Taste and Class in Late Ottoman Beirut PDF

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 43 (2011), 475–492 doi:10.1017/S0020743811000626 Toufoul Abou-Hodeib TA S T E A N D C L A S S I N L AT E O T T O M A N B E I R U T Abstract This article deals with the material aspects of the late Ottoman home in Beirut, focusing on the notion of taste (dhawq) and its role ...

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 43 (2011), 475–492 doi:10.1017/S0020743811000626

Toufoul Abou-Hodeib

TA S T E A N D C L A S S I N L AT E O T T O M A N B E I R U T

Abstract This article deals with the material aspects of the late Ottoman home in Beirut, focusing on the notion of taste (dhawq) and its role in constructing class boundaries. It looks at how intellectuals used taste to articulate a prescriptive middle-class domesticity revolving around the woman as manager of the house and privileging moderation and authenticity in consumption habits. Rather than take such tastes as representative of actual consumption habits of an emerging middle class, and arguing for an approach that goes beyond taste as a construct, the article investigates the potentiality of new objects for subverting the existing social order. Based on a marital-conflict case brought to the Hanafi court, the article explores how one such object, a phonograph, opened interpretive possibilities in the gendered rigidity of court procedures.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city of Beirut underwent dramatic transformations. A combination of state-imposed reforms, local efforts, and regional growth brought Beirut to the fore as the main port city in the Levant and as capital of its own vilayet in 1888. Its public image became one of the centerpieces of the centralizing efforts of the Tanzimat, particularly under Sultan Abd¨ulhamit II (r. 1876–1909). This was reflected in an urban policy aimed at instilling the imperial presence in the details of everyday life, from the public square to the sewage system.1 The language of reform and modernity also found expression within an emerging intellectual group attempting to particularize and localize both European cultural impact and Ottoman reforms. Using the platforms provided by literary and philanthropic societies as well as newspapers and periodicals, various intellectuals tried to ground modern changes in their own realities and turn them into vehicles for social transformation. From the 1880s on, domesticity increasingly became a central topic of discourse, structured by a number of interrelated issues that occupied Christian and Muslim intellectuals alike: the question of women’s education and role in society, the location of the family in a societal order increasingly viewed as organic, the formulation of an “oriental” or “Syrian” identity, and the redefinition of tradition at a time of cultural and social upheaval. The body of literature that emerged around the topic indicates that the

Toufoul Abou-Hodeib is a Fellow in the Research Program “Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe,” at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany; e-mail: [email protected] © Cambridge University Press 2011 0020-7438/11 $15.00

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home signified something more than just a physical structure or a status symbol. It came to constitute a contentious site of struggle over defining the meaning of modernity and how Ottoman subjects were meant to live it. The discourse of domesticity in Beirut paralleled similar discourses elsewhere in the region. Scholars have linked this development in Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, and other places to the emergence of new social classes and changing conceptions of gender.2 On Ottoman Syria in particular, Akram Khater’s work on Mount Lebanon ties the invention of “home” to discourses and practices of class and gender.3 In his attention to material aspects of the home, Khater argues that the “central-hall house” typology was used as “testament to” and “indication of” the social standing of returning migrants from the Americas seeking to signify their middle-class identity and to distinguish themselves from their peasant surroundings.4 This article makes material aspects of the home a central concern by specifically focusing on the category of taste (dhawq). Although signifying wealth and distinction is not a strictly modern phenomenon, the role that taste came to play in late Ottoman Beirut was linked to industrialized production, wider access to consumption, and advertising trends. In that sense, the home—including both its structure and its contents—not only signified a social standing but also played a role in recasting and articulating class differences. I start by locating the Beirut home in its urban context and exploring the various principles of living embodied by the “central-hall house” typology. These principles are then linked to the discourse of domesticity, placing the latter in its regional context and investigating how it attempted to translate abstract notions of class, “oriental” difference, and civic duty into a daily praxis revolving around taste. This notion of “taste” worked to ground abstract concepts of modern order in everyday practice, to reconfigure the place of the woman at the heart of the nuclear family, and to articulate a middleclass culture distinguished from both the wealthier classes and ifranj¯ı, or European, culture. Taking taste as developed in intellectual circles to be representative of modern taste in general risks reproducing a discourse that marginalizes a large part of an emerging middle class as not yet modern and as failing, because of its difference, to integrate into the overall experience of modernity. Beirut’s position as growing port city meant that more and more of the city’s inhabitants were exposed to both imported and locally manufactured commodities. While one cannot speak of a Beiruti “middle class” in the sense of an organized class with a clearly defined set of common interests, turn of the century Beirut witnessed the emergence of a middle-class culture defined by economic position, education, and a lifestyle characterized by greater access to commodities. Intellectual advice in the press attempted to give form to this emerging middle class through, among other things, lifestyle advice privileging authenticity and moderation in consumption habits. Yet the tastes and preferences of such an idealized middle class constructed in the press cannot be assumed to be the tastes actually prevalent in Beirut. Using Beirut court records, advertisements, and trade reports, the last two sections thus reconstruct elements of a form of taste not presented in the intellectual corpus, one that privileged novelty and abundance over authenticity and moderation. Uncovering such taste is particularly important in the context of Beirut, where Ottoman historiography is dominated by intellectuals, merchants, and bureaucrats.5

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R E C O N S I D E R I N G TA S T E A N D C L A S S I N B E I R U T

Rather than take “the middle class” as an existing category, this article focuses on the process of its emergence. I argue that a new species of intellectuals, schooled both in European and local knowledge, attempted to reposition itself as the vanguard of an idealized middle class whose cultural habits were distinct from both the upper classes and what they perceived as European influences. Following Bourdieu’s view of the intellectual class as the dominated segment of the upper class, the attempt by a group of intellectuals to define middle-class taste can be seen as a move toward recasting class difference by positioning itself as the dominating segment of an emerging middle class.6 Holding cultural capital—that of taste and the ability to recognize and reproduce it—to be more relevant than economic capital to the construction of a modern everyday, several intellectuals writing in turn of the century Beirut saw domesticity as part of an idealized middle-class culture to which members of the emerging middle class should aspire. In this process of class repositioning, Muslim and Christian intellectuals in Beirut drew on existing vocabulary—the designation “those of middling means” (mutawassit.u¯ alh.a¯ l)—to address their targeted audience, redefining the term to refer to a set of cultural practices instead of just an economic position.7 Bringing class dynamics back into the picture minimizes the overemphasized sectarian dimension of late Ottoman culture, and of Beirut in particular, and allows for the exploration of cultural dimensions and relations that are otherwise obfuscated by the use of “sect” as an analytical category. The use of taste justifies this shift of emphasis because intellectuals of various sects shared a common cultural language, partially shaped by press debates and scientific societies, just as the inhabitants of Beirut shared the same commercial spaces and were exposed to the same consumer products.8 Deemphasizing sect as an analytical category brings to the fore a cross-sectarian anxiety about the loss of “authenticity.” The choice of the periodicals al-Muqtataf, Thamarat al-Funun, al-Mahabba, and al-Hasna
as sources relates to this concern, because they represent the most prominent approaches to domesticity circulating in Beirut at the time.9 That is not to say that sectarian identity did not matter. As we shall see in the discussion of alMahabba and Thamarat al-Funun, there were differences both in content and language when it came to the way women’s fashion was linked to their domestic duties. Rather than taking sectarian differences as a starting point, however, I have elected to indicate them where they arise in the course of this article.

HOME IN THE CITY

The formation of intellectual categories of domesticity paralleled a growing concern with beauty, hygiene, and order in the language of Ottoman urban reformers. As early as 1836, inspired by his diplomatic missions to Paris, Vienna, and London, the leading early Tanzimat statesman Mustafa Res¸it Pasha advocated “scientific” principles and geometrical rules in the urban regeneration of the imperial capital.10 The logic of the “straight line” was a powerful guiding principle for these changes. The increasing importance of wheeled traffic for the transportation of goods and passengers in the rapidly expanding cities of the empire necessitated the construction of straightened arteries of communication across the urban fabric.11 The straight line’s importance went

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beyond mere functionality, however; it related to an aesthetic of order exemplified in legislation on building facades, protrusions, and heights. Between 1848 and 1882, these functional and aesthetic principles became enshrined in the various urban-planning and building regulations that gradually spread from Istanbul to provincial centers across the empire.12 Because of its growing importance as a port city, Beirut became a target for these reforms as early as the 1860s. For example, with the promulgation of the Street and Building Regulation in 1863, the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works assigned an engineer to Beirut in order to “bring about the fixing and building of houses and roads in an organized manner.”13 In the space of a few decades, Beirut moved away from the neighborhood-based model of urban management current in much of the region until the mid-19th century, which had been dependent on the collaboration of private-property owners, charitable institutions, and official oversight through the Hanafi court.14 The relationship of the inhabitant to her city became mediated by a municipal council, which oversaw the application of building codes. Although charitable institutions, sectarian communities, and property owners continued to play a role in urban management, they did so under the centralized supervision of the municipal council and within the framework of the building code. Changes in residential forms accompanied other urban transformations. Until the end of the 19th century, the most common domiciles in the inner city of Beirut were the d¯ar, a self-contained, patrilocal residence with an internal court, and the h.a¯ ra, a less well-off collection of abodes overlooking an internal court and inhabited by groupings from the same family branch, co-religionists, or people originating from the same geographic area.15 As the city expanded beyond its old walls, a new residential typology referred to today as “the central-hall house” began to take form. In its ideal form, the typology reflected the principles of urban planning and brought together scientific rationality of space, hygienic standards of urban living, and the aesthetic principle of the straight line. The introduction of several rooms, organized on both sides of a longitudinal central hall, encouraged separation between different family members as well as between the private family quarters and the central reception area. The location of the services (kitchen, storage, toilet, sink) in one corner of the plan allowed for outside access as well as for linking water and sewage refuse to the services provided by the municipality. The north–south orientation of the hall opened up the view of the Mediterranean from the city’s slopes. The importance of having a scenic view increased with the popularity of large, glazed windows. By integrating other fashionable elements of the time—such as red Marseilles roof tiles and wall murals—the upperclass Beiruti house became a status symbol and the embodiment of a modern and urban way of life.16 Through the division of functions within its spaces and the various levels of privacy it introduced between the outside world, domestic life, and family life, the central-hall house presented an appealing ideal of modern living revolving around the nuclear family—an ideal that was assumed by the intellectual discourse of domesticity. H O M E , N AT I O N , M O T H E R

In her speech at al-Jamiyya al-Urthudhuksiyya al-Khayriyya (Greek Orthodox Benevolent Society) in Tripoli on 3 June 1910, Julia Tuma introduced the concept of “the first

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sky” to her mostly female audience as “the ‘home’ [al-bayt], the miserable hut, if you wish. One room with a kitchen to its side. The abode of the family of which you are at the center. The home whose management has been given to you and the little kingdom over which God made you queen.” To signify what is beyond this physical description of bayt, Tuma used the English word “home” to evoke a place that constitutes “a shelter for the woman, a kingdom for the mother, a place of jollity for the man, a promenade for the father, and a pasture of well-being and joy for the children.”17 A discursive shift in the understanding of home and an accompanying reconceptualization of women’s role in society over the preceding half century prefigured Tuma’s speech. This shift took place in intellectual circles across the region, and it transformed the house into a social space of citizenship. Initially under the influence of leading reformists and gradually across wider sections of society, as Afsaneh Najmabadi argues for 19th-century Iran, a growing conviction that the education of women was necessary for “progress” and “catching up” with the West reconfigured women from “house” to “manager of the house.”18 Whereas as “house,” a woman formed part of a man’s household and was subject to his management, as manager of the house she became responsible for administering its life and the life of its inhabitants. The discursive transition from premodern to modern hinged on the central position of women in the home, as the domain of the nuclear family and as a citizen’s “first school.” The earliest translation of this kind of domesticity into an idealized set of practices in Beirut was accomplished by Shahin Makariyus and two young lecturers at the Syrian Protestant College, Faris al-Nimr and Yaqub Sarruf. In 1876 they founded the scientific literary journal al-Muqtataf. Soon after, they introduced the faw¯a
id baytiyya (domestic benefits) section, which in the space of a few years became the full-fledged and longsurviving regular feature b¯ab al-tadb¯ır al-manzil¯ı (home management section). This section provided practical advice geared toward scientific management of the home and, with al-mun¯az.ara wa-l-mur¯asala (letters to the editor), constituted an arena for debating the role of the woman at home and, by extension, in wider society. The debate in al-Muqtataf drew in an increasing number of female writers, turning the journal into one of the earliest publications with regular contributions by women.19 Even after its relocation to Egypt in 1884, al-Muqtataf continued to play a pivotal role in the regional debate on domesticity, attracting a regular readership from various cities and towns in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. In the years following al-Muqtataf’s move to Cairo, discourse about the home was gradually picked up by other Beirut-based periodicals. The discussions also migrated beyond the printed word and into speeches delivered at girls’ schools and at the podiums of literary and philanthropic societies.20 Moreover, by publishing speeches delivered outside Beirut and encouraging correspondence from their readers, the press helped forge a discursive field that linked Beirut to Zahla and Damascus in the east, Sidon in the south, and Hums and Baynu in the north and also extended to the expatriate communities of Egypt and the Americas. An expansion in the discourse of domesticity during the last few years of Ottoman rule was typified in two events. The first was the publication of the first Beirut-based women’s magazine, al-Hasna
, immediately following the relaxation of press regulations after the Young Turk Revolution. The second was the formation of the philanthropic societies Yaqazat al-Fatat al-Arabiyya (Arab Girl’s Awakening) in 1914 and Jamiyyat

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al-Amal al-Khayriyya li-l-Fatayat al-Muslimat (Benevolent Society for Muslim Girls) in 1917 by young women from leading Muslim families in Beirut.21 Up to that point, Muslim women as a group had played a largely passive role in the debate on women and domesticity, primarily following its development through the press.22 This does not mean they were not envisioned as objects of reform. As we shall see in the next section, Thamarat al-Funun, which started out as the newspaper of Jamiyyat al-Funun (Society of the Arts), often placed Muslim women at the center of the newspaper’s debates on moderation, authenticity, and domestic life. A M AT T E R O F TA S T E

The notion of dhawq constituted a major component of the discourse of domesticity and carried the management of the home beyond mere housework. As Labiba Hashim put it in a lecture republished in al-Hasna
, “It is not enough for a woman to know about housework, but capability and taste are of her first duties.”23 As manager, the ideal woman was not only expected to carry out household chores efficiently but also to instill in the home a taste specific to an idealized middle-class morality. Through its emphasis on moderate consumption and simplicity, taste served in the discourse of domesticity both as a marker of class and as an indicator of a localized and authentic modernity distinguishable from its European, or ifranj¯ı, counterpart. Grounded in a long history of manuals of manners aimed at cultivating refined behavior and moral character through discipline and training, the category of taste was not new to the Ottoman intellectual sphere. Al-Kafawi’s 17th-century lexicon, still in print in 19th-century Istanbul and Cairo, reveals some of the historical layers implied by the use of the word dhawq. In addition to denoting the physical sense of taste, lived experience, and an innate aptitude for sciences, the word related to the aesthetics of literature, or adab.24 Taste also related to adab in the sense of “manners,” for adab “in all its uses reflects a high valuation of the employment of the will in proper discrimination of correct order, behavior, and taste.”25 Although such manuals of manners were mainly aimed at the upper classes, the focus of social reformers in many parts of the region during the late 19th century shifted to a wider audience,26 reflecting the emergence of a modern public sphere and of an increasingly literate “middle class” enjoying greater access to modern commod...