| Abstrakt: |
Abstract: Women (Kadınlar) was written by Şemsettin Sami Frashëri (1850-1904), a prominent and prolific Ottoman-Albanian man of letters. It appeared in print in the aftermath of the RussoOttoman War of 1877-1878 as one of the first treatises published in Ottoman Turkish on themes encapsulated by "the woman question." Sami’s assertions, which include that females, whether human or other animal, are more or less equal to their male counterparts, have given him a firm standing among the era’s progressive thinkers. At the same time, a close inspection of Women reveals that the (self-) censored treatise could have served the purpose of mainstreaming state-sponsored educational reform by the Hamidian regime (1876-1909) which, by contrast to Sami, has more frequently been associated with conservativism and Islamism. It is argued here that this realization has the effect of complicating our understanding both of Sami’s "progressivism" and Hamidian "conservativism," thereby revealing that an adherence to a vocabulary of binaries presents an obstacle to more fully understanding the variegated ideological landscape of the era |
