The Circassian Sürgün, a forced deportation of Caucasian Muslims in the period following the Crimean War, represents one of the largest population transfers in history as well as one that produced a profound change in the late Ottoman Empire as well as setting into motion many of the forces that were to culminate in the Empire’s successor state, modern Turkey. It served to set the stage for a dramatic demographic reconfiguration in both Anatolia as well as in the European provinces surrounding the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. Between 1861 and 1875 the influx of refugees was so massive that by 1878 as much as 20% of the Muslim population in the lands that constitute modern Turkey were recent immigrants.^[1] These predominantly Sunni Muslim people, while not unfamiliar to the Ottomans, were not, for the most part native speakers of Turkish nor were they accustomed to submission to the Ottoman government. For the most part they arrived in a state of abject poverty, forced off their land by the Russians, robbed of their belongings in transit and denied any opportunity by the Russians to return. Despite their alien and impoverished status, these Circassians, Daghestanis, Abhaz and others were rapidly assimilated during the late Ottoman and modern Republican periods to such an extent that by 1960, Circassian languages were spoken by less than one hundred and fifty thousand people.^[2] This article will examine the Ottoman Government’s response to this wave of immigrants during the years 1860-66. Using Ottoman documents found in the Prime Minister’s Archives in Istanbul, it will explore both the nature of the demographic transformation resulting from this immigration and the transformative effect it had on Ottoman notions of identity and territory.
It is surprising that the story of the Circassian immigration is largely unknown even today. Unlike the great waves of immigrants into the United States during the latter half of the 19th century, this profoundly important immigration has been largely ignored. Part of this is no doubt due to the power of the historical and social myth machinery of the Kemalist regime during the early decades of the Republic of Turkey. In an effort to distance the Republic of Turkey from its Imperial predecessor, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and his entourage sought to erase as much of the Imperial past as possible through the substitution of nationalist myths designed to deny the diverse backgrounds of modern Turks. The pursuit of this goal involved a strict definition of the modern Republic’s borders, accompanied by the explicit declaration that Turkish power extended to those borders and no further. In doing so, history was rewritten in order to bolster “Turkish” claims to the new nation. Imperial borders and frontiers were repudiated in favor of lines of demarcation defined through a series of treaty negotiations. Non-Turkish or Turkified populations outside the borders were abandoned by the new government as were Turkish populations who declined to return during a series of population exchanges.
For the Caucasian emigrants, this process of erasing their historical memory was facilitated by their own lack of written materials and memoirs. The vast majority of the Circassians were illiterate. This was further compounded by the distance Turkish language reform has placed between modern Turkish scholars and the Ottoman world. With the substitution of a modified Latin alphabet script in the late 1920s and the wholesale purging of Persian and Arabic vocabulary, Ottoman Turkish has been removed from the general Turkish public. While this is changing, there remains an enormous historical and cultural divide between the modern Turkey and the Ottoman State. Consequently, for too long there has been an over-reliance on western sources as the prime material in the production of lat Ottoman historical research.
This study is based on material from the Ottoman archives found in the Prime Minister’s Archives in Istanbul. Specifically, it draws primarily from materials found in the ledgers (defter) of the Muhacirin Komisyonu (Emigrant Commission), established in 1860 to address the problem of this massive onslaught of humanity from the Caucasus. The defters represent the outgoing and incoming bureaucratic communications between the Commission officials in Istanbul and those assigned to the task of receiving, processing, transferring and ultimately settling the emigrants in Ottoman territory. The journal entries found in the ledgers each represent a synopsis of the issues under consideration along with a record of the disposition of the matter. They are to be found in defters 758 and 761 of Nezaret-i-Gelen ve Giden (Superintendent of Incoming and Outgoing Memoranda).^[3] The period in question corresponds to the first incarnation of the Muhacirin Komisyonu, running from 1860 until 1865 when it was abolished as an independent Commission and brought into the Meclis-i Vala (Council of Ministers)^[4]. In a number of cases, additional reference will be made to decrees or memoranda from outside ministries where they shed light on a particular issue. In particular, documents from the Council of Ministers (Meclis-i Vala) and the Interior Ministry (Dahiliye) are examined.^[5]

PRELUDE TO SÜRGÜN

Sürgün, or the forced movement of population has a long history in Asia Minor. The word in modern Turkish connotes exile or banishment. Another, older meaning has more to do with driving or pushing a population, derived from the Turkish sürmek, meaning to drive. In Byzantine times, the Emperor Michael Palaeologus was involved with the resettlement of Turks from Selcuk frontier to the Bulgarian frontier and the Dobruca region.^[6] In 1453 Fatih Sultan Mehmet or Mehmet the Conqueror, repopulated the city of Constantinople with Greeks, Armenians and Turks brought in from Anatolia.^[7] Later under Süleyman Kanuni or Süleyman the Magnificent, portions of the Empire were settled by Jews expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1492. None of these cases however comes close to matching the influx of Crimean and Caucasian Muslims as was experienced in the 19th century.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/cuthel1.jpg>

Map 1. Black Sea “Circassian” Coast. Provided by the author.

The origins of the expulsions can be traced back to the 18th century and the emergence of Russian power in the Black Sea region. After an early and abortive attempt by Peter the Great to establish Russian power in the region, Russian armies under Catherine the Great were able to make significant inroads along the Black Sea littoral. With the signing of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, the long standing and strategically vital link between the Ottoman dynasty and the Crimean Khans was effectively broken. This allowed the Russians to pursue an even more aggressive policy of divide and conquer in the region. On one front the Russians were able to reduce Crimean Tatar power in the peninsula, rendering the once mighty Giray dynasty to a vassal status. At the same time the slow grind of Romanov armies was found to the north of the Caucasus along the line of the Terek River. This line of forts running in a northwestly direction from the Caspian near Kizliar as far as Krasnodar served to cut off the Caucasus region from Muslim regions to the north such as Kazan. With the construction of the Georgian military road in 1863, which ran from the fortified town of Vladikavkaz in the north to Tiflis in the south, the Caucasus itself was effectively cut in half.^[8]
Russian plans to finish the process of reduction and subjugation of the Muslim populations were put on hold with the outbreak of the Crimean War. It should be noted that during this period British interests in the regions as well as with the Ottoman Empire had also intensified significantly. The logic or illogic of the “Great Game” took hold and brought redoubled interest by the British in the situation confronting the Muslims of the Caucasus. As for the Russians, it was clear that an unsubdued Caucasus left an unguarded flank in the push towards Central Asia. With the end of the war there came a renewed effort to bring the region under control. Russian steamships were able to effective blockade the coastline of the Black Sea while Russian armies under a series of remarkable capable but brutal officers were able to rapidly reduce the fractured and fractious tribes in the region. Only with the capable Daghestani leader Shamyl was there any organized and meaningful opposition. With his surrender on August 25th 1859 the last effective resistance was crushed and the region effectively passed into Russian control. What followed was a series events never contemplated by any of the parties involved.^[9]
In a 1970 dissertation at Harvard, Mark Pinson wrote about demographic warfare. In particular he wrote about the population exchange between the Ottomans and the Romanovs in the Dobruja region during the early part of the 19th century, culminating with a mass exodus immediately preceding the one under consideration.^[10] In that case an agreement was worked out between the governments whereby Crimean Tatars would be exchanged for Bulgarian Orthodox Christians. At this point the stated aims of both parties were quite clear. Both Empires would benefit from a cleaning up of populations within a larger border area. As such the frontier would become more manageable for both parties as the issue of mixed loyalties within regions of control would be lessened. In any event, the operation was of mixed success and principally benefited the Ottomans. The Crimeans stayed whereas the Bulgarians quickly found themselves less than thrilled in the role of Russian serfdom, prompting the return of a significant portion of the population. Nevertheless, the process took on a formalized status and general agreement on such transfers existed between the governments.
For their part, the Ottomans benefited from the importation of Turkish or Turkic speaking immigrants into frontier and other regions of the Empire. The new arrivals helped to solve a number of problems plaguing the Empire. First and foremost was the general problem of the stagnation of population growth and in certain areas, dangerous decline. Studies have shown the widespread decline in the Muslim population in much of Anatolia as well as some of the European regions dating back as much as two hundred years. The reasons are manifold but one that served as both cause and effect was the exclusion of non-Muslims from the military. Military service fell exclusively on the Muslim portion of the population. Military service was often for extended periods and took significant portions of the young male population away from home during those years when they would be starting families. As a result, the growth rates for Muslims in the Anatolian Provinces were significantly lower than those of non-Muslims. The implications of this were clear. Not only was there a decided bias towards growth among the non-Muslim portion of the population, there was also a considerable drag placed on the overall capacity for tax growth among the Muslim portion of Ottoman society as well. As such, any influx of skilled Muslim labor in the form of Crimean farmers or tradesmen was a blessing from above to the Ottoman State. Crimeans spoke a recognizable dialect of Turkish and shared long ties with the Empire, so much so that the Giray family was the heir to the Ottoman State should the house of Osman die out.
This certainly was not the case with respect to the Caucasian tribes. Ethnically and linguistically they were distinct from both Turk and Tatar. Even their relationship to Islam was different and far more recent. While they were predominantly Sunni Muslims, as were the Ottomans, they had a long standing tradition of following local. Charismatic leaders or murids, rather than following the more centralized and structured Islam of the Ottomans. Caucasian tribes presented an even greater problem of assimilation as they were predominantly pastoralists, something that was to place them in direct competition with the Turkmen tribes of Anatolia. Lastly, despite a longstanding contact between the Ottomans, the Caucasian peoples had never possessed a widespread, formal relationship with and the House of Osman nor had the Ottomans ever held claim to suzerainty over them. Circassian girls and boys had for centuries had found their way into Ottoman households and harems as slaves and some had gone on to enter the Ottoman elite, yet this indicated nothing other than a slight commercial and social contact.
With respect to slavery and social structure there is another aspect of the Caucasian tribes that bears noting at this stage. In rough terms, Caucasian societies were characterized by a rough correspondence between the region and the extent of social stratification. In the more northwestern regions, Caucasian society was more highly stratified. To this end there was the high nobility, the free class and the slave class. Slave holding and agricultural production were the key components to the maintenance of the wealthy elite. The further eastward into the Caucasus, the less stratified Caucasian society became, so much so that among the tribes of the northeastern Caucasus slave owning was virtually unknown. Village life here was more communal and social distinction less pronounced. This point is important to keep in mind, for we shall see how it shaped the Ottoman response to the immigrants to a large degree.

THE ORIGINS OF THE EMIGRANT COMMISSION

With the collapse of the last meaningful organized resistance led by the Daghestani Shamyl in 1859, the Russians embarked on a more aggressive pattern of clearing out the Caucasian Muslim population. By 1860 the Russian Government adopted a policy of removing the Muslim population to other parts of the Empire or, as Allen and Muratoff have noted to Ottoman lands.^[11] Property was seized and villagers harassed in an effort to induce greater emigration. The steady flow of emigrants from the Crimea surged in the period 1856-60 and then began to shift to emigrants from the Caucasus. As this volume of arrivals picked up, the ad hoc system of processing and settling the newcomers on a regional basis became overloaded. In response to this the Ottoman government established the Muhacirin Komisyonu or Emigrant Commission with the issuance of an Irade of Imperial decree on January 1st 1860. The Commission was given administrative control the settlement process, complete with their own staff and budget. In matters involving newly arrived emigrants as well as those awaiting settlement within Ottoman territory, the Commission was given the power to order provincial governors (Valis) as well as local military commanders, to do its bidding.
Records relating to the activities of the Commission were maintained by Commission staff in Istanbul. All incoming and outgoing traffic with the Commission was recorded in a series of ledgers or defters. As noted above, these ledgers provide us with a detailed series of requests, decrees, orders and actions taken by the government in Istanbul as well as those in the provinces. Entries in the ledgers provide a synopsis of the underlying documents received and transmitted, sometimes cursory and at other times in great detail. As such, these entries, numbering nearly three thousand, provide us with data points from which a clearer mosaic emerges. In addition to these entries by the commission, there are records from several other Ottoman bureaus, largely in the form of decrees dealing with settlement, allocation of funds or larger policy issues, which serve to furnish a clearer sense of the scope of the challenge and the Ottoman view on how it should be solved.
The first details to emerge from the records of the Commission and related departmental reports show that the initial wave of immigrants to the Ottoman Empire were comprised largely from the upper classes from the Crimea and the Caucasus. Early records deal largely with the care and settlement of a wealthy elite. Records often refer to individuals as being from the list of known names or mâlûmü’l-esâmî. Honorifics often accompany the names such as Ali Bey or Sheykh Saad as well as Haci Ahmet or Mehmet. This group represented the economic and religious elite of their regions, possessing considerable status and often able to leave with not only their families but with property as well. Access to the government was fairly easy, as may be seen in their numerous petitions for lodging, land or provisions. An example of this is found among the earliest entries in the defters where Seyyid Bey, a Crimean Tatar emir, petitioned for land from an Imperial farm in Silivri, or from the Circassian Mehmed Ağa looking to settle in the Mihalic district of Bursa with nine family members.^[12]
Keeping the elite happy was clearly important to the government and the Commission. As the upper class Crimeans and Caucasians had more or less voluntarily removed themselves from their homelands and emigrated to Ottoman lands, the Ottoman Government took this as a considerable enhancement to their prestige in their role as guardian of all Muslims. Irades of the period constantly refer to the emigrants as being “sheltered by the grace of the Sultan” (dehalet). As the European powers had exacted capitulations from the Ottomans in the past to protect Christian communities within the Ottoman Empire, so now the Ottomans were raising their status through the sheltering of Muslims outside the Empire. This sensitivity to the role as protector can only have been heightened by the failure to stem the Russian advance in the region and the reduction of the once powerful Khanate of the Crimea.
A measure of Ottoman sensitivity in promoting and maintaining their role of protector of Muslims is found in those records with regarding those who found their new situation less than ideal and voiced a desired to return to their homelands. Cases involving groups of prominent Crimeans or Circassians, settled under relatively favorable circumstances, yet still desiring to risk everything and return to Russian controlled territory, represented a potential propaganda disaster. As such, the government took an early and aggressive approach toward what we might term 19th century Ottoman damage control. In addition to cases found in a series of entries in the registers, (761/78/1 from Kastamonu, 761/78/8 from Konya) we can examine the Ottoman approach to the problem during this initial phase of the immigration in an early memorandum regarding this desire to return among a group of Nogai and Crimean Tatars.^[13] In this memo the putative cause for efforts to return arose from nothing more than ruffled feathers arising from relative status accorded to each group. In this case, the Crimeans who had preceded the Nogai into the region surrounding Tulca near the mouth of the Danube, had been granted a number of awards, titles and other perquisites. With the subsequent Nogai immigration, a number of this community felt their stature or rather former stature was being demeaned as they failed to garner equal or greater awards. The upshot was widespread disaffection, resulting in a general call among the Nogai to return. In the end, this threat to the Ottoman image of peaceable safe haven was solved by a liberal sprinkling of awards among the two communities, but not before the issue had traveled up from the Commission to the State Council of Ministers.

EARLY EFFORTS TO ESTABLISH CONTROL

The Ottoman concern with the political repercussions of possible return by the emigrants underscores the fact that in this initial period leading to 1862, there was a fair degree of fluidity in the movement between Russian and Ottoman territory, particularly for upper class emigrants. That the emigrants would even consider return to Russia suggests that the door was not as yet completely shut and that the emigrants still considered some sort of rapprochement possible. Records form the registers from this period also indicate that even for those who did not consider return as a possibility, the way was open for voyages back to the northern Black Sea region for commercial or personal interests. In an effort to quickly gain a measure of control over such movements, the Ottomans immediately confiscated any passports the emigrants might be carrying upon arrival.^[14] The recently arrived were required to apply for new, Ottoman passports and to state the purpose of their travel. These ranged from disposal of property to bringing additional members of the family or extended family back to Ottoman territory, as well as to attend to burials and estates of other family members.^[15] A particularly frequent and interesting reason for travel was the securing and importation of family servants and slaves. This last point was to present the Ottoman with a particularly difficult and vexing issue and will be discussed in greater extent below.
Another reason for maintaining strict control over the flow of people crossing the Black Sea can be seen in the Ottoman suspicion that Russians were planting agents traveling ostensibly as buyers of emigrants’ property. The curious case of one Ebolon Rançe underscores Ottoman concern with Russian intrigue and threats. In this case the subject was suspected of spying for the Russians while in Ottoman territory under the pretext of purchasing property abandoned by the emigrants. While it was difficult for the government to police individuals such as Rançe, it was certainly possible to control or at least limit the movement of emigrants once they arrived and passport confiscation was the first solution.^[16]
In regulating and controlling the emigrants, the highest priority was accorded to limiting internal movement within Ottoman territory. Once settled in a particular district, permission was required for both the elite and commoners to travel. This prevention of movement, men’-i murur was crucial to the success of the commission. Once the great waves of poorer Circassians began, it was essential that the policy be enforced. Without it supplies could not be allocated efficiently. Worse, movement exacerbated regional hardships, increased the chances of disease spreading to a wider area and promoted intra-communal conflict. As such, the records indicate this high priority felt by the Commission officials and failure to exert control was often used as the rationale for demotion or transfer of regional officials should the settlement manager not block or interdict roving bands of emigrants. A particularly notable case involving the problem of internal migrations is captured in the records pertaining to a Nogai leader Berakay Bey. In that case the group attached to him became something of a cause celebre with the Commission they traveled between Amasya and Izmit refusing entreaties to settle and ultimately incurring the wrath and punishment of the Ottomans.
Two additional initiatives adopted to establish a firmer control over the refugees, once the pace of immigration picked up, came in the form of quarantine and the systemic process to disarming those possessing weapons. For those arriving at the primary Black Sea ports of entry, Trabzon, Samsun, Varna and Kostence as well as at the head of the Bosphoros, quarantine facilities were established or improved during the first years of the 1860s.^[17] While these would be overwhelmed after 1862, they served to promote sanitary measures and regulate the flow of arrivals. To this end, the Ottomans relied on European expertise particularly from the French. The establishment of a Sanitary Commission and the aid of such individuals such as he Frenchman Clot Bey and the Italian Dr. Barozzi mark a major advance in the Ottoman effort to address the problems of cholera, typhus and plague.^[18]
With regard to weapons, the problem was generally but not always more diplomatic than dangerous. As the initial waves of Caucasian fighters were not always forced to surrender their arms to the Russians, they often arrived in Ottoman territory armed to the teeth. While this constituted a threat to both the police (zaptiye) and the regular army, the armed fighters were championed as the guardians of Muslims in the Caucasus. Once settled in Ottoman lands they could serve as destabilizing agents either through organized groups or as small scale bandits. In fact this did happened as chronicled in a memorandum regarding an insurrection of Circassians in the Inoz forest in Gelibolu in 1864, which required a levy of 250 men to suppress.^[19] At other times armed bands took to small scale banditry as in the case of a small band of Circassian in the Ankara region.^[20] In general however, the difficulties associated with disarming new arrivals were fairly limited. The great waves beginning in 1862 were by and large disarmed by the Russians at the ports of embarkation, thereby largely limiting armed new arrivals to those traveling in small bands overland and evading the major checkpoints at the frontier.

OTTOMAN PROPAGANDA AND MEASURES OF CONTROL

While the Ottoman Government was concerned with the negative aspects of the emigrants’ behavior, it also sought to capitalize on those aspects deemed casting the empire in a positive light. To this effect, villages where the local residents extended aid and comfort to newly arrived refugees were commended. Broadcasts were sent to the Ottoman papers regarding provisions, homes and other forms of aid extended by locals and the government in an effort to win support both in the capital and beyond.^[21] The government also encouraged such eleemosynary behavior by announcing aid extended to the emigrants in conjunction with indemnification provided to the inhabitants as a reward.^[22] Of particular interest was the Ottoman Government’s desire to present this generosity as something arising not only from the Muslim community, but transcending confessional lines as well. As can be seen in the entry regarding the aid donated by the residents of Zağra-i-atık kaza or village, the letter praising the villagers explicitly mentions the multi-confessional community who provided aid given in the construction of homes for the newly arrived emigrants.^[23]
This and other information, making it way into the Ottoman and European presses was to bear considerable fruit, especially in the following years when it counted the most. Bringing the plight of the Caucasian refugees to the attention of the British public paid off in the donation of money and materials not only from the government but from private subscriptions as well. To a lesser extent the American community in Turkey was able to raise funds for the refugees both locally and from benefactors in the United States.^[24] In both cases however, aid came not only in terms of money but in political capital as well. The plight of the emigrants served the purpose of maintaining British and American political support in the world arena. This served, in part, to offset inroads made in the capitals of Western Europe by the nationalist forces in Greece and the Balkans as well as confirming Western suspicions of Russian aspirations to the Straits as well as Central Asia.
Another aspect of the Ottoman desire to accommodate the needs and claims of the notable class, and to a lesser extent the subsequent wave of indigents, is evidenced in the efforts made at the state level dealing with Russia, as well as the willingness on an individual level, to address difficulties or losses experienced by emigrants in transit. In the former case, the records show cooperation between the Russians and Ottomans in the regulation of the flow of emigrants both across the Black Sea as well as the northeastern frontier.^[25] For those who experienced theft or loss during transit, the Commission and other records show an effort to compensate notables for their losses.^[26] For their part, the Ottomans were fairly liberal in their approach to notables from the list of names returning to Russia to conclude any unfinished business they might have, as long as they felt permanent return was not at risk.^[27]
It should be noted that at this stage that the pace of immigration was still fairly steady and controllable. As noted above, the majority of the immigrants benefiting from Ottoman attention came from the upper strata of Crimean and Caucasian society. The settlement pattern followed during this period also reflects this reality. Early emigrants were, for the most part settled not in central Anatolia or deep in the Balkans but primarily in north and western Anatolia and the eastern Thrace and along the western Black Sea. As such the early emigrants found themselves largely in Trabzon, Biga, Hudavendigar provinces as well as the Dobruca and Thrace. For those especially favored among the emigrants, Istanbul or the immediate region surrounding it were chosen as a reward.
The composition of this last group of most favored emigrants was not simply composed of the wealthiest members found among the list of names. While wealth and political status was accorded it privileges, the Ottoman government attached preferential status to others as well. In particular, they were members of the ulema and those from the classes of skilled tradesmen. For the former, great importance was attached to the settlement of religious scholars among the medresses of Istanbul, Bursa and Edirne. This included not just members of the ulema but leaders from Sufi orders such as Buharali Haci Şakır of the Nakshbandis or Karabağı-zade Seyyid Hacı Ahmet.^[28]
In a more utilitarian vein, we can observe the preferential treatment accorded and the priority assigned by the Ottomans to those with particular job skills. In this category we have two major groups. The first was by far the largest and was comprised of those with experience in farming. One of the great problems in the late Ottoman Empire, as has been noted above was the general decline of the rural and, by extension, the agrarian portion of the population, most notably Muslim farmers. Large imperial farm holdings as well as privately owned large farms had undergone an extended period of decline and stagnation, not only in Anatolia but in Thrace as well. To the Ottomans, new and capable farmers, in particular Crimeans represented a potential means of reviving the basis of the economy. The records of the period leading to 1862 provide an extensive list of land grants to the Crimeans (1200 farms in Velimşe alone), as well as a prescribed period of tax holidays and allocation of resources. As a general rule, new farmers were granted a three year tax holiday as well as the assignment of oxen, seed and tools.^[29] This early process of establishing farmers on abandoned, imperial or waqf landholdings initially was concentrated in the Marmara region provinces as well as Thrace and the European black Sea littoral much in the same way as was the settlement of notable families. Often this was no coincidence but marked the wholesale transfer of a Crimean or other grandee from his now Russian dominions to an Ottoman one.
A second, non-elite group receiving priority consisted of tradesmen possessing special skills. For the government and the commission, priority was given to identifying these people upon entry into Ottoman lands and immediately shunting them to urban areas, primarily the capital. This was explicitly spelled out to the commission in a memorandum from the Ministry of the Interior.^[30] Subsequent waves of immigrants would be interviewed when possible and those classified as having skills in need at the time would be sent on to Istanbul. Members of this group might possess considerable skill levels such as doctors or engineers or might be skilled in trades such as cabinet making or cutlery.^[31]
Perhaps the most important effort to control and integrate the new arrivals within an Ottoman Muslim context was that of mosque contraction, staffing and religious education. The Commission records make it clear that the government was not only content with its traditional duty of ensuring safe passage to Mecca for those undertaking the haj, they were actively concerned in the maintenance an orthodoxy of those Muslims recently arrived in Ottoman territory. During the initial wave of elite Circassians special care was given to the settlement of religious scholars. This took the form of appointments for scholars to religious schools as well as direct employment for religious official either in Istanbul of in regional mosques.^[32] This generosity was even extended to those representing dervish communities, presaging perhaps the relationship between the government and dervish orders that was to occur during the reign of Abdul Hamid II.^[33] On this last matter, it should be noted that the relationship between the Ottomans and newly arrived members of dervish orders or tarikatlar, was tinged by elements of suspicion from the outset. Records indicate that newly arrived dervish leaders were interrogated and detained before being sent on the settlement areas. In addition, their movements were closely monitored.^[34]
The mainstay of this program was the massive effort to construct mosques (cami) and religious schools (medresses) among the newly settled. Once a community had been established, funds were provided for both the construction and the hiring of personnel. These were usually religious leaders (imams) for the mosque and low level clerics (hocas) for the school, taken from among members of the community. In doing so, the government was able to both provide subsistence for the community leadership as well as bring them under control. As the later bands of poorer arrivals were often lead by these individuals, the system enjoyed the benefits of co-opting a leadership already in place. The importance the Ottomans assigned to this process is underscored by the fact that mosque and school construction trails only housing in number of entries throughout the records.

THE FLOODGATES OPEN

By the middle of 1863 the Commission registers present a picture of an organization developing its bureaucratic routines and procedures and directing traffic involving an array of issues. New arrivals were increasingly shunted to the Anatolian provinces, in particular portions of Sivas, Canik and Diyarbakir.^[35] The earlier wave of Crimeans from the period 1860-61 are to be seen in the process of settling down on farms for the most part in the European provinces of Thrace and what is now Bulgaria and the Romanian coast. The most serious problems in the Anatolian provinces involve social frictions between arriving Nogai and Circassians with the Avşar tribe of Turkomens in the Uzunyayla region as well as small scale brigandage on the part of Circassians.^[36] Aziziye sanjak sent in reports regarding poverty stricken emigrants.^[37] Much of the bureaucratic traffic at this stage involved reuniting families, the building and staffing of mosques and the allocation of personnel and money to construct more permanent housing. A network of medical and quarantine staff that had been gathered and assigned to the field.^[38] Then the roof fell in.
In the late fall and winter of 1863, the Russian government decided to increase the rate of forced emigration of Caucasian Muslims. Refugees were herded to the docks along the northern Black Sea and sent with only minimal amounts of food and clothing across to Samsun and Trabzon. While the Ottomans had been alerted that they might expect a large influx, nothing could prepare them for the wave that swamped all their resources in little time. As quickly as emigrants could be sent from the docks, onward to the interior, more arrived. On December 12, 1863 an entry in the Commission’s outgoing defter underscores the chaos, canvassing all the provinces for any housing and provision. Trabzon was choked with new arrivals, as were the suburbs. All Rumelian and Anatolian offices were to be alerted.^[39] The conditions deteriorated quickly. Reports of destitute refugees, wandering about starved and naked flowed from Amasya, Bozok and Sivas.^[40]
By January and February of 1864 the numbers of emigrants at the docks in Samsun and Trabzon had grown to such an extent that smallpox, cholera and typhus had carried away nearly one thousand refugees in Trabzon alone.^[41] By early February, the British consul in Trabzon, Francis A. Stevens, estimated that in the past two months 2700 had succumbed to disease and that 2500 a week were arriving with another 40-50 thousand expected to arrive shortly.^[42]
For its part, the Commission was faced with a nightmare of gigantic proportions. The process of an orderly settlement in Anatolia along the line extending from Kars to Sivas and southward to Konya was breaking down as the under funded and hurried transfer of Circassians provoked additional attacks from the Avşar Turkmens, causing panic stricken refugees to flow northward back to Samsun.^[43] This wave of Abhazians threatened to swamp the entire systems and desperate appeals were made to the provincial centers of Konya, Kastamonu, Kocaeli, and Tolci as to their capacity to absorb new emigrants.^[44] The crisis was so severe that the Commission considered the possibility of sending emigrants as far as Libya. (761/80/148) Also in a departure from the recent focus in the repopulation of the East, the Rumelian Provinces were canvassed as to their capacity to absorb additional refugees. (761/80/170) With the system overloaded, the Commission was faced with the simultaneous problem of clearing the ports and provisioning both new arrivals and those recently settled, all the while keeping them from wandering about, all the while addressing a growing epidemic among those in the Black Sea ports. There, the cold weather and the already weakened condition of the emigrants was taking an ever greater toll.
By mid-February 3000 Circassians has died in Trabzon alone. Added to this were another 500 including Tatars, Greeks as well as Europeans. The Commissions newspaper broadcasts were paying off however as European doctors were arriving to help with the quarantine.^[45] By mid-March the situation was beginning to improve somewhat as a massive program led by Emin Pasha in Trabzon to clear the dock began to show signs of success. Additional steamships were chartered as well as the emergency provision of additional housing.^[46] Ankara alone readied 1000 homes for the Abhaz in Bozok.^[47] Nevertheless, the situation remained grim. The dead were found floating in public fountains and at times the mortality rate reached 60 a day.^[48] An Italian, Dr. Barozzi took charge of the quarantine and closed the port to further traffic during the second week in March.^[49] As if to symbolize the year’s disastrous nature, the last entries of the Muslim year 1280 dealt with the sending of 2000 burial shrouds to Trabzon.
1281 (1864-65) opened with still further indications as to the magnitude of the influx. While many of those landed in late 1863 and 1864 had been cleared from the port and either moved inland to Sivas or westward to Varna, many were now in ports a short distance from Trabzon. Questions were raised as to the mortality rates among the 33,693 sent from Trabzon to Varna.^[50] Akçakal, near Trabzon still had 5000 awaiting tranfer at its piers as well as 80,000 at Soğucak and Toçarli.^[51] As the weather improved, the logistical backlog began to lift. Ships were brought in from the Imperial shipyards in Istanbul as well as placed on charter from Turkish as well as foreign lines.^[52] Those reshipped from the Trabzon region were sent primarily to Samsun, Constanta, Izmid and Varna. At the same, time efforts were made to control the flow of private boats bringing additional refugees into the region. A general prohibition of sailing vessels was put into force in the Trabzon region.
Better weather also allowed large shipments of clothing and food to arrive. Aid also came in the from of additional donations from Western Europe and the United States. As has been noted earlier, foreign aid was noted and publication broadcast sent to the Ottoman papers.^[53] Housing was secured and made available to new settlers. Sivas alone provided 10,000 units in the beginning of the year. Another source of housing in the immediate region also became available. These were the homes of Pontic Greek families who had been encouraged in the preceeding year to migrate to those areas in the Caucasus recently depopulated by the Russian Army.^[54] Abandoned towns and villages of regions were repopulated with Circassians, repeating the Bulgarian/Tatar exchanges of a decade earlier. As the urgency of the winter/spring crisis began to ease, the haphazard settlement policies of the preceding year began to take on a more deliberate and considered form. While there were undoubtably practical considerations to be made as to the absorptive capacity of a particular region in the short term, longer term designs clearly involved a reformulation of the population makeup in three areas critical to the longer term security of the Empire.
The first has already been referred to in the context of the northwestern borderlands along the Black Sea. This was the region to the south of the Danube, which intitially was repopulated with Crimean and Nogai Tatars and to a lesser extent by the first emigrants from the Caucasus.^[55] While early immigrants had been placed in the Dobruja region along the Black Sea littoral, later immigrants were located further inland along the line of the Danube. Regions such as Silistre accounted for much of the later arrivals. Others in the wave of 1863-1865 were moved into Islimiye, Edirne and Siroz, south of the Balkan line. Of this group, many were Tatar who continued to emigrate under pressure from the Russians or who wished to join family already established in the region.
The second region was that guarding the Dardenelles and toward Istanbul surrounding the Sea of Marmara. Included in this region were the Tekfurdag district of the Vilayet of Edirne where large numbers of Circassians were settled during the early years. Along with Crimean Tatars, the Circassians of the region were favored with a mild climate and extensive grants of Imperial farmlands. The pattern of settlement in the region would typically follow the granting of substantial acreage to a headman and his group. Personal status of these leaders ranged from hocas, or minor religious officials who had managed to hold their group together during the period of transit, to magnates who brought with them not only their entourages and families but slaves as well. This group, primarily of Circassians but also Crimeans and later some Dagestanis was also settled along the Asian side in Biga, Karesi and other sanjaks in the Vilayet of Hudavendigar.^[56]
That these two regions were the focus of a deliberate plan for repopulation is no surprise. Greek and Serbian nationalist feelings had been translated into both de jure and de facto losses of territory in the Balkans during the last century. Pan-Slavist and Slavophile groups in conjunction with the Greek independence movement represented the most pressing threat to the Ottomans. The Russians made no attempt to conceal their aims of conquest and the retaking of Constantinople. Beyond the commercial and stategic considerations lay the recovery of the Byzantine capital, the wellspring of Orthodox Christianity. To see that this was central to the Romanov Emperor one need only remember their mantra of Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Nationality. The Ottomans did not need to read between the lines to apprehend the message.
All of this underscores the logic behind the settlement of Crimean and Caucasian Muslims along the European frontiers and in certain strategic regions surrounding the capital. It does however beg the questions as to why subsequently, so much effort was made to settle the emigrants in a broad band in eastern Anatolia. At first blush, the simple expediency of the situation seems to fully account for this settlement. The regions’s population had been in decline for centuries. Moreover, the Muslim portion of the poplation had experienced a relatively greater decline for reasons stated above. As a result there was ample farmland and pastureage in the region to accomodate a large influx. At the same time, the region offered an opportunity to settle a large number of refugees without creating significant social frictions as was the case in the Rumelian Provinces in particular.^[57] Further relocation of emigrants might have simply overloaded the capacities to absorb them, leading to a full blown crisis. In fact, this did occur in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of war in 1876. At that time, several years of poor harvests led to increased marauding by indigent newcomers, which in turn provoked ever greater retaliation from the Christians. This culminated in a massacre of Bulgarian Christians in 1875 in the village of Batak Köy, most likely at the hands of Circassian irregulars known as Başı Bozuks (broken heads). These events were seized upon by the western press, which in turn lead to the British Government’s inquiry under Palmerston into the “Bulgarian Horrors”, further encouraging the Russians to exploit the situation.
The logic attendent in the eastern settlements was therefore obvious. Nevertheless, an examination of its application serves to underscore a deeper and longer lasting intent, namely the creation of an Anatolian buffer zone, designed to protect and strengthen the Turkish Anatolian heartland. The zone extending north and westward from Aleppo in the east and as far west as Konya in the southern portion with Kars in the northeast to Trabzon in the northwest became the strategic for this and subsequent waves of settlers.^[58] A cursory exam of this zone reveals a great deal, more perhaps by where it was not than by where it was. First, with the exception of the southeasternmost portion, the resettlement zone did not include and area of significant Arab populations. The celebrated Circassian of Jordan aside, the vast majority of these people were sent to either Anatolian or Rumelian provinces. There are virtually no records of an systematic efforts made to settle Caucasian peoples in either Egypt, Palestine or Iraq.^[59] In addition, there is little indication of heavy settlement in predominantly Kurdish areas. While settlement in virtually any portion of eastern Anatolia would inevitably place the new arrivals among Kurdish populations, to a great extent settlement was limited to areas of lesser Kurdish concentration. In areas of traditional Kurdish concentrations such as Diyarbakir, settlement was restricted to lands that had been long left fallow or had been abandoned altogether.^[60] This becomes even clearer when one reviews the areas of greatest concentration of new arrivals.^[61] This inner band of resettlement extends from the Uzunyayla region to the northwest of Adana and follows an arc terminating in the region of Tokat and Amasya which lies south of Samsun. With a logic extending back to Byzantine times, the Ottomans were once again constructing the border marches of a greatly reduced empire.^[62]
That the resettlement reflected a goal of regional pacification and control, is further underscored in its absence from areas of significant Armenian density. With the exception of the Harput region where there is evidence of light settlement, the is little or no evidence that the Commission intended to intersperse significant numbers of emigrants in areas where Armenians were numerically predominant. Indeed, the notion of population exchange in the region does not seem to enter into the Commission members thinking. Apart from the settlement of emigrants in recently abandoned homes and farms of Pontic Greeks, there does not appear to be any examples of the occupation of emigrants in non-Muslim or Kurdish areas.^[63] Instead, the records show a pattern of the heaviest settlement directed to the Amasya-Sivas-Uzunyayla band followed by settlements in the Kars-Erzerum region and the areas surrounding Konya. This pattern, taken together with the settlements in the Marmara region and Tuna and Edirne vilayets confirms, the primacy of stategic concerns in the Ottoman response to the emigrants. Once settled, the emigrants could be counted on for agricultural production on either abandoned or largely underutilized farmland. For this purpose oxen, seeds and tools were provided as well as housing. In return for a three year tax holiday, the emigrants were expected to largely fend for themselves. Once this initial period came to an end the Ottoman Treasury hoped to recoup a portion of its investment. In reality, this was not to be the case for some time as drought induced periodic famine as well as a series of logistical problems caused the process to drag on.
There was however a fairly immediate benefit presented by the Circassians, especially among those settled in the eastern provinces. This came in the form of a large and willing group of military conscripts. Despite the hardships associated with life in the Turkish Army and a general twenty-five year exemption from military service offered to the emigrants, large numbers of Circassian men volunteered for military service.^[64] Circassians volunteered for regular army positions, reserve units or served as regional and local police officers. Of even greater benefit to the Ottomans was the enlistment of battle-hardened officers either from the resistance movements in the Caucasus or from the Russian army as well.^[65]

THE QUESTION OF NUMBERS

This importance of the influx of refugees and the subsequent efficacy of Ottoman intent must, in the final analysis turn in large part on the order of magnitude of refugees. Real strategic policy clearly demands real quantities of people. For the Ottomans to have settled 50 or 100 thousand in Anatolia would have constituted a mere drop in the bucket with respect to the already resident population and would thoroughly undercut the argument of this paper. For this purpose let us briefly review some of the numbers available. First and foremost were the figures provided by the Ottoman census of 1831. This was commissioned by Sultan Mahmut II in an effort to ascertain the male Muslim population, largely for military purposes.^[66] In 1844 an extensive survey was undertaken by Jean Henri Abdolomyne Ubicini, which included both Rumelian and Anatolian provinces as well as one by the European A. Ritter zur Helle von Samo in 1872 for Europe and 1874 for Asia.^[67] Lastly there was a general census taken by the Ottomans in 1881/2, which reflected a somewhat confusing melange of an aborted census of 1877/78 whose release was delayed due to the war and also had to deal with the subsequent loss of territory in the Balkans and eastern Anatolia.^[68] Additional materials relating to this subject can be found in individual yearbooks (Salnames) for the provinces as well as regional population reports from the British Foreign Office. The problem has long been one of reconciling these diverse sources in order to provide some semblance of clarity.

<img src=http://abimperio.net/pics/cuthel2.jpg>

Map 2. The settlement of Caucasian migrants in Turkey. Provided by the author.

For his part, Karpat estimates that 1.8 million Tatars arrived as well as 1.5 million Circassians. When taken in comparison with the 1893 census figure of 12.2 million Muslims within the Empire, the true impact of the arrivals becomes clear. İn earlier research using implied growth rates, I found the lower range for the number of emigrants to be 1 million. This number however, did not include those Tatars and Circassians “trapped” behind the post 1878 borders. To further corroborate these numbers, the provinces with the greatest rates of in-migration bear out the data from the Commission and Census alike. Provinces such as Biga, Hudavendigar and Konya showed significantly higher rates of Muslim population growth. In a Foreign Office’s Report on on the Provinces of Trabzon, Sivas, Kastamonu and Part of Angora of late 1867 there were 440,000 Circassians in Sivas Province alone.^[69]
Finally there are the numbers provided by the records of the Commission itself. For the years 1860-1866 alone the combined entries detailing families and individuals suggests at least 300 thousand.and perhaps double that amount. The problems faced in ascertaining a more exact number include double counting smaller groups as they are tranferred from place to place as well as the general Ottoman inability to deal with those periodic onslaughts of tens of thousands of refugees. While there are very detailed reports of smaller groups of anywhere from a dozen to several hundred, including names of group leaders, dependents and places of origin, the large bursts or waves that periodically swamped Trabzon, Kostence and Samsun as well as a handful of secondary ports left records providing estimates of the total influx. Additionally, there is an almost complete silence regarding refugee volume on the land frontier in the eastern Black Sea region. That the eastern frontier was an active entry point is confirmed by the ledger entries and, in other cases by special reports, yet there is a relative paucity of of detail with repect to the overall volume of traffic.^[70] An additional source of information regarding overall population involves outlay for the construction of housing. As housing was initially allotted to individual families with an everage famil size of seven, it is relatively easy to work up a rough estimate of the size of newly arrived emmigrants during this period. Unfortunately this only serves as a base figure as it misses those settled in abandoned buildings and ignores the fact that families were often doubled up in houses with populations approaching twenty.^[71]

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

What we are left with is a picture of massive social disruption followed by an equally massive attempt to settle and socialize a liguistically alien but recognizeable Muslim people within a rapidly changing Ottoman political landscape. The period 1860-1866 represents only the second of several waves of immigrants yet through the registers of the Emigrant Commission we can appreciate not only the Ottoman effort to cope with a largely unregulated influx of refugees whose size threatened to swamp the Black Sea ports and to spread disease and death throughout the region. We can also apprehend a shift in in Ottoman stategic thinking and perhaps longer term aspirations. Unlike the earlier wave of Circassian and Tatar refugees who were used as pawns in what Mark Pinson labelled “demographic warfare”, there is a subtle difference to be found in this second wave.The wave described by Pinson settled and guarded an external frontier, the frontier threaten by the Russians and their Slavic allies, which was the initial focus of Ottoman countermeasures. In this second case, the frontier had no external state threatening Ottoman lands with the exception of the extreme northeast. Instead it was a cultural frontier. On the one side there is the Turkic Anatolian heartland. On the other, there is the land of Kurds, Armenians and Arabs. For the Ottomans, the refugees represented the raw material employed in the reinforcement of the eastern flank of the Anatolian heartland. As discussed above, there were significant economic benefits to be attained in the recultivation of lands long underutilized. Entire regions were reinvigorated by their farming activity and the registers indicate that in some cases taxes produced regional surpluses, a rare success in late Ottoman fiscal accounts.^[72] Yet the pattern of settlement for all practical purposes avoided those territories where Kurds, Arab and Armenians were in the majority. The vast majority of the Anatolian immigrants settled in a clearly defined zone. Keeping social friction to a minimum was certainly a goal, the records provide extensive coverage supporting the importance attached to blending or harmonizing (imtizac).
Neither simple economic considerations nor desires to avoid social conflict can account for the direction the Commission adopted in the settlement of the Circassians. Instead the deliberate agenda of the Ottoman government may be traced in both the choice of settlement locations and in the policies of control and socialization that were adopted. Once the Balkan and Thracian frontiers had been fortified as well as the region surrounding the Straits, the process of rebuilding eastern Anatolia began. This process, once started, was to continue for the next twenty years as the stream of emigrants from the Caucasus was to continue. Later waves were to include Daghestanis and Chechens in larger numbers, reflecting the continued Russian success in the region. Still later, large waves of Turks and Caucasians were to flow into the region in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the War of Independence in the second and third decades of the 20th century. This redefinition of the geographic center of gravity for the late Ottoman and modern Turkish states was best acknowledged in the choice of Ankara as the new Turkish capital in 1923 by Ataturk. In doing so, he not only drew attention to the primacy of Anatolia as the heartland of modern Turkey, he formalized the process of creating the modern Turkish citizen. Yet without this massive wave of 19th century emigrants from the foreign lands north of the Black Sea, it is doubtful such an endevour would have been as successful as the Kemalist vision has proved to be.