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Lessons from the Ottoman Empire Understanding Patrimonial Resilience: Lessons from the Ottoman Empire Tolga Kobas Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 © 2019 Tolga Kobas All rights reserved ABSTRACT Understanding Patrimonial Resilience: Lessons from the Ottoman Empire Tolga Kobas Once declared as a habitual relic of ‘the Third World’ countries, patrimonial regimes have re-emerged on a global scale. Even in the fully bureaucratized states, patrimonial relations made a convincing comeback. How did patrimonialism, which used to be condemned as an artifact from a distant past, prove to be so tenacious, even resurgent in the current global political economy? How does modern capitalism, which emerges painfully out of the crucible of patrimonial states and empires, become, once again, a patrimonial formation? What makes patrimonial-type regimes resilient? In pursuit of this question, the dissertation analyzes the historical-social conditions of possibility for the longevity and resilience of the Ottoman Empire –a patrimonial and bureaucratic empire that ruled a vastly diverse population of people spread over three continents and did so with relative peace and stability. How did the Ottomans kept their patriarchal core and its patrimonial organization intact for six centuries? The research finds three elements that contributed to the maintenance of the empire’s patrimonial formation: adab, an Islamic tradition of professionalism, good manners, and moral propriety; a patrimonial status elite (devşirme) composed of men separated from their non-Muslim parents at childhood and carefully cultivated as Ottoman Sunni Muslims and employed in various capacities for state service; and third, a specialized apparatus of the patriarchal state, the imperial palace schools formed as a network around the main academy at the Topkapi Palace, the Enderûn-ı Hümâyûn. The dissertation focuses on the life, curricula, and pedagogy at the Enderûn campus. As part of the imperial academy’s courtly habitus the Islamic tradition of adab was central to the students’ upbringing and cultivation. How did this historically unique combination of tradition, status, and apparatus contribute to the Ottoman Empire’s structural stability and organizational endurance? Table of Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................. iii Chapter I: The Return of Patrimonial Governments ....................................... 1 Conceptual Criticism ............................................................................................................ 9 Patrimonialism and its beating-heart: Person/Office ................................................. 17 A Theory of Patrimonial Power: Weber à la Foucault .............................................. 25 Keys to patrimonial resilienCe: TraDition, Patriarchy, Apparatus .................. 27 Case Study: The Ottoman ‘Patrimonial’ Empire ....................................................... 33 Adab ...................................................................................................................................... 36 An Ottoman State Apparatus: The Palace Academy of the Enderûn-ı Hümâyûn39 Chapter II: Adab ........................................................................................................ 49 Chapter ObjeCtives ........................................................................................................... 51 HistoriCal BaCkgrounD .................................................................................................... 52 An Elite Pedagogical Ethos ............................................................................................ 60 A Vocational Tradition ............................................................................................................... 62 Adab as Professionalism ............................................................................................................ 69 Adab anD the IslamiC Civilizing Process .................................................................... 72 Adab in the Ottoman Empire ........................................................................................ 77 Conclusion: ‘The Pastoral Game’ and ‘the City Game’ .......................................... 83 Chapter III: The Ottoman Class of Guardians .................................................. 91 The Ottoman Devşirme: A Patrimonial Elite ............................................................... 95 The ColleCtion ProCess: A Pastoral ApproaCh to ReCruitment ....................... 107 Ethnic Solidarity as Regulation and Integration ...................................................... 124 Chapter IV: The Enderun Campus ................................................................... 139 The Original Blueprint ................................................................................................... 146 The PalaCe ........................................................................................................................ 150 The Enderun Campus .................................................................................................... 155 The Initiating Cohorts: Küçük Oda (The Small Chamber) and Büyük Oda (The Great Chamber) .............................................................................................................. 159 Cohort Hierarchy ............................................................................................................ 163 Chapter V: Dorms anD Norms ............................................................................ 173 Army Discipline ............................................................................................................... 174 Patriarchal and Pastoral Proxies: Honor thy father, love thy brother ............... 178 The First Lessons of the Enderûnî ............................................................................... 182 Chapter VI: Disciplining the Soul ..................................................................... 190 The EthiCal SubstanCe of the EnDerunî .................................................................. 193 A Heavenly City: Topkapi PalaCe as the ParaDise of ‘ADn ................................ 196 Rituals of the Imperial Palace ...................................................................................... 206 i The Khāṣṣ Oda: The Forty under Forty .................................................................... 212 Chapter VII: Enderun Core Curriculum ......................................................... 220 The EnDerun’s (Core) CurriCulum ........................................................................... 224 Teaching the Patrimonial Mentality of Government .............................................. 234 Central Themes and DisCursive Forms .................................................................. 246 A Patrimonial Art of Government .............................................................................. 257 Warrior Epics and Wonder-Tales ....................................................................................... 259 Baṭṭālnāme, Danişmendnāme, and Saltuknāme ................................................................ 262 Faith Reframed: It is mainly ‘a political matter’ ..................................................... 275 Chapter VII: ConClusion ....................................................................................... 284 Epilogue: A Game of Chess .......................................................................................... 288 References ............................................................................................................... 293 Appendix .................................................................................................................. 321 ii List of Figures 1. ʿĀrif Çelebi (Şeh-nāmeci Fetḥullāh Çelebi), illustration from the Süleymān- nâme showing Ottoman Janissary recruitment in the Balkans ……………. 109 2. Randolph Bernard, The prospect of the Grand Serraglio, or Imperial Palace of Constantinople as it appears from Galata, 1687 …………………………. 137 3. Enderûn-ı Hümâyûn Mektebi (Third Court, Topkapı Palace) ……………153 iii Chapter I: The Return of Patrimonial Governments This research is inspired by Michel Foucault’s ‘history of the present’.1 It begins with a categorical diagnosis of our current situation: patrimonial regimes are back (Adams and Charrad 2011; Piketty 2014; Adams 2015). Next, the dissertation presents the Ottoman Empire as a historical case –an exemplary case of durable patrimonialism and analyzes the conditions that contributed to the structural and organizational longevity of the empire’s patrimonial setting. On a global scale, in politics and perhaps more insidiously so in economics, patrimonialism and its ruler, ‘the Boss’, have returned. Once confined to the politics of the so-called ‘the Third World’, patrimonial modes of government are found all around the world; once an exception to the rule, today patrimonialism is ubiquitous. Even in fully bureaucratized states patrimonial relations are operational in remarkably diverse areas of social life: in the behavioral and structural organization of businesses, corporations, street gangs, political machines, and political parties.2 Even the ways in which entire governments are organized around a figurative patriarch, for whom
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