Over the past year I've become very interested in the sort of Ottoman ephemera that gets put up for sale on online market places. Sometimes these materials can be great teaching materials (coins, photographs - this was the main reason I started looking), and sometimes it is simply nice to have something pretty and Ottoman. I also like to think about how non-Ottomanist collectors, especially philatelists and delitologists, appreciate the items they collect. In the case of Ottoman postcards, I can definitely see the appeal - something a little exotic, a little different. Yet, very often these postcards have been written on, and each little fragment provides us with a unique insight into the life of an inhabitant of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth century. I'm (very) slowly building a collection, but it's quite incredible how much these things sell for sometimes, not because of what is written on the postcard, but because what stamp or postal mark it has, and how rare or pleasing the image is. I'd like to share one that I had to fight for on one particular online marketplace, but it was, I think, worth the battle.
As with the other online hunters, I was drawn to this postcard by the image. As you can see, it shows a couple of cute kids, the girl in traditional clothing, and the boy in a military helmet. The girl is holding a bottle of Kupferberg champagne almost the same size as her, while the boy takes a bite of the cork end. At the bottom is the logo of the Neue Photographische Gesellschaft, a very successful German postcard company in the first half of the twentieth century. This image was charming enough, but I then noticed that the stamp affixed on the top left was an Ottoman 10 para stamp, with a postmark bearing the name بشكطاش / BECHIKTACHE. So, this card had at least been posted in the Ottoman Empire, which sealed the deal for me, and off I went a-bidding. And what a little gem this one turned out to be.
On the back was a beautifully written note dated 13 Mart 1326 (26 March 1910), that provides a rather nice insight into a sibling relationship in early twentieth century Istanbul. The postcard is addressed to 'our dear sister, the honourable Bedriye hanımefendi', whose address is given as the house of Cevahircizade Abdülkerim beyefendi on Semerci Hill in Şişli. This was a trendy part of town full of fashionable European-style apartments and cafés, a place that would become the subject of Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu's 1922 novel, Kiralık Konak (Mansion to Rent). Like Servet Bey, one of the book's main characters, it seems from this postcard that Bedriye hanımefendi was enjoying her life and the pleasures of the area away from her family. As Reina Lewis discussed in Rethinking Orientalism, Şişli gained a reputation from the 1910s as a trendy neighbourhood with its own fashions that led to the development of the idea of the 'Şişli woman', some of whom would eventually become the glamorous and cosmopolitan women of 1920s Istanbul, discussed by James Ryan in his post on Stambouline.
The postcard was sent by her brother and sister who lived in the Yenimahalle neighbourhood of nearby Beşiktaş, which I think equates to today's Cihannüma near to Yıldız Palace - also not a bad place to live in 1910.The content of their note explains why they have chosen to send their sister an alcohol-themed postcard. The tongue-in-cheek admonishment centres on the fact that Bedriye is down to the last drop of an unspecified tipple in the bottle she has on display, which led her siblings to feel the need to send her another one quickly. 'However,' the brother and sister continue, 'we don't know how you'll be able to save it from the hands of those shameless people?!!' And who were these arsızlar with whom Bedriye associated? Her rowdy friends, of course, and her active social life is the main thrust of the message; how long would this new bottle of plonk last? The siblings continued their teasing: 'If perchance it can slip past Feride hanım and the other boozers, and to make things easier if you'd consider it worth your sending us a few glasses in order for us to be able to toast your health, let's also write down our address: the doctor at the Kosovo Progressive Pharmacy in Yenimahalle, Beşiktaş.'
Hemşire-i muhterememiz,
Son dem müfarakatta irae edilen şişenin bitmeyi ihtimali bize alelacele diğer birini göndermek ihtiyacı hissettirdi; fakat bilmeyiz bu arsızlarla elinden nasıl kurtarabileceksiniz...?!!
Sıhhatınıza badenuş olabilmek üzere şayet Feride hanım ve sair ayyaşından kaçırabilir de birkaç kadeh de bize irsal lütfünda bulunmanızı teshil için adresimizi de yazalım: (Beşiktaş'ta, Yenimahalle'de Kosova Terakki Eczanesinde doktor...)
Sadık biraderiniz, sadık hemşireniz
What can we learn from this jokey little postcard? It is always nice to get a sense of individual interactions without having to go via the prism of the state or other official or organised groups. More work needs to be done on postcards as sources in the Ottoman context, not just in terms of interest in the images chosen, but the often neglected messages written on them. There must be huge numbers of these micro-texts around in markets, bookstores, attics, and, of course, online. The more we look at, the more we can make sense of the role postcards played in communication between Ottoman individuals, and what those individuals wanted to communicated.
Here, for instance, we have a private message between siblings, written without them thinking it would ever be read again or of interest to anyone outside their familial and social group. I can only guess at what Bedriye hanımefendi would think about this public airing of her private correspondence. Yet within the text, her siblings reflect upon some of the issues of the day that one finds discussed in newspapers and magazines of the period, particularly about women of a certain social class and their place in society. Articles and columns in gazettes and magazines gave a lot of space on their pages to thinking about questions of fashion, etiquette, and modesty for women in the new Constitutional era. Here, we are clearly dealing with the alafranga types who generated so much discussion by adopting European aesthetics and practices.
Bedriye's brother and sister give us a particularly light-hearted take on the issue of women and alcohol consumption. Was she a tee-totaler in a lively neighbourhood, and thus the subject of a family joke? Did she just like to enjoy a glass or two of something with her friends? Or was she really a trendy Şişlili who fully contributed to the development of her new neighbourhood's increasingly raucous reputation? We'll never know. But, this little document does tell us something about permissive attitudes towards alcohol among this class of people (as discussed back in 2002 by François Georgeon in Eugene Rogan's Outside In). She does not seem to be doing anything too scandalous; her drinking companions were all women, and their antics happened behind the closed doors of the private home. The terms used to describe Bedriye's companions – shameless people (arsızlar) and boozers (ayyaş) – were not moral accusations, but friendly jests. Bedriye's siblings were not criticising her lifestyle, but gently teasing her about it; indeed, in offering to toast her health, they shared in it. This in itself tells us something quite important about how these privileged young residents of the Ottoman capital viewed themselves and the place of women within their part of society, whether they actually drank or not. And, in their humour and slight irreverence, perhaps we can see evidence for the development of a particular form of Ottoman youth culture.
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| The Zoo in Galata: Another of my online finds, a striking postcard showing a fashionable lady posing in a Galata street as other women look on. |
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