Abstract
Military setbacks during the last years of the eighteenth century intensified the pressure on the Ottoman state to reform. Defeat in the fourth Ottoman-Russian war of 1787–92 was followed by the loss of de facto control over Egypt, which was occupied by Napoleon Bonaparte of France in 1798; the first time since the Crusades that Europeans had seized one of the Muslim heartlands in the Middle East. Further proof of Ottoman—and Muslim—weakness came in 1801. After Ottoman attempts to dislodge Bonaparte’s had army failed, it was the British who intervened to evict the French from Egypt.1 In what was to become one of the defining characteristics of the next 120 years, the Ottoman Empire was now no longer so much fighting the countries of Christian Europe as being fought over by them; a pawn rather than a player in a new superpower rivalry.
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Notes
It has also been argued that the ulema had come increasingly under the influence of the hard-line orthodox teachings of the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandi tariqah. Butrus Abu-Manneh, Studies on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century (1826–1876) (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2001), 65–68.
Uriel Heyd, “The Ottoman Ulema and Westernization in the Time of Selim III and Mahmud II,” in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization, ed. Uriel Heyd (Jerusalem: Publications of the Hebrew University, 1961), 96.
Some Turkish secularists have even—misleadingly—seen it as the first step towards a secular state. For example, Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst and Co., 1998), 144.
Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 110.
Resit Pasha’s memorandum is quoted in Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, Tezakir (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1953), 76–82.
Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856–1876 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 101–102.
Ebül’ulâ Mardin, Medenî Hukuk Cephesinden Cevdet Pasa, 1822–1985 (Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi Yayinlari, 1946), 63.
Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst and Co., 1998), 168.
With the exception of the Caucasus, where they were used in agriculture, the majority of slaves in the Ottoman Empire were employed domestically. However, there is no evidence to support the casual acceptance by many historians of the “humane” nature of Ottoman slavery. What little we know about the treatment of Ottoman slaves—including the castration of boys prior to their sale in slave markets as eunuchs and the widespread sexual abuse of young girls as concubines—appears to indicate otherwise. For a detailed discussion of the use of Circassian slaves in agriculture, see Ehud R. Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), 81–111.
As early as the sixteenth century, Sheikhulislam Ebussuud Effendi had tried unsuccessfully to legalize a moderate rate of interest, but the overwhelming majority of the ulema continued to argue that all forms of usury were banned by the Qur’an. Edhem Eldem, A History of the Ottoman Bank (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Historical Research Center, 1999), 18.
Sevket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism 1820–1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 57.
Such as the Italian Carbonari. Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), 21–22.
For example, Kemal cited Sura 3, Verse 159, in which the Prophet Muhammad is instructed not to ignore the views of his companions in battle. Charles Kurzman (ed.), Modernist Islam 1840–1940: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2002), 144–48.
Article 11. Tuncer Özyavuz, Osmanli Türk Anayasalari (Istanbul: Aklim Yayinevi, 1997), 303. A rough English translation of the 1876 Constitution can be found at http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~genckaya/documents1.html
Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B.Tauris, 1994), 80.
Also known in the West as the “howling dervishes,” the Rifaiyah became famous for self-mortification such as the piercing of the skin with sharp objects. Only a handful of Rifaiyah survive today, although in the late nineteenth century the order had thirty-five dervish lodges in Constantinople alone. Hür Mahmut Yücer, Osmanh Toplumunda Tasavvuf (Istanbul: Insan Yayinlari, 2003), 392.
Particularly against British-backed notions of an Arab caliphate (see earlier). Serif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), 127.
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimization of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), 65.
Nearly 9,100 books were published in the period 1876–1908, of which around 1,300 were on religious subjects. This compares with approximately 2,470 books, of which 682 were religious titles, published in 1840–76. Orhan Kologlu, Avrupa Kiskacinda Abdülhamit (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1998), 406.
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, “Ottoman Educational and Scientific Institutions,” in History of The Ottoman State, Society and Civilisation Vol . 2 (Istanbul: IRCICA, 2002), 468–9.
M. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 44.
John S. Guest, Survival Among the Kurds: A History of the Yezidis (London: Kegan Paul International, 1993), 124–45.
There are no reliable figures for the total number of missionary schools. The 1897 statistical yearbook of the Ottoman Empire puts the number of missionary schools at 383, of which 131 were run by Americans, 127 by the French, and 60 by the British. The First Statistical Yearbook of the Ottoman Empire (Ankara: State Institute of Statistics, 1997), 98. In 1900, there were reported to be 331 U.S.-run missionary schools, rising to 450 in 1913. Uygur Kocabasoglu, “Osmanli Imparatorlugunda 19. Yüzyilda Amerikan Yük-sek Okullari,” in Bahri Savci’ya Armagan (Ankara: Mülkiyeliler Birligi Vakfi Yayinlari, 1988), 305–6.
For example, in a letter to his sister, Ahmet Riza attacked Islam for its attitude towards women before declaring: “Keep this religion away from me.” M. Sükrü Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 200.
Charles Kurzman (ed.), Modernist Islam 1840–1940: A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2002), 172.
Tunali Hilmi, Bir Geçmisin Yadigari: Onuncu Hutbe (Geneva, 1901).
Many had been influenced by the writings of the French sociologist Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931), who argued that democracy ran counter to “the natural laws of evolution.” Gustave Le Bon, “The Laws of Evolution, the Democratic Ideal and the Social Solidarity,” in The Psychology of Socialism 5 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899), 277–301.
Ryan Gingeras, “A Break in the Storm: Reconsidering Sectarian Violence in Ottoman Macedonia during the Young Turk Revolution,” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (2003): 27–35. web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes
The comment has proved impossible to verify and may be apocryphal. But it has been frequently quoted and undoubtedly captures the attitude of many Ottoman nonMuslims. Feroz Ahmed, “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish Communities of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914,” in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 409.
The IMC was not officially inaugurated until 3 April 1909, with a prayer service in the mosque of Aya Sofya, the former Byzantine church of Saint Sophia. M. E. Düzdag, Ikinci Mesrutiyetin ilk aylari ve 31 Mart olayi için bir yakin tarih belgesi Volkan gazetesi, 11 Aralik 1908–20 Nisan 1909: tam ve aynen metin nesri (Istanbul: Iz Yayincilik, 1992), 455–66.
M. Naim Turfan, Rise of the Young Turks, Politics, the Military and Ottoman Collapse (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 158.
Eric J. Zürcher, “The Ides of April: A Fundamentalist Uprising in Istanbul in 1909?” in State and Islam, ed. C. van Dijk and A.H. de Groot (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1996) 69.
For example, Yilmaz Öztuna, “The Political Milieu of the Armenian Question” in The Armenians in the Late Ottoman Period, Türkkaya Ataöv (Ankara: The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, 2001), 59.
Some of the many eyewitness accounts are included in Donald E. Miller and Lorna Tou-ryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkley: University of California Press, 1999), 63–66.
Faik Resit Unat, Ikinci Mesrutiyetin Ilâni ve Otuzbir Mart Hârdisesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, 1991), 82.
There were occasions when the motions submitted by provincial deputies to parliament were dismissed simply because their Turkish was so poor that nobody else could understand what they were saying. Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire 1908–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 79.
Jacob M. Landau, Pan-Turkish: From Irredentism to Cooperation (London: Hurst and Co., 1995), 40–41.
Ziya Gökalp, Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959), 133.
Halide Edip, House With Wisteria: Memoirs of Halide Edip (Charlottesville: Leopolis, 2003), 319–20.
Yavuz Selim Karakisla, Society for the Employment of Ottoman Muslim Women 1916–1923 (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, 2005), 51. No such organizations were formed for non-Muslim women.
The British promised Hussein that they would help install him as ruler of an Arab empire covering virtually the entire territory between Egypt and modern Iran. However, at the same time, the British and the French drew up a secret treaty, which is known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement after the names of its two main architects, the British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes and his French counterpart François Georges-Picot, dividing between themselves most of the territory promised to Hussein. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1945), 413–34.
Hussein remained in secret contact with the ITC throughout almost the entire war. There is little doubt that he would have agreed to lay down his arms if the ITC had been prepared to grant him official pre-eminence in the empire’s Arab provinces. David Fromkin, A Peace To End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East (London: Penguin, 1991), 220–1.
T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935).
Elie Kedourie, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and its Interpreters 1914–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 201.
Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914–1918 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 203.
Some of the many eyewitness accounts of those who survived the deportations have been collected in Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
Enver first cooperated with and then turned against the Bolsheviks. Bülent Gökay, A Clash of Empires: Turkey between Russian Bolshevism and British Imperialism 1918–1923 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997), 67 and 120–22.
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© 2008 Gareth Jenkins
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Jenkins, G. (2008). Reform and Religious Homogenization. In: Political Islam in Turkey. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612457_3
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