{"id":153,"date":"2022-09-01T14:08:58","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T14:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/religionsofmiddleeast1\/?post_type=chapter&p=153"},"modified":"2022-11-04T01:46:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T01:46:32","slug":"nineteenth-century-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu\/religionsofmiddleeast1\/chapter\/nineteenth-century-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 7. Nineteenth Century Middle East"},"content":{"raw":"Middle Eastern Reforms in the Nineteenth Century<\/strong><\/span>\r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nPainting by Antoine-Jean Gros of Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Aboukir in Egypt\r\n\r\nBy the time the nineteenth century dawned, the Ottoman Empire was well on its way to becoming \u201cthe Sick Man of Europe,\u201d as it would soon come to be known among Europeans.\u00a0 The century began with the French in occupation of one of the most important Ottoman provinces, Egypt.\u00a0 Napoleon had conquered Egypt in 1798, in an effort to cut off British access to India via the Middle East.\u00a0 The French general seems to have even had ambitions of invading India himself, but his plans were brought to nothing after the British destroyed his fleet at the Battle of Aboukir Bay later that same year.\u00a0 When the French attempted to take Syria a few months later, the British and Ottoman armies joined together to defeat Napoleon\u2019s forces once again.\u00a0 His plans frustrated, Napoleon slipped away by night to return to France, leaving his army stranded in Egypt for two more years until an agreement was negotiated in 1801 for the French troops to finally evacuate.\r\n\r\nThe French invasion may have been turned back, but the clear lesson from the incident was that any major European power could invade any Middle Eastern country at any time and the only force that could drive them out was the army of another European power.\u00a0 The impact of this realization was twofold:<\/span>\r\n\r\n1) The Middle East became a site of complex Western negotiations for the remainder of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Over time, the British would decide that it was in their best interests to prop up the Ottoman Empire, if only to prevent Ottoman lands from falling into the hands of the Russian Empire.\u00a0 The Russians had already captured some significant Ottoman territory to the north of the Black Sea and were pushing down into the Caucasus and towards Iran via Central Asia.\u00a0 It was this move from Central Asia that really concerned the British, as it created fear that the Russians might horn in on their precious colonial possessions in India.\u00a0 It was in order to prevent such an occurrence that the British twice invaded Afghanistan during the nineteenth century (and twice were defeated there).\u00a0 The political and diplomatic maneuvers in this region by the British and Russian Empires became known as the \u201cEastern Question\u201d or the \u201cGreat Game.\u201d<\/span>\r\n\r\n2) The major Middle Eastern powers, particularly the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, became convinced that their only hope for survival was to implement Westernization within their realms as quickly as possible.\u00a0 Their initial emphasis in Westernization focused on updating their military.\u00a0 This made sense since it was on the battlefield that the Middle Eastern states were losing wars, and the military imbalance between East and West was what made them feel most vulnerable.\u00a0 However, as it turned out, Middle Eastern governments could not just pick and choose what aspects of Western civilization they wanted to adopt.\u00a0 The more entangled they became with their Westernization projects, the more widespread Westernization became in the Middle East, leading to a number of unintended consequences.\u00a0 In fact, Middle Eastern responses to Western dominance can be categorized into four areas, presented below.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe first of the four Middle Eastern responses<\/strong> to Western dominance can be labeled as \u201cTop-Down Reform.\u201d\u00a0 This includes the efforts made by Middle Eastern rulers to implement limited Western reforms within their states in an attempt to better centralize their power and catch up with the West so as to protect their realms from further Western incursions.\u00a0 As mentioned above, the two main places that we will focus our attention on are the Ottoman Empire and Egypt.\u00a0 In Egypt, the departure of French troops left a power vacuum, into which stepped an Ottoman adventurer by the name of Mehmet (or Muhammad) Ali.\u00a0 Mehmet Ali originated in Albania and was promoted through the Ottoman system until he reached the rank of second in command for the Albanian contingent of soldiers brought into Egypt in 1801 upon the evacuation of French troops.\u00a0 Mehmet Ali was a shrewd politician, and he managed to outmaneuver his opponents to achieve the rank of Ottoman governor in Egypt by 1805.\u00a0 Over the next several years, Mehmet Ali went about eliminating opponents and reorganizing the military with the help of French military advisors.\u00a0 Soon he had managed to assemble the most effective fighting force in the Middle East.\r\n\r\nOther reforms implemented by Mehmet Ali included revamping education along Western lines, reorganizing landownership, developing the cotton industry within Egypt, and beginning industrialization projects.\u00a0 His goal was to obtain independence from the Ottoman Empire and to establish a hereditary dynasty in Egypt.\u00a0 He also attempted to centralize the Egyptian economy and streamline the administration so as to turn Egypt into a major regional power.\u00a0 Eventually his reforms and wars of expansion threatened the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire, and the British, Austrians and French joined together to drive his troops back to Egypt in 1840.\u00a0 His expansionist plans defeated, Mehmet Ali was still able to obtain a concession to establish a hereditary dynasty over Egypt.\u00a0 The descendants of Mehmet Ali would continue to rule in Egypt until 1952.<\/span>\r\n\r\nIn the Ottoman Empire, \u201cTop-Down Reform\u201d was pushed by two Ottoman sultans, Selim III and Mahmud II.\u00a0 Selim, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1789-1807, tried to implement reforms through his program entitled nizam-i jedid<\/em>\u00a0(the New Order).\u00a0 However, powerful forces in the military, specifically the Janissary regiments, got wind of Selim\u2019s plans and forced him out of power.\u00a0 His successor, Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839), had the same goals, but he pursued them in a more deliberate and underhanded manner.\u00a0 By 1826, Mahmud had managed to develop a separate military force loyal to himself.\u00a0 Provoking the Janissaries to revolt, Mahmud had them massacred in June 1826 and \u201cthe military institution that had once been the foundation of Ottoman power was destroyed forever\u201d (William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton,\u00a0A History of the Modern Middle East<\/em>, Fourth Edition, 78).\r\n\r\nHowever, by doing this, Mahmud left his government functionally without an army, and it would take some time to rebuild the military along the revised lines that he had envisioned.\u00a0 In a showdown with Mehmet Ali\u2019s troops in 1839, Mahmud\u2019s forces were bested and only direct intervention by the British and Austrians prevented an Ottoman collapse.\u00a0 The empire had been saved, but at the cost of considerable financial concessions to the European powers.\u00a0 Known as \u201ccapitulations,\u201d these concessions granted open access for the Europeans to markets throughout the Ottoman Empire, completely free of taxes that Ottoman merchants themselves had to pay to the government.\u00a0 Although the capitulations had been operating in the empire since the sixteenth century, these new concessions granted European access to Ottoman markets with almost no restrictions.\u00a0 Such a situation was a financial windfall for the British and French but disastrous to the Ottoman economy.\u00a0 Mahmud II died a few months later and his successors pushed forward with further changes.<\/span>\r\n
First initiated by Mahmud II, the Tanzimat reforms were led by a European educated elite (Young Ottomans) who wanted the empire to become more like Europe.\u00a0 Foreign minister Mustafa Reshid Pasha was the driving force for much of this period.\u00a0 The Tanzimat developed a system of state schools, organized the taxation system, re-organized provincial administration, developed infrastructure (roads, canals, railways), established a central bank, established a system of private land-owning, and re-worked the legal system (Majelle: based upon shari`a but organized like European legal code).\u00a0 However, high costs of reform, continued wars with Russia and in the Balkans, and an international depression in the 1870s eventually bankrupted the Ottoman government.\u00a0 The Ottomans were forced to establish a foreign debt commission to monitor their expenditures and assure repayment of loans to European lenders.<\/div>\r\nThe second of the four Middle Eastern responses<\/strong> to Western dominance was modernizing religious reform.\u00a0 Muslims faced the problem that their religion teaches the ultimate victory of Islam over the unbelieving nations, and yet the triumph of the European colonial powers over most of the Muslim world seemed to contradict this long-held belief.\u00a0 As religious scholars struggled with this reality, they found several ways to respond.\u00a0 The first way was the traditional response, which sought to reinforce established Islamic teachings, while withdrawing as much as possible from contact with Western influences.\u00a0 This \u201cbury your head in the sand\u201d approach became harder and harder to implement as colonial powers continued to extend their reach into more of the Muslim world during the course of the nineteenth century.<\/span>\r\n\r\nIn contrast to the traditional response, a number of Muslim thinkers and scholars opted to engage the Western world directly.\u00a0 This group argued that the problem was not with Islam but rather that it was with Muslim leadership which had failed to keep pace with the times.\u00a0 During the first six centuries of Islam, these scholars maintained, the religion had shown a great adaptability and energy for studying God\u2019s world and making advances in science and technology.\u00a0 The problem was that Muslim scholars, particularly after the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had become defensive and inward looking.\u00a0 They had adopted the \u201csafe\u201d approach of simply repeating the teachings of their predecessors, allowing Muslim societies to become stagnant and to retreat from engaging in ground-breaking research in science and technology as their predecessors had done.\u00a0 What was needed was to \u201creopen the door to\u00a0ijtihad<\/em>\u201d (rational thinking) and to reapply the fundamental principles of their faith in new ways, allowing the Islamic world to adapt to modern times and update its society accordingly.\u00a0 To do so would not be to go against Muslim teachings; rather it would be to imitate the practices of their forefathers (salaf<\/em>) who demonstrated this same willingness to engage with the world around them.\u00a0 Leading scholars of this type of modernist Islamic thought included Sayyid Ahmed Khan of India, the traveling scholar Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (who is thought to have been of Iranian origins) and the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh.\r\n\r\nThe third Muslim religious response to Western dominance is also the third of the four Middle Eastern responses<\/strong> mentioned above, the revivalist approach.\u00a0 Revivalists agreed with the modernists that the problem was not with Islam \u2013 it was not as if Islam was somehow a backwards and fatalistic faith, as Western colonialists and missionaries were saying.\u00a0 Rather, the problem was that Muslim leaders had failed in their duty to properly lead Muslim societies, creating a susceptibility to dominance by the aggressive Western colonial powers.\u00a0 Their answer to this problem, however, was very different from that of the modernists.\u00a0 Whereas the modernists wanted to engage with the outside world and were willing to adapt Western practices to apply them in Muslim societies, the revivalists rejected everything from the West as being of infidel origin and therefore polluted.\u00a0 The revivalists felt that what was needed was to return to the examples of Muhammad and the first Muslims, but rather than focus on principles (which could be updated and applied to the new realities of the modern world) the revivalists focused upon more literalistic readings of the Qur\u2019an and hadith (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad).\r\n\r\nLeading revivalists were usually religious scholars or Sufi (mystical) leaders who arose in rural areas (often in desert communities or the West African Sahel).\u00a0\u00a0 These leaders would usually pattern their careers upon the career of the Prophet Muhammad.\u00a0 Even though they grew up in Muslim societies, these leaders believed that their societies had become apostate, i.e. that they had fallen away from \u201ctrue\u201d Islamic practices and had given way to superstition and\/or Western \u201cinfidel\u201d influences.\u00a0 The revivalist leaders would often begin their careers (after years of studying the Qur\u2019an and traditional religious teachings) by preaching against their own societies and calling upon Muslims to repent and return to the original zeal for Islam that they had lost.\u00a0 Usually this preaching would attract some converts but also opposition from societal leaders who did not appreciate being called apostates.\r\n\r\nThe revivalist leaders and their devoted followers would then retreat to smaller communities in the desert or other rural areas where they were accepted not only as religious but also as political leaders, much as the Prophet Muhammad had fled from Mecca to Medina to establish the first Islamic community.\u00a0 After several years in these new communities, the religious leaders would launch holy war (jihad) against the wider apostate society.\u00a0 Often they would succeed in conquering large areas in the name of their revivalist faith, in which they would implement their literalist understandings of\u00a0shari`a<\/em>\u00a0(Islamic) law.\u00a0 In many cases these utopian communities saw themselves as forerunners for a revival that they expected would spread throughout the Islamic world, and their revivalist movements would often come into direct confrontation with Western colonial powers.\u00a0 Among the many successful revivalist movements of the nineteenth century were the Wahhabis of Arabia, the Sanusi movement of Libya, the Mahdist movement of the Sudan, and the holy warriors led by Amir Abd al-Qadir in Algeria.\r\n\r\nThe fourth Middle Eastern response<\/strong> to Western dominance was much like the first and second responses in that it looked to the West for inspiration in the renewal of Middle Eastern societies.\u00a0 Specifically, this group bought into Western ideas of nationalism, i.e. the belief that specific groups of people form \u201cnations\u201d based upon a common identity, usually ethnic, historical, linguistic or religious.\u00a0 Western ideals of nationalism were often linked with democratic and constitutionalist concepts, i.e. the belief that the principles of statehood called for participation of \u201cthe people\u201d rather than just certain elite power holders who had been designated by God to lead, and that the principles of governance were best set out concretely in constitutions that protected the rights of individuals and provided guidelines to hold leaders accountable for how they govern.\u00a0 These ideas were based upon concepts arising from the European Enlightenment and which had been applied in the eighteenth century American and French revolutions.\r\n\r\nAs nation-states were established throughout Europe, ideas of nationalism spread into the European colonies, especially as bright young leaders from colonial countries often traveled to Paris or London to study in Western universities and learn Western ways.\u00a0 They returned to their homelands inspired to implement nationalist principles in their own countries.\u00a0 Ironically enough, their Western inspired nationalism often created within them a desire for independence from Western colonial dominance, the same sorts of desires for freedom that American colonists, for instance, felt regarding their ties with Great Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century.\r\n\r\nNationalist and constitutionalist movements broke out throughout the main countries of the Middle East during the last few decades of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 In Egypt, a military man named Ahmad Urabi led a revolt against the Egyptian government, which had gone into debt to Western financiers in its attempts to modernize Egyptian society in a \u201ctop-down\u201d manner.\u00a0 Urabi\u2019s revolt took place in 1881 but was crushed by a British invasion in 1882. \u00a0The British had become concerned that a nationalist Egyptian government would not prioritize paying off the debts it owed to Western powers.\u00a0 The result was a puppet Egyptian regime dominated by the British in an informal protectorate that would last until 1952.\r\n\r\nIn Constantinople (Istanbul), constitutionalists forced the sultan to agree to the establishment of a written constitution and an elected representative body in 1876.\u00a0 However, the constitution was set aside in the midst of an Ottoman military defeat to Russia in 1878, and the sultan Abdul Hamid II ruled as a dictator for the next thirty years.\u00a0 In 1908, following more Ottoman military defeats, a group known as the Young Turks overthrew the government and re-established the Ottoman constitution and representative government.\u00a0 A similar constitutionalist movement took place in Iran during the first decade of the twentieth century.\r\n\r\nHowever, these Middle Eastern responses to Western dominance would all fail to obtain their ultimate objective \u2013 parity with the West and self governance.\u00a0 \u201cTop-Down\u201d reforms and Islamic modernism would successfully remake Middle Eastern states in many areas, including politics, education, culture, and religion.\u00a0 However, they were less successful in breaking free from Western control.\u00a0 The vast expenses required to remake Middle Eastern societies resulted in substantial debts to Western financiers, which led directly to further Western dominance. \u00a0Islamic revivalist movements, while achieving some success at establishing independent principalities, would all be defeated militarily by Western colonial powers or Top-down reformers by the end of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Even the constitutionalists were unable to achieve their aims for the same reasons \u2013 their nationalist\/constitutional aims ran contrary to the interests of Western powers, who made sure that they failed to obtain the autonomy that they desired.\r\n\r\nPrimary Sources<\/strong><\/span>\r\n\r\nThe documents linked below are all Ottoman reform documents from the 19th and early 20th centuries.\u00a0 The first document is the Rescript of Gulhane of November 3, 1839, shortly after the European powers had rescued the Ottomans from the armies of Mehmet Ali.\u00a0 The second document is the Rescript of Reform - Islahat Fermani of February 18, 1856, issued shortly after Britain and France had assisted the Ottomans against the Russian Empire in the Crimean War.\u00a0 It ushered in the Tanzimat reforms.\u00a0 The third document is the Ottoman constitution of December 23, 1876, which established the first European style constitution in the history of the empire, although it would shortly be put on hold by Sultan Abdulhamid II.\u00a0 The fourth document is the Revised Articles of the 1876 constitution, established in August 1909 after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 had restored constituionalists into power in the Ottoman empire.<\/span>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.anayasa.gen.tr\/gulhane.htm<\/a>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.anayasa.gen.tr\/reform.htm<\/a>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/iow.eui.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2014\/05\/Brown-01-Ottoman-Constitution.pdf<\/a>\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/www.anayasa.gen.tr\/1909amendment.htm<\/a>\r\n\r\nImage below: Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid (r. 1839-1861, who oversaw the Tanzimat reforms, meets with Queen Victoria of England and Emperor Napoleon III of France.\r\n\r\n\"\"<\/strong>","rendered":"

Middle Eastern Reforms in the Nineteenth Century<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Painting by Antoine-Jean Gros of Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Aboukir in Egypt<\/p>\n

By the time the nineteenth century dawned, the Ottoman Empire was well on its way to becoming \u201cthe Sick Man of Europe,\u201d as it would soon come to be known among Europeans.\u00a0 The century began with the French in occupation of one of the most important Ottoman provinces, Egypt.\u00a0 Napoleon had conquered Egypt in 1798, in an effort to cut off British access to India via the Middle East.\u00a0 The French general seems to have even had ambitions of invading India himself, but his plans were brought to nothing after the British destroyed his fleet at the Battle of Aboukir Bay later that same year.\u00a0 When the French attempted to take Syria a few months later, the British and Ottoman armies joined together to defeat Napoleon\u2019s forces once again.\u00a0 His plans frustrated, Napoleon slipped away by night to return to France, leaving his army stranded in Egypt for two more years until an agreement was negotiated in 1801 for the French troops to finally evacuate.<\/p>\n

The French invasion may have been turned back, but the clear lesson from the incident was that any major European power could invade any Middle Eastern country at any time and the only force that could drive them out was the army of another European power.\u00a0 The impact of this realization was twofold:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) The Middle East became a site of complex Western negotiations for the remainder of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Over time, the British would decide that it was in their best interests to prop up the Ottoman Empire, if only to prevent Ottoman lands from falling into the hands of the Russian Empire.\u00a0 The Russians had already captured some significant Ottoman territory to the north of the Black Sea and were pushing down into the Caucasus and towards Iran via Central Asia.\u00a0 It was this move from Central Asia that really concerned the British, as it created fear that the Russians might horn in on their precious colonial possessions in India.\u00a0 It was in order to prevent such an occurrence that the British twice invaded Afghanistan during the nineteenth century (and twice were defeated there).\u00a0 The political and diplomatic maneuvers in this region by the British and Russian Empires became known as the \u201cEastern Question\u201d or the \u201cGreat Game.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

2) The major Middle Eastern powers, particularly the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, became convinced that their only hope for survival was to implement Westernization within their realms as quickly as possible.\u00a0 Their initial emphasis in Westernization focused on updating their military.\u00a0 This made sense since it was on the battlefield that the Middle Eastern states were losing wars, and the military imbalance between East and West was what made them feel most vulnerable.\u00a0 However, as it turned out, Middle Eastern governments could not just pick and choose what aspects of Western civilization they wanted to adopt.\u00a0 The more entangled they became with their Westernization projects, the more widespread Westernization became in the Middle East, leading to a number of unintended consequences.\u00a0 In fact, Middle Eastern responses to Western dominance can be categorized into four areas, presented below.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first of the four Middle Eastern responses<\/strong> to Western dominance can be labeled as \u201cTop-Down Reform.\u201d\u00a0 This includes the efforts made by Middle Eastern rulers to implement limited Western reforms within their states in an attempt to better centralize their power and catch up with the West so as to protect their realms from further Western incursions.\u00a0 As mentioned above, the two main places that we will focus our attention on are the Ottoman Empire and Egypt.\u00a0 In Egypt, the departure of French troops left a power vacuum, into which stepped an Ottoman adventurer by the name of Mehmet (or Muhammad) Ali.\u00a0 Mehmet Ali originated in Albania and was promoted through the Ottoman system until he reached the rank of second in command for the Albanian contingent of soldiers brought into Egypt in 1801 upon the evacuation of French troops.\u00a0 Mehmet Ali was a shrewd politician, and he managed to outmaneuver his opponents to achieve the rank of Ottoman governor in Egypt by 1805.\u00a0 Over the next several years, Mehmet Ali went about eliminating opponents and reorganizing the military with the help of French military advisors.\u00a0 Soon he had managed to assemble the most effective fighting force in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Other reforms implemented by Mehmet Ali included revamping education along Western lines, reorganizing landownership, developing the cotton industry within Egypt, and beginning industrialization projects.\u00a0 His goal was to obtain independence from the Ottoman Empire and to establish a hereditary dynasty in Egypt.\u00a0 He also attempted to centralize the Egyptian economy and streamline the administration so as to turn Egypt into a major regional power.\u00a0 Eventually his reforms and wars of expansion threatened the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire, and the British, Austrians and French joined together to drive his troops back to Egypt in 1840.\u00a0 His expansionist plans defeated, Mehmet Ali was still able to obtain a concession to establish a hereditary dynasty over Egypt.\u00a0 The descendants of Mehmet Ali would continue to rule in Egypt until 1952.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Ottoman Empire, \u201cTop-Down Reform\u201d was pushed by two Ottoman sultans, Selim III and Mahmud II.\u00a0 Selim, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1789-1807, tried to implement reforms through his program entitled nizam-i jedid<\/em>\u00a0(the New Order).\u00a0 However, powerful forces in the military, specifically the Janissary regiments, got wind of Selim\u2019s plans and forced him out of power.\u00a0 His successor, Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839), had the same goals, but he pursued them in a more deliberate and underhanded manner.\u00a0 By 1826, Mahmud had managed to develop a separate military force loyal to himself.\u00a0 Provoking the Janissaries to revolt, Mahmud had them massacred in June 1826 and \u201cthe military institution that had once been the foundation of Ottoman power was destroyed forever\u201d (William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton,\u00a0A History of the Modern Middle East<\/em>, Fourth Edition, 78).<\/p>\n

However, by doing this, Mahmud left his government functionally without an army, and it would take some time to rebuild the military along the revised lines that he had envisioned.\u00a0 In a showdown with Mehmet Ali\u2019s troops in 1839, Mahmud\u2019s forces were bested and only direct intervention by the British and Austrians prevented an Ottoman collapse.\u00a0 The empire had been saved, but at the cost of considerable financial concessions to the European powers.\u00a0 Known as \u201ccapitulations,\u201d these concessions granted open access for the Europeans to markets throughout the Ottoman Empire, completely free of taxes that Ottoman merchants themselves had to pay to the government.\u00a0 Although the capitulations had been operating in the empire since the sixteenth century, these new concessions granted European access to Ottoman markets with almost no restrictions.\u00a0 Such a situation was a financial windfall for the British and French but disastrous to the Ottoman economy.\u00a0 Mahmud II died a few months later and his successors pushed forward with further changes.<\/span><\/p>\n

First initiated by Mahmud II, the Tanzimat reforms were led by a European educated elite (Young Ottomans) who wanted the empire to become more like Europe.\u00a0 Foreign minister Mustafa Reshid Pasha was the driving force for much of this period.\u00a0 The Tanzimat developed a system of state schools, organized the taxation system, re-organized provincial administration, developed infrastructure (roads, canals, railways), established a central bank, established a system of private land-owning, and re-worked the legal system (Majelle: based upon shari`a but organized like European legal code).\u00a0 However, high costs of reform, continued wars with Russia and in the Balkans, and an international depression in the 1870s eventually bankrupted the Ottoman government.\u00a0 The Ottomans were forced to establish a foreign debt commission to monitor their expenditures and assure repayment of loans to European lenders.<\/div>\n

The second of the four Middle Eastern responses<\/strong> to Western dominance was modernizing religious reform.\u00a0 Muslims faced the problem that their religion teaches the ultimate victory of Islam over the unbelieving nations, and yet the triumph of the European colonial powers over most of the Muslim world seemed to contradict this long-held belief.\u00a0 As religious scholars struggled with this reality, they found several ways to respond.\u00a0 The first way was the traditional response, which sought to reinforce established Islamic teachings, while withdrawing as much as possible from contact with Western influences.\u00a0 This \u201cbury your head in the sand\u201d approach became harder and harder to implement as colonial powers continued to extend their reach into more of the Muslim world during the course of the nineteenth century.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast to the traditional response, a number of Muslim thinkers and scholars opted to engage the Western world directly.\u00a0 This group argued that the problem was not with Islam but rather that it was with Muslim leadership which had failed to keep pace with the times.\u00a0 During the first six centuries of Islam, these scholars maintained, the religion had shown a great adaptability and energy for studying God\u2019s world and making advances in science and technology.\u00a0 The problem was that Muslim scholars, particularly after the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had become defensive and inward looking.\u00a0 They had adopted the \u201csafe\u201d approach of simply repeating the teachings of their predecessors, allowing Muslim societies to become stagnant and to retreat from engaging in ground-breaking research in science and technology as their predecessors had done.\u00a0 What was needed was to \u201creopen the door to\u00a0ijtihad<\/em>\u201d (rational thinking) and to reapply the fundamental principles of their faith in new ways, allowing the Islamic world to adapt to modern times and update its society accordingly.\u00a0 To do so would not be to go against Muslim teachings; rather it would be to imitate the practices of their forefathers (salaf<\/em>) who demonstrated this same willingness to engage with the world around them.\u00a0 Leading scholars of this type of modernist Islamic thought included Sayyid Ahmed Khan of India, the traveling scholar Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (who is thought to have been of Iranian origins) and the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh.<\/p>\n

The third Muslim religious response to Western dominance is also the third of the four Middle Eastern responses<\/strong> mentioned above, the revivalist approach.\u00a0 Revivalists agreed with the modernists that the problem was not with Islam \u2013 it was not as if Islam was somehow a backwards and fatalistic faith, as Western colonialists and missionaries were saying.\u00a0 Rather, the problem was that Muslim leaders had failed in their duty to properly lead Muslim societies, creating a susceptibility to dominance by the aggressive Western colonial powers.\u00a0 Their answer to this problem, however, was very different from that of the modernists.\u00a0 Whereas the modernists wanted to engage with the outside world and were willing to adapt Western practices to apply them in Muslim societies, the revivalists rejected everything from the West as being of infidel origin and therefore polluted.\u00a0 The revivalists felt that what was needed was to return to the examples of Muhammad and the first Muslims, but rather than focus on principles (which could be updated and applied to the new realities of the modern world) the revivalists focused upon more literalistic readings of the Qur\u2019an and hadith (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad).<\/p>\n

Leading revivalists were usually religious scholars or Sufi (mystical) leaders who arose in rural areas (often in desert communities or the West African Sahel).\u00a0\u00a0 These leaders would usually pattern their careers upon the career of the Prophet Muhammad.\u00a0 Even though they grew up in Muslim societies, these leaders believed that their societies had become apostate, i.e. that they had fallen away from \u201ctrue\u201d Islamic practices and had given way to superstition and\/or Western \u201cinfidel\u201d influences.\u00a0 The revivalist leaders would often begin their careers (after years of studying the Qur\u2019an and traditional religious teachings) by preaching against their own societies and calling upon Muslims to repent and return to the original zeal for Islam that they had lost.\u00a0 Usually this preaching would attract some converts but also opposition from societal leaders who did not appreciate being called apostates.<\/p>\n

The revivalist leaders and their devoted followers would then retreat to smaller communities in the desert or other rural areas where they were accepted not only as religious but also as political leaders, much as the Prophet Muhammad had fled from Mecca to Medina to establish the first Islamic community.\u00a0 After several years in these new communities, the religious leaders would launch holy war (jihad) against the wider apostate society.\u00a0 Often they would succeed in conquering large areas in the name of their revivalist faith, in which they would implement their literalist understandings of\u00a0shari`a<\/em>\u00a0(Islamic) law.\u00a0 In many cases these utopian communities saw themselves as forerunners for a revival that they expected would spread throughout the Islamic world, and their revivalist movements would often come into direct confrontation with Western colonial powers.\u00a0 Among the many successful revivalist movements of the nineteenth century were the Wahhabis of Arabia, the Sanusi movement of Libya, the Mahdist movement of the Sudan, and the holy warriors led by Amir Abd al-Qadir in Algeria.<\/p>\n

The fourth Middle Eastern response<\/strong> to Western dominance was much like the first and second responses in that it looked to the West for inspiration in the renewal of Middle Eastern societies.\u00a0 Specifically, this group bought into Western ideas of nationalism, i.e. the belief that specific groups of people form \u201cnations\u201d based upon a common identity, usually ethnic, historical, linguistic or religious.\u00a0 Western ideals of nationalism were often linked with democratic and constitutionalist concepts, i.e. the belief that the principles of statehood called for participation of \u201cthe people\u201d rather than just certain elite power holders who had been designated by God to lead, and that the principles of governance were best set out concretely in constitutions that protected the rights of individuals and provided guidelines to hold leaders accountable for how they govern.\u00a0 These ideas were based upon concepts arising from the European Enlightenment and which had been applied in the eighteenth century American and French revolutions.<\/p>\n

As nation-states were established throughout Europe, ideas of nationalism spread into the European colonies, especially as bright young leaders from colonial countries often traveled to Paris or London to study in Western universities and learn Western ways.\u00a0 They returned to their homelands inspired to implement nationalist principles in their own countries.\u00a0 Ironically enough, their Western inspired nationalism often created within them a desire for independence from Western colonial dominance, the same sorts of desires for freedom that American colonists, for instance, felt regarding their ties with Great Britain during the second half of the eighteenth century.<\/p>\n

Nationalist and constitutionalist movements broke out throughout the main countries of the Middle East during the last few decades of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 In Egypt, a military man named Ahmad Urabi led a revolt against the Egyptian government, which had gone into debt to Western financiers in its attempts to modernize Egyptian society in a \u201ctop-down\u201d manner.\u00a0 Urabi\u2019s revolt took place in 1881 but was crushed by a British invasion in 1882. \u00a0The British had become concerned that a nationalist Egyptian government would not prioritize paying off the debts it owed to Western powers.\u00a0 The result was a puppet Egyptian regime dominated by the British in an informal protectorate that would last until 1952.<\/p>\n

In Constantinople (Istanbul), constitutionalists forced the sultan to agree to the establishment of a written constitution and an elected representative body in 1876.\u00a0 However, the constitution was set aside in the midst of an Ottoman military defeat to Russia in 1878, and the sultan Abdul Hamid II ruled as a dictator for the next thirty years.\u00a0 In 1908, following more Ottoman military defeats, a group known as the Young Turks overthrew the government and re-established the Ottoman constitution and representative government.\u00a0 A similar constitutionalist movement took place in Iran during the first decade of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

However, these Middle Eastern responses to Western dominance would all fail to obtain their ultimate objective \u2013 parity with the West and self governance.\u00a0 \u201cTop-Down\u201d reforms and Islamic modernism would successfully remake Middle Eastern states in many areas, including politics, education, culture, and religion.\u00a0 However, they were less successful in breaking free from Western control.\u00a0 The vast expenses required to remake Middle Eastern societies resulted in substantial debts to Western financiers, which led directly to further Western dominance. \u00a0Islamic revivalist movements, while achieving some success at establishing independent principalities, would all be defeated militarily by Western colonial powers or Top-down reformers by the end of the nineteenth century.\u00a0 Even the constitutionalists were unable to achieve their aims for the same reasons \u2013 their nationalist\/constitutional aims ran contrary to the interests of Western powers, who made sure that they failed to obtain the autonomy that they desired.<\/p>\n

Primary Sources<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The documents linked below are all Ottoman reform documents from the 19th and early 20th centuries.\u00a0 The first document is the Rescript of Gulhane of November 3, 1839, shortly after the European powers had rescued the Ottomans from the armies of Mehmet Ali.\u00a0 The second document is the Rescript of Reform – Islahat Fermani of February 18, 1856, issued shortly after Britain and France had assisted the Ottomans against the Russian Empire in the Crimean War.\u00a0 It ushered in the Tanzimat reforms.\u00a0 The third document is the Ottoman constitution of December 23, 1876, which established the first European style constitution in the history of the empire, although it would shortly be put on hold by Sultan Abdulhamid II.\u00a0 The fourth document is the Revised Articles of the 1876 constitution, established in August 1909 after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 had restored constituionalists into power in the Ottoman empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.anayasa.gen.tr\/gulhane.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.anayasa.gen.tr\/reform.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/iow.eui.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2014\/05\/Brown-01-Ottoman-Constitution.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.anayasa.gen.tr\/1909amendment.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Image below: Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid (r. 1839-1861, who oversaw the Tanzimat reforms, meets with Queen Victoria of England and Emperor Napoleon III of France.<\/p>\n

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