love. In this mystical context, too, the dark of night was of special importance. Since the early days of Islam, Sufi lore often reversed the relations between day and night, between sleep and wakefulness. To be awake and engage only in this-worldly pursuits without attending to one's spiritual duties is in fact to be heedlessly sleeping (hab-ı gaflet in the Ottoman-Turkish form of the originally Persian expression). These notions were manifested in Sufi practice. Already in the first centuries of Islam, devout Sufis would deprive themselves of sleep as a means of training the soul and reaching union with God.Footnote 43 Some collectively performed Sufi rituals also took place after dark.Footnote 44 These practices and the world of images of which they were part were still widespread among Sufis in the 18th century and one comes across them in countless poems about the night. Here is an example from Erzurumlu İbrahim Hakkı (d. 1780):
The eye of the people of love is awake at the time of dawn.
The soul of the people of the heart is filled with secrets at the time of dawn.
The town of the heart is quiet at night, without the common crowds.
The gathering of the soul [bezm-i can] takes place without the distress of strangers at the time of dawn.Footnote 45
Darkness therefore provided real and metaphoric setting for human interaction and for spiritual contemplation that were hardly possible in daytime. It gave birth to a whole tradition of nighttime poetry, which was in itself significant for mediating darkness by assigning it different meanings.Footnote 46 These meanings, in turn, were all fundamental in the staging and conceptualization of the basic form of Ottoman nocturnal conviviality, the meclis.
ENLIGHTENED: DARKNESS, LIGHT, AND THE ELITE MECLIS
The word meclis is derived from the Arabic root jalasa, which means to sit, and therefore, in principle, any meeting of people can be described as a meclis. Yet, in the Ottoman world the word meclis usually referred more specifically to a convivial gathering of companions commonly held in private gardens, houses, courtyards, and taverns. A meclis typically included refreshments, conversation, games, and sometimes music, singing, poetry recitation, and alcohol consumption. Similar gatherings were held by groups across the Ottoman social spectrum and served to consolidate solidarity among group members.Footnote 47 It was in elite circles, however, that the meclis reached its most elaborate form.
As scripted in classical Ottoman poetry, an ideal gathering would take place within the walls of a secluded garden on a spring evening, in the company of close friends. Food and wine would be served, poetry recited, and music played.Footnote 48 The elite meclis was usually conceptualized in mystical terms, and revelers assumed the roles of poets and dervishes, intoxicated with love, mundane and divine. As Deniz Çalış has put it, the participants of the classical meclis
followed the Orthodox ritual practices in everyday life. During the garden party, however, they broke momentarily away from ascetic principles, and engaged in sensual pursuits and drinking. This was part of a kind of ritual of inversion, in which they pretended to be mystics engaged in the quest for God.Footnote 49
A significant part of this “ritual of inversion” was the reversing of relations between night and day. This reversal was closely related to the sense of exclusivity shared by the participants. The classical elite meclis was confined both spatially (to the garden) and temporally (to the night), but it was exclusive on a more substantial level: the meclis was defined by its very difference from the outer world, and from the crowds that populated it. In their own eyes, the participants were the erbab-ı batın, those of the internal, mystical understanding. Their spiritual insight elevated them above “those of the outside” (erbab-ı zahir), the ignorant crowds and dogmatic moralists who renounced beauty and pleasure without truly understanding their internal, divine qualities. In Ottoman poetry, these outsiders always lurk outside the confines of the gathering, threatening it, but also serving to consolidate the bonds between those who partake in it.
In keeping with this function, the classical gathering was visualized and often physically arranged in a circle, with participants facing inward. The wine cup would circle around between the participants. This practice was known as devr, a word that was also used to refer to the revolution of spheres and planets.Footnote 50 Indeed, like everything else in the meclis, the circling of the cup carried a symbolic meaning. It tied participants not only to one another but also to celestial rhythms as punctuated by the revolution of heavenly bodies. It is worth noting that, while today excessive illumination often blinds us from seeing the night sky, in the dark of past times the stars were available for all to see and were often a source of inspiration. Indeed, similes of luminary bodies abound in Ottoman poetry in general, and in representations of gatherings in particular. The recurrent circular images—of planets and spheres revolving around the earth (according to the geocentric model) or moths encircling a candle—were typically constructed around a pole, a source of power and beauty, which was often associated with light.
The classical meclis did not blur the multilayered distinction between night and day: quite the contrary. It derived much of its meaning from the open inversion of temporal routine, an inversion that served the exclusive collective identity of the participants. Spiritually enlightened and socially elevated, they were not subject to the religious and social dictums that applied to everybody else. It was in this tradition that the lantern parties of the 1720s were grounded.
“A PROFUSION OF LIGHT”
Full-moon, outdoor summer parties were favored in court circles long before the 18th century and there is evidence to suggest that even çırağan (lit. lanterns) parties were not entirely new.Footnote 51 Yet, 18th-century writers generally identify the tradition of the lantern party with the figure of the powerful grand vizier Nevşehirli Damad İbrahim Pasha. According to court chronicler Raşid, the first çırağan party was held in 26 April 1720 at the new palace of the grand vizier in Beşiktaş, significantly named Çırağan. The sultan arrived with his harem and retinue and stayed for a week. Raşid writes that the sultan spent his days listening to music and his nights at çırağan parties.Footnote 52 Mourdagea D'Ohsson (d. 1807) adds in his encyclopedic work on the Ottoman Empire that the sultan enjoyed himself so much at these parties that he ordered them to be repeated the next spring, hence starting a tradition.Footnote 53
In addition to the sultan, the parties entertained the top officials who dominated Ottoman politics in the years 1718–30. These included, most notably, Grand Vizier Damad İbrahim Pasha, his lieutenant Mehmed (kethüda), and the grand admiral (kapudan) Kaymak Mustafa Pasha.Footnote 54 The çırağan parties were most commonly held in the gardens of the new mansions built along the Bosporus and went well into the dark hours, although in modern terms the sultan apparently got tired quite early. According to various accounts, he usually left between 3:00 and 5:00 at night, that is, three to five hours after sunset according to the Ottoman hour system.Footnote 55
The most important feature of these parties was the amount of light. Thousands of candles and lanterns were arranged in the tulip beds, and vases of colored water and mirrors were placed, creating a dazzling multitude of lights and reflections. At times, displays of fireworks were staged. Cages of nightingales were set among the lanterns and tulips, adding an audio dimension to the setting.Footnote 56 The real garden and the poetic garden invoked in the poetry produced in and about this setting became hard to distinguish.Footnote 57 This poetry, written by the best-known poets of the period, enables us to reconstruct the meaning allocated to the çırağan parties by those who partook in them. The main poetic themes sensitized listeners to the night sky, to the setting of the garden, and to the sounds and colors of the interaction taking place in it. In this, the çırağan poems followed well-established conventions. Take, for example, the following lines from a song by Nedim (d. 1730): “Flute and dulcimer, viol, harp, and tambour / The bulbul's song in harmony with the arbor. / The world's filled with mirth and joy of every color / Good news to the garden for the time of lanterns is come.”Footnote 58
Also in line with long-time conventions is the rather stark differentiation between the inner domain of the garden and the world outside. The garden is illuminated, alive, filled with joy, and this is contrasted with the surrounding darkness and silence. İzzet Ali Pasha (d. 1734) describes one of the çırağan parties held by the grand vizier in the following words:
Who views the lanterns in the tulip garden
Sees darkness become light in springtime.
. . .
Who attends to the gleam of mirrors in the meadow
Supposes the shining sun has descended to earth.
. . .
Well done, nighttime diffusion of pleasure's blessings,
For now the dark heart of the people of vision finds Divine light.Footnote 59
In line with convention, the poet endows the party with mystical significance and describes the participants as enlightened by divine light, which enables them to pure their hearts of the dark spot of sin (süveyda) and see beyond the veil of reality. But the border between light and darkness, between inside and the outside, is not drawn only on the mystical level. It is also a social boundary separating the select from the “commoners.” Here is İzzet Ali Pasha once again: “It's fitting if they come to observe this elite gathering [bezm-i has] / The shining stars of all the layers of heaven.”Footnote 60
Like other modes of elite meclis, then, the çırağan contributed to the solidification of collective identity and personal relations within elite circles. Drawing the attention of all participants, fire represented the coming together of the souls. In this sense it was often explicitly associated with the archetypical beloved, a role that in elite meclis settings was often assigned to beautiful boys who served as cupbearers (sing. saki) or dancers. Within this world of conventional images and scripted behaviors, the beloved was frequently conceptualized as igniting the fire of love in the hearts of those present. The night once again emerges as the setting for more open expression of emotions and desires, with fire serving as a symbol of the shared experience. Here is Nedim: “They watch the dance of the darling dears / The wails of lutes rise to the spheres / A mouth-flame of voices set the soul on fire / Good news to the garden for the time of the lanterns is come.”Footnote 61
Thus far I have emphasized the intimate nature and the inner-oriented aspects of the çırağan parties. But there was clearly a dimension of ostentation: in the pitch-black night of 18th-century Istanbul, the glow generated by thousands of candles, and the fireworks (with their additional audio dimension), were noted by the people in nearby neighborhoods, generating an image of imperial power that was near and yet inaccessible.Footnote 62 The çırağan poems echoed this effect and amplified it by explicitly connecting the light spectacle with power and authority. This association too was not new, of course, but the scale was unprecedented. With typical hyperboles, the poets glorified the amount of light and its dazzling impact. Take for example, the following lines by Mirza-Zade Ahmed Neyli (d. 1748): “The kingly nature desires that lanterns be plentiful / So it's no wonder that the ruler of the age wishes çırağan. / Don't think it a lantern party; the stars have gathered on earth / To observe the flower garden of the world-tending king of kings.”Footnote 63 The amount of light is here directly connected to the nature of sovereignty. The kings of the world, the rulers of the empire, flock to the çırağan parties, or the Çırağan palace in Beşiktaş where many of these parties took place. Even the stars join them in marvelling at the beauty of the garden of the king of kings, the sultan. The same association of the abundance of light with the power of the ruler is made in a gazel by İzzet Ali Pasha written for another çırağan party:
The tulip is become bringer of warmth to the lanterns-gathering tonight
It proffers its passionate burning to the ruler of the age tonight.
It decorated the court of lanterns with a cloth of many colors
It ornamented this majestic kingly gathering tonight.
. . .
While every radiant candle is like a brilliant daytime
Who looks at the gleam of the shining moon's face tonight.Footnote 64
The ability to “turn night into day” sent a message of power to those left outside the garden, whether they were lesser officials or commoners. Far from being a transparent entity that allows social interaction to take place, light was the main theme of the party. This focus was apparent both in the physical arrangement of the garden, made to draw the attention of the participants to the lamps and their reflections, and in the poems, songs, and descriptions written about these parties. Staged against the surrounding darkness, the unique configuration of light was anchored in a multilayered universe of meaning. On the political level, light was identified with the patron and the çırağan parties therefore celebrated the power of the monarch, and possibly his highest representatives.Footnote 65 On the social level, light represented the affinity and collective experience of exhilaration; on the mystical level, it was conceived as a divine gift given to those worthy of it.
DIMLY LIT: POPULAR DRINKING PARTIES
While the rich would usually host parties at home and often have their guests sleep over,Footnote 66 the homes of the nonelite were typically smaller and hosting expenditures, for illumination in particular, were heavy. Commoners therefore preferred to meet outside and share the costs between them.Footnote 67 Moreover, due to the ban on alcohol consumption, drinking was usually done outside the Muslim quarters, for example, in open areas along the Bosporus.Footnote 68 Just as alcohol consumption was pushed away from the neighborhoods, where hegemonic norms were most powerful, it was exiled outside the day, when orthodoxy and the mechanisms upholding it were most effective. Charles White, a British officer who spent three years in Istanbul around the mid-19th century, noted the connection between darkness and drinking when describing parties held along the banks of the Bosporus. So long as it is light, he writes, participants “content themselves with smoking, conversing, fingering their beads, eating melons, and drinking coffee or water. But when night throws its veil around them, and intrusive eyes can no longer watch their actions, then comes the flow of wine, if not the feast of soul.”Footnote 69
Most often, however, meclis-type drinking gatherings among commoners took place in different types of bars and taverns scattered in non-Muslim quarters throughout the city.Footnote 70 Despite occasional attempts to close them down, there were hundreds of such establishments in late 18th-century Istanbul, forming the basis for a wide, if not entirely respectable, nightlife scene.Footnote 71 Clearly, non-Muslims could drink in broad daylight, without necessarily risking their reputation. According to D'Ohsson, people of the “lower classes” such as sailors, soldiers, and “dervishes” similarly did not limit their drinking to the dark hours.Footnote 72 Living on the margins of society, these people were less susceptible to communal pressure. However, more “respectable” Muslims needed the hood of darkness if they were to preserve their reputation.Footnote 73
A glimpse of 18th-century tavern nightlife is offered in the biographical dictionary of Mirza-zade Mehmed Emin Salim (d. 1743) in the entry for the late 17th-century poet Dervish Fasih. One day, Fasih took a boat from Fener to Galata and joined some of his friends in one of the many taverns of the area. It seems that it was late in the afternoon and other groups had already formed their own “circles” (halka) of drinking, probably with a candle or another source of light in the center.Footnote 74 As Ekrem Koçu writes in his work on Istanbul taverns, albeit without specifying the period, owners of taverns would greet their patrons, seat them, and place a lantern in their midst. Their assistants, known as “fire boys” (ateş oğlanları) would light it, saying “welcome, gentlemen.”Footnote 75
Just as in the elite meclis, the symbolism and the physical arrangement of sitting were hard to distinguish. Here too, at the center of the circle was the saki, or wine-server, whose beauty was supposed to set the fire of love in the hearts of the drinkers. These literary conventions actually scripted expectations and behaviors. We know, for example, that tavern owners indeed sought to employ good-looking boys as wine-servers, in order to attract customers.Footnote 76 This was the case in the obscure tavern in Galata frequented by Fasih and his friends.
In the midst of the company, a beautiful, heart-burning candle is lighting up the piping-hot meclis of pleasure, shining [so] bright that all the participants of the meclis. . . were moths to that bedroom-candle of the harem of beauty, and all those present were amazed, drunk and crazed by his bewildering beauty.Footnote 77
With every round of the cup, Salim goes on, the saki made the ring of companions forget the distress of the world and in every cup he “pillaged” their mind and reason.
Fasih fell instantly in love and began courting the boy with clever talk and poetry, but just when he thought he was making progress, the boy said he had to leave as night was falling. Fasih spent the rest of the night drinking and agonizing, wondering if the saki would return the next day, as he had promised. Day came, and then evening again and Fasih was still waiting. Unable to withstand the wait any longer, he finally went to the home of that saki and spent the rest of the night on his doorstep. But even there he could not find rest. After an unpleasant encounter with other fans of the boy, which nearly cost Fasih his life, he was put on a boat and sent back across the Golden Horn.Footnote 78
The anecdote demonstrates that despite some obvious differences, the popular meclis shared certain communalities with its elite parallels. Idioms and individuals migrated back and forth between the palaces of the great and the rest of the city, making the boundaries that were so important to the elite porous, and therefore even more important to maintain and reinforce. Like the dazzling spectacle of lights, the candles on tavern tables were ultimately islands in an ocean of darkness. Humble rather than extravagant and largely devoid of the political meanings associated with it in elite settings, light was nevertheless identified with a shared experience of unrestrained joy and affection that only shone brighter in the surrounding darkness. Like moths around a candle, revelers of all kinds turned their back to darkness and their faces inside, forming a circle around a source of real and metaphoric light and gravitating toward it.
LIGHTS OUT
In late September 1730, an Albanian janissary known as Patrona Halil lead an uprising that brought about the downfall and execution of Damad İbrahim and his associates, and the replacement of Sultan Ahmet III with Mahmud I (r. 1730–54).Footnote 79 The mutiny revealed the limitations of “demonstrative power” as practiced by the palace. Rather than asserting its authority, the extravagance of the ruling faction at a time of severe hardships created much popular resentment. Abdi, who wrote a chronicle of the rebellion, explicitly notes that the grand vizier and “the majority of those of high rank” were immersed in parties of pleasures and musical entertainment “day and night” while “the poor people were wretched by tyranny and oppression.”Footnote 80 Even if we accept that Abdi and other chroniclers sought to retrospectively defame İbrahim and his faction in order to appease their new master, Sultan Mahmud I, and even if we agree that the rebellion was an intra-elite conspiracy rather than a popular revolt,Footnote 81 it is still significant that contemporary writers chose to devote much of their critique to the extravagance and pomp of the former ruling faction. The authors were tapping onto a widely held sense of animosity, using the magnificent night parties of the elite as a shining, easy-to-hit target.
It was not nocturnal conviviality as such but its extravagance that angered the people. It seems that the leader of the rebellion himself was not exactly the early-to-bed type. According to the Earl of Sandwich, who traveled through Istanbul a few years after the rebellion, Patrona Halil used to spend his nights at the taverns of Galata, where he drank dry all of his days’ earnings.Footnote 82 The chronicler Destari Salih ties Halil and his associates to the night in a different manner. He describes them as a “a fearless group of dirty pimps from among the naked people of the bath of sin and fornication.”Footnote 83 As noted above, public bathhouses were known as sites of commercial sex, especially at night. Due to this reputation, and to low wages, it was mostly migrants with limited opportunities who worked in public bathhouses in Istanbul. Albanians dominated the profession.Footnote 84 In his effort to deprecate the rebels, Destari Salih builds on the negative image of public bath workers and emphasizes their activity at night, which he associates with disorder, insecurity, and treachery. Sultanic authority and order, by contrast, are equated with the sun, with the morning, and with light.Footnote 85
These metaphors convey something of the actual situation as narrated in the chronicle. Convened in the illuminated halls of the palace to decide how to deal with the rebels, the top officials were quite literally in the dark regarding what was going outside. As the night descended on the “meat square” (et meydanı), the crowd that had assembled there during the day began to dissolve, leaving only the leaders, hesitant and vulnerable. Yet, the palace was apparently unaware of the situation and missed the opportunity to act before the rebels began to regroup in the morning.Footnote 86 The sultan eventually capitulated to the demands of the rebels and executed the grand vizier and his associates, before being forced to step down himself. According to Destari Salih, after the rebels received the bodies of the grand vizier, his lieutenant, and the grand admiral, they plucked out their eyes and stuck candles in their stead saying “if there is going to be a çırağan, let it be this way.”Footnote 87 We cannot verify that this event actually took place, and yet it is significant that Destari Salih chose to narrate it in this way. He no doubt thought that his readers would deem it plausible that the rebels would sarcastically usurp the power associated with the imagery of the çırağan to celebrate their victory over the ruling elite in a little party of their own. Despite their humble background, Halil and his supporters do not seem to have been particularly impressed by the palace's demonstrations of power. They quite easily leapt over the social walls that were supposed to separate them from the elite. Not only were Halil and his men able to force the execution of the powerful grand vizier and, soon thereafter, the dethronement of the reigning sultan; they actually ruled the capital for almost a month, showing no signs of an inferiority complex. A bunch of tavern drunkards and hamam attendants busted the garden party and turned off the lights.Footnote 88
CONCLUSION
This study has demonstrated the importance of darkness for political, social, and cultural life in 18th-century Istanbul. It has shown that the palace's authority depended on spectacular power, but just like the flickering aura of çırağan candles, it remained unstable. Light was produced in large amounts to demonstrate patrimonial power, but it actually marked the limits of this mode of rule.
Light could only be produced locally and momentarily. Beyond the illuminated halls and gardens of the great, darkness reigned supreme, allowing refuge from diurnal mechanisms of rule. Nighttime offered opportunity for illicit modes of socialization and, at times, for subversive political action.
Clearly uncomfortable with this situation, the reformers of the 19th century sought to tighten the state's grip over the dark streets. Relying on new concepts of order and novel technologies they set out to “colonize” the night.Footnote 89 Street lighting was their most effective weapon. The new light was an industrialized, uniform, standard entity that, in sharp contrast to the lanterns of the 18th century, was not made to attract attention. It increasingly appeared as an abstract entity serving an abstract state struggling to dispel darkness and disorder. Both darkness and light, which are commonly perceived as natural, unchanging entities, were in the process of being transformed by social and political processes.
