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Westernisation in the eighteenth-century Ottoman empire: how far, how fast?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Rhoads Murphey
Rhoads Murphey*
Affiliation:
Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham
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Abstract

A long-cherished assumption in standard periodisations of Ottoman history holds that Westernisation in the Ottoman empire had its beginnings in the early eighteenth century. According to the traditional view, the effects of the European Enlightenment began to be felt in the Ottoman empire with the establishment of the Muteferrika Press in 1727, gained pace as the century progressed and achieved a kind of culmination under the rule of the would-be reformist sultan Selim III (reigned 1789-1807). This study examines the evidence for the broader reception of Western, especially secular, ideas at the community level among various of the principal population groups (both Christian and Muslim) of the empire, and attempts a reassessment of the pace of Westernisation divorced from the usual Istanbul-centric and court-centred framework of analysis.

Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 23 , 1999 , pp. 116 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1999

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References

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38. Camariano-Cioran, Academies 147 (notes 4-6).

39. Kitromilides, ‘Idea of science’, 135.

40. Ibid., 188.

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43. Ware, T., Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Oxford 1964) 7 Google Scholar. Ware is here citing the observation of the Russian cleric Father Florovsky.

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45. For a contemporary account of the proselytising activities of the Jesuits in the East, see Aubrey de La Mottraye, F., Voyage du Sieur A. de La Mottraye en Europe, Asie et Afrique [1699-1715] 2 vols. (La Haye 1727)Google Scholar. See in particular 1: 299-304 (1703) where La Mottraye relates the troubles between the Catholic and anti-Catholic congregations of Istanbul’s Armenian community and the role played by the Catholic missionaries in those disputes, and 1: 305 (1703) where he records the sultan’s decision to order the closing of the Jesuit college in Trabzon as a source for the fomenting of inter-denominational acrimony.

46. Ware, Eustratios Argenti, 23.

47. Ware, Eustratios Argenti, 171.

48. By the early twentieth century on the eve of the Young Turk Revolution Istanbul boasted more than 300 tekkes (Sufi lodges). According to statistics provided by Gündüz, Irfan, Osmanlilarda devlet-tekke münasebetleri (Istanbul 1984) 219-20Google Scholar, a rapid increase (a rise of more than 23 per cent) in the number of Istanbul’s Sufi lodges had taken place during the relatively short period of four decades between 1868 and 1908. During this period, the number of Sufi lodges rose by 59 from a base number of 252 in 1868 to 285 in 1890 and reached a peak of 311 in 1908. In the years following the Young Turk Revolution their number seems to have stabilised at around 250, but it is significant that in later years (see for example the statistics for the year 1330/1912 published in 1330 Senesi Istanbul Belediyesi Ihsaiyat Mecmuasi [Istanbul 1331] 109-13), alongide the established orders such as the Nakşibendî (52 lodges), the Kadirî (45 lodges), the Rifaî (40 lodges) and the Halvetî (32 lodges)), some of the more recently founded orders also seem to have survived.

49. See note 43 above.