1880 Karamanli Script Map of the Ottoman Empire / Near East

Ottoman Empire's Turkish-speaking Orthodox Minority.

This is a fascinating c. 1880 map of the Asian portion of the Ottoman Empire in the Karamanli Turkish type. The map reflects the complex and contradictory trends of the late Ottoman period, in which the empire's remarkable cosmopolitanism collided with 19th-century nationalism.

A Closer Look

As the title indicates, the map covers the Asian portion of the Ottoman Empire, including Anatolia, Armenia, the Levant, northern Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Regions, cities, and major topographic features are labeled throughout. Lines trace major overland and maritime routes. Despite being written in a dead language, most place names are easy enough to decipher, such as Cairo (ΚΑΧΙΡΕ), Jaffa (ΙΑΦΦΑ), Gaza (ΓΑΖΑ), and Jerusalem (ΚΟΥΤΣΝΣΕΡΙΦ, Kudüs-i Şerif in modern Turkish) at the bottom. Both the region and city of Karaman (ΚΑΡΑΜΑΝ) are labeled in the interior of Anatolia, due north of Cyprus. An inset map of the Dardanelles, with Istanbul (ΙΣΤΑΝΠΟΛ), appears in the top-right corner. Longitude is measured from Greenwich, noted along the bottom border.

Historical Context

Like similar maps in non-Arabic based scripts produced in the late Ottoman period (see, for example, our BalkansArmenian-agayan-1898), this map reflects the complex and changing nature of ethno-religious identity at the time. On the one hand, the map is indicative of Ottoman cosmopolitanism, in which a Christian minority using the Greek alphabet could survive and even thrive for centuries. On the other hand, the increased use of print technology and the dissolution of Ottoman central authority in the 19th century led to a sharper sense of ethno-religious identity, especially among non-Muslims and non-Turks, trends that the Ottoman state itself at times encouraged to assuage growing calls for autonomy among minorities. These developments presaged the violent transition of the empire into a nation-state in the early 20th century.

Karamanli Turkish

Though the text on this map might appear to be in Greek, it is actually in Karamanli Turkish, an ephemeral variant of Turkish written in the Greek Alphabet. Karamanli Turkish (Kαραμανλήδικα) was a unique written form of Turkish used primarily by the Karamanlides, a Greek Orthodox Christian community in the Ottoman Empire, from the early 18th century until the early 20th century. Karamanli Turkish is distinctive for its use of the Greek alphabet to write Ottoman Turkish, reflecting the community's bilingual and bicultural identity: Turkish in speech but Greek in religion and cultural affiliation. The origins of the Karamanlides are disputed, but they were concentrated in the interior Anatolian region of Karaman.

Karamanlides emerged as a practical solution for a community that spoke Turkish natively but was educated in the Greek script, allowing them to engage with religious texts, newspapers, and literature in their spoken language. Karamanli was widely used in liturgical books, local newspapers, and novels. Its decline began with the rise of Turkish nationalism, educational reforms favoring the Latin script, and especially after the 1923 Greco-Turkish Population Exchange, when most Karamanlides were deported to Greece, where their Turkish dialect was marginalized or lost. The language fell into disuse as surviving speakers assimilated linguistically into Greek society and Karamanli publications ceased entirely.

Publication History and Census

This map contains no publication information and is not dated. It includes the Suez Canal but not the Hejaz Railway or any other railways in the Ottoman Empire proper (i.e. minus the Khedivate of Egypt), suggesting a date around 1880. We have not been able to locate any other examples of this map, but we have seen several other Karamanli Turkish maps (of the United States, Great Britain, and South America) done in the same style, suggesting they all derive from an atlas published in the Karamanli script sometime around 1880. This date is also be consistent with developments in printing technology and the general trend toward increased national-ethnic identity in the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century. Most likely, such an atlas would have been published in Istanbul.

Condition

Very good.