The Dream Diary of an Ottoman Governor: Kulakzade Mahmud Pasha's Dusnama

Abstract

Muslims were not the first in the Near East to interpret dreams. This type of divination had a long history, and Muslims were not ignorant of that history. The interest of early Arab Islamic cultures in dreams can be proved by the vast literature on dreams and their interpretation as well as dream accounts written in diverse historical texts. The Ottoman Empire was no different in that it also shared this culture of dream interpretation and narration. Unlike past scholarship that ignored the significance of dreams, the number of studies addressing the subject has increased in the recent decades, thanks to the growing tendency of scholars to see dreams as potential sources for cultural history. However, as Peter Burke has stated, scholars and historians in particular must bear in mind the fact that they do not have access to the dream itself but at best to a written record, modified by the preconscious or conscious mind in the course of recollection and writing. Historians must be aware of the fact that dream accounts might be recorded by dreamers who recounted how they wanted to remember them. The reality of the dream, in a sense, may be distorted. However, dream accounts, distorted or not, can provide a ground for historical analysis because they may reveal the most intimate sentiments, aspirations, and anxieties of the dreamer. Such self-narratives can provide the historian with information necessary to map the mindset of a historical personage, because such 'secondary elaboration' probably reveals the character and problems of the dreamer as clearly as the dream itself does. This paper focuses on a sampling of dreams related in an 18th-century Ottoman self-narrative to provide insight into the life and mind of an Ottoman governor. I will try to demonstrate how the author of the narrative made meaning of those dreams and revealed his aspirations.