The Ottomans ruled much of the Arab World for four centuries. Bruce Masters's work surveys this period, emphasizing the cultural and social changes that occurred against the backdrop of the political ...realities that Arabs experienced as subjects of the Ottoman sultans. The persistence of Ottoman rule over a vast area for several centuries required that some Arabs collaborate in the imperial enterprise. Masters highlights the role of two social classes that made the empire successful: the Sunni Muslim religious scholars, the ulama, and the urban notables, the acyan. Both groups identified with the Ottoman sultanate and were its firmest backers, although for different reasons. The ulama legitimated the Ottoman state as a righteous Muslim sultanate, while the acyan emerged as the dominant political and economic class in most Arab cities due to their connections to the regime. Together, the two helped to maintain the empire.
The return of Ottoman rule to Aleppo in 1840 corresponded with the inauguration of the reform era (1839-76). Although the central Ottoman state could not have foreseen the outcome, these political ...reforms undermined its economic sovereignty in two key areas. The Ottoman land reform law of 1858 and schemes to settle the Bedouin in northern Syria enabled Aleppo's political elite to scramble for the steppe lands of the Euphrates valley and ultimately paved the way for European capitalists to exploit the agricultural resources of the region. Additionally, attempts to control the abuses of the capitulatory system provoked a marked decline in the relative fortunes of the city's traditional commercial elite, with much of the internal regional trade shifting into the hands of European merchants. Le retour des Ottomans à Alep en 1840 correspond au début de la période de réformes (1839-1876). Bien que l'état central ottoman n'eût pas pu prévoir leurs conséquences, ces réformes politiques ont miné sa souveraineté économique dans deux régions clé. Le code foncier ottomane de 1858 et les projets visant à la sédentarisation des Bédouins dans la Syrie du Nord ont permis à l'élite politique d'Alep une ruée vers les steppes de la vallée de l'Euphrate et ont fini par préparer le chemin aux capitalistes européens qui sont venus exploiter les ressources agricoles de la région. En outre, les tentatives d'obtenir le contrôle des abus du système capitulaire ont provoqué le déclin marqué des fortunes concernées de l'élite commerciale traditionnelle car une grande partie du commerce intérieure régionale tombait dans les mains des négociants européens.
Masters explores the evolution of Christian and Jewish communities in the Ottoman empire over four hundred years. Early communities lived with the hierarchy of Muslim law, but the nineteenth century ...marked the beginning of tensions between Muslims and Christians and the twentieth-century rhetoric of religious fundamentalism.
Three books are analyzed: Cem Behar's A Neighborhood in Ottoman Istanbul: Fruit Vendors and Civil Servants in the Kasap Ilyas Mahalle; John Limbert's Shiraz in the Age of Hafez: The Glory of a ...Medieval Persian City; and The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire, edited by Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp and Stefan Weber.
Masters reviews A Neighborhood in Ottoman Istanbul: Fruit Vendors and Civil Servants in the Kasap Ilyas Mahalle by Cem Behar, Shiraz in the Age of Hafez: The Glory of a Medieval Persian City by John ...Limbert, and The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire edited by Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp, and Stefan Weber.
