PROBLEMS OF PERIODIZATION IN OTTOMAN HISTORY: The Fifteenth through the
Eighteenth Centuries
Author(s): Jane Hathaway
Source: Turkish Studies Association Bulletin , Fall 1996, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 25-
31
Published by: Indiana University Press
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The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin , vol. 20, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 25-31
PROBLEMS OF PERIODIZATION IN
OTTOMAN HISTORY: The Fifteenth
through the Eighteenth Centuries
By Jane Hathaway
The periodization of Ottoman history from the conquest of Const
in 1453 until the reforms of the nineteenth century is currently being
This is a natural concomitant of the debate that emerged during the 1
the so-called decline paradigm: the notion that the Ottoman Empire, af
of continuous military conquest and territorial expansion from the earl
century through the reign of Siileyman I (1520-1566), entered a prolonged
steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption. A reasse
this paradigm recasts the two centuries following Siileyman' s death as
adjustment in response to new economic, technological, and diplomatic
As such reappraisals make their way into print,1 the periodization by
which this paradigm was framed naturally becomes subject to fresh scr
The conventional trajectory of Ottoman history, as set forth by
generation of scholars from Paul Wittek to Stanford Shaw,2 begins wit
Ottoman emirate expanding through the impetus of its gazi ethos. The
of this ethos is the capture of the Byzantine capital Constantinople. W
imperial capital, the Ottoman polity becomes a world empire that re
height of its institutional development and the limit of its expansion co
in the century following the taking of Constantinople. This fruition d
reign of Siileyman I is labelled the empire's golden age. Even the rese
1 See, for example, Suraiya Faroqhi, part 2 of Halil ínalcik (ed.) with Donald Q
Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire , 1300-1914 (Cambridge an
25
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 413-14, 468-70, 572-3; Engin D. Akarli, "Ott
riography" (a review of Economic and Social History ), Middle East Studies Association
1 (July 1996): 33-36; Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in th
Empire (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 153-85; Linda
Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Otto
1560-1660 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996).
2 Paul Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1
1971); idem, "L'Empire ottoman de la défaite d'Ankara à la prise de Constantin
des Études Islamiques 12 (1938): 1-34; Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman
Modern Turkey, vol. I, Empire of the Gâzîs: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Em
1808 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
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Jane Hathaway
the older generation of Ottomanists had revealed that the Süleymanic golden
age was an ideal construct. Halil ínalcik and Uriel Heyd, for example, pointed
out that certain of the legal codes attributed to Kanuní Süleyman's enlightened
reign were actually set in place by his predecessors, notably Mehmed II (1444-
1446, 1451-1481), Bayezid II (1481-1512), and Selim I (1512-1520).3 Corruption and
intrigue were well-advanced in Süleyman's reign, as attested by the execution of the
popular crown prince Mustafa at the instigation of the triumvirate of Süleyman's
wife Hurrem Sultan, daughter Mihrimah Sultan, and son-in-law Rüstern Pasha.4
Meanwhile, Süleyman's death by no means signaled the end of Ottoman expansion.
Despite the defeat by the Hapsburg fleet at Lepanto in 1571, the Ottomans made two
critical gains in the eastern Mediterranean during the following century: Cyprus
in 1572 and Crete in 1669. And despite the sense of foreboding associated with the
tenure of Murad III (1574-1595), whose first words on his accession, "I am hungry,"
were thought to augur ill for the empire's fortunes,5 Ottoman intellectual and
artistic life flourished during his reign. Indeed, the treatises lamenting the empire's
decline that proliferated during these years themselves bespeak literary vitality.6
Without detracting from Süleyman's long, productive rule, we can concede
that he has acquired a mystique comparable to, if arguably better-deserved than,
that of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809 C.E.). The solution to the
problem of periodization, however, is not as simple as demystifying Süleyman's
reign. Rather, the challenge is to re-examine the assumption that the sixteenth
century represented the epitome of Ottoman society's political and institutional
development, and that the accomplishments of that era could never be equaled.
Moreover, the proper response to this challenge is not to attempt to prove that
earlier or later periods were as productive or enlightened as the sixteenth century
but to abandon altogether the qualitative hierarchy that obliges us to speak of a
"golden age" in the first place.
This is what recent rethinking of the Ottoman decline paradigm has attempted
to accomplish. This new school of thought acknowledges, in so many words, that a
massive empire that lasted for over six centuries cannot have had an ideal moment
and an ideal permutation by which the entire chronological and geographical span
of the empire can be judged. True, if a gazi state has ceased to expand, then it is
3 Halil ínalcik, "Suleiman the Lawgiver and Ottoman Law/' Archivům Ottomanicum 1 (1969):
105-38; Uriel Heyd, "Kanun and Sharî'a in Old Ottoman Criminal Law/' Israel Academy of
Sciences and Humanities Proceedings , vol. 3, no. 1; idem, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law,
ed. V.L. Ménage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 7-33.
4 For a summary of this incident, see Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, The Turkish Letters of Ogier
26 Ghiselin de Busbecq, ed. and trans. E.S. Forster (Oxford and London: Clarendon Press, 1968),
28-33; Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 79, 81-84.
5 Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa
Âlî (1541-1600) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 295.
6 On Ottoman decline literature, see Bernard Lewis, "Ottoman Observers of Ottoman De-
cline," Islamic Studies, Karachi, 1 (1962): 71-87; Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 101-103;
Walter Livingston Wright, ed. and trans., Ottoman Statecraft: The Book of Counsel for Vezirs
and Governors of San Mehmet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1935), 18ff.; Douglas
A. Howard, "Ottoman Historiography and the Literature of 'Decline' of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries," Journal of Asian History 22 (1988): 52-77.
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PROBLEMS OF PERIODIZATION IN OTTOMAN HISTORY
no longer an effective gazi state. This does not necessarily mean, howev
has begun to decline but rather indicates that it has passed into anothe
its empirehood. There was no clear point at which the Ottoman Empi
out of its gazi phase. The moment had been long in preparation; the
Constantinople and the establishment of a permanent capital contribut
did the defeat of the Mamluk sultanate in 1517 and the consequent abs
the Holy Cities and the remnant of the Abbasid caliphate. With these conq
empire became, as has often been pointed out, a predominantly Muslim
a new set of responsibilities to the bastions of Sunni Islam.7 It continued
its territories for some time, yet a sprawling world empire could be e
have different priorities from those of a gazi state.
In this light, the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth and e
centuries become the period when the Ottoman Empire began to come
with these new responsibilities. Beginning in the late sixteenth century, fo
example, the sultans and their wives and concubines established the gre
pious foundations that serviced the Holy Cities, known collectively as
Haremeyn. These vakifs are compatible with the dominant political real
era, when imperial power was diluted by an increasingly dense network
groups at the center. For the endowment of pious foundations serving
Cities was the special purview of imperial women, while the administr
maintenance of the vaktfs fell to the eunuchs of the imperial harem
clients among the governors and military personnel of the various p
The annual pilgrimage caravans that the Ottomans were now respons
dispatching from Cairo and Damascus similarly required a massive m
of provincial manpower.9 One cannot speak of a causal relationship b
so-called "sultanate of women" of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and
the adoption of a pious, secluded imperial profile, but women naturally took a
larger role in an empire in which the piety of the ruler and his family was stressed
and in which royalty was largely secluded from public view.10
Decentralization is a common theme of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Ottoman historiography. Yet perhaps historians in the field do not habitually
acknowledge how closely linked decentralization in the Ottoman provinces is to
7 See, for example, Halil ínalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age , 1300-1600, trans.
Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 34; P.M. Holt,
Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 1516-1922: A Political History (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1966), 42; Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 5, 160, 166.
8 Stanford J. Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman
27
Egypt , 1517-1798 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 269-70; Î.H. Uzunçarçili,
Mekke-i Miikerreme Emirleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1972), 15; Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims
and Sultans: The Hajj under the Ottomans, 1517-1683 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1994),
80, 90; Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 166, 203-04, 209-10; Jane Hathaway, 'The Role of the Kizlar
Agasi in Seventeenth-Eighteenth Century Ottoman Eevpt/' Studia Islamica 75 (1992): 141-42.
9 See, for example, Faroqhi, Sultans and Pilgrims; Karl K. Barbir, Ottoman Rule in Damascus,
1708-1758 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 108-77; Michel Tuchscherer, "Le
Pèlerinage de l'émir Sulaymân Gáwiš al-Qazduglî, sirdâr de la caravane de la Mekke en
1739/' Annales Islamologiques 24 (1988): 155-206.
10 On this point, see Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 168-85.
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Jane Hathaway
this diffusion of power among elements at the center. It was not simply the case
that a weak sultanate encouraged local potentates to assert their independence;
more fundamentally, a larger corps of government officials meant a larger corps
of functionaries making the rounds of the provinces, with all the opportunities
that this mobility entailed for forging ties with local elements and for becoming
localized. The rebellious celali governors of the seventeenth century were, after all,
appointed from Istanbul, whatever significance their various ethnic backgrounds
may have had for their inclination to rebellion.11
Indeed, the administrative dynamic of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies does not present a clear-cut case of the central government facing off against
provincial elites. For these provincial elites included transplanted members of
the central administration and their clients; moreover, they often modeled the
structures through which they operated on prototypes at the center. Perhaps the
most noteworthy example of such a structure is the elite household, a conglomerate
of kinship and clientage ties that not only drew inspiration from the households of
the sultan and his viziers but often enjoyed clientage ties of its own to these central
households.12 Sporadic attempts at "recentralization" during these two centuries,
notably the reforms of the Köprülü grand viziers in the latter part of the seventeenth
century,13 often entailed replacing entrenched local clients of a corrupt grand vizier
with those of his reforming replacement. The grand vizier Köprülü Fazil Ahmed
Pasha, for example, launched an overhaul of Egypt's finances in 1670 by appointing
his personal lieutenant ( kâhya or kethüda ) governor of that province.14
In short, the era of the "politics of notables" in the Ottoman provinces, as
set forth by the late Albert Houráni,15 has antecedents in this diffusion of power
at the center; the enterprising viziers, governors, and bureaucrats of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries were the precursors to the indigenous local notables of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were occasionally so localized as to
be indistinguishable from local notables themselves.16 Provincial decentralization
11 Two Abkhazian governors of Aleppo rebelled in the seventeenth century: Abaza Mehmed
Pasha in 1623-1628 and Abaza Hasan Pasha in 1657-1659. Metin Kunt notes the ethnic
solidarity among Abkhazian and other Caucasian elements in Ottoman service, as well as
popular perception that Abkhazians were ignorant and avaricious. See Metin Kunt, "Ethn
Regional (Cms) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Establishment/' Internationa
Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974): 233-39.
12 Jane Hathaway, "The Military Household in Ottoman Egypt," International Journal of Mid
East Studies 27 (1995): 39-52; Rifaat Abou-El-Haj, "The Ottoman Vezir and Pa§a Househo
1683-1703: A Preliminary Report," Journal of the American Oriental Society 94 (1974): 438-
Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government , 1550
28 1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
13 On the Köprülü reforms, see Encyclopaedia of Islam , New ed. (Ei2), s.v. "Köprülü,"
M. Tayyib Gökbilgin and R.C. Repp; Norman Itzkowitz, Ottoman Empire and Islamic Traditi
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 77-81.
14 Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglts (Ca
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 62, 148-50.
15 Albert Houráni, "Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables," in Beginnings of Modern
tion in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, eds. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chamb
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
16 On this point, see Kunt, The Sultan's Servants, chapter 5 and Conclusion; and Abou-El-Ha
"Vezir and Pa§a Households," 446, n. 37.
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PROBLEMS OF PERIODIZATION IN OTTOMAN HISTORY
and the rise of local notables ( ayan ) was a lengthy, complex process to w
both central and provincial officials and elites actively contributed. Seen in
light, decentralization belongs to a trajectory of Ottoman administrative ev
that stretches from at least the late sixteenth century through the early nine
century, when the sened-i ittifak that Mahmud II signed in 1808 sealed the po
the ayan.17
Hence the post-Siileymanic decentralization of the Ottoman Empire appears
far more Siileymanic and centralized than we might have expected. Yet while
the continuities that link this middle period to the so-called golden age certainly
demand attention, we must not assume that the administrative developments of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were merely mutations of archetypal
institutions that had been codified during the golden age. If we accepted such
an argument, we would be tacitly accepting the nebulous Siileymanic era as an
Ottoman classical age, which is, indeed, how it is often defined: the era during
which the institutions of the mature empire were codified. By this reasoning,
the sultan's imperial council (divan), the imperial court, the Ottoman legal and
educational systems, and the system of land tenure and provincial administration
reached their full development during the sixteenth century.
Scholars of the legal and educational systems might counter such an assertion
by pointing out that legal and educational organs and codes were well developed
by the end of the previous century.18 In the administrative arena, on the other
hand, new institutions took root after the so-called classical era. To begin with,
there was arguably never a "classical" mode of land tenure. The timar system,
whereby provincial administrators received an assignment of usufruct from the
proceeds of which they equipped cavalry troops, was touted even by the "decline"
writers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries as the ideal form of
land tenure, provided it was functioning properly.19 In most of its Arab provinces,
however, the Ottoman state never introduced the timar system. Egypt, Iraq, and the
North African provinces were from the outset salyane provinces whose governors
remitted an annual tribute derived from taxes.20 By at least the seventeenth century,
tax farming ( iltizam ) had taken root throughout the empire. It was exploited by
government officials and local elites alike as a means of amassing great fortunes
and extensive properties. Ottoman officials and local grandees distributed tax farms
purchased at auction among their clients in a massive patronage network. The
17 See Halil ínalcik, "The Nature of Traditional Society: Turkey/' in Political Modernization in
Japan and Turkey , eds. R.E. Ward and D.A. Rustow (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1968), 42-63; Kemal Karpat, "The Land Regime, Social Structure, and Modernization in the 29
Ottoman Empire/' in Beginnings of Modernization , eds. Polk and Chambers, 69-90; Bernard
Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1961,
1968), 74-76, 447-48.
18 See note 3, above; ínalcik, Classical Age , 165-85; Richard Repp, "Some Observations on
the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy," in Scholars , Saints and Sufis: Muslim
Religious Institutions since 1500, ed. Nikki R. Keddie (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London:
University of California Press, 1972), 17-32.
19 See, for example, Wright, ed. and trans., Ottoman Statecraft, chapter 9 of San Mehmed's
treatise.
20 ínalcik, Classical Age, 105.
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Jane Hathaway
introduction of the life-tenure tax farm, or malikâne, at the end of the seventeenth
century allowed provincial elites to forge massive heritable estates.21 In sum, the
institutional developments in land tenure during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries contributed directly to an entrenched provincial nobility that challenged
the central authorities for revenues and influence.
According to the qualitative hierarchy that informs the conventional scheme
of Ottoman history, tax farming and the rise of provincial elites are regarded as
signs of decline, the more so when they are accompanied by corruption. The
centuries during which these institutional changes became widespread appear
as the autumn of the empire's life: the days of its self-assured maturity were
irretrievable, yet it had not advanced to the apotheosis that thorough-going reform
would offer. With the realization early in the nineteenth century that salvation lay
in adoption of European technology and, eventually, legal and social institutions,
the empire was dramatically extracted from this rut. Because of the standard equa-
tion of Europeanization with modernization and modernization with reform,22
these middle centuries are labelled pre-modern, as well as post-Siileymanic or
post-classical.
Yet this sort of equation gives short shrift to a reforming tradition of long
standing in the central government, which provides a distinctively Ottoman context
to the Tanzimat-era reforms. Beginning not long after Süleyman I's death, sporadic
attempts were made to reform the empire's administration by reining in powerful
elites and curbing corruption in the allocation of revenues. As early as the 1620s,
Sultan Osman II (1618-1622) had seen the logic of eliminating the increasingly
influential and independent-minded Janissaries; he was murdered because of his
efforts toward this goal.23 Later reforms concentrated on removing unauthorized
personnel from government payrolls and ensuring efficient tax collection. The
Köprülü grand viziers of the late seventeenth century were famous bureaucratic
reformers.24 During the eighteenth century, a tradition of reform seemed to attach
to the house of Ahmed III (1703-1 730). 25 Later in the century, a current of reform
among the diplomats who emerged from the Ottoman chancery paved the way
for the broad program of European-inspired reforms launched by Selim III (1789-
1807).26 Selim's reform program would be fulfilled by Mahmud II (1808-1839) and
his successors during the Tanzimat era.27Reform, too, then, can be seen as part of
21 EI2, s.v., "Mālikāne," by Irène Beldiceanu-Steinherr; Shaw, Financial and Administrative
Organization, 30, 39. For an argument that iltizâm appeared in Egypt soon after the Ottoman
conquest, see Mohsen Shuman, 'The Beginnings of Urban Iltizam in Egypt/' in The State and
Its Servants: Administration in Egypt from Ottoman Times to the Present , ed. Nelly Hanna (Cairo:
30 American University in Cairo Press, 1995).
22 For a critique of this position, see Akarli, "Ottoman Historiography/' 35.
23 See Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Histoire de l'empire ottoman , trans. J.-J. Heilert, 18 vols.
(Paris: Bellizard, Barthès, Dufour, et Lowell, 1835-1843), vol. VIII, 295-312.
24 See note 13, above.
25 See EI2, s.v. "Ahmad III," by Harold Bowen.
26 Virginia H. Aksan, An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace: Ahmed Resmî Efendi, 1700-1753
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 184-205; Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire
under Sultan Selim III, 1789-1807 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
27 For an overview of the Tanzimat reforms, see Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 74-128.
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PROBLEMS OF PERIODIZATION IN OTTOMAN HISTORY
the continuum of Ottoman history that extends at least from the Siiley
through the nineteenth century.
The term "pre-modern" carries a distinctive set of problems in the his
phy of the various Ottoman provinces. For many Ottoman provinces, the
century wasche era when autonomy or outright independence was won
empire. Thus a tendency has existed in the historiography of each of th
provinces to regard the pre-nineteenth-century period as an era of cor
strongmen or insensitive Ottoman appointees. Even when continuities b
modern and pre-modern eras are acknowledged and nationalism is do
a stark contrast remains between the age of progressive development, o
the aegis of indigenous or localized elites, and the dark, oppressive ce
Ottoman domination.28
The point I wish to stress here is that if these middle centuries of Otto
are viewed as integral parts of the general trajectory of the empire's his
gain in integrity and in relevance to the development of Ottoman instit
culture. The assignment of stages of development to the Ottoman Empi
have seen, somewhat arbitrary and, moreover, imposes a series of value
on the empire's history. Numerous pressures exist to present Ottoman hist
fashion: the nationalist agendas that dog history-writing in many former
provinces, for example, or the more mundane pedagogical priorities that i
face in the classroom. Yet it is misleading to present Ottoman history, or t
of any political, social, or cultural entity, as a line along which lie fixed
which maturity is achieved or decline sets in. Momentous changes in th
Empire were long in preparation, and it is with the aim of appreciating
gestation that continuities, rather than disjunctures, should be stressed
i 31
28 See, for example, Henry Dodwell, The Founder of Modern Egypt: A Study of Muhammad Ali
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), 2-7, 37-38, 193-95; P.J. Vatikiotis, The History
of Modern Egypt: From Muhammad Ali to Mubarak, 4th ed. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1991), 26-38, 51-69. For an intriguing Cold War-era ideological slant, see Vera P. Moutafchieva,
Agrarian Relations in the Ottoman Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, East European
Monographs, No. 256 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia
University Press, New York, 1988).
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