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Volume:4, Issue:7, AGUST 2014 Issn: 2147-5210

www.thestudiesofottomandomain.com

The Orientalist Construction of the Ottoman Governance

The Orient has always been constructed as the ultimate “other,” contrasting

with the West in the Orientalist discourse. The Orientalist narrative claims

continuity by depicting the West as descending in a line from the Greeks, the

Romans, or the medieval Europeans and strengthens this narrative by

contrasting it with an “other”. It postulates a constantly stagnant and inferior

historical entity called the Orient as the opposite of the West.1

One of the important political entities that represented the Orient in

the European literature was the Ottoman Empire. This article will give a

brief historical background on the European perception of the Ottoman

Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and will highlight

how this perception changed into the theory of “Oriental Despotism” in the

eighteenth century. The Weberian interpretation of the Orient is a critical

part of the European perception of the Ottoman Empire. The “Oriental

Despotism” model became the root of Weber’s idea of “Sultanism” in which

he dealt with governance methods of the Ottomans. This article will

particularly concentrate on how the Ottoman governance was narrated in

these arguments.

The authors that will be discussed in this article wrote about many

aspects of the Ottoman Empire. This article, however, concentrates on the

central themes of slavery, military and administrative strata of the empire,

governance, and freedom, and how western writers represented the Ottoman

Empire in Europe in the light of these themes. The interest in this subject is

part of a broader research agenda that is interested in the question of whether

1 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 207.

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the status of the ruling elite in the Ottoman Empire was slavery or not, and if

not how we can better explain their status. The connotations the devshirme

or “enslaved” elite have not been fully discussed yet, and are all embedded

in the Orientalist arguments.

Ottoman society was divided into askeri (the ruling elite) and reaya

(the ruled) at least in terms of administrative purposes. Scholarly research

has demonstrated that these boundaries were quite blurry in most cases,

especially after the sixteenth century.2 In the Orientalist narrative, however,

the ruling elite was depicted as the “slaves” of the Sultan’s household

derived from the devshirme system. The janissaries were also the soldiers of

the slave army of the Sultan. The loyalty of these slaves, the argument goes,

amplified the power of the despotic Sultan over society. The reaya was also

considered as ontologically tranquil and obedient. This essential nature of

the elite and the people was rooted in an essential lack of freedom in

Ottoman society. This perception led to the belief that the Ottoman Empire

was unable to create and nurture virtue and urban culture, which in the West

eventually gave rise to clamor for freedom.

How the European representation of the Ottoman Empire reached the

point of Orientalist construction is the concentration of this article. In order

to analyze this transition, the article starts with examining the writings of

travellers and diplomats who visited the empire during the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries. For this purpose, we include the embassy reports of

the Venetian diplomats such as Marcantonio Barbaro, Bernardo Navagero,

and Lazaro Soranzo; writings of two prominent English historians who also

2 Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550-1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

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visited the Ottoman Empire Richard Knolles and Sir Paul Rycaut; a

sixteenth-century French traveller Nicolas Nicolay; and a Flemish diplomat,

Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq.

This article concentrated on how the writings of the sixteenth-

seventeenth-century travellers were transformed into a more theoretical

framework, which was highly Orientalist during the Enlightenment era, and

influenced European attitudes towards the empire in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries. The intention is not to delve into a textual analysis of

a single thinker but to present the change of the ideas in interpreting the

Ottoman Empire as part of the Orient.3 Of particular importance is the theory

of “Orientalist Despotism” developed by a prominent Enlightenment thinker,

Montesquieu, who became a big influence on Max Weber’s writings about

the Orient.

Weber is not extensively studied by Ottoman historians except for

the adoption of some useful terminology that he successfully developed such

as “patrimonial bureaucracy.” 4 His Orientalist attitude towards the East,

however, is entrenched throughout his writing, and especially regarding the

Ottoman Empire and the devshirme system in particular.

3 There has been works that used the methods of source criticism identifying the sources used by the Enlightenment thinkers and showing how they used them. Such as Geoffrey Atkinson, Les Relations de voyages du XVIIe siècle et l’évolution des idées: contribution à l’étude de la formation de l’esprit du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: E. Champion, 1924); Muriel Dodds, Les Récrits de voyages: sources de L’Esprit des lois de Montesquieu, (Paris: Champion, 1929); or for a more recent study John Greville Agard Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 4: Barbarians, Savages and Empires (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 4 Carter Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte 1789-1922, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Hülya Canbakal, Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: Ayntab in the 17th Centrury, (Leiden, Boston: Brill Publications, 2007). Canbakal argues that although the Weberian framework is not used anymore due to its bias towards “Oriental city” his theory could still hep discovering some dimensions of Ottoman cities. Ibid., 180.

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European Travelers

There are vast numbers of travel accounts written during the long-lasting

Ottoman reign – those of diplomats, pilgrims, captives, merchants,

missionaries, travelers and the like. The focus of the accounts varies

according to the motivation of a given traveler; for example, while the trade

routes and markets were important in a merchant’s accounts, it was more

crucial for a diplomat to figure out the range of danger that might come from

Ottomans in a possible war. These travel accounts are the first-hand

observations of the Orient by Westerners, and have traditionally been crucial

sources for historians.

Travel accounts recorded up until the eighteenth century do not

reflect a particular theoretical approach to the Orient; however, some

common patterns and ideas which formed the basis for the theory of

“Oriental Despotism” can be traced in them.5 The intention here is not to

examine these accounts in depth, but to discuss some ideas that were

common among Orientalists describing the Ottoman Empire using works

from Venice, England, and France as examples.

Lucette Valensi’s work on sixty-two embassy reports of Venetians

from 1503 to the 1570s shows that there is certain ambivalence in their

reactions toward the Ottomans. On the one hand, they are fascinated with the

Sultan’s power. Gritti’s report in 1503, which is the first in the series, refers

to the Grand Signor as the world’s greatest prince; Margo Minio in 1522

describes the Grand Signor as the most powerful monarch, and such

5 Aslı Çırakman, From the “Terror of the World” to the “Sick Man of Europe” European Images of Ottoman Empire and Society from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (New York, Washington: Peter Lang. 2002), 105.

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references are frequent. 6 The abundance of tax revenues, the immense

amount of wealth, regular provisioning of the army at all times, and

disciplined human resources were almost always admired.7

But they surely are speaking of an enemy that entrusted the ruling

power to the enslaved people that were born Christians. It is almost

impossible for them to conceive of the “submissiveness” of the military and

administrative men.8 Their adoption of Islam and hatred against Christians,

the discipline of the troops, the perseverance of the soldiers, and devotion to

the emperor and public good Lucette Valensi verbalized under the term

“obedience.”9

Navagero, who was a bailo in Istanbul and reported on the empire

in 1553, for example, devotes a section to the devshirme system. The

education of the levied children in four palaces is one of his central

preoccupations. His description is not only informative but also depicts a

certain picture. He mentions that fourteen nations provided children for the

Ottomans whenever war occurred, and the palaces were filled with

children. 10 He describes a very rational and systematic process where

Christian children were brought in, divided according to their talents and

6 Lucette Valensi, Venice and the Sublime Porte, the Birth of the Despot, Arthur Denner, trans (Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 24. 7 Ibid., 27-29. 8 Ibid., 24. Marcantonio Barbaro writes in 1573 “It truly merits serious consideration that the wealth, the power, the government, in short, that the entire state of the Ottoman Empire is founded on and entrusted to people who were all born into the Christian faith and who, by various means, were enslaved and borne off into the Mohammedan sect.” 9 There is no recurring specific word for the term “obedience” in the original text, but the reports keep mentioning the ‘l’estrema unione “(extreme union) “soldati che compancier al loro signore” (soldier pleasing their seignior). 10 Unfortunately, the source does not specify the countries.

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abilities, and educated in full-time schools until their appointments to

official posts.11

Navagero clearly expresses his impression of the discipline of the

janissary army, and the wealth that gives them the weapons, the clothes and

the strong union they have.12 Yet, he also stresses that the janissaries become

“unchained devils” at the time of the Sultan’s death and commit crimes and

offences toward the locals only to be pardoned by the authorities.13 It is

wise to remember here again that these reports were written to inform

Venice on the strengths and weaknesses of the empire, to be used in

developing strategies. Therefore, an overemphasis on the military force

should be expected. On the other hand, presumably the Ottomans would

want to depict an unshakable cohesive image to their enemies.

Another intriguing matter for the Venetian ambassadors was the

lack of aristocracy through nobility in the Ottoman system. Only blood

nobility could confront the emperor’s power in Venetian eyes. Without it,

the emperor was left with limitless power. Marcantonio Barbaro notes his

surprise that the Sultan speaks only to his mutes, pages, and women, and his

officers could only speak to him during ceremonies and in public places.14

Being part of a legitimate elite in their own societies, they see not having

nobility as the contrary of Venetian practice, as anti-Venice, the opposite of

a “correct way of being.”

Lazaro Soranzo’s account of 1598 is on the political relationship

between the Turks and other Christian princes, the conditions of war and

11 Bernardo Navagero, “Relazione Dell’Impero Ottomano,” Relazioni Degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato, vol. 1., (Firenze, 1840), 49-50. 12 Ibid., 48. 13 Ibid,, 57. 14 Valensi, Venice and the Sublime Porte, 41.

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peace, and what Venice should do in general to maintain the peace. He

mentions that his father was killed while fighting against the Turks, and he

chooses to write in a style that would be profitable to the commonwealth.

But his tone in the book is not dramatic. Soranzo very briefly introduces the

sultan of the time, and the offices of the palace, and the forces of the empire.

Even though he depicts the empire as a tyranny, he admits the great

discipline of the Ottoman army and notes that it is something the West

lacks.15

He finds sea power less effective but mentions the abundance of

artillery and bullets provided from Istanbul at Pera, and Belgrad at Buda.

The Venetian ambassador highlights the richness of the Ottoman state. For

him, the excessive amount of gold owned by the sultan was because of the

tımar system, which enables the sultan to have a ready military force of

more than three hundred soldiers without pay.16 He also lists the right to

confiscate the goods of the rich, the tribute the Christian subjects pay, cizye,

and the benevolences of the Christian princes as other causes of its richness.

We observe a similar attitude toward the empire in England as well.

They were against a tyranny, which they wanted to understand and establish

relationships with. For example, Richard Knolles (1545-1610) read Lazaro

Soranzo and gave him as one of his references in his The General Histoire of

the Turkes.17 He stresses the fact that England has to maintain its trade with

the Ottoman Empire. Yet he also argued that the sultan ruling over his slaves

15 Lazaro Soranzo, The Ottoman of Lazaro Soranzo, Abraham Hartvvell trans. (London: John Windet, 1603), 30. 16 Ibid., 33-35. 17 Richard Knolles, The General Histoire of the Turks, From the First Beginning of That Nation to the Rising of the Ottoman Familie: With all the Notable Expeditions of the Christian Princes Against Them (London: Adam Islip, 1603).

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produced tyranny in two ways: first, by disarming his subjects; and second,

by establishing slave administrative and military strata.18 The absence of

private property and nobility were also indicators of a tyrannical regime.19

Cruelty, violence and slavery in its continual state of war generated chaos

and instability and these were the main features of this political regime

known as tyranny.

Sir Paul Rycaut (1629-1700) published three major works, The

Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1666); History of the Turkish Empire

from 1623 to 1677 (1679), which is the nucleus of his three-volume first

work and a continuation of Knolles’s The General Histoire of the Turks; and

the last one The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches (1679).

Rycaut presents quite an analytical approach toward his subject matter, the

Turks. He sets his goal to draw a scheme of the Turkish government,

policies, and customs with consideration and concern for his King, rather

than treating it as a supply of “discourse and admiration” like the travelers

do.20

His main focus in distinguishing the Ottomans is the absence of the

nobility. He emphasizes the destruction of the “ancient nobility,” noting that

honor was attached to the office itself but not to the people, and people can

be promoted only through “the favor” of the Sultan, not through noble blood.

18 Ibid, section: A briefe discourse of the greatnesse of the Turkish empire: as also wherein the greatest strength thereof consisteth, and of what power the bordering princes, as well Mahometanes as Christians are in comparison of it. [no pagination in this last section] 19 Çırakman, From the “Terror of the World”, 62-63. 20 Paul Rycaut, “The Epistle Dedicatory,” in The Present State of the Ottoman Empire, (London: John Starkey and Henry Brome, 1668), 1-3.

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In this line, the confiscation of estate and the law of fratricide are

highlighted.21

As in the case of Venice, English works emphasized the Ottoman

regime as a tyranny. The general characteristics of this regime were

presented as the lack of nobility and the existence of a slave military

administrative strata instead. The selection and promotion criteria of

devshirme elite, a system based on meritocracy, was contrasted and

criticized. It was highlighted that the lack of nobility left the sultan

uncontrolled. Despite all the criticism, the methods of maintaining a

disciplined army and of generating wealth were treated with praise. They

presented the Ottoman state as a legitimate government, and argued that

good relations should be established with them.

An early-sixteenth-century traveler from France, Nicolas Nicolay

(1517-1583), focuses on slavery. He, similar to the previous authors,

interpreted the enslavement of Christians, which to him meant the

destruction of civil society, as tyranny. He speaks of enslaved Christians in

Aleppo who work as laborers and in other “dishonorable occupations,”22 or

of “the place where Turks called a market” in Tripoli as the place the poor

Christians brought from Sicily, and Malta were sold.23

Nicolas devotes a section to the janissaries. He praises the success

of the armies, and presents the army as the imitation of the Phalanx of

Macedonia through which Alexander spread his domination and monarchy;

21 C. J. Heywood, “Sir Paul Rycaut, A Seventeenth-Century Observer of the Ottoman State: Notes for a Study,” in Ezel Kural Shaw and C. J. Heywood, eds., English and Continental Views of the Ottoman Empire 1500-1800 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 45. 22 Nicolas Nicolay, Dans L’empire de Soliman le Magnifique, (no publication place: Press du Cnrs, 1989), 65. 23 Ibid, 83.

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he gives the army legitimacy through a culture. 24 Interestingly, Phalanx

army was interpreted as the root of the Roman legions and the Orientalist

arguments would claim to belong to the West. As a Christian, he does not,

however, favor the method of conscription. He says that these children were

kidnapped from their parents, “taken away from the true law and the light of

Jesus-Christ to follow the obscure and blind sect of false prophet

Muhammad.”25 His reaction was directed more toward the children, who he

finds unclean in spirit and untamed because they do not even want to meet

with their parents when they grow older. 26

Travel accounts represented the political character of the empire as

a legitimate form of monarchy since the beginning of the sixteenth century.

“Tyrannical monarchy” was not the only definition of the Ottoman regime.

In this period, the Ottoman Empire was dealt with by bringing different

political categories. The best example of this is Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596)

who defined the Ottoman regime as a "seigneurial monarchy," as distinct

from "tyrannical monarchies." The chief difference between them, Bodin

argued, was that the tyrannical ones did not consider their subjects'

interests.27

The prevailing interpretation of the Ottoman regime in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, however, was defined around the idea of

tyrannical government, and the definition of tyranny was hazily used. 28

Without a theoretical framework, the idea of tyranny generally referred to

24 Ibid., 156. 25 Ibid., 156. “[ils sont] induits à délaisser la vraie loi et lumière de Jésus-Christ pour ensuivre l’obscure et aveuglée sect du faux prophète Mahomet.” 26 Ibid., 154. 27 Thomas Kaiser, “The Evil Empire? The Debate on Turkish Despotism in Eighteenth Century French Political Culture,” The Journal of Modern History 72 (Chicago. 2000), 10. 28 Ibid., 11.

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the behaviors of the empire toward the Christians. It did not, however,

consist of only negative impressions. The tyrant became an object of

admiration for the European observers at this period. Rycaut, in his terms,

‘confessed’ that it should be an honor to be a slave of such a powerful and

successful monarch who did not punish the innocent with the guilty. The

oppression was applied with distinction between the two.

Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, a Flemish diplomat, who was sent to

the Ottoman Empire, was highly impressed by the power of the central state

and the loyalty enjoyed by the Sultan, especially from the janissary army.29

The Venetian writers were predicting the Ottomans to be the ones who

would achieve a universal monarchy, which was a broadly accepted theme

among medieval scholars.30 The idea of tyranny was something to be praised

in some aspects – totally different from the eighteenth century Orientalist

constructions of the Ottoman Empire according to the theory of despotism.

The main themes that could be the core elements of the despotic

regime that is fully defined in the eighteenth century are.

The eighteenth century thinkers also stressed the factors that caused

the Ottoman regime to be defined as a tyranny in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries. The treatment of the Christian subjects, the devshirme

system itself – which is seen as the biggest cruelty of the empire toward

Christians – the loyal slave military administrative strata and the absence of

29 Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople 1554-1562, tr. Edward Seymour Forster (Oxford, 1968) 30 Valensi, Venice and the Sublime Porte, 48-50. Four monarchies as phases of world history was the vastly espoused theory before Hegel and Marx. It was believed that the kingdoms, Babylonian-Assyrian, Persian, Greek, and Roman, were to be succeeded by a final one, which would be the universal monarchy. Even though the Ottoman Empire was not seen as the last monarchy, it was surely placed as a strong candidate to become a universal one.

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a noble class that could balance the power of the Sultan were the factors

used both in the definitions of tyranny and despotism. While defining

despotism, however, these characteristics were fully defined and established

into a theoretical framework.

Enlightenment: Montesquieu

In the eighteenth century, there was a decline in the publication of books on

the customs and history of the Ottomans. However, there was a boom in

travel accounts mainly focusing on antiquities and the history of the ancient

states in the area.31 The focus was no longer on understanding the Ottomans.

This was a period when the ways of good governing became one of the most

important debates all over Europe. In these debates, the Ottoman Empire

became a major focus of discussion, especially in French political culture, as

the representative of the worst way of governing.32 The primary interest was

on fitting it into the stereotype of Oriental Despotism.

The despotic Ottoman rule was as crucial for Western culture as the

Greco-Roman one, which is believed to be the forebearer of the current West

and the newly introduced regime of “Western Republicanism.” Thomas

Kaiser uses succinct quotes to highlight the importance of the creation of

otherness during that time. As one eighteenth-century observer put it, if

knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans might be considered

"pleasant" and "even useful," knowledge of Turkish politics was surely

"necessary" and "nearly indispensable," since Ottoman affairs "affect us

most closely."33 Representing the Ottoman Empire as the embodiment of

31 Çırakman, From the “Terror of the World” to the “Sick Man of Europe”106. 32 Kaiser, “The Evil Empire?,” 9. 33 Ibid.

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despotism provided the worst example of governance in defining the nature

of Western political systems and society.

It was Montesquieu who first provided a theory of despotism where

the Ottoman Empire figured as the perfect example, and he created a

systematic interpretation to those beliefs about the Orient. In his book The

Spirit of Laws, he used the information provided by travelers, mostly

Rycaut’s and Chardin’s notes on Turkey and Persia, in order to confirm his

principles of despotic regime.

Montesquieu challenged the belief that the tyrant regime made the

Ottoman government successful and strong, as the seventeenth century

writings had asserted, and contrasted despotism with liberty. The Christian

kings of Europe, albeit absolute, preserved individual liberty, whereas an

Oriental despot oppressed his subjects entirely. It was not only the Christians

that were enslaved, but society as a whole was not free. This form of

government was claimed to imply the slavery of the entire society.

Despotism referred to an arbitrary omnipotent ruler dominating over a

stagnant, ignorant, and slavish society.34

Montesquieu pre-establishes laws on multiple subjects from

taxation to childrearing, from the principles of democratic government to

gender relations. He uses ahistorical means such as religion and climate to

explain these rules. There were three main types of government, i.e.,

democracy, monarchy, and despotism. The closest example to democracy

was the English parliament, France to monarchy, and anything about the

Orient is presented as the supporting example of the despotic forms.

34 Çırakman, From the “Terror of the World” to the “Sick Man of Europe, 117.

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The best example of ahistorical approach in Montesquieu’s writings

is his explanations through climate. He explains that cold air increased the

elasticity of the body allowing the blood to move easily to the extreme parts

of the heart, which increased the strength of the body. Warm air, on the other

hand, relaxes and lengthens the fibres, which diminishes the strength and

elasticity. 35 He argues that people in warm climates can display very

emotional, reactionary behaviour. They are motivated by desire; like old

men, timorous. People of the colder climates, on the other hand, are stronger

and stimulated by reason; like young men, brave.36 For him, it was the warm

climates where despotic governments prevailed. These areas were given as

Turkey, Persia, India, China, Korea, and Japan – clearly, an inaccurate

assessment.37

In those places, people are all passive and indolent, and the

indifference to freedom and passive obedience in the essence of Orientals

made them deserve the despotism that ruled them. In those lands, any virtue

other than fear could not prevail. Tranquility was not the indicator of

happiness but obedience.38 The society ruled not by reason, but arbitrary

will. The subjects were slaves without property and there was a steady

decline that could not be prevented because of the corrupt nature of the

system.

But, still, the worst of them all were the Turks. It was believed that

all the ethnic groups under Ottoman rule, just like “noble savages” like

Tatars, or the descendants of ancient and glorious civilizations like Greeks,

35 Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, (Chicago, London, Toronto: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 102. 36 Ibid., 102-103. 37 Ibid., 104-108. 38 Ibid., 26.

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were captives of the corrupted regime of the Turks.39 The inherently despotic

regime of the Turks was the perfect example of “Oriental Despotism” and

the absolute opposite of “Western Republicanism.” Montesquieu portrait a

picture where both the governance of Turks and the social norms were the

outcome of unchangeable characteristics that came from the essence of this

society. The fact that the Turks were the “other” was not because of the

varying practices but because of the inherent characteristics. The Orient was

always as it was and there was nothing to do to change it, just like there was

no chance of taking these lands into cold climates. Contrary to the sixteenth

and seventeenth century writers the problem here was not to understand the

Ottomans but to create the intrinsically “other” of the West.

Enlightenment thinkers used the “Oriental Despot” model mostly as

a comparative example while criticizing the domestic policies of their own

government. Montesquieu provided a contested model of misrule, which, at

the same time, was used for accusing the French monarchy. After the Saint

Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, for example, the monarch was associated

with the Turkish despotism. 40 This standard model of despotism was

reiterated by the monarchy itself in order to be able to dispel the charges

against it. 41 The “Oriental despot” left its mark on political debates of

eighteenth-century Europe and became a basis for major theoretical works

from the “Asian type production” of Karl Marx to Max Weber’s idea of

‘Sultanism’.42

39 Çırakman, From the “Terror of the World” to the “Sick Man of Europe, 109. 40 Valensi, Venice and the Sublime Porte, 91. 41 Kaiser, “The Evil Empire?,” 13. 42 Wittfogel argues that a non-Western semi-managerial system of despotic power, i.e. Oriental despotism, became a total managerial and fully despotic under Communist totalitarianism. Karl August Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism; A Comparative Study of Total Power, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).

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Max Weber

Max Weber’s main research question was the origins of capitalism,

its characteristics and how far modern capitalism was affected by religion,

namely, Protestantism. 43 He was interested in religion in all his works,

believing that it was a universal phenomenon, which shaped people’s

mentality. He thought that religious faith and its attitudes to economics was

crucial in determining societys’ economic structure. What he especially

examined was “rationalism” on the religions of the world, which he saw as

the most important characteristic of European civilization. 44 Finally, he

concluded that Protestant work ethic was the most important element that

fueled the capitalist spirit in Europe.

India, China, Asia and the lands of ancient Judaism and Islam

constituted the “Orient” in his study.45 He studied the religion of China as

the first large-scale study of a non-western religion, comparing

Confucianism with Puritanism, then India and Hinduism, Jainism and

Buddhism.46 Weber never studied Islam under a separate heading, and the

comments he made about Islam were scattered in his study. Weber is often

regarded as the founder of the modern social sciences and as the most

important classical sociological theorist, therefore his assumptions about

Islam, and in particular about the Ottoman Empire, will be discussed here in

more detail compared to the previous thinkers.

43 Alastair Hamilton, “Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in Stephen Turner ed., The Cambridge Companion to Weber (Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 2000), 151. 44 Ibid., 153-54. 45 John Love, “Weber’s Orient,” eds. Stephen Turner, The Cambridge Companion to Weber (Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 2000), 172-73. 46 Love, “Weber’s Orient,”, 172-200.

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Max Weber constructed his arguments on two main types: the

Occident and the Orient, although those varied within themselves.47 He

examined the development of capitalism by scrutinizing what was present in

the Occidental societies that produced capitalist modern society, as well as

by scrutinizing why the Oriental societies could not develop capitalism.

Probing the “absences,” which prevented the Orient from a capitalist

development, Weber adopted the idea of the existence of ontological

discrepancies between the Occident and the Orient.

Depicting the West descended from the ancient Greeks and the

medieval Europeans, and was an “invented tradition.” 48 Weber never

explained why the practices of the ancient Greece had to be taken as given

and why an essential pattern had to be drawn until modern times from that

root. He preferred rather to bring explanations to the differences between

European societies in a downplaying manner but emphasized every single

difference of the Oriental societies as an ontological discreteness.49

The influence of Orientalist assumptions on Weber’s work is not a

new criticism. It was first raised by Rodinson,50 then followed by Turner,51

Said, and Springborg.52 These studies concentrate on Weber’s interpretation

of why Oriental societies could not develop modern capitalism while the

Occident did, mostly converging on his arguments about law, state

administration, commerce and acquisition of ethics. Therefore they have

47 Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage, 1979), 259. 48 For a concise usage of the term: Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 49 Engin Isin, Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship, (Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 2002), 13. 50 Maxime Rodinson, Islam et Capitalisme, (Paris, 1966), 99-117. 51 Bryan Turner, Islam: Islam, State, and Politics, (Routledge, 1974), 257-86. 52 Patricia Springborg. Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince (Oxford: Polity Press, 1992), 9.

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predominantly emphasized the “means of production” that he employed in

examining the characteristics of Occidental cities.

“Means of warfare” and “means of law” were also important

features that were equally stressed. In terms of the “means of law”, Weber

again utilized the same type of discretion between the Occident and the

Orient. He juxtaposed two justice types: “a) Informal judgments rendered in

terms of concrete ethical or other practical valuations [Kadi-justice] b)

formal judgments rendered by drawing on “analogies” and by depending

upon and interpreting concrete “precedents.” This is empirical justice.”53

Weber used rationality as a classification while creating the

typology of law. Rationality represented the systematization, calculability,

regularity, secularity, logic, and being rule-bound in his usage of the term.

Hence, rational justice was a precondition for capitalism in Weber’s

argument, since it provided ‘calculable’ adjudication and administration that

were demanded by bourgeois interests.54 Weber claimed that the Roman law

was a mixture of rational, empirical and Kadi-justice. However, it was the

only law that became rationalized, and perfectionalized, due to

bureaucratization.55

The genealogical tie of ‘rational law’ in the Occident again excluded the

Islamic societies from this unique development. It was the Kadi-justice that

was practiced by the oriental societies which was the complete opposite of

‘rational law’ according to Weber. Kadi-justice was everything that a

rational law was not. It was unsistematized, bounded by tradition and

53 Weber, Economy and Society, 976. 54 Ibid., 980. 55 Ibid., 978.

68

stemmed from a divine power.56 The judgment of each individual case was

based on the arbitrary will of the Kadi, in contrast to the ‘rational law’ that

was bounded by the written precise rules.57

In Weber’s work, all the ‘Occidental’ historical developments were

considered as the leading factors to the creation of the ‘Occidental city’,

which was the locus for the emergence of capitalism at the same time.

Islamic societies, however, were excluded from these developments by a

typology of the Occidental and the Oriental. 58

56 Ibid., 976. 57 The Sharia was rigid in theory, but due to the institutionalization of the Kadi-justice, it became unstable and arbitrary. The more the religious nature of Kadi emphasized the more his subjective decisions influenced the case and the adjudication became less rule-bound. Weber showed this combination of rigid tradition and arbitrary judgment as a typical of all patrimonial systems. Even though the Islamic law stood as the ideal type for Kadi-justice, Weber also characterized English law by Kadi-justice and claimed that capitalism developed in England despite of its judicial system. The Ottomanists also highlighted the similarities between the Ottoman customary law and the medieval English law. This characterization made Weber’s reasoning about the typology of law invalid. Mainly because, England was not only one of the European countries that developed modern capitalism but also it was where it first appeared. Therefore, it cannot be said that rational law was the precondition for the modern capitalist society. Weber, Economy and Society, 976-77; Haim Gerber, Economy and Society in an Ottoman City: Bursa, 1600-1700, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1998, 199-200; Patricia Crone, “Weber, Islamic Law, and the Rise of Capitalism”, Max Weber and Islam, ed. Tobby E. Huff, New Jersey, 1999, 253. 58 The uniqueness of the Occidental city emanated from five essential characteristics, namely, 1. a fortification; 2. a market; 3. a court of its own or at least partially autonomous law, codified specifically for the city; 4. a related form of association, mostly a political association of legal specialists; and 5. at least partial autonomy or autocephaly enjoyed by the urban community. Weber found these characteristics, as the similar patterns of urban culture, in the ancient Greek and in European medieval societies, and developed a genealogical tie between these two and the Western modern society. Moreover, while explaining the way these urban characteristics emerged in the Occident, Weber argued that these characteristics could also be traced in the Orient, but only occasionally and always in rudiments. Max Weber, The City, trans. and ed. Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth (New York: The Free Press, 1966), 81; Max Weber, General Economic History (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1927), 316.

69

The most significant notion of ancient Greek and medieval cities was

defined as fraternity and brotherhood in arms in Weber’s work.59 For him,

this notion first emerged among the warriors of the cities. He asserted that

the emergence of cities and citizens was mostly related to the means of

warfare as well as the means of production.60 Whether or not warriors owned

their means of warfare was the determining factor about their status.61 The

major difference of the Occidental armies, according to Weber, was that the

warriors owned their means of warfare and therefore gained free status.

The ancient Greek polis and medieval European societies were based

on either the citizens’ army or the army of a tribal association of freemen, as

exemplified by the Spartan army of hoplites and the feudal army of the

Middle Ages, respectively. 62 Those armies, Weber claimed, “regularly

turned the duty and the honor of carrying arms into a privilege of a dominant

stratum.” 63 Along with the process of rationalization of economic

acquisition, military activities became a “profession” that requires a vast

amount of training. Moreover, as the ruler’s need for a standing army

increased, in addition to the improvement of the military technology,

conscription of ‘permanent soldiers’ emerged. This need generated a further

occupational specialization, which fostered strata in the manner of

‘bureaucratic officialdom’.64

59 Weber, General Economic History, 319. 60 Isin, Being Political, 9. 61 Weber, General Economic History, 320. 62 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, (London: University of California Press, 1978), 1019. 63 Ibid., 1018. 64 Ibid., 1019.

70

Weber claimed that occupational and spatial relationships dissolved

and replaced clan ties in the Occident; thus, the environment suitable for the

notion of citizenship emerged. An occupational bond emerged among

professional soldiers who were free citizens due to their ownership of arms.

Warriors were the first group in the cities to experience fraternity. The

citizens of ancient Greek or medieval cities shared feelings of fraternity

when they had to defend their cities against attacks.

For Weber, the dismantling of clan ties was enhanced by conversion

to Christianity. Christianity had profoundly shaken the old traditions and

replaced the old ties. The traditional ties were weak since they did not retain

magic or taboo barriers. Weber added that “the often very significant role

played by the parish community in the administrative organization of

medieval cities is only one of many symptoms pointing to this quality of the

Christian religion, which, in dissolving clan ties, importantly shaped the

medieval city. Islam, by contrast, never really overcame the divisiveness of

Arab tribal and clan ties”, hence, the Oriental city remained as the

composition of different tribal groups, and an urban culture did not

emerge.65 Accordingly, in the spacial entity that might be called the ‘Islamic

city’, traditional groups lived in separate districts, which were like ‘villages’

within cities, each reflecting the tribal and religious identity of their

inhabitants.66

65 Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 1244. 66 Turner, Islam: Islam, State, and Politics, 100. See also Bryan Turner, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974); H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952); Ira Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard, 1967). It should be noted that Lapidus proposes a more nuanced interpretation of ‘Islamic city,’ which emphasizes a social process rather than an established form.

71

Another aspect that must be investigated in this debate is Weber’s

argument about how the ‘nature of law’ influenced the existence of the

cities. Weber argued that the most important legal acquisition in the

Occident was the establishment of a special ‘rational’ urban law, the

‘Burgher law’, toward the end of the seventeenth century. Not only the

creation of a new law for urban communities, but also the way this law was

applied had a tremendous impact on the development of ‘urban

community’.67

Weber added, the ‘Burgher law’ was applied by the ‘court of the

consuls’ in medieval European cities. That is to say, legal specialists

developed a permanent political association made up of the members with

the status as urbanites.68 These developments were shown as the signifiers of

Occidental virtues such as rationality, urban unity and autonomy in Weber’s

model. On the other hand, Islamic societies had not developed such laws but

were ruled by the Sharia under the application of the kadı. Islamic cities

were the products of the combination of a rigid law and arbitrary application

in contradiction to Occidental cities, which developed their own special

‘rational’ law for urbanites. Though Turner challenged Weber’s approach to

Islam in many respects, he agreed with him on the ‘village’ nature of the

Islamic city.69

67 Weber asserted that the ‘burghers’ were prohibited from being summoned to non-urban courts, which indicated that membership to a certain urban community gained importance during selection of the court, which was responsible for the judgment. This application contributed to the sense of being an ‘urban community’ distinct from the others. Weber, The City, 111. 68 Weber, The City, 112. 69 The cities were considered not as centers of production but as “parasites” exploiting the resources of the rural areas. Turner developed Weber’s ideas by claiming that the dismantling of the clan and tribal ties generated the ‘burgher’ – as contrasted to the man from the countryside – in Occidental cities. Turner, Islam: Islam, State, and Politics, 103.

72

The most important characteristic that differentiates between the

Occidental and Oriental cities was the emergence of the burgher identity.

Burgher was used to define the unencumbered and free citizens of the

Occident. According to this approach the free citizens, the burgher, were

capable of developing a fraternity, producing law codes unique to their

cities, and creating autonomous administrative institutions. Yet, on the other

hand, the Islamic institutions never managed to become autonomous civic

institutions that protected the residents of the cities. Turner agreed that the

institutions were present to protect the state.70 Two historical facts are used

to support the argument of the absence of an urban culture in Islamic

societies: first, “Islamic cities” were never ruled by autonomous institutions,

and second, they never had their own laws.

The free citizens of the Occident were absent in the Orient. For

Weber and Turner, the reasons for the Oriental inability to create an urban

culture were multiple. In connection with the formerly mentioned impact of

Islam on society, which was different from that of Christianity in its inability

to dismantle old traditional ties, the presence of magic in Islamic societies

was considered a factor. Weber asserted that the barriers among the

traditional groups were so strengthened by their beliefs in different kinds of

magic that they could not constitute one ritualistic community, which would

bind them to each other as citizens of the city.71

The root cause of that inability, however, was the organization of

warriors as the slaves of the Sultan due to the patrimonial nature of the

Sultanate in the Orient. Weber pinpointed the means of warfare as the

difference between the Occident and the Orient. The free warriors who 70 Ibid. 71 Weber, General Economic History, 323.

73

owned their means of warfare of the armies of Ancient Greece and medieval

Europe generated the first bonds of solidarity in the Occidental cities, and as

they became more professionalized they developed an occupational bond

which resulted in to the generation of an identity that belong to the city.

Weber compared these armies with the Janissary army.

He claimed that one of the most significant features of ‘Sultanism’

was the existence of a professional army of slaves, the Janissaries, which

was privileged over the masses and completely loyal to its master.72 The

existence of enslaved military strata enabled the prevalence of the tyrannical

regime of the Sultan in all spheres of life, so that any kind of autonomous

bodies, including the city, did not emerge.

Weber compared the Occidental and Oriental societies in terms of

means of production, law, and warfare, and he especially compared the

emergence of rationality in these fields. For him, rationality was created and

nurtured in a chain of causation that stemmed from the emergence of the

free individuals in the cities. In fact, it all came down to the freedom that

was never seen in the Orient. Weber, who has a very important place in the

history of social sciences, based his analysis of the Orient on a very simple

fact that had been reiterated for centuries: freedom.

In the texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Ottoman

tyranny was interpreted as a power of slave administrators and disciplined

army. This power and tyranny was praised in some texts and some even

depicted the Ottomans as a universal monarchy. Eighteenth-century

European thinkers did not have this kind of admiration towards the

Ottomans, and they dispersed the idea that not only the soldiers, but the

72 Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 1015-1019.

74

entire population of the Ottoman Empire, were slaves. Weber continued

looking at the Orient with a similar simplistic criterion.

Ottoman governance had been as tyranny, seigniorial monarchy, or Oriental

Despotism long before Weber. He described it as Sultanism. He argued that

the janissaries were the slaves of the Sultan and completely loyal to him.

This loyalty was represented as the most important obstacle against all kinds

of freedom.

CONCLUSION

What should be highlighted first as a conclusion in this article is the

difference in the approaches of, on one hand, the sixteenth and seventeenth

century travellers towards the Ottoman Empire, and on the other, that of

Weber. We read about the variety of interpretations the former group

brought on the Ottoman governance methods from “tyrannical monarchy” to

“seigneurial monarchy.” These alternative voices are all concentrated on

understanding the Ottoman Empire –its social structure, army, and

governing methods. There are multiple forms and cultures in the Orient for

the sixteenth and seventeenth century travellers. They did not assume a

homogenous body. This attempt began to disappear in the Enlightenment

era, when Ottoman dynasty, which then began to represent the “Oriental

Despotism,” and served as an instrument in criticizing the French monarchy.

In Weber, we loose this multiplicity. The Orient becomes a big

entity, almost a big hole into which was thrown anything “non-Western”.

The differences between different “oriental” cultures disappear. They are all

75

evaluated, and judged in comparison with the “occident”. The Orient

becomes a homogenous entity, the classical “other”.

The “oriental” city, similarly, was described as a place that did not

have any of the characteristics the “occidental” city had, or else the

occidental characteristics that did show themselves were only in rudimentary

form. It was a non-city. Therefore, this descriptive city is not even located in

the map. We are not sure if the “oriental city” Weber talking at a given

moment is in China, in the Ottoman Empire, or other Muslim populated

areas. It is an all-encompassing description of the non-existent city located

outside Europe.

Following Weber, an entire body of literature emerged studying the

Muslim populated cities under the theory of the “Islamic city.” Weber’s

writings on the Oriental city, and the “Islamic city” theory have been

criticized and left behind. 73 In modern urban historiography the latest

tendency is to study individual cities according to their geographical,

73 The “Islamic city” model has been used mostly by French scholars to study mainly North African cities such as Tunis and Fez. W. Marçais, “L’Islamisme et la vie urbaine,” L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lêtres, Comptes Rendus (Paris: January-March 1928), 86-100; R Brunschvig, “Urbanisme medieval et droit musulman,” Revue des Études Islamiques 15 (1947), 127-155; J. Sauvaget, Alep: Essai sur le Developpement d’une Grande ville Syrienne, Des Origines au Milieu du XIXe Siecle (Paris: P Geuthner, 1941); G. E. Von Grunebaum, “The structure of the Muslim town,” American Anthropologist 57, no. 2, (1955), 141-158; G. Baer, “The administrative, economic and social functions of the Turkish guilds,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 1 (1970), 28-50. For the critique of the ‘Islamic City’ theory: Albert Hourani, “The Islamic City in the Light of Recent Research,” in The Islamic City, edited by A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern (Oxford: B. Cassirer, 1970), 36-66; S. M. Stern, “The Constitution of the Islamic City” in The Islamic City, edited by A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern (Oxford: B. Cassirer, 1970), 25-51. This book is a collection of papers presented to a colloquium discussing different aspects of the “Islamic city” model, which mark the beginning of a revisionist literature on the ‘Islamic city’. Andre Raymond, “Islamic City, Arab City: Orientalist Myths and Recent Reviews,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 21, no.1 (1994), 3-18; Janet L. Abu-Lughod, “The Islamic City—Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, no. 2 (1987), 162-163.

76

economical, and various other characteristics, independent from any

typologies.74

When we specifically concentrate on the case of the Ottoman

Empire, the Weberian approach to the city introduces a specific

interpretation of the Ottoman governance, “Sultanism.” Weber cites reasons

a lack of civic virtue, unencumbered individuals who turned into free

citizens, and a lack of autonomous civic institutions for the existence of an

“enslaved military and administrative elite.” For all the writers considered in

this article, slavery emerges as an important theme that has an impact on

their opinion on the governance type in the Ottoman Empire. In the case of

Weber, the enslaved administrative elite and army were completely loyal

power groups that enhanced the power of the Sultan and turned him into a

despot. Particularly, he concentrated the janissary army, were enslaved and

therefore loyal.

Leaving aside the fact that the “slave” status of the janissaries is still

under discussion in the Ottoman history writing, how this slavery could

engender complete loyalty to the Sultan is mysterious to the author of this

article. In the last decade, there emerged a good body of literature that

claims the janissaries became the intermediary group between the Sultan and

the people, balancing off the power of the Sultan.75 Some scholars interpret

this role as a “democratic” mission that transferred the Ottoman governance

74 Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 13. 75 Cemal Kafadar, “On the Purity and Corruption of the Janissaries,” Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 15(1991), 273-279; Donald Quataert, “Janissaries, Artisans and the Question of Ottoman Decline 1730-1914,” in idem., ed., Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire 1730-1914, (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), 197-203; Cengiz Kırlı, “A Profile of the Labor Force in Early-Nineteenth Century Istanbul,” International Labor and Working Class History 60 (2001), 125-140.

77

to a new form, to a “Second Empire” in the seventeenth century.76 Although

talking about “democratic” mission could be seen problematic, the

discussion of the loyalty of the janissaries is legitimate. My own research on

the roles of the janissaries in seventeenth-century Istanbul demonstrates

solidarity between the janissaries and the civil inhabitants of the city, and the

janissaries did not hesitate to protest against the Sultan wherever they did not

approve the policies of the Ottoman state.77 All this recent research rebuffs

Weberian interpretation of “enslaved army and administrative elite,” and

opens up a legitimate ground to question what “slavery” was in the Ottoman

Empire.

76 Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: The Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 77 Gülay Yılmaz, “The Economic and Social Roles of Janissaries in a Seventeenth-Century Ottoman City: The Case of Istanbul,” PhD Dissertation (McGill University, 2011.)

78

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