Note: to improve Web browser compatibility this document is divided into five sections with paging links at the bottom. Click on Show full page to view the full document all at once, though problems may be experienced with some browsers. Please note that some of the internal links at the top of the document, e.g. all the Quick Tour links, will not work unless the full document is viewed all at once.

Miles, M. 2009-06. "Deaf People, Sign Language and Communication, in Ottoman and Modern Turkey: Observations and Excerpts from 1300 to 2009. From sources in English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin and Turkish, with introduction and some annotation." Internet publication URL: www.independentliving.org/miles200907.html

Sources and texts are introduced and quoted, identifying deaf men and women through more than 700 years of Turkish history, and sign language through 500 years, continuing to the present.

PDF, 494 KB

 

M Miles.  West Midlands, UK.
E-mail: m99miles@hotmail.com

Revised Version 5.02    [July 2009] 

CONTENTS

OVERVIEW  &  GUIDE
            Quick Tour

ONLINE GRAPHICS

 1.0  INTRODUCTION
            1.1  Some Strong Cautions
            1.2  'Deaf'? 'Mute'?
            1.3  Sign Language History and Scepticism
            1.4  Deaf people (640 - 1928), Names and Dates
            1.5  Appreciation
2.0  TECHNICAL NOTES ON QUOTATIONS
            2.1  Notes on translation, transliteration
            2.2  *Respecting Copyright*
3.0  EARLIER POINTS (c. 1250 BC to 1295 CE)
4.0  'OTTOMAN' DEAF & MUTE QUOTATIONS and NOTES
            4.1  1300 - 1469
            4.2  1470s - 1590s
            4.3  1600 - 1699
            4.4  1700 - 1910s
            4.5  Turkish Republic 1920s - 2003
            4.6  Recent Work, in date order
5.0  REFERENCES: (BY AUTHOR, ALPHABETICALLY)

 

OVERVIEW and GUIDE

This collection offers many sources and textual excerpts, with some annotation and discussion, identifying deaf men and women through more than 700 years of Turkish history, and sign language through 500 years, up to the present. Most of the excerpts are situated in the regions of Istanbul and Edirne between 1300 and the 1920s, when 'deaf- mute' people worked at the court of the Ottoman sultans. In the past 150 years some other cities of the Ottoman Empire, and of modern Turkey, come into focus. Evidence appears for deaf servants developing a Sign Language probably from the late 15th century onward, and teaching it to younger deaf people, and also to some hearing people. Sign language is seen becoming established in some households, harems and working places of successive sultans, viziers and minor court officials. Deaf people who had retired from service and were living in the cities and towns also returned for social contact with the deaf people currently serving the Ottoman court. The most recent half century has seen more significant development of formal education for deaf children, and the beginnings of a rediscovery and official recognition of the value of sign language. The strengths, weaknesses and contradictions of different kinds of evidence are scrutinised and discussed, and some popular myths are seen to lack any solid basis.

 

 

*Some Ways To Use This Collection*

People with a 'Visual' Priority, who want to see some pictures, images, colour and costumes, can start straight away by hitting the links in the Online Graphics, which are grouped all together. The rest of the material is all textual, in several languages.

Historical Researchers may wish to study first the Introduction and the Technical Notes, to check the likely quality of the texts presented.  They may be interested mainly in texts from a particular historical period: sections 3.0 and 4.0 appear approximately in date order, so they can find items in the period of choice. Or they may wish to go straight to the References, to see whether there are any new sources there.

Some  Deaf people  and  Sign Linguists,  also  Teachers  of many subjects, may like a Quick Tour around some of the 'best bits' on deaf people and sign language. Then they can decide whether to go back and start at the beginning, or read the surrounding context of a particular historical period.  To pick out the 'best bits' is not at all easy, because people have their own preferences about where to start, when looking at a jigsaw puzzle; and these pieces are in several languages and spaced out across 500 years. Everyone is likely to construct a different picture.  One quick tour around the big picture can be made with the following links:

Quick Tour (requires full page view)

1470s, Koçu;    1559, Lorichs;    1599, Dallam;    1608, Bon;

  1630s, Evliya;    1660s, Bobovius;   [1750s?], Peirce;    1789, Dikici;

     1829, Slade;   1870s, Gaden;   1909-10, Silent Worker (two similar items);

               Roe, 1917     1930s-1950s, Gök;   2003, Yüksel.

 

Women... are represented much less often than men in the texts and illustrations offered in this collection, though they are sometimes seen in the background. This is a common problem with historical records across the world. Women do appear in the links shown above to  1660s Bobovius,  [1750s?], Peirce,  1789, Dikici. In the modern era, several of the early foreign teachers of deaf children were women (see below e.g. 1914, Greene;  1915, Gage,  1951-1953, Girgin. One modern reference, 2003, Yüksel shows deaf women and men serving in Turkey's National Assembly in the 21st century.

Adventurers into Deep History  may wish to plunge in to the evidence for deaf people among the Hittites around 1250 BC, in the central region of Turkey.

 

Some Online Graphics of the Ottoman 'Deaf Mutes'

Please take care with the graphic illustrations that are found at the following links. Most of them have some copyright restriction on their use. They can be viewed by clicking on the links. But do not copy any pictures onto your blog, or your website, without first checking the legal position!

1. Some illustrations of deaf people in full uniform, at the Ottoman court:

http://www.baarnhielm.net/~gorbaa/draktbok/eng/35.htm
'Imperial mute', from Ralamb Costume Book, no. 35

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/   Search for: 1239191 Dilsis
(picture can be enlarged)

http://www.baarnhielm.net/~gorbaa/draktbok/eng/94.htm
Deaf messenger. Ralamb Costume Book, no. 94

http://www.potaforum.com/showthread.php?t=19206
"Saray dili, dilsiz dili..."  A deaf mute man in costume.

From Gallica, e.g. number 19 in a set of 21 palace photos:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/    Select 'Advanced search'
For 'Text', enter:  Muet de Palais
Select Document type: Image
Search through to No. 19 of "Costumes Turcs"
Enlarge to  "Full Screen"

 

2. The deaf school building, Istanbul, in the 1890s.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b28781
(Click to enlarge)

 

3. Some images of deaf-mute people in Turkey at various times may be found by search of Google "Images". Some books also have pictures or drawings of costumes and their users. For example Emin Cenkmen (1948) Osmanli Sarayi ve Kiyafetleri, Türkiye Yayinevi, pp. 117, 208-215, 298, (see also end-page with corrections), compiles information (in Turkish) from various sources, and drawings of ornamental court costumes and equipment worn by 'bizeban' and 'dilsiz' and also dwarfs, among the members of the Seferli Oda. Similarly, see Baykal (1953, pp. 24 {caption}, 26 {ftn. 5}, 50, 62-65).

 

1.0  INTRODUCTION

Evidence is shown below of deaf and/or 'mute' people in Ottoman and modern Turkish history, with a major focus on the employment of trained deaf(-mute) people at the Ottoman court probably from the 1470s onward, certainly from the mid-16th century. Specific evidence is given for the development of a complex system of signed communication (which may be called 'Ottoman Sign Language'), which was formally taught by experienced deaf users to younger deaf people, at a specific location in the Topkapi Palace, as well as being less formally 'handed on' in everyday use. That language was also learnt and used by some hearing courtiers and some Sultans, in the vicinity of Istanbul, Edirne, and some other major seats of government, through a period of four to five hundred years. Sign languages of deaf people also had some use in other major cities of the Ottoman empire.

There is evidence for the adoption of the Ottoman Sign Language by hearing users because of its practical usefulness, and the perpetuation of the Ottoman Sign Language over several centuries. At present, no historical parallel is known, anywhere in the world, for a sign language continuing through five hundred years or more (Zeshan 2006). Yet the continuation of Ottoman Sign Language might actually reflect some of the ill-defined and incremental home- and street- level processes that are much more widespread, in the 'handing-on' of signed communication to the next generation, wherever there have been large urban or suburban populations among whom were significant numbers of people born deaf or who lost their hearing early in life. One reason for producing this collection is that an earlier journal article (Miles 2000a) that is also open online, "Signing in the Seraglio", concentrated on the period between 1500 and 1700, and may inadvertently have given the impression that the Ottoman Sign Language was confined to that period, and was used only in the palaces at Istanbul. That impression is incorrect, as will be seen in the texts shown below.

A further reason is that deaf people and sign linguists would like to know whether Ottoman Sign Language (OSL) was the historical forerunner of 'Türk Isaret Dili' (Turkish Sign Language) as used now. This collection cannot provide a final answer to that, but it will certainly provide background material on which interested people may make up their minds. The compiler's own view, as the evidence began to accumulate year upon year, is that the question may now be reversed: can anyone show evidence that TID/TSL is not a direct descendant of OSL?  Ottoman SL can now be shown to have had an impact beyond the confines of a few royal palaces, and it was a language with a lot of prestige attached. It seems reasonable to expect that it was a major contributor to TID/TSL, unless evidence is found that contradicts such an expectation. Comparative studies of sign languages in Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Iraq and Syria may also shed some light on the question.

 

1.1  Some Strong Cautions
Historians seldom display an online collection of the 'evidence texts' or 'pièces justificatives' that underpin their work. This reticence of historians has several reasons, some more compelling than others. Most of what passes for 'history' actually contains very large elements of guesswork, emendation, myth, embroidery and spin. The available contemporary evidence is often mutually contradictory, and often derives from one or two poorly preserved manuscripts, dated some years after the events. Even when nine sources say X (and X sounds likely), and one source says Y (and Y looks unlikely), and the truth is actually something more like Z, it may easily happen that Y is nearer the truth than X. (Of course, 'the truth' may well appear to be something different, as told a week later by five different eyewitnesses of any event). Some level of deliberate or unconscious bias or spin probably enters almost everything we say or write today. There is no reason to think that earlier recorders were any less subject to these deviations. Later compilers and analysts often add further bias by selecting only the sources they find attractive. Handwritten textual evidence is subject to many hazards, such as errors in copying, illegible words, haphazard spellings, deliberate alterations, mistranslations, and other problems. The meaning of words often changed significantly over centuries, or even within decades, and varied from one geographical place to another. At any of these (and many other) barriers, turning points or hazards, the historian may have to choose one source or meaning, and mention others in footnotes or omit them altogether.

Compiling an historical account is thus a messy business, usually done in a private 'workshop'. Later, it is offered to the public with a coating of varnish to cover the cracks and gaps. With some years of practice, many historians probably do become better craftspeople, with a wider knowledge of languages, of their own specialist period, of how people in that period thought about their lives, and of the frailty of all human knowledge. One danger of offering a collection of textual 'evidence' online, is that people with no training or experience in handling historical texts, but with a strong modern agenda of activism or of campaigning for particular goals, may seize on some particular text and use it in an attempt to 'prove' a modern argument, even though the original context may have been quite different, or the text is doubtful. (For similar reasons, the custodians of religious texts have often been reluctant to let 'ordinary people' read them or attempt to interpret them).

However, the internet already makes public a considerable number of texts and interpretations about the Ottoman 'mutes'. Many of those texts have no historical basis, or depend on very doubtful evidence, or give a (probably unjustified) prominence to particular aspects of the evidence. For readers with a serious interest in this topic, and who are willing to face the difficulties of texts in several different languages (in which ordinary words and names were often spelled in various ways in earlier centuries), and to weigh up the apparent contradictions between different witnesses, this collection is offered. The original idea was to put the excerpts of text online without any notes or comments. Then it was realised that to do so would place them beyond the reach of anyone lacking experience in historical research and interpretation, or anyone who had not spent some years in study of Turkish social history, or anyone who had made no study of deafness and sign language. So some notes and comments have been added (with the risk that these may impose the compiler's own fallible judgement and framework on the texts).

The compiler's notes and comments have been clearly marked by bold, square brackets [  ].   Users are cautioned that  (i) the original texts may be mistaken in what they assert;  and  (ii) the compiler's notes and comments may sometimes be mistaken in what they suggest;  (iii) much more primary source evidence probably exists, particularly in Ottoman Turkish, in Arabic, and in the Balkan languages, which might throw a different light on what appears in the evidence shown below.  The addition of new evidence will be very welcome. It will not necessarily make the overall picture much clearer; but it may enrich our understanding of the complexity of the field.

The present collection, arranged in order of date, has the merit (and also the problem) of making clear that most European sources almost certainly copied or edited material from earlier authors, usually without acknowledgement, sometimes with imaginative additions and exaggerations, and sometimes with a strong 'orientalist' bias. Some later sources apparently had no actual experience with deaf and mute people in Turkey, or had only slight contact which they then padded out with material from others, to give an authentic sound. Such borrowing, and even fabrication, is a problem in every century of 'travel' writing, so every text needs careful and critical scrutiny. Modern writers are also inclined to select among the available evidence and to 'read back' modern wishes and agendas into the past, to construct a picture of history that suits their own taste or agenda or prejudice. It is tempting to insert interpretations, based on how 'we' think events 'must have' happened, even though it is very likely that people living centuries earlier did not think or act exactly in the ways that most people act or think now. The present compiler is not immune from such temptations, but has tried to be careful and cautious, and to present as much primary evidence as possible, not smoothing out or neglecting the contradictions, issues, arguments and loose ends. This work is a preliminary and preparatory phase, before well-informed sketches can begin to be made of the history of deaf people and their sign languages in Turkey, and of the hearing people who sometimes took an interest in them.

One positive factor, when the reader is trying to evaluate evidence on the history of deaf people and sign language, is that most of it has little or no implication for political or religious issues. So it may have been less liable to distortion or spin. It very seldom made any political difference, whether a ruler had a deaf servant, or several deaf servants, or none at all. Only in one case, i.e. the brief periods during which Sultan Mustafa I was on the throne (1617-18, 1622-23), did some historians record that his inability to use sign language was one of the reasons for his removal from power (along with his general weakness of intellect and other abilities). The majority of historians have had no more interest in the 'deaf-mute' servants than they had in the horse the sultan or vizir might happen to be riding.

Dates, periods.  In general, texts have been presented in 'apparent' order of the date or period in which observations were made - the year or period shown in bold italics - rather than by the date of report or of publication. This has the disadvantage of some mixing of primary sources with secondary sources - but the intelligent reader is expected to bear in mind the differences, and to maintain his or her sceptical scrutiny of all sources. Two periods have been particularly in focus: from the 1470s to 1700 (during which deaf people and their communications apparently became well established at the Ottoman Court); and from the 1820s to 1920s, a period of slowly increasing change and modernisation, leading to the modern Turkish Republic. A few observations of other impairments, disabilities or differences are included for context and comparison. Some 'mutes' continued to work at the Court from 1700 onward, but there is a period of perhaps 70 or 80 years that seems to offer less description or comment on them from sources within Turkey, while strongly biased comments continued within Western Europe. This was followed by an apparent upswing of attention during the 19th century, from European visitors to Istanbul, with a new focus from the 1890s on the first formal schools for deaf children. A remarkable closing note shows deaf assistants still working in the Turkish National Assembly in 2003, for the better security and secrecy of high-level deliberations.

20th century.  The histories of deaf people in Turkey during the 20th century are waiting for Turkish historians and interested deaf people to take up and examine more seriously on a basis of textual and graphical evidence, personal memories, and calm reflection. The latest upswing of European interest, during the past 20 years, unfortunately has tended more to reinforce prejudices than to produce enlightenment. In 'historical' or pseudo-historical novels set in the Ottoman period, some authors seem to have found it almost obligatory to have a muscular set of 'mutes' lurking behind the curtains, avidly awaiting the signal to leap upon their trembling victim and strangle him with a bowstring. This reinforces a familiar western fantasy of the 'oriental strangeness' of the court, the brutality of (some of) the Sultans, the (imagined) 'barely-controlled animal' side of the mutes, while sketching a dismal and distorted 'Islamic' background. Such a focus on fantasy and prejudice tends to eliminate or suppress the more interesting scenes in which there is good evidence that some deaf people spent years of their lives serving the highest officials of a vast empire, and made their sign language a viable means of communication for both deaf and hearing people. Historical novels on the Ottomans were being written from the 18th century onward, reaching a small, literate public. The modern equivalents are read by vastly greater numbers across the world, among whom only a tiny minority has any access to primary sources or an interest in historical accuracy. It is to be hoped that some of the more intelligent novelists will begin to add to the interest and realism of their work by a more careful and nuanced portrayal of deaf characters in the context of Ottoman history.

Relevance to the 21st century.  The processes of development in the past century formed a part of the worldwide movement, by deaf people and their hearing friends and colleagues, to value Deaf lives and languages and cultures. The experience of Turkish deaf people over several centuries also has a wider relevance to the 21st century world, where between 7 and 10 billion people with different cultures and languages will need to find ways of living together and sharing resources with peace and justice in an increasingly fragile environment. Historical studies suggest that the traditional power and wealth of kings and armies, as exhibited in the Ottoman Empire (and the other major empires), will be very hard to use wisely for the benefit of billions of people spread across the world. Other methods of governance must be found that will make better use of communication and example, and depend less on threats of destruction to compel population groups to comply with the wishes of distant rulers, or engineers, or marketing personnel. Starting at the other end, what can be learnt from the 'survival skills' of people who were deaf and mute, most of whom had very little power and were perceived by the public as being 'defective'? By developing a different kind of power, or adapting themselves to using a little power in more effective ways, some of those deaf people built worthwhile lives and influenced powerful men at the highest level. They survived, served and taught their method of communication to rulers, in a multinational environment of considerable risk and complex power struggles. Those capacities for adaptability, service and communication, by people who carried messages between the great and powerful, will be needed in the present century too.

Pre-Ottoman notes.  Deafness and deaf people in Asia Minor certainly appear in some sources before the start of the Ottoman period, mainly in Byzantine ecclesiastical literature. For example, in the 9th century "Life of Saint Eustratius", the saint was twice reported to have healed 'deaf and dumb' children at Kursunlu and at Constantinople (Mango, 1968).  Some 'healing' stories have more interest in the casual details of deaf people's lives (e.g. the knife-grinder mentioned below under "late 6th century?", by Georgios) or in possible contributions to otolaryngological history (e.g. Lascaratos 1996; Lascaratos & Assimakopoulos 1999; Lascaratos, Poulacou-Rebelacou & Yiotakis 1998). In 1319, Jean Glykys, Patriarch of the Orthodox Christians at Constantinople was seriously ill and paralysed, so was allowed to resign his post. His successor was Gérasime, an elderly priest and monk, "an old man with white hair and nearly deaf", who became Patriarch in 1320 but died within a year (Rohrbacher, 1858, volume 19, pp. 434-435). Byzantine philanthropy and social welfare has been studied in detail, e.g. by Constantelos (1968) and others, with material on blind, mentally disabled and physically disabled people; but deafness is noticeably absent. Mitler (1979) mentions that church buildings were constructed in Galata (near Constantinople) in 1420 for Benedictine monks. Editing the work of Domenico Hierosolimitano (c. 1580-1590), M.J.L. Austin (p. 71) has the church of St. Benedict founded by Benedictines in 1427). It is possible that a standardised and limited Benedictine 'gestural system' had some use within that monastery; but no evidence has been published showing contact or influence between that sub-linguistic form of communication and the sign language used by deaf people in Constantinople/Istanbul.

 

1.2  'Deaf'?  'Mute'?
The words 'deaf' and 'mute' have already been used above without any discussion, as though they have a clear and universally agreed meaning, which is not so. In many old languages, the same word could mean 'deaf' (in the case of being unable to hear) or could mean 'mute' (in the sense of being unable to speak), and historically there has been a popular assumption that someone born deaf (or losing their hearing very early in life) will be unable to speak -- so a single word meaning 'deaf and mute' could be used, combining the two features or incapacities. (See discussion by Scalenghe, 2005, for the terms in Ottoman Syria). Some careful observers in the ancient world knew that there were different levels of deafness or 'hearing loss', as described in the 9th century CE by Arabic commentator al-Jahiz (transl. 1967), whose works were known by well-educated people throughout the Ottoman period. Observers were also aware that some deaf people communicated fluently using sign language, giving evidence of a lively intelligence, as described late in the 4th century CE by the North African theologian Augustine (transl. Russell 1968, p. 13) whose works were known in Byzantium. Complex languages of bodily gesture and sign were described in literature of Indian antiquity, being used by hearing people in various situations (Miles 2000b). So there was not necessarily any 'problem' about deaf people using a sign language of their own, where there were enough of them together in one time and place to make it feasible.

 

In the present compilation, there are textual excerpts across several centuries, refering to people as 'deaf' or 'mute', 'sourd' and 'muet', 'sagir', 'kulaksiz', 'bizeban', 'dilsiz', and so on. In no case is there any audiological report indicating the measured 'hearing loss'. In no case is there a professional report about a person's incapacity to speak, or their possible ability to learn to speak. The sole evidence available is about people who learnt to use sign language. Examining the texts, it appears that many people were known in their local community by a name meaning 'deaf' or 'mute', and their family and neighbours may have known from daily experience that those individuals were both deaf and mute; or in some cases, had a loss of hearing but were not mute, or were mute without being deaf. It is difficult, now, to go beyond that 'knowledge', as recorded by the words used in the context of the record. The Turkish word 'dilsiz' literally means 'without tongue' or 'without language'; but many of the people known as Dilsiz did have a language of sign and gesture, and it is highly likely that every one of them had a tongue. No evidence has been found that any of them had been born without a tongue, or had their tongue amputated or mutilated. Some were known as 'Sagir' (deaf). Others were known as 'Kulaksiz' ('ear-less'); but there was no evidence that they had been born without ears, or had had their ears cut off. Those people were understood, in their time, to be without the capacity of hearing. With modern medical knowledge, readers now may wish to bring a more nuanced understanding to these issues; but the texts shown below will be discussed almost entirely within the knowledge-world of the writers in earlier centuries. For that reason, such terms as 'mute' and 'deaf-mute', which no longer sound correct in modern English, will be employed here. Another reason for using them could be that confident, modern, deaf people may prefer the old terms. Levent Beskardes, a well known deaf Turkish actor and artist, interviewed in Hurriyet in December 2008, reportedly stated that he was  "against the expression 'hearing impaired', just as he is against people whose speech is bad being called 'speaking impaired.' He prefers to be called a deaf mute."

 

1.3  Sign Language History and Scepticism
The main problem, in actually demonstrating that a sign language was being used before 1900, is that Sign Language is essentially a mental, physical, spatial and kinetic set of activities. The only complete 'proof' of a sign language would be a detailed and expert analysis of several hours of moving pictures, i.e. film or video. That proof has not been found (though it not impossible that some film of sign language might still exist, in a cupboard or storeroom somewhere in Istanbul, from the final years of the Ottomans, i.e. the 1910s and 1920s, if serious searches were made for it). Before film, there was not much more than a limited number of verbal descriptions of vocabularies, mostly of sublinguistic finger codes used in some monastic communities of Europe. Even that level of description has not yet been found for Ottoman Sign Language.

Anyone adopting a fully sceptical position could therefore say:  "Show me the action! Show the movement! Until I see film of the hands, heads, eyes, mouths, arms, and body, moving in the 'signing space' between two or more people, you will not convince me that it was taking place more than a hundred years ago. At present, you can show nothing that moves, earlier than the 20th century. You have reports from people who were not themselves users of sign language, saying that there are 'mutes' who are able to communicate about anything. But the reports are all third or fourth hand, through interpreters, or through palace servants who probably told the same hocus-pocus to a long list of foreigners wanting to take home some amazing stories about their foreign trip. I can show you a group of dog-owners today, who will assure you that their dog knows and understands whatever they say. The dog even knows what they are going to say or do before they have said it or done it! But if you take them into a laboratory, and get them to discuss some philosophical question, there's no evidence that the dog understands a word they are saying. You discuss Plato, and maybe the dog hopes it will get a Plate of food! But the dog won't really get interested until it is back home, and it sees and hears a series of tiny body signals, at the right time of day, which its owner usually makes before getting up to give the dog its dinner, or take it for a walk."

These objections have some strength - but on that basis, much of what happens in the world today, and most of what happened in the past, can also be dismissed. Two important points can be made:
(1). Nobody claims that deaf people in historical Turkey could fly through the air, or pass invisibly through solid walls! The suggestion is that 'deaf-mute' people engaged in signed communication, a human phenomenon that has been studied in increasingly fine detail during the past 40 years, using analysis of film and video. Signed communication has been shown to exist in a wide variety of forms: everything along a range from simple gestures to complex and fully grammatical languages. It is only in the past 30 years that the range and complexity of motion in time and space, and interaction of movements between two or more people, has begun to be researched in a scientific way, by analysis of video evidence, in the light of a vast range of modern linguistic knowledge and theory. (Ordinary members of the public remain mostly unaware of this research. If asked to show what is meant by 'sign language', they would still today normally wave their hands and wiggle their fingers; or make a few of the iconic gestures normally used by hearing people).
(2). None of the reported historical observations from Istanbul and other cities gives an adequate description of the actual complexity of movement and body parts in Sign Language. Yet it is interesting to notice, over two or three centuries, the cumulative total, which supplies an impressive range of movements and body parts. From different witnesses shown below, the following are reported, taking place in a large space around the signing persons: nods and signs, movement of feet, lips, heads, arms, both right and left hands, touching various parts of the body, clacking or grinding of teeth, winking, motion of eyes and eyebrows, 'mouthing', lip-reading, spitting on the ground, and hooting noises. None of the witnesses reported the full list of actions. A few actions are reported by only one person, and were not repeated later. The present collection is the first place in which all these actions or activities are assembled and listed together, from the Ottoman court. (The list even includes an action that has rarely appeared in formal sign language research literature -- but 'spitting' as a part of communication is known to anthropologists).

The point is that, until very recently, the variety and complexity of actions and movements and use of space was not 'public knowledge'. If people in the past had falsely claimed to have witnessed sign language being used, they would have been most unlikely to give so much detail. It is quite possible that some false claims were made, and then copied by later writers. Yet in the long run, it is not at all easy to fabricate a series of false reports continuing over several hundred years, in which all the details are possible, and the cumulative sum of the details is credible by modern linguistic research standards.  The historical case is not thereby 'proven'; but the suggestion does have a cumulative credibility, that over several centuries, some non-specialist reporters were indeed witnessing deaf people using an elaborated and grammatically effective sign language.

 

The texts listed below, covering about five hundred years, are by far the longest continuous series of evidence for the use of a Sign Language in  particular locations and regions, i.e. Istanbul and its suburbs, Edirne, and many other urban and rural places to which deaf people travelled, or returned after living and working in Istanbul.

 

1.4  Deaf people (640 - 1928), Names and Dates

Through a period of roughly 1300 years (640s-1928), about 40 deaf (and/or) mute people in, near, or visiting Istanbul, or other Turkish cities or towns, and having a personal name and some known dates, can be found in the works or quotations below. Those details make them stand out with a little more colour, personality or activity from the group of 'mutes' at court and in their living quarters, or the earlier crowds of people seeking healing at the shrines of saints, or the thousands of deaf people living ordinary lives in rural villages. Their level of 'public notice' ranges from having a passing mention in a single list, to having a series of mentions and details across 80 years. (For example, the deaf eunuch Dilsiz Süleyman Aga, or Süleyman Aga Bizeban, was a trusted servant of Sultana Safiye in the 1580s and 1590s. He had celebratory fountains named after him, and in his native Kosovo he founded a Waqf with mosque and school, which carried his name onward in historical records to the 1670s, and his mosque still stands today).

 

DATE (CE)   NAME (and some detail)

 640                 Theodosios (deaf son of Emperor Heraclius)

1048                Asan (or Hasan) the Deaf (military commander)

1320                Gerasimos (Patriarch of Orthodox Christians)

c. 1400            Dilsiz Muhammed

c. 1425-1515   Ilyas Sücaeddin ibn Ilyas (deaf in later life)

450s-1471       Sheikh al-Bistami (author, deaf from middle age)

1478                Dilsiz Yahya  (servant at court of Fatih Mehmed)
                        Dilsiz Yusuf
                        Dilsiz Ismail
                        Dilsiz Balaban

1505                Zati  (the poet)

1573                Koca dilsiz
1574-76           Sagir Behram Pasa (Governor of Diyarbekir)

580s-1600s      Dilzis Süleyman Aga (favourite of Sultana Safiye)
590s-1630s      Riyadi al-Asamm  (Kadi of Aleppo)

1603                Dilsiz Kili  (Killi, Kuli or Kullili)
1620                Dilsiz Ali Aga

1630                Deaf David (Daud) (chief of the imperial sword makers)
1630s ?            [Dilsiz Saqueda ?  (favourite of Murad IV ?)]

1635                Dilsiz Civan
                        Dilsiz Tavsan (Aga)

1646                Buzagi Dilsiz
1660s ?            Dilsiz Ali Dede
1691                Dilsiz Mahomet Aga  or Mehmed Aga

1706                Dilsiz Mohammed  [? same as 1691 ?]

18th century    Sakalli Dilsiz Ali  (artist, engraver in bone)

1748                Ahmed Bizeban  (father of poet Esrâr Dede)

1789                Dilsiz Rukiye (female servant in harem of Selim III)

1813-1814       Dilsiz Hüseyin (accidentally drowned during sports)
1830-1831       Basdilsiz Bargir (Beygir) dilsiz

1830s               Dr John Kitto (visiting scholar, deafened as teenager)

1847                Hüseyin Aga (?)

c. 1890             Ali Galip (studied in Grati's school?)
1892                M. Pekmezian  (deaf teacher in France, then Istanbul)

late 1890s        Sheikh Fayyad ibn Abdullah (visited Istanbul from Lebanon)

[1880s-1920s] Jacques Faraggi (helped found Salonica deaf school)
[1890s-1920s] Edgard Faraggi, Istanbul (educated at Paris)

[1901-1960s?] Süleyman Sirri Gök (founded Deaf Association)

[1900s-1973]   Ismet Inönü (born 1884, deafened in his 20s, Prime Minister of Turkey)

1915                deaf Samuel (student at Merzifon)
                        Theodorus   (student at Merzifon)

1923                Alber[t] Karmona [Carmona] (founded Izmir school)

1928                Deaf Hamdi (primary school teacher at Nusaybin)

 

Some notes appear on the internet of further historical deaf/mute people, for whom dates and details are not quite clear to the present compiler, such as  'Zenci' [Negro] Dilsiz Mehmed, in a legal case from Ottoman archives (Batur et al, 2002, p. 84); also Dilsiz Ibrahim;  and no doubt many others. There are of course hundreds of people in Turkey now who have the surname 'Dilsiz', without any impairment of hearing -- it is merely a family name, with a meaning in the distant past. There may also have been some people in earlier times who acquired a nickname of 'The Deaf', for some reason other than an actual serious hearing impairment.

For the first fifty years of the 20th century, it should not be difficult to find 100 deaf people with names, dates and places. Even for an earlier 500 years, a diligent search should bring out a much wider prosopographical account, giving more depth and quality to the available knowledge of deaf people's lives.

 

1.5  Appreciation
Useful information, comments, suggestions and criticism were received at various times over ten years, from:  L. Bragg;  E. Demirbas;  I. Demircioglu;  A.E. Dikici;  M. Essex;  C. Finkel;  N. Halici;  E. Kara;  C. Miles;  R. Murphey;  M. Petal;  M. Plackett;  P. Raswant;  K. Sprick;  and U. Zeshan. None of these informants bears responsibility for any errors in the present version.
No grants or funding of any kind has been received for the studies involved in compiling the present work. However, the generous services of Birmingham University Library, the Oxford University Bodleian Library (Oriental Institute) and Sackler Library, the British Library, Bristol University Library, and the Inter-Library Loan facilities of Birmingham and of Dudley Library Services, have been invaluable during the past 15 years, providing access to a wealth of texts from distant times and places. The astonishing power of Google and Google Books has greatly facilitated the location or cross-checking of relevant texts.
The facilitative role played by the Independent Living Institute in hosting this material on its site, the friendly correspondence with the Director, A. Ratzka, and the meticulous attention of webmaster M. Goldstick, continue to be very warmly appreciated.

 

2.0  TECHNICAL NOTES on the Quotations

Online Materials.  Many of the older (pre-1900) items are available full text online, either with open access, or with restricted access (e.g. available by membership of an institution with a big library budget). The number of such online texts is increasing every month.  Serious researchers who wish to verify each text for themselves are strongly recommended to use Google and particularly Google Books, or other search engines of their choice; and to use national union library catalogues to get an idea of some of the differences in spelling of author names, to widen their search.

Some texts that were available online earlier may be reformatted with different URLs, and the date and edition used may be different from the one shown below, and the author's name may have a slightly different spelling. For those reasons, most of the online texts have not been shown with URLs or hotlinks, in the collection below. However, the URLs that are shown below were working in June 2009 (unless stated otherwise).

Nicknames.  During the Ottoman period, as in most of the world's history, it was customary for people to have nicknames indicating some bodily feature. Such nicknames were given to people of the highest social status, as well as to ordinary people. For example, a list of titles and nicknames of the Ottoman sultans and their relatives and senior officers, by Alderson (1956, pp. 112-120), includes important people known by nicknames such as Deli (mad);  Egri (crooked);  Hadim (eunuch);  Hantal (clumsy);  Kanbur (hunch-backed);  Kel (bald);  Mest (sot);  Sarhos (drunkard);  Semen / Semiz (fat);  Tavasi (eunuch);  Topal (lame).  At the other end of the social scale, a city register in South Eastern Anatolia in 1518  (Ilhan, 2000, pp. 191-225), shows similar names such as `Arec (possibly for A`rec, lame);  Ahres ("probably meaning dump" [=dumb]);  Dilsuz;  Divane (Persian: foolish, insane);  Mahrum (deprived, destitute, disappointed);  Musammet (Arabic: 'made silent or speechless, silenced');  Remed (having ophthalmia);  Seyda (Persian: mad with love).

Quotes, Brackets, Dots.  Material enclosed in quotation marks  " ... "  represents direct quotations from the authors cited; but where one quotation appears within another quotation, the inside one is usually given in single apostrophes '.....'  Elsewhere, single apostrophes are used to draw attention to a particular word, for example: 'mute' is used historically as a noun, representing someone who did not speak, usually someone who was deaf and mute; but this word is not considered polite in modern English, so sometimes it is shown in 'warning' apostrophes.

Square brackets in Bold type  [  ]  appear within some quotations to indicate a brief explanatory word or words inserted by the present compiler / annotator. As noted above, bold square brackets also mark longer explanatory remarks or commentary by the compiler / annotator. The aim is to make a very clear distinction between the compiler's 21st century annotations and the direct quotations from primary or secondary sources. Earlier editorial insertions appear 'as found' in editions, often in parentheses (  ), but where they originally used square brackets [ ] those brackets have been changed to curly brackets { }  to avoid confusion. Superscript numerals indicating editorial footnotes have been omitted, and the footnote is usually shown by some other means.  Spelling, capitalization of nouns, punctuation and accentuation, or lack of it, are given 'as found' in texts, mostly without  'sic'  or other concessions to modern practice; but see note below on 'Transliteration and Diacriticals'.

Several dots  ...  appearing in a text indicate that material has been omitted by the present compiler. In most cases, some explanatory information has been provided around quotations where 'mutes' appeared in historical texts, to assist in contextualising them, or to indicate the status of the writer. In some cases, less clearly relevant material has been included from one author, for its possible pertinence to another author's observations -- these have mostly not been cross-referenced; but, as in the case of some quotations from modern historians, they may appear adjacent to the primary sources.

2.1  Notes on translation, transliteration
In various historical periods, textual translators have had different ideas about the extent to which they should translate literally, or should give a dynamic paraphrase of the meaning (so far as they have understood it), or might even deliberately insert their own view of what the text 'should have' said. Apart from what they actually thought they were doing, the possibility of unconscious bias may also play some part. Readers of the texts below that have been translated (some more than once) should bear in mind that, even with the best of skills and intentions, they are already a little removed from what the original author may have wanted to say. (See Bernard Lewis, 1999, "From Babel to Dragomans", for an entertaining account of these processes of translation and interpretation). The Turkish word 'çevirme', for 'translation', obtains a lot more colour in the Turkish-English dictionary by Hony & Iz (2nd edn. 1957), with the following definitions:  "Piece of meat roasted on a spit or skewer;  kebab;  a kind of thick jam;  turning movement (military);  translation. Translated."  This was presumably not intended to be humorous; but these different meanings give a fine representation of the twists and turns in cooking up a 'translation'.

For the same reason, the present compiler has mostly not given his own translation to English from Latin, French, German etc (which could add one more jump away from what was originally written), but sometimes indicates the (probable) meaning in the course of the annotation. (Ideally, all text and notes would also appear in translation to Turkish, to be more accessible to the people who are likely to be most interested. But that remains to be done by those who are capable of it, who might approach the subject with a completely different set of ideas!) Probably some (perhaps most) of the foreign visitors who reported what they 'saw and heard' at Istanbul, actually 'saw' less than they reported, and what they did 'see' was coloured by explanations given to them by interpreters at the Court, with some (small?) changes of meaning between one language and another. The more intelligent travellers would have cross-questioned their interpreters, and also tried to obtain confirmation or rebuttal from other local sources and by discussion with other foreign observers, until they had made up their minds about the truth and meaning of what they had seen and heard. The less careful travellers probably just copied what others had reported earlier, adding a little spin and embroidery, so as to appear 'original'. Yet even the intelligent and careful observer can sometimes be misinformed. And occasionally the careless or fraudulent reporter happens to get something right, that nobody else noticed.

Transliteration and diacriticals.  Over several centuries, different methods of transliteration and spelling have arisen, whether from the Arabic script in which Turkish was originally written, or from the Roman script adopted by the Turkey government early in the 20th century. No attempt has been made to harmonise the different spellings, in what appears below. Most of them are given 'as found' in the various quotations, but in some cases accents or diacritical marks have been omitted because they are not uniformly represented in computer software, whether in text-processing or screen drivers or printers. For example, the accent placed under 's', denoting the English 'sh' sound, has here been omitted, or shown with underlining, 's', or sometimes shown as 'sh'. The accent that may be placed above the 'g' in Turkish, known as 'yumushak ge' or 'soft g', has been omitted from words and names because some computer systems will represent it by a peculiar non-alphabetic symbol, while others will simply leave a gap where it occurs. Either fault may leave the reader without any means to look up the word in a dictionary; whereas using the plain 'g' in that word or name will give the reader enough information to go forward, even though it is not quite correct. In most cases below it is represented by underlining: 'g'  (yet this too can get lost when printing out in fonts where 'g' has a big loop below the line).  Apologies are offered for all such flaws, inaccuracies or substitutions. Further, some diacriticals that would now be used in French were not used in earlier centuries. The spelling and punctuation of earlier English and German also had many differences, which may be puzzling at first sight. The transliteration of Greek here makes some use of capital letters to represent long vowels such as Eeta and Omega, while omitting some accents.

 

2.2   RESPECTING COPYRIGHT
The textual material shown below is reproduced for purposes of education and scholarship for public benefit on a non-profit non-commercial basis.  None of the quotations should be further published or replicated in print or on the internet without clear indication of the original sources and authorship, as shown.  Careful consideration and compliance should be given to the legal copyright entitlements of any 20th or 21st century authors, translators and publishers.  Usually no more than a short extract is allowable in  "fair use"  (i.e. that which cannot reasonably be believed to cause any loss to those parties or to take unfair advantage of their work) unless permission is obtained from the original publishers or copyright holders. Copyright violation may incur legal action. Kindly stay within the reasonable legal guidelines and limits!  Any authors translators publishers or other copyright owners having reason to believe that their rights are infringed in the present compilation as it appears on the independentliving.org site are requested to contact the compiler promptly and such material will be removed.

 

 

3.0  EARLIER POINTS (c. 1250 BC to 1295 CE)

A few items at the start come before the Ottoman period began, to give a deeper historical context. These include some deaf people working as individuals or in a group, in the royal palaces and temples of the Hittite Empire more than 3200 years ago; the early Byzantine Empire when a theologian used sign communication during a vow of silence; a glance at courtly practices in the neighbouring Sassanid Empire;  the deaf son of a 7th century Emperor of Byzantium; an early Turkish Sufi teacher who seems to mention sign language in one of his poems around 1300 CE; and other points of possible relevance.  (In this earlier material, a lot of 'explanatory material' is given for a very small amount of primary text, so some patience is required!)

c. 1250 BC
SOYSAL, Yasemin [Arikan] (2001) Hitit din ve sosyal hayatinda {LU/MUNUS}U.HUB "sagir". In: G. Wilhelm (editor) Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongresses für Hethitologie, Wurzburg, 4.-8. Oktober 1999, pp. 652-669. Studien zu den Bogazköy-Texten, Band 45. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
[This contribution, in Turkish, collects most of the available locations and constructions in which {LU}U.HUB (deaf man) and GAL{LU} U.HUB (chief deaf man or supervisor of deaf men) are found, and gives transliteration of them, with translation to Turkish. Soysal discusses and lists the various activities and roles performed by Hittite deaf men, mostly within the cultic ceremonies performed in or near the royal palaces and temples, in the later half of the second millennium BC. Deaf women also appear briefly in two texts.]

MILES, M. (2008)  Hittite Deaf Men in the 13th century B.C.: introductory notes with annotated bibliography. http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200809.html

[This web article lists slightly more texts than Soysal's article (see previous item), with annotation in English; and also sets the Hittite deaf people in the wider context of deafness and deaf people in the early Middle East, between about 2200 BC and 1400 CE.]

 

 

3rd to 7th century CE (?)
AL-JAHIZ (attributed). Le Livre de la Couronne. Kitâb at-Taj (fi ahlâq al-Mulûk) transl. Charles Pellat (1954) Paris: Société d'Édition "Les Belles Lettres".
[The Sassanian empire (dynasty ruling c. 224-636 CE) at its height pushed back the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire and threatened Byzantium. Reportedly, Sassanian monarchs had a custom of silence at meals. If anyone needed to communicate, he used signs and gestures instead of speaking.  Pellat translated the Arabic as follows (pp. 46-47):]
            "{Conversation à table}. À table, il convient de ne tenir aucun propos, ni sérieux, ni badin. Si le Roi engage la conversation, il n'y a pas lieu de l'imiter, mais on doit simplement l'écouter en baissant les yeux.
C'est bien pour quelque chose que les Souverains sassanides,  quand les tables étaient avancées, se bornaient à 'marmotter' {1}, et personne ne prononçait une parole tant qu'elles n'étaient pas retirées. S'ils étaient constraints d'exprimer un désir, au lieu de parler, ils faisaient des gestes et des signes suffisament clairs pour indiquer ce qu'ils désiraient ou recherchaient." (p. 46)
Footnote {1} "D'après les dictionnaires arabes, la zamzama désigne des sons gutturaux (formés dans le gosier sans le secours de la langue) que les Zoroastriens font entendre quand ils font leurs prières en commençant à manger; v. Buhalâ', à l'index."  [Buhalâ = The Book of Misers, by al-Jahiz.]
            "'Dans cette nourriture, disaient-ils, réside la vie en ce monde. Il convient donc que l'homme applique sa pensée et occupe son esprit et ses membres à ce qu'il mange, afin que chaque organe prenne sa part de nourriture; ainsi, le corps, l'esprit animal qui siège dans le coeur et le tempérament naturel qui réside dans le foie sont parfaitement alimentés et l'organisme reçoit complètement cette nourriture.'
Le silence observé pendant les repas comporte de nombreux avantages qui sont énumérés dans l'Ayin {1} des Persans; nous nous abstenons de les mentionner ici car ils n'ont aucun rapport avec notre sujet." (p. 47)
{1} [Refers to Introduction, p. 16.:]   "..l'Ayinnamè 'le Livre de règlementations' {#} dont F. Gabrieli {##} a signalé les vestiges conservés par Ibn Qotaiba, avait également été traduit par Ibn al-Moqafa`.
{#}  A. Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides, 2nd edn, Copenhagen, 1944.  {##}  F. Gabrieli, l'Opera di Ibn al-Muqaffa`, dans la  Rivista degli studi orientali, vol. XIII, fasc. III (1932) 197-247."
[ For the possible relevance of this reported Sassanian practice to the later Ottoman Sign Language, a further passage in the Kitab at-Taj may be noted on the status of different court servants (Pellat, transl. p. 52:]
            " c) La troisième classe, à dix coudées de la deuxième, comprenait les bouffons, les amuseurs, et les bateleurs. Mais, de cette troisième classe, étaient exclus les gens de basse extraction, et d'humble origine, les infirmes, les géants, les nains, les difformes, les invertis, les enfants de parents inconnus, les fils de vulgaires artisans -- disons de tisserands ou de barbiers -- même si, par exemple, ils étaient devins."
[The reason reportedly given by Ardechir I for this exclusion, was that nothing is more likely to lower the royal soul than "la compagnie d'un sot" or the conversation of the common people. Thus, while the troupe of (well-born?) buffoons, tumblers and clowns was perhaps similar to what the 16th and 17th century Ottoman rulers had at their courts (as at many other royal courts), the Sassanids excluded people of the lower classes and people with various sorts of disability. Their meal-time signs might have been more like the limited gestural codes that evolved later in monasteries.]
            [The Kitab al-Taj is not the most reliable of sources. It tends to be quoted because it gives extensive detail, it sounds plausible (at least, in Pellat's translation), and there are not many other sources on the Sassanid court. Charles Pellat, the leading 20th century specialist on Jahiz, did not regard it as a genuine work of Jahiz (who lived c. 776-868 CE, and was thus writing 600 years after the founding Sassanid monarch, Ardechir I, and 200 years after the Sassanid empire fell); but some other scholars were willing to believe that it came from Jahiz. Pellat (p. 14) dated it in the middle of the 9th century CE. Another critic suggests the 11th century. No special reason is offered, why the Ottoman rulers should have adopted any practices described in the Kitab at-Taj -- but it was part of the known 'etiquette' literature, if any Ottoman ruler was looking for a more dignified or exclusive image, and wished to find historical precedents. It appears that Sultan Mehmed II (reigned 1444-1446; 1451-1481) did seek such an image and distance, later in his reign. In the 11th century, the Seljuk Turks conquered and occupied territory similar to that held earlier by the Sassanids, including much of Anatolia. In the 14th century Timur Lang ('the Lame'), also having Turkish roots, extended his power across much the same area, temporarily checking the rise of Ottoman power. As the waves of power and dynasty swept back and forth across South West Asia, the courtly counsellors and 'spin-doctors' of each century probably did what they could to promote the dignity and majesty of each successive ruler, picking up fragments of religion, tradition and custom from earlier empires. See also Gülru Necipoglu (1991) Architecture, ceremonial and power, pp. 251-257, summarising other possible influences on the Ottoman sultans' early move toward silence and seclusion, in some contrast with contemporary rulers; and noting also some later movement away from the 'straitjacket' of seclusion and rigid formality (257-258).]

 

 

382 CE
GREGORY of Nazianzus. Saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Lettres, volume II, edited and translated by P. Gallay (1967). Paris: Société d'Édition "Les Belles Lettres".
[Gregory was briefly Bishop of Constantinople, but resigned in 381 and left for his home town of Nazianzus. He made a vow of silence during the 50 days of Lent, 382. During this period he visited a religious community at Lamis, and seems to have communicated with signs and gestures, which apparently some of the monks did not appreciate. He wrote several short letters in Greek (II: pp. 5-11) discussing this visit, including one to his cousin, Eulalios, whom he had visited at Lamis.]
            "CXVI. A Eulalios. Lamis a été pour moi un lieu de silence et d'entrainement à la philosophie; mais si j'ai contemplé ce lieu en me taisant, je désire aussi le voir en parlant, afin de satisfaire mon affection pour les frères et de me justifier du reproche de taciturnité devant vous, mauvais interprètes de mes signes de tête [Gk. neumatOn]."
[E. Venables (1880) Eulalius, in W. Smith & H. Wace (editors) A Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. II, London, suggests that, during the visit, Gregory's  "sighs [sic] and gestures were so correctly interpreted by Eulalius that the visit was one of great mutual edification."  Venables might have had some further ancient source for this.]

 

 

late 6th century ?
GEORGIOS [of Sykéon; early 7th century] Vie de Théodore de Sykéon. I. Texte grec. II. Traduction, commentaire et appendice, by André-Jean Festugière (1970) Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes.
[Byzantine religious literature has many reports of deaf or mute people being healed by holy men. Some people may read these reports as historical accounts, others may see them as exhortations to faith, in which the physical details are not intended to be read as 'scientifically' precise. Here, one account is extracted for its detail of a deaf man's occupation and method of communication.  Sykeon, the birthplace of St. Theodorus, was near Anastasiopolis, in the region of Ancyre (Ankara) (II: pp. 7, 168). Theodorus was born in the reign of Justinian (527-565 CE), and died in 613. The vita was compiled by his disciple Georgios (II: 22, 156-157, 164-165), and is full of severe ascetic practices, and reported healings of people with disabilities or serious illness. In chapter 156a, a man who was a knife grinder, born deaf and mute, reportedly received healing, when the holy man prayed over him and blew into his mouth and ears.  Festugière's translation begins:]
            "Une autre fois, ce fut un rémouleur sourd et muet, qui ne répondait, dans les rencontres, qu'avec des cailloux et par signes, qui vint au saint" (vol. II, pp. 134-135).  [Greek: "'Allos tis, 'akonEtEs, kOphos kai 'alalos huparchOn, 'apo psEphou kai dia neumatOn didous 'apokrisin tois paratugchanousin 'autOi paregeneto pros ton hosion." (Vol. I, p. 129).
[The Greek description seems to contain a little more of interest than the rather terse French translation shows. Festugière omitted the 'huparchOn' which indicates the man was deaf from birth. He used the impersonal 'rencontres', (encounters, chance meetings) to represent the human beings who came by, to whom the knifegrinder gave answer or response. He also used 'des cailloux' (small stones or pebbles, plural) where the Greek word is singular, probably because Festugière thought 'a stone or pebble' would make little sense as an aid to communication with 'people who happened to be present with him' (tois paratugchanousin). The initial impression could be that one of the man's responses was 'throwing small stones' at other people. Yet the passage might make better sense if psEphou is the genitive of psEphas, 'juggler' (or the activities of a juggler, with the emphasis on the rapid hand and arm movements), or of psEphos not as a pebble but meaning 'reckoning, numbering', either with rapid hand movements on the abacus, or the finger movements of people accustomed to digital calculation. (Another well-known meaning of psEphos was as a vote cast, i.e. the gesture of throwing a voting pebble into the ballot urn). (Cf. GWH Lampe, 1961, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon, pp. 1541-42.) Communication with head, finger, hand or arm movements is what one might expect from a man born deaf, who had grown up to earn his living with a practical, digital skill.
Among people with various impairments whose treatment by Theodorus was recorded, some more who were 'mute' appear in vol. II, pp. 54-55 (small boy, from Ancyre); p. 59 (young man); p. 63;  pp. 80-81 (slave named Theodora); p. 81 (girl aged 8); p. 134 (deaf and blind baby).]

 

c. 623-641 CE
NIKEPHORUS I, Patriarch. Nicephori Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani Opuscula Historica, edidit Carolus de Boor, accedit Ignatii Diaconi Vita Nicephori. Lipsiae, 1880.
JOHN, Bishop of Nikiu [late 7th century CE] Chronique de Jean, Evêque de Nikiou. Texte Ethiopien, publié et traduit par H. Zotenberg (1883). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.
KAEGI, Walter E (2003) Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium. Cambridge University Press.
[Flavius Heraclius (c. 575-641) became Emperor in October 610, and married Eudokia, with whom he had two children. Eudokia, who had epilespy, died in 612. In 622 or 623, Heraclius married his niece Martina and had further children (Kaegi, pp. 106-107, 266-68), the second being Theodosius, who was deaf {and mute}. After a few years, Heraclius arranged for the marriage of Theodosius with Nike, daughter of the Persian ruler Shahrbaraz (Nikephorus, p. 21, lines 19-21). Kaegi comments (p. 188) that this marriage of  "the very young (five or six years old at the time), deaf-mute Theodosius"  had great implications for Byzantine power in Persia. (While his deaf son was growing up, Heraclius was busy fighting the Sassanids).
The 'Short History' by Nikephorus (750-828), Patriarch of Constantinople, mentioned the impairments of the first two sons of Heraklius and Martina, i.e. Flavios {or Fabius} had a 'wry neck' which restricted turning his head, while Theodore was deaf {and mute}. These features were portrayed by Nikephorus as a divine judgement in the form of a 'visible public disgrace' for their scandalous marriage:]
            "{Greek transliterated} kai dE duo huieis 'ex 'autEs tiktei, hOn tov men Phlauion ton de Theodosion prosEgoreusen. hE dikE de 'ethriambeue to 'athemiton, kai tou men presbuterou pareimenon 'edeiknu ton 'auchena hOs mEd' heterOthi 'epistrephesthai hoion te 'einai, tou d' 'au neOterou tEn 'akoustikEn 'aphEirEto 'aisthEsin kai kOphon 'EdE 'apephaine."  (Nikephorus, p. 14, lines 17-23. The Latin index has Theodosius as the  "filius surdus"  of the royal couple, p. 243).
[The two facts, that this deaf boy was the Emperor's son, and that it was possible for a 'geopolitically strategic' marriage to be arranged for him while he was still very young, make it highly likely that some care and attention was given to the upbringing of Theodosius, with provision for his training and education, probably at Byzantium (Constantinople). At the very least, some servants would regularly have taken care of his safety and wellbeing, and an informal system of 'home sign' communication would probably have developed over months and years, with such servants, and some of Theodosius's brothers and sisters. It is even possible that a few deaf youths might have been collected as companions for Theodosius, but no record has been seen of his education. The focus of historical attention has been on the public disapproval of the Emperor's consanguineous marriage, and on the boys' physical impairments.]
            [Bishop John of Nikiu was a leader in the Jacobite church of Egypt in the second half of the 7th century, whose Chronicle survived in an Ethiopian version written in 1602 on the basis of an old Arabic paraphrase (p. 6). Bishop John recorded that after the death of Heraclius in 641, Martina and her surviving sons were seized and mutilated by her enemies, so that the young men would be disqualified from the throne; but Theodosius was spared the cutting, because he was already disqualified:]
            "On ne fit aucun mal à un autre de ses fils qui, étant sourd-muet, n'était pas apte au tröne." (Bishop John, transl. Zotenberg, pp. 460-461).

 

 

9th century (probably second half)
PHOTIUS. Ctésias: La Perse, L'Inde: les sommaires de Photius, edited and translated by R. Henry (1947). Brussels.
CTESIAS. Ctésias de Cnide. La Perse, l'Inde, autres fragments. Texte établi, traduit et commenté by D. Lenfant (2004) Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
[PHOTIUS (born between 810 and 827; died 897), scholar and patriarch of Constantinople, made excerpts from the Indica of Ctesias, who had spent several years as a physician at the court of Artaxerxes II, around 400 BC. Photius thus recorded a text in which Ctesias described a 'Dog-headed' (Cynokephaloi) people, in the vicinity of the Indus river. These people were in contact with other Indians, whose language they understood, but with whom they could not speak. They reportedly made themselves understood thus:]
            "by barking, and by signals with hands and fingers, as do the deaf and mute"  [Greek: "kai tais chersi kai tois dactulois sEmainousin, hOsper hoi kOphoi kai 'alaloi." (Ctesias, 2004, double-page 180; with notes by Lenfant on pp. 313-314 speculating, to little purpose, about who these people might have been).
[The point, of course, is not whether Ctesias or Photius actually believed in 'dog-headed' barking people -- they probably did not -- but that Ctesias mentioned the use of hand and finger signs as a method of communication, giving 'the deaf and mute' as a known reference to explain his point; and Photius, at Constantinople in the 9th century, transcribed this brief description of Sign Language while making his excerpts from Ctesias.]
            [An encounter with barking, dog-headed people would hardly have surprised Turkey's greatest traveller, Evliya Çelebi, whose famous Seyahâtname in the 17th century includes a description of the Ettels and the Kaiták people near the border between Daghistan and Persia.  "Ettel signifies in the Mogolic language, tongue of dogs; they take this name from their war-cry, which is a kind of howling. ... The Kaitáks are ... a strange race of men like the beast of the day of judgement, with heads in the form of kettles, brows two fingers broad, shoulders so square that a man may easily stand upon them, thin limbs, round eyes, large heels, and red faces."  (Evliya, transl. Von Hammer, vol. II, p. 157). Evliya travelled to this border region, met these people, noted some of their customs and some words of their 'Mogolic' language, and gave his report with plenty of circumstantial detail. All that is required is a little imagination, on the part of the reader.]

 

 

1048
SKYLITZES.  Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis Historiarum. Editio Princeps, edited by Ioannes Thurn (1973). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
JACOB, Xavier (ed) (1990) Les Turcs au Moyen Age. Textes-Byzantins. Traduits du Grec et annotés. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi.
[In 1048, the Seljuk ruler Tughrul Beg, occupied with besieging Pasar, sent his nephew, known as Asan the Deaf {Greek: "'Asan ton legomenon kOphon"}, sometimes represented as Hasan the Deaf, at the head of a Turkish army of 20,000 men to fight the Roman {Byzantine} troops and to occupy Media. Near the river Stragna, Asan came upon the Roman camp apparently abandoned, and allowed his troops to disperse for booty. Later the Romans emerged from hiding, and attacked strongly. Asan died fighting in the front line, and his army was defeated. (Skylites, pp. 447-449;  Jacob (1990, pp. 80-82).]

 

c. 1295
CODEX CUMANICUS. See: Peter Golden [1992] Codex Cumanicus. At:
http://eurasia-research.com/erc/002cam.htm

[The Codex Cumanicus, probably dating c. 1295, includes some details of early Turkic languages (Golden, 1992). It has a short vocabulary of defect and disability, such as  teli, aqmaq for "mad, stupid"; kzsiz, kor for "blind"; aqsax for "lame";  qulaqsiz and tilsiz for "deaf, mute". After 700 years, the modern Turkish words, deli, ahmak, kor, aksak are easily recognisable, as are all those with the suffix -siz (-less), gözsiz, kulaksiz, dilsiz (eyeless, earless, tongueless).  As in many European languages, there is some historical tendency to use 'deaf and dumb' together, or for the word 'mute' to be understood as including both deafness and the inability to speak. Certainly, observant people in antiquity knew that there could be a range from perfect hearing through hearing impairment, to complete deafness; and that some people with hearing might temporarily or permanently be unable to speak. Yet the simplification of terms can be seen in many of the quotations below. No audiological examination results are recorded for any of the 'mutes' mentioned in historical records shown here. It is assumed that the great majority of them were deaf or had significantly impaired hearing.]
            [Some writers of novels or pseudo-historical accounts have assumed that the word 'Dilsiz' (literally 'tongueless') involved the cutting out of the court servants' tongues. Some have further assumed that 'of course' the male Dilsiz must also have been castrated, as part of a package of atrocities and obscenities that the 'mad Eastern despots' were well known (in the fertile Western imagination) to have inflicted on their subjects. Certainly, some cutting or slitting of tongues or other fleshy parts of the body is recorded in Middle Eastern history, as punishment for specific crimes, or in early 'shock and awe' policies to terrify populations into submission (Adamson 1978) or possibly in some religious rituals. (See also Nikephoros, transl. Mango 1990, section 40, where Justinian's tongue and nose are cut off, {Greek} "temOn tEn glOttan kai tEn hrina", pp. 96-97).  Yet no primary evidence has been produced to show that any ruler's servants in the Ottoman era became mute as a result of such 'mutilation'. There is evidence that a few of the Ottoman sultans suffered serious mental illness during their reigns; but they and their advisors were not so crazy as to have a man's tongue torn out or slit down the middle and then to take that same man as a personal servant or armed guard. When rulers chose to have deaf and mute servants around them, the main reasons seems to have been to reduce the chances of being overheard when discussing vital and secret business with their most senior officials.]

 

4.0   ‘OTTOMAN’ DEAF & MUTE QUOTATIONS and NOTES

4.1  1300 - 1469

 

c. 1300 (?)
YUNUS EMRE. Selected Poems, translated by TS Halman (2nd edn, 1993), Ankara: Ministry of Culture, Turkish Republic.
[A well-known and highly enigmatic poem by the Sufi, Yunus Emre (c. 1240-1320), contains the following verse (with the Turkish original (transliterated from arabic script to roman) opposite on p. 108.]
            "To the blind, I gave signals with my hand;
Whatever I whispered, the deaf man heard.
The dumb broke into speech, called me out and
Repeated with me every single word." (p. 109).
[The verse in Turkish comprises ten words (some being compounds, as it is an agglutinative language), compared with 31 words in English. Terms for the blind, deaf, and mute are easily identified, as are some terms for whisper, hear, call, speech. A term for 'giving hand signals' is not so obvious, and the order of words in Turkish is notoriously different from what might be expected in English. The English translation may involve some paraphrasis, to convey the supposed meaning. Allowing for the poet's ironic reversal of normal expectation -- i.e. signalling to the blind, whispering to the deaf, hearing the dumb speak -- this poem may be considered to contain an early mention of communicating with hand signals in Turkish literature.]

 

CAUTION:  The earliest-dated account found in the present study, of some activity of 'mutes' of the Ottoman court, is attributed to the 14th century, by an 18th century novelist (next item). That writer clearly had access to some historical sources for the story she told, yet probably inserted the mutes by her own imagination, without a basis in any primary source, in her account of Sultan Murad's death in 1389. The account is probably mistaken. It is shown here, as an example of some of the problems and confusions with which historians have to deal in handling medieval materials; and also because the dubious source can be viewed, full text online, and therefore is liable to be picked up and repeated by incautious writers, as though it were 'proof', which it is not.

 

1389
GOMEZ, Madeleine-Angéline Poisson (1722) Anecdotes ou histoire secrette de la maison ottomane. Amsterdam.
[Madame de Gomez (c. 1684-1770), a talented novelist, wrote a number of stories based on historical events. Here, in volume 1, pp. 34-36, she recounted the death of Sultan Murad I after a battle in Serbia. Prince Bajazet {Bayezid} was on the spot, whereas his brother was represented as being at some distance and the news had not reached him. Bajazet promptly sent a message to his brother, as if from their father, to come immediately to the Sultan's tent. The brother arrived, and was immediately strangled, thus removing Bajazet's sole competitor for the throne:]
            "Le Prince [Soliman] arriva en peu de jours sur les frontières de la Servie, où il trouva l'armée rangée en bataille & observant un merveilleux silence. Il demanda où étoit le Sultan. On lui montra la tente de Bajazet; & il n'y fut pas plûtôt entré que quatre muets se jetterent sur lui, & l'étranglerent avec la corde d'un arc; de peur qu'en se servant d'un autre genre de mort, ils ne repandissent le sang Imperial & n'en violassent la majesté." (p. 36)
            [In the Gomez version, there seems to be some confusion of names: modern historians generally take Bajazet's brother to have been called Yakub, not Soliman. However, the difference is already found in early Byzantine records, in which one source calls the brother Sabucius; another calls him Soliman, and a third Jacob or Yakub. For some, he was the elder brother, for others, the younger. Some state that he was strangled, but one says that his eyes were gouged out. {See works by Johannes Ducas;  Laonicus Chalcocondylas, and Johannes Leunclavius;  and George Phrantzes; in Migne (ed. 1866) Patrologia Graeca, vol. 157, pp. 775-776; vol. 159, pp. 66, 763; vol. 156, p. 703.}  No source has been seen that shows involvement of mutes in the strangling.  The mutes may have been a factor that Gomez projected back into the story, from later history (e.g. as an earlier version of Prince Mustafa being strangled by Sultan Suleiman's mutes in 1553), in the belief that they were the 'official' palace executioners (which does not seem to have been the case at any stage of history). Leunclavius further suggested that Turkish historians exonerated Bajazet from responsibility, and believed that the decision was taken by a secret council of leaders on the battlefield.  Lamartine (1855, pp. 279-281) underlined the Turkish account, against the Byzantine historians.  Gomez's margin date for her 'anecdote', given as 1372 (running on from earlier pages), is similar to the Byzantine dating, but modern historians (e.g. Alderson 1956, p. 166; Finkel 2005, p. 21) work with the date 1389 for the death of Murad. Most accounts have Yakub nearby, on one wing of the army, rather than arriving a few days later. Thus for several reasons, the story by Madame de Gomez is of doubtful historical accuracy, though she incorporated a number of possibly valid points from early sources, and the climactic event is very likely correct, i.e. Bayezid's brother arrived and was promptly killed. More recently, Gibbons (1916, p. 180) had Bayezid busy executing high-ranking Serbian prisoners to avenge the death of Sultan Murad, amidst which he "sent servants to seek out his brother Yakub who had distinguished himself during the battle, and was being acclaimed by his soldiers. Yakub was taken to Bayezid's tent, and was strangled with a bowstring." Sources cited are Chalcocondylas, Ducas, and Phrantzes. (But none of those writers actually specified a bowstring, in Migne's edition. Indeed, Dukas had the prince - whom he calls Sabucium - arriving and being blinded, not strangled).]

 

 

c. 1400, or 1451 (?)
[The Osmanli or 'Ottoman' rulers began with Osman (c. 1281-1324), and the Ottoman territory expanded across Anatolia and some Balkan states throughout the 14th century, under Orkhan, Murad I, and Bayezid I (1389-1402). Historical encyclopedia articles on the mutes (dilsizler, or bizebanlar) in English by Bernard Lewis (1965), and in Turkish by Mehmet Zeki Pakalin (1983) and by Abdülkadir Özcan (1994), state that they were present among the court servants in the reign of Fatih Sultan Mehmed II (1451-1481), claiming sources in Ottoman court records. There are occasional hints of their presence as far back as Bayezid I (1389-1402). Yet early sources have not been quoted in the encyclopedias to substantiate those claims.]

 

 

c. 1400
MUNDY, C.S. (1948) Notes on three Turkish manuscripts. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 12: 533-541.
[One of the three manuscripts, `Ömer b. Mezîd: Mecmû`atu'n-nazâir (SOAS, 27, 689), apparently dated 1436, lists 84 authors of poetry, a few known and many  "hitherto unknown poets of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries".  No. 21 in the list is shown as  "Dilsûz Muhammed, 31" (the 31 refers to poem number 31), with footnote by Mundy,  "I have written this word with a circumflex, in order to represent the spelling. It may be either the Turkish dilsûz  (= dilsiz) or the Persian dilsûz."   A further note  after  "No. 52. Muhammed, 53, 122, 239"  gives  "{Muhammed -- see also Dilsûz Muhammed.}" ]

 

 

1431
KAI KAUS ibn Iskander ibn Qabus. Le Cabous Namè ou livre de Cabous, translated by A. QUERRY (1886). Paris: Leroux.  (See also: A Mirror for Princes: the Qabus Nama, translated by Reuben Levy, 1951, London: Cressel.)
[The Cabous Namè (in English: Kabusnama, Qabus-nama, etc), written in Persian in 1082-1083 CE,  was an early example of an 'instruction manual' containing guidance for rulers and princes. According to C.E. Bosworth (1978),  "At least three Ottoman Turkish translations were made, the earliest being done for Sultân Murâd II (824-55 / 1421-51) ... The Ottoman Turkish versions that have survived are:  (a) the translation by Merdjimek Ahmed b. Ilyâs, dated 835/1431, ed. Kazan 1298/1880-1, Istanbul 1941;.."   A passage in chapter VII (on  "De la Recherche de l'Excellence dans l'art du bien dire")  remarks that a child deprived of all language exposure during infancy will grow up mute, giving also the example of congenitally deaf persons. This knowledge, i.e. that spoken language is learnt behaviour, and its absence arises normally from lack of hearing other people's speech, contradicts the widely held belief that the absence of speech arises from a mouth or tongue defect, and should be remedied by making an incision beneath the tongue.]
            "Ne te lasse pas d'être un auditeur attentif, c'est en sachant écouter qu'on acquiert  {p. 87}  la sagesse et l'art de bien dire; les enfants nous en fournissent la preuve. En effet, supposons un enfant qui, dès sa naissance, serait enfermé dans un caveau, y serait allaité, nourri, auquel sa mère ou sa nourrice n'adresserait jamais une parole ni une caresse, qui n'entendrait aucun son, il est évident que, devenu grand, il resterait muet et incapable d'émettre une parole à moins que, par quelque hasard, il n'eût l'occasion d'entendre et ainsi d'apprendre à parler. Une autre preuve de ce que j'avance est ce fait que tout sourd de naissance est en même temps muet; ne voit on pas que tous les muets sont sourds?" (pp. 86-87)
[Whether Murad II ever did read this work is not known; but it would have been known to some of the Ottoman court savants in the 15th century (or earlier), and may have had some influence on how deafness and muteness were regarded.]

 

1433
DE LA BROQUIERE, Bertrandon (1892) Le Voyage d'Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquière..., edited by Charles Schefer. Paris: Leroux.
Viewed at  http://gallica.bnf.fr/

, March 2009.
[Broquière (sometimes Brocquière), an officer of the Duke of Burgundy, visited Jerusalem in 1432, then returned to France overland through Anatolia and the Balkans, at some risk to his life, apparently with a view to gathering information for future crusading forces to travel by land in the opposite direction. He left Constantinople on 31 January 1433, in company with Sir Benedic[t] de Fourlino and his entourage, ambassador of the Duke of Milan, travelling to meet Sultan Murad II at Adrianople (Edirne) (p. 167). They saw Murad briefly at a small town, but he declined to transact any business as he was on a recreational trip and his senior officers were absent (pp. 176-177). The two visitors returned to Edirne and awaited Murad's arrival. Broquiére gave some details of what he had learnt about Murad's personal appearance, habits and pleasures, methods of raising forces, personal servants and courtiers (pp. 181-186). Eventually Broquiére accompanied the Ambassador to a formal audience with Murad, which he described in some detail (pp. 187-192). The Sultan appeared from his residential quarters accompanied by his group of male pages as far as the entrance to the 'business' court. However, Murad entered the latter with only three people:]
            "...et ne sailly avecques luy que ung petit nain et deux autres garçons qui font le fol." (p. 188)
[On this point, Schefer's edition appears very similar to that used earlier by M. Le Grand d'Aussy, as translated by Thomas Johnes in 1807:]         "There was nobody with him but a small dwarf, and two young persons who acted the part of fools" (p. 254).
[The detail seems to be omitted in the modern account by Necipoglu ("Architecture, Ceremonial, etc" see under "1480 - 1530"), who has the Sultan  "accompanied by two royal pages and a dwarf" (p. 17a) citing Broquière's report from the Schefer 1892 edition (but using the spelling 'Brocquière'). Broquière made further points relevant to considerations of sultanic 'presence or distance' from ordinary human contact with the public world or with visitors. After the ambassador's gifts had been shown to the seated Sultan, the latter got up, stepped toward the ambassador and took his hand, while the ambassador tried to kiss the Sultan's hand. But the Sultan:]
            "...ne le souffry point pour l'onneur du duc de Milan et luy demanda comment son bon fradello et voisin le duc de Milan se portoit. Respondy que tresbien." (p. 191)  [Upon this friendly gesture, the brief conversation was translated between Turkish and Italian by a Jewish interpreter, as Broquière was told,  "comme il me fu dit, car je ne le povois ouyr" (being seated at some distance).]
            "Car aussi le seigneur ne menge nulle fois que en son privé et sont peu de gens qui l'ayent veu boire, ne mengier, ne ouyr parler." (p. 192)
[There is thus some evidence that the habit of later Sultans to eat separately, to be accompanied only by dwarfs and buffoons, and seldom to be heard speaking openly, may date at least as far back as 1433. The observation of "garçons qui font le fol" can reasonably be translated 'young men who play the fool', yet one may speculate about what Broquière actually saw them doing. Did he see two men tumbling around like buffoons, or making ridiculous faces? Did he actually see no odd behaviour, but merely learnt from a courtier that those men were buffoons? Or might he have seen two men silently raising their arms, making signals with their fingers, nodding their heads and signalling with their eyebrows? The later 'dwarfs and mutes' of the Ottoman sultans acted as buffoons and played the fool, as well as communicating by sign language. It is possible that Broquière saw a dwarf and two deaf men with Murad II, and misinterpreted their communicative movements as 'acting the fool'; (yet it is hardly strong evidence.)]