The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Ottomans (1299–1924)

The Ottomans, the dynasty that ruled the Balkans, Anatolia, and most of the Arab world for up to six centuries, inherited a political tradition from the Seljuqs and Ilkhanids that came from three sources: Islamic, based on the experience of the early Muslim community; Near Eastern, inherited from the pre-Islamic empires of the Middle East and Persia and developed under the Abbasids; and Turco-Mongol, based on the tribal chieftainships of Central Asia. This combined tradition reached them through Islamic political literature translated early in their rule and through their experiences on the steppes and under late Seljuq and Mongol or Ilkhanid government. From the Mongols they adopted world conquest as the purpose of rule, a purpose that dovetailed with Islamic monotheism’s goal of world domination and conversion as well as Near Eastern methods of centralized bureaucratic administration. They also learned that rulers’ law, reconciled with Islamic law and implemented in state courts, could create a political community extending beyond the Muslims to encompass all faiths. Their political literature suggests that they intended from the beginning to establish a just state fit for world dominion, belying the tendentious image of their pure tribal ethos in 15th-century chronicles and Turkish nationalist legends. By the 16th-century reign of Süleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66), it became possible to think with ‘Ala’ al-Din ‘Ali Kinalizade (1510–72) that the Ottomans had succeeded in creating the just and virtuous government recommended by Plato.

Beyond these heterogeneous origins, Ottoman political thought was influenced by two sets of circumstances. One was the initial Ottoman conquests, which were made in Byzantine territory. At first Muslims were in the minority, and it was imperative to harness the strength and skills of non-Muslims for the state. Ottoman rulers therefore allied with Christian powers, created non-Muslim military units, and brought non-Muslims into the palace and administration. Although many of the non-Muslims serving the state converted to Islam, some Muslims reacted against what they defined as the corruption brought by officials of non-Muslim origin into what they assumed to be more truly Islamic politics, and they made the assimilation of ideas and institutions from different sources an excuse for rejecting state policies. An opposition strain developed throughout Ottoman politics (as in earlier Muslim politics) that used Islamic piety and the tradition of “forbidding wrong” to critique the state and condemn rulers’ pragmatic politics of incorporation as the source of the empire’s political problems.

The other main influence on Ottoman political thought was the transition from the conquest state and expanding economy of the early centuries to the stable geography and challenged economy of the 16th and 17th centuries and then to the shrinking empire and modernization efforts of the 18th and 19th centuries. These changes, deemed a decline from the empire’s original potential of world conquest, generated a literature of advice and reform that became the most prominent strand of Ottoman political literature, especially after the end of the 16th century when the major works were composed. By the 19th century, this literature had become preoccupied with the assimilation of Western political thought.

The earliest Ottoman political works were translations of classics from the Seljuq and Ilkhanid periods. The first original works were composed in the 15th century. A book of philosophical ethics by Ahmed b. Husam al-Din al-Amasi (early 15th century) dedicated to Mehmed I (r. 1413–20) contained a section on politics, as did a work in the tradition of Islamic ethics by Sinan Paşa (d. 1486), the grand vizier of Mehmed II (r. 1451–81). The genres of history and historical epic also became vehicles for political thought; the heroic poems of Taj al-Din Ibrahim b. Khizr Ahmedi (d. 1413) and Enveri (late 15th century), as well as histories written by men such as Oruj b. ‘Adil (late 15th to early 16th century), Dervish Ahmed Aşikpaşazade (1400–ca. 1484), Tursun Beg b. Hamza Beg (d. after 1491), and Mehmed Neşri, conveyed their authors’ attitudes toward the state, individual rulers, and specific policies. In the early 16th century, the Ottoman prince Abu al-Khayr Muhammad Korkud b. Bayazid (1470–1513) and the grand vizier Lutfi Paşa (1488–1562/3) wrote works of political advice in new styles. Several of these works, even some of the earliest, exhibited a theme that would become characteristic of Ottoman political thought: the greatness and virtue of government in the past (the Ottoman, Muslim, or Near Eastern past) and its sad decline in the present. Early in the empire’s life, writers claimed that the “Byzantine” administrative complexity introduced by Bayazid I (r. 1389–1402) corrupted the purity of the nomad conquerors, causing them to lose divine favor. Measured against the ideal state of these writers’ imaginings, all real political life demonstrated the validity of their theme of decline.

The discourse of decline gained sudden relevance in the disturbed conditions of the early 17th century and generated a flood of political writing. Administrators and statesmen such as Mustafa ‘Ali b. Ahmed b. ‘Abd al-Mawla (1541–1600), Göriceli Koca Mustafa Bey (Koçi Bey), and Mustafa b. Abdullah Hajji Khalifa Katib Çelebi (1609–57) blamed the government’s inability to cope with climatic, economic, technological, and geopolitical changes on the decay of administrative rectitude and sought either to restore the administrative effectiveness of the past or to galvanize the sultan into seizing the reins of government and eliminating bureaucratic corruption by force. Meanwhile, critics in religious positions who followed the reformist preacher Kadızade pointed to sins and ethical deviations in the body politic, such as Sufi worship, the consumption of coffee and tobacco, and peace with Christian states, and sought to convert the ruler and his entourage to a more pious and traditional Islam. The debate over the causes of the observed problems continued unresolved; 18th-century governments attempted to address both sets of concerns through military-political reform and the preaching of Islam. Politics spread beyond the elites; a popular politics of artisans, urban migrants, and their Janissary protectors developed in the cities, and a politics of notables and tax farmers emerged in the provinces.

The assumptions about progress and development in 19th-century European political thought appeared to offer a way out of this endless spiral. It was therefore embraced enthusiastically, especially by officials responsible for the empire’s survival. Others, especially those disadvantaged by economic change, saw it as another foreign intrusion. While reforming officials labored to implement bureaucratic modernization, an exiled liberal group called the Young Ottomans critiqued their efforts. In a civilization accustomed to autocratic rule, they generated a new political literature opposing top-down modernization and sultanic absolutism. Their ideas helped prepare the way for the republican government and popular politics of the 20th century. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908, reacting against the heavy-handed despotism of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909), revived the nullified Constitution of 1876, and the last years of the empire were spent under constitutional rule.