Faroqhi S.N. The Cambridge History of Turkey: Volume 3, The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839
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christoph k. neumann
indemnities, the right to sail the Black Sea now ceded to Russia, and the pro-
tection of all Orthodox Ottoman subjects secured by the Russian tsarina. To
a degree this latter stipulation was countered by the swift reinvention of the
old and venerable title of caliph as ‘spiritual leader of all Muslims’. Thus
the Ottoman sultan could claim some kind of leadership over the Muslims
under Russian rule. The caliphate, of only minor importance up to 1774,
was to experience a largely symbolic but significant reappraisal that lasted
until its abolition in 1924.
The independence of the Crimea was only a first step. Following repeated
conflicts around the person of the new khan S¸ahingiray, Russia annexed the
peninsula in 1783. Catherine II’s famous ‘Greek project’, an attempt to secure
a kingdom in south-eastern Europe for her grandson Constantine, led to
another war against Russia and the Habsburgs, with further territorial losses.
The treaty of Jassy (1792) defined the Dniestr as the Ottoman–Russian frontier.
In 1812 this frontier was moved back to the Pruth, as Bessarabia had now also
been lost by the sultans.
The Ottomans were generally defeated, and often in a humiliating way,
whenever they saw themselves forced to go to war with one of the great Euro-
pean powers, or whenever an adventurous general such as Napoleon Bona-
parte on his Egyptian expedition of 1799–1802 saw an opportunity to attack
without risking serious reaction in Europe. Only the English naval expeditions
against Istanbul and Egypt in 1807 ended with some kind of Ottoman success.
Otherwise the sultans’ armies on their own were never again in a position to
efficiently defend Ottoman territory.
Seeking viable alliances therefore became a matter of survival for the
empire. From 1794 the Ottomans maintained permanent embassies in the
most important European capitals. Shifting alliances – with Prussia, Sweden,
England and France – often served to ward off military attacks. At the same
time, however, they served as a means for Western powers to gain economic
influence and extraterritorial status for their merchants.
32
To open up Ottoman
markets for trade interests became one of the leading motives of European
policy toward the empire, culminating in the treaty of Balta Limanı (1838),
which guaranteed Britain a free-trade regime.
33
Similar agreements with other
powers were soon to follow.
32 See the contribution of Edhem Eldem in this volume (chapter 14).
33 On the convention of 1838, see the special issue 7 (1992) of the journal New Perspectives
on Turkey.
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Political and diplomatic developments
Provincial aspirations to independence
Yet Ottoman alliances with Western powers did not provide protection
against European support for political movements in various provinces that
increasingly aimed at separation from the empire. Separatist movements were
a relatively new feature in Ottoman history, caused by the loss of the monopoly
on legitimacy that the sultans had been able to claim at least since the time of
Mehmed the Conqueror.
The Wahhabis of the Arabian Peninsula, a religious movement with the aim
of abolishing all ‘heretical’ innovations introduced since the Prophet Muham-
mad’s time, became an especially serious threat to Ottoman legitimacy. During
the mid eighteenth century the Wahhabis had established a polity of their own
in central Arabia under the leadership of the al-Sa‘ud family. In 1804 the Wah-
habis conquered Mecca and Medina and destroyed much of the local sepulchral
architecture, thus demonstrating that the Ottoman sultan could no longer be
regarded as a functional ‘protector of the sacred cities’.
Moreover, when Wahhabi influence was curtailed in the 1810s, it was not by
the sultan’s armies but by those of Muhammad Ali Pas¸a, governor-general of
Egypt (d. 1849). Among Muslim power-holders, he was the most prominent
and successful when it came to establishing a political base of his own. Starting
as deputy commander of Albanian auxiliary forces, he brutally eliminated all
his rivals in a process that culminated in the massacre of the heads of the
leading mamluk households in 1811. His military power increased to a degree
that on the one hand, the Ottoman government depended on his help in
a number of cases and, on the other, Muhammad Ali was able to act like
an independent ruler.
34
In several instances his measures became the direct
models for Ottoman reform.
Muhammad Ali and his contemporary Tepedelenli Ali Pas¸a (1744–1822)
were powerful enough to find themselves in close contact, and occasionally
conflict, with European states. Ali Pas¸a had established his rule over large
parts of Greece and Albania.
35
In Serbia and southern Greece, the Ottomans
experienced the first uprisings turning into struggles motivated by national-
ist aspirations. The traumatic, disruptive, violent and politically highly com-
plex developments in south-eastern Europe involved a continuous strug-
gle. Contenders at various times were the Ottoman government; regional
34 Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, his Army, and the Making of Modern Egypt
(Cambridge, 1997), pp. 278–305.
35 Katherine E. Fleming, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy and Orientalism in Ali Pasha’s
Greece (Princeton, 1999).
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christoph k. neumann
Muslim power-holders; adherents of the national Serbian or Greek causes;
Muhammad Ali defending sometimes Ottoman interests and sometimes his
own; and last but not least, intervening foreign powers. The establishment of
a Greek kingdom on the Peloponnese (1832), Serbian autonomy and Russian
territorial gains in the peace of Edirne (1829) did not terminate the crisis. In the
following years Muhammad Ali Pas¸a defeated the Ottomans on the battlefield,
extended his rule over Syria and secured himself a hereditary governorship of
Egypt. Full Egyptian independence was prevented only by foreign interven-
tion.
That any kind of political stability depended upon the strengthening of
Ottoman political and military structures had thus been amply demonstrated.
It had become equally clear that political strength required a comprehensive
transformation of state and society. Indeed, this transformation had been under
way since the late 1780s.
Military, administrative and educational reforms
Characteristically the Ottomans attempted to achievethis transformationfrom
the top down, via central state power. Reform and finally modernity often
clashed not only with conservative interests but also with those of certain
sectors of society favouring other types of transformation. Little research
has been done on why Ottoman society did not embark on a more holistic
approach, and why there have been numerous Ottoman modernities rather
than a single version of the modernity project.
Selim III (r. 1789–1807) had established a second, state-of-the-art army par-
allel to that of the janissaries and provincial troops. This ‘new order’ (Nizam-ı
cedid) required a restructuring of state finances and administration. Its costs,
together with inter-elite rivalries, caused its final demise in the crisis years of
1807–8, with their violent clashes and uprisings, coups and counter-coups. The
only surviving male member of the dynasty, Mahmud II (r. 1808–39), bided his
time, first abolishing the ‘new order’. Both janissaries and, in the so-called ‘let-
ter of agreement’ (Sened-i
˙
Ittifak), local notables were guaranteed their social
standing and political influence.
On the other hand, Mahmud II continued Selim III’s attempts to establish
institutions that enhanced state control over society, curbing the influence of
many of the provincial power-holders whose positions he had confirmed in
1808. In a similar, but much more dramatic, move Mahmud II then annihilated
the janissary corps, killing thousands of its members and abolishing the units
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Political and diplomatic developments
(1826). What Ottoman state ideologists called the ‘Beneficent Event’ (vak‘a-ı
hayriye) is often taken as the point from which the road to Ottoman state
reform was begun.
This view appears to be problematic in two regards. On the one hand, its
adherents may underestimate the impact of the transformations prior to 1826.
On the other, neither before nor after the vak‘a-ı hayriye was state reform
unified or unchallenged. There are few studies on the post-janissary Ottoman
army and its military value, so we do not really know to what degree the mili-
tary aspect of Mahmud’s II reforms can be called a success. Clearly the troops
of the central administration did not perform very well against the Egyptians
during the 1830s, as Helmuth von Moltke’s ‘Letters from Turkey’ reflect; at
this time von Moltke was adviser to the grand vizier.
36
Seen from that angle,
the ‘Beneficent Event’ perhaps takes on meaning less as a measure of military
reform than as an attempt to discipline society by eliminating one of its best-
organised groups.
When the Ottoman Empire signed the treaty of Balta Limanı with England
in 1838, Mahmud II and his elites had taken a number of measures strength-
ening state structures that once again made the empire resemble its West-
ern counterparts to a much greater extent than both sides would have liked
to believe. The central administration had embarked on its transformation
towards what can be described as a Weberian-type of bureaucracy.
37
A ‘trans-
lation office’ (terceme odası), which had been founded in 1822, served as one of
the main channels through which political knowledge was appropriated by a
newgroup of French-speaking Muslim bureaucrats. Perhaps even more impor-
tant were the state schools that began to train military men, physicians and
bureaucrats. They primarily served the needs of the central government, and
this left an opening for missionary and community schools, which continued
to widen throughout the nineteenth century. Similarly, it was in the 1850sthat
printing and the press, whose emergence Mahmud II had actively supported,
transformed themselves from institutions disseminating state-controlled infor-
mation and instruction into forums of public debate.
36 Helmuth von Moltke, Briefe
¨
uber Zust
¨
ande und Begebenheiten in der T
¨
urkei aus den Jahren
1835–39, 6th edn (Berlin, 1893); Helmuth von Moltke, Der russisch–t
¨
urkische Feldzug in
der europ
¨
aischen T
¨
urkei 1828–1829 (Berlin, 1877). To be read in conjunction with Ahmed
Muhtar, T
¨
urkiye devletinin en m
¨
uhimm ve mes¸hur esfarından H 1244–1245 M 1828–1829
T
¨
urkiye–Rusya seferi ve Edirne muahedesi yahud vakıtsız sefer ibret ve intibah dersleri, 2 vols.
(Ankara, 1928–30).
37 Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922
(Princeton, 1980).
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Experiments with a new form of statehood
The conservatism and traditionalism that had marked Ottoman politics since
the age of S
¨
uleyman the Magnificent thus had largely been given up. The label
‘age of reform’, so often employed for the Ottoman nineteenth century,
38
is
justified in this respect. Otherwise, this chapter argues for a history of the
Ottoman Empire narrated not as a sequence of stages, but as transformations
that allow for the simultaneity of conflicting tendencies, and in which external
forces and internal dynamics both have their places. Seen in this perspective,
Ottoman history is as much part of Western history as it is external to it.
The Ottoman state of the nineteenth century tried to be as authoritative
as possible. Weak in comparison with European great powers, the sultan’s
administrators had to accept numerous and deep infringements of Ottoman
sovereignty. Moreover, their legitimacy was challenged by a variety of social
forces. In response, they attempted to control their populations as tightly as
possible. Mahmud II’s reign saw the introduction of a tax on wealth, a census
and a pass regime aiming at controlling internal travel. New costumes for civil
servants and military personnel – including the fez – were introduced, and so
was an official gazette that also assumed propagandistic functions. The sultan
himself repeatedly took to the road in order to inspect his domains, as well as
to demonstrate largesse and splendour.
Thus when Mahmud II curbed the power of janissaries and notables, he did
not do away with the patronage that sustained Ottoman society up to its very
end. He did not tear down the social boundaries that separated confessional,
linguistic, gendered or professional groups in the empire. Slavery was not
forbidden, and the concept of a law valid for all Ottoman subjects would
emerge only later on. Ottoman continuities remained strong, and Ottoman
history was still far from its end.
38 Donald Quataert, ‘The Age of Reforms, 1812–1914’, in An Economic and Social History of
the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, ed. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (Cambridge, 1994),
pp. 759–946.
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part ii
*
An Empire in Transition
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4
Political culture and the great households
carter vaughn findley
The Ottoman Empire was patrimonial in organisation and Islamic in ideals and
values: it was an Islamic sultanate, which also belonged to a larger category of
patrimonial monarchies, or states conceived on the model of vastly extended
households.
1
At the centre, the Ottoman state consisted of the sultan and the
dynasty, the ideas and values that legitimised the imperial system, the formal
apparatus – organisational, regulatory and procedural – of government, and
the elites who worked within that apparatus. The ruling elites were askeri
(‘military’, whether all of them were literally soldiers or not), as contrasted to
reaya (‘flocks’, subjects). Officially, the armed, tax-exempt status of the elites,
as well as distinctions in dress, sharply differentiated between askeri and reaya,
between state and society. All constituents of the government united in a
political balance or imbalance that changed over time with important results,
as did the equilibrium between state and society.
This complex system changed profoundly between 1603 and 1838. Scholars
long envisaged these changes as a decline, following the empire’s earlier rise
and preceding its nineteenth-century reform era. However, if certain things fell
in this period, others rose. These two centuries do not display a single upward
or downward trend. Even shorter-term trends mask divergent trajectories
followedbydifferentpartsof the imperial system. Analogously, the period 1603–
1789 has been characterised as one of decentralisation and weakening state
power. Yet the formation of new provincial power centres may have signified
instead the emergence of new interlocutors between state and society and
the creation of denser centre–periphery linkages, at least until late eighteenth-
century crises provoked a trend back towards centralisation.
2
Understanding
Ottoman political culture in this period requires examining change in the
1 I thank Bo
˘
gac¸ Ergene for research assistance in the preparation of this essay; Carter
Vaughn Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, 1989), pp. 6–8.
2 Ahmet Tabako
˘
glu, Gerileme d
¨
onemine girerken Osmanlı maliyesi (Istanbul, 1985), p. 222;
Dina Rizk Khoury, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul 1540–1834
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governmental system, abuses and reflections on what to do about them, the
rise of competing elite households within the state-as-household,
3
and the
post-1789 return towards centralisation.
Transformations in imperial political culture
The period from 1603 to 1838 was one of crisis and change for all elements of
the government. First among them, the sultan had historically been a warrior-
patriarch ruling a state seen as a single patrimonial household: he was the
household head, the dynasty was the family, the territory of the state formed
the dynastic patrimony, the ruling class was the sultan’s slave military retinue,
and the subject peoples were the ‘flocks’ (reaya) whom God had entrusted
to the sultan’s care. The sultan’s decree served as a major source of law, in
supplement to the s¸eriat and custom. Rule by one sultan united the many
territories. Dynastic succession perpetuated the state over generations. By dis-
pensing justice, protecting the subjects and fulfilling religiously valued roles,
the sultan provided the state with its focal point of legitimisation.
This period saw an uneasy transition from warrior-sultans, who ruled and
commanded on campaign, to sedentary sultans, who reigned more than ruled,
and again to dominant sultans – rulers but no longer warriors – between
1789 and 1839. Murad III (r. 1574–95), the last sultan to come to the throne
by armed contest, was also the last to send out a son as provincial governor;
thereafter, princes were reared in the imperial harem and not allowed to father
children or acquire experience of the world before their accession. From 1617
the principle of contested succession and fratricide lapsed, and the succession
process shifted to seniority among the males of the dynasty. Dynastic life
became concentrated in the palace, the influence of the sultan mother (valide
sultan) grew, and the sultan’s sons-in-law (damad), high-ranking statesmen
married to the sultans’ daughters and sisters, emerged as heads of factional
alliances that united powerful figures from the palace and the ruling elite.
4
The sultans’ powers became dispersed and contested. Instead of a state
understood as one imperial household, power shifted among elite households
(Cambridge, 1997), pp. 44–8; Karl Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus, 1708–1758 (Princeton,
1980), pp. 65–107.
3 Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazda
˘
glıs (Cam-
bridge, 1997), p. 24.
4 Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New
York and Oxford, 1993), pp. 21–5, 58–79; Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Tableau g
´
en
´
eral de
l’Empire othoman, 3 vols. (folio edition) (Paris, 1787–1820), vol. I, pp. 93–4, vol. III, pp. 315,
318–19.
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Political culture and the great households
divided by factional rivalries. Sultans periodically tried to revive the warrior-
ruler role as late as the reign of Mustafa II (r. 1695–1703), in his case with
disastrous results.
5
Six sultans were deposed, and in some cases murdered. Fac-
tional rivalries, janissary revolts, and ulema opposition were recurrent themes
of these episodes. The eighteenth century confirmed the trend toward civil-
ianisation, not just of the sultanate, but of the entire government.
6
Eventually,
the sultans appeared as almost immobile figures in an endless pageant of
court ceremony and religious ritual.
7
Yet none of the sultans’ powers had been
reduced in principle. When support for the over-mighty provincial households
waned and dynamic sultans reappeared (Selim III, r. 1789–1807, and Mahmud II,
r. 1808–39), the political balance shifted, opening an era of centralising reform.
The sultans’ ritual functions were only part of the imperial legitimisation
system, identified above as the second constituent of the imperial system.
Originally acquired by force, sultanic power could only be legitimised through
justice and other religiously valued functions. Ottoman sultans pursued these
goals by assuming a series of religiously sanctioned roles and titles – warrior for
the faith (gazi), Servitor of the Two Holy Cities (hadim
¨
ul-haremeyn il-s¸erifeyn),
protector of the pilgrimage, by extension even caliph. In the palace treasury,
theypreserved relics of the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors,
relics that had been acquired when Selim I conquered Egypt (1517). Important
ceremonials revolved around these relics, and in this period the banner of the
Prophet (sancak-ı s¸erif) was actually carried on campaign when the sultan or
grand vizier commanded.
8
While there was tension over whether justice meant strictly observing
religious law or exercising imperial prerogative, the sultans provided justice
through the councils (divans) that they and high officials held and through
the s¸eriat courts, which applied both Islamic law and that of the state (kanun).
Sultans and other members of the dynasty patronised Islamic institutions on
a scale their subordinates could not match, creating foundations (evkaf)to
build and maintain mosques, charitable institutions and public works. Within
its capabilities, the government provided pensions for former office-holders
and for people whose goodwill it wished to consolidate.
9
With the trend from
warrior-ruler to symbolic sultan, the focus shifted toward patronage and the
5 Rifa‘at Ali Abou-El-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics (Istanbul
and Leiden, 1984), p. 53.
6 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization,
3 vols. (Chicago, 1974), vol. III, pp. 55–8, 103–4, 127–30, 139–40.
7 D’Ohsson, Tableau g
´
en
´
eral, vol. I, pp. 253–8, vol. III, pp. 311, 319–27, 328, 329–30, 332–3, 358.
8 Peirce, Imperial Harem,pp.153–85; D’Ohsson, Tableau g
´
en
´
eral, vol. I, pp. 261–8.
9 Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus,pp.77–81.
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