Tanzimat has been classically treated as a break with the tradition (ancien régime) and opening into the modern. Historians have debated the direction of the rupture and documented the reinvention of the state. However, the modernism of the classical historiography on Tanzimat (Berkes, Kuran, Lewis) has exclusively focused on the birth of modern institutions and ideas at the heart of the empire. In this paper, I would like to undo this hegemonic interpretation by focusing on the place of the oath in the Ottoman statecraft and its transformation following the Greek Independence. Ottoman and modern historians emphasized the abolition of the Janissary as the cardinal event while minimizing the Greek affair. Following Philliou (2011), I would like to rethink Tanzimat in view of the ‘Greek Interregnum’ (Rûm Fetreti) and the ruination of the sovereign-subject bond. Oath, I argue, was the immemorial governmental technology binding the subjects of the empire (teba’a) to the Sultan. With Tanzimat, as Abu-Manneh (2001) noted, the asymmetry of the oath is ‘reversed’: Sultan emerges as a voice and swears by his own name in order to suture the continuum between the people and the sovereign. After briefly addressing the authority of the oath in the classical age, I will show how in the emergent age of nationalism it failed to produce subjection. I will trace this failure through documents from the Ottoman archives and Greek revolutionary writings.

The Ottoman constitution of 1876 has long been regarded as the apotheosis of nineteenth-century Ottomanism, an interpretation that places critics of constitutionalism outside the mainstream of Ottomanist thought. Among those critics is Ali Suavi (1839-1878), whose neglect by scholars owes in large part to his reputation as a “turbaned radical” aligned with an unlettered Muslim working class and propelled by a chauvinist Islamist politics of resentment. This paper participates in a broader re-examination of the substance and legacy of nineteenth-century Ottomanism by taking a closer look at Ali Suavi’s political writings, particularly his reflections on the concept of sovereignty and his related critique of the Ottoman constitutionalist movement and its concessions to the emerging ideology of internationalism. I focus on a series of articles and pamphlets written by Suavi between 1869 and 1876, a period in which he remained in Europe following the break-up of the Young Ottoman Society. The writings he produced during this period include a series of meditations in his self-published journal Ulûm on sovereignty, as well as a number of pamphlets on international affairs that were published in French and English for a European audience. Both sets of writings reflect the influence of the Scottish conservative author David Urquhart (1805-1877), Suavi’s friend and close collaborator in this period. My analysis focuses on the relationship between Suavi’s view of sovereignty and his argument against both constitutionalism and the internationalization of Ottoman governance. Against the prevailing reading of Suavi’s political agenda as narrowly sectarian and unsophisticated, I show how Suavi’s writings reflect a keen attention to the new geopolitical order that emerged in the wake of the Crimean War. The expansion of international institutions and enterprises that characterized this new geopolitical order was among the chief targets of Urquhart’s critique of British liberal policy, and it served as the fulcrum of the ideological alliance between the Islamist Suavi and his Scottish Presbyterian patron. Both men critiqued the emerging ideology of internationalism as an infringement on national sovereignty, while participating in cosmopolitan practices of international travel and exchange. By highlighting the resonances between Suavi’s meditations on sovereignty and internationalism and those of Urquhart, this paper draws out underexplored parallels between Islamist and European conservative critiques of liberalism. In doing so, it underscores the ideological diversity of the Ottomanist movement and emphasizes the cosmopolitan origins of modern Islamist political thought from its nineteenth-century beginnings onward.

During the 19th century, European imperial rule introduced liberal ideals of governance to much of the Muslim world, thereby transforming indigenous understandings of Sharia law. It is widely recognized that such transformations generated a new notion of ijtihad, such that ijtihad came to be associated with prevailing 19th century ideas about “civilizational progress”. Nevertheless, existing scholarship on Islamic law does not offer a systematic analysis of such ideas, or their relationship to matters of international capitalism, race, and colonialism. The proposed presentation offers such an analysis, and draws out its implications for modern religious reform movements which seek to reshape Sharia doctrine through ijtihad. The analysis is based on two sets of primary source texts. The first set of texts consists in late 19th and early 20th century writings on colonial policy vis-à-vis the Muslim world. Special attention is given to the writings of Evelyn Baring, George Nathaniel Curzon, and Frederick Lugard - prominent British colonial officials charged with governing Muslim populations in Egypt, India, and Nigeria. The second set of texts consists in late 19th and early 20th century Arabic writings on ijtihad and civilizational progress. Special attention is given to Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida, as well as more secular contemporaries like Shibli Shumayyil and Taha Husayn. I argue that 19th century ideas of civilizational progress presume that technology and economic output advance to ever higher levels. Meanwhile, morality is tied to particular aims; namely, securing as much freedom and equality as possible, while reducing human suffering as much possible. The extent to which these aims are achievable depends (in large part) upon levels of technology and economic output. Advanced European capitalist nations have the highest levels of technology and economic output, thereby enabling them to engineer the most advanced forms of morality (which are embodied in European institutions and law codes). Such nations have a moral obligation to impose more advanced forms of morality on other nations (e.g., Muslim nations) through imperial rule (i.e., the civilizing mission). I suggest that Muslim reformist discourses which invoke ijtihad exhibit a fundamental tension. Hence, these discourses embrace the ideal of civilizational progress. Nevertheless, such discourses also disavow (or ignore) the economic, racial, and imperial dimensions of this ideal. I argue that understanding the preceding tension is key to understanding the politics of Muslim religious reform, both as championed by Muslims and as championed by European imperial powers.