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Our Time: On the Durability of the Alaturka Hour System in the Late Ottoman
Empire

Article · October 2010

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Int. J. Turkish Studies Vol. 16, Nos. 1&2, 2010

Avner Wishnitzer

“OUR TIME:” ON THE DURABILITY OF THE

ALATURKA HOUR SYSTEM
IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Introduction

Over the last two hundred years, the use of mean time has become so
widespread that it is largely taken for granted, as if part of the natural order of
things. This was hardly the way the Ottoman elites of the early twentieth century
saw it. In fact, the adoption of mean time and its implications became the object of a
debate that was to continue into the Republican era. This debate is at the center of
the current study.
Mean time entered the Ottoman Empire around the middle of the nineteenth
century and was increasingly used in various governmental agencies alongside the
indigenous hour system, commonly known as gurubi or alaturka saat. The use of
mean time widened considerably following the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, but it
did not fully supersede the Ottoman system down to the fall of the Empire. It was
only in the beginning of 1926 that the old hour system was finally abolished and
universally replaced by mean time in the newly established Republic of Turkey.1
So far, the few discussions devoted to the matter have focused on bureaucratic
aspects of the process and sought to explain, in a somewhat teleological manner, the
eventual triumph of mean time.2 While certainly relying on these earlier studies, I

Author’s Note: This article is largely based on my PhD dissertation. I wish to thank my
supervisor, Professor Ehud R. Toledano, for his continuous guidance and the Colton
Foundation for its support. The article itself was written during a post-doctoral year at the
University of Washington. I would like to thank my host, Professor Reşat Kasaba, for his
constant assistance, Professors Walter Andrews and Selim Kuru for their thoughts and
insights, and the Fulbright Program for its support. Last but not least, I thank Dr. Eyal Ginio
for his comments on an earlier version of this article.
1
“Günün Yirmi Dört Saatine Taksimine Dair (1925),” Düstür, 3rd ed., vol. 7, 317-318.
2
Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Feza Günergun, “Osmanlı Türkiyesi'nde Alaturka Saat'ten
Alafranga Saat'e Geçiş,” in X. Ulusal Astronomi Kongresi (2-6 Eylül 1996), (İstanbul:
İstanbul Üniversitesi Fen Fakültesi, Astronomi ve Uzay Bilimler Bölümü, 1996), 434-441;
Doğan Gündüz, “Alaturka Saatten Alafranga Saate Geçiş: Osmanlı'nın Mekanik Saatle
Buluşması,” İstanbul 51 (2004): 120-126. Both Uğur Tanyeli and Palmira Brummett have
discussed some cultural and political aspects of the Ottoman hour system but neither of them
has focused on the transition process per se. See Uğur Tanyeli, “The Emergence of Modern
Time Consciousness in the Islamic World and the Problematics of Spatial Perception,” in
Anytime, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), 159-167; Palmira
48 Avner Wishnitzer

wish to turn the main question they raise upside down and ask how the alaturka
system survived in spite of the efforts to replace it. By placing the bureaucratic
process within a wider context, I will argue that the transition to mean time was not
an inevitable outcome of blind processes of modernization but an ideological choice
that reflected the cultural and political agenda promoted by the rising professional
elites of the early twentieth century. The marginalization of the alaturka hour
system, and the world of values with which it was connected, dialectically generated
a defensive response among sectors and individuals who felt threatened by the
emerging temporal order. The durability of the alaturka system will thus be
explained by the role it was assigned in the consolidation of a “nativist” Ottoman-
Muslim identity.

Alaturka Saat and the Spread of Mean Time

The Ottoman hour system traced its origins to the ancient scheme of
“seasonal” or “temporal” hours, according to which the day and the night were each
divided into a set of twelve equal units. Daytime hours were counted from sunrise to
sunset and nighttime hours, from sunset to sunrise. As the length of daytime and
nighttime changed throughout the year, the seasonal hours varied in length
accordingly.3 While the use of seasonal hours continued down to the twentieth
century, the Ottoman tradition of astronomical timekeeping relied first and foremost
on equinoctial hours (al-mustawiya), which by definition, were of equal length.4
According to the system devised by Ottoman astronomers in the fifteenth century, if
not earlier, two cycles of twelve equal hours were counted from sunset, reckoned as
twelve o’clock.5
The spread of this system in subsequent centuries was most probably
connected to the widening use of mechanical clocks. The first mechanical clocks
had reached the Ottoman court already in the late fifteenth century, and during the
sixteenth they were sold in ever growing numbers, gradually spreading beyond

Brummett, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908-1911 (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2000), 312-313.
3
On temporal/seasonal hours, see Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks
and Modern Temporal Orders (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 19. For the
Ottoman context, see Atilla Bir, “Zamanı Belirlemeye Yarayan Aletler,” in Osmanlı
İmparatorluğunun Doruğu: 16. Yüzyıl Teknolojisi, ed. Kazım Çeçen (İstanbul: İstanbul
Büyük Şehir Belediyesi, İstanbul Su ve Kanalizasyon İdaresi, 1999), 231-235.
4
Equinoctial hours were already known in antiquity and were used in tables of prayer time
before the Ottoman era. The Ottoman innovation was the counting of equal hours from
sunset. See: David King, In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical
Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization (Studies I-IX) (Leiden:
Brill, 2004), vol. 1, 201-208.
5
Idem, Islamic Mathematical Astronomy (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), 246-252. See also:
Idem., In Synchrony, vol. 1, 207-208, 553.
 “Our Time” 49

palace circles.6 It seems safe to assume that by the second half of the eighteenth
century, thousands of timepieces were marketed throughout the Ottoman domains
every year.7 Seasonal hours were ill suited for the new devices, as their length
equaled the standard hours of the clock only on the two equinoxes. Equinoctial
hours, by contrast, were fully compatible with the uniform hours of the mechanical
clock except that the need to adjust all clocks and watches to show 12 at sunset wore
down their mechanisms.8 Since sunset (gurub) was the baseline of this unique
Ottoman arrangement, just as it was in the system of seasonal hours, the names
gurubi (and ezani) saat remained in use and were in fact at least as common in
official correspondence as the now better-known term alaturka saat. For the sake of
clarity, however, I will use this last term throughout this study and elaborate on the
cultural and political meanings it carried in the second half of the article.9
In order to evaluate correctly the alaturka system, we need to re-place it in the
“temporal culture” from which it emerged. The term “temporal culture” here
denotes the vast ensemble of practices, behaviors, and concepts that concern the
social organization of time and fill it with meaning. In contrast to modern,
artificially lit societies, in the temporal culture of early modern Ottoman society
sunset brought an end to the daily cycle of social life, as people withdrew from the
public sphere into the safety of their homes. Moreover, sunset marked the beginning
of a new calendar day and the beginning of a new cycle of religious ritual.10 It thus
made perfect sense to set the clock to start a new cycle at this time, with the call for

6
Otto Kurz, European Clocks and Watches in the Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 20-46.
Kemal Özdemir, Ottoman Clocks and Watches (İstanbul: Creative Yayıncılık, 1993), 145. On
the clock collection in the Ottoman palace, see: Fanny Davis, “The Clocks and Watches of the
Topkapı Palace Museum,” Journal of Turkish Studies 8 (1984): 41-51. On the diffusion of
clocks and local manufacture during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see: Kurz,
European Clocks, 55-60; Fatma Müge Göçek, East Encounters West: France and the
Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 104-
107; Özdemir, Ottoman Clocks, 111-125.
7
Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, “Some Remarks on Ottoman Science and Its Relation with European
Science and Technology,” in Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire, ed.
Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (Hampshire: Variorum, 2004), 57. For estimations of numbers of
clocks sold in the Ottoman Empire, see: Kurz, European Clocks, 71-88. Ottoman sources too
suggest the proliferation of clocks and watches in the eighteenth century, both in İstanbul and
in the provinces. See: Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of the Empire:
Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 103-
106; Uğur Tanyeli, “Norms of Domestic Comfort Luxury in Ottoman Metropolises: Sixteenth
to Eighteenth Centuries,” in The Illuminated Table, The Prosperous House: Food and Shelter
in Ottoman Material Culture, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann (Würzburg:
Ergon Verlag, 2003), 314-315.
8
Ahmet Samim, “Vaktimizi Bilelim,” Sada-ı Millet (111), March 21, 1910, 1; S. M. Zwemer,
“The Clock, the Calendar and the Koran,” The Moslem World 3 (1913): 272.
9
The forms used in this article are the Turkish adaptations of the Italian alla-turca and alla-
franga.
10
On the Muslim cycle of prayers, see David King, Astronomy in the Service of Islam
(London: Variorum, 1993), 250-251.
50 Avner Wishnitzer

the evening prayer. In other words, the strength of the alaturka system stemmed
from its compatibility with these patterns, from the sense of inner logic and
coherence created by the synchronicity of all cycles.11
While the origins and early development of the alaturka system remain
obscure, by the nineteenth century it predominated over seasonal hours, at least in
official use.12 In theory, it could be just as precise as the mean time system, but the
need to set all clocks and watches on a daily basis created discrepancies. Gaps
between different timepieces widened quickly if they were not set on time for a few
days.13 The resulting level of unpunctuality did not present serious difficulties
before the nineteenth century as most governmental and commercial structures
remained relatively simple and could rely on the daily prayer cycle for temporal
orientation. Even if hours were fixed, they were usually understood with relatively
wide margins.14
But times were changing. The reign of Sultan Selim III (1789-1807)
inaugurated a long period of nearly constant reform aimed at creating a more
centralized and effective state apparatus to cope with internal challenges and a
rapidly changing outside world. Early in this reform process, different organs of the
Ottoman state began experimenting with new techniques of time organization. In an
attempt to attain better surveillance capabilities and higher levels of regularity,
efficiency, and predictability, these organs developed elaborate “temporal
constructs” in which clocks played an increasingly important role.15 The term
“temporal constructs” here denotes the comprehensive ensembles of time-related
practices and procedures that govern the work routines in complex organizations. In
the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, the emergence of such constructs became
most evident in the administrative system, in the post-1826 army, and later in the
educational system. Similar constructs were devised for various systems of
transportation and communication that were run by the state.

11
On some of the main traits of Ottoman temporal culture, see Avner Wishnitzer, “The
Transformation of Ottoman Temporal Culture during the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’” (PhD
diss., Tel Aviv University, 2009), 33-86.
12
Tanyeli, “The Emergence,” 162; Bir, “Zamanı Belirlemeye,” 233.
13
John F. Fraser, Pictures from the Balkans (London: Cassell & Company, 1912), 119-120;
Samim, “Vaktimizi Bilelim,” 1. See also: İhsanoğlu and Günergun, “Osmanlı Türkiyesinde,”
436.
14
“Loosely” defined hours were still common in nineteenth-century correspondence. For
examples, see: Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereafter BOA), C.DH 2331, 7.C.1277 (18 May
1812); BOA, C.DH 3421, 3.Ca.1230 (12 April 1815); BOA, A.MKT.NZD 230/38, 1273 (25
July 1857). For similar vagueness in the deliberation of the first Ottoman parliament, see
Hakkı Tarık Us, Meclis-i Meb‛usan Zabıt Ceridesi 1293=1877 (İstanbul: Vakit, 1954), vol. 2,
40; and in an official notification in the Takvim-i Vekayi, see Boğaziçi Şirket-i Hayriye:
Tarihçe, Salname (İstanbul: Ahmed İhsan ve Şürekası, 1330/1914), 2-3, no. 1. On the
importance of the prayer cycle for temporal orientation and early modern Ottoman standards
of punctuality, see: Wishnitzer, The Transformation, 51-65.
15
For this process, see Wishnitzer, “The Transformation,” passim.
 “Our Time” 51

Until the end of the nineteenth century, almost all the temporal constructs
within the state apparatus relied on the alaturka system. Daily routines in
governmental bureaus and military compounds, schedules of schools and ferries all
featured the Ottoman hours. As the length of night and day shifted throughout the
year, however, the length of workdays in bureaus varied greatly between winter and
summer, and office hours had to be redefined every few months. The same problem
arose in school schedules and in public transportation timetables, and creative
solutions were found in order to solve it.16 For example, shortly after the Young
Turk Revolution, official workdays were redefined in terms of hours before and
after noontime (rather than in terms of alaturka saat) probably because noontime
changed at a slower rate between days. Officials were now instructed to arrive three
hours before noon, to take a one-hour break at noontime, and then continue to work
until four and a half hours after noon.17 The same arrangement was apparently tried
in the educational system as well.18
In establishing noontime as baseline, this arrangement was reminiscent of the
hour system that developed in Europe, which originally counted hours from high
noon to high noon. However, since the earth's axis is tilted, and because its orbit
around the sun is not circular but rather elliptic, the rotation rate of the earth is not
uniform. Real solar time, which is measured by the movement of the sun across the
sky, therefore varies with the season. Mean time is the annual average of this non-
uniform movement. Thanks to its compatibility with mechanical clocks, the use of
mean time spread throughout Europe in the early modern period but for centuries,
real solar time maintained its supremacy. It was only in the late eighteenth century
that European cities began to keep mean time in preference to apparent solar time.19
Mean time began to spread in the Ottoman Empire around the middle of the
nineteenth century and came to be known as zevali (from zeval, noon), vasati (from
vasat, mean), or alafranga saat. The main channels through which mean time
entered the Ottoman Empire have been surveyed elsewhere and need not be
discussed here.20 Suffice it to say that it was mainly in the army and in various
agencies handling communication, transportation, and foreign affairs that mean time

16
For the need to adjust office hours and ferries’ timetables, see, for example: BOA,
A.MKT.NZD 169/47, 22.S.1272 (8 November 1855); BOA, DH.MUİ 103-2/23, 28.Ş.1328
(28 August 1910); BOA, MV. 143/23, 22 Mayıs 1326 (5 June 1910); BOA, DH.İD 130/8, 2
Şubat 1330 (15 February 1915).
17
BOA, DH.MUİ 34-2/21, 25 Teşrin-i Evvel 1325 (2.11.1909).
18
For attempts to create rational school schedules based on the gurubi system, see “Mekteb-i
Senayi Nizamnamesidir,” Düstür, 1st ed., vol. 2, 262-26; “Umum Mekâtib-i İdadiye-i
Mülkiyenin İdare-i Dahiliyelerine Mahsus Talimattır,” published in Mahmud Cevad, Maârif-i
Umûmiye Nezâreti: Tarihçe-i Teşkilât ve İcrââtı (Ankara: Millî Eğitim Bakanlığı Yayınları,
2002) (first published 1338/1919-1920), 349; “Umum Mekatib-i Rüşdiyenin Nizamname-i
Dahilisidir,” Düstür, 1st ed., vol. 2, 249-257.
19
Derek Howse, Greenwich Time and the Discovery of the Longitude (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980) 37-38, 82; Rossum, History of the Hour, 346-347.
20
İhsanoğlu and Günergun, “Osmanlı Türkiyesinde,” 434-441; Gündüz, “Alaturka Saatten,”
120-126; Wishnitzer, The Transformation, 324-334.
52 Avner Wishnitzer

was first used, usually alongside the alaturka system. The concurrent use of the two
hour systems, like the simultaneous use of several calendars, complicated time
organization within the empire and created much confusion.21
Given its “stability,” mean time was advantageous as a basis for the elaborate
temporal constructs of the nineteenth century, but these same structures could and
did work on the basis of the Ottoman system. In other words, the complexities of the
Ottoman system alone cannot explain the spread of mean time and the process
should not be understood in terms of some “natural” evolutionary process. Hour
systems, fashions, technologies, tastes, and ideas do not travel on their own. They
are disseminated along identifiable routes by specific human actors who seek to
promote particular agendas. Let us now point to some of the main agents that
actively promoted the use of mean time in the Ottoman Empire and examine their
rationale.

Advocating Mean Time

Before the age of the railway and telegraph, every community kept its own
hour, which was derived from the meridian where it was located,22 and the slowness
of transport and communication made synchronization of these local hours both
impossible and unnecessary. Telegraph systems, which were becoming global by the
end of nineteenth century, wove remote localities into a huge network, capable of
transmitting information almost instantaneously. Once connected in this network,
the multitude of times was increasingly perceived as a problem. The huge number of
local times created great difficulties in the operation of railway systems too.23
Such problems were the main motive for convening the Prime Meridian
Conference in Washington, D.C., in 1884. The conference, which was attended by
representatives of twenty-five countries, including the Ottoman Empire, made
several important decisions. Most relevant to our discussion here, the conference
defined the longitude of the Greenwich Observatory as the Prime Meridian from
which longitudes were to be counted; it set the beginning of the Universal Day at

21
The confusion created by the multiplicity of hour systems and calendars is touched upon
below. Ottoman calendars have received some scholarly attention. See for example: B. van
Dalen, R. S. Humphreys, Manuela Marín, Ann K.S. Lambton, Christine Woodhead, Athar M.
Ali, J. O. Hunwick, G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, I. Proudfoot, F.C. de Blois, “Ta'rīk̲ h̲ (a.),” EI2,
vol. 10, 257-271; Cumhure Üçer, “İstanbul'da Zaman ve Takvimler,” İstanbul 51 (2004): 76-
80; Richard B. Rose, “The Ottoman Fiscal Calendar,” Middle East Studies Association
Bulletin 25/2 (1991): 157-168; Zwemer, “The Clock,” 262-274.
22
Howse, Greenwich Time, 82.
23
Eviatar Zerubavel, “The Standardization of Time: A Sociohistorical Perspective,”
American Journal of Sociology 88, 1 (1982): 4-8. Stephan Kern, The Culture of Time and
Space, 1880-1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 11-12; David Landes,
Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1983), 285-286.
 “Our Time” 53

midnight GMT, and decided that counting the hours of the day would run from zero
to twenty-four.24
Although adopted almost unanimously, the decisions of the conference were
implemented slowly by the respective governments. Japan applied the system in
1888, Italy and Germany in 1893, Spain in 1901, and France only in 1911. Things
were even more complicated for the Ottomans, since the unification of time in their
empire was not merely the adoption of a new standard time, but rather, the
replacement of the gurubî hours with a completely different, mean time-based
system. In 1884 this was not on the agenda. While still in Washington, the Ottoman
delegate stated that regardless of the recommendations of the Prime Meridian
Conference, in the Ottoman state there would always be two times, l'heure à la
franque and l'heure à la turque.25
Concurrent use of both hour systems indeed continued throughout the
Hamidian era until the 1908 Young Turk Revolution opened the way to reform.
According to Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Feza Günergun, a committee was formed
in the spring of 1913 to examine the benefits of adopting Greenwich Mean Time for
all official matters.26 In fact, a similar committee had already been formed by the
Ministry of Treasury in late 1908 or early 1909, not long after the Revolution. In
order to allow better handling of official affairs, that committee had recommended
reforming the mali calendar and adopting mean time instead of the Ottoman hour
system.27
As the recommendations of the committee were being discussed, a civil
servant named Hassan Hamid wrote an article for the newly established journal
Mülkiye (Civil Service), calling on the government to endorse them. Mülkiye,
published by the alumni society of the School of Civil Service (Mekteb-i Mülkiye),
became an important arena for the exchange of ideas within the circles of schooled
civil servants.28 Hamid's article sheds light on the rationale of the adherents of mean
time within those circles; therefore, I would like to examine his arguments is some
detail.
Hamid directly tied the reform of both the calendar and the hour system to the
new era inaugurated by the restoration of the constitution.29 Beginning with the
problems caused by the concurrent use of multiple calendars, he went on to argue
that the use of alaturka hours was similarly a source of major confusion. As
examples, Hamid pointed to the difficulties caused by the changing length of the
workday throughout the year and by the fluctuating durations between meals.30

24
Howse, Greenwich Time, 138-151.
25
Ibid., 148.
26
İhsanoğlu and Günergun, “Osmanlı Türkiyesinde,” 438.
27
BOA, MV 124/66, 20.M.1327 (10 February 1909).
28
On this publication, see: Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 243-252.
29
Hassan Hamid, “Şemsi Tarih, Zevali Saat,” Mülkiye 2 (1 Mart 1325/ 14 March 1909), 25.
30
Hamid was not the only one to put forward these problems. Ahmed Samim, whose article
will be discussed below, brought up similar concerns about working hours. Contemporary
Ottoman books on hygiene and home economics typically recommended keeping a fixed
54 Avner Wishnitzer

While Hamid mentioned the internal problems caused by reliance on the

alaturka hours, he was much more concerned about the incompatibility of the
Ottoman system with that common throughout Europe and in North America.
Peoples and nations, he argued, need to have certain principles and practices in
common in order to communicate, and in this sense, the calendar and the hour
system are just like a shared language. It was essential to create a common ground
with the “civilized west” (garb-ı medeni ile), Hamid maintained, in order to benefit
from its “treasures of knowledge and accomplishments.”31 Steamers, railways,
telegraph and telephone lines, he continued, now connected “east and west” and the
incompatibility of the hour systems and calendars was injurious to that connection.32
Hamid thus offered to eliminate discrepancies by universally applying mean time,
which had already been adopted in Europe, America and “even [in] significant parts
of Africa and Asia.”33
Hamid then criticized the Council of State (Şura-ı Devlet), which endorsed
reforming the calendar but not the hour system. He warned that this partial adoption
of the committee’s recommendations would have grave implications. Then, in the
last paragraph, he reported that after he had written most of the article he was
informed that the cabinet had decided to reject reform of both the calendar and the
hour system. The basis for the decision, Hamid noted somewhat bitterly, was “the
well-known concept of not upsetting the old order.”34 Officially, the
recommendations had not been rejected; rather, their application was postponed to
“an appropriate time.”35 The result was the same, nevertheless. The exclusive
application of mean time was thwarted.
That was not the last disappointment for the adherents of mean time. In March
1910, Ahmed Samim, a contributor to Sada-ı Millet, clearly expressed frustration at
the failure of the previous year’s attempts to reform the calendar and the hour
system.36 Samim endorsed yet another initiative, brought to the upper house of the
parliament (Meclis-i A‛yan) by one of its members, Gazi Muhtar Paşa. Possibly as a
result of the previous failures, Muhtar's bill was less radical. Rather than abolishing
the alaturka system all together, he suggested requiring by law that mean time dials
be placed alongside alaturka ones on all public clocks and in all muvakkithanes.37 In

duration between meals and often provided schedules that employed mean time. For
examples, see: Mustafa Münif, Yüz Sene Yaşamak İçin (İstanbul: Adab Matbaası, 1331/1912-
1913), 9-12, 38; Ali Riza, Kızlara Mahsus Hıfzıssıhha (2. Kitap) (İstanbul: Karabet Matbaası,
1318/1900-1901), 33-34; Ahmed Edib, İktisad Beyti (İstanbul: Kanaat Kütüphanesi ve
Matbaası, 1331/1912-1913), 36-37.
31
Hamid, “Şemsi Tarih,” 26.
32
Ibid., 27.
33
Ibid., 27.
34
Ibid., 28-29.
35
BOA, MV 124/66, 20.M.1327 (10 February 1909).
36
Samim, “Vaktimizi Bilelim,” 1-5.
37
Muvakkithanes were one-room buildings which housed muvakkits, or Islamic timekeepers,
who were traditionally charged with setting prayer and fast times. As the use of mechanical
clocks spread in the nineteenth century, many muvakkits began placing clocks in the windows
 “Our Time” 55

order to allow the calibration of the two hour systems, Muhtar proposed to renew the
practice of firing a canon at high noon, a practice which had apparently been
suspended for some thirty years. Muhtar further offered to require by law that mean
time appear in all pocket almanacs, alongside the alaturka hours.38
Samim significantly called Muhtar’s proposal a “civilized initiative” (medeni
teşebüs) and listed the disadvantages of the native hour system. “There is no one,”
he argued, “that does not know how wrong and disorganized the alaturka system
is.”39 Since its baseline was constantly fluctuating, the alaturka system created
serious difficulties in the running of state affairs, in the organization of
transportation lines, and in a host of other fields. Samim noted that several ministries
and governmental organs has already begun to use mean time alongside alaturka
hours but pointed out that without the ability to set the clocks to a standard time, this
change would only do harm. In short, the proposed bill was meant to create more
favorable conditions for the use of the new system.
Some deputies had apparently argued that there was no need for a law and that
recommending the use of mean time to the executive organs would suffice. Some
objected to the sanctions included in the bill and claimed that it would be wrong to
punish individuals for not using mean time. Samim, therefore, stressed that the
sanctions were not directed against individuals but meant to induce muvakkits and
the gunners at the Imperial Arsenal to comply with the law.40 Clearly echoing
revolutionary currents, he claimed that the fact that mean time was not universally
shown alongside alaturka hours ran contradictory to the principle of equality. While
users of the alaturka hour system could easily set their timepieces everywhere, users
of mean time met with all kinds of difficulties. Therefore, Samim insisted that a law
was needed in order to correct that situation. He further dismissed criticism raised
in religious circles against the use of the new system and concluded by expressing
his hope that the bill would not fail like earlier initiatives.41
Samim’s article and the discussion it echoes clearly demonstrate the
considerable efforts that were needed to push forward the use of meantime, in the
face of significant opposition. These efforts joined a long list of measures taken
following the revolution in the field of time organization. That was a clear reflection
of the new emphasis laid by the new leading elites on punctuality, efficiency, and
temporal regularity.42 But although several aspects of time organization within the

or on the walls of their muvakkithanes so that people could set their personal timepieces as
they passed by. On muvakkits, see Süheyl Ünver, “Osmanlı Türkleri İlim Tarihinde
Muvakkithaneler,” in Atatürk Konferansları V, 1971-1972 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu,
1975), 217-257.
38
Samim, “Vaktimizi Bilelim,” 5.
39
Ibid., 1, 5.
40
Ibid., 3-4.
41
Ibid., 5.
42
On these measures, see: Wishnitzer, “The Transformation,” 140-154, 310-317; On the
outlook that undergirded these measures, see: Ibid, 154-157, 209-229, 266-287.
56 Avner Wishnitzer

state apparatus were indeed changed to a certain extent, the concurrent use of both
systems continued, and so did the confusion.43
In the military, such confusion could have grave consequences44 and in 1912,
the Ministry of War decided to switch to mean time and to press for the universal
application of the foreign system throughout the state apparatus.45 In line with the
directive of the Ministry of War, the undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior
ordered the universal adoption of mean time in all bureaus of the civil service. Only
the calls for prayers were to remain connected to the alaturka system. This memo,
and similar ones issued subsequently, explained the basic principles of the mean
time system and gave very detailed instructions concerning the writing of dates and
hours in official documents.46
Whereas before the revolution, attempts were made to devise rational temporal
constructs on the basis of an “irrational” hour system, converting hours back and
forth as needed, the new tendency in leading military and bureaucratic circles was to
abolish the old system altogether. The new configuration of power created following
the deposition of the sultan, allowed for the promotion of that agenda. Exercising its
now unchallenged power, the army simply bypassed the opposition raised against
the abolition of the alaturka system in Parliament and tried to impose the new
system not only within its own body, but throughout the civil administration too.
Two international conferences held in Paris in 1912 and 1913 further promoted
the use of mean time in the Ottoman state apparatus. The first proposed that an
International Time Committee oversee the unification of time signals, secure the use
of GMT worldwide, and establish an international organization that would
coordinate data from various observatories in order to reach the highest possible
level of exactitude in the setting of time.47 The Ottomans participated in the
conference, and shortly thereafter, the office of the Grand Vezir asked several
ministries whether or not the state should adopt the new time order proposed in
Paris. A committee formed in order to look into the matter recommended adoption,
and the Ottoman cabinet decided to participate in the 1913 conference, which was to
rectify the recommendations made in the previous conference.48 The decision was
explained by the advantages of the proposed system “not only for foreign relations,
but especially for our internal dealings.” Specifically, the post, the telegraph, the
national shipping companies and all railway companies operating in the country
would benefit from the new arrangement.49

43
Palmira Brummett has already shown that this confusion was sometimes an object of satire
in the contemporary press. See: Brummett, Image and Imperialism, 312-313.
44
See for example: BOA, MB.HPS.M 4/9, 29 Nisan 1328 (12 May 1912).
45
İhsanoğlu and Günergun, “Osmanlı Türkiyesinde,” 437.
46
BOA, MB.HPS.M 4/9, 29 Nisan 1328 (12 May 1912); BOA, DH.MB.HPS.M 2/5, 12
Mayıs 1328 (25 May 1912); BOA, DH.MB.HPS.M 2/5, 22 Mayıs 1328 (2 June 1912); BOA,
DH.MB.HPS.M 7/28, 7 Teşrin-i Evvel 1328 (20 October 1912).
47
Howse, Greenwich Time, 164-166.
48
İhsanoğlu ve Günergun, “Osmanlı Türkiyesinde,” 438.
49
BOA, MV 178/37, 11 Haziran 1329 (24 June 1913).
 “Our Time” 57

Following the second conference, the radio-telegraph center in İstanbul began

to receive the international time signal sent from Paris, allowing the calibration of
İstanbul time with the international time system. Starting in May 1915, the signal
was transmitted to the Galata tower, on which a “time-ball” was installed.50 Every
day at exactly 12:00 mean time, upon receiving an electric signal, the time-ball was
automatically lowered along its pole so that residents of the city and mariners in the
Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara could set their timepieces.51 This was
certainly a landmark in transition to mean time. Through a global network of instant
communication, a time set in Greenwich was communicated through Paris to the
center of İstanbul and signaled from the top of the tallest building around. This was
probably the most visible indication that a new comprehensive temporal order was
taking over the heart of the Ottoman Empire.
By late 1916, the conduct of official business in the center of old İstanbul
(Dersaadet) relied on mean time. According to a memo issued by the cabinet in
December of that year, the Municipality of İstanbul wished that the entire city would
switch to mean time, and that İstanbul time would be communicated to all towns and
townships. The cabinet ordered that the matter be examined in a committee formed
by the Ministry of the Interior. It is not clear how much work was actually done to
promote the change.52 What is beyond doubt is that at least within the state
apparatus, the alaturka hour system was losing ground rapidly.
Yet, as evidence from the second decade of the twentieth century indicates, the
transition to mean time was far from complete. Some government officials
continued to inscribe the old alaturka hours on official documents, while others had
to be reminded over and over again that noon and midnight replaced sunset and
sunrise as the main dividing lines of the day. These remained a source of confusion
down to the last years of the Empire.53 Sources from the early years of the
Republican era reveal that even following the official abolition of the alaturka
system, the actual transition to mean time was not at all smooth. Mehmet B.
Uluengin has suggested that the central government may have been concerned that
individuals who resented the exclusive adoption of mean time would hamper the
process.54 I would like to suggest that these difficulties arose because the transition
to mean time was never merely a bureaucratic issue but one that was closely
connected with questions of identity and cultural orientation.

50
On the first time balls in nineteenth-century England, see Howse, Greenwich Time, 79-80,
96-99.
51
İhsanoğlu ve Günergun, “Osmanlı Türkiyesinde,” 438-439. For more details, see Doğan
Gündüz, “Galata Kulesi'ndeki Saatleri Ayarlama Küresi,” Toplumsal Tarih 126 (2004): 1-4.
52
BOA, MV 204/86, 30 Teşrin-i Sani 1332 (13 December 1916).
53
See for example: BOA, DH.MB.HPS.M 17/39, 5 Teşrin-i Sani 1330 (16 November 1914);
BOA, DH.EUM.MTK 60/26, 30 Teşrin-i Sani 1330 (13 December 1914); BOA,
DH.EUM.MTK 76/49, 20 Nisan 1330 (3 May 1914); BOA, DH.EUM.MTK 80/30, 19 Nisan
1331 (2 May 1915).
54
Mehmet B. Uluengin, “Secularizing Anatolia Tick by Tick: Clock Towers in the Ottoman
Empire and in the Turkish Republic,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, 1
(2010): 30.
58 Avner Wishnitzer

“The Civilized West”

At first glance it seems that the proponents of the mean time system were
simply being practical, that they did not concern themselves with identity, culture,
and the like. In their official recommendations and newspaper articles alike, the
advocates of mean time tended to list the difficulties and confusion caused by the
concurrent use of the two hour systems and to propose eliminating them by
replacing the old hour system with the international one. In light of such practical
reasoning, the need to switch back and forth between hour systems certainly does
not make any sense. And yet, similar conversions are an integral part of daily life
still today and are often taken for granted. Consider, for example, weights and
measures, national currencies, or even languages.
It is thus worth stressing once again that eliminating difference and imposing
uniformity are never inevitable outcomes of blind “modernization processes” that
force themselves on societies. Standardization is a political choice with far-reaching
economic, social, and cultural implications. Hassan Hamid, whose arguments in
favor of the mean time system were noted above, openly expressed his hope that
abolishing an hour system that “belonged to a different era” would bring the
Ottoman Empire closer to the “civilized west.” This was not merely a matter of
practicality; it was a declaration of a new cultural orientation and a new political
agenda.
The use of the terms alaturka and alafranga reminds us that the two hour
systems were never culturally neutral. Just as the dividing line between gurubi and
zevali signified the different positions of the sun that the two systems used as a
baseline, and the term ezani alluded to the religious baggage that the Ottoman
system carried, the terms alaturka/alafranga expressed the significance that the two
systems had in the construction of collective identities. The terms alafranga and
alaturka, best translated as “European style” and “Ottoman style,” became widely
used during the second half of the nineteenth century as European commodities,
tastes and fashions were disseminated through Ottoman urban centers on an
unprecedented scale.55 By the end of the nineteenth century the term alafranga
could denote anything, from “European style” house furniture, through clothing and
haircuts, and on to table manners and etiquette.
Writing about the alaturka/alafranga distinction, some scholars have portrayed
a culturally bifurcated, polarized, or even schizoid society that could hardly
reconcile the conflicting orientations within it.56 Projecting post-Kemalist

55
On the diffusion patterns of European products and manners during the second half of the
nineteenth century, see: Alan Duben and Cem Behar, İstanbul Households: Marriage, Family
and Fertility, 1840-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 202-214.
56
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, 19. Asır Türk Edebiyat Tarihi (İstanbul: Çağlayan Kitabevi,
1982), 136-137; Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill
University Press, 1964), 106-110, 155-200; Carter V. Fındley “An Ottoman Occidentalist in
 “Our Time” 59

dichotomies onto the Ottoman past, some of these authors have attributed the
embrace of European cultural forms to the “secular,” reform-oriented groups within
Ottoman society and ascribed rejection of the foreign to the traditional or “religious”
groups.57 At first sight, the alafranga/alaturka differentiation seems to validate such
analyses. The conceptual dichotomy it represents might lead us to conclude that
there were very clear boundaries separating the indigenous from the foreign,
boundaries which forced contemporaries to choose sides.
In reality, things were much more complex. It was often not mere duality, or
the coexistence of indigenous and European cultural forms, that characterized late
nineteenth-century Ottoman society; rather, it was the hybridization, the fusion of
local and foreign elements, and the creation of new, modern forms that were
distinctly Ottoman.58 Sometimes, an innovation that was dubbed “foreign” when it
had been first introduced became assimilated to the extent that one or two
generations later, it was considered native and even “traditional.”59
The idea that Ottoman society was closed, fanatically guarding itself against
change, has been sufficiently refuted, even if not yet extinct.60 The Ottomans had
been appropriating foreign ideas, tastes, and technologies for centuries.61 What was

Europe: Ahmed Midhat Meets Madame Gülnar, 1889,” American Historical Review 103/1
(1998): 25-26; idem., Ottoman Civil Officialdom, 35-39.
57
Benjamin Fortna, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late
Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 13-14.
58
These patterns of integration are to be found in almost every aspect of life in the Ottoman
Empire since the Tanzimat, and even more so during the Hamidian period. The attempt to
weave Islamic and European notions was of course at the heart of the Young Ottomans
movement, as so thoroughly discussed by Şerif Mardin in his The Genesis of Young Ottoman
Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1962). For further examples of such attempts in other fields, see:
(jurisprudence and law system) Avi Rubin, “Ottoman Modernity: The Nizamiye Courts in the
Late 19th Century” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2006), 25-74; Iris Agmon “Recording
Procedures and Legal Culture in the Late Ottoman Shari‛a Court of Jaffa, 1865-1890,”
Islamic Law and Society 11/3 (2004); (education) Fortna, Imperial Classroom, esp. pp. 87-
129, 176 nr. 21; (architecture) Shirine Hamadeh, The City's Pleasures: İstanbul in the 18th
Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007); (official attire) Donald Quataert,
“Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720-1829,” International
Journal of Middle East Studies 29/3 (1997), 420-421; (fashion) Brummet, Image and
Imperialism, 225.
59
Selçuk Esenbel, “The Anguish of Civilized Behavior: The Use of Western Cultural Forms
in the Everyday Lives of the Meiji Japanese and the Ottoman Turks during the Nineteenth
Century,” Japan Review 5 (1994): 154-156.
60
See for example: Jason Goodwin, Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire
(London: Vintage, 1999), 151.
61
For a critique of “Muslim conservatism” in borrowing military technologies, see Gábor
Ágoston, “Disjointed Historiography and Islamic Military Technology: The European
Military Revolution Debate and the Ottomans,” in Essays in Honour of Ekmeleddin
İhsanoğlu, vol. 1, ed. Mustafa Kaçar and Zeynep Durukal (İstanbul: IRCICA, 2006), 572-
576; Virginia Aksan, “Breaking the Spell of the Baron de Tott: Reframing the Question of
Military Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1760-1830,” International History Review 24, 2
60 Avner Wishnitzer

new about the adoption of imported cultural forms in the period under discussion
was its scope. Earlier in Ottoman history interest in Europe was limited to groups
within the elite, but towards the end of the nineteenth century, European products,
fashions and manners diffused down the social ladder, and by the early twentieth
century, even the lower classes in İstanbul felt their impact.62
The second half of the nineteenth century was characterized not only by the
extent to which these forms were diffused, but also by the unfavorable political
context in which this process was taking place. European powers of undeniable
military, technological and economic superiority were encroaching on Ottoman
borders and competing for influence within the Ottoman domains. Very much aware
of their weakness, many Ottomans were living with a constant sense of threat that,
recent works have shown, informed Ottoman policy, especially during the Hamidian
and second constitutional eras.63
To some extent, the initial adoption of European ideas, models, and cultural
forms was an attempt to ward off western aggression by utilizing its own arsenal.
The trend was driven further by authors, theatre people and critics who, regardless
of state interests, were eager to experiment with new genres and concepts.64 At the
same time, the political context discussed above had engendered suspicion towards
European culture, particularly given the open contempt to anything Ottoman often
expressed by Europeans.65 Especially during the Hamidian era, the adoption of
foreign fashions and concepts came to be seen by many as indication of the
dwindling of Islamic morals and identity.66 In this context, the term alafranga
signified not merely the foreign origin of an object or a new cultural form but also a
reservation, or even a sense that these innovations posed a threat to the native
culture.67 Şerif Mardin, who analyzed in detail the social origins of the opposition to
“over-westernization,” showed that this opposition was established in popular

(2002): 253-278. On “westernization” during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see
Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), esp. 37-42.
62
Duben and Behar, İstanbul Households, 203; Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, 42.
63
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in
the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909 (London: I.B Tauris, 1999); Fortna, Imperial Classroom. On
the intensive discussion of European hegemony in the post-1908 Ottoman satirical press, see:
Brummett, Image and Imperialism, esp. 149-220.
64
Duben and Behar, İstanbul Households, 202-203; Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultan:
Culture and Everyday Life in the Ottoman Empire from the Middle Ages until the 20th
Century (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 247.
65
Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultan, 251.
66
Fortna, Imperial Classroom, 202, 207.
67
İsmail Doğan, Ahmet Mithat; Ali Gurbetoğlu, Avrupa Âdâb-ı Muâşereti yahut Alafranga
(Ankara: Akçağ, 2001), 34.
 “Our Time” 61

culture as well and that it served as a mechanism of social control against those
transgressing established norms.68
Thus, while the use of hybrid cultural forms continued, on the discursive level
attempts were made to draw clearer lines between the local and the foreign, between
the Self and the Other. Such clear-cut distinctions were of course ideological
simplifications of a much more conflicted social reality. The projection of a
supposedly cohesive “self” in contradistinction to an equally monolithic “other”
served the ideological ends of such groups as the Young Ottomans in their
opposition to the Tanzimat leadership. During the Hamidian era, similar distinctions
served the ruling elite in their efforts to cultivate a sense of collective Ottoman
identity that would galvanize the loyalty of the subjects to the state and facilitate
their mobilization.69 In an attempt to reconcile their project with the wish to benefit
from interaction with European countries, the Hamidian political and intellectual
elite largely advocated selective borrowing from Europe.
Sultan Abdülhamid II (r.1876-1909) held the view that European civilization
consisted of “technique” and “idea.” Although the introduction of techniques was
beneficial for the Ottomans, he considered the adoption of European ideas
dangerous for peoples still not educated enough to absorb them.70 Writers such as
Ahmed Midhat (1844-1912) similarly distinguished between “material progress”
and “moral progress” and endorsed selective application of European innovations.71
Such discursive tactics were comparable to contemporary anti-colonial discourses in
other parts of the world. According to Partha Chatterjee, anti-colonial nationalism
demarcated as its own “domain of sovereignty,” an inner, spiritual realm separated
from the material world into which foreigners were not allowed.72
The contours of the foreign were demarcated and constantly debated in the
widening stream of newspapers and periodicals of all kinds. According to Elizabeth
Frierson, who has worked on late Ottoman women's magazines, the foreign
increasingly served to define the indigenous, sometimes by setting an example to be

68
Şerif Mardin, “Super Westernization in Urban Life in the Ottoman Empire in the Last
Quarter of the Nineteenth Century,” in Turkey: Geographic and Social Perspectives, ed. Peter
Benedict, Erol Tümertekin and Fatma Mansur (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), 403-446.
69
The efforts to form and inculcate an Ottoman civic identity in the second half of the
nineteenth century have been rather thoroughly studied. See for example: Mardin, The
Genesis, 326-332, 369-372; J. G. Rahme, “Namık Kemal's Constitutional Ottomanism and
non-Muslims,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 10/1(1999): pp. 23-39. Deringil, The
Well-Protected Domains, esp. 93-111.
70
Quoted in Orhan Okay, Batı Medeniyeti karşısında Ahmed Midhat Efendi (Ankara: Millı
Eğitim, Gençlik ve Spor Bakanlığı, 1989), 9.
71
Although explicitly advocating this distinction, Midhat's work in fact transcended this
binary. See: Findley, “Ottoman Occidentalist,” 23-24, 42-28. For an analysis of Midhat’s
synthesis of European notions and traditionalist Ottoman-Islamic mores, see: Ahmed Evin,
Origins and Development of the Turkish Novel (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1983), 81-
113.
72
Quoted in Findley, “Ottoman Occidentalist,” 18.
62 Avner Wishnitzer

emulated, sometimes by presenting an alleged contrast which was to be rejected.73

Palmira Brummett’s extensive work on the satirical press of the early years of the
second constitutional era similarly demonstrates that the foreign and the indigenous
were very often contrasted, the former often being associated with the “new,” and
the latter with the traditional order. However, the boundaries of all these categories
were constantly being contested, drawn and redrawn by the satirists depending on
the message they wanted to convey. In the quasi-colonial context of the early
twentieth century, the symbols produced, appropriated and used in the Ottoman
press were not “readily divisible into two such mutually exclusive realms of ancient
and modern.”74 It must also be remembered that this whole discussion was taking
place on the pages of newspapers, journals, and novels, all of which were
appropriated formats that had been assimilated to the point they were no longer
considered alafranga.
This complexity should warn us against portraying late Ottoman cultural life
solely in the black and white colors of polemic discourses. In real life, people moved
between the allegedly contrasting worlds quite easily. They could attend a karagöz
play on one day and a European-style theatre on the next, without necessarily
feeling schizophrenic.75 In other words, the alaturka/alafranga distinction did not
reflect a society torn between two conflicting and mutually exclusive orientations,
but quite the opposite. It indicated the multiplicity of valid cultural alternatives
available and, even more important, the fluidity of the boundaries running between
those alternatives. There was no need to draw lines between the indigenous and the
foreign as long as the former was the only feasible option. After all, identity
normally becomes an issue when it is no longer taken for granted.
The dissemination of foreign cultural forms and their hybridization with native
forms and the collage of customs, tastes, manners and styles brought about the need
to create a sense of order by classifying and defining what was “ours” and what was
not. As already noted, these attempts to delineate the “ours” were inseparable from
the effort to form an “us,” that is, an Ottoman collective identity. The adoption of
foreign cultural forms remained entangled with a sense of danger to indigenous
identity, which was in turn bound to a much more readily perceived threat to the
territorial cohesion of the Empire.76 This sense of threat increased significantly after

73
Elizabeth B. Frierson, “Mirrors Out, Mirrors In: Domestication and Rejection of the
Foreign in Late-Ottoman Women's Magazines (1875-1908),” in Women, Patronage, and Self-
Representation in Islamic Societies, ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2000), 177-184.
74
Brummett, Image and Imperialism, 14. Brummett discusses at length the satirical
gazettes’ treatment of the threat of European cultural hegemony and the dichotomy along
alaturka and alafranga lines. See esp., 189-258.
75
As Paul Dumont has noted, the diary of Said Bey records the type of syntheses discussed
above, as they were lived by a medium-ranking official in early twentieth century İstanbul.
See: Paul Dumont, “Said Bey: the Everyday Life of an İstanbul Townsman at the Beginning
of the XXth Century,” in Osmanistische Studien zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte: In
memoriam Vančo Boškov, ed. Hans Georg Majer (Wiesbaden : O. Harrassowitz, 1986), 1-7.
76
Esenbel, “The Anguish,” 179.
 “Our Time” 63

1908 not only because of the large territorial losses, but also as a result of the
declared Europeanized vision of the Committee of Union and Progress, and more
broadly, the social groups supporting it.
The very notion of “progress” was crucial here. Ever since the late eighteenth
century, the term “progress” had been used in Europe to denote an understanding of
history as a linear forward-movement along an imaginary timeline.77 From their self-
proclaimed position at the most anterior edge of that timeline, European elites
looked “back” at the non-European peoples and arranged them according to how far
they were “behind” Europe. Difference between nations and civilizations was
increasingly defined in temporal terms. These notions were closely related to ideas
of social Darwinism, which similarly drew on the notion of evolution toward
perfection along a single timeline.78
Under the shade of European dominance, professional elites around the world
adopted this outlook and began to gauge the condition of their respective societies in
similar temporal terms. Defining themselves as ‘progressive,’ they stressed their
break with the past. The very distinction between past and present was thus drawn in
dualistic terms of ‘modern’ and ‘traditional,’ ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive.’ Modes of
life, practices, and ideas which were not compatible with the vision of civilization
espoused by the rising elites were branded 'ancient' or 'backward.' In other words,
they were denied their place in the present and relegated to the past.79
Over the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman elites too became
concerned about their own position on that same imaginary timeline. Increasingly,
they defined the condition of their Empire as ‘lagging behind.’ Catching up with the
Europeans depended on budgeting time in the most practical aspects of everyday
life, as if it was possible to combine the minutes saved in efficient work and strike
them off the accumulated temporal distance that the Europeans had opened.

77
On the notion of progress as movement though uniform, empty time, see Reinhart
Kosellek, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1985), esp. 222-255.
78
The relations between ideas of evolution and notions of progress are too complex to be
considered here. See: Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought,
1860-1945 (Cambridge UK: University of Cambridge, 1997), 5. Social Darwinism was
common in military circles and central in the ideology of some factions of the Young Turks.
See: M. Şükrü Hanıoğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995), 12-13, 208-212; Handan N. Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman
Military and the March to World War I (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 33-35.
79
See: Stephan Tanaka, New Times in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004); Potima Banerjee, Politics of Time: ‘Primitives’ and History Writing in A Colonial
Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); On Barak, “Egyptian Times: Temporality,
Personhood, and the Techno-Political Making of Modern Egypt, 1830-1930” (Ph.D.
dissertation, New York University, 2009). On such dualist discourse promoted by English
colonial officials in Mombasa, see: Frederick Cooper, “Colonizing Time: Work Rhythms and
Labor Conflict in Colonial Mombasa,” in Colonialism and Culture, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), esp. 237-240. On similar discursive tactics
directed against the lower classes in nineteenth-century England, see: Maureen Perkins, The
Reform of Time: Magic and Modernity (London: Pluto Press, 2001).
64 Avner Wishnitzer

Especially within circles of politically aware officers and bureaucrats in the early
twentieth century, regularity, punctuality, and efficiency became means to attain
progress and a yardstick by which to measure it.80
It must be emphasized that the very notion of progress was by then well
established among the Ottoman elites and was not a Young Turk innovation.81 What
was new was the idea that everything “traditional” had to be purged in order to make
way for progress, and it was in that context that the Ottoman hour system, itself an
innovative combination of old and new, was branded a “backward,” remnant of the
past that had to be eradicated.82 The “struggle” between the alaturka and the
alafranga systems should be understood in this context of competing visions of
modernity under the shadow of European military, political, economic and cultural
hegemony. If the struggle over the hours was a cultural issue, then, it was no less a
political one.

“Our Time”

Palmira Brummett has demonstrated how political aspects of the imported hour
system were reflected in post-1908 satirical publications. These cartoons and
caricatures lampooned the confusion caused by the use of two separate systems and
expressed the cultural meanings connected with each. Along with the newly
imported technologies of transportation and communication which disrupted the
sense of time, the European hour system was viewed with skepticism. It was
presented as a strange system, foreign to Ottoman practices, one that was forced on
Ottoman society rather than integrated into it. It was European time representing
European hegemony.83
The reservation toward mean time was not limited to the virtual sphere of
cartoons; it was inscribed onto the physical space of the city in the shape of clock
towers.84 In his recent work, Mehmet Bengüh Uluengin shows that Ottoman clock

80
For examples of this outlook, see: Osman Senai, “Çalışalım,” Asker 1(21 Ağostos 1326/3
September 1908): 8-9; Süleyman Mehmed Avan-Zade, Alman Askeri ve Almanya'da Hayat-ı
Askeriye (İstanbul: Orhaniye Matbaası, 1335/1917), 14, 22-23; Tevfik, “Terakki-i Akvamın
Alameti,” Mülkiye, 1(1 Şubat 1324/1909), 14-16; Badi‘ Nuri, “Hükümet Kırtasiye,” Mülkiye
8(11 Eylül 1325/1909), 19-22; Fuad Ebülmuammer, Vezaif-i Aile (İstanbul: Keteon
Bedrusyan Matbaası, 1328, 1910-1911), 21.
81
For the notion of progress among the Young Ottomans, see: Mardin, Genesis, 350-352,
405-406.
82
In his article quoted above, Hassan Hamid specifically points to the outdated nature of the
Ottoman system and connects his endorsement of mean time to the dawn of a new
consitutional era. Hamid, “Şemsi Tarih,” 25, 27.
83
Brummett, Image and Imperialism, 308-314.
84
On Ottoman Clock Towers, see: Uluengin, “Secularizing Anatolia,” 18-36. Klaus Kreiser,
“Ottoman Clock Towers: A Preliminary Survey and Some General Remarks on Construction
Dates, Sponsors, Locations and Functions,” in Kaçar and Durukal, Essays in Honour, vol. 1,
543-556; Sabrı Yetkin, Kentsel bir Sembolün Doğuşu-İzmir Saat Kulesi (İzmir: İzmir
Büyükşehir Belediyesi, 2001); Hakki Acun, “Anatolia Clock Towers,” in The Great Ottoman-
 “Our Time” 65

towers carried “complex and seemingly contradictory layering of meanings.” The

cultural meaning associated with clock towers were fluid, Uluengin concludes, and
it was the context that determined the way these buildings were interpreted.85 The
hours shown by the clock towers add an additional level of complexity. Those built
before the second half of the nineteenth century all displayed alaturka time, a clear
expression of the obviousness of the indigenous, of its cultural monopoly.86 At that
time, there was no need to distinguish between alaturka and alafranga simply
because the latter did not exist as a valid cultural option. However, as the use of
mean time spread, more and more public clocks began to show mean time, often
alongside the old alaturka hours.
Sultan Abdülhamid II did not oppose this trend, but quite the contrary. In a
document composed at some point during the 1890s concerning the future of the
Ottoman territories in present-day Libya, the sultan called for the construction of a
clock tower that would show mean time. This was, according to Selim Deringil, an
attempt to project an image of Ottoman authority, and modernity, in the province.87
But there may have been practical motives as well. In 1884, for example, two mean
time clocks were purchased in order to be placed in two different locations in
İstanbul, next to clocks showing alaturka hours. The clocks were intended to
facilitate the handling of official affairs.88 The placing of clocks showing different
hours one next to the other assisted in the constant calibration of personal
timepieces. The same type of practical needs induced officials in the post and
telegraph office in Eminönü to ask for the placing of a clock showing both
alafranga and alaturka hours. Such a clock was needed, it was said, since the post
office was working all day long with shipping and railway companies.89 The
“Islamist” Sultan and his administration obviously did not think that mean time was
inherently anti-Islamic, as long as it did not replace the indigenous system. In fact,

Turkish Civilisation, vol. 4, ed. Kemal Çiçek et. al. (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2000), 374-379;
Nil Birol, “Managing the Time of the Bureaucrat in the Late Nineteenth Century Ottoman
Administration” (M.A thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2005), 50-57; Şule Gürbüz, “Saat
Kulelerinin Varlığı ve Yokluğu Üzerine,” in Zamanın Görünen Yüzü: Saatler, ed. Selahattin
Özpalabıyıklar (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi, 2009), 133-147; Zeynep Çelik, Empire, Architecture,
and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914 (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2008), 146-151; Avner Wishnitzer, “A Comment on Mehmet Bengü Uluengin’s
“Secularizing Anatolia Tick by Tick: Clock Towers in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish
Republic,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42/4 (2010): 537-545.
85
Uluengin, “Secularizing Anatolia,” 31-32.
86
Several clock towers were constructed by the Ottomans before the mid-19th century. See:
Kreiser, “Ottoman Clock Towers,” 552-555.
87
Selim Deringil, “They Live in a Stage of Nomadism and Savagery: The Late Ottoman
Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, 2
(2003): 320.
88
The correspondence concerning these clocks is lengthy. See: BOA, I.DH 940/74403,
3.Ra.1302 (21 December 1884); BOA, DH.MKT 1405/50, 22.C.1304 (17 March 1887);
BOA, DH.MKT 1408/109, 6.R.1304 (31 March 1887).
89
BOA, Y.PRK.PT 8/11, 1.C.1310 (21 October 1892). For another clock tower showing both
zevali and gurubi hours, see: BOA, DH.MKT 1376/59, 9.S.1304 (3 May 1887).
66 Avner Wishnitzer

the sultan even erected a clock tower that showed both mean and alaturka time right
next to the mosque that bore his name, in the compound of the Yıldız palace.90
The double-faced public clocks were visible expressions of the validity and
relevance of both hour systems. But the attacks of mean time advocates against this
ambivalence dialectically created their opposition. Whereas Ahmet Samim, whose
article was quoted above, felt that users of alafranga hours were discriminated
against, others felt that the local hour system was being pushed away from the
public sphere by a foreign one. This was exactly the concern of the Governor of
Beirut when he appealed for permission to build a clock tower in his provincial
capital. Many foreign establishments, he wrote to the palace in September 1897,
have constructed clocks, “all of which show and sound the Western hour” (saat-i
garbiyi irae ve ilan etmekte). Since there was no public clock showing Muslim
times, the Muslim population and even government officials were forced to set their
watches according to alafranga hours.91
Ten years later, the Governor of the Province of Jerusalem, Ali Ekrem Bey,
notified the palace that a clock tower had been constructed in honor of the sultan.
“Although there were clock towers showing alafranga hours in every corner of the
town of Jerusalem,” wrote Ali Ekrem Bey, “there was none showing ezani hours.”92
The inauguration of this clock tower was celebrated on the anniversary of the
sultan’s accession to the throne, and ever since that “blissful day,” the ringing sound
of the ezani clock “has been enlivening (tenşit) the hearts of the Muslims.”93
Both governors referred not only to the visual effect of the clock towers, but to
the audio dimension too. In the face of increased foreign activity, and a sense of
threat to Muslim hegemony, native time had to be both seen and heard. The
attention to the sound of bells was clearly connected to the call of the muezzin, so
typical of Muslim cities. Indeed, just a few years after the construction of the clock
tower in Jerusalem, the same sensitivity to Muslim hegemony within urban
cacophony created an incredibly long correspondence concerning the bells of the
clock tower at the German Dormition church on Mount Zion, just outside
Jerusalem’s city walls. Here the concern that the sound of the bells would mute the
call of the muezzin from the nearby mosque at King David’s tomb was explicitly
expressed.94
This inseparability of temporality, religious feelings, and collective identity
was best expressed by Ahmet Haşim (1884?-1933), one of the most prominent
writers of the transition period between the Ottoman and the Republican eras. The
text quoted below was first published in 1923, a few years before the old hour

90
BOA, Y.MTV 49/84, 1.N.1308 (10 April 1891).
91
BOA, Y.MTV 167/200, 8 Eylül 1313 (20 September 1897). For more information
concerning the Beirut clock tower, see: Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an
Ottoman Provinicial Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 243-247.
92
BOA, Y.PRK.UM 80/69 15 Teşrin-i Evvel 1323 (28 October 1907). For more information
concerning the clock tower in Jerusalem, see: Zeynep Çelik, Empire, Architecture, and the
City, 146-151.
93
BOA, Y.PRK.UM 80/69 15 Teşrin-i Evvel 1323 (28 October 1907).
94
BOA, DH.İD 30/123 7.Ca.1328 (16 May 1910).
 “Our Time” 67

system was abolished, along with the Hicri calendar. Haşim’s words capture much
of what was said here in the last few pages, and thus they deserve to be quoted in
length:

The most surreptitious yet most powerful of innovations was the introduction
of foreign time, not in terms of the clocks as such, but the time system itself.
Just as in the past we had our own lifestyles, attitudes, modes of dress, and
tastes deriving from our religion, our race and tradition, so we had our own
hours and days to suit this lifestyle. The Muslim used to judge the beginning of
the day by the glint of dawn, and its end by the last light of dusk. The hands of
those old innocent watches hidden beneath strong metal lids would stumble
like the legs of a tired insect across the numerals around the dial, in a pattern
which corresponded more or less with the movement of the sun across the sky,
and keep their owners informed, with acceptable accuracy, of the time. Time
was an infinite garden, and the hours were colourful flowers lit by the by the
sun which bloomed there, inclining sometimes to the left, sometimes to the
right. Until we became accustomed to foreign time, the twenty four hours
“day” with each end lost in the darkness of night. … Instead we had our own
real day, which began with the light and ended with the light, a short,
undemanding, easily lived day of just twelve hours. … Admittedly, according
to astronomical calculations this time was primitive and inaccurate. But it was
venerable and sacred. … Those old hours marked the death of our fathers, the
wedding days of our mothers, our own births, the departure of caravans and the
conquest of enemy cities. The foreign hours which replaced them upset our
lives, resetting them according to an unknown code of laws, and making them
unrecognizable to our spirits. … Now the clocks in the house of Muslims seem
to show the times of another world, where the hours which are night, and those
which are day take on the colour of night. Like wayfarers who have lost their
way in the desert, we are lost in time.95

It was exactly this sense of cultural disorientation, this utter displacement, that
the adversaries of mean time feared, and it was on this ground that they objected the
abolition of the alaturka system, as the following incident so clearly indicates.
During the early years of the second constitutional period, Member of Parliament
Rıza Tevfik proposed to apply mean time instead of the old alaturka system.
According to Rıza Nur, who recorded the event in his memoirs, opposition came
mainly from “turbaned” deputies. Outraged by Tevfik’s claim that the early Turks

95
Published in translation in Özdemir, Ottoman Clocks, 149-152. For the text in Turkish, see:
Ahmet Haşim, “Müslüman Saati,” in Ahmet Haşim, Bize Göre/Gurebâhâne-i
Laklakan/Frankfurt Seyahatnamesi, ed. Mehmet Kaplan (İstanbul: Millî Eğitim Basımevi,
1969), 102-105.
68 Avner Wishnitzer

were infidels, they rose in protest, yelling that “to abolish our clock is to abolish the
prayer. Were the Turks ever infidels?”96
It is important to note once again how the alaturka system was bound with
religious practice and feelings, creating a time that was distinctly “ours.” Tevfik was
trying to break that nexus by questioning the Muslim identity of the early Turks, and
that was exactly what provoked so many delegates, prompting them to furiously
reject his doubts of their affiliation, along with his proposed reform.
In the face of a tremendous cultural shift, the alaturka system represented for
many Ottomans a way of life, a set of values and beliefs, and an identity they sought
to preserve. It is clear, then, that the cultural load attached to both hour systems, a
load which I tried to unpack and present in these last pages, was not merely a matter
of academic interest. It actually guided the political choices made by some of the
contemporaries and kept the alaturka system alive until the radically different
political and cultural climate of the early Republican era facilitated its elimination.

Conclusion

From the time it entered the Ottoman Empire until the Young Turk Revolution,
mean time was used alongside the alaturka hour system. However, in the
atmosphere that prevailed in the aftermath of the revolution, the alaturka system
was perceived not only as a bureaucratic nuisance, but also as a symbol of Ottoman
backwardness. Within leading military and bureaucratic circles, abolishing it was
increasingly considered crucial to the Ottoman modernization project which they
believed to be dependent on closer interaction with Europe.
Although the army leadership was now in position to replace the alaturka hour
system with mean time, the transition was only completed after the fall of the
Empire.97 The durability of the alaturka system can be explained in part by its
compatibility with other common temporal practices and conventions. An integral
component of the indigenous temporal culture, the alaturka hour system could be
easily used by sectors that opposed the accelerated Europeanization led by the CUP,
as a focal point of a defensive Ottoman-Muslim identity they sought to promote.
The attempts to annul the Ottoman hour system thus created their own opposition.
The trenches in the battle for the future orientation of the Empire were only now
becoming stabilized, and for the time being, the alaturka loyalists were still able to
hold the line. The two systems, and the cultural orientations they came to represent,
thus continued to co-exist.
While the Ottoman political and intellectual elite throughout the period under
discussion largely shared the notion of progress, and visualized modernity as a
temporal location at the tip of the historical timeline, the nature of modernity and the
possible ways to reach it were constantly debated. The Hamidian era was

96
Rıza Nur, Hayat ve Hatıratım, vol. 1 (İstanbul: Altındağ, 1967), 281. For reference to
similar concerns raised in religious circles, see: Samim, “Vaktimizi Bilelim,” 4.
97
The Republican political elite was much more determined to annihilate the use of the
alaturka system. See Uluengin, “Secularizing Anatolia,” 26-31.
 “Our Time” 69

characterized by conscious efforts to seek a synthesis between the foreign and the
indigenous in order to pave a distinctly Ottoman path to modernity. In this climate,
the concurrent use of the two systems was seen as natural.
With railway, steamship, telegraph, and telephone lines spanning huge
territories and forming a fully integrated system that was becoming ever denser, ever
more compelling, the Ottoman elites found that their maneuvering space was more
and more limited. While cultivating connections with the newly formed worldwide
grid, Hamidian political and intellectual leaders were rather comfortable with
maintaining a level of friction in the points of interface between the Ottoman and the
European. The more radical wing of the CUP, by contrast, sought to purge society of
elements that seemed to be incompatible with the emerging world system. All this
stresses the importance of the brief Young Turk era as a transition period between
the rather pragmatic eclecticism of the Ottomans and the more monolithic European
orientation of the Republicans.

University of Washington, Seattle

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