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THE SULTAN AND THE REBEL: SAʿDUN AL-MANSUR'S REVOLT IN THE MUNTAFIQ, C. 1891–1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2013

Hala Fattah  and
Candan Badem
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Abstract

From 1891 to 1911, a disenfranchised shaykh of the Muntafiq tribe, Saʿdun al-Mansur, led a large uprising against Ottoman rule in southern Iraq. Feeling that he had been disinherited from properties that were his birthright, he fought battle after battle against rival family claimants, shaykhs in Arabia and the Gulf, and reformist Ottoman governors in Baghdad and Basra. This article analyzes Saʿdun's insurgency both within the context of his life and against the background of shifting socioeconomic and political events in Iraq, Arabia, and the Gulf at the turn of the 20th century. One of the last rebellions against Ottoman central authority in southern Iraq, the insurgency was also notable for the indirect but intriguing links between the rebel shaykh and his nominal overlord Sultan ʿAbd al-Hamid II, who paid special attention to the rebel's fate.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 677 - 693
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

NOTES

Authors’ note: The authors express their great thanks to the Mary Ann and Lawrence Tucker Foundation, and in particular to Larry Tucker, for making available Mahmud Ramiz Effendi's report for our research. We are also grateful for the assistance of Mr. Nasir Tawfiq Abdul-Karim al-Saʿdun, great-grand nephew of Saʿdun Pasha. Last but not least, we are deeply appreciative of the excellent comments on earlier drafts by the editors of IJMES and the four anonymous reviewers. All errors and omissions are the authors’ alone.

1 See, for example, Emrence, Cem, Remapping the Ottoman Middle East: Modernity, Imperial Bureaucracy and the Islamic State (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012)Google Scholar; Wilkins, Charles L., Forging Urban Solidarities: Ottoman Aleppo 1640–1700 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hickok, Michael Robert, The Ottoman Administration of Eighteenth-Century Bosnia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997)Google Scholar.

2 Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998)Google Scholar; idem, “The Struggle against Shiʿism in Hamidian Iraq: A Study in Ottoman Counter-Propaganda,” Die Welt des Islams 30 (1990): 45–62; Yitzhak Nakash, “The Conversion of Iraq's Tribes to Shiʿism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (1994): 443–63; Çetinsaya, Gokhan, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890–1908 (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar; Ceylan, Ebubekir, “Carrot or Stick? Ottoman Tribal Policy in Baghdad, 1831–1876,” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 3 (2009): 169–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, The Ottoman Origins of Modern Iraq: Political Reform, Modernization and Development in the Nineteenth Century Middle East (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011).

3 Visser, Reidar, Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2005)Google Scholar; Çetinsaya, Gokhan, “Ottoman–British Relations in Iraq and the Gulf, 1890–1908,” Turkish Review of Middle East Studies 15 (2004): 137–75Google Scholar.

4 For example, see Sinan Marufoğlu's translation of archival material from Ottoman Turkish into Arabic, comprising the correspondence sent to the Porte by religious leaders, tribal shaykhs, and merchants in Iraq. Marufoğlu, Sinan, al-ʿIraq fi al-Wathaʾiq al-ʿUthmaniyya: al-Awdaʿ al-Siyasiyya wa-l-Ijtimaʿiyya fi al-ʿIraq khilal al-ʿAhd al-ʿUthmani [Iraq in Ottoman Documents: Political and Social Events in Iraq in the Ottoman Period] (Amman: Dar al-Shuruq Publishers, 2006)Google Scholar. An earlier and lesser known publication is al-Madamgha, Mustafa Kazim, Nusus min Wathaʾiq al-ʿUthmaniya ʿan Tarikh al-Basra fi Sijillat Mahkamat al-Sharʿiyya fi al-Basra [Selections of Ottoman Archival Texts on the History of Basra in the Court Records of Basra] (Basra, Iraq: Basra University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. In Turkish, see Umar, Ömer Osman, “Basra ile Müntefik'te Aşiretlerin Mücadelesi ve Sadun Paşa” [Intertribal Struggle in Basra and the Muntafiq under Saʿdun Pasha], Fırat Üniversitesi Ortadoğu Araştırmaları Dergisi 2 (2004): 5–38Google Scholar.

5 Ceylan, The Ottoman Origins of Modern Iraq, 169.

6 Ibid., 134.

7 Ibid., 140–41.

8 Ibid., 141–44.

9 Ibid., 135.

10 For example, the settlement of tribes in government towns in eastern and southern Iraq saw the almost immediate diversion of trade to other, less controlled venues, forcing Ottoman officials to resort to unenforceable bans on the export of important commodities. See Fattah, Hala, The Politics of Regional Trade in Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745–1900 (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1997), 185–206Google Scholar. For the Arabian peninsula, see Anscombe, Frederick F., The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 167–73Google Scholar.

11 Jwaideh, Albertine, “Aspects of Land Tenure and Social Change in Lower Iraq during Ottoman Times,” in Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East, ed. Khalidi, T. (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1984), 333–43Google Scholar.

12 Fattah, The Politics of Regional Trade, 186–91.

13 Ceylan, The Ottoman Origins of Modern Iraq, 147.

14 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 88.

15 Ibid., 88; al-Saʿdun, Hamid Hamed, Hikayat ʿan al-Muntafiq: Waqaʿi min Tarikh al-Iraq al-Hadith wa-l-Muʿasir [Stories of the Muntafiq: Events from the History of Modern and Contemporary Iraq] (Baghdad: Dhakira Publishers, 2001), 193–200Google Scholar.

16 Al-Saʿdun, Hikayat ʿan al-Muntafiq, 193–200.

17 Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, 1–15; Gokhan Çetinsaya, “Ottoman–British Relations in Iraq and the Gulf.”

18 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 88–89. See also al-ʿAzzawi, ʿAbbas, Tarikh al-Iraq bayn Ihtilalayn, vol. 8 (Baghdad: al-Tijara wa-l-Tibaʿa, 1956), 53–58Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 88.

20 Some of the Muntafiq chiefs fled to the Shamiya desert, others to the Iraq–Iran border. See Jwaideh, “Aspects of Land Tenure and Social Change,” 346; al-ʿAzzawi, Tarikh al-Iraq, 53–58; and Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 89.

21 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 89.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Hamad al-Saʿdun, Hamid, Imarat al-Muntafiq wa-Atharuha fi Tarikh al-ʿIraq wa-l-Mintaqa al-Iqlimiyya, 1546–1918 [The Muntafiq Principality and Its Impact on the History of Iraq and the Region] (Baghdad: Dar Waʾil Publishing House, 1999), 227–28Google Scholar.

25 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 89.

26 Jwaideh, “Aspects of Land Tenure,” 345–51. See also Batatu, Hanna, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Baʿthists and Free Officers (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 75Google Scholar.

27 Al-Rasheed, Madawi, Politics in an Arabian Oasis: The Rashidi Tribal Dynasty (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1991), 201–22Google Scholar; Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf, 16–166; and Fattah, The Politics of Regional Trade, 13–61.

28 Shaykh Saʿdun al-Mansur assumed the post of shaykh al-mashāyikh (paramount chief) in 1903. See Sluglett, Peter, “Al-Muntafik,” Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 7, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 582–83Google Scholar.

29 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 88. See also Shahvar, Soli, “Tribes and Telegraphs in Lower Iraq: The Muntafiq and the Baghdad–Basrah Telegraph Line of 1863–65,” Middle Eastern Studies 39 (2003): 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Al-Saʿdun, Imarat al-Muntafiq, 227–28.

31 Ibid., 227–29.

32 Al-Saʿdun, Hikayat ʿan al-Muntafiq, 225.

33 Al-Saʿdun, Imarat al-Muntafiq, 228–29.

34 Al-Saʿdun, Hikayat ʿan al-Muntafiq, 216.

35 Al-Saʿdun, Imarat al-Muntafiq, 230.

36 Ibid., 230–31.

37 Ibid., 231–32.

38 Ibid., 234.

39 Çetinsaya, “Ottoman–British Relations,” 138–39.

40 Ibid., 141.

41 Ibid., 156–65.

42 Al-Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis, 212.

43 Visser, Basra, the Failed Gulf State, 73–109. See also Al-Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis, 210–14; and Bell, Gertrude, Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia (London: H.M.'s Stationery Office, 1920), 26Google Scholar.

44 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 90.

45 Bidwell, Robin, ed., Foreign Office Confidential Print: The Affairs of Kuwait, 1896–1905, vol. 2 (London: Frank Cass and Co. Ltd., 1971), 62Google Scholar.

46 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 91.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereafter BOA), BEO 2766/207433.

50 Çetinsaya, Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 91.

51 Ibid., 92.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Mahmud Ramiz Efendi, “Müntefik sancağı merkezi bulunan Nasiriye kasabasına dört saat mesafede Bataih nahiyesi dahilinde Mayia mevkiinde rüesa-i aşairden Sadun Paşa'nın ikametgahı bulunan kalenin cinayat silsilesi” [The chain of murders committed at the fortress of Saʿdun Pasha of the tribal chiefs, situated in Mayiʿa within the nāḥiya of Bataih, at a distance of four hours to the town of Nasiriyya, center of the sanjak of Muntafiq], a 53-page manuscript written in Ottoman Turkish, dated August 1911. This unpaginated report forms part of the private library of the Mary Ann and Lawrence Tucker Foundation and was graciously offered to us by the foundation for our research. This section of the article will rely only on this report.

55 BOA.TFR.1. ŞKT. 163/162115.

56 BOA.DH.SYS.66/6–14 lef1–3. See also BOA.BEO 3916/293649, lef2.

57 BOA.DH.SYS.66/6–14 lef1–3. See also BOA.BEO 3916/293649, lef2.

58 BOA.BEO 3958/296799 lef 11.

59 Ömer Umar, “Basra ile Müntefik'te Aşiretlerin,” 36–37.

60 See al-Saʿdun, Imarat al-Muntafiq, 244; and al-Saʿdun, Hikayat ʿan al-Muntafiq, 227–30.

61 See Marufoğlu, al-ʿIraq fi al-Wathaʾiq al-ʿUthmaniyya, 205–11.

62 BOA.BEO 4109/308152.

63 BOA.BEO 4050/303700, 11 June 1912.

64 Marufoğlu, al-ʿIraq fi al-Wathaʾiq al-ʿUthmaniyya, 205–206.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid., 217–19.

68 Al-ʿAzzawi, Tarikh al-ʿIraq, 279.

69 Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 87Google Scholar.

70 Ibid., 87.