904 – 005 – The Ottoman Empire

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The Ottoman Empire

Called by the Turks Osmanlıs, after the name of the founder of the dynasty Osman I (Ar., ʿUthmān), the Ottomans were Oghuz (Tk., Oğuz) Turks who came out of Central Asia and created a vast state that ultimately encompassed all of southeastern Europe up to the northern frontiers of Hungary, Anatolia, and the Middle East up to the borders of Iran as well as the Mediterranean coast of North Africa almost to the Atlantic Ocean. As a multiethnic, multi-religious, and multicultural entity, the Ottoman Empire was the last of the great Islamic empires, which emerged in the later Middle Ages and continued its existence until the early twentieth century.

Conquest, 1300–1600

The Ottoman Empire was created by a series of conquests carried out between the early fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries by ten successive capable rulers of the Ottoman Turkish dynasty. Starting as nomadic gazis (Ar., ghāzī, “raider”), fighting for the faith of Islam against the decadent Byzantine Empire on behalf of the Seljuk Empire of Konya (“Seljuks of Rum”), Osman I and his successors in the fourteenth century expanded primarily into Christian lands of southeastern Europe as far as the Danube, while avoiding conflict with the Muslim Turkoman principalities that had dominated Anatolia after they defeated the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. These conquests were facilitated by policies that left the defeated Christian princes in control of their states as long as they accepted vassalage and provided tribute and warriors to assist further Ottoman conquests and that allowed Christian officials and soldiers to join the Ottoman government and army as mercenaries without being required to convert to Islam. This first Ottoman Empire incorporated territories that encompassed the modern states of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia; it bypassed the Byzantine capital Constantinople, which, despite the depopulation and despoilage inflicted by the Latin Crusaders early in the thirteenth century, held out as a result of its massive defense walls as well as the services provided by soldiers from Christian Europe, though its emperors for the most part accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman leaders. Efforts by the Byzantine emperors to reunite the Orthodox church with Rome in order to stimulate the creation of a new crusade to rescue their empire led to new internal divisions that prevented any sort of unified resistance to the Ottomans.

This initial period of Ottoman expansion came to an end during the reign of Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402) who, influenced by the Christian princesses and their advisers at the Ottoman court, replaced the gazi tradition of conquering Christian territories with seizure of the Turkoman Muslim principalities in Anatolia; at the same time he substituted Byzantine for Muslim practices in his court and administration. The Muslim Turkomans who had led the conquests into Europe as gazis refused to participate in attacks on their Muslim coreligionists, however, particularly since the spoils available was far less than in Europe, so the conquests to the East were accomplished largely with contingents furnished by Christian vassals. Many of the displaced Anatolian Turkoman princes took refuge with the Mamlūk sultans who since 1250 had displaced the Ayyūbids in Egypt and Syria, or with the rising Tatar conqueror of Iran and Central Asia, Tamerlane, where they sought assistance in regaining their territories. The Mamlūk Empire was then attempting to expand its influence north from Syria into Cilicia and the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, but it was by this time too weak to provide substantial military assistance to the Turkomans. Tamerlane also preferred to move through Iran into India, but fearing that Ottoman expansion eastward past the Euphrates might threaten his western provinces, he mounted a massive invasion of Anatolia that culminated in his rout of the Ottoman army and capture of Bayezid I at the Battle of Ankara (1402). To ensure that no single power would rise up to dominate Anatolia and threaten his domains, he went on to ravage the peninsula and restore the surviving Turkoman princes before resuming his invasion of India.

Bayezid I died in captivity, but enough of his sons survived to contest for power during the Ottoman Interregnum (1402–1413) that followed. Initially Prince Süleyman, based at Edirne, managed to retain Ottoman power in Europe with the assistance of the Christian vassal princes of southeastern Europe. Ultimately, however, his efforts to restore Ottoman rule in Anatolia were defeated by his brother Mehmed, supported by the Turkoman gazis who had remained along the Danube fighting against the Hungarians, and who had opposed Bayezid’s expansion into the Muslim East as well as the Christian vassals’ influence in his court. As Mehmed I (r. 1413–1421), he restored Ottoman rule between the Danube and the Euphrates, driving out Christian influences in the court and inaugurating a policy, continued by Murad II (r. 1421–1444, 1446–1451) and Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481) “the Conqueror” (Fâtih); this policy instituted direct Ottoman administration in both Europe and Anatolia in place of the indirect rule through vassals which had characterized the previous century.

This restoration was accompanied in 1453 by Mehmed II’s conquest and long siege of Byzantine Constantinople. The city had been ravaged and largely depopulated since its occupation by Latin Crusaders in 1204. But Mehmed intended to restore it to its old splendor and prosperity so it could serve as the capital of the restored Roman Empire that he wished to create. Therefore, instead of following the Muslim tradition of sacking cities that resisted conquest, he used his army to rebuild it and then carried out a policy of forced immigration (sürgün) of peoples from all parts of his empire to repopulate it and restore its economic life as quickly as possible. Mehmed repopulated the new capital with Christians and Jews, in addition to Muslims.

The rapid expansion of the Ottoman dominions created severe financial, economic, and social strains. These were, however, successfully resolved during the long and relatively peaceful reign of Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512), thus making possible substantial expansion in the first half of the sixteenth century beyond the boundaries of the first empire, across the Danube through Hungary to the gates of Vienna and eastward into the territories of the classical Islamic empires of the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids. Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520) “the Grim” (Yavuz), in response to the rise of the Ṣafavid empire in Iran starting about 1500 and its threat to Anatolia and to the regional balance of power, first defeated the Ṣafavids at Chaldiran (1514) in eastern Anatolia, and then went on to conquer the Mamlūk dominions during a rapid campaign through Syria and Egypt in 1516–1517, soon afterward adding the Arabian peninsula to his domains. With the confrontation of the Safavids and the conquest of Arab world complete, the Ottoman Empire’s strategic and ideological focus shifted. The sultans became guardians of the hajj and the holy places of Islam, and claimed primacy in the Islamic world as the Great Caliphs. The Ottoman Empire became the most powerful state in the Islamic world.

Sultan Süleyman, “The Lawgiver” (Kanuni; called “The Magnificent” in Europe), who ruled from 1520 to 1566, supported by an alliance with France against their common Habsburg enemy, went on to conquer Hungary (1526) and to put Vienna under a siege (1529), which though unsuccessful was followed by the creation of a system of border gazi warriors who carried out guerrilla warfare with raids well into central Europe during the next two centuries. With the stalemate in land warfare, the struggle between the Ottomans and Habsburgs was transferred to the Mediterranean Sea. Süleyman created a powerful navy under the leadership of the pirate governor of Algeria, Grand Admiral Hayruddin Barbarossa; the commander not only brought Algeria into the empire as a province whose revenues were set aside in perpetuity for support of the Ottoman navy, but also made the entire Mediterranean into an Ottoman lake. Süleyman also expanded Ottoman power in the East; after conquering Iraq and the southern Caucasus from the Ṣafavids (1534), he built an eastern fleet that from bases in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea conquered the Yemen and broke European naval efforts to blockade the old international shipping routes through the Middle East and then went on to assist Muslim rulers in western India and Indonesia against the Portuguese and others. Under Süleyman, the Ottoman Empire became a world power.

Government And Society

The reign of Sultan Süleyman marked the peak of Ottoman power and prosperity as well as the highest development of its governmental, social, and economic systems. The Ottoman sultans preserved the traditional Middle Eastern social division between a small ruling class (askeri or “military”) at the top, whose functions were limited largely to keeping order and securing sufficient financial resources to maintain itself and carry out its role, and a large subject class of rayas (reâyâ, or “protected flock”), organized into autonomous communities according to religion (millets) or economic pursuit (esnaf, or “guilds”) that cared for all aspects of life not controlled by the ruling class.

Ruling Class

Membership in the ruling class was open to all who declared and manifested loyalty to the sultan, his dynasty, and his empire; who accepted the religion of Islam; who knew and practiced the “Ottoman Way,” a highly complex system of behavior including use of the Ottoman language, a variant derived from Turkish, Arabic, and Persian; and who knew and carried out the particular practices used by one or another of the groups into which the ruling class was divided. Those who failed to meet these requirements were considered members of the subject class regardless of their origins or religion. Thus ruling class members could be the children of existing members, but only if they acquired and practiced all the required characteristics. Members could also come from the devşirme system of recruitment among Christian youths, which was carried out on a large scale in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the recruits were converted to Islam and educated in the Ottoman Way in the palace school established by Mehmed II and continued by his successors. Other members entered the ruling class as slaves or captives of existing members, or as “renegades” who came to the Ottoman Empire from all the nations of Europe, seeking their fortunes under the banner of the sultans. In general, all ruling class members who came from a Turkish or Muslim heritage, including the former members of the ruling classes of the Seljuk and Mamlūk empires and their descendants, formed a Turko-Islamic aristocracy; converts from Christianity formed a separate devşirme class. The two groups struggled for power and prestige, with the ruler seeking to balance them with equal positions and revenues in order to control and use both.

Members of the ruling class were divided into “institutions” according to function. The Palace or Imperial Institution in the Topkapı Palace consisted of two branches: the Inner Service (enderûn), including the Harem, was charged with producing, maintaining, training, and entertaining sultans, and as such comprised the sultans themselves, their wives, concubines, children, and slaves; the Outer Service (birûn) included servants of the sultan who were involved in affairs outside of as well as within the palace, in fact exercising the sultan’s function of directing the army and administering the empire. The Scribal Institution (kalemiye), constituting the treasury of the sultan and including all the “men of the pen” (ehl-i kalem), carried out the administrative duties of the ruling class, in particular assessing and collecting taxes, making expenditures, and writing imperial decrees and most other administrative documents. It included the grand vizier (sadr-ı azam) and other officials holding the rank of vizier and the title pasha (paşa) who met as the imperial council (divan) in the kubbealtı section of the second courtyard of the palace and were in charge of supervising and leading the Ottoman system on behalf of the sultan. The Military Institution (seyfiye) included the “men of the sword” (ehl-i seyf) charged with expanding and defending the empire and keeping order and security: the sipahi cavalry, commanded for the most part by members of the Turko-Islamic aristocracy; the Janissary (yeniçeri) infantry, military arm of the devşirme, which comprised the most important part of the Ottoman army starting in the sixteenth century and constituted the principal garrisons and police of major cities and towns of the empire; the Ottoman navy, long commanded by grand admirals who were given the governorship of Algeria as well as control of the customs duties of most of the ports of the Mediterranean to provide them with necessary revenues; the artillery (topçiyan); and various other corps. Finally there was the Religious or Cultural Institution (ilmiye), led by the şeyhülislam (Ar., shaykh al-Islām) and composed of “men of knowledge” (ehl-i ilm, ülemâ; Ar. ʿulamāʿ), constituting not only the leaders of prayer (imāms) and others serving in the mosques, but also the judges (qadi) and jurisconsults (müfti), and all others in the realm of culture; to these persons the title efendi was given, as it was to members of the scribal class, who also had to undergo religious training. The Islam maintained by the Ottoman ülema was orthodox Sunnī.

Within the institutions of the Ottoman ruling class, organization was maintained largely in accordance with financial functions. Each position had certain sources of revenue, either taxes of varied sorts, fees levied in return for the performance of official duties or salaries paid by the treasury. In general, all revenues in the empire were considered to constitute the imperial wealth (havâssı hümayûn) of the sultan, who alienated it on occasion in perpetuity as private property (mülk) or for religious foundations (vakıf, evkâf; Ar., waqf, awqāf) or maintained it in financial/administrative units (muqataʿât) intended to produce revenues for the sultan and his ruling class. Out of the revenues that were left as muqataʿât, some were assigned as emanets to collectors (emins) who were paid salaries for carrying out their duties, for the most part consisting of collecting taxes or fees without additional functions; some were assigned to officials of the state or army who used the revenues entirely as their own salary (timars) in return for performing functions in addition to collecting the revenues, as viziers in the imperial council or as officers of the sipahi cavalry or the artillery corps; and some were assigned as tax-farms (iltizam) to tax-farmers (mültezims) as the result of bids won by those who promised to pay the treasure the largest share of their annual revenues, since unlike the timar holders they performed no other function than the collection of revenues. Regardless of the source of revenues, the holders of the muqata’ât were given only enough authority to make certain that taxable revenues were produced; the producers of the revenue, whether cultivators, artisans or merchants, maintained property rights to pursue their own occupations as long as they delivered the required taxes.

Subject Class

All functions of society as well as of government and administration not dealt with by the ruling class were relegated to the reâyâ (protected flock) or rayas, who constituted the subject class. For this purpose the reâyâ were organized into religiously based communities called at different times cemaʿât, tâ’ife and, finally millet, as well as into guilds (esnâf), mystic orders of dervishes (tariqât) and other groupings that formed a substratum of Ottoman society. Most important were the religiously based communities, most often called millets, of which three were established by Mehmed the Conqueror soon after he made Istanbul his capital in 1453. The Greek Orthodox and Armenian Gregorian millets were led by their patriarchs and staffed by the clerics organized in hierarchies under their authority. The former included, in addition to ethnic Greeks, all the Slavs and Romanians living in southeastern Europe; the latter included not only Armenians, but also gypsies, Nestorians, Copts, and other Eastern Christians. Mehmed II and his successor Bayezid II attempted to organize the Jewish millet like those of the Christians, appointing Moses Capsali, grand rabbi of Istanbul under the last Byzantines, as chief of all the rabbis and all Jews throughout the empire.

In the countryside, villages were for the most part constituted entirely of members of one millet or another. In the larger towns and cities, quarters (sg., mahalle; pl., mahallât), surrounded by walls and guarded by gates, were set aside for each millet. There was no municipal government as such in traditional Ottoman society. Whether rabbis or bishops or imams, the religious leaders of each quarter or village carried out all the secular functions not performed by the ruling class, basing these duties on their own religious laws as interpreted in their religious councils and courts, and conducting their affairs in their own languages and in accordance with their own customs and traditions. Thus they organized and operated schools, old-age homes, and kitchens for the poor. Leaders of the different urban millets came together on occasion for specific functions that required general cooperation, such as the celebration of certain festivals or organization against attacks, plagues or fires; but for the most part each lived independently with little input either by members of the ruling class or by members of the other millets.

Decline

The classical system of empire reached its peak under Sultan Süleyman in the sixteenth century, but signs of weakness signaled the beginning of a slow but steady decline. In the second half of the sixteenth century, there emerged a series of external and internal challenges to the classical Ottoman system, and this led to a series of crises and subsequent transformations of the empire in military, political, social, and financial institutions. The long and exhausting wars in the second half of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, often on two fronts, with the Habsburgs and Persians, both increased the financial burden and spoiled the classical military structure. And both of these gave way to corruption of the classical land system and the tax system. This in turn led to transformation in political, administrative, social, and financial structures of the empire, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. New developments in European warfare demanded more soldiers with firearms. This brought about the elimination of timar holding sipahi cavalry which used traditional weapons, and the increase of the number of standing janissary army and mercenaries with firearms. This substantial increase put strains on the financial system and treasury. This huge financial strain turned into a profound financial crisis as a result of inflation caused by the influx of silver from the New World. The measures to remedy this financial crisis led to the gradual replacement of timar system with the direct taxation (tax-farming) system, transforming the Ottoman classical land and tax system. This transformation, coupled with the population growth in the sixteenth century, led to social and political unrest, and rebellions both in the center and in the provinces. Thus the economic and military changes in Europe, and subsequent crises and responses to these crises radically transformed the empire and its political, administrative and socioeconomic structure. These transformations from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries tended towards a decentralization of Ottoman authority and administration. In the center, the structure of political elites and political culture changed; weakening of sultanic power resulted in the formation and rise of households within the ruling class. In the provinces, weakening of state power and tax-farming of state lands led to emergence of a class of provincial notables (âyân) who in time acquired administrative and military functions.

Reform And Modernization

In face of military defeats against the European powers and chronic internal political crises, the ruling elites attempted several reform initiatives in order to forestall the military decline of the empire, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Under the leadership of Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) and the dynasty of Köprülü grand viziers placed in power during the later years of the seventeenth century by Sultan Mehmed IV (r. 1648–1687), efforts were made to reform the system in order to save the empire. This reform, however, was undertaken on the basis of the prevailing belief that Ottoman institutions and practices were superior to anything developed in Christian Europe; that therefore Ottoman weakness was due less to any inferiority of its institutions than to a failure to apply them as had been in the centuries of Ottoman greatness. Traditional reform at this time therefore consisted of efforts to restore the old ways, executing corrupt and incompetent officials and soldiers. As soon as the government and army had been restored sufficiently to beat back the European attacks, however, the corruption returned and continued until the next crisis forced similar efforts. Increasing losses to Russia and Austria during the eighteenth century, however, forced the sultans to modify this traditional reform, at least to the extent of acknowledging that European weapons and tactics were superior, and to accept at least partial reforms of the Ottoman military, which were introduced by a series of European renegades who entered Ottoman service. Inevitably, however, the Janissary corps refused to accept this sort of change, because their status in the ruling class depended on their monopoly of the traditional techniques and practices. This compelled the sultans to create a separate modern infantry and artillery corps, which, however, could not for the most part be used because of opposition by the Janissary corps, supported by members of the ruling class who also feared that the new forces would be used to eliminate them.

From the late eighteenth century onward the Ottoman Empire faced three prominent challenges, and responses to these challenges once more transformed the empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thus paving the way for the Tanzimat period. The first was a strategic threat posed by the Russian Empire. In the eighteenth century, the emergence of Russia as a great power brought about a shift in the balance of power, at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The Empire was in decline militarily, and Russia was eager to fill the vacuum that Ottoman weakness had created in the region. There were a series of Russo-Ottoman wars, resulting in the Russian invasion of Ottoman territory in the Balkans, southeastern Europe, and the Caucasus. The Ottomans were persistently defeated by the Russians (with the exception of the Crimean War of 1853–1856), and the very heart of the Ottoman Empire, the capital Istanbul, was often threatened by the Russian army. At the same time, the decline of the empire and the prospect of its disintegration created a power struggle among European Great Powers. This struggle, known as the Eastern Question, over the fate of the empire to safeguard the strategic, territorial, and commercial interests of the European Great Powers in the Ottoman domains, lasted until the end of the empire.

The second challenge was the emergence and spread of nationalist ideas and movements in the Ottoman Empire after the French Revolution, first among non-Muslim elements, and then among non-Turkish Muslim elements. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of the First World War, the empire faced a series of nationalist and separatist uprisings, from different ethnic groups, seeking to break up the empire in order to secure their independence. The uprisings of the Christian minorities, supported by Russia and other European Great Powers, who sought to use these movements as vehicles to extend their influence within the Ottoman body politic and, ultimately, to replace Ottoman rule with their own. It started with the Greek revolution early in the century and continued in Serbia and Bulgaria; later in the century, it spread to Macedonia and to the Armenians in Anatolia. The resulting loss of territories and large-scale massacres of Muslim (and in some cases Jewish) subjects by the rebels as well as by the newly independent Christian states of southeastern Europe, aimed at securing homogenous national populations for the new nation-states, led to massacres and counter-massacres that characterized the empire, with little break, during the last half century of its existence.

The third challenge was the empire’s incremental financial dependence on the West and the “peaceful penetration” of the major European powers. In the nineteenth century, European powers had succeeded in penetrating the Ottoman Empire to a considerable degree, interfering in its internal affairs, and recruiting networks of clients among the Sultan’s own subjects. A number of factors facilitated this penetration. The European powers acquired certain legal rights of interference in Ottoman internal affairs, through the reform provisions of the treaties of Paris (1856) and Berlin (1878), through the capitulations, which gave their subjects legal and fiscal privileges within the Ottoman Empire, and through the religious protectorates that particular European powers asserted over particular groups of Ottoman Christians. In addition, the considerable expansion of the Ottoman Empire’s trade with the European powers, and the various economic concessions, including ports, railways, mines, and river navigation, which had been awarded by the Ottoman government to European enterprises, enabled the European powers to build up local commercial clienteles, particularly in the major ports and trading centers. This commercial influence was accompanied by cultural influences, promoted by missionaries and educational institutions. Finally, the omnipresence of European political influence was assured through chains of consuls that were established in almost every important provincial center throughout the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman statesmen developed a number of responses to these challenges. First, all these challenges pushed the Ottomans into a new series of reforms directed towards centralization and Westernization. To save the empire, the foremost need was better military; better military required more revenue; more revenue required centralized administration and finance, and this required the abandonment of decentralization and elimination of âyâns. Therefore, an administrative centralization process began along with military modernization. Military modernization in turn gave way to bureaucratic, administrative, and legal modernization, and the state underwent a period of Westernization in political, social, economic, and cultural fields throughout the nineteenth century.

These reforms occurred during the Tanzimat period planned under Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839), were carried out under his sons Abdülmecid (r. 1839–1861) and Abdülaziz (r. 1861–1876), and were brought to successful culmination under Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909). As proclaimed in 1839, the Tanzimat reforms promised an overall reorganization in every institution of state and society, from a more orderly tax collection to a fair and regular system of military conscription, and from a reform in education to a radical reorganization of the justice system. The proposed reforms were partially based upon European models, and initiated an unprecedented, though slow, process of institutional and cultural Westernization. In another respect, too, the Islamic and Ottoman tradition was partially severed, with the promise of civil equality for the Empire’s non-Muslim subjects. The reformers of the Tanzimat believed that the Ottoman Empire could be saved only by being integrated into the Western political and economic system. They argued that it would be wiser for the Empire to join, rather than resist, Europe and would also benefit from joining the world economic system. In order to recruit assistance in the struggle against Russia, the Porte offered the British certain financial incentives in order to create a stronger bond.

The traditional decentralized Ottoman system became increasingly centralized; the central government extended its authority and activity to all areas of Ottoman life, undermining, though not entirely replacing, the millets and guilds. Since functions were expanding, moreover, the traditional Ottoman governmental system in which the ruling class acted through the imperial council was replaced with an increasingly complex system of government, divided into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The executive was organized into ministries headed by ministers who came together in a cabinet led by the grand vizier. The legislative function was given to deliberative bodies, culminating in a partly representative council of state in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and in the democratically elected parliament introduced initially in 1877–1878 and then again in the Young Turk constitutional period (1908–1918). Administration was turned over to a new hierarchy of well-educated bureaucrats (memurs) who dominated Ottoman governmental life until the end of the empire. The reforms introduced during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed the Ottoman Empire into a relatively well-governed and modern state. Emphasism was laid, however, on institutional and physical reforms, with the centralized bureaucracy exercising far more control over the lives of the subjects than was the case in the traditional decentralized Ottoman system. As a result, liberal political movements, led by the Young Ottomans during the years of the Tanzimat and by the Young Turks during the reign of Abdülhamid II, demanded political and social reforms as well. For all the difficulties and deficiencies in the implementation of government-sponsored reforms, it is clear that the Tanzimat era initiated a process of social and economic change, the development of modern communications, including telegraph lines, and steam navigation.

• Additionally, in the age of nationalism and imperialism, the most vital issue for the Ottoman elites was the effort to keep the independence and territorial integrity of the empire, which consisted of very different ethnic and religious elements. From the 1830s until the end of the empire, all the political discussions and struggles occurring among the political and military elites consisted of different, and often opposing, solutions for the prevention of nationalist and separatist tendencies among the non-Muslims who constituted about 40 percent of the population at the beginning of the nineteenth century. To forestall the nationalist challenge, Ottoman statesmen developed the policy of Ottomanism to promote the notion of one Ottoman nation, consisting of individuals with equal rights based on law, sharing the same mother country, and loyal to the state and the sultan. Ottomanism underwent several phases:
  • First, the state acknowledged basic rights citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, as reflected in the Imperial Rescript of Gulhane of 1839;
  • Second, the state tried to create socio-economic development together with a joint education system, especially in the Christian provinces of the Balkans, after the Imperial Rescript of Reform of 1856; and,
  • Third, as a last hope to curb separatist tendencies among the Christians, the state gave its citizens political rights, turning the empire into a constitutional monarchy, with a constitution and a parliament in 1876.

Furthermore, since the Empire was militarily too weak to tackle the external threats, effective diplomacy was therefore regarded as an essential guarantee of the Empire’s survival. The Ottoman statesmen attempted to exploit the balance of power between the European powers and to exploit their rivalries, especially those between Britain and Russia. During the Tanzimat period, Britain (and France and Austria at times) emerged as the main supporter of the Empire against Russia. Although the Ottoman Empire was weak in comparison with the European Great Powers, it remained a significant international actor whose independent decisions could materially influence the interests and behavior of more powerful states. After 1856, the Ottoman Empire was formally admitted by treaty into the European state system, and her status as a great European power was recognized.

From 1875 onward, the Tanzimat regime entered a period of profound crisis, marked by the bankruptcy of the state treasury, a series of Christian rebellions in the Balkan provinces, a constitutionalist coup d’état, a major diplomatic confrontation with the European Great Powers, and a protracted and disastrous war with Russia which ended in 1878 with the Empire’s territorial truncation by the treaties of San Stefano and Berlin. After the period of crisis ended, Sultan Abdülhamid II charted a new course in domestic, and in foreign policy to defend the Empire’s independence and territorial integrity. Abdülhamid did not reject the Tanzimat reforms, most of which he preserved, and some of which he developed further; but he was deeply critical of those aspects of his predecessors’ policies which, he believed, had provoked the crisis of the mid-1870s: their financial recklessness, their tolerance of the spread of European influence within the Empire, their inability to restrain nationalist and separatist tendencies among their Christian subjects, and their failure to protect their Muslim subjects, upon whose solidarity and welfare, Abdülhamid believed, the Ottoman Empire’s survival depended.

Sultan Abdülhamid was a staunch authoritarian. He dissolved the parliament in 1878, establishing his own absolute control over the executive organs of government. He was determined to control in detail the initiation and implementation of policy. He ignored the rules of bureaucratic hierarchy, exerting personal authority over provincial as well as central officials. He was a strong centralizer, determined to curb all tendencies toward provincial autonomy. Abdülhamid saw Islam and Muslim solidarity, expressed in a common loyalty to the caliphate, as crucial to the empire’s efforts to resist European penetration and the separatist aspirations of his non-Turkish Muslim subjects. This policy was expressed in much official deference to Islam and to religious leaders and in an officially sponsored religious propaganda that at times assumed a “pan-Islamic” form by appealing to Muslim solidarity outside the Ottoman Empire. Abdülhamid emphasized Islam domestically in order to invoke the loyalty of his Muslim subjects — in particular non-Turkish Muslims like the Albanians and the Arabs. The reign of Abdülhamid was one of considerable achievements in the fields of social and economic reform. He continued the beneficial aspects of the Tanzimat reforms and encouraged construction of schools, railways, harbors, irrigation works, telegraph lines, and other infrastructure projects. He also encouraged improvement in finance, trade, mining, and agricultural export, as well as in education, civil administration, security, and military affairs. However, his financial caution significantly limited the extent of his civil and economic reforms. Unlike the Tanzimat statesmen, Abdülhamid avoided peace-time alliances with the Great Powers, maintaining an overall diplomatic stance of “neutrality” or “non-commitment.” Abdülhamid distanced the empire from its former protector, Great Britain, and harmonized relations with the empire’s traditional enemy, Russia, initiating the longest period of peace in Russo-Ottoman relations for more than a century. He also inaugurated a close relationship with Germany in order to restrain Britain and Russia.

Opposition to Abdülhamid’s regime was led by the Young Turks, a group consisting of intellectuals, students, and both civilian and military officers. Their chief organization, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), consisted mainly of young officers of the general staff who were serving in Macedonian provinces, demanded the restoration of the parliament as a means to curb autocracy and preserve the integrity of the empire. The CUP staged an uprising in Macedonia in the summer of 1908. Fearing internal chaos, the sultan proclaimed the restoration of the parliament on July 24, 1908. A counter-revolution broke out in Istanbul in April 1909 against the policies of the CUP. The CUP crushed this rebellion and also dethroned Abdülhamid on April 27, 1909, falsely accusing him of having instigated the rebellion.

During the second constitutional period (1908–1918), the Ottoman Empire experienced the most democratic era of its history, with a myriad of political parties electing deputies to the Ottoman parliament, which enacted major secular and liberal reforms. An initial period in which members of all the different nationalities worked to strengthen and preserve the empire was brought to an end by Austria’s annexation of Bosnia, Bulgaria’s annexation of East Rumelia, and Greece’s annexation of Crete. Unrest in Macedonia and in other provinces resumed, with the forceful Ottoman military responses to restore order compounding the violence. Ottoman territorial losses continued, with Italy’s invasion of the provinces of Libya in the Tripolitanian War (1911–1912) and the victory of the newly independent states of southeastern Europe during the First Balkan War (1912), which pushed the Ottomans out of all their remaining European provinces and threatened their control of Istanbul itself. As thousands of refugees flooded into Istanbul, and as the remaining parts of the Empire fell into increasing despair and chaos, the CUP leaders Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha, and Cemal Pasha were in January 1913 able to end the internal political turmoil by a coup, and establish a Triumvirate that successfully defended Istanbul and took advantage of disputes among the Balkan states during the Second Balkan War (1913) to regain Edirne and eastern Thrace, and introduced major military, social and economic legislation.

The CUP’s primary aim was a defensive foreign policy and rapprochement with the Entente Powers (Britain, France, and Russia). In order to save the territorial integrity of the Empire, the CUP, especially after the traumatic effect of the Balkan Wars on Ottoman public opinion, was convinced that only an alliance with Britain (and the Entente) could guarantee the survival of what remained of the Empire, and tried to seek support from London and Paris, but this proved impossible for the politics of the European powers of the time, and by the start of the First World War the Ottoman government had failed to fulfill its objectives. The CUP leaders were convinced that neutrality would be disastrous for the Ottoman Empire since it would leave it isolated and at the mercy of the belligerent states. In the end, the Triumvirate formed an alliance with Germany and entered the war, despite the wishes of certain sections of military and political elites and intellectuals to stay out of the war.

During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire faced hostilities in eastern Anatolia against the Russians and in Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Palestine against the British and their allies. Although they successfully resisted an armada of British–French naval and land forces in the Dardanelles in 1915, they were less successful in other areas: the Russians penetrated deep into eastern Anatolia and the British captured Baghdad, Palestine, and Syria. Throughout the war, the Allies signed a number of agreements for the partition of the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the Anglo-Franco-Russian agreements of March–April 1915 (known as the Constantinople Agreement), Britain and France agreed that the question of Constantinople and the Straits would finally be solved by annexing the area into the Russian Empire. Under the Sykes-Picot agreement of April–October 1916, Russia was also given most of eastern Anatolia (including Erzurum, Trabzon, Van, and Bitlis), with France to receive Syria and Cilicia and Britain to gain control of Palestine and Mesopotamia in exchange. By 1917, Russian forces occupied territories east of the Trabzon–Van line; the Ottoman army was only able to regain eastern Anatolia after Russian forces had evacuated as a result of the outbreak of revolution at home. As a consequence of Russia’s withdrawal from the war, arrangements with Russia, including the Constantinople Agreement, were annulled.

After the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918, however, Britain, France, and Italy submitted their respective demands, based on previous agreements, to the Paris Peace Conference and began to occupy several parts of Anatolia. The peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, known as the Treaty of Sevres, dated August 10, 1920, was extremely severe; not only did it strip the Empire of all its Arab provinces, it also deprived the Ottomans control of the Straits, and also created an independent Armenian state and envisaged future Greek control of western Anatolia. The Turkish nationalists, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), organized an armed resistance movement against the Allies’ occupation and successfully fought the Greeks, French, and Italians in western and southern Anatolia, thus leading to the establishment of the Turkish Republic in Anatolia and eastern Thrace. During the Turkish War for Independence (1919–1922), two rival governments appeared: in Ankara under Mustafa Kemal, and in Allied occupied Istanbul under Sultan Mehmed VI who defended a policy of compromise and collaboration with the Allies. Accordingly, after the final victory of Mustafa Kemal over Greek forces in western Anatolia, and in the wake of peace negotiations at Lausanne, the Ankara Government abolished the Ottoman sultanate on November 1, 1922, thus officially ending the Ottoman Empire.

Osmanlis

Calling themselves Osmanlis, after tribal chieftain Osman I, the Ottomans were Turks from Central Asia. They created a vast empire that encompassed southeastern Europe to northern Hungary, the Middle East to Iran, and most of the North African coast. They rivaled European nations, established a formidable army, and had a religious diversity greater than that of previous Islamic empires.

Conquering Lands In Europe And The Middle East

From the 1300s to around 1600, Ottoman rulers expanded their territory through a series of conquests. Osman I and his followers started out as nomadic ghazis (raiders) fighting on behalf of Islam against the Byzantine Empire. They gained control of the Christian lands (such as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Bosnia) and encouraged large numbers of Turkish warriors to populate their new empire. The Ottomans left Christian rulers in control as long as they accepted the dominance of the Ottomans and provided them with funding and troops. Alarmed by the success of the Turkish warriors, the Europeans launched a series of failed Crusades against them. The Ottomans, however, turned their attention to Islamic territories in the late 1300s. Influenced by Christian princesses and court advisers, the sultan Bayezid I began a new policy of seizing Muslim lands. Turkish soldiers refused to participate in these attacks, leaving armies of Christians to conquer new regions. The Mongol conqueror Tamerlane (Timur Lang) viewed Bayezid’s aggression as a threat and captured the sultan, ravaging his lands before resuming his invasion of India. Bayezid’s son Mehmed I restored the empire in the early 1400s, establishing more centralized Ottoman rule in conquered lands.

In 1453 Mehmed II completed the major task of conquering Constantinople, the former Byzantine capital. Seeking to restore the city to its former splendor, Mehmed rebuilt it and forced his subjects to move there to help the city prosper. He then repopulated the capital with people of all religions. Mehmed appealed to European Jews, who had suffered religious persecution under the Christians. He urged them to immigrate to the Ottoman lands, promising peace and economic prosperity. Thousands of Jews flooded into the Ottoman Empire, many arriving before the Spanish Inquisition.

During the 1500s, various sultans expanded the empire. They pushed into the Middle East, conquering Syria, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. They also conquered Hungary and laid siege to Vienna, which they did not win, although border ghazis carried out raids against the Europeans during the next two centuries. The Ottomans formed an alliance with France against the Hapsburgs, the Viennese dynasty that controlled much of Europe. By the 1600s, the Ottomans had seized Romania and Transylvania. They had also established a powerful navy, gaining control of key shipping routes.

Ottoman success depended on many factors — the use of sophisticated weapons, a highly organized army staffed with slaves, a religious tolerance that enabled them to rule different groups without provoking discontent, and a government that encouraged the development of agriculture, trade, and the arts. Many Christians viewed their defeat as a sign from God and converted to Islam, accepting it as a religion that values Jesus as a prophet and promotes Christian ideals. They continued to observe certain aspects of Christianity, however, such as celebrating Easter, performing baptism, and venerating saints.

Life Under Ottoman Rule

The Ottomans had a complex society with a lavish court and a strong army. In Istanbul (the former Constantinople), the Topkapi Palace held chambers for the sultan, harem, and staff members; schools for pages and slaves; military, civil, and religious offices; kitchens; and gardens. The Ottoman military had no rival in Europe or the Middle East, with an elite corps of ground troops (Janissaries) composed of Christians drafted from the Balkans. Under what became known as the devsirme system of recruitment, the most promising young men received a palace education and joined the ruling class, serving as pages or officers in the army. The others worked as apprentices to Turkish officers, learning military techniques that surpassed those used by any army in the Middle East or Europe.

Social Structure

Like other empires in the Middle East, the Ottomans maintained a small ruling class and a large subject population organized into self-governing communities according to religion (millets) or guilds (esnaf). People could join the ruling class only if they demonstrated exceptional loyalty to the sultan, accepted Islam, and practiced the Ottoman way, a complex system of behavior that included the use of the Ottoman language (a dialect derived from Turkish, Arabic, and Persian). Those who failed to meet these requirements served as subjects, even if of royal lineage.

The ruling class consisted of two groups — those of Turkish or Muslim heritage and the devsirme class of Christian converts. Christians tended to favor expansion into Muslim territories, while Turks and Muslims urged the sultans to invade Europe. Sultans typically tried to establish a balance between the two groups, giving them equal positions and pay. Members of the ruling class fulfilled specific functions. Some served as advisers to sultans. Others oversaw the treasury, collected taxes, maintained security, led prayers, and served as judges. All members practiced a form of Sunni Islam that contained elements of Sufism and Christianity.

Sultans received their authority through their family line, but Turkish custom did not specify who would assume power if more than one male heir survived the sultan. This led to conflicts between brothers, often resolved by tests of military strength, though sometimes by murder. Some sultans favored one son over the others, preparing him for the position by giving him an important administrative or military post. After 1595 , however, all of the sultan’s male relatives had to live inside the harem, and conspiracies often played a role in the selection of successors.

Ottoman rulers referred to the subject class as the reaya (protected flock). Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups organized themselves into millets, each with its own customs and language. Villages consisted entirely of members of one millet, while larger towns and cities had different millet quarters — gated communities surrounded by walls. Millet communities typically centered around a mosque or temple, and religious leaders supervised the administration of schools, homes for the aged, courts, kitchens for the poor, maintenance of public facilities, and police. Leaders of different millets gathered together in times of emergency or to prepare for certain festivities but typically worked independently of one another. The sultans had introduced the millet system in the hope of preventing the religious conflict that plagued other societies. They achieved a high degree of success but could not always suppress local conflicts between religious communities.

Guilds mainly existed in urban areas, where merchants, craftspeople, entertainers, and even prostitutes banded with their colleagues to manage financial and administrative matters. Guilds settled disputes, collected money for charity, sent members on military campaigns, and organized holiday celebrations. Some had initiation ceremonies involving pilgrimages, prayers, and lectures on sobriety and other virtues. Like millets, guilds typically operated along religious lines.

Arts and Culture

Literature, visual arts, and music thrived under Ottoman rule, influenced by Turkish, Arab, Persian, Byzantine, and European culture. In the mid-1400s, Mehmed II supported poets and painters from all over the empire. Later sultans concentrated especially on Arabic and Persian poetry. Poets wrote of military battles, love, and their personal observations and emotions. Prose writers composed histories praising the Ottoman dynasty and recording daily life in the court and the military. World histories, travelogues, and geographical treatises also gained popularity during the Ottoman Empire.

Illumination became a highly developed art form under Ottoman rule. Mehmed II opened a studio in the royal court, where calligraphers, painters, illuminators, and bookbinders worked to create illustrated texts and designs for ceramics, carpets, and wood and metalwork. Persian fables and love stories served as the earliest illustrated works, and Persian styles dominated in the 1400s. By the end of the 1500s, however, Ottoman artists had become known for their distinctive illuminations of histories exalting the Ottoman state and the sultan.

In rural areas, wandering poet-musicians were the primary entertainers. In Anatolia (central Turkey), for example, minstrels spread Turkish folk culture with their songs. They entertained people at fairs, participated in contests, sang to soldiers, and celebrated Turkish battles and virtues. Shadow puppet plays were a popular form of entertainment in the countryside.

Decline Of The Ottomans

During the 1600s, power slowly slipped from the central government to the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman sultans were less effective as rulers. Their harem upbringing had deprived them of experience in military or state affairs, and rendered them unfit for the task of maintaining the empire. Because it had ceased to expand, the Ottoman Empire lost a major source of revenue — the wealth of other nations. To boost the faltering economy, the ruling class imposed heavy taxes on the population. The army began to break down as poorly paid soldiers seized lands and kept the taxes for themselves. Work shortages led to widespread hunger and poverty, and masses of people moved to the cities to find jobs.

Efforts At Reform

Members of the ruling class made little effort to improve conditions, some even profiting from the chaos among their subjects. Sensing Ottoman weakness, Europeans moved to conquer Ottoman lands in Hungary and southeastern Europe. The Ottomans scrambled to strengthen their empire, hoping to restore it to its former power. They executed corrupt officials and instituted reforms in education and the military. Some wanted to modernize the state, looking to the gains that Europe had made during the Industrial Revolution. Others believed in the superiority of Ottoman practices and did not seek change until Russia and Austria took over some Ottoman lands in the 1700s. Alarmed by these developments, the ruling class invited Europeans to help them train a new army. But the military reforms were resisted by the old military establishment and had little impact.

During the 1800s, Europeans became more powerful and began to intervene in Ottoman affairs. They encouraged Christians to rise up against the Ottoman Turks and secure their independence. Alarmed by these developments, the Ottomans began the task of replacing old institutions with new ones, largely based on Western models. The Ottomans centralized their government, weakening the millets and guilds but not entirely replacing them. They organized the government into executive, legislative, and judicial branches, with a prime minister and an elected parliament. They also reformed their legal codes, adopting European models and court systems while retaining shari’ah principles.

New political groups also arose within the empire. A group called the Young Ottomans pushed for reforms within the ruling class, including the use of a simpler official language that would create a sense of equality between Ottoman rulers and their subjects. They believed in citizens’ rights and held that Islam and modernization could work together compatibly. The Young Ottomans took over the government briefly during the 1870s, but the sultan they placed in power turned against them and implemented strict policies favoring the ruling class. Other groups formed, among them the Young Turks, organized by Young Ottomans living in exile in Paris, and the Fatherland Society, headed by Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk ), the future president of Turkey. These groups both promoted European-style reforms and a stronger central government.

Clashes With Europe

Reforms transformed the Ottoman Empire from a disorganized series of states into a relatively efficient, modern regime whose government treated its subjects far more humanely than those of many Western nations. Europeans, however, continued to threaten Ottoman authority, labeling the Ottoman Empire the “sick man of Europe.” Backed by Russia and Austria, Christian nationalist groups created movements and new states that fragmented the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans tried to win them over by officially recognizing the equality of all religious groups but reacted with violence when the Christians failed to end their attacks. Such clashes continued throughout the last 50 years of the empire. At the same time, thousands of Jews fleeing persecution in Russia and central Europe settled in Ottoman lands, where they made significant contributions to agriculture, industry, and trade.

During the early 1900s, the Ottomans continued to make reforms. They could not eliminate Christian opposition, however, and the Ottoman states in southeastern Europe rose up in the First Balkan War ( 1912 ), gaining their independence. Muslims and Jews from these regions flooded into Istanbul. The Young Turks seized control over the government, making liberal reforms and regaining Balkan lands a part of their program. The Young Turks helped secularize the legal system and provided for the education of women. They also allied the Ottoman Empire with Germany and Austria during World War I ( 1914 – 1918 ). When the Germans lost the war, the empire disintegrated and disbanded completely in 1922. Britain, France, Italy, and Russia carved the Ottoman state up into mandates and protectorates to divide amongst themselves.

Mustafa Kemal, however, refused to let the Europeans have all of the Ottoman territories. In 1918 he led the Turkish War for Independence, chasing the Europeans from the former seat of the Ottoman Empire. He took the name Atatürk (meaning “father of the Turks”) and created the Turkish Republic, of which he became president until his death in 1938. Out of all the countries in the Middle East, Turkey alone emerged as an independent nation at the end of World War I. See also Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal; Mawlawiyah; Sufism; Turkey.

Sufis And The Empire

Various Sufi orders flourished in the Ottoman Empire. The most influential was the Bektashi brotherhood, which spread over Anatolia and the Balkans in the 1400s. The Bektashiyah performed ritual dancing and wine drinking and adopted certain Christian practices, such as confession of sins.

The Mevlevi (Mawlawiyah in Arabic) thrived in urban areas. The order is often referred to as the Whirling Dervishes, after the rigorous dancing they perform as a meditation ritual.

Wandering Sufi teachers helped the ruling class by spreading Islam, settling disputes, and protecting travelers. Some, however, led revolts against the state. Viewing the Sufis as a threat, sultans worked to integrate them into Ottoman society. The hired them to provide protection for soldiers and sultans and gave them funding for their schools and communities.

Women’s Socioeconomic Role

Overview

As elsewhere, the quest to understand the role of women in the Ottoman Empire in the larger context of social history has led to a rewriting of Ottoman history. Such rewriting reveals the original contributions of non-Western societies to global projects of modernity and constitutes an alternative to man-centered nationalist history writing. However, despite the valuable contributions of scholars in disassociating the harem from eroticism and the Ottoman Empire from the harem, Orientalist tendencies that feed from ahistorical interpretations of Islamic histories continue to influence the contemporary perception of Ottoman history.

The Early And Classical Periods

The Ottoman Empire was founded at the end of the thirteenth century as an emirate that quickly grew toward Byzantine borders. Intermarriage and conversions guaranteed more physical expansion. Love between Muslim warriors and Byzantine women, or bilateral cultural expansion, became an asset for foundation in both myth and reality. Expansion continued with changing capital cities during the fourteenth century, and the Muslim dream of conquering İstanbul became a reality with Mehmed II the Conqueror (1432–1481) in 1453. Mehmed II also changed how Ottoman sultans procreated: He did not have any children with his Christian wives and relied on his concubines for procreation. This was a strategy that was to guarantee undivided power, and this is the story of how the imperial harem started to become synonymous with an Ottoman rule that lasted for over six centuries. Thus, concubinage as an ultimate form of reproduction and sexual politics was only invented by the Ottoman sultans in the fifteenth century.

In fact, dwelling on the history of how the sultans related to women and how they procreated is synonymous with dwelling on Ottoman history. However, this sexual dimension of politics is overemphasized in the Ottoman context with the key word “harem.” Both the imperial harem and ordinary harems are discussed in reference to women’s life in the Ottoman Empire here. Harem is a major issue concerning women in the Ottoman Empire as depictions of the harem were used for the eroticization a of Muslim women for centuries. These depictions are still an important obstacle to a complete understanding of how multifarious and changing the lives of women were in the empire.

A century after Mehmed II’s institutionalization of imperial procreation with concubines, concubines who influenced rulers, either with love, by bearing children, or as the mothers of those children who would become sultans, evolved into a political asset and the “Rule of Women” lasted for a century. Acknowledging the power of women and observing that they derive this power from a politico-sexual strategy that instrumentalizes them as slaves might have been empowering; however, the problem with such a paradigm is that the debate on the rule of women indicates this rule started a downward path for the empire. The ruthlessness and ambition attributed to these influential women, the most famous of whom were Hürrem Sultan and Kösem Sultan (1590–1651), also take away from any suggestion of empowerment. Political acts that are regarded as normal for men become character flaws in women according to the Rule of Women paradigm, and character flaws degenerate Ottoman politics.

The very same period of the Rule of Women, when viewed from the angle of women’s support of ḥammām and city culture, takes a different turn. The ḥammām, or the public bath, has a special place among historical spaces in the Ottoman Empire, shared with the Mediterranean region. The Roman bathing culture was made a part of Islamic culture by the Ottomans during this period. Like the mosque, the school/medrese, and the saintly tomb/türbe, the ḥammām became a part of mosque complexes. Women have used ḥammāms perhaps more frequently than other parts of these complexes. The complexes were commonly founded by women like Hürrem, who is most famous for being the patron of the Haseki ḥammām in Istanbul. Such endowments were acts of concern that powerful women initiated, out of which residential and commercial areas developed, drawing new populations to these locales. In other words, powerful women, by founding spaces that incorporated new districts in the city, facilitated new urban as well as political patterns. These patterns grew markedly in the sixteenth century, continuing into the seventeenth and marking the classical age of the Ottoman Empire.

It is not uncommon to evaluate everything that happened after the rule of Sultan Süleyman as stagnation and decline as the boundaries of the empire that almost included the Mediterranean from Algeria to Vienna in the sixteenth century started shrinking in the seventeenth century after a series of revolts that followed expansion. The classical periodization of the Ottoman Empire as such is not typical of current historiography. In line with İnalcık and Quataert’s conceptualization (1995), it is now more common to roughly periodize the empire in terms of its beginnings up to the fifteenth century, the classical period up to the eighteenth century, and the age of reforms for the nineteenth century. In this conceptualization, women are not regarded as a reason for decline; instead, they are part of a story of modernization, a story experienced parallel to that of Europe.

Age Of Reforms

As in Europe, a different class of women became the symbol of a new kind of ruling strategy by the eighteenth century: women who belonged to a newly forming moneyed class increased their outdoor activities to declare their newly acquired power and became more visible to the Ottoman state, so officials stepped in to regulate these activities in a direct manner. Their early attempts consisted of enforcing punitive measures on women’s activities. Decrees that regulated women were issued repeatedly, and through such repetitions, it became obvious that most women resisted the regulations. The law, like the women who came into contact with the law through their actions and the groups they represented, became reflexive and fluid. As a result, the state modernized and unified the code on men’s attire in 1829 and remained silent on women’s dress, but eventually stopped regulating women’s attire as well. This was an acknowledgment of different demands for power in the empire from a new class that consisted of people from different religions. However, whereas the Muslim members of this class could acquire more power through iltizam, or buying tax-farms from the state, Christians had to be content with the relative equality that the reforms of Tanzimat brought in 1836. In the meanwhile, they began to invest in nationalism.

The multiethnic makeup of the empire had long been leading to its shrinking, particularly where the Balkan and Greek populations declared and struggled for various forms of independence. As the more Christian-populated of the lands declared independence and some Muslim populations living there migrated to what remained of the empire, the general population of the Ottoman Empire became increasingly Muslim. Young Ottoman thought, symbolized most commonly by Mehmet Namık Kemal (1840–1888), reinvented a Muslim past in the golden age of Islam, simultaneously imagining a multiethnic form of Ottoman citizenship where each group lived peacefully side by side. Ideas such as democracy and equality that made this paradoxical but sound approach possible were to be found in the age of the Prophet and in the key words meşveret (consultation), ijmāʿ (consensus), and ijtihād (independent reasoning).

The non-Muslim groups that remained in the empire also adopted Ottomanism, and they, too, had long wanted their own modernization projects to reach fruition. From 1861 onward, female education was so advanced in the Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire that soon unemployment grew among the growing number of women teachers. Educated young women tended to marry later, sometimes remained single, and increased their bargaining power with education. Meanwhile, the existence of birth control practices and frequent postponement of marriage also influenced other urban communities in the empire in the nineteenth century and led to the prolongation of youth and education. The Hamidian state (1876–1909) was especially notable for its contribution to this prolongation via its development of girls’ education and for its efforts toward modernization, even though such efforts always supported further centralization and state power. It initiated and continued programs of occupational and systematic education for women in Istanbul and other cities, an effort that built on the developments of girls’ education that had started in 1850. This emerging interest in education is vital to conceptualizing the dynamics within the modernizing Ottoman state and its relation to the changing society, as well as a better understanding of women’s role in this transformation.

Through its struggles for independence against not only the Ottoman Empire, but also France and Britain, Egypt had developed outstanding institutions of education, especially girls’ education, and media. At the end of the nineteenth century, Egypt, together with Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya, were no longer parts of the Ottoman Empire. Until then, Cairo and Istanbul had shared a flourishing feminist movement that combined the forces of education and media. Qāsim Amīn (1863–1908) was a lot like Namık Kemal in many ways, a proto-feminist man who saw himself as a savior of women. There are parallels between the lives of Egyptian feminists, such as Hoda Shaarawi (1879–1947), and feminists in Istanbul such as Fatma Âliye Hanım (1862–1936) and Halide Edip Adıvar (1884–1964). They all had a problematic relationship with local politicians and Western elites, remaining between the two. Due to this tension, their struggle for rights mostly concurred with centralization and nationalization and was scorned when it did not.

The long history of the feminist movement in Turkey was uncovered as recently as the 1990s (see Demirdirek, 1998; the original appeared in Turkish in 1993). This process represented the collaboration of academic and political feminisms. Related works show that, by 1908, these efforts were best revealed in the social currents aroused after the Constitutional Revolution. Now, women’s feminist discourse—instead of men’s discourse on women’s emancipation—became an important part of the evolving media. It should be noted that just as a Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian nationalist spirit developed alongside Balkan, Greek, and Arab forms of nationalism, the feminist priorities of the writers in corresponding journals coexisted with and were soon replaced by nationalist sentiments. Turkish feminists developed a nationalistic pro-military attitude supporting the armed struggle for the foundation of the Turkish republic.

The legacy of the Ottoman feminists can be understood better through the history of the media, demonstrating the transition from the impermanence of women in industry and social life to a position of relative stability. This stability was achieved by women mostly via a successful instrumentalization of the media during the post-1908 period. However, the more women were included in industry and social life, the more feminism was excluded from the dialogue. Biographies and autobiographies of women like Fatma Âliye and Halide Edip who achieved this stability at the turn of the century clearly demonstrate these processes of inclusion and exclusion. Fatma Âliye is a product of Young Ottoman thought that centered on the Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish, and converted them to Islam. By the sixteenth century, they came to dominate key administrative and military positions. Sufi organizations were particularly important because of their role at a local, rural and popular level: they inspired warriors in battle, safeguarded travellers and pilgrims in hospices (tekke), and transmitted and kept alive literary and religious culture.

Two Sufi orders were particularly influential: the Bekhtashis who, during the sixteenth century, were brought under state control by becoming the regular ‘chaplains’ of the Janissari (infantry) corps; and the Mevlevis, who played a principal part in the ceremonial investiture of the sultan. But state control of religious knowledge and Sufi orders eventually led to a loss of autonomy for religious organizations, which came rto be identified with the Ottoman regime and its interests.

Non-Muslim subjects were organized according to religious denomination and granted internal and localized self-government status under their own leaders, subject to payment of a poll-tax. The religious leaders were usually appointed by the Muslim government and were responsible for relations with the authorities but also for community disputes and local taxation. In official documents the main millet (‘religious community’) are identified as Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and, later, Roman Catholic and Jewish.

Before the Turkish migrations of the thirteenth century, the vast majority of the population in Anatolia was Christian; by the end of the fifteenth century, 90 per cent had become Muslim. This was due to widespread Muslim immigration, but, above all, to the conversion of Christians to Islam. Such a successful rate of conversion can be traced back to the weakening of both the Byzantine state and the Greek Orthodox church. The consequent demoralization of the Christian population, and the breakdown of Anatolian society enhanced the appeal of Sufi missionaries. They presented Islam in terms of religious syncretism, and emphasized mutual beliefs as well as the high status of Jesus in Islam.

Islam In The Balkans

By contrast to Anatolia, after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans during the fourteenth century, the majority of the population remained Christian. A census of 1520–30 reveals that 81 percent of the overall Balkan population was Christian, with a high percentage of Muslims (45 percent) concentrated in Bosnia. In a second wave of Islamization during the seventeenth century, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia and Crete witnessed a high percentage of conversions. At present, Islam is a majority religion in Albania, Bosnia and the Kosovo region of Serbia. Along with indigenous peoples who converted to Islam, Muslims in this area can also be traced back to Turkish-speaking settlers and Muslims from other regions of the Ottoman empire who arrived in the wake of the conquests. The majority of Muslims is Sunni of the Hanafi school, with some Shi’is (Alevis) in Bulgaria. The influence of the Sufi orders is also important, especially the Bekhtashiyah, a syncretistic egalitarian tariqa with strong Shi‘i features.

Decline Of The Empire

By the 1792 Treaty of Jassy, the empire lost all its territories north of the Black Sea to Russia. In the west, after the second siege of Vienna in 1683 and the Ottoman retreat from an Austro-German-Polish army, the empire pulled back to its 1512 frontiers while, in other areas, many local rulers had become virtually independent.

The Decline Of The Ottoman Empire In The Balkans

From the mid-nineteenth century the disintegration extended to parts of the Arabian peninsula and Egypt; Algeria was lost to the French and the Balkan provinces were fighting for their autonomy. By the end of World War One, as a result of the colonial expansion of Western powers, the Ottoman empire had lost its Arab provinces of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and the Yemen. In 1922 the Ottoman sultanate was abolished and the Turkish republic founded; two years later the last Ottoman caliph was deposed.

Islamic Law In The Ottoman Empire

Islamic law was the official legal system of the Ottoman state, but it was influenced by the particular features of such a large state. First, the Ottoman ruler reserved an area of imperial law apart from Islamic law but that was seen as justified by it. Second, the Ottoman state allowed religious minorities to adjudicate themselves on issues of religious practice and intra-communal dispute according to the millet system. As a result, in certain branches of law dealing with individuals, family, and inheritance, there was respect for the customs and beliefs of religious minorities.

Categories Of Ottoman Law

Ottoman law can be divided into two categories according to legal authority. First, there is the authority of Allah, understood through the Sharīʿa. Second, there is the authority of the ruler (ūlū al-amr), whom Allah commands the Muslims to obey. We will discuss both these law sources and then examine the Ottoman legal system chronologically according the major periods of Ottoman legal development.

Fortunately, there are plentiful Ottoman legal codices and Sharīʿa court records, which allow a detailed reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system.

Sharīʿa Law

Rules that were derived from the Qurʾān and the sunnah and codified in books of fiqh were called Sharīʿa law, and these rules formed 85 percent of the legal system. Ottoman archives prove that Sharīʿa rules were taken as the basis for personal law, family law, inheritance law, just obligation, law of commodities, commercial law, and all the branches of private law with respect to international private law; for all procedures of public law; for 80 percent of penal law; for the majority of financial law; and in the general principles of administrative law, and constitutional law. The mainstay fiqh manuals in the Ottoman realm were the al-Durar wa al-Ghurar of Molla Khusraw and Multaqā al-Abhur by Ibrāhīm al-Ḥalebi, both Ḥanafī books of law that were effectively viewed as the civil code for the Ottoman state.

ʿUrfī Law

This body of financial law, land law, discretionary (taʿzīr) penalties, and arrangements concerning military law and administrative law in particular was based on the restricted legislative discretion allowed to the ruler by the Sharīʿa, as well as on jurisprudential decrees founded on secondary sources such as custom and public good. These were considered to fall under al-siyasa al-sharʿiyyah (public law), qānūn (dynastic legal code) and its codification in qānūnnāme, ʿurfī huqūq (customary law), and the like. Since these could not exceed the limits set by the Sharīʿa, they should not be viewed as a legal system outside of Islamic law.

In Ottoman law, the real legislator is Allah. Other legislative sources are not regarded as legislators, but as sources that determine decrees congruent with God’s Divine Providence. Yet within the framework of the principles decreed by God and the Prophet, the Qurʾānic notion of the ūlā al-Amr, “those in command,” was seen as vesting the Ottoman sultan with certain legislative powers. Some of these powers were as follows:

1. One area in which Ottoman sultans wielded their legislative
   powers was the codification of Sharīʿa law in the form of decrees. These included the Codes of Qandiyah (Qandiyah Qānūnnāmesi, 1670), and the Codes of Hania (1704), which were completely codified forms of the fiqh rulings concerning kharāj (land tax) and jizyah. Other, later examples of this were the 1876 Majellah (Mecelle), which was prepared after the Tanzimat reforms, and the Decree for Family Law (1917).
2. The sultan could also legislate directly by codifying an act of independent Islamic legal reasoning (ijtihād). There were two ways in which the ū lū al-Amr could exercise this right in Islamic law. If the sultan himself was well versed in Islamic jurisprudence, he had the right of preference. If the sultan was not a faqīh, the preference regarding such issues could be made by his appointed shaykhul Islam or muftis and then endorsed by the ruler so that the disputed matter would bind all Muslim subjects. The best example of this was Ebüssuʾûd’s fatwā regarding the permissibility of endowing cash as a pious endowment in perpetuity (nuqād-i mawqufah), which bound all Ottoman subjects after its issuance.
3. The above-mentioned legislative powers vested in the ū lū al-amr only applied to the promulgation of the current Sharīʿa decrees as codes of law or endorsement of the judgments of mujtahid (jurisprudent) or mufti. But Ottoman rulers also believed that there were limited legislative powers vested directly in the state and its ruler, the ūlū al-amr. In the Ottoman view, Islamic law provided the ūlū al-amr with the power to make legal arrangements in certain areas, in consultation with the Majlis-i Shūrā (the Advisory Council). In Ottoman law, this kind of legislative power was referred to as the power of raʾy-i waliyyul-amr (the opinion of the ruler), ḥaqq al-salṭanah (the sultan’s prerogative), “affairs committed to the charge of the ūlū al-amr,” or al-siyasa al-sharʿiyyah. In Ottoman legislation, the task of the Majlis-i Shūrā (the Advisory Council) was undertaken by the muftis advising on dynastic law (mufti-i qānūn), which prepared the legal codes, or the Dīwān-i Humāyūn (the Imperial Council).
4. The Ottoman states also understood the ruler to be able to issue law in areas qualified by Islamic law as “permissible” (jāʾiz), on the basis of Qurʾān 4:58–59 regardless of the branch of law. In Ottoman legislation, sultans used their authority to legislate legal arrangements such as those known as yasaqnâme (legal codes dictating taʿzīr penalties).
5. The Ottoman rulers also assumed the right to determine the penalties for crimes committed against the state and crimes punishable by taʿzīr. In one of the Ottoman codes of law (Kanunnāme-i Osmani [Ottoman Code]. İstanbul University. Ty. 1807), this authority was explained as “some legal affairs, like establishing all kinds of penalties for mischief-makers and wrongdoers in order to prevent and mitigate unjust acts.” In fact, those penal decrees that formed the first chapter of the general Ottoman legal codes were made by the sultans Mehmet the Conqueror, Bayezid II, Selim I, and Süleyman the Magnificent (known to Ottomans as “the Lawgiver”). That is, private law, individual and exceptional penal decrees, and the majority of the legal codes of Bozoq (province of Yozgat in Anatolia) belonging to the Dulqādīrid family (the last of the Anatolian emirates to yield to the Ottomans, managing to remain independent until 1521) had been arranged entirely through the use of that authority.
6. The state’s judicial, administrative, financial, and military arrangements were within the sultan’s control. The ūlā al-amr, particularly the sultan, was responsible for implementing various measures for the performance of public services. According to Islamic jurists, administrative arrangements regarding the state organization were set up in accordance with the principle of the public good. Certain financial arrangements were completely under the authority of the ūlūal-amr.
7. One of the legislative powers granted to ūlū al-amr in Islamic law was determining the legal regime and method of administration of lands that were conquered through warfare. In this regard, the ūlāal-amr had several choices, one of which was to proclaim them the state’s land (that is, mīrī land) and to deal with them as he wished in the public interest.

Periods Of Ottoman Law

The legal development from the beginning of the Ottoman period until the Turkish Republic can be divided into two periods.

Founding Of The Ottoman State Until The Tanzimat Reforms (1299–1839)

Before the proclamation of the Imperial Decree of Reform of 1839, there were different aspects to the legal system of Ottoman state. First, there were principles of private law, or rules of civil law, that were taken completely from Ḥanafī fiqh and concerned personal law, family law, inheritance, contracts, and real estate law. Second, in penal law, the rules of fiqh pertaining to ʿuqūbāt (crimes and punishments) were applied in cases of hudūd (the hudūd is plural of had and the word ḥadd a punishment that is to be applied as the right of Allah (public right) and is ordained by the Qurʾān or the Sunnah) and jināyāt (this term sometimes was used in the place of hudūd and as the plural of jināyah which these crimes were originally the acts directed against people’s life, goods, or chastity that are prohibited by Sharīʿa). Qānūnnāme legislations and the books of Islamic jurisprudence were accepted as the written legal codes of the Ottoman state until the Tanzimat period. Although books of Islamic jurisprudence were the references for Sharīʿa law, the qānūnnāmes were the references for the customary laws (themselves understood to be based on Sharīʿa principles).

The Ottoman state did not follow a dramatically different path from other Muslim states in implementing Islamic law. In those fields where Islamic law decreed clear judgments, applications were based on Ḥanafī fiqh. The application of any opinion against Islamic law was in theory not allowed, and the Ottoman state even bound the implementation of views that contradicted the Ḥanafī madhhab to very strict, formal conditions. Nevertheless, in those fields where Islamic law attributed limited legislative power to the ūlū al-amr, they followed certain legislative formalities and thus determined the laws, which were also known as customary law. They looked to the “affairs of the servants of Allah upon the basis of Sharīʿa and Laws” and settled all legal disputes in reference to the “Holy Sh0arīʿa and the Blessed Decrees of Laws.” (Prime Minister Archives (PA), YEE, 14-1540, p. 14) The most noteworthy features of Islamic law in the Ottoman period are the following:

1. Fiqh manuals and the madrasah system of legal education: The method of teaching fiqh and settling legal disputes on that basis, which had also been followed by the earlier Turkish Muslim states, continued to be applied as it had been before. Again, the major references used in the courts of law were the books of Ḥanafī fiqh. The qāḍīs were chosen from those who had been educated at madrasahs and were well versed in fiqh. &Moreover, eminent scholars of Islamic law were appointed to the office of qāḍī ʿal-askar, or chief military judge, who was charged with appointed lower qāḍīs for a long time in the Ottoman state. For that reason, the method of studying books on Islamic jurisprudence, such as texts, annotations, and footnotes, continued in the same way as it had in earlier Muslim societies. The text of the Ghurar, written by Molla Khusraw (d. 1480), a jurist during the time of Mehmet the Conqueror, and his work al-Durar, which was a commentary on the former, were used in court as manuals. On the other hand, the legal text Multaqā al-Abḥur by Ibrāhīm al-Ḥalebī, one of the imams of the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul, and a book called Majmaʿ al-Anhur by Shaykh al-Islām Abdurrahman (Dāmād) Effendi, which was a commentary on the former, were authoritative manuals as well. As a matter of fact, the Multaqā al-Abḥur was accepted as the official legal code of the Ottoman state by the imperial edicts issued in 1648 and 1687.
2. The codification of fatāwā as a source of law: Since there were a sufficient number of systematic books on Islamic jurisprudence, the Ottoman jurists occupied themselves with the codification of books of fatāwā, in which legal answers were compiled in response to questions submitted rather than in the systematic topical format of fiqh books. Some collections of fatāwā, such as the Fatāwā of Ebüssuʾûd Efendi and Abdurrahim (Menteshizade) Efendi, remain the most significant references for Islamic law today. These collections of fatāwā influenced the Ottoman jurists until the end of the state.
3. Another noteworthy feature of that period is the Qānūnnāme, or sultanic
   legal code. These resulted from the fact that the Dīwān-i Humāyūn (the Imperial Council) and the sultan, who functioned as ūlūal-amr, implemented certain important legal arrangements in certain areas under the name of qānūnnāme with the legislative power vested in them by Islamic law, as explained above. The Ottoman qānūn legal codes before the Tanzimat could be classified into two groups. The first of these groups was the general legal codes known as Qānūn al-ʿUthmānī (Ottoman Law). Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451–1481) was the first of the sultans to issue a qānūnnāme intended to be of universal application. The first of the two qānūnnāmes that he issued deals with organization of offices connected with the state, with posts held by ʿulamāʾ, and those held by the more prominent men of government, such as wazīrs. The second one, chiefly concerned with fines, taxes, and tolls, was later subsumed in the much more comprehensive Qānūnnāme-i ʿUthmānī or Qānūnnāme-i Āl-i ʿUthmān. Sultan Selim I further extended that law and then published it. Qānūn al-ʿUthmānī (Ottoman Law), which was prepared during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, remained in force until after the Tanzimat, except for several minute amendments made during the time of Murad IV and Ahmed I. General laws are made up, basically, of decrees concerning taʿzīr penalties, then the statutes of raʿāyā (Muslim and non-Muslim subjects) and the taxes for which they were liable, as well as those issues for which military organizations and similar supervisors were vested with legislative prerogative. The system of timar (fief) was also detailed in it. The second group consisted of the special legal codes on provinces — around thirty-five of them — and the sancak (principalities) affiliated with these provinces. They were the forms of the general Ottoman laws that were adapted to local conditions and numbered about seven hundred. They regulated military, penal, agricultural, and administrative principles apart from the issues of customs and bāj (transit or market duty). Although some researchers hold that the Ottoman qānūnnāmes constitute a customary law (ʿurfī huqūq) that was completely distinct from Islamic law, this is not true. It could be stated that the Ottoman qānūn codices were — by virtue of the authority Islam granted to the state — composed of military law, administrative law, certain areas of financial law, and such decrees of the criminal law pertaining to crimes and punishments as were not contrary to Islam. These qānūnnāmes also served as the basis of those legal arrangements that emerged as result of the codification movements after the Tanzimat reforms.
4. Prior to the Tanzimat reforms there were also some legislation
   movements that started as a result of the close relationship with the legal and economic life of Europe. Nevertheless, the actual date of the codification movements in today’s sense was the date of the promulgation of the Tanzimat movement.

Legal developments in the post-Tanzimat period ( 1839–1926 )

A completely new page was opened in Ottoman history of law with the Gülhane hatt-ı hümayun (imperial edict) promulgated in Istanbul’s Gülhane Park in 1839. The westernization movement in the Ottoman state, which started with Sultan Selim III and continued with Sultan Mahmud II, began to yield fruit with the Tanzimat firmān (imperial decree) that was promulgated during the reign of Sultan Abdülmecid. Nevertheless, despite all these statements, it is certain that there was some duality in Ottoman law after 1839, for the ūlā al-amr exceeded the limited authority allowed them under Islamic law from time to time, and they discriminated between legal regulations as codes with religious and national bases and codes with a European basis. The outstanding features of this period are as follows:

1. The Sharīʿah decrees in books on fiqh began to be codified in
   the form of codes, instructions, and regulations through legal arrangements in accordance with the requirements of the age. The Majellah (Mecelle), promulgated in 1876 and consisting of 1851 articles, is the most typical example of this. As time went on, the field of codification movements was expanded and the reasons for codification increased. The limits of the legislative power appointed by Islamic law to rulers in commercial law, real estate law, and the law of procedures began to prove excessive. As a result, some codes — such as the law of criminal procedure — were adapted from European codes word for word.
2. The strict Ḥanafī focus that had characterized the Ottoman
   state for centuries began to change after the Tanzimat reforms and particularly during last years of the empire. Ottoman jurists studied different law codes from around the world, especially European civil law, and worked to produce similar domestic codes that were in conformity with the perception and requirements of the century. That work required jurists to look at the views of the other madhhabs of Islamic law that were in concordance with the requirements of the age. From then on, Ottoman jurists began to refer not only to the books on jurisprudence from the Ḥanafī madhhab but also to those of the other madhhabs in preparing new codes, though this appeared very little in the Majellah. On the other hand, the Decree for Family Law of 1917 became the first and most significant example of those qualities. The committees for personal-status (al-ahwāl al-shakhsiyyah) and contract (wājibat) law, which were established in the republican period, also took that method of working as their basis. In fact, those committees went weven further and aimed to integrate European laws with the principles of Islamic law.

The Ottoman Empire

904 – 005

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Last Updated:    05/2022

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