religion of ottoman empire

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157006510X499689

Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010) 239-266 brill.nl/jemh

Th e Ottoman Ruling Group and the Religions of its Subjects in the Early Modern Age:

a Survey of Current Research

Suraiya FaroqhiInstanbul Bilgi University

AbstractTh roughout the early modern period, the Ottoman ruling group perpetuated a social order based on clear-cut hierarchies; this emphasis on hierarchy governed relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, and between the ruling group and the tax-paying population, regardless of religion. Within this system—where everybody was sup-posed to know his or her place and, ideally, remain in it—there was room for ad hoc agreements. While fl exible arrangements were often made by lower-level offi ce-holders and but tacitly condoned by the central administration, a widespread sense of hierarchy ensured that improvisation remained within the limits set by a framework fi xed by Islamic law and sultanic commands. Th is paper reviews the work dealing with the manner in which the Ottoman ruling group regarded the religions of its subjects, mainly Islam and Orthodox Christianity, focusing on the manner in which the Ottoman establishment con-ceptualized its own relationship to Islamic traditions of rule.

KeywordsOttoman elite, socio-political hierarchy, Orthodox Church, integration into the Ottoman imperial structure, clothing rules, church and synagogue buildings, conversion to Islam, conversion from one Christian denomination to another, Orthodox monasteries, Otto-man domination

Introduction

In the present essay, we will review recent work concerning the policies of the Ottoman ruling group for managing the religious aff airs of its sub-jects. For our purposes that means mainly Islam and the diff erent varieties of Christianity; due to linguistic reasons Judaism will only be touched upon in passing. Our central concern will be the manner in which the Ottoman ruling establishment conceptualized its relationship to Islamic traditions

240 S. Faroqhi / Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010) 239-266

of governance, and how interpretations of these traditions conditioned the Ottoman elite’s treatment of its subjects, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Included for consideration are studies published in Turkish, English, Ger-man, and French, with books and articles from the last twenty-fi ve years accorded pride of place, but the mid-1980s do not fi gure as a magic threshold never to be overstepped, and older works will feature whenever relevant.

As to the time period to be examined, we will begin with the conquest of Istanbul in 1453, mainly because so few Ottoman documents survive from earlier periods. In addition, both contemporary Europeans and also the Ottomans themselves saw the conquest of Constantinople as a major event in their history. Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451-81) thus was honored by the title ‘Ebu ‘l-fetih (“Father of Victory”).1 Our discus-sion will end in 1774 with the peace of Küçük Kaynarca, after the sultan’s armies had lost a major war against the Russian Empire of Catherine II, which resulted in the loss of the Crimea, the fi rst Muslim territory that the Ottomans were obliged to give up. Conventionally 1774 is regarded as a turning point in Ottoman history, and there is a good deal of justifi -cation for this view, as it also ended the forty to fi fty-year period of eco-nomic expansion that many provinces of the Empire had enjoyed during the mid-eighteenth century.2

By the umbrella term “ruling group” or “ruling establishment,” whose attitudes form the topic of the present article, I mean members of the dynasty itself, high-level active administrators, and a crowd of less-easily defi ned people who gravitated around these power-holders. Members of the last category, such as deposed offi cials waiting for reappointment, often were not very powerful in themselves, but they were frequently vocal: many authors of chronicles and political treatises fell into this cate-gory of “administrators-in-waiting.” Th erefore we know more about the views of these people than about those of most sultans or viziers, who were far less prolix.3 Moreover, in quite a few cases the views of sultans and high offi cials have only come down to us indirectly, through the per-

1 Stéphane Yérasimos, Konstantinopel: Istanbuls historisches Erbe (Cologne, 2000), 208-209.

2 Mehmet Genç, “L’Économie ottomane et la guerre au XVIIIème siècle,” Turcica 27 (1995): 177-196.

3 Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: Th e Historian Mustafâ Âli (1541-1600) (Princeton, 1986); Jan Schmidt, Pure Water for Th irsty Muslims: A Study of Mustafa ‘Ali of Gallipoli’s Künhü l-ahbar (Leiden, 1992).

S. Faroqhi / Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010) 239-266 241

ceptions of those who had the leisure to describe and judge them. It is necessary therefore, when describing the sources or consequences of Ottoman policies, to use the rather vague terms “ruling group” or “ruling establishment” in preference to other, more clearly defi ned ones.

Inscribing a Muslim Empire: Reconstructing Constantinople as Istanbul

Mehmed the Conqueror’s decision to establish his capital in Istanbul, whose conquest had formed part of the unrealized ambitions of early Muslim caliphs and thus could be viewed as the fulfi llment of a religious duty, was apparently taken only after some hesitation. It was probably contested, even though the critics preferred to await the sultan’s death before they voiced in writing their disgust at the decision. Th is contesta-tion was expressed in religious and even apocalyptic terms, in which an assumed peculiar link between Constantinople/Istanbul and “unbelief ” was unambiguously fore-grounded.4 At this site, Salomon, though con-sidered a prophet by Muslims, had lapsed into unbelief upon the insti-gation of one of his wives, and the place had been visited by numerous heaven-sent calamities. Even the construction of Haghia Sophia/Aya Sofya, the only positive feature in this sequence of disasters, was considered insuf-fi cient to make the city a fi t place for the residence of a Muslim ruler.

Presumably the anonymous author(s) of these apocalyptic texts were connected to Edirne, the center for Ottoman expansion into the Balkans. Th eir criticism was also directed at the Conqueror’s attempt to position the Ottoman sultan himself as a successor of the Roman emperors; instead the authors of these texts encouraged their rulers to model themselves on the fi rst four caliphs, combining unassuming piety and military prow-ess. By implication this policy should have meant keeping the capital at Edirne and also governing the expanding state by means of the relatively simple administrative structures that had characterized the Ottoman prin-cipality during the 1300s. Signifi cantly, however, both Mehmed the Con-queror in his policy of turning Istanbul into the capital of a great Islamic empire and his opponents, who viewed this project as undesirable or per-haps impossible, phrased their arguments with reference to the religion of Islam.

4 Stephane Yérasimos, La Fondation de Constantinople et de Sainte-Sophie dans les traditions turques (Istanbul, 1990).


Th e restructuring of the former Byzantine capital, virtually a city-state from the late fourteenth century onward, has also been a major topic of study during recent years.5 While Mehmed the Conqueror and his son Bayezid II (r. 1481-1512) did not wish to create a totally Muslim city, as evidenced by the settlement of Christian and Jewish immigrants, Islam was defi nitely imprinted upon the cityscape as the dominant character. Haghia Sophia became a mosque under the name of Aya Sofya, the church of the Holy Apostles was razed in order to accommodate the new ruler’s own foundation complex, and the other surviving Byzantine churches were gradually converted into mosques during the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries. Courtiers were encouraged to found large and small mosques that often became the cores of town quarters in which converts and Mus-lim immigrants dominated the scene. Certainly Mehmed the Conqueror showed interest in some Byzantine artifacts that he apparently regarded as appropriate ornaments for his newly established palace, and also in cer-tain Greek manuscripts. But this interest was not shared by most of the rulers and viziers who followed him.6 Offi cial Ottoman culture was decid-edly and unambiguously Islamic.

Inscribing a Muslim Empire: Islamization in the Balkans

Among historians of the Balkans under Ottoman rule there has been much debate about the extent to which the partial Islamization of the Balkans and the immigration of the sultans’ Muslim subjects into south-eastern Europe were controlled by the Ottoman central government and its offi ce-holders. Down to the 1970s it was fashionable to attribute both settlement and conversion to directives issued by the Ottoman center. Turkish scholars liked to stress the importance of state-directed immigra-tion from Anatolia, including the actual displacement of certain popula-

5 Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: Th e Topkapı Palace in the Fif-teenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge MA, 1991) and eadem, “Th e Life of an Impe-rial Monument: Hagia Sophia after Byzantium,” in Hagia Sophia from the Age of Justinian to the Present, eds. Robert Mark and Ahmet Ş. Çakmak (Cambridge, 1992): 195-226; Elisabeth Zachariadou, “Les notables laiques et le patriarchat oecuménique après la prise de Constantinople,” Turcica 30 (1998): 119-134; and Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu, Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital (University Park PA, 2009).

6 Julian Raby, “Mehmed the Conqueror’s Greek Scriptorium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983): 15-34.


tions (sürgün).7 By contrast, Balkan historians highlighted the role of conversion and even, on the basis of sometimes spurious sources, assumed the existence of offi cial Islamization campaigns undertaken with a liberal use of force and violence. Today’s scholars are less inclined to attribute so much power to an incipient early modern state. However, it is hard to tell to what extent this current scholarly reticence is due to a better under-standing of conditions prevailing in the 1500s or even 1700s, and to what extent it is merely a by-product of disillusionment with the eff ectiveness of the modern states that we ourselves inhabit. Whatever the explanation, social processes independent of direction by the Ottoman state are today considered more important than state-sponsored migration or conver-sion.8 Th ough during the last few years we observe a counter-current: in a recent study Mehmed IV (r. 1648-87) appears as an active proponent of Islamization, obliging his Jewish doctors to become Muslims, solemnly receiving new converts and gratifying them with gifts. Moreover his mother, the formidable Hatice Turhan Sultan, by building the Yeni Cami at the edge of the capital’s market district, made sure that the Jewish population of this area moved away and resettled at the outskirts of the city.9

While the Islamization of Anatolia had taken place largely during the 1200s and 1300s and run its course by the second half of the fi fteenth century, in the Balkans this process either accompanied or followed the Ottoman conquest.10 In the eastern part of today’s Bulgaria for example, as migrants followed the conquering armies, the vast majority of the pop-ulation was Muslim by the early 1500s.11 Immigrants from Anatolia

7 Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda bir İskan ve Kolonizasyon Metodu Olarak Sürgünler,” İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 11.1-4 (1949-50): 524-569; 13.1-4 (1951-52): 56-78; 15.1-4 (1953-54): 209-237.

8 Antonina Zhelyazkova, “Islamization in the Balkans as a Historiographical Problem: the Southeast European Perspective,” in Th e Ottomans and the Balkans: A Discussion of His-toriography, eds. Fikret Adanır and Suraiya Faroqhi (Leiden, 2002), 223-266.

9 Anton Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahasi petitions and Otto-man Social Life, 1670-1730 (Leiden, 2004); Lucienne Th ys-Şenocak, Ottoman Women Builders: Th e Architectural Patronage of Hatice Turhan Sultan (Aldershot, 2006), 187-268; Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford, 2008).

10 Speros Vryonis Jr., Th e Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, 1971); Heath Lowry, Trabzon Şehrinin İslâmlaşma ve Türkleşmesi, trans. Heath Lowry and Demet Lowry (Istan-bul, 1981).

11 Ömer Lütfi Barkan, “XVI. Asrın Başında Nufusun Yayılışı,” glued into İstanbul Üni-versitesi Iktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 11 (1949-50), end of volume.


included nomads and semi-nomads (yürük) who, however, soon lost their tribal organization and were treated by the Ottoman state as self-sustain-ing military (and later para-military) units. We know very little about the circumstances causing these yürük to immigrate into the Balkans, but it is improbable that in most cases the fl edgling Ottoman Empire had much to do with this process.

Similarly, conversion to Islam took place for a variety of motives; dis-gust concerning the unending strife between Catholic and Orthodox Christians must have been a factor of signifi cance. Some people must also have felt that the Byzantine Empire was crumbling, and that God appar-ently had withdrawn his protection. Moreover, certain Muslim holy men established themselves in the Balkans, attracting Christian followers by a propensity to connect locally venerated sanctuaries with saintly fi gures from the Islamic context; in the long run such adherents of this or that dervish sheik often converted to Islam.12

For the more worldly-minded, conversion opened up possibilities of social ascent, especially attractive given the impoverishment that many people must have suff ered during the wars and pestilences of the later Middle Ages.13 Th e availability of Islamic pious foundations surely formed an additional inducement to convert, for the latter provided employment to Muslims, sometimes on an appreciable scale. In addition such institu-tions off ered aid to the needy, and as Christian charities so often had col-lapsed poor people must have applied to wherever help was forthcoming.14 Other converts must have been attracted by the chance of ridding them-selves of the head tax (cizye), from which Muslims were exempt, hoping to be henceforth treated on an equal footing by their Muslim neighbors; and some people also probably also saw conversion as a welcome occasion to rid themselves of an unsatisfactory spouse.

Our sources do not often permit us neatly to separate Balkan converts to Islam from Muslim immigrants, although this has been attempted time and again by certain nationalist historians. Th ere is considerable debate, for example, as to whether the adherents of the Bosnian Church, deemed schismatic by Catholics and Orthodox alike, were more inclined than

12 F.W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, 2 vols., ed. Margaret Hasluck (Oxford, 1929), passim.

13 Klaus Peter Matschke, Das Kreuz und der Halbmond, Die Geschichte der Türkenkriege (Düsseldorf, 2004).

14 Heath Lowry, Th e Shaping of the Ottoman Balkans, 1350-1500: Th e Conquest, Settle-ment & Infrastructural Development of Northern Greece (Istanbul, 2008).


others to convert to Islam. Most medievalists today discount this theory. Yet it has been pointed out, correctly in my view, that the earliest Otto-man tax registers featured a special term for the local variety of Christians (kristiyan) that diff ered conspicuously from the word referring to Chris-tians in all other parts of the Ottoman Empire (gebran). In later registers, these kristiyan disappeared, and Muslims took their places.15 All these conversions were more or less voluntary.

Enslaved prisoners, however, frequently had no option but to change their religion, and in their case we can unambiguously speak of forced conversions, with Muslim subjects of the sultans imposing their will on the captives. As to the Ottoman state apparatus itself, it obliged people to convert when young boys taken captive in war were scheduled for service in the palace or induction into the army: in such instances conversion was almost inevitable. When dealing with young boys from the Christian population domiciled in the empire that were recruited into state service (devşirme), involuntary Islamization was also the rule.

Th e situation of these youngsters, after all, was akin to state slavery even though not, strictly speaking, identical with it. In addition, people who broke the rules of decorum incumbent on non-Muslims might some-times convert to Islam in order to avoid serious penalties—such conver-sions were obviously not voluntary either. In brief, inducements to change one’s religion were numerous, but the coercive force of the state, much exaggerated by nationalist historians of the Balkan states, was involved in only a limited number of cases.

Apart from group Islamization, there were the conversions of individu-als. Seventeenth-century examples have been studied, and this work pro-vides novel and precious information.16 Recent converts who were poor often petitioned the sultan for money to buy themselves a set of clothes appropriate to a Muslim, a request that was often granted. Certain con-verts provided background information about themselves and the experi-ences that had led them to accept Islam: and even if these accounts must have been “tailored” so as to pass muster with the offi cials scrutinizing the petitions, they were by no means entirely formulaic.

Islamization also impacted the built environment. Th e core areas of Balkan towns including Istanbul, many of which had Muslim majorities

15 Fikret Adanir, “Th e Formation of a ‘Muslim’ Nation in Bosnia-Hercegovina: a His-toriographic Discussion,” in Th e Ottomans and the Balkans, 267-304.

16 Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans.


by the sixteenth century, consisted of pious foundations surrounding one or several mosques, in addition to schools or guesthouses, with perhaps a khan in the vicinity. In the provinces, however, the sultans were less active as pious founders; rather, men who had become prominent in the con-quest of the Balkans were more in evidence as donors.17 If the local churches were of some size and magnifi cence, as for instance in Salonica, they were often pressed into service as mosques: those that were not “converted” right after the conquest later on might be seized upon the initiative of a local administrator or holy man.18

Making a mosque out of a church often changed the religious compo-sition of the surrounding town quarter as well. To provide the new mosque with a congregation, non-Muslims might be obliged by the Ottoman state to sell their properties to Muslims and settle someplace else.19 For security reasons, as well, non-Muslims were often pushed out of the forti-fi ed core areas, and city silhouettes came to be characterized by accumula-tions of mosque domes and slender minarets; the Danube towns of Vidin and Ruse retained this appearance well into the 1800s. We can thus speak of the pronounced Islamization of Balkan towns both in terms of popula-tion and the built environment.

In addition, the Balkans contained certain rural areas whose inhabit-ants became Muslims, either soon after the conquest or else later on. Apart from Bosnia and the eastern section of present-day Bulgaria, the most prominent example is doubtless the Albanian-speaking territory. Here Islamization occurred in the seventeenth century, when Catholic visitors and missionaries were on hand to report on the relevant circum-stances, and also on their own mostly unsuccessful attempts to impose post-Tridentine discipline on what remained of their fl ocks. Once again, centrally directed campaigns to convert the “infi dels” were not a major factor. But doubtless avoiding the head-tax was a consideration, for this payment was being collected much more energetically in the late seven-teenth century, when the Ottoman government needed to fi nance a long and unsuccessful war against the Habsburgs (1683-99). As to the Otto-man administration, it may not have been sorry to see some of the more

17 For example, Machiel Kiel, Ottoman Architecture in Albania, 1385-1912 (Istanbul, 1410/1990), passim.

18 Richard Kreutel, “Ein Kirchenraub in Selânîk,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 69 (1977): 73-90.

19 Başbakanlık Arşivi-Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul (from now on BA), section Mühimme Defterleri no 87, p. 67, document no. 168 (1047/1637-38).


obstreperous Albanian tribesmen convert and thereby become less ame-nable to the political infl uence of the Pope.20

In the early eighteenth century, Islamization could also be an indirect consequence of migration. During the Ottoman-Habsburg war of 1683-99, the armies of Leopold I were temporarily present in the Kosovo, where they obtained the support of the Serbian Orthodox archbishop. When the Habsburg troops were obliged to withdraw from the region, this prel-ate and many of his adherents along with their families migrated to the emperor’s territories, where the men were settled as peasant-soldiers along the Ottoman border. Flight, warfare, and the plague resulted in large population losses in the Kosovo, and some of the vacant lands were occu-pied by immigrant Albanians, who by that time were for the most part Muslims. Th e consequences of this event are still very much with us.21

Inscribing an Islamic Empire: Images of a Sunni Sultan

Th e Ottoman dynasty presented itself as earning legitimacy through the practical services it rendered to the Muslim world. Sultans expanded the domain of Islam by conquering the lands of infi del kings, and followed up their successes through the lavish provision of mosques and other charities. Aiding pilgrims to Mecca was another important legitimizing feature. All Muslims with the necessary means were and are required to perform the pilgrimage at least once in their lives, so helping these men and women to fulfi ll a fundamental religious duty allowed the sultans to present themselves as model Islamic rulers. Once the Ottomans obtained control of Mecca and Medina in 1517 the support of pilgrims and per-manent residents of the Hijaz thus became a major item of state expendi-ture.22 Albeit less strongly focused on religion, another major legitimizing feature was the Ottomans’ establishment of “just rule”: this meant that the sultans claimed to protect their subjects, if necessary, against the admin-istrators they themselves had appointed.23

20 Zhelyazkova, “Islamization” in Th e Ottomans and the Balkans, 243-244.21 Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (New York, 1999), 160-175.22 Suraiya Faroqhi, Pilgrims and Sultans: the Hajj under the Ottomans (London, 1994),

74-91.23 Halil İnalcık, “Adaletnameler,” Belgeler, 2.3-4 (1965): 42-149; Suraiya Faroqhi,

“Political Activity among Ottoman Taxpayers and the Problem of Sultanic Legitimation (1570-1650),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 34 (1992): 1-39; Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: the Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca, 1994).


While these avenues of legitimization were kept open throughout the period under discussion, others were operative only in certain periods. After the conquest of Constantinople/Istanbul, Mehmed the Conqueror cast himself in the role of world emperor, appropriating the claims to uni-versal monarchy once put forward by the rulers of Byzantium. It has been suggested that the eclectic architecture of his palace was meant to mirror his cosmopolitan empire: for in the Topkapı Sarayı, structures of Iranian inspiration were juxtaposed to towers and loggias visibly derived from Italian prototypes. Moreover the main entrance to the palace grounds was directly opposite the Aya Sofya. Iranian, Italian, and Byzantine architec-tural styles were probably meant to commemorate conquests or plans for conquest in Iran, southern Italy, and Constantinople itself. Invitations extended to Italian Renaissance artists also probably enhanced the image of the great conqueror served by skilled men “from the seven climes.”24 However, probably in response to the opposition that Mehmed the Con-queror encountered during his later years, his son Bayezid II reverted to presenting the sultan as a straightforwardly Islamic ruler.

In the 1520s and 1530s there occurred another attempt to modify the image of the sultan so that he could be legitimized more easily, this time among prospective subjects in central Europe and Italy. At this time the Ottomans besieged Vienna once (1529) and came close to doing so again but a few years later (1532). An Italian campaign was anticipated at this time as well, to strengthen the hand of the king of France in his struggle for northern Italy. Th e Ottomans, however, soon gave up this project, presumably because the sultan was wary of over-extending his forces.25 But in the fi rst fl ush of Ottoman victories the then grand vizier ordered a helmet for Sultan Süleyman (r. 1520-66) in Venice that had obvious affi n-ities to the papal tiara. As crowns were unknown at the Ottoman court, the sultan never actually wore this sign of sovereignty, but it was carried along on campaigns in central Europe to proclaim Sultan Süleyman as the legitimate successor of popes and emperors.26 In the same context, certain

24 Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power, 250-253.25 Matschke, Türkenkriege, 271. 26 Otto Kurz, “A Gold Helmet Made in Venice for Sulayman the Magnifi cent,” in

idem, Th e Decorative Arts of Europe and the Middle East (London, reprint 1977), 249-258; Gülru Necipoğlu, “Süleyman the Magnifi cent and the Representation of Power in the Con-text of Ottoman-Habsburg-Papal Rivalry,” Th e Art Bulletin, 71.3 (1989): 401-427; Jürgen Rapp, “Der Pergamentriss zu Sultan Süleymans ‘Vierkronenhelm’ und weitere venezianische Goldschmiedentwürfe für den Türkischen Hof aus dem sogenannten Schmuckinventar


Ottoman authors propagated the idea that Süleyman might be the uni-versal monarch whose reign in Muslim lore, as well in its Christian coun-terpart, preceded the Second Coming and the Last Judgment.

As Süleyman grew older and his sons began to fi ght amongst them-selves for the throne, these apocalyptic interpretations lost favor in the Ottoman palace, and the aging monarch now cast himself as a model of sober Sunni Islamic piety.27 Th is latter feature was also dominant in Sül-eyman’s self-presentation when he had the architect Sinan construct his mosque on a high hill over the Golden Horn (1550-57).28 Th e calli-graphic inscriptions adorning the mosque’s interior were chosen in close consultation with the sultan, if not by him personally; they celebrate Sül-eyman’s campaigns, though, signifi cantly, not so much his victories over the “infi dels” as those he gained over the Shiite “heretics” of Iran. Th is tradition of casting the sultan as the victorious representative of Sunni orthodox belief vis à vis the Shiites continued for over half a century. Even in the early 1600s, when the religious aspect of the confl ict had largely been eclipsed by purely political struggles over the control of Iraq and the Caucasus, Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-17), whose lack of military success was notorious, was celebrated in panegyrics as building a great sanctuary (today’s “Blue Mosque”) that granted him ascendancy over the Iranian “heretics.”29

Later sultans, in their turns, devised—or had imposed on them—other legitimizing stances that remained valid over a few decades or sometimes even a century or two. After the death of Ahmed I (1617), for example, no Ottoman ruler of the seventeenth century built any major mosques, possibly because certain writers were proclaiming that a sultan should make conquests before he undertook a major building project; in spite of many

Herzog Albrechts V. von Bayern” Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, Dritte Folge Band 54 (2003): 105-149.

27 Cornell H. Fleischer, “Th e Lawgiver as Messiah: Th e Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleyman,” in Soliman le Magnifi que et son temps, Actes du Colloque de Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 7-10 mars 1990 (Paris, 1992), 159-178. Com-pare Kaya Şahin, “Constantinople and the End Time: Th e Ottoman Conquest as a Por-tent of the Last Hour,” forthcoming in the Journal of Early Modern History.

28 Gülru Necipoğlu-Kafadar, “Th e Süleymaniye Complex in Istanbul: an Interpreta-tion,” in Muqarnas 3 (1986): 92-117.

29 [Ca’fer Efendi], Risâle-i mi’mâriyye: an early-seventeenth-century Ottoman Treatise on Architecture, trans. Howard Crane (Leiden, 1987), 67 and 75.


wars, enduring conquests in this period were rather thin on the ground.30 Yet beginning with Mahmud I (r. 1730-54) we once again encounter a series of major pious foundations established by sultans in their own names.31 Even during the 1800s such construction activity continued, although at times the empire seemed on the verge of disintegration, as happened on several occasions during the reigns of Selim III (r. 1789-1807) and Mahmud II (r. 1808-39). Yet both these rulers established mosque com-plexes that still form part of the Istanbul skyline. Lack of resources, at least in the later 1700s and throughout the 1800s, was therefore not an impediment to mosque construction. Contrary, or so it seems, to the thinking of an earlier period, the religious-political role of pious founda-tions in legitimizing sultanic rule was now deemed of such signifi cance that, come hell or high water, major sums of money were allocated for this purpose.

Basic Principles of Ottoman Policy, or “Combining Opposites”

Inscribing an Islamic empire on newly conquered territories and popula-tions implied a constant reference to bodies of law, both religious and issuing from the sultan’s writ (kanun). Th ere existed a powerful hierarchy of religious and juridical specialists whose interpretations of Islamic law the sultans’ bureaucracy took into serious consideration. In addition, the sultans themselves emitted numerous edicts to regulate the aff airs of their subjects on a day-to-day level. Many of the latter, while dealing with “political” matters (according to present-day categorization), often pos-sessed, in the thinking of the times, a religious aspect as well.

Apart from the kadis (judges) trained in medreses (colleges), Ottoman administrators for the most part did not receive any profound training in Islamic religious law. However in case of need they could turn to offi cially appointed müftis (legal consultants).32 At the same time it is not clear how provincial judges, who were thoroughly familiar with Islamic religious law

30 Tülay Artan, “Arts and Architecture,” in Th e Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 3, Th e Later Ottoman Empire 1603-1839 (Cambridge, 2006): 408-480, see pp. 458, 474-6, especially.

31 Pia Hochhut, “Zur Finanzierung des Baus einer Sultansmoschee: Die Nûruosmaniye,” in Osma nische Studien zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte: In Memoriam Vančo Boškov, ed. Hans Georg Majer (Wiesbaden, 1986), 68-75.

32 Colin Imber, Ebu’s-su’ud: the Islamic Legal Tradition (Edinburgh, 1997).


through their studies in the medreses, learned about the numerous deci-sions of their rulers that also had binding force. Th ese connections and disjunctions between religious law and sultanic pronouncements were of some “operational” importance; while in principle, the sultans’ edicts were not to contradict Islamic law but merely to “fi ll in the gaps,” in practice certain divergences did exist. We must assume that “ordinary” offi cials learned what they needed to know about the principles of Islamic reli-gious law in what we would call on-the-job training, and judges familiar-ized themselves with sultanic edicts in a similar fashion.

Pragmatism was thus the order of the day, a tendency furthered even more by the fact that no sultan was bound by the rulings of his predeces-sor. As long as he complied with Islamic religious law, a newly enthroned ruler was within his rights if he abrogated the edicts of his deceased father or uncle; for any sultanate was deemed to end, at the very latest, with the death of its holder.33 Th e grants of privilege that regulated the presence of European diplomats and merchants on Ottoman soil, and whose confi r-mation quite often was preceded by lengthy negotiations, also became invalid at the death of each sultan.34

On the other hand, the Ottoman administration always professed a profound respect for what its members had once defi ned as “tradition,” and consequently, the modifi cations introduced by individual sultans were generally limited in scope. Undeniably, at least by the seventeenth century, to fl y in the face of “tradition” could be politically dangerous. Th us a new ruler, when reviewing previous grants of privilege and other sultanic commands, often confi rmed the rulings of his predecessors. In the central archives we fi nd quite a few large volumes, dating from the mid-eighteenth century and later, which contain nothing but the various grants of privilege that were submitted to a given ruler after his accession that then obtained renewed force by a re-inscription into a register, which bore the name of the recently enthroned ruler. Some of these grants dated from the remote past; if properly confi rmed through the ages, a privilege dating from the late sixteenth century might be considered valid over two hundred years later.

Th roughout the period under study, the Ottoman ruling group assumed that Jews, as well as Christians of various denominations, had

33 Nicolas Vatin and Gilles Veinstein, Le sérail ébranlé (Paris, 2003). 34 Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th-18th Century): An

Annotated Edition of ‘Ahdnames and Other Documents (Leiden, 2000).


their places, inferior but well-established, within the society of the Empire. Diff erently from the policies of most European early modern states, the Ottoman ruling group did not assume that religious unifi ca-tion was a pre-condition for the successful functioning of their state. Th is attitude meant that while insults (especially of lowly folk against non-Muslims) were not a rare occurrence, and catastrophes such as the annihi-lation of the Ottoman navy by Russian forces (1770) led to occasional pogroms against non-Muslims, Muslims higher up the social ladder rarely participated in such actions.35 In the Ottoman Empire there was thus no parallel to the state-abetted, if not state-sponsored, pogroms such as the forced baptisms of Jews in late medieval Spain, or the conversion, often manu militari, of French Huguenots before and after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1689. Nonetheless, insulting and belittling expressions denoting “unbelievers” occurred in Ottoman offi cial documents well into the nineteenth century.

Accommodating Religious Diversity: Non-Muslim Places of Worship

Evidently our study would been meaningless if “inscribing the Ottoman-Islamic presence,” the issue that has occupied us so far, had led to the dis-appearance of Christians and Jews and the destruction (or recycling) of all their places of worship in the shape of mosques. Since none of this actu-ally occurred, in the second section of our study we will discuss the fate of Christian churches, both in the physical and the ecclesiastical sense of the term, as well as the rather special case of Catholic mission priests and fri-ars active in the sultans’ territories. According to Islamic religious law, non-Muslims are entitled to repair their churches and synagogues, but not to enlarge them or build new ones.36 Th is rule meant that whenever a religious building needed repairs, the relevant congregation had to apply to the kadi or, especially in Istanbul, the central administration itself. Th is procedure was presumably intended to ensure that no enlargements or impressive redecorations took place under cover of repairs. Repairs to

35 For an unpublished account of this event as relayed to the French vice-consul of Morea, see Chambre de Commerce de Marseille J335 (31 July 1770); Elena Frangakis-Syrett, Th e Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700-1820) (Athens, 1992), 59-60.

36 Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Arab World: Th e Roots of Sectarianism (Cam-bridge, 2001), 22.


mosques also needed to be approved by the kadi, however for quite a dif-ferent motive, namely to protect the property of pious foundations from dilapidation. Th erefore, a kadi and the local architect who often was his helper in such matters oversaw repairs to religious buildings belonging to both Muslims and non-Muslims.

In theory the prohibition to build new churches or synagogues should have meant that non-Muslims, especially in Istanbul, were progressively deprived of any buildings at all that were suitable for religious services. In the course of time, as we have seen, virtually all Byzantine churches became mosques or else slowly decayed and fi nally disappeared. In the same way the Jews of Salonica and Istanbul, almost all recent immigrants, should have been unable to survive on Ottoman territory, as they could not claim any “ancient” places of worship and yet needed synagogues if they wanted to continue being Jews.37 In practice however, accommoda-tions concerning new buildings were often possible; while most churches or former churches surviving in Turkey today date from the nineteenth century, this is due to damage by fi res, to urban growth or to the settle-ment of previously uninhabited areas, rather than to the fact that all church-building was impossible before the 1850s.

Frequently, the authorities were pragmatic when it came to permitting the construction of new churches in places where an Orthodox popula-tion had established itself; while technically illegal under Islamic law, such buildings existed and whenever necessary their congregations secured permissions to repair them.38 In the case of certain monasteries or con-vents too the attitude of the Ottoman government was quite pragmatic. St. Philothei of Athens was proven to have established a “new” nunnery, and also to have aided slaves to escape from their Muslim masters.39 Her convent, however, remained in existence, but the quid pro quo—as usual—remains unknown.

In Bulgarian historiography, there has been a good deal of debate con-cerning the assumption that Islamic religious law, because it forbade the

37 Minna Rozen, “Public Space and Private Space among the Jews of Istanbul in the Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries,” Turcica 30 (1998): 331-46; see p. 340.

38 Rossitsa Gradeva, “On Zimmis and their Chrurch Buildings: Four Cases from Rumeli,” in Th e Ottoman Empire: Myths, Realities and “Black Holes,” Contributions in Hon-our of Colin Imber (Istanbul, 2006), 203-237.

39 Suraiya Faroqhi, “An Orthodox Woman Saint in an Ottoman Document,” in Syncré-tismes et hérésies dans l’Orient seldjoukide et ottoman des XIIIe-XVIIIe siècles, Actes du Colloque du Collège de France octobre 2001, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris, 2005), 383-394.


embellishment of churches, largely prevented any creativity of the Ortho-dox population in architecture and painting before the mid-nineteenth century. Yet Machiel Kiel and Rossitsa Gradeva in their diff erent ways both have toned down the practical impact of Islamic religious prescrip-tions in these matters. Th us, in certain regions of modern Greece and Serbia, also former Ottoman provinces, there was substantial artistic endeavor, so its weakness in the Bulgarian lands must be explained by other factors.40 Usually prescriptions of religious law mattered less than contingencies of a purely local nature, so that the survival or destruction of individual Orthodox churches often cannot be explained by any gen-eral rules.41 Th e dominant role of chance in these matters is not to be gainsaid.

Rather remarkably, it was possible not only to repair or redecorate monasteries and convents, but also actually to construct them, for Otto-man sources quite often refer to people who did so. In some cases, the buildings in question are extant and visibly date from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Th us, where monasteries were concerned, the obsta-cles confronting a would-be donor or founder also could apparently be surmounted or circumvented. Evidently local Muslim and non-Muslim elites developed “understandings” that, for the most part, we can no lon-ger reconstruct from documents—but that left a legacy in the buildings themselves. Loans, commercial deals at reduced prices, attestations that this or that local administrator enjoyed the confi dence of provincials, and other such political or fi nancial tradeoff s were probably not recorded, but must have made possible the construction and embellishment of many a church or synagogue. However, for as long as people could still remember the novelty of such “new” institutions, the latter were always at risk, as they could easily be denounced as illicit innovations.

Most disputes, however, and thus most of our information on repair projects to Christian churches, concern not “new” but rather two very old institutions, namely the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and that of the Nativity in Bethlehem. From our perspective it is very impor-tant to know what the Ottoman authorities thought about the presence of Christian and Jewish pilgrims in the Holy Land.42 After all, Palestine

40 Machiel Kiel, Art and Society of Bulgaria in the Turkish Period (Assen, NL, 1985), 143-205, see particularly 192-193.

41 Rositsa Gradeva, “Ottoman Policy towards Christian Church Buildings,” in Etudes Bal-kaniques 4 (1994): 14-36.

42 Francis E. Peters, Jerusalem: Th e Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims,


was a territory with a large Muslim majority comprising two important Islamic places of pilgrimage, namely the Haram-ı şerif of Jerusalem, with its two mosques dating back to the Umayyad period, and the sanctuary of Abraham in Halilürrahman, present-day Hebron.43 Th e pilgrimage route to Mecca also traversed the region and thus the territory held a major reli-gious and political signifi cance to Muslims.

Already in pre-Ottoman times, Catholics, Orthodox, Armenians (also known as Gregorians), and certain smaller groups such as the Ethiopians, had shared the use of the church of the Holy Sepulcher, and this contin-ued after the Ottoman conquest in 1516. A group of Franciscans residing in Jerusalem took charge of the Catholic pilgrims, and also shared in the responsibility for the upkeep of the church itself.44 However, cohabitation was anything but peaceful; disputes over what seemed—to an outsider—questions of minor importance were exacerbated by the feeling on all sides that concessions, once made, would lead to further loss of control, ending perhaps in complete eviction.45 On the whole the Ottoman authorities had a certain tendency to favor the Orthodox, as the ecumeni-cal patriarch was an Ottoman subject and the clergy over whom he pre-sided had long since been integrated into the government apparatus. By contrast, the center of the Armenians was situated in the Safavid sphere of infl uence, in other words on hostile territory. As for Catholics, the Pope was known to be a major enemy of the sultans. On the whole, how-ever, the Ottoman government maintained a degree of neutrality in inter-church disputes, doubtless realizing that in the end, pilgrims of all denominations were producers of state revenue. Th e ambassadors of the king of France exerted pressure in favor of the Catholics, but before the late 1600s it was not nearly as eff ective as some of these diplomats liked to believe. Only the pressures of the 1683-99 war with the Habsburgs induced the Ottoman authorities to make some concessions to the Cath-olics in view of the support given to the latter by French diplomats.46

and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginnings of Modern Times (Princeton, 1985), a selection of primary sources translated into English with commentary.

43 Uriel Heyd, Ottoman Documents on Palestine, 1552-1615 (Oxford, 1960); Oded Peri, Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem: Th e Question of the Holy Sites in Early Ottoman Times (Leiden, 2001).

44 Peri, Christianity under Islam, 133.45 Peri, Christianity and Islam, 114.46 Peri, Christianity and Islam, 150-151; Jean-Louis Dusson, Marquis de Bonnac,

Mémoire historique sur l’Ambassade de France à Constantinople, ed. Charles Schefer (Paris, 1894), 139-140.


Accommodating Religious Diversity: Non-Muslim Dignitaries and Institutions

Until 1982, when there appeared a two-volume collection of studies on Ottoman non-Muslims, there was a tendency to assume that the frame-work of relations between the Ottoman ruling group and the diff erent non-Muslim communities had essentially been set in the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror.47 Th is sultan was believed to have established the so-called millet system, that is, the organization of non-Muslims in offi cially privi-leged communities separately by religion or denomination, and under the authority of the relevant high-level religious leaders. However, Benjamin Braude with respect to the Jews and Kevork Bardakjian with respect to the Armenians have affi rmed that this notion is a serious anachronism.48 Th e full recognition of these “corporate bodies” of non-Muslims, and also the establishment of regular committees to govern them, did not occur before the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover at this late date the Ottoman administration tended to support lay leaders in order to balance the oligarchy of bishops and rabbis, a policy that had not been followed in earlier, less secularized times. By contrast, Braude and Bardakjian have assumed that there were no millet organizations in the fi fteenth or six-teenth centuries, but only quite fl exible agreements on the part of the administration with individual churchmen or congregations. While not all specialists of non-Muslim Ottoman history would agree with the more extreme formulations of this view, a moderate variant has become part of the scholarly consensus.49

What did exist in the view of the Ottoman bureaucracy were individ-ual religious communities, be they offi cially acknowledged churches with established hierarchies, such as the Orthodox or the Armenian, or else sets of congregations such as the Jews or the Samaritans. Such groups had chiefs appointed by the sultan’s administration—thus Orthodox bishops,

47 Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1982).

48 Benjamin Braude, “Foundation Myths of the Millet System,” in Christians and Jews, 1.69-88; Kevork Bardakjian, “Th e Rise of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople,” in Christians and Jews, 1.89-100.

49 Richard Clogg, “Th e Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire,” in Christians and Jews, 1.184-207; Paraskevas Konortas, “From Tâ’ife to Millet: Ottoman Terms for the Ottoman Greek Orthodox Community,” in Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, eds. Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (Princeton, 1999), 169-179.


to say nothing of the patriarchs, received offi cial documents of investiture (berat). In this sense they were on a par with the ruler’s offi cials, but also with dervish sheiks or even wardens of artisan guilds.

In addition, recent research has rediscovered what L. Hadrovics had already pointed out shortly after the Second World War, namely that the Orthodox church was linked to the governmental apparatus through the nexus of tax-farming.50 At least by the eighteenth century bishops acted as ex offi cio tax-farmers of the dues payable by non-Muslim subjects. We can often explain the well-known instability of high church offi ces, the patri-archates included, by the tax-farming activities of bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs. At least until life-time tax-farms were instituted in 1695, tax-farmers frequently lost their revenue sources because a competitor off ered more money, and no exception was made in favor of church dig-nitaries.51 In addition, due to the bishops’ role as tax-farmers, in years of crisis Orthodox communities might fi nd themselves without pastoral care beyond what the local papaz (priest) could provide. For a bishop might go bankrupt and leave his bishopric because he was responsible for the pay-ment of taxes that, due perhaps to war or epidemics, he was unable to collect. On the other hand, this state of aff airs evidently implied that from the fi scal point of view, the Orthodox Church was an integral part of the Ottoman governing apparatus.

Orthodox monasteries were a special case. First, their archives often enough went back to Byzantine times and recorded the accommodation that their abbots (higoumenoi) made with the Ottomans, once it became clear that the last emperors of Byzantium were not in a position to protect them. Monasteries thus created havens of relative security for persons and properties.52 In the Black Sea region of Trabzon (Trebizond), monasteries also survived the Ottoman conquest without major mishaps and some of them continued to function until the Greco-Turkish population exchange

50 Ladislas Hadrovics, Le peuple serbe et son église sous la domination turque (Paris, 1947).

51 Klaus Peter Matschke and Franz Tinnefeld, Die Gesellschaft im späten Byzanz, Grup-pen, Strukturen, Lebensformen (Cologne, 2001), 158-220, see pp. 218-220; Klaus Peter Matschke, “Research Problems concerning the Transition to Turkokratia: the Byzantinist Standpoint,” in Th e Ottomans and the Balkans, 102-110.

52 Elizabeth Zachariadou, “Th e Worrisome Wealth of the Čelnik Radić,” in Studies in Ottoman History in Honour of Professor V. L. Ménage, eds. Colin Heywood and Colin Imber (Istanbul, 1994), 383-397.


of 1923.53 Some monasteries, such as St Catherine’s on the Sinai, retained their prestige, in part because the Ottoman rulers were quite willing to permit the monks to ask for alms in faraway provinces of the empire, including the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia in today’s Roma-nia. At the same time, monasteries could serve as sources of state revenue. Th e most dramatic example of such “milking” of church treasuries was surely the policy of “confi scation with possible repurchase,” undertaken by Selim II (1566-74), which caused many ecclesiastical institutions to sell their treasures in order to redeem their lands.54

A considerable degree of recognition and legitimization was thus accorded by the Ottoman state to the Orthodox ecclesiastical establish-ment and presumably to the Armenians as well. On the other hand, churches and congregations found ways of adjusting to Ottoman rule. Christian churches other than the Orthodox and Armenian were toler-ated in practice even though often not offi cially recognized. Non-Muslim immigrants into the Ottoman Empire were, upon occasion, even wel-comed by the authorities, the arrival of Sephardic Jews driven out of Spain after 1492 forming the best-known case in point. All these exam-ples meant that the Ottoman authorities quite often negotiated with bish-ops, heads of monasteries, or rabbis, and recent research has given us an understanding of the manner in which especially the Orthodox church was implicated in the functioning of the Ottoman Empire.

A Special Case: Clothing Regulations for Non-Muslims

If Christian churches and Jewish congregations were thus offi cially accom-modated, this did not mean that before the mid-nineteenth century the authorities were willing to view their subjects of diff ering religions and denominations on an equal footing. Sunni Muslims were what might be termed “fi rst-class” subjects who preceded all others. In addition the Ottoman ruling group—as well as its subjects, for that matter—assumed that it should be possible to determine a person’s place in society by a mere

53 Anthony Bryer, “Late Byzantine Rural Society in Matzouka,” in Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society, eds. Anthony Bryer and Heath Lowry (Birmingham, 1986), 53-158.

54 John Alexander (Alexandropoulos), “Th e Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away: Athos and the Confi scation Aff air of 1568-1569,” in Mount Athos in the 14th-16th Centu-ries, Athonika Symmeikta 4 (1997): 149-200.


look at his clothing and accoutrements. Of course, the Ottomans were not the only polity that singled out “inferior” members by their garments; it is worth remembering that the yellow marks on the clothing of Jews in quite a few European states were only abolished in the eighteenth century.

But what makes the Ottoman context distinctive was the complicated relationship between local non-Muslims (zimmis) and foreign residents. To use Ottoman terminology, ehl-i zimmet (“people under the control [of the Islamic state]”) confronted harbi kefere (“unbelievers from the land of war”) or müstemin (people [from the lands of the infi dels] who had been granted protection). It was always considered proper for foreign mer-chants or diplomatic personnel to wear the clothing of their countries of origin, a practice permitting the knowledgeable observer to “place” them immediately.55 However, foreign non-Muslims often preferred to wear Muslim garb, partly because these clothes entailed the right to bear arms, and weaponry was necessary when traveling, while no such privilege was attached to the clothing of foreigners. In certain instances, visitors to the Ottoman lands received formal permission to wear Muslim clothing for their own protection. In brief, the presence of privileged foreigners tended to blur the neat dividing lines between Muslims and non-Muslims in the sartorial sphere, and this happened in spite of the Ottoman administra-tion’s concern to maintain unambiguous signs of diff erence.

Accommodating Religious Diversity: Catholic Missions among other Christian Churches

Rather paradoxically the Ottoman administration quite often agreed with the more extremist adherents of the Counter-Reformation in viewing all Catholics as subjects of the Pope. At least during the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries, this position made Catholics into “enemies of the state,” in theory if not necessarily in practice. Even in Ottoman provinces with a sizeable Catholic population, such as Hungary, a church hierarchy there-fore was not allowed to reside.56 Th e Habsburgs’ ardent defense of the

55 Matthew Elliot, “Clothing Regulations in the Ottoman Empire: Th e Case of the Franks,” in Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity, eds. Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph Neumann (Istanbul, 2004), 103-124.

56 Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor “Hungarian Studies in Ottoman History,” in Th e Otto-mans and the Balkans, 305-350.


Counter-Reformation must have soured Ottoman attitudes even further.57 Th us, the spiritual needs of Catholics in the Ottoman realm were in the care of priests and monks who had received their training or ordination outside the sultan’s domains, usually in Italy—this arrangement resembled the one applied to the Orthodox majority populations in Venetian colo-nies.58 Nor were there any papal diplomats resident in the Ottoman capital.

To the extent that the activities of Catholic missionaries were tolerated, they owed it largely to the protection of the king of France and the latter’s diplomats, who viewed Ottoman Catholics as “multipliers” who might enlarge their own “spheres of infl uence” in Istanbul or Izmir.59 Although the unoffi cial French support given to the Venetians during the war over Crete (1645-69) had caused relations to cool for some time, the Ottoman ruling establishment regarded the king of France, the principal opponent of the Habsburgs, as a potential and often an actual ally. Unoffi cial tolera-tion thus applied mainly to those priests and friars who could claim at least an indirect association with the French embassy, while the impact of these missionaries on ambassadorial policies varied with the religious and political convictions of the relevant envoys.

According to Muslim religious law, apostates from Islam are to be exe-cuted. For this and other reasons, Catholic missionaries could only hope for converts among the Christian subjects of the Empire. In addition to the outright acceptance of Roman Catholicism, there existed the option of becoming Uniates, who recognized the authority of the Pope but retained traditional customs and rituals, including the use of Arabic or Greek rather than Latin in religious services.60 Th e Maronites of the Leba-

57 Meinolf Arens, Habsburg und Siebenbürgen 1600-1605: Gewaltsame Eingliederungs-versuche eines ostmitteleuropäischen Fürstentums in einen frühabsolutistischen Reichsverband (Cologne, 2001).

58 Markus Koller, “Eine Gesellschaft im Wandel—die osmanische Herrschaft in Ungarn im 17. Jahrhundert (1606-1683),” forthcoming, 2010.

59 Géraud Poumarède, Pour en fi nir avec la croisade: Mythes et réalités de la lutte contre les Turcs aux XV e et XVIe siècles (Paris, 2004); idem, “Justifi er l’injustifi able: l’alliance turque au miroir de la chrétienté (XVIe-XVIIe siècles),” Revue d’histoire diplomatique 3 (1997): 217-46; and idem, “Négocier près de la Sublime Porte: Jalons pour une nouvelle histoire des capitulations franco-ottomanes,” in L’invention de la diplomatie, ed. Lucien Bély (Paris, 1998), 71-85.

60 Steven Runciman, Th e Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constan-tinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (Cambridge, 1968): 263.


nese mountains were Uniates by the early seventeenth century, and their links to Italy were so close that many sultanic commands involving them can be found in a register covering the aff airs of Venetian and Ragusan residents.61

Yet other conversions to Roman Catholicism were linked to the attempts of Ottoman Christians in the 1700s and 1800s to lessen their tax loads and better their social status by acquiring the “protection” of a foreign embassy, particularly once again that of the king of France.62 Many Christian merchants purchased positions as so-called dragomans (translators). Yet they might not reside in the places where the consulates they supposedly served were located, or even know the relevant languages. European consuls condoned this practice for reasons of material gain, and also, as noted previously, because a large number of protégés seemed to enhance the status of the embassy or consulate concerned. Recent studies on such protégés in both Istanbul and Izmir have shown that Ottoman Catholics were of diverse origins. Many long-term residents in the Levant were of remote French or Italian ancestry who mingled with local converts of more or less recent vintage.63 Religion remained the crucial link that held the group together: in the period concerning us here, and well into the 1800s, marriages with non-Catholic partners remained extremely rare.

A large section of Aleppo’s Christians in the eighteenth century became Catholics for somewhat diff erent motives. Certainly many traders of this major mart must have felt that belonging to the same church as the French, one of their principal trading partners, presented an advantage. For those active in Egypt, forming a typical trade diaspora, the tight cohe-sion made possible by adhering to a church not otherwise represented in

61 BA, section Maliyeden müdevver, No 17901, p. 6 and elsewhere. 62 For the perspective of a Turkish scholar of nationalist convictions, see Ali İhsan

Bağış, Osmanlı Ticaretinde Gayri Müslimler, Kapitülasyonlar, Beratlı Tüccarlar ve Hayriye Tüccarları (1750-1839) (Ankara, 1983). For a diff erent viewpoint, see Bruce Masters, “Th e Sultan’s Entrepreneurs: Th e Avrupa tüccarı and the Hayriye tüccarıs in Syria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1992): 579-597.

63 Marie-Carmen Smyrnelis, “Les Arméniens catholiques aux XVIIIème et XIXème siè-cles,” Revue du Monde Arménien moderne et contemporain 2 (1995): 25-44; eadem, “Les Européens et leur implantation dans l’espace urbain de Smyrne,” in Les étrangers dans la ville, Jacques Bottin and Donatella Calabi, eds. (Paris, 1999): 65-75; Oliver Jens Schmitt, Levantiner, Lebenswelten und Identitäten einer ethnokonfessionellen Gruppe im osmanischen Reich im “langen 19. Jahrhundert” (Munich, 2005).


the local environment was doubtless an additional attraction.64 But many local Christians chose an association with the Catholic Church simply because they regarded the Orthodox hierarchy, with its close implication in the Ottoman government apparatus, as impervious to their demands for greater local autonomy.65 Moreover in this period, the upper clergy of the Orthodox Church attempted to make their organization more Greco-phone, a policy that did not go over well with the Arabic-speaking con-gregations of Aleppo. When they proposed to change over to the Catholic church, Aleppo’s Christians were obviously in a position to negotiate con-ditions, so that in a sense their move may be compared to the better-known Bulgarian demand for an “exarchate” (a separate Orthodox Church) that occurred about a century later. Diff erently from what happened in the mid-nineteenth century however, when the Bulgarian quest for auton-omy found a sympathetic hearing in the Ottoman administration, the eighteenth-century bureaucratic apparatus tended to favor the Orthodox. But this support was not energetic enough to off set the advantages Alep-po’s Christians saw in a change of ecclesiastical allegiance to the Catholic Church.

Conclusion

Research on Ottoman non-Muslims, and as a corollary, the attitudes of the Ottoman ruling group towards Christians and Jews, has revived dur-ing the last twenty years or so. Th is trend is doubtless connected with the prominence of “identity politics” since the 1989-91 collapse of “bureau-cratic socialism” in eastern and central Europe, and then with the wars that accompanied the dissolution of historic Yugoslavia.66 Moreover the fading of hopes for a greater share of well-being and broader access to social justice for the majority of the world’s people seems to have contrib-uted to the revivals of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish fundamentalisms and an attendant narrowing of social vision. Th is state of aff airs may have encouraged greater interest in the manner in which the various non-

64 André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire, au XVIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Damascus, 1973-74), 2:484-497; Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984).

65 Masters, Christians and Jews, 191.66 John Lampe, Yugoslavia as History: Twice there was a Country (Cambridge, 2000),

332ff .


national empires that came and went in the course of history have dealt with those of their subjects professing a religion or denomination diff er-ent from that of the governing elite. In a world progressively dominated by Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the conquest of overseas empires by various European powers, the Ottoman Empire managed to expand and later maintain its hold over its multi-religious population well into the late 1700s and often beyond. It is legitimate and indeed impor-tant to ask ourselves how this result was achieved.

We have discussed the sultans’ policies under two headings, namely “inscribing the Ottoman and Islamic presence” and “accommodating reli-gious diversity.” Th ese headings have been chosen because like other pre-nineteenth-century monarchies, and mutatis mutandis, like more current regimes, the Ottomans were concerned with making their presence on the territories they had conquered at once palpable and permanent. Th is objective was achieved through public construction, especially in newly conquered cities; it is certainly not by chance that both Edirne and Istan-bul, shortly after their respective conquests in 1362 and 1453, were adorned with visually prominent and highly impressive mosques, schools, covered markets and public baths. Th us these two cities, but also other previously insignifi cant places such as Sarajevo, were made into “show-cases” of the Ottoman and Muslim presence. Moreover the symbolic value of these towns sometimes long outlasted the Ottoman Empire. Th e damage infl icted on Sarajevo during the civil wars in 1990s Yugoslavia was connected directly with the fact that the town was viewed as an epit-ome of the Muslim presence in south-eastern Europe, a feature that many combatants quite unhistorically defi ned as “Turkish.” On the other hand, the rapid reconstruction of Sarajevo or Mostar during the last few years also was linked to the realization, on the part of locals but also of interna-tional organizations, that the Muslim presence in this area was a value to be protected.

Another monument to the Ottoman presence, even more enduring by being inscribed in people’s hearts and minds, was the Islamization of siz-able parts of the population of south-eastern Europe. Even though in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, large numbers of Balkan Muslims lost their lives or else were forced to emigrate under often appalling condi-tions, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, as well as the Muslim populations of western Th race (Greece) and Bulgaria, continue to exist in the Chris-tian and post-Christian states of south-eastern Europe. In some cases these Muslim populations were the fairly remote descendants of Anatolian


immigrants, while in other instances, they were locals who had converted to Islam. We have seen that these conversions—like most conversions examined closely—were accompanied by social pressures of various kinds. But it is thoroughly untenable to believe that the Ottoman state had the power and its ruling elites the will to force massive groups of its subjects to adopt Islam.

Th e Ottoman Empire also resembled other monarchical states in that great care was taken in publicly presenting the sultan.67 Th e state elite, that, after all, had the power to depose the ruler, was both the organizer and the target audience of these representations; but they also were intended for prominent foreign Muslims and for the envoys of neighbor-ing potentates both within the world of Islam and outside it. Th e domi-nant motif was certainly the image of the pious Sunni Muslim ruler, upholder of Islamic religious law. In the 1500s and 1600s this laudatory stance often contrasted with the negative image of the “heretic” shah of Iran, whose western territories the sultans made great eff orts to conquer. Th is self-presentation implied that the sultans and female members of the dynasty as well, sponsored great complexes of mosques and charitable institutions.

While the basic features of the sultanic image thus remained unchanged over the centuries, variations in detail were not impossible. Mehmed the Conqueror desired to present himself as a “lord of the world,” in the tra-dition of Roman emperors; the young Süleyman seems to have encour-aged speculations with respect to his possible eschatological role, and many seventeenth-century sultans were reticent when it came to ostenta-tious public charities. All these elements show that within a framework determined by religious law and “tradition,” it was possible for sultans and their viziers to invent novel modes of representing power.

Governing an empire with a large non-Muslim population meant devising policies concerning Christian and Jewish places of worship. While acknowledging the prescriptions of religious law, and applying them whenever they fi tted the requirements of “state policy,” the Otto-man administration allowed a great many informal arrangements on the local level—and when there were no objections, well and good. On the other hand, the instability of all “novelties” in general, and of “new”

67 Suraiya Faroqhi, Another Mirror for Princes: Th e Public Image of the Sultans and its Reception (Istanbul, 2008); Gilles Veinstein, “Autoportrait du sultan ottoman en con-quérant” (Istanbul, forthcoming).


churches or synagogues in particular, was obvious to contemporaries and modern historians alike. If the Ottoman elite wished to save face vis à vis the more piety-minded, or to use a modern term, “fundamentalist” Mus-lims, sultans and viziers could come down heavily against “novelties.”68 Faced with opposition expressed in terms of Islamic law, it was always possible to revoke a previously accorded toleration. While these contin-gencies injected considerable uncertainties into the lives of some non-Muslims, in many cases these people nonetheless built and adorned churches and synagogues according to the means at their disposal.

As to the churches as organizations, researchers have noted the close implication of the Orthodox hierarchy in the Ottoman state apparatus. From the fi nancial administration’s viewpoint, bishops and patriarchs fi g-ured among the numerous tax-farmers ensuring the collection of state revenues. Monasteries, in so far as they were “ancient,” apparently bene-fi ted from the respect that the administration accorded to institutions and practices deemed “traditional.” As to the Catholic mission priests, viewed with distaste by many Orthodox (to say nothing of the Ottoman elite itself ), they were able to continue their activities largely because of the sultans’ foreign policy concerns. While the late seventeenth-century defeats in the war against the Habsburgs made the support of Louis XIV of France seem imperative, European diplomats tended to overestimate greatly the impact that their moves—and intrigues—had on Ottoman ecclesiastical policies.

Th roughout the early modern period, the Ottoman ruling group estab-lished and then perpetuated a social order based on clear-cut hierarchies; this emphasis on hierarchy governed relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of the empire, and evidently, those between the rul-ing group and the tax-paying population—regardless of religion—as well. Graphically expressed, this observation can be found in the report of a late sixteenth-century ambassador from Morocco who stressed that nobody in Istanbul would ever dream of violating rules of precedence.69 Th erefore at least, we can be assured that the dominant role of hierarchy in Istanbul society is not just a fi gment of our present-day imaginations.

68 Madeline Zilfi , “Discordant Revivalism in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul,” Th e Jour-nal of Near Eastern Studies 45.4 (1986): 251-269.

69 Abou-l-Hasan Ali ben Mohammed Et-Tamgrouti [Al-Tamghrûtî], En-nafhat el-mis-kiya fi -s-sifarat et-Tourkiya: Relation d’une ambassade marocaine en Turquie 1589-1591, trans. Henry de Castries (Paris, 1929), 61.


But within this system, where everybody was supposed to know his or her place and, at least ideally, remain in it, in practice there was room for maneuver and ad hoc agreements. While fl exible arrangements were often made by lower-level offi ce-holders and but tacitly condoned by the cen-tral administration, a widespread sense of hierarchy ensured that improvi-sation remained within the limits set by a relatively fi rm framework, fi xed by Islamic law and sultanic commands.

Historians of the British Empire will think of the analogous role of “deference” in assuring the cohesion of society at the imperial center of Britain. Perhaps when it came to maintaining an empire, there is a paral-lel between the two setups: the Ottoman elites combined deeply ingrained notions of hierarchy with fl exible arrangements on the local level, while their British counterparts relied on the frequently invoked “deference of the lower orders” and as a typical understatement, described their own “fl exible arrangements” by the less dignifi ed term of “muddling through.”

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