Selim Deringil, " Long Live the Sultan! Symbolism and Power in the Hamidian Regime," chapter one of his The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1909, London, 1998, pp. 16-43.
Yamada Torajiro always made a point of bringing his guests to the ceremony of the Friday prayer, the selamlik.  Japanese visitors to Istanbul were a rarity in the 1890s, and he was the city's only long term Japanese resident. On a bright May morning, Yamada and his guests stood spellbound as the Albanian Horseguards trotted up to the palace and took up their stations. The sun glinted on their spears as the band struck up the Hamidiye march. Next came the officers of the Imperial Guard, mounted on splendid Arab horses in their impeccable uniforms, and they too took up their positions inside the Yildiz Palace. Finally the sultan, accompanied by the empress dowager and the reigning empress emerged from the palace in his landau and proceeded to the mosque. As the clear cry of the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, the sultan alighted and all his troops in one voice shouted a loud acclaim. When his guest asked Yamada what they were shouting he replied 'They shout, "Long Live the Sultan!",just as we shout "Tenno Heika Banzai!" in the presence of our emperor.
Ceremony as codified competition between states

It was no accident that Yamada and his guests were able to 'read' the ceremony of Friday prayer correctly. The nineteenth century was a period of standardized ceremony, from the Court of St James to the Meiji Palace. What the Japanese visitors had witnessed was nothing other than the reinvigoration of the symbolic language of the sultanate and caliphate in a world context where pomp and circumstance had become a form of competition between states. This was particularly important for states like the Ottoman and the Japanese, which were not first-rung powers. As humorously put by John Elliot in his discussion of Spain under Philip IV: 'It is as if a form of "Avis Principle" operates in the world of political imagery and propaganda: those who are only second try harder.'

There are indeed many common themes linking the cult of emperor shared by Ottomans, Austrians, Russians and Japanese. The Russian tsars from Nicholas I (r. 1025-1055) onwards tried to forge a direct link with their people by using a 'synthesis of Russian myths' in which 'official Orthodoxy serv[ed] purely a state function'. This was precisely the way official Islam was seen by Abdulhamid II. As Nicholas I and Alexander III played up the image of the 'blessed tsar' Abdulhamid actually pushed the same title, 'the holy personage', (zat-i akdes-i humayun), further than any of his predecessors. The terms 'holy Russian land' or the 'the holy land Tyrol' found their obvious equivalent in 'the sacred name of the Sublime State', (ism-i kaddes-i devlet-i aliyye).

It was hoped in both the Russian and Ottoman cases that by forging a link of sacrality directly with the people, inconvenient intermediaries like political parties and parliaments could be avoided. The same goal is seen in the Japan of the Meiji years, particularly in the 1880s and 1890s, when there occurred what Carol Gluck has called 'a denaturing of politics', as Meiji statesmen, all the while preparing for the inevitable emergence of political parties, worked to somehow stigmatize political activity as 'disloyal' to the emperor. The major difference between the Japanese, Russian and Ottoman cases was that religion played a relatively minor role in the Japanese experience. Yet, in the 'constant repetition' of elements in the 'emperor ideology' (tennosei ideology), the attempt to focus almost reflexive loyalty on the person of the emperor was very similar to the Russian and Ottoman cases.

In the Austrian example the mythology surrounding the House of Habsburg was the core of the official symbolism of the state, yet it coexisted with a constitutional polity after 1867. One of the ways of meeting the challenge of nationalism was by trying to inculcate a sense of belonging to the 'Imperia! Fatherland', particularly by creating an of official 'history of the Fatherland' (vaterlandische geschichte) to teach the non-Austrian subjects who came to study at the University of Vienna.

This is not to deny the differences between the Ottoman polity and its imperial legitimist contemporaries. Russia, Austria, Japan and Prussia/ Germany all had at least a semblance of representational politics by the turn of the century. The Ottoman parliament, though a fairly lively body in its first days of 1876, had to await the end of Hamidian autocracy before it was revived in 1909. A ruler like Abdulhamid II, who laboured under the stigma of the 'Terrible Turk' or the 'Red Sultan', while trying to pose as a modern monarch, suffered the self-imposed handicap of his virtually complete isolation from his own people and the outside world. The following is the story of a desperate rearguard action fought in an effort to overcome this isolation in the international arena.

Levels of meaning in Hamidian ideology

As Sultan Abdulhamid II retreated further and further behind the high walls of the Yildiz Palace he became more and more of a myth. Yet this process of distancing himself from the people created a contradiction at the very core of his conception of state power. On the one hand, the Hamidian regime sought to penetrate ever further into the daily life of Ottoman society, and the Ottoman system had always stressed the personal visibility of the ruler. On the other hand, the sultan's obsession with his security determined that he was very rarely seen outside the palace walls. This left him open to the criticism, often leveled at him, that he was a 'passive caliph'. The sultan's myth had, as a result, to be 'managed' through a system of symbols which constantly reminded the people of his power and omnipresence.

In this context Abdulhamid II seems to have reverted to the ways of his ancestors before Mahmud II. Rulers like Mahmud, Abdulmecid and Abdulaziz, played the role of the modern public ruler who went out among his people to give a personal manifestation of state legitimacy. Unlike his immediate predecessors, but somewhat like his ancestors, Abdulhamid's aim was to create 'vibrations of power' without being seen.  In stark contrast to Abdulaziz, who made the first and only state visit by an Ottoman sultan to Europe in 1867 to see the World Exposition in Paris, Abdulhamid crushed all rumours that he was about to visit Europe.

Communication with his people and the outside world had therefore to be made through a world of symbols. These were based almost entirely on Islamic motifs: 'It was from Islam that the Muslim Ottomans could draw the emotional resonance that could mobilize both the upper and lower classes. It was Islam that would provide the store of symbols which could compete with the national symbols of the Greeks and the Serbs.'

In this process of competition through symbols, it was critical that the 'middle of the message' should get through to the population at large. In this context, Carol Gluck's study of a very similar effort in Meiji Japan is worth quoting at length:
Three kinds of interactions can be identified in the process that produced a universe of shared significance from diverse ideological formulations. The first emerged from the stressed parts of ideological speech, what is called the 'middle of the message'; the second from the unstressed elements that often appeared as 'dependent clauses' of ideological utterance; and the third from the unarticulated element, identified as the 'deep social meanings' that made ideological discourse comprehensible to those who participated in it.
This description can be usefully applied to the late Ottoman case. The first category, or 'middle of the message', was continuous reference to Islam, the sultan as caliph and the protector of the sacred places, etc. The second category, which Gluck also defines as a 'naturalization of meaning', occurred in the 'dependent clauses' of Ottoman civilization which found body in utterances related to nomads and other unorthodox or heretical elements such as the Shi'a or the Kurds: 'the settling and civilizing of nomads or 'the elimination of the state of savagery and ignorance of the nomads, or 'they live in a state of heresy and ignorance'.

The category of 'deep social meanings', which remain unarticulated but come to be related to the 'givens' in Ottoman/Turkish society, present in the everyday life of the ordinary person, can be seen in the usage of terms such as 'civilization': 'that toothless monster called civilization' in the actual words of the Turkish national anthem.  Similarly, the reflexive uses of science or scholarship as central to notions of 'progress' inform the thinking of the reform-oriented Ottoman intellectual.

Intellectual conditioning of the elite

Who were the people instilled with this mentality and expected to translate it into workable policies? What informed the decision making of the typical late-Ottoman bureaucrat-statesman as he sat in his office overlooking the Golden Horn? First, he was a man who had been imbued with the ideology of Islam from a very young age. Yet, a very close second, he was a man who had been exposed to the ideas of the Enlightenment, if in a most diffused form. The main preoccupation, not to say obsession, of the late Ottoman statesman was the saving of the state. This central cause is addressed by various statesmen in different ways and with emphasis placed on a variety of solutions. A major influence on their thought was Ibn Khaldun, who figures as a sort of touchstone in Ottoman-Islamic statecraft.  A very good case in point is the late Ottoman statesman-historian Ahmed Cevdet Pasa who, although usually thought of as conservative, was the first major historian to be influenced by nineteenth-century 'scientific history'.

Ahmed Cevdet Pasa translated a section of the Mukaddimah in which he paid homage to Ibn Khaldun as a historian who, 'knows only one measure that of verifying and revising what has been recounted'. Ibn Khaldun's cyclical conception of state power, by which states grew, achieved maturity and declined, impressed Ottomans like Cevdet Pasa who sought to place their civilization in this context. Ibn Khaldun's view of man as a predator who could only be kept in check by an overarching coercive authority, and his view that there existed only certain peoples who possessed the requisite nature  to constitute this authority, served in particular to legitimate the rule of the Ottoman house.  Cevdet Pasa is also responsible for the codification of Seriat rulings which took the shape of the Mecelle, which still forms the basis of some aspects of civil law in successor states of the Ottoman empire.

Yet, ever since the French revolution, the Ottomans had been aware of the new winds blowing in Europe. Particularly after the Tanzimat reform, Europe became a source of emulation to the point of embarrassment. Sadik Rifat Pasa one of the leading men of the Tanzimat, looked to Metternichean Austria and the 'great bureaucrats who had created modern Europe' for examples of the sort of enlightened autocracy he hoped to transplant into an Ottoman context. The aims of the Ottoman reformers were very akin to those of the French physiocrats: a contented people engaged in peaceful pursuits which would allow them, and the state, prosperity.
The unification of Germany and the Risorgimento greatly impressed Ottoman statesmen, although Ahmed Cevdet Pasa had a so mewhat jaundiced view of the 'rationalism question':
When Napoleon III was fighting Austria over the matter of Italy, he came up with this 'nationality' business ... and this did damage to the system of gov-ernment which had been practiced for all these years ... It always used to be the case that a legitimate government had the right to punish with force any rebellious subjects ... However, Napoleon invented this new rule which stated that any government which is nor wanted by any of its subjects must give up its rule over them ... This has caused great surprise among some states who firmly rejected it.
The Pasa went on to comment that Britain had supported this principle whereas Russia had categorically rejected it. This had led to the unification of Italy. Yet Italy was avenged by a unified Germany, and the evil-doer Napoleon got his just deserts. Suleyman Husnu Pasa a contemporary of Ahmed Cevdet, was also inspired by what he called, 'The European policy ... of integrating all nationalities, languages and religions.' He did, however, admit that 'even if this were admissible by the Seriat, the present conditions (of the empire) do not allow it …'

All manifestations of power and social interaction leave a trace to their origin. Translating Clifford Geertz to a late Ottoman context, to read the enlargement of the sultan's private pavilion in a mosque, or the playing of a certain piece of music on certain occasions, or the procession of decorated camels bearing the sultan's gifts to Mecca, or the formulae of power in the everyday language of the policy makers: all this is the stuff of historical texture.

Broadly speaking, the symbols of power in the Hamidian Ottoman empire fall into four categories. Three relate to the sultan and his palace. There were, first of all, the symbols relating to the sacrality of the person of the sultan/caliph, such as coats of arms on public buildings, official music, ceremonies, and public works which reflected directly the glory and power of the Ottoman state. Secondly, there were the more specific and personal manifestations of imperial munificence such as decorations specially donated copies of the Qur'an, imperial standards and other ceremonial trappings. Third were the religiously symbolic items acquired by the palace such as calligraphy purported to belong to Islamic great men and other artifacts of similar significance.

The fourth falls into a somewhat different category. It concerns the symbolism of language in Ottoman official documentation. Although not always directly related to the person of the ruler, certain key phrases and words which frequently recur in official documentation provide us with valuable clues as to how the Hamidian bureaucracy conceptualized such matters as the relationship of the ruler and the ruled, their attitude to the nomadic populations, and relationships between members of the state elite themselves.

Public symbolism and its manifestations

The immediate predecessors of Abdulhamid II had always taken great pains to appear as 'modem' monarchs by adopting the European practice of displaying portraits of the monarch in public places. Mahmud II had begun this practice. Various religious sheikhs blessed his portraits before they were placed in government offices and other public places, and a twenty-one gun salute was fired as a guard of honour marched past them. This became a tradition which was continued under Abdulmecid (r. 1839-1861) and Abdulaziz (r. 1861-1876).28 Also in 1850, 'three large portraits of Sultan Abdulmecit arrived in Egypt ... and were paraded through the city [Cairo] in a great procession.' The portraits were then exhibited at the citadel among great pomp and celebration.

Abdulhamid deliberately forbade the display of his likeness in public spaces. It is unclear whether this was out of considerations of Islamic orthodoxy which forbids the depiction of the human image, or an obsession with security. On 15 May 1902, the vilayet of Ankara reported that, 'a portrait of our August Master the Caliph has been seen in a coffee shop in Ankara'. The communication went on to say, 'because the nature of the location was not in keeping with the sacred character of the Imperial Image, [the portrait] has been bought and sent to the palace.'

Abdulhamid, apparently in an iconoclastic show of Islamic orthodoxy, replaced the image of the ruler with uniformly embroidered banners bearing the legend 'Long Live the Sultan!' (Padishanim Ok yasa!) which served the same purpose. This acclaim, which was shouted by soldiers and civilians, had long been the customary way of expressing loyalty to the ruler. Nevertheless, it also became much more standardized as part of the process of increased international competition in ceremonial displays, very similar to the acclaims of' Long Live the Queen!' in the British Empire or 'Tenno heika banzai!' in Japan.  Verbal acclaims could also become a symbol of opposition. The Young Turk opposition to the sultan focused on the acclaim in a negative fashion: cadets at the Military Academy and the Imperial Medical School would refuse to perform it on public occasions, or mumble a rude version of it.

Despite his fear of assassination (which turned out to be well founded, as there was an attempt in 1905), Abdulhamid maintained the tradition of public Friday prayers as a ceremony in which the ruler showed himself to the people. In the nineteenth century, Friday prayers acquired additional ceremonial trappings inspired by European examples.

A physical manifestation of this shift towards a modern public persona of the monarch was nineteenth-century mosque architecture. The classical Ottoman mosque was altered to suit the ceremonial protocol of European usage with the addition of a two-storey structure to the main building to serve as ceremonial public space to give a more secular character to the buildings. Aptullah Kuran has pointed out that the space in the imperial mosques designated as the personal prayer chamber of the sultan greatly increased in size from the late eighteenth century:  '[The] appearance and evolution of the sultan's prayer platform, or loge, went beyond the prerequisites of architecture…. It emerged as a vehicle of pomp and circumstance.' Abdulhamid's own mosque, the Yildiz is said to, '[have broken] with the Ottoman architectural tradition altogether,' as there was an unprecedented increase in ceremonial space which actually outstripped the prayer space.

The Friday prayer ceremony (cuma selamligi or simply selamlik) would begin as the royal procession left the Yildiz Palace with great pomp, the Imperial landau escorted by Albanian House Guards in livery, and make its way to the Yildiz mosque. There, after prayers, special officials would collect petitions from the people. It also appears that the occasion became something of a tourist attraction, as one contemporary account describes the groups of British, American or Germans whose carriages formed, 'a long line on their way to Yildiz to watch the selamlik ceremony.' A sort of dais was built to accommodate foreign visitors, where they were permitted to watch the ceremonies and salute the sultan. They were also told not to make any brusque movements with their hands, as this could be misconstrued as an attempted assassination by the guards, who would react accordingly.

A frequent spectator was Yamada Torajiro, whose account of the selamlik is particularly interesting because of his extremely detailed rendition. Yamada noted that the sultan would be driven to the mosque in his landau, but on the return journey he would mount a simpler caleche, and take the reins himself. Male members of the dynasty, his palace retinue, leading bureaucrats, and high ranking military, in that order, would then line up behind him. This could well have been a symbolic representation of the ruler taking in hand the reins of the state. He also noted that the 'empress dowager' end the 'empress' would take part in the ceremonial procession and accompany the sultan to the mosque, but in keeping with Islamic custom, where women do not go to Friday prayers, they would remain in their carriages. However, their very presence in the courtyard was a departure from Islamic practice. Yamada wrote in his diary that the ceremony was very moving as it 'reflected the former glory of a great empire that has now stumbled.'39

On one occasion the selamlik provided the setting for a show of personal courage on the part of the sultan. When a bomb exploded at the ceremony in 1905 and the sultan escaped unscathed as the result of an unexpected change in procedure:
There ensued a general panic as debris and blood was strewn about. The sultan held up his hands and shouted in his deep voice: 'Don't panic!' He then mounted his carriage, took the reins, and as he passed the foreign dignitaries they all shouted 'Hooray!' in one voice.
Another of the rare occasions when the sultan showed himself in public was the ceremonial visit to the Holy Relics at the Topkapi Palace and the shrine of Eyup on the Golden Horn during Ramadan. Yamada again provides a detailed account. The sultan would set off for the old palace accompanied by 300 carriages bearing his harem and entourage. On this occasion the roads were prepared by 'covering them with a thick white sand'. 41

How did these ceremonies appear to the wider population? Hagop Mintzuri, an Armenian baker's apprentice, later wrote in his memoirs that he remembered the sultan's arrival at the Sinan Pasa mosque in Besiktas for ceremonial prayers at the end of the fast of Ramadan:
First the Albanian guards, dressed in violet knee-breeches, who were not soldiers or police and did not speak Turkish, would fill the upper part of our marker square. Then would come the Arab guards of the sultan, dressed in red salvar and adorned with green turbans. These too, did not speak Turkish and they would fill the road. Finally the Palace Guard of the sultan, chosen exclusively from Turks who were tall, sporting their decorations on their chests, would take up their positions as an inner ring in front of the Albanians and Arabs.
It is instructive that even an observer such as Mintzuri should have paid attention to the personnel forming concentric circles of security around the sultan. It is fairly clear from his 'reading' of their ceremonial placing, and the fact that he specifically pointed out that the Albanians and Arabs did not speak Turkish, while the innermost circle were 'exclusively Turks', that he was sensitized to the gradations of ethnic loyalty projected by the ceremonial guard.

It is also possible that, as an Armenian, Mintzuri may have been more sensitive to this gradation, as the ceremony described must have been taking place in the late 1890s, not long after the Armenian massacres in the district of Kumkapi in Istanbul in 1895,  The Turks he was describing were almost certainly the elite Ertugrul regiment, named after the legendary father of Osman, founder of the empire. They were chosen exclusively from the region of Sogud, the mythical heartland of the Ottoman Turks, where the empire had its origins.

Mintzuri also records how, as a young boy, he was deeply impressed by the ceremony of the departure of the sultan's gifts to Mecca and Medina, the surre alayi.   These gifts to the Holy Cities were a symbolic statement of the caliph's protection for the most sacred stronghold of Islam. Camels heavily caparisoned in gilded livery would parade though the streets of Istanbul bearing the ceremonial offerings. This too was an occasion for great pomp, and Mintzuri relates how a procession of bands would march through the streets playing the Hamidiye march.

One of the rare occasions when Abdulhamid actually allowed the dignitaries of state to approach his person was at the Ramadan holiday (bayram) during the yearly ceremony of the kissing of the hem of his robe (etek opmek). In a memoir written by a close aide we get some very interesting details of the actual conduct of the ceremony:
The sultan's aids hold up gold embroidered handkerchiefs standing at either side of the royal personage. Rather than the actual hem of the robe, as each  dignitary files past he kisses one of these and holds it up to his forehead in a gesture of submission (blat). Only to accept the greetings of the ulema does the sultan rise.
In this adaptation of a very old custom, there was a significant departure from tradition to allow for the change in dress. At these ceremonies the sultan no longer wore a caftan, instead he appeared in dress uniform or a morning coat; thus the embroidered handkerchiefs replaced the hem of his robe. It is also significant that the caliph rose as a gesture of humility and respect towards religious functionaries.

In most of these public ceremonies there was a significant blending of old and new, Islamic and Western traditions. The selamlik became an occasion where Islamic tradition and Western style protocol were combined,
with foreign dignitaries and palace ladies present in the same ceremonial space. The surre procession was accompanied by a military band playing Western marches, and the blat accommodated changing dress styles.

Official iconography

These events, however, remained very much the exception that proved the rule. It was to be from well within the sanctum of the Yildiz Palace that Abdulhamid made his declarations in symbols and official iconography. One of the most notable symbols of the renewed emphasis on power and ceremonial in the late nineteenth century was heraldry.

The Sublime State (devlet-i aliyye) was symbolized by the coat of arms of the House of Osman (arma-i osmani). The design had been commissioned from an Italian artist by Mahmud II. By the time Abdulhamid II came to sit on the Ottoman throne, it was such a well established part of Ottoman official symbolism that when the sultan asked for a detailed description of its contents in 1905, as he was apparently upset about the lack of uniformity in its depiction, the bureaucracy was momentarily embarrassed because no official authorized version seemed to be readily available. It was finally dug up and the contents described.

In a detailed memorandum the sultan was informed that the Ottoman coat of arms consisted of both old and new, Turkish and Islamic, motifs, such as armaments and other symbolic objects. The central motif in the shield was 'the exalted crown of the Sultans', topped by the seal or tugra of the regnant ruler. This was flanked by two heavy tomes, one symbolizing Islamic law, Seriat, and the other modern law codes (ahkam-i seriyye ve nizamiye'yi cami kitab). Under these appeared a set of scales representing justice. The central motif was surrounded and flanked by symbolic armaments, the old balancing the new: arrow and quiver-infantry rifle and bayonet, old style muzzle-loading cannon a modern field artillery piece, a traditional scimitar, a modern cavalry sabre etc. The coat of arms also included traditional Islamic-Ottoman symbols such as a vase full of blossoming roses and incense, standing for the magnanimity of the state. The total design was flanked on the right side by a cluster of red banners and on the left by a cluster of green banners symbolizing the sultanic-Ottoman as well as the universal Islamic nature of the caliphate. Set under the entire design were the whole array of Ottoman decorations. Thus the central themes of the Ottoman coat of arms revolved around the continuity of the old and the new, the traditional and the modern.

Another feature of nineteenth-century commemorative iconography was the commemorative medallion. Perhaps the most interesting among the Ottoman examples of this genre, as a bid for modernity combined with time-honoured historical legitimation, is the medallion struck in 1850, during the reign of Abdulmecid (r.1831-1861). An admirable document on the late Ottoman state of mind, it is emblazoned with the slogan 'Cet Etat subsistera. Dieu le veut'. On one side it features a fortress battered by heavy seas over which flies the Ottoman banner. On the rim are to be found slogans such as 'Justice egale pour tous', 'Protection des faibles', 'L'Etat releve', and so on. On the reverse the motifs include the Central Asian Turkish cap, and engraved in various places the names Mahomet II (Mehmed II, the Conqueror of Istanbul in 1453) Solyman I (Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent r. 1494-1566), Reshid (Mustafa Resid Pasa, grand vizier at the time and the major figure behind the Tanzimat reforms), Aali (Mehmed Emin Ali Pasa, together with Resid a major figure in the reform movement), and Coprulu (Mehmed Koprulu and his son Ahmed Koprulu, the architects of revived Ottoman power in the second half of the sixteenth century).

A similar effort to derive legitimation for the present by using symbols of the past can be observed in the prominent place given to the Ottoman genealogical lineage in the state almanacs (salname). In an almanac prepared for the vilayet of Bursa in 1885, the roots of the Ottoman family are taken back to the legendary Oguz tribe and from there to Adam and Eve via Noah. The official dynastic myth of how the Selcuk Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad protected Osman, the founder of the dynasty, is duly recounted, claiming that the House of Osman is according to the research of experts one of the oldest in the world, and will last forever.' Such manifest official fiction was an ancient tradition in Islamic court panegyrics, but what is interesting here is that it should be featured in a state almanac which is a creation of bureaucratic modernization and features such mundane data as the names of the various ministers, agricultural produce, and main geographical features of the area. The inclusion of this mythical lineage is all the more interesting as Woodhead tells us that the descent from the Oguz tribe, 'and the speculative genealogy particularly popular during the fifteenth century', was, 'largely discredited' by the late sixteenth century. The fact that apocryphal genealogies should have been brought back in during the nineteenth century, when the Ottoman state was beginning to look distinctly shaky, is significant. The aim in this case was to stress that the rule of the Ottoman family was a permanent and inevitable feature of the landscape.

The salname are in themselves a manifestation of the 'pumping up' of the Ottoman foundation myth. The genealogy of the Ottoman sultans does not appear in the state almanacs (devlet salnameleri) until 1853 (1270 AH) although they begin in 1846. It then disappears, to emerge again in 1868 (1285 AH). In the reign of Abdulhamid, the genealogy moves up from fifth place in the table of contents to third place. Individual entries under each sultan are also considerably expanded so that where earlier volumes gave only basic data such as dates of birth and death, those in the Hamidian period are much more detailed.

Just as the Ottomans tried to emphasize preexisting traditions by including them in the symbols of state, they also attempted to curtail the circulation of what were considered 'rival symbols'. A correspondence between the chancery of the grand vizier and the palace, dated 8 June 1892, dealt with the issue of the importation of goods whose packaging bore the coat of arms of a rival power. The matter had come up over a crate of mirrors which were being sent from Greece to Crete. It must be remembered that these were turbulent years leading up to the autonomy of Crete and the Ottoman-Greek war of 1897. The sultan wanted to forbid the entry of such packages, but the grand vizier had to point out that there was no legal means by which the Ottoman customs could keep them out.

On 2 July 1889, the Ministry of the Interior reported that certain 'illustrated plates' (levha), published in Moscow, had been seized in the Pera quarter of Istanbul, 'bearing the images of Byzantine emperors and Russian tsars'. It had come to the minister's attention that these plates had been distributed to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul, and were accompanied by 'a history book bearing certain harmful information'.

This episode stands as a striking illustration of the fact that the Ottoman authorities understood only too well the implications of the Russian tsars' claims to the status of protecter of all Greek Orthodox subjects in the Ottoman realm, and of their pretension to being 'descendants of the Byzantine emperors,' with Moscow as the 'Third Rome'. This event occurred in the reign of Alexander III who ascended the throne in 1883. It would have been entirely in keeping with the Moscow (rather than Petersburg) centred state symbolism of Alexander, who also stressed the mystic nature of tsardom.

The Byzantine past was a sensitive issue as the Ottoman official mythology stressed the position of the Ottoman sultans as the successors of Rome and Byzantium. After the conquest in 1453, the Ottoman imperial tradition came into its own. Necipoglu has confirmed that the Topkapi Palace was deliberately built on the site of the Byzantine acropolis. Fletcher has also emphasised that, 'The city itself was symbolic of legitimacy in the Roman imperial tradition so that the Ottoman ruler ... now adorned himself with the symbols of Caesar.' The cathedral of Hagia Sophia, converted to a mosque after the conquest, and purportedly the scene of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I's assuming the mantle of the caliphate in 1519, was especially significant. Abdulhamid was to accord particular importance to this mosque as the seat of the caliphate.

Thus, the news that, 'certain Greek and other visitors had been drawing and writing on the walls and galleries' of the mosque seemed particularly untoward. To prevent this sort of behaviour strict new instructions ordered that visitors should be escorted at all times.

Indeed Istanbul had always occupied a central position in the symbolism aimed at reinforcing the legitimacy of the Ottoman sultans. Gulru Necipoglu has shown that the ceremonial progress by a newly enthroned sultan to the mausoleums of his ancestors in Istanbul was itself a means of declaring his legitimacy: 'These tombs built posthumously by the successors of deceased sultans proclaimed Ottoman dynastic legitimacy architecturally by highlighting the uninterrupted continuity of a proud lineage.

The presence of the mausoleums, Hagia Sophia and the Holy Relics of the Prophet in Istanbul all contributed to the city's symbolism. Resid Pasa possibly the greatest Turkish statesman of the nineteenth century, listed his 'three pillars of the state'    as Islam, the sultanate and the caliphate all of which were sustained by the House of Osman which protected Mecca and Medina and the continuity of Istanbul as the capital of the empire.

The visual confirmation of the sultan's sovereignty took the form of his monogram (tugra) which appeared on all public works completed in his time. Clock towers erected all over Anatolia bearing the imperial coat of arms and other reminders of sultanic power became ubiquitous. Some of the clock towers were inaugurated in small Anatolian towns such as Nigde, Adana and Yozgad to commemorate the sultan's silver jubilee in 1901. Finkel has pointed out that 'specifically secular monumental architecture' represented by a clock tower highlighted the confrontation between Qur'anic time punctuated by the call to prayer from the minarets, and conversion to a new economic order 'founded on the conjoining of time to labour'. Thus, particularly in Anatolia and the Arab provinces, these buildings were intended as physical manifestations of the 'middle of the message' end served as markers of a new concept of time and power.

Although clock towers and the like were secular bids for legitimacy, the small village mosques were also made into lieux de memoire. One aspect of the sultan's symbolic representation in the provinces was the building of small uniform mosques bearing commemorative plaques that linked his name with distant Ottoman ancestors. One such order dated 8 September 1892 provided for the composition of chronograms   for commemorative plaques to be erected over nine mosques in villages in the C, Corlu area in Thrace. The sultans chosen, one for each mosque, were: Osman II, Mustafa I, Ahmed I, Mehmed IV, Murad III, Selim II, Beyazld II, Suleyman I (the Magnificent), and Selim 1.

The records also show that the sultan built three mosques in the villages on the island of Rhodes, dedicated respectively to himself, his mother Tir-i Mujgan Hanim, and the legendary Ertugrul Gazi.66 Orders were also issued that the mosque built by Sultan Yildirim Beyazid, one of the earlier heroic sultans, in the small town of Ynegol, not far from Sogud, was to be rebuilt as it was in ruins. This was duly done and sanctification ceremonies took place on the sultan's nineteenth accession anniversary. Another symbolic connection between the days of early glory and the Hamidian regime, was the deliberate effort to echo the architecture of the Great Mosque (Ulu Cami) in Bursa in the architecture of the Yildiz mosque. It was specified that 'the pulpit (minber) of the mosque should resemble the pulpit of the Great Mosque in Bursa.'

Although religious/dynastic legitimation themes were being employed here, the function of these mosques was, if anything, closer to the secular message of the clock towers. It is also significant that both the clock towers and the mosques were built in small places, thus manifesting
the local level.   

One example of this 'grass roots' message is the commemorative plaque reported on by the Vali of Baghdad, which was to be erected on an obelisk by the Hindiyye dam in the vilayet. A fairly typical example of the genre, it bore the legend: 'To commemorate the Holy Name of the Caliph and to furnish an ornament to His Eternal Power.' The vali specified that the text would be in Arabic, which indicates that the target audience was the local population, rather than a general statement of power, which would probably have been in Turkish.

         Serif Mardin has noted that, 'The wide adoption of an imperial name in Anatolia is a marked feature of [Abdulhamid II's] reign.' In this effort to communicate through symbols, Abdulhamid was in a position very similar  to the Russian tsar where the 'synthesis of the Russian myths, in which Orthodoxy could serve as a bridge from the sovereign emperor to the 'people'  was employed to bolster the image of the Russian autocracy.

In all these efforts it is important to note that the symbolic statements on the buildings, bridges, dams and clock towers were made in a specific historical context: the effort made from the Tanzimat onwards to reform and modernize Ottoman cities. In what Dumont and Georgeon call the struggle between state power and the local communities', symbolic manifestations of power such as coats of arms or commemorative plaques play a very critical role in the dynamic tension between state and society. Timothy Mitchell has noted the obsession with 'an appearance of order' in Egypt in the late nineteenth century where similar developments were taking place. Ottoman public space was similarly 'ordered', when possible, to suit the symbolic statements the centre wanted to make.

In nineteenth-century Istanbul, Celik has pointed out that 'the regularizing  of the urban fabric' occurred as a result of the desire of Ottoman statesmen to present a 'modem' appearance to the outside world. The 'regularizing' of the urban space, as in the case of Egypt, was not only intend, to 'epater les bourgeois', but also represented an exercise of power on the part of the centre. The monumental character of historic buildings such as the Hagia Sophia and the Suleymaniye mosque were emphasized by creating clearings around them.

Similarly, no expense was spared to restore the tombs of the legendary first two sultans of the House of Osman, Osman and his son Orhan, who were buried in Bursa. Bursa was also frequently accorded special honors as, (mehd-i'the crucible of the Sublime State' (mehd-i zuhur-u saltanat). Indeed a veritable cult of Ottomania was created around the historical heritage of the Ottoman dynasty, as Abdulhamid focused in an unprecedented fashion on the 'creation myth' of the Ottoman State. Part of this was the elaborate commemorative ceremony (ihtifal) staged every year at the tom of the legendary founder of the Ottoman dynasty, Ertugrul Gazi, the father  of Osman Gazi. The shrine of Ertugrul in Sogud, a small town i west central Anatolia, was turned into a commemorative mausoleum complex honouring the misty origins of the empire.

The tomb of Ertugrul was rebuilt in 1886 and a fountain bearing chronogram celebrating Abdulhamid as benefactor was inaugurated. The sarcophagus bearing what were reputed to be the remains of Ertugrul was refashioned in marble and a grave reputedly belonging to his wife was also rebuilt and turned into shrine in 1887. Sultan Osman's first grave was also rebuilt next to that of his father. Together with this, twenty-five graves belonging to 'comrades in arms of Ertugrul Gazi' received new stones. This activity looks distinctly like the 'invention of tradition' given that the identity of these people is unclear and only a few of the graves actually bear names. Even the historian of the site who eulogized the 'great founder of the Ottoman state' felt obliged to point out that, 'It is difficult to tell how Abdulhamid II established that the grave belonged to Ertugrul Gazi's wife. We can only surmise that he relied on reliable hearsay.' The Ertugrul Gazi shrine is mentioned frequently in despatches. In 1902 considerable money was spent on the creation of an open square around the Ertugrul Gazi Mosque by the expropriation and demolition of buildings
hemming it in.

The complex became the site for annual celebrations when the 'original Ottoman tribe' the Karakecili, would ride into Sogud dressed as Central Asian nomadic horsemen and stage a parade where they would sing a 'national march' with the refrain: 'We are soldiers of the Ertugrul Regiment ... 'We are ready to die for our Sultan Abdulhamid'. This would be followed by a display of horsemanship and a game of cirid, the traditional Central Asian sport.

It became a custom for the leader of the tribe to telegram the palace every year to the effect that, 'We have fulfilled our annual sacred duty of paying our respects to the shrine of the revered ancestors of His Imperial Majesty.' Even the so-called 'mother of Ertugrul Gazi', a Hayme Ana, was to be honoured with a special mausoleum built by imperial order in the village where she was reputedly buried.  The Hayme Ana mausoleum was maintained and refurbished regularly at considerable expense from the privy purse of the sultan.

The sultan's renewed emphasis on the 'Turkishness' of the early days of the Ottoman state can also be seen in his treatment of the 'original Turkish dynasties'. He greatly honoured the Ramazanogullari clan, who had been a Turkish beylik in the Adana region, because they claimed to be 'of pure Turkish blood'. Abdulhamid invited Emetullah Hatun, the leading matriarch of the clan, to Istanbul where she and her entourage were lodged at the Yildiz Palace and treated as honoured guests.

The renewed obsession with the early days of the Ottoman empire in Abdulhamid's reign can be likened to the same sort of obsession with dynastic legitimation in such times of extreme crisis as after the Timurid debacle of 1402. Mehmed I, the strongest figure in the interregnum, 'spent some of his precious resources to build a mosque in Sogud'. Like Abdulhamid much later, Mehmed felt the need to issue a statement to the grassroots .

From obscure towns and villages of Thrace and Anatolia to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the sultan took great pains to ensure that his munificence was acknowledged. His symbolic gifts acquired particular importance in the holy cities. On 6 April 1889, an imperial gift of several candelabra was delivered to the Ka'ba and presented during a ceremony which was held during Ramadan, ensuring that 'thousands of the faithful intoned prayers for the long life and success of His Imperial Majesty.' Also, two ceremonial tents were erected in Mecca every year during the haj on the two hills of Arafat and Mina. These were erected only during the pilgrimage, and were the symbols of the sultan's presence as his annual haj message was read from the tent on Mina. It is significant that the tents were pitched on the two hills that served as the focus of excitement during the performance of the haj rites.

Further visibility was ensured through the traditional practice of the sultan/caliph providing the holy mantle which covered the sacred stone of the Ka'ba (sitare-i serif). On 6 September 1892, the palace was informed that the new mantle, with the sultan's name embroidered in gold, was ready. It was to replace the old one which still bore the name of Abdulaziz.

The visual confirmation of sovereignty was also extended to non-Muslim places of worship. On 23 October 1885, the grand vizier Kamil Pasa reported that the Armenian Catholic church in Buyukdere in Istanbul had erected a commemorative plaque stating that the church had been constructed 'during the just and glorious reign of Abdulhamid II'. What is interesting is that the initiative seems to have come from the Armenian archbishop, who declared that 'this was being done for the first time in a Christian temple'. In fact the sultan was rather unsure about how appropriate this whole business was, and ordered that 'it be secretly investigated as to what the exact wording on the plaque consists of,' as 'if it is too prominently displayed it might be offensive to Muslim opinion.' Kamil Pasa reported back that it was a harmless display of loyalty, and in any case the plaque was displayed in an inner courtyard where few Muslim eyes would see it.

It would seem, however, that Abdulhamid soon overcame his shyness and the erecting of official iconography on non-Muslim official buildings became commonplace. An order dated 16 March 1894 declared that the
request of the Catholic Archbishop of Uskub (Scopje) to display a plaque bearing the imperial monogram (tugra) on the archbishop's residence was to be granted. The decision was based on the precedent which declared that 'since various archbishoprics of other confessions have in the past been thus honoured with the August Symbol', it was appropriate in this case, too.

The matter of just where official iconography could be displayed sometimes led to amusing incidents, one such being the case of Manolaki, a Greek tea house operator in Istanbul who set himself up as the self styled 'tea maker in chief to the Imperial Palace' (saray-i humayun cayci basisi). The hapless Manolaki was hauled off by the police for having taken the pains to stage an elaborate ceremony where he slaughtered a sacrificial sheep and solemnly erected the Imperial monogram (tugra) over his shop. The municipal authorities found his behaviour particularly reprehensible as this had led 'to other tradesmen presenting petitions to embellish their shops with the Imperial Arms'. Although the Ottoman equivalent for 'Purveyors of fine teas to Her Majesty the Queen' was to be found in the official commercial almanacs Manolaki evidently did not qualify.

Indeed, the use or misuse of the Ottoman coat of arms could attain crisis dimensions. On 28 December 1905, the Ministry of the Interior was to report that the American Embassy had interceded in favour of a certain Mr Rosenstein, the distributor of Singer sewing machines for the Ottoman empire. Rosenstein was claiming the right to display the imperial coat of arms in provincial branch shops in towns like Edirne and Yzmit. A certain Karabet Basmaciyan had applied for permission to display the arms in his shop in Catalca.

The firm's view was that the imperial permission, which was given for the central office in Istanbul, automatically applied also to the provinces. The ministry had other ideas: 'It is to be noted that the employees of this firm are mostly foreigners of uncertain demeanour (mechul el ahval bir takim ecanib), and many of them are Armenians among whom are some who have been known to be involved in the recent murderous attack (on the sultan).' The matter was becoming all the more serious as, 'the embassies are beginning to take a close interest in the matter.' The fact that something as ostensibly peripheral as permission to use the coat of arms as a sales promotion gimmick for sewing machines should overlap with a major crisis such as the Armenian issue illustrates just how enmeshed symbolism was with the chronic instability of the times.

The 'Imperial Photographers', the Gulmez Brothers, who had been commissioned to take photographs to be sent to the Chicago World Fair of 1893, also applied for permission to 'grace their shop with the royal coat of arms' and the tugra. It is highly unlikely that they were granted permission.

Louis Rambert, the director of the Imperial Tobacco Regie, recorded a similar event in his diary. The Ottoman customs seized crates containing the products of the Regie, on the grounds that they bore the imperial coat of arms. The affair created something of a diplomatic crisis as the ambassadors of France, Austria and Germany became involved. Rambert only solved the problem by producing an official authorization specifying that the Regie's permission to use the arms as part of its logo ran for another five years.

Personal manifestations of royal favour

The nineteenth century was the century of decorations, as royal favor became channeled into precise dosages. The Hamidian regime habitually  used decorations as a form of investment in the goodwill it hoped they would foster in the recipient. Thus, symbolic manifestation of sultanic munificence had a co-optive aim. Decorating or otherwise rewarding men it could not discipline or control had always been a policy of the Sublime Porte. As real coercive power declined in the nineteenth century this be' came all the more prevalent. Yet, the decorations policy of the Ottoman centre must not be seen purely as an alternative to coercion. In a very real sense decorations were a manifestation of the integrative symbolic code and it has been pointed out above that the coat of arms of the Ottoman House was prominently featured on decorations. As in the matter of the coat of arms, uniformity of the design of various decorations was a consideration for the sultan, who ordered that  precise drawings illustrating all the state decorations be made and presented to him.

On 19 June 1892, the vilayet of Konya reported that certain Greek notables in the town of Isparta had been wearing their official decorations and uniforms to church during the Easter service. The governor proudly reported that he had put a stop to 'this inappropriate practice'. He was (no doubt much to his surprise) promptly reprimanded and told that 'these people are wearing their decorations as a gesture of pride and loyalty and should not be interfered with.' Evidently the local official was offended by the Christians sporting Islamic symbols such as the star and crescent on
their chests in the profane space which a church constituted. He was overridden by his superiors who rapped his knuckles for interfering in a practice which they chose to approve of.

Nor were decorations treated lightly by the recipients or potential recipients. When the Ottoman ambassador to Paris, Munir Pasa was sent on a tour of the Balkan capitals and distributed decorations, the event caused quite a furore. The Ottoman High Commission in Sofia reported that the decoration of the King of Serbia's daughter with a high ranking medal (nisan-i ali) and his delivery of a Compassionate Order (sefkat nisani) to the Queen of Rumania, had caused heated discussion in the Bulgarian press. It was seen as a move by the Porte to support Serbian and Rumanian interests in the Balkans against those of Bulgaria.

The fact that decorations usually came with an award of money meant that they were often solicited by some rather dubious characters. Such was the case of one Professor Adolphe Strauss, who wrote to Yildiz claiming that his articles in the Hungarian press had created such positive feeling towards the sultan that when they were read aloud in the Hungarian parliament the deputies spontaneously leapt to their feet shouting: 'eljen a sultan!' (long live the sultan). The good professor actually went on to recommend that several of his colleagues be awarded specific decorations: 'For Prof. Sigismonde Vajda, the Order of the Osmanieh Third Class would be appropriate since he already holds the Osmanieh Second Class ...' and so on.

Together with decorations, the presentation of copies of the Qur'an or ceremonial banners was also part of the symbolic dialogue between the ruler and ruled. One element that the sultan tried to woo were the Kurdish chieftains of eastern Anatolia. On 11 September 1891, the vilayet of Trabzon reported that the ceremonial banners and Qur'ans sent to the Kurdish tribes of the Erzurum region had been received, and the proper ceremony in the presence of a military band and a guard of honour had been carried out. The banners were manufactured in Istanbul especially for the Kurdish Hamidiye regiments and paid for out of the privy purse.

Even in the besieged garrison in Medina in 1918, the regimental standards were solemnly decorated. To maintain morale, the garrison commander organized an essay competition which was won by an tract on 'flag protocol'. The writer specified that the flags which bore the coat of arms of the Ottoman state be dipped to salute the sultan, whereas in the case of those bearing suras from the Qur'an the sultan was to offer the salute.

The crack Ertugrul regiment which served as the personal bodyguard of the sultan also had its sancak renewed in 1892. The privy purse reported that special care had been taken to ensure that 'the prayers, dates and other legends are identical to the one that is kept as a sample in the Imperial Treasury.' Robes of honour (hil'at) were another form of the symbolic exercise of sovereignty. In these matters strict protocol was applied and precedent was seen as 'accepted procedure'. When the question of the award of a robe of honour to Sheikh Ibn-Resid came up in 1885, the grand vizier, Said Pasa advised against it. The vizier's reasons are interesting, for they illustrate the considerations that were weighed in these matters. Said Pasa pointed out that although it was customary to pay Arab sheikhs money to 'provide for the protection of the Hijaz roads', the granting of hil'at was reserved only for the sharifs of Mecca.  If any such honour was awarded to Ibn-Resid, it would mean that 'he would be considered an equal of the sharifs and this will imply that the stare is dependent on him, thereby increasing his prestige among the Arab sheikhs in a way that would be detrimental to the influence of the state.'

Particularly in the Arab provinces, decorations and other symbols of imperial favour were employed to 'win the hearts of the local sheikhs and notables'. The long-time Vali of Hijaz and Yemen, Osman Nuri Pasa, was to write:
The nomads and sheikhs are lovers of justice. The best way co deal with them is to be entirely honest and honour promises made to them. Their men and women should always be given a good reception at state offices, their complaints listened to and the necessary measures taken. The notables among them should be given decorations and a fuss should be made over them as these people are very fond of pomp and circumstance.
Symbolic objects acquired by the state

One means of emphasizing sacrality was for the palace to buy up symbolic objects which it deemed it should have in its safe-keeping. There is also evidence of this practice in the last years of the previous reign. Butrus Abu Manneh has drawn attention to the ceremonial progress, in May 1872, of 'the Prophet's sandals' from Hakkari in eastern Anatolia to Istanbul, and the grand ceremony conducted upon their arrival. The press gave reports of the progress every step of the way and offered accounts of miraculous happenings en route. Another instance of this was the order to buy what was purportedly a copy of the Prophet's handwriting in the form of a letter written to the ruler of the Ghassanids. Acquired from a certain Monsieur 'Perpinyani' (presumably Perpigniani) in 1875, it was ordered that it should be placed in the Imperial Treasury.

Objects like this, often of dubious authenticity, bought from people of foreign nationality, continue to come up in dispatches. Another such case was an item of calligraphy, supposedly an example of the handwriting of the Caliph Ali, which the enterprising Perpinyani had presented to the palace in 1877. The grand vizier Said Pasa pointed out that the item had been handed over to the treasury some time ago, and Perpinyani, backed by the French embassy, was now demanding his original fee of 5,000 liras plus interest of 1,000 lira because of the delay in payment and if not the return of the item. Moreover, he was threatening to sell the piece to the British Museum if he was not paid promptly.

Many years later the matter had still not been settled. On 13 March 1892, ministers were still discussing the appeasement' of Perpinyani who continued to make a thorough nuisance of himself by repeated pressure through the French ambassador. It was estimated that 5,000 lira was a fair price, as the accumulated interest would actually amount to more. By August 1893, when the palace was informed that the matter had still not been settled, the ministers were told with evident exasperation that 'even if the authenticity of the item is less than certain it should be bought and placed in the Imperial Treasury where all such sacred items belong.' What was being said here in plain language was: 'buy it even though it is probably a fake.' A failure to do so might have resulted in a grievous loss of prestige, particularly if the ubiquitous Perpinyani did succeed in selling it to the British Museum.

The news that the palace was prepared to pay good money for such items attracted potential sellers of a similarly dubious nature. One such case was a woman named Fatma, a resident of Makrikoy (Bakirkoy) in Istanbul, who telegraphed that she wanted to present to the sultan what she claimed was the stirrup of the Caliph Ali. This stirrup, she said, had magical qualities: when porters (hamal) had difficulties lifting their burden, she would wash the stirrup and make them drink the water. The porters, thus fortified, would happily swing their burden unto their backs.  The Minister of Police, Nazim Bey, took a somewhat jaundiced view when he was instructed to summon the item to inspect it. He reported that the woman had no real evidence beyond what her late father-in-law had told her, and that the stirrup was somewhat garishly fashioned as a dragon's head: 'although the shape of stirrups at the time is unknown, it is unlikely that the Caliph Ali would have used such a stirrup thus adorned.' Nazim Bey added that the inscription which conveniently adorned the stirrup 'the stirrup of the Caliph Ali'- was suspiciously like the writing of  our present time'.

It is highly unlikely that the palace would have bought the item. In cases where members of the wider population approached the palace on such matters, it is worth bearing in mind that what was going on was a decorous form of giving alms to the poor. It is unlikely that Abdulhamid II would have been tempted to invest in the occult properties of Ali's stirrup and much more likely that, with the tale of misfortune that went with it (dead husband, son in the army, having travelled all the way from Bursa to make the gift), the petitioner hoped for (and probably received) the sultan's charity.

Another such case was that of Tahir Efendi. Like Fatma, a person of modest means and a minor official in the Ministry of War, Tahir Efendi brought forward what he claimed was a letter of patent (berat) entitling him to certain revenues as the descendant of the chief standard bearer (sersancakdar) of the Prophet Mohammed. The palace ordered that the matter be looked into and that 'it be examined if there is indeed such a hereditary rank'. The chances are that Tahir Efendi was sent away with 'a little something' (bir mikdar sey), as the saying always went in the event of such occurances.

The symbolism of language in the Hamidian era

When one combs through Ottoman archival documentation, one comes across certain words, phrases, or cliches which frequently recur. Usually overlooked as part of chancery offiicialese, these phrases can provide useful clues to the way the state regarded its subjects, the relationships among the ruling elite themselves, and the way they perceived the basis of their rule.  This was noticed by a contemporary British observer:
For ruling native subjects, the guiding word is 'akilaneh (skillfully), while the brutal and often sanguinary conflicts among the peasantry are described by no fiercer a term than na-saz-lik (impropriety); the correction of the same to be performed in a peaceful mode, is called tarteeb (setting to rights). Voormak (to strike), a word implying resort to force is a word but rarely pronounced, and then in a subdued voice. These are specimens of the tatlu dil, the 'sweet tongue' of the Turkish rulers.
The first thing that emerges from a close reading of these 'codes' is that the state's view of its people was never negative. The people as a whole were always good, they were occasionally led astray by certain malicious and perfidious elements, but were potentially always capable of loyalty. This was not the result, as it has been argued ad nauseum of the fact that the state considered its people a 'herd' or a 'flock'. Bernard Lewis has pointed out that in the course of the nineteenth century the Ottoman term reaya was replaced by teb'a which was, 'becoming the Ottoman equivalent of the English word "subject"'. Particularly in the nineteenth century, the state was in desperate need of a reliable population, it was simply not in a position to dismiss the population as rebellious and to crush insurgency, even if it had the material means to do so, which more than often it did not.

In the case of the Yezidis, Iraqi Kurds who were targeted for conversion to Hanefi Islam, the people themselves were seen as 'simple folk who cannot tell good from evil (nik ve bed'i tefrik edemiyen sade-dilan ahali).' They were being led astray by their leaders who were 'fooling and provoking them' (igfalat ve tesvikat). In another, totally different, context the same words come up. When refugees from Greece who had been settled on the Ottoman side of the border, threatened to go back to Greece because they had not been given the land promised them by the state, they too were termed as 'those who cannot tell good from evil (nik ve bed-i fark etmez kimseler)' and who had been led astray by the Greeks.

Nor was this attitude confined only to Muslims. When Protestant missionaries became active among the Christian population of the vilayet of Syria, the people were again seen as 'simple people who cannot tell good from ill and are having their beliefs poisoned' by evil elements (nik ve bed-i fark ve temyize muktedir olmayan sade-dilan ahali).  Similarly the Alevi Kizilbas population of Tokad were described as, 'simple village folk (sade-dil kir'a halki)' who were to be 'shown the high path of enlightenment' by instructing them in the Hanefi mezheb.  When American missionaries attempted to open a school in Konya, the view was again that this was 'an effort to fool the Armenian simple folk into increasing the influence and number of Protestants in the area (ermeni sade dilanini igfal).'  When the population itself seemed to be involved in untoward activity their leaders were usually to blame and were qualified as 'confused or silly elements (sebukmagiz takimi)'.  Nor were Christian missionaries the only source of perfidy and subversion working on the population. The Sh'i missionaries active in the vilayets of Mosul and Basra were also known to be 'perturbing the minds (tahdis-i efkar); of the people and inviting them to become Shi'a.

This motif of confusing and otherwise troubling minds comes up time and again. Even in mainstream Islam, matters which could provoke controversy were to be treated carefully. When the newspaper Malumat published a rebuttal of some anti-Islamic article published in Egypt it was reprimanded for 'confusing the minds' of the common people (tesvis-i ezhan) by allowing such debates to appear in the newspaper columns.  Hasan Kayali has pointed out that this tendency continued into the Young Turk period when, in 1912, 'discussion of political subjects was banned in view of reports from the provinces that religious functionaries who would nor be expected to "distinguish good from bad" in political issues were preaching on matters of elections and politics.'

When Fahrettin Pasa the defender of Medina in 1918, was betrayed by his subalterns who spread about the rumour that he was deranged, his biographer was to characterize these men as 'those who had water on the brain but nonetheless succeeded in tricking some innocents among us'.

Another stock phrase particularly when it came to nomadic populations such as the Bedouin Arabs, or the Kurdish tribes, was that they 'live in a state of nomadism and savagery (hal-i vahset ve bedeviyetde yasarlar).' The Yezidi Kurds who lived in this state were to tee 'gradually brought into the fold of civilization (pey der pey daire-i medeniyete idhal)', which was to be done through schooling and the constitution of a municipal authority in their area, Sincar. This vocabulary then, was the expression of both the age-old contradiction between the desert and the town, and the 'mission civilizatrice' mentality of the new Ottoman bureaucracy. As Mardin puts it, the Bedouin had to be 'liberat[ed] from the shackles of community life.' The sultan himself once told a European ambassador that in eastern Anatolia there were tribes, 'whose comportment is similar to savage tribes in America'.

The ultimate aim, of course, was to transform them into reliable members of the 'fundamental elements (unsur-u asli')'. The obsession with 'bringing civilization and progress to the Arabs (urbanin temeddun ve terakkileri ) and 'transforming them into a settled population (urbanin tevattinlari), occupied Ottoman officials from the mountains of Iraq to the sands of the Sahara. The main reason why the Ottomans wooed the Senusi  sheikhs in the latter area was that they, 'reformed the character (tehzib-i ahlak)' of the Bedouin and, 'abated their savagery (izale-i vahset)'.  The nomads were usually considered as something akin to wild creatures, who had to be managed lest untoward developments 'provoke their wild nature and hatred (tevahhus ve nefretlerini mucib olmak)'.

The effort to create reliable military operatives was the source of another recurring formula: that the people should be incorporated into the ranks 'without lamentation (sizildisizca)'. This word comes up every time there is a question of incorporating otherwise unruly peoples into the armed forces. The Yezidis, the North African desert Bedouins, and the Alevis of Anatolia were all to be thus treated. The fact was of course that there was no end of 'lament' on the part of these people. When it became a matter of open rebellion then it was necessary to 'punish them and frighten like-minded ones (kendileri tedib ve emsali terhib).'

When it was a question of a Christian minority who had a complaint, the form was usually 'the complaints mixed with gratitude (sukran ile memzuc sikayetleri), as in the case of the Armenians of Tokad who complained that they were being deprived of schooling.

Also there was a constant effort to present a good, or at least a defendable image towards the outside world. This was usually expressed by the stock phrase that something 'would not look good towards friend or foe (enzar-i yar ve agyara karsu ho' gorunmemek),' or that it would 'cause loose talk (tervic-i kil-u kal).'  At a time when the Ottoman state was under constant pressure from the outside world to implement this or that treaty obligation, or to fulfill promises of this or that reform, it was of manifest importance not to provide additional opportunities to exert leverage.

Very often these utterances have what $Serif Mardin has celled 'en incantatory quality', and appear to voice the feelings of a ruling elite that is trying to convince itself of its own legitimate right to existence. The very name of the Ottoman state, memalik-i mahrusa-i sahane, (the well protected domains of His Imperial Majesty')was a testimony to this state of mind, and a monumental irony, because they were anything but well protected. Every time the danger of the disintegration of the state had to be mentioned it was accompanied by huda negerde (may God forbid), almost as though to voice the very words was to tempt providence.

Another name for the state was 'devlet-i ebed-i muddet-i osmaniye'' the eternal Ottoman state, very akin to Roma aeterna or 'la France eternelle' end with the same 'halo of perpetuity'.
 
Conclusion

The most crucial task any project of social and political legitimation must face in an ancien regime state is the need to make itself out to be part of 'the natural order of things','things as they always have been'. When the population at large accepts the historical inertia of a particular order of things, half the battle has been won; it then becomes a question of maintaining the status quo. The problem arises when the political centre tries to make new and more intensive demands on its population, or the expectations of the people change. Thus, the Hamidian order tried to perpetuate the image that it was what Ernest Gellner called 'the very norm of truth', yet on the other hand it tried to inject new muscle into this image by squeezing society for material and spiritual resources which could only be mobilized at the cost of altering the basic balance.

The symbols drawn from the familiar Islamic traditions had long since been accepted because, as elegantly put by Edward Shils, 'one of the main reasons why what is given by the past is so widely accepted is that it permits life to move along lines set and anticipated from past experience and thus subtly converts the anticipated into the inevitable and the inevitable into the acceptable.'

The problem in the Hamidian Ottoman state was that increased Islamic symbolism and reliance on the caliphate as the 'exemplary centre linking the earthly and celestial hierarchies', was an inadequate substitute for real power.