Color spies .. Why did the French seek to steal the secrets of the Ottoman dyes?

The year 1516 AD / 922 AH witnessed the beginning of the entry of the Ottomans into the Arab countries with the defeat of the Mamluks and the killing of their sultan “Qansuh al-Ghouri” in the battle of “Marj Dabiq” north of Aleppo, and then the seizure of Egypt after their defeat in Raydaniyah and the execution of the last Mamluk Sultan “Tuman Bay” in the following year 1517 AD / 923 AH .

With this victory, the Ottoman Empire extended over a vast area of ​​the three continents of the ancient world, and came into close contact with major cultures and economies, and then its major cities became capitals of money, business and trade.

The era that began with the era of Sultan "Mehmed the Conqueror" and ended with the death of his grandson, Sultan "Suleiman the Magnificent", is the golden era in the history of the Ottoman Empire, in which this country witnessed the peak of its rise, strength and youth on the stage of world history.

Although the Ottomans were able to achieve major political and military achievements in Asia, Africa and Europe, they were able to achieve remarkable progress in many economic fields, especially the remarkable superiority in the textile and fabric industry, then their ability to excel also in the manufacture of dyes and colors, at a time when Europe was powerless For realizing the secrets of this craftsmanship.

Faced with this European deficit, made sure France to explore the secret of the progress of industrial Ottoman in Almsabogat and bright colors that have remained on the surface of clothing, fabrics and textiles then, despite long-standing and repeat the washed and cleaned, which is what the French did not know his secrets until the end of the eighteenth century.

Weaving from Central Asia to the metropolis of the Ottomans

It is known that the Turks of Central Asia themselves developed the art of textile making, and that the great Seljuks followed their path, and due to the inability of the fabrics to defy the factors of time, only a few examples of those fabrics have reached us, which we note decorated with geometric motifs in line with the prevailing aesthetic concepts at the time.

The textile industry continued during the Seljuk period in Anatolia. Silk textiles were famous, and the red color was widely used in fabrics. It was also decorated with silver and gold threads and ornaments in the form of animals mostly, especially birds.

Starting from the fifteenth century AD, the Turkish fabrics began to diversify, and it was prevalent at the time that the sultans’ clothes were wrapped in belts and preserved, and thanks to this custom, we received some models that reflect the richness of the famous fabrics of that era, and we got to know their types such as silk, velvet, and “Serasir” (cloth). Woven with gold and silver threads), damask brocade, and more.

[1] Fabrics were embroidered in the Ottoman era and decorated with symmetrical geometric motifs devoid of any figurative drawing, or with floral motifs.

At that time, the textile industry center was at the fore, and the fabrics and kaftans that were made there were exported abroad.

The records of palace gifts show us that fabrics were made in the era of the Ottoman Empire in many cities, some of which were famous for the types of fabrics they produced, as “Sernik” Istanbul, “Benigi” Bursa, and “Atlas” Sakes (Chios in today’s Greece) became famous.

[2] With the decline in the quality of the cloth industry in the sixteenth century, a law was issued that determined the number of fabric threads, their dimensions, types and amount according to their type and other controls.

In the seventeenth century, the textile industry in Istanbul witnessed a remarkable development, and in the same period the cities of Aleppo, Damascus, Manmen, Sakez and Cairo emerged as centers of this industry.

With the beginning of the use of atlas, brocade and velor in the manufacture of clothing;

The use of gold and silver threads declined, as did the use of colors, and by the eighteenth century the cloth industry began to decline.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, clothing from a variety of fabrics began to be made to be displayed in the Turkish pavilions at various international fairs.

In 1843, a factory for the manufacture of silk fabrics was opened in "Herak" in Istanbul to meet the needs of the palace.

Besides clothing fabrics, special fabrics were made for weaving banners and tents.

[3]

Ottoman superiority in the field of dyeing and colors

Parallel to the manufacture of fabrics and textiles of all kinds;

Ottoman, Indian and Arab, the craft of dyeing fabrics spread in most of the centers that carried out textile work, and dyeing factories in Anatolia had spread extensively since the sixteenth century in major cities, such as Toqat, Gorum, Bursa, Hamid, Ankara, Kayseri, Adana, Urfa, Malatya, Maraş, and Entebbe.

This fact can be confirmed by looking at the “liberation” records in the Ottoman archives, through which we knew the numbers of dyeing factories from the taxes they paid to the state.

Factories or laboratories used natural dyes until the appearance of aniline dyes in a late period, and they were used for the main colors, madder root and carmine for red, indigo for blue, and a kind of blackberry for yellow.

The roots of these plants and the cochineal insect were found in Anatolia, but indigo was imported from India, so the price of blue was more expensive, as the dye with indigo and dark green cost 30 pounds, exceeding all other types of dyes.

In order for the dyeing to be good and to establish the colors on their splendor, the fabrics were treated with alum solution, which was extracted from the best types of alum from different parts of Anatolia and Thrace, and the Europeans tried hard to obtain it from those same regions.

[4]

Thanks to the textile industry in the countries of the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt, the state assumed a global economic position, as this industry and its products remained among the most consumed products in the Western world, and thanks to the efforts of the Ottoman textile industry centers to develop their capabilities as an urgent necessity in front of the competition of Persian and Indian textiles. ;

During the fifteenth century, new craft sects appeared in several cities of the Ottoman Empire, specializing in designs with colors printed in Indian styles, or what was known as the “Basmji” sects.

[5]

On the political side and its economic effects on the textile and fabric industry;

The victory of the Ottomans over the Safavids in the Battle of “Caldiran” in August 1514 AD and the occupation of their capital, Tabriz, was decisive in the final annexation of eastern Anatolia to the Ottoman Empire and its control of the cities of Diyarbakir and Maraş from the hands of the local Turkmen leaders who ruled it.

This had the benefits of strategic and economic mission, it has protected the plateau Anatolian in the east state of the Ottoman invaders from central Asia, as dominated by the Ottomans as a result on the transport routes of the Persian silk between Tabriz and Aleppo, and between Tabriz and Bursa, and estimated imports of the state of Diyarbakir in 1528 the price of imports of the Balkans fully.

[6]

France and industrial espionage

In view of the important commercial role that Aleppo played locally and internationally, the European trading countries, most notably England and France, set up trade representatives in it, and these people took the political status as consuls for their countries, and this included the establishment of the French diplomatic representatives in Aleppo in the late sixteenth century.

These letters date back to the year 1600, and are kept in the Chamber of Commerce of Marseille, which was responsible for them, and the main director of France's foreign trade.

Foreign merchants enjoyed commercial and legal privileges under the system of privileges, which began according to a Franco-Ottoman agreement signed during the era of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1536 and continued until the first half of the twentieth century.

[7]

The French government funded trips to India to learn the techniques of dyeing. One of these was a dyer named Jenniferville who had been trained at the Joplin textile factory and then sent to Pondicherry.

These residents and commercial representatives played an insignificant role than the consuls and spies, as they were close and permanently following the economic conditions of the Ottoman Empire.

By the eighteenth century AD, the French bought huge quantities of fabrics made in the Ottoman Empire, and soon France occupied the position that was the Italian city of Venice in the Middle Ages, and France became the main distributor of Ottoman goods in Europe, where Ottoman goods were shipped to the port of Marseille and from there they were redistributed to other regions.

[8]

In front of the French realizing the size of the huge gains and revenues that the Ottoman Empire obtained from the textile industry and its export to Europe, the French authorities tried to limit the import of oriental fabrics and work to manufacture them locally, and for this goal, French producers sought to find new ways to develop textile production in different regions. From the world, merchants and producers traveled far and wide in pursuit of this goal.

For example, the French government funded trips to India for that purpose, and one of these travelers was a dyer named "Genverville" who received his training first in the "Joblan" textile factory and then was sent to the "Pondicherry" region in southeast India, which was controlled by the French East India Company at the time, In order to get acquainted with the techniques used by the Indian dyers so that he could apply them in his factory in the French city of Rouen.

[9]

In her important book, “Ottoman Egypt and Global Transformations,” Egyptian historian Dr. Nelly Hanna recounted French intelligence activities sponsored by the kings of France themselves during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to reveal the secrets of “the supremacy of Ottoman dyes and colors” and their superiority over their French and European counterparts.

French producers tried to improve the processes of coloring, especially dyeing and bleaching, and there were motives behind this, because colored textiles had become fashionable in Europe and the Ottoman Empire at the time.

The methods and techniques used in dyeing and bleaching in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire were far superior to those in France and other parts of Europe.

A study of dyes in England in the early eighteenth century shows that the colors were limited and poor, and that when it was required to dye precious textiles, it was difficult and costly, as they were sent to Holland to whiten them.

Dyeing red was also expensive until the late eighteenth century, and sometimes cotton fabrics were sent to the Orient to dye them red.

All of these things contributed to a noticeable rise in the prices of fabrics, which explains the strong interest in colors and dyes in the East.

Nelly Hanna observed what she called “industrial espionage” at that time, as many European countries - and France in particular - were keen to steal the secrets of various industries from the masters of the crafts sects in the Ottoman era, and the custom was that each sect had a sheikh and a law that determined the relations between workers. With these crafts, he preserves the secrets of the craft from being passed on outside the sons of the same craft in order to preserve their livelihoods, and to continue exclusively in families, families or certain individuals.

In front of this world of artisan secrets, France began to send spies to explore what was hidden from it in all fields, for example, with regard to the production of ammonia salt, which cured many diseases at that time, and Ottoman Egypt excelled in its production and export;

In order to obtain his scientific and craft secrets, France used French priests and missionaries residing in the Orient who are fluent in the Arabic language to steal the principles of that craft by entering the laboratories and observing the workers.

There is an exciting adventure undertaken by a French doctor named "Granger" in order to be able to gather information about the manufacture of ammonia salt in Egypt, where he hid his personality, and disguised himself in a Bedouin costume, and walked barefoot, and remained on that for a while until he noticed and collected information about this salt.

[10]

In every trade and industry that France wanted to settle in its country, it sent spies to gather the necessary information. There are even Jesuit Franciscan missionaries who stayed for decades among the people and gained their trust for this purpose.

France has done the same thing to heal the reasons for their inability to compete and learn the secrets of workmanship colors and dyes, which was characterized by the Ottoman textiles in Egypt, Syria and Anatolia, for two centuries or more throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the advent of the French campaign to Egypt led by Napoleon in 1798.

The red color threw me, "the Turkish Red" or "Alondrini Red", the most difficult colors and most complex workmanship for the French, and remained for decades has almost two centuries until they were able to steal its composition details of the Ottoman laboratories in "Izmir" and "Edirne" with the support of the French king.

The thieves of these combinations of French artisans who have returned to their country and opened plants for dyeing and tried in various ways to keep the secrets of their products even protect their standing among their competitors.

However, things have changed over time, Vastdmoa state policies that have sought to publish any technical knowledge that will help to develop industries and encourage them, and then the French state began in the nineteenth century by issuing specialized periodicals for the purpose of dissemination of innovations and encouraging them in the field of industry, and established so " encouragement of national Industry Association "in 1801 to upgrade the industrial revolution in France in front of the fierce competition to rival Britain.

Thanks to the issuance of these bulletins, the secrets of the manufacture of the Turkish red color, which remained an obscure secret of the Ottoman and then French textile industry over the centuries, spread. From the aspects of the world of ideas and the foundations upon which the empires and the rising expansionist forces were built at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as an insignificant part of the emergence of the economies of these empires and the development of their “industrial revolution” was based on theft and deception.

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