AN AMERICAN IN ALGIERS – PART 12

This week, we continue with yet another excerpt from the captivity narrative of John Foss, the American who, in October, 1793, was captured by Barbary corsairs from Algiers.

Last week’s excerpt provided some details about governance, prices, peoples, and some personal details about the Dey of Algiers.

This week’s excerpt deals with education and Ottoman books.

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Regarding the learning of the Musselmen, or of their learned men, little can be said.

The Turks profess the greatest contempt for learning. Greece, which was once the native country of genius, arts, and sciences, produces at present, beside Turks, numerous bands of Christian bishops, priests and monks, who, in general, are as ignorant as the Turks themselves.

The education of a Turk seldom extends further than to the reading the Turkish language, and the Koran, and writing a common letter. Some of them understand astronomy enough to calculate the time of an eclipse, but these are comparatively few, and they are regarded as extraordinary persons.

Of literature in modern Turkey, a curious specimen was printed in the year 1769, in Vienna.

The book, which is a French translation, is titled A treatise upon Tactics, or an artificial method for the discipline of troops and was a work printed and published in Constantinople by Ibrahim Effendi, officer Mutte ferrika of the Ottoman Porte. The original appeared in 1730 and was intended as an experiment for the establishment of a Turkish press.[1]

The Turks are said, however, to have preferred the use of manuscripts to printed books, and so the scheme for a printing industry, for want of encouragement, was laid aside.

The preface of Ibrahim begins thus: “In the name of the most clement and merciful God, praises, thanks and benedictions be to the sovereign master of the empires and kingdoms of the Heavens and the Earth; to the master of Glory and omnipotence, God most high and most holy, who is the principal and the source of all order and symmetry in the universe, whose supreme will rules the affairs of the sons of Adam, and whose decrees, direct all the actions of men.”

In this book, the writer censures his countrymen, for their negligence as to the acquisition of modern discipline. To the curious, an extract from this work may not be altogether unentertaining:

“In former ages,” says the writer, “when the Christians made less use of cannon, muskets, and grenades, and when the principal arms of war, were sabers, the Mussulmen, who were superior to all nations in the management of these weapons, made a progress so rapid that the Christians scattered upon the face of the Earth, astonished at the victories of the Mussulmen and daring no more to oppose themselves to the irresistible force, remained during some time in the greatest consternation.

“In the end, invoking Heaven and Earth to find some remedy to their distress, and exploring every resource without knowing on what side to turn themselves, they made a final effort to invent an expedition proper to repair their losses. At first they were unanimously desirous to perfect the use of canons, of muskets, and of other arms. Afterwards, seeing that the assistance of these was still too weak to repel the impetuous attacks of the Mussulmen, and in particular those of the Ottoman armies, they made new attempts, and they labored, all in concert, to oppose themselves to this fatal destiny and to find some means of resistance.

“At last, after many consultations and conferences, the unanimous result of their deliberations was, that after having given a better form to their artillery and their arsenals, it would be necessary to find some means of subjecting their unfortunate troops, by certain rules. This constant and firm discipline was such that the soldiers, restrained in a perfect order, finding no opportunity to flee or desert their ranks (nor time enough to think of danger and to terrify themselves with the thoughts of instant death) might persist, in spite of their inclination, in their ranks, seeing themselves indispensably forced to it.

“Afterwards they thought that it was necessary to give more consistency to their lines, ranged in order of battle, and to invent new discipline, to render them more firm, immovable, and capable of supporting the thundering shocks of the Mussulmen and so resist their vigorous attacks, which for some time, being the only object of their attention, they have, at last, by their indefatigable application, arrived so far as to reduce the rules and principles of tactics to a particular art, and to treat them methodically in books composed upon the military science.”

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For the next installment of John Foss’s narrative, see the next post here in this blog.

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For those who may be interested…

The above excerpt from John Foss’s narrative comes from A journal, of the captivity and sufferings of John Foss; several years a prisoner at Algiers: together with some account of the treatment of Christian slaves when sick—and observations on the Manners and Customs of the Algerines, second edition, originally published in 1798, pp. 75-78.

As usual, I have lightly edited and abridged the original text to make it more accessible for modern readers.

[1] The French title of the book to which John Foss refers is Traité de la tactique ou méthode artificielle pour l’ordonnance des troupes (Treatise on tactics, or an artificial method for the organization of troops). This book, published in Vienna in 1769, was a translation of a Turkish-language text titled Usul al Hikam fi Nizam (Nidham) al Umam(Priciples of wisdom in the global system), first published in Istanbul in 1631 by Ibrahim Muteferrika, a Hungarian renegade who created the first Ottoman press, which printed books from 1729 to 1742. The title pages for both Traité de la tactique and Usul al Hikam are pictured below.