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Ottoman Political Reform in the Provinces: The Damascus Advisory Council in 1844–45

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Elizabeth Thompson
Elizabeth Thompson
Affiliation:
Doctoral candidate at the Department of History, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 10027, U.S.A.
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Extract

The year 1844–45 in Damascus province was a dry one, aggravated by a brutal winter frost. Reports of ruined crops and disputes over precious water sources reached the city, where as yet there was still enough to eat. But the city was by no means immune to the drought. It was felt in varying ways, like rising prices and, of all things, a shortage of leeches. Barbers could not get enough of them to meet medical needs, and their prices had risen sharply. So the barbers began smuggling them. An Ottoman market official (mültazim), on noticing that government leech sales for that month had dropped from 45,000 to 7,000, ordered police (tüfenkçi) to confiscate the creatures from barbershops and sold them himself for profit. Conflict between the official and barbers exploded, and each side made its way, as rural peasants and tax collectors had in the crisis, to the ultimate court of appeal in the province, the Majlis Shūrā al-Shām al-ʿAlī, or high advisory council for Damascus province.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , August 1993 , pp. 457 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank the following people for their advice and support at the various stages of preparing this article: Richard Bulliet, Bruce Masters, Rhoads Murphey, Linda Schilcher, and David Waldner.

1 Register of the al-ʿAli, Majlis Shūra al-Shām, 22 October 1844 to 31 October 1845, ʿ Awāmir al-Sultaniyya, vol. 5 (Damascus: Historical Documents Center), 363–64, 370.Google Scholar

2 For top-down interpretations of the Tanzimat, see Davison, Roderic, Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856–1876 (Princeton, N.J., 1963);Google Scholar and Shaw, Stanford J. and Shaw, Ezel Rural, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1977), esp. chap. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a similar view specifically on administrative councils, see Ortayli, İlber, Tanzimatdan Cumhuriyete Yerel Yönetim Geleneği (Istanbul, 1985), esp. 67–70Google Scholar. All of these works rely primarily on central-state records.

3 See especially Ma'oz, Moshe, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine 1840–1861 (Oxford, 1968), 87–100;Google Scholar and Khoury, Philip S., Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Majlis register, 370.

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13 Ibid., 15.

14 Ibid., 24–25.

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25 Chairmanship of each session was not designated, but one member always arrived a half-hour or more earlier than the others, and I have hypothesized that this member organized the day's session.

26 The Jerusalem council in 1851 met only under the direct guidance of the governor, and was "forced" to sign decisions (madabii). See Hirschfeld, Yair, “Prussian and Ottoman Policies in Palestine during the 1840s,” in Kushner, Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period, 263–79.Google Scholar

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32 See Perrot, G., Souvenirs dun voyage en Asie Mineure (Paris, 1867), 343–46,Google Scholar who reports improvisation on provincial councils for lack of clear rules even twenty years after the period of this study.

33 Ma'oz, , Ottoman Reform, 82.Google Scholar

34 See Kerr, Malcolm H., Lebanon in the Last Years of Feudalism 1840–1868 (Beirut, 1959),Google Scholar intro.

35 Rafeq, , “Impact of Europe,” 430Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., 425.

37 Chevallier, Dominique, “Lyon et la Syrie: Les bases d'une intervention,” in his Villes et travail en Syrie du XIXe au XXe siècle (Paris, 1982), 41–52.Google Scholar

38 See Owen, Roger, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800–1914 (New York, 1981), 86–93;Google Scholar and Pamuk, Sevket, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism (Cambridge, 1987), 18–21.Google Scholar

39 Rafeq, , “Impact of Europe,” 421Google Scholar.

40 Majlis register, 244–46Google Scholar.

41 Ghazzal, , “Les Fondements,” 92.Google Scholar A Jew had been a member of the council in 1840, but the circumstances of his removal are also unclear, though it may have been related to the blood libel case.

42 Davison, , Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 42–45.Google Scholar

43 Ma'oz, , Ottoman Reform, 198.Google Scholar

44 Inalcik, , “Application of Tanzimat,“ 20–29.Google Scholar

45 Ma'oz, , Ottoman Reform, 92, 198.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., 99, 197–99.

47 Ibid., 87.

48 Majlis register, 186–87, 214–16, 368–70.

49 Ibid., 19, 207, 333–34.

50 See, for example, Hourani, , “Ottoman Reform,” 43Google Scholar, where he says: “The process of change which took place in this period was one which, by and large, the population of the empire and its dependent states—even the educated part of it—did not understand.” See also Heper, Metin, “Center and Periphery in the Ottoman Empire,” International Political Science Review 1 (1980): 81–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 See Karpat, K. H., “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789–1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3 (1972): 243–44,CrossRefGoogle Scholar where he argues that Ottoman overtures to European trade affected Christian and Muslim social structures differently and led to a risky decentralization of trade policy through the mid-19th century.

52 Tilly, , Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990–1990 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 25–26.Google Scholar

53 ibid., 99–100.

54 Majlis register, 111Google Scholar.

55 See Ma'oz, , Ottoman Reform, 112,Google Scholar where he characterizes the incident as an act of vengeance by the Sunni council against the Shiʿi Harfush. The text of the report in the record book does not support this interpretation, for it focuses mainly on concrete accounts of villagers’ complaints and shortfalls in the Harfush's submission of tax revenues to the treasury.

56 For Damascus diwans in the 18th century, see Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, The Province of Damascus 1723–1783 (Beirut, 1970), 23–24.Google Scholar For Aleppo, see Marcus, Abraham, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1989), 82–83.Google Scholar And for the whole Ottoman Empire, see Inalcik, Halil, “Centralization and Decentralization in Ottoman Administration,” in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. Naff, Thomas and Owen, Roger (Carbondale, III., 1977), 33, 41–43.Google Scholar

57 Davison, , Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 41.Google Scholar

58 Schilcher, , Families in Politics, 35, 47–53.Google Scholar

59 This observation is based on the analysis of paired signatures. A more conclusive study would require the extensive statistical process of multiple factor analysis. However, the polarity suggested by the pairing patterns is so strong that similar results are likely in the more extensive procedure.

60 See Inalcik, , “Application of Tanzimat,” 13;Google ScholarFindley, , “Evolution of System,” 5;Google Scholar and Heper, , “Center and Periphery,” 94.Google Scholar

61 Binder, Leonard, “The Natural History of Development Theory,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 28, 1 (01 1986): 8–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 For examples of Hourani's influence, see Khoury, , Urban Notables, 1–25;Google ScholarMattar, Philip, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement (New York, 1988), 1–16;Google Scholar and Muslih, Muhammad Y., The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York, 1988), 1–9,Google Scholar where the politics of notables paradigm is applied to later periods of Levantine history.

63 See, for example, Rafeq, Province of Damascus, for an illustration of local rule interrupted only intermittently by the Porte during the 18th century; and also Barbir, Karl, “From Pasha to Efendi: The Assimilation of Ottomans into Damascene Society 1516–1783,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 1 (1979–80): 69,Google Scholar where he suggests that Ottoman officials behaved from local interests, not loyalty to Istanbul.

64 Ghazzal, , “Les Fondements,” 340–45;Google Scholar and Khoury, , Urban Notables, 2–5.Google Scholar See also Hanna, Abdullah, “The Agricultural Problem in Syria from the Early 19th Century to 1945,” M.E.S. Series, n. 16 (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1985), 24–32,Google Scholar where he calls the 1858 land reform a new feudalism.

65 Grémion, Pierre, Le pouvoir périphérique (Paris, 1976), 10–14, 162, 340–43.Google Scholar

66 Tilly, Charles, “Where Do Rights Come From?,” The Working Paper Series, no. 98 (New York: New School for Social Research, 1990), 5–6.Google Scholar