Ottoman decline thesis

In 1683 the Ottoman Empire reached its maximum territorial extent in Europe, during the period formerly labelled as one of stagnation and decline.

The Ottoman decline thesis or Ottoman decline paradigm (Turkish: Osmanlı Gerileme Tezi) is an obsolete^[1] historical narrative which once played a dominant role in the study of the history of the Ottoman Empire. According to the decline thesis, following a golden age associated with the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), the empire gradually entered into a period of all-encompassing stagnation and decline from which it was never able to recover, lasting until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.^[2] This thesis was used throughout most of the twentieth century as the basis of both Western and Republican Turkish^[3] understanding of Ottoman history. However, by 1978, historians had begun to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of the decline thesis.^[4]

After the publication of numerous new studies throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and the reexamination of Ottoman history through the use of previously untapped sources and methodologies, academic historians of the Ottoman Empire achieved a consensus that the entire notion of Ottoman decline was a myth – that in fact, the Ottoman Empire remained a vigorous and dynamic state long after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent.^[1] The decline thesis has been criticized as "teleological", "regressive", "orientalist", "simplistic", and "one-dimensional",^[5] and described as "a concept which has no place in historical analysis".^[6] Scholars have thus "learned better than to discuss [it]."^[7]

Despite this dramatic paradigm shift among professional historians, the decline thesis continues to maintain a strong presence in popular history, as well as academic history written by scholars who are not specialists on the Ottoman Empire. In some cases this is due to the continued reliance by non-specialists on outdated and debunked works,^[8] and in others to certain political interests benefiting from the continued perpetuation of the decline narrative.^[9]

^ ^a ^b
Hathaway, Jane (2008). The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800. Pearson Education Ltd. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-582-41899-8. One of the most momentous changes to have occurred in Ottoman studies since the publication of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent [1966] is the deconstruction of the so-called 'Ottoman decline thesis' – that is, the notion that toward the end of the sixteenth century, following the reign of Sultan Suleyman I (1520–66), the empire entered a lengthy decline from which it never truly recovered, despite heroic attempts at westernizing reforms in the nineteenth century. Over the last twenty years or so, as Chapter 4 will point out, historians of the Ottoman Empire have rejected the narrative of decline in favour of one of crisis and adaptation
- Kunt, Metin (1995). "Introduction to Part I". In Kunt, Metin; Christine Woodhead (eds.). Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York: Longman. pp. 37–38. students of Ottoman history have learned better than to discuss a "decline" which supposedly began during the reigns of Süleyman's "ineffectual" successors and then continued for centuries.
- Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern Period. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-107-41144-9. Ottomanist historians have produced several works in the last decades, revising the traditional understanding of this period from various angles, some of which were not even considered as topics of historical inquiry in the mid-twentieth century. Thanks to these works, the conventional narrative of Ottoman history – that in the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire entered a prolonged period of decline marked by steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption – has been discarded.
- Woodhead, Christine (2011). "Introduction". In Christine Woodhead (ed.). The Ottoman World. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post-1600 'decline'
- Ehud Toledano (2011). "The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period: A socio-political analysis". In Woodhead, Christine (ed.). The Ottoman World. Routledge. p. 457. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked.
- Leslie Peirce, "Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: the Early Centuries," Mediterranean Historical Review 19/1 (2004): 22.
- Cemal Kafadar, "The Question of Ottoman Decline," Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 4/1–2 (1997–98), pp. 30–75.
- M. Fatih Çalışır, "Decline of a 'Myth': Perspectives on the Ottoman 'Decline'," The History School 9 (2011): 37–60.
- Donald Quataert, "Ottoman History Writing and Changing Attitudes towards the Notion of 'Decline,'" History Compass 1 (2003)
^
Linda Darling, Revenue Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), [1].
- Günhan Börekçi, "Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) and His Immediate Predecessors," PhD dissertation (The Ohio State University, 2010), 5.
^
Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (I. B. Tauris, 2004; 2011), pp. 42–43.
- Virginia Aksan, "Ottoman to Turk: Continuity and Change," International Journal 61 (Winter 2005/6): 19–38.
^ Howard, Douglas A. "Genre and myth in the Ottoman advice for kings literature," in Aksan, Virginia H. and Daniel Goffman eds. The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2007; 2009), 143.
^
Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy, 4.
- Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, pp. 3–4.
- Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization, (Cornell University Press, 1994), ix.
^ Finkel, Caroline (1988). The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606. Vienna: VWGÖ. p. 143. ISBN 3-85369-708-9.
^ Kunt, Metin (1995). "Introduction to Part I". In Kunt, Metin; Christine Woodhead (eds.). Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York: Longman. pp. 37–38. students of Ottoman history have learned better than to discuss a "decline" which supposedly began during the reigns of Süleyman's "ineffectual" successors and then continued for centuries.
^ Ehud Toledano (2011). "The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period: A socio-political analysis". In Woodhead, Christine (ed.). The Ottoman World. Routledge. p. 457. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked. However, only too often, the results of painstaking research and innovative revisions offered in that literature have not yet percolated down to scholars working outside Ottoman studies. Historians in adjacent fields have tended to rely on earlier classics and later uninformed surveys which perpetuate older, now deconstructed, views.
^ Dana Sajdi refers on the one hand to nationalists in post-Ottoman regions of the world, and on the other, to the supporters of imperialistic intervention in the Middle East among some politicians in the West. Sajdi, Dana (2007). "Decline, its Discontents, and Ottoman Cultural History: By Way of Introduction". In Sajdi, Dana (ed.). Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century. London: I.B. Taurus. pp. 38–9.

[nodecline-1] Hathaway, Jane (2008). The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800. Pearson Education Ltd. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-582-41899-8. One of the most momentous changes to have occurred in Ottoman studies since the publication of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent [1966] is the deconstruction of the so-called 'Ottoman decline thesis' – that is, the notion that toward the end of the sixteenth century, following the reign of Sultan Suleyman I (1520–66), the empire entered a lengthy decline from which it never truly recovered, despite heroic attempts at westernizing reforms in the nineteenth century. Over the last twenty years or so, as Chapter 4 will point out, historians of the Ottoman Empire have rejected the narrative of decline in favour of one of crisis and adaptation
Kunt, Metin (1995). "Introduction to Part I". In Kunt, Metin; Christine Woodhead (eds.). Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York: Longman. pp. 37–38. students of Ottoman history have learned better than to discuss a "decline" which supposedly began during the reigns of Süleyman's "ineffectual" successors and then continued for centuries.

Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern Period. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-107-41144-9. Ottomanist historians have produced several works in the last decades, revising the traditional understanding of this period from various angles, some of which were not even considered as topics of historical inquiry in the mid-twentieth century. Thanks to these works, the conventional narrative of Ottoman history – that in the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire entered a prolonged period of decline marked by steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption – has been discarded.

Woodhead, Christine (2011). "Introduction". In Christine Woodhead (ed.). The Ottoman World. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post-1600 'decline'

Ehud Toledano (2011). "The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period: A socio-political analysis". In Woodhead, Christine (ed.). The Ottoman World. Routledge. p. 457. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked.

Leslie Peirce, "Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: the Early Centuries," Mediterranean Historical Review 19/1 (2004): 22.

Cemal Kafadar, "The Question of Ottoman Decline," Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 4/1–2 (1997–98), pp. 30–75.

M. Fatih Çalışır, "Decline of a 'Myth': Perspectives on the Ottoman 'Decline'," The History School 9 (2011): 37–60.

Donald Quataert, "Ottoman History Writing and Changing Attitudes towards the Notion of 'Decline,'" History Compass 1 (2003)

[2] Kunt, Metin (1995). "Introduction to Part I". In Kunt, Metin; Christine Woodhead (eds.). Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York: Longman. pp. 37–38. students of Ottoman history have learned better than to discuss a "decline" which supposedly began during the reigns of Süleyman's "ineffectual" successors and then continued for centuries.

[3] Tezcan, Baki (2010). The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern Period. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-107-41144-9. Ottomanist historians have produced several works in the last decades, revising the traditional understanding of this period from various angles, some of which were not even considered as topics of historical inquiry in the mid-twentieth century. Thanks to these works, the conventional narrative of Ottoman history – that in the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire entered a prolonged period of decline marked by steadily increasing military decay and institutional corruption – has been discarded.

[4] Woodhead, Christine (2011). "Introduction". In Christine Woodhead (ed.). The Ottoman World. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. Ottomanist historians have largely jettisoned the notion of a post-1600 'decline'

[5] Ehud Toledano (2011). "The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period: A socio-political analysis". In Woodhead, Christine (ed.). The Ottoman World. Routledge. p. 457. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked.

[6] Leslie Peirce, "Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: the Early Centuries," Mediterranean Historical Review 19/1 (2004): 22.

[7] Cemal Kafadar, "The Question of Ottoman Decline," Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 4/1–2 (1997–98), pp. 30–75.

[8] M. Fatih Çalışır, "Decline of a 'Myth': Perspectives on the Ottoman 'Decline'," The History School 9 (2011): 37–60.

[9] Donald Quataert, "Ottoman History Writing and Changing Attitudes towards the Notion of 'Decline,'" History Compass 1 (2003)

[2] Linda Darling, Revenue Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), [1].
Günhan Börekçi, "Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) and His Immediate Predecessors," PhD dissertation (The Ohio State University, 2010), 5.

[11] Günhan Börekçi, "Factions and Favorites at the Courts of Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) and His Immediate Predecessors," PhD dissertation (The Ohio State University, 2010), 5.

[3] Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (I. B. Tauris, 2004; 2011), pp. 42–43.
Virginia Aksan, "Ottoman to Turk: Continuity and Change," International Journal 61 (Winter 2005/6): 19–38.

[13] Virginia Aksan, "Ottoman to Turk: Continuity and Change," International Journal 61 (Winter 2005/6): 19–38.

[4] Howard, Douglas A. "Genre and myth in the Ottoman advice for kings literature," in Aksan, Virginia H. and Daniel Goffman eds. The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2007; 2009), 143.

[5] Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy, 4.
Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, pp. 3–4.

Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization, (Cornell University Press, 1994), ix.

[16] Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, pp. 3–4.

[17] Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization, (Cornell University Press, 1994), ix.

[6] Finkel, Caroline (1988). The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Campaigns in Hungary, 1593–1606. Vienna: VWGÖ. p. 143. ISBN 3-85369-708-9.

[7] Kunt, Metin (1995). "Introduction to Part I". In Kunt, Metin; Christine Woodhead (eds.). Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World. London and New York: Longman. pp. 37–38. students of Ottoman history have learned better than to discuss a "decline" which supposedly began during the reigns of Süleyman's "ineffectual" successors and then continued for centuries.

[8] Ehud Toledano (2011). "The Arabic-speaking world in the Ottoman period: A socio-political analysis". In Woodhead, Christine (ed.). The Ottoman World. Routledge. p. 457. ISBN 978-0-415-44492-7. In the scholarly literature produced by Ottomanists since the mid-1970s, the hitherto prevailing view of Ottoman decline has been effectively debunked. However, only too often, the results of painstaking research and innovative revisions offered in that literature have not yet percolated down to scholars working outside Ottoman studies. Historians in adjacent fields have tended to rely on earlier classics and later uninformed surveys which perpetuate older, now deconstructed, views.

[9] Dana Sajdi refers on the one hand to nationalists in post-Ottoman regions of the world, and on the other, to the supporters of imperialistic intervention in the Middle East among some politicians in the West. Sajdi, Dana (2007). "Decline, its Discontents, and Ottoman Cultural History: By Way of Introduction". In Sajdi, Dana (ed.). Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century. London: I.B. Taurus. pp. 38–9.

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Part of a series on the
History of the Ottoman Empire

Timeline
Rise (1299–1453) Beylik of Osman Interregnum (1402–1413) Fall of Constantinople
Classical Age (1453–1566) Sultanate of Women (1533–1656)
Transformation (1566–1703) Köprülü Era (1656–1703)
Old Regime (1703–1789) Tulip Era (1718–1730)
Decline & Modernization (1789–1908) Nizam-i Djedid (late 18th and early 19th) Tanzimat Era (1839–1876) 1st Constitutional Era (1876–1878)
Dissolution (1908–1922) 2nd Constitutional Era (1908–1920) World War I (1914–1918) Partitioning (1918–1922) Abolition of the Sultanate (1922) Abolition of the Caliphate (1924)
Historiography (Ghaza, Decline)
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