“Be careful about the religious issues before all other duties. The religious precepts build a strong the state… Depend on God's help in the esteem of justice and fairness, to remove the cruelty, attempts in every duty.” - Sultan Osman I
When we contemplate the idea of citizenship in the modern world, we tend to think of it in the context of how we personally experience the concept. Our citizenship is inextricably tied to our place of birth, our ethnic background, and our language. In other words, our citizenship is bound to our ideas about our nationality. In pre-modern times however, this was not the case. Classical civilizations viewed citizenship as a privilege bestowed upon those who had either earned or paid for their rights as a member of the state. This trend continued for centuries mostly unchanged until the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the implementation of the millet system. What we began to see under the Ottomans however, is not what we would think of today when we refer to the idea of citizenship. To think of citizenship in the Ottoman Empire using the criteria by which we determine citizenship today, namely one’s nationality, would cause us to commit the anachronistic mistake of projecting the idea of nationalism into a time when such an idea would have been entirely foreign to those who lived in the Ottoman Empire. In order to fix this problem we must first have a clear understanding of what we mean when we talk about citizenship in the Ottoman Empire. Only then can we attempt to answer the central question of what exactly is responsible for the rise of proto-citizens in the Ottoman Empire.
Given that the idea of nationalism was far removed from the time of the Ottomans, what can we say about the way people interacted and identified themselves with regards to the state? In the early part of the history of the Ottoman Empire, people saw themselves as being more directly connected to their specific community than they were to the state as a whole. People lived in segregated confessional communities called millets. It was often the case that millets would also be further subdivided by profession or trade. These communities were, for the most part, allowed to carry out the administration of their neighborhoods according to their own customs and systems of organization. More specifically, the term describes the separate legal courts that existed in each community and went about the business of directing community policy with relatively little interference from those who were in charge of the Ottoman state as a whole. In fact, the only real influence the Ottoman sultan exerted on each individual millet was channeled through the head of each individual millet, who was usually the leader of the religious hierarchy in each community. One could argue that the real focal point of power in the early empire revolved around the millet, as each was allowed to legislate their own laws and levy their own taxes.
The question of whether or not the millet system eventually led to the rise of the proto-citizen is one that may not have a definitive answer, but we can make predictions about what a society of proto-citizens would look like if it were indeed promoted by the millet system. Firstly, we would begin to see the breaking down, at least in the daily administration of the state, of the barriers that separated subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Such a phenomenon would surely be an indication of progress towards a less local, more centralized state identity. This is exactly what we see in the Ottoman Empire, notably in the city of Aintab. In 1540, Süleyman the Magnificent set out to codify a set of laws for the Ottoman Empire. This new set of legal reforms served to centralize authority over the empire with the sultan at the expense of community leaders, and these reforms became representative of the sultan’s presence in each community (Peirce 286). In the past, cities were granted a greater level of autonomy in conducting the business of it’s people, but Süleyman’s reforms created a system of give-and-take that dictated the way in which state authority would be legitimized. The legal organs and processes of Aintab were being absorbed into those of the empire as a whole which lead to local custom being circumscribed by the new centralized power. As Leslie Peirce writes “There was no clear line separating state and society in Aintab (289).”
Peirce also describes in detail “the trickle-down effect of the benefits of state generated offices through the granting of ever smaller units of tax-farming.” Local people were being appointed to offices in government administration, and therefore suddenly owed allegiance to the state over their local neighborhood. In turn, these new bureaucrats would employ more men in the enforcement of the duties of their office. These men would have no title per se, but would in fact be bearers of state authority. These tax farms eventually became one of the main issues for dispute over whether the state or local authorities would have ultimate control, and the new imperial courts would be the venue in which these issues were debated. (292)
Although local custom was beginning to lose ground against a new imperial state law, it was not completely eliminated as a tool used by local government. Customary law continued to have legal standing in areas where it was convenient, and when it was not in contradiction with the Qur’an. Local custom was also only applicable in the region in which it originated and was not retro-active. But why was this the case? Certainly the Ottomans appreciated the extent to which total and complete reform would be disruptive on a large scale, and besides, their interest was not in eliminating local custom, but simply to show that state rule, and state legislation would have the right-of-way in Ottoman cities. By supplanting the Qur’an as the supreme law of the land the Ottomans created new ties between the individual and the state. These new ties would eventually evolve into the bonds that acted as the new framework on which the modern idea of citizenship would be constructed.
There is a wealth of evidence that supports the idea that modern citizenship was first conceived in the Ottoman Empire. Süleyman’s reforms initiated a process that would continue throughout the rest of the Ottoman Empire’s reign over the Balkans and the Middle East. The results of this process were indeed a new breed of citizenship where citizens were directly tied to state government in such a way that their state identity overrode that of their regional or even religious identity. While it is obvious that proto-citizens existed in the Ottoman Empire, it is not so obvious that this was a direct result of the millet system. A great deal of the evidence points to this being the case, but there is possibly a lack of any real definitive, all-or-nothing piece of evidence linking proto-citizenship to the millet system. In other words, we have a case of having a lot of necessary information, but not much information sufficient to make a final judgment one way or the other.
i dont get this
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