At one stage in history, the Ottoman Empire was the biggest land-based empire in the world spread over three continents, Asia (Middle East and central Asia), Africa (North Africa minus Morocco) and Europe (Eastern Europe including the Caucasus). Although Muslims, or rather Sunni Muslims, were a privileged group, the various Christian sects and Jews were, in accordance with the Quranic recognition of them as “people of the book”, granted substantial communal autonomy under the millet system. The protection tax, jizya, was charged from them. When the Jews were driven out of Spain in 1492 they found sanctuary in Ottoman territories. In 1992, their descendants in Israel held a special 500-year ceremony to remember that. For centuries, such a system provided peace and security to all Ottoman subjects though neither Muslims nor non-Muslims enjoyed modern-type citizenship rights.
There was a downside to Ottoman policies, however. They used to raid Christian villages in the Caucasus to capture boys of tender age who were then separated from their families and groomed at special isolated military institutions to become personal bodyguards of the sultan. They were known as janussaris (jaan-nisaaris or loyal help). Like all Muslim or Islamic states, the Ottoman Empire remained a military-feudal institution deriving its wealth essentially from conquest while trade and commerce remained neglected. The sultans were despots and a harem culture evolved under their patronage. Once conquests came to a standstill and reverses set in, the systemic imbalance between the economic base and political superstructure entered an insoluble contradiction that, from the 19th century onwards, set in irreversible decay and decline.
For the Ottomans the need to invoke the status of caliph arose in 1774 when Czarina Catherine of Russia asserted her role as the representative of Orthodox Christians living in Ottoman territories. For centuries these two empires had been embroiled in warfare in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and their domains had been expanding and contracting depending on who had the upper hand. The ulema (clergy) decided that the sultan should claim the status of caliph to represent the interests of Muslims living in Russian territories. That, in short, is the origin of the Ottoman Caliphate. Such a claim became part of convention, something likening customary law of Muslims, and thereafter the sultan began to be referred to as caliph as well. The Ottoman Caliphate became the symbol of Muslim power in a world increasingly dominated by Christian Europe. At no stage did the Ottomans or earlier Arab caliphs claim sacerdotal authority comparable to the Pope. The ulema were no doubt specialists of sharia but not a priestly class set apart from the lay population.
The French Revolution (1789) ushered in the doctrine of nationalism as the right of self-determination. The Ottoman Empire, headed by a Muslim ruler and several Christian subject communities, was the first to experience separatist revolts. Aided and abetted by France and Russia, Serbia (1915), Greece (1932), Bulgaria (1878) and other such nationalities broke away. The Ottomans began to be referred to derisively as the “sick man of Europe”.
Confronted by reverses, the Ottomans did try to reform and modernise. In 1839, the inviolability of life, honour and property of all subjects was recognised. In 1856, the idea of limited government and rule of law were introduced, and equality of all subjects before the law, irrespective of religion, sect or creed was granted. Entrance into the state services was opened to all subjects. It was a radical departure from the earlier Ottoman practice of reserving governmental positions only for Muslims. The 1876 constitution affirmed the recognition of the principle of rule of law. Also, under the tanzimat (reorganisation) system, secular laws began to be adopted, parallel with sharia law. The constitution provided for limited and indirect suffrage. However, in 1878, the assertive Sultan Abdul Hamid suspended such changes but, in 1908, they were revived. The forces behind these constitutional changes were military officers and civil servants, who came to be known as the Young Turks.
The Young Turks began to stress the Turkish identity of the Ottoman Empire. Previously, it was considered denigrating to call the Ottomans Turks. They preferred to be known as the Ottomans but, with the Young Turks, reactive nationalism acquired distinct Turkish trappings. At that stage, Turanian or Turkish nationalism included the Kurds who were not Turks. The main ideologue of Turanianism was Zia Gokulp, a Kurd. Such a trend, however, impacted on the Arabs negatively, where secular Arab nationalism begun to surface among Christian intellectuals while the old controversy about the Arab/Qureish precondition of the caliphate was vented by Islamists such as Rashid Rida. The Wahhabis of Nejd had, for a long time, been giving trouble to the Ottomans.
The early 20th century saw war clouds gathering over Europe. The First World War broke out in July 1914. Ottoman Turkey joined the war in November 1914. On the goading of the Russians the Armenians revolted against the Ottomans and bitter, bloody conflict broke out. Initially, Turkish-Kurdish Ottomans were killed in very large numbers but, ultimately, the Armenians suffered huge loss of life. It has been described as the Armenian genocide. On the other hand, although the Arab revolt of 1916 was a stab in the back from the Ottoman point of view, the Arab masses continued to identify with the empire emotionally because of its status as the caliphate. Therefore, when Sharif Hussein and his sons, as Sunni descendants of the Prophet (PBUH), led the revolt, they by no means enjoyed mass support. The Hollywood spectacle Lawrence of Arabia is a great exaggeration.
Secret British-French negotiations had begun in 1915 to capture Ottoman territories in the Middle East. The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) between them promised a homeland to the Jews in Palestine while simultaneously promising an Arab Kingdom whose exact boundaries were not clear. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 formally committed the UK to the establishment of the Jewish homeland in Palestine. No doubt, the time of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East was over and it would have ended any way, but defeat in the war meant that the future map of the Middle East was determined by the British and French mandates. The Arab right of national self-determination did not figure anywhere in the redrawing of the map of the Middle East. The Khilafat Movement needs to be evaluated in that background.
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The writer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan, professor emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University, and honorary senior fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival: The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford, 2012; and Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Oxford, 2013. He can be reached at:[email protected]