Social and Legal Order in the Eighteenth Century

chapter 1 Social and Legal Order in the Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth century has an identifiable starting point, one with important political and social connotations for the transformations that took place in the following years. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 is considered a landmark of imperial defeat and social unrest, and thus the beginning of the eighteenth century as a new era. The treaty represented more than a military defeat of the Ottomans by a Western coalition let by Austria, it was also a political rec- ognition of the loss of imperial control over its territories and subjects. The 1703 rebellion against Mustafa ii and his şeyhülislam Feyzullah was in fact an expression of larger popular unrest that resulted from the losses and humilia- tion of the Ottomans by the Treaty of Karlowitz.1 Yet, rebels were still loyal to the ideals of the state, the rule of law, and the power of the shariʿa.2 Although they did not ask for a regime change, landholders and military groups received dispensations and compensation from the government. On the one hand, the uprisings of Patrona Halil in 1730 and that of the Alba- nian immigrants in the sipahi bazaar in 1740 in Istanbul were outcries for the re-establishment of the old order, that is, the re-establishment of the privileges of the Muslim majority against non-Muslims and foreign traders in the market and the abolishment of war taxes.3 The reform agenda of the coalition of Janissaries and the ulema in opposition to the sultanic forces (i.e., the coalition between the sultan and the grand vizier), can be interpreted in terms of its ideals of establishing the old political order and shariʿa as a conservative and religiously motivated movement.4 On the other hand, the coalition’s economic class interests, with the integration of the Janissaries into the market economy as artisans and shopkeepers and the transformation of the ulema into the most important contractors and sub-contractors of tax-farming in Istanbul and the provinces, favored the establishment of a new order in which these new economic actors had a voice in the constitution of politics.5

1 Barkey, Empire of Difference, 212. 2 Rifaʾat Ali Abou-El-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics ([Leiden]: Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1984), 70–72. Barkey, Empire of Difference, 212. 3 Barkey, Empire of Difference, 217. 4 Ibid., 225. 5 Baki Tezcan’s interpretation of ulema as the main actors of progressive forces that advocated for constitutionalism is addressed in more detail in the discussion of imperial law on the following pages. See Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire.

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Figure 1.1 Portrait of Mahmud i. Kebir Musavver Silsilenâme (c. 1720), Levnî. TOPKAPI PALACE MUSEUM LIBRARY, A 3109, FOLIO 24a.