Millet (Ottoman Empire)

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Millet (stress on the e) is an Ottoman Turkish term for a confessional community in the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, with the Tanzimat reforms, the term started to refer to a legally protected ethnic and religious minority group, other than the ruling Sunni. Millet comes from the Arabic word milla (ملة).

Contents

1 Concept
2 Millets

2.1 Muslims
2.2 Phanariot Greeks
2.3 Jews
2.4 Armenians

3 History

3.1 Establishment
3.2 19th Century (Reformation Era)
3.3 Modern Use

4 See also
5 References
6 Sources
7 Further reading

Concept

The millet concept has a similarity to autonomous territories that has long been the European norm for dealing with minority groups. The millet system has a long history in the Middle East, and is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non-Muslim minorities (dhimmi). The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves (in cases not involving any Muslim) with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government.

Each millet was under the supervision of an Ethnarch ('national' leader), most often a religious hierarch such as the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, who reported directly to the Ottoman Sultan. The millets had a great deal of power - they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was insisted was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of one millet committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party applied, but the - ruling - Islamic majority being paramount, any dispute involving a Muslim fell under their sharia-based law.

Millets

Beside the Muslim millet, the main millets were the Greek Orthodox, Jewish and Armenian ones.^{[#endnote_shaw]} A wide array of other groups such as Catholics, Karaites, and Samaritans were also represented, whereas others, which were seen as deviant forms of Islam, such as Shi'as, Alawis, Alevis, and Yezidis, had no official status and were generally considered to be part of the Muslim millet — though the syncretic Druzes of the Djebel Druze and the Mount Lebanon enjoyed a rather feudal-type autonomy (like the Assyrian Christian villages under Mar Shimun in the Hakkari mountains). These groups were spread across the empire with significant minorities in most of the major cities. Autonomy for these groups was thus impossible to base on a territorial region.

Muslims

Muslim communities prospered the most under the Ottoman Empire, as the Sultan was also the Caliph. Ottoman law did not recognize such notions as ethnicity or citizenship, thus, a Muslim of any ethnic background enjoyed precisely the same rights and privileges. It was claimed that under such conditions, Muslim Arabs came to view the empire as a revived Islamic empire. However, even if Caliphate played a significant role, the real existence of these feelings is questionable long before the Arab Revolt and the subsequent dissolution of the empire in 20th century. By the 17th century, the Barbaresque Maghreb regencies were only nominally under the Ottoman control and Egypt was almost independent by the begin of the 19th century.

Phanariot Greeks

From an early date, Greek citizens of Constantinople were able to achieve high positions in the fields of commerce, politics, religion, and the military. The Patriarch of Constantinople, for example, developed a great degree of power, both religious and political, but was still very tightly controlled by the state. Phanariot Greeks even worked as the sultan's statesmen in Western Europe and as local rulers in the Balkans; and Aegean Greeks were granted wide commercial rights and also developed a fleet that quickly became the empire's maritime weapon. In fact, some Greek citizens prospered to such a degree that they eventually opposed the Greek War of Independence of 1821–1831, afraid to lose their privileged position in the imperial capital.

On the other hand, the Christian population in the Balkans was practically devoid of any rights preventng it for centuries to develop above the level of peasantry. Any signs of dissent were harshly suppressed (e.g. see April Uprising).

Jews

The Ottoman Jews enjoyed similar privileges to those of the Phanariot Greeks, and indeed came to enjoy some of the most extensive freedoms in Jewish history. The city of Thessaloniki, for instance, received a great influx of Jews in the 15th century and soon flourished economically to such an extent that, during the 18th century, it was the largest and possibly the most prosperous Jewish city in the world. By the early 20th century, Ottoman Jews—together with Armenian and Greeks—dominated commerce within the Empire.

Armenians

The Ottomans assigned Armenians equal legal representation, as one of the main millets. Other Orthodox populations, like the Bulgars and Serbs, were placed under the authority of the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinopole, but this has never been the case for Armenians. The Armenian Church under the Ottomans had an improved position. It has to be mentioned that they had very early interaction with Ottomans.

History

Given the House of Osman was a Muslim populated institution, it is important to understand objectively, besides the each millets own ego-centric histories, these institutions were related to each other during the 6 centuries that they occupied the same political sphere under the state organization of the Ottoman Empire. Questions that are brought forward are "What was the states organizational behavior between Muslims to not-Muslim subpopulations? What was the status of subjects (individuals) under Millets? How the state did perceive the anti-Semitism and related these feelings to other millets.

Establishment

Millet as an institution, was functioning even before the Osman I, under the ottoman organization.

19th Century (Reformation Era)

The millet system was altered by the increasing influence of European powers in the Middle East, as various European powers (often enjoying extraterritorial privileges for their own citizens) declared themselves protectors of their religious cohorts in the Empire. Thus the Russians became guardians of the Eastern Orthodox groups, the French of the Catholics, and the British of the Jews and other groups.

New millets were created in the 19th century for several uniate and protestant Christian communities, then for the separate national Eastern Orthodox Bulgarian Church, recognized as a millet by an Ottoman firman in 1870 and excommunicated two years later by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as adherents of phyletism (national or ethnic principle in church organization). This altered the balance of power as the millet became wealthy and outside Ottoman law.

Modern Use

Today the millet system is still used at varying degrees in some post-Ottoman countries like Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt, but also in non-post-Ottoman states like Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh which kept the principle of separate personal status courts and/or laws for every recognized religious community and, for most of them, reserved seats in the parliament.

In Egypt for instance, according to a 1995 law, the application of family law, including marriage, divorce, alimony, child custody, inheritance and burial, is based on an individual's religion. In the practice of family law, the State recognizes only the three "heavenly religions": Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Muslim families are subject to the Personal Status Law, which draws on Sharia. Christian families are subject to canon law, and Jewish families are subject to Jewish law. In cases of family law disputes involving a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, the courts apply the Personal Status Law (see: [Egypt - International Religious Freedom Report Released by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2001]).

Some observers deem that multiculturalism, as practiced in states like Canada and Australia, also has some similarities to the millet system. The national-cultural autonomy principle of the austromarxists, bundist and folkist thinkers also bears some similarity with the millet system.

References

↑ Stanford J. Shaw, "Dynamics of Ottoman Society and administration", in "History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey"

Sources

(incomplete)

[Ottoman empire site, German full original version] (to be further exploited)