Latin Lies: The Lost History of Arabic Script Experimentation in Turkic Languages (original) (raw)

The Clash between Latin and Arabic Alphabets among the Turkish Community in Bulgaria in the Interwar Period

Journal of Balkan Research Institute, 2018

In this article, I will address the topic of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria in the interwar period through the interpretive lens of the "linguistic" or better "alphabetic" rights, placed in the context of the "Latinization" processes taking place in the wide Eurasian space, as well of the post-imperial sociopolitical dynamics. To this aim, I describe the interesting and little known case of the writing practices of the Turkish community in Bulgaria in the period between the two world wars. In particular, I take into account the repercussions of Atatürk's alphabetical reform in Bulgaria, demonstrating how the adoption of the Latin alphabet in Turkey represented a significant challenge for the country, triggering the fears of both the Bulgarian authorities and of the more conservative factions of the local Turkish community. In this context, I analyze the attitudes towards the Arabic and the Latin alphabet employed to write the Turkish language in the Balkan country, illustrating the reasons for the prohibition of the Turkish Latin alphabet, in an unprecedented combination of interests between Bulgarian authorities and Islamic religious leaders. I will try to show how in that specific historical moment, writing systems, far from being "neutral" communication elements, lent themselves to various manipulations of an ideological and political nature.

Telegraphy, Typography, and the Alphabet: The Origins of Alphabet Revolutions in the Russo-Ottoman Space

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2020

This paper explores the history of the alphabet revolutions in the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, beginning in the 1860s and culminating with the new Turkish alphabet and the Soviet latinization movement in the 1920s. Unlike earlier works that have treated these movements separately, this article traces the origins of the alphabet revolutions to the 19th-century communications revolution, when the telegraph and movable metal type challenged the existing modes of knowledge production and imposed new epistemologies of writing on the Muslims in the Russo-Ottoman space. This article examines the media technologies of the era and the cross-imperial debates surrounding various alphabet proposals that predated latinization and suggests that the history of language reform in the Russo-Ottoman world be reevaluated as a product of a modernizing information age that eventually changed the entire linguistic landscape of Eurasia.

A Social History of Ottoman Languages (an Introduction)

Turcica, 2023

This is the introduction to a special issue on the "Social history of Ottoman languages." When historians approach the political and social implications of language choice in the early modern Ottoman Empire, they treat it as either selecting a proto-nationalist affiliation just part of an indistinct premodern non-identity. This introduction introduces alternative theoretical and conceptual frameworks to approach the question of language in the early modern Ottoman Empire. This dossier/special issue itself is dedicated to the question of the social history of language in the early modern Ottoman Empire. It brings a small group of leading and budding scholars to help provide new insights into the language of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, it tries to demonstrate the diversity of languages in the Empire through essays on (pre-Ottoman) Turkish, Bosnian in the Arabic script, and Armenian.

Writing Bosnian in Arabic: The Development of the Arebica Script in the Long 19th Century

Turcica, 2023

This article examines the intensifying efforts of Bosnian Muslim scholars to promote and standardize a modified Arabic script for their native language over the long 19th century. A local variant of aljamiado literature, this Arebica script has received considerable scholarly attention since then, but broadly as a folkloric and literary phenomenon. I argue instead that it developed during this period as a sustained project of communal reform in the context of changing relations between Bosnian Muslims and the Ottoman state. Starting in the late 18th century, Bosnian scholars affiliated with the Naqshbandi Sufi order increasingly experimented with vernacular religious instruction in the Arabic script as part of a broader engagement with questions of dynastic loyalty and local autonomy on the Ottoman frontier. With the curbing of this autonomy through the mid-19th century, more rebellious figures such as Abdulvehab Ilhamija gave way to successors who entered into a collaborative relationship with the imperial center – an arrangement that would persist through both the Tanzimat and the subsequent Austro-Hungarian occupation. Members of this reformist network continued their experiments with Arebica under both regimes, adapting to the new technological opportunities of the ‘Age of Steam and Print’ and ultimately feeding into Bosnia’s vibrant Pan-Islamist reform movement of the early 20th century. While never achieving the status envisioned by its most prominent advocates, the development of Arebica therefore nevertheless highlights the dynamic interplay between provincial Muslims and state reforms in the late Ottoman period.

Khusnutdinov F., Babajanov B. Arabic in Central Asia // Showcasing the Role and Legacy of the Arabic Language along the Silk Roads. – Paris: UNESCO, 2024. Pp. 77–105. URL: https://doi.org/10.54678/CSIM3818

Arabic in Central Asia, 2024

Since Central Asia became part of Pax Islamica at the beginning of the eighth century, the further civilizational development of the region has been closely linked to the Arabic language. Up to the first quarter of the twentieth century, Arabic script could be found almost everywhere in Central Asia – from inscriptions on architectural structures, funerary stones, steles and coins to everyday objects, jewellery, weapons and, of course, manuscripts. Within the region, Arabic has for centuries served as the language of state administration, science, knowledge transmission, diplomatic correspondence and, more broadly, the language of culture. Despite the fact that local languages remained in wider use, a reverence for Arabic speech persisted, not only as the language of the Qurʾān, but also as that of high poetry and refined culture. This article examines the circulation of the Arabic language in Central Asia between the eighth and sixteenth centuries through the prism of its multilayered manifestations in space, from public (external) spaces to private (internal) ones. While paying close attention to the competition of Arabic with other significant languages in the region, primarily Persian, the article also discusses the consolidation of Arabic through epigraphy, documents, science and the circulation of money.