Cambridge University Press and School of Oriental and African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

http://www.jstor.org

Review Author(s): Martin Stokes Review by: Martin Stokes Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 56,

No. 1 (1993), pp. 142-143Published by: on behalf of Cambridge University Press School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/620310Accessed: 28-07-2015 09:34 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

This content downloaded from 79.112.60.152 on Tue, 28 Jul 2015 09:34:17 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

142 REVIEWS Apart from one elaboration (shown in italics), the commentator here adds nothing to al- Nasafl. His purpose is simply to give an easier explanation of the problem. This is typical of much of his Commentary, suggesting that his intended readers were students. The admoni- tion at the end of one passage of commentary: 'Think about it! ', reinforces this impression. His failure to define or cross-reference techni- cal terms, such as 'mahr' or 'mahr of equiva- lence' is typical of all works of fiqh. One may assume that students acquired this basic knowledge in lectures and disputations in the madrasa.

This leaves the problem of why a judge in the Arab city of Hama should have taken the trouble to translate the Commentary into Turkish. The answer is possibly that in the early fourteenth century, students from the Turkish-speaking area to the north would have attended madrasas in Syria. Students of a particular 'nationality' would probably have tended to congregate in a particular madrasa and to demand textbooks in their own language, where this was not Arabic. It was perhaps for the Turkish-speaking students in a madrasa in Hama that Ibrahim made his translation.

COLIN IMBER

OWEN WRIGHT: Demetrius Cantemir." The collection of notations. Part 1: Text. Transcribed and annotated by Owen Wright. (SOAS Musicology Series, Vol 1.) xxvii, 734 pp. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1992. ?60.

Voltaire held the work of Cantemir in high esteem as a corrective to 'les mis6rables fables' of then current wisdom about the Ottoman Turks. Cantemir was in effect a princely hostage in Istanbul between 1687 and 1710. His observations were therefore based on an unusually lengthy experience of life in the cosmopolitan centre of an Empire which was committed, following a series of military defeats, to a new understanding of the cultures and technologies of its Christian adversaries. This new understanding, and the so-called 'Tulip Era' that followed, was marked by an efflorescence of poetry, philosophy, miniature painting, architecture and music. Cantemir's writing on all aspects of Ottoman society describes both a critical period in Ottoman history, and a critical juncture in the East-West relations of the time.

His writing on Turkish music, in which field he was an expert practitioner and a skilled theorist, is particularly significant. His attempts to codify the music theory of the day and to notate the urban Turkish tradition were unique in his time, demonstrating an attempt to extend Western intellectual prac- tices into areas which had hitherto resisted them. As Dr. Wright points out, notated sources of Middle Eastern music are few and far between, making any attempt to construct a history of these traditions beyond histories

of their theory alone extremely difficult. The lack of notated music in Ottoman Turkey, apart from the isolated efforts of 'local foreigners' such as Ali Ufki (Bobowski) in the mid seventeenth century, is indeed striking when one considers the extent of literacy in other areas of intellectual and bureaucratic life. Music printing also developed very slowly. Roughly one and a half centuries separate Ibrahim Miiteferrika's first printing press and the first printed editions of Turkish music by Haci Emin Efendi in 1875. Perhaps notation was not just an 'irrelevance ' to prac- tising musicians as Wright suggests (p. xi), but, as Cem Behar has argued [1987], something actively resisted by musicians as disrupting the chains of authority upon which the profession as a whole was based.

The major scholarly exercise of transcribing and editing this body of musical knowledge by Owen Wright is of inestimable value, not only to those interested in exploring the still largely inaccessible world of Ottoman music (if only as a result of the philological skills required), but to those with a more general interest in the political and cultural ferment of the Tulip Era. Having said this, the first volume of two dedicated to Cantemir's musical writings is not intended as an introduction for the non- specialist. It presents an edition of the 353 melodies transcribed by Cantemir with anno- tations detailing concordances with other notated historical sources (Ali Ufki, Hampar- sun, Fonton), present printed editions and facsimiles, the explanation of names and titles, and the resolution of ambiguities relating to pitch, rhythm and form. Even though Cantemir's system was relatively straight- forward, consisting of letters for pitches and numbers for durations, editing them has clearly been a complex task: the edition pre- sents detailed and thorough arguments for the choices and decisions made. For example, number 233 (p. 486) contains what is clearly a relatively rare slip on Cantemir's part, which throws the rhythmic pattern (usul) into dis- array. Three possibilities are explained and notated, together with the reasons for the ver- sion chosen. The dominant impression is how- ever of pages whose music can be 'heard' by anybody possessing a rudimentary knowledge of the classical genre. For this, both editor and publishers deserve credit.

The editor has carefully avoided the tempta- tion of resolving difficulties and ambiguities by reference to later theoretical practices. One might have decided on an edition of this text which would be of more direct use to practis- ing Turkish musicians today by adopting the notational conventions of the Ezgi-Arel or Tire systems. However, as Wright points out, the makam system of today differs in key respects from that of Cantemir's time. Cantemir's notes segdh and evif both cover pitch ranges that now, as a result of subse- quent theoretical systematization and elabora- tion, would be specified by two notes for each. The fact that in Wright's edition some makam have slightly different key signatures to those which would be recognized today is not only an accurate presentation of makam theory as understood by Cantemir, but it points to the discontinuities in a system which many

This content downloaded from 79.112.60.152 on Tue, 28 Jul 2015 09:34:17 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS 143 Turkish musicians (and observers) today like to see as an unbroken and essentially unchanging chain of musical knowledge dating back to the time of Pythagoras. What is more, the tonal constitution of some makam was changing even as Cantemir was trying to establish a method of notating them. A piece in Penqgah makami has a double key signature in the text, indicating the possibility that Cantemir was trying to reconcile old and new practices in the performance of this makam by contemporary musicians (p. 605).

Similarly, Wright has not adopted the rela- tively 'long' values of contemporary Turkish notation, but shorter values in which semi- demi quavers are quite frequent. This has the advantage of suggesting that performances were quicker on the whole than they are today, and also of allowing for the use of liga- tures to suggest the shape of the underlying rhythmic mode. Readers more familiar with Western notational conventions will be able to perceive the rhythmic shape and flow of the pieces more easily than they would had current Turkish notational practice been observed.

There are limitations in a documentary source which gives tantalizingly little evidence of contemporary musical practice, song texts, the conventions of performance, the role of improvisation and the social organization of musicians. Historical musicology is of course reliant on notated texts, but what notations represent, and the attitudes they encode on the part of the notater have to be understood if we are to avoid a tendency to interpret other musics according to our own text-centred methods of analysis. The publication of Cantemir's collection does however put at the disposal of all scholars of Middle Eastern music a major resource from which a more comprehensive history of the Ottoman tradi- tion will certainly emerge. Wright's commen- tary is eagerly awaited.

MARTIN STOKES

METIN HEPER (ed): Strong states and economic interest groups: the post- 1980 Turkish experience. [ix], 198 pp. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991. DM 115, $54.95.

Professor Metin Heper has for some time argued the thesis that Turkey is a country with a very strong 'state tradition', stronger than that, even, of France. Reflecting the school of thought which has lately called for the revival of the 'State' in political analysis, Heper sug- gests that interest groups in Turkey have to be studied with the strength of the state always in mind. This is important since the study of interest groups is influenced by the norms of the relatively 'stateless' societies (like the United States in particular) where they are seen as an integral part of the pluralist political process. In Turkey, according to Heper, inter- est groups-state relationships are not even cor- poratist, let alone pluralist. In Turkey ' interest groups have been virtually ignored' (p. 21).

The other eleven contributors to this book then set out to test this hypothesis, argued in the introduction by Heper. Nine chapters are each devoted to an important field, after two very useful contributions on, first, the political economy of Turkey in the 1980s (Ziya Oni?) and, second, the legal framework for interest associations (Ergun Ozbudun). The subse- quent chapters are on Labour (Umit Cizre Sakallioglu), Agriculture (Ustfin Ergiider), Commercial Groups (Ersin Kalaycloglu), Exporters (Selim Ilkin), Banks (Ayge Oncii and Deniz Gbkqe), Industry Yilmaz Esmer), Big Business (Yegim Arat), and political uncertainty in business life (Ayge Bugra). These very informative contributions are well researched and make a brave attempt to test the hypothesis. Interesting, but not altogether supportive, conclusions emerge.

The privileged, but subordinate, position of the sole representative trade union federation (Turkish Work) has suffered years of wage restraint under tight legislation since military intervention in 1980. But recently the federa- tion has been making its presence felt by effec- tive near-strike action. A'griculture, it is shown, has always been wooed by the political parties (achieving great gains in the process) and has thereby a good deal of influence on government policy without the need for strong interest groups. Chambers of Commerce are clearly under firm governmental tutelage, voicing their demands and grievances after, not before, the implementation of economic policies. They seem not to be in even a 'corporate' relationship with government. Exporters, on the other hand, have organized themselves well in a body called 'Turk- Trade '. Consequently there have been ' signif- icant parallels between the government's deci- sions and Turk-Trade's demands' (p. 98), though their influence has latterly declined. Despite the expansion of banking activities since the partial transition to a market econo- my in the early 1980s, the centrality of the state is still seen to be intact, though the logic and mode of state intervention have changed. Decisions under Ozal's government were taken by an 'inner circle' around the Prime Minister, and were then simply explained, sometimes by Ozal himself, 'to placate the vested interest groups at special meetings or the ordinary meetings of the associations' (p. 105). Decisions were insulated from both politics and the bureaucracy.

As for the manufacturing industries, it emerges that their activities do 'bear resem- blances to both the corporatist and pluralist models' (p. 134) but the deep effects of Turkey's long state tradition are still observ- able.' Nevertheless, some rudimentary signs of pluralist development in recent years cannot be ignored' (p. 134). Big business, overlapping with industry, is mainly represented by the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (TUSIAD). Its efforts are 'unprecedented in the context of a State- orientated Turkish polity' (p. 147), but the tangible outcome of its dialogue with the government is seen to be limited. The last con- tributor concludes: 'A satisfactory formal relationship between the business community and the State has yet to be realized' (p. 162).

This content downloaded from 79.112.60.152 on Tue, 28 Jul 2015 09:34:17 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Article Contentsp. 142p. 143

Issue Table of ContentsBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1993), pp. i-vi+1-208Front Matter [pp. i-vi]The Condominium Revisited: The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1934-1956: A Review Article [pp. 1-12]The Treaty of 1387 between Murd I and the Genoese [pp. 13-33]Religion and State in Khumain's "Kashf al-asrr" [pp. 34-45]The Ramtek Inscriptions II: The Vkaka Inscription in the Kevala-Narasiha Temple [pp. 46-74]Tamil Expressives with Initial Voiced Stops [pp. 75-86]Notes on Modern Editions of the Taoist Canon [pp. 87-95]The Chinese Madhyamaka Practice of "p'an-chiao": The Case of Chi-Tsang [pp. 96-118]Notes and Communications [pp. 119-122]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 123-124]Review: untitled [pp. 124-125]Review: untitled [pp. 125-127]Review: untitled [pp. 127-128]Review: untitled [pp. 128-129]Review: untitled [pp. 129-130]Review: untitled [pp. 130-131]Review: untitled [pp. 131-132]Review: untitled [pp. 132-134]Review: untitled [pp. 134-135]Review: untitled [pp. 135-136]Review: untitled [pp. 136-137]Review: untitled [pp. 137-138]Review: untitled [pp. 138-139]Review: untitled [p. 139]Review: untitled [p. 140]Review: untitled [pp. 140-141]Review: untitled [pp. 141-142]Review: untitled [pp. 142-143]Review: untitled [pp. 143-144]Review: untitled [pp. 144-145]Review: untitled [pp. 145-148]Review: untitled [pp. 148-150]Review: untitled [p. 151]Review: untitled [pp. 151-153]Review: untitled [pp. 153-154]Review: untitled [pp. 154-155]Review: untitled [pp. 155-156]Review: untitled [pp. 156-157]Review: untitled [pp. 157-158]Review: untitled [p. 158]Review: untitled [pp. 158-159]Review: untitled [pp. 159-160]Review: untitled [pp. 160-161]Review: untitled [pp. 161-162]Review: untitled [pp. 162-163]Review: untitled [pp. 163-165]Review: untitled [p. 165]Review: untitled [pp. 165-166]Review: untitled [pp. 167-168]Review: untitled [pp. 168-169]Review: untitled [p. 169]Review: untitled [pp. 169-171]Review: untitled [pp. 171-172]Review: untitled [pp. 172-173]Review: untitled [pp. 173-174]Review: untitled [p. 174]Review: untitled [pp. 174-176]Review: untitled [pp. 176-177]Review: untitled [pp. 177-178]Review: untitled [pp. 178-179]Review: untitled [p. 179]Review: untitled [pp. 179-180]Review: untitled [pp. 180-181]Review: untitled [pp. 181-182]Review: untitled [pp. 182-183]Review: untitled [pp. 183-184]Review: untitled [pp. 184-185]Review: untitled [pp. 185-186]Review: untitled [pp. 187-188]Review: untitled [pp. 188-189]Review: untitled [pp. 189-191]Review: untitled [p. 191]Review: untitled [pp. 191-192]Review: untitled [pp. 192-193]Review: untitled [pp. 193-194]Review: untitled [pp. 194-196]Review: untitled [p. 196]Review: untitled [pp. 196-198]

Short NoticesReview: untitled [p. 198]Review: untitled [pp. 198-199]Review: untitled [p. 199]Review: untitled [pp. 199-200]Review: untitled [p. 200]Review: untitled [p. 200]Review: untitled [pp. 200-201]Review: untitled [p. 201]Review: untitled [pp. 201-202]Review: untitled [p. 202]Review: untitled [pp. 202-203]Review: untitled [p. 203]Review: untitled [p. 203]Review: untitled [p. 204]Review: untitled [p. 204]Review: untitled [pp. 204-205]Review: untitled [p. 205]

Other Books Received for Review [pp. 206-208]List of Works Published under the Auspices of the School of Oriental and African Studies 1946-1992Back Matter