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Lecture Notes History of the Middle EastLecture 1
The Middle East was a term invented by external powers (UK India office/US)
Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) > ISIS dismantled border Iraq and Syria, thereby destroying the
agreement (essentially a colonialized creation of the Middle East)
The Arab league is a regional agreement within the Middle East, rather different from the EU or UN,
mainly promoting the Arab identity. Countries such as Iran aren’t in there due to the fact that they
may be situated in the Middle East but have a different identity (e.g. Persian).
The rise of the Ottomans
- 14th – 16th century: periods of expansion
- 17th century: stalemate (deadlock)
- 18th century: territorial losses
Ottoman ruling elite: organized by groups of different people:
- At the top: Sultan-caliph (religious and political leader)
- Shayk al-Islam
o In a way independent from the sultan, because he had the top religious authority, but
not entirely independent
- Underneath him were royal princes and an imperial council (grand vizier Divan)
- At the bottom was the ‘ulama (Muslim community)
- The elite consisted of:
o Military: Janissaries (infantry, but enslaved) and Sipahi (cavalry). They also imposed
conscription on the population
o Civil service
o Religious establishment (Ulama and Qadis (judges))
- Eventually the sultans had decentralized the empire (Janissaries benefitted)
- Originally, the Janissaries were enslaved but they became a part of the economic elite and
started their own business, even collecting their own tax
The Millet System
- Sultans organized their non-Muslim subjects into religious communities called ps
- Three major non-Muslim religions granted millet status:
o Greek-Orthodox Christianity
o Judaism
o Armenian Christianity
- Permitted non-Muslims to retain their religious laws, educational systems, and communal
leaderships
- Non-Muslims were still barred from military service and prevented from becoming members
of the Ottoman ruling elite
- The sultan wanted those people to be loyal to him and not conspire against him. He achieved
this through the religious freedom/tolerance; the millet system
,Loss of Ottoman Superiority:
14th-16th centuries End 17th, early 18th century
Ottoman fleet: maritime superiority; dominate Weakened ottoman central government led to
the Mediterranean inability to fund and improve military
Military conscription (levied)
Capitulations: commercial treaties with Europe Industrial revolution in Europe (not experienced
meant to facilitate mutually beneficial ties but by Ottomans); capitulations turned into an
exploited by European merchants instrument of European merchants
In Europe it boosted capitalism and created a
new economic system, but also gave the
merchants a relative advantage (production-
wise)
Lecture 2
Decentralization of the empire by the sultan was done through increased power of the Grand Vizier
which was a civil assembly that (co-)operated closely for and with the sultan
The sultan was always present on the battleground and the army was very effective through the
sultan’s guidance
During this time, commercial relations with Europe also improved and thrived (Industrial Revolution in
Europe). The IR completely shifted the balance of power between the Ottomans and Europeans
(Ottomans had no IR)
Reformism: 1789-1849
The objective of the reform was to arrest the decline and return to prosperity. This was done through:
1. State sponsored military reforms
2. Reform of civilian institutions
3. Creation of a new elite (existing elite was benefitting from the decentralization process)
Selim III and Muhammad Ali sought to 1) expand the central state, and 2) eliminate customary
intermediaries between the population and the state
Selim III (1789-1806)
- Sought the strengthen, not transform, the Ottomans
- Created new infantry corps, the nizam-I jedid (= the new order)
- Opened up channels for communication of knowledge of the West into Ottoman circles
- However, failure occurred:
o In 1806, the Janissaries led the ulama and derebeys (feudal lords) felt threatened and
deposed Selim III (due to lack of religion in the Western views which meant
neglection toward Islamic values)
o Mustafa IV elected his successor
Muhammad Ali – Governor of Egypt (1805-1848)
, - Ethnic Albanian, born and raised in Kavalla (Greece)
- 1801: Arrived in Egypt to evacuate the French occupiers (so that Egypt remained under the
authority of Istanbul) > initiated a process of modernization
- 1805: Istanbul recognized him as governor
- 40 years of internal development and imperial expansion
o Sustained commercial and diplomatic contact with Europe
Muhammad Ali’s reforms
- Political objective: secure independence from the Ottoman Empire through strengthening the
military
- He established officers’ training school in Aswan
- Conscription of fellahin > poor, rural class (not really part of the society, but Muhammad
made them a part by levying conscription)
- Established School of Languages > use European languages to communicate with the West
- Brought out first Arabic-language newspaper > building an identity, sense of community,
attachment to the state, sense of belonging
- Confiscated iltizam land (specific land completely managed by the ‘ulama) > no taxation, but
Muhammad imposed
- Modernized agriculture
- Industrialization (war / textile) > made Europe great
- Reorganized administration into a centralized bureaucracy
How did the Ottomans react to the crisis of the Empire?
- Nationalism played a major part (structural global phenomenon of the 19th/early 20th century)
o Threatening for ‘the Porte’: contestation from within of authority of the sultan
o Yet, European powers used national aspirations instrumentally to pursue their
objectives
- Independence movements (Balkans, Greece)
- Influence of the French Revolution
The Greek Revolt (1821-1829)
- Armed nationalist revolt in 1821
o Decline of Ottoman central authority facilitated rise of local Greek derebeys
- Egyptian and Ottoman forces joined to combat the revolt in 1827
o Joint Ottoman-Egyptian action had defeated the Greek revolt, but European
intervention overturned results achieved
Great Powers Involvement
- Great Powers avoided hostilities by offering to mediate between Greeks and Ottomans
- Mahmud II insisted on full restoration of Ottoman control over Greece
- 1827: Naval battle at Navarino Bay > Britain, France, and Russia (allied) defeated the Ottoman
fleet
- Greece declared independent in 1832
, - The Eastern Question: Ottoman Empire to remain as a weak buffer state between European
competing interests
Lecture 3
Europe’s influence on Egypt
- European methods of administration, education, and political organization (provider of
expertise – beloved enemy (threat and shadow))
- European economic penetration of the Middle East included
o Sale of arms and other manufactured products
o Provision of huge amounts of capital investment and easy access to credit
- Cultural influence (French revolutions, constitutional limitations to power)
Egyptian imam Rifa’ah Rafi’ al-Tahtawi translated the French constitution into Arabic > it was then
translated from Arabic into Turkish
A new age of Reformism
- Goal: overcoming the failure of Selim III
- Mahmud II: confident that only modernizing reforms can ‘save’ the empire (Tanzimat) >
pragmatic man (military reform)
o He wanted to create one Ottoman people > reform the whole society, but the empire
was multilingual, multiethnic and so on
- But reforms do not produce the expected outcome. Why?
o European empires do not work to help the Porte modernize its province
o Rather they want to colonize and dominate the Ottoman land
- After the French Revolution the enlightened ideas started spreading extensively
Sultan Mahmud II
- Acted decisively against political forces that paralyzed royal authority
o Curbed autonomy of derebeys
o European-style army corps (and eliminated the Janissaries (infantry) and abolished
sipahi (cavalry) units)
o Made Shayk al-Islam part of the state bureaucracy
§ Relationship between caliph and Shayk al-Islam was very ambiguous
o Created ministry of religious endowments
Ottoman Tanzimat period: 1839-1876
- Two royal decrees defined essence of Tanzimat
o Hatt-I Sharif of Gülhane (1839)
o Hatt-I Hümayan (1856)
- Aim: create a nationalism from above, by breaking down religious and cultural autonomy of
the millets and creating a notion of common Ottoman citizenship or “Ottomanism” > idea of
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