Sultan Mehmed II established the millet system, giving religious freedom to minorities in the Ottoman Empire
The
Millet System
Before
looking at how nationalism affected the Ottomans, we have to look further back,
at how different nationalities originally were a source of strength for the Ottomans.
After Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453,
he had a unique problem on his hands: how to deal with the sizable Christian
minority within his realm. Islam has numerous rules about how to treat
religious minorities and what kinds of rights they are accorded. Working within
these rules, Sultan Mehmed established a system later known as the millet system (millet coming from the Arabic
word ملة meaning “nation”).
According to the millet system, Christians within the Ottoman
Empire were allowed to live much like they did before Ottoman rule. They were
allowed to chose their own religious leaders, collect their own taxes, use
their own language, and even to have their own courts where Christians were
tried according to Christian laws, not Muslim ones. This type of a system was
revolutionary at that time in Europe, where in Christian-dominated areas, there
was no concept of religious freedom rights.
Over time, the millet system would grow to include more than
just one group of Christians. To accommodate all the different forms of
Christianity within the Ottoman realm, each church was given its own millet,
and allowed to run by its own rules. Jews were also allowed to have their own
millet. During the reign of Mehmed II’s son, Bayezid II, thousands of Jews who
were experiencing religious persecution at the hands of Spain’s Catholics were
welcomed into the Ottoman Empire where they were given much more religious
freedom than anywhere else in the world at that time.
With the millet system, different
nationalities, ethnicities, cultures, and religions were allowed to
thrive. People commonly think of the Ottoman Empire as a “Turkish” empire. This
is far from the truth. While the sultans from the beginning to the end were
Turkish, the general populace was a wide variety of peoples. People
within the millets were able to rise up in society to prominent positions. In
fact, many of the sultan’s viziers (ministers) came from Greek, Bosnian, Arab,
or Persian backgrounds.
European
Nationalism
In
1789, a revolution began in France that would alter world history. The French
Empire, headed by a tyrannical king was shaken to its core. The revolution
helped bring Enlightenment ideas to the forefront in Europe, such as
natural rights, government by the people, and social contract theory. However,
besides the political effects of the revolution, a much more important social
one was taking form: nationalism.
In Europe, the concept of nationalism took
the form of people being led by ethnically similar people. The large
multi-national empires of the past, such as the Holy Roman Empire or the
Spanish Empire were seen as inherently weak because of the numerous
nationalities and languages within the empire. Ethnic/linguistic groups began
to revolt. The goal of many of these groups was to be led by someone who has
the same ethnicity and language as them. Thus for example, the Dutch of Holland
rejected Spanish rule, as did the Italians in Sicily. Revolutions broke out
across the European continent, based on the idea of establishing nation-states:
countries that only have one nationality within them, and are ruled by someone
of that nationality.
This
rising tide of nationalism made its way into the Ottoman Empire as well.
Although the millet system gave people their rights and allowed them to rule themselves,
European nationalism dictated that the ethnic minorities of the Ottoman Empire
should not have a Turkish sultan. Nationalism meant that they had to break free of the Ottoman
Empire and be led by their own people.
Such an idea did not just arise on its own
within the Ottoman Empire. As previously stated, the millet system provided a
framework for different nationalities to have rights and freedom within the
Ottoman realm. With this type of contentment, average people were unlikely to
rise up against their Ottoman governors. To provide the backbone for such
revolutions, the major European powers of the day – Britain, France, and Russia
– stepped in.
Revolts
Against the Ottoman Government
European powers actively encouraged
nationalities within the Ottoman empire to revolt throughout the 1800s. For
example, the Greek revolution of 1821-1832 was strongly encouraged by other
European powers, who sought to undermine and weaken the Ottomans. Not all
Greeks were in favor of independence, in fact the Orthodox Patriarch, who was
chosen by the Greeks in accordance with the millet system openly denounced the
rebels in favor of unity with the Ottomans. However, the Greek revolutionaries
were heavily aided by the British, who sent their navy (along with the Russians
and the French) to battle the Ottomans on behalf of the Greeks. With the
political and economic strains that the Ottomans were already facing at that
time, they were unable to defeat this intervention by Europe and Greece was
proclaimed independent of the Ottoman Empire.
With the successful nationalistic revolt of
the Greeks, other minorities within the empire were encouraged to revolt. The
Tanzimat reforms that were discussed in post 2 also helped to strengthen
nationalist revolts. The Tanzimat encouraged all people within the Ottoman
Empire to submit to a single code of laws, instead of allowing them the right
to live according to their own ethnic/religious rules. Thus, more revolts
ensued. The Serbians continued armed revolt against the Ottomans throughout the
1800s, and were strongly supported by the Russians. Armenians throughout
Anatolia also revolted and were also supported by the Russians. Even fellow
Muslims, the Bosniaks began to fight for independence, both because of
nationalistic ideas and as protest against the un-Islamic reforms in the
Tanzimat.
Turkish
Nationalism
Perhaps the most bewildering forms
of nationalism during the decline of the Ottoman Empire was the nationalistic
ideas of the Turks and Arabs. Since 1517, the Turks and Arabs had been
intimately linked within the Ottoman Empire. Their cultures and histories
mixed, explaining the huge amount of loan words from each other in both
languages today. Both had a very large role within the Ottoman Empire, and
should have had every reason to see it succeed. However, the rising tide of
European nationalism affected them as well.
In response to the revolts of the Greeks,
Armenians, Serbians, and others, the Turkish leaders in the Ottoman Empire
needed to find a way to counter the effects of such revolutions. While
Sultan Abdülhamid II’s solution was pan-Islamic solidarity and an
“Ottoman” identity instead of a nationalist identity in the empire, many others
began to think of the Ottoman Empire as a purely Turkish state. They promoted the
ideas that Turkish pride should be emphasized in the same way nationalist pride
was prevalent throughout Europe. Turks began to promote themselves
throughout government, and exclude others. This policy was promoted by the same
group (the Young Turks) that promoted secularism and a movement away from Islam
throughout the 1800s.
World
War One and Arab Nationalism
As a reaction to the rise of Turkish
nationalism, some Arab thinkers and political leaders began to formulate ideas
of Arab nationalism. They looked back at the Abbasid and Umayyad days when
Arabs were the leaders of the Muslim empire and hoped to create something
similar. In their view, the Ottoman Turks had hampered the progress of the Arab
world and held them back.
By the time World War One began in the summer
of 1914, the Ottoman Empire was nothing but a shell of its former self. Its
former lands in Europe were now gone as the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, and
Bosnians were all either independent or under European control. All that was
left was the predominantly Turkish lands of Anatolia and the Arab lands south
of it, including present-day Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia.
In WWI, the Ottomans sided with the Germans
and Austrians against Russia, France, and Britain. Due to Turkish nationalism,
the army was almost entirely made up of Turks, with Arabs excluded. Because of
this, the British saw an opportunity to further break apart the Ottoman state.
The British offered the Arab governor of Makkah, Sherif Hussain, his own Arab
kingdom if he sided with them and revolted against the Ottomans. The British
sent the later (in)famous T.E. Lawrence (aka, Lawrence of Arabia) to Hussain to
convince him to revolt, and provide him with huge amounts of money and weapons.
With British encouragement, a group of Arabs
from the Hejaz (Western Arabian Peninsula, including Makkah and Madinah),
revolted against their brothers in Islam and sided with the British. From 1914
to 1918, the Arabs harassed the Ottoman forces throughout the Arab world.
Because of the Arab Revolt, the British were able to easily conquer Iraq,
Palestine, and Syria from the Ottoman Empire. For the first time since 1187,
the holy city of Jerusalem was under the control of Christian Europe, this time
because of the help given to them by nationalistic Arabs.
Final
Destruction of the Ottoman Empire
World War One did not go with for the
Ottomans. Invaded by European powers and revolted against by the Arabs, the
Ottoman Empire essentially ceased to exist by the time the war was over in
1918. An ultra-nationalist Turkish leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, took power in
what was now known as Turkey, and declared it a purely Turkish state. Other
nationalities were not welcomed in this new nation. In fact, huge population
transfers occured between Greece and Turkey, with each expelling the other
ethnic group from within its borders.
In the Arab world, the British (of course)
did not keep their promise to Sherif Hussain. They had simultaneously decided
to divide up the Arab world between Britain and France. Arbitrary lines were
drawn on the map to divide up the Arab world into new states called
Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Zionist Jews were encouraged
to settle in Palestine, creating a new Jewish state – Israel. Egypt continued
under British domination to become its own nation, separate from the rest of
the Arab world. What had once been the great Ottoman Empire was no more, it was
replaced by numerous competing and disunited nationalistic states.
Conclusions
Like all empires throughout Islamic history
and world history in general, the Ottomans did not last forever. They were the
last great Muslim empire, finally ending just one generation ago. The reasons
for their decline are many. Political corruption weakened them in the face of
Europe’s rising power. Economically, many factors (both within and outside of
Ottoman control) helped bring poverty and despair to the empire that was once
the economic powerhouse of Europe. The Islamic character of the empire was
lost. And finally, the European idea of nationalism dealt the empire its
death-blow. The purpose of this series is not to languish on past failures and
mistakes. It is to educate people, Muslim and non, to understand the mistakes
of the past to help prevent the same mistakes in the future.
Bibliography:
Hodgson,
M. G. S. The Venture of Islam, Conscience and History
in a World Civilization. 3. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1974.
Ochsenwald,
William, and Sydney Fisher. The Middle East: A History.
6th. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.
Social Plugin