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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2021
Oymak. Al. Boy. Cemaat. Taife. Aşiret. These are the terms Ottoman officials used in imperial orders (mühimme) to describe diverse human communities linked by their mobility and externality to village administration in Ottoman Anatolia between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1924, Turkish historian Ahmet Refik compiled Ottoman imperial orders concerning such communities into a volume he titled Anadolu'da Türk Aşiretleri, 966–1200 (Turkish Tribes in Anatolia, 1560–1786). His use of the term aşiret (tribe) in the title is striking, because this term was only used in 9% of the orders in his volume (23 out of 244 total). However, by the late nineteenth century and in Refik's early Republican context, aşiret had become the standard term for these rural, extra-village, mobile human communities, which he understood as similar enough to include in his painstaking effort of compilation.
1 Refik, Ahmet, Anadolu'da Türk Âşiretleri, 966–1200: Anadolu'da Yaşayan Türk Aşiretleri Hakkında Divani Hümayun Mühmime Defterlerinde Mukayyet Hükümleri Havidir (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1930)Google Scholar.
2 Zakariya, Wasfi, ʻAsha'ir al-Sham (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 1983)Google Scholar; ʻAbbas Azzawi, ʻAsha'ir al-ʻIraq (Baghdad: Mabba'at al-Ma`arif, 1947); Other examples of mid-twentieth-century compilations include ʻUmar Rida Kahhala, Muʻjam Qaba'il al-ʻArab al-Qadima wa-l-Haditha, 5 vols. (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risala, 1982); and Baha Tuqan's translated and expanded edition of Frederick Peake's A History of Jordan and its Tribes, Baha al-Din Tuqan, trans., Tarikh Sharq al-Urdunn wa-Qaba'iliha (Amman: al-Dar al-‘Arabiyya, 1935).
3 Shryock, Andrew, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 221–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See for example a map of the winter grazing grounds of aşirets in Iraq and Najd created by the Ottoman Sixth Army in 1909/1910, with an accompanying table listing population, dwelling type, sect, and weapons holdings of each aşiret, held at the Rare Sources Library at Istanbul University (Harita # 93667). I thank Camille Cole for bringing this source to my attention, and the Historical Texts Analysis team of the OpenGulf project for our discussions of its implications for late Ottoman conceptions of “tribe”: David Joseph Wrisley, Camille Cole, and Nada Ammagui. See also, Camille Lyons Cole, “Empire on Edge: Land, Law and Capital in Gilded Age Basra” (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2020), 199–205.
5 Kasaba, Reşat, A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants and Refugees (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
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7 Winter, Stefan, “The Province of Raqqa Under Ottoman Rule, 1535–1800: A Preliminary Study,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 68, no. 4 (2009): 253–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stefan Winter, “Alep et l’émirat Du Désert (Çöl Beyliği) Au Xviie-Xviiie Siècle,” in Aleppo and Its Hinterland in the Ottoman Period/Alep et Sa Province à l’époque Ottomane, ed. Stefan Winter and Mafalda Ade (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 86–108; Orhonlu, Cengiz, Osmanli İmparatorluğu'nda Aşiretlerin İskanı (Istanbul: Eren, 1987)Google Scholar; Halaçoğlu, Yusuf, 18. Yüzyılda Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun İskan Siyaseti ve Aşiretlerin Yerleştirilmesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1991)Google Scholar.
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9 This vision is articulated comprehensively in the Provincial Administration Regulation (Vilayet Nizamnamesi). Düstur: I. Tertib, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Matbaa-yi Amire, 1289), 625; For the concept of state space, see Lefebvre, Henri, State, Space, World: Selected Essays, ed. Brenner, Neil and Elden, Stuart (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
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11 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereafter B.O.A.) I.MSM 69/2005, 8 Z 1260/19 December 1844, Page 2.
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17 References to the mukhtārs of these communities are scattered in the Salt sharia court records (SSCR). For example, see Muhammad ʻAbd al-Qadir Khuraysat and Farid Tarif Dawud, Jurj, Sijill Mahkamat al-Salt al-Shar‘iyya: 5 Dhi al-Qa'da 1302 H-Ghurrat Rabi` al-Thani 1305 H, 1885–1888 M (Amman: Ministry of Culture, 2007)Google Scholar.
18 See the Title Regulation (Tapu Nizamnamesi), Düstur, 1289, 1:200–8.
19 SSCR Volume 5, Page 122, Record 124, n.d.
20 SSCR Volume 18, page 159, 25 R 1330/13 April 1912.
21 See for example the 1867 Regulation on Financial Affairs (Umur-u maliye dair nizamname) Düstur: I. Tertib, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Matbaa-yi Amire, 1289), 4.
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