Academic Year 2008-2009

Malhamé – Malfamé: The Ambiguity of Empire in the Late Ottoman Levant
January 21, 2009, 5:30PM
Cabot Intercultural Center, 7th floor
Speaker: Jens Hanssen, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean History, University of Toronto

Summary

On 21 January 2009 Jens Hanssen, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean History at the University of Toronto, presented a talk entitled "Malhamé – Malfamé: The Ambiguity of Empire in the Late Ottoman Levant." Professor Hanssen's expertise on urban life in the provincial capitals of the Ottoman Empire during its waning years shone through in the story he told about the travails of the Malhame family. The story recalls a family of Maronite Christians, which Hanssen dubs "transimperial" subjects, who served as power brokers and facilitators of influence between Europe, protected European subjects in the Levant, and the Ottoman government. They moved easily between confessional groups, intermarried with European Catholics, were multilingual, and sometimes adopted European identities. As a young man, the scion of the Malhame family, Salim, had been sent to Istanbul to study. While he lived in penury, Salim was known to be a remarkable student.

His notable talent quickly allowed him to move between influential roles in the administration of empire. From here he married into an influential Levantine family, held lucrative financial interests all over the world, and lived a life of considerable importance in Istanbul. His brother Najib also attained notable success as an operative for Sultan Abdul Hamid, confronting exiled Young Turks opposed to the regime. When the Young Turks orchestrated the reinstitution of the constitution in 1908, the Malhames became targets of a public campaign intent on defaming them. The campaign was highly public and included articles and cartoons which attacked their supposed pernicious influence. The cartoons depicted them variously as horned rams, microbes, spies, and fungi. Given this treatment, a large portion of the family took advantage of their extensive ties to Europe, and soon made a life there. In the end, the story of the Melhames is one of the malleability of identity in the late Ottoman Levant, and the intense cross-cultural interaction that the urban milieu of that period allowed for.

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