Paul Wittek | |
|---|---|
 Paul Wittek,c. 1938 | |
| Born | (1894-01-11)11 January 1894 |
| Died | 13 June 1978(1978-06-13) (aged 84) Eastcote, England |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
| Thesis | Die Entstehung der Zenturienordnung. Studie zur ältesten römischen Sozial- und Verfassungsgeschichte (1920) |
| Influences | Ahmet Refik Altınay,Vasilij Bartolʹd,Stefan George,Mehmet Fuat Köprülü,Friedrich Kraelitz [de],Johannes Heinrich Mordtmann [de],Max Weber[1] |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | |
| Sub-discipline | Ottoman studies |
| Institutions | School of Oriental and African Studies |
| Doctoral students | Victor Louis Ménage |
| Notable students | Peter Charanis,Stanford J. Shaw,Elizabeth Zachariadou |
| Main interests | early Ottoman history |
| Notable works | The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (1938) |
| Notable ideas | Ghaza thesis |
Paul Wittek (11 January 1894 – 13 June 1978) was an AustrianOrientalist and historian. His 1938 thesis on therise of the Ottoman Empire, known as theghazi thesis, argues that the driving force behind Ottoman state-building was theexpansion of Islam. Until the 1980s, his theory was the most influential and dominant explanation of the formation of theOttoman Empire.
Wittek was conscripted at theoutbreak of World War I as a reserve officer to an Austro-Hungarian artillery regiment. In October 1914, he suffered a head wound inGalicia and was taken to Vienna to recover. Subsequently, he served first on theIsonzo Front and in 1917 was drafted as a military adviser to theOttoman Empire, where he was stationed in Istanbul and Syria until the war ended. During this time Wittek learnedOttoman Turkish and acquired the patronage ofJohannes Heinrich Mordtmann [de], the former German consul in Istanbul. Once the war ended, Wittek returned to Vienna and resumed his studies in ancient history, which he had already begun before the war. In 1920 he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on early Roman social and constitutional history, after which he dedicated himself to the study of Ottoman history.
Wittek was in Vienna during the emergence of the fledgling discipline ofOttoman studies. He was co-editor (with his mentor Kraelitz) and contributor to the first scholarly journal in this field, calledMitteilungen zur osmanischen Geschichte (Notes on Ottoman History), of which two volumes appeared between 1921 and 1926. For his livelihood Wittek worked as a journalist for the conservative literary and political fortnightlyÖsterreichische Rundschau. After it ceased publication in 1924, he moved back to Istanbul and wrote for the German-languageTürkische Post, but soon became involved in the creation of theGerman Archaeological Institute in Istanbul, where he received an appointment through theGerman Foreign Office by late 1926, initially as an Assistant inTurkology.[2][3] By 1929 Wittek was a specialist (Referent) and worked closely with the DirectorMartin Schede [de] to establish a research programme spanning Classical and Christian antiquities as well as Turkish art in collaboration with German Byzantinists and Orientalists, among themHellmut Ritter as the representative of theGerman Oriental Society in Istanbul,Paul Kahle andHans Lietzmann.[4] Wittek's activities included study tours to collect material on early Ottomanepigraphy.[5] He also examinedbeylik-period architecture and collaborated withFriedrich Sarre andKarl Wulzinger [de] on a monograph of late medievalMiletus under Islamic rule. In Istanbul, he met and befriended the Russian OrientalistVasilij Bartolʹd.[6] He claimed a part in the collective effort of Turkish historians to put a halt to the sale of Ottoman treasury archives to Bulgaria as scrap paper byİsmet İnönü's government in 1931.[7]
AfterHitler'srise to power in Germany, Wittek resigned from his Istanbul post in the summer of 1933 due to his opposition to theNazi Party[8] and moved with his family to Belgium in 1934, where he worked at theInstitute for Byzantine Studies in Brussels withHenri Grégoire. After theGerman attack on Belgium Wittek fled in a small boat to England, where he was interned as an enemy alien. Thanks to the support of British Orientalists, in particularHamilton Gibb, he was finally released and found a job at theUniversity of London. After the war he returned to his family, who had remained in Belgium. In 1948 he came to London and took up the newly created Chair of Turkish at theSchool of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which he held until his retirement in 1961.
Wittek, who was a devoted member of theGeorge Circle (along with the fellow medievalist and academic refugeeErnst Kantorowicz[9]), published relatively little and mostly in short form, but became very influential within his discipline. His only book-length studies, on the principality ofMenteşe and on the rise of the Ottoman Empire, appeared in the 1930s. In the latter Wittek formulated his ghazi thesis, according to which the ideology of sectarian struggle was the major cohesive factor in the formative phase of the Ottoman Empire. The ghazi thesis was, untilRudi Paul Lindner's nomad thesis in the 1980s, the prevailing view of the emergence of the Ottoman Empire.
