Interview: “Ottoman Vampires: Legend, Impacts and Response” by Salim Fikret Kırgi
By Liam Murray
After years of bitter struggle to gain supremacy in Anatolia and the Bosphorus, by the early 16th century, the Ottomans stood proud over vast swathes of newly-held lands spanning the expanse of the Black Sea, Balkans and Caucasus regions.
Of course, it was not unexpected that the empire’s expansion into these realms would bring it head-to-head with geopolitical adversaries further afield, yet there was one threat is didn’t prepare for and one which no number of Janissary troops could fend from: That of the vampire.
It was no sooner than the Sublime Porte had established its jurisdiction over these new additions to the empire that what one jurist penned as “the ignorant superstitions of the masses,” began to become to a series concern to authorities.
In “Ottoman Vampires: Legend, Impacts and Response,” film academic and historian Salim Fikret Kırgi compiles an impressive number of records from the Ottoman juristic and literary archives to separate the modern myth from the original conception of vampire lore as it stood in pre-modern Europe.
The book is full of a number of fascinating accounts and tidbits, showing just how seriously the vampire phenomenon was taken by authorities, and raising a number of questions for the modern reader.
For instance, what does a government do when entire villages threaten to uproot from an area due to an outbreak of vampirism? By what qualities can one distinguish between supernatural beings, such as werewolves, witches and evil spirits? And what is the halal way to deal with a vampire, given Islam’s interdiction on body desecration?
I decided to ask the author himself to cast more light on this fascinating work.
What sparked the idea for this book?
This book is essentially a thesis with a few extra additions. The thesis was the result of much research on the roots of the vampire phenomenon, which owes to my fascination with how the creatures are represented in fiction – especially film.
Of course, my studies began with the source of inspiration for Dracula, Vlad the Impaler – one of the most controversial figures in Ottoman history. Before long, however, the main flow of the thesis began to take form around both the enduring and contradictory elements of vampire fiction when compared to its folkloric origins.
It is the combination of a number of reflections on vampire lore in the West, within the scope of varying beliefs, terminological complexities, and disagreements between the Catholic and Orthodox Church that took place regarding the vampire-like creatures reported in the Ottoman Empire, including among Turkic and Muslim populations – and in light of pre-Islamic beliefs.
My advisor was a great help in making sure the end product remained academic, didn’t detract from the main issues at hand, and was as well-ordered as possible.
Do you think the role of the vampire in Ottoman lore has been lost over time?
Yes. But more to the point, I think the popularisation of vampires in Western fiction allowed for the notion to take hold that the vampire concept was somehow “foreign.” However, the vampire craze of 18th-century Europe rests on written accounts from Ottoman Christians, as reported by Catholic missionaries. This goes somewhat to explain why academics working in Ottoman history have never fully embraced the concept.
Of the reports you mention, one of the most fantastical is related by Ottoman explorer and travel writer Evliya Çelebi, upon his witnessing battle between witches that took place in the skies above a Circassian village in the Black Sea. How would these kinds of reports be treated at the time and how should we judge them now?
The validity of many supernatural spectacles reported by Evliya Çelebi has long been a source of debate. However, if you consider factors such as the period in which the work was written, the concept of “reality” as it would have been expressed at the time, the different mentalities, and the writer’s own literary flights, it’s impossible to give a definitive answer on this. Essentially, the book’s importance lies in its value as a cultural artefact.
In any sense, what’s undisputable regarding the beliefs around that night is that such reports were clearly not considered a “foreign” notion by Ottoman readers of the time.
The representations of vampires found in the book seem far closer to what we would today regard as zombies, evil spirits – or even witches. When doing your research, was it difficult to account for the changing nuances of these terms?
Yes, this was quite inevitable. The fact is that, for as many terms that exist to describe these kinds of phenomena, there exist as many differences in the exact definitions of the terms. We’re talking about the pre-modern period and a plurality of beliefs among dozens of ethnic and linguistic groups across the breadth of Eastern Europe. If one community calls them one thing, their neighbours call them another – and that’s even if they have a name for the superstition at all.
Furthermore, as languages evolve over time, concepts are forgotten – before arriving later carrying a different meaning.
The clearest examples of this come in the evolution of the Turkish term “cadı”,” or “witch,” or the most widely used Balkan term for vampire, “vrykolakas” (which actually comes from a word for “werewolf”).
This challenge presented me with much difficulty both in terms of the research and writing processes. Even if I slot in a direct dictionary reference for terms used in the book, there will always be those who say: “But such-and-such here isn’t the same thing you’re talking about, is it?” And they’re not wrong.
I kept coming up against these kinds of issues throughout my research. As Oscar Wilde said: “To define is to limit.” I love that phrase a lot and I found it came to mind multiple times when researching early-modern folk beliefs that haven’t retained a shred of their original meaning in modernity. But I think I explain this sufficiently in the book, which focuses not so much on the vampire of modern fiction, but rather that of the quickly changing folk beliefs that form its inspiration.
These days, when Muslims hear about paranormal issues, they are normally quick to contextualise them into Islamic notions, such as suggesting “jinn” activity. With this in mind, how are we to respond to the fact that the notion of vampires was inscribed in fatwas as a separate concept at this time?
A process unfolded, picking up speed from the 16th century and continuing up to the Republican period, which saw a centralisation of Sunni beliefs and a distancing from more heterodox identities stemming from folk beliefs. In this, lies the answer to your question. These fatwas on vampires were issued around the start of this process, as the muftis began trying to deal with and domesticize various folk beliefs. With that in mind, it would be an exaggeration to say this created a new category for vampires, as such.
It can be said, however, that authorities, as they explored various ill-defined and “objectionable” folk beliefs, often benefit from couching them in religiously permissible terminology. The Greek Orthodox and Catholic authorities of the same era can be said to have struck a similar attitude. The result of this process is that today, when explaining now long-normalised elements of horror, explanations such as jinns or evil spirits first come to hand.
What does the Ottoman Sheikh-ul Islam Ebussuud Efendi’s mentioning of vampires in his many fatwas say about the Ottoman’s relationship with the supernatural beliefs of other nations?
The central claim of the book is that the vampire phenomenon was a belief that was shared among the Ottoman empires’ various religious and ethnic groups – to the extent that it spread further due to their interactions, making it – at the very least – not as foreign as it appears today.
In Ebussuud Efendi’s fatwas, he talks of the vampires as a non-Muslim belief, adding that the creatures would not harm those of Islamic faith. When the question of vampires comes up again, he answers that corpses that rise from the dead must have a stake driven through their heart.
In the region we are dealing with, most of the Muslims were converts, who retained certain old superstitions or old family beliefs. In that sense, it’s not so easy to suddenly lose one’s old fears.
That said, whether Christian or Muslim – or even among the pagan Circassians, who lived in the mountains, one comes across various accounts that show the vampire being perceived of as a general threat going beyond religion.
The book shows the changing role of vampires in Western thought as it developed through the Reformation, the Enlightenment and later, imbibing Orientalist notions. Do you think myths always carry cultural or political meaning?
Vampires certainly gained a particular degree of attention in the war over beliefs that was waged during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. By the Enlightenment era, they transformed into a projective concept that pointed to the backwardness of the East. Later, they became serialised as a pop cultural product. Essentially, no amount of centralisation or standardisation of religion is enough to escape the classification of many beliefs as “pop” or “folk” religion.
Of course, the vampire rumours have a place in this mix, but it’s exceptional for it to have remained in use for such a long period – maybe because it scared others so much.
Do you think vampirism has a cultural significance today?
As talk of the East’s backwardness continued, the concept turned into a “Threat from the East” and persisted thus. From the Romantic period and beyond, the vampire myth starts to appear in horror fiction and is often cited for its subtext. The popularity of the Dracula novel and its adaptations is clearly crucial in this context.
The concept has come pretty far in the time since. For instance, one of the most recent retellings of the tale Vlad the Impaler, Dracula Untold, for instance, clearly has a political stance, adding to the lore the quite over-the-top idea that Count Dracula broke with his religion as a result of the mercilessness of the Ottomans. By the end of the movie, Dracula engages in a sword fight with Sultan Mehmet II, before sacrificing his life to save Christian Europe from the Muslim Turks.
When we consider the political origins of the vampire phenomenon, none of this should come as any surprise.
As contexts change over time, vampires find themselves slotted into the political agenda of the day. My own view is that works based on real historical figures and events should be as faithful as possible, however much you add to the supernatural elements – that’s all fair and square. The idea of mixing the story of Vlad the Impaler and his Ottoman foes with vampire lore is, in itself, already such an appealing concept that there’s no need to distance it from historical fact any further.
As a cinema buff, you must have a few takes on vampire movie adaptations. Do you have any favourites?
I can’t stand modern movies based on love between humans and vampires – nor anything in which we see vampires firing weapons.
I can’t remember how it came about, but I suppose Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the first work that sparked my interest in vampires and gothic fiction. It is a ground-breaking film in many ways. Other favourites that come to mind include a number of the old Hammer Films, the 1979 adaption of Salem’s Lot, as well as mixes of comedy and horror from the 1980s, Lost Boys and the first season of True Blood. Vampire Hunter D is also an especially good anime.
That’s not forgetting Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath – an adaption of Tolstoy, which is an exceptional production well worth watching for anyone interested in the genre. As part of my research, I try to watch as many vampire films and TV shows as possible. It is always a pleasure to see how these old myths persist.
Do you think Turkey is in need of a good, historically-grounded vampire movie?
Absolutely. It’s such a shame that Turkish cinema is full of repetitive, quite boring productions. There was recently a vampire-based TV Show, but it didn’t really take off. In any case, it didn’t base itself in this kind of lore. I hope we can see some better works in the future.
Author Bio: Liam Murray is a writer, translator, and longtime denizen of Istanbul, who has had poetry and articles published in various journals and news sites, including Traversing Tradition, Daily Sabah, and the Bosphorus Review of Books.