Great’s Prussia, or even Catherine the Great’s Russia, let alone France or England.
THE TANZIMAT ERA
Modernization and rationalization of the Ottoman gov- ernment occurred under Mahmud II and the Tanzimat, which created councils and ministries according to Euro- pean models. This period saw the institution of many new ministries: the Ministry of Religious Foundations (1826), the Ministry of the Interior (1836), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1836), the Ministry of Finance (1838), the Ministry of Commerce (1839), the Ministry of Postal Services (1840), the Ministry of Education (1857), and the Ministry of Justice (1868). Of all these newly established offices, it was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that gained the greatest influence. Its rise was partly due to the grow- ing significance of diplomacy in the face of diminishing Ottoman military capabilities and the rapid development of Great Power politics, but it was also due to the expertise of the ministers and their staff, knowledge of European languages, societies, economies, and government policies, all vital information for modernizing the empire.
In addition to this transition to ministerial gover- nance, the other important development in the gov- ernment administration of the era was the creation of consultative councils and assemblies. Of these, the Supreme Council for Judicial Ordinances (Meclis-i Vala- yı Ahkam-ı Adliye) was the most significant. Although not an elected body, the council was vested with a semi- legislative authority and thus played a crucial role in reforming the Ottoman legal system and central bureau- cracy. By 1868 it evolved into a Council of State (Şura-yı Devlet). Another significant administrative reform was the opening of the first Ottoman Parliament in March 1877. Although it failed in its legislative functions, the parliament proved a surprisingly effective forum for gov- ernment criticism. It was suspended less than a year later, in February 1878, by its reluctant founder, Abdülhamid II, and reopened only in 1909.
ERA OF CENTRALIZATION
Despite the failure of his parliamentary experiment, Abdülhamid II continued many of the reforms of the Tanzimat, albeit in a characteristically autocratic fash- ion. Abdülhamid II’s government—greatly expanded and aided by modern technologies such as the electric tele- graph and railroads—achieved a degree of centraliza- tion and efficacy never before seen in Ottoman history. By 1908 the number of government officials had risen to 35,000, compared to the 18th-century bureaucracy of 1,500. Most of these new government officials were pro- fessional bureaucrats, educated in specialized schools.
The overland telegraph reached Fao on the Persian Gulf by 1865 and under Abdülhamid II, who established
a telegraph station in his Yıldız Palace, it connected all the provincial centers with the central government. The sultan’s domestic surveillance system, feared by many, also relied heavily on the new technology. Although the Ottoman railroad system was modest in comparison to European railway networks—in 1911 its total length was 4,030 miles, compared to Austria-Hungary’s 14,218 miles and Russia’s 42,516 miles—it enabled Istanbul to rede- ploy soldiers quickly to troubled or rebellious regions. Increasingly, however lack of cash and growing Otto- man debt—which, from the establishment of the Pub- lic Debt Administration in 1881, came under foreign control—hindered further modernization and undercut the authority of the Ottoman government. The new tech- nologies proved to be a double edged sword, which the sultan’s domestic and foreign enemies used effectively to topple him.
Gábor Ágoston
See also Committee of Union and Progress;
constitution; parliament; railroads; reisülküt- tab; Tanzimat; telegraph.
Further reading: Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform
in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922
(Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1980); Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princ- eton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); Colin Imber,
The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power
(Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–
1600 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973); Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Otto- man Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Erik
J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004).
administration, provincial Despite ongoing scholar- ship, the origins of Ottoman provincial administration continue to remain somewhat obscure, especially since the early development of this system included a shift from a nomadic to a more settled way of life, reducing the likelihood that written records would have been kept or securely preserved. At first, as is typical of a semino- madic tribal community, leadership remained in family hands. The first quasi provincial governor was a son of Orhan I (r. 1324–62), who was vested with much greater authority than his later counterparts. Other offspring of Orhan were sent to govern smaller territorial units.
EVOLUTION OF PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION
As the early Ottomans came to develop a more settled agricultural lifestyle, the style of governance also devel- oped into one that understood itself increasingly in geographic terms as opposed to the tribal divisions of administration, provincial 13
leadership that attend a nomadic culture. At this stage of development, the creation of larger and smaller adminis- trative units became a necessity.
The largest entity was the province—vilayet or bey-
lerbeylik,—which was divided into several subprovinces
or districts called sancaks (in Arabic, liwa). Sancaks were made up of even smaller units called nahiyes. Both this system of division and its nomenclature arise from a combined Turkish and Arabic background in which mili- tary commanders, called beys in Turkish or emirs in Ara- bic, received a standard, or sancak, from the sovereign as a symbol of power. Ottoman district governors thus came to be called sancakbeyi (in Arabic, amir al-liwa). Eventually the area under their control was also called a sancak. The first sancakbeyi was probably appointed near the end of the reign of Orhan or during the reign of Murad I (1362–89). By the time of Sultan Bayezid I (1389–1402), appointing these provincial administrators had became a common practice.
Further expansion and institutionalization led to the need for another level of management, senior adminis- trators to oversee the sancakbeyi. This is the origin of the
beylerbeyi literally, the bey (commander) of the sancak- beyi. The beylerbeyi ruled over a larger province known as
a vilayet. It is thought that the first beylerbeyi, or gover- norship, was founded in Rumelia (the European parts of the empire), and administration of this region thus ulti- mately became the most prestigious position of provincial leadership. Next came the formation of the vilayet of Ana- tolia in 1393. This is how the classical Ottoman system of provincial administration emerged and functioned until the end of the 16th century and in a somewhat changed form through the late 18th to early 19th century.
In the 1520s, there were six to eight vilayets alto- gether and approximately 90 sancaks. By around 1570 these numbers had increased to 24 vilayets with more than 250 sancaks. Structural changes within the Otto- man Empire increased the importance of the beylerbeyis and the number of vilayets continued to multiply, reach- ing approximately 35 by the beginning of the 17th cen- tury. At the same time, the prestige of the sancakbeyi’s post began to sink. This was no doubt due in part to the burgeoning number of beylerbeyis and the consequent development, beginning in the 1590s, of a related office of secondary importance, the muhafız pasha (defender pasha). In certain areas the prebends or hases—benefits formerly allotted to sancakbeyis were assigned instead to the more senior beylerbeyis in the form of an allow- ance (arpalık); this was often done even when the official receiving the benefits was temporarily dismissed.
As the territory of the empire grew under Selim I (r. 1512–20) and Süleyman I (r. 1520–66), not only did the number of sancaks and vilayets increase, but the forms and conventions for incorporating newly conquered fron-
tier zones became more eclectic. New formats of provin- cial governing structure began to emerge, depending on local traditions, distance from the Ottoman capital, and the degree of pacification of the conquered lands. As well as the administrative units in the Anatolian core prov- inces and Ottoman-controlled European lands, four fur- ther subtypes can be distinguished in the eastern regions from the 1530s: the ocaklık, the yurtluks, the hükümet
sancağıs, and the salyaneli. In the ocaklık, which pre-
vailed in conquered lands occupied by certain Turkoman and Kurdish groups, the traditional tribal chief remained as bey but income from the land in the form of prebends or timars was granted to outsiders, imperial tax regis- ters (tahrirs) were prepared, and the bey was obligated to support the sultan with troops and military leader- ship in times of war. The yurtluks were similar in form except that the post of bey did not automatically pass from father to son. In the hükümet sancağıs, also formed mainly on Turkoman and Kurdish tribal territories, tra- ditional local leadership was maintained on a heredi- tary basis without the introduction of prebends and tax registers. Nevertheless, joining imperial campaigns was obligatory. Finally, in the salyaneli districts, no prebends whatsoever were granted, incomes were collected merely for the treasury, and governors sent from Istanbul were paid in cash from the moneys collected.
The most important consideration in assigning pro- vincial leaders was their loyalty to the Ottoman house. The specific obligations and responsibilities of the bey-
lerbeyis were not clearly defined and an individual
appointed to a provincial or district governor post proba- bly received fairly laconic instructions. Equally indefinite was the length of the commission, with some appoint- ments lasting mere days while others extended over a decade. In general, beylerbeyis were replaced more often than the sancakbeyis.
The provincial ruling class in the empire were iden- tified as ümera (the plural of emir) and included both the beylerbeyis and the sancakbeyis. In the 16th century, the ümera were usually renegades from a variety of eth- nic and cultural backgrounds, whereas in earlier periods they would have been either of Turkish origin or from local families. The ümera came largely from the Otto- man devşirme or child-levy system, which collected non-Muslim children from subject peoples on the fron- tiers of the empire and cultivated the most talented with education and training. After years of labor and school- ing, often in positions of political importance and trust, the most able and most unconditionally faithful of these young men were selected for positions of governance. Of course, ability was not the only criterion; the decisive fac- tor in selection was often patronage, with certain candi- dates pushed into the foreground by the various groups in power or by their high-ranking fathers.