Ottoman Pronatalism in Printed
Sources in Late Nineteenth Century
iletiim : arat›rmalar› • © 2014 • 12(2): 13-40 Gülhan Balsoy
Abstract
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Ottoman pronatalism and issues related to midwifery, pregnancy, and abortion increasingly made their appearance in to Ottoman publishing. Books and journal and newspaper articles advocating directly and indirectly pronatalist ideals gained prominence as the Ottoman print culture developed and started to target popular audience beside the elites. The normative literature played an important function to popularize pronatalist ideals as well as medical knowledge. In this article, I will handle a largely ignored topic and present some examples to the ways issues related to midwifery, abortion and pregnancy made their appearance into Ottoman printed media. Through those examples, I will try to identify some of the main characteristics of nineteenth century pronatalism. The examination of pronatalist debates in printed sources will contribute to the analysis of Ottoman media and counter politics by adding a gendered aspect to it.
Keywords: Ottoman print culture, Advice books, Pronatalism, Population policies. Geç Osmanlı Döneminde Basılı Kaynaklarda Osmanlı Pronatalizmi Özet
On dokuzuncu yüzyılın ikinci yarısında Osmanlı doğum ve nüfus politikalarına ilişkin yazı ve görüşler matbu kaynaklarda da daha fazla tartışılmaya başlandı. Osmanlı matbu kültürü gelişip basılı yayın sayısı arttıkça doğrudan ya da dolaylı olarak pronatalist fikirleri konu edinen kitap, gazete ve dergi yazıları da çoğaldı. Nüfus artışını özendirmeyi amaçlayan bu fikirler, dönemin önemli türlerinden biri olan nasihat kitaplarında da yer aldı. Bu makale şimdiye kadar büyük ölçüde incelenmeden bırakılmış bir konuyu ele alıp geç Osmanlı matbu kaynaklarındaki pronatalist fikirleri değerlendirecektir. Bu kaynaklar aracılığıyla doğum politikalarının görünürleşmesinin ve sıradan okurlarla buluşmasının etkilerini sorgulayacaktır. Gazete, dergi, nasihat kitapları, roman ve tiyatro eserleri gibi matbu kaynakların nüfus ve doğum politikaları açısından incelenmesi Osmanlı matbuat kültürünü toplumsal cinsiyet perspektifinden değerlendirmeyi ve henüz yeni ilgi çekmekte olan bu alana katkıda bulunmayı amaçlamaktadır.
Anahtar kelimeler: Osmanlı matbuat kültürü, Nasihat kitapları, Pronatalizm, Doğum ve nüfus politikaları.
Today most of the recent scholarship agree that the announcement of the Tanzimat Rescript in 1839 and its promise to reconstitute the judicial system, to eliminate the intermediaries between the sultan and Ottoman subjects, and the principle of equality before the law regardless of faith or social status were the symbols of a process of redefinition of the state-society relationship. Some works also argue that those changes permitted the emergence of public space as a ground for political debate and activity, despite its limited scope, and the relatively low level of participation in it (Frierson, 1995; Kırlı, 2000; Kırlı, 2004; Özbek, 2002; Özbek, 2007; Turna, 2008; Akşit, 2010; Özbay, 2010). Printed sources and the debates taking place in them constituted an important venue of this newly developing public space. Although the real breakthrough in print culture came with 1908 Young Turk Revolution, with the rise in literacy during the reign of Abdülhamid II, printed sources flourished both in number and variety through the course of the nineteenth century. Moreover, a newspaper culture also emerged in this period (Karagöz-Kızılca, 2013). Reproduction, female sexuality, and pronatalism were important topics of public discussion in those newly emerging printed media (Schick, 2011).
In this article, I will present some samples of printed sources on Ottoman pronatalism. I will handle printed journals and newspapers, advice books, and popular fiction as the major venues where pronatalist debates and ideas were represented. At the beginning, however, I should mention that my aim is not to cover extensively the debates in Ottoman journals and newspapers as well as the other printed genres,
Ottoman Pronatalism in Printed Sources
in Late Nineteenth Century
but I rather try to present a sample of the different printed sources where pronatalist debates were reconstructed and shaped. The examples I give below should be taken as representative of the broader discussion on reproductive politics in late nineteenth century.
Before starting, I want to clarify what I mean with the term Ottoman pronatalism.1 From mid to late nineteenth century, population
started to attract mounting attention as a crucial national resource, while, at the same time, the Ottoman state was being deprived of drastic amounts of population due to territorial losses, nationalist rebellions and the formation of independent states, vast migration movements, and epidemics (Karpat, 1985). Politicians, scientists, intellectuals, and medical doctors agreed that population was a crucial asset of national wealth and a precondition for prosperity and progress. They sought ways to hinder the factors that led to the decrease of population and initiated policies to promote its further increase.2 However, the concern about population was not merely a
matter of numbers, but its composition, control, regulation, and surveillance were at the core of the new functions of the “modern state.”
I argue that Ottoman pronatalism was formulated through three registers: The medicalization of childbirth and the professionalization of midwifery; bans on abortion; and the medicalization of pregnancy and the discipline of the female body. In order to decrease maternal mortality rates, Ottoman medical and bureaucratic elites sought ways
to improve the medical standards of childbirth in the second half of the nineteenth century. Transformation and enhancement of the practices of childbirth brought the education and licensing of midwives, who were the prime agents assisting women during childbirth in the Ottoman society. Male midwives and obstetricians were also educated and trained first in Europe and then on Ottoman lands. The use of new medical technologies such as forceps, and the opening of a maternity hospital were also some of the other means through which the medical standards at childbirths were improved.
The policies and discourses to ban abortion was the second major venue of Ottoman pronatalism. While the Ottoman authorities were trying to implement policies to improve health standards at childbirth, they also sought ways to decrease abortions, which they saw as the main means of birth control among Muslim women of the empire and hence the main reason of population decrease. However, Ottoman authorities did more than complaining about the practice of abortion and besides criminalizing it by legal measures, the Ottoman authorities developed social policies to discourage abortion, such as offering financial aid to families to raise children. An anti-abortion campaign which stretched over a few decades was carried out on discursive, legal and everyday policy levels.
In the period I investigate, health care during pregnancy also received the attention of medical doctors. They maintained that a healthy pregnancy was the precondition of having a secure childbirth and raising healthy children. In order to draw wider attention to the importance of proper health care during gestation, they expressed their ideas by publishing advice books targeting pregnant women. The prescriptive literature on pregnancy conceptualized this important female experience as a medical event that should be checked and controlled by the experts.
Below, I will present some examples to the ways issues related to midwifery, abortion and pregnancy made their appearance into Ottoman printed media. Through those examples, I will try to identify some of the main characteristics of nineteenth century pronatalism.
The analysis of pronatalist pieces in printed sources also offers the opportunity to discuss how women were portrayed by the pronatalist writers. Thus, the examination of pronatalist debates in printed sources will contribute to the analysis of Ottoman media and counter politics by adding a gendered aspect to it.
Journals and Newspapers
One of the main venues where Ottoman pronatalism was constructed and debated was the journals and newspapers. As in some other topics, Namık Kemal was one of the first writers advocating pronatalist ideas in printed press. Namık Kemal has written several articles on population and he was one of the most ardent opponents of abortion.3 He saw population as a crucial national asset and
precondition of economic wealth and international power.4 Besides his
article where he expressed his views on population in general he also wrote specifically on abortion.
Ottoman policies targeting to discourage women to have abortions and encouraging them to give births to larger number of children were defined through the axis of debauchery (safahat) versus poverty (sefalet). According to this dichotomous view, some women had abortions in order to avoid the burdens of raising children while others were forced to terminate their pregnancies because of poverty. The first type of women was threatened with the punishments of afterlife, whereas the second type of women was situated within family. Financial help was offered to those families who had more than seven and later more than four children no matter how irregular those payments were (Balsoy, 2013).
However, Namık Kemal was not only critical about those women who avoid having children due to their debauchery, but he also disapproved of those women who practice abortion due to their poverty. He criticizes that the very same women who cry for years and years for a baby they lost after three days of life do not hesitate or feel any guilt for ruining the fruit of their own lives that they have fed deep inside and before seeing her rosy face even once. Maybe the most
stringent opposition to the practice of abortion is raised with his question, “Why does a mother, who does not hesitate to kill the innocent in her womb, avoid eating her children just like a cat after they were born?” Indeed, Namık Kemal uses a very harsh vocabulary to describe the experiences of women who terminate their pregnancies. He compares women who terminate their pregnancies with snakes and scorpions and concludes that they are worse than such creatures. Moreover, he claims that those women cannot be believers since they do not fear God or the prophet. As such, he also opens female nature to discussion. But it is not only women who are the targets of his harsh criticisms but some men also have their shares. Namık Kemal mentions that in Ottoman society there were also men who impregnate their female slaves (cariye) and then kills both the slave and the child.
A similar point of view that lamented abortion and took it as a chance to question women’s nature was penned by Ahmet Rasim and published in Servet-i Fünun.5 Ahmet Rasim’s account is significant for
not limiting the abortion practice to the “debauchery” and “poverty” dichotomy, and for questioning whether there is a female nature or anything essential about femininity. His account starts with a description of quite an early morning. The wilderness and harshness of the nature that he describes is torn down with a women’s scream. This is the scream of a woman who is trying to abort her baby. Ahmet Rasim contemplates that the woman is aborting the baby that she has been feeding deep inside her uterus for the last two months. He argues that a mother, who tries to imagine for just one second the future awaiting the child, would not be able to commit this murderous act. He believes that women commit this crime because they are incapable of evaluating the consequences of this terrible practice. According to him those women who practice abortion also fail to grasp the rights of the father over the child and the harms such a murder would give to humanity.6
One of the contemporary positivist journals, Mecmua-i Fünun (Journal of Sciences) sporadically devoted its pages to medicine.7 In its
December 1866 issue the doctor Kırımlızade Aziz İdris Bey wrote a piece on abortion and its harms.8 Doctor Aziz was a military physician
important role in the struggle to make Turkish rather than French the official language of instruction of medicine. As such, he took part in the establishment of the Imperial Faculty of Medicine (Mekteb-i
Tıbbiye-i Mülkiye) and became its first director (Süreyya Bey, 1996: 345).
He was also one of the defenders of contemporary pronatalist views. In his article, he reasserted that the grandeur and the glory of a country depended on the abundance of its population. According to doctor Aziz, contributing to population increase was the duty and responsibility of every individual. Spending effort in this purpose would bring even more prosperity and power than conquering other countries. Along these lines, Aziz gave a prominent place to abortion and reported in detail about the harms and methods of abortion.9
In this article, doctor Aziz explicitly demonstrated that he was specifically worried about the fate of the “Muslim” population rather than the protection of extant demographic composition. According to the doctor, it was “Muslim” women who frequently practiced abortion, and hence it was the Muslim population that declined. He lamented that since non-Muslim women did not practice abortion, the population of non-Muslim communities were not decreasing but were, on the contrary, increasing. To underline his concerns about the depopulation risk of the Muslims, Aziz also remonstrated that military duty was only performed by the Muslim population, and hence led to further loss of Muslim lives during the times of war. In this sense Aziz’s framework was shaped by the assumption that the Muslim population was declining due to abortion and military duty, whereas the Christian population enjoyed growth by being devoid of these two factors.10
The Ottoman pronatalists were worried about the social consequences of abortion more than its personal ones. The discourses on the harms of abortion oscillate between personal and social harms of abortion, yet in the end it is always the negative impacts on the wellbeing of the Ottoman lands that makes it imperative to eradicate the practice of abortion. In other words, although the discourses on abortion emphasized the risks of abortion on the mother’s life, banning abortion was a political rather than a humanitarian goal for the Ottoman pronatalists. For example, one article published in Ayine,
a women’s journal published in Thessalonica (Bozkurt, 2005), gives overt clues about the social ills of abortion practice.11 This article
mentions that women terminate their pregnancies for many different reasons. In some cases, it is the husband who forces the wife to terminate her pregnancy. The burdens and difficulties of raising children, and ignorance about the ills of abortion are also other major factors that are portrayed as leading women to continue this practice. This article also talks about the different methods used to forcefully terminate pregnancies, including execution of an operation and use of chemical medicaments. Nonetheless, it reminds that the mother, would most likely lose her life before the child and hence abortion should be avoided.
A substantial part of this article is devoted to the personal and social consequences and vicissitudes of abortion. The article supposes that if a child is given the opportunity to live, he would grow up and contribute to his society. Killing him before he turns into a full person, would also stripe the society from the possible contributions he would be able to make in the future according to this hypothesis.
Abortion was not the only pronatalist topic that was discussed in journals. It is also possible to see some samples that demonstrate the transformation of midwifery. The ways midwifery was represented in journals and newspaper are also the sign of the raising visibility of licensed midwives as opposed to local ones. Licensed midwives were increasingly publicly recognized, a trend demonstrated by the advertisements or announcements in contemporary newspapers. It was quite common practice to announce the opening of midwives’ offices in the newspapers. For example, El Messeret, a Ladino paper published in İzmir, announced in 1897, that a midwife had just arrived in İzmir.12 She would work at the municipality in the mornings, at the
Osmaniye Pharmacy in Kemeraltı district in the afternoons, and she could be found at her house in the Bon Marche in the evenings. It is significant that the newspaper mentioned that her consultations would be free, which suggests that the municipality would pay her salary. Similarly, in March 1898, Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete announced that the midwife, Fehime hanım, who was examined by the School of
Medicine and awarded a license with a high degree, had accepted to be midwife for the journal. The journal announced to its readers that they could apply to the editorial office if they needed the assistance of a midwife. Fehime hanım would be informed from the headquarters and would go to the houses of those who need her. The announcement mentioned that she had all the merits that a midwife should possess, such as tenderness, affection and mercy.13 This shows that licensed
midwives were becoming publicly visible, and it was becoming increasingly legitimate to have them at births. Yet although her success in the examination was praised, and her high degree was highlighted, traits such as tenderness, affection and mercy were also emphasized.
Advice books
While the Ottoman medical experts were trying to establish institutions that would, in the long run, medicalize childbirth, they were also medically encroaching upon the period of gestation and trying to regulate and discipline pregnancy. However, in a period when the number of male obstetricians still remained very low, the major means of advocating medical scrutiny during pregnancy was by writing about its benefits. In this context, the genre of advice literature played an important role to popularize and advocate disciplinary views on female body, especially when it was experiencing pregnancy and child birth.
Beginning from the 1880s onwards and in parallel with the developments in obstetrics and gynecology as well as the increase in the numbers of doctors specialized in these fields, the first examples of medical treatises concerning pregnancy and childbirth started to appear. One of the first printed books on obstetrics, Fenn-i Vilade (The Science of Birth), in Ottoman Turkish was published in 1880/1881.14
This book was a translation of a German physician and male-midwife,
Skanzoni’s medical tract. The book was translated by a group of
translators, İbrahim Atafi, Hüseyin Ramiz, Nafiz Serya, Hüseyin Sabri, and Ahmed Hilmi. However, it was not translated directly from German, but from its edition in French. The treatise was meant to be used in obstetrics courses at the School of Medicine, and accordingly
used very scholarly language that targeted medical students and could hardly be followed and digested by the lay audience. One of the most outstanding aspects of this book is the absence of images and visual materials, which constitutes a contrast when compared to the treatises that appeared later in the century.
The first prescriptive book, Halid Ziya (Uşaklıgil)’s Haml- ü Vaz’ı
Haml (Pregnancy and Childbirth), counseling the right care during gestation was published only a few years after the appearance of the first medical treatise.15 Halid Ziya stated in the preface that he had
selected and translated the parts that related to pregnancy from Auguste Debay’s bestselling book Hygiène et physiologie du mariage:
Histoire naturelle et médicale de l’homme et de la femme mariés dans ses plus curieux détails (Hygiene and Marital Physiology: Natural and Medical
History of the Married Man and Woman in Its Most Curious Details).16
Almost a decade after this first pregnancy handbook, the second example of this genre, Besim Ömer’s manual, Gebelik ve Gebelikte
Tedabir (Pregnancy and the Precautions during Pregnancy) arrived in
1900/1901.17 Gebelik ve Gebelikte Tedabir was the first book in Besim
Ömer’s series on healthcare and hygiene before, during, and after childbirth. The second volume of this series, Doğururken ve Doğurduktan
Sonra (During and after Childbirth), concerns safety during parturition
and post-natal care, and the third book, Sıhhatnüma-yı Nevzad (Newborn Care), handles infant care. Although we do not have specific information about the number of copies printed and sold, the existence of later editions and the multiple numbers of reprints for each book suggest that they were widely sold and read.18 The announcement of Besim
Ömer’s Gebelik ve Gebelikte Tedabir with quite an appreciation in Servet-i
Fünun is another sign of the welcoming audience pregnancy manuals
received.19 This short review article praises Besim Ömer and his book
quite highly. It also includes some excerpts from Besim Ömer’s book.
Haml-ü Vaz’-ı Haml is a small-sized book that has eighty one
pages.20 The parts that had been translated covered proper healthcare
during pregnancy and major medical risks during gestation and childbirth. Some popular issues, such as the safety of sexual intercourse
during gestation, craving, and mood swings were also handled. In addition to pregnant women, this manual also targeted expectant fathers and sporadically referred directly to them. Gebelik ve Gebelikte
Tedabir is a larger book with one hundred and one regular sized pages.
This book deals more elaborately with the proper life style of pregnant women, devoting almost seventy pages –more than half of its total size- to the hygiene, diet, entertainment, bathing, and dress of expectant mothers.
The agency given to women becomes more overt in Halid Ziya’s second work on pregnancy and child birth. After his Haml u
Vaz’ı-Haml, Halid Ziya produced a second book, Kanun ve Fenn-i Vilade (The
Laws and Science of Childbirth),21 again based on and adapted from
Auguste Debay’s bestselling book Hygiène et Physiologie du Mariage. Like Halid Ziya did with his first book, he took parts from Debay’s book and put them together through his interpretation. In this book, it is also possible to find excerpts, summaries, and information from several other books and treatises by European doctors that are not explicitly and adequately mentioned. Rather than a mot-a-mot translation, this work is an adaptation of certain information and ideas into the Ottoman context. While Haml- ü Vaz’ı Haml is more focused and limits its attention to health care during pregnancy, this second book, Kanun ve Fenn-i Vilade, is a blend of scientific and popular information, medical generalizations and fantastic exceptions.
The conceptualization of the female body as “maternal body” and the advocacy of medical discipline during pregnancy were receiving wider audience as the century closed and as Ottoman pronatalism was consolidated. Even one of the most profit oriented figures of Ottoman print culture, Seyyid Mehmed Tahir, published an advice book for pregnant women, which demonstrates tellingly the attention this genre received by the literate audience. Seyyid Mehmed Tahir Bey was a prolific writer and publisher, who published quite a large number of books and periodicals targeting women, and written by women. He was the owner of the newspapers Malumat (Information) and Servet (Fortune), as well as the İtimat (Reliability) Printing Houses (Aynur, 2004: 62-65). Seyyid Tahir had published extensively on topics such as
women’s liberation, the equality of men and women, and the relations between men and women. However, his motivation was far from being the emancipation of women but it was rather profit and self-interest (Schick, 2011). Thus, Seyyid Tahir’s attentiveness of issues related to pregnancy and childbirth shows that giving admonitions to pregnant women was receiving increasing audience and readership, and becoming quite popular in the context of late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century anxieties of depopulation (Demirci, 2008).
The pregnancy manual Seyyid Tahir prepared and published,
Vaz’ı Haml: İbtia-ı Hamil, Kabilenin Vazifesi, Cenin (Childbirth: The
Beginning of Pregnancy, the Duties of the Midwife, Embryo and Fetus) is quite a short book with twenty nine pages. This book is based on French and German sources that Seyyid Tahir does not identify clearly, but the books seems to be mostly the translation and summary of several books on this topic.
Similar to the other books of this genre, the main problem of Seyyid Tahir’s Vaz’ı Haml is the population question and the threat of depopulation on the Ottoman lands. At the very opening, Seyyid Tahir notes that European cultures attach a great value to the increase of population, and the Ottomans used to share this concern as can be testified by the Quran and the other sacred writings. According to him, Islam allowed polygamy in order to promote population increase. However, Seyyid Tahir laments that the religious and humanitarian duty to produce a good number of offspring was largely disregarded lately, despite the proclivities of Islam. He despises that most of his contemporaries have at most two children, while men used to have twenty to thirty children in the past. He also makes a connection between the number of children a man has and the health and wellbeing of the children, and reaches to the conclusion that the higher the number of children in a family, the healthier they are. According to him, the biggest menace threatening the Ottoman society is not only the low birth rates, but also the poor health and constitution of those born.22
Seyyid Tahir’s ideas about the reasons behind low birth rates remind the discourses on debauchery as the main source of abortion.
According to him, one of the main reasons why women avoid giving births is their frailty, and weakness, as well as their tendency towards make-up, dress, and entertainments at night. Seyyid Tahir subscribes to the idea that Ottoman women cannot reject the pleasures of night life, and fearing that they would be missing sleep once they have children, they avoid becoming pregnant and having children. It is mostly the poor families, according to him, who have larger number of children, but since they lack the resources to raise well-mannered children, their having children is not a benefit to the wellbeing of the Ottoman country but a burden to it on the contrary. Because of the importance of the magnitude and the well-being of the population, Seyyid Tahir believes, the couples should have to be checked before marriage and those who are not of good health should be banned from marriage. However, he laments, this important duty is virtually out of practice in the Ottoman country. In Seyyid Tahir’s work, pronatalism is not merely about giving birth to more children and population increase. The wellbeing of those born, their characteristics and the overall qualities of the population are important issues to be considered in relation to the political and economic exigencies of the Ottoman country. Especially the need for healthier and wealthier generations is underlined boldly.
Seyyid Tahir’s was not alone in associating the magnitude of the population with its wellbeing. The eugenic ideas he was loudly expressing were indeed becoming popular on Ottoman lands (Güvenç Salgırlı, 2009). After the turn of the century, especially in the context of the Second Constitutional Period, eugenic and social-Darwinist ideas were debated widely and expressively among the Ottoman intellectuals. We can see similar ideas expressed in more refined ways in Besim Ömer’s translation from August Debay, Sıhhatnüma-yı İzdivac:
Evleneceklerle Müteehhil ve Mücerred Bulunanlara Nasihat (The Ways for
Healthy Marriage: Advices for the Married, the Single and those Who Would Marry)23, and his Fen ve İzdivac: Evlenebilecekler ve Evlenemeyecekler
(Science and Marriage: Those Who Could and Could Not Marry).24
then later Early Republican pronatalism, and his books express explicitly pronatalist and eugenic ideas.
Advice books about family and marriage also touched upon pronatalist questions. Within the peculiar context of Ottoman pronatalism, advice literature about marriage turned into a heated site of debate related to infertility. Prescriptive literature counseling married couples is a prolific area to discuss and reconstruct Ottoman pronatalism. Fertility, infertility, and fecundity are among the favorite topics of this genre. The marriage handbooks always discuss infertility as a source of problem in marriage, even as a calamity hindering the happiness of the couples. These books also devote their pages to describing the causes and cures of infertility. Nusret Fuad’s İzdivac: Şerait-i Sıhhiye ve İctimaiyesi, Hüseyin Remzi’s Sağdıç-Rehber-i İzdivaç were the earlier examples of this genre. After the turn of the century especially within the political context of Second Constitutional period, such books literary flourished (Balsoy, 2014).
Besim Ömer was again the pioneer writing a book directly on this topic. Besides his intensive work on pregnancy, childbirth, midwifery, he wrote about infertility both directly and indirectly. While he touched upon this issue in his works on different topics, he wrote a medical monograph, Ukum ve Ananet (Infertility and Impotence), in 1890/1891, and examined the reasons and cures of infertility. In this work, he directly addressed the problem of infertility and impotence, and discussed in quite a detailed way the physiological, medical, and social causes of the reproductive dysfunctions. Although the title promised to cover both problems, the major part of the book was devoted to female infertility rather than male impotence.25
Another popular work that deals with the female inability to give birth is the work translated by Avanzade Süleyman, Mesail-i Mühimme-i
Hayatiye ve Sıhhiyeden Kısır Kadınlar (Important Problems about Life
and Health: Infertile Women).26 Avanzade Süleyman27 has translated
this book from a French source on the same topic. Rather than being a
mot-a-mot or exact translation, it is also an adaptation where he took
with his aims and approaches, and without acknowledging the author and name of his source. In late nineteenth and early twentieth century such adaptations were quite frequent in Ottoman print culture. Avanzade Süleyman also made a later adaptation of a similar kind on impotence Adem-i İktidar (Impotence).28 Although Mesail-i Mühimme-i
Hayatiye ve Sıhhiyeden Kısır Kadınlar promises to cover female infertility,
this book is rather limited to artificial fertilization (ilkah-ı suni), which was a novel, yet rather an unreliable medical technology back then. Still, with his emphasis on the importance of population and his expressed target to overcome the male and female infertility, his books are also important contributions to the printed works on pronatalism.
Finally, another type of advice literature that concerns policies of reproduction is the advice books for midwives. Besim Ömer’s perception of midwives and the ideal midwifery practice is overtly expressed in his pamphlet Ebe Hanımlara Öğütlerim (My Admonitions to Midwives). This pamphlet presents a rather full image of the midwifery practice in late nineteenth century and as such, is an excellent source.29 Ebe Hanımlara Öğütlerim includes forty admonitions
to midwives and elaborately discusses pregnancy, labor and delivery, and newborn care. It demonstrates the medical procedures followed during parturition in the late nineteenth century. The ways to examine women before, during and after parturition, the tools and instruments needed and used, the precautions taken for safe delivery, and the procedures to be followed during complications are elaborately described. This pamphlet, moreover, gives a comprehensive picture of the practices followed in the late nineteenth century by criticizing them and pursuing the ideal. In this sense, this manual is also an excellent source to have a glimpse of the late nineteenth century medical procedures and approaches, as well as the mindset of the contemporary doctors toward midwives.
Fiction, theater plays, crime fiction
Finally Ottoman pronatalist ideas, especially the ideas lamenting the practice of abortion were expressed in popular literature (Demirci and Somel, 2008). Here, I will give some brief examples from popular
genres including fiction, theatre plays and crime fiction. Those popular genres also had midwives as their protagonists, criticized abortion, and implicitly advocated pronatalist goals.
One of the most well-known examples of such works is the theatre play titled Iskat-ı Cenin: Facia (Abortion: A Tragedy) written by Hasan Bedrettin.30 Iskat-ı Cenin: Facia is a very rare example of the popular
discourses on the harms of abortion. This play does not limit its attention to the harms of abortion but centers around several major contemporary social problems, including forced marriage and squander. This play demonstrates that the Ottoman elites tapped popular genres to support their legal and political combat against abortion. Moreover, it is a vivid example of the importance attached to popular genres and print culture to express the political and cultural contentions and to influence the society toward their solutions.
One of the protagonists of this theatre play is Afife Hanım, a young and inexperienced girl, who is expected to marry her cousin Şevki Bey. However, she is in love with another young man, Hilmi Bey, and does not want to marry her cousin. Şevki Bey is not in love with Afife Hanım either. He is a squanderer without a proper work or proper manners. As such, he is a stereotypical antagonist figure of Ottoman literature. He consumed his large inheritance recklessly and now tries to recover this loss by speculating in the newly establishing stock market. But with his financial knowledge poor, capital not so large, and temperament deceivable, Şevki Bey shortly falls trap to bankers who lend him money with high interest rates. The only chance left to him is to marry his cousin, Afife Hanım, and to own the fortune of his uncle. In the play, thanks to some lucky coincidences and to some tricks, Afife and Hilmi manage to marry. However, they could not escape the vengeance of Şevki when Afife becomes pregnant. The emergence of a new inheritor leads Şevki to bribe Afife’s doctor and midwife to convince her to terminate her pregnancy by abortion. Afife’s wet nurse and husband are also easily manipulated by those bribed professionals. Unable to resist them all, Afife desperately gives in to the operation induced by the midwife. However the operation proves fatal and she pays her wrong decision with her life.
Although abortion and the tragedy it causes give its name to the play, it constitutes only the last part of the play. However, protagonists’ argumentation and apprehension of abortion and the ways they justify its practice offer us unique opportunity to understand and to reconstruct the contemporary approaches to abortion. Different protagonists of the play have different views and hence represent different understandings. What happens at the end of the play gives clues about playwright’s evaluation and judgment of those different perceptions. Afife Hanım, who is the victim of abortion, is the only person that rejects abortion without any hesitation. However, she is not strong enough to conduct her own will and surrenders to her husband, and pays this with her life. Hilmi Bey is the ambivalent character and his indecisiveness represents how some people in Ottoman society deceive themselves and decide to induce this act. Hilmi Bey, on the one hand, believes that abortion is homicide and it is not right to murder his child, which he denotes as the fruit of his life (semere-i hayat). But on the other hand, he is very much worried that Afife Hanım will not be able to give birth and lose her life during parturition if not before. Although he is not comfortable with the idea, he vindicates it through the risks pregnancy and childbirth poses for his wife’s life. After a long hesitation and ambivalence, he reaches the conclusion that Afife Hanım’s health and wellness are most important, and once she recovers they can have another baby. Finally, the pragmatic standpoint of Ottoman women is best represented by Afife Hanım’s wet nurse (kethuda). While she is worried about Afife Hanım’s health and wellness like Hilmi Bey, she believes without any hesitation that in case one’s health is at risk, there is nothing wrong with having an abortion.
Another work, which this time takes the transformation of midwifery as its topic, is Mehmed Rauf’s vaudeville, İki Ebe Bir Gebe (Two Midwives and a Pregnant Woman).31 Mehmed Rauf, who was
one of the most important authors of Ottoman literature, published this vaudeville under the comic pseudo name Jüpon Bey (Mr. Petticoat) and satirized a parturition scene. Behice, the young pregnant woman was divided between her traditional and superstitious mother, Hayriye
hanım, western style dandy husband, Raci Bey, and her father, Hüsnü Efendi who was satirizing them both without a real belief in either. Raci Bey calls a non-Muslim midwife, Madam Annik, to deliver the baby, but since he is not willing to stay in the house during the parturition he arranges a scene with Madam Annik, who sends him back to her house to bring her tool box that she pretends to have forgotten at home. Seemingly Madam Annik has an intention to call a male doctor and it is also on her behalf to send Raci Bey away. After checking Behice, Madam Annik tells that it would be a breech delivery and adding that she herself is not capable of managing this dangerous situation, she asks Behice’s parents to call a male midwife, Âli Bey. However, a misunderstanding occurs and instead of him, they bring Ali Bey who was a specialist in hemorrhoids. After all kinds of funny and entertaining misunderstandings, finally the right doctor, Âli Bey, arrives and delivers the baby safe and healthy. It is also significant that Âli Bey is not an obstetrician either but a medical student specializing in ophthalmology (emraz-i ayniyye). When finally Raci Bey turns back to his house and finds out that a male midwife had delivered his schild, he becomes outraged, feeling that his honor was tainted. But this time, Behice’s mother and father protect the doctor who had safely delivered their granddaughter.
Although it embodies the standard characteristics of its genre and taps contemporary ethnic and sexist stereotypes for creating “funny” scenes, this theatre play is significant for demonstrating some of the views toward midwives at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having a midwife from a different faith or ethnicity than the woman in parturition was unconventional, but having a male midwife was definitely a novelty, yet it was being slowly accepted by the society.
İki Ebe Bir Gebe was not the only play that had midwives as the protagonists. Although they do not give the same full length space, it is possible to find midwives as the protagonists in both Ahmet Mithad’s Dürdane Hanım, and more interestingly in the crime fiction series Amanvermez Avni. These two popular works both had scenes where the midwives were kidnapped to deliver illegitimate babies.
Popular literature gives us significant clues about the presuppositions and ideological premises of the Ottoman pronatalists. For example, both the theatre play Iskat-ı Cenin: Facia (Abortion: A Tragedy)32, which was published and recited at late 1870s and
lamented the social and personal ills brought by abortion, and Halid Ziya’s novel Sefile (The Wretched Girl)33 published a decade later,
depicted how young girls were ruined as the result of abortion. It is not mere coincidence that the protagonists of both works are Muslim girls. Similar to the official and elite discourses, the popular genres and narratives also underlined anxieties concerning the practices of abortion among the Muslim women.
Conclusion
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Ottoman pronatalism and issues related to midwifery, pregnancy, and abortion increasingly made their appearance in to Ottoman publishing. Books, journals, and newspaper articles advocating directly and indirectly pronatalist ideals gained prominence as the Ottoman print culture developed and started to target popular audience beside the elites. The normative literature played an important function to popularize pronatalist ideals as well as medical knowledge.
The works on pronatalism, whether journals, newspapers, advice books, or popular fiction, regardless of their type, shared the idea that the magnitude of the population was the precondition of the strength of the economy and the military. Most of them started with mentioning the importance of population for welfare and progress. However, when they were talking about population, the pronatalist pieces almost unexceptionally worried about the fate of the Muslim population and did not show any intention to protect the demographic composition as it was. When the anxieties about the fate of the Muslim population is contextualized within the population movements and demographic transformations in this period, it is striking to see that the Muslim population experienced a slightly increased birth rate in the second half of the nineteenth century and its overall share in the total demographic composition increased significantly due to the
migration of Muslim populations after the Crimean War, and the sharp drop of the Christian population mainly due to the loss of territories (Karpat, 1985). The incompatibility between what was actually taking place and what was proposed in official and non-official documents should, thus, be searched from the political standpoints and agendas of Ottoman pronatalists. In this sense, the pronatalism of the nineteenth century, and the battle to increase the Ottoman population was in fact about engendering a Muslim population. In other words, the fear of the decline of the Muslim population cannot be understood on a concrete quantitative basis, but becomes meaningful in the ideological context of the nineteenth century.
Secondly, the examination of works on pronatalism gives us the opportunity to analyze the gendered aspects of late Ottoman print culture. It is usually argued that the appearance of women’s issues on Ottoman newspapers and journals, as well as the emergence of women’s journals should be taken as a signpost of women’s emancipation (Çakır: 1994; Demirdirek, 1993; İlyasoğlu and İnsel, 1984). However, it is not so easy to reach the same conclusion when examining the literature on reproduction. In relation to the pronatalist goals, the printed sources posited women as almost only mothers and producers of children. Moreover, the image of women is quite negative especially in relation to the practice of abortion. Most of the pronatalist writers share the idea that women avoid having children either because of the difficulties and burdens of raising children or because of their tendency to pleasure and sleep. This view disregards both the experiences of women giving birth, raising children, or terminating their pregnancies, and the conditions that shaped those experiences. As such, the analysis of pronatalist pieces in printed genres, reach normative and essentialist conclusions about women’s nature and femininity. Yet, despite the negativity of this image, the examination of pronatalist debates in printed sources contributes to the analysis of Ottoman media by adding a gendered aspect to it.
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Endnotes
1 The arguments here and in the next few paragraphs come from my previous research (Balsoy, 2013). For a detailed discussion of Ottoman pronatalism see this source.
2 Pronatalist approaches in other national contexts have also been researched intensively (Szreter, 1996; Patriarca, 1996; Davin, 1997; Cole, 2000; Camiscioli, 2001). 3 Namık Kemal (19 Rebi’ul ahir 1289/ 13 June 1288 (14.6.1872)). “Nüfus.” İbret 9. 4 Namık Kemal (Teşrin-i Sâni 1288/ 27 Ramazan 1289 (28.11.1872)). “Iskat-ı Cenin.”
Hadika 15.
5 Ahmet Rasim (1307 (1891/92)). “Cenin.” Servet-i Fünun, 1(11):125. 6 Ahmet Rasim (1307 (1891/92)). “Cenin.” Servet-i Fünun, 1(11):125.
7 Mecmua-i Fünun was a major journal on science published by the Ottoman Society of Science (Cemiyet-i İlmiye-i Osmaniye) from 1862 until 1883. It was the main advocates of positivism in Ottoman society. The articles of the Ottoman men of science presenting the contemporary scientific approaches and developments were published in the journal. These articles ranged from physics, chemistry, geology, and medicine to history, geography, philosophy and logic (Işıl, 1986; Aydın, 1995; Işıl Ülman, 1993).
8 Aziz (1866). “Iskat-ı Cenin.” Mecmua-i Fünun 41: 289-292. Tuba Demirci and Selçuk Akşin Somel also analyze the anti-abortion discourses in detail (Demirci and Somel, 2008).
9 Aziz (1866). “Iskat-ı Cenin.” Mecmua-i Fünun 41: 289-292. 10 Aziz (1866). “Iskat-ı Cenin.” Mecmua-i Fünun 41: 289-292.
11 “Iskat-ı Cenin Yani Çocuk Düşürmek.” (30 Teşrin-i Sani 1291/13 Zilkade 1292 (11.12.1875)). Ayine: 1-2.
12 El Messeret, (25 June 1897): 173. I am grateful to Nazan Maksudyan for bringing this document to my attention.
13 Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete, (10.L.1315/4.3.1898), 151. For another example see, Basiretçi Ali (13.Ra.1295/17.1.1878). “Şehir Mektubu, no:157.” Basiret 2318: 2-3. For the reprint see Basiretçi Ali Efendi (2001). “Kadın Ebeler (Kabileler).” İstanbul Mektupları (ed.) Nuri Sağlam. İstanbul: Kitabevi. 679-680.
14 Skanzoni (1298 (1880/81)). Fenn-i Vilade. İstanbul: Mekteb-i Tıbbiye-i Şahane Matbaası.
15 Halid Ziya (Uşaklıgil) (1306 (1888/89)). Haml-ü Vaz’ı Haml. İstanbul: Mihran Matbaası.
16 Debay was a prominent French doctor and man of science and his book attracted significant attention at that time. Auguste Debay (1859). Hygiène et Physiologie du
Mariage; Histoire Naturelle et Médicale de l’Homme et de la Femme Mariés; dans ses plus Curieux Détails. Théorie Nouvelle de la Procréation Mâle et Femelle, Stérilité, Impuissance, Imperfections Génitales, Moyens de les Combattre. Hygiène Spéciale de la Femme Enceinte et du Nouveau-né. Paris: E. Dentu.
17 Besim Ömer (1318(1900/1901)). Gebelik ve Gebelikte Tedabir. İstanbul:
18 Besim Ömer had also produced medical treatises written for the students of medicine and midwifery training, as well as advice books for midwives that described the process of gestation, the mechanics of parturition and the possible complications in the pre- and post-natal periods. Again despite the lack of information regarding the number of copies printed and sold, the availability of different editions suggest that his books have been widely read. His five volume book Fenn-i Velade was a medical treatise to be used in obstetrics courses. Ebelik was also a medical treatise to be used in midwifery courses. Ebe Hanımlara Öğütlerim was a prescriptive manual that mainly set the moral standards for the midwives. However, it also included a brief discussion of the process and mechanics of parturition. Ebelik, Doğurmak ve Doğurtmak, on the other hand, can be called a medical treatise for midwives by its scope and tone. This book opens with a reprint of the former manual but after that, it presents an elaborate and scholarly discussion about the process of gestation, the mechanics of childbirth, and pre- and post-natal medical care, which is comparable to those in the books for medical students. See also Besim Ömer (1933). Fenn-i Velade. İstanbul: Ahmet İhsan Matbaası; Besim Ömer (1928). Ebelik. İstanbul: Ahmet İhsan Matbaası; Besim Ömer (1322 (1904/1905)). Ebe
Hanımlara Öğütlerim. İstanbul: Ahmet İhsan Matbaası; Besim Ömer (1322
(1904/1905)). Ebelik, Doğurmak ve Doğurtmak. İstanbul: Ahmet İhsan Matbaası. 19 “Gebelik ve Gebelikte Tedabir.” (23 Kanunisani 1318/5.2.1903). Servet-i Fünun, 24
(615): 208-209.
20 Although Debay’s book was a bestselling book on sexuality, Halid Ziya had selectively chosen the parts about pregnancy and excluded the gist of the book. This of course deserves a separate discussion on its own account.
21 Halid Ziya (Uşaklıgil) (1311 (1893)). Kanun ve Fenn-i Vilade. İstanbul: Nişan Berberyan Matbaası.
22 Seyyid Tahir (1331 (1915)). Vaz’ı Haml: İbtia-ı Hamil, Kabilenin Vazifesi, Cenin. İstanbul: Şems Matbaası.
23 August Debay (1306 (1888/1889)). Sıhhatnüma-yı İzdivac: Evleneceklerle Müteehhil ve
24 Besim Ömer (1340 (1921/1922)). Fen ve izdivac: Evlenebilecekler ve Evlenemeyecekler. İstanbul: Yeni Matbaa.
25 Besim Ömer (1306/1890-1891)). Ukm ve Ananet. Dersaâdet: Mahmud Bey Matbaası. 26 Avanzade M. Süleyman (1336(1920)). Mesail-i Mühimme-i Hayatiye ve Sıhhiyeden Kısır
Kadınlar. İstanbul: Kader Matbaası.
27 Mehmet Süleyman (Avanzade) was born in 1871. He was trained in pharmacy at the School of Medicine. While he was working as a pharmacist, he started writing on contemporary issues. He wrote and published many books, and he published several bestselling journals including Afiyet (Wellbeing) and Güzel Prenses (Beautiful Princess). His interests covered many different topics such as crime fiction, culinary books, popular history works, and popular medicine works. Most of all, he was the publisher of first women’s year book, Nevsal-i Nisvan (Yalçın, 2001: 558).
28 Mehmed Süleyman Avanzade (1330 (1914)). Yalnız Erkeklere Mahsus Adem-i İktidar. İstanbul: Kasbar Matbaası.
29 Besim Ömer (1322 (1904/1905)). Ebe Hanımlara Öğütlerim. İstanbul: Ahmet İhsan Matbaası. Besides this advice manual Besim Ömer has also written medical treatises and guidebooks for the midwives. See his translation from Pierre Budin, Pierre Budin (1313 (1895/1896)). Seririyyat-ı Viladiyye Dersleri. (trans.) Besim Ömer İstanbul: Mekteb-i Tıbbiyye-i Şahane Matbaası; Besim Ömer (1933). Fenn-i Velade. İstanbul: Ahmet İhsan Matbaası; and Besim Ömer (1322 (1904/1905)). Doğurma ve
Doğurtma. İstanbul: Ahmed İhsan Matbaası.
30 Hasan Bedreddin Paşa (1290 (1873)). Iskat-ı Cenin: Facia. İstanbul: 13 No.lu Matbaa. 31 “İki Ebe Bir Gebe.” (28 Teşrin-i Evvel 1910-18 Teşrin-i Sâni 1910). Hayâl-i Cedîd.. I am
deeply grateful to Seval Şahin for bringing this vaudeville to my attention. 32 Hasan Bedreddin Paşa (1290 (1873)). Iskat-ı Cenin: Facia. İstanbul: 13 No.lu Matbaa. 33 This novel has first been censured when it was being published in a newspaper in
episodes and has never been published in Ottoman Turkish. Today it is possible to find its transcribed reprints. See Uşaklıgil, Halid Ziya (2006). Sefile. İstanbul: Özgür Yayınları). (reprint).
