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Samuel Dolbee, Empire on the Edge: Desert, Nomads, and the Making of an Ottoman Provincial Border, The American Historical Review, Volume 127, Issue 1, March 2022, Pages 129–158, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhac145
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Abstract
This article focuses on the environment and politics in the Ottoman Empire between 1864 and 1890. Specifically, it traces attempts in the region of the Jazira to match provincial borders with both the desert and the motion of people within it. These efforts culminated in the 1871 formation of the special administrative district of Zor (also known as Deir ez-Zor) and a revolt against the administrative arrangement by the Arabic-speaking nomadic group known as the Shammar. The article explains how the Shammar subsequently became attached to different provincial administrations. But the interplay among borders, desert, and motion also continued to incubate ambiguity about what places should be considered part of one province or another. The history of an empire on the edge thus offers a sense of how people thought about and used the environment and borders alike, topics often overshadowed by the post-Ottoman colonial borders imposed on the region. Moreover, it speaks to environmental histories of borderlands, which often foreground absurd borders transecting coherent environments. The article reveals, instead, how even an effort to draw borders around an allegedly coherent environment proved challenging. Finally, the article offers insight into the legacies of “natural” and “artificial” borders in the present.
