Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
106: The Tanzeemat of the Ottoman Empire - Part 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was like an old oak tree that had decayed from within. A patent weakness in military technology, coupled with the inefficiency of an age-old bureaucracy, had sapped its vitality. Gone were the days when Europe trembled at the prospect of Sulaiman the Magnificent marching into Central Europe and knocking at the gates of Vienna.
Now it was the turn of Europe to counterattack, dismember the empire and benefit from its demise. The Ottoman Empire was able to survive another hundred years, not so much because of its military prowess, but because of the rivalries among the principal European powers as to who would pick up the pieces once the empire dissolved. The resulting balance of power did provide the Ottomans a respite in which to reform their institutions, catch up with Europe in technology and perhaps even save the empire from an inevitable demise.
In the latter part of the 18th century, the triumph of European arms over the more traditional arms then in use in Asia and Africa motivated emirs and Sultans alike to seek the technology and techniques of the West. The first to make a move in this direction was Tippu Sultan of Mysore, India. Starting in the year 1760, he and his father Hyder Ali, sought out French assistance in military organization and weapons technology. They were successful in creating the finest fighting machine in India, armed with long-range rifles, rockets and cannon, which held the British Empire at bay for forty years. Tippu fell in battle in the year 1799, a victim of schisms among Indian princes and of British scheming.
The next to seek modernization of his armed forces was Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt. As Napoleon withdrew from the Nile delta (1799), Mohammed Ali reorganized the Turkish-Egyptian garrison in Cairo, supplied it with French muskets, brought in French instructors and built it into a fine fighting machine. In 1805, when the British tried to take Alexandria by force of arms, Mohammed Ali was able to beat them back.
In the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mahmud II (1808-1839) initiated a series of reforms against the opposition of the Janissaries and the entrenched conservatives. A military wakeup call came in 1820 when a rebellion broke out in Greece. Small bands of Greeks, armed and trained by the European powers, were able to inflict severe damage upon the Ottoman garrisons. Sultan Mahmud II was able to use the Ottoman reverses to dismantle the Janissaries (1826) and start the modernization of the army.
The Greek rebellion must be looked at in the broader context of the increasing military power of Russia and its long-range ambition to reach the Mediterranean. The Ottoman Empire, extending in an arc from the Adriatic to the Caspian Sea, was like a solid wall preventing this access. Indeed, the strategic location of the Ottoman Empire to the south of the Russian Empire was the single most important factor in the Balkan wars that raged throughout the 19th century and spilled over into the 20th century. In 1769, the Russians took the important base of Azov on the Don River and broke through to the Black Sea. In 1789 they captured the Crimea, denying the Ottomans the manpower of the Crimean Tatars and the use of the seaports on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Russia could now dream of reaching the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. In the succeeding decades, Russian pressure on the Ottomans continued. The toll on Ottoman manpower and resources was enormous. As the vulnerability of the Ottomans became apparent, Britain, France and Austria-Hungary saw in an expansionist Russia a threat to their own interests. France had her eyes on North Africa; Britain coveted Egypt, while Austria-Hungary had her designs on the Balkans. Hence, the western powers sought to prop up the Ottoman Empire against Russia, even while they chipped away at it from the south and the west.
One military debacle after another faced the Ottomans in the decades of the 1820s and 1830s. The Greek revolt gathered momentum and by 1827, the Greek national forces had taken control of Morea. France, Britain and Russia demanded Ottoman acceptance of Greek independence, but when the Porte refused and called in naval reinforcements from Egypt, a joint European naval attack force destroyed the Ottoman and Egyptian navies at the Battle of Navarino (1827). This event marked an important milestone in the history of the Mediterranean.
Stripped of their navy, the Ottomans could not supply and defend their distant provinces in North Africa. Algiers fell to a determined French assault in 1830. Algeria became a French colony and remained so until the Algerian War of Independence in 1960. Meanwhile, the Russians, declaring themselves to be champions of their fellow Orthodox Greeks, invaded the empire and in a two-pronged drive around the Black Sea, moved through Romania and Bulgaria to within thirty miles of Istanbul. In the east, they occupied Erzurum and Trebizond and threatened complete occupation of Anatolia. The Ottomans were saved by the diplomatic intervention of Britain and France. This was a convincing demonstration of a Russian military capability to reach Istanbul. Ottoman preoccupation with this threat was a primary driver of their foreign policy through the rest of the century. By the Treaty of Edirne (1828), the Ottomans ceded to the Russians the region of the southern Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) and accepted Russian intervention in the provinces of Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia. The independence of Greece was formally ratified in 1830.
Further military reverses were awaiting the Ottomans. In 1830, Mohammed Ali Pasha, Governor of Egypt, demanded compensation from the Porte for his assistance during the Greek insurrection, as well as the hereditary title of Khedive. When the Porte refused, Mohammed Ali sent an expeditionary force into Syria under his son Ibrahim Pasha to compel the Sultan to agree to his demands. In a series of engagements, Ibrahim overcame Ottoman resistance, advanced through Gaza, Haifa, Damascus and Beirut to take Konya (1833). The Egyptians could have taken Istanbul, but European intervention forced Mohammed Ali to call off his troops in return for recognition of his demands by the Sultan. The triumph of the Egyptian forces, supplied with European arms, spurred the modernization of the Ottoman forces. Sultan Mahmud ordered an acceleration of the reforms he had started twenty years earlier, instituting training for army officers, sending them to Europe for instruction, starting technical institutes, reforming education and overhauling the administrative apparatus. He brought in Russian officers to train the infantry, British engineers to build forts, and Prussians to supply and train artillerymen. The initiatives taken by Sultan Mahmud provided the momentum for the reforms that were to follow after his reign.
The tanzeemat were led by Mustafa Rashid Pasha, who started life as the son of a clerk and became one of the most powerful grand viziers in Ottoman history. He started his career as a scribe, and while on assignment to Morea in the 1820s, witnessed firsthand the debacle of Ottoman forces at the hands of the Greek nationalists. He saw firsthand the inefficiency of the administration while employed in the Ottoman bureaucracy. During the Russian-Turkish war of 1826-1828, he was a seal bearer to the grand vizier. He impressed his superiors with his dispatches from the theaters of war and was given increasing responsibilities. In 1833, he was a member of the team that negotiated with Mohammed Ali Pasha of Egypt. As foreign minister (1837-1840) and ambassador to France (1840-1845) he traveled through Europe and had an opportunity to study its institutions. He became grand vizier in 1846 and served in that capacity for six terms of various durations until his death in 1858. It was largely through his initiative that Sultan Abdul Majid I issued the imperial proclamation of 1839, which guaranteed equality before the law to all citizens of the empire and set in motion the reform processes.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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