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FEEDING THE CITY: THE BEIRUT MUNICIPALITY AND THE POLITICS OF FOOD DURING WORLD WAR I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2014

Melanie Schulze Tanielian
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Abstract

World War I in the Ottoman Empire was a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented scale. By 1916 in the Greater Syrian provinces, men, women, and children were dying en masse of a war-induced famine so devastating that popular memory still names this war ḥarb al-majāʿa (the war of famine). Despite the civilian catastrophe, people's experiences on the Ottoman home front have been only marginally explored in the scholarship. Focusing on the city of Beirut, this article highlights the centrality of food provisioning in the competition for political legitimacy in the provincial capital. Through a detailed analysis of how the Beirut municipality was represented in the city's daily newspaper al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, I argue that for local reform-minded notables and intellectuals the war presented an opportunity to prove, both to the local population and to the Ottoman state, that issues related to the internal security and well-being of the Beirut province generally and the city specifically could be dealt with locally through existing governing bodies. The article thus traces the fierce political games played around the issue of food by various actors seeking to win the hearts of Beirutis through their stomachs.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 4: World War I , November 2014 , pp. 737 - 758
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Beshara Doumani, Margaret L. Anderson, Keith Watenpaugh, Katherine Babayan, Nancy Rose Hunt, Isabelle deRezende, the IJMES anonymous reviewers, and editor Beth Baron and associate editor Sara Pursley for their insightful comments. The research was made possible by the Sultan Program of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

1 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 14 November 1915; see also Nicholas Z. Ajay, “Mount Lebanon and the Wilayah of Beirut, 1914–1918: The War Years” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1973), 351.

2 How widespread these attacks on the bakeries were, and whether they can be considered riots, cannot be established from this account. Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 21 November 1914.

3 According to Fritz Grobba's study, the grain harvest of June 1914 was higher than average and sizable resources were thus available in the interior of Greater Syria at the outset of the war. Wartime exigencies, however, led to rising prices and declining supplies over the winter of 1914–15. Even as the situation deteriorated, flour and grain could still be purchased in the interior in late 1915. For example, a government-sponsored grain syndicate of Beiruti, Aleppine, and Lebanese merchants, while failing to secure transport, was able to purchase grain in Aleppo after November 1915. Grobba, Fritz, Die Getreidewirtschaft Syriens und Palästinas seit Beginn des Weltkrieges (Hannover, Germany: n.p., 1923), 18Google Scholar; Schilcher, Linda Schatkowski, “The Famine in Syria, 1915–1918,” in Problems of the Middle East in Historical Perspective: Essays in Honour of Albert Hourani, ed. Spagnolo, John P. and Hourani, Albert (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996), 237–38Google Scholar.

4 For example, before the war, a railway car could be hired for about twenty Ottoman liras; in 1914, it cost sixty. Grobba, Die Getreidewirtschaft, 18.

5 Schilcher, “The Famine,” 237.

6 Ajay, “Mount Lebanon and the Wilayah of Beirut,” 351.

7 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 17 November 1914.

8 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 20 November 1914.

9 Although the shipment was the result of a combined effort of the Ottoman governor, the Beirut municipality, and merchants, the paper credited the president of the municipality Ahmad Mukhtar Bayhum for its success. Ibid.

10 For a more detailed account of the causes of the famine, see Schilcher, “The Famine,” 234–50; and Melanie Tanielian, “The War of Famine: Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Lebanon” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 19–50.

11 It is impossible to account for the number of people who died from starvation, or to distinguish between those who died from hunger and those who died of diseases such as typhus, malaria, and cholera. As for total mortalities, the numbers vary greatly. George Antonius estimated that close to 350,000 people died in Greater Syria. See Antonius, The Arab Awakening; The Story of the Arab National Movement (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965), 241. In her study of German sources, Linda Schilcher raises the number to close to 500,000. See Schilcher, “The Famine,” 229. For a more detailed discussion on mortalities, see Thompson, Elizabeth, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privileges, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 21Google Scholar.

12 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 20.

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19 For example, Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War; and Chickering, Roger, The Great War and Urban Life in Germany: Freiburg, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

20 Tamari, Salim, Year of the Locust: A Soldier's Diary and the Erasure of Palestine's Ottoman Past (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2011), 7Google Scholar. Hasan Kayali's discussion of Jamal Pasha's wartime policies in Greater Syria confirms this assertion; see Kayali, “Wartime Regional and Imperial Integration of Greater Syria during World War I,” in The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation: Bilad al-Sham from the 18th to the 20th Century, ed. Thomas Philipp and Birgit Schäbler (Stuttgart, Germany: F. Steiner, 1998), 296–330. The literature on the formative and emancipatory effects of World War I in general is significant and includes discussions on developments in urban governance and women's entry into the workplace. See for example, Winter and Robert, Capital Cities; Chickering, Roger, The Great War; Maurine Greenwald, Women, War, and Work: The Impact of World War I on Women Workers in the United States (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Grayzel, Susan R., Women and the First World War (London: Longman, 2002)Google Scholar.

21 Tamari, Year of the Locust, 7.

22 The following list of works is by no means comprehensive. For causes, see Bloxham, Donald, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Akçam, Taner, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (New York: Zed Books, 2004)Google Scholar; for a detailed account of the deportations, see Kévorkian, Raymond H., The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011)Google Scholar. For discussions of survivors, see Miller, Donald E. and Miller, Lorna Touryan, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Naguib, Nefissa, “Nations of Orphans and Widows: Armenian Memories of Relief in Jerusalem,” in Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East, ed. Okkenhaug, Inger Marie and Naguib, Nefissa (Boston: Brill, 2008), 35–56Google Scholar. For international and humanitarian responses, see Winter, Jay, ed., America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Watenpaugh, Keith, “The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–27,” American Historical Review 115 (2010): 1315–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 al-Qattan, Najwa, “Safarbarlik: Ottoman Syria and the Great War,” in From the Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon, ed. Philipp, Thomas and Schumann, Christoph (Würzburg, Germany: Argon Verlag, 2004), 163–73Google Scholar.

24 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 6.

25 Jacobson, Abigail examines the negotiation of Ottoman identity in the local context of Jerusalem, in “Negotiating Ottomanism in Times of War: Jerusalem during World War I through the Eyes of a Local Muslim Resident,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40 (2008): 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a more general discussion of competing national identities, see Antonius, The Arab Awakening; Rashid Khalidi, The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); and Kayali, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

26 Tamari, Year of the Locust, 7.

27 Food, food supply policies, and civilian provisioning have played only a marginal role in the history of World War I in the Middle East. Notable exceptions include Schilcher, “The Famine,” 229–58; Pamuk, Şevket, “The Ottoman Economy in World War I,” in The Economics of World War I, ed. Broadberry, S.N. and Harrison, Mark (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 112–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yalman, Ahmet Emin, Turkey in the World War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1930), 119–34Google Scholar; Tamari, Salim, “City of Riffraff: Crowds, Public Space, and New Urban Sensibilities in War-Time Jerusalem, 1917–1921,” in Comparing Cities: The Middle East and South Asia, ed. Ali, Kamran Asdar and Rieker, Martina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 23–48Google Scholar; and Mazza, Robert, “Dining Out in Times of War: Jerusalem 1914–1918,” Jerusalem Quarterly 41 (2010): 52–58Google Scholar.

28 For a more detailed study of Armenian refugees and deportees, see Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 625–80. For an eyewitness account of the locust plague, see McGilvary, Margaret, The Dawn of a New Era in Syria (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1920), 179Google Scholar.

29 The misery in Beirut and its surrounding regions is well documented in a variety of sources. See, for example, Beirut consular reports or the unique report of the Ottoman governor of Mount Lebanon Ismaʿil Haqqi Bey, in Fuʾad Afram Bustani, ed., Ismaʿil Haqqi Bey: Lubnan, Mabahith ʿIlmiyya wa-Ijtimaʿiyya (Beirut: n.p., 1970). Many church archives, such as the daily reports of the priests at St. Paul in Harissa, provide accounts of the effects of the famine and the war on their congregations. The personal wartime correspondence of the staff of the American University of Beirut, most importantly the Howard Bliss and Edward Nickoley collections, include descriptions of the war experience. Memoirs written in the postwar period confirm the dire picture. See, for example, Yamin, Antun, Lubnan fi al-Harb: Dhikra al-Hawadith wa-l-Mazalim fi Lubnan fi al-Harb al-ʿUmumiyya, 1914–1918 (Beirut: al-Matbaʿa al-Adabiyya, 1919), 1:156–60Google Scholar; Arslan, Shakib, Sira Dhatiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Talifia, 1969), 154–59Google Scholar; al-Khuri al-Maqdisi, Jirjis, Aʿzam Harb fi al-Tarikh (Beirut: al-Matbaʿa al-ʿIlmiyya, 1918), 68–69Google Scholar; McGilvary, The Dawn, 71, 171, 206; and Frayha, Qabla an Ansa, 41–51.

30 The newspaper is preserved on microfilm at the American University of Beirut.

31 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 9 January 1915; 10 December 1914; 21 November 1914; 11 April 1915.

32 Tanielian, Melanie, “Politics of Wartime Relief in Ottoman Beirut (1914–1918),” First World War Studies 5 (2014): 69–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tanielian, “The War of Famine,” 169–205.

33 Lubnan, 11 November 1914. According to an article in Cairo's al-Muqattam, only three Beirut papers still operated, under the close scrutiny of authorities, by the middle of 1916: al-Akhbar, al-Balagh, and al-Haqiqa. Al-Muqattam, 8 April 1916.

34 The Beirut Reform Society was founded in 1912. It brought together Muslim and Christian intellectuals and community leaders advocating “a large measure of decentralization which would leave the internal affairs of the Arab vilayets in the hand of the local people.” Salibi, Kamal S., “Beirut under the Young Turks,” in Les Arabes par leurs Archives, ed. Berques, J. and Chevallier, D. (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1976), 205Google Scholar.

35 A number of Syrian and Lebanese émigrés living in Cairo founded the Decentralization Party in 1912. Tauber, Eliezer, The Arab Movements in World War I (London: Frank Cass, 1993), 5Google Scholar.

36 Hanssen, Fin de Siècle, 78; Kassir, Samir, Beirut (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2010), 241Google Scholar.

37 Kassir, Beirut, 240.

38 Abu Bakr Hazim Bey returned to Beirut on 7 March 1912. For a more detailed account, see Salibi, “Beirut under the Young Turks,” 207.

39 ʿAbd al-Ghani al-ʿUraisi was an outspoken Arabist. His editorials were often harsh critiques of the Turkish nationalism espoused by the Committee of Union and Progress. See Khalidi, Rashid Ismaʿil, “The 1912 Election Campaign in the Cities of Bilad al-Sham,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 16 (1984): 466Google Scholar.

40 Tauber, Eliezer, The Emergence of the Arab Movements (London: F. Cass, 1993), 143Google Scholar.

41 Hanssen, Fin de Siècle, 139.

42 Ibid.

43 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 21 November 1914; Ajay, “Mount Lebanon and the Wilayah of Beirut,” 354.

44 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 21 November 1914.

45 Quoted in Ó Gráda, Cormac and Eiríksson, Andrés, Ireland's Great Famine: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006), 20Google Scholar.

46 Ibid.

47 Hanssen, Jens, “The Origins of the Municipal Council in Beirut, 1860–1908,” in Municipalités méditerranéennes les réformes urbaines ottomanes au miroir d’une histoire comparée (Moyen-Orient, Maghreb, Europe méridionale), ed. Lafi, Nora (Berlin: K. Schwarz, 2005), 149Google Scholar.

48 Grobba, Getreidewirtschaft, 18.

49 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 23 November and 24 November 1914.

50 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 24 November 1914.

51 Edward Nickoley, “Historic Diary, February 1917,” Edward Nickoley Collection, box 1, file 2, Archives and Special Collections at the American University of Beirut (hereafter AUB).

52 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 3 December 1914.

53 Ibid.

54 Both Anis Frayha and Nicolah Ziadeh mention that sugar, rice, and coffee were the commodities that disappeared from the market first, or, if available, were unaffordable. See Frayha, Qabla an Ansa, 45; and Ziadeh, Nicolah, “A First-Person Account of the First World War in Greater Syria,” in The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Farschid, Olaf, Kropp, Manfred, and Dähne, Stephan (Beirut: Orient-Institute, 2006), 266Google Scholar.

55 A roṭl is equivalent to about 2.5 kg and an uqqa is about half of that, 1.282 kg.

56 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 3 December 1914.

57 Faroqhi, Suraiya, Towns and Townsmen in Ottoman Anatolia: Trade, Crafts, and Food Production in an Urban Setting, 1520–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 58, 132, 221Google Scholar.

58 Ibid.

59 Yıldırım, Onur, “Bread and Empire: The Working of Grain Provisioning in Istanbul during the Eighteenth Century,” in Nourrir les cités de Mediterranée Antiquité-Temps Moderne, ed. Marine, Brigitte and Virlvouvet, Catherine (Paris: Maisonneuve a. Larose, 2002), 252Google Scholar.

60 At this point there was no universal suffrage; eligibility to vote was based on annual tax payments. Hanssen, Fin de Siècle, 150; Hanssen, “The Origins of the Municipal Council,” 149.

61 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 4 December and 6 December 1914.

62 Grobba, Getreidewirtschaft, 24.

63 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 7 December 1914.

64 Ibid.

65 The French press during World War I issued similar appeals to the moral obligation of communal sacrifice. Jean-Louis Robert, “The Image of the Profiteer,” in Winter and Robert, Capital Cities at War, 104.

66 Foucault, Michel, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977–78 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 31Google Scholar.

67 Tarif Khalidi, “The Arab World,” in The Great World War, 1914–45, ed. Peter Liddle, Ian R. Whitehead, and J. M. Bourne (London: Harper Collins, 2001), 289.

68 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 21 November 1914.

69 al-Hakim, Yusuf, Lubnan wa-Suriya fi al-ʿAhd al-ʿUthmani (Beirut: n.p., 1964), 249–59Google Scholar.

70 Yamin, Lubnan fi al-Harb, 2:17.

71 Schilcher, “The Famine,” 249.

72 Hanssen, Fin de Siècle, 157.

73 Fawaz, Leila Tarazi, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 96–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Hanssen, Fin de Siècle, 146–47.

75 Ibid., 154.

76 Kassir, Beirut, 242.

77 Robert, “The Image of the Profiteer,” 131.

78 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 7 December 1914.

79 Hanssen, Fin de Siècle, 154.

80 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 8 December 1914.

81 The locusts came from the south across the Sinai, arriving in Syria on 1 April 1915. Grobba, Getreidewirtschaft, 14.

82 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 9 April 1915.

83 Yusuf Amil Habash, al-Jihad Lubnan (Beirut: n.p., 1920), 82.

84 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 25 November 1914; for an elaboration on the role of municipal sergeants, see Salibi, “Beirut under the Young Turks,” 201.

85 Kanʿan, Ibrahim Naʿum, Bayrut fi al-Tarikh (Beirut: n.p., 1963), 201Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., 106.

87 Historically, bitter vetch was only consumed as a last resort in times of great starvation. Grobba, Getreidewirtschaft, 36.

88 McGilvary, The Dawn, 205; al-Muqattam, 30 March 1916.

89 Habash, al-Jihad Lubnan, 97.

90 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 9 April 1915.

91 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 31 March 1915. See Qurʾan: Surat al-Baqara (2:179). Muhammad Muhsin Khan's translation of the verse is: “And there is a [saving of] life for you in Al-Qisas (The Law of Equality in Punishment), O men of understanding, that you may become pious.”

92 Ibid.

93 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 9 April 1915.

94 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 13 April 1915.

95 According to the secretary of the American Mission Press in Beirut, Margaret McGilvary, this was the first national chapter established outside of the United States or its dependencies. It was set up in response to the Armenian massacres in the vilayet of Adana in 1909. McGilvary, The Dawn, 83.

96 The civilian relief work of the ARC was organized into three departments: employment, distribution of flour, and assistance to families of Ottoman soldiers in obtaining government allowances. The employment department was split into two offices: one for men, headed by Professor Robert B. Reed, and another for women, supervised by Anna Jessup. Both were associated with SPC. McGilvary, The Dawn, 68, 85; Howard Bliss, Forty-Ninth Annual Report of the Syrian Protestant College to the Board of Trustees 1916–1917, 18, AUB.

97 Letter from Bayard Dodge to Cleveland H. Dodge, 21 January 1915, Bayard Dodge Collection, box 6, file 4, AUB.

98 The ARC generally gave a week's portion of flour to destitute families without a wage earner. McGilvary, The Dawn, 89.

99 SPC students tracked the individual applications, and the offices generally were staffed by native volunteers and supervised by American women, who were either employees of SPC or members of the mission community in the city. Letter from Bayard Dodge to Grace H. Dodge, 5 February 1915, Bayard Dodge Collection, box 6, file 4, AUB; Letter from Margaret McGilvary to unknown recipient, 1 January 1915, Missionaries, box 2, file 1, AUB; Tanielian, “War of Famine,” 137–70.

100 The ARC is mentioned on four other occasions, but all in relation to a medical expedition to the Sinai desert, not to relief in the city. SPC president Howard Bliss and Dr. Ward offered the medical mission to Jamal Pasha in exchange for permitting three British doctors to continue their work at the college in Beirut. Jamal Pasha accepted the offer and a committee was established under the direction of Dr. Ward to conduct the mission. For details, see McGilvary, The Dawn, 87.

101 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 8, 14, 15, and 22 January and 24 March 1915.

102 Tauber, The Arab Movements, 44–45.

103 An act of treachery committed by a member of the Decentralization Party, Muhammad al-Shanti, exposed the actions of the reformers. Yamin, Lubnan fi al-Harb, 52–53; Tauber, The Arab Movements, 44–45.

104 Quoted in Ajay, “Mount Lebanon and the Wilayah of Beirut,” 356.

105 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 4 June 1915.

106 Al-Ittihad al-ʿUthmani, 8 June 1915.

107 Whether the story is true or a narrative device to convey the chaotic and desperate situation in the city is unclear. See Kanʿan, Bayrut, 156.

108 Interview with Dr. Raʾif Abi al-Lam conducted by Nicholas Ajay in 1964. Ajay, “Mount Lebanon and the Wilayah of Beirut,” appendix, 25.

109 Grobba, Getreidewirtschaft, 18.

110 Howard Bliss to American Consul of Beirut Stanley Hollis, 17 August 1915, Missionaries, box 2, file 1, AUB.

111 For example, the same day the governor issued the order, Mrs. Gerald F. Dale Jr. (Mary Bliss) was arrested. McGilvary, The Dawn, 91.

112 Eddé, Carla, Beyrouth: naissance d’une capitale 1918–1924 (Beirut: Sindbad, 2009), 40Google Scholar.

113 Schilcher, “The Famine,” 237–38.

114 George Curtis Doolittle, “Pathos and Humor of the War Years in Syria: A Book of Experiences” (unpublished manuscript, Beirut, 1920), quoted in Ajay, “Mount Lebanon and the Wilayah of Beirut,” appendix V, 263.

115 Al-Muqattam, 30 September 1916.

116 Edward Nickoley, “Historic Diary, February 1917,” Edward Nickoley Collection, box 1, file 2, AUB.

117 Tauber, The Arab Movements, 49–50.

118 Kassir, Beirut, 246–47.