Norman Itzkowitz. Ottoma
Chapter 4
\bH~tk- %Ottoman
Consciousness
Soul-searching is often a by-product of disaster, and the disasters of the seventeenth century
produced much soul' searching among the Ottomans. Statesmen, historians, men of letters, and
palace politicians all sought to identify the malaise that had attacked the Ottoman system and
brought it so low. They wrote books directed at their fellow Ottomans, drew up memoranda to
guide men in authority, and composed minors for princes to give rulers insight into the pressing
problems of the day. All these genres had roots in the literary heritage of the High Islamic
tradition. The authors were intelligent, concerned, and well meaning. They were devoted to their
religion, their state, and their Ottoman way of life. In their writings they hoped to identify
the causes of the reversal in Ottoman fortunes and to find remedies to purge their society of
its festering cankers. They were good Muslim products of the traditions of High Islam that they
were subjecting to scrutiny, and, since they wrote within the framework of that tradition, it is
not surprising to find a good deal of similarity in their analyses and in the literary metaphors
with which they illuminated their discussions.
87
n Empire and Islamic Tradition. 1980
OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ISLAMIC TRADITION
Ottoman Consciousness
THE CIRCLE OF EQUITY
The views of these commentators upon Ottoman decline were expressed in the phraseology of Near
Eastern statecraft and were predicated upon the "circle of equity," a simple but allencompassing formulation that embodied the ethical, political, and social values of the Ottoman
class. In the manner of its employment, this notion resembles the concept of the "state of
nature” expounded by Rousseau and used by European political philosophers. The circle of equity
is designed to show the circular relationships among the various classes of the society and
their functions in a well-run state.
1.
There can be no royal authority without the military.
2.
There can be no military without wealth.
3.
The reaya produce the wealth.
4.
The sultan keeps the reaya by making justice reign.
5.
Justice requires harmony in the world.
6.
The world is a garden, its walls are the state.
7.
The state’s prop is the religious law.
8. There is no support for the religious law without royal authority.
These statements were usually written around the circumference of a circle, showing how the
eighth-statement led directly back to the first. The basis of this political reasoning was the
proposition that the state rested upon the fundamental division between the askeri and reaya
classes. The reaya paid the taxes that support the military class; reaya prosperity depended
upon Justice; and the sultan’s function was to see that justice reigned. Ottoman law was based
upon the religious law of Islam and the administrative regulations embodied in the decrees
issued by the sultan..i
Sari Mehmed Pasha, in his early eighteenth-century work The Book of Counsel for Vezirs and
Governors, echoed the established position of his fellow Ottomans on this issue.
It is necessary to avoid carefully the introduction of the reaya into the askeri class. . . .
For if the entrance of the reaya into the
88
askeri ciass becomes necessary, the reaya are diminished and the way is paved for a diminution
in treasury receipts. Through these means the structure of the Sublime State is corrupted. The
treasury exists through the abundance of the reaya. . . . The state exists through them and the
revenues collected from them.
In the simplest terms, this view held that in Ottoman society everyone had his place. It was the
sultan’s function to keep everyone in his place, and the sultan who did this was a just sultan
who deserved to be obeyed. Seventeenth- century Ottomans were well aware that the equilibrium so
essential to Islamic society had been disturbed and that therein lay the root of Ottoman
difficulties. If they could discover the sources of disequilibrium, remove them, and return the
state to what it had been under Suleiman the Magnificent, equilibrium would be restored. The
examination started seriously with a few writers in the late sixteenth century and continued
during the seventeenth century. Throughout this time the writers were agreed that the
fundamental factors in the state’s debility were a serious decline in the sultan's authority, a
breakdown in the timar and devshirme systems that resulted in the line between the askeri and
the reaya being blurred, and a tendency for people to forsake their places. These factors, it
was agreed, had far-reacliing ramifications throughout the state’s political and social
structure,
DISRUPTION Just as the ideas that formed the circle of equity were IN THE TIMAR interrelated, so,
too, were 'the factors involved in the SYSTEM debility of the state. A good starting point for
an analysis of the infirmity afflicting Ottoman society is the breakdown of the timar system.
The system was one of the institutions most responsible for the state’s early and continued
military success and for its sound internal administration. Commencing in the last years of
the sixteenth century the timar system no longer functioned at anywhere near its former level
of efficiency. At that time inflation began to affect the Ottoman domains, and the financial
position of the timar-holders began to erode. Timar incomes were fixed, and the government was
in no position
89
Norman Itzkowitz. Ottoman Emoire and Islamic Tradition. 1980
EXPANSION OF THE JANISSARY CORPS
OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ISLAMIC TRADITION
to increase their value and thereby close the inflationary gap. Squeezed between the millstones
of set stipends and rising prices, many timar-holders could no longer afford to go on campaign.
Their grants were then revoked. Others were forced simply to abandon their holdings.
Disgruntled, they fled to the cities or swelled the growing ranks of bandit groups that were
pillaging the countryside. Revoked and abandoned timars fell into the hands of leading janissaries, influential slaves of the Porte, and palace favorites. Some reaya even acquired timars
illegally, through bribery. In the mid-seventeenth century several leading janissary officers,
including ex-commanders of the janissary corps, somehow managed appointments as chief financial
officer of the empire, under whose control were the bureaus that substantiated title to timars
and issued the appropriate documents to timar-holders. This office had been held by officials
trained in the bureaucracy. For a janissary commander to assume the post was a flagrant example
of the disruption of harmony and was no doubt related to the tendency for timars to be awarded
to people outside the feudal cavalry body. Corruption at the top was constantly railed against
by Ottoman writers, and it bore out the truth embodied in the Turkish proverb, “the fish begins
to stink at the head,"
As military strength weakened and wealth diminished, justice also declined. The new timarholders oppressed and exploited the reaya, extorting as much as they could in the form of higher
taxes and new levies, while shirking the required military service. As a result the feudal
cavalry was greatly diminished in size and fighting efficiency, the reaya were ground down in
misery, the state treasury began to show mounting deficits, public security in the provinces
degenerated, and men of non-dsfeeri origins entered the military class in increasing numbers.
With the deterioration of the feudal cavalry, the military needs of the empire had to be met by
other means. Those means were primarily a dramatic increase in the number of the janissary corps
and the Sipahis of the Porte. In 1527 the number of janissaries stood at close to 8,000;
90
Ottoman Consciousness
by 1609 the number had mounted to almost 38,000, nearly a fivefold increase in less than a
century. A similar increase took place among the Sipahis of the Forte. Their strength rose from
5,000 to almost 21,000 in the same years. Although there is no way to be certain, it would
appear that most of the increase in both those organizations stemmed from the enrollment of the
sons of janissaries and Sipahis of the Porte. Some of the reaya also found their way into the
military class.
Loud complaints were raised against the entrance of the reaya into the military class, for
thereby they escaped their tax obligations and undermined the circle of equity. Opposition to
the enrollment of janissary sons and the sons of members of other corps was more muted and in
many quarters was looked upon as a virtue. Their enrollment into the janissaries and other corps
was a natural outgrowth of the process set in motion by Selim I and his successor Suleiman the
Magnificent, both of whom relaxed the regulations that prohibited the janissaries from marrying.
Those janissaries who married then pressured the government into condoning the enrollment of
their sons into the corps. Other slaves of the Porte followed.
The problems arising from the enrollment of janissary sons into the corps were more subtle and
less immediately discernible than those connected with the upward mobility of reaya into the
military class. The ghulam system, of which the janissary corps was an integral part, had as its
rationale the development of a body of men devoted solely to the sultan’s service. When other
considerations entered into the lives of the janissaries, such as concern for their own
families, their dedication to the sultan's cause began to wane. Janissaries became less willing
to undergo the rigors of extended campaigns into distant lands, and instead sought connections
in commerce and trade. Forging links with business leaders, they became closely allied with the
economies of Istanbul and the garrison towns in which they were stationed. They grew rich,
powerful, and more independent. The unruliness of the janissaries and the enrollment of their
sons into the corps took its toll on the training and military performance of the corps. Disci91
Norman Itzkowitz. Ottoman Emmre and Islamic Tradition. 1980
OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ISLAMIC TRADITION
Ottoman Consciousness
SEKBANS AND CELAL1S
pline eroded, and the men became extremely recalcitrant.
As the competence of the janissaries declined, theii monetary demands rose. Janissary pay,
ceremonially distributed once every three months, fell seriously into arrears early in the
seventeenth century when the central treasury began to experience severe financial difficulties.
Late payments and payments in debased coinage, which amounted to an enforced cut in salary, led
to numerous uprisings, especially in Istanbul. It had also been customary for each sultan to
extend a cash bonus to the janissaries upon his accession to the throne. The gift was presented
in a ceremony during which the sultan toasted the troops with a glass of sherbet, promising to
salute them again in Rome. As the janissaries became a more powerful factor in internal politics
and as changes in reign became more frequent, they forced the sultans to increase the size of
their accession donations, in what might be considered a cost-of-living adjustment. The monetary
demands of the increased numbers of janissaries put mounting pressure on the central treasury
which resulted in a heavier hand being applied on the reaya, and that in turn produced more
trouble in the provinces.
Provincial unrest had been a prominent feature of Ottoman life since the 1560s. It was
associated in many ways with the military difficulties of the empire and concomitant social and
financial problems. These interrelated ills are seen in microcosm in the series of rebellions,
known as the celMi revolts, that swept Anatolia in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries.
Some of the origins of the celMi revolts are found in the military measures taken by the
Ottomans to cope more effectively with the Hapsburg forces, which had been equipped with
firearms. One measure taken was to train segments of the enlarged janissary corps in the use of
firearms. Another was the organization of a new body of troops, called sekbarn, who were armed
with muskets and gained a reputation as sharpshooters. They were recruited in the late sixteenth
century from among landless peasants, dispossessed timar-holders, and Anatolian nomads. The
92
central government enrolled these sharpshooters in cavalry and infantry units. Their salaries
were covered by new sources of funds derived from tax farms created out of vacant timars.
Additional sekbans were recruited by the provincial governors, who took them into their own
services, as they had done with slaves in earlier centuries. These provincial sekbans were
contributed to the sultan’s army as part of the governor’s own military obligation. The
provincial governors were empowered to levy a special tax on the peasants for the maintenance of
the sekbans under their banners. When the sekbans were sent back to Anatolia at the conclusion
of a campaign, however, they received no pay. When these unemployed troops could find no work in
Anatolia, they swelled the ranks of rebel gangs who had turned to brigandage, forcibly levying
taxes on town and village dwellers, ravaging the countryside, and creating general havoc.
Between 1595 and 1610 these brigands terrorized Anatolia. The sultan's authority was reduced
to nothing. Real power was in the hands of the brigand leaders. They were able to put as many as
20,000 men into the field against the forces of the central government. Such a situation could
not be allowed to continue. The sultan sent his most dependable forces against the brigands and
subdued them between 1607 and 1610.
Janissaries and Sipahis of the Porte were then stationed in the main towns to continue the
pacification of Anatolia. There they followed the same patterns they had developed in Istanbul.
They established ties with the leading elements in the local society, engaged in trade and
commerce, married into the influential families, and eventually dominated the local scene. When
the central government’s hold oyer the provinces grew weaker and weaker in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, these new figures developed into the leaders, known as notables {ayan), of
provincial society.
CAUSES Population Growth Ottoman writers have attributed the empire’s troubles to the dissolution
of the circle of equity, and specifically to the erosion of the sultan’s authority, the
disruption of the timar system, and the
93
Norman Itzkowitz. Ottoman EmDire and Islamic Tradition. 1980
OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ISLAMIC TRADITION
demise of the devshirme. In reality they were describing symptoms rather than causes. At the
root of the problems were several complex causes. One of those causes was a serious population
explosion that began in the sixteenth century. Population growth appears to have outstripped the
increase in new lands brought under cultivation, creating a large group of landless peasants
with very little opportunity for earning a livelihood. They supplied much of the manpower in the
sekban companies, where they were exposed to combat and the use of firearms. It was only a
natural progression for them to use these skills for banditry when they returned to unemployment
in Anatolia. This challenge to the sultan’s authority did not escape the eyes of Ottoman
writers, but the underlying demographic changes were beyond their comprehension.
Inflation Another cause of the problems was inflation. State income was derived mainly from
agricultural revenues and was predicated upon a stable currency. The Ottoman economy was a
regulated one in which the marketplace was carefully supervised: weights and measures, prices
and profits, imports and exports, guilds and raw materials were all under close government
scrutiny. The state acted as a sort of mediator between the manufacturer and the consumer.
The state sought to dominate all trade routes in its area in order to increase customs
receipts, deny its enemies access to necessary war material, and ensure itself of a steady flow
of vital goods. One of the largest consumers of those goods was the state itself, especially the
huge palace complex at Istanbul, and the military. In the interests of the state two price
structures prevailed: one was the going market price and the other the government price, which
was generally about 25 percent lower.
Ottoman prices remained reasonably stable until 1580, when severe inflation, traced to the
influx of cheap Peruvian silver, started to affect the empire. The government resorted to
several expedients, including debasing the currency (which only reinforced the inflationary
trend), seizing the estates of exiled or executed pashas, raising taxes, and extending tax
farming. None of these measures had
94
Ottoman Consciousness
much effect. Inflation in the Ottoman Empire kept pace with that in Europe, where prices doubled
between 1550 and 1600 and by 1650 they were triple those of 1600. Although the capitation tax
rose from 25 akchas in Suleiman s reign to 150 akchas in 1596, a sixfold increase, and would
double again within another century, the treasury still showed mounting deficits. Extraordinary
taxes (ava- rid), levied previously only in emergencies, were converted into an annual tax on
all subjects. Assessed at 50 akchas in 1576, it rose to 240 akchas in only a quarter of a century, and still the insatiable treasury growled for more. Just how severe the inflation was can
be judged by the fact that in 1564 it took approximately 60 akchas to equal one gold ducat, and
by 1648 the exchange rate had doubled. The terrible effects of such rampant inflation were felt
both in the provinces and in the central government. The Ottomans were aware of these effects,
but short of conjuring up a successful alchemist who could change base metal to gold (alchemy
enjoyed a serious revival in this period), the state could find no ready remedy.
End of Conquests Population growth and inflation, compelling as they are as causes for the
empire’s decay, were only strands in the web of causation. The dominating cause was the fact
that by the end of Suleiman the Mag- nificent’s reign the age of Ottoman conquests had come to a
grinding halt. The last significant conquests in the West were Cyprus, which fell in 1570, and
Crete, taken in 1664. Although there was considerable fighting in Persia, the Ottomans failed to
hold any of the territories gained in battle. The Ottoman state was predicated upon, committed
to, and organized for conquest. Conquest had provided wealth in the form of new lands for timar
grants and for agriculture, more positions for those in bureaucratic and religious careers,
additional manpower for the devshirme, and booty of infinite variety. Opportunities for
financial reward on the expanding frontier had served to drain off potentially turbulent
elements in the population. An end to significant and sustained conquest rocked the entire state
structure and sent aftershocks through all its insti95
Norman Itzkowitz. Ottoman Emoire and Islamic Tradition. 1980
OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ISLAMIC TRADITION
tutions. Henceforth, candidates for timars were accommodated mainly through the death of
incumbent timar-holders. A crisis in the religious institutions was unavoidable, because the
religious schools had overexpanded and enrolled far too many students for the reduced number of
jobs that were available. Dissident Muslim seminary students joined the disaffected in the towns
and countryside, challenging the authority of the state. The central government’s monetary needs
had to be met by increasing the tax burden on an already overburdened population, which would in
turn feed the fires of unrest. Devshirme levies became more difficult to raise from the limited
areas already depleted of their young males by earlier enrollments. The frontier was converted
from an area in which hopefuls found advancement and fortune into a place where martyrdom was
the only reward.
96
Ottoman Consciousness
Notions of Islamic superiority had been further enhanced by the passing of the Islamic
millennium. As the Muslim year 1000 A.H. (October 19, 1591-October 7, 1592) approached, there
were dire predictions about the worlds cataclysmic end. When none of the predictions were
fulfilled, the Ottomans took that as a sign of God’s approbation and as evidence that the
Ottoman Empire had achieved the greatest perfection of any Islamic state. Therefore, there was
little the Ottomans could leam from others. This closing of the mind was taking place at the
time when crucial scientific and technological changes were taking place in Europe, and as the
Ottomans smugly patted themselves on the back the gap between Europe and the empire widened.
Geographical and Logistical Limitations Ottoman complacency was only one of the factors involved
in the loss of their knack for conquest: there were others of perhaps even greater significance.
Once the Ottomans had settled upon Constantinople as their capital and made it the premier city
in the Islamic world, they had inexorably fixed the limits of their expansion. They were
dependent upon oxen, camels, and horses to transport the bulk of their military supplies, and
their military organization required the feudal cavalry to disband usually by the end of
October. With the standing army increasingly centered in Istanbul, Vienna in the west and Tabriz
in the east represented the furthest limits of a season’s campaigning. The Ottoman army moved
quickly despite the state of the roads it had to traverse, the adverse weather conditions, and
the means of transport at its disposal, but it still was not quick enough. In 1529 Suleiman and
his huge army left Istanbul on May 10, and did not reach Vienna until September 26, over four
months later. This left them at best only about a month in which to capture Vienna before the
end of campaigning season. On October 15 the Ottoman retreat began, with Vienna still
unconquered. Although the Ottomans did not recognize it at the time, the gates of Vienna
represented the high-water mark of their westward expansion. They carried on the struggle
97
Norman Itzkowitz. Ottoman Emoire and Islamic Tradition. 1980
(^pO§)
41
2-i 8
The Transformation of the Eighteenth Century
The Sened-i Ittifak: 1808
More than half a century passed between the revolts of the 1730s and 1740s' " to the coup d’etat
of 1807—1808 against Selim III — a reformist sultan - which was the third event that shook the
relative calm of Istanbul. The coup against the sultan brought the best men of the provinces to
the imperial center, the first such case of direct intervention from the provinces. The renowned
notable Alemdar (or Bayraktar) Mustafa Pasha arrived in Istanbul with his provincial army to
restore Selim III to his throne, and became instrumental instead in the establishment of Mahmud
EL I return to these tumultuous events in the capital after briefly reviewing the antecedents
that brought the periphery to the center.
In the post-Tulip period, two crucial developments came to maturation. First, the fiscal
system of the late seventeenth century — initiated to collect money for the treasury — altered
traditional sources of income into life-term tax farming, opening the way for the purchase of
numerous sources of revenue by private individuals alone or in association with others. Lifeterm tax farming empowered a wealthy set of Istanbul elites and bureaucrats who bought these tax
farms in the provinces, but farmed them out to provincial notables {ayan), who became their
astute local entrepreneurs. Locally, these notables managed to take over both the lands and the
administrative functions of the traditional elite, also currying favor with the state to assume
important revenue-collecting positions. From the modest local notables who acquired positions
and served the state loyally to the wealthy and powerful notables who threatened the local rule
of the state, the provinces were strewn with these new landholders and tax collectors.4i They
developed their own households, patronage systems, local political culture, and local armies,
which they headed to help the sultan at war when they felt so inclined.
Second, with the impact of a new world of trade engaging especially the western shores of the
empire,’ these local notables and administrators became emboldened turning their tax farming
into commercial enterprises, poised to profit. Internal fiscal reform and external commercial
opportunities altered the social and administrative landscape of the provinces. The traditional
forces of administration and taxation, the provincial landholding system and its managers, and
the timar holders were disappearing. The traditional functions of the state in the provinces
were now taken over by these increasingly powerful local notables, who were organized as
extended regional networks of family, kinship, and patronage ties, ensconced in the changing
structure of land tenure and commercial expansion. The 1808 Agreement (Sened-i ittifak) was the
fin- de-siecle episode of the most powerful among these men arriving in Istanbul to sign a
political document of state—notable truce and cooperation, following their comrade from Rumelia,
Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha.
At the center, Selim IH (1789—1807) had come to power at a moment when the peripheries of the
empire, both the near periphery of the Balkans and the
41 Chapter 7 is devoted to an analysis of these state-society processes.
An Eventful Eighteenth Century: Empowering the Political
farther Arab provinces, were feeling the tension between the administration of
e state and that of the local notables. Rumblings of regional rebellions for autonomy emerged.
In the Balkans, the notables were competing for territory and influence, often bringing the
state into their local struggles. Local rule by he agents °f the center was increasingly varied:
weakening in certain areas while steady and strong in others. For example, in the Serbian
provinces, the Janissaries ran amok, but in the Bosnian provinces, law and order prevailed due
to good central-local administration 43 Yet, within this widespread variation of rule, movements
for autonomy such as that of the Serbs and the Greeks emerged. In other regions, the near
separation of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq became
o vital importance. It is in this atmosphere that Selim HI commenced a series or reforms, the
most important of which was organized around the military el™ forked on the reorganization of a
new military in comparative secrecy with the knowledge of a few reformer administrators; this
indicated that they were worned about the potential reaction of the conservative Janissary
forces an the ulema. For both groups, such reforms represented threats to the traditional order.
Furthermore, that Selim was able to replenish his new army with soldiers and resources from
among the provincial armies also demonstrates that there were among the powerful notables those
who supported the new
young sultan in his endeavor to reform the more traditional and reactionary iorces at the
center.44
A delicate and precarious balance between opponents and supporters of Selim s regime ensued as
enemies of reform multiplied in the provinces and in Istanbul. The Ottomans had forever promoted
power struggles on the periphery under the belief that local and regional struggles for control
between different powerful notables was healthy and would deflect opposition to the state. At
the same time, they also used armies of notables for the protection of the provinces and as
another reserve of military recruits during war. The unintended consequence of such policies was
that when a notable accumulated local power and military might and decided to turn against the
state, he could cause significant damage to the empure. Complicating Selim’s reform initiatives
further was the Russian movement into the Danubian principalities in 1806, the culmination of
Russian interference in the affairs of the Christian population of the Balkans, where they
fomented discontent and also created alliances with the Muslim magnates of the periphery,
especially in Egypt and northern Anatolia.
In the capital, the supporters and the enemies of reform battled among themselves until a coup
led by the Janissaries supported by the ulema gave the upper hand to the enemies of reform. The
coup was achieved on 2,5 May
4! r66
°,f0man mitary Administration in Eighteenth-Century Bosnia.
smail Hakki Uzun?ar5ila, Me$hur Rumeli Ayanlanndan Tirsinikli Ismail, Ythk Oglu Siileyman
h
?"°mn Empm und" s“*®> m. I7S,-,So7 (Cambridge, MA2 2.0
The Transformation of the Eighteenth Century
1807, when the reformer Raif Mahmud Pasha went to the headquarters of the old yamak troops to
pay their salaries and to urge them to join the new army created by Selim III and his men.
Instead, the soldiers savagely killed the pasha. The conservative forces fighting against change
were at the forefront of the coup; the Janissaries were afraid that the new army, the Nizam-i
Cedid, was going to put them out of business; the ulema, meanwhile, steadfastly believed in the
evils of European influence in reform. By z 8 May, various contingents of the Istanbul military
forces were having “a spirited debate over the legality of their actions, before all agreeing to
join the rebellion at the Janissary barracks.4* Many reformers were executed, the reforms
abolished, and, finally, only after the tensions and the hazards of keeping Selim III as sultan
mounted, he was dethroned to make way for Mustafa IV on 29 May 1807.
This rebellion and treachery of the Janissaries launched a coordinated response from the
provinces, an alliance of the ayan of Rumelia and Anatolia marching in unison under the
leadership of Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha, the most powerful notable of Ottoman Europe. The
political divisions in Istanbul, the coup against Selim IQ, the ruin in the Balkans, and the
increasing threat of the Russians came together to propel responsible notables into action. In
the chaos of the palace and the confrontation between the new sultan and the leader of the
provinces, Selim IH was assassinated, thus depriving the counter-coup forces of their most
important asset. The provincial leaders reacted quickly to install instead Mahmud II {1808-1839)
to the throne, removing Mustafa for his younger cousin. Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha became the grand
vizier of the new sultan and proceeded once again to gather reformers around him. From July to
November 1808, Bayraktar remained the dominant force in the empire. Soon after becoming grand
vizier, he appealed to his provincial comrades to come to the capital for a special session
(me§veret-i amme) to discuss the affairs of the state. That he invited his former colleagues to
this assembly is interesting in itself because it demonstrates the realization by a man of the
provinces of the need to coopt the provinces into a project of the center. From this
extraordinary meeting emerged the document entitled “Sened-i Ittifak,” a political agreement
between state and provincial magnates.
The Sened-i Ittifak (literally, a deed of alliance or a concord) was the first of its kind in
political deal making in the Ottoman Empire. The Sened was the political culmination of the
provincial march on Istanbul, yet was negotiated within the context of strong state and societal
actors. Those historians who have emphasized the power of the ayan to the detriment of the state
have a tendency to see the end point of this century — the takeover by Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha
and the 1808 Sened-i Ittifak - as catastrophic for state affairs. They see these events as
heralding a serious loss of state power, and especially for those historians interested in
nationalism, this historical moment signals a green light for local/regional movements of selfdetermination. Others argue
Shaw, Between Old and New, 380.
An Eventful Eighteenth Century: Empowering the Political
zzi
for the relative insignificance of the event.*6 The Sened-i ittifak represented a pakCf.signed
between the state and the ayan with respect to their mutual responsibilities. In fact, careful
study of the documents related to the pact provides us with an alternative explanation of
centralization, espoused especially by one Turkish scholar, I. H. Uzun^argili, who claims that
the Grand Vizier Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha strove to centralize the empire. I agree that
reassembling these important nodes of local power under state supervision would certainly be a
goal of centralization.
Centralization was necessary to reassert control over European provinces. Prior to the reign
of Selim HI, especially the European parts of the empire
k if'jngC<^ int° anarc^' k1 t^ie I79°sJ the infamous notable Pasvanoglu rebelled against the Ottoman
state and its military reforms; many ayan operated rebellious armies and with the increasing
presence of bandits, Macedonia and Thrace had fallen into complete disarray.47 Centralization was
also necessary to pull in as many local power holders as possible, reaffirming their role as
agents of the state. Among them, those who opposed the reforms of the state perceived the
efforts at centralization and the creation of alternative armies as a direct threat to their
well-established provincial rights and privileges. Certainly the relationship between the state
and the ayan of Vidin, Pasvanoglu, suggests that the animosity was the result of the state’s
attempt to forge alternative sources of regional power in the provinces. Others however, in
Rumelia and many m Anatolia had forged alliances with the state and remained loyal. Among those
m Rumelia, Tirsiniklioglu promoted Selim m’s reforms, and Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha - despite some
early hesitation, especially during the Russian
Norman Itzkowitz, for example, delineates the eighteenth century with two events; the 1703
hdirne rebellion and the 1808 Sened-i ittifak. He interprets the latter as one more deadly nail
in the Ottoman state’s coffin, whereby a weak state made an agreement with strong feudal
interests. Furthermore, in his view, this agreement is the first time old Islamic traditions of
government and society were forever altered. See Norman Itzkowitz, “Men and Ideas in the
Eighteenth Century Ottoman Empire,” in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Islamic History, ed.
Thomas Naff and Roger Owen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 15-2.6.
Furthermore, whereas both Halil Inalcik and Kemal Karpat wrote early on about the Sened-i
Ittifakm much more balanced terms, they have been ignored. See Halil inalcik, “Sened-i Ittifak
ve Giilhane Hatt-i Hiimayunu,” Belle ten 28 (October 1964): 603-690; Kemal Karpat, “The'
Land Regime, Social Structure and Modernization in the Ottoman Empire,” in Beginnings of
Modernization in the Middle East, ed. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers (Chicago- The
University of Chicago Press, 1*68), 69-90; idem, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State,
1789 1908,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 3 (1971): 143-281. §erif Mardin
barely points to the r8o8 pact, en passant in a footnote, declaring it to be “a burst of selfassernveness on the part of the Ayans.” See §erif Mardin, “Power, Civil Society, and Culture in
the Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11 (1969): 278-279, n. 2.
For another overview of the historical events leading up to the pact and a description of the
discussions around the pact, see Uzunfar§ih, Me$hur Rumeli Ayanlanndan Tirsinikli Ismail,
or a good overview of the chaos in the Balkans, see Deena Sadat, “Urban Notables in the
to
A ^yann PkD- dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ,
Transf0imatl0n of the Bektashi Corps in the Eighteenth Century,”
Th/lTr
The Muslim World 63 (July 1973): 206-219.
2ZZ
The Transformation of the Eighteenth Century
campaigns - had come around to supporting the sultan. In Anatolia, among the most significant
supporters of the reforms were the ay an with. the_.most power and wealth, Karaosmanoglu and
Qapanoglu.48 Therefore, by the end of Selim DTs reign, despite the varying allegiances in the
Balkans and Anatolia, there were still key notables who had tied their fortunes to those of the
sultan. And for those men, there was no substitute.
These regional men were key to reestablishing order at the center. Their intervention at the
center of imperial politics did not result in a takeover by the ayan; on the contrary, it was an
act of loyalty to the state whereby they tried to reinforce the order they perceived to be
legitimate. When Selim III was dethroned, Bayraktar and his friends/fellow ayan KLes Amis de
Roustchouk,” as Miller calls them, went to Istanbul in 1807—1808 to redress the situation,
reinstate Selim HI, and help him revitalize his reforms. They were organizing, in effect, a
counter—coup in support of the Sultan, but against those who wanted a change in government. When
the sultan was executed at the hands of the conservative alliance, Bayraktar put the young
Mahmud H on the throne and took over the affairs of the state as the new grand vizier. His
intention was to unite the provincial elements with the reformists in Istanbul, and thereby
strengthen the reign of Mahmud EL The Sened-i Ittifak was the pact that resulted when Bayraktar
Mustafa Pasha, the new grand vizier, convened all of the large ayan of Rumelia and Anatolia. Not
many came, but those who did were among the most powerful ayan of Rumelia and Anatolia, the
brokers who held state positions and wielded great local power. Despite their known allegiance
to the Ottoman state, these ayan showed up with their private armies, ready for all
eventualities.45 The result of many days of deliberations was a pledge of loyalty to the Ottoman
state and an agreement to remain on the course of reform, and therefore to back the reformists
within the government. In return, the ayan got a promise of autonomy only in the sense that they
were now fully recognized as regional powers, respected in their positions, and provided with a
sense of freedom of action.
The original speech by Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha both provided an explanation for interference
from the periphery and put the actions of the ayan into context. Bayraktar justified the
rebellious attitudes of the ayan during the reign of Selim UI and presented their presence at
the court as an act of generosity toward the state and Islam. The warriors of Islam, he argued,
had become
48 Shaw tells us that Karaosmanoglu supported Selim ID and his Nizam-i Cedid aimy not only by
supplying money and men to the corps in Istanbul, but also by accepting officers to train his
men m the new forms of warfare. Similarly, Capanoglu engaged in Nizam-i Cedid formation and
support. Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and Newt The Ottoman Empire under Sultan beltm III,
1789-1807 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 2.15.
Uzun^ih counts seven ayan at the events: the ayan from Bilecik, Kalyoncu Mustafa; the ayan from
Mams a, Karaosmanoglu Omer Aga; Capanoglu Siileyman Bey; the ayan of §ile, Ahmed Aga the
voyvodaoi Bolu, Haci Ahmedoglu Seyid Ibrahim Aga; the ayan of Serres, Ismail Bey?
ayln°!?mneG’MusCafa SeeUzunfaxjili,MeghurRumeliAyanlanndan TirsimkU ismatl, 138, Ihese men were
supporters of state policy.
An Eventful Eighteenth Century: Empowering the Political
weakened and had to unite in order to glorify the faith and the empire. The
general tone was that these actions were for the “good of the state,” rather
than m the interests of the ayan.^ However, the language and the spTritfoftRe"
speech were regional; Bayraktar addressed the ayan in their language and style
and appealed to their popular understanding. Consequently, he successfully
brought into the fold of the state those who clearly stood at the interface of
r
state and society, and sent them back out again to preach order and incorporation.
t
The text of the agreement certainly confirms the sense that the strength of the state was
preserved and that the ayan were given what they had already wrested or themselves. The 1808
agreement has often superficially been compared to the Magna Carta; however, this is erroneous.
Unlike the Magna Carta of
m whic!1 tiie king was assailed by numerous grievances by the nobles, the Ottoman document shows no such
contentious spirit. It is also incorrect to assume that the Sened-i Ittifak was the direct
result of the struggles between state and notables. Conflict between these state and societal
actors existed, yet those notables who came to Istanbul were in agreement with the state; that
is, they were not its real opponents.51 It is also worth looking at the beginning of these
documents, especially the Ottoman one that starts with an appreciation of the institution of the
state, and the English document that asserts the freedom and liberty of the church and all free
men. That the Ottoman document started y underlining the special place of the sultan and the
state, the importance of the protection of the state, and the need for submission to the
authority
0 the sultan and the grand vizier was indicative of the centralization agenda.
1 he benefits for the central state were apparent: the reinforcement of the new
armies; the phasing out of the Janissaries by decreasing their salaries even
further, thereby giving them practically no choice but to join the new military
units and retrain; and financial repackaging of some taxes for further military
use. The center had furthermore succeeded to appeal to the periphery, forcing it to retrain
&
itself.
For the notables, the pact did not represent much change in their practices. ayan who
participated in this meeting were already the most important ones, and had in many different
ways ensured that their sons and - even more consequential - their larger kinship network
enjoyed the privileges of their omrnant positions after they had passed away. In practice, they
had already established a kind of “feudality.”5* They had informally established rights
50
Pr°Vuder theiC°mplete teXt of sPeech- See Uzunfarsiii, Me^hur Rumeli Ayanlarmdan Ttrstmklz I,mail, I4I-x4z. For a French translation, see A. F. Miller, who presents
hlBayraktar at the opening session of the conference of ayan. See
Sf M
Miller, Mustapba Pacha Bairaktar, 31 i-m •
11 See Footnote 48.
^
T°US ?3C,USS1°nS °f the Ka^manoglu family of western Anatolia.
qU1
e" P0SB t0 ** S°DS’ but ^
the prominence of
toffmilv
7
te family m key administrative posts. ^ brothers and sons of Mustafa Aga, for example
maintained posts in the region and struggled to keep these titles against other ayan.
’
The Transformation of the Eighteenth Century
and privileges over weaker and smaller ayan. These prerogatives were often enacted through the
alliance of a few strong ayan pooling their resources to subordinate others.S3 As I show in
Chapter 7, the notables who had come to Istanbul to throw their support to the grand vizier and
the young sultan were well established. They had little to fear. They had woven strong
horizontal networks of association and vertical lines of patronage that both protected them from
above among the grandees of the state and created exploitative networks of production. Nothing
in the agreement gave these men new powers. Ail the Sened-i ittifak did was encode this power in
more public ways.
Yet, this agreement between state and notables was quite significant in other ways. It
unmistakably represented a shift from a pattern of deal making between the state and the
individual notable family to deal making between the state and a group of elites, who seemingly
acted in concert. The main advantage to the ayan was not the concessions the state made, but
rather their recognition of the efficacy of concerted action. For the first time, the ayan
understood that they could act in unison and were empowered by the show of force that they had
inadvertently demonstrated. By calling them to Istanbul, the grand vizier had opened the door
for collective bargaining, a circumstance without much precedent in Ottoman history. As the
notables came to the collective realization of the power of the message sent by thousands of men
gathered at the doors of Istanbul, awaiting orders from their masters, the ayan, Mahmud II also
understood the significance of such joint action of resistance to the state. Then and there must
have come his resolve that the state could very well act to retrieve these privileges by waging
war on the ayan. He showed much reluctance to sign the Sened document. Soon after, Sultan Mahmud
II would reassert his and the state’s power by waging war first against the most visible and the
most powerful of the ayan. Aii Pasha of Tanina (Tepedelenli).
Given such an analysis of the events that led up to the reign of Mahmud II and the pact with
the ayan, it is difficult to interpret this history as one of decentralization. The Sened-i
Ittifak was a prelude to the much stronger efforts of consolidation of the nineteenth century.
It represented an important attempt to convince those regional brokers most likely to be
convinced, and to establish a covenant enabling reforms to be carried out with relative peace
and quiet. For the state then, the Sened-i ittifak may not have been a complete political
victory, but certainly it was a political act of consolidation. For the ayan, the Sened-i
Ittifak also was not a political victory, but an event that demonstrated their potential
relational power. The peripheral elites had come to the center, empowered by horizontal ties,
but saw their interest anew in bolstering central power over which they now had much sway.
53 ^.ls said ttat Tirsmiklioglu Ismail Aga of Rusfuk had allied with Osman Pasha Pasvanoglu of
idm in a regional coalition to ensure themselves the role of appointing ayan to positions in
tneir regions, thereby constructing their own patronage networks.
An Eventful Eighteenth Century: Empowering the Political
225
Conclusion
From 1703 to 1730 to 1808, the unfolding of the eighteenth century tells an important story of
political empowerment, of societal forces at different moments in different alliances forging an
opposition to the state that saw its goal as reform. Reform, however, was defined in multiple
ways through the course of this history. It came to mean a return to the old Siileymanic age as
well as just its opposite, an acknowledgment of the need to espouse Western knowledge and
practices. The meaning of reform very much depended on the orces trying to control state
politics. When it was the Janissaries and ulema at the helm of opposition, reform was a return
to the social and political order of the classical age as defined by the actors themselves. It
conceived of bounded institutions, separation of realms and groups in society, and the
remstitution of imperial notions of conquest and territoriality. At the hands of such
conservative religious forces, an increasingly narrow Sunni orthodoxy would be protected and
perfected by the increasingly centralized institution ot the ilmiyye. In contrast, reform at the
hands of Selim III, Mahmud II, and the powerful interlocutors of the state in regional politics
meant continued flexibility at adapting and absorbing new developments, perhaps beyond a
contmued understanding of institutional continuity between the Ottomans and the West. In these
contrasting views of reform, we have to conclude that an important segment of the provincial
elites of 1808 acted in concert to stop the reactionaries at the center, and, as such, they made
possible another round ot more important reforms that were to be carried out by Mahmud E, the
Tanzimat. Notables then proved to be the more flexible element of the empire at this moment,
struggling against those who resisted change and adaptation. Chapter 7 further clarifies the
reasons behind the pragmatism of this new class of actors. In the eighteenth century, these
actors had acquired the capability for important economic and social growth and development, and
it seemed to be m their interest to maintain the order that provided them with such privilege.
Erik J. Ziircher. TURKEY: A Modern History
3 1093 8061553 6
TURKEY
A Modern History
ERIK J. ZURCHER
I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd Publishers London * New York
Erik J. Zurcher. TURKEY: A Modern History
3- The Early Years of Sultan Mahmut II: the centre tries to regain control
Mahmut II had been a witness both to the limited successes of the Nizam-i Cedid and to the fall
and death of his cousin Selim. He seems to have learnt his lessons well and also to have been a
much more adept tactician. He started from an extremely weak position. He had been put into
power by the Bayraktar, who himself was no longer there, and the only reason Mahmut II was left
on the throne was that there was no other male successor available. He therefore had to move
circumspecdy and spent the first 15 years of his reign establishing a power base. This meant
appointing trusted supporters to key positions in the scribal service, the ulema hierarchy and
the army. His second aim was the reduction of the semi-independent ayan who had brought him to
power. This he to a large extent accomplished. Between 1812 and 1817 the major Anatolian
notables were brought under control, and between 1814 and 1820 the same happened in the Balkans.
In Kurdistan the process took longer, but there too the power of the practically independent
Kurdish princes, the Mirs who had ruled over large tribal coalitions, was eventually broken.
Here, the existing tribal structure of society meant that the removal of the princes and the
inability of the central Ottoman government to replace them with effective central control led
to a long period of anarchy, in which authority reverted to the tribal chiefs and to the
religious leaders who built up their authority as mediators in inter-tribal conflicts. In the
Arab provinces the restoration of Ottoman government authority over the notables took place only
later, in the 1840s.
The methods employed in subduing the ayan, in the age-old Ottoman tradition, were peaceful where
possible (bribes were given,
THE EARLY YEARS OF SULTAN MAHMUT II
33
hostages taken, divisions among the notables ably exploited). Open warfare was used only as a
last resort, and then it was that of the traditional military establishment: mainly the
Janissaries. It is important to understand that, while the sultan was slowly strengthening his
hold on the government, he had not yet broken with the scribal or military establishment. While
proponents of reform were put into more and more important positions, the most powerful
politician of these early years of Mahmut’s reign was Halet Efendi, a member of the ulema and
former ambassador to Paris, with a generally conservative oudook. He was close to the
Janissaries and his efforts at, and success in, subjugating the ayan can be seen as being
motivated by a desire to strengthen the position of the Janissary garrisons in the provinces,
which were the great competitors of the notables.
Lost territories: Serbia, Greece, Egypt
Mahmut and his servants succeeded in re-establishing control over most of the central Ottoman
lands, but in a few important cases they failed. In 1804 the insurrection led by Kara George
broke out in Serbia against the excesses of the local Janissary garrisons. The government of
Selim III, engaged in its own struggle with the Janissaries, had condoned the insurrection, but
after the elimination of the garrisons the movement developed into one aimed at Serbian
autonomy. In spite of some modest Russian support for the Serbs, the Ottoman army suppressed the
movement in 1813. Two years later, however, it flared up again and this time the new Serbian
leader, MiioS Obrenovii, reached agreement with the Ottomans on autonomy for a Serbian
principality between Belgrade and Nish. The Ottomans retained the right to garrison the major
towns and to receive a yearly tribute (this, it should be remembered, amounted to the same
degree of influence as the central government had enjoyed in, for instance, Kurdistan or the
Arab provinces in the eighteenth centuiy).
The Greek insurrection which broke out in 1821 was more important for three reasons. First,
the Greek community in the empire played a crucial role in the empire’s external relations, both
economic and diplomatic. Second, from the very beginning of the insurgency many of its leaders
aimed at full independence; and third, the crisis which ensued directly involved all the major
European powers.
The Pktliki Hetairia, a Greek patriotic society founded in Odessa in 1814, had been busy over
the next few years founding cells throughout the Balkans. Kara George was at one time a member.
From 1820
Erik J. Ziircher. TURKEY: A Modern History
34
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
the organization was led by Alexander Ipsilands, a member of one of the elite Phanariote (socalled after the Phanar quarter in Istanbul) Greek families of the Ottoman Empire and himself a
general in the Russian army. In 1821 Ipsilands and his group considered the time ripe for a
full-scale insurrection, which they hoped to trigger by an invasion of Moldavia and Wallachia
{present-day Romania). Their aim was a general rebellion in the Balkans, in order to create a
new Byzantine Empire under Greek leadership, and not merely a Greek national state. The invasion
which was supposed to bring about the realization of this ambitious scheme was, however, a
disaster. The invading army was much too small (about 3000 men) and the peasant population in
Moldavia and Wallachia was never likely to side with the invaders, since the great landowners
and the governors of these provinces were traditionally from the same Phanariote families from
which Ipsilantis stemmed. For their part, many of the influential and rich Greek families of the
Ottoman Empire actually opposed the Hetairia’s nationalist aspirations.
At the same time the invasion failed, another and very different Greek insurrection began to
spread in the southernmost parts of the Balkan peninsula and on the Aegean isles. Although the
rebels were influenced by Hetairia propaganda, it was a genuine popular revolt against Ottoman
misrule. The rebels were badly organized and divided amongst themselves, but nevertheless the
Ottoman army in 1821-4 signally failed to defeat them. By 1824 almost the whole of the Morea
(the Peloponnese) and many islands were in the hands of the rebels. It has been argued that the
success of the rebellion was due in part to the fact that in 1820-22 the Ottoman government was
engaged in the military suppression of the most powerful of all the Balkan notables, Ali Pasha
of Yannina. In removing him, they also removed the only force which could effectively control
the area.
The most important territory lost to the empire in this period was the province of Egypt with
about four million inhabitants. This loss was the work of one man, the Ottoman governor of
Egypt, Mehmet Ali. In the years when Mahmut II was gradually strengthening his hold on the
government apparatus by infiltrating it with his supporters, his governor in Egypt demonstrated
what effective concentration of all power at the centre could accomplish. Mehmet Ali was an
Albanian from Kavalla (now in northern Greece), who had come to Egypt as an officer in the
Albanian contingent in the Ottoman expeditionary force against the French. In 1803 he had become
the leader of that corps
THE EARLY YEARS OF SULTAN MAHMUT II
35
and had established himself as the de facto ruler of Egypt. In 1808, he was officially
recognized as governor of Egypt by the sultan.
The French occupation had fatally weakened the position of the Mamluks, the part-Circassian,
part-Turkish military ruling elite of the country. They had been chased from lower Egypt by the
French and during the Napoleonic wars had been unable to replenish their numbers by recruiting
slaves in the areas north of the Caucasus, as had been their practice for hundreds of years. In
a sense, therefore, the French occupation had provided Mehmet Ali with a clean slate. He used
this opportunity to destroy the last vestiges of Mamluk power, massacring their leaders in the
Cairo citadel in 1811. Thereafter, he embarked on an ambitious programme of reform aimed at the
strengthening of his government.
As with Selim Ill’s Nizam-i Cedid, the main element of the programme was the creation of a
targe, modem, European-style army. This brought with it the need for larger state income through
taxation, the need for a more efficient bureaucracy to mobilize the resources of the country,
and the need for modern Westem-style education in order to create the cadres for the new army
and bureaucracy. The Ottoman reformers from Selim III and Mahmut II onwards had faced the same
dilemma; but they did not have the advantage of a situation, such as Egypt’s, in which the old
establishment had been destroyed by outside interference. Furthermore, Mehmet Ali took much more
drastic action than the early Ottoman reformers could or would undertake to solve the two main
problems which the modernization of the army entailed: lack of income and lack of dependable
manpower from outside the military establishment (the Janissaries and affiliated corps in the
Ottoman case, the Albanian forces and the Mamluks in Egypt). After some experimenting, Mehmet
Ali solved the manpower problem by a radical innovation: the introduction of conscription in
1822. The monetary problem was never completely solved, but Mehmet Ali was much more successful
than the Ottomans of his era in increasing his income to pay for the expensive new army (and
fleet). He replaced the tax-farm system with direct taxation; and he encouraged the development
of agriculture, investing in irrigation and roadworks and forcing the fanners to grow cash
crops, of which cotton became the mainstay of the Egyptian economy. Also, Mehmet Ali enlarged
the highly profitable state monopolies precisely at the time when, as we shall see, the Ottomans
were forced to abandon them.
There can be no doubt that Mehmet Ali’s example was highly
Erik 3. Zurcher. TURKEY: A Modern History
36
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
j
influential in Istanbul, both as an inspiration and as a source of rivalry.
In the early years of his reign, the sultan in his weakened position had
*
no choice but to apply for help to his most powerful subject, first to fight
j
the fundamentalist Wahhabi movement among the tribes of central I
Arabia, which threatened the Ottoman hold on the holy places of Islam,
j
Mecca and Medina, and in 1824 to help suppress the Greek rebellion,
j
something the Ottoman Janissary army was patendy incapable of doing. ^
The last phase of the Greek rebellion, war with Russia again At the request of the sultan’s
government, Egyptian troops landed in the Morea in 1825. Where the Janissaries had failed, they
were highly successful and over the next two years they conquered most of the mainland. Only the
dominance of the Greek merchant navy, which was able to supply the rebels with arms and food,
prevented a complete collapse of the rebellion. In the face of military disaster, the Greek
insurrection was now saved by European intervention. There was a great deal of sympathy with the
Greek rebels in Europe, most of all in Britain and in Russia. In Britain the sources of this
‘philhellenism’ were liberal sympathy for Greek national aspirations and admiration for
classical Greek civilization, with which the modem inhabitants of the southern Balkans were
identified. In Russia, the main motive behind the sympathy for the Greeks was religious
solidarity within the Orthodox church. This public sympathy with the rebels did not translate
into political support, except in one country: Russia.
Tsar Alexander I tried to get the other great powers of Europe to agree to intervene in the
conflict in support of the establishment of an autonomous Greece. The other powers, however,
were not enthusiastic, fearing ‘that an autonomous Greece would become a Russian puppet state.
Tsar Alexander, one of the principal architects of the international order established in 1815,
set too much store by the international ‘system’ to intervene unilaterally against the wishes of
the other powers.
This aspect of the situation changed with the death of Alexander and the accession by Nicholas
I in December 1825. The new tsar let it be known that if no agreement with the other powers
could be reached Russia would go it alone. This threat eventually had its desired effect for,
rather than see Russia intervene on its own, first Britain agreed to autonomy for Greece (in
1826) and then in June 1827 Britain, France and Russia joindy decided to intervene to force a
ceasefire on the parties (thus in effect saving the rebels).
THE EARLY YEARS OF SULTAN MAHMUT II
37
When the sultan refused to accept the mediation of the powers, their fleets first blockaded
the Ottoman and Egyptian navies in the harbour of Navarino on the western coast of the Morea
(Pelopponese), and then on 20 October destroyed them completely, cutting off the Egyptian
expeditionary force. This effectively decided the conflict, but even though Mehmet Ali agreed to
withdraw his troops from the Balkans, the government in Istanbul refused to face facts, which
led to full-scale war with Russia and disaster for the Ottoman army. At the Treaty of Edime,
concluded in September 1829, the Ottomans had to recognize the independence of Greece and the
autonomy of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and of a Serbia to which several
Ottoman districts were added. That the Greece which emerged on the map was only a very small
state, and fell far short of the designs of the Greek nationalists, was only due to the fact
that Britain, France and Austria preferred a malleable Ottoman Empire to a strong Greece
dominated by Russian influence.
Erik J. Zurcher. TURKEY: A Modern History
4* The Later Years of Sultan Mahmut II: the start of the reforms
The Egyptian crisis
At the time of the Treaty of Edime the whole issue of Greek independence was already starting to
be overshadowed by what developed into the most threatening crisis for the Ottoman Empire in the
first half of the nineteenth century, the conflict between the sultan and his most powerful
subject, the governor of Egypt.
Mehmet Ali had come out of the Greek crisis with precious little to show for his efforts and
especially for the enormous expense he had incurred. In 1827 he had lost his fleet into the
bargain. It is therefore understandable that he sought recompense in other areas.
At first he tried to come to an agreement with the French government. Traditionally, Egypt had
close ties with France. The French Catholic mission had been active in the country for a long
time, Napoleon’s occupation was still within living memory, and French officers had played a
leading role in the building and training of Mehmet Ali’s new army. Mehmet Ali discussed with
the French consul, Drovetti,
,
an Egyptian occupation of the North African Ottoman provinces
i,
(Tripolitania, Tunisia and Algeria) with French support and Ottoman acquiescence; in exchange
the French would get political and economic concessions in the area. Nothing came of these
plans. Instead
^ France decided to occupy Algiers herself. ;;
Mehmet Ali now turned to Britain with similar proposals. When
*
Britain refused to co-operate, he decided to move alone. He used ~
a smouldering conflict with the Ottoman governor of Acre over the latter’s refusal to return
Egyptian peasants who had fled Egypt as a pretext for a full-scale campaign to conquer Syria in
1831. After
THE LATER YEARS OF SULTAN MAHMUT II
39
stubborn resistance by its governor, Acre fell in May 1832. In July Mehmet Ali’s son Ibrahim
Pasha, who commanded the Egyptian army, twice defeated the Ottomans, completing the occupation
of Syria. The Ottoman government now officially deposed Mehmet Ali and declared him a rebel.
Mehmet Ali tried to open negotiations, but when the government refused he ordered his troops
into Anatolia, where, on 27 December 1832, they routed the Ottoman forces near Konya.
This disaster opened the road to the Ottoman capital for the Egyptians. Mehmet Ali now
temporized while he tried to reopen negotiations. The Ottomans for their part desperately sought
foreign support against him. Britain refused to give anything more than moral support. Austria’s
Chancellor Mettemich was equally inactive. In desperation the sultan now turned to his
traditional enemy, the Tsar, for help. The Russians, who saw in Mehmet Ali a puppet of a French
government (the July monarchy of Louis Philippe) that they detested, also saw a chance for a
maior diplomatic victory and offered the sultan diplomatic and military support.
When the negotiations between Mehmet Ali and the sultan broke down again and Ibrahim Pasha’s
forces started to march on Istanbul, Russian troops landed on the Bosphorus on 5 April, 1833.
They effectively forestalled any move of Ibrahim Pasha against the capital, but they were not in
a position or in sufficient numbers to attack him. The sultan therefore had no choice but to
accept the substance of the demands made by Mehmet Ali and to appoint him governor of Syria in
May. In addition his son, Ibrahim Pasha, was made tax-collector of the district of Adana. The
Russians received the diplomatic prize they had aimed for in the shape of the treaty of Hiinkar
Iskelesi, concluded in July 1833, which basically was an eight-year defensive alliance between
Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
The treaty made a deep impression in Britain, where Russophobia had already been mounting,
especially in liberal circles. Now the cabinet, too, was deeply worried by the threat of Russian
penetration in the Middle East. Combating the threat of Russian expansionism, as it was
perceived in London, became one of the main determinants of British foreign policy for the next
decades. At the same time, Britain became deeply hostile to the man who had caused all this
trouble, Mehmet Ali.
Mahmut II never really accepted the loss of the Syrian provinces and sought an opportunity to
take revenge. In 1838 he sent his influential
Erik J. Ziircher. TURKEY: A Modern History
40
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mustafa Re$it Pasha, to London to try to get the British
government’s support for an attack on Mehmet Ali. This support was not forthcoming, in spite of
the offer, and conclusion, of a free trade treaty which opened up Ottoman markets (including,
presumably, the areas to be recaptured from the Egyptians) to British trade. Nevertheless, in
April 1839 the sultan felt strong enough to order an attack on the Egyptian forces in northern
Syria. The result was a signal Ottoman defeat at Nizip on 24 June. To make matters worse,
shortly afterwards the Ottoman admiral in command of the fleet in the Mediterranean, on hearing
that one of his arch-rivals had become grand vizier and that his fleet was being recalled,
sailed to Alexandria and handed over the Ottoman fleet to the Egyptians.
The ‘Eastern Question’
The later years of Sultan Mahmut II saw a marked increase in the major European powers’ interest
in Ottoman Empire. The Greek and Egyptian crises had shown up the empire’s weakness and had
alerted Britain to the strategic threat of the Ottoman Empire coming within the Russian sphere
of influence, which would enable the Russians to threaten the British position in the
Mediterranean and in Asia. Austria, too, was increasingly afraid of Russian domination in the
Balkans. Imperial rivalry between Great Britain and France was making itself felt again, a
generation after Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt.
The question of how to satisfy competing Balkan nationalisms and the imperialist ambitions of
the great powers without causing the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, or, if this destruction
was inevitable (something of which the majority of European statesmen were convinced), to
dismember it without upsetting the balance of power in Europe and causing a general war, was
known throughout the nineteenth century as the ‘Eastern Question’. It was high on the political
and diplomatic agenda in every European capital — and quite righdy, too, for dissatisfied
Serbian nationalism was to spark off the First World War in 1914 and lead to the destruction of
not only the Ottoman but also the Austrian, Russian and German empires.
The international political developments sketched here form the background for the two, partly
contradictory developments, which set the pace in the Ottoman Empire from the late 1820s
onwards. On the one hand, the increasing incorporation of parts of the economy into the
capitalist world-system and its attendant growth in trade
THE LATER YEARS OF SULTAN MAHMUT II
41
strengthened the position of those who profited from this development, the Ottoman Christian
traders, industrialists and bankers. On the other, the government of Mahmut II, faced with this
process, under the personal direction of the sultan, increased its efforts to strengthen the
state through military, administrative and fiscal reforms. Gradually, military and political
power and economic strength were polarized between two distinct sectors of Ottoman society: the
predominantly Muslim military/bureaucratic eUte and the emerging Christian bourgeoisie.
The role of foreign powers in this context was ambivalent: they, especially Britain from the
1830s to the 1870s, encouraged modernizing reforms aimed at strengthening the Ottoman state, but
at the same time they jealously guarded their commercial interests and the nghts of their
Christian co-religionists, many of whom had become clients under the berat-sysxem. They pressed
for equal rights for the sultan’s Christian subjects as a touchstone for the sincerity of the
reforms, yet supported the Christian communities’ refusal to give up their traditional rights
under the millet system in exchange for equality.
The sultan in control: the start of the reform movement The policies of Sultan Mahmut II from
1826 onwards determined the direction which Ottoman reform efforts would take for the next 80
years. Like the policies of Selim III and those of his great rival and inspiration, Mehmet Ali
Pasha, they were ultimately aimed at the strengthening of the central state through the building
of a modem army. All his reforms can be understood as means to that end: building a new army
cost money, money had to be generated by more efficient taxation, which in turn could only be
achieved through a modem and efficient central and provincial bureaucracy. Better communications
were needed to extend government control and new types of education to produce the new-style
military and civil servants the sultan needed. Where Mahmut II went much further than his
predecessor (though not as far as Mehmet Ali) was in his efforts to uproot the existing
establishment, abolishing or taming its institutions, and in the scope of his reforms. Where
Selim III had mainly tried to combat abuse of the existing system, Mahmut created new
administrative and legal structures.
The turning point in the subjugation of the establishment was the confrontation between Sultan
Mahmut and the Janissaries in 1826.