An Interconfessional History of Missions in the Middle East and North Africa

Posted on 6. March 20236. March 2023 by thesoutheastpassage

With Norig Neveu, Karène Sanchez Summerer, and Annalaura Turiano

hosted by Andreas Guidi for a joint release with Ottoman History Podcast

Since the 19th century, different forms of missionary activities and preaching have been shaping the role of religion within the societies of the Middle East and North Africa. Not only Christian congregations, but also Muslim and Jewish institutions participated in this phenomenon. Emulation but also competition existed across confessional boundaries and intersected with colonialism, wars, emancipation projects, and state authority. In this episode, we approach the galaxy of missions and preaching in the longue durée with the three editors of a recently published edited volume, Missions and Preaching: Connected and Decompartmentalised Perspectives from the Middle East and North Africa (19th-21st Century).

Norig Neveu is a research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)/ Iremam. Her present research focuses on the reconfiguration of Chistian and Muslim religious authorities in Jordan and Palestine from the end of the 19th century. From 2017 to 2021, she was co-PI and coordinator of the MisSMO research program about Christian missions in the Middle East since the late 19th century (https://missmo.hypotheses.org/). Her last publication includes the Special Issue: “Gender and Mission”, Social Sciences and Missions, 34:1–2 (2021) with Séverine Gabry-Thienpont.

Karène Sanchez Summerer is Professor and Chair of the Middle Eastern Studies Programme at Groningen University (The Netherlands). Her current research considers the interactions between European linguistic and cultural policies, missionaries’ modalities and impact and the Arab Catholic communities in Palestine (1860–1948). She is the PI of the research project (2017–2022), ‘CrossRoads—A connected history between Europeans’ cultural diplomacy and Arab Christians in Mandate Palestine’ (project funded by The Dutch Research Council NWO), and was co-PI of MisSMO. Her last publications include Sanchez Summerer, K. and Zananiri, S., Imaging and Imagining Palestine- Photography, Modernity and the Biblical Lens (1918–1948) (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2021); Irving, S., Nassif, C. and Sanchez Summerer, K., The House of the Priest. A Palestinian life (1885–1954) (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2022).

Annalaura Turiano is a postdoctoral researcher within the Archival City Project at the University Gustave Eiffel (Marne-la-Vallée). Her research interests span missionary education, trans-Mediterranean migrations, and philanthropy in modern Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Her last publications include “Masculinity, Industrial Education and Fascism in Egypt. The construction of gender in the schools of the Salesian mission in Egypt (1900–1939)”, Social Sciences and Missions, 24/2021: 1–32. She is currently finishing a monograph entitled Missionnaires italiens en Égypte. De la pastorale migratoire à la coopération technique 1897-1970, EFR/ IFAO, forthcoming 2023.

To cite this episode: Norig Neveu, Karène Sanchez Summerer, Annalaura Turiano, Andreas Guidi (2023): An Interconfessional History of Missions in the Middle East and North Africa. The Southeast Passage and Ottoman History Podcast #042, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/nterconfessional-history-missions-middle-east-north-africa/.

Music:

Epouro (Choeur de l’Institut d’études coptes)

Traditional Song from Syria (Yanina Chouft); Oshamnu Mikol Om (Cantor Josef Rosenblatt);

Sufi chant (Moslem Sect [sic!] Sulamiya of Beja)., freesound.com (Creative Commons)

Bulgarian Muslims between Empire and Nation

Posted on 24. January 202224. January 2022 by thesoutheastpassage

With Milena Methodieva

hosted by Andreas Guidi and Jovo Miladinovic for a joint release with Ottoman History Podcast

The Aladja Mosque in Plovdiv, early 20th century (Wikimedia Commons)

In 1878, following the Congress of Berlin, Bulgaria became a de facto independent principality. Not anymore under Ottoman rule, the Muslims of Bulgaria navigated this political shift by redefining their place as a minority of a nation-state. The community underwent a political polarization between traditional notables and a group pushing for reforms within Muslim institutions. In this episode, we discuss how these reformists engaged with state and nation-building in Bulgaria by highlighting their connections with the broader Muslim world. Not only did Bulgarian Muslims contribute to the rise of the Young Turk movement, they were also part of a transnational space in which intellectuals and activists debated issues such as the place of Islam in modern society, the value of education, and the question of political relationship with non-Muslim rulers.

Milena Methodieva is a scholar of Ottoman, Balkan, and Turkish history. She is Assistant Professor at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her scholarship focuses on the political, social, and intellectual transformations in the late Ottoman Empire, its successors in the Balkans, and modern Turkey. In her new research project, she focuses on migration to explore the unraveling of the Ottoman imperial world and the emergence of nation-states in the Balkans and modern Turkey.

To cite this episode: Milena Methodieva, Andreas Guidi, Jovo Miladinovic (2022): Bulgarian Muslims between Empire and Nation. The Southeast Passage and Ottoman History Podcast #041, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/methodieva-bulgarian-muslims-empire-nation/.

Music:

Eridi Kalmadı Dağların Karı, performed by Seval Eroğlu, freesound.com (Creative Commons)

Kanun Taksimi, freesound.com (Creative Commons)

A History of Knowledge about the Holocaust in Bulgaria

Posted on 3. November 20213. December 2021 by thesoutheastpassage

With Nadège Ragaru

Marco Behar: “Their Last Way” (from the Series “Past”, detail, 1958), Courtesy of the Bulgarian National Gallery, Sofia.

Since the immediate aftermath of the end of World War II, a narrative concerning the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews from deportation and genocide has nurtured the self-representation of the governments in Sofia and the public discourse in the country. From the decades of state socialist rule to the post-1989 political transformations which led to Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union, the international framework of Holocaust remembrance as well as some references in this discourse have changed, yet the bulk of the rescue narrative which sees the Jews as passive entity persists. This episode discusses how historiography can critically engage with the complex and fragmented knowledge of the Holocaust in Southeast Europe through a journey into different voices and different sources, from trial attestations to popular fiction movies to visual material.

Nadège Ragaru is Research Professor at Sciences Po Paris. Her works explore the history, the historiography, and the memory of the Holocaust and World War II in Southeast Europe. She is currently working on a book project dedicated to war crimes trials in the final months of World War II.

To cite this episode: Nadège Ragaru, Andreas Guidi (2021): A History of Knowledge about the Holocaust in Bulgaria. The Southeast Passage #040, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/ragaru-history-knowledge-holocaust-bulgaria/.

Music:

Edoy: “Chance“

Text Excerpt:

Deposition by Berta and Milko Noah, Skopje, December 27, 1944. The document was produced within the Preliminary Investigation for anti-Jewish crimes in Bulgaria. Source: Vărban Todorov and Nikolaj Poppetrov (eds.), VII săstav na narodnija săd. Edno sabraveno dokumentalno svidetelstvo za antisemitizma v Bălgarija pred 1941-1944 g., Sofia : Iztok & Zapad, 2013, p. 188-193. Translated by Naemi Haberkorn, read out for The Southeast Passage by Nisrine Rahal.

The Armenian Genocide and Property Usurpation in Aintab

Posted on 10. October 20213. December 2021 by thesoutheastpassage

With Ümit Kurt

Hosted by Zeynep Ertuğrul and Andreas Guidi

A prominent Armenian family deported and perished in 1915. Source: Mihran Minassian Private Collection.

The Armenian community of Aintab, nowadays Gaziantep, was among the most flourishing of Ottoman Anatolia. The Armenian Genocide not only brought an end to the community’s coexistence with the Muslim population but also paved the way to the pillage and usurpation of Armenian houses and shops. In this episode, we discuss the characteristics of the community in Aintab and the upsurge of violence in 1915. While addressing the implications of researching this sensitive topic, we focus on the role of local perpetrators as well as the broader juridical configuration which prevented the return of Armenian survivors and legalized material usurpation by local Muslim families.

Ümit Kurt is a Research Fellow at Polonsky Academy in the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute teaching in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ümit is also Vice Executive Secretary of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS). He has published widely on the history of the late Ottoman Empire with a particular focus on the transformations of the imperial structures and their role in constituting the republican regime which he researches and teaches grounded on theories of state and class, social identity, and ethnicity. (Photo Credit: Hüseyin Ovayolu)

To cite this episode: Ümit Kurt, Zeynep Ertuğrul, Andreas Guidi (2021): The Armenian Genocide and Property Usurpation in Aintab. The Southeast Passage #039, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/kurt-armenian-aintab-genocide/.

Music:

Hicham Chahidi: “Sweet Armenia“

Zabel Panosian: “Groung” (Source: BNF Gallica)

Background: Duduk and Santur (by Peyman Heydarian) (Source: https://freesound.org/)

#038 – German Resettlers and Jewish Survivors from Bukovina after 1945

Posted on 9. September 202120. September 2021 by thesoutheastpassage

With Gaëlle Fisher

At the crossroad of Bukovinans Street and Radauti Street, Stuttgart. Courtesy of Gaelle Fisher.

Before World War II, Bukovina was a region marked by multiconfessional coexistence and ruled by the Habsburg Empire (1774-1918) and then by Romania (1918-1940). Two among Bukovina’s population groups, the “ethnic” Germans and the Askhenazi Jews, left the region as a result of the World War and the Holocaust. Thousands of the former were “resettled” in Germany, while a great number of the latter who had survived the persecutions immigrated to Israel. In this episode, we discuss how both groups maintained a link with their homeland region, how they organized into voluntary associations, and how their destiny became interwoven when negotiating the limits of belonging to the respective national societies.

Gaëlle Fisher is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Holocaust Studies, Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Germany. Her work explores the entangled histories of Germany, Eastern Europe, and Israel in the twentieth century. Her current research is for a second book dealing with Jewish responses to persecution in Romania during the Holocaust.

BERGHAHN BOOKS : Resettlers And Survivors: Bukovina And The Politics Of Belonging In West Germany And Israel, 1945–1989

To cite this episode: Gaëlle Fisher, Andreas Guidi (2021): German Resettlers and Jewish Survivors from Bukovina after 1945. The Southeast Passage #038, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/fisher-bukovina-german-jews

Music:

RecKlez: “Kallarash Freylekhs”

Natfule Brandwein: “Das Teurste in Bukowina”

#037 – Hunger and War during the Italian Occupation of Greece

Posted on 24. July 202124. July 2021 by thesoutheastpassage

with Paolo Fonzi

A 1941 cartoon from the newspaper “The Manchester Dispatch”, mocking Mussolini’s dependency on Hitler to defeat Greece

In the spring of 1941, after a brief war ending in an embarrassing retreat for Italy one year earlier, Mussolini’s troops supported by Nazi Germany occupied various regions of Greece. In Fascist Italy’s vision of a Mediterranean empire, Greece had a pivotal place, but several defeats on other war fronts led to the collapse of Italy’s ambitions and the occupation ended in 1943. In this installment, we discuss this World War II occupation through the prism of food scarcity and famine. Despite its brevity, the occupation caused a humanitarian catastrophe, and the question of food supply also complicated the Italian authorities’ control over the territory. The episode focuses on aspects related to gender, ethnic engineering, and violence to illustrate how food shortages shaped the interactions between occupying troops and the local population, but also the hierarchies within the latter.

Paolo Fonzi is Adjunct Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Eastern Piedmont. His fields of expertise include the history of Fascism with a particular focus on the Axis occupation policies. He has investigated the Nazi currency policy in occupied Europe during WWII and the Italian occupation policies in the Balkans with two monographs, one dedicated to Greece between 1941 and 1943 and another, broader in scope, on the occupation of Albania, Yugoslavia, Greece, but also France and the USSR, during WWII.

Fame di guerra. L'occupazione italiana della Grecia (1941-43) - Paolo Fonzi - Libro - Carocci - Studi storici Carocci | IBS

To cite this episode: Paolo Fonzi, Andreas Guidi (2021): Hunger and War during the Italian Occupation of Greece. The Southeast Passage #037, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/hunger-war-italian-occupation-greece

Sound Effects:

BBC Sound Archive: Air Raid Siren, Soldiers Marching.

Music:

Antonis Nasis and Thanos Bouris: “Koroido Mousolini” (Mussolini the Sucker).

To know more about Antonis and Thanos’s music, visit the “Cherchez la femme: Rebetiko quartet” website.

Stelios Perpiniadis: “Akou Ntoutse mou ta nea” (Hear the news, my Duce).

English translation of Perpiniadis’s lyrics:

Hear the news, my Duce

With a smile on their lips,
Our soldiers march forward
And the Italians have become a ridicule
Because their hearts aren’t brave enough

Mussolini, you fool
None of you will be left standing
You and Italy,
Your ridiculous country,
Are all afraid of the khaki color

You have no honor
And when we march in,
Even in Rome, we will raise,
The Greek, blue and white flag

It’s raining and they’re under the tent
They’re not taking a step forward
And they are announcing,
That the weather is to blame

Mussolini, you fool
None of you will be left standing
You and Italy,
Your ridiculous country,
Are all afraid of the khaki color

You have no honor
And when we march in,
Even in Rome, we will raise,
The Greek, blue and white flag.

#036 – Political Opposition from the Ottoman Empire to Republican Turkey

Posted on 21. June 202115. July 2021 by thesoutheastpassage

with Christine Philliou

hosted by Zeynep Ertugrul and Jovo Miladinovic

Portrait of Refik Halit Karay in Aleppo (1928). Courtesy of the Taha Toros Archive

Refik Halid Karay was a satirical writer whose life can help us rethink the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. After 1908, Refik Halid opposed the regime established by the Committee of Union and Progress while remaining a staunch believer of constitutionalism and of a multi-confessional imperial polity. This also provoked a conflict between him and the nationalists gathered around Mustafa Kemal in the aftermath of World War I. Shortly after the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the government forced hin into exile. Through his biography, we discuss the Turkish notion of muhalefet, which refers to opposition and dissent within the margins of the political system.

Christine Philliou is associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the political and social history of the Ottoman Empire and modern Greece and Turkey. Her first book, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (University of California Press, 2011), examined the changes in Ottoman governance resulting from the Greek Revolution and leading up to the Tanzimat reforms of the mid-nineteenth century. She is currently working on a book project on post-Ottoman Greece and Turkey. Her new monograph, discussed in this podcast, is entitled Turkey: A Past against History and it is out at University of California Press.

To cite this episode: Christine Philliou, Zeynep Ertugrul, Jovo Miladinovic (2021): Political Opposition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republican Turkey. The Southeast Passage #036, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/philliou-political-opposition-ottoman-empire-republican-turkey/

Music:

Seyyan Hanım: “Yıldızların Altında”

İbrahim Özgür: “Neden”

#035 – Ottoman Port Cities of the Modern Mediterranean

Posted on 1. April 202121. June 2021 by thesoutheastpassage

with Malte Fuhrmann

hosted by Andreas Guidi and Zeynep Ertugrul for a joint release with Ottoman History Podcast

(Steamers, row and sailing boats on the Istanbul Golden Horn, ca. 1890. Courtesy of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Istanbul)

At the turn of the twentieth century, Ottoman port cities of the Eastern Mediterranean were sites of vibrant cultural encounters. While infrastructural innovations at docks and quays reshaped the urban waterfront, the inhabitants of Izmir, Istanbul, and Salonica engaged with new forms of entertainment arriving from Europe. Operas, balls, and beerhouses changed the way people mingled and interpreted coexistence and diversity in their urban environment. Migrants from Europe and from the hinterlands of major port cities created an original form of Ottoman Mediterranean modernity. This cosmopolitan urban culture was alluring and festive but also had its discontents, who denounced it as decadent and servile to European imperialism. Exploring the everyday life of late Ottoman port cities reveals an effervescent lapse of time in which notions such as modernity, Europe, empire, and nation could be experienced in manifold ways, before the major conflicts of the twentieth century gave a fatal blow to Mediterranean urban diversity.

Malte Fuhrmann is a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin specializing in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, and Southeast Europe. Besides Port Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean: Urban Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020) he has published numerous articles, edited volumes, and monographs, including Konstantinopel – Istanbul. Stadt der Sultane und Rebellen (Constantinople – Istanbul: City of Sultans and Rebels), Frankfurt (M.): Fischer 2019, and The City in the Ottoman Empire: Migration and the Making of Urban Modernity, London: Routledge 2011, a volume edited together with Ulrike Freitag, Nora Lafi, Florian Riedler. Malte is currently working on a comparison of development discourse in modern Bulgaria and Turkey.

New book by Malte Fuhrmann examines the history of Eastern Mediterranean port cities

To cite this episode: Malte Fuhrmann, Zeynep Ertugrul, Andreas Guidi (2021): Ottoman Port Cities of the Modern Mediterranean. The Southeast Passage #035, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/fuhrmann-ottoman-port-cities-modern-mediterranean

Sounds effects:

“A quiet seaside seagulls distant “, “Waves at the edge of Bosphorus”, “Bbc News Sound Effects Tape (Old) – boat – ships sirens”, “A night in Athens”.

Music:

Turku: “Bir demet Yasemen”

Maria Papagika: “Ti se melei esenane”

#034 – Being a Musician in Germany, 1850-1960

Posted on 20. September 202024. September 2020 by thesoutheastpassage

with Martin Rempe

military band germany rempe podcast

A military band from Germany, 1913 (Wikimedia Commons)

A few countries can boast a musical heritage comparable to Germany’s. Yet, this tradition was made possible by rank-and-file musicians, whose position in society was far from stable and acknowledged. In this episode, we discuss a history of music in Germany “from below”. Applying the triad art, play, and work to music as an unresolved matrix to unpack what is often considered a “creative” category, we link the experience and perceptions of musicians to German political history and the musicians’ struggle for recognition. In the second part of the conversation, we approach the gendered dimension of musical professionalisation, the impact of musicians’ mobility on “national” traditions, and the challenges posed by new technologies to making a living with music.

Martin Rempe is a historian of Modern European and Global History. Currently, he is funded by the DFG Heisenberg Program and hosted by the University of Konstanz. Besides, he is a permanent visiting lecturer at the University of St. Gallen. He holds a PhD from Humboldt University, Berlin and habilitated at the University of Konstanz in 2017. He was fellow at the Free University Berlin, at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, and at the Deutsches Museum, Munich. His first monograph is entitled “Entwicklung im Konflikt. Die EWG und der Senegal, 1957–1975” (Böhlau: 2012) and he has co-edited volumes on regionalism in Africa and on musical communication in the 20th century. Martin’s latest book “Kunst, Spiel, Arbeit. Musikerleben in Deutschland, 1850 bis 1960″, has been published with Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in the series Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft. His next book project aims at a global history of the complex interrelationships between military music and society in the long nineteenth century.

To cite this episode: Martin Rempe, Andreas Guidi (2020): Being a Musician in Germany, 1850-1960. The Southeast Passage #034, 22.09.2020, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/rempe-musician-germany-1850-1960/

Music:

Royal Festival Hall: Full orchestra tuning (BBC Sound Archive)

Saxophone-Orchestra Dobri: Tausend Worte Liebe (One thousand words of love, 1929 recording)

The Saxophone-Orchestra Dobri was among the most popular in the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). His conductor Otto Dobrindt pursued a career in the Third Reich within Radio Germany (Deutschlandsender). After World War Two, Dobrindt was employed by the Berliner Rundfunk in the Soviet occupied zone and later in the GDR until his death in 1963.

The opening quote is read by Max Friedrich.

#033 – How the Ottomans shaped the Modern World

Posted on 18. August 202018. August 2020 by thesoutheastpassage

with Alan Mikhail

Selim Piri Reis Podcast

Sultan Selim I and Piri Reis’s world map (1513) – collage based on Wikimedia commons

The Ottoman Empire was a key force in the making of the early modern world. Growing from a regional to a global player and to the most powerful Muslim empire at the turn of the 16^th century, the role of the Ottomans has been largely neglected by Eurocentric narratives about the Atlantic explorations and the Reformation. This episode is based on Alan Mikhail’s new work “God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, his Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World”. In the first part, we discuss the trajectory of Selim I, one of the most important sultans of the House of Osman, and the conflict with his father Bayezid. His life spans from military campaigns in Eastern Anatolia to crucial victories against the Mamluk Empire, which allowed Selim to officially become Caliph and leader of Sunni Islam. In the second part, we open a perspective on the global implications of imperial rivalries in the Mediterranean. Re-centering the Ottomans sheds light on how reactions to a powerful Muslim empire drove Columbus’s and other conquistadors’ worldview, which in turn lingered on in US-American self-perceptions and othering of Muslims and Native Americans.

Alan Mikhail is Professor of History at Yale University, where he also chairs the Department of History. He is a leading historian of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East with a focus on Egypt in the early modern period. He has published grounbreaking studies on environmental and global history (see bibliography below) and his newest monograph, discussed in this podcast, is published by Liveright-Norton.

To cite this episode: Alan Mikhail, Andreas Guidi (2020): How the Ottomans shaped the Modern World. The Southeast Passage #033, 18.08.2020, http://thesoutheastpassage.com/podcast/mikhail-ottomans-selim-modern-world/

Music:

The instrumental compositions in the background are a kind courtesy of Hasan Kiriş.

1. Tanbur Taksimi (Selim’s birth)

2. Etraflıca Yürümek (Selim and Bayezid)

3. Beyatiaraban Taksim (Selim and Piri Reis)

The excerpts from “God’s Shadow” are read by Harriet Walsh.

A PODCAST ABOUT HISTORY IN THE MAKING

Author: thesoutheastpassage

An Interconfessional History of Missions in the Middle East and North Africa

Music:

Further reading:

Bulgarian Muslims between Empire and Nation

Music:

Further reading:

A History of Knowledge about the Holocaust in Bulgaria

Music:

Further reading:

The Armenian Genocide and Property Usurpation in Aintab

Music:

Further reading:

#038 – German Resettlers and Jewish Survivors from Bukovina after 1945

Music:

Further reading:

#037 – Hunger and War during the Italian Occupation of Greece

with Paolo Fonzi

Sound Effects:

Music:

Further reading:

#036 – Political Opposition from the Ottoman Empire to Republican Turkey

with Christine Philliou

Music:

Further reading:

#035 – Ottoman Port Cities of the Modern Mediterranean

with Malte Fuhrmann

Sounds effects:

Music:

Further reading:

#034 – Being a Musician in Germany, 1850-1960

with Martin Rempe

Music:

Further reading:

#033 – How the Ottomans shaped the Modern World

with Alan Mikhail

Music:

Further reading: