Ottoman Rule in Damascus, 1708-1758

by Karl K. Barbir

Overview

On the basis of new evidence from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul, Karl Barbir challenges the current interpretation of Ottoman rule in Damascus during the eighteenth century. He argues that the prevailing themes of decline and stagnation—usually applied to the entire century—in fact apply only to the latter half of the century. This discovery, he contends, affords a more balanced and realistic view of the Near East's Ottoman past than previous studies have suggested.

Originally published in 1980.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691643342
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Series:	Princeton Studies on the Near East , #102
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

Read an Excerpt

Ottoman Rule in Damascus, 1708-1758

---

By Karl K. Barbir

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1980 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05297-7

---

CHAPTER 1

CHANGING PATTERNS IN THE GOVERNORSHIP OF DAMASCUS

In the first half of the eighteenth century, during the brief revival that took place at the imperial center, the Ottomans reorganized the administrative structure of the province of Damascus. Two related sets of patterns of change occurred in the governorship of that province. We have called them, respectively, "limits on the governor's functions" and "provincial centralization." They began roughly at the turn of the century and continued for approximately fifty years. Whoever was the sovereign or chief minister regarded them as precedents for provincial administration in Damascus.

"Limits on the governor's functions" involved two related departures from the classical system of Ottoman provincial organization. In that system, governors of Damascus had military obligations to the sultan outside the province and could thereby hope to achieve promotions to other provinces or to the grand vezirate. After 1708, the governor no longer left Damascus to participate in the wars of the empire. At the same time, no governnor of Damascus — with two minor exceptions — attained the grand vezirate in the first half of the eighteenth century.

"Provincial centralization" evolved when, after 1708, the governor of Damascus was regularly assigned supreme command of the annual pilgrimage to Arabia as well as direct administration of a varying number of the province's subordinate units (sancaks). Both of these changes represented an attempt by Istanbul to centralize affairs in the provincial capital.

The two patterns of change were related in the sense that the pilgrimage was the equivalent of a military campaign, and that the governor's lack of mobility outside the province was balanced by the expansion of his direct authority within the province as well as by the prestige he derived from being commander of the pilgrimage. Whether similar changes developed in other provinces is a question to be posed in future research. The purpose of this part of our study is to analyze the patterns as they developed in Damascus. To set them in context, a brief review of relevant aspects of the Ottoman provincial governorship precedes the analysis.

The Ottoman Provincial Governorship

"At the beginning, in the Ottoman dynasty, it was Osman Gazi who distributed offices of rank." So begins a sixteenth-century administrative ordinance (kanunname) that sought to codify accepted past practices in the structure of Ottoman government. As the eponymous founder of the empire, Osman Gazi began the process of extending sovereign control over all state appointments, whether in the bureaucratic, religious, or military careers. Until the time of Sultan Mehmed II (d. 1481) the first minister, or vezir, was drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the great ulema families who, alone in the fledgling Ottoman state, possessed the education to be administrators. As the absolute deputy of the sultan, the first vezir (later known as the grand vezir) was, at least in theory, the sole means of access to the sovereign in all matters of state. He alone could propose candidates for state posts and obtain the sultan's approval of those appointments. In certain cases, if he were on campaign or far away from the sultan, he could make appointments by proxy. During the reign of Mehmed II, the number of vezirs rose to seven, including the grand vezir, and the vezirate was no longer the pinnacle of attainment for members of the ulema. Mehmed II systematically appointed vezirs from the ranks of thousands of Balkan and Anatolian Christian peasants who were recruited, converted to Islam, and trained for service as honored "slaves" of the sultan. In later centuries, freeborn Muslims were allowed entry into the "military" (askeri) ranks, at the top of which was the vezirate. The number of vezirs increased to nine during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520-1566). Members of the official council of state (divan-t hümayun), which met in a domed chamber, the nine were known as vezirs of the dome (kübbe vezirleri). As the number of qualified recruits rose, more vezirates were created. There were sixteen in 15%: nine as members of the council, seven as governors of major provinces. The total rose to twenty-three in 1599. During the seventeenth century, a number of minor officials of the central government and the provinces gained the vezirate, and, after 1640, most provincial governors were vezirs. During the reign of Sultan Ahmed III (1703-1730) the vezirate of the dome was abolished.

The trend of sending out vezirs as provincial governors was one important element of change in the provincial system. In the classical scheme of provincial administration, the basic unit was a sancak, whose governor (sancakbeyi) commanded the local military forces (timarlis), who enjoyed usufruct from agricultural lands. The basis of the system was the maintenance of a fighting cavalry force that at any time could be called upon to participate in the empire's wars. A combination of sancaks made up a larger unit of administration known earlier as a beylerbeyilik and later as an eyalet, or province.

Aside from natural geography, the limits separating provinces from one another were arbitrary and subject to many changes. They were fixed for military, fiscal, and administrative convenience and were altered at will. There is a hint of this in the standard letter of appointment of provincial governors, in which the sultan is referred to as having the power to divide his realm just as God has made divisions in the human race. It might be added that, no matter how the realm was divided for administrative purposes, the local populations had their own notions of local boundaries, often determined by agricultural patterns or ancient divisions. The problem of provincial boundaries in the Ottoman Empire has been taken too seriously by modern observers. They tend to assume that boundaries were literally fixed and provinces clearly defined. This often reflects a desire to project the limits of modern states back into the past. Difficulties arise with many cases, however: the temporary separation of Sidon province for a few years from the larger province of Damascus in 1614, a separation made permanent after 1660; the attachment of the sancak of Nablus to Sidon for a brief period in the early eighteenth century, although the two were not even continguous; and the fact that the sancak of Hims, though theoretically a part of the province of Tripoli, was assigned to several governors of Damascus.

Such displacements and rearrangements of sancaks marked crucial changes in the military structure of the empire after the last part of the sixteenth century. Inflation and the rise of an expanding janissary army in Istanbul threatened the livelihood and effectiveness of the military forces scattered throughout the provinces. It became necessary to strengthen provincial governors to maintain local order. Recent research has shown that, as a consequence, the administrative importance of the sancaks diminished during the seventeenth century, whereas that of the larger units — the eyalets — increased. At the same time, the state resettled thousands of janissaries in the provinces in order to keep them from making trouble in Istanbul. These forces came to play powerful roles in provincial life. They penetrated the economic structure — particularly the urban craft corporations — and acted as a check to ambitious governors, of whose control they were relatively independent. As if to balance the social and economic power of these new forces, the state allowed displaced and underpaid timarlis to join the retinues of governors. A retinue's size in the classical system was "in proportion to the income received from [a governor's] fiefs." It afterward rose above the earlier average of roughly two hundred armed retainers ready for service in imperial campaigns. Whereas the state, during the seventeenth century, appears to have acceded to this transformation of the provincial system, particularly to the diminished importance of the sancaks, it nevertheless attempted to retain control over the size of each governor's retinue. After 1707 — this date being significant for our analysis — the timarlis attached to governors' retinues, and called pasa defterlisi, could no longer draw income from their original timars. Their support was now the problem of individual governors. Thus, all provincial military forces — with the exception of the relatively few timarlis — were either janissaries, or mercenaries and their descendants.

Changes also took place in the ranks and titles held by provincial governors. Here some distinctions are in order. In the Ottoman system, all officials held rütbes, or posts of rank, but some persons enjoyed as well payes, or state salaries graded by rank and granted as favors. Hence, a teacher in a mosque might hold an Istanbul paye or Mecca paye without living in Istanbul or Mecca, yet have the right to an income equal to that of an official in the religious career actually holding such a post. Similarly, a governor might be granted the Rumeli paye — the rank and income of the empire's senior governor, the governor of Rumeli — while holding some other governorship. As a rule, however, there were three ranks of governors distributed over two provincial units, the sancaks, and the larger entities known earlier as beylerbeyiliks and later as eyalets. A sancak, formerly the basic administrative unit, was headed by a sancakbeyi. The latter possessed the symbolic single horse tail (tug) and the title of bey. In later periods, a sancak might also be assigned to a beylerbeyi (bey of beys), of two horse tails, and with the title of pasa. Those holding the highest rank, the vezirate — pasas of three horse tails — might govern sancaks or eyalets. By 1760, the increase in numbers in the two top ranks led to the following pattern of relationships between ranks and administrative units:

Units Sancaks
Number Eyalets
Number

Ranks Vezir     6
Vezir     21
Beylerbeyi     29
Beylerbeyi     9
Sancakbeyi 13 Titles Bey, Pasa     48
Pasa 30

It has long been maintained and generally accepted that, by the end of the seventeenth century, the typical Ottoman governor was a mere figurehead who, in the face of growing provincial "autonomy," had few powers aside from the collection of taxes. The "reality" of political life is said to have stood in sharp contrast to the prescribed modes of provincial governance. In the classical system, the central government imposed four duties on all governors: to be the sultan's deputy in the provinces in all matters within their competence (umur-u siyaset); to enforce the sultan's orders and all decisions by officials of the religious-judicial system (kadis); to preside over provincial councils' deliberations pertaining to members of the military class; and to maintain public security. Governors, however, had to defer to the provincial kadis, treasurers (defterdars), and janissaries in their spheres of competence, for which they had direct access to Istanbul.

What is usually implied by the thesis of the governors' limited effectiveness is the assertive nature of local groups — fluid in composition and varying in immediate goals — and the limited tenure of most governors. This theme has not been extensively tested, but, instead, has been accepted as a working proposition by historians. A great deal of research is needed to clarify the changes in provincial governorship during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the composition and goals of local groups. In this and other parts of the present study, we will show that, in the first half of the eighteenth century, governors of Damascus continued to exercise considerable power to regulate communications, to encourage economic activity, and to maintain stable patterns of settlement in the face of encroachment by tribes in the countryside. Governors, in other words, were still expected to apply — and continued to attempt to apply — the political theory of the "circle of equity." In brief, this theory — whose origins go far back into Near Eastern history — held that strong and conscientious royal authority was the foundation of justice and prosperity. The Kutadgu Bilig, an eleventh-century Turkish manual of administration, summarizes the theory as follows: "To control the state requires a large army. To support the troops requires great wealth. To obtain this wealth the people must be prosperous. For the people to be prosperous the laws must be just. If any one of these is neglected the state will collapse." In a related conception, Ottoman society was regarded as consisting of four "estates": the ruling elite (askeri, "men of the sword"), the businessmen ("men of negotiation"), bureaucrats ("men of the pen"), and the peasantry (reaya, "men of husbandry"). Artificial as these propositions may seem, they were very much at the heart of government practice. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the historian Naima's recommendations for implementing justice for the four "estates" were taken seriously and contributed in part to the Ottoman state's relative revival. A significant example of this policy is the grand vezir Damad Ibrahim Pasa's 1727 letter of warning to the governor of Damascus, Ismail Pasa (al-'Azm). It gives important evidence of early eighteenth-century provincial policy and shows that the ideals were expected to become reality. According to Damad Ibrahim, the just ruler (hâkim-i âdil, apparently equated with the men of the sword) — in this case the provincial governor — is the originator or first cause of justice for the other three estates: the elite (rical, including the ulema, esraf and ayan), the businessmen (tüccar), and the peasantry (reaya). Note that, in this conception of provincial society, the elite is substituted for the bureaucracy, "men of the pen," of the four-estate theory. If the ruler does not follow the precepts of the "circle of equity" theory, the other three estates are corrupted: "In the first place, if the ruler is not just and inclines to tyranny, the elite, men of negotiation, and the peasantry will become savages." Damad Ibrahim catalogues the abuses of Ismail Pasa and blames him for being the cause of local disturbances and the flight of the population. He concludes his letter with a severe warning and an Arabic aphorism: "Be alert and ponder your fate."

The functions of Ottoman provincial governors thus extended far beyond the collection of taxes. They covered security of life and property, the prevention of mass disturbances, the maintenance of residential patterns, as well as a whole range of matters whose extent and significance have yet to be explored. By the eighteenth century, when the classical social and economic organization had largely been transformed from its sixteenth-century basis, the Ottoman sultan nevertheless continued to regard his subjects as being under his absolute domination and protection. The provincial governors were expected to perform accordingly. Indeed, as Professor Inalcik maintains, the "circle of equity" theory was the cornerstone of Ottoman political philosophy until 1839 and the Tanzimat reforms.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Ottoman Rule in Damascus, 1708-1758 by Karl K. Barbir. Copyright © 1980 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• List of Tables, pg. ix
• Note on Transcription and Dates, pg. xi
• Abbreviations, pg. xiii
• Governors of Damascus, 1708-1758, pg. xv
• Preface, pg. xvii
• Introduction, pg. 1
• Maps, pg. 11
• One. Changing Patterns in the Governorship of Damascus, pg. 13
• Two. Containment of Provincial Groups: Notables, Janissaries, and Tribesmen, pg. 65
• Three. The Pilgrimage: Centerpiece of Ottoman Rule in Damascus, pg. 108
• Conclusion, pg. 178
• Appendices, pg. 181
• Bibliography, pg. 203
• Index, pg. 213