Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Was The Ottoman Empire One of Decline?

I caught this from an academic article, "The Later Tanzimat and the Ottoman Legacy in the Near Eastern Successor States":-

The period of Ottoman decline (from approximately the late seventeenth- to the early nineteenth-century), the system of checks and balances was grossly undermined and arbitrary and despotic government prevailed both at the center and in the provinces. In the later Tanzimat period (1856–71), by contrast, the emphasis was placed on strong state organs and a powerful bureaucracy, armed with a new set of laws borrowed from western legal systems. The maintenance of law and order in the cities and towns was performed by an officer called a subashi, who was one of the kadi's prominent aides and who was “a legal police and a high security official with executive authority”. The kadi's deputies also came from the local 'ulama, whether in the principal court where he presided or in the neighborhood courts of big cities or in towns throughout the province.

But don't forget, the Ottoman Empire became an empire in 1453.

So, from 1453-1918 it existed while from "approximately the late seventeenth- to the early nineteenth-century it was in decline".  Which means out of 500 years existence, it was in decline some 300 years.

Not that good.


1 comment:

Alan said...

We can't even agree on what is allowable during Passover; now you imagine that it's possible for one person to be "correct" about when an Empire was in decline?

What we know as an uncontested fact is: the Rebbinate committed perjury to arrange for Ben-Yehuda to be thrown into prison for his Zionist activities; the Turks freed him when they realized that's the only things he had done.

Said it before and I'll say it again. It is easier to imagine Turkish troops firing at Palestinians to protect Israeli borders, than to picture any European or NorthAmerican troops doing that.

King David didn't rule the region from Jerusalem because Judean forces were strong enough to enforce the hegemony; he did because he knew how to pick and choose the correct allies.