The Emergence of the Modern Middle East

by Professor Asher Susser, PhD, Duygu Atlas

Week 1. The Middle East in the Modern Era

1.1. What and Where is the Middle East?

Welcome to this first opening lecture of our course on the Emergence of the Modern Middle East. I
am Professor Asher Susser from Tel Aviv University. And this is going to be a course about the
modern Middle East, which means the last 200 years or so of the history of this region, from the
early 19th century until the Arab Spring of the last few years.

Our first lesson today is on the Middle East in the modern era. That requires us first to talk a bit
about what is the Middle East. And the other, what is it exactly that we mean by the modern era?
The term Middle East is not self-evident. If you look at this region from the main cities of the Middle
East, from Istanbul, from Cairo or from Tel Aviv, this is not the middle or the east of anything. The
term Middle East is a term created by people who looked at the Middle East from somewhere else.
It is the Middle East if you're looking at this region from Paris,
from London, or from Washington. If you're looking at the region
from outside, it is that Middle East, which is on the way to the
Far East. So what that means is, that this is a term that was
created by foreigners. But even though the term was created by
foreigners, all the peoples of the Middle East use this term to
describe the region in which they themselves live. In Arabic, in
Turkish, in Persian, in Hebrew, this region is called by the Middle Eastern people the Middle East,
even though it is a term of foreign creation.

The term was actually created by an American naval historian,

Alfred Thayer Mahan, who used it in an article and popularized the
term in 1902. The fact that the term created by a foreigner has
been adopted by the local peoples, is an indication of the
enormous effect that foreign nations, foreign powers have had in
the creation of this modern Middle East, as we call it.

Time is defined in this region, according to the Gregorian Western

calendar.
There are Muslim and Jewish calendars, yet day to day
life in the countries of the Middle East is not governed by these
Muslim or Jewish calendars, but rather by the Gregorian Western
Christian calendar. So, both time and space in the Middle East have
been defined by outsiders, again, a reminder of the enormous
influence that outsiders have had in the creation of this modern
Middle East.

So where is it, exactly, this modern Middle East? What are the countries that are included in the
Middle East? Normally, although there are various definitions of what exactly the Middle East is,
most would go along with the definition that the Middle East includes all the Arab countries. That is,
from Morocco in the west to
the countries in the Gulf, like,
Kuwait and the United Arab
Emirates and Saudi Arabia. And
the non-Arab countries, of
which there are three: Turkey,
Iran, and Israel. If we look at
the state structure of the
Middle East, any map of the
Middle East showing us where
the borders of the different
countries are. We can see that,
to a very large degree, this is
the patchwork of foreigners. That imperial powers often sat with rulers and created states where
states had not existed before. Countries were created with new identities that did not yet actually
exist. In fact, in the Middle East, it is much more appropriate to speak of

state-nations rather than nation- states. In Europe, it was very common

for nations like the French or the Germans to create states that represented their national linguistic
and territorial identity. But in the Middle East, states were created before nation-states existed.

Thus, we have countries like Jordan, for example, or the territory of Palestine as defined after the
First World War, where these were totally new creations. There were no Palestinian people or
Jordanian people when these states were created. Nor Syrian or Lebanese or Iraqi people when
their states were created. But with time, with the existence of these states, nations did emerge with
a particular territorial identity. Thus, you do have, after the creation of Palestine, after the creation
of Jordan, after the creation of Iraq, and after the creation of Syria, for example, the emergence of
people who do have Palestinian, Jordanian, Syrian, or Lebanese identities. These are state-nations
rather than nation-states. Nations that came into being after the creation of the state. Not the
creation of states that came into being after the formation of the nation, which is the more typical
European example.

Peoples in the Middle East, for centuries upon centuries, identified themselves collectively not by
the states in which they lived, not by the territory that they inhabited, and not by the language they
spoke, but by their religious belief. Collective identity was about religion, not about territory and
language. And it was only after the dramatic long standing impact of the West that identities began
to shift and to emerge towards a more European style territorial or linguistic identity. This modern
Middle East, this Middle East changing under the impact of the West in the 19th century, went
through very important periods of reform.

First was the reform of

the Ottoman Empire in
the middle of the 19th
century, a set of reforms
which changed the
Empire very significantly,
a modernizing and
centralizing reform that
was known collectively as
the Tanzimat, the
reorganization of the
Ottoman Empire.

In this confrontation, in
this meeting with the
West, we have
another movement in the latter part of the 19th century of Islamic reform, Islamic
thinkers looking for ways and means to find a synthesis between Western science and philosophy,
and religion. A way of adopting Western style, a way of adopting Western philosophy, a way of
adopting Western
modernization, without
losing the Islamic authentic
identity of Middle Eastern
society.

We have the introduction,

as a result of these
movements of reform, of
new ideas, nationalism being one of the most important. Nationalism is that revolutionary idea
which speaks about the sovereignty of man rather than the sovereignty of God. This was one of the
most important revolutionary, ideological changes that took place in the Middle East in the 19th
century and moving on into the 20th. At the end of the First World War in 1918, the Ottoman
Empire, the great Turkish empire which had ruled the Arab
lands for 400 years, came to an end. But
one has to
remember that this Ottoman Empire that ruled the
Arab countries for 400 years was
not seen by the
Arabs as an imperial conqueror, but as a legitimate
Muslim authority. The fact that
the Ottomans were
Turks was not held against them. It was not seen as
a Turkish occupation of
Arab nations. It was a
legitimate Muslim authority, Turkish Muslims ruling over Arab Muslims, and
what was important was not the Turkish-ness or the Arab-ness of the peoples, but their Islamic
religious belief. The legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire was therefore never called into question until
a very, very late phase of our story, the end of the 19th and the early 20th century, and then only
partially, and not by all the Arabs as one.

But it was called into question, this Turkish rule with the emergence of Arab nationalism. With the
fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire,
these new states and the state structure of the region served Western imperial interests, those of
France and Britain above all else. And therefore, even though these states were created when Arab
nationalism was already a factor in the Middle East, the states were created without much respect
for the ideas of Arab nationalism, which spoke of the unification of the Arabic-speaking peoples.
These states divided the Arabs into these imperial creations. Therefore, the Arab state order, as
created after the First World War, was an Arab state order, which did not enjoy much legitimacy in
the eyes of the Arab peoples themselves.

Arab nationalism fought against this imperial state creation.

But Arab nationalism, even though it was a very popular
movement through much of the 20th century, and it was a very
popular movement because Arab nationalism was this brilliant
traditional compromise between pure secularist national ideas
and Islamic identity. Arabism always contained an important
Islamic religious component. And by containing this Islamic
component, Arab nationalism was this easier transition from
Islamic identity to secular Arab nationalism.

But as popular as Arab nationalism was, and it was very popular in the Arab world for much of the
20th century, Arab nationalism was a dismal failure in political practice. Most notably, Arab
nationalism was a dismal failure in the conflict with Israel. The conflict with Israel, in which Israel,
smaller, less populous than the Arab countries, defeated the Arabs twice in 1948 and then, perhaps
even more humiliatingly, in 1967. These wars with Israel and the defeat of the Arabs by Israel in
these wars serve as a kind of monument to Arab failure to effectively meet the Western challenge.
As this kind of monument to Arab failure, Israel finds it extremely difficult to be accepted by the
Arab world around it.

In the aftermath of the 1967 War, politics in the Middle East were governed
by two dominant
trends, even though these two trends were contradictory
to each
other. The one was the final acquiescence of the Arab states
in
the colonial state order. Finally, the Arab states, realizing the
failure of
Arab nationalism, came to terms with the Arab state
structure. It was now
more legitimate to speak about the
Egyptian state and the Egyptian state
interest, raison d’etat as the
French call it. As did the other Arab states like
Jordan and Syria,
and the Palestinians too. Less was said about Arab nationalism,
and more was said about state interest.

But challenging this acquiescence in the colonial state order and the political status quo was the
radical Islamic revival, which filled the vacuum that had been left by Arab nationalism. On the one
hand, we see the radical Islamic revival; and on the other hand, the territorial state and the existing
regimes in conflict with each other in many of the Arab states, from the far west north Africa all the
way to the Gulf. This radical Islamic revival essentially is looking at the modernization process of the
last 150-200 years in an effort to promote an alternative route to modernity. It is mistaken to see
the Islamic revival as opposed to modernity. It is not opposed to modernity, but it is an Islamic
effort to find a pathway to modernity within the framework of an Islamic cultural and legal
framework.

1.2. What is the Modern Era?

Now we come to another question. What is the modern era? Where do we start? And why do we
start where we start?

It is very common and customary in the writing of Middle Eastern

history to start the modern era in 1798. Why 1798? In 1798
Napoleon invaded Egypt, and ushered in through his invasion, a long
period of rapid and radical change. That sounds reasonable. But it is
problematic, because in this determination of the Napoleonic
invasion as the beginning of the modern era, there is a hidden
assumption. That hidden assumption is that the modern era in the
Middle East was created only and solely through European influence
and European supremacy in an area which was in decline, stagnant
and moving nowhere. So there is now a historiographical debate
about whether it was ever really correct to begin the modern era
with the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt.

The Italian historian and philosopher Benedetto Croce said that

history was always writing about contemporary history. All history is contemporary history,
meaning to say that all history is written from the point of view of the present. And as the present
changes all the time, with the changing of the present, we have a changing view of the past. Our
ideas about the past, the way we write about the past, change all the time. Therefore, the idea of
seeing the Napoleonic invasion as the sole impetus for change and modernization in the region has
been challenged in later years.

First let's have a look at the so called

thesis of decline. The
thesis of decline
argues that the Ottoman Empire since
its
peak in the period of the Sultan
Suleyman the Magnificent
who died in
1566, that since this mid-16th century,
the
Ottoman Empire was in a 350-year
linear decline. That
half of the Empire's
existence was this linear decline
for
centuries upon centuries. That the
Middle East had
become a dormant, stagnant society resurrected by the Western encroachment.
That it was Western enlightenment and vitality that brought about the modernization of the Middle
East.

But this was was not so. In the Middle East, well after the 17th century, there are vibrant cities with
centers of government and courts of law and centers of learning and arts and crafts, and trade with
the West and the East. It was not a stagnant, rotting identity or entity. It is true that the Empire did
not expand. From 1683 onwards, the failure in the siege of Vienna, the Ottoman Empire was in
constant retreat in terms of territory. It did weaken in comparison to part of Europe, not to all of it.
Certainly to northern and western Europe. Far less in comparison to southern Europe or Russia. But
this was a matter of relative retreat in comparison to the Empire's former greatness. It was not a
total linear decline.

On the one hand, it is true. The defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683 was the beginning of a period
of territorial contraction. But, on the other hand, there were very handsome Ottoman defeats dealt
to the Russians, for example, after the siege of Vienna in 1711, in the war with the Russians, in what
is presently the country of Moldavia. On
the one hand, the Ottoman Empire was
the “sick man of Europe.” But on the
other, it enjoyed unquestioned Islamic
legitimacy. Even when rebellions in the
Empire brought down the ruling sultan,
legitimacy of the Empire remained
intact.

This remained true until the rise of
new

ideas like nationalism in the late
19th
and early 20th century. It was
only then
that the Empire was really challenged by new ideas
from Europe, and that the legal system was
questioned. Until then, the legal system was seen as
fair and reasonable. But when European style legal
and educational reforms were introduced, these had
a dramatic impact on issues such as collective
identity. These did not make matters better, but quite
the opposite. It is also true that in the 19th century,
the difficulties of the Empire were more clearly visible, clearly seen from the Napoleonic invasion of
Egypt, as one example. But another example that
goes on throughout the 19th century are the
nationalist uprisings against the Ottoman Empire,
amongst the Christians in the Balkans. And these
were nationalist uprisings that succeeded in
obtaining independence for the Christian nations of
the Balkans. The Greeks, the Serbs, the Bulgarians,
who gradually through the 19th century, broke
away from the Ottoman Empire. It is true also that
in the 19th century, the Western advance and
advantage in science and technology
and power projection was very, very clear. But then again,
on
the other hand, the Empire strengthened its hold in much of
the Arabic-speaking provinces,
and controlled a huge domain.
 All the way from Yemen to Libya was all still the Ottoman
Empire.
There were indeed frequent rebellions against the Ottomans since the end of the 16th century. This
was a sign
of weakness. But the fact that the Empire survived these rebellions time and time again
was another sign of Ottoman resilience.

The 17th century was a period of growing decentralization and empowerment of local potentates
and rising urban social classes. Some historians argue that this was a negative force, that it was an
indication of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. But others would argue quite the opposite, that it
enabled an often effective, albeit indirect form of control, and that it wasn't a sign of decline at all.
Hugh Nolan, an Irish historian, not writing about the Ottoman Empire but made a general comment:
“Aye,” he said, “the two things happen at one time. Things get better, and they get worse.”

So what difference does all this discussion make? Did it all begin with Napoleon or not? What is the
correct periodization of this modern era? Was change all initiated from outside by the enlightened,
progressive West, on a dormant, stagnant, and backward society? Did nothing change in the Middle
East until Napoleon?

Well, the answer to all these questions is that it was obviously not so. The picture is much more
complex. The European input added great momentum to a process that had already begun. Some
go even as far as to argue that Napoleon interrupted a local process of modernization, which could
have been a successful alternative to the Western model. Had it not been for Western impact they
say, the Middle East would have established its own model of modernity. Maybe, but equally,
maybe not.

But no one has really offered an alternative periodization. People have

questioned whether it does all begin with Napoleon, but no one has
been able to say, if not Napoleon, then when does it begin exactly? So
the bottom line of the debate is to come to a balanced conclusion,
which would say: The Napoleonic phase was a key to a new period of
rapid change, but one that added a quantum leap forward to an ongoing
process. The colonial interaction, with all its obvious negatives, created
an unprecedented measure of rapid change in politics, the economy,
and perhaps, most importantly, in the sphere of ideas and the erosion of
tradition. Ideas are more dangerous than occupation. Ideas erode
beliefs and traditions. Occupation comes and goes.

Lecture 1.3. The Middle East in the 19th Century

1.3.1. Structure of Society

We're now moving into the discussion on the structure of society in the Middle East at the
beginning of the 19th century. What is important to recognize when we talk about the Middle East
in comparison to Europe, is the emphasis in the Middle East on the structure of society by groups:
Groups as the components of society, rather than societies made up of individuals. The British
historian Malcolm Yapp
described Middle
Eastern society in the following
terms. He
said that Middle Eastern society
“was
composed … of various groups whose
relationship to
each other was like that of
pieces in a mosaic.
Governments recognized
the existence of these
groups and dealt with
them in different ways. There
was no
assumption that society was composed
of
numbers of individuals who should be
treated in a uniform fashion; rather different groups had different rights and interests and required
to be governed in different ways.” Indeed, the different groups in Middle
Eastern society were based on birth, family, the extended family, and tribe,
and most importantly, by religious division. People in the Middle East
defined themselves first and foremost by their religious association.

In 1800, the great majority of the Middle Eastern population were Muslims,
there were minorities, Orthodox Christians, Jews. In Egypt, there was a
Christian Coptic population. In the European parts of the Empire, the
Christian majority was one of two to one over the Muslims, who, in the
European part of the Ottoman Empire, were a minority. There were and are in the Middle East
minorities that are referred to in the professional literature as “compact minorities.”

What are compact minorities? Compact

minorities are
minorities that are located in
one single particular
territory. Like the
Maronite Christians in Mount
Lebanon, or
the Alawis in northwestern Syria, or
the
Druze in the Druze mountain area,
which is in southern
Syria and partly in
Lebanon. Compact minorities, located
in a
specific territory, had a tendency to develop
a very
strong communal identity. Whereas Christians, who were
spread throughout the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox Christians,
for example, who are not a compact minority, had a much greater
tendency to support Arab nationalism far more than the Maronite
Christians of Lebanon. So, there is a difference in the political
affiliations of the minorities, whether they are compact minorities
or other minorities who are spread throughout the Empire. The
Ottomans governed these minorities through their own
autonomous institutions. This was known as the millet system.
The minorities were known as millets, that is autonomous
peoples, so to speak. The minorities were governed by a law of
their own. Not all peoples of the Ottoman Empire were under the
same legal authority. Non-Muslims paid taxes that Muslims did not pay. This was known as the
jizyah, a poll tax, although the Ottomans were not very strict about it. Only about one- third of the
non-Muslims actually paid the tax. But in theory, Muslims followed their law, and Christians and
Jews followed
theirs. The non-Muslim religious communities were not only about religion. Non-
Muslim communities also provided courts of law and schools of education for their particular
communities.

The Muslim community was not uniform

either, divided between the Sunni Muslims
and Shi’ite Muslims. What is the difference
between Sunnis and Shi’is? It is not really
about dogma, much more about politics.
The division between Sunnis and Shi’is goes
back to the 7th century in a political struggle
over who was to be the caliph after the
passing of the Prophet. The fourth
caliph
was supposed to be, in the eyes of his
supporters, Ali the son-in-law of the Prophet. His supporters
were known as the Ali faction, Shi'at Ali.
Shi'a is a faction, and it is from their support of Ali
that
the name Shia derives. It is a political struggle
about who was supposed to be the caliph, not
so
much about religious dogma. Other minorities, like
the Alawis and the Druze, are sects that
broke away from the Shia in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Official establishment Islam was represented by the chief of the

religious establishment in the Ottoman Empire, the Sheikh al-Islam, the
chief religious authority appointed by the Sultan, who was the chief
religious authority for the Muslims in the Empire. But there was also
popular Islam, not only establishment Islam. The Sufi mystical orders, to
which large portions of the Muslim population belonged.

If we look at the social hierarchy in the Ottoman

Empire in the 19th century, at the top of this
hierarchy, we have the government composed, of
course, of the military and the bureaucracy,
staffed in the main
by far by Muslims. It was not
very customary for Jews and
Christians to be part
of either the military or the bureaucracy,
although in the bureaucracy, there were some
Jews and some
Christians, particularly
translators. But government and
bureaucracy
and the military were very much the domain of
Muslims. Second to government was the religious
establishment
and the religious functionaries; the judges, those who interpreted religious law for
the general population. Then [there are] those who are outside government, the merchants, the
peasants, the
tribesmen, the townsmen, the members of the professional guilds, the notables in the provincial
parts of the Empire. The notables who in the provincial parts of the Empire were bridges between
the rulers and the ruled. They were very often the tax collectors and landowners. There were deep
divisions between town and village. Town was the center of government, the center of commerce,
the center of education, the bureaucracy. Peasants, in the eyes of the townsmen, were regarded as
illiterate, uncultured, and ignorant of the outside world. There was a great deal of tension between
landowners in the towns and the peasantry. These tensions between landowners and the peasantry
were to be part and parcel of revolutionary politics, as we will see later on, in the Middle East of the
20th century.

In the 19th century, Middle Eastern society did undergo major transformation. Government became
more centralized, and thus, more powerful. Landowners grew even stronger, and the tensions
between them and the peasantry grew even greater. A new education system that was introduced
into the Empire under the impact of European influence engendered a new group of educated
secular people. This educated secular class, a new class of people in the modernizing Empire,
weakened the status of the religious establishment. But association with religious community, tribe
and family, remained the core organizing principle of society. The issue of new ideas led to the
increased importance of the religious minorities because of their knowledge of languages, their
relative openness to Europe and their improved status as a result of the reforms that were
introduced in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century.

1.3.2. Economy

Having said a few words about society, let's make a brief statement about
the economy of the
Middle East, at the beginning of the 19th century. First
of all, we have to recognize that we don't
have reliable statistics for the
population of the Middle East, for example, at that period. But we do
know
that it is estimated that the Middle Eastern population at that
time was
about 30 million: 6 million in Iran, 24 million in the various
Ottoman
territories, and 3.5 million in Egypt, counted separately
because of the
separate way Egypt took in the 19th century. And
we'll talk a bit more
about that later on. That figure, 3.5 million in
Egypt, is an interesting point
to note at present. Since the beginning
of the 19th century, coming to the beginning of the 21st century
today, Egypt's population has increased 25 times over. If we can say
that the Middle East in the early 19th century was relatively
underpopulated, the great problem of the Middle East today, which
we can see as a major reason for the outbreak of the “Arab Spring” as it is called, is that it is
overpopulated.

In the early 19th century, things were very different. This was a
relatively underpopulated part of the world. Population was kept
low because of the wars that broke out continuously between the
Ottomans and the Persians, between the Ottomans and various
European powers. Famine was frequent, disease, was very common. And there was also birth
control, mainly through abortion which kept the population very low. There were very dramatic
losses of life due to famine in
countries like Egypt and Iraq,
which were completely dependent
on the flow of the great rivers, the
Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and the
Euphrates in Iraq. When rainfall
was low, populations suffered
from famine, causing huge losses
of life. Plague was another cause
of very, very dramatic, tragic losses
of life. One sixth of the population
of Egypt died in 1785 because of
the plague. Over 300,000 people
died in Istanbul because of the plague in 1812.

During the 19th century, there was a revolution of population size. Western
medicine, public health measures, better communications and
transportation, increased security, reduced internal violence, all these led to
an ever increasing population in the 19th century, which increased at a
much faster rate, for the same reasons, in the 20th century.

There were also changes in the composition of the population. The fact that
the Ottoman Empire was gradually losing its European provinces also meant
that the Ottoman Empire was gradually losing much of its Christian population. Provinces that were
lost to Christian powers led to the immigration of Muslims from these places into the Ottoman
Empire. The Ottoman Empire became ever more Muslim and ever less Christian during the 19th
century.

In the period between 1912 and 1923, that is, the first quarter of the
20th century, there was a demographic disaster in the Middle East.
20% of the population of Anatolia, which is the major land mass of
Turkey, died in that period due to wars and other inflictions. 10% of
them emigrated.

During the 19th century and the emergence of the nationalist idea, there was a trend of what we
can call the territorialization of identity. It was not enough for indigenous communities to live in
their particular locations. Under the impact of European ideas, these religious minorities sought a
territorial identity in the form of a state. The creation of these territorial identities led to clashes,
bloody clashes between different religious, national groups. The most tragic of all and the most well
known of all is the terrible tragedy of the Armenians in Turkey of the First World War.
Territorialization of identity, therefore, had some very nasty, unintended consequences.

But because the population of the Middle East grew in the 19th century, on the eve of World War
One, the Middle East was no longer self-sufficient in food. This was a problem that was only
aggravated as time went by. This has become even more of a problem in the Middle East of today,
overpopulated and incapable of
providing its own needs in terms of
food.

In terms of the economic

relations
between the Middle East
and the West,
during the 19th
century, Britain surpassed
France
as the leading commercial
super
power in the Middle East. At
the end of
the 19th century, most
of the Middle
East's commerce
was with Europe. Middle
East
exports of raw materials and
food
items went to Europe, while
the
Europeans, as a result of their
Industrial
Revolution, exported
finished goods from
Europe to the Middle East. There was a
massive flow of capital from Europe to
the Middle East, and the creation of a huge debt, both in the Ottoman Empire and in Egypt, to
European countries and banks. All of the above was much slower in Iran. This connection with
Europe, these economic changes were much slower in Iran, much further away from Europe, far
less in direct contact with Europe, than in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt.

1.3.3. Politics

Moving into politics in the Middle East of the 19th century, I refer again to the British historian
Malcolm Yapp, who spoke about politics being governed by two main characteristics. Government
was diverse and minimal, he said. The governments, as we have noted, recognized the existence of
groups and not individuals. Muslims and non-Muslim subjects were governed in different ways and
by different laws. Muslims followed the Sharia, and Christians and Jews followed their ecclesiastical
or legal frameworks. Tribesmen had their own modes of settling
disputes. Foreigners were also granted special legal privileges; they
were called the capitulations.
Foreigners were governed by the laws
of their own countries,
implemented by their respective consular
representations. Government
was minimal, as was taxation. Services
like law and education were not
supplied by the central government,
but by the various communities. To
outside observers, this gave the
impression of a decentralized and even
ineffective government in
decline. But as another British historian, Albert
Hourani, has noted,
these were actually adaptations in the style of
governance according
to changing circumstances. And they were and remained quite
effective. The locus of power shifted from the sultan to the higher echelons of the bureaucracy in
the office of the grand vizier, the chief minister. Provinces were often controlled by local potentates
as was the case in Egypt and in other parts of the Empire. In the Arab cities of the Empire, there
were notable families, some Arab, some Turkish, that assumed positions of wealth and power. But
because of the importance of religion, notable families tended to send their children to obtain
religious education and to become functionaries in the religious and legal establishment. Through
this kind of employment, they gained control of religious endowments, awqaf as they are known in
Arabic, which were sources of great wealth and political control. Boys but not girls, were schooled in
the traditional schools, the Kutab and the Madrasas, where they learned the Qur’an and religious
jurisprudence, as well as some secular subjects like mathematics and astronomy.

1.4. The Changing Balance of Power with Europe

During this period of the 19th century, there was a dramatic change in the balance of power with
Europe. Up until the middle of the 18th century, the Ottomans could feel on an equal footing with
Europe, and before this period, even superior to Europe. But in the last quarter of the 18th century,
a dramatic change took place. It was clear that the gap between the Ottoman Empire and Western
Europe, in science, technology, military and economic power was all shifting in favor of the
Europeans. Important advances in medicine led to dramatic population growth in Europe.
Technology enabled modern shipbuilding, and therefore also economic expansion. The wealth of
the West enabled the creation of powerful navies and armies, and all of this served the expansion of
Europe ever more at the expense of the Ottomans.

The Russian-Ottoman War of 1768 to 1774 was a critical turning point. The Russians emerged
victorious in this confrontation, and in this war they took over the area of the Crimea. This Russian
victory brought the Russians onto
By The SeaWiFS Project (NASA Earth Observatory) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Loss of Crimea: the banks of the Black Sea. The

Formally Annexed to Russia in 1783
Black Sea from then onwards was
no longer an enclosed Ottoman
lake and brought the Russians
ever closer to the Straits, the
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles,
that lead to the Mediterranean.
This loss of Crimea didn't only
mean the loss of complete
Ottoman control of the Black Sea.
It also meant the first serious loss
of control of Muslim subjects.

The symbolic loss of Ottoman control of Muslim peoples was a great historical reversal of great
meaning, because it was of great religious and legitimacy importance for the Ottoman Empire to be
the ruler of Muslims, and not to have Muslims taken over by Christian powers. The Ottoman Empire
was, after all, the protector of Muslims and of Islam.
In the 19th century, we have what one could call the century of European empires. Europe seemed
to be ruling the world. This led to the realization of the peoples in the Middle East, and the Ottoman
government too, that something had gone awfully
wrong in the cosmic order of things. The belief in the
historic supremacy of Islam over Christianity, the belief
in the historic supremacy of Muslims above all other
religions and peoples, was in need of an update. A
fundamental change in thinking was required. And it
was now at the end of the 18th century, when the
Sultan Selim III began the first serious efforts at
modernizing the Ottoman army.
And this was done in
the 1790s, before the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt.

The fact that reforms began in the military is a very important factor in and of itself. What this
meant (and having a great effect on politics in the Middle East in later years) was that the military
was the vanguard of Western modernizing reform. Military officers became the most westernized
of Middle Eastern societies and very often in later years, became the leaders of revolutionary
change.

Revolutionary change in the military led to revolutionary change in other spheres. To modernize the
military required, for example, the learning of foreign languages, French, English, and German. The
learning of foreign languages in order to modernize the military led eventually to the influx of
foreign ideas. Foreign ideas were the most important in creating what one could call a cultural
shock for the Muslim world and its recognition that Islam was no longer a superior culture. The
Muslims could no longer rely just on their own self sufficiency. New ideas, such as equality before
the law, individual rights, and nationalism gave rise to new forms of identity and to new forms of
organization of the political community.

The most dramatic foreign intrusion was Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in the summer of 1798. The
French stayed for three years until they were forced out by the British and the Ottomans. But this
was the first intrusion into the very heartland of the Ottoman Empire. And it was not only an
intrusion, but also an extreme exposure to the greatness of European power at that time. This was
not just military power. The French came to Egypt not only with their armies, but with scientific
missions, that brought to the Middle East and exposed to the Middle East, this whole new world of
scientific advancement and progress.

During the 19th century, the people of the

Middle East were exposed to an explosion
of European energy. The population of
Europe increased by 50% from 1800 to
1850. Britain's population grew in this
period from 16 million to 27 million.
London became the largest city on earth
with a population of 2.5 million people.
There was therefore much available
manpower, needed both for industry and
the development of large modern armies.
Between 1815 and 1850, Britain's exports to the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean increased
by 800%. Europe's need for raw materials meant olive oil from Tunisia, silk from Lebanon and
cotton from Egypt. The European merchants had the power of their home countries behind them.
The Russians and the French interfered regularly in the affairs of the Christians in the Ottoman
Empire, the Russians supporting their fellow co-religionists, Orthodox Christians, the Serbs and the
Greeks, and the French protecting Catholics. At a later stage, Britain tried to play this minority game
by supporting the Jews and the Zionist idea in Palestine. Support for nationalist aspirations of the
Christian communities of the Ottoman Empire came very regularly from the Europeans. It is the
Christians who were the first to be affected by Western ideas, because by the nature of things, the
Christians had a greater openness to the Christian West.

1.5. The “Eastern Question”

These are the years in which the so-called “Eastern Question”

developed. The
Eastern Question is a question that preoccupied the
European powers. But it
was really a question about the fate of the
Ottoman Empire, which had a very
critical impact on the European
balance of power. The fear of the European
powers was that a
decline or disappearance of the Ottoman Empire, the
collapse of the
Ottoman Empire, could lead to a European struggle for the
remnants
of the Empire that would upset the balance of power in Europe
and
create a huge European war. That is what most European powers
sought to prevent. The European powers, generally speaking, therefore, had the collective interest
to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire despite its weakness, so as not to have the
disintegration of the Empire cause a destabilization of the power relations in Europe.

At the end of the 18th century, and at

the beginning of the 19th, Russia posed
the greatest challenge to the Ottoman
Empire. There were two components of
this Russian challenge: The religious
factor, Russia's support for Orthodox
Christians in the Middle East, and the
strategic factor, Russia's desire to
advance southwards to the Black Sea,
hence the importance of the Straits, the
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles in order
to eventually reach the Mediterranean.

Britain also became an

interested party in the affairs
of the Middle East as a result of
her acquisition of empire in
India, the so-called “jewel in
the crown” of the British
Empire. To maintain
connection with India, Britain
obviously required safe
passage which went through
the Mediterranean and the
Middle East. Britain therefore
acquired a very great interest
in the preservation of Middle Eastern stability.

But things were not always easily

manageable. Bonaparte's expedition to
Egypt in 1798 is a typical example of
these kinds of difficult management.
Napoleon occupied Cairo in July 1798.
A month later in August, the French
fleet was destroyed by the British in
the Battle of the Nile, severing
Napoleon's communications with
France. In September of 1798, the
Ottomans
declared war on France and
entered into an alliance against
France
with both Britain and Russia.
Bonaparte set off into Syria but was stopped at Acre in May 1799, and he returned to France. In
1801, the French force in Egypt finally surrendered to a British expeditionary force.

Britain and Russia were now firmly allied to preserve the integrity of
the Ottoman Empire. But a new reality had emerged in Egypt in the
meantime. In the aftermath of the French occupation, Muhammad Ali,
an Ottoman officer of Albanian origin, who was posted by the
Ottomans to Egypt, gradually assumed control of Egypt as the local
ruler de facto. Muhammad Ali became the creator of modern Egypt,
essentially separating Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, instituting
military reforms, after which followed a whole host of other reforms in
other spheres, actually advancing in reform ahead of the Ottoman
Empire. Muhammad Ali established his own autonomous control of
Egypt in the early 19th century, and thus, he, Muhammad Ali, and
Egypt also became a part of the famous “Eastern Question.”

A core component of this “Eastern Question” during the 19th century

was the conflict between the Ottoman Empire and its Christian subjects in the Balkans, in particular.
Christians in the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans were eagerly discussing and adopting modern
European ideas like nationalism. It was with European support that they were eventually successful
in their struggles for independence. The Greeks were the first, in the 1820s, followed by others like
the Serbs, the Romanians and the Bulgarians. There was a dominant religious element in these
nationalist movements. It was, after all, always Christians fighting against Muslims, and thus, the
natural support of the Europeans for these newly emerging Christian independent movements
versus the Ottomans.

European support
for Greek independence was also

motivated by a romanticized image of ancient Greece,
related to this new struggle of the Greeks for their
independence. As the Ottomans seemed to be losing in
this struggle with the Greeks, Muhammad Ali, now the de
facto ruler in Egypt, was called in by the Ottomans to help
suppress the Greek uprising. But the Turco-Egyptian fleets
were defeated in Navarino by a combined British-French
force in
1827. Muhammad Ali was promised Syria in
return for his assistance, but the Ottomans did not keep
their promise. Muhammad Ali invaded Palestine and Syria
in 1831 and defeated the Ottomans in Konya, which is
deep inside Anatolia, in 1832.

Muhammad Ali was now really threatening the

integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In their despair, the
Ottomans sought help from Russia and they signed a
defense pact with the Russians in 1833.

The Russians were interested in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire against other
threats, but this gave the impression to other European powers that Russia was acquiring a de facto
protectorate over the Ottoman Empire. Britain therefore became committed to removing
Muhammad Ali from Syria, not because she cared so much about the Near East, but because of
Britain's concerns about the balance of power in Europe.

Muhammad Ali defeated the Ottomans again in

1839. And Britain and Russia cooperated to
remove the threat posed by Muhammad Ali,
forced him out of Syria and back to Egypt. But
Muhammad Ali was now given the hereditary
possession of Egypt in exchange for his removal
from Syria. That meant that Egypt was no longer
only under the ruler of Muhammad Ali, but that it
was promised as an inheritance to Muhammad
Ali's sons and their sons after him. Thus, creating a dynasty which ruled in Egypt all along until 1952,
when overthrown by the Egyptian officers under General Nagib and Colonel Nasser.

Matters were destabilized again between the powers in 1854 with the outbreak of the Crimean
War. This was a war that the Russians fought against the Ottomans, and the Ottomans, now backed
by Britain and France, against the Russians. The trouble was ignited at first by conflict between
France and Russia on the protection of Christian holy places in Palestine. The Russians demanded
concessions from the

Ottomans, who refused, resulting in

war, eventually brought to an end by
the Peace of Paris in 1856. The Peace
of Paris, again, guaranteed the
territorial integrity of the Ottoman
Empire by the European powers. But
in return for this European guarantee
of Ottoman integrity, the Sultan
promised reforms and better
treatment of Christian minorities.

What this meant, in conclusion, was a growing European interest and

interference in the lands of the Ottoman Empire. This also led to the
promotion of nationalist movements threatening the Empire and made
it absolutely crucial for the rulers of the Ottoman Empire to engage in
urgent reform to save the Empire. Reforms did not save the Empire in
the end, but they eventually helped to create the modern Middle East
as we know it.

In our next lesson, we will engage in these reforms that changed the Empire and introduced the
modern Middle East.