Faroqhi S.N. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 3, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839

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peaceful roles, a fact evidenced in the great emphasis on the pilgrimage and

its security.

Yet old roles never lost all saliency. Sultans under whom wars

were fought continued to take the title gazi. After 1774, catastrophic defeats

called into question the sultans’ claims as defenders of Islam, thus heightening

incentives to open a new era of reform.

By then the length of Ottoman history had become another claim to legit-

imacy. When Nadir Shah (r. 1736–47) of Iran proposed an Islamic merger,

in which the Ottomans would recognise Ca‘feri Shiism as a ﬁfth school of

jurisprudence and Iran would become a ‘branch’ (s¸ube) of the Ottoman Empire

analogous to the Tatar khanate of the Crimea, the Ottomans were suspicious

of the motives of the Iranians. They compared their hold on the caliphate and

their 450 yearsasagazi state with Iran’s lack of gazi tradition and dynastic

instability, calling Iran the ‘faithless woman of the world who, marrying ﬁrst

one and then another, passes from hand to hand like a handkerchief’.

Ottoman claims to legitimacy were part of an imperial cultural synthesis

of vast integrative scope, including the Ottoman legal system, which, in a

way unmatched in other Islamic states, maximised the importance of both

Islamic and state law. In addition, sultans and high dignitaries patronised not

only the ulema’s mosques and schools of divinity (medreses), but also a wide

range of dervish brotherhoods, and all reﬁned forms of cultural production.

Intellectuals expanded the literary culture of Ottoman Turkish, whose blend

of Arabic, Persian and Turkish implicitly projected Ottoman claims to the

entire Islamic cultural inheritance. Embellishing the theme that the empire

fused religion and state, din-

u-devlet, they drew, too, on the Islamic political–

philosophical tradition and its ‘circle of justice’, in which the sultan and ruling

class provided the justice and protection that the subjects needed in order to

ﬂourish, while the latter provided the resources that the rulers needed in order

to perform their functions.

After 1600, Ottoman thinkers continued to add

to this philosophical tradition.

10 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517–1683 (London,

1994); Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus, ch. 3.

11 Ahmet Zeki

Izg

oer, ‘R

agip Mehmed Pas¸a tahkik ve tahkik (tahlil ve metin)’, MA thesis,

Istanbul University (1988), pp. 58, 68, 82.

12 Y

usuf Kh

ass H

ajib, Wisdom of Royal Glory (Kutadgu Bilig): A Turko-Islamic Mirror for

Princes, ed. and trans. Robert Dankoff (Chicago, 1983), p. 107; R. R. Arat (ed.), Kutadgu

bilig (Ankara, 1947), verses 2057–9, quoted in Halil

Inalcık, ‘Ad

aletn

ameler’, Belgeler 2,

3–4 (1965), 49–145,atp.49. Mustafa Naima, Tarih-i Na’ima: ravzat

ul-h

useyn ﬁ h

ulaset

ahbar

ul-haﬁkayn, 6 vols. (Istanbul, c. 1863), vol. I, p. 39, attributed the circle of jus-

tice to Ibn Khald

un and said that the Ottoman philosopher Kınalızade got it from

him.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Political culture and the great households

Its very scope made the imperial cultural synthesis vulnerable in certain

ways. Over time, many religious movements provoked ofﬁcial condemnation,

their usual fault being opposition to the state rather than heterodox beliefs,

which the state tended otherwise to condone.

At the other extreme, some

Islamic movements, such as the seventeenth-century Kadızadeli movement

the centre or the eighteenth-century Wahhabi revivalist movement in Arabia,

opposed the Ottoman synthesis for its religious inclusiveness. As forthe literary

culture, only the elites could master one of such breadth. Indeed, it would be

more exact to speak of different cultures associated with different elites: the

religious studies of the ulema, the experiential orientation of the mystics, the

philosophical–scientiﬁc tradition, and the worldly belletristic adab culture of

the literary artists and scribal elite. Bridgeable to some spirits, the differences

among these realms of thought caused conﬂicts for others, between religious

thinkers who did and did not approve of mysticism, or between religious

thinkers of either type and exponents of the philosophical or adab cultures,

especially as the latter grew more responsive to stimuli from inﬁdel Europe.

Culturally, it was the westward extension of the interest of the scientiﬁc or

literary intellectuals that launched Westernisation – and the cultural conﬂicts

and shifts of political balance that it provoked in the nineteenth century.

The sultans presided over a governmental mechanism – the third element

of the imperial system – that changed remarkably in this period. Previously,

the central government had largely consisted of the palace, which housed

the imperial family and had much of the central military and religious elites

grouped in or around it. The differentiation of the palace into the enderun

(‘inside’), housing the sultan, his harem and their slaves, and the birun (‘out-

side’), which housed government functions and was accessible to a wider range

of people, showed how the imperial residence still included much of the gov-

ernment.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the government

grew and differentiated, as various agencies moved out of the palace to new

headquarters.

Eventually, the governmental organisation included three or four branches

following divergent developmental paths: the military; the religious elite; the

scribes; and perhaps even a distinct palace service. The old military forces had

13 Ahmet Yas¸ar Ocak, Osmanlı toplumunda zındıklar ve m

ulhidler (15.–17.y

uzyıllar) (Istanbul,

1998), pp. 329–31;SaimSavas¸, Onaltıncı asır Anadolusu’nda bir tekkenin dini ve sosyal tarihi:

Sivas Ali Baba z

aviyesi (Istanbul, 1992), passim.

14 K

atib C¸ elebi, The Balance of Truth, trans. Geoffrey Lewis (London, 1957), pp. 98–9, 132–5

and passim; cf. Naima, Tarih, vol. VI, pp. 218–20, 226; John J. Curry, ‘A Comparison of the

Kadız

adeli and Wahh

ı Movements’ (unpublished paper).

15 D’Ohsson, Tableau g

eral, vol. III, pp. 284–94, 294–304.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

carter vaughn findley

been in crisis by the beginning of this period, for reasons such as the sipahi

cavalry’s resistance to the adoption of ﬁrearms or the janissaries’ numerical

growth and disciplinary decay; reliance on mercenary forces (sarıca, sekban

and the like) had grown as a result.

The religious elite (ilmiye), in turn, faced

such challenges as the Kadızadeli revivalist movement at the centre, later

the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, and the onset of Westernising reforms

after 1789. The hierarchies of judges and medrese professors only reached the

full elaboration of their ranks and privileges after 1700, but this was more

a matter of aristocratisation at the top than scholarly achievement.

By the

1790s, the Ottomans’ increasing need to pursue their interests by diplomatic

rather than military means had opened an era of Europeanising reform that

would marginalise the ulema in the councils of state.

Organisational change proved more beneﬁcial for the scribal and palace

services. Once only a few score record-keepers for the imperial divan, the

scribes came to staff large organisations outside the palace, notably the grand

vizier’s headquarters (Bab-ı

Ali or Sublime Porte, literally, ‘exalted gateway’,

1654), or the treasurer’s (Bab-ı Defteri). By the 1790s, the ﬁnancial depart-

ment as the largest scribal agency employed perhaps 650 scribes, out of a

total of 1,500–2,000, in twenty-ﬁve or so ofﬁces.

As many functions moved

outside the palace, ﬁnally, its inside service evolved into something like a

distinct branch of the ruling class. Emblematic of this change was the emer-

gence out of the mabeyn (‘what is between’, speciﬁcally between the imperial

harem and the rest of the inside service) of a palace secretariat in charge of

the sultan’s communications with agencies outside the palace. A function

for which there had once been no need had become a critical node in govern-

mental communications.

Change in governmental organisation meant change in the social fabric

of the ruling class, the fourth constituent of the imperial centre. Among the

military, the dysfunctionality of sipahi cavalry and janissary infantry and the

recruitment of armed reaya as mercenaries eroded the distinction between rul-

ing and subject classes. As the janissaries merged with the urban population,

and as ordinary men and women bought janissary pay tickets to gain income

16 Virginia H. Aksan, ‘Whatever Happened to the Janissaries? Mobilization for the 1768–1774

Russo-Ottoman War’, WarinHistory5, 1 (1998), 23–36.

17 Madeline C. Zilﬁ, The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600–

1800) (Minneapolis, 1988), chs. 2, 5.

18 Carter Vaughn Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–

1922 (Princeton, 1980), pp. 53, 56; Findley, Ottoman Civil Ofﬁcialdom,p.22;Tabako

glu,

Osmanlı Maliyesi,pp.40–4.

19 D’Ohsson, Tableau g

eral, vol. III, pp. 295–6, 302, 304.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Political culture and the great households

and the tax exemption of the askeri class, a process of corporate organisation

and privilege-seeking occurred that had counterparts throughout eighteenth-

century Ottoman society.

Among scribes, numerical growth was accompa-

nied by increased hierarchisation and upward mobility. While lower scribal

ranks retained guild-like patterns of recruitment, training and promotion,

higher scribal ofﬁcials saw their upward mobility prospects expand to include

provincial governorships and sometimes the grand vizierate, posts dominated

throughout the late ﬁfteenth and sixteenth centuries by the slave-military elite.

Drawn irresistibly into the household-based factionalism of the other elites,

these ‘efendis-turned-pashas’ embodied the ‘civilianisation’ of government.

In the palace, recruitment of young boys through the child levy (devs¸irme)

died out in the early seventeenth century, and the palace school became some-

thing like an exclusive preparatory school.

Meanwhile, the dynastic politics

of arranging marriages between members of ruling elites and women from

the imperial harem created densely webbed relationships between the dynasty

and its servants.

Abuses in governance and philosophical

reﬂections on them

Its structure had always made the Ottoman government subject to abuse,

and new abuses were added to old ones in this period. The most critical new

problem was the spread of cheap ﬁrearms and the arming of the reaya. Merce-

naries of reaya background, recruited for campaigns and afterwards dismissed,

would plunder the countryside. Another development in the early seventeenth

century, condemned because it implied dilution of the sultan’s authority, was

the growing political role of palace women, especially the sultan’s mother,

and sometimes other palace functionaries, notably the chief black eunuch.

Prominent among the old problems, the great extent to which ofﬁce-holders’

compensation took the form of fee and revenue collection rights, rather than

salaries, had always created opportunities for excessive exactions. Military and

economic crises and the necessity for governors and commanders to recruit

mercenary forces caused seismic shifts in the way taxes were assessed and

20 Hathaway, Politics of Households,p.14.

21 Findley, Bureaucratic Reform,pp.78–100; Rifa‘at ‘Ali Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern

State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany, 1991), p. 41; Norman

Itzkowitz, ‘Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Realities’, Studia Islamica 16 (1962), 73–94.

22 Ibrahim Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Gov-

ernment,1550–1650(New York, 1983), pp. 76, 97; d’Ohsson, Tableaug

eral, vol. III, pp. 299–

300; Tayyarzade Ahmed Ata, Tarih-i Ata (Istanbul, 1293/1876), vol. III, pp. 106–7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

carter vaughn findley

collected.

Indicative of these shifts were temporarylevies, which later became

permanent parts of a mounting tax burden under such names as ‘divan levies’

(avarız-ı divaniye), ‘impositions’ (tekalif) of different types, and ‘aids in wartime’

and ‘in peacetime’ (imdad-ı seferiye, imdad-ı hazariye). Tax-farmers collected

such revenues, pocketing the difference between what they took from the

subjects and what they forwarded to the treasury.

Government functionar-

ies would also descend on villages with large parties, requisition food and

fodder, and make large demands in cash or kind (salgun). Supposed to provide

justice, even the kadis abused their right to collect fees for the transactions they

performed and made ‘rounds’ (devre c¸ıkmak) to ‘inspect’ for income opportu-

nities. Faced with such gaps between their ideals of justice and their agents’

predations, sultans issued stern warnings ‘not to ruin the country’, threatened

the ‘harshest punishment’ (es¸edd-i siyaset) against violators, and even called

their subjects to arms (neﬁr-i ‘am) against abusive ofﬁcials. Still the abuses

continued, leading to revolts, peasant ﬂight into the cities or across Ottoman

borders, and reversion of agricultural lands to nomadism.

Debates on what to do about such problems provide insights into Ottoman

political culture in this period. A new sub-genre of political philosophy known

as ‘advice books’ (nasihatname) emerged, contrasting the corrupt present with

an idealised past, visualised in revisionist terms that reﬂected the authors’

preferences more than earlier realities. This literary strategy had the effect

of valorising the earlier image of the state as one great household made

up of the sultan, his slaves and his ‘ﬂocks’, and de-legitimising the new politics

of multiple, rival households. The fault-line between these two alternatives

and the values assigned to them has survived in modern writing on Ottoman

history, even though many of the abuses attacked were already old by 1600.

While these treatises are only one source for the much-contested view that

the Ottoman Empire declined between 1600 and 1800 – the empire’s military

fortunes and the writings of non-Muslim contemporaries like Dimitrius Can-

temir

also did as much to shape that view – these treatises are ‘declinist’.

23 Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants,pp.82–93; Linda T. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy:

Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1 660 (Leiden, 1996).

24 Halil Inalcik, ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–1700’,

Archivum Ottomanicum 6 (1980), 283–337,atp.331.

Inalcık, ‘Ad

aletn

ameler’, pp. 70, 123–25, 135–39); Inalcik, ‘Military and Fiscal Transfor-

mation’, pp. 300–11; Tabako

glu, Osmanlı maliyesi,pp.217–18, 228–34; Khoury, State and

Provincial Society,pp.25, 41; Ebubekir Ratib, ‘Sefaretname’ (S

uleymaniye Library, Istan-

bul, Ms. Esad Efendi 2235), fol. 227a(c.1792).

26 Cantemir’s title is signiﬁcant: Dimitrius Cantemir, Historia incrementorum atque decremen-

torum Aulae othomanicae, ﬁrst published in English as The History of the Growth and Decay

of the Othman Empire, trans. N. Tindal (London, 1734–5).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Political culture and the great households

They denounce the dispersion of the sultan’s power, the inﬁltration of reaya

into the elites, the spread of corruption, the sale of ofﬁces, women’s political

inﬂuence, the diversion of timar incomes to support others than cavalry ofﬁ-

cers and the ruination of the subjects through oppressive taxation such as had

‘never happened in any ruler’s country before’.

Different writers had differ-

ent emphases. But all the authors of this period shared conventional Ottoman

Islamic assumptions, idealising the sultan’s authority and justice and denounc-

ing what they saw as reprehensible ‘innovations’ (bid‘at).

They focused, too,

on the elites more than the subject populations.

In time, more forward-looking views appeared. Technical works such as

Katib C¸ elebi’s Cihannuma, or some embassy narratives, beginning with that of

YirmisekizMehmed C¸ elebi (1720–1), helped to increase responsiveness to Euro-

pean culture.

An innovative line of thought appeared in works inspired by

Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima, studied by Katib C¸ elebi (1609–57) and later authors

and partially translated into Ottoman by Pirizade Mehmed Sahib (1674–1749).

Ibn Khaldun’s theory of how states rose and fell over several generations riv-

eted several authors’ attention.

The Ottoman Empire having already lasted

longer than this theory predicted, they manipulated it to ﬁnd explanations.

Katib C¸ elebi and Naima (d. 1716) saw restoring earlier institutions as the anti-

dote to decline.

Contemplating European societies that were also old but still

dynamic, late eighteenth-century diplomats went further, metamorphosing

Ibn Khaldun’s last phase of the life cycle – originally senility – into a transition

27 The treatise of Koc¸u Bey, quoted in P

al Fodor, ‘State and Society, Crisis and Reform in

15th–17th Century Ottoman Mirror[s] for Princes’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum

Hungaricae 40, 2–3 (1986), 217–40,atp.232; Inalcik, ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation’,

283–4; Ahmed Akg

und

uz, Osmanlı kanunn

ameleri ve hukuk

ı tahlilleri, 9 vols. (Istanbul,

1996), vol. IX (early seventeenth-century treatises); Abou-El-Haj, Formation,pp.20–40,

73–89; Robert Anhegger, ‘Hezarfenn H

useyin Efendi’nin Osmanlı devlet tes¸kil

atına dair

ahazatı’, T

urkiyat Mecmuası, 10 (1951–53), 365–93; Rhoads Murphey, ‘Solakzade’s Trea-

tise of 1652: A Glimpse at Operational Principles Guiding the Ottoman State during Times

of Crisis’, in V. Milletlerarası T

urkiye sosyal ve iktisat tarihi kongresi: tebli

gler (Ankara, 1990),

pp. 27–32; Rhoads Murphey, S¸inasi Tekin and G

ul Alpay Tekin (eds.), Kan

un-n

ame-i

Sult

ıli‘Az

ız Efendi: Aziz Efendi’s Book of Sultanic Laws and Regulations: An Agenda for

Reform by a Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Statesman (Cambridge, MA, 1985).

28 Akg

und

uz, Osmanlı kanunn

ameleri ve hukuk

ı tahlilleri, vol. IX, pp. 152, 263–8; Fodor, ‘State

and Society’, p. 229.

29 Abou-El-Haj, Formation,p.40.

30 K

atib C¸ elebi, The Balance of Truth,p.11; Mehmed Efendi, Le Paradis des inﬁd

eles: relation

de Yirmisekiz C¸ elebi Mehmed Efendi, ambassadeur Ottoman en France sous la R

egence, trans.

J.-C. Galland, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris, 1981); Fatma M

uge G

oc¸ek, East Encounters West:

France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1987).

31 Ibn Khald

un, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, 3 vols., trans. Franz Rosenthal,

2nd edn (Princeton, 1967), vol. I, pp. 247–310.

32 Cornell Fleischer, ‘Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and “Ibn Khald

unism”’, Journal

of Asian and African Studies 18 (1983), 198–220,p.200; Naima, Tarih, vol. I, pp. 33–43.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

carter vaughn findley

from war to peace and the cultivation of prosperity. In search of the means to

achieve these goals, the diplomatic writers crossed an invisible threshold into

a new era of Westernising reform.

Before discussing the return towards cen-

tralisation that followed, we must say more about the household factionalism

of the era in which the treatises were produced.

Patrimonial household factionalism

Because they shaped the politics of the period, the great households have com-

manded scholarly attention, even though they cannot account for the elites’

entire social experience. For example, lower scribal bureaucrats inhabited a

different milieu, insulated from the political turmoil of their superiors and

characterised by guild-like traits,

which reappear widely, even among the

women of the imperial harem.

A full account of the Ottoman elites’ social

realities must take account of this diversity and more. However, the social

setting of greatest political signiﬁcance was the great household.

The formation of elite households within the ruling class, known in ear-

lier periods, became more common in this period for many reasons.

Those

who rose highest in the sultan’s service enjoyed great power and the steeply

increased incomes needed to maintain large establishments. Yet high ofﬁ-

cials also faced distinctive problems, to which the households served as a

response.

Because the Ottomans’ military expansion had virtually ended by 1670,and

because their territories and revenue base began to shrink with the treaty of

33 Virginia H. Aksan, ‘Ottoman Political Writing, 1768–1808’, International Journal of Mid-

dle East Studies 25 (1993), 53–69; Virginia H. Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman in War and

Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi, 1700–1783 (Leiden, 1995), pp. 59, 186; Ahmed Cevdet, Tertib-i

Cevdet ez-Tarih-i Cevdet, 12 vols. (Istanbul, 1309/1891–2), vol. V, p. 362;G

umec¸ Karamuk,

Ahmed Azmi Efendis Gesandtschaftsbericht als Zeugnis des osmanischen Machtverfalls und der

beginnenden Reform

ara Selim III.(Bern,1975); Carter Vaughn Findley, ‘Etat et droit dans

la pens

ee politique ottomane: droits de l’homme ou Rechtsstaat? A propos de deux

relations d’ambassade’, Etudes turques et ottomanes: documents de travail 4 (1995), 39–50;

Carter Vaughn Findley, ‘Osmanlı siyasal d

us¸

uncesinde devlet ve hukuk: insan hakları

mı, hukuk devleti mi?’ in XII. T

urk Tarih Kongresi, Bildiriler (Ankara, 2000), pp. 1195–

1202; Carter Vaughn Findley, ‘Ebu Bekir Ratib’s Vienna Embassy Narrative: Discovering

Austria or Propagandizing for Reform in Istanbul?’, Wiener Zeitschrift f

ur die Kunde des

Morgenlandes 85 (1995), 41–80,p.52 n. 23; Z. Fahri Fındıko

glu, ‘T

urkiyede

Ibn Haldunizm’,

in 60.[=Altmıs¸ıncı] do

gum yılı m

unasebetiyle Fuad K

opr

uarma

ganı: M

elanges Fuad K

opr

(Istanbul, 1957), pp. 153–63,atpp.160–1.

34 Findley, Bureaucratic Reform,pp.93–100; Findley, Ottoman Civil Ofﬁcialdom,pp.57–70.

35 Peirce, Imperial Harem,pp.133–4; Findley, Bureaucratic Reform,p.30; d’Ohsson, Tableau

eral, vol. III, pp. 305–7.

36 Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants,pp.24, 33–44, 45–7, 65, 67; Peirce, Imperial Harem,pp.65–79.

Political culture and the great households

Karlowitz (1699), a pervasive problem was the excessive number of aspirants

to high position.

Many distinctive problems followed from this one. Rapid

mobility, up and down, had always prevailed in government service. Even

though most members of the elites were no longer literally recruited as slaves,

entering the sultan’s service still put a person in the status of slave (kul)in

relation to him. However, this differed from an ordinary slave’s status, it meant

that the sultan had the right summarily to discipline his ofﬁcial slaves.

The

word siyaset, which now means ‘politics’, still referred to the sultan’s power to

punish arbitrarily, a power exercised over his slave elites but not, in principle,

over his subject ‘ﬂocks’. The sultan was legally heir to his slaves, and routinely

conﬁscated their estates after death or disgrace. Inspiring protective strategies,

such as founding family vakıfs, the conﬁscations became more common in

the eighteenth century.

Among the elites, only the ulema enjoyed relative

security.

By the mid-seventeenth century, a system of annual reappointment (tevci-

hat), usually with long waits between appointments, had come into existence,

compounding the instability of high ofﬁce.

Lucky ofﬁcials might be recon-

ﬁrmed, but only for a year at a time. Ranks alone might be conferred on those

for whom there were no places. Important economic interests surrounded this

system. Ofﬁcials had to pay fees, if not also bribes, for each appointment – fees

that formed a major part of their superiors’ incomes. Ofﬁce-holders’ efforts

to recoup the costs of appointment further corrupted Ottoman administra-

tion. As afﬂuent provincials began to invest in ofﬁce, the historical distinction

between rulers and subjects became further blurred. Ofﬁce was becoming

commoditised, and many sources speak of sale of ofﬁce.

Yet those who ‘pur-

chased’ posts subject to annual reappointment acquired no rights that lasted

more than a year. A hybrid form bridging public ofﬁce and private invest-

ment, tax-farms were auctioned to bidders, both ofﬁcials and non-ofﬁcials, for

37 Tabako

glu,Osmanlı maliyesi,p.78;Findley, BureaucraticReform,pp.100–3;Findley, Ottoman

Civil Ofﬁcialdom,pp.68–70.

38 Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants,pp.41–2, 45, 76; Naima, Tarih, vol. I, pp. 34–5.

39 Abou-El-Haj, Formation,pp.48–9, 57; Fatma M

uge G

oc¸ek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of

Empire: Ottoman Westernisation and Social Change (Oxford and New York, 1996), pp. 56–8,

65–6, 92, 95, 97; d’Ohsson, Tableau g

eral, vol. III, pp. 117, 228, 334.

40 Abou-El-Haj, Formation,pp.46–7; Abou-El-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion,p.80; d’Ohsson,

Tableau g

eral, vol. II, pp. 288, 334, vol. III, p. 355.

41 Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants,pp.70–6; Halil Inalcik, ‘Centralisation and Decentralisation

in Ottoman Administration’, in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. Thomas

Naff and Roger Owen (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1977), pp. 27–52,atp.30; d’Ohsson,

Tableau g

eral, vol. I, pp. 294–5, vol. III, pp. 350–4.

42 Anhegger, ‘Hezarfenn’, p. 392.

carter vaughn findley

a set period of years (iltizam), usually three, until the introduction of life-term

tax-farms (malik

ane)in1695.

High dignitaries formed households in response to such problems. The

relationships used to form elite households mirrored those seen at the palace.

Indeed, marriage to a princess was the most valuable relationship for any

household head. Household formation required both maximising ties of kin-

ship by blood or marriage and extending them with ties of slavery and clien-

tage. A household head would rely ﬁrst on his sons and sons-in-law, then on

male slaves or other dependants educated in his household (on the model

of the palace school), selecting young men of promise as prot

es and can-

didates for closer integration into his household through marriage. House-

hold heads also sought alliances between households, between branches

of service, or between Istanbul and provincial centres.

Military solidar-

ity groups, even entire military units, became important adjuncts of elite

households.

As the princess brides illustrate, women’s roles proved critical in forming

and maintaining households. Marriages could be concluded between house-

holds on a footing of equality. However, it was common to imitate the dynasty,

which, having long ceased to recognise any other household as its equal, mar-

ried its daughters to high-ranking men from its ruling elites, who then became

household heads themselves. Imitation of this pattern at all social levels made

it common for young men to enter the households of their fathers-in-law. In

extended households, the senior women might acquire power reminiscent of

the sultan mothers’.

Using kinship and surrogate kinship to enlarge their networks of depen-

dants, household heads strove to protect their interests by appointing retainers

to strategic posts.

The perquisites of high ofﬁce included extensive patron-

age and facilitated expanding elite households to include hundreds of people,

even thousands.

Growing reliance on mercenary forces made an ‘elabo-

rate’ household (m

ukemmel kapı) a prerequisite for appointment to provincial

43 Khoury, State and Provincial Society,pp.18–21 and passim; Darling, Revenue-Raising,

pp. 120–1.

44 Hathaway, Politics of Households,pp.139–64. 45 Ibid., pp. 19–21.

46 Peirce, Imperial Harem,pp.65–79, 105–11, 241–57; Hathaway, Politics of Households,pp.109–

24; d’Ohsson, Tableau g

eral, vol. III, pp. 313–16.

47 Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants,pp.34, 68.

48 Ibrahim Metin Kunt, ‘Dervis¸ Mehmed Pas¸a,Vezir and Entrepreneur:A Study in Ottoman

Political-Economic Theory and Practice’, Turcica 9, 1 (1977), 197–214,atp.203; Kunt, The

Sultan’s Servants,pp.89–93;EvliyaC¸ elebi, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman:

Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588–1622) as Portrayed in Evliya C¸ elebi’s Book of Travels, trans. Robert

Dankoff (Albany, 1991), passim.

Political culture and the great households

governorships or military commands.

Major household heads became ‘con-

tractors’, taking charge of revenue collection, military recruitment and provi-

sioning for the state. Combining high ofﬁces with revenue-farms consolidated

this trend.

Ottoman dignitaries recognised government ﬁnance, particularly

tax-farming, as the best route to wealth; and the posts of their collection agents

utesellim, voyvoda), held ﬁrst by household retainers but later often by nota-

bles (ayan) of local origin, became provincial power centres.

Literary sources

contrast the opulence of the households with the rapid mobility that might

transform a slave into a statesman and son-in-law of the sultan before – even

more suddenly – his severed head would be displayed at the palace as a warning

to others.

The old vision of the state as the sultan’s all-inclusive household yielded to

one in which there were ‘slaves of the slaves’ of the sultan and many house-

holds within his.

A distinctive politics also developed, in which, by modern

standards, policies or issues remained secondary to the unconditional personal

loyalties on which the households were founded. In poetry, a large proportion

of eulogy and satire reﬂects the hope and despair of competing for reward in

such a political environment.

For those in high ofﬁce, political advancement depended on intrigue and

appeals to the sultan’s favour.

Uncertain tenure in high ofﬁce and the way

proximity to the sultan actualised the dangers of the ofﬁcials’ slave status

compounded the dangers of this high-stakes game. Occasionally, a single ofﬁ-

cial would achieve a temporary monopoly of inﬂuence. Thus Mahmud II’s

favourite, Halet Efendi, nearly monopolised inﬂuence in Istanbul just before

the Greek revolution began (1821).

In the provinces, monopolies of inﬂu-

ence by notable families, sometimes lasting for generations, became com-

mon in the eighteenth century.

At other times, two households, or groups

of households, duelled for pre-eminence. The last great scribal rivalry in

Istanbul, between

Akif and Pertev Pas¸as in the 1830s, caused upheaval that

helped precipitate reform in conditions of service, thus rewriting the rules

of the game.

Akif could only topple Pertev’s factional conglomerate by ally-

ing with Husrev Pas¸a, minister of war but also kingpin in the factionalism

49 Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants,p.89.

50 Khoury, State and Provincial Society,pp.44–62, 114–33.

51 Inalcik, ‘Centralisation and Decentralisation’, pp. 31–40.

52 D’Ohsson, Tableau g

eral, vol. III, p. 240. 53 Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants.

54 D’Ohsson, Tableau g

eral, vol. III, p. 354.

55 Findley, Bureaucratic Reform,pp.38–9; Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman

Empire under Selim III, 1789–1807 (Cambridge, MA, 1971), ch. 20.

56 Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus,pp.56–64; Khoury, State and Provincial Society, pp. 57–8.