Essay #1: Outline the reforms initiated in the Ottoman Empire by Selim III and how they were related to the reforms followed during the reign of Mahmud II?

The reign of Selim III was a period of time of state-sponsored reforms. Some of the most important reforms was military reforms in which the Ottoman Empire tried to transform their armed forces in the image of many of the European countries. This was because when Selim became the sultan, the Ottoman Empire was fighting another losing war with Austria and Russia. For the sultan and his advisers, the lessons from the war was, if the military doesn’t improve the Ottoman Empire will crumble. Thus Selim III started a “series of reforms designed to reorganize the existing armed forces along European lines”. However one group was suspicious of the reforms, the Janissaries. The Janissaries were the most efficient military unit in the empire. The Janissaries were a slave army that numbered around 40,000 troops. They are known for their discipline, morale, and professionalism. And during times of peace they were used to maintain domestic law and order. So to appease the Janissaries and convince them to accept the new methods, Selim raised their salaries and rebuilt their barracks. However, that just made them more suspicious, and they “successfully resisted his moves toward reform”. Frustrated by this, the sultan tried to sidestep them by creating a new military unit called the Nazam-i Jedid to replace the Janissaries. They were trained by Europeans, and supplied with modern weapons and given French-style uniforms. And by 1806 the new army numbered around 23,000 troops and it performed effectively in minor actions. His reforms in the military led to reforms in other areas as well. For example diplomacy, the Ottomans established embassies in European capitals, the first one was established in London. This led to more knowledge about the West. However all of Selims reform led to his overthrow in 1806. The Janissaries, a very influential group in Ottoman society, saw the creation of the Nizam-i Jedid and military reform as a threat to their independence. The Derebeys who were “local valley lords”, were alarmed at the way the sultan paid for his new forces. He did this by taking over land. In addition more opposition came from the Ulama who are the religious elite and they opposed the European models which Selim based his military reforms from. Then led by the Janissaries, these forces came together to overthrow Selim III. Next all his reforms were abolished, the embassies were dismantled and the Nizam-i Jedid discharged. Soon after in 1808 Sultan Mahmud II came into power and is very much like Sultan Selim III. Like Selim III, Mahmud II was mainly a military reformer. However the way he differed was that “he saw the need to act decisively against the centrifugal political forces that continued to paralyze royal authority”. Due to the Derebey-Ulama-Janissary coalition that had ousted Selim III, Mahmud II was very careful. In the beginning he used the Janissaries, whose loyalty he brought with bribes, and he turned them against the Derebeys and he was able to break their power. And just like his predecessor Mahmud II ordered the creation of a new European-style army elite but just like in the past the Janissaries rebelled against these reforms but the sultan was prepared for this and crushed the rebellion with his new troops. Thousands of Janissaries were killed on the streets. The military elite that once wielded considerable power in Ottoman society was destroyed forever. This made further reforms easier to implement. He used European instructors to train his soldiers and he established the Imperial War College which was modeled after a French training academy. Just like Selim III the reforms were not just confined to the military. Mahmud II reorganized the bureaucracy and created European style ministries and he increased salaries to curb bribing. Mahmud II also replaced the turban and the robe with the fez and a frock coat among the bureaucracy, this was similar to Salim III who changed the wardrobe of the military, but it was different in that Mahmud went even further and changed the wardrobe for the military and the civilian branches of government. Next Mahmud set up embassies throughout European capitals due to the fact that the Ottoman Empire was embroiled in a number of international crisis and the empire was not able to negotiate or make alliances as a result that very few people were well versed in the European languages, mainly because the empire lost many of its Greek subjects. And so Mahmud II implemented the same reforms that were implemented by Salim III but since Mahmud II was able to curb the Derebey-Ulama-Janissary coalition his reforms stayed in place unlike Salim III reforms.

Essay #2 Explain the ideological roots of the Committee for the Union and Progress (CUP) government which ran the Ottoman Empire between? Who were they and how successful was their government?

The ideological roots of the Committee for the Union and Progress government started in the active Ottoman exile communities that existed in Paris and Geneva. This community grew during Abdul Hamid’s reign and these exiles demanded the restoration of the constitution of 1876. However, these European oriented exiles had no power base and were divided. Their major contribution to the anti-Hamidian sentiment was to bring back the idea of a constitution which was a way “to limit the royal autocracy and bring back principle of Ottomanism”. In addition anti-Hamidian sentiment caused students in the military-medical academy to start a secret protest society known as the Committee of Union and Progress. This society soon attracted other students and civil servants. These students saw the repression as an obstacle to the reforms needed for the survival of the empire. They believed it was necessary to restore a constitutional government and so they tried to start cell groups to further their cause. However, the sultan’s spies discovered the movement and arrested and exiled many of its members. After this the sultan, was very distrustful of all organized institutions, in particular the army. During his reign, the quality of military equipment decreased and salaries were very low. This caused the army to form secret protest groups which aligned to the CUP. Opposition to the sultan was especially prevalent among officers of the Ottoman Third Army stationed in Salonika. These officers believed that the sultan’s attitude toward the army was undermining the strength and decreasing the army’s ability to defend Ottoman territory. This patriotism, grounded in Ottomanism, led a group of officers to revolt and demand that Abdul Hamid restore the constitution and they warned that if he did not restore the constitution, they would do it themselves. The sultan not wanting to challenge his armed forces, restored the constitution that was abolished thirty years earlier. This led to the election of representatives from all areas of the empire. However not everyone was in favor of the European styled constitution. In 1909 protest ensued against the new government. It was led by common soldiers and theological students in Istanbul who voiced their opposition against the influence of the west and called for the implementation of Islamic law. So the Third Army marched to Istanbul, put down the protests. After this Abdul Hamid was accused of starting the protest and so was removed as the sultan. The CUP was the umbrella political party for the Young Turks who were pragmatic reformers who gained full control of the government through the manipulation of parliamentary elections and sheer ruthlessness. By 1913 it was able to consolidate its rule as a virtual military dictatorship. In the beginning the governance of the CUP was marked by an intellectual openness unparalleled in Ottoman history. With the lifting of Abdul Hamid’s censorship, the press was vibrant once again in major cities throughout the empire. And the CUP’s only struggle was to stay in power. So they believed that through better governance, the population would support the CUP government. Consequently the CUP started an expansion of the primary and secondary educational system and the improvement of the military. However this belief also led them to attack the bloated bureaucracy, this led to a number of people getting laid off. This alienated members of the civil service and many notable Arab families whose members had occupied posts in the provincial governments on a hereditary basis. This was one of the many mistakes that the inexperienced CUP government made. In 1909, when the CUP took power they were determined to save the Ottoman Empire. After this they had to decide what kind of a state they wanted: a state based on Ottomanism or a state based Islam. They chose Ottomanism because they believed the state should implement a constitutional government, which would limit the power of the sultan and guarantee rights to non-Muslims. One of the government’s first actions was to abolish the millet system which showed their commitment to Ottomanism. However this did not stop many of the religious minorities to claim a separate state. For instance Bulgaria proclaimed independence. And other nations took over parts of the Ottoman Empire, as in the case of Bosnia, which was taken over by Austria and the North African providence of Tripoli which was taken over by Italy. Other mistakes CUP made was they dismissed the al-Abid family from their positions of power and confiscated some their land. The al-Abid family was one of the wealthiest family in Damascus in the 20th century. The CUP did this because they wanted loyal supporters for their new regime. And most of the time these posts were replaced with fellow Turks, instead of Arabs, who were the majority. This caused the beginnings of the ideology of Arabism to take hold among the Arab population. Thus the CUP government was moderately successful. It resorted the constitution, and promised an equal society for all which they hoped would bring unity. However it was a time when various ethnic groups in the empire demanded independence so the CUP’s concept of Ottomanism did not work.

Essay #3: Our text book describes late 19th century Iran as a region captured between Russian and British interests. What does this mean and in what way was the 1891 Tobacco Protests related to this description?

Nineteenth century Iran was a country captured between British and Russian interests. This meant that both Russia and Britain considered the country to be very important, and this caused them to interfere in the internal affairs of Iran, this undermined the Nasir al Din’s regime. Which was the regime of Iran at that time. Russia had considerable influence in the region because they absorbed many Iran’s neighbors into the Russian Empire. Next they wanted Iranian territory as well and after a decisive military victory over the shah’s tribal forces in 1828, Russia imposed the Treaty of Turkomanchai on Iran. Which granted “Russian merchant’s extraterritorial rights and favorable tariff rates similar to the privileges accorded western Europeans in the Ottoman Capitulations”. However Britain felt threatened by this Russian encroachment on Iran. They felt it posed a threat to India, which was Britain’s jewel in regards to Britain’s imperial holdings. In addition it was unwanted competition to British for overseas markets. And so the shah granted British merchants the same law tariffs and extraterritorial privileges. This paved the way or Iran to be a “European-dominated global economy”. So raw materials were exported and cheap materials imported. Hence may of Iran’s traditional industries like textile declined due to the competition. And so in 1891 the Tabaco protests started because the shah granted an English company “the exclusive right to produce, sell, and export Iran’s entire tobacco crop”. This affected a product which was widely used by Iranians. This united the various opposition to the shah and created mass protests throughout Iran. The protests were led by the Shia Ulama. They said the use of tobacco unlawful and used religious interpretation to justify it. Many Iranians already frustrated with the shah followed this ruling. Which in turn forced the shah to cancel the English company’s “exclusive right to produce, sell, and export Iran’s entire tobacco crop”. The protests against this caused the shah an enormous amount of financial damage. And so he had to ask Russia for loans to keep his state afloat. Consequently Iran joined with Egypt and the Ottoman Empire as a debtor state to European powers. And so the tobacco protests just shows another instance where Iran is captured between British and Russian interests.

Essay #4: Compare and contrast the Wahhabi, Sanusi and Mahdiyya movements.
The Wahhabi, Sanusi, and Mahdiyyah are three different Islamic revival movements with many differences and similarities. Of the three the most influential and the most lasting movement was the Wahhabi movement which was created by a scholar named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. He wrote in his writings a very fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. For instance he regarded Sufism, with its veneration of saints, as a form of polytheism and named followers of Sufism as apostates and so it was the duty of Muslims to kill them. Abd al-Wahhab’s believed that the Quran and the hadith were “the only reliable sources through which the divine will could be comprehended”. He said it is the responsibility of a Muslim to learn and obey the divine commands which were revealed in the Quran and the hadith. This ideology gained the following of Muhammad ibn Saud, who would later become the founder of Saudi Arabia. Thus Wahhabism wields all religious influence in Saudi Arabia. The Sansui movement founded by Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi, was an Algerian who spent several years studying and teaching in Mecca. His views were unpopular there, so he left and settled in Jaghbub in Cyrenaica, which is present day Libya. The aim of the movement was to recreate the original community of the Prophet. “The order rejected the Ottoman and Egyptian forms of Islamic behavior in favor of a more austere desert life”. This movement is different from the Wahhabi movement in that it did not have many bold ideas nor was it as rigorously pure. However it is similar in the fact it had political influence just like the Wahhabi movement. Sanusi movement became the basis for the contemporary Libyan state because in 1950. Al-Sayyid Muhammad Idris, the head of the Sanusi brotherhood and the grandson of its founder became the ruler of Libya. Finally the Mahdiyyah movement was founded by Muhammad Ahmad, “a Sudanese, received a traditional religious education and had established a reputation for asceticism and piety that had gained him a modest popular following”. In 1881 he proclaimed himself the Mahdi, and claimed that he was inspired by God. His goal was to revive the faith through the Quran and the hadith, similarly to the Wahhabi movement. He made a virtue of the poverty and renounced worldly goods much like the Sansui movement who were in favor of a more austere life. Muhammad Ahmad later created an administrative unit, which soon after because the Mahdist state which survived until 1898. Hence the similarity is that all three movements wielded considerable influence in each of their respective states. The difference is that all three had different ideas and sometimes different standards of purity.

Extra Credit: Who was Ahmed Urabi? What constitutes the events labeled as the Urabi Revolts of 1879-82?
Ahmad Urabi was a colonel in the Egyptian army, who was of peasant origins. The Urabi movement began when the ruler of Egypt Khedive Tawfiq made a law which said that Egyptians of peasant origins could not rise through the ranks. This outraged Colonel Urabi and other Egyptian officers. Khedive Tawfiq later repealed the law because of the support Urabi had in the military. However this did not stop Urabi and his supporters, they wanted “to eliminate foreign control of Egypt’s finances and to curtail the autocracy of the khedive by establishing constitutional limits to his authority”. Urabi had the support of the people and the army and so he was appointed minister of war. His rise power threated Khedive Tawfiq and so he has to rely on foreign support to hold on to his throne. In addition Britain and France were alarmed at the prospect of a nationalist government’s restricting their access to the Suez Canal. And the Suez Canal is vital to their national interests. And so British armed forces invaded Egypt and defeated Urabi’s army at the battle of Tel al-Kebir, and two days later Urabi was captured and his movement ended.

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