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Co
ff
eehouses, Guilds and Oriental Despotism Government and Civil Society in Late
th
to Early
th
Century Istanbul and Isfahan,and as seen from Paris and London
W
entitled to use civil society as an analytical term and de
fi
ne itfor our theoretical, comparative purpose. We cannot do so, however,without taking into account when the term makes its
fi
rst appearance inhistory, which is in fact the subject of this conference and this paper (
).AsPaulHazard(
)demonstratedwithgreaterudition,theEuropeanself-consciousnessasacivilsocietywasprecededandaccompaniedbyaninterest and intellectual curiosity about other civilizations and societiesthat is without parallel in world history. This unprecedented interest inthe other cannot have been without an impact on the European self-de
fi
nition. I will examine this interest as directed toward the civiliza-tional area geographically closest to Western Europe and expressed inthe Western views of the Ottoman and Safavid empires. These viewswere quantitatively and qualitatively di
ff
erent from the medieval Wes-tern views of Islam (Frassetto and Blanks
), and were based on aconsiderable amount of accurate factual information published byEuropeantravelersintheNearEast.The question that arises from the de
fi
nition of civil society in analy-tical terms concerns its utility for understanding other societies andhistoricalperiods.Here,boththehistoricalandtheinter-societalaspectsare important. The challenge is to understand the dynamics of othercivilizationsintheirowntermswhileallowinghistoricalvariationwithineach of them. If the second task is ignored, as is usually the case, we canbe misled into a search for atemporal models for entire civilizations.Roth and Schluchter (
), for instance, developed a holistic view of
(
) This paper was presented at the confer-ence on ‘‘Civil Society. Europe encounteringthe other’’ at the Maison des sciences del’Homme,Paris,June
.
,
.
Saïd Amir A
, Department of Sociology, State University of New York,StonyBrook,NewYork[sarjoman@notes.cc.sunysb.edu]
Arch.europ.sociol.,
XLV,
(
),
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.
perart+$
.
perpage©
A.E.S.
types of rationalism as atemporally characteristic of entire civilizations.Despite particular insights some of which will be mentioned below, thesamefailureinhistoricizationmarsS
È
erif Mardin
’
s(
)allembracingdichotomy of the Ottoman society versus the West. More recently,Eisenstadt falls into the same trap of constructing an atemporal modelof civilizational dynamics, despite his far greater historical sensitivity.He correctly sees the crystallization of
‘‘
a very vibrant and autonomouspublic sphere
’’
as a result of the interaction of the ulema (the clericalestate), the shari`a (sacred law), the institution of
waqf
(religiousendowments),theSu
fi
ordersandtherulersintheformativeperiod,butthen ahistorically frames it within the allegedly unchanging boundariesset by the two fundamental concepts of the umma (community of believers) and the shari` a (Eisenstadt
, p.
). Similarly, thoughwith less historical sensitivity, Kamali (
, pp.
,
) presents amodel of civil society distinctive of Islam, stretching from
th
centuryMeccato
st
centuryIran.To avoid such paradoxical lapses into
‘‘
Orientalism
’’
, the concept of civil society must be historicized when applied to the Islamicate civili-zation. Elsewhere, I have argued that the concept of civil society, moreor less as de
fi
ned by Hegel
—
namely a sphere of autonomy and univer-sality constituted and protected by law
—
is applicable to medievalMuslim societies, as it is to medieval Europe (
). By guaranteeing thesecurity of person and property through the administration of justice,civil society was made free and capable of autonomous agency. Accord-ing to this conception, we may apply the term civil society to a sphereof social relations in medieval and early modern Islam whose indepen-dence from the state was in principle guaranteed by Islamic law andwhose autonomous agency was fostered by well-developed laws of contract and commercial partnership. This meant, however, that civilsociety could be stronger or weaker in di
ff
erent periods, and in particu-lar, in relation to di
ff
erent political regimes (Arjomand
). Further-more, the components of civil society and the constitution of the publicsphere can change from one period to another. In addition to the
waqf
-basedinstitutionsof higherlearning
(madrasas)
,Iwilllookattheemer-genceintheearlymodernperiodof guildsandco
ff
eehouses(notincludedinEisenstadt
’
smodel)asimportantcivicinstitutions.IwillrelatethecivilsocietythatgrewuponthemtolawandthestateintheOttomanandSafavid
(
) For alternative conceptions of civilsociety,seeKeane(
,pp.
-
).Thesameessay is instructive on the emergence of theideaof a
‘‘
newdespotism
’’
of themodernstatewith Tocqueville (
ibid.
, pp.
-
) that was infact spun o
ff
Montesquieu
’
s rhetorical deviceof othering despotism as Oriental, to be dis-cussedbelow.
ï
empire,whileaccountingfortheselectiveperceptionandanalysisof thisrelationbycontemporaryEuropeanobservers.** *In a conversation reported in letter
of
Lettres persanes
, a learnedFrenchman contradicts Montesquieu
’
s
fi
ctive Persian (Rica) on theauthorityof messieursTavernierandChardinassoonashehassaidfourwords. The astonished Persian exclaims:
‘‘
[...] quel homme est-ce l
à
? Ilconna
’
ttout
à
l
’
heurelesruesd
’
Ispahanmieuxquemoi!
’’
(Montesquieu
,p.
).Montesquieu
’
simpliedclaimisnotanemptybrag.Onthecontrary,averyaccuratetopographyof Isfahancanbereconstructedonthe basis of the very rich description given in Chardin
’
s
Voyage
, whichwas published in ten volumes in
, ten years before the
Lettres per-sanes
and in the same city of Amsterdam. Tavernier
’
s
Six voyages
waspublished in Utrecht in
. Later in
De l’Esprit des lois
, Montesquieudrew extensively on Chardin in his typi
fi
cation and analysis of Orientaldespotism as a form of government, while ignoring the latter
’
s discus-sion of Islamic law. He also missed Tavernier
’
s distinction between twokinds of law under the Safavid autocracy (
), preferring to typify thelatter as lawless despotism. In this enterprise, he was greatly aided by adi
ff
erent work,
The Present State of the Ottoman Empire
by the EnglishdiplomatPaulRycaut,whichhadbeenpublishedin
—
thatis,whileChardinwaslivinginIsfahan.ItisinRycaut
’
sbookthatwecanclearlyseeMontesquieu
’
scoreideaof lawless Oriental despotism based on equality in powerlessness andfear, as a sharp antithesis of
‘‘
moderate
’’
monarchy based on the rule of law and a social hierarchy based on honor. In the
th
century, neitherMachiavellinorBodinhadconsideredtheOttomanstateasadegenerateform of government (Valensi
, pp.
-
). In fact, Bodin had anunusually benign view of the Ottoman empire, and considered
‘‘
theKing of the Turks
’’
a good prince who safeguards religion and yet
‘‘
heconstrains no one, but [...] even in his seraglio at Pera he permits thepracticeof fourdiversereligions
’’
(citedinVitkus
,p.
).Rycauttells King Charles II, to whom the work was presented, of
‘‘
the absolu-teness of an Emperor without reason, without virtue [...]. In this
(
) According to Tavernier (
,
,p.
),
‘‘
the Persians respect the law of thePrince more than that of Muhammad
’’
. Thisreference to the state law and the Sharia as thetwo components of the Safavid legal system isinterestingly made in the context of one of therepeatedandine
ff
ectualbansondrinkingwineby royal decree. The Shah himself had been aprime culprit in breaching the prohibition of wine drinking by the Sharia, and very soonreturnedtohisbadhabit.
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